Hell isn't such a far fetched thing when you look at it scientifically.
I would be angry too if I missed the opportunity of the human form.
Animals are beautiful creatures right? Beautiful, conscious creatures of almost innumerable varieties of colors, shapes and sizes. There's not so much difference between us and animals. It's actually only a question of the body. But we are not the body, we are the consciousness, the living force within the body. That consciousness is the same in every living thing, so how come one consciousness is in an animal body and another is in a human body? Although some animals may seem majestic, their life is actually rather hellish. The consciousness inside those beautiful bodies of animals is actually alarming. How can the consciousness be comfortable in such a condition of life?
When human beings don't have access to clean facilities, or they begin to fight and hunt each other, or they are uneducated, these are considered distressful conditions of life. It naturally follows that the consciousness must undergo some kind of trans-formative process at death to be reincarnated in such a hellish body of an animal.
For example, a tiger may seem at first glance like an attractive creature. It's powerful and beautifully designed with stripes unique abilities of strength and agility, it's mysterious and sly. But try to imagine if you yourself took it's position in your present level of awareness for one day. You'd be practically unable to handle such a disposition, as you'd find yourself running around on all fours naked, eating raw meat, licking yourself all day and killing opposing tigers for your mate. Would it be a very nice proposal if i forced you to enter into such a life from your present one? I don't think you could say with any confidence you'd be very eager.
But this is actually our position. We are forced, at the end of this body, to enter into a new body based on our present activities. There are varieties of material enjoyments in this life, which are founded upon four principle facilities; eating, mating, sleeping and defending. depending on the ways in which we attempt to enjoy our present bodies and the world around us, nature arranges another material body just suitable for one's desire in the next life. The consciousness is eternal, it's lasting throughout all the changes of bodies in life, from childhood to youth-hood till old age, so what is the difficulty in understanding that at the end of the body, the consciousness will take yet another body.
This is a very logical conclusion, and it is a plain truth. Even in this life, we are forced to enter a different body every day based on previous activities and desires. Besides the day-today process of foodstuffs replenishing the skin cells, the desires of a person create bodies for him to enjoy in the future. Let's say a young man wants to study and become a martial artist. When he first desires to become such a practitioner of the martial arts, he'll have the body of a young man. But as he grows and tries to fulfill that desire, his mind and body change through strict discipline. His strength will increase and his mind will become more agile as it becomes accustomed to the maneuvers and strikes. The mind carries the desire of the person like the wind carries the flavor of a flower. If we see that a desire carries one through changing bodies even within our present experience, it is undoubtable that a desire will carry a person to the next form of body. In the Bhagavad-Gita, the process of that transmigration is explained by Sri Krishna, the personality of Godhead,
Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of Kunti, that state he will attain without fail. [BG 8.6]
Yet another reason to cut down on the sugar.
For example, one may have enjoyed surplus foodstuffs without discrimination, like meats, intoxicants and other abominable things, instead of the foodstuffs that were intended for mankind to eat, such as fruits, grains, vegetables and milk. Throughout his whole life, he was indulging in gluttonous activities, meditating about those activities, hankering for food, and molding his life in such a way that he could eat unlimitedly. Such a person would find his existence even easier and more fulfilling in the body of a hog, because a hog can eat even stool or rubber tires and be satisfied, and a pig enjoys eating large portions all day. Those desires and thoughts that the consciousness spent it's duration in a certain body meditating on will create another body by the arrangement of material nature just according to how that soul has earned and deserves.
Yet a hog's body is full of suffering. It's practically forced by nature to live in an unclean place, eat unclean things, and be subject to the limited consciousness that is innate in any animal. It may have been the soul's desire, but that doesn't mean that such an existence is at all pleasant.
How is it that the consciousness, which we can see presides at one point in a human form, is forced into such an animalistic and crude body? It takes a trip to hell. Hell is not some fairy-tale that is whimsically imagined for the purpose of scaring youngsters to accept some dogma or a place for people to send their enemies with a curse, but hell is a factual and unavoidable reality. Hell is the natural byproduct of the spirit soul's desire to enjoy material nature. When we want to enjoy material life, we must take a material body, which takes the form of a demigod all the way down to the lowest forms of germs and worms, according to one's respective karma.
In hell, the advanced human consciousness is tortured, according to one's karma, in such a way that his consciousness will not mind being forced in the body of a lower creature like a dog or a hog. A dog is very happy with his condition of life, although we see that such a condition is deplorable. This is because that condition is far better than the hell he had just been in.
We can see that consciousness is affected by the circumstances it finds itself in in this very life. The consciousness of a person can shrink if it is shocked or tortured.
"If you just chant 16 rounds..."
The law of conservation of energy is the final proof that the energy of consciousness is transferred to another body at the destruction of the present body. The question is, how can such an advanced consciousness become so animalisticly simple and limited? That same energy that was working in such a complex way, experiencing a palette of emotions, pains, pleasures and finer sentiments becomes so basic it communicates by simply barking or snorting. Hell becomes a natural explanation. The consciousness must undergo some kind of transformation in order to exist in such a low body like that of an animal. So when the Hare Krishna's warn you about hell, don't take it as fanaticism, take it as a scientific and logical fact.
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