What the Hell Is Heaven?

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An excerpt from the new book How to Make One Hell of a Profit and Still Get To Heaven, by Dr. John Demartini

A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

—Ecclesiastes 10:19

Like all great quests, the search for spiritual and financial wealth begins with a question: So what the hell does heaven have to do with wealth? Let’s find out.

For the purposes of this book, heaven represents a heartfelt state of appreciation, fulfillment, and presence—which means being in the here-and-now, not in the future with imagined fear or in the past with remembered guilt. This heartfelt state arises from a perception of balance, harmony, and order. When you know that everything around and within you is in a state of order, you feel grateful and fulfilled. You think and act with grace and poise, and you live with love and appreciation. This is a powerfully creative and magnetic state in which to be. In this state, you feel profoundly different within yourself, and others feel that difference, too. You draw entirely different circumstances and opportunities into your life, including greater financial abundance.

Gratitude for the blessings of life awakens a deep sense of worthiness, belonging, and knowing that you have a special and meaningful mission to fulfill. As you grow in appreciation and love, you trust yourself and this underlying order, and your latent talents spontaneously begin to blossom. In fact, it’s only a perceived lack of self-love that keeps them hidden, like the flowers of an unwatered garden.

Heaven, then, is this state of uplifted and enlightened spirit. A heavenly state occurs whenever you acknowledge that life’s underlying magnificence and order is available everywhere and anytime, no matter what the apparent circumstances. You or any individual or company that understands this will inevitably prosper.

Conversely, whenever you perceive that your life is filled with chaos, you experience nonfulfillment and you feel powerless. At such times, you repel people and opportunities, you imagine that you are struggling in “hell,” and you react with what I call dis-grace (which not only means to be out of favor, dishonored, or shamed but also includes not being grateful, inspired, or in communion with divinity because of judgment, distortion, misperception, or misinterpretation). In such moments, you even say things like, “Man, living like this is just hell!”

Defined this way, both heaven and hell are states of mind, one ordered and the other disordered. But here’s the most exciting part of all: You have the ability to choose which of these states you would love to live in.

One of the great secrets of the universe is that everything is in perfect order already, and the only thing keeping you out of heaven, with all of its spiritual and material bounties, is a lack of awareness and appreciation of that divine order. However, when you appreciate your life, your life actually increases or appreciates in value, and your self-worth and self-love grow. Through such appreciation, your station in life is automatically elevated.

Everything Is Light

I was at a dinner party in New York a few years ago when, during a conversation about spirituality, the question of God came up. I turned to a noted Cambridge professor of physics seated to my left and asked him, “What do you think God is?”

He replied, “From all our studies, the best description we have of God is light. Light is the most probable and plausible essential substance we have found to describe the nature of God.

I then asked him, “So how would you describe human consciousness?”

“Most likely as a by-product of light.”

Almost every spiritual teaching acknowledging God would agree with the physics professor that the inherent nature of divinity is love and light. Spirit is light, and it permeates every level of material existence.

Since both science and religion seem to agree that God is light, could we be emanations from such a loving Source? I define God to be the Grand Organized Design or Designer of a universe filled with heavenly light. What scientist, theologian, or layperson can look at the cosmos and not see a magnificently ordered design bursting with light?

Viewed from the spiritual and material perspectives, light has two meanings—in its spiritual essence it means purity or radiance, and in its material expression it refers to density or weight—but both spirit and matter ultimately consist of light. Light is the essence underlying our existence. The universe is full of radiant light, which is, in essence, love. The more light you have, the more love, gratitude, and order you have in your life. The more you experience this divinity, the more worthy you feel and the more you receive its spiritual and material blessings. If you’re not so sure about that, just stay with me.

Some people make arbitrary distinctions between spirit and matter, but I ask, Where is God or spirit not? You may see someone meditating or praying and think, That’s a spiritual activity, and then see someone else exchanging money to make a purchase and think, Well, that’s obviously material. And yet the meditator may be praying for personal gain, while the shopper may be joyously buying a gift for a loved one. If you knew what was really occurring, you might completely reverse your first opinions.

If you deeply investigate what you call material actions, you might find that they’re spiritual in essence. If you investigate what you think of as spiritual, you may discover that it involves matter. Spirit requires matter to express itself, and matter needs spirit to give it motion and meaning. As your understanding grows, you begin to see spirit and matter in all things, as two inseparable aspects of the same divine root substance that we call by many names: light, love, spirit, or even energy.

Actually, this universe may be nothing more than light at many different frequencies. Energy manifests itself in the form of waves and particles, which, in their essence, are nothing but light. Some physicists even say that matter is simply dense or low-frequency light. To our physical senses, the higher frequencies of light appear to be pure spirit, and the lower frequencies seem to be only matter, but in reality, spirit and matter are inextricably linked in a loving, cosmic dance at all frequencies. In your investigations of spirit and matter, the questions you ask determine which of the two you can see, and the wisest questions reveal both. When you see the two as an ordered one, your love, self-worth, and wealth will grow.

The Ultimate Secret to Wealth and Fulfillment

Your wealth and fulfillment in life are expressions of your heart, mind, and soul. The more the latter are awakened, the more the former may be elevated. There’s a widespread spiritual and business belief that formless spirit and form-full matter are somehow different, or even opposites, but as stated previously, this distinction is an illusion. There is no existence without a perfect combination of the two; in fact, they’re not even two, they’re one. Therefore, you’d be wise to make your spiritual life a business and your business life a spiritual experience. In other words, incorporate your heart, mind, and soul into your business. Put your spirit into your work. Pour on your inspiration. The most fulfilled people I’ve met are the ones who are inspired. They act like missionaries for their work. They put their spirit and inspiration into their interactions with those they meet, and they receive magnificent rewards in return.

You’d be wise to remember that, just as you are light, all matter, including money, is ultimately light. In fact, the word gold comes from the Hebrew aour, which means “light.” The only things keeping you and money apart are the limiting beliefs you hold about it.

Love and appreciation are powerful magnetic forces. If you don’t know how to love and appreciate wealth, if you unconsciously resist and mistrust it by misunderstanding its true nature, why would it be drawn to you? But when you transcend any limiting illusions about wealth and embrace it as a manifestation of spirit-matter, it walks right up and offers itself to you. You either attract abundance into your life or you keep it away, depending on how you think and feel. When spirit (cause) and matter (effect) come equally and fully together in your consciousness, heaven is born. If you would love to get to heaven, you would be wise to learn how to love and appreciate spiritual matter, including its earthly form called wealth.

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Excerpted from the new book How to Make One Hell of a Profit and Still Get To Heaven, by Dr. John Demartini. Published by Hay House (April 2004), it is available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com.

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