Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates Page 7

  But even more powerful than the will of any individual was the will of the tribe, so people hooked up their individual wills to the will of their group and kin. This move had a fabulous extra benefit: because each individual was a part of the tribe, and the tribe was immortal, individuals could claim immortality.

  According to Rank, around the biblical era, this collective will of the tribe got projected onto an even more transcendent entity—a monotheistic God—and that’s when all hell broke loose. Now individual expressions of will were seen as rebellious, and ideas of sin and guilt developed. (One of the benefits of identifying with a group is that groups don’t do guilt, or at least when they do, it gets nicely diluted.) With individual sin came the old death-anxiety blues again. Bad will = bad soul = bad life-power. “The wages of sin is death” is how Paul put it—just one reason why he was known around town as Pithy Paul.

  Professor Rank was Jewish, but he thought Christian self-surrendering love was one cure for death-anxiety, because it beats death to the punch by dissolving the ego before death has a chance to do it. But Rank recognized that self-surrender is a stretch for most lovers, so he suggested looking to artists for clues; he believed artists were crucial to society’s work of creating authentic responses to the anxiety of death. James Joyce undoubtedly ranked high on Otto’s list of soulful artists, despite Joyce’s apparently pedestrian work habits:

  So, does that sound more like what you had in mind by “soul,” Daryl?

  Well, yeah, I guess so. But I’m one of those guys who’re not too good at self-surrendering love. Who is these days? And that artist cure doesn’t do it for me. I know a lot about art, but I don’t know what I like. What I want to know is if my soul, or will, or whatever, can live on forever. At this point in my life, I don’t really care what happens to my body. I just want my “Me” to be immortal.

  Okay, Daryl, you asked for it. So it’s back to the golden days in Athens again.

  Plato “proved” the immortality of the soul in several of his dialogues, but probably his best-known proof is in the dialogue “Meno,” where Socrates demonstrates that the soul must have existed before a person was born.

  Interestingly, most people aren’t all that concerned with the possibility of eternal life before arriving on earth, possibly because even if they did exist then, they can’t remember it. This sheds new light on the old question of what our post-earthly consciousness would be like if the soul were immortal. Would we be able to remember our earthly consciousness? If not, what’s the big whoop about immortality? With no continuity of Me-ness, why should I care—either now or then? Or to put it another way, why should either of me care?

  In any event, Socrates’ proof of prenatal immortality is that one of Meno’s uneducated slave boys actually comes up with the Pythagorean theorem without ever having studied geometry! Therefore, he must be remembering it. You recall that theorem: in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Huh? We can barely remember that from tenth grade, let alone from before we were born.

  Socrates purports to only guide the boy into “discovering” the theorem that is lodged somewhere deep in his psyche. Here’s Socrates at work, drawing with a stick on the ground:SOC.: Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this is a square?

  BOY: I do.

  SOC.: And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?

  BOY: Certainly.

  SOC.: And these lines which I have drawn through the middle of the square are also equal?

  BOY: Yes.

  And on Socrates goes, getting one-word answers from the boy, until the dénouement:SOC. (TO MENO): Do you observe, Meno, that I am not teaching the boy anything, but only asking him questions; and now he fancies that he knows how long a line is necessary in order to produce a figure of eight square feet; does he not?5

  To Socrates, this is proof that the boy is recollecting knowledge he already had, so ipso facto, an immortal psyche exists—in fact, an immortal psyche that got an A in plane geometry.

  For a modern educator, the problem with the Meno proof is that it sure looks like Socrates is teaching the boy the theorem—using, well, the Socratic method of instructing via a series of Q&As.

  MODERN MENO

  A husband and wife sign up for Chinese language lessons.

  “Are you planning to go to China?” the instructor asks.

  “Oh, no,” says the man.“We just adopted a baby from China, and when he starts talking, we want to be able to understand what he’s saying.”

  At the very least, Socrates’ argument here raises questions about what memory actually is and how it works: mysteriously, it turns out.

  Three elderly men visit a doctor for a memory test.The doctor asks the first one, “What’s three times three?”

  “285!” the man replies.

  Worried, the doctor turns to the second man. “How about you? What’s three times three?”

  “Uh, Monday!” the second man shouts.

  Even more concerned, the doctor motions to the third man.

  “Well, what do you say? What’s three times three?”

  “Nine!” the third man replies.

  “Excellent!” the doctor exclaims. “How did you get that?”

  “Oh, easy,” the man says. “You just subtract the 285 from Monday!”

  In The Republic, Plato offers another dubious argument, this one “proving” the soul’s indestructibility, but one question that he was unable to raise at the time is what has come to be known as the Eternal Fruitcake Conundrum, a case of an inanimate object that is indestructible. No lesser authorities than Dave Barry and Johnny Carson have weighed in on this puzzlement:

  Barry: “Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them.”

  Carson: “There’s actually only one fruitcake in the U.S., and it’s passed around year after year from family to family.”

  So the question remains: Are fruitcakes immortal?

  Feeling more immortal now, Daryl?

  Are you kidding? I think this guy Plato’s the fruitcake.

  { 8 }

  Heaven—a Landscape to Die For

  All right, you nerds, enough with the dead philosophers yapping from their graves! I don’t know about you guys, but every night before I go to bed I pray to God I’ll go to Heaven. You know,“If I should die before I wake” and like that. So give me the dope on Heaven, wouldya?

  Okay, Daryl, we admit it: sometimes all this deep-think, edge-of-the-mind philosophy stuff seems so out of touch with what people actually believe, we feel like shouting at all those wackadoodle philosophers and theologians: “Get real!”

  Fact is, in a comprehensive survey of Americans of every religious and nonreligious stripe, pollsters found that the great majority of us believe there is some sort of life after death, that everyone has a soul, and that Heaven and Hell are for real. (None of this, of course, would surprise Freud or Becker.)

  A full 81 percent are confident in an afterlife of some kind, with only slightly fewer (79 percent) concurring with the statement “Every person has a soul that will live forever, either in God’s presence or absence.” What about Heaven? Seventy-six percent reported that they believe in Heaven, with some 5 percent fewer saying that they also believe in Hell.1 (You gotta love that upbeat 5 percent.) As to what kind of heaven the majority has in mind, 60 percent of everyone surveyed described it as nothing more concrete than some kind of “state of eternal existence (with God)” or “merely symbolic,” both of which sound alarmingly philosophical to us. Still, a full 30 percent of all Americans agreed with the statement that Heaven is “an actual place of rest and reward where souls go after death.”

  It’s this “actual place” group that fires our imaginations. Although they represent a bit less than a third of the total population, these are the folks who set the stage for how the rest of us view Heaven—how it’s decorated, how you look there, whom you�
�re likely to meet, how you pass your (infinite) time, and who does the dishes.

  KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCKING HEAVEN

  True believers in a literal Heaven take one hell of a beating in the Hollywood documentary Heaven (1987), directed by Diane Keaton. The film intersperses sermons by evangelicals, pontifications by bearded New Age prophets, and soliloquies by earnest regular folk with black-and-white archival clips of people falling in love and dancing on clouds in Hollywood Heaven. The film’s winking attitude is “We know better.”

  For the record, most of Ms. Keaton’s interviewees believe that Heaven is a city (one Bible scholar notes that the New Jerusalem is five thousand times the size of New York City), that its streets are either gold or crystal, and that there is an abundance of trees, chirping birds, and angels, along with all the people you ever loved and/or who loved you. One youngster states that Heaven is all white and mushy, like marshmallows, and in fact is convinced that one’s diet there consists entirely of marshmallows.

  Mansions, often made out of precious stones and minerals, figure prominently in the cityscape (one preacher stresses that they are rent-free with no fear of eviction). Most are certain that life in Heaven is pain-free, inhabitants never age, and they can eat fatty foods without fear of putting on weight. Interviewees were divided on the role of sex in Heaven, half thinking that residents are way beyond it, the other half thinking that orgasms in the Great Beyond are earth-shattering. There is general agreement that residents look exactly as they did in their earthly incarnation, although many also believe that there is no blood in their heavenly veins and that Up There, folks can walk through walls.

  THE BIBLE SAYS IT’S SO, RIGHT?

  The idea of Heaven as the final destination spot comes to us in all its glory from the Bible, right? Well, it depends on whom you ask.

  Let’s start with modern Bible scholars, and by “modern” we don’t mean edgy hotshot geeks just out of graduate school; we mean mainstream Bible scholars of the last two hundred years or so. According to these folks, the primary meaning of “heaven” in the Hebrew Bible is simply “the firmament”: the transparent dome between the waters above and the waters and earth below.2

  The waters above? What’s that—some kind of exclusive beach resort? Have I been missing something?

  It’s just the way those Old Testament types saw the cosmos, Daryl. They looked up into the sky and it looked kind of soupy up there in the Great Beyond. Remember, they didn’t have telescopes yet.

  To them, the firmament was where the sun, moon, stars, and birds, as well as God, hung out. But the main point is the ancient Hebrews had no concept of a life after death, let alone in the firmament. The very late prophet Daniel speaks of “everlasting life,” with different outcomes for the righteous and the wicked, but it is framed in terms of resurrection—a return to life—rather than a continuation of life in some other place, like Beulah Land,3 a.k.a. Paradise. So not even a glimmer of Heaven yet.

  In the New Testament, most heaven references are to “the kingdom of heaven,” but the kingdom of heaven isn’t Heaven. Okay, let’s try that again. The kingdom of heaven is a euphemism for the kingdom of God, and the earliest Christians, who were originally Jewish, used that term because the name of God was considered too holy to utter.4 The kingdom of heaven is not so much a place as a time—a future time “at the end of the age” when God’s will prevails throughout the universe. That’s why Christians pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Jesus preached that this time was nigh, very nigh, and some passages sound as if he believed it was already here.

  The modernists say that it was only after Jesus’ death, when the disciples had profound spiritual experiences they interpreted as meaning Jesus was still alive, that a fully formed Christian notion of a general resurrection developed. Yet even in resurrection it is not the individual who “goes to Heaven” at death; it is “all the elect” who will be transformed at once—at the end of history. Likewise, Jesus’ description of the fiery furnace “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” refers, not to an afterlife Hell, but rather to the end of history, when the wicked will be excluded from the kingdom of God.

  So, Daryl, the trip to Heaven (or Hell) when you die is one trip we don’t think you should count on, although just in case, you may want to be prepared. Like Woody Allen, who said, “I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”

  But if it’s (literal) uplift you’re looking for, check out the old-school Christian commentators on the Bible. They argue that there are plenty of passages in the Bible that point to a literal Heaven and/or Hell to which all of us will be assigned at the time of our death. For example, the Hebrew Bible speaks of Sheol, a sort of netherworld for departed spirits that roughly corresponds to Hades, although it is described more as a place of weariness than as a place of punishment.5 The traditionalists also cite some Jesus quotables in the gospels that seem to refer to an immediate life-after-death in Heaven. For example, Luke depicts Jesus telling one of the criminals crucified with him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

  That sounds like a very specific time and place and may allay Mr. Allen’s fear that “there is an afterlife, but no one will know where it’s being held.”

  Modern Bible scholars counter that while Jesus may have believed in a sort of temporary parking garage for the dead, he was way more interested in the coming reign of God and our having “eternal life” under his reign at the end of history than in any immediate afterlife in Heaven.

  In any event, it is in the Book of Revelation that traditionalists find a gold mine of heavenly imagery. In the visions of John of Patmos, the wall of the New Jerusalem is made of jasper, and the city itself is pure as gold and clear as glass. The foundations are adorned with jewels, and lamps are unnecessary because God is the light of the city. It is also in the Book of Revelation that traditionalists find their picture of Hell, “a pool of fire and sulphur.” Even though John specifically says these are visions of the Apocalypse at the end of history, old-school commentators like to attribute the imagery to an afterlife in Heaven or Hell. Modernists might suggest the conservatives check their source: John of P. was all alone on an island having, well, visions.

  Interestingly enough, the traditionalists also pick up on Paul’s description of the dawn of the new age at the end of history, even though it’s hard to reconcile with the idea of an immediate Heaven. Paul says, “The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”6 Dubbed “the Rapture” by conservative Christians, this event at the “Endtime” is the subject of the enormously popular “Left Behind” books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

  WWW.YOUVEBEENLEFTBEHIND.COM

  A new website offers a service to those who anticipate being “taken up” in the Rapture and who are concerned about their friends and relatives left behind. For an annual fee (forty dollars for the first year), subscribers can post messages to be emailed to their loved ones six days after the Rapture. Members will be banking on there being at least a six-day window when their loved ones can still be persuaded to repent and accept Christ. “Our purpose is to get one last message to the lost, at a time when they might just be willing to hear it for the first and last time.”

  HOPALONG OF PATMOS

  What if the staff of www.youvebeenleftbehind.comhave all been “taken up” in the Rapture? Who will be minding the store? Don’t worry, they’ve got you covered. The system will go on alert automatically when three of the five staff members, scattered around the U.S., fail to log in over a three-day period. Presumably, the three-out-of-five rule is in case two of the five don’t make the cut. And in case someone falsely triggers the system, there’s another three-day waiting period before the emails are automatically sent.

  Those Left-Behinders sure have all the exits covered.

  ADMISSIONS POLICY

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nbsp; Not surprisingly, the great majority of people who believe Heaven exists also believe they are a shoo-in for being waved through the Pearly Gates. Forty-three percent are convinced they’ll qualify because they have “confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.” Fifteen percent believe they have it knocked because “they have tried to obey the Ten Commandments,” and another 15 percent because “they are basically a good person.” Finally, a particularly sanguine group of 6 percent believe they will make it because “God loves all people and will not let them perish.”

  As for the admissions criteria in the Bible—whether admission to Heaven or eternal life—it all depends again on whom you ask. In looking at the Hebrew Bible, conservatives tend to stress the Law: honor your father and mother; don’t lose your cool around your neighbor’s wife; eat borscht, don’t eat mussels marinara. Liberals prefer the sweeping calls for justice in the books of the prophets. The prophets’ exhortations aren’t as specific as the Law, but some say they’re even harder to live up to. They are summed up by the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”7