Most human beings recognize that the inward longing and desire of mankind is for a state of mental peace and harmony. Every individual is instinctively seeking happiness and a sense of being that is the expression of completeness and satisfaction. Harmonious existence is the natural desire of everyone.
Dissatisfaction with a material sense of life intensifies the inward wish for spiritual fulfillment. The one who is attempting to find his release in intoxication or narcotics really hopes to find peace and satisfaction, but he has gone in the wrong direction to find them. The individual who is mesmerized by sensuality and the pleasure of the senses is really seeking happiness, but he has gone in the wrong direction. All of this is a misdirected search for man's complete being and the understanding of what heaven really means. Jesus must have compassionately realized this when he said of the Magdalen (Luke 7:47), "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much." There is every indication that he perceived that there was in that woman's consciousness a basic love and hunger for good.
False theological teaching has inculcated the belief, still held by many, that heaven is a locality—a place or state of bliss to be awarded in an afterlife. False theology also holds millions in bondage to the belief in and fear of another place or state of existence called hell, thus attempting to govern and control the conduct of mortals through fear and condemnation.
