“Heaven is here … Heaven is now.”
German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann, in her book Putting Away Childish Things (1994), explains: “With its teaching on Hell, the Church has stood Christ’s teaching on its head. It has turned his good news into bad news, turned a God of love into a God of cruelty.”[i]
We’re reminded of Dante’s Inferno (14th century). His journey through hell had nine circles of torment: limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, treachery. Hell was the realm “of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen.” [ii]
In Simple Reality “hell” is merely the behavior of our false self run amok. In fact, we create our own “hell” here on earth, we aren’t sent to a place of torment after death. And further, “heaven” is a manifestation of our True Self. We create heaven here on earth, not a palace of gold somewhere in the sky that we might enter after death if we’re lucky.
One fundamental teaching of Jesus was that the Kingdom of God (Heaven) is within. “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21 KJV
Insight # 43 comes to us from A Course in Miracles, a unique spiritual self-study program. Author Helen Schucman (1909-1981) claims the entire Course was dictated to her by an “inner voice” which identified itself to her as Jesus of Nazareth.
“Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time.”[iii]
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Additional Reading:
- Heaven and Hell, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
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[i] Ranke-Heinemann. Uta. Putting Away Childish Things. New York: Harper/Collins, 1994, p. 239-247.
[ii] John Ciardi, The Divine Comedy, Introduction by Archibald T. MacAllister, p. 14.
[iii] A Course in Miracles © Volume Three: Manual For Teachers (Farmingdale, New York: Coleman Graphics), published in 1975, by the Foundation for Inner Peace, Mill Valley, CA, p. 58.
