I woke one day to find myself in Hell. In life I had been a fraud, a murderer and a coward, and as I burned in the lake of fire I understood exactly why I was there. I burned in anguish for ten thousand years, until I was caught by a chance eddy. Like a scrap of paper over dancing flame, my body went spiralling upwards into the billowing smoke. I found myself walking on jagged pumice that flayed my feet, but all things considered I was happy with the change of pace. I walked away from the orange glow that signified the lake, and deeper into Hell. Eventually even the distant screams faded, and the only sound left in that abyss was my own retching and choking and rasping breath.
In Hell, any relief from pain is illusory. God, in his infinite wisdom, understands that punishment is more potent when combined with the vain hope of relief and the false promise of salvation. As I staggered through the fog, crying with relief, I failed to understand that in Hell the real punishment is always ahead, and never behind.
As I walked, I started to forget. First I forgot my name. Then I forgot where I was. A heavy confusion settled over me, and I began to hallucinate, a fitful and feverish hallucination that grew more complex and detailed with time. I dreamed of being a clump of cells, happily dividing in a warm abyss. I dreamed of molecular filaments connecting tissue, and unburnt perfect pristine skin spreading over the flesh and the bones. I dreamed I was born. I dreamed of being five, writing an untainted name in crayon on sheets of paper. I dreamed my own mother’s embrace. I dreamed of being loved and being able to love (an experience that had always eluded me in reality). I dreamed of flying kites, riding a bike with friends. I dreamed of growing up, of going to school, and marrying my childhood sweetheart. I dreamed of having children. I dreamed of being part of a happy family. I dreamed I was a good man, who knew what was right. I worked earnestly to follow the laws of God and respect my fellow men.
Of course the dream had holes. Hell can never permit a perfect dream. Although I was happy, the people I populated my world with were not. Most of them were unhappy. Most of them lived by each other’s unhappiness, perishing miserably from diseases, starvation, and warfare. In my dream, I was not at fault – I was powerless to prevent their suffering. I was an “ordinary person”, not responsible for the state of the world. I dreamed I lived in a rich country. War, disease, and starvation were far away and happened to people who looked sufficiently different from me. Because I was good, my heart ached when I was reminded of these wretched masses in the newspapers or on the television.
As the wondrous dream progressed, it took on uncanny qualities. The world started tilting into a series of global catastrophes – a global pandemic, international conflict. Not even my wealthy, secure society made me totally immune to these concussions. War looked to be on the horizon. I grew uncomfortable with my boring life. My wife nagged me and my children were spoiled. A strange disquiet crept into my mind. “How could a good God create such a world?” I wondered. “Why would something perfect produce any imperfection?” I decided to travel and obtain true spiritual wisdom and use it to help those in need.
“It’s like the philosopher said,” I said. “A happy life in a world of suffering is like a beggar who dreams for one night that he is a king.” My wife was aghast and threatened me with divorce, which broke my heart. Even though I loved her very much, I could not bear to live in ignorance. I received immunizations against measles, ebola, tuberculosis and cholera, and took the next plane to India.
After searching many continents, travelling by bus and rickshaw through jungles and crowded territories, I was in despair. I had met many gurus, and invariably found them greasy and unpleasant men, manipulative and malicious, living off the donations of their poor and desperate followers. Where a person was reputed to be genuinely saintly, I would discover that they had been killed by political opponents, poisoned by spiritual gurus, or simply had succumbed to the disease and poverty of their home region. After two years, I was ready to give up and return to my mundane but comparatively wealthy life. Perhaps even see my ex-wife and children again.
To celebrate my last day of travels, I went to a bar and got drunk. Some strangers in the bar noticed my expensive watch and quietly watched me. Later that night, the rickshaw I hailed did not carry me back to my hotel. Instead, it carried me into the jungle, where the group of strangers waited with machetes. The sight of gleaming steel sobered me up, and though I begged and pleaded, they did not listen to my pleas. They hacked off my arm with the expensive watch and ripped my money from my pockets. They stood in a circle around me laughing and dividing the cash as I writhed in pain.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I cried out to any God that might hear. “Haven’t I always been a good man? I wasn’t perfect, but I never hurt anyone. I was kind.”
At that, one of my torturers stepped forward. “But dear friend, don’t you recognize us?” the stranger said, throwing down a brief missive into the mud. I stared at it, awful awareness crashing over me. The mud was no longer mud. The jungle mist was a thick black smoke obscuring their faces.
I picked up the letter and read, and it went like this: “I woke one day to find myself in Hell. In life I had been a fraud, a murderer and a coward, and as I burned in the lake of fire I understood exactly why I was there…”
And now, having forgotten even that, and reaching the end of the missive, I understood at last. Once damned, the eternity of torment does not just extend after death, but also before it. After all, hadn’t the plain facts always been right in front of me? No benevolent force was waiting for me behind that carnival world of nations and flags, holocausts, plagues, and hunger-bitten children.
To wake up in Hell is to realize that, from the start, you were already there.