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As we rose, steadily, without the slightest reference to any sort ofgravity, two things became apparent to me at once. The first was thatwe were surrounded by thousands upon thousands of "'individualsouls. I say souls! What did I see? I saw shapes in the whirlwind, somecompletely anthropomorphic, others merely faces, but surroundingme, everywhere, were distinct spiritual entities or individuals, andvery faintly I heard their voices梬hispers, cries, and howls?
mingling with the wind.
The sound couldn't hurt me now, as it had in the prior apparitions,nevertheless I heard this throng as we shot upwards, turning asif on an axis, the tunnel narrowing suddenly so that the souls seemedto touch us, and then widening, only to narrow again.
The second thing which I instantly realized was that the darknesswas fading or being drained utterly from Memnoch's form. Hisprofile was bright and even translucent; so were his shapelessunimportant garments. And the goat legs of the dark Devil were now the legsof a large man. In sum, the entire turbid and smokelike presence hadbeen replaced by something crystalline and reflective, but which feltpliant and warm and alive.
Words came back to me, snatches of scripture, of visions andprophetic claims and poetry; but there was no time to evaluate, toanalyze, to seal into memory.
Memnoch spoke to me in a voice that may not have beentechnically audible, though I heard the familiar accentless speech of theOrdinary Man.
"Now, it is difficult to go to Heaven without the slightest preparation,and you will be stunned and confused by what you see. But ifyou don't see this first, you'll hunger for it throughout our dialogue,and so I'm taking you to the very gates. Be prepared that the laughteryou hear is not laughter. It is joy. It will come through to you aslaughter because that is the only way such ecstatic sound can bephysically received or perceived."No sooner had he finished the last syllable than we found ourselvesstanding in a garden, on a bridge across a stream! For one moment,the light so flooded my eyes that I shut them, thinking the sunof our solar system had found me and was about to burn me the way Ishould have been burnt: a vampire turned into a torch and thenforever extinguished.
But this sourceless light was utterly penetrating and utterly benign.
I opened my eyes, and realized that we were once again amidhundreds of other individuals, and on the banks of the stream and inall directions I saw beings greeting each other, embracing, convers-ing, weeping, and crying out. As before, the shapes were in all degreesof distinctness. One man was as solid as if I'd run into him indie street of the city; another individual seemed no more than a giantfacial expression; while others seemed whirling bits and pieces ofmaterial and light. Others were utterly diaphanous. Some seemedinvisible, except that I knew they were there! The number was impossibleto determine.
The place was limitless. The waters of the stream itself were brilliantwith the reflected light; the grass so vividly green that it seemedin the very act of becoming grass, of being born, as if in a painting oran animated film!
I clung to Memnoch and turned to look at him in this new lightform. He was the direct opposite now of the accumulating darkangel, yet the face had the very same strong features of the granitestatue, and the eyes had the same tender scowl. Behold the angels anddevils of William Blake and you've seen it. It's beyond innocence.
"Now we're going in," he said.
I realized I was clinging to him with both hands.
"You mean this isn't Heaven!" I cried, and my voice came out asdirect speech, intimate, just between us.
"No," he said, smiling and guiding me across this bridge. "Whenwe get inside, you must be strong. You must realize you are in yourearthbound body, unusual as it is, and your senses will beoverwhelmed! You will not be able to endure what you see as you would ifyou were dead or an angel or my lieutenant, which is what I want youto become."There was no time to argue. We had passed swiftly across thebridge; giant gates were opening before us. I couldn't see the summitof the walls.
The sound swelled and enveloped us, and indeed it was like laughter,waves upon waves of shimmering and lucid laughter, only it wascanorous, as though all those who laughed also sang canticles in fullvoice at the same time.
What I saw, however, overwhelmed me as much as the sound.
This was very simply the densest, the most intense, the busiest,and the most profoundly magnificent place I'd ever beheld. Ourlanguage needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes could see whatthe tongue cannot possibly describe.
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