We found those most peacefully and serenely expressing love in immense amounts to one another, and to the living below. Some we found who had turned their focus entirely to earth, and sought nothing but to answer the prayers that rose from the desperate, the needy, the sick.
And Earth by this time, as you know, had seen wars unspeakable, and whole civilizations dissolved by volcanic disaster. The variety and possibilities of suffering increased all the time. It wasn't only in proportion to learning, either, or cultural development. When I looked at Earth, I didn't even try to figure out what ruled the passions of those in one jungle as opposed to the groups in another, or why one population spent generations piling stone upon stone. I knew, of course, more or less everything, but I was not now on an earthly mission.
The dead had become our realm.
We drew near to these souls who looked down with mercy and compassion, who sought by thought to influence others for the good. Ten, twenty, thirty, I saw thousands. Thousands, I tell you, in whom all hope of rebirth or great reward was gone, souls in which existed total acceptance; that this was death; that this was eternity; souls enamored with the flesh and blood they could see just as we Angels had been enamored and still were.
We sat amongst these souls and started to talk with them, here and there, where we could get their attention, and it soon became obvious that they were rather indifferent to our forms, because they assumed we had chosen them as they had chosen theirs, and some of them resembled men and women, and some didn't bother. So I suspect they actually thought us rather new to Sheol in that we had to make such ferocious displays with arms and legs and wings. But they could be distracted from earth, if approached very politely, and we began to question them, remembering to strike for the truth only, but not to be rude.
We must have talked to millions. We roamed Sheol, talking to souls. And the hardest thing in each instance was to get the attention of the individual either off the earth, or off some phantasm of lost existence, or out of a state of airy contemplation in which concentration was now so alien and required such an effort that it couldn't be induced.
The wisest, the most loving souls, did not want to bother with our questions. And only gradually would they realize that we were not mortal men but something of much different substance, and that there was a point to our questions that had to do with a place of reference beyond Earth. You see, this was the dilemma. They had been in Sheol so long that they no longer speculated about the reason for Life or Creation; they no longer cursed a God they didn't know or sought a God who hid from them. And when we began to ask our questions, they thought we were way down there with the new souls, dreaming of punishments and rewards which were never to come.
These wise souls contemplated their past lives in a long wrathless reverie, and sought to answer prayers from below as I have said. They watched over their kindred, their clansmen, their own nations; they watched over those who attracted their attention with accomplished and spectacular displays of religiosity; they watched with sadness the suffering of humans and wished they could help and tried to help by thought when they could.
Almost none of these very strong and patient souls sought the flesh again. But some of them had in the past. They had gone down and been reborn and discovered in the final analysis that they could not remember from one fleshly life to another, so there was no real reason to keep being born! Better to linger here, in the eternity that was known to them, and to watch the Beauty of Creation, and it did seem very beautiful to them, as it had seemed to us.
Well, it was out of these questions, these endless and thoughtful conversations with the dead, that our criteria evolved.
First, to be worthy of Heaven - to have a ghost of a chance with God, I could say - the Soul had to understand life and death in the simplest sense. We found many souls who did. Next there had to be in this understanding an appreciation of the Beauty of God's work, the harmony of Creation from God's point of view, a vision of Nature wrapped in endless and overlapping cycles of survival and reproduction and evolution and growth.
Many souls had come to understand this. Many had. But many who thought life was beautiful felt that death was sad and endless and terrible and they would have chosen never to have been born, had they been given the choice!
I didn't know what to do in the face of that conviction, but it was very widespread. Why did He make us, Whoever He is, if we are to be here like this forever, out of it and never part of it again, unless we wish to dip down and suffer all that torment all over again, for a few moments of glory, which we won't appreciate any more next time than last time, because we can't take our knowledge with us if we are reborn!
Indeed, it was at this point which many souls had ceased to develop or change. They felt great concern and mercy for those who were alive, but they knew sorrow, and joy was not something that they could even imagine anymore. They moved towards peace; and peace indeed seemed about the finest state which they could achieve. Peace, broken by the struggle to answer prayers, was particularly difficult, but to me, as an angel, very attractive. And we stayed in the company of those souls for a long, long time.
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And Earth by this time, as you know, had seen wars unspeakable, and whole civilizations dissolved by volcanic disaster. The variety and possibilities of suffering increased all the time. It wasn't only in proportion to learning, either, or cultural development. When I looked at Earth, I didn't even try to figure out what ruled the passions of those in one jungle as opposed to the groups in another, or why one population spent generations piling stone upon stone. I knew, of course, more or less everything, but I was not now on an earthly mission.
The dead had become our realm.
We drew near to these souls who looked down with mercy and compassion, who sought by thought to influence others for the good. Ten, twenty, thirty, I saw thousands. Thousands, I tell you, in whom all hope of rebirth or great reward was gone, souls in which existed total acceptance; that this was death; that this was eternity; souls enamored with the flesh and blood they could see just as we Angels had been enamored and still were.
We sat amongst these souls and started to talk with them, here and there, where we could get their attention, and it soon became obvious that they were rather indifferent to our forms, because they assumed we had chosen them as they had chosen theirs, and some of them resembled men and women, and some didn't bother. So I suspect they actually thought us rather new to Sheol in that we had to make such ferocious displays with arms and legs and wings. But they could be distracted from earth, if approached very politely, and we began to question them, remembering to strike for the truth only, but not to be rude.
We must have talked to millions. We roamed Sheol, talking to souls. And the hardest thing in each instance was to get the attention of the individual either off the earth, or off some phantasm of lost existence, or out of a state of airy contemplation in which concentration was now so alien and required such an effort that it couldn't be induced.
The wisest, the most loving souls, did not want to bother with our questions. And only gradually would they realize that we were not mortal men but something of much different substance, and that there was a point to our questions that had to do with a place of reference beyond Earth. You see, this was the dilemma. They had been in Sheol so long that they no longer speculated about the reason for Life or Creation; they no longer cursed a God they didn't know or sought a God who hid from them. And when we began to ask our questions, they thought we were way down there with the new souls, dreaming of punishments and rewards which were never to come.
These wise souls contemplated their past lives in a long wrathless reverie, and sought to answer prayers from below as I have said. They watched over their kindred, their clansmen, their own nations; they watched over those who attracted their attention with accomplished and spectacular displays of religiosity; they watched with sadness the suffering of humans and wished they could help and tried to help by thought when they could.
Almost none of these very strong and patient souls sought the flesh again. But some of them had in the past. They had gone down and been reborn and discovered in the final analysis that they could not remember from one fleshly life to another, so there was no real reason to keep being born! Better to linger here, in the eternity that was known to them, and to watch the Beauty of Creation, and it did seem very beautiful to them, as it had seemed to us.
Well, it was out of these questions, these endless and thoughtful conversations with the dead, that our criteria evolved.
First, to be worthy of Heaven - to have a ghost of a chance with God, I could say - the Soul had to understand life and death in the simplest sense. We found many souls who did. Next there had to be in this understanding an appreciation of the Beauty of God's work, the harmony of Creation from God's point of view, a vision of Nature wrapped in endless and overlapping cycles of survival and reproduction and evolution and growth.
Many souls had come to understand this. Many had. But many who thought life was beautiful felt that death was sad and endless and terrible and they would have chosen never to have been born, had they been given the choice!
I didn't know what to do in the face of that conviction, but it was very widespread. Why did He make us, Whoever He is, if we are to be here like this forever, out of it and never part of it again, unless we wish to dip down and suffer all that torment all over again, for a few moments of glory, which we won't appreciate any more next time than last time, because we can't take our knowledge with us if we are reborn!
Indeed, it was at this point which many souls had ceased to develop or change. They felt great concern and mercy for those who were alive, but they knew sorrow, and joy was not something that they could even imagine anymore. They moved towards peace; and peace indeed seemed about the finest state which they could achieve. Peace, broken by the struggle to answer prayers, was particularly difficult, but to me, as an angel, very attractive. And we stayed in the company of those souls for a long, long time.