I think we have to take to word "Forever" cautiously.  For me it's:  It will last forever until something is done within us. 

And what to do?   Make the choice to get out of it, and make _effort_ to reverse the inertia that put you there (focusing   toward the choice we've made)

  Hell only makes sense to me if there is still some choice involved in the afterlife.  Otherwise I don't think you can get around the problem of having eternal suffering for temporary sins - which seems to imply a God that is unacceptably harsh (or just not congruent with a loving God).  That would make God into a worse being than Hitler in my opinion.  At least there was an ending to the torture that Hitler and the Nazis inflicted on others.
  Howard Storm had a great Near Death Experience where he clearly illustrates how someone could choose hell over heaven.  His story is told here, or in his book My Descent Into Death:

http://near-death.com/storm.html

Basically people have a life review and see how themselves and their actions have emotionally / spiritually affected others, and get a sense for how those things have spread in a domino affect throughout living beings.  Howard comes to feel very loved in the presence of Jesus, but realizes he is not worthy to hang out with him, and prefers the company of like minded spirits who tortured him when he first arrived after dying.  He knows he is in the presence of a holy being, and that his own actions have been very unholy, and he knows that everyone else knows this too.  And so he prefers to hang with like minded beings, in a state of hell - like attracts like.  This sort of judgment or hell scene avoids the problem of God being worse than Hitler, and it also correlates with the very great respect that God has given to our free will.  God's respect for our free will is so great that it gives the justification for the existence of moral and natural evil.

Also, I'm not a biblical scholar but I believe the words used in the Matthew passage suggest a very long time, like an age of time, but not necessarily forever.  It may seem like a small difference, but to me it is huge; since it means the difference between God being loving and respectful of our free will or God being a torturer worse than Hitler.

Regression work has never discovered evidence for a hell. However, there is excellent evidence that those who feel like they need to be tormented get their wish, and those who are too proud to accept God, or even their fellow beings, wind up in their own self-imposed isolation.

Considering how many savants and idiots have conspired to produce the Bible, I'd say that the descriptions are remarkably close to the actual truth.

The chronic negativity arises in large part from the severe conditions of life in arid regions. is is tempered as conditions improve. As an example, the Arab historian, Ibn Khaldoun, in his Muqqadimah, stated that society, with its social limitations to freedom, occurs only because we cannot live as individuals apart. In more fertile Greece, Aristotle's maritime biology emphasized cooperative existence. In luxurious India, it seemed self evident that God provides everything in bountiful proportion.

Thus, the sense of danger and finality arise in part from the tradition of 5000 years of persecution, supoprted by physical and social conditions and history. Take away the "forever" and replace it with, "so long as they remain unchanged" and we have precisely what people have been reporting in regression.

dave

Hi Alan I like all the responses here in regards to your poll. I chose hell is in the mind and I see that selection is in the lead. most interesting.

I believe we are capable of building our own afterlife situation by the thoughts we generate while here and now in this place we call C1. Consciousness level one, waking mind, also known as limited perception mind.
during meditation, different levels of the mind, dimensions of that are accessed. there is a concept we could call it little mind and big mind or mind/Mind.

I have perceived we are when not in a body or C1, we are energy systems of a mind/Mind units of consciousness and carrying around our experiences which generated our unique perceptions, and these include self image, as well our entire ego structure we have made in our life. we are all different, like snowflakes, unique, all are like designs and patterns.

I have not surfed outward to view a hell yet there have been times in my life when I, as well I'm sure some others here, have thought that they were visiting hell right now, here, while still yet in the body. In hopes to avoid feeling THAT bad, one learns to generate the higher thoughts through meditation and develop as we have been told, a love for our brothers and sisters so that they won't sink into hell areas. it is a development project of the soul. so thats why I picked hell is in the mind.
Someone already mentioned god gives free will of choice where to focus the mind. I heard a tale of lost souls, where we may presume go into some sort of hell, but we cannot know what that is like unless we find them or join them. I heard of what could happen only in the most rarest of circumstances to a soul who would be very consistent in choosing to separate their self, during their lifetime, and to adhere to negativity and selfishness to an intense degree, such as a Hitler perhaps, and to never allow love nor understanding enter the mind or heart for what is consistently hated; that this one upon death is caused by his thoughts of separation from the hated thing or persons, to indeed, be as he so wished, isolated in space, floating, alone, and not a thing could this unit do to find others to relate to. this would only apply, I was told in this tale, to perhaps a black magician who was using voodoo to inflict harm over a span of years, it was explained this behavior is what we call evil if applied for years, it is not allowed into the heavens where it could harm others.
so its a self made hell from lack of participating with others in the pure celebration of the life or lives we are privileged, in the end to have. after all, we were never promised a rose garden here, but whatever we may be going through, at the least, we will not lose our souls and we will not be harming life, as that becomes an impossibility after a certain point in the soul's evolution.

we so often have these sort of discussions about hell, about evil. I think the answer would reside in your heart intelligence and having the faith of a mustard seed.

love, alysia