What Do You Think Heaven Is? Options

What is Heaven?

Do you believe we go somewhere else or when we die, we are just dead.

Have you changed your mind over the years?

Did your upbringing influence your ideas about Heaven or have you always had your own ideas?

Have you or anyone you know seen Heaven, maybe through an OBE or temporary death experience?

Is Heaven just an imaginary place that the church used to use to encourage people to be good?

What do you think?

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This post has been edited by Radiant Star: Nov 9 2006, 03:55 AM

What is Heaven?

Heaven is a state of being that is as close to God as a soul can get. What this must feel like, how we'd percieve it, we can only guess. Many mystics and theologians have chose to claim that heaven is eternal bliss and pleasure. I simply believe it is a state of existance that is in the highest presence of God. What God is, to me, is the entire universe. Everything that we percieve as real and unreal and all that we don't know or fully understand. Even fiction exists in this universe, within God. Don't believe me? Read some fiction. It exists in some form. Existance is what determines one's closeness to God. I believe that in various degrees of existance we have a measure of awareness. Thus the more aware one is of their universe, the closer to God they are. Awareness does not indictate pleasure or bliss, these are perceptions, not states of being.

Hell is just the opposite. Hell is distance from God and that means the less one is aware of their universe, the further away they are to God. This too does not mean that one feels better or worse, as these are merely perceptions to one's existance. It is possible to be as distant from God as possible (if there is such a thing) and feel pleasure and just the opposite as well.

Do you believe we go somewhere else or when we die, we are just dead.

I believe people in their desire to be immortal have learned to ignore certain biological realities. Especially when it comes to death. I believe once the synapes in your brain stop firing the person you are ceases to exist. However, I also believe that the soul, once the body is dead, is released into the universe. The soul can retain memory of a former being/life, but that is all. Sometimes, for whatever reason, the soul may linger. Lingering souls I believe exist in a state of limbo. They are dead biologically, but the energy (perhaps due to consistancy) remains Earth bound and does not migrate into what some may call the "white light", or the cosmic churning pool for energy. This white light I believe is where souls are fully released from the mundane existance and spat back into the universe to manifest anew. This means, by my reasoning, that reincarnation is possible. Yet only the soul retains any memory of a past life, consciousness is mundane and dies with the body.

Have you changed your mind over the years?

Many times and probably more in the future.

Did your upbringing influence your ideas about Heaven or have you always had your own ideas?

At first but my independant studies of the occult and mysticism helped me to formulate my own ideas aside from my Catholic upbringing.

Have you or anyone you know seen Heaven, maybe through an OBE or temporary death experience?

I believe the only way to experience closeness (possibly even wholeness) with God is to die from this mortal body.

Is Heaven just an imaginary place that the church used to use to encourage people to be good?

I believe what Christianity and Islam teach about heaven is just a psychological mechanism to keep the "sheep" inline. If people thought of access to heaven as an expression rather than fullfillment of a moral obligation, people wouldn't start wars over religion. We wouldn't have martyrs either.