Picture 79-million people, from Manhattan to Monterey, all with the same basic question on their mind—what’s coming? They’re the baby boomers, and according to Penguin Books Editor and Vice President Mitch Horowitz, this is a red-hot question for them.
Many years ago I was in New York visiting Horowitz and noticed on his desk a copy of Dr. Eben Alexander’s best-seller at the time ‘Proof of Heaven.’ I asked him what he thought of the book. He said the subject matter’s soaring popularity wasn’t at all surprising to him. “Why,” I asked? “Boomers,” he said. “They all want to know what the afterlife is like.”
Being a boomer myself I get it. As the years go by who isn’t at least a little curious? But maybe we don’t have to wait a lifetime to figure all this out.
A couple of summers ago my grandchildren may have stumbled onto something that at least hints at a useful lesson, in of all places Disneyland. My youngest grandson will tell you that the Splash Mountain ride, with its water-soaking high-speed drop, was sheer heaven – right here, right now. He’d be happy to live on the darn thing. My granddaughter on the other hand thought the drop was…well, that other place.
It’s tempting to dismiss all that as merely a day of fun at the amusement park. Heaven is, as many believe, of a distant place and time, right?
That depends on the conclusion you reach when you hear heaven described by those who speak with some degree of insight and experience on the matter. Dr. Alexander describes it as light, joy, beauty, absence of fear – sheer love. He’s witnessed this in his lifetime, in what is commonly called a near-death experience. So have others.
Jesus compared a glimpse of heaven to a small but mighty grain of mustard seed. He also said it is neither here nor there, but “at hand.”
Where these descriptions take on greater meaning is in seeing the impact such insights have had on people’s lives today.
A flash of “heaven” has not only been a life-changing and health-producing personal experience, but has also propelled ordinary people into the public arena in a big way. They can’t help but wanting to share their profound experience and lessons with the whole world. They’re truth-tellers who want to enlighten their fellow beings about what they say, unequivocally, is reality.
Best-sellers have been written, lecture circuits packed, and worldwide movements launched following a blink-of-an-eye encounter with the indescribable light and love of reality.
Summing up her own life-changing epiphany, the Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, commented: “That short experience included a glimpse of the great fact that I have since tried to make plain to others, namely, Life in and of Spirit; this Life being the sole reality of existence.”
In our amazement at people’s accounts, what shouldn’t be forgotten is that these heavenly glimpses occurred here, as a state of mind. Instead of wondering what’s coming in an afterlife somewhere else, we should be asking: What’s here, now?
Indeed, that may be what many are asking. Wade Clark, professor of “Religion and Society” at UC Santa Barbara, surveyed the experiences of boomers in his book ‘A Generation of Seekers,’ and he sees an ache for enlightenment.
Leave it to the activist boomers to shun a wait-and-see attitude about what the future holds, and to commit themselves to something they see as important right now, pursuing a spiritual path lined with meaning, health, and sheer happiness.
Perhaps in the quieter, reflective moments of that spiritual journey they’ll realize what many have already discovered – that the state of mind described as heaven is not only attainable in the future, but is the spiritual reality that’s healing and life-fulfilling and here with us all along.