Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?

Dear, 

‘Heaven’ and ‘hell’ are obviously not geographies. 

What is it that we call as ‘holy’? That which is untainted, un-corrupted. And obviously you call that as ‘holy’, because there something within you which gives you that definition. There is something within you which demands cleanliness, there is something within you which does not like taintedness, corruption, conditioning. 

So what you call as ‘holy’ is demanded by something which is of the same ‘holy’ nature and is already present in you. Had you not been holy at all, you could not have demanded the ‘holy’, you would have been satisfied with all the dirt and filth that comes along in life. But we dislike all that. It becomes a load on the mind. We do not like it, we remain dissatisfied. We want something clean, pristine, like this sheet of snow all around. That very urge, firstly means that the ‘holy’ resides within us. Now this is a tricky situation then. If the holy resides within us, then why are we unclean? If our essence is holiness, from where does the unholy come? 

There is a clear contradiction, there is a clear paradox. If essentially you are holy, how can life then be unholy? So when you meet a contradiction like this, obviously you have to reject one of the statements. If two statements contradict each other, both of them cannot be simultaneously true. One of them has to be rejected. You can either say, “Well there is nothing called ‘the essential’, that there is nothing called the ‘center’ or the ‘core’, and there is nothing holy about our existence. If there is, then show it to me. Can you demonstrate or display it to me?” And it will be very difficult to demonstrate, display or convince that essentially we are holy. 

And so you have an easy option available, which is to discard the first statement itself and say that there is nothing called ‘holy’ within. “This haphazard, random, frustrating life is all that we have. Life is nothing but a spread of unholiness.” You can do that; you can reject the first statement. Or, you could say, “I have faith. Essentially I am divine, essentially I am clean, and that directly implies that all that appears unclean is just a myth, an illusion. It is to be rejected, falsified.” What do you do with a statement that is incorrect? You reject it. What do you do with a perception that is an illusion? You reject it. Are you getting it? 

So there can be another type of mind which can then say, “I am not contended with this humdrum, with this unclean, stinking state of affairs. I reject them because essentially I am holy. If I am essentially holy, then how can life be like this? I reject it! I reject it.” 

This rejection cannot happen if firstly you do not get a glimpse of the ‘true’. You are rejecting something by calling it ‘false’. Right? It is only the closeness to the true which gives you the power, the courage to reject the false. Otherwise, you will keep on accepting the false, helplessly, slavishly, without any possibility of redemption. You will keep on accepting it and you will call it ‘surrendering to fate’. You will say, “Well this is all that there is, what can we do? Life is like this for me and for everybody else. It has always been like this, it is like this and I do not foresee any possibility that something can change even in the future.” You will go on living in this falseness. 

To reject the false, closeness of truth is required. Now, truth is by definition, the only element that there is! So what do we mean by ‘closeness of truth’? Does truth ever go far away? Yes, truth does go far away from the one who is living in the false. For him, even though truth is really close, but it becomes apparently very-very distant. Being close, it appears very distant. 

What is meant by ‘association with the holy’ then? ‘Association with the holy’ means that in this false life, there is a possibility of coming in contact with a situation, a person, a book, and anything else that the mind can sense, an environment, which reminds me of my essentially true nature. That is association with the holy. Association with something, someone, the presence of whom reminds you of your own internal truth, whose presence is a proof, a validation that if it is possible in one case, then it is possible for me as well, that is what is meant by, ‘association with the holy’. That is what gives you courage to reject the false. 

For more clarity I invite you to visit: http://prashantadvait.com/2015/04/09/wha...
Asked at: https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150601153251AAWVcrR