The Other Side of Heaven

by Stan Mason

  As the aircraft plunged down from a great height and I remained reticent and passive, refusing to help the man or correct the altitude of the plane, I began to feel a growing change in my status as though being rewarded for following the Heavenly rules. The power in my spirit started to strengthen and, instead of floating gently from here to there, I felt a sudden surge of energy that allowed me to propel myself forwards, backwards and sideways at will inside the falling aircraft. I practised the movements staring at the passive spirits in the back seats for a short while feeling exhilarated at the development. Then, within seconds, the engine of the Cessna started to scream like a wailing banshee as it plunged mercilessly into the ground in a field of cabbages, smashing into pieces with great force. With ease, I removed myself, together with the other two spirits, from the wreckage, staring at the body of the dead pilot before grimacing and walking away. An ambulance would arrive shortly to pick up the pilot’s body while firemen would arrange for the shattered aircraft to be taken away for investigation. The end result would almost certainly reflect ‘pilot error’ and the man’s family would be left to mourn his passing. I had only gone fifty yards across the field when I found myself transported back to the room in Heaven, facing the Centurion Angel.

  ‘I presume that I passed the test,’ I told him bluntly. ‘I refrained from helping anyone, leaving a trail of disaster and dead bodies behind me.’

  ‘I’m very impressed with your progress,’ he responded. ‘You seem to understand the need to follow the rules without questioning the reason.’

  ‘You could have left me down there a bit longer,’ I chided. ‘I was beginning to get used to it.’

  ‘Really?’ he retorted. ‘You clearly don’t realise that you were down there for a period of two full Earthly years.’

  My mouth opened in surprise. ‘Two years?’ I echoed. ‘How can that be? I was in the room with the clairvoyant. Then I saw the couple making love on a bed... the man who lied to her about leaving his wife. After that I saw the young boy who was unable to stop his bicycle from veering across a main road. Both he and the lorry driver who struck him were killed. Then I was in a Cessna aircraft coming in to land which crashed because the pilot had a heart attack. How could that have taken two whole years?’

  ‘Time is not regarded as a feature in Heaven but I assure you that you were on Earth for a full two years.’

  I recalled a joke where a man spoke directly to God asking him about money and time. ‘A pound piece in Heaven is worth a million pounds and a minute is like a hundred years,’ explained God. ‘Will you lend me a pound piece?’ asks the man hopefully. ‘In a minute,’ returned God.

  The Centurion Angel stared at me directly and I knew that he was about to tell me something that would startle me. ‘Do you know how long your body gave up your spirit for you to come to Heaven?’ he asked point-blank. I shook my head. ‘You spirit arrived here almost five years ago.’

  I was shocked at the revelation and felt myself reeling back. ‘I’ve been dead for five years?’ I echoed, stunned at the news. ‘But I’ve only been here a short while.’

  ‘I told you,’ he repeated slowly, ‘time is not a feature in Heaven. You’d be well advised to dismiss it from your mind.’

  The fact that Earthly time was so fleeting amazed me. I could have sworn that that my visit to Earth as an Accompanying Angel had been less than an hour yet it proved to be a full two years. The speed at which time flew by in Heaven was astonishing!

  ‘You should now acquaint yourself with some aspects of the work to be done here,’ related the Centurion Angel.

  ‘Only some aspects?’ I challenged.

  ‘There’s a great deal to see and learn,’ he responded sharply. ‘You’ll find that out in due course.’

  ‘How will I find out?’ I demanded not wishing to be left in the dark.

  ‘It’ll all be arranged for you,’ he replied calmly. ‘Go now and learn.’

  I nodded and left the building looking upward at the black sky before focussing my mind on some matters which concerned me mostly. In Heaven, I noticed that there were no mountains or lakes or parks. The Greeks believed that Elysium was a series of great meadows where spirits could leisurely enjoy themselves. The view before me did not seem to fit such a belief. I sorrowfully missed the beautiful mountains and lakes I had enjoyed so much on Earth and I wondered why they failed to exist here. Perhaps they were like the stars... being located way below Heaven. It was not the only things that I appreciated from the past but, by now, had only become faint memories. I recalled some of the teachers in the Grammar School I attended in the East End of London in my youth. At the time, I was less than concerned with their teaching, acting selfishly like most other schoolboys, wanting to concentrate on playing football in the schoolyard, or leaving before the start of the last lesson of each day in an act of truancy. At the time, I thought little about them or the ways the masters focussed their attention on teaching the boys, spending their working lives trying to mould us into intelligent human-beings, giving us the chance to make something of ourselves in later life. It was only many years afterwards that I recognised their talent and their ardent efforts to input knowledge into our minds for our own benefit. However, by then, it was far too late. In the effluxion of time, they had all grown old and had passed away... yet their names were branded in my memory. Our Form Master, Piggy Allen who taught us English and was so constant in his attitude and kindness towards us despite the way we often remonstrated in class, Shimmy Rosen who bathed our minds in Religion and Mathematics but kept us in order under his iron rule, and Floozey, the French teacher who used to sit in the front of the class with her bottom on the top of the most prominent desk and her legs down on the seat. How we ever learned a word of the language watching her there with her skirt above her knees was a miracle. And then there was Mouldy Miller who taught us history in a way whereby we remembered the dates of every battle, the reign of every king and queen, and every event that happened in the past. They were all such wonderful teachers but it was over forty years later before they came to mind and I began to appreciate them for their commendable efforts. It was the same with mountains, lakes and parks. They were absent in Heaven... gone from my life for ever... and I had loved looking at them so much on Earth. Not only that, but there was the fact that I had been in Heaven almost five years. That was astonishing to say the least. It had seemed like only a few hours yet it was something I needed to adjust to in due course. I was now a spirit in Heaven... not a human-being spending a lifetime of three score and ten years or more on Earth evaluating each day, month or year. Adjustment was essential if I was to get anywhere in the order of scale in Heaven!

  2

  It seemed that my role as an Accompany Angel was over for a while. At least I did not find myself back on Earth having to watch people in treacherous situations. I went out into the main area to find many spirits wandering to and fro, and I wondered what kind of work they were involved in because everything in Heaven seemed to be rather ambitious for most spirits. In the distance, the sound of singing could be heard and eventually a choir comprising some five hundred souls came marching slowly towards me. The leaders carried golden poles without insignias on them as they led the group. I had never heard the songs they were singing before but they sounded smooth and pleasant. I now understood why the term ‘a choir of angels’ was used generally on Earth and I watched the throng pass by before continuing on my way although I had no idea where I was going.

  I think it was the Centurion Angel who arranged the next event for me. He had been so impressed with my non-action as an Accompanying Angel that I was certain he had structured the progress of my status. It happened quite quickly and, although I had the use of my legs, I discovered that I could still float and subsequently glided onwards. It wasn’t long before I saw a face that I recognised ahead of me. It was that of the spirit of my long departed wife. I wasn’t ce
rtain whether she had learned of my demise in advance and was expecting to see me because she did not seem surprised at my presence. I moved towards her with a slight smile on my face, uncertain, as she had never forgiven me for my affair with the fellow teacher.

  ‘Hello, ‘ I managed to say calmly trying to think of her first name which, annoyingly, seemed to ahve eluded me at that moment. There was no point in asking her how she was because we were both vacant spirits floating around in Heaven.

  ‘Hello,’ she responded coolly, and I imagined that she failed to remember my name either.

  There was no hug or embrace as neither of us had any substance, not that we would willingly do so after the affair I had experienced with my fellow teacher. In any case, the truth of the matter was that neither of use could feel any emotion. Now that we were both spirits in Heaven, there was no rancour ... no anger... no envy or jealousy... it was simply meeting a spirit with whom I had once lived with and loved. It had become a relic of the past and was now broken.

  ‘Are you enjoying a state of peace here in Heaven?’ I asked meaninglessly.

  ‘There’s a lot to be done,’ she replied as though she hardly knew me.

  ‘Have you been an Accompanying Angel too?’ I enquired, continuing the conversation even though it was obvious there was nothing between us any more.

  ‘No,’ she answered candidly, ‘I’ve been examining the scrolls of the universe. They go on infinitely.’

  I recalled learning about the word ‘infinitely’ early in my life wondering how it was possible for all the galaxies and planets in the universe to go on endlessly. How was it possible for something so large... so vast... so enormous in size... to go on for ever? It stretched my mind to the full and I was forced to ignore the subject otherwise it would have caused me to dwell on it with great despair. As a teacher, I could not possibly admit to anyone that there was something that I could not account for or accept in reality. A universe that was infinite was the only serious bugbear in my mind that concerned me for the whole of my life.

  ‘You must have learned an awful lot,’ I continued. ‘Are you still a Seraph or have you progressed.’

  ‘It’s not easy to progress in the order of angels,’ she related slowly, almost like a zombie. ‘You have to do good deeds and good work to do so.’

  ‘What kind of deeds?’ I ventured with curiosity building in my mind.

  ‘I cannot tell you the answer to your question,’ she told me point-blank. ‘You’ll find out the details eventually.’

  There it was again... the denial of responding to a simple question. It appeared that not only those in the hierarchy refused to answer ordinary questions; it was the penchant of those on the lower rungs of the ladder to do so as well.

  I had wondered when on Earth how, if there was an afterlife, a man who had married three times would act when faced with the spirits of his three dead wives. I had imagined there would be an argument between them as to which one had priority. However, now I understood that such a confrontation would never happen in Heaven mainly through lack of emotion which was left on Earth after one had passed away. Once a person had died, all emotional contact with anyone or anything became absolutely negative.

  I looked behind my wife to see my grandparents moving closer. I had loved the old man in my youth because he was so sprightly and intelligent. He had written three fictional books which he managed to get published and I had been very proud of him at the time. I moved forward to approach them delighted that they recognised me instantly. Once again there was no hugging or embracing. We simply faced each other staring bleakly with no emotion passing betwen us whatsoever.

  ‘How are you, boy?’ enquired my grandfather meekly.

  ‘I’m find, granddad,’ I replied. ‘Doing any writing?’

  ‘Wish I had the time,’ he echoed. ‘Too busy up here.’

  ‘Too busy,’ I repeated in surprise. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I’m working on the morality of Heaven against that operated on Earth. There’s a lot of work to be done there.’

  ‘But you do have the opportunity to walk around the place in your leisure time,’ I went on with an element of reproach in my voice.

  ‘Leisure time!,’ he told me. ‘That’s a good one! I’m come here to meet you. It’s taken me seventeen Earthly years to get around to it.’

  ‘Seventeen years,’ I retorted. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s how long you’ve been here in Heaven, boy,’ returned my grandfather curtly.

  Once again I was amazed at his revelation. Surely I could not have been dead for seventeen years. It seemed to be less than a day.

  A small queue of distant relatives who had passed away stood behind them waiting to greet me. I didn’t recognise any of them having not been a person who could be called a family man.

  I looked among them with an element of minor distress. ‘Where are my parents?’ I asked with some consternation for they were not to be seen. It was as though I hadn’t asked the question for no one uttered a word. ‘Were they reincarnated and sent back to Earth?’ Silence continued to reign and I could only assume that I had been right.

  The meeting with my relatives proved to be innocuous and extremely passive without any information about my mother and father who were clearly not in Heaven. Not surprisingly, none of us stayed together. Then, as though they didn’t know me, My wife, my grandparents and my distant relatives all went smartly on their way past me. I recalled a medium once saying that she was in contact with a person’s dead parents and that their spirits were living happily together in Heaven. Now that I could observe the situation at first hand for myself, I realised how distorted that prediction proved to be. Spirits here were completely individual, moving separately, without any kind of contact with each other and there was a distinct absence of emotional bonding. I was sad to see my wife and relatives go as it was in my mind to latch on to them for the purpose of comfort and also to learn more about a spirit’s existence in Heaven. Clearly, I was going to have to find the information by means of my own efforts. However, I could not get over the fact that I had been dead for seventeen years. In that event, why did it take my wife and relatives so long to greet me? Surely they could not have been that busy! And what had really happened to my parents?

  ***

  As I observed the departure of my wife and relatives, I felt myself being drawn some distance ahead by an invisible force which began to pull me towards a very large building in the citadel. It was as though I was a steel pin being attracted to the place by a very large magnet. The action was extremely strong and I found myself unable to resist it. When I arrived there, I climbed the wide steps on my own two feet and entered the building feeling discomforted that I knew not what was waiting for me inside. I went into an enormous room that, to my eyes, seemed to go on for ever into the distance. It was bare of any furniture, having a very high ceiling while the lighting was extremely bright for the purpose for which the room was used. Situated all around the walls was an extremely long smooth shelf some two feet wide and four feet high on which rested thousands upon thousands of scrolls that looked as though they were made of parchment. Spirits abounded in the room, all of them standing at the shelf for as far as the eye could see as they searched through the texts in an attempt to absorb the contents. I had no idea whether all the scrolls were identical but I soon found myself being drawn to an empty space at the shelf looking down at the contents of one particular scroll. It related to the universe and how it continued into infinity. I was now having to face my demons by virtue of the fact that I had never understood how infinity could actually work. This was clearly yet another test for me to overcome.

  I recalled the fictional story I used to tell of the greatest architect in the world whose designs and building were renowned by everyone. However, he had one serious flaw in his character in that, after each building was f
inished, he found numerous faults in the design or in the building itself and always complained, never being satisfied. When he died, he went to Heaven, and God had admired his work so much that he took him into his study and showed him the design of the universe. ‘What do you think of that?’ enquired God proudly. The architect examined the plans at length. ‘It’s still not right!’ he complained bitterly.

  Now I was in the position of that great architect but I had no true idea what I was reading. After all, I had died... I didn’t particularly come to Heaven to have to learn about the universe! I stared at the other spirits working their way through the texts and suddenly a voice could be heard in my head.

  ‘Read through the scrolls and you’ll begin to understand,’ came the advice.