https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=auURIaX0sk8
So Leon says, I recently watched your video on heaven as a response to Sam Harris. When you spoke about how some figures become principals, etc. and I was left wondering if you could explain, expand your view on eternal life. You would just join to the principal or principality body of Christ, I assume. How do you think about this? So there is a difference between going to heaven and the resurrection of the body, let’s say. These things are not the same. Going into heaven is, I really do think it is this ascension. It’s this ascension into a participation, into the counsel of God. It’s the capacity that humans have been given to become like angels and to be a part of the great chain of being that links God to the world. Now, in that sense, we do have to become a part of the body of Christ. We are a member of the body of the Messiah. We are a member of the body of the anointed one. A member of the body of the one who unites heaven and earth. And we are anchored to the place, to the cross. We are anchored to the place where heaven and earth were joined together. And so all those things are some ways to kind of understand. We must be part of the kingdom of heaven. We have to be under the rule of heaven and participate in its… and ascend into heaven by becoming, let’s say, lower rungs in the kingdom… not lower rungs, but like, levels of principalities in the kingdom of heaven. So that’s what I think that is. Now, the notion of eternal life, at least when Christ talks about eternal life, he seems to talk about something like the fullness of life. Like a life which springs completely, like a life which is full and is not limited. It’s not limited by time, it’s not limited by space. A life which is complete, you could say. So I think that that’s probably the best way that I would understand eternal life. And the idea is that you don’t get eternal life after you die. You get eternal life… you have access to eternal life now. You have access to the kingdom of heaven now. And these are things that Jesus says himself. Like, I’m not making this up. But there’s a manner in which, in the fullness of things, when all is revealed and all is gathered together in the end, then we will also experience the fullness of that. But that’s as close as I get to giving you an explanation. If you want me to give you a mechanical, physical explanation of what that will be, or what that is in terms of what happens to you after you die, I think the images that the church uses in terms of understanding the idea of a judgment after you die is a really great way to understand it. I do believe there seems to be… I think there seems, at least in my understanding, this is speculation on my part, but I think there is almost like an identity between personal judgment and cosmic judgment, that your end is the end. When you die, it corresponds to the end of all things. And so there isn’t this sense… Because people always ask, like, okay, so if the saints are dead and Christ has not returned, and we haven’t reached the fullness of things, the Pleroma or whatever, then how is it that we can pray to them? Are they already in the kingdom? What is going on? And I think that if we understand that all ends coincide, that the end of each thing culminates into the end of all things, then it’s not as bothersome. You could say that they are answering your prayers from the kingdom. They’re answering your prayers from the eschaton. Because in a way the eschaton is… the end of things is always there, hidden, you could say, in the world. It’s not just something that’s happening in the future.