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So Sam Harris recently did an interview that has been a little viral that has been going being shared clips all over the place and most people are sharing a part of the video where he talks about Trump and the Biden laptop and that’s not really what interests me so much I’m sure a lot of people will be commenting on that but there’s another little clip that is being shared in which Sam Harris says that he’s not going to make magical claims about a flying savior you know coming down from heaven and where is heaven exactly given that we have all these telescopes that are beaming back information from millions of years ago and so I was really surprised to see something like that I mean I thought that I thought that Sam Harris would have the generosity to address things at the highest level of criticizing but I reacted and said on Twitter well this is the one one of the most embarrassing things I’ve heard in a while but after I tweeted that I thought about it a little bit and I started to think that maybe I should be a little more generous to Sam Harris because there are people there are people that think that think heaven is something like what Sam he is suggesting it is and so I thought that it might be a good idea to maybe address what is heaven where is heaven what it is that we’re talking about when we were talking about this and also why maybe some people will have a more will tend towards a more literalist interpretation of that and why and what that could mean even that so let’s go this is Jonathan Peugeot welcome to the symbolic world so in order to understand what heaven and earth is you really have to be able to step into an ancient person’s perception you know you really have to be able to step back into an ancient cosmology and so you can tell me that ancient cosmologies are stupid that they’re ridiculous that they’re disproven you know then fine but you’re not going to be able to understand what they’re talking about so there is a way to enter into this perception and we can we can talk about it as you know recapturing a phenomenological point of view that is recapturing this experience of the world that we have as revealing being to us in the way that that martin heidegger talks about and if we do that then we can more easily recapture what it is that the ancients were talking about when they use the term heaven and earth and what we’ll realize is that these categories of heaven and earth they are universal in every culture sometimes they are personified as gods like uranus and gaia or in for example native traditions you’ll have father heaven mother earth you have it in a more abstract sometimes more philosophical way in Chinese theory you have yang and yen as heaven and earth and you see it again like I said in scripture at the beginning in Genesis 1 God creates heaven and earth now if you want to understand what heaven is you have to understand that it’s related to what it says right there at the outset God create heaven and earth the earth was empty and void was dark and empty and void and then from heaven comes things that help you see the world what comes at first it come there comes speech God speaks the world into existence God creates light light which makes you makes it possible for you to see things and then he creates hierarchies out of heaven and so it’s not that difficult to kind of understand what heaven is in terms of its highest meaning it’s from heaven comes that which makes it possible for identities to exist that is light comes down from heaven and and it you can’t see light but light makes it possible for you to see other things so you can’t see wind but wind is the animating thing that keeps you alive you can’t see wind but wind moves the trees and moves things around you invisibly and so what come what is heaven is something like the invisible hierarchy which underlies the world it is that’s why it’s speech that’s why it’s light that’s why it’s breath that’s why it’s spirit and so it is the invisible things that make other things move is the best way to maybe understand that and so a lot of materialists will say well you know we don’t believe in that stuff we we don’t believe in invisible we just we don’t believe in the invisible world the supernatural world right you a lot of materialists tend to call it but usually the reason why they struggle so much with the notion of supernatural because the imagine supernatural as something which just has a different like invisible substance I guess which is like the material world but is invisible and that is not at all what the ancients meant when they talked about the idea of the invisible world or the or or the world or heaven or spirit you know what they meant by it were things that were really invisible that is patterns meanings purposes math proportions all of these things are not visible that is you can have instantiations of them but they’re not visible as such so you can’t see a purpose a purpose is an invisible motor which makes things move you can’t see a pattern but you can see its instantiations in the world and so you know that that’s true that the pattern is exist in a different way than let’s say the thing in which you find it so take a take an apple for example you can recognize an apple and if the pattern was completely in that apple then you could recognize that this is also an apple and this and this and this so you couldn’t be able to see apples across many different instantiations of apples if there wasn’t a man in which the pattern of apple exists in a different in a different way and exists in a causal way it exists in a way that causes you causes things to bind together and exist as phenomena that you can recognize and so that is what heaven is and then earth is the potentiality it’s the visible world is the world of instantiation but it’s the world of the multiple whereas heaven is moving towards the one moving towards the purpose moving towards the reason for things you know the matter in which they kind of move into one that’s why heaven is often represented as a as a ladder right if the story of Jacob’s ladder you have a ladder going up and you have angels going up and down it can be represented as a tree as this hierarchy of structure going up or it could be recognized as you know it’s often instantiated as something like you know going up a mountain for example is a way to instantiate it’s not heaven itself of course a tree is in heaven and a mountain is in heaven but it’s like the it’s the the place on earth which can help you understand as much as possible what heaven is and so what’s interesting is that a lot of people will think that maybe we’re just like projecting back into these ancient ways of thinking of course the ancient people didn’t think that way they were just stupid and they were they were materialists like us but they weren’t I don’t know what to tell you you know and and some people started to have an intuition of this quite you know in the last late 20th century or mid 20th century going on you see that for example Martin Heidegger I’m gonna read a little text from you in his origin of the work of art he he realizes in reading Aristotle and reading the ancients and when they when they talk about earth they’re not talking about a planet they’re talking about this lower let’s say this quantity this potentiality of the world out of which phenomena arises and so he says what this word earth means here is far removed from the idea of a mass of matter and from the merely astronomical idea of a planet earth is that in which the arising of everything that arises is brought back as indeed the very thing that it is and sheltered in the things that arise the earth presences as the protecting one so the idea is that let’s say you can understand the earth as this matrix out of which phenomena arises but also in a certain way earth is that which protects so the phenomena is that which protects this these things keeps them together or also hold them let’s say in potentiality so that they come back up so I mean obviously he’s he’s definitely talking about something like a seed falling in the ground or you know seed falling on the ground and king being kept underground and then coming up using the earth to then arise out of it and then it will go back into the earth but this is this is not a materialist way of thinking it’s it’s it could be true of of anything right of any type of structure that arises out of potentiality that finds a structured form and then ultimately will go back into that potentiality because everything comes and goes nothing is is immortal everything has a time comes up and then goes back into potentiality and then comes back and then something else will come back up that will have a similar pattern not exactly the same and so Heidegger understood very well that when we talk about earth we’re not talking about this planet or the stuff that’s on the ground although we’ll see how it’s related he was that that that Aristotle was talking about this these two categories of of heaven and earth of that which is above that which is below this is something which was understood by ancients I could find many many examples but I want to read from you an example from Dante and so Dante does a very beautiful things um and so in the Paradiso in Canto 29 Beatrice who is guiding him up now these heavenly spheres and so this is when he’s reached the top he’s reached the prime mobile which if you think about the spheres of heaven as we experience them we have that these planets that cross the the the heavens and they have different levels so you know the highest one is Saturn the lowest one is the moon of course and then there are all these planetary these these these planets that go up and create like a ladder of a hierarchy so in in Dante’s story Dante will climb those spheres as a ladder of perfection and so as he goes up he will encounter souls that are more finer and finer that encompassing them more and more good until he reaches the very top and then he will be brought into the presence of God himself and so you can think oh my goodness like what a silly what a silly way of thinking right because I’d like to take Sam’s position like there’s satellites up there did they get in the way of Dante like did he knock himself on the satellites while he was going up the spheres but Dante is writing at an interesting time because he’s writing at a time where I think that he sensed that there was a deep change afoot and that let’s say the great medieval synthesis of of metaphysics and religion was coming to an end and that he almost had to warn his readers about not reading what he was saying in the wrong way because sometimes in the old text one of the reasons why they don’t interpret it for you because they take for granted that you’re not an idiot if you’re reading these texts and that you would understand it but I think Dante is is a little keen on on putting in a little more in there for you to understand and so and so what oh no now sorry I’m gonna read you first with something that that Beatrice tells him when he’s at the lowest here and he’s getting ready now to ascend these spheres and to encounter these souls and so Beatrice says so Beatrice explained to Dante right standing at this lowest level of the heavenly sphere he’s about to ascend the spheres and encounter these different purified souls souls that have reached more and more good more and more purpose more and more meaning as they are you know as they are higher up in the heavens and so so Beatrice says that these sold showed themselves here not because allotted this sphere has been to them but to give sign of the celestial which is least exalted at that lowest sphere of heaven to speak thus is adapted to your mind since only through the sense it apprehends what then it worthy makes of intellect on this account the scripture condescends unto your faculties and feats and hands to god attributes and means something else and holy church under an aspect of human gabriel and michael represent to you and him who made tobias whole again and so it’s saying the the souls the souls aren’t in these heavenly spheres my goodness are you an idiot like the souls don’t live in these planetary spheres but your experience of these fears they are the proper analogy and and and we are using this language of hierarchies of heavens that you are encountering as the proper way to help you understand the hierarchy of souls and the hierarchy of purified beings and of qualities that ascend up to the good and so it’s like you only we only first understand things through our senses and then those senses are refined experience of our senses is what helps us reach the abstract or helped us reach the more spiritual intuitions but it starts grounded in our our our most immediate encounters our our sensual experiences are the ground on which these more spiritual or even just abstract intuitions are built and this is something i think even a materialist should understand right and so then it says you know we represent these angels as having wings guys with wings but we know that that’s not what they are we we say god has hands and feet and god has a nose and everything but we’re not saying that god is a big physical being in the sky that has these attributes like no one no one that that that has a subtle understanding of these things would think that okay and so Beatrice is warning him not to fall into that trap and then she she so later now when we get to the top to the prime mobile then she does exactly what it is that i’ve been saying she does she links exactly the ancient philosophical categories like the ancient Aristotelian separation between act and potential with heaven and earth and so she says order was concreated and constructed in substances and summit of the world were those wherein the pure act was produced pure potentiality held the lowest part and midway bound potentiality with act such bond that it shall never be unbound so it says the world is is constructed in in these essences in these essences in these meanings these purposes these these these patterns that encompass more and more of the good and at the top is pure act and at the bottom earth is pure potentiality and in the middle of course she’s talking about the incarnation as the place in which man as the the one that gathers visible the visible into him but also gathers the invisible because man is the only one at least that we know of that is capable of abstract thought that is capable of of representing the good of of perceiving the good itself itself or perceiving the trail that leads up to the good itself and so man is that place where act you know and christ is the ultimate version of that where potentiality and act are bound in a way that she’ll never be unbound and so beatrice is joining the very basic metaphysical categories with heaven and earth in a way that would not have surprised anybody in the middle ages not at all like this would have been completely normal this is what heaven and earth are and so the question is why do we use these particular images and this is where you know i think it’s important to understand that the images are also not arbitrary so the fact that we talk about something which is above as being akin to heaven or helping us understand what heaven is is not something that could be replaced with anything because our experience of that which is above us is the best analogy that we can find in our senses to represent analogically the experience of something which is higher in terms of this pattern that these patterns of being that lay themselves out and so think about it just like in a in a in a simple experiment this is a this is an experiment that my brother mature thought of a long time ago and and it was just such a great insight that he had he said if you’re in a crowd of people and someone stands up in a chair what happens something happens all of a sudden everybody in that crowd can see that person the person that is above can see everybody in the crowd but the people in the crowd can’t see all of they can’t see all of each other they can only see the people that are just next to them and so moving up physically moving up in the world is moving from the multiple into the one it is having an experience which contains more quantity into a single vision and this is why in scripture it’s the same thing of why moses goes up a mountain to encounter god you know and try it like do it you can see it you know if you let’s say you lay down on the ground and look look around what do you see not much you’ll see some bunch of blades of grass you’ll see some maybe a few bugs if you’re lucky um but then stand up and start walking up a hill walking up a mountain and once you when you walk up the mountain what’s going to happen is that more and more quantity of information is going to be gathered into one it’s going to be gathered into that which binds it together if you reach the very top of the mountain then all of a sudden you have a perception of of this whole map and so you can have an experience of all of this space which is gathered into a single vision so you can understand that that is what moving up into heaven is it’s moving up from the quantity into the quality from the body into the purpose or into the head or into the thing which binds the body together and you can see it in any kind of phenomena that you want right if you’re if you’re i always use a sports team as an example but it’s a good example like if you’re in a sports team you know you have all the players and then you have the captain of the team or the the you know the captain of the team gives the the plan for the play and the body and the all the players will embody the different aspects of the plan but the plan comes from above the plan comes from the captain which stands above the other players and you know and if he wants to talk to all of them he actually will have to stand above he’ll have to either stand in front in a way where they can all see him he’s going to have to stand on a chair or he’s going to be in the middle where everybody can see him because he is the one giving the plan for the others so that they can now embody that plan in the world so you could say that fractally at a lower level at a microcosmic level the captain of the team ascends into heaven or ascends at least to the top of the mountain to to to receive the plan from heaven and then gives that plan to the team players and then the team players embody that plan in the actual play in the game and so that can that is a very good way for you to understand what heaven is and so when the bible or when you see in in scripture people ascend into heaven it it doesn’t it doesn’t mean the same thing as a lot of people seem to think it means it means that it means going up the hierarchy of principalities and becoming a cause or a light that shines light on multiple multiple things and so you can understand it like a you know like a king or a president or you know someone who who’s the the originator of a of a of something who’s the first one and so he kind of blaze the way and everybody kind of follows in in their their path that is a good way a good analogy to understand heaven and so you can understand that when we say that someone ascends into heaven it means that they move up this hierarchy of causality and they become like principles for the whole world and so the idea is like if you say something like Jesus is in heaven well of course Jesus is in heaven I mean Jesus is the cause of pretty much a very very large part of western civilization and so he is a print the principle that holds western civilization even as a secularist you would have to see that you would have to see that there are some figures rise up into heaven and then cause other people to to to follow in their wake or to to to look to them as lights and examples and patterns to follow and that of course in the in the christian sense has a very deep and profound meaning and it means that you can this is something that can actually happen that’s why we have patron saints that’s why you have patron saints of whole phenomenas of being and you have patron saints of places you name places after after beings that have in you could say ascended into heaven is the best way to describe that and so so the thing is that this is going to be maybe the most difficult part for people to understand is that the analogy of heaven that we understand is the proper analogy that is the actual physical experience of things that are above you is the best analogy for that and so that’s why it’s used to describe what’s what what the scripture is talking about now what’s going to happen is that not everybody will be capable of understanding act and potential not everybody is going to be able to understand the relationship between the invisible and the visible the relationship between the patterns the purpose and their instantiations and some people like your great aunt that barely went to school that maybe couldn’t read or you know wasn’t the smartest person in the world will have a very immediate vision of this and if you ask them they’ll probably not have thought about it and you’ll say something like yeah Jesus went up into heaven of course he went up like where else is he gonna go like he went up and and they haven’t thought about it it’s it’s intuitive they they haven’t worked it out and so but the problem is that in some ways it’s it’s not that big of a deal because their experience of that which is above them is the proper way to understand the spiritual hierarchies at the level at which they’re capable of understanding it now i will admit that in a world of satellites and a world of spaceships and of quasars and whatever this can be difficult because that great aunt of yours whose intuition about what is above is actually right on in terms of her experience of this hierarchy can be completely like their faith can be destroyed by someone pointing out to the fact that obviously Jesus is not hanging up there in the atmosphere like he’s not he’s not having to watch out for for the satellites that are coming by or you know maybe chatting with the people at the space station you know and that it’s true some people’s faith sadly can be could be crushed by that and so in a way maybe this is the time to be a little more to press a little more the the idea which you find in the agents which is that this is an image to help you understand the relationship between the invisible and the visible and it’s there in scripture already at the outset for example there are places in the bible where we say our father in heaven and we don’t flinch when we say that but we also know that there are places in heaven where it says the heaven of heavens cannot contain you and this is also the idea that the heaven of heavens that is the highest heaven the heaven which makes the heavens we see possible right where is that it’s not a place it’s not a place at least in the way that we think of it right it’s the it’s the the the place of places right it’s the cause of place itself or the cause of the or of the patterns behind the very pattern themselves and you see that the way of talking about god all the time we say he’s the king of kings he’s the lord of lords you know and we try to help you see that god is obviously not a king sitting on a throne in the atmosphere and throwing lightning bolts but understanding what a king is might be one of the best ways for you to understand how the authority of god works right understanding what a lord is understanding what like i said what heaven is is the best way to understand the manner in which the invisibles move the visible and so i hope this has been helpful and uh and that it helps you understand a little more what uh what uh heaven is and if you’re interested i wrote a series of articles almost 10 years ago now the first one is called uh most of the time the earth is flat uh and it kind of introduces this way of thinking the second of one is the second one is actually called where is heaven and i address and i use some of the quotes that i quoted today from dante from heidegger and uh from a few other people so if you’re interested in that please check it out and i will talk to you very soon