The Fantasy Island





Fantasy is fiction—an imagined world created to meet a psychological need. We know it isn’t real, and yet we cling to it, often more tightly than we do to reality.

Take superheroes, for instance. Why do we love them, even though we know they don’t exist? Because in a harsh and unpredictable world, they offer escape. They embody strength, justice, immortality. Superman defies bullets. Wonder Woman bends steel.

They give us hope—hope that someone out there might make the world right. At the heart of it, they reassure us: Good will triumph over evil. But superheroes aren’t the only fantasies we cling to.

Consider heaven and hell. Some religions present them as places of reward and punishment. But are they not, too, a kind of Fantasy Island? They offer comfort to those who fear death.

They provide a moral compass structured, certain, and absolute. They promise justice when the world feels unjust. But they also condition obedience: Do good, and you shall be rewarded. Disobey, and you shall burn.

One friend once told me, “I don’t like scaring people with talk of hell or Judgment Day. But sometimes, those ideas help people behave better. And if a deity created me, shouldn’t I know Him, thank Him for my existence?”

To which I replied: “That’s what I call healthy fear. But it’s still fear. And fear controls. Shouldn’t we teach our children to do good because it’s right—not because they’re promised heaven or threatened with hell? Shouldn’t compassion arise from empathy, not reward?”

Imagine this: You help an elderly person cross the road. Do you do it because an angel is tallying points for your afterlife? Or because it's simply the human thing to do?



When we treat moral goodness like a transaction—deeds for divine currency—we reduce the joy of giving into a bribe system. In the working world, it's fair: Work X hours, earn Y dollars. But in the realm of spirit, of conscience, of being—must it be the same? If heaven is just a reward, what makes it different from a bribe? What if the real joy is in doing good without expecting anything in return?

So where are heaven and hell, really? They live inside us. Heaven is that space in the mind where we keep our peace, our hopes, our kind intentions. Hell is the dark corner where we bury fear, guilt, nightmares. Every day, we fluctuate between the two. But in between them lies something else: A void. A neutral, silent space. Not empty—but spacious. Like the vacuum of space in the cosmos. No fear. No desire. No judgment. In a vacuum, particles try to spread out, to dissolve. They can’t be held. They resist form. And maybe that’s what we need: To expand that inner void—that quiet space—so wide, so open, that heaven and hell dissolve entirely.

When the mind is no longer obsessed with reward or paralyzed by punishment, when fear is replaced by awareness, and when compassion needs no bribe— that, to me, is the State of Realization. The end of Fantasy Island. And the beginning of something real.




What if heaven and hell were never out there, but always inside and we could dissolve them both



nmadasamy@nmadasamy.com