Transcription
One of the questions I asked them about was what was Heaven like, and I shouldn't tell you the answer because, um, anybody that really knew what Heaven was like wouldn't want to be here anymore and then want to be there because this is so inferior to Heaven and Heaven is so superior to this world in every way that, um, it makes no sense to be here.
But you don't get to Heaven by killing yourself. That's not, um, that's a, um, very unlikely way to access Heaven because to kill oneself would be a rejection of God. Um, and so, uh, I guess that's one of the reasons why knowledge of Heaven has been so obscure, um, because we don't really need to know about it.
Heaven is just a few little things about it. Um, every possibility of life and every interesting and wonderful thing that ever was, is, or will be, not just in this world but in the entire universe and in all the dimensions, is in Heaven. So Heaven has the essence and the knowledge, um, of everything that was and is and is yet to be. And you have one has an opportunity to see and feel and touch and know and experience. So I mean, obviously, one can spend an eternity, eternity in Heaven just experiencing things, just looking at things, just, um, getting to know things and, um, being around things.
Um, Heaven is layered like, um, an onion. And the outer part of Heaven is, um, um, seems like the physical world because that's the entry level for, um, beings from the physical world. And then as one goes deeper and deeper into Heaven, it, um, has different rules of physics and different properties. Um, so it gets more and more, um, wondrous and mysterious and interesting the deeper you go into Heaven. And at the core of Heaven, at the very center of Heaven, is God and, um, a vast array of beings who have become so holy. And by holy, I mean, wh-o-l-l-y, I guess, and h-o-l-y, become so whole, so complete, that there's no longer any doubt, any blemish, any shadow, any hesitancy. And they are ready and eager to be one with God, to be in communion with God.
Um, people don't come to that easily, but it is the desire of all beings to come to that place where they are in communion with God. And in the center of Heaven, people are invited to participate with God in the ongoing act of creation. And the way that they participate is, um, by bringing their uniqueness, their self, their personality, their life experience to God. And the only analogy, I mean, the way they explain it to me in the analogy is, is that they now become part of the song of creation, or as it's been said, they become part of the Heavenly Choir.
God is the conductor and composer of the song of creation, but each of us gets to bring our own unique self, our own unique instrument, voice into that choir and participate with God in that. And, uh, the song of creation is, in fact, the creation. Or to put it another way, um, we are being sung by God in the Heavenly Choir. And if God in the Heavenly Choir to cease the song, um, there would be no physical universe. There would be no time. There'd be no space. There'd be no matter, no energy because, in fact, what the universe is, it's some vibratory states of space created by the song of creation. And that's who and what we are and what we experience.
And so, um, we come back to our source. We, we are em-, emanate from there. It's our origin and our source where we come from. We come out into this world and have a variety of experiences, even including the bizarre experience of thinking that, um, we're somehow separate and unique and apart from all of that. One of the things that we're here to learn is how utterly connected and dependent we are in all of that. We're all connected. We're all, um, in a sense, part of the One.
And so, um, what we get to experience in this life is both our separateness and our connectedness, us to the One. Uh, one of the interesting things in my experience was, um, the angels and Jesus always referred to God as the One. Um, I found it interesting in the Bible that God is very often referred to as the One. In the, um, the most profound prayer of the Jewish faith proclaims, um, that God is One in the Shema. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, and the Lord is One." And that the singularity and totality and completeness of God really is the beginning of wisdom in our relationship to that because from this singular, complete One, we are a part of that Oneness. And that's what our return to God teaches us. It, um, I mean, in human terms, it's coming home. When we go to Heaven, we have come back to where we were born from, where we belong, and who we are. And to come to God in the center of Heaven is to come back to our, into the bosom of our mother, our father, our creator, and to finally be home, really home. And to know and to be known, to receive love and to give love. And that's our completeness because that's what, that's what we are. We are, we are an act of God's love expressed out. And we bring that love back in a new and profound way to God from this experience of life, even from this experience of separateness.
Um, but once we know who we are, we know we're no longer really separate anymore. I mean, even though sometimes I feel like a stranger in a strange land, I know that what separates me from God is very little. So that's one of the weird things. Um, although Heaven and Hell seem far away, they're really here, very, very close. The reason why they're so close is that it's dimensional travel. It's not space and time travel. And so, um, even in this world, God is not so far away. And God hasn't through the Holy Spirit, um, that can dwell inside of us and does dwell inside of us. We can know how close God is because God is both ultimately completely transcendent and other, and completely immanent and present at the same time. You know, theologians argue, is God completely transcendent or immanent? And the truth is, yes, both.
Um, so one of the things that we can do in this world is to contemplate God. Um, contemplate the love of God. God, contemplate the closeness of God. Contemplate the, um, beauty of God, the completeness and signity of God. You know, um, the Bible says, "All things work for God's good purpose for those who love God." Um, you know, because the reality is, and this is one of the big profound truths that the Bible's trying to teach us, is that God wins ultimately. It's all about God, and it's all from God, and returns to God, and is of God. And all this sense of separateness and sin and chaos and evil are all things that we need to work our way through to return to the completeness and perfection of that which is God.