The Travelers: The Wonders of Journeying in the Afterlife

By Joseph Lima Sconce

The main theme of my book is that the afterlife is real and substantial and that all of us, when we arrive there at some point, will soon realize this. Our spiritual bodies are very much like our natural bodies, except that the spiritual bodies are in perfect shape. Life in the afterlife is, at least superficially, very much like life on Earth. People in the spiritual world live in real places: beautiful cities or country locations in heaven, and noisome slums in hell. People there work as they do on Earthwillingly and joyously in heaven, not so in hell. They also enjoy time off from work, which is marvelous in heaven and, within strict limits, somewhat enjoyable in Hell. We are full human beings in the afterlife, up to and including that dreaded word for most religionssex. But in the spiritual world, time and space function differently, being fluid and connected to our thoughts and emotions; deception is nearly impossible, and the economy is a moneyless one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jul 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452577371

Joseph Lima Sconce

I was born in San Salvador, El Salvador on July 28, 1964. My father was an American Diplomat and met my mom on his first overseas assignment, Brazil. I spent my first fifteen years as a “diplomatic brat”, living in: El Salvador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador. While baptized in the New Church, (the largest Swedenborgian denomination) I only started learning about it in Costa Rica, after my best friend, Cathy Osuna died of heart failure at the age of 13. In 1979, the U.S. State Dept. relocated us, permanently to the U.S. I have been living in Fairfax Co., Virginia since then, except for two years in my religion’s college, The Academy of the New Church, (1983-1985) and three years in San Diego (1996-1999). I got a B.A. degree in History from George Mason University in 1989. I worked for ten years in the book retail industry, (1985- 1995), but after a car accident, lost my job and my brother in San Diego suggested that I try for an accounting degree, because of my love for numbers. I studied accounting in SDSU and started working on accounting in San Diego. But I am a dyed-in-the -wool Northeasterner, and on January 1999 went back to Fairfax and the wonderful Northeast. I worked in accounting for three years, but quit to take care of my parents on Sept. 2001. After I was in a position to work again a year later, I decided to leave accounting, since financial accounting showed no respect for the rules of mathematics, and that bothered my sensibility of the beauty of numbers. I decided to go back to retail, this time in Trader Joe’s, which I knew was a great place to shop for great food, and soon found out that it was a great place to work. I have been with Trader Joe’s for 10 years, and love it.

Book preview

The Travelers

The Wonders of Journeying in the Afterlife

A Novel Based on the Spiritual Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg

Joseph Lima Sconce

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Copyright © 2013 Joseph Lima Sconce.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911844

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7736-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7738-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7737-1 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 7/24/2013

Contents

Author’s Note

List of Characters

Introduction

Part 1

The First Day In

The Spiritual World

Chapter 1 The Transitions

Chapter 2 Welcoming the Newcomers

Chapter 3 Getting Ready for Lunch

Chapter 4 Lunch and an Invitation

Chapter 5 The Conference

Chapter 6 Organizing the Group over Tea

Chapter 7 Dinner and Preparing for the Travels

Part 2

The First Adventures Of The Journey In The Spiritual World

Chapter 8 The Travelers Head toward Harpers Ferry

Chapter 9 The Lessons from Harpers Ferry

Chapter 10 Cathy and Albert’s Story and Their Home in Heaven

Chapter 11 Dorothy Fabrizio and Her Mental State

Chapter 12 An Eventful Day Shopping in Edgewood

Chapter 13 In the Spiritual Bryn Athyn

Chapter 14 Dorothy and Alvaro in the Badlands

Chapter 15 Lessons Learned the Day Before the Rescue

Chapter 16 Rescue in the Badlands

Chapter 17 Preparing for the Imaginary Heaven

Chapter 18 The Catholic’s Imaginary Heaven and Bill’s Find

Part 3

The Journey To Eastport

Chapter 19 A Liberal Muslim Joins the Group and Cathy’s Crisis

Chapter 20 The Threat to the Group Develops in Montowese

Chapter 21 Reincarnation’s Problems and Group Tension

Chapter 22 Origin of Spiritual Food and Giving Hints to the Group

Chapter 23 Temptations & Preparations on the Way to Yarmouth

Chapter 24 The Day before the Revelation

Chapter 25 The Secret of The Earths in the Universe Revealed

Chapter 26 Endings and Beginnings in Beddington and Hell

Chapter 27 The Endgame for the Travelers in Eastport

Bibliography

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my best friend, my Mother, Rozinha Lima Sconce (1934-2013). It was she that rescued me from my monent of deepest despair after the death of my other best friend, Cathy Osuna, at the age of 13, in Costa Rica in July 1977. My mother, seeing my endless suffering because of Cathy’s death introduced me to the view of the Afterlife postulated by Emanuel Swedenborg, by reading to me a novel based on Swedenborg’s Writtings and encouraging me to read Heaven and Hell. The part of me that looks toward doing good is based on what my mother did for me in 1977. Also, she was instrumental in the writing of this novel. With encouragement, fresh ideas and construtive criticism, she made it possible to make this book the most important project of my life, and hopefully, a book that relieves the fear of death to the reader.

Author’s Note

The marked portions of the novel are the portions that are nonfictional in one way or another. These nonfictional parts fall into the following three categories:

1) Autobiographical material, primarily used for the character of Joseph and his experiences on Earth

2) Either direct quotes or paraphrasing from the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and, in a few cases, other sources

3) Strongly held views of the author on various issues, such as cell phones, fundamentalists, guns, fashion, etc.

Regarding the third item, in the beginning of the novel, the character of Joseph is the expresser of these views, but as the novel advances, other characters also express such views. In certain cases, I modified my views on some of these issues, and therefore, so did the character of Joseph. In other words, I examined many of my strongly held beliefs as I wrote this novel, and I found some of them to be in error.

Joseph Sconce

List of Characters

Joseph Sconce - forty-eight; employee of Trader Joe’s; Swedenborgian; died in a car accident on I-66 in a thunderstorm on August 2 after a birthday party at his brother’s house

Allison Harper - seventy-seven; retired Catholic schoolteacher; has one son, one daughter, and four grandchildren; strong Catholic; died of a heart attack on August 2 after suffering a massive stroke two years earlier that left her in a coma

Jane McCormick - eighty-five; housewife and socialite; rich and widowed; fundamentalist Baptist; goes to church three times a week; died of natural causes on August 2

Randy Stevens - sixty-nine; ex–vice president of Technological Applications Corp.; no religious beliefs; married with two sons and three grandchildren; died of prostate cancer on August 2

Christine McGold - fifty-four; professor of modern European history at GMU; single; believing agnostic; died of hepatitis A on August 2

Bill Watson - thirty-seven; defense lawyer; married with two children—Amy, ten, and Jeff, seven; nominal Episcopalian; died in an auto accident on I-495 South, close to Tysons exit, in a thunderstorm on August 2

Alice Watson - thirty-five; part-time clerk at Barnes & Noble; wife of Bill; Episcopalian; died with her husband, Bill, in an auto accident

Gabriel Leonard McCoy - fifty-nine; computer technologist; amateur cosmologist; has two brothers and two sisters; confessed atheist; died of a stroke caused by an embolism on August 2

Rosslyn Mathews - seventy-eight; has two sons, one daughter, and seven grandchildren; nominal Catholic; died of breast cancer on August 2

Dorothy Fabrizio - forty-four; housewife; severely abused by her husband; nearly atheistic Jew; killed herself on August 2

Abdul Hassim - sixty-seven; financial analyst; married with two children; liberal Muslim; died of a heart attack on June 12 in New York City

Cathy (Osuna) - no age; spiritual angel and guide angel to newcomers; married to Albert; died in July 1977 at age thirteen of a childhood heart condition; best friend of Joseph on Earth (nonfictional)

Albert (Woodson) - no age; spiritual angel and guide angel to newcomers; married to Cathy; died in June 1976 at age seventy

Alvaro - no age; spiritual angel; hospital director of main welcoming spiritual hospital for Earth’s Northern Virginia; died in 1972 at age forty-two

Introduction

The following manuscript is a novel based on the spiritual writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborg was a scientist of great renown in the eighteenth century, and by the age of fifty-seven, he had written over twenty books on the sciences known during that period, especially astronomy and cosmology, as well as philosophical works about the essence of the human soul. He was, in other words, one of the last of the Renaissance men—that is, a person who possessed all the knowledge available to know by the standards of the time. Starting in 1745, and for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life, Swedenborg experienced what skeptics claim were mystical experiences, in which he communicated with God through angels. He was fully awake and aware during these mystical occurrences, and he wrote what he learned from the experiences. The information he recorded came to be known as the Writings, which total twenty-nine volumes and about eighteen thousand pages of revelations from God. His experiences and writings cannot really be classified as mystical, since Swedenborg never claimed to be in communion with God or encouraged people to try communication with the spiritual world. Swedenborg also did not start or encourage the foundation of a new religious organization based on these Divine Revelations. The first organization founded based on the Writings was founded twenty years after Swedenborg’s death. His experience can be better classified as receiving vast amounts of information from God through angels so that some of the veiled mysteries surrounding what is said in the Bible were made clear for a humanity that was starting to embrace the scientific disciplines and to question the Bible’s large amount of literal irrationality.

Swedenborg’s best known work is Heaven and Hell, and for good reason. In the five-hundred-page book, Swedenborg tells us in great detail how God structured the spiritual world and what people on Earth have to do to reach Heaven and avoid Hell. I believe that it is fair to say that the most important aspect of religion for almost all humans who are even minimally religious is whether there is an afterlife and, if so, what type of life on Earth will lead a person to Heaven. In this great work, God, through Swedenborg, tells us exactly what we need to do to achieve the joy of a heavenly life. This novel is based largely on this book by Swedenborg, although it is supplemented by other books of the Writings, such as Conjugal Love, Divine Providence, Divine Love and Wisdom, and, most importantly, The Earths in the Universe. The fictional events of this novel, to the best of my ability, follow the parameters set by Heaven and Hell; the novel is a fictionalized description of what happens to people when their natural bodies cease to function and they arrive in the spiritual world.

Swedenborg was a scientist, and therefore, logical reasoning was of great importance to him, so God transmitted His Divine Revelation to Swedenborg in logical terms. The vast majority of the Writings (with a few interesting exceptions that are an important part of the novel) are quite logical in the presentation of God’s Wisdom, and the Writings make up the third Judeo-Christian Divine Revelation, or Testament. One of the basic principles that Swedenborg emphasizes is that true faith is a belief that can be rationally understood. In other words, if a person does not understand or see the logic of a certain piece of doctrine, he or she should not believe it—a principle that is almost the complete opposite of what most other belief systems espouse. I ask the reader to develop the same attitude in relation to what is said in the novel in regard to the afterlife—the reader should be skeptical but open-minded about what is being described. I ask the reader only to accept the possibility that God gave Swedenborg this testament and to analyze the spiritual message of the novel to decide if this possibility is based on a logical foundation and, therefore, if what happened to Swedenborg was a true Divine Revelation. I also ask the reader to give some serious thought to what a truly joyful eternal life in Heaven would consist of. I believe that most everybody, to use a classic and clichéd view of Heaven, after thinking about it for a few minutes, would find the idea that angels are sexless beings playing harps on clouds for eternity an idea of a Hell, not a Heaven. Is the view that life in heaven consists almost entirely of constant praying and singing of hymns forever truly heavenly? What would, for each reader, constitute an eternal life in which a person could be truly content and in peace forever? This is the most important question asked in the novel, and I believe that the answer, while initially surprising, will, logically, be the only answer that could make anybody eternally content and therefore in a heavenly place.

Prophets—that is, people who claim to have received revelations from a Supreme Deity—are regarded with great skepticism in today’s hi-tech, science-driven world. A Supreme Deity communicating with a certain person to give information about what the afterlife is like is, by definition, a miracle, and so-called miracles are highly suspect. However, if there is a God, He would try to give His children, the human race, guidance on how to lead moral and decent existences on Earth, which means that at least some of the prophets were genuine, and the Divine Revelations they received are true in one way or another.

The only other option is atheism, which many science-dominated people embrace. I believe that almost all belief systems (some more than others) have merit to them and, in their non politicized form, are helpful in making us better people. The one exception is atheism. Atheism, which is, ironically, embraced by people who claim to only believe in the logic that science espouses, is the most irrational of all beliefs. The concept that this universe, with its incredibly complex yet harmonious organization, happened by chance and out of nothing is so absurd that anybody who really believes that is insane on some level. How could this vast universe emerge out of nothing? At some level, someone had to be the originator and organizer of the universe, and that someone had to be some form of a Supreme Deity to accomplish such a monumental task. The belief that nothing created something is beyond insane. I am a believer in science when science tries to describe how the universe and the human race came to exist. But when science tries to explain why the universe and we are the way we are, science is ill suited to give any answers. No scientific discipline can ultimately answer a question that begins with why. For example, has science ever answered the following simple questions: Why is the speed of light 186,232 miles per second, and why is this the highest speed attainable by anything in the universe? Science will never be able to answer these simple questions, because the answers lie not in science but in religion. The speed of light is what it is because God made it so when He created the universe, for reasons that He has not told us yet. However, in my opinion, it is interesting that this ultimate speed limit on space travel could eventually make travel within our solar system quite convenient, with even Pluto just five hours away, but travel to other solar systems would take so long as to be completely impractical. Maybe God does not want communication between the many humanlike races that undoubtedly exist in this vast universe, and considering that we have enough trouble living in peace with humans from other races or nations on Earth, God is probably right in making it next to impossible for Earth humans to achieve meaningful contact with sentient beings from other planets. Therefore, in this novel, the belief of atheism is the one for which the criticism is absolute and uncompromising. Atheism is an insane concept, and anybody who truly believes in it is largely insane in a spiritual sense.

I wrote the novel based on not only what Swedenborg says in Heaven and Hell but also my own life experiences and beliefs. Therefore, the character of Joseph is me. The parts relating to Earth are autobiographical, and the parts that take place in the afterlife are a projectional spiritual pre autobiography. One of the principles of Swedenborgianism is that the only person that we can spiritually judge is ourselves. We can never judge whether anyone else is headed to Hell.. Therefore, with one partial exception, all the other characters who are in the spiritual world in this novel have to be, and are, fictional.

This is not the first Swedenborgian novel that has been written. To my knowledge, at least five other novels based on the Swedenborgian belief system have been written. These five novels were part of my inspiration to write this novel, and I have a great debt of gratitude to Louis Pendleton (author of The Invisible Police and The Wedding Garment in the 1930s) and Naomi Gladish Smith (author of The Arrivals, The Wanderers, and The Searchers within the last ten years) for inspiring me in attempting to do what they did so well. In a Swedenborgian novel, all the characters die, or transition, in the first chapter, with the rest of the story happening in the spiritual world. The reader should not look at the deaths in the first chapter as scary and depressing events but as simply the beginning of a wondrous afterlife. I sincerely hope that the reader enjoys this novel as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Joseph Sconce

PART 1

THE FIRST DAY IN

THE SPIRITUAL WORLD

Chapter 1

The Transitions

August 2, 8:30 p.m., Bristow, Virginia

Thanks for the birthday dinner, Mark. The prime rib roast was excellent, Joseph said to his brother as he entered his bright yellow car for the thirty-mile ride home.

No problem, Joseph. Makes up for me forgetting your birthday last year. Pity Mae did not come. Still problems with her back?

A distant flash of lightning reminded them of the severe thunderstorm warning issued for that night.

Yeah, the physical therapy helped, but it was only a twenty percent solution—well, maybe a twenty-five percent solution, Joseph responded. Well, looks like this cold front is coming through in big style. It will be one heck of a storm I will be driving into. At least this damn two-week heat wave will end! Can you believe it? Ten straight days of ninety-eight degrees or higher! It was one hundred four degrees on my actual birthday! Thanks a lot for the birthday present, Mother Nature.

Mark laughed. You and your numbers and stats, Jos! Not that I was counting, but in less than fifteen seconds, you mentioned six stats. Sobering, Mark asked, So what is next with Mae? Surgery?

Possibly. But you know how American doctors frequently use surgery only as a last resort. We are going to the neurology center next week to see what the next step is. Smiling, Joseph said, As for my stat fixation, heck, I learned my times tables at the age of three, so it has always been an essential part of me, as you well know. Remember when you went through the papers on my computer desk and showed me virtually every paper consisted of numbers in little squares? That was before Excel. Now I have tens of millions of numbers in tens of millions of little squares! Heavenly.

Mark laughed. You’re hopeless! You know, I bet you would accept a job paying minimum wage just so long as you could do whatever you wanted to do in Excel.

Joseph laughed. Minimum wage? Heck, if I could afford it, I would work for free on that job. Actually, I sort of do that right now. He started the car.

Jos, you are sure where the turn into I-66 is?

Yes, I think I finally learned how to come to and go from your house. Joseph looked with concern at the heavy lightning to the east. It’s going to be a heck of a drive once I hit I-66.

Right, so no funny business with the driving. Slow and easy, and no cell-phone calls!

Joseph laughed. As you well know, Mark, I consider a bashed cell phone the only good cell phone. Invention of the devil, those things. I am sure that in Heaven there are no cell phones.

Joseph waved good-bye and headed north on Route 29 to connect with I-66 East. As he drove, he reflected on the delayed birthday dinner with Mark. Over the past ten years, as Mark moved farther and farther away from his original home in central Fairfax County, social events with his brother had become rare. He could count on one hand the number of times he saw Mark each year. Also, ever since Mark had gotten rid of his landline phone and gone exclusively to cell-phone use, communicating with him was frequently next to impossible. And since a user could tell who was calling the cell, the user could choose not to return the call. Joseph remembered how on Mark’s fortieth birthday, January 13 of last year, it had taken seven or eight voice mails over a two-month period for Mark to come over and pick up his birthday present. Joseph snorted in disgust. Cell-phone companies had done a good job promoting propaganda to convince people cell phones were indispensable, turning their customers into gullible addicts. The reality was that cell phones disrupted normal communication between people while turning those addicts into rude and oblivious cyber robots who were losing the sense of what constituted proper public behavior. He was not kidding his brother that he believed there were no cell phones in Heaven. And since Joseph had definite views about what Heaven was like, he did not take that belief lightly.

Joseph turned the car onto I-66 and headed east. The car soon entered the center of the storm, and the wind started howling at forty to fifty-five miles an hour. The rain, falling in sheets, reduced visibility to nearly zero. Joseph slowed his speed to about thirty-five miles an hour.

A couple hundred feet behind Joseph’s car, and one lane to the left, the driver of an eighteen-wheeler was having more problems than just handling his ten-ton truck in a vicious thunderstorm. Man! Stupid of me to spend three hours of my sleep period fooling around with my iPhone. Did I have to make those calls and watch ESPN on it for so long? Jack wondered. I am exhausted. Plus, that supersize meal at Wendy’s did not help matters. Have to get this food load to the supermarket on time, though. The boss is not very happy with my late deliveries. The truck driver increased his speed to sixty miles an hour.

Joseph saw the eighteen-wheeler approaching quickly from the left. Idiot! Some people never learn it is better to be a little late to your destination than risk not arriving at all. Joseph steered his car as far as he could to the right to give the truck as much room as possible to pass.

As the truck started to pass Joseph’s car, the driver, despite his best efforts, dozed off at the wheel. He fell asleep for only five seconds, but it was enough time for disaster to strike. As Jack dozed off, he turned the steering wheel sharply to the right. The cab of the truck suddenly jackknifed into Joseph’s lane, not ten feet from his car.

Joseph had fewer than two seconds to see the disaster coming and say, Holy— His car slammed into the truck’s cab at thirty-five miles an hour. The front part of the car was smashed flat all the way to the windshield. The trailer part of the truck, slipping on the wet pavement, veered right, scrunching the left side of the car to half its original width.

After a brief sensation of pain and confused visions of things being rent apart, the night settled over Joseph’s consciousness.

*******

Six miles east of the accident on I-66, on the Capitol Beltway, a BMW carrying a couple in their midthirties headed south near the Tysons Corner exit at sixty-five miles an hour in heavy rain and high wind. Dammit, Bill, slow down! Can’t you see our visibility is near zero in this thunderstorm? Plus, we are going through a construction zone. These nearby concrete barriers give me the willies, Alice complained to her husband.

Don’t worry, hun. I have driven safely through worse in Florida. This thunderstorm is a baby compared to the ones we would get in Tampa, Bill responded confidently.

Well, this storm is a big one for Virginia, and the drivers here react accordingly by slowing down. Why do you have to always pretend that the freeway is the Indy 500 speedway? Remember, you are one speeding ticket away from getting your driver’s license suspended, for God’s sake. Slow down! Bill’s only response to his wife’s concerns was an irritated clucking of the tongue and a brief look at her that revealed his disdain for her opinions about his driving. Bill had always had full confidence in his driving abilities. His aggressive driving habits were a reflection of his overall nature. His aggression was what made him one of the most successful young defense attorneys in the DC area.

As Bill turned his eyes back to the road, he saw a single bright brake light about one hundred feet ahead and to the right. Assuming the light belonged to a motorcycle, he moved the car slightly to the left and accelerated to pass the vehicle. It was a fatal assumption by Bill. Ahead of Bill and Alice was not a motorcycle but a Suburban SUV with a defective left brake light. Their natural lives ended in a blink of an eye as Bill’s BMW crashed into the rear of the SUV at sixty-five miles an hour.

*******

Inova Fairfax Hospital was rated as one of the top fifty hospitals in the country. Its nurses and doctors were of the highest professional caliber and compassionate to the patients. But no matter how great the medical staff or the hospital, the widely known but seldom-mentioned truth was that medicine could only postpone death; it could never prevent it. Every doctor knew this, but as he or she was sworn to preserve life, the doctor fought a never-ending battle against the specter of death—a battle the doctor knew he or she would always lose at some point. When a doctor realized medical science could do no more for a critically ill or injured patient, it was his or her duty to make the patient’s last moments on Earth as painless and peaceful as possible.

On the night and early morning of August 2 and 3, the ICU unit of Fairfax Hospital was normal. But in some of the rooms, it was depressingly normal. Most patients in the ICU unit were in stable condition or improving, but in six of the rooms, the situation was quite different.

*******

In room 5 of the ICU, Nurse Mayers looked at the heavily sedated form of Ms. Jane McCormick with mixed emotions. The latest EKG showed Ms. McCormick’s heart was failing fast. It was extremely unlikely she would be alive in the morning. Nurse Mayers had been a registered nurse for twenty years, and compassion for dying patients was second nature to her, but this patient had tested the entire ICU staff’s capacity for compassion and patience to the limit. Ever since Ms. McCormick had arrived in the ICU unit two weeks before, she had behaved as if the hospital were supposed to be a five-star hotel and as if her room were the presidential suite. She constantly demanded to be treated as if she were a princess. If the staff did not grant even the smallest of her requests, she was insulting and insufferably arrogant. What Nurse Mayers found most infuriating about Ms. McCormick was that while being so boorish with the hospital staff trying to keep her alive, she made constant references to how often she went to church, and because of her church attendance, she said, Jesus had saved her. If heaven means having to live in eternity next to this woman, Nurse Mayers thought, I might choose to go to the other place.

Mayers shook her head, shaking away the unprofessional and uncharitable thought from her mind. Back to work, she thought to herself. She checked Ms. McCormick’s heart monitor and immediately realized that this was it. Ms. McCormick’s heart readings were fluctuating wildly, a sure indication that the end was near. Mayers pressed the code-blue button even while knowing that it would do no good. Before the doctors arrived, the heart monitor flatlined.

*******

In room 8 of the ICU, a similar diagnosis but a much different emotional reaction from the one in room 5 was occurring.

It’s hopeless. Her liver has just shut down permanently, Dr. Stokes said with great sadness to the attendant nurse. Blood poisoning will reach deadly levels within two to three hours. Dr. Stokes had lost patients before but never like this. And rarely as nice, patient, and courageous as Professor Christine McGold, Dr. Stokes thought to himself. If there is a God, he sometimes wondered, why does He permit the nice ones to get the worst diseases?

Christine had arrived at the hospital seventeen days ago with what seemed like a normal case of hepatitis A, but no treatment or medication had helped her condition. In fact, the hepatitis A had eaten her liver like a starved dog offered a bowl of prime steak. Within five days of Christine’s arrival at the hospital, doctors had transferred her to the ICU unit, but it had not helped. In his twenty-three years as a doctor, Dr. Stokes had never seen such a virulent case of hepatitis. While hepatitis A had always been a seriously debilitating disease, modern medicine had reduced the fatality rate to about 1 percent, with most of the fatal cases involving people who drank heavily, which was not the case with Ms. McGold.

In the twelve days Dr. Stokes had been Christine’s (he thought of her on a first-name basis) doctor, he had had several illuminating talks with her. Her knowledge of history was of course extensive, but more importantly, her conclusions on the effects of historical events on future events were fascinating and original. He had also found out that Christine was a lonely person. She had never married, never had children, and was an only child. She had never had a lasting relationship with a man, because she felt that the men she had dated were more interested in sex than in friendship and love. So all alone, she had devoted all her energies to her job as history professor at George Mason University and had adopted her students as her children.

There was one other interesting feature that Dr. Stokes had observed in Christine: frequently when he entered the room, she had her eyes closed, her arms across her chest, and her mouth moving silently, as if in prayer. And yet in his conversations with her, she never mentioned God or Jesus and had once referred to organized religion as an interesting historical phenomenon.

As Dr. Stokes checked the monitors that were indicating the beginning of the final stages of Christine’s disease, he gave a silent prayer of thanks for the benefits of heavy sedation in these terminal cases and left the room in a mood of deep sadness. It would be a long time before he would recover emotionally from the loss of this patient.

*******

Well, that was a close one, Gabriel Leonard McCoy thought to himself. He knew his heart attack had been a good sign that he needed to get his act together health-wise. Fortunately, no permanent damage seemed to have occurred, and he would be out of ICU in a day or two and home in a week. At 280 pounds and with very high blood pressure, McCoy knew he had been lucky. He was determined to follow the strict diet and exercise regimen prescribed by the doctors and to lose the doctor-recommended one hundred pounds as quickly as possible; he felt there was no sense in taking any more risks with the only life that Mother Nature had given him.

McCoy was not one to believe in the fairy tales that the religions of the world put out, although he understood how those fairy tales came about, of course. The idea of sentient beings like humans existing for, in almost all cases, less than a century and then ceasing to exist was instinctively abhorrent to the human mind. So humans invented the concept of a loving God who had given them an eternal soul that would exist in some weirdo airy-fairy spiritual plane. Yes, McCoy thought to himself, understandable why religions came to exist—but still rubbish! For McCoy, science was the only true religion. Science was based on logic, facts, and reality—not on ridiculous tales that a clear-minded eight-year-old could see through.

Thinking back to his childhood, McCoy remembered how he had been the clear-minded eight-year-old who had seen through the rubbish that his strict Presbyterian parents constantly talked about. How could any god be considered loving if He had predestined a tiny minority of the human race to heaven and condemned the rest to hell? What was so loving about that? And how arrogant his parents were in believing that they were among the few who were saved just because they were Presbyterians! His parents were not particularly nice people outside the doors of the church that they attended at least twice a week. His father, a small-business owner, treated his subordinates with an irritating paternalism at best and was downright insulting, humiliating them at worst. His mother was a housewife, following the strict tradition of her religion, with no hobbies of any intellectual content. McCoy felt that his mother released the frustration of a boring and empty life on her children. Yes, ever since he was eight, he had made his goal to leave that poisonous household as quickly as possible and to go as far away from it as possible. And he had—he had started attending a university on the other side of the country at seventeen and had never looked back. Religion had poisoned his parents; it was not going to poison him!

McCoy had graduated with honors in physics in 1975 from UCLA and, seeing that the future of the world would be a computerized one, had gotten a doctorate in computer sciences in 1980. His present job as head computer programmer for a large computer firm in the Dulles Airport area of Virginia gave him very comfortable living and was intellectually stimulating. In his time off, he focused his attention on his lifelong obsession: proving that the creation of the universe had been a random accident with no supernatural hocus-pocus involved in the process. He knew that just a couple of adjustments to the cosmological equations would prove that the idea of God or an afterlife was bunk to anybody with a smidgen of intellectual honesty. Of course, he secretly admitted to himself he had been a couple of adjustments away for ten years now; and every time he felt he had finally made the key adjustment, some other part of the cosmological equations went out of kilter.

Oh well! Nobody said that proving that God does not exist would be easy, he said to himself.

As he said these words, a blood clot, undetected by the doctors, moved into the main artery of Gabriel Leonard McCoy’s brain and got stuck in the intersection of that artery and another minor artery. The end came rapidly. A tremendous headache suddenly struck McCoy, and within thirty seconds, a massive stroke shut down his brain.

*******

In room 10 of the ICU, a doctor–relative of patient conference of sorts was going on. Allison O’Claire Harper had been in Fairfax Hospital for two years now, ever since a massive stroke had destroyed almost all the higher functions of her brain, turning her into an almost total vegetable. It had been tremendously hard on her son, Marcus, and daughter, Mary, to see their mother neither there on Earth nor in the heaven that their strong Catholic faith talked about. They were now conferring with their mother’s young thirty-year-old doctor, Dr. Hayes, about whether or not to continue keeping their mother in spiritual limbo using extraordinary medical methods.

Look, Dr. Hayes, I know about your Hippocratic oath and find it laudable that you follow it with such devotion. But everything has limits! Marcus argued. My mother has not been alive in any real sense of the word for two years. Our Catholic faith considers suicide a capital sin, so that is why Mary and I never argued with you about keeping her in this state while her heart and lungs were keeping her body alive by themselves. But now that you told us that her heart is about to fail, we cannot condone keeping her body alive by artificial means.

Mr. Harper, you must understand that if we turn off the heart and lung machines, she will be dead within an hour. Yes, the stroke she suffered was massive, but it is still possible that her brain can rewire itself, and she might regain consciousness and even be able to speak a little, Dr. Hayes retorted.

And what are the chances of that happening? Also, even if my mom’s brain does rewire itself, what kind of person will she be? Marcus asked with some asperity.

Admittedly remote. About a two percent to three percent chance within the next year. As for your second question, she might regain the mind of a three-year-old, Dr. Hayes admitted.

A two percent to three percent chance to live an extra five, ten, or twenty years as an unlearning three-year-old! What kind of life is that, Dr. Hayes? Marcus said angrily.

Better than death in my view, Mr. Harper, Dr. Hayes retorted.

No, Dr. Hayes, it is not! We believe that there is a life beyond this one, and what you are proposing is a living hell for my mom for God knows how long. Or what might be even worse, virtual nonexistence for many long years. Fury started creeping into Marcus’s tone.

Before Dr. Hayes could respond, Mary stepped in to calm the increasing hostility between her brother and Dr. Hayes.

Dr. Hayes, Mary pleaded, please, please put aside your medical science learning for a minute and view the situation from another point of view. My mom was a Catholic schoolteacher for thirty-five years. She firmly believes in her faith. And she was never happier than when she was teaching her faith to her pupils. If she were asked to spend years, maybe a decade, as a virtual vegetable or an eighty-year-old three-year-old, she would be horrified at the prospect. She is not afraid of death. She firmly believes that Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and her patron saint will protect her from harm when she reaches the other side. Please don’t delay her appointment with our infinite Maker by using machines made by finite human minds. I am asking you to trust God on this issue.

Dr. Hayes looked at Mary and, for the first time in his short career, understood that there were some medical situations that transcended a strict interpretation of the Hippocratic oath. Sometimes, Dr. Hayes now realized, medical compassion meant knowing when to let a patient go.

I am not sure I understand about how God works, Ms. Harper, but I can see your and your mother’s point of view. Excuse me. It is just that I have been trained to believe that death is the ultimate enemy, Dr. Hayes responded, humbled. Life alone is not enough. Quality of life is sometimes more important. I can see that now. My apologies for raising my voice to you, Mr. Harper.

Apology accepted, Dr. Hayes. I know you were just trying to follow your oath to the best of your ability. Now can you please accede to our request? Marcus replied calmly.

Yes, Mr. and Ms. Harper.

Dr. Hayes went to the heart-lung machine and turned it off.

*******

If only Mr. Stevens had come to see us earlier, Ms. Stevens, Dr. Wilson explained to the patient’s wife in room 2 of the ICU. "As little as six months earlier and we could have had a good chance of saving his life. Prostate cancer is among the most treatable, with a recovery rate of ninety percent if caught early!" the doctor emphasized.

My husband has always been a stubborn man, Doctor, Ms. Wilson explained. I pleaded with him to see a doctor when the pain started two years ago, but he kept procrastinating and putting off the consultation for as long as possible. He had always hated doctors and hospitals.

Well, his procrastination has cost him his life. The cancer has generalized, and he only has a few hours left, Dr. Wilson explained with a combination of compassion toward the wife and anger toward the patient’s stubbornness in his voice.

Tears started to flow from Mrs. Stevens’s eyes, and she started sobbing in hopeless despair. Her beloved husband—her stubborn, foolish, and beloved husband—was dying, and there was nothing she could do about it. Dr. Wilson hugged Mrs. Stevens to comfort her. He had had to comfort relatives too many times, he felt, in his thirty-year career. That was the part of his job he really hated as an ICU doctor.

As the doctor consoled the widow-to-be, the life monitors of Mr. Stevens slowly started to move downward, indicating the beginning of the end.

*******

At 6:00 p.m. on August 2, Rosslyn Mathews was receiving visitors in room 15 of the ICU. Jerry, her son; Linda, her daughter; and two of her seven beloved grandchildren—Lauren, eleven, and Samuel, eight—had come to visit her. Despite her tremendous fatigue, Rosslyn was joyous in seeing some of her grandchildren again. She loved her children dearly, but it was her grandchildren who were the delight of her life. With her grandchildren, she had reexperienced the pleasuresof motherhood without the sometimes negative aspects of being a disciplinarian or a nagging mother. Yes, she could spoil her grandchildren with presents and treats and not worry about really spoiling them, because it was their parents’ job to correct whatever bad habits they picked up while visiting Grandma. From her grandchildren, she only got unconditional love, and she returned that love with interest.

Rosslyn did not know that this was probably their last visit. Days ago, the doctors had informed Jerry and Linda that their mother’s cancer had gone past the critical stage into the terminal stage. Rosslyn, in their opinion, had no more than three or four days to live. Jerry and Linda, under the advice of the doctor, had decided it would be best not to tell Rosslyn about her true condition. The doctors had promised that when the moment came, Rosslyn would be under sedation, and she would pass away peacefully—hence, the reason for this visit on the afternoon of August 2.

It is really a pity we could not bring all the grandchildren, Mom, but the hospital drew the line at four visitors at a time, Jerry commented cheerfully—cheerfulness he definitely did not feel.

No problem, dear. I will see my other grandchildren on other visits to come. Hopefully, my grandchildren will be visiting me at home in two or three weeks, Rosslyn said with confidence.

Yes, Mom, that is sure to be the case, Jerry replied.

Silently, he prayed to Jesus for his mother’s soul. His prayer was a rarity, since his family, his mom included, was not particularly religious. They were all Roman Catholics, technically speaking, but not devoted ones. They went to Mass only on major holidays, and Jerry could count on one hand the number of times he had confessed himself. As for the pope, Jerry found it the ultimate in arrogance that Catholics had to consider the pope’s decisions and pronouncements as infallible, therefore making the pope effectively a god on Earth.

Jerry, dear, you okay? You looked to be a mile away. His mom gently roused him from his prayers and thoughts.

It’s nothing, Mom. Just daydreaming, I guess—dreaming about the day you will return to your house, Jerry, roused from his thoughts, replied suddenly.

A sharp pain afflicted Rosslyn, and she groaned in complaint. The doctor took a look at the monitors and gave a minimal sigh.

Mrs. Mathews, I am going to give you something for that pain and also a light sedative. You need to rest now. Okay? the doctor informed her.

Okay, Doc. The pain is getting to be annoying. Thanks, Rosslyn replied.

As the sedative took effect, Jerry took the doctor aside and asked in low voice, Well?

I am afraid that she will not wake up. Her heart is starting to fail. It is a matter of hours now,

the doctor replied frankly.

Jerry and Linda left the room, determined to control their tears until they got to the privacy of their bedroom. It would not do any good for the children to know of their despair just now.

*********

Chapter 2

Welcoming the Newcomers

Joseph was dreaming—dreaming of the park behind his house right after a good snowfall. He enjoyed the beautiful, intricate patterns that the snow formed on the tree branches, the brilliance of the sun’s rays reflecting off the snow, and the delicious contrast of feeling both chilly and warm in the sunshine of the day after the snowstorm. Paradoxically, Joseph also dreamed of a warm April day with the trees in full bloom and the new leaves emerging from their winter buds. Joseph also dreamed that beautiful voices were comforting him and assuring him that everything was going to be all right. The voices also told him not to be afraid—that God and His Infinite Love were protecting him.

As Joseph started to regain consciousness, the details of his dreams started to dissolve like morning fog under a warm sun. When he was fully conscious, he remembered only the feelings of comfort and assurance.

Joseph slowly opened his eyes and received an immediate shock.

Where am I? he asked aloud. This is not my bedroom! He looked around carefully. Looks like a hospital room. Fairfax Hospital? Why am I here?

He thought back to his last memories before awakening in the hospital, and he remembered.

The damn jackknifing eighteen-wheeler in the thunderstorm! The damn truck cut into our lane ten feet away from me, and I ran into it—at about thirty-five miles an hour, Joseph remembered, mystified.

Joseph looked around for the tubes, IVs, and bags of serum, plasma, and blood that he would surely be connected to. Such a crash would provoke serious if not critical injuries. But he saw no tubes or bags of fluids connected to him. He checked for injuries on his body and found none.

Huh? I ran at high speed into a ten-ton truck in a thunderstorm, and I am not injured at all?

An increasing sense of excitement was replacing his initial confusion.

Can it be true? I died! Joseph immediately corrected himself. "My natural body died. I, my mind, and my consciousness are in the spiritual world!

I have to make sure this is true, and I think I know how.

Joseph had been born with a birth defect that had affected the whole right side of his body. Nothing on his right side worked as well as his left side. He only had about 60 percent use of his right hand and arm. His right hand was useless for detailed work. He had undergone three operations on his right leg to reduce a massive limp. His right eye was not as good as left eye, and so forth. In his forty-eight years, he had never been able to curl his toes on his right foot. If he could do that now …

First, he tested his right hand. As a great fan of the show Star Trek, he knew how to do the Vulcan live long and prosper salute, but only with his left hand. If he could do the salute with his right … Joseph raised his right hand and tested it. The right-hand fingers separated easily into the salute.

Yes! Joseph exclaimed. Now for the toes.

He concentrated and tried to curl his right toes. After three seconds of strain, the toes obediently curled!

Losing his self-control, Joseph let waves of strong emotions break out, and he dropped to his knees in thankful prayer. He cried tears of joy for having been reborn into this second life. He sighed deeply, full of relief that he now knew that what he had read in Swedenborgian works about the afterlife was true and that the niggling doubts he had sometimes felt about the afterlife were false. He thanked God for honoring him as one of a tiny minority on Earth who knew the reality of the afterlife. He felt waves of excitement as he realized he would satisfy his vast curiosity about the details of this second existence and why it worked. Most of all, he prayed to God for help and guidance in choosing the path of good and truth leading to Heaven and getting rid of his evils that wanted to lead him to Hell.

He prayed and cried joyously for what seemed a long time. He stopped only when he heard footsteps coming into the room and tried to get control of his emotions.

Hello, I am Nurse Lindsey. I came in to check up on you as soon as I heard you. I came to tell you what has happened to you. But from what I see, you already know what has happened, the nurse commented happily.

Yes. I believe I do know, Joseph responded, his voice still shaky as he tried to calm down. But you can confirm for me. Am I now in the spiritual world? And more specifically, in the part of the spiritual world called the World of Spirits, where everybody who has made the transition from Earth arrives?

Yes to both questions, Nurse Lindsey replied. How are you feeling about all this?

Feeling? Joyful, relieved, thankful to God, and curious about the things that are about to come, Joseph answered.

Good. It is a good sign that you are reacting this way to the transition, Lindsey replied in a reassuring way.

May I ask what may seem to be a personal question? Joseph inquired.

Unlike on Earth, we are not afraid of personal questions here. Ask, Lindsey encouraged Joseph.

Are you an angel? Are you to be my angel guide through my sojourn in the World of Spirits? Joseph asked shyly.

Lindsey smiled. "Those are two questions! The answer to both is no. I am what is termed a good spirit in training to be an angel. When my training is complete, I will become a welcomer to greet spirits that awake in hospitals like this one. As for your second question, you will meet your angel guides when the moment is right. It will not be too long."

Joseph took a careful look around the room and commented, You know, when I first opened my eyes, I thought this was Fairfax Hospital. But now that I look more carefully, I can see that it is not. This room is bigger. The curtain separating the two patient beds is of bright-colored fabric instead of the muted pastels of the real Fairfax Hospital. Also, I see that there is no health monitoring equipment surrounding the bed.

Very good, Joseph. Yes, when a person awakes in the spiritual world, it is The Lord’s Wish that that person wake up in a place similar but not identical to the place where the transition from Earth to here took place. Or in your case, as victim of an accident, to awaken in a hospital that would seem at first to be the hospital you would be interned at if your natural body had survived. This is done so that the shock of the transition is relieved as much as possible but also, at the same time, to have the novitiate spirit gradually realize that he or she is no longer on Earth, Lindsey explained.

Yes. I read about that in Swedenborgian works. It made perfect sense when I read about it. I am glad to see that that is also true, Joseph replied.

"That’s fine, Joseph. Just don’t get too confident on the amount of knowledge you have acquired from Swedenborgian works. Remember, what you do know about the spiritual world is miniscule compared to what you don’t know," Lindsey gently warned him.

I will certainly keep that in mind, Lindsey. Thanks for the warning, Joseph replied humbly. At the risk of appearing to be a Swedenborgian know-it-all, I assume that you will now recommend that I take a bath and get into a set of clothes that will appear in my closet while I am in the bathroom, that this set of clothes will strongly appeal to my taste in clothes, and that after I get dressed, I should go to the hospital’s cafeteria and have a delicious meal of my personal choice, Joseph said.

Lindsey smiled. Not quite complete. You forgot the part about brushing your teeth and combing your hair. Lindsey’s smile waned slightly. Seriously, it is very good that you are prepared for what happens in the spiritual world to a newcomer during the first few hours after completing the transition. Just remember that the spiritual world is in a time and space that is connected to your thoughts and emotions, so it is full of surprises. And from what I learned about you as you were waking up, surprises are not your favorite things. Correct?

Absolutely correct. I hate surprises. My mind needs time to process incoming data, so to speak, before I can frame a proper response or appropriate action. Heck, until now at least, it would take me five or more seconds to tell my right from my left. If quick thinking were the only measure of intelligence, I would have been the dumbest person on Earth, Joseph said.

Your reaction to surprises will probably improve as your travels in the World of Spirits accumulate. But it will be a gradual change, so you have to develop a mental strategy to handle surprises properly in the early stages of your adventures here. Lunch will be at one o’clock p.m. Yes, we use Earth time and clocks in this welcoming hospital for the mental peace of newcomers. I suggest you think about what I told you and about other things until then, Lindsey advised.

Thanks again, Lindsey. I will certainly do that, Joseph said.

Lindsey said her good-byes, and Joseph went to the bathroom to take his bath.

When Joseph emerged from the bathroom, he checked his closet, and as expected, he saw the kind of clothes that appealed to him. There was a bright blue long-sleeved shirt of light material. Next to it, there was a bright yellow sweat suit with a green stripe down the pants legs and green piping on the jacket, medium-length brown socks, and black shoes exactly like the ones he had worn on Earth, which he had bought from…… He couldn’t remember the store’s name!

Interesting! The first evidence of selective memory loss once we arrive in the spiritual world, Joseph said to himself. He knew that once anybody arrived in this reality, he or she forgot things that related only to Earth. God had ordained this provision so that the novitiate spirit did not go through the even greater discomfort of remembering his home address, for example, while never being able to find his house, for such a house did not exist in the spiritual world.

After dressing, Joseph paced in his room and did some serious thinking. Okay, how will I handle the surprises that this World of Spirits will surely throw at me? Always expecting a surprise at any moment was no solution. He would be mentally and emotionally exhausted in no time. He could use his knowledge of the basic way time and space worked there to reduce his reaction time, but that would work only if he knew that his thoughts and emotions were affecting the space and time around him. If he was with other people, he wouldn’t be sure. Maybe, he thought, the only solution for now was to pray. Yes, every time some uncomfortable surprise came at him, he should pray to God for guidance.

Joseph was a devout Swedenborgian who fully believed in God and His Total Benevolence toward everybody. But praying, at least in the usual way, had never been a big part of his life. Eevery time he faced a moral decision, he asked God what the morally correct course was by invoking the Golden Rule. But was that really praying? Probably not. At least not complete praying. Yes, he had to work on that.

Now for the other things that Lindsey mentioned, he thought. He knew her remark had been a not-so-subtle hint that he should start his self-examination of what he really loved. Okay, first for the good news. He had never been obsessed with money and wealth accumulation. Except for good food, his taste in material things had been modest. He had been a strict, law-abiding citizen even when he’d felt a specific law was senseless. He had lied, of course, but tried hard not to; and he did not think that he had ever uttered a black lie—a lie told to deliberately hurt another person. He tried his best to follow the Golden Rule but was not always successful. He was not ambitious, which was a human characteristic that was good only in small doses in his view. He was not a control freak and tried to respect everyone’s privacy. That was the main reason for his hatred of cell phones. Okay, that was it for the good news. Now for the bad news.

He had a short fuse when it came to what he regarded as irrational behavior. Ironically, he got the most emotional when somebody was using emotions instead of logic to argue something. He would have liked to believe that he treated his irrational outbursts by the same standard, but he suspected that was not the case. He enjoyed being by himself for long periods of time. Everybody needed some time alone to recharge his or her social batteries, but his recharge time was excessive, he knew. Sometimes he wondered whether he would miss people if he were stuck on a desert island for life. He would have liked to think so, but- … He might have had some antisocial tendencies. He had a definite tendency toward laziness, but the news there was not so bad. He had fought this tendency quite frequently, but at least he had always completed his obligations in the best way possible. The problem with his laziness arose when a task was an option and not an obligation. Sometimes he loved arguing just for the sake of arguing, and sometimes he played hardball to win an argument. He was selfish, but so was virtually every person on Earth. He did not know the depth and extent of his selfishness, so he could think more about that later, he decided. Potentially, the most problematic issue was his total aversion toward sex or even light physical touching. People touching him discomforted him quite a bit. And as for sex, the idea of performing such an act disgusted him. That attitude brought on a second problem. While he admired women’s greater sensitivity toward other people’s emotions and their less-violent personalities, he also was deeply suspicious of what he viewed as sneakiness and their infuriating tendency to say something while meaning something completely different. Also, he found their neat-freak tendencies quite annoying.

Okay, that’s enough introspection for now. He was tired, which was not