[ voice; ]
There seems to be some great cognitive dissonance the lot of you are all but too eager to force upon yourselves, I find. Many of you believe that Hell has some sort of great, spiritual meaning; that I and the rest of the demonic hosts were born (or created) to tempt you into the darkness and then punish you for your failures. A great many of you, when confronted with the truth, then choose to rail or argue against what I say, citing some great scale of "Wrongness" and "Right" that must be continually balanced in one's favor to be afforded the chance to enter Heaven, lest you fail what Yahweh expects of you and find yourselves in "my" realm, a place where you will burn and suffer for all of eternity.
[ A beat ]
Let me tell you right now that all of you are wrong. Almost ignorantly so. Hell is not a place for eon spanning torments. It is not a fiery pit where all who sin are imprisoned until the end of time, their souls judged unworthy of the Silver City's environs. No Fallen Angels plot to overthrow Yahweh and send the world into ruin; a point of fact, actually, is that outside of myself, Dumah, and one other annoying pest? Those who fell alongside me rarely step in through the Flaming Gyre to speak with me about anything.
No, Hell is you torturing yourself. It lasts however long you will it to last. There is no great machination, no grand ironic punishment for those who have sinned: your soul finds its way to Hell if you believe it must belong there, and you are "kept" within the realm until you either realize this, or all of Creation comes to an end. That is Hell. Self-enlightenment or oblivion, forgiveness of conscience or what amounts to emotional suicide.
[ Another beat. He laughs. ]
It's all very Buddhist, isn't it?