Certainly our ultimate fear has always been the fear of the grave (..although it was Jerry Seinfeld who pointed out that death was actually number two on the list of our greatest fears, with most people listing a fear of public speaking as first. Amazingly this indicates, Jerry noted, that more people would rather be in the box than standing over it giving a eulogy!)
In any case death has always loomed large for us, and any hope for warding off an early death or obtaining some sort of life after death has always been clutched at. Quite naturally nothing can be more desirous to us than eternal life for ourselves and our loved ones, or at least some sort of life beyond the grave.
But in order for a life after death, our resurrection, to be made possible, a super-natural Organizer has to be envisioned who has arranged for such magic and who will administer the system (No dogs, cats or any other pets allowed in, babies to be parked in limbo, bad guys cast into burning pits, good guys given harps, wings and virgins.) In heaven, as on earth, rules are necessary, and exclusivity is preferred. Rewards are stratified with spiritual gold and platinum cards. The hereafter, we claim, is a meritocracy, though we secretly hope there will be favoritism when we show up to be tested.
Death and a hereafter are difficult subjects to get our minds around, and mankind, for good and bad, has always had a hard time distinguishing between what is imagined and what is real. Buddhists seem to fear not death but endless cycles of rebirth usually followed by lives of suffering, and so they long for blessed extinction instead of a hereafter. But the three religions of The Book, however, play a kind of three card monty with their adherents. First after we die we find out our prize, heaven, hell or purgatory. (Purgatory seems the more cruel of the three, like an eternity in a Department of Motor Vehicles or a grungy laundromat.)
Heaven is too absurd to even discuss seriously, especially if, in the hereafter, we are all to be allowed to individually decide what our heavenly reward is to be. For if our desires are to be met, what if my idea of the joyful afterlife is to ride around on a muffler-less Harley, thundering for all eternity? Are my neighbours to be blissfully deaf to my pleasures? Some martyrs dream of 72 virgins. Would it be greedy and gauche to wish for 73? And we are told that in the sweet hereafter we will be reunited with our friends and loved-ones. But do you really want to meet your sweet old Grandma and have to tell her you've basically been doing nothing for the last 25 years? But if, in fact, our friends and family members are waiting for us, will there also be celebrities on display that we can chase and pester? Or do they live in a sort of exclusive gated community, cordoned off from prying eyes?
Well, no, heaven and our desires and pleasures there will in no way resemble life on earth, clergymen feel forced to admit. The ecstatic pleasures of heaven are fundementally different and superior, and we will not miss earthly pleasures in the slightest as the heavenly will be supreme.
Admittedly this idea gives us something to chew on. We will not miss our old pleasures because we will be transformed and will thereby appreciate the superior pleasures to come. But this idea begs the question, who is being rewarded in heaven? Certainly not you or me, for in order to gain admittance we need to be bleached of our old desires before being allowed entrance. And our desires are who we are.
Personally I'm fond of my pleasures, as they are a decent blend of the physical and the intellectual. But one group of the religiously demented strongly suggest that there will be no sensualism in heaven, at least not anything resembling the carnal kind. Another group suggests rich abundences of virgins. It seems to me obvious that trying to satisfy legions of virgins frothing and frustrated after eons of anticipation, seems more like hellish work in the long run.
As most men have learned, providing women, divine or not, with regular orgasms is as strenuous as mining coal - and will wreck your back sooner.
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