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"These wise souls contemplated their past lives in a long wrath-less 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 withaccomplished and spectacular displays of religiosity; they watchedwith sadness the suffering of humans and wished they could help andtried to help by thought when they could.
"Almost none of these very strong and patient souls sought theflesh again. But some of them had in the past. They had gone downand been reborn and discovered in the final analysis that they couldnot remember from one fleshly life to another, so there was no realreason to keep being born! Better to linger here, in the eternity thatwas known to them, and to watch the Beauty of Creation, and it didseem very beautiful to them, as it had seemed to us.
"Well, it was out of these questions, these endless and thoughtfulconversations with the dead, that my criteria evolved.
"First, to be worthy of Heaven梩o have a ghost of a chance withGod, I could say梩he Soul had to understand life and death in thesimplest sense. I found many souls who did. Next there had to be inthis understanding an appreciation of the Beauty of God's work, theharmony of Creation from God's point of view, a vision of Naturewrapped in endless and overlapping cycles of survival andreproduction and evolution and growth.
"Many souls had come to understand this. Many had. But manywho thought life was beautiful, felt that death was sad and endlessand 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 wasvery widespread. Why did He make us, Whoever He is, if we are tobe here like this forever, out of it and never part of it again, unless wewish to dip down and suffer all that torment all over again, for a fewmoments of glory, which we won't appreciate any more next timethan last time, because we can't take our knowledge with us if we arereborn!
"Indeed, it was at this point which many souls had ceased to developor change. They felt great concern and mercy for those whowere alive, but they knew sorrow, and joy was not something thatthey could even imagine anymore. They moved towards peace; andpeace indeed seemed about the finest state which they could achieve.
Peace, broken by the struggle to answer prayers, was particularlydifficult, but to me, as an angel, very attractive. And I stayed in thecompany of these souls for a long, long time.
"Now, if I could only tell them, I thought, if I could begin to instructthem, maybe I could bring them around, prepare them, makethem ready for Heaven, but in this state they are not ready, and Idon't know if they will believe what I say. And what if they do believeand are filled suddenly with the hunger for Heaven and then Goddoesn't let them in.
"No, I had to be very careful. I could not proclaim knowledgefrom atop boulders as I had done in my short time on earth. If I wasto intrude on the progress of one of these dead ones, there had to bea very good chance that that soul would follow me to God's Throne.
"Understanding of life and death? That wasn't enough. Acceptanceof death? That wasn't enough. Indifference to life and death,that wasn't good enough surely. Quiet confusion and drifting. No.
That sort of soul had lost its character. It was as far from an Angel aswas the rain that fell on Earth.
"At last I came into a region smaller than the others, and peopledwith only a few souls. Now I speak comparatively. Remember, I'mthe Devil. I spend a lot of time in Heaven and Hell. So when I say afew, that is to make a picture that is manageable to your mind. Forthe sake of exposition, let's say a few thousand or more. But I speak ofgreat numbers. Don't doubt.""I follow you.""And these souls absolutely astonished me by their radiance, theirtranquility, and the degrees of knowledge which they had attainedand retained. First of all, almost every one of them had a full humanshape. That is, they had realized their original forms or perhaps idealforms in the invisible. They looked like angels! They were invisiblemen, women, and children, and they had about them accoutrementsthat had been dear in life. Some of them were brand new and hadcome from death thoughtful and seeking and ready for the mysterious.
Others had learned all in Sheol over centuries of watching andfearing to lose their individuality, no matter how terrible things didappear. But all were intensely visible! And anthropomorphic, thoughof course they were diaphanous, as all spirits are; and some were palerthan others; but all essentially could be seen clearly by others andthemselves.
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