Some thoughts on the logic of 'Heaven would be boring' arguments

I was kicking this question around with my brother the other day, and he offered the possibility that perhaps every experience in heaven is more rewarding than the last, so the experiences only become more fulfilling, for eternity. Doesn't matter whether it's cleaning the stove or eating a burger or climbing a mountain or falling in love or exploring new universes, your appreciation of the experiences just keeps increasing forever.

Interesting topic, Omni. Thanks for posting.


Yes, on Skeptiko. Several members suggested that no matter how pleasurable one's existence was (in heaven or wherever) one would eventually become accustomed to it, and then it would no longer be pleasurable but boring. My response was to question why, if that happened, the degree of one's pleasure could not simply be increased such that one was no longer accustomed to it, and it was no longer unpleasurable or boring by familiarity.

More generally, I suggest that an eternity of heaven - by some meaningful understanding - could entail eternal evolution or at least changing of conscious reality; and we have a taste of this here on Earth: for example, we have evolved/changed our subsistence from manual labour to large-scale automation; our game-playing entertainment from physical to virtual; our musical instruments from acoustic to electronic; etc etc. Who knows what paradigms are realisable that we right now can't (or don't) even imagine, just like the members of a subsistence tribe from hundreds of years ago more than likely couldn't (or didn't) even imagine the possibility of an electronic game like World of Warcraft (does anybody even play that anymore? I never got into it)?

[ETA: Also, consider that conscious evolution occurs in specific niches too, for example, the expert understanding of the possible and preferable opening moves in the game of chess has evolved over time. Think of how enjoyable it must be for chess masters to evolve the game in this way, and think of the endless niches in which this sort of pleasing evolution could occur over eternity.]

This seems to be a variation on your first point ("If you can do literally anything, as is often applied to Heaven in its depictions in media, then you would never get bored. If you wanted limitations and challenges, you would get them. Even if you'd experienced everything you could imagine, you could simply wish to experience things that you'd never imagined.").

Very interesting , Laird ! Is evolution in "heaven" even necessary or even possible. I'd love to know.. 

My own feelings about this (for what it's worth, not much) is that everything (every possibility) already exists, is already known on that side (dimension). I suspect this may be some kind of tough adventure playground, where you choose to come to leave behind "perfection", so that you can experience what isn't perfection. And when you return, you see clearly how great perfection (in all it's manifestations) is.

How long this might go on for, I suspect it can't stop; "beginnings" and "ends" may only be applicable here.

But who would choose an adventure in the gas oven's of Auschwitz or the Gulag Archipelago. Existence and a meaning that makes perfect sense seems to be unsolvable.

[Laird]

Hey tim! Thanks for your reply. Yes, it seems that if every possibility already exists or is already known, then evolution is impossible - because there is nothing new/unknown to evolve into. It's an interesting philosophical question: does every possibility already exist in some sense, and if so, what sense is that, and is it a "real" enough sense to eliminate the possibility of evolution? Here's a curiosity: if every possibility already exists, then the possibility of evolution in heaven already exists!

That gives me pause for thought - about what it means for every possibility to already exist. Some possibilities are contradictory: riffing off the last paragraph, the possibility of evolution in heaven contradicts the possibility of no evolution in heaven. So, perhaps only some possibilities can "already exist" in a real sense, and other possibilities "already exist" in just a "hypothetical" sense: i.e., they can be "known" only in an intellectual or perhaps even "virtual" experiential sense via the imagination.

One broad(er?) related interesting question I think is "Do all possibilities exist in a timeless sense, or are new possibilities generated within time by creative acts of will?" I think that if we were to take an evolutionary view, we would probably answer: the latter, and we would probably also suggest that either (1) "timeless" consciousness is an oxymoron, or (2) that in a "timeless" state, there is no boredom anyway, because there is no slowly (oh so slowly!) elapsing time in which for one to become bored as things stay the same.

A whimsical aside. It occurs to me that Irving Berlin might have unwittingly composed a great allegory on the reincarnational journey of the soul, in his song "There's No Business Like Show Business" written for the musical Annie Get Your Gun in 1946. Of course the butcher, baker, grocer and clerk are the soul bored by dreary, boring and endless Heavenly existence and wanting for "anything theatrical and thrilling". Let's go on with the show!

In a sorta related fashion,  there was some spoken word type of recorded album I once heard a long time ago..... new agey hippie buddhism themed. One thing that stuck in my mind was when she says the reason why people are so fascinated and attracted to things such as films and tv, is that they are a 2 dimensional representation of the 3 dimensional role playing that our souls, deep down, know they are doing here

I feel the difficulty is in knowing much about the topic under consideration. That is, so-called 'heaven'. There are lots of ideas about what the word refers to, many being coloured by traditional religions and a fair amount by speculation and fantasising by - well anyone really.

But what is it that is really being considered? I think as a starting point, it refers to a state of existence without our current Earthly physical body. But we don't even know what that entails. Some descriptions of (so-called) heaven have the inhabitants in possession of some sort of body, though not one of the types of atoms and molecules we are familiar with. Yet in many NDE accounts, a person may describe a confusing mixture of having no body at all, journeying in realms of pure consciousness, as well as encountering distinct beings with some sort of appearance as well a buildings and landscapes and so on.

Our ideas seem a bit like the parable of the blind man and the elephant. Each idea picks up some small fragment of the whole elephant, and expands upon that to construct an image where everything is just like that one small part.

Personally, I think there is a lot more than a single elephant. I think the ideas we have so far represent just a postage-stamp sized element of an infinitely vaster 'something'. I don't even think the word 'heaven' very apt in all of this, it seems to refer to just this postage-stamp sized fragment.

Well I'm not really able to offer any opinions on the boredom aspect. I think perhaps an exploration of what we mean by boredom, what causes it, under what circumstances, and does it affect everyone in the same way or is it a variable personality trait or an inevitable consequence, is it impacted by free-will ...

I feel the difficulty is in knowing much about the topic under consideration. That is, so-called 'heaven'. There are lots of ideas about what the word refers to, many being coloured by traditional religions and a fair amount by speculation and fantasising by - well anyone really.

But what is it that is really being considered? I think as a starting point, it refers to a state of existence without our current Earthly physical body. But we don't even know what that entails. Some descriptions of (so-called) heaven have the inhabitants in possession of some sort of body, though not one of the types of atoms and molecules we are familiar with. Yet in many NDE accounts, a person may describe a confusing mixture of having no body at all, journeying in realms of pure consciousness, as well as encountering distinct beings with some sort of appearance as well a buildings and landscapes and so on.

Our ideas seem a bit like the parable of the blind man and the elephant. Each idea picks up some small fragment of the whole elephant, and expands upon that to construct an image where everything is just like that one small part.

Personally, I think there is a lot more than a single elephant. I think the ideas we have so far represent just a postage-stamp sized element of an infinitely vaster 'something'. I don't even think the word 'heaven' very apt in all of this, it seems to refer to just this postage-stamp sized fragment.

Well I'm not really able to offer any opinions on the boredom aspect. I think perhaps an exploration of what we mean by boredom, what causes it, under what circumstances, and does it affect everyone in the same way or is it a  variable personality trait or an inevitable consequence, is it impacted by free-will ...

Very carefully, I suggest there is a more formal way to approach this.

In the environment of physical space - the structure of events occurs at a location.  It sets the framework for physical outcomes to manifest in an actual environment.

In the environment of informational space the the structure of events occur framed by a state.

If (and only if) information is real - then heaven fits the description of a state -not a location.  As a condition or set of probabilities that describe both inner relations and relations with its environment, a state is well understood in scientific analysis.  Anyone, as a living thing, can be influential in a location with motion, or can be influential in a state by making decisions or feeling emotions that lead to intent.

After weeks (months?) of being involved in things far removed from the subjects discussed here (culminating in a move to a new home this past weekend), I've started to ponder on things again. I return, as ever, to the questions regarding the nature of that which survives death and the experience beyond this physical life.

I've never subscribed to the notion of a heaven or hell which always, to me, came with some form of judgement which I just don't find credible. Then, just recently, I was listening to a YouTube talk from Rupert Spira in which he talked of a kind of temporary transitional state after death but before the ultimate dissolution of the personality (ego death). That transitional state he termed the bardo which prompted me to reconsider some Eastern/Buddhist/Mystical concepts that I have previously rejected. I have always thought of this dissolution of being; this existence without thoughts, personality or discernment as nothing short of annihilation. I couldn't face that. I wanted to go to that nice, peaceful afterlife which is much like this life but without the trappings of the physical world such as physical pain, illness and death.

But it seems that this reconsideration has taken root and I sense a new understanding emerging from it. Early stages yet but I can now see that my fears of dying were the same as my fears of any kind of annihilation of the personality, which led me to reject those concepts mentioned above. Now I have to face them head on. I have, for many years, insisted that separation is an illusion yet I have not followed that statement to its inevitable conclusion: that the individual personality is just that illusion of separation.  I happened across a blog post from Michael Prescott which kind of sums up what I have been thinking over the past few days.

Here's a quote from that blog entry.

These sojourns in what the Tibetans call the chonyid bardo and sidpa bardo take place below the evolutionary level of the higher self, on a lower plane where postmortem existence is largely dictated by the biases, assumptions, and limitations of the subconscious mind. Such existence is a virtual-reality simulation, real enough to be fully immersive and widely shared, but not real enough to withstand the direct apprehension that yields liberation. Most NDErs who report visiting the afterlife remember this kind of experience. Most mediumistic communicators exist at this level also. Communications from higher-level entities are rarer and more difficult to evaluate or verify, since they typically lack evidential content.

[Laird]

Nice to see you around, Kam. I don't subscribe to the idea of dissolution myself but I have no real data anyway on which to base a (non)subscription... it's, like, just my opinion, man.

Nice to see you around, Kam. I don't subscribe to the idea of dissolution myself but I have no real data anyway on which to base a (non)subscription... it's, like, just my opinion, man.

You saying “it’s, like, just my opinion, man.” made me think of how true that statement frequently really is when we make our feelings known. The present event has taught us that there is really nowhere or no-one to look to for ‘truth’ - it’s mostly all subjective imo. The bits that appears not to be are the non-conscious bits. It’s like they are in place as a framework with which we find ‘firm ground’ to base at least part of ‘our worldview’ on. If none of our reality was ‘firm‘, would we possibly go insane?

Anyway, back to my original opinion...

I see dissolution as a possibility, perhaps even an inevitability, but after merely one lifetime? To me, one lifetime is but an ink spot in a book. I think reincarnation is real, and must be considered as part of our reality. Perhaps it takes more ‘time’ for some souls to reach a place where dissolution is reached than others, maybe there are some who get it much quicker than others? I am not really a fan of puzzles, probably because I’m not very good at solving them, but strangely enough, the big puzzle that is life, really is what keeps me alive!!!