Hell is a State of Mind.

Plato returns.

from The Great Divorce

'Hush,' he said sternly. 'Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind--ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind--is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.' (Lewis 70-71)

This really does bring me back to the Platonic idea of Forms; perhaps, intuitively, these are the reasons I have always preferred Plato to Aristotle.

Hell as a state of mind--a state of mind we take with us into death: this frightens me, or at least makes me feel uncomfortable. This reminds me, too, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem, The Blessed Damozel and her gold bar of Heaven. I read this poem for the first time as an undergraduate student, and it struck me so profoundly because it represented an idea I had never given credence to before: that we still feel loss and pain and sorrow while we are in Heaven--that we will still miss those we love and ache for them until we are together again.

And still she bow’d herself and stoop’d
Out of the circling charm;
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she lean’d on warm,
And the lilies lay as if asleep
Along her bended arm.

From the fix’d place of Heaven she saw
Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
Within the gulf to pierce
Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sand in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curl’d moon
Was like a little feather
Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,
Strove not her accents there,
Fain to be hearken’d? When those bells
Possess’d the mid-day air,
Strove not her steps to reach my side
Down all the echoing stair?)

“I wish that he were come to me,
For he will come,” she said.
“Have I not pray’d in Heaven?—on earth,
Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d?
Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
And shall I feel afraid?

(Lines 43-72)

But this is not necessarily what Lewis means, I do not think. I believe we enter death with these thoughts still etched on our soul, but we must let them go in order to fully appreciate the joy of Heaven and God's grace. It's in letting them go, though, that we find the difficulty. How do you step away from a soul-changing love?

I suppose it is in realizing that need and love and want are separate and that unconditional love transcends the contexts and connotations we attach to it.

There is more to talk about when it comes to Hell as a state of mind, but I do not feel I can do it justice as yet.