The worst hells are called "knots". These are often formed by great generals or leaders, who have led whole armies and peoples into battle or large groups of people into persecution of others. When the most dominating soul meets its passing then there is a spiralling down into fear, darkness and a chaotic state of mind, in which nothing seems clear and no direction of motion or purpose is indicated. Such "knots" are the focus of special angel rescue operations. How many people on earth today, utterly loathing all that Hitler did, will pray for him, where his soul now lives in tumult, crushed by defeat, still screaming, still attempting to proclaim, to explain, still clutching at those who once listened and followed unto death, now angry or in terrible fear of those of their victims who desire only revenge. Many damaged and weakened souls must be taken away and isolated for healing before their leader can be brought towards any hope of restoration and this could take a matter of 200 years or more. Men will know when this matter is finally being resolved in heaven, when there cease to be any attempts to explain or to revive with glory or in bravado the days of Hitler, when it almost seems forgotten and recedes in history and when men and women born generations later who cannot even recall the stories of their grandparents forget to hate. The image of the leader who destroyed millions and took his own followers down to defeat and into hell will not be forgotten, but those who try to judge him personally will think of him only as sick and pathetic.
Those people, who believe in an after-life will after death find the kind of place they expect to find. They will be united with most of their loved ones and if they have lived well according to their light they may dwell for long in a kind of "summer-land" . Naturally there must be many different places for people with different ideas of what is a pleasant place to be in, though it seems likely that earth languages will be no barrier as thought will speak directly to thought. But such "heavens" cannot be the end or sum of life experience; sooner or later some further effort or growth of the person is required, further education is offered, further service made possible and in many cases the period of change may be difficult. Many ideas about heaven seem very boring but one can imagine quite a lot of people getting bogged down in quite pleasant conditions and not altogether prepared to change their circumstances again. They may even get snobbish about their position relative to that of some others. But before we go into the problem of escaping from heaven, we may do well to realise how mixed up are our concepts of heaven and hell and so grant OAHSPE the right to call even hells, heavens of a kind. A place of eternal pop music and dancing would be a gorgeous heaven for many, but absolute hell for anyone who hated this, while even many addicts might get bored "in time", for earth time sense is not lost in the lower heavens. Clearly then if we are to reach any state of greater loving and higher knowing we have to grow out of one kind of heaven into another kind. We really need a great deal of teaching and a great deal of help. None of our earthly ideas, none of our prejudices is safe. Indeed our present ability even to imagine higher heaven is very limited indeed; even the very words "heaven" and "hell" are cluttered up with the beliefs of generations of our ancestors who believed in a heaven above and a hell below, where the inhabitants of the former might be expected to find additional pleasure in counting themselves lucky since the sufferings of those in hell could be on view.
People with such ideas who make some effort to be good, whether from fear or from genuinely good intention will expect to be rewarded in heaven and by heaven and they will go directly to their own idea of heaven. The more thoughtful, the most devout and this includes many very humble people with little thought of self or reward but whose idea of heaven is to be in a position to help others, will "gravitate" spiritually upwards to a heaven where service is possible and training for service provided. They will want first to learn how to walk and talk and be effective in their new condition and they will be several classes ahead of most of us. This is what OAHSPE calls "the second resurrection" in which only those effective for good under the inspiration of God and his angels working under the Will of the All Highest can live and operate. This is not to say they remain high up and remote from earth, though at times a peculiar peace of existence may be theirs for a time as needed. But primarily the effectiveness of higher angels lies in their ability to ascend and descend with equal ease "the ladder" which rests upon the earth and ascends to "the throne of God". To anyone still weighted down with self-thoughts and heavy with materiality the higher levels and the presence of higher angels gives a sensation of extreme discomfort, as of a blinding light or of air too rarefied to "breathe". Souls seeking attainment for its own sake may rise to find too much demanded of them, the work too hard, too long sustained or not well rewarded. They may come to know of higher heavens and seek them for a time, but prefer to drop back into more comfortable conditions where a little additional knowledge enables them to lord it over others.

The Teachings of Oahspe

Greta James