In Orthodox literature visions of hell are as common as visions of heaven and paradise. Such visions and experiences, unlike visions of heaven, occur more commonly to ordinary sinners than to saints, and their purpose is always clear. St. Gregory in his Dialogues states: “In His unbounded mercy, the good God allows some souls to return to their bodies shortly after death, so that the sight of hell might at last teach them to fear the eternal punishments in which words alone could not make them believe” (Dialogues IV, 37, p. 237). St. Gregory then describes several experiences of hell and tells of the impression they produced on the beholders. Thus, a certain Spanish hermit Peter died and saw “hell with all its torments and countless pools of fire.” On returning to life, Peter described what he had seen, “but even had he kept silent, his penitential fasts and night watches would have been eloquent witnesses to his terrifying visit to hell and his deep fear of its dreadful torments. God had shown Himself most merciful by not allowing him to die in this experience with death” (p. 238).
The 8th-century English chronicler, Venerable Bede, relates how a man from the province of Northumbria returned after being “dead” one whole night and related his experience of both paradise and hell. In hell, he found himself in dense darkness; “frequent masses of dusky flame suddenly appeared before us, rising as though from a great pit and falling back into it again.... As the tongues of flame rose, they were filled with the souls of men which, like sparks flying up with the smoke, were sometimes flung high in the air, and at others dropped back into the depths as the vapors of the fire died down. Furthermore, an indescribable stench welled up with these vapors, and filled the whole of this gloomy place.... I suddenly heard behind me the sound of a most hideous and desperate lamentation, accompanied by harsh laughter.... I saw a throng of wicked spirits dragging with them five human souls howling and lamenting into the depths of the darkness while the devils laughed and exulted.... Meanwhile, some of the dark spirits emerged from the fiery depths and rushed to surround me, harassing me with their glowing eyes and foul flames issuing from their mouths and nostrils....”44
In the Life of Taxiotes the Soldier it is related that after Taxiotes was stopped by the demonic “tax-collectors” at the toll-houses, “the evil spirits took me and began to beat me. They led me down into the earth, which had parted to receive us. I was conducted through narrow entrances and confining, evil-smelling cracks. When I reached the very depths of hell, I saw there the souls of sinners, confined in eternal darkness. Existence there cannot be called life, for it consists of nothing but suffering, tears that find no comfort, and a gnashing teeth that can find no description. That place is forever full of the desperate cry: ‘Woe, woe! Alas, alas!’ It is impossible to describe all the suffering which hell contains, all its torments and pains. The departed groan from the depths of their heart, but no one pities them; they weep, but no one comforts them; they beg, but no one listens to them and delivers them. I too was confined in those dark regions, full of terrible sorrows, and wept and bitterly sobbed for six hours.”45
The monk of Wenlock beheld a similar scene in the “lowest depths” of the earth, where “he heard a horrible, tremendous, and unspeakable groaning and weeping of souls in distress. And the angel said to him: ‘The murmuring and crying which you hear down there comes from those souls to which the loving kindness of the Lord shall never come, but an undying flame shall torture them forever’” (The Letters of St. Boniface, p. 28).
Of course, we should not be overly fascinated by the literal details of such experiences, and even less than in the case of paradise and heaven should we try to piece together a “geography” of hell based on such accounts. The Western notions of “purgatory” and “limbo” are attempts to make such a “geography”; but Orthodox tradition knows only the one reality of hell in the underworld. Furthermore, as St. Mark of Ephesus teaches (see his Second Homily on Purgatorial Fire in Appendix I), what is seen in experiences of hell is often an image of future torments rather than a literal depiction of the present state of those awaiting the Last Judgment in hell. But whether it is an actual beholding of present realities or a vision of the future, the experience of hell as recorded in Orthodox sources is a powerful means of awakening one to a life of Christian struggle, which is the only means of escaping eternal torment; this is why God grants such experiences.
Are there any comparable experiences of hell in today’s “after-death” literature?
Dr. Moody and most other investigators today have found almost no such experiences, as we have already seen. Earlier we explained this fact as due to the “comfortable” spiritual life of men today, who often have no fear of hell or knowledge of demons, and thus do not expect to see such things after death. However, a recent book on life after death has suggested another explanation which seems to be of equal value, while at the same time denying that the experience of hell is really as rare as it seems. Here we shall briefly examine the findings of this book.
Dr. Maurice Rawlings, a Tennessee physician who specializes in internal medicine and cardiovascular diseases, has himself resuscitated many persons who have been “clinically dead.” His own interviews of these persons have taught him that, “contrary to most published life-after-death cases, not all death experiences are good. Hell also exists! After my own realization of this fact I started collecting accounts of unpleasant cases that other investigators apparently had missed. This has happened, I think, because the investigators, normally psychiatrists, have never resuscitated a patient. They have not had the opportunity to be on the scene. The unpleasant experiences in my study have turned out to be at least as frequent as the pleasant ones.”46 “I have found that most of the bad experiences are soon suppressed deeply into the patient’s subliminal or subconscious mind. These bad experiences seem to be so painful and disturbing that they are removed from conscious recall so that only the pleasant experiences — or no experiences at all — are recollected” (p. 65).
Dr. Rawlings describes his “model” of these experiences of helclass="underline" “As with those who have had good experiences, those reporting bad experiences may have trouble realizing they are dead as they watch people work on their dead bodies. They may also enter a dark passage after leaving the room, but instead of emerging into bright surroundings they enter a dark, dim environment where they encounter grotesque people who may be lurking in the shadows or along a burning lake of fire. The horrors defy description and are difficult to recall” (pp. 63-64). Various descriptions are given — including some by “regular church members” who are surprised to find themselves in such a state — of manifestations of imps and grotesque giants, of a descent into blackness and a fiery heat, of a pit and an ocean of fire (pp. 103-110).
In general, these experiences — both in their shortness and in the absence of any angelic or demonic guides — lack the complete characteristics of genuine other-worldly experiences, and some of them are quite reminiscent of Robert Monroe’s adventures in the “astral plane.” But they do supply an important corrective to the widely reported experience of “pleasantness” and “paradise” after death: the “out-of-body” realm is by no means all pleasantness and light, and those who have experienced its “hellish” side are closer to the truth of things than those who experience only “pleasure” in this state. The demons of the aerial realm expose something of their true nature to such ones, even giving them a hint of the torments to come for those who have not known Christ and been obedient to His commandments.
44
Bede,
46
Maurice Rawlings,