Originally Posted by Nebulous

Depends on WHICH lower plane you're talking about. There are more areas and planes than you could possibly list, though some are frequented by astral travellers. In the astral there is sort of a beaten path, and basically the further out you wander the less you'll find people have been there before and the harder you'll have to dig to find any information about that area of the astral....assuming there IS any information left.

When you say "lower planes" I'm going to assume that like everybody else you're talking about "zomg dark" planes. All I can say is there are beautiful dark planes and haunting dark planes, hostile and barren ones, ones full of the dead and ones full of terror, ones full of strange creatures and ones full of wise ones. It truly depends on where you go and what you encounter. I am a friend to both higher and lower planes - any who would take the time to build a bond of trust and mutuality with me are welcomed in my opinion, and I refuse to discriminate based on what "Realm" they come from or whether they LOOK scary to me as a fallible human being. If you open your mind (carefully and sensibly of course) you will find that sometimes the scary ones will simply walk up, take a seat and talk to you and smile - even if their smile is full of sharp teeth and there is a great darkness and aura that inspires awe and fear around them, they'd never harm a single hair on your head. I have learned some of my greatest lessons from these, and made friends as well among the higher realms where things are bright and beautiful and orbs of light seem to smile as they float about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's very hard to make a blanket statement about the "lower" realms and there far too are many of them with far too many variations. While I'm sure there is probably a realm like you described, my_road, I doubt it's "hell" and if an astral traveler ever ran into it they should probably just handle themselves carefully. Nothing to be afraid of. :)