Hell & Beyond

by Michael Phillips

  As I trudged along, more of what the Don had said came back to me.

  “You were of the great majority,” he had said, “who form patterns of attitude and behavior and motive that inflict much invisible damage on their inner characters. They do not know that they are choosing selfishness or selflessness a thousand times a day. They are slowly turning their innermost beings into something more in love with itself, more intent upon gratifying its desires, or, if they choose wisdom, to something more committed to laying down those desires for others.

  “When they arrive here and their eyes are opened, they are shocked to see what they have become. They never realized what effect a million choices, all added together, had upon them. You are not alone. Many a religious man or woman is the most horrified of all—Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists. Just think what it must be to those who thought themselves among the righteous, who devoted their lives to church or meditation or jihad or synagogue, who gave of their money and their time, upon arriving here to discover that there was no true spirituality in them whatsoever—only love of self. The pain you are enduring is not to be compared with their appalling discovery—that all the while they were only hypocrites.”

  The day wore on. Indeed, the whole of time was day. For the first time since my arrival, fatigue set in. My throat grew parched and dry. I felt blisters on my feet. The sun bore down relentlessly. No shade or water was to be found. The hills toward which I was bound appeared no closer than when I began. I despaired that I would ever reach them.

  I walked for what seemed days on end with no night to separate them. My memory became keen as my vision. But the memories were not of mere incidents. I saw into them… saw the motives that had prompted my actions and words and attitudes. My will had been given me as a priceless gift. But I had used it only for myself. I saw that I had chosen selfishness, that I had chosen pride, that I had chosen greed and sloth, that I had chosen judgment, that I had chosen unforgiveness, that I had chosen deceit, that I had chosen lust, that I had chosen the bigoted self-righteousness of my unbelief. My own will had been a complicit accomplice in my crime against God’s creation—the person he had created me to be.

  A vision of my mother rose before me… tears in her eyes as she turned away from a caustically patronizing remark her sixteen-year-old son had just made about something she had said. I had reached that age where I had fallen in love with my intellect, smitten with my prowess of logic and analysis. And why not? I was getting A’s in all my classes. I was recognized as the most skilled debater in school, with a tongue both witty and biting, able to cut any verbal opponent to shreds… and proud of it. My mother was an intellectual neophyte in my eyes. I lost no opportunity to engage her in a quarrelsome tussle of words (“discussions,” I called them) that I might sharpen my powers of disputation at her expense. I had entered life’s season of supreme hubris when it pleasurably fed my burgeoning pride to look down on her from the lofty vantage point of my sixteen-year-old ego.

  The glistening tears in her eyes stung my brain with hot coals of remorse. I saw into her as never before. I beheld the humility informing the silences that often met my verbal barrages. I always took her refusal to engage with my insistent polemics as ignorance and weakness. In fact, she understood truth at far deeper levels than I had realized. I had been the ignorant one, not seeing the deeper currents that flowed within her—currents of wisdom and character and personhood that lay worlds removed from the person I was becoming. I now saw that she pulled away from discussion, returning my intellectual barbs with silence, not because she didn’t understand but because she was grieved at the increasing delight I took in sharpening my mental weapons at the expense of others. She had hoped I would one day find peace in love of truth rather than feeding my pride on the debate of mere ideas.

  The sickening grief I felt at the sight of her in my mind’s eye overwhelmed me. For it was now too late to undo those thousands of condescending words and supercilious expressions and scornful responses with which I had battered her though my teen years.

  Another vision now came… it was of my own face wearing a haughty smirk as I walked into the quad at the center of campus during my university days. My pride had grown mighty in the years since I had honed the razor’s edge of my wit against the whetstone of my mother’s heart. I heard a commotion as I approached the scene. The quad was filled with a crowd of students. Somewhere from its center an enthusiastic Christian with microphone in hand was regaling his listeners with a passionate plea to heed the call of Jesus. The words were red meat to my enlightened atheism. I made my way into the midst of the throng, most of which wasn’t listening anyway, and awaited my opportunity. At last it came. I raised my hand and stepped forward.

  “You wouldn’t mind a question?” I said, addressing the speaker.

  “Not at all, speak up,” he replied.

  He had no idea what he was getting into. In less than five minutes, the microphone was in my hand, not his. The entire quad was listening in rapt attention as I cut the fellow to verbal bits. Everyone around erupted into applause, enjoying my ruthless put-downs. I handed the microphone back to the Christian and walked jauntily through the crowds to laughter and congratulations and pats on the back, thinking very well of myself. The young man tried to salvage something by responding to what I had said. But the crowd was emboldened by my efforts. They jeered and taunted and shouted him down. No one heard a word he said. Nothing was left for him but to pack up his things and leave in humiliation. I had had my triumph. The incident was written up in the next issue of the university paper, and ever after I was considered a sort of prophet of rationalism.

  Now I saw all. The pomposity of my words and expression that day had fairly dripped with condescension. The sight in my mind’s eye of the look on my face as I walked through the fawning crowd was so disgusting, I gagged at the memory.

  Then came a third image, this one more recent. I was seated at the desk of a national news discussion program with several other prominent personalities. My book had reached the top of the best-seller list. I was now one of the most famous atheists in the country. As I fielded questions and parried with the other guests, my gestures, mannerisms, and entire bearing reflected the pretentious self-worship of one who knew all, and who knew that he knew all. I remembered the occasion so distinctly, remembered what I had been thinking and feeling at the time. The utter blindness of my vanity was so keen and clear! How could a man be so unseeing to what he was, to what was inside, so unaware of the stench of unmasked ego? Yet that blindness had consumed me.

  The sight was loathsome beyond words. At last I turned away, then vomited with such force that I thought it would wrench my insides out.

  I recovered myself and continued on. Images continued to tumble from out of my past into my soul.

  After what seemed interminably long and lonely days of soul-searching and mind-probing, I realized that the hills ahead were at last closer than when I set out. They rose from the desert in sheer rock and treacherous faces of cliff. Somehow I knew, however, that my way would eventually lead through them. I recognized the highest peak among them—I cannot say how—as the fabled Mount Sinai. With the realization, I knew that I had been crossing the Wilderness of Sin. But now it was not the Israelites—I was wandering in the wilderness of my own sin.

  Twelve

  The Garden of Moments

  After a journey I thought would never end, I reached the barren foothills and saw vegetation ahead. It appeared to be a cluster of palms, but as I came closer I realized that I had come to a great garden containing all manner of flowers and shrubs and growing things. Some were as high as trees. Some spread over the ground. Some grew in small ornamental gardens, some in beds along the path. As I neared, the air changed. It became thick and fragrant. All about me grew the most fabulous and unusual assortment of blossoms imaginable. They were infinitely varied—some larger than my head, some so small it would take a magnifying glass to bring them into focus. In the center of t
he garden sat an emerald pool that watered the whole. I stooped to my knees and drank from it and was refreshed from my long journey. As the living waters revived me, I stood and walked about. And my mind recalled more that the English don had told me.

  “The oasis where you will gain sustenance to continue your pilgrimage,” he had said, “is the Garden Where Eyes Are Opened. All pass through it on their way to the High Countries beyond. But everyone comes to it in his own time and in his own way. Some find themselves in the Garden immediately after the passage through the Light. Everyone’s eyes must be opened that he may behold himself for what he is. But many and varied are the pathways and destinations that lead to the opening of eyes.”

  As I walked about, the fragrances of the blossoms filled me, not merely with the sense of smell, but with an entire sensation of knowing. Their aromas shot an inner light pulsing into the depths of my being. All sensations became as one—sight, smell, thought, feeling, even taste. As they did, my inner eyes were opened to what the myriad fragrances were saying. The nostalgic scents brought with them throbs of disappointment and longing. I saw what a gift of intelligence I had been given, yet how little of it I had turned into wisdom.

  I came to what appeared an expansive lawn or ground cover spreading around me. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was comprised of a vast profusion of tiny blossoms. I had hardly noticed them until I was some distance into the middle of the colorful meadow. I knelt down and saw every color of the rainbow—violets and violas, buttercups and forget-me-nots, and a thousand others… millions of individual flowers that together formed the carpet beneath me.

  I lay face down in its midst and breathed in deeply. I was not prepared for the result. Mingled with its sweet perfume was an odor that I can call nothing but rancid. It was so bitter I jerked my head away in disgust. Again I remembered the Don’s words.

  “At the garden you will come face to face with your own tiny moments,” he had told me. “Your attitudes, your motives, your words, your choices, your thoughts. Every one planted a seed in the soil of your developing character. They grew and blossomed. You will now see what fruit the seeds of your choices bore. Some will fill you with pleasure. We are all products of many good influences we allowed to take root within ourselves and good choices we make, as well as those elements of selfishness and selfish choices we allowed to grow along with them. The smells from the blossoms of self-centeredness will be so vile to your senses that they will make you retch. But we must see ourselves for what we are. It is why we are taken to the Garden.”

  As I lay on the carpet, some of the fragrances filled me with nostalgic pleasure and happiness. I recalled family and friends, my brother and sister, my boyhood best friend, several teachers who had been kind to me. Then without warning a foul stench reminded me of the day I had stolen a package of gum from the drug store and put it in my pocket when my mother and the clerk were busy at the counter.

  After a long while, I stood and gazed about. The sea of tiny flowers now revealed itself as what it was. I realized that I was gazing upon myself. The fragrances of the vast meadow of blossoms represented the character I had developed throughout the years of my life. It was this that he had been asking for when he first met me and held out his hand. My character was an enormous and complex mix of good and evil, a few kindnesses but many selfishnesses, a few sweet smells of care and compassion and love I had shown, mingled with many putrid odors caused by far more choices to put myself first. With a grief deeper than anything I had known on earth, I realized that the few kindnesses I had been capable of had been shown toward my wife and children and friends and those whom it was easy for me to love. But I could recall few random kindnesses or gracious thoughts toward the unlovely and irritating, and especially toward those whose views clashed with mine.

  I drew in a deep breath where I stood. The smell was not pleasant. It stung my senses. Tears filled my eyes. The stench of my character caused an anguish I scarcely thought I could bear.

  I loathed myself. Never before had I hated myself as I did at that moment.

  In my heart of hearts, I longed for the reek of selfishness to be purified into sweet perfume. I longed for my wrongs to be set right. I longed for my intelligence to be turned to wisdom. I longed for my arrogance to be turned to respect. I longed for my unbelief to be turned to faith. I longed for my pride to be turned to humility.

  I continued to walk about the vast Garden for days, weeks, perhaps years—an aion, I suppose. I cannot describe the truths I saw other than to say that the noisome smells brought fresh revelation and many tears. I did not resist them when they came, for at last I wanted to be made clean and pure. I wanted my character to release a pleasing fragrance.

  For the first time since my arrival, I began to long for the purification of the fire.

  Thirteen

  The Consuming Fire that Did Not Consume

  Finally I knew I was to move on from the Garden. An inner impulsion led me toward the peak of Sinai that loomed ahead. Within a short time, I was climbing its steep crags, falling occasionally, now scrambling up a rocky gorge, next scaling what seemed an impossible face of sheer rock, then finding yet more difficult obstacles rising above.

  Ahead in the distance, I saw an ominous light. It was unlike that of my Portal of Waking. It was not white, but red and orange and full of turbulence and motion. A shudder swept through me. I knew it was the light of a great fire. Slowly I continued toward it.

  Rising over the top of a ridge, I saw ahead what appeared as an enormous bonfire. Even from a distance its heat was so great that I could scarcely take another step. Yet I crept slowly forward.

  In its midst a giant tree was growing. Every inch of it was aflame—trunk, branches, leaves. How it could survive amid such heat I had no idea. I could see that the tree was alive, however, for green was everywhere. Even as I beheld the scene, I saw new buds and shoots sprouting all over it. As they did, they, too, burst into flame. Every inch burned violently and intensely, yet new growth continued to emerge. I knew I was gazing upon yet one more manifestation of Reality that I had scoffed at in my former life—the burning bush of Sinai where Moses had encountered the God of the enslaved Hebrews.

  I approached as close as I dared. With my improved eyesight, I stared into the midst of the fire. I now saw upon the trunk and branches of the massive tree millions of tiny bugs and spiders and ants and termites and wood lice and wood-eating beetles and clusters of all manner of parasites attempting to destroy it. Many had burrowed deep into its trunk. Much of the bark had been destroyed. The bugs covered every inch of the tree. Upon its leaves, millions of worms and aphids and moths and caterpillars and locusts ate away the greenery as fast as it grew. It was impossible that any growing thing could survive such an onslaught of pestilence. The termites and beetles had bored to the very core of the trunk and must surely destroy it. The battle was fierce between the parasites of death and the new life that sprouted from the tree. The moment a new shoot of green appeared, a thousand moths and locusts attacked it with vengeance. The entire tree was being attacked from without and within, from above and below. I could see into it, all the way beneath the surface where its roots were suffering unrelenting attack from underground pests. Yet the vermin all were all able to survive the blistering flames.

  Then out of the midst of the fire, a voice of thunder spoke.

  “Come no nearer,” it said. “Take off your shoes, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

  I did so, then hid my face and fell to my knees, trembling in awe and terror.

  “I Am who I Am,” thundered the Voice. “I Am the One you denied. I Am Creator and Father of all things living and dead. I Am the fire-core of the universe. I Am Truth. I Am Alpha and Omega. I Am Light. I Am Life. The purifying fire of light burns from my being in purest love. The fire you fear burns only with the terror of unknowing. When my people make close approach, the fire of my love radiates light and warmth and comfort into their souls, for they have
made their home in my own heart.”

  My head was still bowed to the ground. I was afraid to look up.

  “Now behold the fire of my purification,” said the commanding Voice, “that you may be made ready to be made whole.

  “Who can endure the day of the Lord’s coming? I will have men who will bring me offerings of righteousness. I Am like a refiner’s fire and a fuller’s soap. I will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and I will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver until they present right offerings to the Lord.

  “Behold the day comes, burning like a furnace, when I shall purify them. And out of the fire, for those who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.”

  A great wave of heat suddenly shot through my frame. It compelled me to look up. The flames about the burning tree rose to such a tumult that I could no longer see trunk, nor branches, nor leaves.

  The fire enveloped the tree entirely. I perceived that to save the tree, every termite, every beetle, every worm boring its way into its innermost soul, every locust of destruction, must be burned up and utterly destroyed. They were the parasites of sin attempting to kill the life of the tree. To unmake them, the flame must reach inside the trunk, into its innermost places, into the depths of its roots, and there burn away the parasites that the life of the tree be preserved.

  The tree was overwhelmed in fierce flames. In its midst, I saw the wood itself glowing red, utterly devoured in the fire but not consumed. One by one, tiny flecks of white rose into the air. I knew that each was a termite or worm or locust burned off from within the tree, destroyed utterly, never to plague it again. At length a snowstorm of white ash rose amid the fire and drifted away into nothingness. The flames had done their work. The aion of pestilence was past.