What Dreams May Come (9 page)

“And there are people here, who love each other, who have sexual relations,” he said, startling me again. “The mind is capable of anything, always remember that. In time, of course, these people usually realize that physical contact isn’t as integral here as it was in life.

“For that matter,” he continued, “we don’t have to use our bodies at all; we only possess them because they’re familiar to us. If we chose, we could perform any function with our minds alone.”

“No hunger,” I said. “No thirst. No fatigue. No pain.” I made a sound of bemusement. “No problems,” I concluded.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Albert told me. “Except for the lack of need for what you’ve mentioned—and the absence of need to earn a living—everything is still the same. Your problems are unchanged. You still have to solve them.”

His words made me think of Ann. It was disturbing to believe that, after all the hardships she’d suffered in life, there’d be no respite for her here. That seemed unjust.

“There’s help, here, as well, remember,” Albert said picking up my thought again. “A good deal more perceptive too.”

“I just wish I could let her know all this,” I told him. “I can’t get rid of this sense of apprehension about her.”

“You’re still picking up her distress,” he replied. “You should let go.”

“Then I’d lose contact completely,” I said.

“It isn’t contact,” he told me. “Ann isn’t aware of it— and it only holds you back. You’re here now, Chris. Your problems lie herein.”

The power of mind

I KNEW HE was right and, in spite of continuing anxiety, tried to put it from my mind. “Is walking your only means of transportation here?” I asked to change the subject.

“By no means,” Albert said. “Each of us possesses our own personal method of rapid transit.”

“What’s that?”

“Since there are no space limitations,” he answered, “travel can be instantaneous. You saw how I came to you when you called my name. I did it by thinking of my house.”

“Does everyone travel that way?” I asked in surprise.

“Those who wish to,” he said, “and can conceive of it.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Everything is mental, Chris,” he told me. “Never forget mat. Those who believe that transportation is confined to cars and bicycles will travel that way. Those who feel that walking is the only way to get around will walk. There’s a vast difference, here, you see, between what people think is necessary and what really is. If you look around enough, you’ll find vehicles, greenhouses, stores, factories, et cetera. None of which are needed, yet all of which exist because someone believes they are needed.”

“Can you teach me to travel by thought?” I asked.

“Certainly. It’s just a matter of imagination. Visualize yourself ten yards ahead of where you are.”

“That’s all?”

He nodded. “Try it.”

I closed my eyes and did. I sensed a feeling of vibration; then, abruptly, felt myself glide forward in a leaning posture. Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around. Albert was about six feet behind me, Katie running to my side, tail wagging.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You stopped yourself,” he said. “Try again. You don’t have to close your eyes.”

“It wasn’t instantaneous,” I said. “I felt myself moving.”

“That’s because it’s new to you,” he told me. “After you get used to it, it will be instantaneous. Try again.”

I looked at a spot beneath a birch tree some twenty yards away and visualized myself standing there.

The movement was so rapid, I couldn’t follow it. I cried out in surprise as I tumbled to the ground. There was no pain. I looked around to see Katie running toward me, barking.

Albert was beside me before she was; I didn’t see how he did it. “You’re trying too hard,” he said with a laugh.

My smile was sheepish. “Well, at least it didn’t hurt,” I said.

“It will never hurt,” he replied. “Our bodies are impervious to injury.”

I got on my knees and patted Katie as she reached me. “Does it frighten her?” I asked.

“No, no, she knows what’s happening.”

I stood up, thinking how Ann would enjoy it. Imagining the look on her face the first time she tried it. She always loved new, exciting things; loved to share them with me.

Before my sense of apprehension could return, I chose a hilltop several hundred yards away and visualized myself standing there.

A feeling of vibration again; I should say altering vibration. I blinked and I was there.

No, I wasn’t. I looked around in confusion. Albert and Katie were nowhere in sight. What had I done wrong now?

A flash of light appeared in front of me, then Albert’s voice said, “You went too far.”

I looked around for him. In between the blinking of my eyes, he was in front of me, holding Katie in his arms.

“What was that flash of light?” I asked as he set her down.

“My thought,” he said. “They can be transported too.”

“Can I send my thoughts to Ann then?” I asked quickly.

“If she were receptive to them, she might get something,” he answered. “As it is, sending thoughts to her would be extremely difficult if not impossible.”

Again, I willed away the deep uneasiness which thoughts of Ann produced in me. I had to have faith in Albert’s words. “Could I travel to England by thought?” I said, asking the first question to occur to me. “I mean England here, of course; I presume there is one.”

“There is indeed,” he said. “And you could travel there because you did in life, and know what to visualize.”

“What exactly are we?” I asked.

“In a counterpart of the United States,” he told me. “One naturally gravitates to the wave length of his own country and people. Not that you couldn’t live where you chose. As long as you were comfortable there.”

“There’s an equivalent, here, to every country on earth then?”

“At this level,” Albert answered. “In higher realms, national consciousness ceases to exist.”

“Higher realms?” I was confused again.

“My father’s house has many mansions, Chris,” he said. “For instance, you’ll find, in the hereafter, the particular heaven of each theology.”

“Which is right then?” I asked, completely baffled now.

“All of them,” he said, “and none. Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, Christian, Jew—each has an after-life experience which reflects his own beliefs. The Viking had his Valhalla, the American Indian his Happy Hunting Ground, the zealot his City of Gold. All are real. Each is a portion of the overall reality.

“You’ll even find, here, those who claim that survival is nonsense,” he said. “They bang their nonmaterial tables with their nonmaterial fists and sneer at any suggestion of a life beyond matter. It’s the ultimate irony of delusion.

“Remember this,” he finished. “For everything in life, there’s a counterpart in afterlife. This includes the most beautiful as well as the ugliest of phenomena.”

I felt a chilling sensation as he said that; I didn’t know why and, somehow, didn’t want to know. Hastily, I changed the subject. “I feel awkward in this outfit now,” I said. I spoke impulsively but, having done so, realized that I had spoken the truth.

Albert sounded concerned as he asked, “I haven’t made you feel that way, have I?”

“Not at all. I just—” I shrugged. “Well, how do I change?”

“The way you changed locations.”

“With imagination; mind?”

He nodded. “Always with mind, Chris. That can’t be emphasized enough.”

“Right.” I closed my eyes and visualized myself wearing a robe like Albert’s. Instantly, I felt that “altering” sensation again, this time something like a thousand butterflies fluttering around me for an instant. The description is inexact but I can do no better.

“Is it done?” I asked.

“Look,” he told me.

I opened my eyes and looked down.

I had to laugh. I’d often worn a long, velour caftan around the house but it had been nothing like what I wore at that moment. I felt somewhat guilty to be so amused but couldn’t help myself.

“It’s all right,” Albert told me, smiling. “A lot of people laugh the first time they see their robes.”

“It’s not like yours,” I said. Mine was white, without a sash.

“It will alter in time as you do,” he told me.

“How is it made?”

“By the imposition of mental imagery on the ideoplastic medium of your aura.”

“Come again?”

He chuckled. “Let’s just say that, while on earth, clothes may make the man, here the process is definitely reversed. The atmosphere around us is malleable. It, literally, reproduces the image of any sustained thought. It’s like a mold waiting for imprints. Except for our bodies, no form is stable unless concentrated thought makes it so.”

I could only shake my head again. “Incredible.”

“Not really, Chris,” he said. “Extremely credible, in fact. On earth, before anything is created materially, it has to be created mentally, doesn’t it? When matter is put aside, all creation becomes exclusively mental, that’s all. You’ll come, in time, to adopt the power of mind.”

Memory still haunts

As WE CONTINUED on, Katie walking by my side, I began to realize that Albert’s robe and sash connoted some advanced condition on his part, mine my “beginner’s” status.

He knew my thoughts again. “It all depends on what you make of yourself,” he said. “What work you do.”

“Work?” I asked.

He chuckled. “Surprised?”

I had no answer. “I guess I never thought about it.”

“Most people haven’t,” he said. “Or, if they have, they’ve visualized the hereafter as some sort of eternal Sunday. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s more work here than on earth. However—” He held up a finger as I started to speak. “—work that’s undertaken freely, for the joy of doing it.”

“What kind of work should I do?” I asked.

“That’s up to you,” he said. “Since there’s no need to earn a living, it can be what pleases you most.”

“Well, I’ve always wanted to write something more useful than scripts,” I told him.

“Do it then.”

“I doubt if I’ll be able to concentrate until I know that Ann is all right.”

“You’ve got to leave that be, Chris,” he said. “It’s beyond your reach. Plan on writing.”

“What would be the point of it?” I asked. “For instance, if a scientist, here, wrote a book on some revolutionary discovery, what good would it do? No one would need it here.”

“They would on earth,” he said.

I didn’t understand that until he explained that no one on earth develops anything revolutionary alone; all vital knowledge emanates from Summerland—transmitted in such a way that more than one person can receive it.

When I asked him what he meant by “transmitted” he said mental transmission—although scientists here are constantly attempting to devise a system whereby the earth level may be contacted directly.

“You mean like radio?” I asked.

“Something like that.”

The concept was so incredible to me that I had to think about it before speaking again.

“So when do I start working?” I finally asked. What I had in mind, of course, was losing myself so completely in some endeavor that time would pass quickly and Ann and I would be together again.

Albert laughed. “Well, give yourself a little time,” he said. “You just arrived. You have to learn the ground rules first.”

I had to smile and Albert laughed again. “Not the best phrase I could have chosen,” he said. He patted me on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re willing to work. Too many people come here only wanting to take things easy. Since there are no needs, this can easily be accomplished. It soon becomes monotonous though. One can even be bored here.”

He explained that all kinds of jobs were available with obvious exceptions. There’s no need for a Health Department

or a Sanitation Department, Fire or Police Department, nor for food or clothing industries, transportation systems, doctors, lawyers, realtors. “Least of all,” he added, smiling, “morticians.”

“What about people who worked in those professions?” “They work at something else.” His smile faded. “Or some of them continue doing the same thing. Not here, of course.”

That chilling sensation again; the hint of “another place.” I didn’t want to know about it. Once more, I was conscious of my own effort to change the subject—though equally unconscious of why I felt so strongly about it. “You said you’d explain the third sphere,” I told him.

“All right.” He nodded. “I’m no expert, mind you, but—“

He explained that earth is surrounded by concentric spheres of existence which vary in width and density, Summerland being the third. I asked how many there are altogether and he answered that he wasn’t sure but had heard there are seven—the bottom one so rudimental that it actually blends with earth.

“Is that where I was?” I asked. As he nodded, I went on. “Until I started upward.”

“It’s a mistake to use the words ‘up’ and ‘down’ to describe these spheres,” he said. “It’s not that simple. Our world is set apart from earth only by a distance of vibration. In actuality, all existence coincides.”

“Then Ann is really close by,” I said.

“In a sense,” he replied. “Still, is she conscious of the television waves surrounding her?”

“She is if she turns on a receiver.”

“But she’s not a receiver herself,” he said.

I was going to ask if we could help her find a receiver when I remembered the experience with Perry. That was no answer, I decided. I couldn’t put her through that again.

I looked around the flowering meadow we were crossing. It reminded me of one I saw in England in 1957; I was working on a script there, you recall. I spent a weekend at the producer’s cottage and, on Sunday morning, very early, looked across this lovely meadow from the window of my room. I remembered the intense green silence of it—which brought to recollection all the lovely places I had seen in life, the lovely moments I’d experienced. Was that another reason why I’d fought so hard to keep from dying? I wondered.

“You should have seen me struggle,” Albert said, picking up my thought once more; it seemed he could do it at will. “It took me nearly six hours to let go.”

“Why?”