What Dreams May Come (23 page)

“She is safe,” I said.

“Safe from where she was.”

I felt a tremor of uneasiness. “She’s here?” I asked. “In Summerland?”

He seemed reluctant to answer.

“Albert.” I looked at him anxiously. “Can I see her?”

He sighed. “I’m afraid not, Chris.”

I stared at him in blank dismay.

“You see,” he said, “although the love of someone close can, on occasion, elevate a soul to Summerland—though I’ve never seen it done with a suicide—that soul is, rarely, if ever, able to remain here.”

“Why?” I asked. That I was back in Summerland seemed, suddenly, a hollow victory.

“There are a hundred different answers to that question,” he said. “A thousand. The simplest of which is that Ann just isn’t ready for it yet.”

“Where is she then?” I was sitting up now, gazing at him apprehensively.

He seemed to brace himself. Was that a smile? “Well,” he started, “the answer to that brings up a subject so immense I don’t know where to begin. You haven’t been in Summerland long enough to have been exposed to it.”

“What subject?” I asked.

“Rebirth,” he said.

I felt dazed and lost. The more I learned of afterlife, the more confusing it became.

“Rebirth?”

“You’ve actually survived death many times,” he said. “You remember the identity of the life you just departed but you’ve had—we’ve all had—a multitude of past lives.”

A memory surfaced from the darkness in my mind. A cottage and an old man lying on a bed, two people nearby, a white-haired woman and a middle-aged man, their dress foreign, the woman’s accent unfamiliar as she said, “I think he’s gone.”

That old man had been me?

“Are you telling me that Ann is back on earth again?” I asked.

He nodded and I couldn’t restrain a groan of despair.

“Chris, would you rather she was still where you found her?”

“No,but—“

“Because you helped her understand what she’d done,” he said, “she was able to replace her self-imprisonment with immediate rebirth. Surely, you can see the vast improvement in that.”

“Yes, but—” Again, I couldn’t finish. Of course, I was grateful that she was free of that dreadful place.

Still, now, we were separated again.

“Where?” I asked.

He answered quietly. “India.”

The path begins on earth

AT LAST, I spoke. One word.

“India ?”

“It was immediately available,” he said, “as well as offering a challenge to her soul; a handicap to overcome which can counterbalance the negative effect of her suicide.”

“Handicap?” I asked uneasily.

“The body she’s chosen will, in later years, contract an illness which will cause severe sleep deprivation.”

Ann had taken her life with sleeping pills. To balance the scales, she’d acquire a condition which would not permit her to sleep normally.

“And she chose this?” I asked, wanting to be sure of that.

“Absolutely,” Albert said. “Rebirth is always a matter of choice.”

I nodded slowly, staring at him. “What about—the rest?” I asked.

“The rest is good,” he said. “In compensation for the pain she endured and the progress she achieved in her last life. Her new parents are intelligent, attractive people, the father in local government, the mother a successful artist. Ann—she’ll have another name, of course—will be given much love and opportunity for creative and intellectual growth.”

I thought about it for a while before I spoke. Then I said, “I want to go back too.”

Albert looked distressed.

“Chris,” he said, “unless one has to, one should never choose rebirth until one has studied and improved the mind so that the next life is an improvement over the last.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” I conceded. “But I have to be with her and help her if I can. I feel guilty for not having helped her enough in our past life together. I want to try again.”

“Chris, think,” he said. “Do you really want to return so soon to a world where masses are robbed and cheated by a few? Where food is destroyed while millions starve? Where service to state is a brute hypocrisy? Where killing is a simpler solution than loving?”

His words were harsh but I knew he spoke them for my benefit, hoping to convince me to remain in Summerland and grow.

“I know you’re right,” I said. “And I know you have my best interests at heart. But I love Ann and I have to be with her, helping her as best I can.”

His smile was sad but accepting. “I understand.” He nodded. “Well, I’m not surprised,” he said. “I’ve seen you both together.”

I started. “When?”

“When both of you were taken from that etheric prison.” His smile was tender now. “Your auras blend. You have the same vibration, as I told you. That’s why you can’t bear being separated from her. She’s your soul mate and I understand completely why you want to be with her. I’m sure Ann chose rebirth in hope of bringing both of you together somehow. Still—“

“What?”

“I wish you could understand the implications of returning.”

“It can be done, can’t it?” I asked in concern.

“It may not be simple,” he answered. “And there could be risks.”

“What sort of risks?”

He hesitated, then replied. “We’d best have an expert tell you.”

I thought I could return immediately. I should have known that such a complex process was not so easily effected; that, like everything in afterlife, it required study.

First came the lecture.

Near the center of the city I was in a giant, circular temple seating thousands. A shaft of white light shone down on it, clearly visible in spite of the abundant illumination.

When Albert and I entered the temple, we moved unhesitatingly to a pair of seats halfway to the speaker’s platform. I cannot tell you why. They weren’t marked or different, in any way, from all the other seats. Still, I knew those seats were ours before we reached them.

The massive audience was talking quietly; by which, of course, I mean without an audible sound. Many smiled at us as we took our places.

“Are all these people planning to be reborn?” I asked in surprise.

“I doubt it,” Albert said. “Most of them are probably here to learn.”

I nodded, trying not to acknowledge my mounting unrest. It was similar to the feeling I’d had when I first arrived in Summerland; when something in me had, unconsciously, been aware of Ann’s impending suicide.

Similar, I say. It couldn’t be the same. I knew that she would live now, not die. Still, our separation was equally distressing to me. I couldn’t tell you, Robert, what the higher ramifications are of being soul mates. I can tell you this however. As long as you are separated from your own, that long are you troubled. No matter what the circumstances, no matter how exquisite the environment in which you find yourself.

To be half of one can only be a torment when the other half is gone.

A lovely woman walked up to the platform now and smiled at us, began to speak.

“Shakespeare put it this way in referring to death,” she said. “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

She smiled again. “Beautifully expressed,” she said, “if totally inaccurate. We have all discovered this country following our ‘deaths.’ What is more, it is a bourn from which all travelers must, eventually, return.

“We are triune,” she continued. “Spirit, soul and body; this last third—in earthly life—composed of physical, etheric and astral bodies. I will not discuss our spirit at this time. Our soul contains the essence of God within us. This essence directs our course of life, guiding the soul through many life experiences. Each time a portion of the soul descends into flesh, it absorbs that experience and evolves, becoming enriched by it. Or—” She paused, “—detracting from it.”

Which was essentially what Albert had said, I recalled. Ann’s suicide had detracted from her soul and, now, she had chosen to absorb enough positive experience to rebuild it.

How is this larger self added to or subtracted from? By memory. Each of us has an external and an internal memory, the external belonging to our visible body, the internal to our invisible—or spiritual—body. Every single thing any one of us has ever thought, willed, spoken, done, heard or seen is inscribed on this internal memory.

This comprehensive recollection always remains in its “Father’s house,” growing or diminishing with the results of each new physical life. The astral—or spirit—body returns to earth but remains the same. Only the body of flesh and its etheric double is altered.

There is a line of communication between the higher self and whatever physical form the soul has, currently, chosen. For instance, if the physical self receives an inspiration, it comes from the soul. The so-called “still, small voice” is knowledge from former lessons which warn an individual not to commit some act which would do injury to its soul.

However, by and large, except in cases of those born receptive to its existence or who, by looking inward—meditating—become aware of it, the penetration of this true self into matter is rarely perceived.

“The process, then, is this,” the woman told us. “Life after life of effort, interspersed with periods of rest and study on this plane, gradually shapes the soul to that which it aspires to be. Sometimes, what it has failed to achieve in life can be achieved in afterlife so that the next rebirth is attended by more awareness, more ability to effect the ultimate aspiration toward God.

“Thus, the triunity which we are experiences a triad of incarnation, disincarnation and reincarnation. Man should be well aware of how to die for he has done it many times. Yet, every time he returns to flesh—with rare exceptions—he forgets again.”

A question occurred to me. Amazingly, the woman answered it as though she’d picked it from my mind.

“You appear now as you did in your last incarnation,” she said. “You have, of course, had many different appearances, some of the opposite sex. You retain the look of your previous life, however, because it is most vivid in your memory.

“When that life terminated, your consciousness receded, in stages, toward its source, dissociating itself from its involvement in matter. This process of relinquishment took place in the etheric world where your desires and feelings were refined, all nonregenerated forces from your life focused and transmuted. At length, your consciousness receded to this mental or ‘heaven’ stage where it is, now, completely free of matter.”

I didn’t know whether she’d receive my thanks for the answer but I nodded once. It may have been imagined but it seemed as though she smiled and nodded back.

“The length of the stay in afterlife varies,” she continued. “Sometimes a thousand years may pass between incarnations. When awareness comes after death, the initial impulse of the personality is to reincarnate. Newcomers invariably begin to practice the method by which vibrations are controlled so they can be reborn.

“The real discipline is for a soul to decide to remain in Summerland and study to improve so that the next incarnation will be a larger forward step in the soul-growth process.”

Another question occurred to me; immediately answered again. I wondered if I was the only one thinking it.

“Not everyone is reborn,” the woman said. “Some souls are so advanced they no longer reincarnate but pass on to a level of existence beyond anything that earth can offer, achieving a final reunion with God.

“These souls, having found no remaining lack in their attempts to atone for misdeeds or acquire knowledge, elect to join the Creator and are drawn into a state of perfect oneness with Him, becoming, as it were, integral with the universal pattern.”

She did not go into the details of this so-called “third” death since it is too complex and all of us had much experience to face yet, much to learn and many limitations to overcome. Limitations which can only be dealt with on earth because it is the only place where they can be externalized. Summerland is far too malleable, far too easy to control. Only in the density of matter can any personality face the most severe of trials. It is man’s primary testing ground, the place for action and experiment.

All of us have a path to follow and the path begins on earth.

Through all eternity

“How, SPECIFICALLY, is it done?” the woman continued. “For those concerned, in this manner.”

I found myself leaning forward. What she’d said, to that point, had been interesting. Now, however, she was going to tell us—tell me how I could go about rejoining Ann once more.

Here is what she told us, Robert.

When a soul who seeks reentry into flesh selects his preference of parents, he—or she—clears it with what might be termed a computer. Then, if there is competition, so to speak, for a particular placement, the computer will decide which soul is most appropriate to the task—or, more likely, most in need of it.

I call it a computer but, of course, it is more complex than that, being capable of blending the thought patterns of all those who have applied for a similar type of heredity and environment. As this mass of thought material is synchronized into an overall pattern, the soul most qualified comes to recognize that he or she is the one to be selected and the rest, unquestioning, search further.

She warned us that it is tempting, in the state of freedom enjoyed in Summerland, to plan a life ahead as being one of great ambition.

“Let me caution any of you who plan rebirth,” she said, “to be aware of the restrictions you will face in physical life. Demand less in order to accomplish more is the preferable method.”

The details will fascinate you, Robert: In the Far East, souls desiring to re-enter matter remain in the abodes of men and women and, when the time is propitious, visualize themselves as cells and enter the wombs of their mothers to be. It is simple and uncomplicated.

It is, also, dangerous. Should the child be born dead, the soul becomes locked in a coma on the etheric level, no longer a viable entity but one which cannot free its consciousness. This is because the soul mind is in deep sleep when rebirth takes place. No mental action is possible until a child’s faculties are ready to be utilized.