Dear murat,
Not sure what the jewish belief in hell is. I have never seen any reference to it in jewish scripture or other writings.
But the Kabalists had a program of meditation for going thru the gates at the lower 6 levels of heaven, and finally encountering God at the 7th level; and then they would come back as pure beings. God purifies in Judaism.
The process is interesting. I have never done it, as it is risky, but this is how it is done.
For several days you cloister yourself in a room and meditate, sing, chant and mantra until you are prepared for the ascension. Then you sit down and write out the various names of god. This gets you into the lowest heaven.
I am not sure what state you are in at this point, but the next step is to approach the gate to the next level heaven, which is guarded by angels. To bypass them you have to fool them by expressing the names of god. And you do this at each level until the 7th.
The problem is that you cannot use the same names twice, as the angels would not be fooled and would destroy you, whatever that means. So the Kabalists invented longer and longer names of god each time they went back for purification. Is nothing lasting?
Seeming treatises have been written with longer and longer names of god in them.
It seems that every 100 years or so a new generation of the Kabalists would pick up where the others left off. The practice only lasted a few hundred years as you might expect.
yanniru |