The Soul After Death

1. The “Location” of Heaven and Hell

We have now seen, through numerous accounts of Holy Fathers and in Lives of Saints, that the soul after death enters immediately into the aerial realm of the under-heaven, whose characteristics we have examined in detail. We have also seen that the progress of the soul through this aerial realm, once the body has actually died and the soul is finished with earthly things, is described as an ascent through the toll-houses, where the Particular Judgment begins in order to determine the fitness of the soul to dwell in heaven. Those souls that are convicted of unrepented sins are cast down by the fallen spirits into hell; those that pass successfully through the trials of the toll-houses ascend freely, guided by angels, to heaven.

What is this heaven? Where is it? Is heaven a place? Is it “up”?

As with all matters concerning life after death, we should not ask such questions out of mere curiosity, but solely in order to understand better the teaching on this subject which the Church has handed down to us, and to escape the confusions which modern ideas and some psychic experiences can cause even in Orthodox Christians.

It so happens that the question of the “location” of heaven (and hell) is one that has been very widely misunderstood in modern times. It was only a few years ago that the Soviet dictator Krushchev was laughing at religious people who still believed in heaven — he had sent “cosmonauts” into space and they had not seen it!

No thinking Christian, of course, believes in the atheist caricature of a heaven “in the sky,” although there are some naive Protestants who would place heaven in a distant galaxy or constellation; the whole visible creation is fallen and corrupt, and there is no place in it anywhere for the invisible heaven of God, which is a spiritual and not a material reality. But many Christians, in order to escape the mockery of unbelievers and avoid even the slightest taint of any materialistic conception, have gone to an opposite extreme and declare that heaven is “nowhere.” Among Roman Catholics and Protestants there are sophisticated apologies which proclaim that heaven is “a state, not a place,” that “up” is only a metaphor, the Ascension of Christ (Luke 24:50-51, Acts 1:9-11) was not really an “ascension,” but only a change of state. The result of such apologies is that heaven and hell become very vague and indefinite conceptions, and the sense of their reality begins to disappear — with disastrous results for Christian life, because these are the very realities toward which our whole earthly life is directed.

All such apologies, according to the teaching of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, are based on the false idea of the modern philosopher Descartes that everything that is not material is “pure spirit” and is not limited by time and space. This is not the teaching of the Orthodox Church. Bishop Ignatius writes: “The fantasy of Descartes concerning the independence of spirits on space and time is a decisive absurdity. Everything that is limited is necessarily dependent on space” (vol. III, p. 312). “The numerous quotations cited above from the Divine service books and the works of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church decide with complete satisfaction the question as to where paradise and hell are located.... With what clarity the teaching of the Orthodox Eastern Church indicates that the location of paradise is in the heaven and the location of hell is in the bowels of the earth” (vol. III, pp. 308-9; the emphasis is his). Here we shall only indicate just how this teaching is to be interpreted.

It is certainly true, as Bishop Ignatius’ numerous citations indicate, that all Orthodox sources — the Holy Scripture, Divine services, Lives of Saints, writings of Holy Fathers — speak of paradise and heaven as “up” and hell as “down,” under the earth. And it is also true that since angels and souls are limited in space (as we have seen in the chapter above on “The Orthodox Doctrine of Angels”), they must always be in one definite place — whether heaven, hell, or earth. We have already quoted the teaching of St. John Damascene that “when the angels are in heaven they are not on earth, and when they are sent to earth by God they do not remain in heaven” (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II. 3, p. 206), which is only the same doctrine taught earlier by St. Basil the Great (On the Holy Spirit, ch. 23), St. Gregory the Dialogist (Morals on the Book of Job, Book II, 3), and indeed all the Orthodox Fathers.

Heaven, therefore, is certainly a place, and it is certainly up from any point on the earth, and hell is certainly down, in the bowels of the earth; but these places and their inhabitants cannot be seen by men until their spiritual eyes are opened, as we have seen earlier with regard to the aerial realm. Further, these places are not within the “coordinates” of our space-time system: an airliner does not pass “invisibly” through paradise, nor an earth satellite through the third heaven, nor can the souls waiting in hell for the Last Judgment be reached by drilling for them in the earth. They are not there, but in a different kind of space that begins right here but extends, as it were, in a different direction.

There are indications, or at least hints, of this other kind of reality even in everyday, this-worldly experience. For example, the existence of volcanos and of great heat in the center of the earth is taken by many Saints and Fathers as a direct indication of the existence of hell in the bowels of the earth.37 Of course, hell is not “material” in the sense that the lava that flows up from under the crust of the earth is material; but there does seem to be a kind of “overlapping” of the two kinds of reality — an “overlapping” that can be seen first of all in the nature of man himself, who is capable, under certain circumstance or by God’s will, of perceiving both kinds of reality even in this life. Modern scientists themselves have come to admit that they are no longer sure of the ultimate nature and boundaries of matter, nor where it leaves off and “psychic” reality begins.

Numerous incidents in the Lives of Saints show how this other kind of space “breaks into” the “normal” space of this world. Often, for example, the soul of a newly deceased man is seen rising to heaven, as when St. Benedict saw the soul of St. Germanus of Capua carried to heaven by angels in a ball of fire (St. Gregory’s Dialogues, II, 35), or the residents of Afognak saw St. Herman’s soul ascending in a pillar of fire, or the Elder Philaret of Glinsk saw the soul of St. Seraphim of Sarov ascending. The Prophet Elisha beheld the Prophet Elijah taken up in a fiery chariot into heaven (III Kings 2:11). Often, also, souls are beheld going through the toll-houses; such cases are especially numerous in the Life of St. Niphon of Constantia (Dec. 23) and St. Columba of Iona — some of the latter were quoted above in the chapter on the toll-houses. In the Life of Blessed Theophilus of Kiev, the one witness of the righteous one’s death saw how at this time “something flashed before his gaze and a current of cool air struck his face. Dimitry looked upwards in amazement and became petrified. In the cell, the ceiling began to rise and the blue sky, as if extending its arms, was preparing to receive the holy soul of the dying righteous one.”38

Beyond the general knowledge that heaven and hell are indeed “places,” but not places in this world, in our space-time system — we need not be curious. These “places” are so different from our earthly notions of “place” that we shall become hopelessly confused if we attempt to piece together a “geography” of them. Some Lives of Saints indicate clearly that “heaven” is above “paradise”; others indicate that there are at least “three heavens” — but it is not for us to define the “boundaries” of these places or to try to distinguish their characteristics. Such descriptions are given to us, in God’s Providence, in order to inspire us to struggle to reach them by a Christian life and death — but not in order to apply to them worldly categories of logic and knowledge which do not fit them. St. John Chrysostom rightly recalls us to our proper concern in studying about heaven and hell: “You ask where hell is; but why should you know it? You must know that hell exists, not where it is hidden…. In my opinion, it is somewhere outside this whole world.... Let us attempt to find out not where it is, but how to escape it” (Homilies on Romans, 31:3-4).

It is not given us to understand very much of the other-worldly reality in this life, although we do know enough to answer the rationalists who say that heaven and hell are “nowhere” and therefore non-existent because they cannot see them. These places are indeed “somewhere,” and some living on earth have been there and returned to tell of them; but these places are seen by us in the flesh more by faith than by knowledge: Now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known (I Cor. 13:12).

2. Christian Experiences of Heaven

True Christian experiences of heaven always bear one and the same stamp of other-worldly experience. Those who have beheld heaven have not merely travelled to a different place; they have also entered into a whole different spiritual state. We who have not experienced this personally must be satisfied with the description of certain outward features which, taken together, distinguish these experiences rather clearly from all of the experiences of the aerial realm which we have examined above.

Numerous Lives of Saints contain descriptions of souls entering heaven, as seen from the earth. In the Life of St. Anthony the Great we read: “Another time, Anthony was sitting in the mountain, and looking up he saw one carried on high, and a joyful band meeting him. Filled with wonder, he pronounced them a band of the blessed, and prayed to learn what this might be. And straightway came a voice to him, saying ‘This is the soul of Ammon, the monk of Nitria, who led an ascetic life down to his old age’” (Life of St. Anthony, Eastern Orthodox Books edition, p. 38).

Abba Serapion thus described the death of St. Mark of Thrace: “Looking up, I beheld the soul of the Saint already being delivered from the bonds of the body. It was covered by angelic hands with a bright white garment and raised up by them to heaven. I beheld the aerial path to heaven and the opened heavens. Then I saw the hordes of demons standing on this path and heard an angelic voice addressed to the demons: ‘Sons of darkness! Flee and hide yourselves from the face of the light of righteousness!’ The holy soul of Mark was detained in the air for about one hour. Then a voice was heard from heaven, saying to the angels: ‘Take and bring here him who put the demons to shame.’ When the soul of the saint had passed without any harm to itself through the hordes of demons and had already drawn near to the opened heaven, I saw as it were the likeness of a hand stretched out from heaven receiving the immaculate soul. Then this vision was hidden from my eyes, and I saw nothing more” (Lives of Saints, April 5).

From these accounts we may already see three characteristics of the true Christian experience of heaven: It is an ascent; the soul is conducted by angels; it is greeted by and joins the company of the inhabitants of heaven.

Experiences of heaven are of various kinds. Sometimes a soul is conducted to heaven before death to be shown its wonders or the place prepared there for the soul. Thus, St. Maura, after resisting the two false visions of the fallen spirits during her martyrdom (described above as an example of the temptations that can occur at the hour of death), described the God-given experience that followed: “I also beheld a third man, very comely of appearance; his face shone like the sun. He took me by the hand, led me up to heaven and showed me a throne covered with white garments, and a crown, most beautiful in appearance. Amazed at such beauty, I asked the man that had led me up to heaven: ‘Whose is this, my lord?’ He told me: ‘This is the reward for your struggle.... But now return to your body. In the morning, at the sixth hour, the angels of God will come to take your soul up to heaven.’ ”39

There is also the experience of beholding heaven in vision from afar, as when the First Martyr St. Stephen beheld the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). Here, however, we shall study only the specific experience that is most comparable to today’s “after-death” experiences: the ascent to heaven, either at death or in a Divinely-granted experience, whether “in” or “out” of the body.

St. Salvius of Albi, a 6th-century hierarch of Gaul, after being dead for the better part of a day, returned to life and gave this account to his friend, St. Gregory of Tours: “When my cell shook four days ago, and you saw me lying dead, I was raised up by two angels and carried to the highest peak of heaven, until I seemed to have beneath my feet not only this miserable earth, but also the sun and moon, the clouds and stars. Then I was conducted through a gate that shone more brightly than the light of the sun and entered a building where the whole floor shone with gold and silver. The light was impossible to describe. The place was filled with a multitude of people, neither male nor female, stretching so far in all directions that one could not see where it ended. The angels made a way for me through the crowd of people in front of me, and we came to the place towards which our gaze had been directed even when we had been far away. Over this place hung a cloud more brilliant than any light, and yet no sun or moon or star could be seen; indeed, the cloud shone more brightly than any of these with its own brilliance. A voice came out of the cloud, as the voice of many waters. Sinner that I am, I was greeted with great respect by a number of beings, some dressed in priestly vestments and others in ordinary dress; my guides told me that these were the martyrs and other holy men whom we honor here on earth and to whom we pray with great devotion. As I stood here there was wafted over me a fragrance of such sweetness that, nourished by it, I have felt no need of food or drink until this very moment. Then I heard a voice which said: ‘Let this man go back into the world, for our churches have need of him.’ I heard the voice, but I could not see who was speaking. Then I prostrated myself on the ground and wept. ‘Alas, alas, O Lord!’ I said. ‘Why hast Thou shown me these things only to take them away from me again?...’ The voice which had spoken to me said: ‘Go in peace. I will watch over you until I bring you back once more to this place.’ Then my guides left me and I turned back through the gate by which I had entered, weeping as I went.”40

Several more important characteristics are added in this experience: the brightness of the light of heaven; the invisible presence of the Lord, Whose voice is heard; the Saint’s awe and fear before the Lord; and a tangible sensing of Divine grace, in the form of an indescribable fragrance. Further, it is specified that the multitudes of “people” encountered in heaven are (in addition to the angels who conduct souls) the souls of martyrs and holy men.

The monk of Wenlock, after being raised up by angels and passing through the toll-houses, “saw also a place of wondrous beauty, wherein a multitude of very handsome men were enjoying extraordinary happiness, and they invited him to come and share in their happiness if it were permitted to him. And a fragrance of wonderful sweetness came to him from the breath of the blessed souls rejoicing together. The holy angels told him that this was the famed Paradise of God.” Further on, “he beheld shining walls of gleaming splendor of amazing length and enormous height. And the holy angels said: ‘This is that sacred and famous city, the heavenly Jerusalem, where holy souls live in joy forever.’ He said that those souls and the walls of that glorious city ... were of such dazzling brilliance that his eyes were utterly unable to look upon them” (The Letters of St. Boniface, pp. 28-29).

Perhaps the fullest and most striking experience of heaven recorded in Christian literature is that of St. Andrew, the Fool for Christ of Constantinople (9th century). This experience was written down in the Saint’s own words by his friend Nicephorus; we give only some excerpts from it here:

Once, during a terrible winter when St. Andrew lay in a city street frozen and near death, he suddenly felt a warmth within him and beheld a splendid youth with a face shining like the sun, who conducted him to paradise and the third heaven. “By God’s will I remained for two weeks in a sweet vision.... I saw myself in a splendid and marvelous paradise.... In mind and heart I was astonished at the unutterable beauty of the paradise of God, and I took sweet delight walking in it. There were a multitude of gardens there, filled with tall trees which, swaying in their tips, rejoiced my eyes, and from their branches there came forth a great fragrance.... One cannot compare these trees in their beauty to any earthly tree.... In these gardens there were innumerable birds with wings golden, snow-white, and of various colors. They sat on the branches of the trees of paradise and sang so wondrously that from the sweetness of their singing I was beside myself.... After this a kind of fear fell upon me, and it seemed to me that I was standing at the peak of the firmament of heaven. Before me a youth was walking with a face as bright as the sun, clothed in purple.... When I followed in his steps I saw a great and splendid Cross, in form like a rainbow, and around it stood fiery singers like flames and sang sweet hymns, glorifying the Lord Who had once been crucified on the Cross. The youth who was going before me, coming up to the Cross, kissed it and gave me a sign that I should also kiss the Cross.... In kissing it I was filled with unutterable spiritual sweetness, and I smelled a fragrance more powerful than that of paradise. Going past the Cross, I looked down and saw under me as it were the abyss of the sea…. My guide, turning to me, said, ‘Fear not, for we must ascend yet higher.’

“And he gave me his hand. When I seized it we were already above the second firmament. There I saw wondrous men, their repose, and the joy of their feasting which cannot be communicated by the human tongue…. And behold, after this we ascended above the third heaven, where I saw and heard a multitude of heavenly powers hymning and glorifying God. We went up to a curtain which shone like lightning, before which great and frightful youths were standing, in appearance like fiery flames.... And the youth who was leading me said to me: ‘When the curtain opens, you shall see the Master Christ. Bow down to the throne of His glory.’ Hearing this, I rejoiced and trembled, for I was overcome by terror and unutterable joy.... And behold, a flaming hand opened the curtain, and like the Prophet Isaiah I beheld my Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and above it stood the Seraphim (Isaiah 6:1). He was clothed in a purple garment; His face was most bright, and His eyes looked on me with love. Seeing this, I fell down before Him, bowing down to the most bright and fearful throne of His glory. The joy that overcame me on beholding His face cannot be expressed in words. Even now, remembering this vision, I am filled with unutterable joy. In trembling I lay there before my Master.... After this all the heavenly host sang a most wondrous and unutterable hymn, and then — I myself do not understand how — again I found myself walking in paradise.”41

When St. Andrew reflected that he had not seen the Mother of God in heaven, an angel told him: “Did you wish to see here the Queen Who is more brighter than the heavenly powers? She is not here; She has gone away to the world which lies in great misfortune, to help people and to comfort the sorrowing. I would have shown you Her holy place, but now there is no time, for you must again return.” Here once more the fact is affirmed that angels and saints can be in only one place at a time.

Even in the 19th century, a similar true vision of heaven was beheld by a disciple of Elder Paisius Velichkovsky, Schema-monk Theodore of Svir. Towards the end of his life he experienced God’s grace very strongly. Shortly after one such experience he fell into a sickness and for three days was in a sort of coma. “When a state of ecstasy began in him and he came out of himself, there appeared to him a certain invisible youth, who was sensed and beheld by the feeling of the heart alone; and this youth led him by a narrow path towards the left. Father Theodore himself, as he later related, had the feeling that he had already died, and he said to himself: ‘I have died. I do not know whether I shall be saved or perish.’

“ ‘You are saved!’ an invisible voice said to him in answer to this thought. And suddenly a power like a violent whirlwind carried him off and transported him to the right side.

“ ‘Taste the sweetness of the betrothals of paradise which I give to those who love Me,’ an invisible voice declared. With these words, it seemed to Father Theodore that the Saviour Himself placed His right hand on his heart, and he was transported into an unutterably pleasant dwelling, as it were, but one that was completely invisible and indescribable in the words of earthly language. From this feeling he went over to another even more exalted one, and then to a third one; but all these feelings, as he said himself, he could remember only with his heart, but could not understand with his mind.

“Then he saw something like a temple, and in it, near the altar, something like a tent, in which there were five or six men. A mental voice said: ‘For the sake of these men your death is set aside. For them you will live.’ Then the spiritual stature of some of his disciples was revealed to him, and the Lord declared to him the trials which were to disturb the evening of his days.... But the Divine voice assured him that the ship of his soul would not suffer from these fierce waves, for its invisible guide was Christ.”42

Other experiences of heaven from the Lives of Saints and ascetics could be given, but they do no more than repeat the characteristics already described here. It will be instructive, however — especially for purposes of a comparison with contemporary “after-death” experiences — to present the experience of a modern sinner in heaven. Thus, the author of “Unbelievable for Many” (whose testimony has already been quoted several times above), after escaping the demons of the toll-houses by the intercession of the Mother of God, described how, still being conducted by his angel-guides, “we were continuing to move upward...when I saw a bright light above me; it resembled, as it seemed to me, our sunlight, but was much more intense. There evidently is some kind of kingdom of light. Yes, precisely a kingdom, full of the power of light — because there was no shade with this light. ‘But how can there be light without shade?’ immediately my perplexed conceptions made their appearance.

“And suddenly we were quickly carried into the field of this light, and it literally blinded me. I shut my eyes, brought my hands up to my face, but this did not help since my hands did not give shade. And what did such protection mean here anyway?

“ ‘My God, what is this, what kind of light is this? Why for me it is like regular darkness! I cannot look, and as in darkness, can see nothing....’

“This incapacity to see, to look, increased in me the fear before the unknown, natural in this state of being found in a world unknown to me, and with alarm I thought: ‘What will come next? Shall we soon pass this sphere of light, and is there a limit, an end?’

“But something different happened. Majestically, without wrath, but authoritatively and firmly, the words resounded from above: Not ready! And after that ... an immediate stop came to our rapid flight upward — we quickly began to descend” (pp. 26-27).

In this experience the quality of the light of heaven is made clearer: it is of a kind that cannot be borne by one who is not prepared for it by the Christian life of struggle such as Sts. Salvius and Andrew endured.

3. Characteristics of the True Experience of Heaven

Let us now summarize the main characteristics of these true experiences of heaven and see how they differ from the experiences of the aerial world as described in previous chapters.

(1) The true experience of heaven invariably occurs at the end of a process of ascent, usually through the toll-houses (if the soul has any “tolls” to pay there). In today’s “out-of-body” and “after-death” experiences, on the other hand, the toll-houses and their demons are never encountered, and only occasionally is a process of ascent described.

(2) The soul is always conducted to heaven by an angel or angels, and never “wanders” into it or goes of its own will or motive power. This is surely one of the most striking differences between genuine experiences of heaven and the contemporary experiences of Pentecostals and others who describe “after-death” experiences of “paradise” and “heaven”: the latter are virtually identical with secular and even atheist experiences of “paradise,” as we have already seen, except in incidental points of interpretation, which can easily be supplied by the human imagination in the “astral plane”; but virtually never in such experiences is the soul conducted by angels. Of this St. John Chrysostom, in interpreting Luke 16:19-31, writes: “Lazarus then was conducted away by angels, but the soul of the other (the rich man) was taken by certain frightful powers who, it may be, were sent for this. For the soul by itself cannot depart to that life, because this is impossible. If we, in going from city to city, have need of a guide, how much more will the soul be in need of guides when it is torn away from the body and presented for the future life?”43

This point, indeed, may be taken as one of the touchstones of the authentic experience of heaven. In the contemporary experiences the soul is most frequently offered a choice to remain in “paradise” or go back to earth; while the genuine experience of heaven occurs not by the choice of man but only at the command of God, fulfilled by His angels. The common “out-of-body” experience of “paradise” in our days has no need of a guide because it takes place right here, in the air above us, still in this world; while the presence of the guiding angels is necessary if the experience takes place outside this world, in a different kind of reality, where the soul cannot go by itself. (This is not to say that demons cannot masquerade as “guiding angels” also, but they seldom seem to do so in today’s experiences.)

(3) The experience occurs in bright light, and is accompanied by manifest signs of Divine grace, in particular a wonderful fragrance. Such signs, it is true, sometimes are present in today’s “after-death” experiences also, but there is a fundamental difference between them that can scarcely be over-emphasized. Today’s experiences are superficial, even sensuous; there is nothing to distinguish them from the similar experiences of unbelievers save the Christian imagery which the observer sees in (or adds to) the experience; these are no more than the natural experience of pleasure in the “out-of-body” state with a thin “Christian” covering. (Perhaps, also, in some of them the fallen spirits are already adding their deceptions to entice the observer further into pride and confirm his superficial idea of Christianity; but here there is no need to determine this.) In the true Christian experiences, on the other hand, the depth of the experience is confirmed by truly miraculous occurrences: St. Salvius was so “nourished” by the fragrance that he needed no food or drink for over three days, and the fragrance vanished and his tongue became sore and swollen only the moment that he revealed his experience; St. Andrew was gone for two weeks; K. Uekskuell was “clinically dead” for 36 hours. In today’s experiences, to be sure, there are sometimes “miraculous recoveries” from near or seeming death, but never anything as extraordinary as the above occurrences, and never anything to indicate that those who have experienced them have actually seen heaven as opposed to a pleasing appearance in the “out-of-body” realm (the “astral plane”). The difference between today’s experiences and the true experience of heaven is exactly the same as the difference between today’s superficial “Christianity” and true Orthodox Christianity. The “peace,” for example, that can be experienced by a person who has “accepted Jesus as his personal Saviour” or who has had the very common experience of contemporary “speaking in tongues,” or has had a vision of “Christ” (something by no means rare today), but who knows nothing of the life of conscious Christian struggle and repentance and has never partaken of the true Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Mysteries instituted by Christ Himself — simply cannot be compared in any way with the peace that is revealed in the lives of the great Orthodox Saints. The contemporary experiences are literally “counterfeits” of the real experience of heaven.

(4) The true experience of heaven is accompanied by a feeling of such awe and fear before the greatness of God, and a feeling of such unworthiness to be beholding it, as are seldom found even among Orthodox Christians today, let alone those outside the Church of Christ. St. Salvius’ heartfelt expressions of his unworthiness, St. Andrew’s trembling prostration before Christ, even K. Uekskuell’s blindness in the light he was unworthy to behold — are unheard of in today’s experiences. Those who are seeing “paradise” in the aerial realm today are “pleased,” “happy,” “satisfied” — seldom anything more; if they behold “Christ” in some form, it is only to indulge in the familiar “dialogues” with him that characterize experiences in the “charismatic” movement. The element of the Divine and of man’s awe before it, the fear of God, are absent in such experiences.

Other characteristics of the true experience of heaven, as recorded especially in the Orthodox Lives of Saints, could be set forth; but those discussed above are sufficient to distinguish them emphatically from today’s experiences. Let us only remember, whenever we dare to talk of such exalted and other-worldly experiences, that they are far above our low level of feeling and understanding, and that they are given to us more as hints than as complete descriptions of what cannot properly be described in human language at all. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him (I Cor. 2:9).

A NOTE ON VISIONS OF HELL

For Orthodox believers the reality of hell is as certain as that of heaven. Our Lord Himself on many occasions spoke of those men whom, because they did not obey His commandments, He will send into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). In one of His parables, He gives the vivid example of the rich man who, condemned to hell because of his unrighteous deeds in this life, looks up to paradise which he has lost and begs the Patriarch Abraham there to allow Lazarus, the beggar whom he disdained while alive, to come and dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham replies that between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, and there is no contact between the saved and the damned (Luke 16:24, 26).

In Orthodox literature visions of hell are as common as visions of heaven and paradise. Such visions and experiences, unlike visions of heaven, occur more commonly to ordinary sinners than to saints, and their purpose is always clear. St. Gregory in his Dialogues states: “In His unbounded mercy, the good God allows some souls to return to their bodies shortly after death, so that the sight of hell might at last teach them to fear the eternal punishments in which words alone could not make them believe” (Dialogues IV, 37, p. 237). St. Gregory then describes several experiences of hell and tells of the impression they produced on the beholders. Thus, a certain Spanish hermit Peter died and saw “hell with all its torments and countless pools of fire.” On returning to life, Peter described what he had seen, “but even had he kept silent, his penitential fasts and night watches would have been eloquent witnesses to his terrifying visit to hell and his deep fear of its dreadful torments. God had shown Himself most merciful by not allowing him to die in this experience with death” (p. 238).

The 8th-century English chronicler, Venerable Bede, relates how a man from the province of Northumbria returned after being “dead” one whole night and related his experience of both paradise and hell. In hell, he found himself in dense darkness; “frequent masses of dusky flame suddenly appeared before us, rising as though from a great pit and falling back into it again.... As the tongues of flame rose, they were filled with the souls of men which, like sparks flying up with the smoke, were sometimes flung high in the air, and at others dropped back into the depths as the vapors of the fire died down. Furthermore, an indescribable stench welled up with these vapors, and filled the whole of this gloomy place.... I suddenly heard behind me the sound of a most hideous and desperate lamentation, accompanied by harsh laughter.... I saw a throng of wicked spirits dragging with them five human souls howling and lamenting into the depths of the darkness while the devils laughed and exulted.... Meanwhile, some of the dark spirits emerged from the fiery depths and rushed to surround me, harassing me with their glowing eyes and foul flames issuing from their mouths and nostrils....”44

In the Life of Taxiotes the Soldier it is related that after Taxiotes was stopped by the demonic “tax-collectors” at the toll-houses, “the evil spirits took me and began to beat me. They led me down into the earth, which had parted to receive us. I was conducted through narrow entrances and confining, evil-smelling cracks. When I reached the very depths of hell, I saw there the souls of sinners, confined in eternal darkness. Existence there cannot be called life, for it consists of nothing but suffering, tears that find no comfort, and a gnashing teeth that can find no description. That place is forever full of the desperate cry: ‘Woe, woe! Alas, alas!’ It is impossible to describe all the suffering which hell contains, all its torments and pains. The departed groan from the depths of their heart, but no one pities them; they weep, but no one comforts them; they beg, but no one listens to them and delivers them. I too was confined in those dark regions, full of terrible sorrows, and wept and bitterly sobbed for six hours.”45

The monk of Wenlock beheld a similar scene in the “lowest depths” of the earth, where “he heard a horrible, tremendous, and unspeakable groaning and weeping of souls in distress. And the angel said to him: ‘The murmuring and crying which you hear down there comes from those souls to which the loving kindness of the Lord shall never come, but an undying flame shall torture them forever’” (The Letters of St. Boniface, p. 28).

Of course, we should not be overly fascinated by the literal details of such experiences, and even less than in the case of paradise and heaven should we try to piece together a “geography” of hell based on such accounts. The Western notions of “purgatory” and “limbo” are attempts to make such a “geography”; but Orthodox tradition knows only the one reality of hell in the underworld. Furthermore, as St. Mark of Ephesus teaches (see his Second Homily on Purgatorial Fire in Appendix I), what is seen in experiences of hell is often an image of future torments rather than a literal depiction of the present state of those awaiting the Last Judgment in hell. But whether it is an actual beholding of present realities or a vision of the future, the experience of hell as recorded in Orthodox sources is a powerful means of awakening one to a life of Christian struggle, which is the only means of escaping eternal torment; this is why God grants such experiences.

Are there any comparable experiences of hell in today’s “after-death” literature?

Dr. Moody and most other investigators today have found almost no such experiences, as we have already seen. Earlier we explained this fact as due to the “comfortable” spiritual life of men today, who often have no fear of hell or knowledge of demons, and thus do not expect to see such things after death. However, a recent book on life after death has suggested another explanation which seems to be of equal value, while at the same time denying that the experience of hell is really as rare as it seems. Here we shall briefly examine the findings of this book.

Dr. Maurice Rawlings, a Tennessee physician who specializes in internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases, has himself resuscitated many persons who have been “clinically dead.” His own interviews of these persons have taught him that, “contrary to most published life-after-death cases, not all death experiences are good. Hell also exists! After my own realization of this fact I started collecting accounts of unpleasant cases that other investigators apparently had missed. This has happened, I think, because the investigators, normally psychiatrists, have never resuscitated a patient. They have not had the opportunity to be on the scene. The unpleasant experiences in my study have turned out to be at least as frequent as the pleasant ones.”46 “I have found that most of the bad experiences are soon suppressed deeply into the patient’s subliminal or subconscious mind. These bad experiences seem to be so painful and disturbing that they are removed from conscious recall so that only the pleasant experiences — or no experiences at all — are recollected” (p. 65).

Dr. Rawlings describes his “model” of these experiences of hell: “As with those who have had good experiences, those reporting bad experiences may have trouble realizing they are dead as they watch people work on their dead bodies. They may also enter a dark passage after leaving the room, but instead of emerging into bright surroundings they enter a dark, dim environment where they encounter grotesque people who may be lurking in the shadows or along a burning lake of fire. The horrors defy description and are difficult to recall” (pp. 63-64). Various descriptions are given — including some by “regular church members” who are surprised to find themselves in such a state — of manifestations of imps and grotesque giants, of a descent into blackness and a fiery heat, of a pit and an ocean of fire (pp. 103-110).

In general, these experiences — both in their shortness and in the absence of any angelic or demonic guides — lack the complete characteristics of genuine other-worldly experiences, and some of them are quite reminiscent of Robert Monroe’s adventures in the “astral plane.” But they do supply an important corrective to the widely reported experience of “pleasantness” and “paradise” after death: the “out-of-body” realm is by no means all pleasantness and light, and those who have experienced its “hellish” side are closer to the truth of things than those who experience only “pleasure” in this state. The demons of the aerial realm expose something of their true nature to such ones, even giving them a hint of the torments to come for those who have not known Christ and been obedient to His commandments.