“It will not do at all to expect some divine or heavenly world ready to receive us at death; quite the opposite is the real necessity — it is in this world and life that we become heaven for all the beings who ever have or shall live. And especially for those beings and places with whom we relate in our actual daily experience. This is the ‘reception’ of the divine sphere, with all its angles and wheels, points and spirals ‘falling into unity’ as the self, the heart, and the minds of dreaming and waking.

While I cannot say what death is or what lies beyond it (and this is likely to be as unique for each being as birth is), I can say from experience and reflection, that we would be well served to become heaven, now, rather than expect it as ‘a reward’ for ‘good behavior’, somehow ‘due’ us in some imagined afterworld or afterlife.

The key is true interbeing, which is also called love, and what turns this key is the purposive character of our intention. Selfishness — including the expectation of reward — binds the key so that it cannot ‘turn’ naturally, inwardly, receptively… and with beauty’s own spirit. What the opposite of selfishness truly is can never be said, for it has nothing in common with language. One either becomes, and thus demonstrates it, or the mark is missed — the narrowness of language only rarely approaches it, and when it does, it is because that which moves within it is caring, rather than explanatory.”

— an anonymous informant