Excerpt, "Awkward Truths: Beyond the dogmas of Science, Religion and New-Age Philosophies"
© Stephen Pirie, 2004
For the last couple of years, thousand, it’s been customary to believe that if we are perfectly nice to each other, we’ll end up in Heaven when we die.
Heaven, by all accounts, is a place for nice dead people and is presumably decked out with lots of nice things. We can be quite certain that it’s also scarce of bad people who would disagree, argue or fight with us – that it’s a perfectly peaceful place. After all, the dearly departed destined for “up there” are always directed to “rest in peace,” not “may you argue and fight till the cows come home.”
So we might expect that a bliss-filled after-life, at least for those who are sufficiently nice, is perfectly peaceful, harmonious, agreeable and good.
We can also expect that we’d be perfectly relaxed, without a hint of being upset or shocked. Being perfectly relaxed, with ne’r a bip or a bump on our flat-line, we’d not want, or be allowed any excitement... or surprise, as anything remotely interesting, stimulating, arousing or surprising would disturb some of our perfectly relaxed blissful peace and quiet.
No surprises pretty much puts the kibosh on entertainment, as entertainment is usually about surprise – stuff we haven’t seen, heard or known before. No surprises and no entertainment would put the dampers on having the occasional laugh.
So, no laughing.
Come to think of it, no surprises and no laughing would rule out humour, or at least any jokes worth telling, as any really good (naughty) jokes would most certainly upset or offend some of those perfectly peaceful, bliss-filled folk.
Being perfectly harmonious definitely rules out disharmony, so ornery individuals wanting to disagree or argue would be asked to leave, perfectly politely, you understand. So no characters, individuals or anyone called “Lucifer.”
Yes, we’re all individuals, except in Heaven. Not to mention Nirvana, where we get to live in perfect bliss-filled “oneness,” devoid of any troublesome, disagreeable types who just don’t know when to shut up. That means NO TALKING, not even a bit of delicious gossip about poor old Martha and Fred over yonder. We couldn’t even shhhh anyone... as that would disrupt the pristine silence of the place.
No disharmony means no pet animals, at least not any cats, dogs or any other fluffy cute carnivores – just ask the next mouse as it is chased and killed by the family cat if life is perfectly harmonious.
Whoops, that means only vegetarians could get into Heaven... in addition to which they’d all be virgins, since sex, and anything else remotely noisy, stimulating, rousing, messy or exciting would, as mentioned earlier, seriously disturb some of God’s perfect bliss-filled peace and quiet.
So, we can expect that Heaven (and Nirvana) is filled with perfectly agreeable, silent, peaceful, tidy, harmonious vegetarians, who never laugh, have sex, joke, mess about, or show any character or individuality.
Hell.
