Consciousness in Heaven

"I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself"

When discussing eschatological topics, our theme in this final month of the year, the tendency is to focus on death, judgement, and hell. But today, I would like to focus on heaven. To give a proper characterization of a supernatural state such as heaven, it seems advisable to begin with an analogous natural state that we can observe here on earth, such as that of the animals. Many poets have related a certain jealousy of the state of animals. Walt Whitman, to take a very secular example, wrote the following regarding animals:

They do not sweat and whine about their condition;

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;

Not one is dissatisfied – not one is demented with the mania of owning things;

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;

Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

– Walt Whitman, “Animals”

The poets have detailed more eloquently than I can this strange longing for the situation in which the animals find themselves. Nonetheless, I would like to discuss the reasons for this longing. I believe the root of this intuition is a desire for a life free of anxiety, self-consciousness, complexity, and the like; a desire for the state before the fall of man, after which man was naked and hid himself (ref. Gen 3:10). We hide our shame, our self-consciousness, and we long to be free of that burden. We are, in a way, taunted and scorned by nature and, in particular, by the animals. This poetic intuition has great merit and I believe it provides an excellent perspective from which we might conjecture about eternal blessedness.

So, do dogs go to heaven? Just kidding. But I do want to first examine what heaven would mean for a dog, or for animals more generally. We have the opportunity in this life to readily observe the activities of animals that seem to max out their capabilities, which, in the case of dogs, appear to be various forms of physically demanding and mentally engaging play. There are a few other elements that must be in place as well, for example, having their basic needs met without effort or struggle, and (depending on the animal) some level of positive social interaction. When these preconditions are met, such activities can even result in a kind of loss of self, not in the sense of unconscious sleep, but in the way that one might lose oneself in deep conversation, being so invested and engaged with another in the context of a mutual pursuit of something higher than the individual good.

This state is one of activity, obviously, but also of rest, just in a different way. The rest experienced at such times is a rest precisely in the role that one fulfills. There is no distraction, no bouncing around from one task to the next, just resting in this one mutual pursuit. Now animals are not conscious of how they participate in such goods; they are not capable of conscious conversation or anything of the sort, but that is precisely the point that I believe is at the heart of this poetic intuition. Animals don’t struggle to lose themselves in this way, to slough off the anxieties of self-consciousness in order to participate in such fulfilling activities; they just do it, provided that the effects of man’s sinfulness (i.e. death and corruption pervading the natural order) are kept at bay. It is precisely man’s fallen state of neurotic self-consciousness that prevents him from the same ease of fulfillment and rest.

Tied to this intuition to envy the animals’ apparent fulfilment and true rest is another more philosophical perspective. In The Problem of Pain, while discussing hell, C.S. Lewis proposes the following analogy: “[B]urn a log, and you have gases, heat and ash. To have been a log means now being those three things. If soul can be destroyed, must there not be a state of having been a human soul?” (The Problem of Pain, Chapter VIII: “Hell”) While no longer possessing the faculties that make humans more than other animals, Lewis proposes that these souls would have descended down the hierarchy of creation to the level of beasts, while 1) retaining a tantalizing memory of their former capacities of reason and free will, and 2) animalistically following their passions in ever more debasing ways as they continue to corrupt their souls and their nature. Lewis continues:

“What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is “remains”. To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man — to be an ex-man or “damned ghost” — would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will. It is, of course, impossible to imagine what the consciousness of such a creature — already a loose congeries of mutually antagonistic sins rather than a sinner would be like.”

The fact that Lewis brings up the conundrum of the consciousness of those in such a state is interesting, for it is as though their selfishness grows so as to actually consume the very self it seeks to serve. Thus, consciousness, or sense of self, in such a state diverges at the same time to both extremes, namely toward utter self-centeredness, and toward the disintegration of the self.

Now, extending this analogy toward the happier horizon of heaven, we see that heaven must be a state in which man becomes more than just a man. The animals become more than mere material beasts when they participate in the fulfilment of man and the glory of God. So too, man becomes more than just a man when he is brought into participation with the supernatural activity of the whole hierarchy of heaven. While so participating, his sense of self exists exactly to the proper degree and with the proper character to fit perfectly into that hierarchy, into the mystical body of Christ, through which he becomes like God. It is not for us to know the full extent of the part we each are meant to play in this hierarchy, how it intertwines with those of every other soul, and harmonizes with the choirs of angels. But just as animals happily play their part here on earth with ease and contentment, every so often glimpsing the larger plan, but never comprehending its entirety, so I imagine the blessed in heaven will joyfully lose themselves eternally in the enjoyment of their participation in the heavenly symphony as they gaze intently upon the Maestro of the universe, every so often receiving a glimpse of His face.

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