When we speak of heaven, we look to the skies. We do so without considering that, from the earth’s surface, “up” is actually any direction in space. Only when we leave the surface of the earth do we recognize that there is no such thing as “up,” or down, east, west, etc. Heaven, then, is just “out there.”

In visualizing or understanding the concept of heaven we are handicapped by our human package of senses. We rely on our sight, hearing, touch and other senses to experience and understand the world we inhabit. When it comes to heaven, we are trying to grasp the concept with those same tools, but they are insufficient.

Heaven is beyond the reach of our commonly used senses.

Most of us are comfortable with the idea that the spirit or personality exists after physical death, but we are unable to grasp the structure of that existence. We imagine heaven to be a physical place where the sun always shines and we are surrounded by beauty. We envision reuniting with our loved ones in a perfect semblance of how we choose to remember them before their passing.

Once again, we fall back on past experiences we have had using our senses. It is the only frame of reference we have. We are unable to imagine a dimension of existence that exists outside of that frame of reference just as we are unable to imagine our personal existence outside of the body we inhabit.

Perhaps the easiest way to grasp such a perplexing concept is to compare it to a person who is deaf from birth. What terminology would you use to describe music to that person? You might attempt such communication by using visual cues, but where would you even begin? How would you even define sound to someone who had never heard as much as a whisper?

This is exactly the handicap we face when trying to imagine “where” heaven exists.

It is fairly certain that God and spiritual beings inhabit a dimension that we cannot see, hear, or touch. Perhaps that dimension resonates to a vibration that our senses just can’t detect. Perhaps our earthly senses create so much background “noise” that in drowns out the subtle input of the spiritual realm.

Perhaps heaven already surrounds us.

Perhaps physical death silences all our human senses so that, freed from the din of our human existence, we can at last experience the reality of the spiritual realm.

Heaven is out there. It just can’t be experienced while we inhabit a living human form, and death is the only way in.