Heaven, Hell, and Divine Discontent? – 09.23.10

Student Comment: You spoke earlier of dissatisfaction, which reminded me of something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I listened to a talk with a prominent spiritual figure, and he spoke about heaven and hell. He said that heaven is like being doomed to eternal famility, or familiarity. He went on to say that there’s no need to create in the absence of discontent, and that heaven is an upgrade of the illusion and hell is a downgrade. I’m just curious of what you have to say about that.

“God did not create out of discontent; this world doesn’t exist because of discontent,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But once egos are put into the world, the egos have discontent because an ego is not real and therefore it feels lacking inside. And that discontent causes it to do something, or find someone, to make it feel whole and real. But nothing it does can take away that discontent.” And, in actuality, heaven is not really the goal of any religion. “What the religions teach is liberation. And that liberation is the liberation from both heaven and hell. Both of them are illusions, and, ultimately, any heaven you create will become hell. . . . But as long as one is in the ego, one is constantly going to try to find one’s heaven . . . and flee from some hellish condition that is actually an internal definition, and so you can’t run away from yourself cause you're taking yourself with you wherever you go and the hellishness will be re-created. . . . So the whole fabric of society is decomposing because of this, and, at the same time, it creates the possibility of returning to the Real Self, that is transcendent of desire.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 23, 2010.