How Heaven Becomes Hell

The Six Realms
Part two

Even though we reject everything,
there is still a rejector.
As long as there is a rejector,
there is a path.

As long as we keep rejecting,
we are collecting something.

We have to accept
not to accept or reject.

Materially – or spiritually – we can become stuck. Life is pleasurable. We enjoy it – “I have arrived”. This is spiritual materialism, so there is the weakness. We are holding on to something! This is the god realm of pleasure.

In order to understand how the six realms work, we have to be honest with ourselves. For example, it’s easy to be taken in by people who inhabit the god realms, as they talk the talk, and it’s important to recognise this in ourselves – we can also talk the talk, can’t we?!

The problem is that if we don’t recognise our natural essence as clear empty space, we won’t recognise that there is a problem! We will continue to believe that the neurotic energies we experience are unique to ourselves. Because we are constantly holding on to the past and projecting into the future, we cannot find ‘now’. ‘Now’ is clear empty space – nothing doing! But we keep filling this space – this sacred space – with something or other. We could call this space ‘pure consciousness’ if that helps – it’s no man’s land.

We can start anywhere, so let’s start with the god realm – our perfect life – heaven – our achievement. The god realm is the environment of pride. Because of this weakness (pride) we are easily disturbed, which which is expressed through projections and justifications.

That is when we enter the realm of battle: the environment of the jealous gods. We pit our energy against that of others, and become very busy, picking at everything, grasping and taking. We take advantage of situations; this is the realm of envy. As we get more and more carried away, our desires become stronger, and we descend in to the human realm.

The human realm is the psychological state of excessive activity, desire and frustration. Here we see the development of addiction, because we feel that we need more and more (gradually, we are becoming aware that in every realm, the sacred space becomes more solid and frozen). This realm of desire, where we crave excessively, becomes very complicated and confused and so we attempt to simplify by categorising and pigeonholing, which then limits our view. We move to a coarser level where our intellect and humour are diminished and things become mechanical: and so we enter the animal realm of survival.

The animal realm is embodied by a rigid approach where we become habitual and territorial. We’re constantly trying to make things work, but there is never enough and we always need more: we take and take but cannot digest or share. And so we enter the realm of the hungry ghosts.

The realm of the hungry ghosts is the height of poverty. We are insatiable, always wanting more and more. Utter selfishness leads to aggression: we fixate and want to destroy everything. This is the powerful realm of hell: we either become very heated or very cold.

This is the journey from heaven to hell, and it can happen in a split second. Once we recognise that we are bound up in hell, the process reverses and we make our way back up to the god realms again. This is our psychological lot, up and down all day like the game of Snakes and Ladders! We may find ourselves predominantly living in one realm, perhaps throughout our entire life time – this was our choice.

It is important to recognise this pattern in others – not to condemn or label and then dismiss, but to understand and thus feel compassion. We can truly show compassion because we empathise, having been there ourselves, and got stuck. Spiritual knowledge is neutral: it is part of our psychological make up, and it all depends on whether we use this knowledge as a weapon or a wisdom.

The god realm is more ethereal and the hell realm more solid, but all the realms describe space under various conditions.

The six realms are unconscious consciousness.
Ego is unconscious space.

It is possible to transform this unconscious space into conscious space,
and that is done through the recognition of clarity.

The moment we recognise a realm,
we recognise the emotion associated with that realm.
That recognition is wisdom…
…the Buddha in the Mud.

That is the key to freedom.