The answer to the question: "is Heaven is place?" is yes. However,  rather than a literal physical place the research from near death experiences clearly shows that Heaven is an otherworldly place or a dimension with another form of existence. The evidence suggests that people actually leave their bodies and go to an otherworldly place that is non-physical and not like here on earth. While a real place, heaven is not a literal physical place but an unearthly dimension beyond our physical world.

   From this we can also conclude that the ‘things’ we do in heaven are also not like the things we do here on earth, as we are in another dimension and in another form of existence.

   In chapter three of 90 Minutes in Heaven, Piper tells us that his most vivid memory of heaven was what he heard and that this was songs all praising Jesus. Based on this, on his website he has a section titled: “What do people do in heaven?”

  Here Piper explains that “Heaven is full of singing” and that we will all be part of God’s choir.  We are also told that, “Imagine eating all you want and never gaining weight!” Throughout his description there is clearly a sense of heaven as a literal physical place as he tries to adapt his experience to a specific interpretation of the Bible. 

   However, also in chapter three we find a more honest description of heaven and what it is also like according to NDE research:

I get frustrated describing what heaven was like, because I can’t even begin to put into words what it looked like, sounded like, and felt like. It was perfect, and I knew that I had no needs and never would again. I didn’t even think of earth or those left behind.

   As we have looked at earlier, most people who have near death experiences find it hard to put their experience into words, and this is why this description of heaven is a lot more honest than Piper’s other attempts to describe heaven as a literal place based on narrow biblical interpretation. 

   To figure out what heaven is really like, we need to know more about what the core or essence of heaven is. Here one NDE research study, the Evergreen Study, found that as stage one and the most common feature in the NDE, 75 percent experienced a feeling of overwhelming peace. The study also found that 56 percent encountered a Light and 34 percent described entering the Light. 

   Also another study, the Southern California Study found that 70 percent experienced the feeling state, and 62 percent encountered a Light with 18 percent entering the Light. The study also found that 48 percent encountered deceased friends or relatives, spirit beings or religious figures. While the feeling state is clearly the most common feature of both studies, we are not given any information about how many percent of the 48 percent meet a religious figure.

   However, in another study of over 300 near death experiences published in The Truth in the Light by Dr. Peter Fenwick, we find that 33 percent met a religious figure. As a more common encounter than with a religious figure, Fenwick found that 38 percent met someone they knew of which 50 percent met a dead relative and surprisingly 38 percent met someone who was still alive. He also found that even though people did describe hearing “heavenly” music like Piper, this only happened to about 20 percent.

   In my own study, I found that the Light was the most common feature with 73 percent of the people having this experience. This fits with both the Evergreen and Southern California studies but also with Fenwick’s study, which found that 72 percent encountered the Light. Generally, as we have seen throughout the book, the Light is seen as the most common feature of the near death experience but there is another element of the experience that is even more common.

   To get to the core of heaven we have to go back to Fenwick’s earlier conclusion:

Although many of these visions of Paradise include strong well-formed, visual images, sometimes the imagery is much less pictorial, at times almost losing its form completely. And yet it still remains intensely emotional, and still gives this very strong impression of heightened awareness.

   Here we have as in both the Evergreen and Southern California studies that an intensely emotional feeling state along with heightened awareness is the predominate feature at the core of the experience of paradise or heaven. 

   Fenwick explains that while the Light was experienced by 72 percent, he found that a larger majority; 88 percent described the experience of the feeling state of calm, peace, or joy. And so he concludes that, “This means that these positive feelings are far more common than the light or the tunnel, or indeed any of the other phenomena of the NDE.”

   The profound feeling state of peace, joy and love is the heart of the experience of heaven and of the near death experience in general, as Fenwick here explains further:

This emotional state is primary and spreads into whatever imagery arises. When strong imagery is present it is coloured by fundamental feelings, and becomes an intensely emotional experience. The essence of each of these experiences was the “feeling state”…It is this feeling state more than anything else which seems to me to shape and define the near death experience.

   Also another researcher, Margot Grey, found that 47 percent experienced a feeling state of peace and euphoria, and 29 percent experienced joy and happiness. So, all of this evidence is pointing us in the direction of the essence of heaven through what people experience as the core of their near death experience. This essence is the profound feeling state in another dimension rather than an actual place or meeting with some specific religious figure.

   This means that behind whatever visions or images that are experienced in heaven, still we find that expanded awareness seems to be the essence of the experience of heaven. It also means that behind whatever being or religious figure we meet, the feelings of peace, joy and love are at the heart of the experience.