Hi guys… I have written a post in my other blog on whether there is such a thing as absolute evil. Do please read it 🙂 In this post, I am going to negate the concept of the eternal heaven or paradise. 

Take note of the term “eternal heaven”. I am not saying that heaven does not exist. Neither am I saying that heaven does exist. The existence of heaven is just a belief that a lot of people have, which cannot be confirmed unless we are dead. Provided that we have done enough good to even “see heaven”.

I am referring to the concept of an heaven which is eternal. Meaning permanent. Is there such a thing as eternal heaven?

How do we go about defining what is impermanent? If we know what is impermanent, then by the law of remainder, we will know what is not impermanent. Therefore, let’s look at how we can define what is impermanent. 

Something that is impermanent, is that which has a beginning and an end. Do you agree? It has a birth and a death. This laptop is impermanent. This blogger website is impermanent. Forget the laptop and the blogger website. This whole universe is impermanent! Because all these have a beginning and therefore an end too. Meaning, they are bound by time. 

These impermanent objects are also bound by space. If this laptop is not bound by space, then it can be at several places at the same time. Heck, it can be everywhere at the same moment in time! But it is not! This laptop is here on my desk. It occupies space. Therefore, it is bound by space. 

Therefore, everything that is impermanent is bound by time and space. It also has a name and form. Are you with me so far? So now, let’s look at our eternal heaven. The concept of heaven is a place where you go to after you are dead, or rather where your “spirit” goes to after the body is dead, and experience eternal happiness. We can observe two things from here:

1) Heaven is a place, a conception which is clearly bound by time and space if you think about it. Clearly, it has a name and a form. So the question arises, where is this heaven? Who created heaven? So before creating the heaven, where was the creator? The fact that heaven was created itself shows that there was a beginning for heaven -> immediately you can conclude that it is bound by time. Therefore, heaven is impermanent and thus there is NO such thing as an “eternal heaven”. If there is such a place called heaven, then it will be an impermanent experience.

2) Is happiness an experience or understanding? If it is an experience, then that happiness is impermanent. Because every experience begins somewhere and ends somewhere. No experience lasts forever. Therefore, you cannot “experience” eternal happiness. It is a state of understanding. (How you reach this state of understanding is not within the scope of this post.)

So now we know what is impermanent, what then is not impermanent? Take note that I did not use the term “permanent”. Something that is not bound by both time and space is not impermanent. Something which the impermanent “objects” depend upon. Something that is an independent reality. The Hindus call this independent reality Brahman.

This is a side-track. I did not mention two more definitions of what is impermanent. Anything that has an attribute attached to it, for example colour, quality, quantity, etc., is of an impermanent nature. Anything that has this attributes is subject to change. Therefore, anything that is changing is impermanent. 

Everything around us is changing. Just think about this. Appearances change. Technology changes. Ideologies change. EVERYTHING! 

But a change cannot be measured without a reference point. For example, how do you measure time? Time = Final – Initial. Right? You always measure something with a reference point, which will be your “Initial”. Similarly, by analogy, there should be a reference point to measure all this change around us! This reference point is what we call the Changeless entity. This Changeless entity is that which is not impermanent, not bound by time and space (meaning it is eternal and omnipresent), it is called Brahman.