What we see when we consider these two types of suffering humans endure, is that they are separable. We get, ultimately, zero good out of our susceptibility to physical and/or psycho-physical suffering--out of our bodily diseases, vulnerability to being victim to other men, starvation, loss of physical liberty. But we get incredible good out of the world resisting our will; a world that gave immediately everything we would will, would be a nightmare of a world; there would be no achievement, because any aim or goal would be realized at the snap of a finger.

These two sources of human suffering, as I said, are separable; and so we see a possible theory of Paradise--a heaven, as the religions have promised us. If we could imagine a world where we cannot suffer poor health, cannot starve, cannot be victimized bodily or psychologically--but yet this world would resist our will, the world’s resistance remaining--this would be as close as we could conceive to a Paradise, a kingdom of the heavens, or “gardens with rivers flowing beneath”. In such a world we would have all the good that comes from struggle, having goals that must be pursued with vigor, the possibility of failure and the consequent necessity to strive as hard as we can. But we would have totally gone from such a Paradise the horrors of cancer and all other illnesses, hunger, loss of physical liberty, physical victimization and war. We would no longer have the frail flesh that can give us agonies and misery; but we would retain the meaning that comes from struggling to bring about our goals, and the necessity to work and labor hard which is the only way our achievements can be valuable to begin with.

This, then, is a theory of heaven--none of the current physical vulnerability of the flesh to its tortures, but all the good that comes from a world that resists our will. But it is, still, not a categorical salvation. For let us live in this world for a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand years; we have a resisting world, so let us try this goal, try that, and try another. At some point, the joy in such a world is emptied of meaning finally; at some point we grow exhausted. A hundred thousand years of this world and more than a million to go; and a million again and again after that. Obviously despair at infinity will at some point overwhelm us, no matter how blessed this existence must be. The only alternatives to this infinite horizon being either transmigration and rebirth again and again, infinitely; or, worse eternal death. And so no--this is a theory of heaven that is about as close to God’s promised Paradise as we can yet conceive; but it is not categorical salvation, for the very notion of categorical salvation is that it is total and complete redemption, with not a single flaw in life that remains unredeemed. For our categorical salvation we must seek elsewhere.