Some years ago, Jordan Peterson asked, “What is your version of hell, and what is your version of heaven?” If memory serves, he then tells us to “run away” from hell and to “run toward” heaven.

The question is excellent, but the remedy–which amounts to more attachment and aversion and thus is just more samsara–is wrongheaded. Just more seeking…

We can ask the question again but with a different aim. “What is your version of hell?” will likely generate Sartre’s answer: “Hell is other people.”

At which point, it’s sensible to ask: “What sort of other people would make up your version of hell?” Take time with this question. Really ponder it. Find out whom, in particular, you loathe, despise, cannot stand. (We are now making our way into Jungian shadow work, aren’t we?)

Be very clear. Let’s suppose that there are three sorts of people you can’t abide. Great! Now for some surprises:

First, there are (per our hypothesis) three different ego-selves, each of which dislikes a different kind of person. Try to find out what each of these ego-selves is.

Second, take ego-self #1, #2, and #3 in turn and ask: “Is this ego-self (e.g., #1) actually real?” Really go into the matter.

Third, when it’s clear that none of these ego-selves is real, is it immediately clear that no others are real either? For how can there be any other when there is not a–that is, any–self?

Hell, in brief, was a confabulation of the mind, and the mind, it turns out is, unreal. Therefore, where, “beyond” the unreality of the mind, is hell actually? There is no heaven, no hell, and no others because there is no self. There’s only unnamable, indivisible, omnipresent reality.