Being in God’s presence is the chief delight of paradise, according to Muslim philosophers and mystics, and the greater one’s degree of blessedness, the closer one will be to God. Accounts of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascent through the seven heavens to the very throne of God are taken as revealing his uniquely favoured status. Although Sufis (Islamic mystics) speak of an ecstatic “annihilation” (fanāʾ) in the presence of God, the emphasis within mainstream Islamic traditions on God’s transcendence has discouraged the development of eschatology focusing on divinization or beatific union with God. Hinduism
In Hinduism (a comparatively modern term that covers manifold religious practices and worldviews of the peoples of South Asia), heaven is the perennial object of myth, ritual practice, and philosophical speculation. The most ancient religious texts, the Vedas (1500–1200 bce), depict heaven as the domain of sky gods such as Indra, the thunder god; Surya, the Sun; Agni, the sacrificial fire; Soma, the heavenly elixir (embodied on earth as an intoxicating plant); Varuna, the overseer of cosmic order; and Yama, the first human to die. Ritual sacrifice was deemed essential for world maintenance, and funeral rites ensured that the spirit of the deceased would ascend to the “world of the fathers” on high. Rebirth in heaven depended upon having male householder descendants to sponsor the necessary rites.
During the period of the early Upanishads (800–500 bce), a group of itinerant sages turned from the sacrificial ritualism of Vedic tradition to develop the rudiments of classical Hindu soteriology (the theological doctrine of salvation). These sages taught that the entire phenomenal world is caught up in an endless cycle of birth and death (samsara) propelled by desire. A person’s station in life is determined by actions performed in previous lives (karma). To be reborn in heaven (svarga) is pleasant but impermanent; even the gods must eventually die. The ultimate goal is to escape this perishing life and attain union with the infinite spirit (brahman).
The Upanishadic path of liberation required practicing spiritual disciplines beyond the capacity of ordinary householders. But by the beginning of the 2nd millennium, the mystical asceticism of the Upanishads had been absorbed into the great stream of devotional Hinduism. The result was the appearance of new forms of religious literature, such as the Bhagavadgita and the Puranas, in which salvation takes the form of personal union with the divine, thus opening a broad way to heaven (or, rather, to the heaven beyond all heavens) to those who entrust themselves to the protection of a deity. Buddhism
Buddhism began in the early 5th century bce in northeast India as a renunciant movement seeking liberation from samsara through knowledge and spiritual discipline. The Buddha Gotama, the founder of the religion, is the paradigm of an enlightened being who has entered parinibbana (complete nibbana [Sanskrit nirvana]), the state in which the causes of all future existence have been eliminated. Classical Buddhist cosmology describes six realms of rebirth within an incalculably vast system of worlds and eons. One may be reborn as an animal, a human, a hungry ghost, a demigod, a denizen of one of the horrific hell realms, or a god in one of the pleasurable heaven realms. All of these births partake of the impermanence that characterizes samsara. Thus, heaven, in the sense of a celestial realm, is not the goal of spiritual practice. Yet Buddhist tradition speaks of celestial beings of limitless wisdom and compassion, such as Amitabha Buddha and the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who have dedicated their abundant merit to the cultivation of heavenlike Pure Lands for the salvation of sentient beings. Devotees reborn in these paradisiacal realms find there the ideal conditions for attaining enlightenment. Other heavens
Most, if not all, cultures possess multiple images of heaven and paradise, which coexist in unsystematic profusion. Mount Olympus, the Elysian Fields, and the Isles of the Blessed in Greek and Roman mythology constitute just one example. In Chinese civilizations, conformity to the “way of heaven” (tiandao) is a perennial ideal that appears in a variety of traditions. It is evident in ancient practices of sacrifice and divination, in Confucian teachings on discerning the will of heaven (tianming; literally “heaven’s mandate”) within the nexus of social relations, in Daoist teachings on harmonizing with the way of heaven as manifest in nature, in popular Daoist legends of the Ba Xian (“Eight Immortals”), who travel to heaven by means of alchemy and yoga, and also in innumerable Chinese Buddhist and sectarian movements dedicated to the cult of heaven.
Ba Xian (The Eight Immortals), Chinese painting of the 18th century; in the Guimet Museum, Paris.Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
In some traditions, heaven seems to recede into the background. Native American cultures, for example, are oriented toward the totality of earth, sky, and the four directions rather than toward heaven alone. Although heaven is not typically the abode of the blessed dead in Native American mythology, the stars, Sun, Moon, clouds, mountaintops, and sky-dwelling creators figure significantly. The Christian-influenced prophetic visions characteristic of revitalization movements such as the 19th-century Ghost Dance and the religion of Handsome Lake are fervently millenarian, proclaiming the advent of an eschatological paradise to be accompanied by the return of the dead and the restoration of tribal life.
New models of heaven in the modern West have been influenced by ideals of progress, evolution, social equality, and domestic tranquility. The 19th-century Spiritualist movement, adapting the doctrines of the Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg and of the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, mixed clairvoyance with science to describe heavenly spheres, radiant with luminiferous ether, where the spirits worked for causes such as abolition, temperance, feminism, and socialism and pursued opportunities for self-improvement. Utopian communities sought to bring this progressive heaven to practical realization on earth. Consolation literature, epitomized in the United States by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s novel The Gates Ajar (1868), portrayed heaven as an intimate realm of family reunions.
Belief in heaven persists despite age-old criticisms: that it is an irrational, wish-fulfilling fantasy, a symptom of alienation, and an evasion of responsibility for bettering the real world. Defenders of the doctrine insist, on the contrary, that belief in heaven has a morally invigorating effect, endowing life with meaning and direction and inspiring deeds of heroic self-sacrifice. Whatever be the case, familiarity with the iconography of heaven is indispensable to understanding Western literature and art, including the poetry of Dante, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Thomas Traherne, John Bunyan, and William Blake, as well as the paintings of Fra Angelico, Luca Signorelli, Sandro Botticelli, Correggio, Jan van Eyck, and Stefan Lochner. Much the same can be said for other cultures: in every historical period, depictions of heaven provide a revealing index of what a society regards as the highest good. Hence the study of heaven is, in its broadest application, the study of ultimate human ideals. Carol Zaleski
Citation Information
Article Title: Heaven
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.