FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  
, tended to obscure and complicate one's relations with other souls; but that in heaven, where activity and energy were untiring and unceasing, one lived far more in the emotion and work of the moment, and less in retrospect and prospect. What mattered was actual experience and the effect of experience; memory itself was but an artistic method of dealing with the past, and corresponded to fanciful and delightful anticipations of the future. "The truth is," he said, "that the indulgence of memory is to a great extent a mere sentimental weakness; to live much in recollection is a sign of exhausted and depleted vitality. The further you are removed from your last earthly life, the less tempted you will be to recall it. The highest spirits of all here," he said, "have no temptation ever to revert to retrospect, because the pure energies of the moment are all-sustaining and all-sufficing." The only trace I ever noticed of any memory of my past life in heaven was that things sometimes seemed surprisingly familiar to me, and that I had the sense of a serene permanence, which possessed and encompassed me. Indeed I came to believe that the strange feeling of permanence which haunts one upon earth, when one is happy and content, even though one knows that everything is changing and shifting around one, and that all is precarious and uncertain, is in itself a memory of the serene and untroubled continuance of heaven, and a desire to taste it and realise it. Be this as it may, from the time of my finding my settled task and ordered place in the heavenly community the memories of my old life upon earth began to fade from my thoughts. I could, indeed, always recall them by an effort, but there seemed less and less inclination to do so the more I became absorbed in my heavenly activities. One thing I noticed in these days; it surprised me very greatly, till I reflected that my surprise was but the consequence of the strange and mournful blindness with regard to spiritual things in which we live under the dark skies of earth. We have there a false idea that somehow or other death takes all the individuality out of a man, obliterating all the whims, prejudices, the thorny and unreasonable dislikes and fancies, oddities, tempers, roughnesses, and subtlenesses from a temperament. Of course there are a good many of these things which disappear together with the body, such as the glooms, suspicions, and cloudy irritabilities, which ar
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98  
99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
memory
 

heaven

 

things

 
permanence
 

strange

 
noticed
 

heavenly

 

recall

 

serene

 

experience


retrospect

 
moment
 

inclination

 

obscure

 

effort

 

absorbed

 

activities

 

greatly

 

reflected

 
surprised

tended

 

finding

 
settled
 

realise

 

ordered

 

thoughts

 

memories

 
complicate
 

community

 
surprise

consequence

 

fancies

 

oddities

 

tempers

 
roughnesses
 

dislikes

 

unreasonable

 
prejudices
 

thorny

 

suspicions


subtlenesses

 
disappear
 

glooms

 

temperament

 

obliterating

 

spiritual

 

desire

 

mournful

 

blindness

 

regard