Story 156 - Heaven or Hell our Own Creation

When Rama was a student preparing for the Bachelor of Arts Examination, a fellow-student used to live in the same room with him. This fellow-student was a very playful young man. He used to while away his time in singing, dancing and playing. One day a gentleman asked this friend how many hours he used to devote to his studies. He smilingly said, "Full 18 hours." The friend said, what does that mean? You waste four or five hours in my presence, before my eyes, I know that you sleep about 8 or 9 hours out of the 24, and that leaves you only 10 or 12 hours, and yet you say that you read for full 18 hours. The young man said, "You have not studied Mathematics." I can prove that I read for full 18 hours. The gentleman said, "Well, how is that?" The young man said, "I and this Rama live in the same room; as a matter of fact I read for 12 hours and he reads for 24 hours, that makes up to 36; strike the average, 18 falls to his share and 18 to mine”. The gentleman said, "Well, admitting that you read for 12 hours, but this I cannot admit that Rama reads for full 24 hours.

How is that possible? I know that Rama is a very hard working student, I know he is preparing so many subjects, and he is not only doing the University work, he is doing four times as much work extra and preparing many other subjects, and doing all sorts of works, but still the laws of nature will not allow him to work for 24 hours*" This fellow student began to explain. He said, "I can show you that when he is taking his dinner, he never allows his mind to idle away a single second; I can show you that he always has with him a paper on which there is some scientific problem to reflect upon, some mathematical or philosophical subject, or some book or some poem which he may commit to memory; he may be writing a poem or doing some sort of work or other, he never wastes a moment when he is taking his meals. When he is in the toilet room, he is drawing with a piece of chalk figures on the wall; when he goes to sleep, he is working at some problem or other, he is always dreaming of the same subjects which occupy his mind during the day. Thus his 24 hours are devoted to study."

Well, there was some truth in his statement. The man who devotes full 18 hours of his time to study, in his dreams he can do nothing else but the same kind of work which he has been doing in the day time.

This being the case, in your long, long sleep of death, what should you expect; the period between the death and the next birth, that period of long sleep, how is that to pass? Vedanta says this will pass in your hells or heavens; this will pass in your paradises, or your purgatories. What are these paradises, these hells and heavens? These are the dreamlands which pass between one death and the next birth. Here is a man, a true Christian, who has been living a most pious, religious and devout life, who has been attending the Church every Sunday, who has been offering his prayers every morning and1 every evening, he has been invoking the grace of God at every meal that he has taken, and has been keeping the Cross of Christ on his breast all his life, he has meditating upon Christ all the while that he was awake, from his birth until his death; he was all the while living, moving, and having his being in the holy presence of Jesus the Christ. This man is a man who has devoted his wakeful state to the love of Christ, the wakeful state of 80 or 90 years, he has devoted all his thought to Christ, he has been expecting after death to find himself seated on the right hand side of Jesus the Christ, and he has been dreaming and thinking all his life, about the angels, seraphims, and cherubims that will greet him after death. According to Vedanta, a devout Christian of this kind will find himself after death on the right hand side of Jesus the Christ. Verily, verily after death, during that long, long sleep, between this death and the next birth, he will find himself surrounded by the cherubims, the seraphims, and the angels who are singing hellelujas all the while. Me will find himself in their midst. There is no reason why he should not find himself in their midst. Vedanta says, “O Christians, if you are devout, if you are really in earnest and faithful, you will get the promises in your books fulfilled, but find no fault with the Mohammedans and the Hindus. If a Mohammedan is a true Mohammedan, if he has been devoting all his wakeful state of 70 or 80 years of his life in the same way, as prescribed by Mohammed, and has been thinking of and looking up to Mohammed, and he has been offering up his prayers four or five times a day (Mohammedans offer prayers four or five times in every 24 hours, and they are very strict, very devotional), if he has been all the time living in the name of Mohammed, and if he has been always ready to lay down his life in the name of Mohammed, (These Mohammedans are very earnest, most zealous, and you might even say sometime bigoted fanatics), then what will become of a Mohammedan of this kind, the dream of whose life has been to serve the cause of Mohammedanism, to make the name of Mohammed resound from one end of the world to the other? A Mohammadan of this kind, when he dies, what will become of him? To him will befall nothing which is contrary to the laws of nature. The law of nature is what we are dreaming in our wakeful state, the same we shall dream when we go to sleep. He has been dreaming of Mohammed, of the Paradise, of the beautiful gardens, and of the beautiful damsels; the rivers of wine that are promised by their Prophet after death; he has been dreaming about magnificent palaces and objects of luxury in heaven after death. Vedanta says there is not a law or force in nature, which can prevent him from enjoying the kind of heaven about which he was dreaming. He must see a heaven of the same sort, he must find himself, after death, in a paradise of the sort promised by his Prophet.

But Vedanta says, “O Mohammedans, you have no right to place all the people in this world, after death, at the disposal of your own Prophet, at the mercy of one Mohammed only. Let Christians enjoy their thoughts: make them free, do not want to subject all these, whether they die in Europe, America, India, Japan, or China, to the mercy of Mohammed. 'If they believe in Mohammed, all right; otherwise they are damned.' You have no right to speak that way, to be so cruel. If you are a follower of Mohammed, you will have a heaven of the kind which you desire, and so with all religions. If you are true to your ideas, if you are true to your dogmas or creed, or your religion after death, you will have a heaven of the same sort as you are expecting. In reality, hell or heaven after death is dependent upon yourselves. You make the heaven after death, and you make the hell after death. In reality the heavens and hells are simply your dreams, nothing more, dreams which appear to you to be real at that time. You know dreams appear to be real when we are dreaming. So these hells or heavens will appear to you to be real after death, but as a matter of fact, in reality, they are nothing more than dreams.

MORAL: Whatever we are always thinking about in our wakeful state, the same we dream when we go to sleep. Similarly, whatever ideas about hell or heaven we cherish constantly in daily life, the same will appear real to us in our life after death.

Vol. 2 (80-83)