The Other Side of Heaven

By Stan Mason

An old man dies and his spirit goes to Heaven, but it turns out to be entirely different to anything he had ever imagined in his mortal life.
He discovers that it is governed by very strict rules, many of which goes against the grain especially when he has to account for all the bad things he did when he was alive.. One of his tasks is to be sent back to Earth as an Accompanying Angel to report on a Seraph and later returns to unravel a situation that could affect the whole planet. He meets the Cosmic Joker who takes him to Hell with surprising results and, very clearly, spirit life is nothing like anything he had expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Authors
• Release date: Jan 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783334872

Book preview

damages.

1

There were times when I had stood in front of a class of thirty boys and girls, teaching English or Geography, feeling extremely proud at being able to transfer information for the benefit of their education, realising that my efforts would help them to go out into the wide world well-equipped in knowledge to sustain a proper future for themselves. There were other times when I felt despondent at the poor decisions I had made and my perseverance to practice bad habits, as well as the lack of love for other people close to me, exposing my selfishness and personal weakness which seemed to have escaped my conscience. The pundits say that one’s personality forms at the age of three and never changes during one’s lifetime. They are probably quite correct in that assumption. A miserable child will always be sad and sulky; a happy one will tend to enjoy the fruits of life. However, whether my personality was good or bad was irrelevant as it was all now in the past... long gone and long forgotten. My time on Earth had expired and I was forced to leave my body behind ensuring that my spirit escaped to be free.

The church was practically empty except for the small group of people, mostly elegantly dressed in black or dark clothing, who listened to the priest talk briefly about the better elements of my life from a sheet of paper which had been hurriedly scribbled and passed to him by one of my nephews. Then, when the brief ceremony was over, the mourners made their way outside into the cemetery to wend their way slowly past the multitude of engraved tombstones behind a long well-worn metal trolley that carried the ornate wooden coffin with my body inside until they reached the site of the open grave. They all stood quite still at the edge, watching the pall being lowered and then began to listen to the final prayers of the priest officiating over the ceremony... ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I stood some distance away by the side of one of the large tombstones in spirit form watching the proceedings without despair or desolation. I was invisible to all those attending... no one could see me as I observed the coffin being lowered with a slight smile on my face. At last, I was immune from pain and disappointment and all my failures in life only to realise that, when the incantation ended and the mourners had shovelled a tiny element of earth upon the lowered coffin ... everything was gone! The body in which I had shared my life, my particular personal history, the many relationships developed with friends and loved ones, my earthly needs, my long-faded ambitions, my aspiring hopes, all the knowledge I had gathered, as well as the experience secured over the many years of my life, indeed, not only those but my whole future ... they were all gone... interred under the sod of six feet of rich earthy soil. My flesh would rot and be eaten by parasitic insects until only my bones were left to crumble into dust. My life was irrevocably and definitely over!

***

During the years I spent on Earth I had always been a conscientious person ready to face the truth in life of any incident whether or not I was fit enough to deal with it. For that reason, as soon as I reached the age of maturity I had the notion that the paranormal existed. It was hosted with such entities as ghosts and spectres, poltergeists or spirits... even aliens from another planet... entering our world to haunt people to distraction by one means or another. However, I was never willing to accept the words of the numerous pundits in the world willing to predict what happens to the spirit of a person who passed away, although there were some exceptions with regard to the many people who claimed that they had suffered near-death experiences in crises. The former clearly had no idea what they were talking about for there is no evidence to prove the logic or the existence of a hereafter, while the latter practically always told their story of how they saw a wonderful bright light shining ahead of them that seemed to lead to another world before they managed to recover.

Not surprisingly, over the years, the authors of fiction have provided thousands of tales about ghosts, spectres, poltergeists, and spirits that form the paranormal and, indeed, some people have even experienced such weird and haunting activities in various houses to prove that something unnatural exists in the world. However, no one has ever been able to place a hand on their heart to identify anything that might or might not take place in the hereafter... if indeed there happened to be one. Certainly, it is not possible to establish any dubious existence of Heaven or Hell, Such reasoning can only be considered idyllic and fictional in terms of reality.

Before he died, Houdini, the famous escapologist, arranged a code by which he intended to contact his relatives and friends after his death to ensure that it was his spirit in contention but no message was ever forthcoming. From that conclusion, it is possible to suppose that when a person died, the aura that surrounded the body soon fades away and the existence ends at that moment in time. It is far more likely, however, that each person lives their life on Earth for a number of years and then is gone for ever; life becomes extinct. Unlike the flowers that bloom in the soil and return to enrich our lives each year, human-beings cannot return in the same form. For them it is a matter of total extinction of their lives and their souls. As some pundits earnestly predicted in the past: ‘Our lives on Earth are on lease only for a brief period of time.’

***

Before the last essence of life left my body, I considered how amazing it was that a fleeting memory of something which occurred briefly in the distant past could signal an effect in the brain and burst into incandescence many years later. Without rhyme or reason, as I lay on my death-bed, a vision suddenly triggered in my mind at the time when I was a schoolboy in the East End of London. It depicted a man parading along the pavement outside Whitechapel underground station carrying a large placard on a pole which read: ‘The End Is Nigh’. I didn’t know exactly what it meant at the time except that it was probably the end of the world and, in my youth, I felt quite haunted by the fact for a while in the belief that my life might end long before it had actually begun. Naturally, passers-by tended to ignore the man, thinking him to be either misguided or a a lunatic, while others ridiculed him, shouting abuse until, in the effluxion of time, he failed to appear on the pavement and was never seen again. It may well have been that he was signalling to the world that it was his end that was nigh.

My life thereafter continued in the usual vein as with most other people but now, at the age of eighty-eight, it fell to me to recognise that it was time for my end to be nigh. I had lain in bed for some time as a lonely weak old man, with irregular breathing that became more shallow each day. Arthritis riddled my body causing me great pain down my right side while, in addition, a weakening lethargy or malaise spread throughout me denying me the right to follow through any normal action. I could not imagine how much weight I had lost over the past few months but I knew in my mind that it was quite considerable. The sigbt in my right eye had long gone, I was toothless, while my thin face has become extremely wrinkled turning into a yellowish colour like parchment. No longer was I the romantic gigolo desired by many members of the opposite sex in my youth. The pleasantness of all the good days were gone... having paled into insignificance... for I now lived completely alone having become a widower some five years earlier. Sadly, my needs to stay alive had become extremely basic. Even worse, no food had touched my lips for almost ten days. Indeed, for me, in my present state, there was no doubt that my end was nigh.

Sleep can be a blessed friend to a body racked with pain. Subsequently, that night, during my stay in the arms of Morpheus, the murmur in my ancient heart finally reached its peak. It was the beginning of the end for the organs in my body started to fail to function any more and the Reaper’s scythe swiftly cut the umbilical cord which symbolically attached me to Earthly life. There was no wonderful light at the end of a tunnel for me to follow because I had died during my sleep so that death arrived ignominiously during my slumber. Nonetheless, my aura or spirit remained hovering above my listless body for a brief period of time in the place where I had lived for the past forty years although, in truth, I felt absolutely nothing... no sense of feeling, no taste of death... none of any of the senses except for sight.

However there were some distinct advantages to be enjoyed by the fact of my demise. For example, I was no longer burdened by the mantle of my body which enabled me to float lightly wherever I wanted to drift. Secondly, I was released from the agonising and continuous pain of the arthritis I had suffered. Thirdly, there was no more agony in gasping as I tried to gain my breath to keep my body alive. Contrarily, I seemed to hover listlessly in a vacuum overseeing the people thronging at the scene of my burial, watching them vacantly not only then but also during the wake that followed before finding my spirit alone in the empty house in which I had lived for much of my life. However, as the days passed by, and the house was cleared of furniture to be sold by relatives who gained handsomely from my Will, my spirit grew weaker and weaker until it faded into infinity. In due course, I found myself in a state of darkness in limbo with no substance and no feeling. Time was no longer of the essence; it seemed to have ended shortly after my demise. Nothing seemed to matter any more, nor did anything that had been of interest to me on Earth when I had been alive. I was simply the entity of a spirit floating in space without any intent, sense, shape or form.

As the dawn brings the light, I suddenly found myself in a waking mode in a place of wilderness. It was a new dimension in which I found myself although I still was in limbo with no memory or form or any sort of existence. It was as though I was floating across a moor in the early morning with the mist hanging heavily all around. I was simply a single spirit; an entity with no function and no place to go. During my lifetime, I had told many jokes. One of them had been about a man who died and went to Heaven. He was met by the Archangel Gabriel who said: ‘On Mondays, you polish clouds all day. On Tuesday, you play the harp all day. On Wednesday, you clean the Archangel’s clothing all day... and so on every day of the week. You work twenty-four hours, seven days each week. And if you disagree, things will get worse because we’ll send you to the other place!

Now that I had passed away, if I had carried forward into death any of my senses, I would have been surprised not to be received by the Archangel Gabriel, or by someone of a high rank in the Heavenly hierarchy, or faced the Pearly Gates seeking my entry into God’s world, or even ride upwards to Heaven on a moving escalator towards the summit where I would expected to spend eternity. It appeared that all the amusing anecdotes and tales told on Earth about the afterlife were completely misguided. As I floated vacantly in space I waited patiently for something to happen but nothing did. Time was still non-existent, and no particular thoughts passed through me. I was merely a novice spirit with no form, nothing to do, and nowhere to go.

Eventually, I felt the presence of another spirt moving close by, and then another, until a whole group of us assembled together although I could seen no one... nothing. No doubt the spirits with me had been human-beings who had faced the Grim Reaper like myself and had lost the battle. There was no sense of relationship or cameraderie with any of them and I failed to see any of them as either human-beings or spirits. It was simply the feel of them around me in close proximity. Certainly there was no animosity between any of us for I began to understand that the feelings of a spirit are entirely bereft.

After a while, the vision of an angel, looking like an ordinary man, dressed in a sombre grey toga appeared in the distance. It became quite clear that he faced us intending to hold council for all the spirits gathered there. He stopped in the near distance, his stentorian voice reaching us loud and clear.

‘Your Earthly bodies have been left behind allowing your souls the freedom of your spirits,’ he boomed. ‘It is a new experience for all of you and, except for the few, it is one to which you’ll need to adjust. You are all novice spirits most of whom are about to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Once there, you will find that there are many levels in this realm and you have been placed initially at the lowest one. Some of you will aspire to reach higher levels, others will fail. You will learn all about that later. However, we all have a role to play in the greater part of eternity. Of that you will eventually discover. Now... kindly follow me!’

All the spirits obeyed the order and wafted in space towards the man who began to walk on ahead. We were like amoeba floating in a pond, transparent as such but not capable of dividing. There were elements of his short oration which concerned me but I was unable to focus my mind on them at that moment. Everything was somewhat of a blur. We continued to progress over what appeared to be a long distance in a huge desert area without becoming tired or afraid or bored until we reached our destination. Still there were no Pearly Gates, no Archangel Gabriel to greet us, no moving staircase, or anything at all. We had simply reached another deserted area with absolutely nothing to see all the way to the horizon. Although I still had the senses of sight and hearing, I was disappointed because there was nothing to see or hear except the words of the angel. I merely waited with the other spirits to learn of what the future might be... if indeed there was any to come... for I had been extinguished in life and recognised that, the way things were going, I might suffer the same fate in death.

During my lifetime, I had been an ardent atheist, never believing in the existence of God or of a Supreme Power who affected decisions on how our lives progressed. In my dotage, I was lectured by a friend who told me it was advisable for me to change my views because in the history of mankind and its economics both death and taxes were inevitable. His logic was that if a Supreme Power didn’t exist then my views on atheism would hardly matter. However, if there was one, I would suffer the pain of ingnominy when I came before him in Heaven on the Judgement Day for not having believed in him, let alone not worshipping him. Unfortunately, I was too obstinate to take his advice but now, had I possessed any cogent thoughts, I would have recognised that I ought to have listened to him and changed my views. However, I could never fathom the reason why people needed to use a Supreme Power for support in the essence of their lives... some of them to the point of fanaticism. They went to church to pray for relief from pain, for guidance in their lives, and for the comfort of others. In my opinion, they were fooling themselves with such actions and completely misguided. I couldn’t blame them for asking someone who didn’t exist for help. After all, mankind had been wrong on many major issues in past history. For example, everyone once believed that the world was flat and that they would die if they fell off its edge... wherever that might happen to be. Equally, the scientists in ancient times considered that the Earth was the centre of the universe and that the planets moved around it until Copernicus proved otherwise. Therefore why should they believe that there was a God somewhere in the firmament who listened to their prayers? The incidents recorded in history and the events in the lives of people surviving today were so horrendous, in terms of physical disasters, personal accidents, war, famine, disease, suffering, and universal hatred, that any belief in a Supreme Power looking after any nation or person had to be ambitious to say the least. As far as I was concerned, the whole idea of an afterlife was a mythical belief. The Greeks thought of Elysium in terms of a glorious meadow yet they could not help feeling that, in truth, it was a shadowy and unsubstantial place. The Mohammedans were more precise in thinking that in Heaven physical desires would be satisfied and there would be a spiritual facility as well. The popular Christian idea of Heaven, derived from the Book of Revelation, was of a great bejewelled crystalline city where those who are saved go about in white robes and are probably winged. Those beliefs were way beyond my comprehension and it was quite clear by everyone on Earth that they could never truly be proved. Yet people still prayed fervently and repeatedly to a Supreme Power.

To my utter regret, most decisions I had made in life were far too late in terms of reward or effectiveness. For example, the purchase of my house was far more expensive than it should have because I dilly-dallied over a long period of time whether or not to buy one. Subsequently, by the time a positive decision was made the price had increased substantially. The investments I made were equally expensive because I waited patiently, following everyone else into the fray well after they had made their choices which meant that when they cashed them in, I was still left with either a small marginal profit or a loss. I married late in life which denied me from having children because my wife was too old to have them. I followed the horse-racing correspondents in the newspapers suggesting which horses should be backed only to be one of a host of losers most of the time. The list of my failures from the bad decisions I had made seemed to be endless sapping most of the money I earned. Like many other people in life, I was a veritable sad vision of success. In my mind I knew that I should have taken the bull by the horns on many major issues, taken counsel on some of my bad habits, and have done much better!

‘Your spirits will soon start to develop in a form that you recognise,’ declared the angel leader confidently. ‘As I mentioned before, it will be a new experience for you and you’ll need to adjust. You have to remember that we do not expect much of you on your arrival here... not until you meet the Angel of Justice who will interview each one of you to discuss your past lives. Then you will receive further instruction.’

I wondered what we would be expected to do when we received further instruction. It was an enigma that didn’t concern me too much at the time because my mind was in delirium. We watched the angel disappear into the mist in the distance and waited patiently together. After a while, I began to see the shapes of the others and looked down at myself to find that my body had developed in the same way as it had done so on Earth. I seemed to be much younger although the power within me seemed to have diminished. I was dressed in a similar grey toga to the angel although I was not of any substance and continued to float in space like a spirit entity. There was still no feeling within me yet I had an energy which I knew would propel me forward whenever I was asked to go.

There was no euphoria when our shapes became obvious, simply a spiritual experience to share with each other. The most noticeable feature at that point was the utter silence which seemed to flood the scene. There was not a sound or a murmur ... no rustle of breeze or wind... just utter silence which seemed to explode by virtue of its non-existence. Then, like a curtain rising in a theatre, a scene appeared before us which on Earth would have been most stunning. The Kingdom of Heaven appeared as a realm surrounded by great white walls which in themselves looked quietly magnificent. They had been erected with enormous white stones reaching up to a very great height while a number of towers peered above them in the near distance.

The angel appeared once more and beckoned us towards the walls. At first, there seemed to be no door or gateway by which means we could enter. However, surprisingly, our spirits passed through them without any difficulty proving that we were natural spirits and that solid objects provided no resistance whatsoever. As we passed through the walls, however, the Kingdom of Heaven suddenly disappeared from our view. All we could see was a grand area very much like a military parade ground, austere and bleak, reaching out far to the horizon. We assembled there like an assortment of recruits in the army before another angel appeared in a toga emulating a sergeant in the military inspecting a new set of recruits. After he had wandered up and down, staring at each of us carefully, a scroll appeared in his hand which he opened to read an address.

‘There are a number of rules which you will all have to follow without fail and I shall read them to you now,’ he began solemnly. ‘I can inform you that eventually you’ll recall your past life and the people whom you once loved. Hence, the first rule is that you will never use the power you gain to contact anyone from your past life on Earth for any reason whatsoever. Secondly, you will obey all commands given to you by any angel of a higher rank without question. Thirdly, you will never refer to any other place than Heaven. Fourthly, you will never seek to approach a higher authority for any reason unless requested to do so. There are other minor rules you’ll need to follow but these are the prime directives which you will all obey without question.’ He paused to look at the assembly before him again before taking a step back. ‘Now... if you’ll come with me, I shall take you forward.’

As he turned, we all dutifully followed him, but a spate of curiosity arrived in my head and I ventured to ask a question.

‘Will I meet my wife here in Heaven?’ I called out suddenly recognising her vision although she was nowhere to be