The address of heaven

Almost all religious books and writings refer to HEAVEN as a place where everything is picture perfect. According to them, heaven is a place where God resides and everything is serenading. And most of us come to believe that heaven is somewhere up there in space, with golden gates, beautiful princesses and all the luxuries that one could desire; because that is the picture painted by our ancestors.

Maybe our ancestors knew where heaven was or maybe they did not, but had they been more direct in their reference to heaven, life would certainly have been less complex for us. But then again, complexity is the essence of life, right?

But we need to understand that heaven is not a place in space where we go after death; it is not a place where we would be greeted by hooris and get to enjoy everything materialistic. After all, what is the point of enjoying after we die? God created us to enjoy life on this very planet, our Earth. Why would He reserve something so special and so magnificent as the HEAVEN for our death? Of course He would not. It is we who have not understood the meaning behind the word.

Heaven actually is a place in time when our mind, body and soul are in sync with one another. Because when that happens, we are at our happiest, we are full of vibrant energy and we radiate the kind of glow which even diamonds cannot.

The most primitive example of heaven is the act of sex. We feel true bliss after we orgasm. Ever wondered why? Because that is when our mind, body and soul are in unison with one another. It is a momentary feeling but one which we all enjoy and have or will experience at some point in our life.

Some of you may take offence to the fact that a pious concept like heaven is being compared to something as taboo as sex. To all those who are thinking this way, let me ask you- is it wrong to worship something that is the very core of the life process? All religions worship life in some form or another. However, most of us do not know that we are actually worshipping it. I would digress from the subject a wee bit here and quote a situation that would help me put my point across about life a little more clearly.

Being a Hindu, I asked my mother the other day if she understood the meaning of Shiv Lingam. The answer was an emphatic yes but sadly, the explanation was totally off the mark. What she took Shiv Lingam to be was some kind of force which could give us prosperity in life. But actually, if you look closely at it, you would notice that Shiv Lingam is actually the penis standing atop the female reproductory organ. Maybe my mother knew it or maybe she did not, but the fact that we worship Shiv Lingam is proof enough that we worship the giver of life.

Of course, the fanatics out there would be after my blood if I argued with them that when the Hindu ladies and men alike rub the Shiv Lingam with water, milk etc. to please the Lord, why is our society so demeaning about the act of sex?

Coming back to the concept of heaven, sex gives us a momentary feeling of being in heaven, of total bliss. But that does not mean that we can get that heavenly feeling for a split second only. In fact, we can reside in heaven all our life without giving up on any material pleasures of the world.

All we need to do is get our mind, body and soul in sync with one another. And that can happen only when we live in the moment, do what we like and stop worrying about the future. Once we start living life in the present without getting stuck in the past or the future, we would start living in the heaven that has so often been described by authors and religious teachers.

So let us stop waiting for our death as an excuse to go to heaven, because that way, we never will. Let us create our heaven in this very world, because that is what we were meant to do.