Let us now take a detour into a yet denser reality so we can better understand another of our options on awakening in the borderland. There are some of us who have lived our lives in such a way that we turned completely within ourselves. We blocked out all love, all warmth, all spirit from our daily doings; we created a void around ourselves. We chose to deny our responsibilities to others and to ourselves; we choose ourselves at all cost. Upon passing on, before we become conscious that we have entered the borderland, we swiftly move on to that realm to which our life choices in the earth resonate. This region is void of love, life, and light, void of all of those things we cast out from our lives in the earth. The region in which we find ourselves is approximately our wish come true. We are truly alone, with ourselves, within ourselves; it is pain beyond pain for us. Edgar Cayce described this region of void as "outer darkness."
The name of this dimension describes it very accurately, as we find no love, hope, friendship, kindness, benevolence, or any of what we have come to know as human qualities. Instead there is nothing but ourselves, and it is unbearable. In the absence of that which we term fruits of the spirit – truth, love, patience, gentleness, kindness, long-suffering, and brotherly love – we fill the void with an irrational and unbelievable amount of pain and fear. It is so dark in the realm of outer darkness that the dark hurts and panic grips us without our knowing why. Like our material universe, outer darkness seems endless and without any meaningful boundaries. There is nowhere we can go to escape the agony and horror which fills almost every part of our being, and the desire to flee consumes us. The farther and faster we travel through this realm the greater the feeling that it is endless. Even outer darkness has degrees, and it is darker and denser at the center than at its outer fringes. Helen Greaves describes these degrees as hells. Likewise, this is the hell described by Emanuel Swedenborg in Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell From Things Heard and Seen. The closer we are to the outer edges, the more interaction there is with others in the realm, while the closer to the center we find ourselves, the darker and more painful we find the solitude. One in outer darkness cannot move toward the center or edges by force of one’s own motion. The center or edges are levels of reality and are not linear. One cannot travel across this dimension; one must grow through the levels of this realm.
Outer darkness is not one of those realms which must be overcome in stages, although we can choose that method of growth. One may find oneself on a particular level after death that most closely corresponds to one’s activity and the degree of absence of those fruits of the spirit in one’s life, and there is no need to experience other levels here. No level of outer darkness is without pain and fear, but, as we have noted, the very center is the most agonizing. In the reality we call outer darkness we have very little memory of our earthly lives. We remember little if anything of our earthly relationships, and we are so absorbed in pain and fear that our suffering exacts every last ounce of our attention.
This lower region of outer darkness is not a punishment. It is a region which operates lawfully for the benefit of those agonized souls. This region is not a realm which was created for any soul to experience, but one which came about as a consequence of the negative activity of souls in creation. So great has been the desire for self, so monumental across time and space has been the selfishness of some of God’s creatures that this realm is the creation or manifestation of their own collective activities. Outer darkness and the reality with which it is associated were created and are held in place by collective self-interest.
As noted previously, universal law is perfect and works for the benefit of all, all of the time. An excellent example of the Law of Grace is that no evil, no negativity, no matter how single or collective in nature, exists without a way of redemption being simultaneously imprinted by the Creative Forces throughout its fiber.
Nowhere else is it so obvious than in the realm of outer darkness because no one need remain here beyond one’s own will to do so. We might conjecture that no one wishes to suffer such misery but that simply is not so. We constantly do things in the earth that cause us difficulty, unhappiness, pain, and illness. We do not wish to suffer the discomfort of our actions, but this does not keep us from those activities. In the earth as in spiritual realms, until we turn our attention from ourselves, we cannot in any way change our estate.
The occupants in outer darkness are there for various lengths of time. It is peculiar to discuss length of residence by a measure which does not exist in that dimension. For most of us it is very difficult to relate to a timeless condition, so the use of finite terms helps us to better understand. Some residents feel they have been in outer darkness for weeks or months, others for eons. No doubt all are correct in their assessment of length of time spent in this realm. In a reality of pain and torment, even a moment can seem like an eternity and there is no way to judge length of stay until after one has long departed. Doubtless some souls have occupied outer darkness for what we would measure as hundreds, even thousands of years. But it is more likely that most stay for a considerably shorter period. It is not possible for souls to be forever confined to outer darkness, since in such a case there would be no hope of redemption. Further, Swedenborg in Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell from Things Heard and Seen noted that it is God who keeps the balance in the realm of outer darkness so that all things would not be destroyed. Again, outer darkness is not a punishment, rather it is the ultimate manifestation of our own undoing, and He who is Mercy would never abandon us to such spiritual agony. |
