The Gates of Heaven

I was reading about some of the atrocities that people commit in wars, and I was pondering the incredible unconditional love and compassion that surrounds all people when they are in the Spirit World. And I was wondering, how could the two ever be reconciled?

I thought, if only all these war criminals were able to feel in their hearts, for even one instant, all the love and joy and endless compassion that is there for all people who live in the Spirit World, that surrounds them and fills them in every instant of their existence. Then they would all drop their guns, their bombs and their knives, and there would be peace and an end to all war on Earth.

But then I wondered: What happens when a serial killer or a soldier who has murdered and tortured dozens of people arrive at the “gates of heaven”? That is, the entrance to the Spirit World, where most of us spend our time between lives, or remain forever once we have “graduated” from the Earth school.

Does he get admitted? Has he earned entry through the “pearly gates”? Or does he, rather, get sent to burn in hell, as so many of us are taught to believe as children?

So I thought I'd make a list of some of the typical people you can find on Earth, and see what would happen in each of these imaginary cases when they die.

Imaginary Case No. 1: Ordinary People

The great majority of us here on Earth are “ordinary people”.

Now, by ordinary people, I don't mean that you are boring or that there is nothing special about you.

Of course you are special! Of course you are unique! And, as I write in this post about how we are all amazing, of course you are amazing too!

No. What I mean by ordinary people, is that most of us are people who are not especially saintly, but we're also not horrible people who have murdered dozens of people in our lives or spend most of our time torturing prisoners.

We might even have committed crimes. Maybe we've cheated someone or defrauded the government or stolen from someone. Maybe we've even made our living for a while as a scam artist.

But we're still “ordinary people”. We're not atrocious war criminals or sadistic serial murderers. And we're not incredible gurus and avatars who can materialize objects out of thin air or lead thousands of people on religious pilgrimages either.

Anyways, coming back to our imaginary case number 1.

So let's imagine that we know someone named Bob and someone called Ann.

Bob and Ann

Bob sits in a cubicle in a corporate office from 9 to 5 on weekdays. He lives in a nice white house in the suburbs and has 4 kids. His wife, Ann, doesn't work. She stays at home and looks after their 4 babies as well as the fifth one which is on its way into the world.

Sometimes Bob lies to Ann and goes out for a drink with his buddies after work instead of going home to lend a hand with the housework. But he tells his wife he's still in the office. He hates housework, you know. So he'll do anything to avoid it.

Sometimes Bob takes some office supplies from work. Not a ton of things, maybe just a package of paper, a few pens, some scissors and glue. He's got a lot of kids at school, and they all need school supplies and anything he can do to save a buck here or there, well, it's better 'n nothing, right?

Ann, on the other hand, is sick and tired of the house and the babies and all those dirty dishes and dirty diapers and dirty laundry.

The kids get on her nerves and she finds herself screaming at them more often than she'd like to. Sometimes she spanks them too. She loves them, but she very rarely cuddles them or kisses them or tells them how much she loves them. She's just too bone-tired for that.

She wishes with all her might that Bob might earn a little more money so they can take a well-deserved holiday. Someplace exotic, like the Seychelles or the Caribbean.

They'd dump the kids with her parents for a week and just take off. Disconnect.

But Bob doesn't earn that much money. He's just a low-level clerk sitting in a cubicle.

So sometimes when Ann goes to the supermarket she packs a small foil bag into her purse, and she goes around the aisles sticking little items into the foil bag like a can of sardines, some lipstick or a package of hot-dogs.

The foil bag keeps these items from setting off the alarms when she leaves the grounds without paying for them. She'd like to stop doing this, but really, Bob doesn't make that much money. And anything she can do to stretch their dollar to the max, well, she'll do it.

Bob likes to spend his Sundays vegging out at home on the sofa, watching football or baseball or whatever happens to be on, as long as there's a ball involved somewhere.

Ann's one indulgence is a weekly visit to her hair salon. When she's at the salon she can gripe a bit and no one gets mad at her. And she comes out looking great to boot.

After she goes to the hair salon, she and hubby Bob usually get to enjoy a really hot night together.

So Bob and Ann go dragging around through life. Their kids grow up, go to university, get jobs, get married and then turn into younger versions of Bob and Ann.

In the meantime Bob and Ann are now retired. They finally get to travel around the world. They do all the things in their old age that they had always dreamt of doing and never could when they were younger. They enjoy themselves, they enjoy their grandkids until the day comes when the Grim Reaper comes for them.

So now that they are staring Death in the face, what happens to them?

Does Bob get sent to burn in hell because he stole some office supplies or sometimes thought mean things about his boss?

Does Ann have to enter into some sort of purgatory because she wasn't such a hot Mama and in addition she was a shoplifter?

Naw. They're just your ordinary everyday Jane and Joe. We've all done these sorts of things. And like most of us, they find the “gates of heaven”, that is, the tunnel of light into the Spirit World, wide open for them.

That doesn't mean that they won't have to pay their karmic dues for the things that they stole or the lies that they told. But really, these aren't major things to worry about.

Maybe in a future life someone will steal some money from Ann, and she would've paid up her karmic dues. Maybe Bob's future spouse in his new life will lie to him occasionally. But nothing disastrous there.

Imaginary Case Number 2: The Serial Murderer and the Sadistic Prison Guard

Jim is a serial killer. He's the kind of guy you'd habitually find portrayed in “Criminal Minds” and “CSI”.

He especially likes torturing young girls. He kidnaps them and then he tortures them and then he rapes them and then he kills them. He feels no compunction. No sorrow. No regrets.

Billy is a soldier fighting in a war that he didn't choose. But even though he didn't choose this war, you can't deny that he really enjoys it.

He's very authoritarian, and soon his supreme sense of self-confidence earns him a high position. Now he's in charge of the prisoners of war, and he gets to do what he likes with them.

So sometimes he'll drag in a prisoner just because he can. He'll torture the prisoner all afternoon and then send him back to his cell.

Sometimes he'll even torture the same prisoner for days on end, until the poor bloke can't take it anymore and expires on the torture table.

Billy just laughs when this happens.

“Cart this corpse away!” he'll yell jubilant to his subordinates. “It's of no more use to us now.”

He'll relax for a few days. Have a few drinks with his cronies to congratulate himself for a job well done. He might even be especially nice to his wife, and take her out to a candlelit dinner.

But after a while, that eager restlessness will settle in again. And then he'll just have to do it all over again.

Death Comes for Jim and Billy

Confident though they might feel most of the time, Jim and Billy are still only mortal men. And one day, the Grim Reaper comes for them too. And the next thing you know, the pearly white gates of heaven are looming up before them.

So do you think they'll pass through? Get to enjoy cakes and banquets in the presence of St. Peter after all their hard life's labour?

Well, I'm not a medium but I actually once read an account by someone who was capable of astral travelling, and he described precisely such an incident, when 2 blokes similar to Jim the serial killer and Billy the sadistic prison guard arrived at the entrance to the Spirit World.

Adam was standing at the entrance with a high level spirit guide or angel. The angel held the doors of the Spirit World open for them and opened his arms wide, offering them an embrace full of love.

Adam was appalled that people like Jim the serial killer and Billy the sadistic prison guard would get to enjoy the same delights in the afterlife as nice, basically good people like Ann and Bob. He was about to protest, but the angel motioned him to just watch.

As Jim the serial killer and Billy the sadistic prison guard neared the pearly gates, the light and love pouring out towards them literally blinded them. They had to cover their eyes, and even so you could tell that their hands made no difference, and the light continued to hurt their eyes.

The angel moved forward to hug them and enfold them in divine compassion and forgiveness. But they couldn't accept that welcome.

“No!” they cried in horror. “The things we have done are such a dark stain on our hearts that we can't go near that light. It hurts us. It burns us.”

They both then turned tail and fled.

The angel then explained what would become of them.

Both would travel to a lower astral world that vibrated at the same low vibration that they did.

In these spirit worlds, in these astral levels as well as on Earth, our vibrations are EVERYTHING.

What We Vibrate Is What We Get

What we are vibrating is where we will go and what we will get.

So these elderly gentlemen (who, on the other hand had nothing gentle about them at all) would both travel to the lower astral world that they had earned throughout their lives with their deeds and actions.

Jim would find himself surrounded by serial killers and this time, HE would be their victim!

Billy would find himself surrounded by sadistic torturers and this time, guess who was going to get tortured?

Except that, being only spirits and not humans living on a physical plane anymore, this time, their torture would never end.

Jim would be tortured and “murdered”. But since he couldn't die, he would just have to “wake up” and go through it all over again, throughout all of eternity.

And since Billy wouldn't be able to seek solace and escape from his tortures through death, his only fate would be to be tortured endlessly.

Jim's and Billy's Salvation

Well, I could stop here. But if you've an unusual load of compassion in you (and I wouldn't be the least surprised if by now you're crowing and chortling over the fates of Jim and Billy, goodness knows they've more than earned it!), you might actually feel a little bit bad for Jim and Billy.

It's true they were really true SOB's. But they were human too. They are children of G-d, and they carry the divine spark within them as do all G-d's creations.

So there must be at least some iota of good within them. Some tiny capacity, no matter how minuscule, for repentance, and wanting to make up for their crimes.

So what happens if and when this little, almost imperceptible spark within them stirs to life? Will they be stuck getting tortured in this inhuman astral world forever?

Well, they could very well literally spend eons and eons being tortured in their dark astral worlds. But G-d never abandons any one of his creations, and he would never abandon Jim or Billy either.

One day, Jim might all of a sudden get sick and tired of “living” this way. He suddenly realizes what a bastard he had been throughout his past life, and he starts to think about all his poor victims, and how he would like to be able to do something to make it up to them.

Now, people don't turn into a Jim the serial killer or a Billy the sadistic prison guard overnight. It takes lifetime upon lifetime upon lifetime of deliberately living in a way that goes against everything that is good and right in life, to become like Jim or Billy.

Of deliberately choosing to do what one knows is bad and wrong over what one knows is the right thing to do.

So Jim and Billy can't just “get over” a lifetime of atrocious crime just like that. And they know it.

Nonetheless, the possibility is still very much within the reach of Jim and Billy.

The minute Jim, or Billy, feels the spark of a desire to atone for his wrong actions and to become a better person, a spirit guide will enter into the dark astral world to talk with him.

He would explain to Jim and Billy what they will have to go through in order to better their lot in life.

They wouldn't be able to go up into the Spirit World, where all of us ordinary, basically nice souls live, in order to visit with their loved ones.

And of course, they would have to face all the karmic debts that they would have before them, that they had accrued over so many lifetimes of atrocious behaviour.

They would have to pay for every life that they had taken. Every victim that they had tortured. Every family that they had caused to suffer.

But the rewards would also be great. If they succeeded in their intentions, if they fulfilled their purpose in each of their subsequent lives, they would never have to return to the lower astral worlds, to be tortured all over again.

They could gain the “gates of heaven” and be re-united with their loved ones who habitually live there, and spend all their time between lives in the company of these loved ones.

And each time they came back to Earth in a new incarnation, their lives would get easier and easier, as they progressively cleaned themselves of the black stains of their earlier, condemnable actions and became brighter and more full of light.

If they were willing to go through that, then they, too, could leave their lower astral world and one day, become better people, full of light and compassion.

So how do you know that maybe you too weren't once a Jim, a serial killer? Or that maybe once upon a time I too was once a Billy, a sadistic torturer?

We don't know where we came from, or what we have done in past lives. No one knows where anyone came from.

So the only thing we can do is to forgive ourselves and to feel compassion for ourselves and for everyone else. Because really, we really don't know where any of us came from, or what we may have done in the past.

The only thing that matters right now, is who we are right now, where we are right now and who we can become.

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Death and the Afterlife

Afterlife Authorities

Guided Tour of the Afterlife

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