Heaven is pleasure, and nothing but
There are dreamscapes that I sometimes refer to as “Arcadian spaces” and other times as “Heaven,” even though I do not believe in a religious heaven. From February 2020 until autumn of 2021, I often dreamt of beautiful, idyllic landscapes populated by a few calm and beautiful people. They were going about ordinary activities while aware that they were in a dream, and therefore, every gesture was a performance, every construction a work of art. They made their lives beautiful because there is nothing else to do in a dream. They were the servants of the dream. They were also its architects. There was nothing else.
These experiences are easily the most significant of my life. I mean, I think these are the kinds of experiences that have made other people start religions.
I am of a much more sober nature. I think of these experiences in terms of philosophy and psychology. I think about predilections and interests that I have which could lead to a ‘hell’ or which could lead to a ‘heaven’. There are ideas or habits which might be perfectly justified, but which do not service a heaven. For example, equal pay for equal work. This idea is certainly fair and justified, but it is not how soldiers win wars. They may not bicker about who is entitled to what. There is no way to even negotiate an agreement in the long term because the missions and dangers are in constant flux. The war takes priority over everything.
Heaven is a similar priority. Once in a heaven, one has nothing better to do than stay in it. Any other priority leads to an exit. A heaven is paradoxically not a venue of fairness, and fairness is not even conceivable.
This simple, obvious logic, I found mind-blowing. I discovered that I have many ideas and priorities that do not lead to a heaven, and I have had to ask myself why.
A heaven is a pole of attraction. There is something going on that attracts attention. Participants work together harmoniously to keep that thing going. To give an Earthly example, musicians try to give their audience something of value, and the audience applauds and pays money in order to encourage them to continue. Some are even inspired to become musicians themselves. Another example: Teachers try to provide their students something of value, and the students become parents who pay to send their children to the same school. These are poles of attraction: there is some central activity that attracts attention and support, and there is some periphery which is nurtured in the model of the center.
A heaven is a next-level pole of attraction; it is not part of reality; it reshapes reality. It is therefore fundamentally psychedelic, even if it appears quite ordinary. Because it is fluid, it must be maintained. Every act, every gesture, counts.
My dreams were of a small number of women who were the center of their heaven, and a much larger number of girls who sought to emulate them and learn from them, and to contribute to the beauty of the dream. It occurred to me that the presence of males would have implied a second kind of denizen, but it is the nature of heavens that there be only one. The only difference among denizens can be distance from the center, which, in my perception, was revealed by age.
My clearest memory is that of a group of women and girls building a house in an Arcadian setting. The whole operation seemed choreographed, but that is because there is one most efficient way to do something, and if everyone sees it independently, they seem choreographed. As a means of sharing information, they sang to each other in volleys — in calls and replies. I could not understand, but I had the intuition that each participant was advertising resources and stating needs. This came off also as though it had been orchestrated. It was beautiful to watch and to hear.
The participants were beaming with delight — not because the work was fun, but because success is fun. It was the interaction that was pleasurable. During these months, I watched them in many settings, and I understood that the kind of undertaking mattered little to them — and how could it? They were dreaming. What makes a song beautiful is not necessarily the topic of the lyrics. It is the composition of the song and the coördination among the musicians that make it beautiful.
This led me to an obvious insight: a heaven is not a place of freedom. When performing a song, one may not make all kinds of noise at any moment. At any given instant, the number of possible harmonious sounds is an infinitesimally small percentage of what is possible at large. One must be on-beat and on-key. Similarly, there is no personal freedom in a heaven. It can’t be the case that everyone may do anything, because anything includes disharmonious things. The range of acceptable behaviour is quite limited. I don’t mean that anyone is enforcing harmony. It’s simply the case that if you start doing something that is not part of a given heaven, you lose sight of it. By tuning into some incompatible thing, you tune out of that heaven.
The more beautiful a heaven is, the fewer things that can be done there. That is a consequent of ordinary logic. A further entailment is that the most beautiful heaven is one that is a single event. Experience confirms.
The most beautiful and most awesome kind of (mystical) heaven is a choir that sings a single note forever, a single note that resonates with every creative and symbiotic force in universe. It is thunderous, it vibrates, it shudders. It is the orgasm of a thousand angels. It is the most beautiful, awe-inspiring, penetrating event — period. But it is beautiful because it is that one thing — and nothing else.
Such monolithic heavens are inspiring — even soul-shattering — but they are, in the end, unbearable. They are too much pleasure for too long, and the overreaching problem is that it is the same pleasure.
Lesser heavens have more things going on. They are nevertheless heavens because those things are all harmonious. A wrist watch, for all its complexity, may operate in only one way, or not at all. Any change to a functioning watch leads to a non-functioning watch.
Most of my experiences were as a child observer of lesser heavens, although I did participate, much to my pleasure, several times. However, I did find the mindfulness it required to be exhausting. It is possible for people like me to stumble into a heaven. But it is hard for them to stay.
We are in our region of reality because we find heavens too monotonic and too tiring. We are where there is diversity, intrigue, threats, and dangers. By way of illustration: we don’t watch movies about people experiencing pleasure. That’s boring. We watch movies about people facing threats and peril. That is where our attention naturally gravitates. It is our nature.
No one in our world is criticised for having too much pain. Too much pleasure, however, is considered a sign of moral weakness. People who pursue lives of pleasure are on some degenerate path. It might even be true — but it says something about the nature of this world, not pleasure. Elsewhere, pleasure is a holy undertaking of the highest order. It requires enormous self-disciple and will. One must be selflessly devoted to the theme of a heaven. Any lapse of attention causes one’s connection to unravel.
Most people who have come to our world are because it is disagreeable, not in spite of it. People who have nightmares, who watch movies that are nightmares, are people here for the spanking. They prefer pain because they are the kind of people who manage pain more naturally than pleasure. Another insight I received during this time is that people prefer what they can manage to what they like.
Once you have experienced a heaven, and you realise that you’ve stopped, you know what you are.
And now a word from our sponsor:
One of the diarists of The Salt Island Diaries (Clara) dreams of Heaven. At the same time, she observes that 19th century New England is anything but a heaven. Yet she sees a parallel between the women she observes in Heaven and the women in her home. One place has coherent goals, and one place is an construct of the 19th century.
Heaven is coherent because all its denizens share the same goal: Heaven. One seeks harmony and beauty. One must make the most of what one has for the purpose of making heaven more heavenly. There are no side interests.
The goals of 19th century New England are a hodge-podge of traditions, economic incentives, punishments, prejudices, habits, and so on. Some goals might well be contradictory. There is no way to come to terms with a system that was never meant to be coherent to begin with.
One must create a bubble of coherency that treats with society as an external entity. We must interact with society, but we need not internalise its incoherencies. Clara realises that Heaven is not a holy place, but holiness of attention. It is a practice, not a location.