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and heaven. They are only metaphors, and one should not stretch metaphors too far, otherwise they lose all meaning. That's what has happened, and it has happened all over the world, in almost all the religions: beautiful metaphors stretched too far have become ugly.
Now there are maps of hell, of heaven, available, and it is really strange that we were not able to make maps of the earth. Those were made just a few centuries ago, but there are five-thousand-year-old maps of heaven and hell. It was easy because it is all imagination; you can make anything out of imagination; hence the Christians' heaven is different and the Hindus' heaven is different and the Mohammedan's heaven is different. They are bound to be different: different peoples'imagination works in a different way.
The Tibetan heaven cannot be cool; they are so tired of the cold -- it is warm. The Indian heaven cannot be warm; they are so tired of the heat -- it is cool. Now how can they agree about that? An Indian heaven is bound to be air-conditioned. The Indian hell is full of fire, naturally -- that's how India is suffering. We know that's how hell should be more fire, fire and fire, all flame, everywhere. From where do they go on getting all this gas and kerosene? -- nobody knows! For eternity they have been burning hell-fire. And it cannot be a small thing: millions of people are thrown into hell. And the whole work consists of one thing: just cooking them' And they are not owed to die either, because if they die they are freed from suffering, and they have to be there for eternity. And the whole work consists of this. That may be the cause of the scarcity of petrol and kerosene. Hell is somewhere deep down, so they have shut off all petrol going towards hell. And it must be easy there: you just put a pipe down and the petrol starts flowing. To pump it up is difficult!
This is just imagination. There is certainly something like hell, but it exists in you. And you are the creator of it, your mind is the cause of it. If you can go beyond the mind you go beyond hell, you go beyond suffering.
Meditation is the way of transcendence. And life can be sheer joy. There is no
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