So, a gathering of Angels decided to go with me, to draw as close as possible to Matter in order to pull together for ourselves an entire knowledge, to better comprehend, as God had asked us to do. Michael came with me. And so did a host of other archangels. There were a few Seraphim. There were a few Ophanim. And some of the lower orders which are the least intelligent angels, but nevertheless angels, and much in love with Creation and curious as to what was making me so angry with God.
I can't give you the number of how many we were. But when we reached the earth, we went our separate ways to perceive things, and came together often and instantly and agreed upon what we had seen.
What united us was our interest in the statement of God that Humankind was part of Nature. We just couldn't see how this was true. We went exploring.
Very quickly, I learnt that men and women lived now in large groups, very unlike the other primates, that they built shelters for themselves, that they painted their bodies with various colors, that the women often lived separate from the men, and that they believed in something invisible. Now what was that? Was it the souls of the ancestors, the dearly departed who were still locked in the air of Earth, disembodied and confused?
Yes, it was the souls of ancestors, but the humans worshiped other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the Wild Beasts and to him they made blood sacrifice on Altars, thinking this aspect of Almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and rather easy to please or displease.
Now I can't say this was a very big surprise to me. I'd seen the early signs of it. After all, I too had seen the millions of years Lucifer telescoped for you in the Revelations. But when I drew near to these altars, when I heard the specific prayer to the God of the Wild Animals; when I began to see the care and deliberation of the sacrifice - the slaying of a ram or a deer - I was much struck by the fact that not only had these humans come to look like Angels, but they had guessed at the truth.
They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They knew. They didn't know what He was like but they knew. And this instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence as did their surviving spiritual souls. Let me be even clearer.
Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one's own death - this had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans; and this individuality feared death; feared annihilation! Saw it, knew what it was, saw it happening. And prayed for a God that He would not let such a thing have no meaning in the world.
And it was this very same tenacity - the tenacity of this individuality - that made the human soul stay alive after it left the body, imitating the shape of the body, holding itself together, so to speak, clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by shaping itself according to the only word it knew.
Man had invented or discovered God. [ Her voice is calm, polite and almost humbly instructive, no trace of the arrogance she carries in her voice on earth now. ] And in some instances, tribes worshiped more than one such deity who was perceived to have created this or that part of the world. And yes, humans knew of the souls of the dead surviving; and they did reach out to these souls and make offerings to them. They brought offerings to their graves. They cried out to these dead souls. They begged for their help in the hunt, and in the birthing of a child, in all things.
And as we angels peered into Sheol, as we passed into it, invisible, our essence causing no disturbance in a realm that was purely souls at that point... souls and nothing but souls ... we realized that these souls were strengthened in their survival by the attentions of those living on earth, by the love being sent to them by humans, by the thoughts of them in human minds. It was a process.
And just as with angels, these souls were individuals with varying degrees of intellect, interest, or curiosity. They were hosts as well to all human emotions, though in many, mercifully, all emotion was on the wane.
Some souls, for example, knew that they were dead, and sought to respond to the prayers of their children, and actively attempted to advise, speaking with all the power they could muster in a spiritual voice. They struggled to appear to their children. Sometimes they broke through for fleeting seconds, gathering to themselves swirling particles of matter by the sheer force of their invisible essence. Other times they made themselves visible in dreams, when the soul of the sleeping human was opened to other souls. They told their children of the bitterness and darkness of death, and that they must be brave and strong in life. They gave their children advice.
And they seemed, in some instances at least, to know that the belief and attention of their sons and daughters strengthened them. They requested offerings and prayers, they reminded the children of their duty. These souls were to some extent the least confused, except for one thing. They thought they had seen all there was to be seen.
No hint of Heaven. And no light from Heaven penetrated Sheol, nor any music. From Sheol one saw the darkness and the stars, and the people of Earth.
Not unbearable if you think you are a god to your children, of course, and can still derive strength from the mere sight of the libations they pour on your grave. Not if you feel pleasure in those who hearken to your advice and anger at those who don't, and not if you can communicate occasionally, sometimes with spectacular results.
Gods they seemed to their children. Ancestral gods of a certain kind. Not the Creator of All. Human beings had distinct ideas on both questions, as I've said.
I became greatly absorbed with this whole question of Sheol. I traveled the length and breadth of Sheol. Some of these souls didn't know they were dead. They knew only they were lost and blind and miserable and they cried all the time like infant humans. They were so weak I don't even think they felt the presence of other souls.
Other souls were clearly deluded. They thought they were still alive! They chased after their kindred, trying vainly to get the oblivious son or daughter to listen, when of course the kindred could not hear or see them; and these, these who thought they were still living, well, these had no presence of mind to gather matter to make themselves appear or to come to the living in a dream, because they didn't know they were dead.
To continue, some souls knew they were ghosts when they came to mortals. Others thought they were alive and the whole world had turned against them. Others simply drifted, seeing and hearing the sounds of other living beings but remote from this as if in a stupor or dream. And some souls died.
Before my very eyes, some died. And soon I realized many were dying. The dying soul would last a week, perhaps a month in human time, after its separation from the human body, retaining its shape, and then begin to fade. The essence would gradually disperse, just as did the essence inside an animal upon its death. Gone into the air, returned perhaps to the energy and essence of God.
Perhaps. Perhaps their energy went back into the Creator. Some might fancy that they were like the light of a candle returned to the eternal fire. I don't know. But that I did not see, little flames wafting to Heaven, drawn aloft by a mighty and loving blaze. No, I saw nothing of the kind.
From Sheol, the Light of God was not visible. For Sheol, the consolation of God did not exist. Yet these were spiritual beings, made in our image and His image, and clinging to that image, and hungering for a life beyond death. That was the agony. The hunger for the life beyond death.
Not that it was the case at all that the absence of this hunger would extinguish any souls at the time of death. The hunger, in fact, seemed innate. The hunger had to die out in Sheol before the soul would disintegrate. Indeed, souls went through many, many experiences in Sheol, and those who had become the strongest were those who perceived themselves as gods, or humans passed into the realm of the good God, and attentive to humans; and these souls gained power even to sway the others and strengthen them sometimes and keep them from fading away.
[ She pauses as if not sure how to proceed. Then, goes on. ]
There were some souls who understood things in a different way. They knew they weren't gods. They knew they were dead humans. They knew they didn't really have the right to change the destiny of those who prayed to them; they knew that the libations essentially were symbolic. These souls understood the meaning of the concept symbolic. They knew. And they knew they were dead and they perceived themselves to be lost. They would have reentered the flesh if they could have. For there in the flesh was all the light and warmth and comfort that they had ever known and could still see. And sometimes these souls managed to do exactly that!
I witnessed it in various different fashions. I saw these souls deliberately descend and take possession of a stupefied mortal, take over his limbs and brain and live in him until the man gained the strength to throw the soul off. You know these things. All men do - what is involved in possession.
no subject
So, a gathering of Angels decided to go with me, to draw as close as possible to Matter in order to pull together for ourselves an entire knowledge, to better comprehend, as God had asked us to do. Michael came with me. And so did a host of other archangels. There were a few Seraphim. There were a few Ophanim. And some of the lower orders which are the least intelligent angels, but nevertheless angels, and much in love with Creation and curious as to what was making me so angry with God.
I can't give you the number of how many we were. But when we reached the earth, we went our separate ways to perceive things, and came together often and instantly and agreed upon what we had seen.
What united us was our interest in the statement of God that Humankind was part of Nature. We just couldn't see how this was true. We went exploring.
Very quickly, I learnt that men and women lived now in large groups, very unlike the other primates, that they built shelters for themselves, that they painted their bodies with various colors, that the women often lived separate from the men, and that they believed in something invisible. Now what was that? Was it the souls of the ancestors, the dearly departed who were still locked in the air of Earth, disembodied and confused?
Yes, it was the souls of ancestors, but the humans worshiped other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the Wild Beasts and to him they made blood sacrifice on Altars, thinking this aspect of Almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and rather easy to please or displease.
Now I can't say this was a very big surprise to me. I'd seen the early signs of it. After all, I too had seen the millions of years Lucifer telescoped for you in the Revelations. But when I drew near to these altars, when I heard the specific prayer to the God of the Wild Animals; when I began to see the care and deliberation of the sacrifice - the slaying of a ram or a deer - I was much struck by the fact that not only had these humans come to look like Angels, but they had guessed at the truth.
They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They knew. They didn't know what He was like but they knew. And this instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence as did their surviving spiritual souls. Let me be even clearer.
Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one's own death - this had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans; and this individuality feared death; feared annihilation! Saw it, knew what it was, saw it happening. And prayed for a God that He would not let such a thing have no meaning in the world.
And it was this very same tenacity - the tenacity of this individuality - that made the human soul stay alive after it left the body, imitating the shape of the body, holding itself together, so to speak, clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by shaping itself according to the only word it knew.
Man had invented or discovered God. [ Her voice is calm, polite and almost humbly instructive, no trace of the arrogance she carries in her voice on earth now. ] And in some instances, tribes worshiped more than one such deity who was perceived to have created this or that part of the world. And yes, humans knew of the souls of the dead surviving; and they did reach out to these souls and make offerings to them. They brought offerings to their graves. They cried out to these dead souls. They begged for their help in the hunt, and in the birthing of a child, in all things.
And as we angels peered into Sheol, as we passed into it, invisible, our essence causing no disturbance in a realm that was purely souls at that point... souls and nothing but souls ... we realized that these souls were strengthened in their survival by the attentions of those living on earth, by the love being sent to them by humans, by the thoughts of them in human minds. It was a process.
And just as with angels, these souls were individuals with varying degrees of intellect, interest, or curiosity. They were hosts as well to all human emotions, though in many, mercifully, all emotion was on the wane.
Some souls, for example, knew that they were dead, and sought to respond to the prayers of their children, and actively attempted to advise, speaking with all the power they could muster in a spiritual voice. They struggled to appear to their children. Sometimes they broke through for fleeting seconds, gathering to themselves swirling particles of matter by the sheer force of their invisible essence. Other times they made themselves visible in dreams, when the soul of the sleeping human was opened to other souls. They told their children of the bitterness and darkness of death, and that they must be brave and strong in life. They gave their children advice.
And they seemed, in some instances at least, to know that the belief and attention of their sons and daughters strengthened them. They requested offerings and prayers, they reminded the children of their duty. These souls were to some extent the least confused, except for one thing. They thought they had seen all there was to be seen.
No hint of Heaven. And no light from Heaven penetrated Sheol, nor any music. From Sheol one saw the darkness and the stars, and the people of Earth.
Not unbearable if you think you are a god to your children, of course, and can still derive strength from the mere sight of the libations they pour on your grave. Not if you feel pleasure in those who hearken to your advice and anger at those who don't, and not if you can communicate occasionally, sometimes with spectacular results.
Gods they seemed to their children. Ancestral gods of a certain kind. Not the Creator of All. Human beings had distinct ideas on both questions, as I've said.
I became greatly absorbed with this whole question of Sheol. I traveled the length and breadth of Sheol. Some of these souls didn't know they were dead. They knew only they were lost and blind and miserable and they cried all the time like infant humans. They were so weak I don't even think they felt the presence of other souls.
Other souls were clearly deluded. They thought they were still alive! They chased after their kindred, trying vainly to get the oblivious son or daughter to listen, when of course the kindred could not hear or see them; and these, these who thought they were still living, well, these had no presence of mind to gather matter to make themselves appear or to come to the living in a dream, because they didn't know they were dead.
To continue, some souls knew they were ghosts when they came to mortals. Others thought they were alive and the whole world had turned against them. Others simply drifted, seeing and hearing the sounds of other living beings but remote from this as if in a stupor or dream. And some souls died.
Before my very eyes, some died. And soon I realized many were dying. The dying soul would last a week, perhaps a month in human time, after its separation from the human body, retaining its shape, and then begin to fade. The essence would gradually disperse, just as did the essence inside an animal upon its death. Gone into the air, returned perhaps to the energy and essence of God.
Perhaps. Perhaps their energy went back into the Creator. Some might fancy that they were like the light of a candle returned to the eternal fire. I don't know. But that I did not see, little flames wafting to Heaven, drawn aloft by a mighty and loving blaze. No, I saw nothing of the kind.
From Sheol, the Light of God was not visible. For Sheol, the consolation of God did not exist. Yet these were spiritual beings, made in our image and His image, and clinging to that image, and hungering for a life beyond death. That was the agony. The hunger for the life beyond death.
Not that it was the case at all that the absence of this hunger would extinguish any souls at the time of death. The hunger, in fact, seemed innate. The hunger had to die out in Sheol before the soul would disintegrate. Indeed, souls went through many, many experiences in Sheol, and those who had become the strongest were those who perceived themselves as gods, or humans passed into the realm of the good God, and attentive to humans; and these souls gained power even to sway the others and strengthen them sometimes and keep them from fading away.
[ She pauses as if not sure how to proceed. Then, goes on. ]
There were some souls who understood things in a different way. They knew they weren't gods. They knew they were dead humans. They knew they didn't really have the right to change the destiny of those who prayed to them; they knew that the libations essentially were symbolic. These souls understood the meaning of the concept symbolic. They knew. And they knew they were dead and they perceived themselves to be lost. They would have reentered the flesh if they could have. For there in the flesh was all the light and warmth and comfort that they had ever known and could still see. And sometimes these souls managed to do exactly that!
I witnessed it in various different fashions. I saw these souls deliberately descend and take possession of a stupefied mortal, take over his limbs and brain and live in him until the man gained the strength to throw the soul off. You know these things. All men do - what is involved in possession.