Four times in three days I have been confronted with questions about heaven and hell. One was an email conversation, one was in a zoom conversation, another in a book I was reading by Richard Rohr, and the most recent in a sermon last Sunday. I figured this might a hint to address the subject in an episode. I have dealt with the topic before. I thought it was time to revisit the subject.
During the summer when the weather is good, we attend an outdoor worship service held by a Congregational church in a neighboring town. In her sermon last Sunday the pastor talked about her ordination exam five years ago. In preparation for the ordination council she invited some clergy friends to send her the most challenging questions that might be asked during the oral examination. One asked, “Is Gandhi in heaven?” He followed up with the question, “Is Hitler in Heaven?” Finally he asked a third one: “How about child abusers? How about a person who abused your child?”
The questions were designed to test the limits of the salvation, grace and justice of God. The scripture text for her message was John 3:17 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The pastor did a very good job addressing the questions, coming down strongly on the grace of God and coming close to universalism. Throughout the sermon I kept thinking about how I would preach that sermon and approach those questions. I tend to do that a lot when listening to sermons. Occupational hazard.
First I would address what heaven is. Heaven is not a place. We tend to use spatial metaphors to describe the Kingdom of Heaven. As if it is up in the sky somewhere. I think people in Jesus time took that literally. That is why the gospels have Jesus bodily ascending into heaven like superman, as if he is right beyond the clouds, hanging out with his Dad until one day he is going to come in the clouds, return to earth and usher in his kingdom on earth. These spatial ideas are enshrined in literal interpretations of the Christian doctrines of the ascension of Christ and the Second Coming of Christ. But we know heaven is not a place in the stratosphere or in outer space. You can’t get there in a space ship. And you can’t get to hell by means of a cave.
When you listen carefully to what Jesus says, it is clear Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven is here now. He said “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” That can also be translated the Kingdom of God is “in the midst of you,” meaning all around you. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.” Spiritual Reality it is not spatial or temporal.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not about the body or the psyche. The apostle Paul said, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” The body is perishable. The ego is a product of the brain which is an organ of the body. When the brain dies, the ego dies. The personal self dies. There is no gated community in the clouds for personal egos to enjoy forever.
When we die the mortal self and the mortal body die. There is no ghost that leaves the body and is transported to heaven or hell. Gandhi did not go anywhere when he was shot and killed. Hitler did not go anywhere when he committed suicide in a bunker in Berlin. So, “Did Hitler go to heaven?” No. There is no little entity with a warped personality and a ridiculous mustache standing before the throne of God.
Thoughtful Christians struggle with the question of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. They try to balance justice, grace, love and mercy, and find just the right balance. The problem is the question. It is the wrong question. There is no right answer to a wrong question. It is not a question of love and grace and justice, much less reward and punishment.
The right question is who and what we really are. Who or what survives the death of the body? That is the important question: Who am I? What am I? This is called the spiritual practice of self-inquiry. When one knows the answer to that question – not intellectually but experientially – then all questions about heaven and hell, who is saved and who is lost, fall away.
Heaven and hell are not places in the afterlife. Heaven and hell are symbols of the experience of the individual self here now. Evil people are in hell here and now. They are suffering here and now. The first noble truth of the Buddha is “Life is suffering.” Another way of saying this is “Life is hell.” The Buddha was offering a way to escape suffering. Christians look for a way to escape hell. The problem is that Christians think hell is someplace else and sometime else. The truth is that it is here now.
People commit suicide because life is hell for them, and they are trying to escape it by drastic means. The Kingdom of Hell is within you, just like the Kingdom of heaven is within you. A person who is living in hell now makes life hell for others. That is the source of all types of abuse. The ego creates its own hell on earth here and now.
Hitler’s life was a living hell, and he made life hell for millions of people. The Nazi concentration camps were hell for the people imprisoned there. It was hell created by the hellion Adolf Hitler. Evil people live in their own personal hell and they create hell and spread hell through their lives. He knew it would be hell if he had to face the legal consequences for his hellish behavior, which is why he killed himself rather than face judgment. He did not escape judgement. He experienced it.
Heaven is likewise here and now. Egolessness is heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. Godly people are living in heaven now. That is why godly people endure great physical suffering with great faith. It doesn’t matter what one’s religion is. Gandhi lived in heaven during his lifetime while identifying as a Hindu. Some Christian preachers are hateful abusive personalities who are living in their own personal hell and making their families and churches a living hell.
The parables of Jesus that speak about Judgement Day and heaven and hell are to be interpreted in this light. They are not about a Day of Reckoning in the future. Judgement Day is here now. Justice is here now. The past and the future are in our imagination. There is only here now. The separation of the sheep and the goats is now. Lazarus and the Rich man are here now. These are dualistic metaphors that describe this dualistic world. Heaven and hell are now.
What about after death? Is there nothing after death? Is it nonexistence? Never-ending nothingness, extinction? That is what some former fundamentalist Christians fear. They are afraid if they give up their childhood understanding of religion, then they are throwing away a ticket to an eternal celestial paradise, and they will never see their loved ones again.
What happens after death? We survive death, but not as who we thought we were. The ego does not survive death but who were really are does. Remember the right question is: Who am I? What am I? If the ego or personal self does not survive death, what does survive death?
The good news is that you already know the answers to these questions. If you have had any glimpse of nondual reality, then you know who and what you are. You just need to identify that and identify as that. You are what you have always been. You are what you were before your body was conceived in your mother’s womb. You are what you were before the self-conscious ego was formed by the brain between the ages of two and three. You are what you are in deep dreamless sleep. You will be after death what you were before birth.
That is what you are. That is not nothing. That is the Divine. You come from God and return to God. You were one with God before birth, and you are one with God now, and you will be one with God after death. That is the Kingdom of Heaven. Some call this Pure Consciousness. I like the word Intelligence or Being. Thomas Merton calls this the True Self. We are that which is not born and cannot die. The True Self survives death.
That True Self is expressed in all separate selves. Being is expressed in all separate beings, including human beings. Just because the body of Marshall Davis will die one day does not mean I die. I am much more than Marshall Davis. I am every person. We live on in everything as everyone. This is the fulfillment of the common hope that we are reunited with loved ones at death. That is true, but not in the sense we thought. We are eternally one with our loved ones in a deeper way than our minds or hearts can imagine.
Nothing and no one that has ever existed is lost or separated from you or God. They are here now and will always be here now. No one is dead. Jesus said of God, “So he is the God of the living, not the dead, for they are all alive to him.” Everyone is alive to God now. All lifetimes are simultaneous in the Kingdom of God, which is the Divine Present and Divine Presence. At death these mortal expressions that we think of as ourselves are reunited with the One God, whom we have never really been separated from, except in our understanding. We are united with our loved ones who have died. They are one with God who is beyond our dualistic conceptions of good and evil, past, present and future.
In other words nothing is lost and no one is lost, including all those personal selves that were actually expressions of God. Everyone is in God and God is in everyone. We are all one with this Eternal Reality. That includes Hitler and Gandhi. Not the little twisted ego named Adolf, but who and what he really is. The one True Self. We are Hitler and Hitler is us. The same with Gandhi, and all saints and sinners. Until we realize who we really are, we will spend our live judging others and judging ourselves in an earthly hell of our own making. This realization of who we are is what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.