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HEAVEN ON EARTH: a Different Perspective, Introduction

Joseph Mancini, Jr.

      The notion of Heaven on Earth is hardly new, but it has been gaining a new momentum during the past decade or so.  More and more Lightworkers—those individuals who consciously seek to bring Light to the Planet, to raise the vibration of Earthly life—are talking about such an event occurring in the not-too-distant future.

      But what does Heaven on Earth actually mean?  For some cultures, it suggests that which may follow an apocalyptic period, an end time, a cosmic purification: the coming of a New Age of love and wellbeing throughout the Earth’s populations.  For instance, according to the Hopi, we are nearing the end of the Fourth World with the same highly destructive disconnection from Mother Earth that humanity experienced at the end of the first three Worlds.  As before, humans will have another chance to get it right, this time at the beginning of the Fifth World.   Similarly, while some students of the Mayan prophecies that are coming to fulfillment probably at the end of 2012 envision a complete destruction of the Earth, others suggest that what will occur is more like a radical change in consciousness. This is conceived as a movement totally away from a denser frequency very little regarded toward a higher frequency of being that will be the tipping point for a rejuvenation of the Earth and its residents.  Likewise, many of the more recent regression subjects of world-renowned hypnotherapist Dolores Cannon have told of a New Earth in a new dimension that will accommodate those who have moved to a higher, more loving frequency while the Old Earth will still be populated with those with denser energies.     

     However different these and other descriptions of Heaven on Earth are from one another, each suggests that change is leaving behind the old, a movement mostly away from that which has been.  Such change can be clarified by looking more closely at certain words that have been used to label it.   One of these words is transmutation, which may be defined as a change from one essence or substance to another.  This is what the Alchemists tried to achieve in changing base metal into gold.  Another change-word is transformation, which is change in structure, form, or arrangement, rather than in essence.  This is the change that water goes through as it moves from a gas to a liquid to a solid, while remaining H20.   Still another pertinent word is derived from Roman Catholic theology: transubstantiation, which is a change of essence without a change in outward appearance.  In the Catholic liturgy, bread and wine do not lose their identifying appearance, yet their essences are believed to change into the Body and Blood of Christ.     

     Any of the change-words discussed above, in one manner or another, may be used to describe the shift from the present situation to Heaven on Earth as conceived by, among others, the Hopis, the interpreters of the Mayan prophecies, and the visionaries speaking to Dolores Cannon.  But there is another change-word that may provide a different understanding of Heaven on Earth.  This word, transfiguration, also comes from a Christian Source.  In Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, and Luke 9:28-36 (and in the Synoptic Gospels, 2 Peter 1:16-18 and John 1:14), Christ goes to a mountain with Apostles Peter, James and John; there he becomes transfigured, “radiant,” “glorified” before them while speaking with Moses and Elijah.

  What, then, does it mean to become transfigured and therefore radiant (luminous, shining, beaming, bright, brilliant, glowing)?  What is suggested, I believe, is that Christ’s hypostatic union of two complete natures, Human and Divine, in one person is fully manifested to the awestruck disciples.  This union is very high frequency—hence the radiance—and is generally considered beyond merely Human understanding (though not beyond Human experience).  In fact, “union” is probably an inadequate and dualistic description; it may be more to the point to see this phenomenon as the simultaneous presence of what appear to be two separate frequencies, but which are ultimately inescapably interdependent.  One could say also that the Human and Divine are really two versions of the very same thing, much as a photon, which is a measure of light, is simultaneously both a particle (something localized) and a wave (that which is diffused).  In our merely Human apprehension, we can, as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle posits, perceive usually only one of the aspects of our beingness at a time and so falsely see them as totally separate.  Nevertheless, during the process of transfiguration, in the glowing forth of our true multidimensional beingness, we apprehend our own, hypostatic Christ Consciousness.

     Transfiguration, then, may be more akin to the true meaning of Heaven on Earth. In this conceptualization, Earth IS Heaven, though not to us until we realize Earth to be what it has always been and always will be.  Here is where the notion of change according to Gestalt Therapy is pertinent: the Gestalt therapists believe that an individual changes not by becoming someone new, but rather by becoming, showing forth, manifesting, making luminous more of who he or she already is.   Thus, in contrast to the other notions of Heaven on Earth mentioned above, the change that is Transfiguration is not a leaving behind of anything, but rather a fulfillment, a thorough realization of that which is now.  A kindred view is found in one of the Buddhist scriptures, where the Blessed One is asked where does one go to seek Nirvana; in answering, the Blessed One details the rising of the soul through a hierarchy of heavens, at the pinnacle of which, the soul begins the descent back down through the heavens to arrive where it had first embarked on its journey: Nirvana is here, now, in the flesh illuminated by high consciousness.  Similarly, in “Little Gidding” (the last of Four Quartets), T.S. Eliot writes,

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time”

(p. 59). 

And, as Immanuel says through Pat Rodegast,

 “The human condition is not the antithesis of heaven.

It is the reproduction, within a limited vision,

manifest in physical form.

There is nothing in human experience/that does not exist in spirit”

(Book I, p. 4).

What, then, are the implications of the notion of Heaven on Earth as Transfiguration?

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