The existence of hell
For the Orthodox believer, hell is as real as heaven. The Lord Himself has repeatedly spoken about those whom, for disobeying His commandments, He will send into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25, 41). In one of His parables, He gave a vivid example of a rich man who was condemned to hellish torments for unrighteous deeds during this life, looking at the paradise that he had lost, and asking the patriarch Abraham to allow the beggar Lazarus, whom he neglected during his life, to wash the end of his finger was in water, and he cooled his tongue, for he was tormented in the flame. But Abraham replied that a great gulf was established between them and that there was no communion between the saved and the damned (Luke 16: 24-26).
In Orthodox literature, visions of hell are as common as visions of heaven and paradise. Unlike visions of heaven, such visions and experiences are most often given to ordinary sinners, and not to saints, and the purpose of this is clear. In his Conversations, St. Gregory argued: "In His ineffable mercy, the good God allows some souls to return to their bodies after death, so that the sight of hell could finally teach them to fear eternal punishment, which words alone could not make them believe" (Interviews, IV, 37, page 237).
Then St. Gregory describes several experiences of hell and talks about the impressions they made on those who saw. So, a certain Spanish hermit Peter died and saw "hell with all the torments and countless lakes of fire." Returning to life, Peter told about what he had seen, “but even if he had remained silent, his penitential fasts and night vigils would be an eloquent testimony of his terrifying stay in hell and deep fear of terrible torment. God showed His immeasurable mercy, not allowing him to die and experience all this after death."
The eighth century chronicler Bede the Venerable from England related how a Northumbrian resident returned after being "dead" all night and recounted his experiences of both heaven and hell. In hell he found himself in impenetrable darkness; “Often in front of us suddenly appeared clouds of dim flame, as if rising from a huge pit and falling back there … As the tongues of flame grew, they were filled with human souls, which, like sparks flying with smoke, sometimes found themselves high in the air, then fell back into the depths as the fiery vapor decreased.
Moreover, an indescribable stench poured out with these vapors and filled all this gloomy place … Suddenly from behind I heard the sound of the most terrible and desperate moaning, which was accompanied by a rude laugh … I saw a crowd of evil spirits, dragging 5 souls into the depths, which howled and groaned while the demons laughed and rejoiced … Meanwhile, dark spirits appeared from the fiery depths and began to surround me, frightening with their sparkling eyes and disgusting flames emanating from their mouths and nostrils … "(Misfortune Honorable" History of the English Church and People ", book V, 12).
The story about the warrior Taxiot says how demonic "tax collectors" stopped him during ordeals: “Evil spirits, taking me, began to beat me and then brought me down; the earth parted, and I, being led by narrow passages through narrow and stinking wells, descended to the very depths of the dungeons of hell, where the souls of sinners are locked in eternal darkness, where there is no life for people, but only eternal torment, inconsolable crying and unspeakable gnashing of teeth. Desperate cries are always heard there: “Woe, woe to us! Alas, alas! "And it is impossible to convey all the sufferings there, it is impossible to retell all the torments and diseases that I saw. They groan from the depths of the soul, and no one has mercy on them; they cry, and there is no one who comforts; they pray, and there is no one who hears them and delivers them. And I was imprisoned in those gloomy places, full of terrible sorrow, and I wept and wept bitterly from the third hour to the tenth "(" Lives of the Saints ", March 28).
A similar scene was seen by a monk from Wenlock in the "underworld" of the earth, where "he heard the terrible, terrible and inexpressible groans and sobs of unfortunate souls." And the Angel said to him: "The murmur and cries that you hear down there come from those souls to which the loving mercy of God never reaches, but the undying fire torments them forever" (letters of St. Boniface).
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Of course, we should not be too fascinated by the literal details of these experiences, and even less than in the case of heaven and heaven, we should try to bring together the geography of hell based on such information. The Western concepts of "purgatory" and "limbo" are just attempts to create such a "geography", but the Orthodox tradition knows only one reality in the underworld - hell. Moreover, as St. Mark of Ephesus (see his "Second Word on Purgatory Fire"), what is seen in the experiences of hell is often an experience of future torment, and not a literal description of the current state of those awaiting the Last Judgment in hell. But whether it is a real spectacle of current realities or a vision of the future, the experience of hell, as presented in Orthodox sources, is a powerful means of awakening a person to a life of Christian deed, which serves as the only way to that,to avoid eternal torment; that's why God grants this experience.
Is there any analogous experience of hell in contemporary "posthumous" literature?
Dr. Raymond Moody and most other modern researchers have found little to no such experience. This fact is associated with the "comfortable" spiritual life of a modern person, who often does not have the fear of hellish torment or the knowledge of demons and therefore does not expect to see this after death. But a recent book on life after death offers another explanation that appears to be equivalent; it follows from this message that the experience of hell is not really as rare as it might seem. Here we briefly review the discoveries of this book entitled Beyond Death.
Dr. Maurice Rawlings, a Tennessee physician who specializes in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, has himself resuscitated many people who have experienced clinical death. Surveys of such people showed him that “contrary to most published life after death, not every death experience is enjoyable. Hell also exists! After realizing this fact myself, I began to collect stories of unpleasant incidents that other researchers had clearly missed. This happened, I think, because these researchers, usually psychiatrists, never resuscitated the patient. They did not have the opportunity to be at the scene. In my research, unpleasant experiences seem to be at least as frequent as pleasant ones … "(Maurice Rawlings, Beyond Death)" I have establishedthat most of the unpleasant experiences are soon displaced from the patient's consciousness. These difficult experiences, apparently, are so painful, unpleasant that they are removed from conscious memory, and therefore people remember only pleasant experiences or do not remember anything”(p. 65).
Dr. Rawlings described his model of such experiences of hell: “Like those who have had pleasant experiences, those who have reported hard experiences can also hardly realize that they have died as they watch the doctors tinker with their bodies. They can also enter a dark passage upon exiting a room, but instead of entering a light environment, they find themselves in a dark, dim environment, where they meet strange people who may lurk in the shadows or along a burning lake of fire. The horrors are beyond description and are hard to remember. There are various descriptions of the appearance of demons and strange giants, descent into blackness and fiery heat, pits and oceans of fire.
In general, these experiences - both in their brevity and in the absence of angelic and demonic leaders - do not have the characteristics of a genuine otherworldly experience, and some of them resemble the adventures of Robert Monroe in the "astral plane."
But they still make an important amendment to the well-known experience of "pleasantness" and "paradise" after death: the "out-of-body sphere" is in no way pleasantness and light, and those who have experienced a "hellish" side in this are closer to the point things than those who experienced only "pleasure" in this state. The demons of the air kingdom somewhat reveal their true nature to these persons, giving them a hint of torment awaiting those who did not know Christ and did not fulfill His commandments.