Words From the Knower of Self.....Thoughts on African Cosmology by Brother Jaaja

Heaven and Hell.
Some believe that Heaven is a mystical place up in the sky where God dwells looking down on all creation. It’s said to be a place where righteous souls go after life and are rewarded for having performed good deeds while living on earth. And then there’s Hell, said to be the opposite, a place of fire where unrighteous souls are punished for all eternity for the bad they have done while alive. Do these places really exist? It all depends on your perception. Ancient Kametian science taught that both places are possible to experience, not as an actual physical place, but as states of consciousness. It’s quit possible for one to experience both “ heavenly “ and or “ hellish “ states of consciousness depending on the content of one’s mind. Most of us during the course of a lifetime experience a bit of both.



In the “ Book of Coming Forth by Day and Night “ during the judgment seen the heart (consciousness) of the deceased is weighed against the feather of Maat (symbol of balance, truth, harmony, purity of consciousness). If the heart is found to be pure in state, or light as the feather, the individual soul is allowed to join with it’s higher cosmic self which is immortal. If the heart on the other hand is found to be heavier than the feather it is not allowed to pass but must return to the realm of creation (be reborn) to develop further. The objective here is to achieve balance. Life and the interplay that happens between the soul and the physical world allow us the opportunity to bring into harmony our higher faculties (reason, righteousness, virtuousness, etc) with that of our lower faculties (animal instinct, fear, selfishness, etc). The higher must become master of the lower in order to achieve balance.


What does this all have to do with heaven and hell? As we evolve as spiritual beings through our interaction with the physical world we have many different experiences. These experiences and how we choose to identify with them serve to shape the perceptions of our inner mind. Our identification is what causes the scale to move in one direction or the other. When identified with too strongly, the things we experience in the physical world leave their markings embedded upon us, producing desire in the mind and causing the person to experience states of mental unrest. These imprints that are left behind determine to what degree an individual may experience either “ heavenly “ or “ hellish “ states of awareness. Thoughts take on form just like anything else. To put it simply, we are what we think. When we experience moments of anger, frustration, rage, sadness, depression, we are
in fact experiencing metaphorically speaking, various degrees of “ hell “. This is the hell that comes from being in a state of mental unrest. When we experience moments of great joy, happiness, blissfulness, etc, we are experiencing degrees of “ heavenly “ consciousness. Because this state produces moments of great joy, we seek to have these kinds of experiences over and over again. When we fail to find them within the physical world, they then become the source of great pain and suffering. It’s these kinds of experiences that produce desire, which again is a form of mental unrest. Both states, “ heavenly “ and “ hellish “ symbolically represent the tilting of the scale to one side or the other. Both potentially represent a degree of imbalance depending on how one identifies with either, being that neither represents absolute reality.
Someone may say, why should feeling happiness and blissfulness represent a state of imbalance? My response would be that it doesn’t have to. One can experience moments of happiness or sadness and still maintain balance within themselves as long as one does not identify with the specific emotion or feeling as being who they really are. It’s important to remind ourselves that we are not our emotions. Something challenging can happen to us in life and at that moment we feel sad or we come to hold negative perceptions of ourselves. Another moment something good happens to us and now we feel what we perceive as happiness. This is what’s referred to as ego identification. The person comes to believe that he/she is the emotions that are being experienced through interaction with the outer world. He/she does not identify with the true inner self, which transcends the emotions of the physical body. So the individual’s happiness (heaven) or sadness (hell) is dependent upon what he/she does or does not have in the physical world. If one’s happiness or sadness in determined by external factors existing in the outer world, then it is not true in nature (illusion).
If you believe that you have found true happiness because of the things you may have in life, just ask yourself would you feel the same way if these things were taken away. If you feel that you are unfortunate because you find that there are things you are without, then ask yourself why is it that you place such value on things that eventually someday you will have to leave behind. Some day that’s exactly what will happen. No matter what you have, family, a house, a career, money, fame, etc. At some point the physical body will die and the soul will move on leave all these things behind. So one’s happiness or sadness should not be dependent upon things that are
here one moment then gone the next (illusions). True happiness comes from inner peace, a peace that comes from having a clear conscious, desiring nothing, being at peace with one’s self. To desire nothing at all is to not experience “ heaven “ or “ hell “, but to exist in an eternal state of contentment (htp). The contentment I speak of is one that transcends both “ heaven “ and “ hell “. It is a state that has always been with us and will always be with us, but can only be realized by looking within. May we all find hetep (peace) in this very lifetime.

Jaaja Knower of Self.