I guess it's some legacy expression from a more religious era. "là-bas" , "down there", = "in our material world" by opposition to paradise which is described to be up in the sky.
My understanding of "là-bas" is that it also means "over there" so I had no problem with the sentence. My only concern was the pronunciation which sounded off. Instead of [lah-bah], it sounded like [lay-bah].