Part 5

Heaven and Hell- where are they?

A Bangali poet says, “Heaven and Hell can’t be far from here. They are in the midst of people and amongst people are gods and demons” [“Kotha shorgo kotha norok k boley ta bohudur, manusher majhey shorgo norok- manushetey shura-shur].

Clearly the poet finds them in this very world. But it is an imaginative realization, something spiritual, confined to the kingdom of mind. Apart from it we hear of another kind of earthly paradise and it signifies man’s peaceful home.***  

According to Hindu scriptures heaven is the dwelling place of gods and goddesses. It is a land of eternal spring where there is no sorrow, no decay, no death. Everything necessary for enjoying happiness and  pleasure is found there including perfumed gardens and voluptuous dancing girls of exquisite beauty.

This heaven, the abode of gods and goddesses, is almost inaccessible and situated at a very great height. According to the Hindu belief it is situated on the crest of Mount Sumeru. In fact it is a part of Himalayas. It takes extra ordinary physical and mental strength to reach there. The plain land below was called earth. Ordinary people were inhabitants of the earth. Only gods and goddesses could come down to earth and go up to heaven. The common man could not do this.

In the Mahabharat we find that the pious and holy Judhishthir had arrived in heaven alive traveling all the way upward on foot. Tracing the root he followed, one can understand that this heaven was no longer place than Kailashpuri in a part of Himalayas. We do not know whether holy Judhisthir was able to reach there or had died on the way but after him perhaps no other man except the famous mountaineers such as Tenzing and Hilary visited that place. The present condition of heaven is not known to us for want of communication. However, if that heaven and the gods and goddesses still exist they would have been noticed by the recent mountaineers, isn’t it?

We came to know by reading Ramayan that Ravan, the legendary monarch of Srilanka, had mounted to heaven and fought with the gods and his son Meghnad and earned the title ‘Indrajit’ by defeating and imprisoning Indra, the king of gods. It appears from the story that strong man could force his way to heaven. Afterwards, Ravan had conceived a plan for making a staircase from earth to heaven for the convenience of his people but his premature death at the hands of Ram put an end of his plan. In all probability Ravan had planned to discover a mountain pass leading to the top of Himalayas.

The Islamic legends in many cases follow the scripture Tawrit or the Holy Bible with a few changes in certain names here and there. For instance, Eve-Hawa, Snake- Satan, Tree of knowledge- Apple tree, the garden of Eden - Heaven, etc.  

The place which is called the garden of Eden described in Bible is that very place which the Muslims call heaven and describe the events and environment of that place as pertaining to heaven.  The description of the original abode of Hazrat Adam given in the Bible is like this - “And the lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and hence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Poison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel; that is which goeth towards the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

In this Biblical description it is seen that in the region where these four rivers originated there was at that time a place called Eden and that Adam used to live in a beautiful garden in Eden. This Eden perhaps was situated in the mountainous region on the eastern part of modern Turkey. The four rivers mentioned in the Bible originated there and the rivers Poison and Gihon flowed into the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea respectively. While the other two rivers, namely, Hiddekel and Euphrates being united flowed jointly into the Persian Gulf. Life in this Eden is called ‘Adam’s life in heaven’ and the Garden of Eden is called ‘heaven’ by the Muslims.

‘Heaven and Hell’ so much publicized these days, are said to have been created billions of years ago. We are told that people are admitted to these institutions after the trial following Doomsday. We are also told that the universe, that is the entire creation of Allah will be annihilated with the blowing of trumpet of angel Israfil and that nothing will exist except Allah Himself. In that case will heaven and hell cease to exist, too? If they are demolished before being filled in why did Allah create them before Doomsday? And if they are not demolished, are they outside the creation of Allah? Besides, if people are to be admitted to these institutions only after trial on the Day of Judgment what purpose is served by creating them such a long time ago? Doesn’t the scenario only reveal the imperfect designing plan of the ‘perfect’ God?

In creating them there was supposedly a place called ‘Gehenna’ near a big city in the west. It was a place for dumping and burning heaps of garbage and dead bodies and also for punishing the criminals by burning them to death. People hated that place because it was filthy and feared it very much because it was horrifying. Nobody would go there voluntarily. On the contrary wicked people used to be threatened with such words such as ‘You would go to Gehenna’, or ‘Do you want to go to Gehenna?” etc. The word ‘Gehenna’ is the origin of ‘Gehennam’ in some languages and in Arabic it is supposed to have taken the form ‘Jahannam’.

The Vedic view of heaven is that it is situated far above this world for which reason it is also called the ‘Upper Sphere’. Opposed to this, some Muslim priests say that communication between the graves of the virtuous and heaven and that between the graves of the sinners and hell is established through tunnels (during ‘kobor-ajab’). It indicates that heaven and hell lie under the earth. Is it really so?

Scientists say that the average heat of the surface of the earth is 20 degree centigrade and thirty miles below the surface temperature is 1200 degree centigrade, enough to melt pebbles, stones etc. This is the source of volcanic eruption and lava. The temperature increases further down the earth until it reaches 6000 degree centigrade towards the center. It is equal to the temperature of the outer layer of the sun. It shows that hellish fire may exist under the earth quite plausibly but where are the heavenly gardens?

Whatever may be the spiritual, mythological or historical account of heaven or hell, has the picture of it as shown today any geographical entity?

What is the merit of the Night of destiny (Shab-e-Barat)?

Shab-e-barat or the Night of destiny is a Muslim annual festival celebrated on a particular night of an Islamic lunar month. It is said that fortunes smiles on him for a year who spends this night in adoration and adulation of Allah. Luck favors him in the matter of getting and spending. Many people have been observing the custom in the belief that is true. However it is seen in practice that the observance of breach of this custom makes little or no difference in the prevailing standards of living of the people concerned. On the contrary, it is so happens at times that those who do not bother about it become all the more prosperous. For example, the richest man in the Muslim world was His Highness the Aga Khan, Did he ever spend the Night of Destiny, in offering prayers to Allah?

There are quite a number of similar ceremonies of Hindu religious worships. one of them is the annual worship of goddess Laksmi who is believed to shower money and property on her devotees. But a fact is that many a man remains as poor as a church mouse after a lifetime of Laksmi’s worship whereas Henry Ford of the USA became the richest man in the world without ever worshiping the goddess Laksmi.

The worship of goddess Saraswati is such another Hindu religious ceremony. She is supposed to endow her worshipers with vast learning and yet Gopal Chand (a neighbor of writer) in spite of his regular worship of the goddess Saraswati for seven years, could not learn the alphabet whereas Rabindranath Tagore, the poet became a Nobel laureate without ever worshiping the goddess Saraswati.  

What is the significance of ‘Kasuf’ and ‘Khasuf’ prayers during solar/lunar eclipses?

Like the people in other countries in ancient times people in this part of the world, too, used to fear the lunar eclipse and solar eclipse as ominous and some still do. The superstition still persists. that is why there are the rituals of praying to the gods, blowing the conch-shell and ringing the temple bell and bathing in the Ganges among the Hindus. among the Muslims, too, there is the custom of saving ‘Kasuf’ and ‘Khasuf’ prayers during the lunar and solar eclipses. 

Apparently those who introduced these rituals to be observed during a lunar or solar eclipse had two objectives. One was to help the moon and the sun by freeing them from danger of being permanently eclipsed, and the other was to benefit themselves indirectly by rescuing these heavenly spheres from clutches of the eclipse. Perhaps they thought that the sun and the moon suffer a lot when demons ‘Rahu’ and ‘Ketu’ seize them and start swallowing them slowly as a snake swallows a frog. If the eclipse lasted too long they might die ! Thus for the early release of the sun and the moon from an eclipse nothing could be done except praying to the gods and goddesses. Therefore, the holy and noble minded men of the past introduced these rites and rituals for the well-being of the sun and moon, for good of themselves and for the good of all inhabitants of this world.

Astronomers say that in the stellar sky the earth is moving about the sun in an elliptical orbit and the moon is moving about the earth in also a slightly elliptical orbit. In the course of these planetary revolutions eclipse of the sun occurs when the moon comes between the sun and the earth, thus depriving the earth of the sun’s light. An eclipse of the moon occurs when the earth is between the moon and the sun thus making the moon enter the shadow cast by the earth. Thus, in fact, the solar and lunar eclipses are caused by the movements of the sun and the moon along intersecting planes of the lunar and terrestrial orbits. Demons like Rahu and Ketu have nothing to do with them. It is therefore possible to calculate and predict accurately the time and duration of an eclipse, either solar or lunar or both, based on a knowledge of the distance between the sun and the earth and that between the earth and the moon along with their diameters and speed. Needless to say, astronomers have been doing it for centuries and their predictions have proved absolutely correct to the fraction of a minute.

Such a list of solar and lunar eclipses expected to occur for thirty-six years from 1965 to 2000 A.D. was once published by the astronomers in advance. For eighteen years up to this year (1982) all of them occurred as predicted and it is a certainty that there will be no deviations in the coming years. An eclipse is not a miracle, nor is it anything divine. It is an ordinary natural phenomenon, a common worldly event. By way of ocular proof a list of the coming solar eclipses from the year 1983 to the year 2000 is given below. [This prediction list was published in the year 1982 and collected from the book Abdul Jabbar - Introducing the Stellar Sky]