Islam demands a powerful faith, the kind of faith that knows no limits. According to the Koran, those that die in battle for Allah are guaranteed an eternity in paradise, and there are no rules of engagement. Mahomet felt that all previous prophets had failed in bringing God's will to bear upon everyone in the world, and that God had handed him the sword as a last resort. The consequences soon followed.

      A martyr straps a belt of explosives under his coat, walks into a crowd of people and blows himself and everyone else to pieces. After a while the martyr awakens in a strange place, and is a bit confused as he gains his orientation. As the mist clears, his attention is slowly drawn to what appears to be a large imposing structure. Suddenly, there in all its glory stands a magnificent castle, nestled in a green meadow; from its parapets colorful banners flutter in the gentle breeze. As he draws nearer, the castle takes on exquisite detail. It glows with a luster from the alabaster walls and marble columns, inside hang tapestries rich in pattern and color. The furniture is of ornately carved oak, and mahogany, intricately gilded in gold and silver. He finds himself clothed in the finest silk and velvet embedded with precious jewels. Then he notices a handsome young man enter the room and beckon him to follow. The servant leads him to another large room extravagantly furnished with numerous beautiful young women engaged in various activities. As he enters, they turn to him, and smile.

     The martyr has received all that was promised–even more. And so he revels in his paradise . . . for a day? A year? A thousand years? Although he has all his desires, a time comes when he wonders what is beyond the castle. Then one day while venturing out into the warm sunshine, his attention is drawn to an awareness of the same mist he emerged from when discovering the castle. Slowly walking forward he enters the mist until completely enveloped, and then, becoming alarmed, backs out. A slight feeling of disappointment takes hold, and he wonders what is beyond the fog. As the young martyr turns and approaches the castle, it no longer seems as lustrous, nor as detailed in splendor as the day before. Entering the main chamber reveals faded tapestries no longer rich in color, now turning drab, the same with the gilding, and inlaid jewels. His beautiful young women have aged, and show little interest in him. All around, the once magnificent castle takes on a dreary, shabby pallor, and begins to slowly crack and crumble. Panic grips him as he flees from the ruin into the eerie mist.

     As the fog clears, he finds himself strangely detached and outside an open marketplace filled with people. Is that him walking into the crowd? Oh no, a sudden explosion devastates the place as smoke, fire, and body parts fly away; he too is lost from sight. Ghost-like figures rise into the air with ghastly white faces grimaced in torment. Slowly, one by one, they begin turning, and gather about him. He screams, but it’s too late, what’s done is done.

     What went wrong? What happened to his wonderful life? Nothing really, he had created an illusion based on his expectations, and when his illusion failed, the time had come for him to face a higher truth. These truths, often referred to as Spiritual laws, have been around since the beginning of time. One might say that the entire order of the cosmos exists for the sake of these principles.

     The Spiritual heavens, or celestial spheres, often referred to as the astral planes, are a group of worlds firmly anchored within our solar system. These spheres represent stages of spiritual depth and diversity. The dense lower levels ascend in degree to more rarified higher levels. Spiritual entities, or souls, are very special beings that have come to inhabit these abodes after eons of time through stages of evolutionary development. Less advanced souls occupy the lower levels, and take advantage of the lessons that guide their knowledge of work done in the higher dimensions. Once a certain level of perfection is reached, other options become available.

     While there is one spiritual system, one could say that there are many dimensions or heavens. For instance, devout Christians are drawn to a very large spacial area where they live their spiritual lives sharing common beliefs and values. There may be dimensions within a heaven, such as a place where all Protestants, Mormons, or Catholics gather. The Moslem faith also draws souls that think and believe according to the Qur'an, and divisions in their heaven beckon moderates or radicals, Shiite, Sunni, or Sufi. The Jewish faith has its realm too, as do the Hindus, and Buddhists. There is a place for each and all. These religions are mentioned because they are large spiritual groups, but religion is no requirement for there to be an after life, although those that emphatically deny it fulfill their own expectations. They often slumber through their spiritual lives until drawn back to their new physical counterparts. It is like a train passenger that sleeps through all the depot stops on a long journey. Nonetheless, all souls generally end up where they deserve to be, although in rare cases souls that refuse to accept their physical death linger in familiar places in the astral shadows of the Earth plane. We call them ghosts.

     There comes a time for most souls when conditions are ideal, and certain forces in alignment, then the soul is called back to a new life. For some, it is an opportunity to enjoy the good that has accrued to them through deeds done in previous lives; for others, to carry on in the physical world with theories and experiments performed in the astral planes. For those souls holding debts, it is as a bell tolling; bringing them back to atone for the ill they have brought about in a past life. This is the evolution of the soul in harmony with spiritual justice.

     Now we return to our young martyr. Before the explosion he already had his vision of paradise formulated in his mind. In the spiritual plane Mind is the reality. It is the builder, it is what everything is made of. The building blocks are called Thought Forms, they can assume any form or surface that suits the builder. But there is one condition that is usually self-managed. It takes psychic energy to build, and it takes a small amount of that same energy to maintain, otherwise it slowly dissipates away. The young martyr kept his castle intact through his own exuberance and happiness. He never wanted more. Thus, his castle would have endured indefinitely. Things changed once those thoughts turned away from paradise; his disappointment virtually brought down the castle. In the long-run Thought Forms do not last forever, and when accounts need to be balanced, it was as if the castle had never existed. Spiritual law is ineluctable. No soul can deprive another soul of its life. The martyr came out of the mist to witness his own act, and now must take responsibility. Yet, by those same laws no soul is doomed to suffer forever; there is always a way to balance the difference between right and wrong. In one way or another, the young martyr will come to understand, and in due time atone for his act. Many things are taken into consideration. Was he taken as a youth and brainwashed into believing that what he did was right and good? Woe to the trainers, who, by the way, don’t seem too anxious to blow themselves up. They also will stand to account, and undoubtedly become victims of their own hate. And how does that work?

      The universal struggle between good and evil applies specifically to human behavior, and determines the state of the soul. Within the spiritual worlds there is a place for souls holding debts of differing gravity waiting for the call to return to Earth, much of that is dependent on, well, attitude. Feelings of remorse and guilt usually speed up the return to physical life. The higher dimensions of this other world indicate less involvement in evil activity, as opposed to the worst at the dense lower level. Our young martyr probably falls somewhere in-between, meaning that his act was serious, but because others bear some responsibility for his deed, he is not alone. In due time he will be drawn to rebirth, pay his debt, and return to the path of progress that all souls strive to maintain.

      The lowest levels hold the worst of the worst. Torturing and killing out of hatred carries such force that it actually distorts the visage of the soul into hideous shapes. Other demented souls torture and scourge the new arrival for interminable lengths of time because there is no death to end the pain and suffering. Then, out of sheer wrath the sufferer becomes the vicious instrument of torture, and the performance is repeated over and over. This lowest realm is ugly and vile, every form of terror and cruelty becomes an eternity of equal suffering, for little saving light enters this dark and deathly frigid place, although fires illumine the grotesque horror. Repentance and redemption are possible still, but largely ignored by those that revel in the carnage; hence, evil lives on. Those that through their own sheer hatred send out young and innocent suicide bombers to do their dirty work can be found here in growing numbers, along with those that torture, disfigure, and kill. Lastly: saying they did it in the name of God is the worst crime of all. This amounts to a denial of their own existence and the soul faces extinction altogether; it is returned to the origin from whence it came, and cast into the Lake of Fire that is the solar orb.