The Landscape of Reality – Is it Only Heaven, Hell, and Earth?

The Garden is Bigger and more Unified than we Think

Most Christians grow up with an understanding that the order of reality falls into three regions: Heaven, Hell, and Earth. All three regions are distinct and rarely interact. Each of them operates according to its own laws and practices and generally doesn’t have any effect on the others. Very occasionally, God in heaven might impact someone or something on Earth, if asked through prayer, but that is a hit or miss proposition. Sometimes the Devil in hell might also impact someone or something on Earth, just to stir up trouble, but that also is hit or miss. The larger vision is of conflict between Heaven and Hell where each use Earth as a proxy in their battle. Earth, of course, being the weak link, is understood to have no impact at all on the other two. It just suffers at the whims of whatever higher power chooses to pay attention.

This particular Christian landscape also imagines these three realms are somewhat sequential. In other words, human beings begin on Earth and then after death, depending on their behavior, move on to one of the other two realms. If you are “good” you go to Heaven where you will be happy for eternity. If you are “bad” you go to Hell where you will be tortured for eternity.

“And these [accursed] will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.” – Matthew 25:46

Now of course, there are many conflicting descriptions in scripture itself about what happens at the time of death, and the above quote is one of those which appears to support the above Landscape of Reality. But there are many alternate visions which don’t include two possible outcomes, but rather a single, universal destination for all people.

“The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” - Isaiah 52:10

“[Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets.” – Acts 3:21

But for those who buy into the above Landscape, the sequence model prevails. In addition, the battle between good and evil on Earth is seen as a reflection of the larger battle raging on the eternal stage between Heaven and Hell. Humans are simply understood as bit players in a larger drama, and we help ourselves if we align with the right side. And of course, belief in Jesus, and being “good,” will bring us to the right side. Then when we move to the next realm, we can be assured it will be the happy one.

In addition, in this view Earth and its inhabitants are portrayed as having little importance; we are virtually worthless. While God is profoundly angry with, and judging, all humanity most of the time.

The greatest challenge of this interpretation is the defining of God as a merciless and egotistical Deity, sending people ignorant of, or in denial of, God’s grandeur to be tortured for all eternity. Any human parent would show more mercy than this God, particularly a God who claims to be Love itself.

“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” – 1 John 4:8

However, when we listen to people who’ve had Near Death Experiences, they describe to us a very different sort of Landscape of Reality. In this Landscape there is only one realm, with an infinite number of dimensions to it, and all the parts impact all the other parts all the time. Our universe, in this Landscape, is simply one dimension among many. As we see in the letter to the Hebrews (in the original Greek), there are many universes.

“By faith we understand that the [universes] were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.” – Hebrews 11:3

At the beginning of the Bible we hear in the very first sentence that there are “heavens,” not the singular “heaven.”

“When God began to create the heavens and the earth.”

And Paul writes in Ephesians that there are many heavenly places, not just one.

“God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.” – Ephesians 1:20

The Earth realm is where the vibrational energy of God, of love, of consciousness, moves rather slowly, which is what separates it from the transcendent realms, the heavenly places. This lower vibration is what allows energy to take form as physical matter and to exist in this three-dimensional space.

Mystic and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once noted that “matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.”

All dimensions are connected and interacting with each other all the time. We are One. Reality is more of a spectrum rather than three clear cut realms.

“[There is] one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” – Ephesians 4:6

What happens in heaven or “hell” or any other reality affects our three-dimensional space/time existence. And surprisingly, what we do on earth impacts those in other realms. We are intimately connected. The intuition in our heart is the whisper of angels. Synchronicities are the universe nudging us along. Our prayer and meditation invite actions of the Divine. Our consciousness transcends the material world. Our souls touch God. Our anger sends ripples out into the cosmos while our joy causes the heavenly choirs to sing.

The veils between the realms are porous. Learning to “see,” be aware of, sense, inhabit, and engage with all the dimensions, while still living and operating out of time/space realm, is the ideal. Thus far only Jesus has fully achieved it.

That medieval rigid heaven/hell/earth landscape of reality is humanity’s attempt to codify and grasp that which is beyond space/time logic.

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All Scripture quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.