I have sometimes wondered, does the universe disappear when I close my eyes? After all, if we do not see it - can it be said to exist at all?

I think the answer is yes, it does disappear. But we get it a bit confused, because we always tie it to "vision" - to see.

The right way to think about these things is that seeing is an experience. But so is hearing. Smelling. Touching. Feeling. Thinking. Seeing becomes a metaphor for all of these ways to experience the universe.

When we wonder about "does the universe disappear when I close my eyes", what we are actually asking is; does the universe cease when I no longer experience it?

And it would. That is what death is. It ceases, for you - I think.

But there is no way to not experience it, even as "you" cease to be. Because who is looking through your eyes, is looking through every pair of eyes. Everyone who experiences, is you.

Even if you should die, and death should prove to be "non-experience", there would be others who experienced it, and that would keep the universe going, and you watching it.

As long as there are eyes to see (which is a metaphor for an experiencer) there is something also to be experienced.

They go together, or not at all.

So what of the afterlife? What of heaven?

When your point of view ceases.. this human being.. experience must resume elsewhere. You can not "not experience". So when you die, a new experience starts.

And it might feel just as it does now.

Who's to say that the new can not start in "heaven" as a continuation of the old?

We already experience these shifts every night, in dreams.

Heaven might be a dream.

But so could this life be a dream.

And the shift from one to the other... like falling asleep and waking up. Do you not always feel like yourself, even in a dream?