900. But through the satisfaction of the dangerous desires (eating of the tree of knowledge) and the resultant sufferings, the individual is enriched with experience, he is filled with knowledge and wisdom, so that at last he knows the difference between the desires that are dangerous and those that are not. And with this knowledge he gradually becomes used to practising satisfying only those desires that are not dangerous and that are right, and he becomes blissful. What we call "hell" is merely the result of the individual's satisfaction of his dangerous desires. "Hell" is therefore the same as the individual's instruction in what is true and what is untrue, what is real and what is unreal, what is normal and what is abnormal, what is the pleasant good and what is the unpleasant good; in other words, "hell" is a reality through which the highest wisdom can be experienced and acknowledged in the ignorant being's consciousness. As we can see, without "hell" there would be no wisdom and consequently no consciousness, no life. "Hell" and the "kingdom of heaven" are therefore essentially merely the most extreme consequences of the law of cause and effect. And we now better understand the world redeemer's reference to "hell fire" in connection with beings that were still to the highest degree imperfect, beings that to the highest degree lacked practical, personal experience of the reality and authority of the message of neighbourly love. What else could he have referred these beings to? Theoretical instruction, in other words, other beings' experience, is in such cases not enough. Here only the experiences that one has oneself experienced will be satisfactory. In the world redeemer's use of the expression "in danger of hell fire", there is absolutely no hint of anger or fury, or any reference to any kind of punishment or act of revenge on the part of Providence or the Godhead. On the contrary, the expression is synonymous with a reference to the only form of deliverance that exists for the being's further development and its acquisition of knowledge or wisdom, without which the being would remain at its present, temporary dark and primitive stage, and indeed would be wholly excluded from the great cycle that in "Livets Bog" we call the evolutionary spiral.
      "Hell" is therefore in reality the road to the "kingdom of heaven". Without this "road" animals would for all eternity remain animals, and terrestrial human beings – which to a large extent means robbers, murderers and beings that promote killing, war and mutilation – would forever be forced to maintain their dark traditions and remain in their spheres of darkness, quite apart from the fact that all life, and thereby the existence of the universe itself, would be a complete impossibility. As "hell" or "hell fire" is therefore an instruction in the perfect way of living, a personal experience of how life should not be lived, a phenomenon that is activated with absolute certainty in every single instance, no matter how great or small, in which the individual acts wrongly, teaching him about his mistake, and thereby, with the radiant brilliance of high intellectuality, removing from his consciousness and his being the lack of intellectuality or painful primitiveness the mistake represents, it is not so surprising that the world redeemer refers to this fire in situations in which the beings represented this lack of intellectuality to such an extent that they could not be taught through his knowledge, nor were in a position to learn from the experience of others. This referral is therefore just as normal and loving a phenomenon as all his so-called "miracles".