heaven

• conceived as › 7 mansion worlds

15:7.5Je­ru­sem, the head­quar­ters of your lo­cal sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia, has its seven worlds of tran­si­tion cul­ture, each of which is en­cir­cled by seven satel­lites, among which are the seven man­sion worlds of mor­ontia de­ten­tion, man’s first post­mor­tal res­i­dence. As the term heaven has been used on Uran­tia, it has some­times meant these seven man­sion worlds, the first man­sion world be­ing de­nom­i­nated the first heaven, and so on to the sev­enth.

• conceived as › Jerusem

46:0.1Je­ru­sem, the head­quar­ters of Sa­ta­nia, is an av­er­age cap­i­tal of a lo­cal sys­tem, and aside from nu­mer­ous ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties oc­ca­sioned by the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion and the be­stowal of Mi­chael on Uran­tia, it is typ­i­cal of sim­i­lar spheres. Your lo­cal sys­tem has passed through some stormy ex­pe­ri­ences, but it is at pres­ent be­ing ad­min­is­tered most ef­fi­ciently, and as the ages pass, the re­sults of dishar­mony are be­ing slowly but surely erad­i­cated. Or­der and good will are be­ing re­stored, and the con­di­tions on Je­ru­sem are more and more ap­proach­ing the heav­enly sta­tus of your tra­di­tions, for the sys­tem head­quar­ters is truly the heaven vi­su­al­ized by the ma­jor­ity of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury re­li­gious be­liev­ers.

• conceived as › 1st mansion world by most prophets
• h. of heavens
• some wise men saw vision of

48:6.23You should con­sider the state­ment about “heaven” and the “heaven of heav­ens.” The heaven con­ceived by most of your proph­ets was the first of the man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tem. When the apos­tle spoke of be­ing “caught up to the third heaven,” he re­ferred to that ex­pe­ri­ence in which his Ad­juster was de­tached dur­ing sleep and in this un­usual state made a pro­jec­tion to the third of the seven man­sion worlds. Some of your wise men saw the vi­sion of the greater heaven, “the heaven of heav­ens,” of which the sev­en­fold man­sion world ex­pe­ri­ence was but the first; the sec­ond be­ing Je­ru­sem; the third, Eden­tia and its satel­lites; the fourth, Sal­ving­ton and the sur­round­ing ed­u­ca­tional spheres; the fifth, Uversa; the sixth, Ha­vona; and the sev­enth, Par­a­dise.

• also referred to as Great Beyond

63:6.6“O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily food, de­liver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our for­est en­e­mies, and with mercy re­ceive us into the Great Be­yond.”

63:6.7On­a­gar main­tained head­quar­ters on the north­ern shores of the an­cient Med­i­ter­ra­nean in the re­gion of the pres­ent Caspian Sea at a set­tle­ment called Oban, the tar­ry­ing place on the west­ward turn­ing of the travel trail lead­ing up north­ward from the Mes­o­po­ta­mian south­land. From Oban he sent out teach­ers to the re­mote set­tle­ments to spread his new doc­trines of one De­ity and his con­cept of the here­after, which he called the Great Be­yond. These emis­saries of On­a­gar were the world’s first mis­sion­ar­ies; they were also the first hu­man be­ings to cook meat, the first reg­u­larly to use fire in the prepa­ra­tion of food. They cooked flesh on the ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in the fire, but their de­scen­dants al­most en­tirely re­verted to the use of raw flesh.

• only the rich supposed to go direct to

69:5.12As civ­i­liza­tion de­vel­oped, men ac­quired new in­cen­tives for sav­ing; new wants were rapidly added to the orig­i­nal food hunger. Pov­erty be­came so ab­horred that only the rich were sup­posed to go di­rect to heaven when they died. Prop­erty be­came so highly val­ued that to give a pre­ten­tious feast would wipe a dis­honor from one’s name.

• conceived as › savages’ conceptions

86:4.7Early man en­ter­tained no ideas of hell or fu­ture pun­ish­ment. The sav­age looked upon the fu­ture life as just like this one, mi­nus all ill luck. Later on, a sep­a­rate des­tiny for good ghosts and bad ghosts—heaven and hell—was con­ceived. But since many prim­i­tive races be­lieved that man en­tered the next life just as he left this one, they did not rel­ish the idea of be­com­ing old and de­crepit. The aged much pre­ferred to be killed be­fore be­com­ing too in­firm.

• conceived as › deadland, ghost homeland

87:1.1Death was feared be­cause death meant the lib­er­a­tion of an­other ghost from its phys­i­cal body. The an­cients did their best to pre­vent death, to avoid the trou­ble of hav­ing to con­tend with a new ghost. They were al­ways anx­ious to in­duce the ghost to leave the scene of death, to em­bark on the jour­ney to dead­land. The ghost was feared most of all dur­ing the sup­posed tran­si­tion pe­riod be­tween its emer­gence at the time of death and its later de­par­ture for the ghost home­land, a vague and prim­i­tive con­cept of pseudo heaven.

• Jewish traditions derived from Zoroastrianism

95:6.6The Jew­ish tra­di­tions of heaven and hell and the doc­trine of dev­ils as re­corded in the He­brew scrip­tures, while founded on the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia, were prin­ci­pally de­rived from the Zoroas­tri­ans dur­ing the times when the Jews were un­der the po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural dom­i­nance of the Per­sians. Zoroaster, like the Egyp­tians, taught the “day of judg­ment,” but he con­nected this event with the end of the world.

• not endless rest but ceaseless progression

181:1.2“When I have re­turned to live in you and work through you, I can the bet­ter lead you on through this life and guide you through the many abodes in the fu­ture life in the heaven of heav­ens. Life in the Fa­ther’s eter­nal cre­ation is not an end­less rest of idle­ness and self­ish ease but rather a cease­less pro­gres­sion in grace, truth, and glory. Each of the many, many sta­tions in my Fa­ther’s house is a stop­ping place, a life de­signed to pre­pare you for the next one ahead. And so will the chil­dren of light go on from glory to glory un­til they at­tain the di­vine es­tate wherein they are spir­i­tu­ally per­fected even as the Fa­ther is per­fect in all things.

• eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived

181:2.20And then Je­sus went over to Philip, who, stand­ing up, heard this mes­sage from his Mas­ter: “Philip, you have asked me many fool­ish ques­tions, but I have done my ut­most to an­swer ev­ery one, and now would I an­swer the last of such ques­tion­ings which have arisen in your most hon­est but un­spir­i­tual mind. All the time I have been com­ing around to­ward you, have you been say­ing to your­self, ‘What shall I ever do if the Mas­ter goes away and leaves us alone in the world?’ O, you of lit­tle faith! And yet you have al­most as much as many of your breth­ren. You have been a good stew­ard, Philip. You failed us only a few times, and one of those fail­ures we uti­lized to man­i­fest the Fa­ther’s glory. Your of­fice of stew­ard­ship is about over. You must soon more fully do the work you were called to do—the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom. Philip, you have al­ways wanted to be shown, and very soon shall you see great things. Far bet­ter that you should have seen all this by faith, but since you were sin­cere even in your ma­te­rial sight­ed­ness, you will live to see my words ful­filled. And then, when you are blessed with spir­i­tual vi­sion, go forth to your work, ded­i­cat­ing your life to the cause of lead­ing man­kind to search for God and to seek eter­nal re­al­i­ties with the eye of spir­i­tual faith and not with the eyes of the ma­te­rial mind. Re­mem­ber, Philip, you have a great mis­sion on earth, for the world is filled with those who look at life just as you have tended to. You have a great work to do, and when it is fin­ished in faith, you shall come to me in my king­dom, and I will take great plea­sure in show­ing you that which eye has not seen, ear heard, nor the mor­tal mind con­ceived. In the mean­time, be­come as a lit­tle child in the king­dom of the spirit and per­mit me, as the spirit of the new teacher, to lead you for­ward in the spir­i­tual king­dom. And in this way will I be able to do much for you which I was not able to ac­com­plish when I so­journed with you as a mor­tal of the realm. And al­ways re­mem­ber, Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Fa­ther.”