We may liken hell and heaven or goodness -- I mean positive energy -- to energies. In the universe, all matter, all things, are created by energy, and we call that "Creative Force," or we might call it the "Creator." Because the energy has been scattered in different directions, all the energy has now scattered all over the place in the universe and become different worlds and different beings. These beings will acquire their individual states of thinking or levels of consciousness, and according to the inter-reactions among each other, they will generate another kind of energy.

This kind of energy, we will divide into two categories. The first one we can call "positive" energy, or we say God nature, heavenly force, or Buddha nature. The second category, we can name "negative" power, evil or dark force, or the opposite of goodness. Now, the goodness and the positive energy are side by side with the negative. Whenever any beings, be they devas, angelic beings, or earthlings, worldly people, generate goodness, tolerance, loving compassion, and cooperation with each other, then this energy will be categorized as good, the God force, or positive power. And then the more we think good thoughts, the more the beings generate this kind of goodness, the more positive power we have in our atmosphere, in our world. Whenever we or any beings generate hatred, bad thoughts, or any kind of negative tendencies, actions or speech, we add it to the negative storehouse of the atmosphere, which is what we call the evil force. This force will breed more hatred, more wars, and more disharmony in our world or in any world in which these people happen to reside.

So that is the reason we should always generate goodness in our thoughts, in our deeds. In thoughts, deeds, and what else? Speech, yes, to derive the goodness that we have sown. That is why in the Bible it is stated, "As you sow, so shall you reap," and in the Buddhist scriptures, it is stated that if you do good deeds, you'll get good results; if you do bad, then you'll reap the results thereof. Most scriptures mention the same things. In order to reach heaven, it is logical, now we know that we have to tune into goodness, to the positive part of the world. And the more we step into goodness, the nearer the goodness, the more we merge into this heavenly quality and the more we are near to heaven. The negative force may exist in our neighborhood, but it will not affect us. For example, we have lights in our house, neon lamps, and outside our house may be darkness, but when we step into our house and stay there, we can read, we can work, we can play, we can see our loved ones and all the surroundings. The darkness outside will not affect our light inside the house. So that is a very simple and a kind of basic explanation about good and evil, heaven and hell.

If the negative power is very strong, then it creates a kind of very condensed atmosphere. Whoever happens to be drawn into it by his own or her own actions will experience the so-called hell, where the most intense agonies, repentance, and guilty feelings will torture them until they have paid off the bad thinking or deeds that they have done before. We can avoid that. We can avoid this stage of agony, which is called hell, if we turn to goodness now.

There are two kinds of heavens. One is temporary and one is permanent. The so-called temporary heaven can be earned by doing good deeds, by avoiding evil, and by practicing religious penance or believing in some religion or the God of your faith, by prayers, reading scriptures, and trying to live accordingly as much as you can. Another kind of heaven, or kingdom, or what we call the ultimate Kingdom of God, is the permanent, eternal, everlasting one that requires more effort and that requires the grace of the Almighty, the God nature, or the God within us.

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How difficult it is to take people back to heaven, because of too many preconceived ideas, too many prejudices, too much ignorance.