Is Heaven Real?

An article on thedailybeast.com caught my eye today, titled: “Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife” and it was very compelling. Many alchemical woodcut drawings from the 1700’s – 1800’s depict a sky opening and leading up to a place; or a land of light. In William Henry’s book, The Secret of Sion, discusses the existence of a land of light that’s been termed “heaven” in Christian terminology. The doctor may indeed have discovered something truly profound. As one commenter said that what this experience does prove that the doctor has experienced a realm of consciousness that exists outside of the brain – as the bacteria that infected the part that created conscious reality was ultimately inactive, this meant there there is a realm of consciousness interacting with reality. Is this heavenly destination the very same place that is depicted in these alchemical drawings? The skeptic may point out that the alchemical drawings were drenched in symbolism and the alchemical knowledge was actually stored in the images but conveyed in symbolism. Quoting the doctor he describes beings he saw while at this heaven-like place, Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer-like lines behind them. Depicted in the alchemical image to the left there is a dove at the center top of the image according to Henry a Dove has a cosmic meaning, If we think of John instructing Jesus in some form of stellar knowledge it opens us to the possibility that he was infusing Jesus’ consciousness with the light of certain stars or star systems. In particular, following the flight of the dove will lead us to the Mother Star, Sion. “ Earlier in the chapter Henry states, …Before the cross gained prominence in the fourth century, the second-century church father Clement of Alexandria urged early Christians to use the dove or a fish as a symbol to identify themselves and each other as followers of Jesus. In the alchemical image to the left the dove here may in fact be the cosmic meaning and embodiment of stellar knowledge and thus the center of Sion; the land of light – or heaven. At one point in his book Henry states, For the awakened Gnostic, Christ is a being of light and the Christ narrative is an allegory of a universal internal spiritual experience, the Way of Light.[…] This is the ancient spiritual journey of the Wayshower, Jesus demonstrated. We follow (and will complete) this light path both individually and as a species… The doctor further in the article anaylizes  his experience by saying, Before my experience these ideas were abstractions. Today they are realities. Not only is the universe defined by unity, it is also—I now know—defined by love. The universe as I experienced it in my coma is—I have come to see with both shock and joy—the same one that both Einstein and Jesus were speaking of in their (very) different ways. No matter what way you look at it, in the end it seems we all will be bathed in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty!

 

I think I may have found my next book too – Proof of Heaven; Eben Alexander – after I finish reading Tuning the Diamonds.