My busted headlight thankfully doesn’t require a new plastic shield. I do need to figure out how to remove it so I can glue a chunk back on, but last night I replaced the broken bulb, thanks to Lo-Lo. I’ve been assuming that Halogen meant a Hg-vapor light. For years I have thought this. I hate the mercury vapor headlamps on cars, they blind me. So when I bought a new bulb last night I was appalled that there were only Halogen bulbs. Thankfully they were still tungsten filaments.
Now that is out of the way.
I’ve talked to a few people about what might happen after death lately. So I figured I’d set down my own thoughts on the subject. I hesitate to call it an afterlife, mostly because I think the word ‘life’ might not mean then what it means now. So I’ll call it afterthis to please myself. I don’t think of heaven and hell as the separate places or even as places at all. I almost want to say I see afterthis as a progression to a higher state of comprehension. I don’t think afterthis is corporeal at all. For me it might exist solely soully. I do think that the way we live our lives will determine the quality of the afterthis. An oversimplified analogy is that if a mouse is evil in its life it goes to mouse hell when it dies and is chased by cats all day, but a saintly cat dies and goes to cat heaven where it chases mice. They could be the same place.
Now for a soul it would be a bit different. The quality of life that a person lives determines the amount of their comprehension and wisdom afterthis. So a bad person wouldn’t be much different in afterthis than that person was in life. A good person would know more, perhaps be more at one with the stuff of itself and the stuff of creation, be more one with God. This fits easily into the ‘choosing evil is choosing not-God choosing good is choosing God’ scenario. For me all of the thoughts of hell as a place of literal burning torment and heaven as feasting is more symbolic than anything. For me, the burning torment of a hell would be a continuing sense of lack of love lack of understanding. Heaven would be a feast of knowledge and a feeling of fullness and joy that complete understanding and oneness would bring.
Where the idea of the resurrection of the body fits in, I am not sure. I hesitate to think that it is literal. Perhaps it is something that can only be thought about with any certitude in the afterthis. More expansion on literalality in the coming days.
My idea of heaven, aside from the whole knoweldege, love thing, wouldn’t be heaven for too many. My idea of heaven is a giant cosmic tape recorder. I’d be able to go anywhere in history and be there, in spirit. I would be able to stop time and walk around and view the great battles, speaches, events in history. I wouldn’t actually be there, but walk about as a spirit. Through this I would come to a greater understanding of the universe and humanity. To think that I could walk with Jesus, or see Noah build his ark. You could listen to Plato, or Mozart. Of course along with this would come the understanding of all languages. You could find out if humanity was alone in the cosmos, and if not, you could visit the history of other worlds. That is my idea of heaven, of course I’m an historian, so I think that’d be cool for me. I could see how it would be hell for others.
a catholic priest told me that you do not come back in a literal body. he used some other word for it, “glorified” or something.
maybe the afterthis is sort of disengagement from the universe, a being outside of it. and that could be where we reach full understanding. and the ‘glorified body’ of the resurrection is the reengagement of the soul with the universe?
hehe, i sound quacky.
I don’t think I have ever wondered what heaven was like. Sure when I was little I pictured harps and angels flying above my head. But now that I am older it’s something I have decided is beyond my comprehension. Like people that say things like “Well I think God wouldn’t want that” how the heck would I know what God would want? I can’t put myself in his head. He’s God! And it’s the same for trying to figure out what heaven is like. It’s too massive of a thing,way beyond the human understanding. I guess everyone has their ideas and theories,but no one really knows. And what I think about is not what heaven is LIKE but making sure I get there.