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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Franchezzo

They rescue a repentant individual serving as slave to an Emperor-like master in what appeared to be an old Roman-Empire city.

 

 

return to the main-page article on "Hell" 

 

 

 

Editor's prefatory comment:

We might imagine the Dark Realms to be all caves and barren landscape, and much of it is, but in certain sections one finds entire cities, sometimes of huge proportion, with a population of millions. And some of these cities resemble those of the ancient world.

In one of these fortified citadels, a local chieftain rules. He calls himself an Emperor, and it could be possible that, during his Earth life, he did rule with such title.

 

 

deceit and fraud as the very atmosphere of the city 

A Spirit Guide gives instruction to Franchezzo:

“Always remember that you will be surrounded by every species of deceit and falsehood, and believe no one who comes to you as a messenger from us unless he can give you the countersign of your order. With the highest powers of their intellect to help them they will plot and scheme with great cleverness to tempt and entrap you. In these regions there are men who were amongst the greatest intellectual powers of their age, but whose awful careers of wickedness have sunk them to these spheres where they reign over all around them—even worse and more despotic tyrants now than they were upon earth. Beware, then, and heed all the warnings we have given you.”

 

 

Editor's note:

Is this not remarkable? The Guide’s stern warnings easily remind us of the attitudes and mental dispositions we encounter from political leaders who burden us, every day on tv, with their false humility and con-job concern, their big sloppy grins of faux affability, their feigned posturing of public service. Everything they say is a lie. Every legislative enactment, labeled as “for the people” or “prosperity for all” or “safety and security” works to produce the opposite – all designed to solidify their power and control over society as they reduce and eliminate personal liberties.

"Beware and heed", indeed.

 

 

My companion's spirit name was "Faithful Friend", a name given him in memory of his devotion to a friend who abused his friendship and finally betrayed him, and whom he had even then forgiven and helped in the hour when shame and humiliation overtook the betrayer, and when reproach and con- tempt or even revenge might have seemed amply justifiable to many minds. This truly noble spirit had been a man of by no means perfectly moral character in his earthly life, and had therefore passed at death into the lower spheres near the earth plane, but he had risen rapidly, and at the time I met him he was one of the Brotherhood in the second sphere, to which I had so recently been admitted, and had been once before through the Kingdoms of Hell…

the city was surrounded by a barrier of fire, half a mile deep, like a force-field in a sci-fi movie

[Reaching] the mass of fire I saw that it was like a fiery wall surrounding the country, through which all who sought to enter or leave it must pass.

"See now, Franchezzo, " said Faithful Friend, "we are about to pass through this wall of fire, but do not let that alarm you, for so long as your courage and your will do not fail and you exert all your will-power to repel these fiery particles they cannot come in actual contact with your body. Like the waters of the Red Sea they will fall apart on either side and we shall pass through unscathed.

"Were anyone of weak will and timid soul to attempt this they would fail, and be driven back by the force of these flames which are propelled outwards by a current of strong will -- force set in motion by the fierce and powerful beings who reign here and who thus, as they imagine...

the fire-barrier was designed to keep out the missionary spirits who might free their slaves

... protect themselves from intrusions from the higher spheres. To us, however, with our more spiritualised bodies, these flames and the walls and rocks you will find in this land, are no more impenetrable than is the solid material of earthly doors and walls, and as we can pass at will through them so can we pass through these...

like the Berlin Wall, the fire also imprisoned the inhabitants of the city

... which are none the less sufficiently solid to imprison the spirits who dwell in this country" …

My friend now took my hand firmly in his and we "willed" ourselves to pass through the wall of fire. I confess that a momentary sense of fear passed over me as we began to enter it, but I felt we were "in for it", so exerting all my powers and concentrating my thoughts I soon found that we were floating through—the flames forming a fiery arch below and above us through which as through a tunnel we passed. Thinking of it now I should say it must have been about a quarter to half a mile thick, judging as one would by earthly measurements…

Editor's note: Like the despotic politicians today, the ruling elite of the city lived in a protected fortified compound, behind barriers and walls with armed guards, while the plebs were offered no such security of walled and policed repose. Compare the actions of the Emperor to those of the tribal leader: see "the 500 tape-recorded messages from the other side" writing.

As we emerged [from the fiery impasse] we found ourselves in a land of night. It might have seemed like the bottomless pit of desolation had we not stood upon solid enough ground, while above us was this canopy of black smoke.

How far this country extended it was impossible to form any idea, since the heavy atmosphere like a black fog shut in our vision on every side. I was told that it extended through the whole of this vast and dreadful sphere.

black jagged mountains, black forests, nameless desolate black plains, swamps of black ooze, black slimy crawly creatures and fanged bats

In some parts there were great tumbled jagged mountains of black rocks, in others long and dreary wastes of desert plains while yet others were mighty swamps of black oozing mud, full of the most noisome crawling creatures, slimy monsters, and huge bats.

Again there were dense black forests of gigantic, repulsive looking trees, almost human in their power and tenacity, encircling and imprisoning those who ventured amongst them.

Ere I left this awful land I had seen these and other dreadful regions, but truly neither I nor anyone else could ever really describe them in all their loathsomeness and foulness.

As we stood looking at this country my sight, gradually becoming used to the darkness, enabled me to perceive the surrounding objects dimly, and I saw that before us there was a highway marked by the passage of many spirit feet across the black plain on which we stood. A plain covered with dust and ashes, as though all the blighted hopes, the dead ashes, of misused earthly lives had been scattered there…

They approach the entrance to a city, with Faithful Friend commenting:

“In this place there are none who have not themselves been guilty during their earthly lives of the most awful cruelties, the most absolute defiance of the laws of mercy and justice. In coming here they are only intent upon finding fresh means to gratify their lust for cruelty, and thus they expose themselves to becoming in their turn the victims of beings no more ferocious than themselves but stronger in will-power and cleverer in intellect.

 

Editor's note:

“The most awful cruelties…”

We are reminded of a chapter’s title in Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek’s “The Road To Serfdom” as “Why The Worst Get On Top.”

 

 

 

Everyone has an ego to contend with, and everyone, potentially, must acknowledge that one’s heart is capable of any atrocity. But – there are those among us, those who will yet populate the lowest reaches of hell, who have actualized the potential for evil.

The average so-called good person of society is simply trying to live his or her life, raise a family, get to work on time, and save for the future. But the lowest of the low are too emotionally needy to “live and let live.” They need something from the rest of us to find their significance. They want to “make a difference” – which is code language for “I must interfere with the lives of others that they might serve me and aggrandize my pathetic self.”

"I need, I need, I need"

These are “the worst,” as Hayek called them, “who get on top.” Sometime good people volunteer for public service if they see a real need, and if they feel they can truly help, but the ignoble, the crass, those of shriveled heart, must find their way into the public limelight. Their small minds and small spirits demand the notoriety.

"I need, I need, I need"

See more on the "Clear Thinking" page concerning the "games people play."

 

 

"This is the city of cruelty, and those who reign here do so by virtue of their very excess of that vice. The wretched spirits [of this land] labouring as helpless slaves for their spirit tyrants … yet exists a connecting link of magnetism which will keep them living and animated by a reflected life till the soul germ shall cast off its present envelope and rise to a higher state of life." …

 

 

Editor's note:

“a connecting link of magnetism…”

Let us take special notice that it is not only the ringleaders of cruelties who inhabit the swamp-pits of black ooze, but they are kept company by the servile masses who supported their vices.

These are the victim mentalities -- still living as slaves in hell -- who voted for them, cheered them, fawned over them, high-fiving them, believed them to be their saviors against “those others” who were imagined to be their enemies.

The lesson becomes, if you support "the worst who get on top," you will go down with them.

 

 

“Even in the visit we shall pay to this sphere we shall only be able to see a part, a fractional part, of this immense sphere of evil spirits, yet we shall traverse an extent of space far greater than if you had travelled over the whole of the little planet Earth from which we both have come.

 

 

Editor's note:

How large is the world of the Dark Realms?

Recall that, in earlier testimony, these Guides were traveling at a speed, they said, not quite as fast as that of thought but, they intimated, something akin. This suggests that they were moving at some meaningful fraction of the speed of light.

In the present passage, the Guide informs us that, during their excursion, they would visit only a tiny portion of hell, even so the area would equal that of the entire surface of the Earth. From this, we discern that the entire Dark Realms might encompass a volume – we don’t know, but – to fill the orbit of Mars or Jupiter.

There are other reports, of similar tenor, which speak to the size of Summerland, and these suggest an even larger span of distance.

The coming worlds are huge, and more than huge, and well capacious enough to serve their purposes.

'countless millions of miles'

Note: Later on, a Guide comments to Franchezzo on the enormous dimensions of hell:

And standing on that mountain peak we could survey the mighty panorama of Hell stretched out at our feet. [The Guide] then addressed us in grave solemn tones:

"This scene upon which we look is but a small, a very small, fractional, portion of the great sphere which men have been wont to speak of as 'Hell.' There are dark spheres above this which may seem to many to deserve the name until they have seen this place and learned in it how low a soul can sink and how much more terrible in this sphere can be both the crimes and the sufferings.

'countless millions of miles'

“The great belt of dark matter of which is composed this, the lowest of the earth spheres, extends for countless millions of earthly miles around us, and has received within its borders all those multitudes of sinful souls whose material lives have been passed on earth, and whose existences date back to the remote far-off ages in which the planet Earth first began to bear its harvest of conscious immortals...

a place designed to work out one's own salvation, till the lust for sin be extirpated from one's soul

... destined to sin and suffer and work out each their own salvation till they should be purified from all earthly stain—all taint of their lower nature. The multitudes of such lives have been, and shall yet be, as the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea in number…

"Far beyond the power of any mortal to carry even his thoughts, lie the myriad dwelling places of the spheres, each spot or locality bearing upon it the individual stamp of the spirit whose life has created it, and, as there are no two faces, no two minds, even no two blades of grass, exactly similar in all the countless beings that have peopled the earth —so there are no two places in the spirit world exactly alike.

"Each place—yea, even each sphere —is the separate creation of the particular class of minds that have created it, and those whose minds are in affinity being drawn to each other in the spirit world every place will bear more or less the peculiar stamp of its inhabitants.

"Thus in giving a description of this or any other sphere you will naturally be able to tell only what you have seen, and to describe those places to which you were attracted, while another spirit who has beheld a different portion of the same sphere may describe it so very differently…”

And it seems that Summerland is even more expansive. 

 

 

the missionaries are looking for, can help, only those who flash a glimmer of common spirit, a beginning particle of repentant attitude

"In the spirit world, like draws to like by a universal law, and those of entirely opposite natures repel each other so entirely, that they can never mingle or even touch the circle in which each dwells. Thus in our wanderings we shall only visit those with whom either from nationality or temperament we have some germ of feeling, however slight, in common.”

Passing and repassing us upon this highway were a great many dark spirits, some bearing great heavy loads upon their backs, others almost crawling along on all fours like beasts.

great gangs of slaves

Editor's note: These are the true-believers of old, still serving some Dear Leader as slaves in hell. Note: with "iron collars", still being led around by a halter.

Great gangs of slaves passed us, wearing heavy iron collars on their necks and linked together by a heavy chain. They were coming from the second or inner gate of what was evidently a large fortified city whose dark buildings loomed through the dense masses of dark fog in front of us.

it looked like a city from the old Roman Empire

The causeway, the style of buildings, and the appearance of many of the spirits made me feel as though we were entering some ancient fortified city of the old Roman Empire, only here everything gave one the sense of being foul and horrible, in spite of the fine architecture and the magnificent buildings whose outlines we could dimly trace. The second gateway was finer in appearance than the first, and the gates being open we passed in with the stream of spirits hurrying through it, and as before we seemed to pass unseen.

"You will perceive," said Faithful Friend, "that here there is a life in no way different from the earthly life of such a city, at the time when the one of which this is the spiritual reflection, was in the full zenith of its power, and when the particles of which this is formed were thrown off from its material life and drawn down by the force of attraction to form this city and these buildings, fit dwellings for its spiritual inhabitants. And you will see in the more modern appearance of many of the buildings and inhabitants how it has been added to from time to time by the same process which is going on continuously.

many of these true-believers don't know they're dead and wonder why everything looks so dingy and horrible

Editor’s note: In their Earth lives, they had lived the sensual life, were materialistic and atheistic -- which is why they aborted their babies -- had spurned the knowledge of the afterlife; and now, still firmly resisting the truth with closed mind, they continue to be afterlife deniers, even in hell. Is this not pathetic?

“You will notice that most of the spirits here fancy themselves still in the earthly counterpart and wonder why all looks so dark and foul and dingy. In like manner this same city has its spiritual prototype in the higher spheres to which all that was fair and good and noble in its life has been attracted, and where those spirits who were good and true have gone to dwell; for, in the lives of cities as of men, the spiritual emanations are attracted upwards or downwards according as there is good or evil in the deeds done in them. And as the deeds done in this city have in evil far exceeded those which were good, so this city is far larger, far more thickly peopled, in this sphere than in those above. In the ages to come when the spirits who are here now shall have progressed, that heavenly counterpart will be fully finished and fully peopled, and then will this place we gaze at now have crumbled into dust—faded from this sphere."

We were now in a narrow street such as it must have been in the earthly city, and a short distance farther brought us into a large square surrounded with magnificent palaces… All was truly on a magnificent scale, yet all to my eyes appeared dark, stained with great splashes of blood, and covered with slimy fungus growths which disfigured the magnificence and hung in great repulsive-looking festoons, like twisted snakes, from all the pillars and cope-stones of the buildings.

like Venice built on swampland, this city swims on black slimy ooze

Black slimy mud oozed up through the crevices of the marble pavement, as though the city floated upon a foul swamp, and noisome vapours curled up from the ground and floated above and around us in fantastic and horrible smoke wreaths like the huge phantoms of past crimes.

Everywhere were dark spirits crawling across the great square and in and out of the palace doors—driven onward by other stronger dark spirits with lash or spear.

the air filled with sacrilegious execration

Such cries of execration as broke forth from time to time, such fearful oaths, such curses and imprecations, it was truly the pandemonium of the lost souls in the Infernal regions! And over all hung those black night clouds of sorrow and suffering and wrong.

Far away to the earth my thoughts travelled, back to the days of the Roman Empire, and I saw reflected as in a glass this city in all the splendour of her power, in all the iniquities of her tyranny and her crimes … till it should become a great prison for all the evil spirits of that wicked time.

the Emperor's Palace

We went up the wide flight of steps through the lofty door-way and found ourselves in the outer court of the Emperor's Palace. No one spoke to us or seemed aware of our presence, and we passed on through several smaller halls till we reached the door of the Presence Chamber.

Here my companion stopped and said,

"I cannot enter with you, friend, because I have already visited the dark spirit who reigns here, and therefore my presence would at once excite his suspicions and defeat the object of your visit, which is that you may rescue an unhappy spirit whose repentant prayers have reached the higher spheres, and will be answered by the help you are sent to give him. You will find the person you seek without any difficulty. His desire for help has already drawn us thus near to him and will draw you still closer.

“I must now for a time part from you because I have my own path of work to follow, but we shall meet again ere long, and if you but keep a stout heart and a strong will and do not forget the warnings given you no harm can befall you. Adieu, my friend, and know that I also shall need all my powers."

 

 

Editor's note:

Why this pause for caution by the Guide?

Why not “send in the Marines,” dispatch a commando force, to rescue the hapless one? Some of the Guides, the senior ones, have so much power that they could level the city – level the whole Dark Realms, if they chose to – so why the circumspection?

Ah, but that would be cheating. There is the issue of the “prime directive” over there, in that, free will must be honored at all times, even if one makes a bad choice.

This Guide says that he can’t go in because he’s known there and this would rile everyone up. What are we to make of this scruple? Just this, I think: the Dark Realms are populated not by the punished but by the students, unwitting or otherwise, of natural law. All of them are in process of having “the lust of evil ground out of the soul.” And it would do no good, no long term good for their spiritual evolution, to force anyone into submission.

This would just enrage them and set them back another thousand years in the rat-cellar. No, there must be, as this Guide intimates, rules of engagement. The sacred potentialities even of the most wicked are honored by the Guides, even if the evil ones themselves are too far gone at the moment to care.

Missionaries in hell, we discern, operate according to a strict code of human rights based upon the reality of latent sacred human potential. Nothing is done to infringe upon volition, and, even in a rescue operation, great care is taken not to encourage any further hatred toward God, so as to leave the insane ones in a worse mental condition.

We begin to perceive that it’s like dealing with very small children. Much incivility on the part of a "terrible infant" is tolerated with a view toward a more mature and better day coming.

 

 

Thus, then, I parted from Faithful Friend and passed on alone into the Council Chamber, which I found thronged with spirits, both men and women, and furnished with all the barbaric splendour of the days of the Emperors.

Yet to my sight there was over everything the same stamp of foul loathsomeness which had struck me in the exterior of the palace. The men and women, haughty patricians in their lives, no doubt, appeared to be eaten up with a loathsome disease like lepers, only they were even more horrible to look upon.

The walls and floors seemed stained with dark pools of blood and hung with evil thoughts for drapery. Worm eaten and corrupting were the stately robes these haughty spirits wore, and saturated with the disease germs from their corrupted bodies.

the Emperor on his throne

On a great throne sat the Emperor himself, the most foul and awful example of degraded intellect and manhood in all that vast crowd of degraded spirits, while stamped upon his features was such a look of cruelty and vice that beside him the others sank into insignificance by comparison. I could not but admire, even while it revolted me, the majestic power of this man's intellect and will…

And I saw his court and his companions change back to the likeness of their earthly lives, and I knew that to each and all they appeared just the same in their own eyes, all were alike unconscious of the horrible change in themselves, yet perfectly conscious of the change in each of their companions.

the repentant man, cowering in a corner

Were all unconscious? No! not quite all. There was one man crouching in a corner, his mantle drawn over his disfigured face, whom I perceived to be fully conscious of his own vileness as well as the vileness of all who surrounded him. And in this man's heart there had sprung up a desire, hopeless, as it seemed to himself, for better things, for a path to open before him which, however hard and thorny, might lead him from this night of Hell and give him even at this eleventh hour the hope of a life removed from the horrors of this place and these associates.

And as I looked I knew it was to this man that I was sent, though how I was to help him I knew not, I could not guess. I only felt that the power which had led me so far would open up my path and show me the way.

if you are of a different spirit, even when you walk into a room, without saying a word, they'll know you're different

While I had stood thus gazing around me, the dark spirits and their Ruler became conscious of my presence, and a look of anger and ferocity passed over his face, while in a voice thick and hoarse with passion he demanded who I was and how I dared to enter his presence.

I answered, "That I was a stranger only lately come to this dark sphere and I was still lost in wonder at finding such a palace in the spirit world." A wild ferocious laugh broke from the spirit, and he cried out that they would soon enlighten me as to many things in the spirit world.

"But since you are a stranger," he continued, "and because we always receive strangers right royally here, I pray you to be seated and partake with us of our feast."

a chair of entrapment

He pointed to a vacant seat at the long table in front of him at which many of the spirits were seated, and which was spread with what bore the semblance of a great feast such as might have been given in the days of his earthly grandeur.

Everything looked real enough, but I had been warned that it was all more or less illusionary, that the food never satisfied the awful cravings of hunger which these former gluttons felt, and that the wine was a fiery liquid which scorched the throat and rendered a thousand times worse the thirst which consumed these drunkards. I had been told to neither eat nor drink anything offered me in these regions, nor to accept any invitation to rest myself given by these beings. For to do so would mean the subjugation of my higher powers to the senses once more, and would at once put me more on a level with these dark beings and into their power.

I answered therefore, "That while I fully appreciated the motives which prompted him to offer me the hospitality of his palace, I must still decline it as I had no desire to either eat or drink anything."

the pretence of graciousness, the big sloppy grin of affability

At this rebuff his eyes shot gleams of living fire at me and a deeper shade of anger crossed his brow, but he still maintained a pretence of graciousness and signed to me to approach yet nearer to him.

the to-be-rescued man tries to help

Meanwhile the man whom I had come to help—aroused from his bitter meditations by my arrival and the Emperor's speech with me—had drawn near in wonder at my boldness and alarmed for my safety, for he knew no more of me than that I seemed some unlucky new arrival who had not yet learnt the dangers of this horrible place. His anxiety for me and a certain sense of pity created a link between us, which, unknown to either, was to be the means whereby I would be able to draw him away with me.

When I advanced a few steps towards the Emperor's throne this repentant spirit followed me, and, coming close, whispered, "Do not be beguiled by him. Turn and fly from this place while there is yet time, and I will draw their attention from you for the moment."

I thanked the spirit but said, "I shall not fly from any man, be he whom he may, and will take care not to fall into any trap."

Our hurried speech had not been unnoticed by the Emperor, for he became most impatient, and striking his sword upon the ground cried out to me, "Approach, stranger! Have you no manners that you keep an Emperor waiting? Behold my chair of state, my throne, seat yourself in it and try for a moment how it feels to be in an Emperor's place."

I looked at the throne as he pointed and saw it was like a great chair with a canopy over it. Two immense winged figures in bronze stood at the back of the seat, each with six long arms extended to form the back and sides, while upon the heads of these figures the canopy rested as upon pillars. I had no thought to sit in such a place; its late occupant was too repulsive to me for me to desire to go any nearer to him, but had even curiosity made me wish to examine the chair the sight I saw would have effectually prevented me.

the chair was a form of prison

The chair seemed suddenly to become endowed with life, and before my eyes I beheld a vision of an unhappy spirit struggling in the embraces of those awful arms which encircled it and crushed its body into a mangled writhing' mass. And I knew that such was the fate of all those whom the Emperor induced to try the comforts of his chair.

Only for one brief instant the vision lasted and then I turned to the Emperor and, bowing, said to him, "I have no desire to place myself upon your level, and must again decline the honour you would do me."

as deception fails, he resorts to brute force

Whereupon he broke into a tempest of rage, and cried out to his guards to seize me and thrust me into that chair and pour the food and the wine down my throat till they choked me.

Immediately there was a rush made towards me, the man I had come to save throwing himself before me to protect me, and in a moment we were surrounded by a seething, fighting mass of spirits, and for that moment, I confess, my heart sank within me and my courage began to fail.

They looked so horrible, so fiendish, so like a pack of wild beasts let loose and all setting upon me at once. Only for a moment, however, for the conflict aroused all my combative qualities of which I have been thought to possess my fair share. And I threw out all my will to repel them … and calling upon all good powers to aid me while I grasped firm hold of the poor spirit who had sought to help me.

Thus I retreated to the door, step by step, the whole crowd of dark spirits following us with wild cries and menacing gestures, yet unable to touch us while I kept firm my determination to keep them off.

At last we reached the door and passed through it, whereupon it seemed to close fast and keep in our pursuers. Then strong arms seemed to lift us both up and bear us away into a place of safety on the dark plain.

My rescued companion was by this time in a state of unconsciousness, and as I stood by him I saw four majestic spirits from the higher spheres making magnetic passes over his prostrate form. And then I beheld the most wonderful sight I had ever seen.

From the dark disfigured body which lay as in a sleep of death there arose a mist-like vapour which grew more and more dense till it took shape in the form of the spirit himself; the purified soul of that poor spirit released from its dark envelope.

And I saw those four angelic spirits lift the still unconscious risen soul in their arms as one would bear a child, then they all floated away from me up, up, till they vanished from my sight.

battlefield commendation

And at my side stood another bright angel who said to me, "Be of good cheer, oh! Son of the Land of Hope, for many shalt thou help in this dark land, and great is the joy of the angels in Heaven over these sinners that have repented."

left alone, to work, in the harvest fields of hell

As he finished speaking he vanished, and I was alone once more on the bleak plains of Hell.

 

 

Editor's last word: