He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another w… - Philip Pullman

So Lyra and her daemon turned away from the world they were born in, and looked toward the sun, and walked into the sky.

And then what?" said her Dæmon sleepily "build what?"
"The Republic of Heaven.

A sense of belonging, a sense of being part of a real and important story, a sense of being connected to other people, to people who are not here any more, to those who have gone before us. And a sense of being connected to the universe itself. All those things were promised and summed up in the phrase, 'The Kingdom of Heaven'. But if the Kingdom is dead, we still need those things. We can't live without those things because it's too bleak, it's too bare and we don't need to. We can find a way of creating them for ourselves if we think in terms of a Republic of Heaven. This is not a Kingdom but a Republic, in which we are all free and equal citizens, with — and this is the important thing — responsibilities. With the responsibility to make this place into a Republic of Heaven for everyone. Not to live in it in a state of perpetual self-indulgence, but to work hard to make this place as good as we possibly can.