We may remind ourselves of Jacob’s ladder, in a vision of which he saw the angels of God rising to, and descending from, Heaven.
It may be conjectured that Egyptians looked at the layers of the pyramids as stone representations of positions of souls in either government or the afterlife and tried to guess where their souls were placed in a larger scheme of things, whether political, social, or spiritual.
If we picture ourselves living on a perfectly flat plane, we find that we can, at any given time, only go in three directions. We can go up, down, or sideways. Most of us spend most of our lives going sideways. Our concerns are overly horizontal. When we attempt to ascend, our earthly interests and desires pull us down. When we fall, we are always reminded that we are in danger, and that danger is both exciting and scary. Most of us stay within the “easily returnable” levels, so we avoid extremes.
If we imagine ourselves to be the size of a fraction of a grain of sand, we may see ourselves approaching a large, flat plane, much like an old long-playing record. That slight elevation is the plane on which those live who have a belief in a God more powerful than themselves. In the West, that mostly includes Protestants of every denomination. A smaller, slightly higher plane, represented by a 45 rpm single resting on the LP record represents the slightly higher plane reached by those who believe in The Trinity.
Above that, there is another flat plain, may be visualized as a shimmering CD resting atop the smaller 45 and larger 33 records. According to John 6;53 and following passages, “If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life it you.” This implies that He Who many consider the Son of God believes that the highest of the earthly planes is occupied by those who follow that teaching. It makes no more sense to those on the lower planes than it did when first said. But, that’s the way it is.
It’s interesting to see how many of those in denominations whose cash flows depend on other teachings are able to ignore or get around that. Along with many lapsed Catholics, they do.
