G:
I have a question… might sound like i am not being serious, but i am being serious…
Where do you think Heaven is?
Obviously its not “up in the sky” where Jesus is said to have ascended…. Scientifically speaking…. that doesn’t work, although it perhaps was taught that way 2000 years ago so folks could grasp the concept…
What was “evident” to me, after years of my “personal research project,” was that there is simply the “seen” physical universe, and a deeper “deep nature” behind it… although that deep nature, in my sensing…. IS awareness…. like an all encompassing awareness….
My wife and I were chatting, and we both agreed that “when we cry out for help, there is someone that hears (God… or… the Chinese call him Lao Tian). This is definitely our sense of looking back at our lives and seemingly having help when we needed it desperately….
That is a large step for me, moving from the “i am a part of it all” stance that has been my view of things for quite some time…. Because if there is a”someone” (superpersonhood??) that we are connected to, then that could mean that same logic could take OUR personhood past when we die… if you know what i mean… like what was called “spirit”….
I dropped a separate thing called “Spirit” from the way i see things many years ago…. But now it is like… if the root of everything is like Lao Tien, then this could make our entity continue on as a part of “awareness without a physical body”….
N:
Interesting! I have wondered and wondered about these things for a long time now. I agree that “heaven/paradise/the spirit world/nirvana/whatever other cultures and religions call it” is not “up in the sky somewhere.” (And yes, I know those are not all the same things, but they have things in common…). I do think of God/Creator (And probably Lao Tien…) as “Spirit” (with multiple “personhood” somewhat as expressed in the concept of “Trinity”). As Creator, God must be in some sense “outside creation” and yet God also, in my way of thinking also is within creation in different forms–communicating with Creation in Spirit (form that can hear/speak/interact with physical Creation–after all, we have that ourselves, physical, spiritual, creative, mental aspects) and physical forms. I do believe God is more that just “in everything”; I do believe God has a strongly personal aspect, too.
The thing is, the longer I live, the more I experience of God, the more convinced I become that God (notice that I don’t use he/she/it because I think God encompasses and goes beyond all that) is so much greater, immense, “beyond” our narrow comprehension.
So what we are offered as explanations or dogma in religion is an attempt to “explain/describe” God in terms we can maybe try to wrap our minds (and limited spirits, within our human form) around.
Which brings me back to the “heaven” concept. Honestly, I don’t know what that would “look like.” Of course, that has to do with our physical senses (sight, sound, taste, etc.) and our limited spiritual and emotional senses as well.
People “theorize” about heaven (or even muiltiple heavens) in different ways, but almost always in some kind of “physical/measureable” terms because that is how we as humans relate. Some people think of “other dimensions” or of a specific “location in the universe” (or multiple heavens: the Bible speaks of that) or of “us being part of the great whole” … but even that is in a sense a “location” within “Creation.”
I used to be big on trying to think of “heaven” and “God” and so on in terms of “science” … but even our understanding of science is still so limited, and our ideas and theories are constantly in flux and change as we discover new facts … and also the new “possibilities” those lead to. While it is invigorating to think about those “possibilities,” it seems to me we are still, to a large degree, kind of “stuck” in our “physical, created” identity. (“Identity” itself is an interesting concept, because it wraps up so many aspects of ourselves … and if God is so much greater and beyond, God’s identity must also be far greater and beyond what we conceive.
Again, our religious beliefs/theories are, in my opinion, small and limited attempts to describe what we cannot wholly comprehend, that is so far beyond and above us and all we know. But, at the same time, I think we get “glimmers” … as in times of prayer, communication (calling out and hearing), meditation, seeing something or experiencing something that fills us with an “awe” beyond what we can describe.
No doubt you’ve read C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, and Madeleine L’Engle’s sci-fi/fantasy books and The Shack and so on. I enjoy reading those kinds of books because they help to draw me into the possibilities of “beyond” and “above” and pull me out of my “intellectual” boundaries that have been imposed by religion and science. They also help me relax and “allow” a more “comfortable and possible” “relationship” with God that isn’t “bound” so physically by religion (and science and other human constructs).
I do feel more and more like the Biblical child on Jesus’ lap or sheep in his arms–after spending decades (from childhood onwards) “struggling”and “wondering” and “stressing.” I no doubt still have far to go, and no doubt will never reach “full understanding” in this lifetime … and maybe that’s why we need “eternity” (another whole concept beyond us …) to “grow into” understanding … a kind of understanding that itself is far beyond and above what we can even try to imagine…. Anyway, that’s where I’m at this morning … it might change/develop/grow/ in a moment or two … <giggle>!!
I’m also not sure “heaven” even is a “where” (at least in terms of a “location”)…
G:
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I can see that your pondering on this has brought you to a personal understanding. Let’s continue pondering and thinking about this. Yes, it seems that reaching into this opens it up as an experiencing….
What started this current pondering was a sense of “If Lao Tien is ALL, then the concept that Origen had of “transmigration of souls” might have been on to something. For a long time I have seen the “me” only being an individuation experience as long as there was a brain with neurons to “contain” it, and once the brain dies, that individuated “me” goes back to the oceanic awareness… like a drop of water rejoining the ocean….
Now I am thinking, “If Lao Tien has an individuation… so to speak… then perhaps a “me” can also exist without a physical container… “
My picture was I am a leaf, and when the leaf falls to the ground, it goes back to where it came from, and the “leaf identity,” as a “stuck together entity,” returns to its original separate elements… the end of that one leaf….
We usually call that individuation “personhood”…
N:
There was a really interesting discussion on just that topic (about leaves) last night on CBC Ideas, an old discussion with David Suzuki … https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16004662-suzukis-survival-guide-or-life-death
G:
Thanks I will listen to that.
So I didn’t have a way of asking that question… does the “me” have the ability to exist apart from our physical container…
N:
hmmm…. “me” apart from our physical container … what is “life” anyway? … Star Trek pondered that physical container question quite often!
G:
It starts with my experienced sense that there are not two separate parts, only nature and deep nature…. So if Lao Tien (God) IS deep nature… like the all encompassing awareness — beyond, in all and thru all (the everything) — then i am a temporary container of a particle of that awareness (i like the term awareness more than life….). Then… science says “nothing is lost, but just changes from one form to another”… then “spirit” (and heaven) would be another part of deep nature…. I have become of the mind that a “me” only has one “me life” and then goes back to original nature….. so to speak…. but reconsidering what that looks like. 
C: Very interesting question! I think “heaven” is on a whole different plane, something we couldn’t really understand or imagine while we are alive in this world. Something very cool!
Reality is Dharma 