Where Is Paradise? Discovering the Garden Within
Nov 21, 2025
“This very place, the Lotus Paradise,
This very body, the Buddha.” - Zen Master Hakuin
With these words, the great Zen Master Hakuin, interpreted the Heart Sutra in its most exquisite and refined form. In doing so, he also gave a mystical transmission, which sums up all spiritual teachings of all the ages, in just one simple phrase.
If we are perceptive, and dig a little beyond the dogma, we can even see that Christ was offering a similar teaching. In a translation of Christ’s teachings, by Neil Douglas–Klotz, taken directly from Aramaic, (the original language in which he spoke) Jesus says:
“Create your reign of unity now-
through our fiery hearts And willing hands Let your council rule our lives, clearing our intention for co-creation Unite our “I can” to yours, so that we walk as kings and queens with every creature Desire with and through us the rule of universal fruitfulness onto the Earth Your rule springs into existence As our arms reach out to embrace all creation Come into the bedroom or our hearts prepare us for the marriage of power and beauty From this divine union, let us birth new images for a new world of peace Create your reign of unity now!”
The Marriage of Power and Beauty
And what exactly is the marriage of power and beauty, which Jesus refers to? There is a Sanskrit mantra, which is:
The meeting of male and female leading to ultimate truth
Satyam means truth. Shivam means Godliness. Sunderam means beauty. Shivam is the masculine principle. Sunderam is the feminine principle. Through the meeting of power and beauty, the ultimate truth is revealed.
When we have experienced the divine union of masculine and feminine, spoken of by Jesus, or indicated by the Sanskrit mantra, Satyam Shivam Sunderam, it is obvious that “new images for a new world” will automatically manifest, an eternal world based on peace and unity.
Why Humanity Lost Its Golden Age
I would like to explore why this new world indicated by mystics, has not happened within recorded memory. Perhaps in the past, there was a golden age. This is entirely possible and there are indications that this was the case. However, for the past 5000 years and more, a great part of humanity has known strife, war, greed and abuse as ruling principles.
The reason is, in a sense, obvious for all to see. As an example, we can contemplate the phenomenon of the Bonsai tree, prevalent in Japan or China. People think these are very cute and ornamental decorations to have in their home, but the implications are sinister.
A Bonsai tree is grown from the seed of a normal tree. For example, imagine the seed of an Oak. It was destined to become a huge and magnificent tree, under which hundreds of people could find shade. However, when it is turned into a Bonsai, as the tree is growing, its roots are systematically cut at intervals, transforming it into a dwarf tree. It has all the attributes of a huge tree, but in miniature. In short, it has not been allowed to live its full potential.
The Great Deception: Sex as Sin
This systematic cutting of the roots has been practised on human beings for thousands of years, thereby making us more manageable and easy to control by ruling powers. Osho has informed us in one of his books that priests and politicians down the ages have been entangled in a secret “mafia of the soul”, enslaving humanity in their warped grip of power. This is surprisingly easy to do. All they had to do was to let us believe, through repeated conditioning, that ‘sex is sin.’ This conditioning is done from birth onwards, so the child never guesses that it has been turned into a human Bonsai.
We have one energy circulating within us. This same energy can be expressed in our sexuality, through the heart, and through our spirit essence. However, if it has been cut from the sex, it will never reach to the heart, and never reach to the soul. Just as a tree whose roots have been cut cannot grow its trunk and branches towards the sky, so it is with the human energy system.
Growth is a process of maturation. As we mature in one aspect, we are then able to open to another aspect within. The sexual energy, which forms our roots, needs to spread deep into the earth of our being, in order for the tree of life within us to begin its ascent. If we try to create a shortcut, and ascend before we have lived our sexual instinctual nature, we are in for a surprise. We cannot access love or spirituality effectively. We remain stunted, dried up, serious and depressed.
Paradise is here on Earth right now.
When Sexual Energy Blossoms
When someone lives their sexuality in a healthy natural way, they become juicy, playful, loving and expansive. And they also discover the great ‘open secret’ that the mafia of the soul does not want us to know. When you are plugged into your full potential for sexual ecstasy, you will discover that Paradise is here-now. You will see beauty everywhere, and will want to nurture more beauty and more lovingness. You will discover that God is within you, as well as in each life form. You will yearn to savour and nurture the gifts life bestows on us. You will find yourself back in the Garden of Eden.
I have often wondered why ugly and monstrous buildings are created, when everyone knows that people everywhere are attracted in droves to visit exquisite sacred architecture. Why are we made to suffer, in buildings which are created to look and feel like cages for rats, rather than as expressions of beauty and fulfilment?
There needs to be time in life for meditation and play!
Reclaiming Our Power and Play
The answer is simple. We allow ourselves to be treated like rats in cages, because we are not in our power. We believe in the mafia of the soul. We believe it is our destiny for life to be stressful, arduous, full of conflict and deadly serious. We believe this, because we have been told it is so, because we see it demonstrated, and because we are not in touch with our own capacity for ecstasy.
Osho’s vision of the new world, is sane, practical, and balanced. He recommends that people work only six hours a day, four days a week, leaving enough time for meditation, loving and play. He further suggests that instead of cities, people should live in small communes, in beautiful surroundings. He recommends that the whole commune should look after children, rather than just one set of parents, so they can have imprints from several sources, and choose the best and most nurturing imprints for their development.
He says:
“This earth can be a splendour, a magic, a miracle. Our hands have that touch – it is just that we have never tried it. Man has never given a chance to his own potential to grow, to blossom, to bring fulfilment and contentment.”
The Signs of a New Dawn
I am sure in my bones and marrow that a New Dawn is ready to manifest. It is in our power to nurture this into being. The signs are all around us. Organic agriculture, ecology in tune with nature, alternative energy (which does not require raping the earth of its resources), sacred architecture, holistic medicine, creative education (such as the Steiner approach), the ecstatic birth movement, alternative currency systems, living water systems, (such as those designed by Schauberger), new ways of celebrating spirituality, the art of Tantra, and the list goes on.
The Sensual Path Back to Eden
Paradise is not somewhere else. It is in our hands. I remember to this day, a very special moment of adolescent fulfilment. A man utterly seduced me with the words, “Have you ever felt that eyes are the window to the soul? When I look in your eyes, I see you, I see your soul.” And then came the magical, princely kiss, long and lingering, and of course, I melted all the way to my soul…
Touch, hugging, eye contact, dancing, smelling and tasting can all propel us into a deep soul communion. Our whole experience and expression of life is an invitation into a truly magical, beautiful world.
In my vision of paradise, beauty and godliness guide the way. We awaken our God and Goddess nature here and now, and celebrate our joy through aesthetic, creative beauty, in tune with nature. Various indigenous cultures, in their creation stories, claim that human beings were placed on this Earth, to become custodians for the planet, to bring harmony and balance to all living beings. We have the gift of free will. The question is how will we choose to use that, to destroy ourselves and everything else? Let this not be the way the wheel of the New Dawn turns!
Say No to What Destroys — Say Yes to What Nourishes
Just say NO! to all forms of rapist technology, no to genetically modified foods, no to chemicals that kill our soil, water and destroy our health, no to war, no to idiotic dogmas, which poison our minds, no to brainwashing of all kinds, such as newspapers and TV, no to fear mongering. And, walk your talk!
Say YES to love and all expressions of love, yes to all kinds of nurturing, yes to beauty, yes to harmony, yes to playfulness and celebration, yes to healthy foods! And dance your way to God! Hug more and paradise is found. Do more massage and you will have found the promised land! Learn Tantric sex, and discover sacred unity. Plant a tree and see Eden before you. Eat more greens and embrace the blessing of health and vitality. Meditate and embrace your spirit. Create more eco-villages. Learn from nature and copy her. She is wise in the laws of universal energy.
The Whisper of Spirit Within
As far as I know, each soul carries a whispered transmission, directly from Spirit, indicating the direction their steps in life should follow. As we learn to align our life with Spirit, we will find our blessed path opening before us. When we travel this path, we find that our shadow is made of joy. This joy is infectious, and inspires others to follow their own spirit whisper. Soon, as more and more people are able to hear their whispered transmission, a great wave of joy will engulf the world.
In the meantime, each individual is invited by existence to discover that Paradise is really, here and now.
The Golden Crisis: Birth of the New Humanity
And some more words from Osho on the New Dawn to end with:
“This crisis is a golden crisis, because people only change under great stress. If a crisis is tolerable, people will tolerate it. But we are now at a point where things are no longer tolerable. There is no more time for commissions and their reports.
The problems are very simple. They just have to be made clearly available to the whole of humanity: these problems are your creation and you are still creating them. Just a great awareness has to be spread that we are still supporting these problems, so that everybody can understand that we have to withdraw our support and take some practical steps. For example, if someone wants to be a world citizen, the U.N. should give a world citizen passport so the person is no longer connected to any nation. These are just small steps, but they can immediately become large steps. They will create an atmosphere.
Realise the responsibility: Man has never faced a greater responsibility before, a responsibility to renounce the whole past, to erase it from your being.
The future should not be just a hope and an opportunity – those are terrible words. The future should be absolutely ours. We have lived with the idea of a golden past, but it was never golden.
Now we can create a future, which is really golden.
So I say: the new man is the greatest revolution that has ever happened in the world. And since we know the old world and its miseries, we can avoid all those miseries; we can avoid all those jealousies, all those seriousnesses, all those angers, all those wars, all those destructive tendencies.
The new man means that we are no longer going to allow anybody to sacrifice us for any beautiful name.
We are going to live our lives, not according to ideals but according to our own longings, our own passionate intuitions. And we are going to live moment to moment; we are no longer going to be fooled by “tomorrow,” and promises for tomorrow.”
FAQ
Where Is the Paradise on Earth?
When we ask “Where is Paradise on Earth?” we often imagine a faraway land, a hidden garden of Eden that no longer exists. But the great mystics, from Jesus Christ to Zen Master Hakuin, have always pointed us inward.
“This very body, the Buddha. This very place, the Lotus Paradise.”
Paradise, in this sense, is not a place in the physical universe, but a state of awakened being. It begins when the soul unites heaven and earth within the body, when the energy of life that once rooted Adam and Eve in the garden flows freely again.
Jesus tells us, “The kingdom of God is within you.” When he spoke of “Thy Kingdom come”, he wasn’t pointing to some distant third heaven, but to the new heaven and new earth born in consciousness when love, faith, and spirit rule the heart. Paradise is here, in this living moment, when we remember our divine nature and live in harmony with creation.
Where Is the Place Called Paradise?
The word Paradise comes from the ancient Persian pairidaeza, meaning a walled garden. In the Bible, it’s used to describe both the garden of Eden (in Genesis) and the realm of the righteous in the new heaven (in Revelation).
When Jesus hung upon the cross and spoke to the dying thief, he said, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) The Greek word used here, paradeisos, evokes a divine garden, a place of rest, peace, and reunion with God.
Some traditions place this Paradise in the third heaven, the spiritual realm Paul described when he said, “I was caught up into Paradise and heard things no mortal is permitted to repeat.” (2 Corinthians 12:2–4). Others believe it is the new Jerusalem, the city of light described in Revelation, descending to Earth when the old heaven and earth pass away.
Yet the mystics whisper that Paradise is not a somewhere, but a state of soul. It is both within and beyond the physical universe, the meeting place of the seen and unseen, where the heart of man rests in the heart of God.
Are Heaven and Paradise the Same Place?
The Bible and scripture often use the words heaven and paradise together, yet with subtle distinction. Heaven is often described as the broader realm of God, the home of angels, the ultimate destination of spirit after death, and the place where Jesus ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father. Paradise, meanwhile, is the garden of the soul, the blessed rest of the righteous between worlds, or the new earth awaiting resurrection.
In the Old Testament, this paradise was symbolized as Abraham’s bosom, a place of comfort and waiting for the faithful. After the resurrection of Christ, Paradise became open to all those who live in faith and love.
So, while heaven may refer to the vast spiritual space, the first heaven (the sky), the second heaven (outer space), and the third heaven (the realm of divine presence), paradise is the sacred garden within that mirrors God’s perfect harmony.
To live in Paradise is to live in communion with the Divine, here and now, while also trusting in the eternal promise, the new heaven and new earth where death, destruction, and hell are no more.
As the Apostle Paul wrote, our hope and faith are not in escaping the world, but in transforming it, until all creation becomes one radiant city, the New Jerusalem, where heaven and earth are one.
