Posted 31 March 2012 - 06:50 PM
There are at least two perspectives on heaven, one has to do with the pleasure and pain of one or more individuals may feel in a certain context. Adam and Eve for instance were in heaven because they felt no pain, everything felt good to them. In this sense we were obviously "expelled" from paradise as soon as our parents stopped treating us like gods.
I don't find this perspective very interesting because even if one could achieve going back to that kind of heaven (all pleasure no pain) that wouldn't mean (to me) a more interesting life. It's like drugs, they may make you feel good, but nothing else gets better. When the effect passes you're just the same and everything else remains the same. Or a very rich guy, he may have lots of pleasure (girls, trips, adrenaline, etc) but although he may satisfy most of his immediate desires, he won't really grow up, at most he will grow old! In a sense, all this pleasure is a sore replacement for the development of vision and consciousness we could otherwise have (a much more interesting life).
There is another sense of paradise which has to do with the degree of beauty. A person, for instance, may sometimes be so amazingly beautiful that you may think: she belongs in (or comes from) Paradise! Now there are many kinds of beautiful things but, at least to me, the ones that articulate several kinds of beauty are even more beautiful. Complexity, harmony, diversity, are some of the things that add up to the beauty of the whole. So a world where there would be only music by the Black Eyed Peas would be quite beautiful (in my view at least), but a world where there would be music by the Black Eyed Peas and Mozart would be even more beautiful. You can see where this leads: millions of musicians, writers, hairdressers, lovers, ambitious people of all sorts, etc... then the whole gets even more beautiful.
So if you're seeing the world (the entire universe, in all possible dimensions) from the outside, and if you could see both the smallest detail and in the widest scope, then I think it would be very difficult not to see it as the most beautiful thing in existence. For one it contains all that is beautiful. Secondly all that is beautiful is articulated, it's part of a whole, it has a story, a sequence, ramifications, antecedents and consequents, a story to be told that connects all the dots. Thirdly there is all this diversity, from the very small to the very large, to every point in space and time, to all kinds of creatures, feelings, thoughts, etc. Just imagine, all the books would be there, all the tv shows and everything that lead to them, all the lies, all the sacrifices, all the attempts at truth, all the galaxies and planets, every drop of water. How could you say, seen in this perspective, that this wasn't the most beautiful object, by far, in Existence (in fact the All of Existence). I think even "Paradise" seems a shallow word in this context.
So I would have to say that, from an "outsider" perspective, we are living in a world far more beautiful than any Paradise we can imagine (that encompasses all of our imaginations and hopes). Of course, knowing that is of little practical use to us insiders. It won't reduce our pain, disease, disillusionment or other kinds of suffering or of those surrounding us. It may, however, get us in Love with Reality. It may make us want to know her better, be it in the form of another person, a star, an economy, a sea, a painting, a music, whatever. And, in fact, what better way is there to pass what moments we may have left, than by searching beauty, truth and love wherever we may find them?
, Please 
0
