Different Notions of Heaven (from ABC special)

This is an interesting topic for this forum. See the description of the show’s interviews below.

I’ve been busy, so Barbara Walters missed interviewing me about the Taoist notion of heaven(s).
It would have enriched her show. The Daliai lama’s views on the show were closest to that of the alchemical Daoist, except for his unexplained faith based notion of a Buddha beyond Heaven.

In the alchemical view, Heaven is Here and Now, but it requires deep cultivation practice to experience all of its dimensions while still in a physical body. So if you chase after Heaven elsewhere, you are missing the entry portal within you.

Later (form) Heaven, Early (formless form) Heaven, and Original/Primordial (formless formless) Heaven all co-exist in the same space, but are vibrating at different speeds/time rhythms. And allemerge from the Supreme Mystery that is and always will be unknowable. This embraces every possible experience, my view. All religionists, and near death experiences are simply reflecting their consciousness and SHAPING their experience of heaven. But many are unfortunately stuck with the outdated notion that you have to wait to die to get into Heaven.

What is yoiur notion of heaven?

Michael

HEAVEN — WHERE IS IT? HOW DO WE GET THERE?
BARBARA WALTERS EXPLORES THE MEANING OF HEAVEN AND AFTERLIFE
ABC News
December 20, 2005

http://abcnews.go.com/International/Beliefs/story?id=1374010

Nearly nine out of 10 people in the United States say they believe in
heaven, according to a recent ABC News poll. But what exactly do people
think of when they think of an afterlife and what do they believe is
required to get there?

Barbara Walters travels to India, Israel and throughout the United States,
interviewing religious leaders, scientists, believers and non-believers
alike to get a range of perspectives on heaven and the afterlife.

From Valhalla to Nirvana

Every culture has wrestled with the question of an afterlife, and most have
come to a similar conclusion: The bad end up in Hell, the good go to Heaven.

If you were a Viking who died in battle, fierce goddess warriors known as
the Valkyries would carry you to Viking Heaven, Valhalla, where you would
join an eternal feast. The Romans thought they became immortal and were
spirited off to Paradise on a fiery four-horse chariot.

The early Christians and Jews believed that man was not pure enough to enter
the Kingdom of Heaven as flesh and blood. They believed all people were
transformed into spiritual beings, filling Heaven with angels.

That belief has changed over the centuries, but angels still have an
important connection with heaven. In cities all over the world, angels can
be seen in watchful poses. “We believe that they are the ones who take care
of us. They are the messengers of God. They are the ones who are God’s very
special friends and his servants,” said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick,
archbishop of Washington, D.C., and chancellor of Catholic University.

“I always think of heaven as being a place where we won’t have any troubles
anymore. Heaven is a place where there will be peace and tranquility,”
McCarrick said. As a Catholic, McCarrick believes heaven is more than a
spiritual place. Catholics, he explained, believe the body is resurrected.
“I’m looking forward to meeting my mom and dad and the rest of my family,”
he added.

The Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts, pastor of New York’s famed Abyssinian Baptist
Church, tells Walters he has had many visions of heaven over the years. He
describes heaven as “no tears, no mourning, no suffering. It’s eternal joy
and happiness because you are at one with God.”

Butts says he’s certain of heaven’s existence, but says it’s in an
indescribable dimension. “Heaven is in another dimension. So you don’t
necessarily have to look up but you can look out and see heaven. Heaven is a
fourth dimension if you will,” he tells Walters.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the American Society for Muslim
Advancement, tells Walters he believes heaven is indeed a physical place,
but getting there depends on your behavior in this life. “The real life is
the next life Š and based upon how we live this life, it determines where we
shall be in the next. We are told we will be in comfortable homes, reclining
on silk couches Š so we’re given the delights of sex, the delights of wine,
the delights of food with all of their positive things without their
negative aspects.”

The promise of heaven plays a central role in the life of Pastor Ted
Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and his
congregation. As an evangelical, Haggard believes if you are not a born
again Christian, you have no assurance of going to heaven. But if you are
“born again” in the belief that Jesus Christ is your personal savior, you
are assured a place in Heaven. He also believes that this life is a sort of
weigh station on the way to an eternal home. “Jesus Christ guarantees
eternal life to anybody that’ll follow him. Š The purpose of life is to
glorify God and go to heaven Š ’cause heaven is our home.”

Rabbi Neil Gillman, a professor of philosophy at New York’s Jewish
Theological Seminary, expressed Judaism’s perspective on the afterlife. “For
the past 2,000 years, most Jews believed that at death the body and the soul
separate, the body is interred and disintegrates in the Earth, the soul goes
off to be with God,” he tells Walters. But that’s not the end of the story.
“At the end of days, God will resurrect bodies, will reunite body and soul,
and the individual will come before God to account for his or her life,”
Gillman said.

Walters also traveled to India where she met with the Dalai Lama, considered
by Buddhists to be the reincarnated Buddha. The Dalai Lama says that the
purpose of life is to be happy, and that you can accomplish that by
“warm-heartedness.” He tells Walters heaven “is [the] best place to further
develop the spiritual practice Š for Buddhist the final goal is not just to
reach there, but to become Buddha. [It’s] not the end.”

As a Buddhist he believes in reincarnation and tells Walters that people can
have second lives as animals. “If someone do[es] very bad, badly Š kill or
steal Š [he] could be born in an animal body.” Walters also talks to actor
Richard Gere, a longtime follower of Buddhism. Gere tells Walters, “I don’t
think necessarily heaven and hell happen in some other life. I think it’s
right now.”

The Skeptics and Non-Believers

Walters also speaks with scientists, who say they’re beginning to understand
why so many people believe in heaven. Still, they have yet to come up with
the proof that it exists.

For most people, proof of Heaven’s existence is not necessary. Faith is all
they need. Dr. Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Institutes of
Health, thinks he has figured out why this faith comes easily to some, but
eludes others. “Whether a person is spiritual or not is not necessarily a
matter of their will. It may be something innate about their personality,”
Hamer tells Walters.

Hamer suspects spirituality might be a personality trait encoded in our
genes. He began his research by asking more than 1,000 people to answer a
series of questions about faith and spirituality. He then tested DNA from
the study participants and found that those who scored highest on his survey
had a mutation of at least one gene that seemed to affect their level of
spirituality. He named it “the God gene.”

“It’s a gene that’s called VMAT2 and we can isolate it, and we can study it
in detail. Š This particular gene controls certain chemicals in the brain.
And those chemicals affect how consciousness works. They affect the way that
our feelings react to the events around us,” he tells Walters.

Hamer also notes that researchers have been able to detect changes in the
brain when people are in the midst of intense prayer or meditation.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroradiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, is
one of those researchers. Newberg says his research shows a marked increase
in brain activity in the frontal regions of the brain. “At the same time,”
he adds, “the parts of the brain that monitor our sense of time and space
became less active.”

Newberg says this contributes to an individual’s feeling of “losing that
sense of self.” The feeling, he said, is “attributed to God, for example.
And then they feel that God is providing them that energy, that feeling.”

But for Ellen Johnson, president of the American Atheists, science or no
science, heaven is a myth.

“Heaven doesn’t exist, hell doesn’t exist. We weren’t alive before we were
born and we’re not going to exist after we die. I’m not happy about the fact
that that’s the end of life, but I can accept that and make my life more
fulfilling now, because this is the only chance I have,” she tells Walters.

‘Death Trips’ to Heaven

Walters also talks with people who feel certain of heaven’s existence, apart
from their faith, because they believe they’ve had a glimpse of it in
near-death experiences.

A U.S. News & World Report from the late 1990s says as many as 18 million
Americans believe they have had near-death experiences that gave them a
glimpse of the afterlife.

Dianne Morrissey tells Walters she felt the “white light of God” when she
was electrocuted. “My near-death experience changed everything about me. Š
There is not a single experience on Earth that could ever be as good as
being dead,” she said.

British psychologist Susan Blackmore has spent decades searching for a
scientific explanation: “When the oxygen levels fall in the brain Š you get
massive over-activity in the brain. Š I think there is a true
transformation, but not because you’ve been to heaven.”

Family, Children and Heaven

Walters talks with California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, whose early
experiences with loss as a member of the Kennedy family prompted her to
write a book about heaven for children. “I had, growing up, a lot of
questions about these deaths that occurred in my family with no person to
really talk to them about it,” she tells Walters.

“My daughter, who was about 6 or 7 at the time, started asking me a lot of
the same questions that I had had as a child, really basic questions: ‘Why
do you put somebody in a coffin? Where does she go now? Is she scared in the
box? Can she breathe in the box?’ And what was interesting, Barbara, was
that she started answering the questions for herself. So I started writing
down her answers,” she said.

Walters also talks with Mitch Albom, author of “The Five People You Meet in
Heaven,” to get his personal take on the afterlife.

Albom tells Walters, “There’s one thing I would say about heaven. If you
believe that there’s a heaven, your life here on Earth here is different.
You may believe that you’re gonna see your loved ones again. So the grief
that you had after they’re gone isn’t as strong. You may believe that you’ll
have to answer for your actions. So the way you behave here on Earth is
changed. So in a certain way, just believing in the idea of heaven is
heavenly in and of itself,” he said.

————

SEARCHING FOR HEAVEN
A PREVIEW OF BARBARA WALTERS’ SPECIAL REPORT:
‘HEAVEN. WHERE IS IT? HOW DO WE GET THERE?’
ABC News
December 16, 2005

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/print?id=1411270

On Dec. 11, 2002, 42-year-old Deb Foster checked into Scripps Memorial
Hospital in San Diego to give birth. Her doctors performed a successful
Caesarean section, delivering her second child — a healthy baby girl named
Bryce. Her family was thrilled, especially her husband, Andy, and their
11Ž2-year-old son, Christopher. Within hours, however, Foster was fighting for
her life.

“It was as if my breath was knocked out of me, and I couldn’t breathe. I
said: ‘I’m dying. I’m dying. Help me,'” Foster recalled.

She had suffered an amniotic fluid embolism — a life-threatening condition.
“It [the embolism] went in through my heart into my lungs and shut
everything down. I was flat-lined. There wasn’t a pulse. I was dead,” Foster
said. The doctors later confirmed that Foster was clinically dead for about
four minutes. As they struggled to bring her back to life, she says she took
an unforgettable journey.

“I immediately went to a different place. I was on a staircase, and the
staircase went as high up into the sky as you can imagine and the sky was
the most incredible color of blue that does not exist in this life. It’s not
on any color palette. I’ve tried to find it after this experience. It
doesn’t exist.”

Foster said she had company during her journey. “There were dogs and cats
going up and down the staircase, and they were very gleeful. And you could
just tell they were so intensely happy. … I was in this place of
incredible peace. There wasn’t any pain. It was serene. It was the perfect
moment,” she said.

Foster believes she saw a glimpse of heaven.

British psychologist Dr. Susan Blackmore spent decades searching for a
scientific explanation for the near-death experience. She developed a theory
that these experiences can be explained as the product of a dying brain. “We
know that when the oxygen levels fall in the brain, the inhibitory systems
start to fail first and you get massive overactivity in the brain. It’s kind
of going wild in there. I think there is a true transformation but not
because you’ve been to heaven,” she said.

Many scientists and doctors believe that the near-death experience is simply
the function of a dying brain, but Foster — and thousands of others who
have had similar experiences — believe otherwise.

“I know what I experienced, and no scientist can deny the near-death
experience. There is no proof that it doesn’t exist. It exists, and I was
there,” she said.

Looking for Answers to a Universal Question

What’s behind these visions of an afterlife, the human craving for eternity,
the sense that another world awaits us when we die? Is it innate? Is it
something we learn?

Walters talks with both scientists and religious leaders to examine the
question.

Dean Hamer, a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health, tells Walters
he thinks he has figured out why faith comes easily to some, but eludes
others. His research suggests that some people may have a genetic
predisposition toward faith. “This particular gene controls certain
chemicals in the brain. And those chemicals affect how consciousness works.
They affect the way that our feelings react to the events around us,” he
said.

Walters also traveled to the Himalayas in northern India and spoke with
Buddhism’s most esteemed believer, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, who does
not believe in God but does believe in a form of heaven.

In spite of the continuing inhumanity, war, suffering and disease that still
plague the Earth, the Dalai Lama said he believed the world today was closer
to heaven than to hell.

Walters also met with Palestinian terrorists at a high-security prison in
Israel to ask about their concept of heaven that underlies their willingness
to kill others in order to martyr themselves.

When asked whether he wanted non-Muslims to go to hell, Jihad Jarrar, one of
the terrorists, responded: “No, it’s not what I want. It’s what God wants.
It’s not what I want. You should follow Mohammed.”

And those who don’t, “will go to hell, of course,” he added.

Prominent Christian leaders explained their own perceptions of heaven.

The Rev. Dr. Calvin Butts, pastor of New York’s famed Abyssinian Baptist
Church in Harlem, N.Y., told Walters he too had seen heaven. He described
heaven as “eternal joy and happiness because you are at one with God” — and
a place where he’ll have his hair back.

But who will be allowed to enter heaven is a matter of debate for religious
leaders of different faiths. Pastor Ted Haggard believes only those who
accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior will enter heaven. Those who
don’t will go to hell, Haggard believes. “I don’t want to communicate a bad
attitude or anything like that. But the issue is this is a guarantee for
eternal life,” he told Walters.

In addition to these religious figures, Walters talks with ordinary people
about their beliefs and how those beliefs make a difference in their daily
lives.