“Son, father told me about your books and I just didn’t want to read such language coming from you. I knew, when you were just a boy, that you had the makings of a writer. Don’t you remember all the books I gave you each Christmas? I used to envy you having all those wonderful books to read. From the time I married your father I never had the time to even glance at a book.”
“Poor mother,” I said. “And I was foolish enough to think you didn’t care about books. How stupid of me!”
She looked at me tenderly and said: “Since I am here I’ve discovered that books aren’t as important as we believe on earth. We have no newspapers, magazines or books. I would say that in talking to one another we are reading and writing books. And we don’t get headaches and colitis from it either. Every day we gain a broader outlook on life, become more tolerant and more at peace with ourselves and one another.”
“I wish some writers I know could have heard your words. How beautifully put! Now I see where I got my talent from! It was always a mystery to me, always bothered me. I used to console myself by saying that often geniuses are born of very ordinary parents. What egotism!”
Whereupon my mother observed, “Nobody has an easy time of it on earth. Earth is the testing ground. And, as I remarked before, it is close to being Hell. The torment, the poverty, the misery of mankind seems like the vengeance of some cruel god. Here we don’t talk of Cod or gods. Neither did the Buddha, if you remember his words!”
I was becoming more and more impressed with my mother’s words. Far from being a dumbbell I found wisdom in her words. Had she perhaps mingled with some of the great writers of the past? There must be many of them here, I thought to myself. But as I soon found out, the best ones had long since returned to earth. Some souls remained only a week or a month, while others stayed for centuries. Thus I soon discovered Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Walt Whitman, Knut Hamsun and a few other of my great favorites were no longer in limbo. They had learned fast. I could have met Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Waldo Frank and the like, even Jack London, but I passed it up.
Knowing my preoccupation with literature, she indicated a certain corner where they usually congregated, but I didn’t bother to go. Somehow I was learning more and enjoying myself more, just conversing with my mother. I had abandoned the idea of finding my father. He and Barrymore, his drinking companion below, had probably ferreted out a jolly bar in some out of the way corner.
It is generally assumed that one doesn’t know he is dead until some time after his expiration. That certainly was true in my case. Of course, as I have remarked earlier, there is no such thing as time here. Just as one never sees a school house, a radio or television set, a telephone, so one never sees a time piece. Five minutes may seem like a year and a hundred years like a few days. Also, to be sure, there is no sign of automobile or train. The sky is utterly different ‑ more like the Mediterranean and the stars shine brightly day and night. ‘Wild life is also missing, but the air is filled with birds of all kinds, all colors, usually. Singing melodiously. The ground is studded with wild flowers gleaming like rubies, sapphires, emeralds. At the horizon the edges curl up, giving the impression of being inside a limitless pancake. Fatigue is almost unknown, as this astral body is one which never wears out. A very noticeable thing is no one seems to be in a hurry. Nothing has great importance or urgency. Everything seems natural, extremely natural. One is at home and at peace immediately. The scholars and scientists, with their burning questions and dubious theories here partake of a seeming eternal rest.
I had a premonition that my mother was getting ready to return to Earth. I asked her how would we recognize one another when I too returned to earth. She said there was no way. One only felt that one had known another in a previous existence. As she spoke I recalled all the things I had heard on earth about reincarnation, karma, and so on. Nearly everyone I knew had experienced some strange “coincidence” at some time or other in his life. Many is the time, in a foreign country, that I had walked the same street before, recognized every house on the block. Also it frequently happened that I ran into someone and knew them instantly. Maybe we had last met in Egypt or China or Africa. Despite all the arguments of cynics and disbelievers, the existence of the soul, the eternality of life, was well‑known to earthlings. If there was such a thing as Hell on Earth there was also “Snatches of other realities.” Was “reality” not the very word philosophers and metaphysicians quarreled about? Yet it often happened that a simple ignorant peasant or a so‑called fool knew more about such matters than the wise ones. However much I wanted to see my mother again, however much I wanted to meet Cora again, I began to feel more and more that I would elect to return to some other planet rather than Earth. Though I had made the best of a difficult life, though I had learned to transform the bad into the good, still I felt that Earth had nothing more to offer me. If possible, I would not only choose another planet but another Universe! I was no longer looking for approbation but for confirmations.
Reflecting on the absence of such figures as Marie Corelli and Rider Haggard, I began to suspect that they too had elected for a different world than the one they came from.