HEAVEN IS NOT LOCATION

by roy k austin
(Dorset England)

Regarding our forgetfulness of life, prior to our birth. -In
short, our being in the world, but not knowing, what
or who we are. It would not be long before the words
of adults, events and happenings would brush against
us, as our thinking patterns began to develop and
turn inward, so as to construct a memory. Like
grains of dust in our infinite dark space, do these
memories gravitate to form a ball, until we began to see
and feel ourselves as that ball, that body-mind. Of course, all
such memories build our false sense of selfhood, and the
world we find ourselves in does little or nothing to
discourage this. What has happened to us then?

To extend the metaphor, have we not exchanged our
infinite dark space - our true self, our true
' I ' ness which
contains the universe, for a pathetic accretion of memories,
grains of dust to a ball, adrift, floating and hopelessly lost,
within what turns out to be, our true infinite self?
In exchanging our infinite nature for a finite nature, we willingly
inherited all the concomitant problems of this world.
On top of that our true nature is also timeless but it has
also lost the quality of the 'eternal now '. Taking refuge in
the past, where all memories, by definition, reside. In effect,
feeding on what is dead and gone, and projecting all of this
into a future tense which never comes.

Standing back from all of this, finding stillness within as a
discipline, discovering the fruitfulness of learning how to
quiet the brain, discarding by degree, patterns of thought
until thought almost ceases. In other words coming to know
pure meditation, gradually rediscovering our true centre,
our true self, which is commensurate with our metaphor-
that infinite dark space. - Look within without thought and
we can accommodate all the stars we perceive at a glance,
quite easily. WE are not 'in' the universe, the universe is
'in' us. This diminishment of the true self to the pseudo,
through birth to demise, with its inherent amnesia, may be
a prerequisite for 'the divine drama' but rest assured,
keeping in mind your true essence, that you are not
only the actor on stage but the author as well. The
enlightenment of the Buddha, for example, should it be
realised in each one of us, would bring the curtain down.
Heaven is not location but a state of consciousness. That
consciousness is what we truly are, pre birth and post demise.