Heaven is not likely to be what we think/hope it is.

Let's assume that we survive death and go on, as souls, to another existence. That's a big assumption that is hard to swallow, but it seems to be built into the human brain. The very oldest of our societies, once they moved from random peoples wandering around the landscape, looking for something to kill and eat, to tribes who grew crops and then to societies, have all acknowledged this desire to live again in another realm beyond our imagining.

So there must be something to it, at least from our human point of view.

But what does that ultra-existence look like?

Usually it involves being re-connected with our loved ones here on earth, but you can see right off that we have problems. What if you don't want to see those people again -- certainly not for all of eternity? You want to spend endless years with the husband or wife you divorced or even that obnoxious uncle or aunt? This part of the idea of heaven just doesn't work unless you get to choose the people you want to meet in heaven.

But that brings up a different problem: What if someone else's view of heaven involves re-uniting with you, but you don't want to re-unite with that person? What if all those relatives are waiting for you in heaven, and the last thing you want to do is show up at that eternal reunion?

Does your heaven overlap with mine? How would that work? It wouldn't, right?

So is it possible that you can exist in another world and interact with anyone you choose but avoid interacting with those who see you as part of their heaven? Sounds complicated, no?

And what does your disposal have to do with it? If you're sent off in style, with a grandiose funeral, replete with spoken remembrances from not just your left-behind relatives but, if you were an "important" person, tributes from dignitaries, does that somehow assure your place in heaven ahead of those millions of nameless people who didn't have proper burials but were shoveled into graves during this or that war?

Are you beginning to see that the logistics are mind-boggling?

We don't have a clue what happens to us once we die. The various religions tell us this or that, but they're all just guessing. And they all have their own versions of heaven, which, again, is just guessing. Hoping.

I still like the idea that we come back in another life, having learned something from our previous lives, but that, too, is just hoping and guessing. I have not one clue that it's real.

What I'm trying to say is that we can't, as humans, imagine an afterlife, a heaven.

The best minds have not solved even the most basic of questions: Why are we here? How did we get here? Where are we going? What's it all about?

But let's jump to the end: You or I die. Everyone mourns. We get a memorial or a stone or, if we're lucky, a poem to remember us. But we're dead. It's all over for us. No more you or me.

However we're disposed of, we'll end up as bones and eventually dust. In other words, in the end, our physical self will be nothing, whether we've been depositied in a box or a crypt or just a ditch (along with lots of other nameless dead people).

So then what?

That's what we don't know. We can only guess. And hope. We just can't believe that the unique person you and I were is suddenly "disappeared": nowhere to be found. Gone. Forever.

That, of course, is why we invented the idea of heaven. (Hell, too, but I don't buy that: no way can you torture humans forever for mistakes they made as stupid humans. Uh uh. Sorry.)

I have to come back to the mystery of it all, which I embrace. I love the notion that I don't understand how all "this" works. It obviously started from something -- which I don't pretend to understand -- and continues in a way that seems to go on despite us (astronomy, geology, physics, etc.) -- but here we are, an intelligent species, able to think about all those puzzles, and we still can't figure it all out.

But we keep trying.

We try to understand how the universe works and how human emotions work and how math works and how the brain does what it does, to let all this thinking take place at all, but, in the end, we're overwhelmed by the sheer perplexity of it all.

And don't you just love it? I do.

This is what heaven's all about: we don't have a clue, we humans here on earth, but maybe in some other existence beyond this one, we will. God will tell us what it was all about. And we'll be so happy in that knowledge that we'll forget all our human concerns and just live the afterlife in total bliss.

Whoa! No sex? No booze? No poetry? No good movies? No lobster with drawn butter?

See what I mean? We're humans: We can't imagine pleasure beyond what we've known.

Hey, see you in heaven! Be sure to look me up, okay?

(Just check my DO NOT CONTACT list first. Saint Peter has it.)