How Are We Supposed to Know What Heaven's Like?

Q. Is there only one place in Heaven?

A. I would think the opposite. Since a soul occupies a place in Heaven based on the degree to which it has perfected itself on Earth, and since every person is unique, I would think there's potentially an infinite number of levels in Heaven. Some may be very close to one another, but every soul has a reward - its own "place" in Heaven - perfectly suited to it.  

Q. If there's infinite place in Heaven, can we travel to any dimension? Like if someone leaves Earth and went to Mars.

A. I don't imagine that it's like that. I would assume that Heaven is its own "dimension," and that's where souls are. And why would one want to be anywhere else, if Heaven and its proximity to God is one's tailor-made reward? But, as I've mentioned, we know very little about these things for sure and we'll have to wait until it's our time to find out.

Q. How are we supposed to know what’s in Heaven?

I mentioned to you a while ago that that may be something people are curious about, but it's not something that is important for us to know. If it was something we needed to know, we'd have been told about it. I refer you to Deuteronomy 29:28: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, while the revealed things belong to us and our children forever so that we may perform all the words of this law." We've been told what we need to know in order to follow God's will. We'll find out more when it's important for us to know more. 

I also refer you to the Mishna in Chagigah 2:1, which teaches that there are four things we're better off not worrying about too much: what's above the world, what's below the world, what came before the world, and what will be after the world. A person isn't going to receive enough information to satisfy their curiosity on these topics and they're just going to distract a person from more practical concerns.

Rabbi Jack's book Ask Rabbi Jack is available from Kodesh Press and on Amazon.com.