When you dream at night, you don’t even wonder at the weird shape-shifting and changing of people, the changing of scenes, or objects. When you awaken and recall the dream, you realize how weird it was. But you are then awake in your familiar room with objects that don’t change. You are back to normal, secure with a reality which is solid and familiar.

I’ve come to realize that night-dreams are an insight into the nature of true reality; call it "heaven" if you wish. It is a state of mind which is unattached to any belief in material objects or linear Time. It is a mind-play in which the moment appears to be whatever one wants it to be. Appearance is but a figment of an imaginative mind; there is nothing material or real about it, even here in World, as physicists have demonstrated conclusively. The only thing which might be called "real" is the mind which imagines whatever it is perceiving. It was in God’s imagination that He created us, and it is there that we live.

World is that half-cycle period in which we have chosen to believe in the finite rather than the infinite. We have chosen to believe a limited physical reality which doesn’t do weird changes unexpectedly. World is still just a mind-play, but we choose to believe a lie about its nature. We like the lie because we are separated from God and feel fearful; we want our lives to be stable, concrete, predictable. We still do create in our minds whatever we choose to perceive, but we don't want to realize that; we have ignorantly defaulted our responsibility for what we do. We like the irresponsibility of being victims of forces which we think are greater than we are. That is our excuse for being ungodly. Here in World, we think that one can have power over another, even do him harm. We think that if one applies himself to his desires, that he can attain the enticements which the World-mind (Satan) offers. We learn to love that kind of satisfaction.

So, one learns as a child to take this life seriously, to walk on concrete paths, to strive for goals which require specific achievements, to play by specific rules for which violations bring specific punishments. We learn that acts have predictable consequences, and that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We learn to live with such limitations, and to die by them.

Each of us is as limited as Harry Haller was in Herman Hesse’s STEPPENWOLF. Approaching the age of 50, life was intolerable and he looked forward to his fiftieth birthday when he would use a razor to end it all. He took life seriously, and death, too.

A despondent Harry walks, late one night, into a bar where he meets a pretty young woman, Hermine, with whom he will fall in love, a woman who already knows the truth about the unreality of this limited existence. She undertakes the task of teaching Harry to take life less seriously. She tells him that eternity is the goal and it lies on the other side of appearances; that we have no guides to it except for one's own homesickness.

The theme of Hesse’s novel is that World is just a mind-play, a magic theater "for madmen only" where you can step through any door you wish and you will find what you want. Finally arriving at a costume ball and a Magic Theater, in one of the rooms where he wanders, Harry stabs Hermine. He is taken to court where he is tried for taking life too seriously. He is filled with remorse and wants punishment. The prosecutor says, "He stabbed a reflection of a girl with a reflection of a knife." He is convicted; his punishment is  loud laughter by everyone present. When he leaves that scene, he finally "gets it," and he begins to laugh at it all. He is suddenly free.

Hesse understood Jesus’ message that one must die to this world, totally release it. Only when we realize that each of us creates his own perceptions can we be free of the rules which require our perceptions to harmonize with other traditional beliefs. We must reject that old concept which we learned from birth and which has become a core-belief in our souls. We must prefer to be like a butterfly in the ethers, with no solid object on which to land, with a free mind. We must happily yield ourselves, spirits, and minds to the unknowable whims of that Supreme Mind which fathered us. Only the moment has meaning, tomorrow has none. One must be free to live the moment. This is what Jesus meant when He said to not worry about tomorrow, food, drink, shelter. We can hardly comprehend this concept because logic tells us it won't work. Bums are disliked. Ascetics can't live in modern society. BUT, Jesus said "I have no place to lay my head, Follow Me!" (paraphrased)

World is not "real" and neither is Heaven. Heaven is not a place where one must have shelters from fantasy weather, or fantasy food for fantasy bodies, or protection from fantasy harm or death. The mind is finally free, but we can’t yet imagine what our challenges will be in that Light because we can’t see out from our darkness. Surely, the stage setting will be this planet, and other races will be just as physically limited as they are now; but God’s Elect and His Israel Family, who were "born from above" will be spirit beings who can appear as physical, like Jesus did after His resurrection. We will promote a spiritual society which is founded on Godly principles and where justice is not fickle. Heaven will be our magic-theater where we can create a Godly kingdom to replace this evil deception of World.

Science is already discovering the nature of reality as a phantasm, some suggesting that it is a great Hologram. See Hologram Reality for a discussion of this.