Hell Is Other People, But Then, So Is Heaven

The ego is a disorganized complexity demanding order from its own manufactured chaos. Stress is a psychological fear response of an ego-self experiencing lack of control over the chaos it conjures up.

We certainly have little control over other people and this is a fearful and confounding prospect to an ego, which must always predict its actions based on the actions of others. Therefore, to an ego, hell is other people and hell is the foundation of fear.


Nevertheless, the greatest joy you experience result from engaging in a world of others. Hence, heaven is other people. 

If you had little time left to live, your fear would not be loss of self, but the loss of a self as engaged with others. If you were the only existing 'self' in the world, death would result in minimal suffering and this is because it is others from which you receive your greatest joy and you fear that loss more than anything. Even joys that seem individually invented are magnified exponentially, when shared with others. Meaning is mutually defined and not solely developed by any one person.

The self is always constructed in reference to other selves and without others there could be no self-concept or “you.” However, in a dualistic world, that which brings intense joy must also be the foundation for fear. Fear has many symptoms, from mild nervousness to paralyzing panic. It can be so debilitating as to drive ones mood into a self-abnegating ‘nothingness’ referred to as depression. Fear can also manifest as anger and rage and many bright minds have theorized that, when enraged, even the most mild-mannered are only a thought away from the act of murder.

Of course, fear is also experienced as guilt, embarrassment, remorse, regret, etc, and these responses are grounded in the memory of past failed actions or inactions. In fact, some claim that the pressing burden of guilt alone keeps us locked in the past, seeking freedom. This is because the self is an invention of the past seeking to become free of what it believes constructed it. As a result, the past is your "Creator," not God.

Experiencing the stress of fear responses is directly related to other people and, thus, it is others that we seek periods of escape in order to mitigate or seek relief from fear responses. We believe that by reducing physical proximity to others, fear is mitigated.

By removing your body from me, you believe you are safe from psychological fear and this is because you believe you are more a body than a mind. 

Let’s face it, if you’re alone with nature, you have no fear of judgment, whereas, with me, you may need to be vigilant to the contents of my mind which, although I may not directly disclose, you may feel forced to decipher my judgments and that can initiate psychological fear responses or stress. Therefore, it’s easy to understand why so many seek the sanctity of solitude and some seek it above all else making it the most sacred of relationships.

Seeking to sequester ones self-concept from other self-concepts may very well be absurd, since the self-concept is purely abstract and is not in any sense ‘real,’ other than what the mind invents. Yet, protecting your self-concept from “me,” certainly reinforces its reality for “you” and sometimes such conflict paradoxically makes us feel that the self-concept is “real” and that we are truly “alive.”

If only you could be free of my judgments, but then this will mean freeing me from your own, because my judgments are yours.

Judgment is nothing more than mutually superimposing a past upon one another and the greatest joy we can ever experience will be in sharing a moment free of the past.

The greatest suffering (hell) will be imposing a past upon one another in an attempt to control chaos and diminish our mutual hell.

Therefore, we are both heaven and hell to each other and any proverbial “awakening” must be mutually attained, otherwise individual enlightenment is nothing more than a figment of our collective imagination.