The Rays | The Eleventh Ray | 287
(245-339)

Therefore, O atheist! Because of your misguidance, you will either tumble into non-being at your eternal execution, or you will enter Hell! As for non-existence, which is absolute evil, since it consists of the annihilation together with yourself of all your relatives, forbears and descendants, whom you love and at whose happiness you are to an extent happy, it causes pain to your spirit, heart, and inner nature severer than a thousand Hells. For if there was no Hell, there would be no Paradise. Through your disbelief, everything falls into non-existence. If you go to Hell and remain within the sphere of existence, those you love and your relatives will be happy in Paradise, or will be the recipients of compassion in some respects within the spheres of existence. This means you should support the idea of Hell existing. To oppose it is to support non-existence, which is to support the elimination of innumerable friends’ happiness.

Yes, Hell is an awesome, majestic, existent land which performs the wise and just function of being the place of incarceration of the Glorious Sovereign of the sphere of existence, which is pure good. It performs numerous other functions, besides that of prison, and fulfils many purposes and carries out many duties connected with the eternal realm. It is also the awe-inspiring habitation of many living creatures like the Angels of Hell.

S e c o n d P o i n t : There is no contradiction between the existence and ghastly torments of Hell, and infinite mercy, true justice, and wisdom with its balance and absence of waste. Indeed, mercy, justice, and wisdom require its existence. For to punish a tyrant who tramples the rights of a thousand innocents and to kill a savage animal who tears to pieces a hundred cowed animals, is for the oppressed a thousandfold mercy within justice. While to pardon the tyrant and leave the savage beast free, is for hundreds of wretches a hundredfold pitilessness in place of that single act of misplaced mercy.

Similarly, among those who will enter Hell is the absolute disbeliever. For through his disbelief and denial he both transgresses the rights of the Divine Names, and through denying the testimony of beings to those Names, he transgresses their rights, and by denying the elevated duties of glorification of creatures before the Divine Names he violates their rights, and through denying their being

No Voice