There is so much in the story it is impossible to cover in one blog. For instance, Jesus blessed those who believed without seeing - and yet, the boy's parents only truly believed after given proof of the boy's unknown dead relative; and the congregation was split between those who would believe in just about anything and those who were deeply disturbed by the weirdness of it all - even though they professed to believe in a living Jesus and life after death. Not in THIS world, they insisted. This latter attitude is what strikes me most; it is as if our view of the world is entirely correct, even if all the facts aren't currently in place. This perception usually continues for most of us even as we all experience weirdness in our lives, even as every night we drift into an alternate reality; and even if we believe in a god-man who rose from the dead.
Many of us have had out-of-body experiences, just as the boy had before he had his vision of heaven, and although this is not life-shattering like a near-death-experience, it can alter one's vision of reality forever; for if one can BE without body, that is, observe as a point of reference apart from the body, what then is "ourself?" If it is more than our solid body, what else is it?
Many religions, including Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, talk of many levels of heaven, which is how we got the expression, "he must be in seventh heaven." These are envisioned as hierarchical levels of awareness, with the higher of each (or, alternatively, those closer to the center), being more inclusive of the Great Totality. If we are to accept this concept, then the visions of others become much easier to understand.
In the movie, we have a scene where the father goes to a non-spiritual psychiatrist for her explanation of her son's visions. "Yes," she says, "all of this is very common. Severe trauma causes the body to produce endorphins, which cause a sense of euphoria that the mind links with elements from the cultural background. Muslims will see Mohammed, Jews, Moses, and Christians, Jesus." In other words, these visions, because they differ, are proof that they are only the end products of chemical changes in the brain. Case closed, go home and let the boy get over it.
Not to mention the paranormal aspects of the visions the boy had, we might also suggest to the psychiatrist that our normal experiences are ALSO only the product of chemical combinations. Going on along this logical axis, we can then say that even our concepts of the body and of chemicals themselves are an illusion - and we can continue with this ad infinitum. This logic is not an explanation, then, but rather a blind shot into the scary world of open reality, a soothing fairy tale in itself. Rather, we might better say that this level of reality is largely confined to what we witness as the material. Seeing reality in terms of levels of inclusivity, we can understand that what happened with the boy, and with many others, is that they became aware of another level that was more whole. It was, in affect, more "holy" as the religious might put it. And because it was beyond the scope of common material reference, the materially- situated ego had to dig up material world references to the holy. To the Jew, that reference might be Moses, to the Hindu, Vishnu, and so on. What seemed like a negation of fact through plurality to the psychiatrist was only a shift in reference frames from different cultural perspectives.
None of this is really all that odd; for instance, music, mere manipulations of sonic waves, is used to elicit a huge variety of emotions, including the holy. It is a bridge between dimensions, so to speak, just as our religious figures are. Jesus for the Christian encapsulates certain levels of the holy experience. He IS, then, as the person ascends to the higher level. It is not that odd after all. But it is our fear of realities beyond our own that keep us from experiencing them or accepting them. Why this is so, as terrifying as this world can be, is in itself something of a mystery and another story in itself, but that was the working principle for the people of the boy's community. As the movie shows us, for those who were able accept this other reality, their daily reality became that much richer. FK