In Search of Our Own Heaven

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            The idea of heaven has often inspired the thoughts and deeds of human beings since time immemorial. However, most of us have only surmised about the same, having as many conceptions thereof as there are faiths and beliefs. Accordingly, the Hindu sages, through deep explorations, have suggested their own thesis on the same. Accordingly, there are supposed to be as many heavens as there are thoughts and desires, often customised according to one’s faith. As all of us think, feel and cognize differently, we have different conceptions of heaven.

            Varying according to religions and nations, there are said to be separate heavens for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Red Indians, Chinese, Jews and so on. This is made possible because sharing life’s experiences with the same set of people during our present or past lives, we generate our ‘Give and Take’ account against the self-same people depending upon our identifications. Our thoughts, desires and ambitions also hover around experiences featuring the people with whom we spend most of our time and life’s events. Hence, people of a faith or nationality are said to congregate together even in the afterlife though not necessarily, as a person of a particular faith or nationality could very well identify with a faith or nationality altogether different.

            The Zoroastrian heaven is visualised as the realm of eternal pleasure as do all Semitic religions including Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Vedantic religion (read Hinduism), as in foregoing paragraph, believes in the multiplicity of heavens and hells, determined as they are by our differing desires and deeds. Different desires take us to corresponding heavens. If our earthly desires can’t be fulfilled elsewhere, we must return here to undergo relevant experiences. Many of these religions believe continuation of the delectable phenomenal life into heaven through the aid of resurrected bodies, an idea disputed by Hinduism.

            Thus, all our ideas about multiple heavens are nothing but analogous projections of our varying thoughts and desires. Our thoughts are so powerful that whatever we think can be made real because of generation of suitable vibrations as per the ‘Law of Attraction’. The same happens during our dreams which appear real while we watch them. It only shows that reality is relative as also proven by Quantum Physics i.e. the observer can change the observation. Deficient of the perception of sense-beings, the mythical material world vanishes immediately on closure of our eyes. Strangely, whatever sense objects we glimpse in a subconscious state (REM sleep) vanish during a dreamless sleep. We may see similar things, but not necessarily the same things because of our differing thought patterns.

            Bound in time and space, our physical bodies are subject to death, decay, change and causation. It is the subtle spiritual bodies which continue post death, but that is also changeable as one can’t continue in the heaven or astral/causal bodies endlessly. As there are limits to our good thoughts and deeds, so are there limits to their fruits as beautifully narrated through the dialogue between Nachiketa and Yama, the Hindu God of Death in Katha Upanishad. Like our money deposited in a bank account, we are said to stay and enjoy the pleasures of heaven only as long as our good Karma deposits allow after which are supposed to take birth in a suitable realm (read earth or any planet with potential life) for undergoing newer experiences and learning newer lessons.

            Eternal heaven is an impossibility according to Hinduism. The heavenly pleasures, therefore, are not supposed to be eternal as their cause i.e. our good thoughts and deeds are bound in time and space. The highest of our pleasure on this earth lasts for a very short time when we compare the same to our timeless existence in the cosmos. Pleasures to be pleasures must be necessarily fleeting. No sense pleasure can continue forever. If we continue laughing indefinitely, we may even die.

            Pleasures are dependent upon comparisons and vary spatio-temporally from person to person. How can we know that the celestial pleasures are worthwhile unless we compare them with pleasures on earth or elsewhere? The chocolates and ice-cream which pleased us in childhood lose their charm in older age. Even if you love them in old age, they would lose their pleasing quality if we continue consuming the same indefinitely and in fact, the resulting experience would start turning into a suffering.

            But our happiness on earth is always accompanied by pain and suffering. A wise man, obviously, would like to follow the path which is away from duality of sensual pleasure and pain unless you enjoy the routine rotational experiences of the same. The wise usually pursue the ‘absolute goodness’ which brings perpetual happiness, independent of sense gratifications. As celestial pleasures are also said to be dependent on senses and sense organs of our astral bodies, they too don’t last longer and are equally accompanied by sufferings. However, the pain and suffering in heaven are supposed to be finer in nature compared to their earthly mutants.

            Our endless desires would drive us crazy if we were to live alone in the wilderness. We would be pulled back to the multiple charms of societal living. That’s why the seekers and seers have advised against the ‘heaven-fixation’ for the seekers of highest happiness and bliss. This highest happiness lies in the attainment of the wisdom which emancipates us from our material desires by slackening our attachment to this gross body and related sensual pleasures. The boundless human nature can’t continue in the same state for long and keeps stretching itself to newer spaces. Hence, newer births and desires for newer experiences afforded by the infinite genius of Cosmic Drama.

            Accompanying our pleasures, there are sufferings and misfortunes which most of us would wish to shun. But actually our misfortunes bring out wonderful awakening of our real Self, thereby helping our spiritual evolution. Without them, we could not learn anything from our transitory earthly experiences. Enriching our mind and broadening our vision, our sufferings make us wiser, maturer and a seeker of the Absolute Truth.

            But we can’t realise this Absolute Truth or Happiness as long as we are trapped in the cycle of birth and death owing to our attachment to the sensual pleasures. The same makes us into sinners and we are born again and again till we become perfected. Unless and until all our material desires are satisfied, we can’t have the longing for the Absolute Truth. Once awakened, this longing can’t die out. It only grows stronger and stronger until the same is realised. That is why, we need to realise our immortal Self through practices of Yoga and meditation. The realisation of this Absolute Truth is more of a mental state where you go beyond the carnal attachments or desires to the heavenly pleasure or learn the felicity to inhabit the realm of pleasure and pain without any discrimination or discomfort.

            Once we feel it deep within our soul, we become free from the fear of death, from a fickle mind, from ephemeral physical body and from all fleeting sense perceptions. To attain this, our heart, soul and intellect need to be purified through a realized Master. The mortals, thus, rising beyond the limits of mortality enter the abode of immortality where there is no death, has lasting joy and bliss. Strangely, that immortal being is right within us all which can only be realised through deep Yogic and meditative practices. We may realise our true immortal nature and the ‘Absolute Truth’ on earth itself without waiting for the death to destroy our physical shell.