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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468577358 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/20/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 116 |
| File size: | 183 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Life after Life After Life ...
By O. Dexter Covell
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 O. Dexter CovellAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-7739-6
Chapter One
The Transition
Silas never fully regained consciousness throughout the long night from his fall down the elevator shaft that he had been building at his grain company, except for short periods during which he must have been aware only of an overwhelming amount of severe pain. This pain gradually dissolved into a sense of himself separate from his body which had been laid on the bed in his bedroom. This sense of self included a body that was similar to the one on the bed except it was thankfully completely free of pain and it was floating in an area near the ceiling in his bedroom where he was enjoying complete silence and bliss. In fact, he felt to him almost as though God's finger had reached down and touched him because he was experiencing himself as perfect, with no physical pain whatsoever. He was aware of the body stretched out on the bed below him and of what was being said and done to save his life but was unable to communicate with anyone there, not even with his wife, Mary Elizabeth, who sat with him through the night holding his hand. They had always been very close and shared every thought, but still she, along with everyone else in the room, regarded Silas as though the only Silas they knew was right there on the bed, and when he sensed the physicians pronounce him dead early in the morning because he had stopped breathing, he wanted to cry out that a terrible mistake was being made – he was only 35, in the prime of his life, too young to die – but he was unable to make any kind of sound or contact or get their attention in any way. It was maddening, but he became otherwise preoccupied when the room which had been bathed in a soft white light, along with all its occupants including his body, began getting darker and gradually faded from his view, and he was reluctantly beginning to accept the idea that to human sense he had just died. He could feel that he was moving toward a nearby opening into what appeared to him to be some sort of dimly lit tunnel. It was not that he was doing anything on his own to get there, but rather that some unknown force which he regarded as the hand of God was propelling him in that direction, and even if he had wanted to, he seemed powerless to change his course or speed. He was moving steadily toward the tunnel entrance now, and fell to reflecting on the cause of his being there in the first place, berating himself for the impulsiveness that had led to his death, particularly since he realized that taking the new elevator rather than walking down the nearby stairs in the grain elevator would have saved him only a minute or two at best. He went on to bring his beloved wife and little children into his consciousness, and could barely stand to consider the consequences of what their lives without him might be like, even though he knew they would soon find out he had left them well provided for.
Before he could bring himself any additional sorrow, he became aware that he had moved into the tunnel entrance and was starting to float along through a long circular tunnel which was dimly lit throughout its length and seemed to culminate in a distant, more brightly lit, exit. The tunnel was of sufficient diameter so that he could easily stand in it with room to spare, but not on its surface because it had no discernible floor, and it appeared to be made in its entirety of a soft flexible material that was luminous with soft light. He could not resist the urge to try to feel it, however there was nothing to feel – the walls of the tunnel always seemed just beyond his reach no matter what contortions of his body he attempted. Nothing was visible through the open exit except that it was bathed in a brighter light compared to the lighting of the tunnel. It was not at all claustrophobic and seemed very peaceful to him, yet it might have caused him to be apprehensive because it was all in the unknown, except that he had the distinct feeling that God was leading him along the way.
Any further thoughts that he might have had along this line were interrupted by new images that were flooding into his consciousness. These images, and he could also sense what had been said at the time, started from the very beginning of his human life and sequentially traced his life and everything of consequence he had done or said, good or bad, all the way right up to the present – a complete history of his life that was stored in his memory. He was a spectator to a detailed and complete rehearsal of every event or incident that had taken place in his lifetime – a life review that spared him nothing, including those instances where he had acted unkindly or negatively or done something hurtful, as well as those laudable instances where he done the opposite. There was a smooth flow from image to image, and Silas felt that all of this would be very embarrassing to him if viewed by others and he hoped that no one else would ever get to see it, but was satisfied that on the whole, it could have been worse! There were, however, several events that he regretted sincerely and wondered if he would ever have the chance to make amends?
Silas was forced to conclude there could be no doubt now that insofar as his mortal body was concerned, he was dead, although otherwise he felt quite alive and perfectly at peace with the situation. He still seemed to have a body, and since he no longer was dressed in his bedclothes, he was able to carefully check his present body up and down and in and out, and found that it seemed identical to the mortal body he had just before death, only now it was completely free from pain and every injury, even down to the broken tooth he had scheduled to be removed the next week which now felt as good and solid as new, as well as the knee he had injured as a youth playing games with his friends which was pain free for the first time in years. He wondered, "What is this body that I seem to have now anyway"? If he had left the old body behind, was this new one still made up of blood, bones, muscles, a brain, etc, like the old one, or of something else entirely? Could it be new one? Or was it the old body which had been mysteriously healed of all its ailments? He noted that although he could sense his entire body, the whole thing seemed to have a reduced substance or density. And just touching it was a new experience – a touch turned out to be more of a caress of the surface of his body rather than a probing of it – and he continued his examination by trying to squeeze and probe with new vigor, but felt no resulting sensation. This time, though, he could vaguely feel the bones and organs under his skin, but again he had the impression they were less dense than he would have expected, and found all this to be very surprising. Could it be that he was approaching the state of "perfection" that Jesus referred to when he commanded his followers to "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).
And then some of the other things he had learned over the years of his religious studies began to come into his consciousness, and he realized that the body he now seemed to have was not material at all, or not some combination of materiality and spirituality, but totally and continuously spiritual, just as it must have been when originally created by the Creator. It was identical in appearance to his old material body except for one thing – although this body might have the same appearance and be composed of the similar elements that characterize a material body, they all seemed to have a much lower or lesser density. What the ramifications of this might mean, Silas, untypically for him, had no idea, but he thought it could have something to do with a new theory he had heard of that had to do with a characteristic of matter called "mass" which purported to show that even thoughts have weight.
Silas then went on to reiterate his belief system that God alone created man and that there is only one Creator – that, which for the sake of convenience, has come to be called by many "God", or "Lord", or "Father" among other names. This Creator, Silas had come to understand, is a unique and ever-present force. It creates an individual soul including spirit, mind, and form that constitutes each and every being, and this individual soul can be said to represent the complete being or essence or reality of its creation. And then Silas remembered reading in the Bible the statements that what God created was pronounced as "very good" (Gen 1:31), and man became "a living soul" (Gen 2:7). The latter statement quickly led him to the conclusion that although his material body had not survived the accident, his soul had survived because it is eternal, having been created by God along with mind, spirit, and form, which when taken together make up the being or essence or reality of man. This essence of man had been expressed by his mind during his time on Earth as a form evidenced as a physical being, and was now being expressed by the thought of that same mind in a spiritual form suitable to its new environment. He was conscious now of only a perfect body, totally free of the imperfections that had accumulated in his human body over the years, including the injuries caused by the recent accident. Surely, he reasoned, this perfection must be, at the very least, at the heart of what Jesus meant when he commanded us to "Be ye perfect", and wondered anew if he was coming close to that state of perfection, or could it be that he was already there?
Before he could carry this line of reasoning further, he became aware that something else was changing. He had emerged from the tunnel without realizing that he was doing so, clothed now in a robe of some kind of neutral color material that he was unfamiliar with, and he turned around to take a good look at the tunnel because he was interested in the design and construction of such a unique conveyance, but it had disappeared and there was no trace of it anywhere to be seen. His attention was immediately directed back to a scene that was beyond description and almost beautiful beyond his comprehension. Could this be the paradise that Jesus referred to when he said to the thief on the cross next to him, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise"? (Luke 23:43) He was at first struck by the impression of colors more vivid than he had ever imagined which appeared to him in numerous flowerbeds planted around the area. Although he had never been known to have much interest in such things, he had to admit that it was outstanding, and surely would have astonished his wife who was regarded as having a "green thumb", but she had never even come anywhere close to planting a display of this magnificence. This, of course, started him thinking about her again, and he wanted more than anything else to somehow let her know he was missing her but was otherwise fine, but he struggled to put her temporarily out of his thoughts in favor of contemplating what was before him.
He was standing in the middle of what appeared to him to be an endless field of green grass that looked as though it had just been carefully mowed by unseen mowers. It appeared to extend to the limits of his vision and he could see there were other areas planted like this one all around him into the far distance. But then his attention drifted overhead to a sky that was unlike any sky he had ever seen. It gave the impression of infinity, and in fact, he could see no end to it because it extended down to where it looked somehow as though it merged with the green fields in the far distance. There was no sun shining in the sky and yet the sky glowed with some sort of brilliance that provided ample illumination despite the fact that the sky seemed opaque, and in addition to that, there was no sound or noise whatsoever – it was all perfectly quiet.
Since nothing much seemed to be happening, Silas thought he might go over right then to the nearest bed of flowers to see in what manner they were being watered since he figured that could present a difficult problem for someone since the flower beds were spaced at least a half mile apart, and the moment he had the thought that he wanted to be there – he was there! This was astounding to him, and he experimented by going to some of the other flowerbeds, and he then headed back to the lawn area he had started from, all with the same ease of travel! This, he thought, was far better than riding a horse or taking one of the trains he was so fond of, and he had the premonition there would probably be other things yet to come that would amaze him.
In the meantime, he had seen no one else, and began to wonder where everyone could be. He was aware of some recent figures that estimated the population of the entire world at approximately one billion, and he knew that the average life span at the time was somewhat less than 50 years. He reached for his ever-present slide rule to come up with some of the numbers, but it, of course, was long gone and he was forced to do the math in his head, which proved to be an easier matter than he imagined it would be. If this information was at all accurate, he reasoned it would mean that an average of 20 million people would die on Earth each year, or nearly 55,000 each day or 2,300 each hour! So, in that case, shouldn't there be a lot more people milling around here? Were there other Heavens beyond his sight or could it be that this Heaven was the only one, and big beyond belief?
He looked around again, this time more carefully and in all directions, and could identify only maybe a few dozen objects that might be people in the near and far distance. The inevitable conclusion had to be that at this level of density of people, the whole area, which Silas later heard described as The Reception Area, was far larger than he at first assumed to it to be in order to accommodate this many people, and in fact, it had to be enormous, and served to reinforce his feelings of the immensity of the whole place.
Silas suddenly realized that all things considered, he was extremely comfortable – it not being too hot or too cold, and also that a strange feeling of bliss had settled over him. But further consideration of this was interrupted when he noticed that one of the figures he had seen in the distance seemed to be approaching him, The figure turned out to be a normal-looking man, about his size and dressed in a bright yellow robe otherwise just like his. In an instant he was standing before him, welcoming him by communicating what Silas sensed as, "Welcome home Silas, my name is Sol, and I am your Spiritual Guide."
Silas, to his great surprise, could not detect any corresponding movement of Sol's mouth or lips that could have produced these words, and Sol went on to tell Silas that he would help him get settled, and would always be available anytime for assistance and advice for any reason whatsoever. He also apologized to him for having kept him waiting, but explained that he had trouble determining Silas's exact location because Silas had been moving around. Sol validated this by assuring Silas, "I'm glad to see, though, that you seem to have already discovered some of the many pleasant surprises that await you in Heaven."
Chapter Two
Acclimation
The man standing before Silas, who had said his name was Sol, was of pleasant appearance, and although Silas was not a tall man, he was slightly shorter than Silas and appeared to him to be of about the same age. He was dressed in a substantial-looking bright yellow robe that fit him perfectly but did little to enhance the better features of his stocky build. Seeing him so dressed suggested to Silas that the robe he was now wearing appeared to be of similar design and material, so Silas, who had been fastidious in his dress on Earth, was curious and examined the fabric of his new robe. He was surprised to find that it was not made of woven material but of some other kind of smooth material with which he was not familiar. It appeared to be made of one piece closely shaped to fit his body's requirements but just as comfortable and flexible as his skin.
Sol complimented Silas for his self-discovery of the technique of moving from one location to another by thought alone rather than locomotion, and said he might as well tell him more as long as they were on the subject, because sooner or later it would all become obvious to one who seemed to be such a quick learner. Sol told him that he could instantly move around anywhere he wanted to be, near or far, just by visualizing or expressing his destination in his consciousness and thinking he wanted to be there! This could include distant destinations as Silas had already discovered, or distances as short as a few feet which would be accomplished by an accompanying movement of his limbs which resembled walking but was called "gliding". He went on to explain to Silas what was fast becoming apparent to him – that he, like everyone and every single thing here in what Sol was now calling "Heaven" was entirely spiritual and there was nothing here, whatsoever, that could be considered physical or material or restricted by any of the limitations imposed by physicality.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Life after Life After Life ... by O. Dexter Covell Copyright © 2012 by O. Dexter Covell. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword....................ixI – The Transition....................1
II – Acclimation....................15
III – The Reunion....................29
IV – The Council....................39
V – The Cluster Group....................51
VI – The Experiments....................65
VII – Reincarnation....................81