And he was afraid, and said, “How dreadful is this place!

And this is the gate of Heaven.”

GENESIS 28:17

Everywhere you look there is evidence of mankind’s yearning for Heaven. In every culture and throughout every epoch, humans have painted the celestial realms, have written about Paradise and have talked about the concept of a Utopia, a Heaven on earth, and a Garden of Eden, a place of “Earthly delights”.

From the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome and Egypt to the world of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the “reality” of Paradise has exerted fascination. Even today, in a current global climate focused aggressively on the material, Heaven, it would seem, has once again become a popular subject among many of those disillusioned with contemporary living.

There are some who say Heaven is a real place, a reward for having lived a good life on earth. To reach Heaven, you must abide by specific rules. For others, Heaven is a state of mind, while there are those who believe passionately, as author Eckhart Tolle does, that Heaven begins right here on Earth. By striving to make this world a better place, they argue, we can create Heaven in the here and now.

Heavenly questions

Despite the current celestial debate, or maybe even because of it, time-old questions continue to rise to the surface: Where is Heaven and what exactly does Heaven mean?

Ancient burial sites are evidence that people have tried many different ways of reaching Heaven. The pyramids of Egypt are testament to this. Their sloping sides were designed as staircases to the skies, enabling the soul of the dead Pharaoh, complete with all his earthly possessions, to join the sun god, Ra. In ancient Greece, the dead were buried with coins in their mouths to pay Charon, the ferryman, to take them across the River Styx to the underworld, where their souls had to make a moral choice: Heaven and eternal life, or the easier path to Hell. In some parts of Europe, the dead person was buried with his boots on so he could safely cross the Whinnymuir, a mythical place covered with prickly brambles and thorn bushes that led to a bridge to Heaven.

As heaven is the dwelling place of God and the blessed, many people believe that heaven is everywhere — just as God is everywhere. In general, however, most theologians agree there is a special and glorious abode where the blessed have their particular home and where they usually abide, despite being able to roam about this earthly world freely.

At the end of the world, it has been said that earth, together with the celestial bodies, will be gloriously transformed into a part of the dwelling place of the blessed and that God will “pitch his tent among his people”, wiping away all tears as a new heaven and a new earth come into being. “There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21: 4).

However, it seems, there is more than one Heaven.

According to the mystical Jewish teaching, the Kabbalah, there are in fact seven heavens, though sometimes these are seen as “curtains” or “veils” separating the different levels of reality.