The Travelers: The Wonders of Journeying in the Afterlife

By Joseph Lima Sconce

From the creative and highly imaginative
author Joseph Lima Sconce comes a
highly engaging and deeply meaningful
volume that believes that death should
not be feared. Instead, it is something
to be celebrated for. The Travelers
deems that death is the gateway to
another world. It is the transition to
real, substantial, eternal, and wondrous
afterlife. It tries to show to readers that
death does not exist. When one dies,
he goes to an afterlife but soon, the
reward will become immensely more
worthwhile and joyful if one chooses to
go to heaven.
This book reveals that the afterlife
is real and substantial, and that all
of humans, when they arrive there at
some point, will soon realize this. Their
spiritual bodies are very much like
natural bodies, except that the spiritual
bodies are in perfect shape, in addition
to basic telepathy and the speaking of
a universal language.
People in the spiritual world live in
real places: beautiful cities or country
location in Heaven, noisome slums in
hell. People there work like on earth;
willingly and happily in heaven, not so
in hell, and also enjoy time off from
work, which are marvelous in heaven
and within strict limits somewhat
enjoyable in hell. They are full human
beings in the afterlife, in every aspect.
But in the spiritual world, time and
space function differently, being fluid
and connected to a persons thoughts
and emotions, that deception and lying
are nearly impossible and the economy
is a moneyless one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483618319

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

PART 1

THE FIRST DAY IN THE

SPIRITUAL WORLD

CHAPTER 1

THE TRANSITIONS

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

T

HANKS 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

J

OSEPH 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 surprising, considering what had just happened to him. He checked the clock on his nightstand; it read ten thirty. He could have a nice two-hour nap before lunch. So he lay down on his bed and slept.

*******

The ICU floor in the spiritual-world version of Fairfax Hospital was, like the rest of the hospital, a near replica—meaning the architectural structure of the ICU was a near replica, because obviously the personnel who worked on that floor were completely different, and so were the purpose and objectives of their work. In the natural world, the purpose of ICU units was to extend the natural lives of critically ill patients and delay the specter of death as long as possible, and the doctors and nurses worked tirelessly toward this goal. In the spiritual world, the purpose of the ICU staff was (1) to make the awakening from the transition as peaceful as possible, (2) to find out how easily each newcomer would accept the fact of being in a new spiritual existence, and (3) if a newcomer was receptive to at least the possibility of a substantial spiritual reality, to encourage the newcomer to start his journey of self-discovery. A newcomer arrived in almost-perfect physical health. In the case of diseases that caused a significant change in the physical appearance of a patient of Earth, the newcomer arrived with the same appearance in the spiritual world; however, that appearance would be temporary, and such a person would acquire a healthy look in a few days. Therefore, traditional medicine was of no use in the ICU center of spiritual hospitals. What mattered to the staff of the spiritual ICU was the mental and spiritual health of the newcomers; their new spiritual bodies were self-healing and, therefore, in no need of doctoring.

Unlike other parts of the hospital, where good spirits could be part of the welcoming staff, every member of the ICU floor staff was a highly experienced angel who had welcomed hundreds or thousands of newcomers. There was a reason for this arrangement. ICU newcomers tended to have more-complex mental and spiritual difficulties than newcomers from other parts of the hospital did. First, because the average age of the ICU newcomers was over seventy, their long lives had given them time to create complex mixtures of good and evil. Second, almost all ICU patients had been increasingly sick for long periods of time, in some cases for over a decade. As a result, ICU newcomers had had a long time to think of their mortality, which, in most cases, increased their fear of death. Constantly thinking about death without receiving accurate information of the afterlife created a vicious cycle of fear that fd upon itself and grew exponentially. Third, an ICU newcomer who had strong religious beliefs almost certainly had wrong ideas about what the afterlife really was like and tended to hold on to those beliefs for a long time after the transition.

For these reasons, the doctors and nurses who took care of the newcomers at the ICU had to have great skill in telling the newcomers the truth about what had happened to them without resorting to the slightest deception, since angels could not do deceive in any form and still be able to keep their patients’ emotions in a calm state. In effect, they had to be gently blunt, which was almost a contradiction in terms on Earth. As with the medical field in the natural world, the staff divided itself into spiritual medical specialties. The specialties were divided not by the type of disease but the type and amount of dedication a newcomer had to whatever type of religious faith the newcomer had adhered to on Earth. Ironically, the newcomers whose religious beliefs had been soft on Earth, such as agnostics, Unitarians, nondevout Catholics, and persons who had not given much thought to religion in any form, were the most receptive to the idea of what the spiritual world was really like, and they accepted their transition quite rapidly. Their minds tended to be open to new religious concepts, and finding out that they would continue to live eternally in a substantial reality came as a pleasant surprise to them—a surprise they accepted readily. The newcomers with hard-core beliefs, such as devout Catholics, fundamentalists of any stripe, and hard-core atheists (for atheism was considered a faith in the spiritual world), tended to have a hard time letting go of their preconceived notions of what the spiritual world should be like according to their view, and therefore, they rejected, sometimes for a long time, the reality of the spiritual world that they were living in now. Therefore, each member of the ICU staff had been trained in a specific Earth religion and its fallacies, and his or her job was to try to show newcomers the errors in their beliefs and start the process of convincing the newcomers to accept the spiritual reality they were now living in.

*******

In almost all of the spiritual world, time and space did not behave as it did on Earth. In the spiritual world, the behavior of time and space was connected to the thoughts and emotional patterns of each individual. However, since this was a difficult concept for novitiate spirits to grasp early on, time and space appeared to behave as they did in the natural world in parts of welcoming hospitals and especially in the ICU centers of these hospitals. Therefore, the ICU centers were some of the few places in the spiritual world where people used clocks, and the staff worked on a punch-in-and-out schedule.

Both for the convenience of the angelic staff and the peace of mind of earthly ICU patients who were about to complete their transition, the newcomers woke up for the first time in the spiritual world in what appeared to be early morning following the day they had gone to sleep for the last time on Earth. This was because angels tended to work in the spiritual mornings and pursue other activities in the afternoons and evenings. Also, waking up to early morning sunshine for the first time in their new existence was the most calming transition for ICU newcomers.

It was 6:00 a.m. (EDT) on Earth date August 3, and the medical staff of the spiritual world’s Fairfax Hospital ICU was beginning its morning briefing. Chief doctor James was calling the briefing to order, and the doctors and nurses sat down to receive their initial information on the newcomers of that morning.

Six newcomers arrived overnight in the spiritual world on our ICU floor. As usual, they should wake up between seven forty-five and eight a.m. Four of the six experienced the usual type of transition that ICU patients go through. However, one transitioned suddenly from an undetected brain embolism while recovering from a moderate heart attack. Another newcomer was in a state of coma for two years on Earth before transitioning due to heart failure. So these two newcomers will need special care in the initial stages.

Dr. James continued, Here are the vital signs for these six newcomers: One, Jane McCormick, eighty-five, transition cause: heart failure due to natural causes, fundamentalist Baptist. Two, Christine McGold, fifty-four, transition cause: hepatitis A, believing agnostic- Dr. James continued giving the spiritual vital-signs summary for all six patients.

It was necessary for the whole staff to have a brief overview of all ICU newcomers in case a particular newcomer arrived in a spiritual state that required the care of more than one doctor-nurse welcoming team.

Here are the dossiers with the details of each of the newcomers’ external behavior on Earth, Dr. James continued.

From the moment humans were born on Earth, dossiers of their external behaviors on Earth were created and built on in the spiritual world. Every significant detail of their actions on Earth appeared in the dossiers in the spiritual world. However, the dossiers did not mention internal thoughts, feelings, motivations, and attitudes toward these actions. The reason for this omission was simple: only God and the individuals themselves could know their internal selves, and frequently, even the people themselves did not fully understand who they were internally.

Dr. James started calling out team names and handing team members copies of the dossiers of their patients. Each team then went into a small, private reading room to read the dossiers and discuss the best approach in handling their specific patient. By 8:00 a.m., each team was ready to start the welcoming process for the patients who were awakening from their transitions.

*******

Dr. Jake and Nurse Edwin could not help feeling a vague sense of unease as they entered Mrs. McCormick’s room. They had been a welcoming team for over five hundred Baptist newcomers, but rarely had they read a dossier that warned them of so much trouble ahead. Ms. McCormick’s actions on Earth had been ones of a person who thought she could go through life with a thin veneer of loudly proclaimed religious piety while she mistreated anybody she wanted, sometimes with no apparent motive. She had been born into wealth and had never worked in her life. The daughter of devout fundamental Baptists, she had grown up in a faith-alone belief system that discouraged any self-examination and promoted the idea that a person received salvation simply by being a Baptist; according to her faith, Baptists were automatically saved by Jesus. This belief was not unusual in many Baptist families, but unfortunately, unlike other children from overzealous Baptist families, she had never shown through her actions that she had given a thought to the possibility that her belief system encouraged arrogance and vanity and discouraged true charity and respect for others.

Mrs. McCormick had married at twenty-two but had never had any children, explaining to her husband that she would not have the time to raise them properly as good Baptists. But all she’d had was free time. She had spent her days going to church functions, proudly proclaiming she went to church three times a week, and especially shopping—she had done lots and lots of shopping. Dr. Jake mentally cringed when he remembered the millions of dollars Mrs. McCormick had spent on herself. She had never spent less than $500 on a dress and had purchased several hundred over her life, and her jewelry collection had been beyond exorbitant. Her husband, a mild-mannered man, had learned quickly not to complain about her spending. Her spending was from her family trust fund, not his hard-earned money, so it was none of his business, she’d told him several times. She’d had a reason for all this exorbitant spending. She had constantly badgered her husband, a political analyst for the Republican Party, for invitations to dinner and cocktail parties of the DC area’s immense political party circuit. She’d made sure she was always among the best-dressed guests at these functions, and her conversations during such events had been full of Is. She’d made a point not to drink alcohol at these functions, because good Baptists don’t drink, and she had frequently lectured drinkers at these functions about the evils of drinking. However, in the privacy of her home, she had done enough drinking to moderately damage her liver. She had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to her Baptist church and some money to conservative political causes but made a point of telling people about her gracious generosity at every opportunity she got. Her husband had made the transition when she was sixty-six, and she had received the unpleasant surprise of watching the invitations to the social functions she enjoyed so much suddenly dry up. So alone, socially ostracized, and getting old, Mrs. McCormick had shown increasing bitterness and rudeness toward almost anybody. When she had been admitted to the ICU of Fairfax Hospital for her final days before her transition, her behavior had been appalling. It seemed that not even approaching death had had an effect on her behavior toward other people.

Dr. Jake and Nurse Edwin said a prayer to God to give them the strength to do and say the right things to help this troubled patient and to remove any negative feelings they had toward the patient after reading her life story. They had attended Baptists with dossiers as bad as Mrs. McCormick’s, and a few of them had shown themselves to have central cores of goodness in them and had, after long struggles in the World of Spirits, finally taken the path to Heaven. They hoped this patient was like those few. They entered Mrs. McCormick’s room in a hopeful and compassionate but professional mood.

When they entered Jane McCormick’s room, she was already fully awake with a look that told of surprise but also of a deep-seated sense of superiority.

Hello, Mrs. McCormick. I am Jack, your new doctor, and this is Edwin, your new nurse, Dr. Jack said, making the introductions.

How are you doing, ma’am? Edwin greeted her with a key opening question.

In the initial talks with newcomers, experience had shown that newcomers reacted better while talking to the nurse member of the team, since doctors in the natural world were always somewhat intimidating and aloof, while nurses seemed more caring and compassionate. Therefore, after the greetings were over, the nurse would do most of the talking, and the doctor would supervise and only intervene if what the nurse had said was not quite correct or if the patient became so nervous that administering a calming agent or sedative became necessary. Experience also had shown that there was a cross-sexual relationship in welcoming patients. Male patients reacted better to a female welcoming team, and vice versa.

First of all, it is Mrs. McCormick, not ‘ma’am’ to you. Second, where is my usual morning nurse, Ms. Mayers? Mrs. McCormick replied haughtily Finally, I am feeling fine, thank you very much. Actually, I have not felt this good in a long time, she admitted.

Nurse Mayers is not in this hospital, Mrs. McCormick, Edwin replied enigmatically.

Jane McCormick did not notice the nuances of Edwin’s answer and plowed on arrogantly. "She got fired, huh? Or at least got transferred to a lesser hospital. Serves her right. That nurse would not know the meaning of the words professional competence if they bit her in her ass." Jane suddenly stopped, startled at her language. Ladies like Jane never used language like that. It was not seemly to use such language, for persons of the upper class should not talk like plebes.

Momentarily chagrined, Jane responded more humbly. Sorry, I never say things like that. Quite unseemly to do so. I beg your forgiveness.

It is not to us that you should beg for forgiveness, Edwin replied. It is to someone else.

You mean God? Oh sure, I will do so momentarily. If there is one thing I know how to do, it is to pray to God, Jane replied. Funny, I never saw nurses express religious views on the job in a secular hospital. Jane was curious and mystified at the same time.

In this hospital, we are not afraid of talking about religious matters. You are no longer in Fairfax Hospital, Edwin told her gently but bluntly.

I was transferred? To a hospital run by a religious organization? Not Catholic, I hope. I am devout Baptist and won’t put up with being served by nuns! Arrogant, self-important creatures, those nuns! Jane rambled on.

For a fraction of a second, the doctor and nurse exchanged a look that spoke volumes. Not a good start. In a few sentences, Jane McCormick had been viciously insulting to an individual who had tried to save her life and to a whole group of people who, for the most part, wanted to serve God, no matter how misguided their methods. The worst part was that Jane seemed to be trying to curb her sharp tongue and was failing miserably. Nurse Edwin decided to try a new approach.

No, this is not a Catholic hospital, Mrs. McCormick. In this hospital, we receive and treat patients of all faiths. We believe that all faiths have something good to offer the human soul, principally because, in one form or another, all faiths believe in the Golden Rule. You, as a devout Baptist, are surely aware of the Golden Rule, Mrs. McCormick? Edwin asked.

After a brief hesitation, Mrs. McCormick answered with a wave of her hand. Sure, I learned about the Golden Rule by the time I was six. Good rule, good rule—no doubt about it. But all rules, well, have exceptions to them. I mean, you can’t expect people of breeding to treat uncultured plebes the same way they would treat another person of breeding. If we did that, these plebes would become insubordinate, and we can’t have that. Social chaos would result.

Edwin gave a tiny sigh. Jane’s exception meant that she believed that the Golden Rule should be ignored 98 percent of the time! Getting worse. Time for the big question, Edwin thought.

"Mrs. McCormick, you spent two weeks in the ICU of Fairfax Hospital. During that time, did you give any thought to your mortality? After all, you are eighty-five, and you were quite sick. What