The Divine Universe

The Jewish patriarch, Jacob, had a dream in which he saw a ladder from earth to heaven. Jesus enigmatically identified the ladder as “the son of man”. Those are strange stories, but they seem to be related to what follows.

I don’t think of heaven as up there, nor do I see it as a destination only for those who have died. I see it as a state of existence in the cosmic environment that is harmonious, serene, beautiful and joyful. But it seems that reaching this state entails a slow and arduous upward climb.

I do not think humankind has the wisdom or the will to reach heaven in a hurry, but I think much of the wisdom is deposited with us in the example of holy and heroic men and women and the teachings of the sages.

I say they were heroic because, almost without exception, the prophets and saints have shown great fortitude in the face of hostility and persecution. Most of them lived in danger and many of them died for their convictions.

Their enemies were often not consciously wicked people. Some were people in power who were exercising a prudent concern to maintain the stability and the accepted values of their society. Sometimes they were protecting a religious tradition against a prophetic demand for reform that seemed to them like heresy. They feared change.

The saints and sages are people ahead of their time, living in a world that is, to quote an Anglican theologian, “even now, but not yet”. Jesus of Nazareth is a prime example. He was executed for subversion on the orders of the Roman consul, and he was also convicted of blasphemy by the Jewish religious authorities. The world was not ready for him. It still isn’t.

Jesus referred often to the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, and in his parables heaven is here, not up there. He focuses on familiar happenings and people, but they are idealised or given a twist that offers a glimpse of the kingdom. The parables do not point away from this world; they point to our world transformed. Relationships are harmonious, just, kind, generous, forgiving and open. There is no violence, no deceit, no exploitation or domination of one by another. It is not the world we know, but it is not anywhere else either. It is this world as most of us wish it was.

Many people hope that they will enter such a world after they die. We have stories told by people who believe they have glimpsed such a perfect world in a mystical revelation or a near-death experience. Saint Paul is the best-known example. I don’t wish to discount such experiences, but I am not sure that most of us would settle in easily to such a perfect environment. We are habituated to our perverted and dysfunctional way of relating and doing things. We might feel painfully out of place and embarrassed. I think we need training to appreciate heaven and fit in.

Ours is an individualistic, competitive, cynical and often cruel world. The formal education of our children consists largely of equipping them to compete successfully so they will win and others lose. Educationists also claim to “build character”, especially through sport. This often means making our children insensitive enough and smart enough to handle the stresses and hurts of life as we live it.

The sages do not require that we be winners; they do not suggest that happiness lies along that path. All our lives are marked by tragedies and failures, but sages see these as steps upward rather than downward on the stairway to heaven. The saints’ resilience and fortitude does not come from cultivated insensitivity, but from a very profound optimism about the meaning and purpose of life. They climb the stairway, not as a means to some kind of superiority, but because they see a radiant light and hear beautiful music from there. They see the personal traumas, tragedies and failures they endure as steps in a struggle towards that ‘strange attractor’, to borrow a mathematical term.

Everyone, I think, has experience of love in some way; everyone feels affection and is kind from time to time. But when the individual is the first priority – my self-realization, my enjoyment, my comfort and security, my pleasure - kindness becomes a rare commodity. Changing that is a daunting task.

No one, as far as I know, has detected any natural physical feature of our bodies and brains that might drive such an endeavour. Yet there is, deep within, a longing to be a nobler, happier and more serene person. There is also a fundamental love instinct that is more than just a biological mechanism to promote genetic proliferation.

Richard Dawkins wrote famously about “The Selfish Gene”. Successful evolution requires random mutations of our genetic code. But adaptation, which is the key to successful evolution, depends to a great extent on relational harmony and co-operation. If genetics really is the key, I suggest that we must also have an “unselfish gene”, or at least a “wisdom gene” that enables us to see the positive value of kindness and co-operation, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything that could be called a society of any kind.

Evolution involves physiological changes, but behavioural change is also significant. Human evolution at least involves the deliberate, conscious cultivation of behaviour that enhances social adaptation. But, like all evolutionary phenomena, it is not a purely individual thing; it is part of the total environment. It is not just something that heroic and holy human individuals do; it is something the universe is doing; it is a cosmic phenomenon. It is something to do with the divine nature of the universe that we are part of. It is as though there were a kind of ‘divine discontent’ that urges the cosmos, including all of us, toward ultimate perfection.

The stairway to heaven is a metaphor, but it represents a reality that exists in dimensions we have not yet found measurements for, so it is outside the realm of science. But some who have not been concerned to put numbers to its height and breadth have discovered and climbed it.