Overview

Hell focuses on what you have. Heaven reminds you of who you are. And once you clearly remember who you are, you don’t even need heaven; then what you have is Liberation. Do not starve yourselves of happiness. If you are giving up on lower happiness, make sure that you provide yourself with higher happiness. That is your privilege. More than privilege—that is your dharma, that is your responsibility.

Niralamba Upanishad

कः स्वर्गः । को नरकः । स्वर्ग इति च सत्संसर्गः स्वर्गः । नरक इति च असत्संसारिवषयजनसंसर्ग एव नरकः ।

What is heaven? What is hell? Heaven is the association with the truth. Hell is the association with the false and worldliness.

~ Niralamba Upanishad, Verse 17

The fine line between heaven and hell

Acharya Prashant: ‘Heaven is association with the holy.’ The best thing would have been a non-dual state in which no association holds any meaning—there exists nobody else to associate with, there is nobody else at all. And that state is blissful beyond all imaginations of the best of heavens.

Even heaven is confined by the depiction and definition of what ‘heaven’ means. Therefore, Liberation is a place higher and better than heaven. Heaven has a depiction and definition, and, therefore, heaven has its boundaries. And where there are boundaries, there is sorrow. Liberation has neither depiction nor definition, and Liberation is freedom from all boundaries and, therefore, all sorrow.

A graded approach

Here, the sages are talking of heaven. They are talking of heaven because heaven will make it possible to be liberated. Theoretically, it is possible to be liberated even from hell, but it is difficult. Therefore, this is a graded approach: Heaven, and above heaven lies liberation. And below heaven lies hell. And we live in hell. We live in hell. We are being told how to graduate to heaven. And if you make good use of heaven, you will be liberated even from heaven.

What is heaven?

What is heaven? The company of holiness is heaven—satsaṁsargaḥ. ‘Sargaḥ’ means association, coming close to something. ‘Sat’ means that which is indestructible, infallible, eternal. Be with someone who will not solve your problem but will demonstrate your problem to be false. That is heaven. Heaven is a place where you get no sympathies for having problems.

What is hell?

Hell, on the other hand, according to the sage, is association with the unholy worldly folk. Hell is a place where your problemed self is ratified.

Do not think of hell as a place where you will be cruelly dealt with. All the usual comic book depictions of hell are exactly that—a kid’s fantasy or nightmare. Immense cauldrons full of boiling oil and slaves being dealt with whiplashes, monsters out to suck your blood—that is what we think hell is. Hell is not all this.

Hell is a place where you get a lot of sympathy, consolation, condolence, commiseration. You are told that ‘we agree that you are in a miserable state’. Your neighbour comes to you, puts his hands on your shoulder, and with a grave face tells you that you are indeed in deep trouble. What has been done? Your belief in your problemed existence has been deepened. That is hell.

What is your problem?

Your problem is not that you have problems. Your problem is that you think you are the one who can have problems. And these are two very different things. It is one thing to have problems. It is another thing to mistake your identity so much that you start imagining yourself as being problemed.

Hell: Reinforce the problems

In hell, your belief in your problemed identity is reinforced. Hell is full of people ready to offer you a shoulder to sob on. You go to someone and tell him, ‘You know, I am so weak, and I am a victim of circumstances, and I am ignorant and sick, luckless and witless!’ And the other fellow will be very quick to not only accept what you are saying but also return and reflect back to you an exaggerated version of what you are saying. You tell him, ‘I am feverish, I have a temperature of 101!’ He will put his palm on your face and say, ‘No, it is 103!’ That is hell. The fact is you have 98.4.

Heaven: Dismiss the problems

Heaven is where your problems are not solved; heaven is where your problems are dismissed. To solve a problem is to honour a problem. Heaven is a place where problems are not admitted. Hell is the place where you are not admitted if you don’t have problems.

So, heaven is the company of people who will not pay attention to what you have because all that you have is problems. Heaven is the company of the people who will pay attention to what you are. Because when you do that, you have very little respect left for what you have. And the more attention you pay to what you have, the easier it becomes for you to turn oblivious to what you are.

Liberation: Beyond all problems

Hell focuses on what you have. Heaven reminds you of who you are. And once you clearly remember who you are, you don’t even need heaven; then what you have is Liberation.

3 levels of living

There are three ways of living.

Hell: Polluted happiness

The most common way of living is: ‘What do I have?’ Nine hundred and ninety people from a thousand constantly worry and wonder, ‘What do I have? How much do I have? How long will it last? How can I have more?’

Heaven: Higher happiness

Then some nine people maybe bother to look at what they are: ‘What is the quality of my mind, thought, consciousness, life?’—quality that is not measured through possessions because all possessions are ultimately sources of problems. Either they are explicitly problems, or they are problems waiting to manifest; they are lying latent, dormant. ‘I am not very concerned about what I have. The more attention I pay to what I have, the more I am empowering my problems. I am rather much more concerned about what I am.’

Liberation: Absolute happiness

And if you pay sufficient and honest attention to who you are, you are liberated of even the need to ask who you are. That is the fruit of constantly inquiring and wondering about your fundamental existence. You could either worry about all the miscellaneous things—which most people do—or you could keep aside all the miscellaneous worries and focus your mind on this one question or concern or worry, which is: ‘How am I doing? What is the quality of my existence? Who am I to be worrying so much?’

Needless to say, all the three are meaningful only with respect to one’s mortal existence. Hell, heaven and Liberation—none of these relate to any kind of afterlife or places that one reaches after death. Hell is a way of living, heaven is another way of living, and Liberation is royal life itself.

Heaven or hell is your choice

You are not consigned to hell. You are not rewarded a heaven. Hell and heaven are both choices, your own sovereign choices. No angel, no record keeper, no god outside of you decides whether you will be in heaven or hell. Give up that excuse. You decide whether you want to be in heaven or hell.

3 levels of happiness

Heaven gives you one kind of happiness; hell, too, offers you a particular kind of happiness, and what Liberation gives you is the ultimate happiness. So, it is not about forgoing happiness.

Hellish happiness

Unfortunately, the lowest kind of hellish happiness prevails and dominates so much that hellish happiness has become synonymous with happiness itself. There is a funny repercussion, therefore: those who are not in hell often start wondering whether they are happy at all. You might actually be blissful, that you can easily admit: ‘Yeah, I have a silent, gentle bliss about me’. But if you are asked, ‘Are you happy?’ you will have a problem quickly and conclusively asserting yourself because happiness has been monopolized by the citizens of hell. Laughing, shrieking, yelling, loud, glitzy, blingy happiness.

So, it is important to realize that when you rise from hell, you don’t give up happiness; you just rise to a higher level of happiness. Similarly, Liberation is not liberation from happiness; it is the ultimate level of happiness.

Heaven: Rise in happiness

Why am I talking about this? I am talking about this because if you are not convinced that you are graduating to a higher level of happiness, then heaven can feel like a place with no happiness because heaven does not have happiness of the kind that is found in hell. And if your very definition of happiness gets dictated by the citizens of hell, if you start buying into and believing in the definitions they create, hell will become very attractive, and heaven will look very dull to you. And that will pose a danger. Even if you are offered heaven, even if you wisely choose heaven, even if you do gain admission to heaven, you will have an unfortunate inclination to slip back to hell. Why? Because heaven will appear quite an unhappy place.

Liberation: Infinite happiness

Therefore, the one who graduates to heaven, the one who elevates himself to Liberation must be very clear that he is not forsaking happiness; he is reclaiming happiness. And reclaiming happiness is very important. You cannot allow happiness to be monopolized by the inhabitants of hell. The ones who are in heaven, they are the ones who really deserve to be happy. The ones who are liberated must be infinitely happy.

Happiness - Monopoly of hell?

But you see what we have done? We have abandoned the word ‘happy’ to be used by the worldly folk, and for the liberated state, we have felt obligated to coin another word: ‘bliss’ or ‘Joy’. What are you saying? You are saying, ‘We have bliss, we have Joy’—what the hell! And who has happiness? Exactly that—hell.

You have bliss, you have Joy—but who has happiness? Hell has happiness. Indirectly, you have declared that you are not happy, that you have Joy and bliss, but you don’t have happiness. It is a very puritan way of looking at things, but it is also harmful. It is not harmful when you are already liberated, but when you are in hell, it is a very harmful way of putting things.

Do you crave happiness?

You are in hell, so what does your ego really crave for? Happiness, right? Your ego wants happiness, and you are telling the ego, ‘Happiness is found in hell. In Liberation, you can have bliss’; the ego says, ‘Who wants bliss? I want happiness, so I will very happily stay put in hell!’ And that is what happens.

In the hell-state of its existence, the ego has very little respect for bliss or Ananda—all that it cares for is sukha or happiness—and you are telling the ego that ‘you cannot have happiness if you graduate beyond hell’. So, the ego refuses to graduate beyond hell. The ego says, ‘I will stay here. I am happy because this is the only place where one can find happiness. So I will not go to heaven or Liberation.’

Hell offers corrupted happiness

You have to tell yourself: ‘What is found in hell is the lowest and the most polluted, the most diluted, most corrupted kind of happiness. It is no happiness at all. I really want to be happy; therefore, I am giving up this place; therefore, I am venturing out; therefore, I am rising high.’

So, those on the spiritual path must take special care to be happy. As we said, the spiritual seeker must reclaim happiness. Otherwise, you are letting happiness go to the dogs—literally. You are allowing such people to monopolize and misuse the word ‘happy’, people who have no right to be happy. But they are the ones who are always found happy.

Misuse of the word “happy”

Heaven is a very happy—no, hell is a very happy place. See? I needed to correct myself! Heaven should be a happy place; instead, all the happy ones are found in hell. All hours in hell are happy hours, and heaven is such a dry place! Why have we allowed that? All the people who are laughing and giggling are found in hell.

Somebody said that all the interesting people are found in hell. No, they are not interesting. They are sick people. It is just that the very definition of the word ‘interesting’ has become distorted to their advantage. People in hell are as interesting as a stinking pile of trash. It is indeed interesting—but to whom? To crows, to dogs, to various kinds of bacteria and such things. They find it very interesting. Are you a crow to accept that definition? Why must you accept that definition?

Reclaim the word “happy”

Therefore, it is important to reclaim these words—‘interesting’, ‘happy’, ‘smart’. Why must you call all the nonsensical beefcakes as smart? I have never heard somebody calling a Buddha or Mahavira smart. Why not? Why have you abandoned all the interesting words to the creatures of hell? Why? By doing that, you have raised trouble for yourself.

Spiritual Happiness

We have come to a point where if you find a spiritual person really pleased and radiant and actually happy, you start doubting whether he is really spiritual—because the only ones who have a right to be happy are the people of hell.

‘You say you are spiritual. How are you happy then? You are not supposed to be happy!’

‘Then what am I supposed to be?’

‘You are supposed to be gloomy, dull—de facto dead! You are supposed to be a corpse somehow in motion. You are not supposed to dance, you are not supposed to sing. You are supposed to be just regretting the fact that you are breathing; you are supposed to be wishing that you dropped dead this moment or next. Then you are a spiritual person!’

Are you attracted to hell?

All the merrymaking is reserved for the inhabitants of hell. No wonder that place is jampacked. If all the merrymaking is supposed to happen in hell, where would you find most people? In hell. And that is what we have done. Everything that makes life worth living has been allotted to hell. Now, how is it surprising that everybody is attracted to hell?

You should be highly happy

If you are a lover of Truth, if you are in the spiritual pursuit, then you have the double responsibility to remain highly happy. And when I say ‘highly happy’, I do not mean the degree of happiness; I am referring to the quality of happiness. Do you get the difference? I am saying you have to be highly happy. That does not mean that you have to increase the decibel levels doubly as you guffaw out. ‘Highly happy’ means your happiness has to be of a high order. It is your responsibility.

Do not starve yourselves of happiness. If you are giving up on lower happiness, make sure that you provide yourself with higher happiness. That is your privilege. More than privilege—that is your dharma, that is your responsibility.

This will sound strange to you. ‘Is it my dharma to be really happy?’ Yes, it is your dharma to be really happy. Because if you are not really happy, then you will seek happiness, and if you do that, sooner than later you will find yourself in hell.

Create heavenly happiness

The only way to avoid hell-like happiness is to create heaven-like happiness for yourself. If you are living in a heaven devoid of happiness, that heaven will not be able to hold you for long; your patience will run thin, and you will find yourself attracted to hell. All said and done, hell offers happiness.

Elevating life is one thing. Giving up on life is a totally different thing. Choosing the right road compared to the wrong road is one thing, and not travelling at all is a totally different thing.

Bragging about happiness

Questioner: I have come across many such people who brag that they are living happy and satisfied lives, but it is clear that they are just suffering in ignorance. They still make these claims and do not want to confront themselves honestly. So, if I am a spiritual seeker and I want to show them that there is something higher to be had, how should I approach them? How can I have the clarity to display to them what is really worth having?

Nightmare of residents of hell

Acharya Prashant: See, the resident of hell who claims that he is happy will be terribly afraid of facing someone who is really happy. That is his nightmare. So, he is always cautious. He will not want to come across a really happy person. Therefore, he will be very choosy, very selective in terms of the ones he speaks to, the ones he chooses to make claims in front of, due to fear.

You are saying there are so many residents of hell who go about bragging that they are happy and satisfied. They cannot make these claims in front of everybody. They make these claims in front of only those who would not dispute or disprove these claims.

Bragging means fear

So, if they are able to successfully make these claims in front of you, it merely means that right now you are not in a place where your very being or presence or voice reflects back to them their miserable state of existence. They think that you are a soiled mirror. You can deceive yourself by standing in front of a soiled mirror, can you not? Once they know that you reflect back honestly and accurately, they will be very afraid of making dishonest claims in front of you.

The fact that they avoid reality, the fact that they avoid Truth and spirituality itself demonstrates that they are afraid. If you say that you are indeed happy and satisfied, would you be reluctant to test the depth of your satisfaction, the depth of your life? No. But you will notice that these people are very reluctant. They are reluctant because they know they will be exposed.

Are you made a fool of?

So, it is not as if it is a tremendously difficult problem that some people are putting up an act. Such people are more conscious of the act and the deception than anybody else. It is just that you are still not very evolved, and hence they are able to pull a fast one and fool you, or so they think.

4 steps of liberation

Questioner: We see many cases of such seekers. They say they have experienced heavenly happiness but they have lost it and fallen back to their habituated state. So, is the claim that they experienced this higher happiness false? If they actually had a taste of it, why would they go back to lower happiness?

Acharya Prashant: Because Joy has to become a habit. It cannot remain a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of experience for you. The very process of realization has been broken down into four steps: śravaṇa, manana, nididhyāsana, and samādhi or dissolution.

Śravaṇa - Listening

You get an instantaneous taste of Liberation through śravaṇa itself. In the moment of immersed listening, you are actually liberated. But the latent tendencies haven’t disappeared; they haven’t been burnt down. They have just retreated. They have retreated because in the moment of listening you are not empowering them. You are not empowering them, so they have just shrivelled up. Soon they will regain their size and might.

Manana - Contemplation

Then comes manana. You keep contemplating, thinking; your mind is full of the words that you have received even after the speaker is no longer in front of you.

Nididhyāsana - Meditation

Then comes nididhyāsana. Now you are letting those words become a habit with you. This requires disciplined effort. The thing is not merely intellectual or cerebral. Nididhyāsana means that now it is becoming a matter of life with you.

Samādhi - Liberation

You are not merely thinking about what has been said unto you; you are now living it. And once you start living it consistently, there is samādhi. So, it is rather easy to get an occasional taste of Liberation, but it does not suffice. You have to pay the full price to get the licenced version. Otherwise, all that you have is a little bit of demonstration, which is quite charming—but how long will that charm last? A few seconds, a few minutes, and then you will be told to pay the price.

Ultimate Joy and Freedom

So, there are so many people who indeed get a glimpse of the Ultimate Joy or Freedom or samādhi. Those glimpses, as we said, are rather frequent; they aren’t as rare as we assume. The very process of life is such that you will stumble upon Liberation sometime or the other even without effort.

Only Truth is consistent

You may want to live in your lies and fantasies continuously and consistently, but the problem is that lies and fantasies cannot be continuous or consistent. Only Truth can be consistent. Falseness, by definition, carries a certain innate inconsistency. So, those inconsistencies will frequently be exposed. You will stumble quite harshly upon the fact that your make-believe world is false.

Now, that is an opportunity. The moment when your imagination is dashed, the moment when life comes down very harshly upon you, the moment when you receive humiliating setbacks, occasions when your basic assumption about life and yourself are proven wrong — those moments are all moments of opportunity.

Only Truth is inviolable

And such things keep happening with all of us. We keep receiving rays of sunlight when cracks inevitably show up in our dark cocoons of falseness. And cracks will show up—sometimes here, sometimes there. Why? Because the cocoon itself is false and inconsistent. It cannot hold up for long. It cannot have structural integrity that is inviolable. Only Truth is inviolable. Falseness, by definition, will keep imploding within itself.

The cocoon of falseness

So, those moments when your cocoon cracks up and light enters your darkness, you could either take it as a moment of remorse, or you could take it as a moment of opportunity. Most people take it as a setback. Therefore, what do they do? They seal the place from where the rays entered. Others use the incoming sunlight to clearly see what is there inside the darkness of their cocoon. And once they see that, they blast the cocoon out from within. That is Liberation.

Glimpses of Truth

Life will keep giving you chances, but those chances are just chances. It depends on you to turn those chances into life. That is the choice you have to make. And that is nothing automatic.

If someone says, ‘I have had a glimpse of the Truth’, he is probably not lying, because most of us do get several glimpses of the Truth. The question is not whether you have had those glimpses. The question is: what did you do with those glimpses? Those glimpses were an invitation. Those glimpses were a challenge. How did you respond?

Know your worth

Questioner: Saints have said that even heaven is not worth having. If that is so, shouldn’t it be seen as worthless right from the beginning?

Acharya Prashant: If you are in hell, you do not even realize the worthlessness of hell. How will you realize the worthlessness of heaven? One has to somehow keep clear of the temptation to speak from an absolutist vantage point. Heaven is worthless only from the point of absolute attainment. Otherwise, it is not.

Don’t say heaven is worthless

Who has the right to say that heaven is worthless? The one who has surpassed even heaven. The liberated one alone has the right to say that heaven is worthless.

But most of us are creatures of hell. Living in hell, we borrow the words of the liberated ones who said that even heaven is worthless. The ones who are liberated, in their liberated exaltation, in their liberated frenzy, uttered, ‘Oh! Even heaven is worthless!’ These were the utterances of the ones who had transcended and surpassed even heaven. So, those words befit only them.

Who are we? We’re hell

And who are we? We are living in hell. Our only hope is heaven. But we catch the words of the liberated ones, and the words tell us that heaven is worthless. So, very comfortably, we stay put in hell.

Don’t misuse the sages

This is ridiculous. And this happens so often. People will take the words of some liberated master and say, ‘See? Saint Kabir has said that there is no point in worshipping even Rama, so why should I worship Rama?’ Saint Kabir can say that. How can you say that? He is the one who has surpassed even heaven. But how can you say that? You are neck-deep in the muck of hell! Who are you to quote the sages? Why are you quoting them? You should rather look at your life.

Don’t misuse the scriptures

It is a favourite pastime of those who don’t have the wits to make sense of the scriptures. To berate the importance of scriptures, they quote the scriptures. They quote the scriptures to prove that the scriptures are not needed. The idiot does not know that, on his own, he would not even have known that scriptures are not needed. Even to say that scriptures are not needed he needed the scriptures. So, all these are just childish manoeuvres of the ego trying to somehow escape the parent.

A three-year-old wants to hide from papa. So, what does he do? He hides behind papa! Papa is huge, and the fellow says, ‘I don’t want papa!’ The only little problem is that you need papa even to hide from papa. So inexorable is papa! But the little one is quite smug: ‘I don’t need papa!’

***************************************** DHANYAVAAD ********************************************* The above content is taken from this video whose transcription is also available at 2 places: Library - See here. In chapter 35 of the book “Ananda: Happiness Without Reason”.

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