We find concepts of heaven realms and hell realms in endless cultures and mythologies. Even in Buddhism.

From my experience with the Astral plane, i think there are a lot of spaces "between the in-between"

Ayauascha shows us this too. It's all a spectrum, not a binary.

I don't feel there is a set end place. You live,learn, your physical body dies and you leave to exist in a self projected holographic version of your life for a while. Any serious addictions/vices or emotional issues you have created, you have to work through until your conciousness has been refined and purified enough to continue your travels where ever is best suited to your own karmic traces. I've encountered various souls like this on the astral plane....some very akin to the description of "hungry ghosts" with quite odd addictions/mental disorder, but then on the flip side i've encountered wise souls with an endless stream of compassion and love radiating from them.

Souls travel together and we have kin. So i think many souls just wait and hang around until the rest of their party are with them and then they move on/reincarnate in the same time frame.

Either way, where ever we go, we go there to learn and we never stop learning. The more we learn,the more we wish to be of service to others and raising conciousness levels and alleviating suffering where ever we go

beautifully said!
i mean if a realm like this one and hyperspace can exist, who knows what other realms there could be

I was raised in Christian religion and churches. I have since become more towards animism. Through using psychedelics, I now see a spirit in all living things. I believe that the body is just a vessel for the spirit.

When it comes to my beliefs on heaven and the afterlife I just find it hard to believe that the spirit would just end with the death of the body. The universe is full of infinite possibilities. I have always though of heaven, even when I was little, something reverted back to nature. Where we fully live in harmony with the universe.

I like to think that while all consciousness derived from a single point (for want of a better descriptor) that it is, by design, forever expanding to fill some also constantly expanding void.

There are apparently no constant absolutes. In this reflection of thought I feel there is no singular end point, just an ever blossoming fractal type of expansion.

Luke 17:20
20 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Well said Acacian. One thing is for sure, we will all find out what is and isn't after our last human breath. Id be willing to guess that the true nature of all things and reality are more complex than can be explained or described here and now so I dont spend a lot of time pondering these questions now like I used to.

One thought I did have while reading some of the newer replies is the remark that it seems un-natural to think we all just live in this world as people then everything goes black. Heaven is and can be used as an alternate explanation, the Judea Christian idea of heaven in-particular to me shares the same un-natural feeling. Just as it would seem like quite a waste to only live this one life and everything just ends, Its also equally a wast IMO to exist as a spirit in and eternal place such as heaven and never move on or progress. Its the same kind of thing.

If their is some type of destination our spirits or our consciousness go to Id like to envision it as a way station, like a layover at an airport as our consciousness waits, possibly reviews its past life before it embarks on being embodied once again is some other form and dimension.

This is one of those questions I like to put in the box. The box is full of all the questions man has struggled with since the beginning of time. Why am I here? Is there a God? What's the meaning of life? Etc. etc. etc.

I have no way of knowing one way or the other and I don't believe that knowing will improve my quality of life. So I tuck it away in the box. Sometimes I like to pick up the box, shake it a bit like a Christmas present, ponder what secrets it holds. Other times I try to open the box and I'll really dig into it, trying to find some answers. This leads me to frustration and sometimes even depression. At which point my wife will remind me that the box holds only questions and no answers of it's own.

So I'll put the box down and walk away.

Point being, for a long time I used to obsess over these questions, or more appropriately the possible answers to these questions. At some point I realized that my obsessive desire to use psychedelics to unearth the 'secrets of the universe' was adding to my unhappiness rather than helping me live a more balanced, happier life. Now I just try to take things as they come and not worry too much about the nature of the universe.

yeah I feel this too.. I feel on this journey we are all on - whatever it is - a huge part of its nature is growth.. and that we will always yearn to keep growing - and this will require changes of scenery so to say - otherwise we may fall into old patterns that we were intending to grow out of in the first place. I tend to think our journey never really ends and that there will always be new experiences for us to learn and develope ourselves from.. this is of course, me projecting my assumption that we keep some part of "us" when we die..anyways, I think people see the whole heaven thing a bit like enlightenment.. they see it as some end goal.. some final frontier - and forget that enlightenment is no end game - it is more a way of being.. a way of seeing or having seen that then is then integrated.. hard to call yourself enlightened if you don't bring it all home

A Korean Christian lady once told me this story of heaven and hell.

In hell, there is really terrific food for free everywhere, but everyone is starving because all the chopsticks are a meter long and you just can't reach your arms far enough away to get the food to your mouth.

Heaven is exactly like hell, great food, meter long chopsticks and all, however everyone is fed because they feed each-other.

Heaven, Hell.
They are subjective.
Words are insufficient.
They are concepts.

Both can be known as Eternal Life.
Varying in structure and emotional depth.

As previously stated, no.
There are no pearly gates.
However some may experience something of similar nature.

Everything continues.
Once through the experience of 'death' this becomes clear.
And as previously stated, this is where souls are born and recycled.
Also accepted/relieved of their three-dimensional duties.
This is however rare.

Try your best not to betray the path in front of you.
For it's not only you who will suffer for this action.
Your family may be splintered.
And your fate, sealed.

There is no burning lake of fire.
Only a burning feeling of regret.
For me at least.

E.S.O

^ I liked that, apart from the regret part.

Life is too infinite for regret in the grand scheme of things. a regret is a indication of a lesson that may have been learnt 'too' late, but perhaps the lesson was to learn of the lesson regardless of when and why.

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you"

Life exhales,
Death inhales,

The point between the two is the mystery we'll all come to embrace.

Our sacral chakra's (well, all of them )play a key part in our afterlife experiences. Most of the world resides within this sacral conciousness. The animistic part of us governed by desire and impulse of the senses.

The sacral is known as one's own abode and many people reside in their own 'abodes' after death...Like a self projected dream state but it tends to be stuck in a loop with a particular theme or reoccurring event. (sometimes this can be addiction/compulsive behabiour & thinking, or it can be the result of dying and the soul not even knowing it has passed over, or the trauma of it being too much to handle...) Once the psychological blockage has been transmuted, that looping scenario stops and we move further up to the corresponding levels of conciousness.

In my eyes, The goal is to try and die 'in' the eternal heart space, But death can be a surprise so we can't always direct when and how we go.

The level of conciousness we attain in this life time is the only train ticket we have for when we go. Where we go is all down to the culmination of our sub-concious ,concious, and super-conciousness.

Like in the Carlos castaneda books with Don Juan. Use Death as an adviser!

Rather than fear it or assume it's a mystery too mysterios to approach, assign it the characteristic of wisdom and knowledge of the mysteries that lay beyond it's opaque threshold. The language after death may be incomprehensible and untranslatable to the living, but instigating a non verbal dialogue with our own inevitable fate can be as fruitful as we dare to make it.

---

Other things worth mentioning;

Bardo

Bardo (Tib. བར་དོ་, Wyl. bar do; Skt. antarābhava) — commonly used to denote the intermediate state between death and rebirth, but in reality bardos are occurring continuously, throughout both life and death, and are junctures at which the possibility of liberation, or enlightenment, is heightened.

The different bardos can be categorized into four or six:
The Four Bardos


1 the natural bardo of this life (Skt. jatyantarābhava; Tib. རང་བཞིན་སྐྱེ་བའི་བར་དོ་; Wyl. rang bzhin skye ba'i bar do) which begins when a connection with a new birth is first made and continues until the conditions that will certainly lead to death become manifest.

2 the painful bardo of dying (Skt. mumūrṣāntarābhava; Tib. འཆི་ཁ་གནད་གཅོད་ཀྱི་བར་དོ་; Wyl. 'chi kha gnad gcod kyi bar do) which begins when these conditions manifest and continues until the 'inner respiration' ceases and the luminosity of the dharmakaya dawns.

3 the luminous bardo of dharmata (Skt. dharmatāntarābhava; Tib. ཆོས་ཉིད་འོད་གསལ་གྱི་བར་དོ་; Wyl. chos nyid 'od gsal gyi bar do) which lasts from the moment the dharmakaya luminosity dawns after death and continues until the visions of precious spontaneous perfection are complete.

4 the karmic bardo of becoming (Skt. bhāvāntarābhava; Tib. སྲིད་པ་ལས་ཀྱི་བར་དོ་; Wyl. srid pa las kyi bar do) which lasts from the moment the bardo body is created and continues until the connection with a new rebirth is made.

The Six Bardos

The four above with the addition of:

5. the bardo of meditation (Skt. samādhyantarābhava; Tib. བསམ་གཏན་གྱི་བར་དོ་, Wyl. bsam gtan gyi bar do)

6. the bardo of dreaming (Skt. svapanāntarābhava; Tib. རྨི་ལམ་གྱི་བར་དོ་, Wyl. rmi lam gyi bar do)

I really liked this and tried to find the original author on Google with no luck. I still shared it on facebook though and tagged it as an unknown author.

Thanks a lot for sharing

DTR, what you said is true.
But for me, regret will always be there.
With the addition of 'what could have been'.
I betrayed God. I know this. 'It' knows this.
My soul was transmuted from lover to thief.
The very make-up of my body and soul, altered forever.

In some cases, it's necessary to live with regret.
In this way you can prevent others from playing the fool.

You speak the truth.
But there are always variables.

E.S.O

to fathom hell
or soar angelic

you need a pinch
of psychedelic

is it though? maybe those mistakes you made will shape you in a positive way

If through some miracle the harm I brought to others disappears.
Then maybe. But at the moment I only live to make that possible.
Handing out demons like pieces of candy tend to add weight to life.

I just hope people don't betray their path.
It effects the universe.

E.S.O

\\

Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.

You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if

to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.

The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.

(Richard Siken)


Heaven is the visible world.

In my life experience I have seen that holding onto regret only serves itself to hold the person back from achieving the highest version of self. Regret serves no purpose to hold onto. I felt the burden of deep seeded regret and shame I held inside from childhood all the way into my late 30's but when I did the work and liberated myself from these self imposed prisons I felt I deserved and therefor must remain because there was no way to right this wrong. Since there was nothing I could do so I sentenced myself to a life of holding onto this regret.

Then I went to the forest and there I was shown everything in a new way. I saw that it made no difference to those I hurt whether I lived in suffering or not. It did not ease their pains, nor change the past. In the end all it did was add to the negativity and suffering of the collective world.

In that forest I left it all. I walked through the fire in a series of tortuous ceremonies and in the end saw the light so to speak. I did a wrong that there was no undoing, the only thing I could do was make the world better. By freeing myself from my self imposed prison through the hardest thing one can do. Forgive myself. I was then able to begin the task of becoming the man I wished to be. Liberated from this burden, although just the first step, was the most important because without it I could not progress,

Im not writing these words to change your mind. Its not my place nor really my intention. My intention is to say to anyone open and listening that you don't have to live with guilt just because it cant be rectified. It only holds you and humanity back from progressing in a positive loving direction. If these words do give you something to ponder great but im not trying to change you or anyone. Just expressing my own life experiences and how happy I am today compared to 18 months ago.

I would say that regret has been my biggest bugbear over the years and usually over the things i didn"t do rather than the things i did* (*Butthole Surfers). Although both have applied!
It"s good to learn from your mistakes but i see being eaten by regret as similar to driving while continually looking in the rear view mirrors. The best that you can hope for in this situation is that you won"t see where you are going and the lovely views, and the worst is that you might run into something, leading to more regrets and an endless self perpetuating cycle.
As for heaven existing, i really don"t know. What is real and not real seems to be very complicated. Perhaps we are already in heaven.