Heaven, hell, and purgatory are not simply geographic claims about the afterlife but theological statements about the moral structure of the cosmos — about whether justice is ultimately real, whether transformation is still possible after death, whether love is ultimately stronger than destruction. These concepts have their analogues in many traditions: the Buddhist realms of existence, the Zoroastrian bridge of judgment, the Hindu lokas, the indigenous understanding of a spirit world that mirrors and interpenetrates the living one. The serious question is not whether these places exist as described but what it means to believe that what we do matters — that the universe keeps some kind of account.
Rumi