Dear Classico,

Whether or not there is an Actual God (and even in the higher revealed Religions, though we encounter enough Angels and Saints, 'God' always has remained beyond the Human ken), we DO have a Spiritual Infrastructure that approximates Heaven. We do have a Universe that divides between Good and Evil, between Community Love and Demonic Rapacity. The Angels and the Saints DO exist on the other side. They are accessible in our Dreams. And we certainly know that Evil exists.

One needs to take sides.

Perhaps the substantial question is whether there is survival after death. I can't be certain that all souls survive... indeed, in one of my most important dreams, where I met with the Very Angel of God (an Angel the size of a great Oak Tree who radiated as though with a multicolored Fire), It told me that "not all will live beyond the grave". Perhaps we can discern the Truth closer by what the Ancient Greeks believed, that Immortality was reserved only for the Heroic.

So, anyway, what would immortality entail? Well, it would seem obvious that one would have to be able to identify with some reality a bit less evenescent then the physical body. Consciousness and Identity would have to be attached to something that could outlast the physical body. What would this be? it has been the pursuit of the Holy Chalice, the Philosopher's Stone -- the whole Spiritual Pursuit is an attempt to transcend the Physical Identity into an Eternal Identity. It is an heroic quest. And the Higher Religions have had their successes and champions -- Catholicism, Hinduism, Sufism from Zoroastrianism and the similar Traditions fronm out of those Families. Not Protestantism, though, since it follows Paul exclusively, and every enlightened individual knows for an absolute certainty that Paul was the Antichrist and offered up a doctrine anathema to all True Spirituality.

Indeed, the Anti-Religious sentiment common among many Western individuals sources from no other condition but that they have intuited the inherent Evil of Pauline Christianity, and then accidentally infer that every Religion must be equally tainted. Some are. As the Zoroastrians knew some 3500 years ago, that Evil is always ready to contend with Goodness, even in the Religious Sphere. It requires the Individual to go into Religion with a sense of Humility and yet with some Keen Discernment which requires not much more than a sense for Morality. Well, if one is morally deficient, or confused, that at least one could examine the History of Religion for its Saints -- individuals who have proven through Miracle that they obviously had Transcended the Physical and had attained some Survival of Death.