692. 7
HELL
Just as man's idea of heaven is very general, so hazy as to be almost none at all, so too is his idea of hell. He is like hut-dwellers in a forest who can have a mental picture of the world beyond, but do not know of its empires or kingdoms, still less its forms of government, and even less the communities or life of those communities. Until they know these things their idea of the world is bound to be very general, such as to be scarcely any at all. The same applies to man's ideas of heaven and of hell. Yet there are countless phenomena in both places, infinitely more than those existing on any planet. How countless they are becomes clear from the mere consideration that just as nobody ever has in mind exactly the same heaven as anybody else, so nobody ever has in mind exactly the same hell. And yet all souls who have ever lived in the world since creation began go to those places and are gathered together.