City Voices Interview w Daniel Ingram, MD on Mental Illness & Spirituality

A few decades ago I learned from two Latter Day Saints missionaries that their church’s doctrine teaches that the Biblical ‘Lake of Fire’ meant for the truly wicked actually represents an eternal spiritual burning of guilt over one’s corporeal misdeeds.

Accordingly, I concluded, upon an atrocity-committing monster’s physical death, not only would he (or she) be 100 percent liberated from the anger and hate that blighted his physical life; also, his spirit or consciousness would be forced to exist with the presumably unwanted awareness of the mindbogglingly immense amount of needless suffering he personally had caused.

I believe that our brain's structural/chemical flaws are what we basically are while our soul is confined within our physical, bodily form. The human soul may be inherently good, on its own; however, trapped within the physical body, notably the corruptible brain, oftentimes the soul’s purity may not be able to shine through. ...

Though I’m not at all comparing him to Hitler, when the typically indignant rightwing radio-talk-show host Rush Limbaugh died, I, though no fan of his smug-ugly politics/ideology, wondered whether his spirit or consciousness may finally be 100 percent free of the purely cerebrally based agitation and contempt that may have actually blighted much of his life. Therefore, free of his corporeal shell, he may be wondering, ‘Why was I so angry, so much of the time? Oh, the things I said!... I really hope I didn't do damage while I was there’ .