A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly as the Little Book

by Daniel Quinn

  The Schopenhauer-influenced hold that the Afterlife and its constituent parts are formed solely by the perception of the perceiver, that these constituents have no substance in themselves, are merely perceptions. Objects exist only in relation to subjects. The Afterlife, to paraphrase Schopenhauer, is idea. All that in any way belongs or can belong to the Afterlife is willy-nilly conditioned through the perceiver, exists only for the perceiver, is only the perception of the perceiver, is, then, entirely perceptual. To begin a meeting, the Schopenhauer-influenced will knock together some benches, sit down, and decide what it is they are perceiving for the duration of their assembly. This done, they reflect on the fact that it is only perceptual anyway, so what does it matter? What outsiders see, of course, is only a handful of thinkers sitting on wooden benches and holding their foreheads in intense indifference to everything.

  The founding meeting of the Church of the Afterlife As Will and Idea (Schopenhauer-influenced), which split from the psycho-reactive in 1901. Schopenhauer himself is easily recognizable as the second shade from the right. At his left sits James Russell Lowell, the American poet; at his right are the British radical reform politician John Bright, Frederick III of Germany, American abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, and Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi. (illustration credits 5.1)

  Two other religions of the spontaneous sort can be sampled in Appendix II.

  1 I speak here of contemporary conditions, of course. Different conditions prevail in earlier times. Take a “deep dive” and you’ll come up in the midst of people whose view of reality is animistic; for them, the transition between life and the Afterlife was a slight and unimportant one; they perceive no great difference between the two, and so their religious beliefs are much the same as they were in life.

  2 Which is to say among the Regulars. Though they presumably have some sort of interior life, Husks are manifestly incapable of any activity that could be termed religion. Adepts take no interest whatever in our religions; many people assume they have one of their own that has no outward display whatever.

  3 Newcomers (for some reason especially theosophists) sometimes try to maintain the tradition they followed in life. For example, you might see a new arrival staring intently at a rock and then saying (paraphrasing Leadbetter), “Firstly, the whole of the physical matter is seen instead of a minute part of it; secondly, the vibrations of its physical particles are perceptible; thirdly is seen its astral counterpart composed of various grades of astral stuff whose particles are in constant motion; fourthly, the Universal Divine Life must be here in this rock although fifthly [here our newcomer pauses and appears deeply troubled] the rock is descending into the earth and the earth is descending into itself and I no longer can see the rock or earth.” Then he will stand up, look questioningly at his surrounds, and never again quote (or misquote) his spiritual leader. A recently arrived theologian might try to start up a discussion on the fine points of the various arguments for the existence of God, but as soon as he mentions Anselm and the ontological argument or the arguments from first cause (cosmological) or design (teleological) or contingency, his listeners will shake their heads as if to say, “This we know already and all the counterarguments for whatever argument you may propose” and simply drift away.

  4 To add a generous measure of confusion, these followers, who are in fact completely intact, call themselves “the Skinless.” Most people refer to the truly skinless as the Karroum, and reserve the term Skinless for their followers. When someone is said to be “as sensitive as a Skinless,” this is a reference not to the Karroum but to their followers, who are notably captious and, well, thin-skinned.

  5 Lethe, in Greek mythology, was a river in Hades whose waters cause drinkers to forget their past.

  6 Helen Hansen Gable, In the Waters of Lethe.

  CHAPTER THE LAST

  IN WHICH

  LIES ARE EXPOSED!

  Newcomers to the afterlife—who arrive full of alarm, confusion, and apprehension—turn to The Little Book for gentle reassurance and cold facts, and these are the principal fare of the early chapters. I assume that, since you’ve reached this point in the text, your own alarm, confusion, and apprehension have abated to a point where you can with equanimity hear a truth that I have systematically suppressed in earlier pages:

  The Afterlife is Hell.

  In your heart-of-hearts you knew that, didn’t you?

  On the other hand, it is no less true to say that …

  The Afterlife is Heaven.

  • • •

  The doctrine of the Roman Church1 will assist me in solving this strange paradox. As the theologians of this sect have worked it all out, one’s disposition in the Afterlife is determined absolutely and solely by the state of one’s soul at the moment of death: Die in a state of grace—even after a whole lifetime of debauchery—and you are Heaven-bound (though a bit of purgatorial polishing may be needed before you actually get there); die in mortal sin—even after a whole lifetime of angelic piety—and it’s Hell for you, once and for all.

  Obviously an element of something very like luck determines your fate under this system. Be struck by lightning as you step out of the confessional box, and bliss is yours, forever. Slip in the bathtub and crack your skull while dismembering your spouse, and it’s excruciating torment for a period longer than any of us can imagine. To increase one’s chances for eternal happiness, one is always well advised to lengthen the odds: Just as a matter of raw statistics, the habitual saint clearly has a better chance of dying in a state of grace than the habitual sinner.

  Thinkers of the Reformation and of later times were not at ease with this rather arbitrary approach to human fate in the Afterlife. Character—the state of one’s conscience—seemed more to the point than a state of grace that could be produced almost mechanically with the proper sacramental formulas. Gradually an altogether new vision of Heaven and Hell began to emerge: Heaven and Hell were not places to which people were sent in death, Heaven and Hell were places people chose—in life.

  And thus is the paradox solved.

  The Afterlife is full of people who made their life on earth a Hell. Why should they not do the same here? For them, the Afterlife is Hell because they brought Hell with them, and wherever they are is Hell.

  You can verify this for yourself very easily. Visit a human monster, a Joseph Stalin or an Adolf Hitler; for tens of kilometers around them, you will find utter silence and desolation. They sit enthroned in the center of their own Hells of misery, loneliness, and hatred … forever. Forever not because some God has condemned them to it, but because they have condemned themselves to it. Hell is all that they know—all that they ever knew. If they wanted to, they could abandon Hell tomorrow—as they might have done in life … if they’d wanted to.

  But the Afterlife is also full of people who made their life on earth a Heaven. They brought Heaven with them, and wherever they are is Heaven.

  As in life, most of us live well within the polar extremes. Some of us were denied any real chance at making life on earth a Heaven for ourselves. A child who is sent to work in the mines at age five and dies before his tenth birthday has little chance to learn the language of bliss. The victims of war, slavery, and oppression come to us knowing little but Hell and have to develop an aptitude for its opposite. Wherever you go in the cities, across the deserts, in the catacombs, down the road that leads to forever, you’ll see Heaven and Hell on every side … in us. Look for them and you’ll soon know them. There on your left, Hell shuffles by, carrying a reluctant, gloomy chicken, his only comrade. There on your right, Heaven springs past, singing—a lunatic, a little too much for civilized contact.

  Just the way it always was.

  1 If in life you were in need of a razor (and only the finest would do), you visited Kindal on the avenue de l’Opéra in Paris; if you were in need of an umbrella of a similar quality, you visited James Smith & Sons on Oxford Street in London. In need of a doctrine, where else would one turn
except to the Church of Rome?

  APPENDIXES

  I’ve always felt I would be doing less than my best for newcomers to the Afterlife if I were to include in The Little Book nothing but answers to their most obvious and urgent questions. A staggeringly enormous treasury of writings about the Afterlife—of every kind, including (but not limited to) the literary, the scholarly, the scientific, and the speculative—has accumulated over the millennia, and I like to conclude each new edition of The Little Book with a minute sample drawn from it.

  In past editions, I have included:

  • an account that comes to us from an African people (presumably of Homo habilis) so ancient that the Afterlife was, they claim, uninhabited by the human kind until they arrived

  • Benjamin Franklin’s “Six Improvements of the Afterlife Which Could Be Easily Effected by Its Inhabitants”

  • an excerpt from Sigmund Freud’s The Psycho-Analysis of Joan of Arc

  • “An Admission of Error,” written specifically for The Little Book by an unfortunately still crazed and unrepentant Adolf Hitler (seventeen words in German, twenty-one in the English translation)

  The selections I’ve made for this edition come more nearly under the heading “Literary Curiosities and Popular Philosophical and Scientific Delusions.”

  APPENDIX I

  TWO

  CROSSING-OVER

  TRACTS

  When a crossing-over pamphlet is thrust into your hand on a street corner or blown into your face as you trudge down the road, you will be forgiven for thinking of it as a piece of litter. Crudely printed, on the flimsiest available material, these dismal screeds seem designed to make a poor first impression. Nonetheless, some are very ancient texts that scholars would not hesitate to shelve alongside the Rig-Veda, the Three Pitakas, or the Kojiki and Nihongi of Japan.

  The following description of the stages of crossing over is embraced by the Radiant, who meet in covens of thirteen on the thirteenth day of the first month of every thirteenth year1 and chant their doctrine for thirteen hours. You may already have heard fragments of their “song” floating on the etheric currents.

  THE THIRTEEN STAGES OF CROSSING OVER2

  1. You who know nothing of crossing over, listen carefully. This is the Stage of Symptoms, the bleeding through the nose, the sores, the illuminated head—when the spirit becomes enkindled and you cannot resist your quitting the body.

  2. In this mansion everything is different, everything causes afflictions. The light will not come back, though you shudder and complain. The knowledge-holders wait with their lokas of fatigue, wait and ripen with the dawn.

  3. Too long standing in one place brings the Flame-enhaloed Deities. Do not wince within their illusion, even though they are frightening. Keep alert. Those are fisheyes staring down upon you.

  4. The Dweller on the Threshold cannot help you. He is blind. Only the soul is aware that what it is experiencing is no hallucination. Pick up a bone relic and cross over.

  5. Listen well to the Blood-draining deities’ questions. Say: I will give you an account of the state of heavenly water flowing through the thirteen mansions of the moon and how on a certain road I saw the sun set in a pool of black mud. They will then be occupied forever with understanding.

  6. Do not think this stage has to do with dreaming, that the soul is here made drowsy, neither asleep nor awake. You must bathe in the fire of the newly born if you are to escape this most miserable of stages.

  7. In the dark substance the scintillae appear. Do not follow them. Follow instead the seven planets and their stars, though they too will lead you downward. Everything does, here in the holiest of paradises.

  8. Learn to listen without distraction. There is continuity of sorts in even the darkest doctrine. Follow the path that’s already established. The earth will offer no resistance. It will lead you to a pond where you pick Sentients like lice from your pores.

  9. If you try to flee without thinking, the Blood-draining deities will sing you into their skull-bowls. Pain pervades you wholly. Axes whistle through first the right wrist then the left. A polished bell is placed in the eastern hemisphere of your brain and will ring and ring—if you try to flee from this stage without thinking.

  10. If you no longer recognize yourself in the maelstrom, head for the Cave. Enter with no expectation, muttering thunderfist over and over. Here the great treasure lies hidden. Here Hiranyagabha awaits you with its six eyes and its yellow incubator where the jewel reposes, and its pestle to mortar your skull.

  11. Yes, each stage will deceive you, if you do not attend carefully. This is not an imaginary journey. He Who Is Truly Small will take you down to his own littleness. The larger shadows are not to be trusted.

  12. From horizon to horizon the sky trembles. The clouds disperse. Thought-forms float by as thick as trunks. The word incarnate separates from the spirit. This is the Twelfth Stage. You must learn to enjoy it. It will last for twelve periods.3

  13. Lost one, this is the Dawning of Radiances. You’re lucky you made it this far. The owl will take you to the Four Females Who Keep the Door, where an opulence awaits you, and elephant, ibex, wolf. The Doorkeepers bite their nether lips. Their eyes are glassy. The head they lay at your feet is yours.

  The most famous coven meeting of the Radiant in modern times occurred in 1951 in a storefront in Three Ponies.4 The members were nearing the end of their chant when the khaki-clad body of a young man crashed down into the midst of them from nowhere—in the middle of one of his own sentences. Lying on his back in the dust, staring up sightlessly into the eyes of the shades around him, he continued to rave for about half an hour in a state of trance. At last he concluded with these words: “Did you make it? Is it over? Are you there?”—and vanished, never to be seen again in the Afterlife.

  The astonished witnesses quickly reached the conclusion that this young man (“the Bodhisattva in Khaki”) had in that very hour died, arriving in the Afterlife in a state of such advanced enlightenment that he was already uttering the directions he would need to follow in order to cross over to the next state of being beyond the Afterlife. In a panic-stricken frenzy, they began immediately to reconstruct the ranting words that had cascaded from his mouth.

  To say that they were in a frenzy hardly covers the matter. They drove themselves into paroxysms of lunacy over the next two days, battling over what they’d heard in fact and in imagination, interpreting sounds (did he say lokas or logos or perhaps locusts?), interpolating at whim and at need. They had been given (they felt sure) the most important revelation in human history, but how much of it did they have right? Not enough, evidently, for them to repeat the Bodhisattva’s feat. Every year brings forth dozens of new attempts to “get it right.” The version that follows makes as much (and as little) sense as any of them.

  THE CHANT OF THE KHAKI BODHISATTVA5

  First, your whereabouts.

  Ask the old man on your left, the one supine in the gutter. He will tap-dance for fifteen minutes on a blue handkerchief then begin to bleed from the gums. Pick up the handkerchief and read it as if it were the last novel of a lost race known as man and if it says, “Through dominant freighters of imperial wardrobes,” you know you’re on the right track. Follow it.

  Keep following it.

  Those people, the ones whose faces are all alike, cluster with them in the corner for the dictation of simple transliterations, extraneous treatises fading in hands piping the sacred texts. Pay attention!

  “The University.”

  “The Mortuary.”

  “The stiffening fingers.”

  Visit the Den of Winds.

  How was it? Do you think you will ever come back again? Did the woman in the red swirl explain your shivers? Your sins? How much of life did you take in? 10%? 40%? 3%?

  If you err at this stage, you will wander forever in “sangsara,” so do not err, though your nerve endings are popping like balloons, like stars.

  Take the bone-relics off the pyre
and plant them. Soon tiny pigs will squeal forth from the ground. Kill them all and try to merge with their rainbow-hued blood. It is impossible, but you must try if you are to experience utter loneliness. The Purified Ones are calling.

  Don’t answer. Start jogging. This will keep you in shape for the later, more treacherous parts of the journey, like the mating with the scorpion or the swim through the mirror’s smile.

  Hitch up your dress or pants and start walking, it’s not over yet. There are pits to be crossed and whole areas of “dilapidated air.”

  Are your fingers a dark yellow yet? Good. You are getting closer.

  Mud raining from the skies, trees slipping from the bank, the days going backward and forward making whirlpools of the weeks. You are in another region, so wipe the smile off your mouth, here comes the blizzard of glass.

  Follow the blind baby, your natural inclinations are useless now, and it will lead you into the desert where cars drift like lizards, their gaze filling you with dread—

  A GRIP ON THE HOMELAND

  —Palpable dread, plants, animals, motor brains.

  “Sudden acts of physics seen intoxicated to immutable inceptions form continuity on radiated nails present set machine undoubtedly to the absorbent sky.”

  Bring this message to the technicians. They won’t fix it, but will offer you a place to stay overnight and fortify you with tea. Thank them and move on.

  The world is an invention, you think (how else could you have gotten out of the blizzard of glass?), but you are wrong. It is what it is.