Where Is Heaven? Not a Place?

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Hope1960

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I’m the OP of the other thread on multiverses and other dimensions, inspired by the book, Imagine Heaven.

Let’s approach this from another angle. In that thread I asked where Heaven is. I just read this article where Fr. Just agrees with JPII, saying Catholic teaching is that Heaven in not a place but a state of being.

Anyone care to explain how Jesus, Mary and maybe Enoch and Elijah, (who aren’t glorified) can “be” there?
 
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What could be meant by " a state of being"? A state of consciousness? A vibration? A level of reality?

Can we have heaven within us even now in this world?
Is it part of who we are?

Not a place but a realm of experience. Something non physical, a quality of existence?
 
Shakuhachi said:
What could be meant by " a state of being"?
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I have no idea. I hope someone does. In Imagine Heaven, the author (non-Catholic) suggested Heaven
might be in another dimension, but that didn’t go over well with some posters and I don’t know for certain if the Church allows us to believe that or not.
 
Hope1960 said:
Anyone care to explain how Jesus, Mary and maybe Enoch and Elijah, (who aren’t glorified) can “be” there?
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Elijah and Enoch are in Paradise which I assumed to be Eden. They haven’t died yet and are awaiting the final confrontation with the Antichrist.
 
You mean how they can “be” with God? They just are. In other words: they exist with God in eternity.

Explaining things that are out of our existential experience is difficult because we have no experience of it.

For me, a good way of approaching the question is to consider the difference between “classical” physics and “quantum” physics. They are both completely different models of the Universe and not at all compatible (although, physics are working to unify the two). Our living perceptual concepts of existence, place, time, etc have no equivalent in the spiritual domain, so we resort to imperfect analogies and metaphors.

As far as I understand Judaism, Heaven is exclusively the abode of God. For humans he created Paradise (or Gan Eden) – which is distinct from Heaven. In Christianity, we seem to consider the two equivalent.

One Jewish legend (Lurian Kabbalah - Zohar) goes something like this:
When it arose within the Infinite to create Something from Nothing, the Infinite withdrew and concealed itself from a point, thereby forming a central, metaphysical void. It is in this void that the Primordial Man, Adam, and all the countless Worlds emerge.
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In other words: God alone existed, one, eternal, unchanging, occupying all of eternity. He withdrew himself from part of eternity to allow for creation. Since Creation is imperfect it is our duty to restore it to its original state of harmony and perfection.

While these topics are fun to ponder, we need to heed the advice of the Council of Trent:
“Let the more difficult and subtle questions, and those which tend not to edification (1 Tim 1:4), and from which for the most part there is no increase of piety, be excluded from popular discourses before the uneducated multitude.”
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The 1980 Russian Orthodox Synod advises:
“In the deliberations on life after death one must in general keep in mind that it has not pleased the Lord to reveal to us very much … To add conjectures to the little that the Lord has been pleased to reveal to us is not beneficial to our salvation, and all disputes in this domain are detrimental.”
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And the Jewish mishna hagiga 11b advises:
“Whoever looks at four matters, it would have been better for him if he had never entered the world: What is above and what is below, what was before and what will be after.”
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During apparitions of Mary she always flown above.
When Padre pio spoke about heaven he pointed above.
 
When we are in heaven we won’t be in a physical place. The Bible says that heaven is nothing like Earth. Our best speculation suggests that when we are in heaven we are unified with the God and enjoy the beatific vision, agility, etc.
 
Heaven is not a place, in that if we had a map of the entire physical universe, we could not point to Heaven’s location. We conceive of it as metaphorically “above,” and so Jesus’ ascension and the later apparitions mentioned by others make use of that, but Heaven is not literally in the sky or in space.

“Another dimension” is probably closer, but I can see reasons for being wary of that, as even if one day our descendants become so advanced that they can explore and map the multiverse, I doubt they will find Heaven or Hell.

Heaven, in its essence, is the Beatific Vision, the direct experience of God’s unveiled presence. You could have that while standing on Earth, as Jesus did throughout his earthly life, or while carrying out God’s will across the universe, as the angels do. That’s what “state of being” is getting at — it’s more a transformation of how you experience reality than a mere transportation to another place.

It does appear that the Heaven in which our glorified post-resurrection bodies will exist (and Jesus’ and Mary’s already do) must have some qualities of a physical place, but it’s not the sort of place you can travel to physically from here.
 
Hope1960 said:
Anyone care to explain how Jesus, Mary and maybe Enoch and Elijah, (who aren’t glorified) can “be” there?
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So, hold on: by your own (subsequent) post, you’re saying that Enoch and Elijah aren’t “in heaven”, so to speak. Therefore, the only glorified bodies in heaven are Jesus’ and Mary’s. What’s the problem with that, then?
 
What Fr. Ryland is suggesting flies in the face of credible sources. His opinion doesn’t equal fact.

Ecclesiasticus 44:16 (Douay-Rheims)

Henoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise, that he may give repentance to the nations.

Malachi 4:5

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.

St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, Liber 4, Cap. 30

The disciples of the Apostles say that they (Enoch and Elijah) whose living bodies were taken up from the earth, have been placed in an earthly paradise, where they will remain until the end of the world.

Summa Theologica, iii, Q. xlix, art. 5

Elijah was raised into the aerial, not the empyrean heaven, which is the abode of the Saints, and in like manner Enoch was carried away to a terrestrial paradise, where he and Elijah, it is believed, will live together until the coming of the Antichrist.

St. Robert Bellarmine, Liber Tertius, P. 434

Enoch and Elijah… live even now and shall live until they come to oppose Antichrist himself, and to preserve the elect in the faith of Christ, and in the end shall convert the Jews, and it is certain that this has not yet been fulfilled.
 
in slavish and indian worlds used word as “Бог” or “God”, that covers idea “about highest type” but this words also cover idea “nothine else, then spirit”, that lead at mistaces in conclusions. This words used for sarcasms that “god is spagetti monster, and atheists have physical body with pleasures.”.

But is more correct for me use “ELohi” or others words where idea superior beign translated correctly, even with possiblity of Gods much more better then mortal physical Body, even as phycisal crystals or orher like in Revelation ch4…
 
Gorgias said:
So, hold on: by your own (subsequent) post, you’re saying that Enoch and Elijah aren’t “in heaven”, so to speak. Therefore, the only glorified bodies in heaven are Jesus’ and Mary’s. What’s the problem with that, then?
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Personally, I agree with the late Fr. Ryland, and believe Enoch and Elijah died.
As far as Jesus and Mary, their bodies have to be somewhere, unless it’s different for glorified bodies.
 
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Cruciferi said:
What Fr. Ryland is suggesting flies in the face of credible sources. His opinion doesn’t equal fact.

Ecclesiasticus 44:16 (Douay-Rheims)

Henoch pleased God, and was translated into paradise, that he may give repentance to the nations.

Malachi 4:5

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.

St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, Liber 4, Cap. 30

The disciples of the Apostles say that they (Enoch and Elijah) whose living bodies were taken up from the earth, have been placed in an earthly paradise, where they will remain until the end of the world.

Summa Theologica, iii, Q. xlix, art. 5

Elijah was raised into the aerial, not the empyrean heaven, which is the abode of the Saints, and in like manner Enoch was carried away to a terrestrial paradise, where he and Elijah, it is believed, will live together until the coming of the Antichrist.

St. Robert Bellarmine, Liber Tertius, P. 434

Enoch and Elijah… live even now and shall live until they come to oppose Antichrist himself, and to preserve the elect in the faith of Christ, and in the end shall convert the Jews, and it is certain that this has not yet been fulfilled.
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Ok, assuming you’re right, and I disagree, how can they still be alive if they’re not glorified, and how is it they can’t be found?
 
Spiritual spaces are a dimension of spiritual substances. The Trinity of Persons are consubstantial. A spiritual dimension exclusive to them. Same with heaven. To enter, a likeness in substance is necessary.
 
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Human beings trying to understand divine matters. Maybe we should just let God worry about this one.
 
Benadam said:
Spiritual spaces are a dimension of spiritual substances. The Trinity of Persons are consubstantial. A spiritual dimension exclusive to them. Same with heaven. To enter, a likeness in substance is necessary.
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Benadam, are you Catholic?
 
Benadam said:
Yup I believe what the Catholic Church teaches. All of it.
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Ok, and you said that spiritual spaces are a DIMENSION of spiritual substances. That goes with what Ive been saying all along, here and on my other thread, that Heaven is in another dimension.
 
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They’ve been translated or relocated to another area not directly connected with the Earth, namely Eden or Paradise. Adam and Eve were kicked out of Paradise; however, there’s nothing preventing God from allowing two GREAT men reentry.

This possibility shouldn’t be surprising. Scientists have proposed the existence of pocket universes, extra dimensions, and mirror worlds.
 
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