Hi Andrew —
Perhaps, Thomas, you would share a few words about avichi...
Thanks for that, it's not a term I'm familiar with, but I'll happily offer a view from the reference you've thoughtfully supplied.
Avichi ... Waveless, having no waves or movement; without happiness; without repose. "A generalized term for places of evil realizations, but not of 'punishment' in the Christian sense ...
Well it would depend on how one interprets 'places of evil realisations', which I realise is open to semantic interpretation, so I'm not so much contending these views, as offering from my own perspective.
First something on the nature of evil. Evil is defined by St Thomas Aquinas (De malo, 2:2) as a privation of form or order or due measure. In the physical realm a 'thing' is good in proportion as it possesses being. God alone is essentially being (Exodus 3:14, John 8:58).
God alone is Absolute; God alone is Good (Luke 18:19). Everything else possesses limited being, and in so far as it possesses being, it is good. Evil then implies a deficiency, hence it cannot exist in God who is not deficient of being in any sense, nor can it be ascribed to God in a moral sense, as God cannot will what He does not will, thus to imply God wills evil is a contradiction, and God, being One, Absolute, Simple, cannot suffer contradiction. God can allow evil, according to His justice and mercy, but that does not mean He wills it according to His own being and nature.
Only a being endowed with a rational nature can will evil, that is only a creature who can know God can act, in the knowledge of God, in deliberate opposition to the Divine Will. As God is not good but the Good, and it is in the nature of the Good to communicate itself (according to Plato, and we see no reason to deny it), then an evil act, a sin, is wilfully and knowingly not only contrary to God, but contrary to the good of the acting agent, contrary to the good of those acted upon.
In short sin, and evil, is an offence against God, oneself, and one's neighbour.
I drag this out because 'a place of evil realisation' must necessarily be punitive; but it is not a punishment inflericted by God, rather it is self-inflicted, and this is how 'the wages of sin' should be perceived in a properly Christian sense. As Wil says, and I agree, "we are not punished for our sins but by them". As Jesus says to the sinner: "Neither will I condemn thee. Go, and now sin no more" (John 8:11), the subtext being 'you're only hurting yourself ...'
In that context I would say that 'a place of evil realisation' is no more ontologically real than evil itself ... if it exists its a 'place of not-being' (self-contradictory, I know), or 'nowhere', or perhaps 'nothingness' ...
+++
Christian metaphysics starts from the one, absolute, divine principle, and locates everything else in a direct relation to that — that is fundamentally what Christianity is all about — a union that is expressed in Scripture in terms of both a filial and nuptial relationship, that is in metaphors in which no closer union can be conceived.
So in Catholic metaphysics evil has no 'place' nor 'being' as such, and this is signified by Our Lord's reference to Gehenna. A useful idea is 'the phantom zone' of the DC Superman comics. Once exiled to the zone, the prisoner plays no further part in existence or creation. So Gehenna should not be conceived as a place, nor even a state, but a non-place, or no-state.
So I would say if any place of 'evil realisation' exists, it's purely in the mind, and has no actualisation outside of it ... here introduces the idea of being 'trapped in oneself' and this can only lead to extinction, as the individual human self is not a self-sustaining entity.
where the will for evil, and the unsatisfied evil longings for pure selfishness, find their chance for expansion — and final extinction of the entity itself.
The 'wages of sin' is that is that all that is not real 'dissolves', or perhaps better 'evaporates', that is, is seen for what it is, it is seen through (as in seeing through a deception), and in the seeing through, the sin ceases to exist as something, but rather an absence (of good). The 'problem' for the person is that, having invested oneself in the sin, as the sin evaporates, so does the being of the person. So we agree on the point of final extinction, but not sure about 'expansion' — sin cannot become more in the eschaton, but less. I can agree 'expansion' by dissipation, perhaps it's just a matter of semantic language?
I would liken it to standing before a light that illuminates what is real, and does not illuminate, in fact evaporates, what is false.
Avichi has many degrees or grades.
Here is where we differ. We refer to and go straight to the principle. The fundamental reality of Christianity is the union between the person and God, with no intermediate states. Having said that, some identify degrees within that Union, "But he that received the seed upon good ground, is he that heareth the word, and understandeth, and beareth fruit, and yieldeth the one an hundredfold, and another sixty, and another thirty" Matthew 13:23 — so one might talk of a 30%, a 60% or a 100% union ... this the Fathers likened to proximity to the throne in the City of God. Some are right next to the throne, some at a distance, some further away ... but all will be where they should be ... then again, this is in Matthew/Mark, but not in Luke, John nor Paul.
So, on reflection, I suppose I could agree if one accepts that the degrees and grades are just shades of the one reality.
Nature has all things in her; if she has heavens where good and true men find rest and peace and bliss, so has she other spheres and states where gravitate those who must find an outlet for the evil passions burning within.
We would disagree with this ... there are no states of the 'not-good', the 'not-true' — a lie has no substance because it is fundamentally false. Again, maybe semantics.
Therethere is death, and there is the judgement, and the result of the judgement is either acceptance or denial of the True and the Real, there is either life, in union with the True and the Real, or there is extinction, because there is nothing else to be, if the true, the real, is rejected.
Again, it depends on one's definition of 'nature'. If cosmological, then I can agree ... but then Christianity is not a cosmological but metacosmic.
In nature we see shades of grey — darkly, as in a mirror — there, we are in the pure light of what is. There are no shades of grey, no spheres or states of unreality, of untruth. There things either are, or are not: "We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like to him: because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2) ... if we are not like Him, and He is Life, then we are not 'life' in any eschatalogical sense.
They, at the end of their avichi, go to pieces and are ground over and over, and vanish away finally like a shadow before the sunlight in the air — ground over in Nature's laboratory"
I can agree with this. Extinction is absolute, but is it immediate? What is time in the eschaton? The soul registers time, so we may presume something, but not quite time as we experience it now. A whole other discussion, perhaps.
Avichi is a state, not a locality per se; nevertheless, an entity, whatever state it may be in, must have location,
I don't think I agree ... in the sense that extinction is not a state ... but is this referencing time again? One would have to define location if one means other than a spatiotemporal one?
and consequently so far as the human race is concerned, avichi is Myalba, our earth in certain of its lowest aspects.
I tend to think Christian metaphysics has moved beyond this kind of language ... heaven is 'above' and hell 'below' only in an analogical sense. Is this implying there are actual places in relation to? I doubt it ... I assume its talking about mutability of nature. Anyway, I think I've covered enough above so don't need to respond here in detail.
Beings entirely in avichi are born and reborn uninterruptedly, with scarcely intermissions of time periods.
We don't do reincarnation, if this is what the text is inferring ... I find the idea bleak and somewhat hopeless.
But "suppose a case of a monster of wickedness, sensuality, ambition, avarice, pride, deceit, etc.: but who nevertheless has a germ or germs of something better, flashes of a more divine nature — where is he to go?
Here we would say the same as everything ... the judgement is an interview with Christ, as it were, the fire that refines, that heals, the solves ... no doubt a subjectively 'painful' experience, the realisation of the degree of one's error, or the degree of refusal to love and be loved ... but the point is that 'flash of divine nature' is the Logos by and in whom all things subsist, that sense in the soul of the creature of its vocation.
The said spark smouldering under a heap of dirt ...
I find what follows from this point lacking in metaphysical rigour ...
+++
As an esotericist, or as a person with that background, I can say with utmost confidence that this is what Jesus of Nazareth experienced at one point during His ordeal upon the cross.
Without doubt ... Jesus endured Gehenna on the Cross; He became the dispossessed of the whole world, abandoned by all; the Romans didn't want Him, and tried to offload Him onto the Jews; the Jews tried to offload Him onto the Romans, the mob — no doubt many who sang hosanna on His entry into Jerusalem — now turned and traded Him for Barabas; His executioners diced for His clothes; His followers fled ... just His mother and John, and the women, at a distance — he tasted the bitter dregs of that primordial human fear — that I count for nothing — not for nothing do we call it The Passion, the Via Dolorosa.
Why is there a legend about the descent of Christ into hell?
Well a number of reasons. One: That the Cross is an Act written in time, from outside time, in that respect it is retro-active in time. The Harrowing of Hell symbolises the fact that Christ's victory over death includes all ... from Adam on ...
... another, my own interpretation, is that Christ is the Logos, "For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and in him. And he is before all, and by him all things consist." (Colossians 1:16-17). The way I read it, Christ permeated every corner of Creation, and took back what was His ... no stone was left unturned, no soul left abandoned ... but then I'm a sucker for a love story ...
... but read the hymn of Colossians — there is catholic metaphysics in a nutshell.
There are some psychic mediums, I'm sure, who are less experienced metaphysically, or less familiar intellectually with the true state of things than others. They may maintain all sorts of pet beliefs, or misinterpretations, when it comes to the astral plane and afterlife. Far better to have a firm foothold, gained through meditation, Service and study ... than the curse of a too loose anchoring in the etheric and physical body.
I tend to treat the matter as one of interest, but as you say, psychics are notoriously unsure, and half the time seem to have no idea themselves what they are about, and no doubt they are earth-bound. I tend to read the mystics, there you're on safe ground, and higher ground.
God bless,
Thomas
