Heaven
Overview
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological
Religious cosmology
A Religious cosmology is a way of explaining the origin, the history and the evolution of the universe based on the religious mythology of a specific tradition...

 or metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 term for the physical or transcendent
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages...

 place from which heavenly beings (such as a Sky deity, God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

, angels, heavenly rulers, heavenly saints or venerated ancestors
Veneration of the dead
Veneration of the dead is based on the belief that the deceased, often family members, have a continued existence and/or possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living...

) originate, are enthroned
Throne of God
The Throne of God is the reigning centre of the chief deity of the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The throne is said by various holy books to reside above the Seventh Heaven called Araboth in Judaism.-Judaism:...

 or inhabit. It is commonly believed that heavenly beings can descend to earth or take on earthly flesh and that earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...

 or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive.
Quotations

Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.

Richard Bach, in Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

I cannot be content with less than heaven;Living, and comprehensive of all life.Thee, universal heaven, celestial all;Thee, sacrjd seat of intellective time;Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth,Star-throned.

Philip James Bailey, Festus (1903)

If our Creator has so bountifully provided for our existence here, which is but momentary, and for our temporal wants, which will soon be forgotten, how much more must He have done for our enjoyment in the everlasting world?

Hosea Ballou|Hosea Ballou, as quoted in Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou (1854) p. 261

Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul. "The kingdom of God is within you."

Henry Ward Beecher, in Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher

To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild Flower,Hold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hour.

William Blake in Auguries of Innocence|Auguries of Innocence (c. 1803)

A robin redbreast in a cagePuts all Heaven in a rage.

William Blake in Auguries of Innocence|Auguries of Innocence (c. 1803)

No coward soul is mine,No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:I see Heaven's glories shine,And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

Emily Brontë in "No Coward Soul Is Mine" (1848)

Heaven does not make holiness, but holiness makes heaven; because if you do not give yourself in sympathy to goodness, goodness cannot give itself in influence to you.

Phillips Brooks, in "The Gift And Its Return" in Sermons (1883), p. 275

All the way to Heaven is heaven because He said,"'I am the Way."

St. Catherine of Siena, as quoted in My God and My All: The Life of St. Francis of Assisi (1959) by Elizabeth Goudge, p. 107

 
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