To
all of us the thought of heaven is dear,
Why not be sure of it and make it here?
Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)
And
tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
And what we had imagined we believed.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Where
is heaven, we ask? In the absence of a precise celestial
location, the answer, by overwhelming consensus which
however does not constitute certitude, is 'up there'
as opposed to 'down here.' Oddly enough, be that as
it may we are unable to pinpoint heaven's abode, we
all know more or less what to expect upon arrival: that
it's a significantly better place than where we are
now, which some liken to hell or demonstrate that the
here and now is a hell of our own making. To further
clarify, it seems that most of the religions subscribe
to the notion that you have to die to get to there,
which is why I, for one, would rather be here than up
there, the premise of which, combined with personal
observed experience, persuades me that what is presumably
better in heaven can be experienced/encountered here
on earth.
So
if there is a heaven on earth, a proposition I fully
endorse, what is preventing us from discovering or encountering
it? What is it about this heaven on earth that it resists
unconcealment? The philosopher Martin Heidegger, in
his essay "The Thing," proposes that what
is near is most far and "is not simply a matter
of physical or temporal proximity, but rather a matter
of how something reveals itself or is present to us."
Cambridge Dictionary describes heaven as "where
God or the gods live and where good people are believed
to go after they die, so that they can enjoy perfect
happiness. In scripture, heaven is depicted as a place
of ultimate peace, joy, and the presence of God."
The origins of the word predate 1150: in Old English
heofon "home of God," and earlier "the
visible sky, firmament."
Most
of the religions inculcate that heaven is the reward
for living a righteous life on earth, and that after
"knocking on heaven's door," it's the soul
or spirit, not the body, that gains entrance; and that
what is better there than here is everlasting: being
in permanent community with angels instead of asses.
And while no one has empirically reported on the physical
environment and daily happenings in heaven, even the
faith-based must know that the concept of heaven collapses
when put to the duality test.
The
law of duality states that whatever is, in order for
it to be, presupposes something other than itself. In
other words you cannot have a something without a nothing:
hot without cold; good without evil; happiness without
sadness. Therefore, whatever is wonderful or perfect
in heaven is only so compared to lesser or imperfect
states, which refutes the conventional understanding
of heaven where everything is everlastingly perfect.
So if duality is the final arbiter of both the location
and true nature of heaven, it categorically cannot exist
up there but only in the here and now where the appreciation
or value of anything is a function of contrast and opposition.
Anything that risks being itself forever is a sure formula
for oblivion. If our temperature were a constant, unchanging
25 celcius under sunny skies, the concept of the weather
would cease to exist.
In
the light of the above logic, it appears that the religions,
the great weavers of admittedly compelling and enduring
fairy tales, have got it all wrong. From the perspective
of duality and its first principles, the religious concept
of heaven is an heresy. Or, if there is a heaven, it
can only be found here on earth, where the living dwell
and time and space are meaningful only in so far as
they are penetrated by duality. The film director Wim
Wenders, in "Wings of Desire," has his protagonists,
two immortal angels, observing the goings on on earth,
and they yearn to be human; they yearn for temporality
(mortality). As seen through the eyes and thoughts of
the angels, heaven is located on the planet earth, where
the the law of duality reigns supreme, where the perfect
summer day is so in contrast to the myriad of bad weather
days with which we are all too familiar. "It is
certain that when he makes water, his urine is congealed
ice." (Measure for Measure, Shakespeare).
So
how do we perceive, make contact with heaven on earth?
As per Kant's categories, through the five senses where
every sense, at one extreme, is able to register deprivation,
and at the other extreme, fulfilment. When afflicted
with a cold, we lose our sense of olfaction. Upon regaining
our health we celebrate the rediscovery of the wonderful
scents of the world: the smell of the rose, the clean
air after a purifying rain. Set against the noise and
cacophony of the world are the great monuments of music
exemplified by Bach and Mozart. After an extended period
of being alone can there be anything more heavenly than
waking up in the morning in the arms of your beloved?
Happiness
or heaven on earth consists of those joyous, impermanent
intervals made possible by the law of duality. If man
is motivated by the pleasure principle, as Freud claims,
some of those pleasures are nothing less than heaven
on earth. And upon attainment, however temporary, the
rewards are biochemically measurable: the immune system
enjoys a boost, serotonin levels increase, dopamine
indices go up.
Those
well meaning but misguided seekers for whom transcending
duality is the ultimate state of being, for whom the
conventional religions hold no purchase, are on a Kafkaesque,
dead-end search, and are tragically unwitting to the
nearness of the infinite number of heavens offered up
in daily life, which, for example, for the Satori-seeking
Zen student, might be nothing more -- but everything
to others -- than the care and concern around which
communities form.
In
order to encounter and dwell, however impermanently,
in heaven, one must begin to question the premises that
have been imposed by our religions. We begin by deconceptualizing
the word, stripping it from its mundane usage, in order
to rediscover the feelings and experiences that caused
us to speak the word 'heaven' for the very first time.
And as the individual reexamines those perfect intervals
in his life which he may describe as heavenly, he will
note that the necessary condition which allowed for
those heavenly feelings to manifest was its location:
not up there but here on earth. So heavenly were those
moments he quite naturally wished them to endure forever,
an impossibility on earth, so he invented an amorphous
spiritual realm that to this day resonates with almost
all the world's religions.
The
first man who beheld the miracle of his sentience, who
uttered "I am," discovered all that need be
known of heaven, and that its first and only home has
always been right here on earth.
The
heavenly experience can neither be grasped nor appreciated
without the effort of reflection and thought. If there
was an original first sin, it was wanting heavenly experiences
to be everlasting, and then, as if under the effects
of a happy drug, shifting its location from earth to
a celestial abode where it couldn't be interrogated,
where faith has always enjoyed the upper hand over fact.
To those persons for whom the power of thought and the
discovery of truth are vitally linked, heaven is but
a mere reach for the mind.
As to the wretched of the earth and in the spirit of
consession, the millions dying of inanation or caught
in wars not of their making, for whom heaven on earth
is but a pipe-dream, they have surely earned the right
to believe in the existence of a better world (up there)
than the one they are living in now.
