Glancing behind the veil between this world and what may be next

Preamble

There have been notable excursions of the inquisitive minds of writers into the world hereafter in as far as such a realm can be explored at all. Even the Bible is sparing in its portrayal of the world hereafter. Of this we catch a glimpse in the parable of Dives and Lazarus in Saint Luke’s gospel. The one great revelation of the eternal realm beyond mortal existence remains of course Dante’s Divine Comedy. With Virgil as his guide the author or his imaginary self witnesses the fate of those who must endure just punishment in Hell or Purgatory, while Beatrice provides his guidance in Paradise. As Erich Auerbach astutely observed in a chapter of his seminal work Mimesis, the feat of imagining events in the realm beyond death lends astounding precision to discerning the unchanging and therefore quintessential qualities of realities within the known worlds of politics and society. Though widespread belief in an afterlife as depicted by medieval thinkers became less assured, writers did not forsake the domain of heaven and hell altogether. Maurice Joly’s The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu ( Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu) offered great scope to the writer’s bitter criticism of the political situation in France under the reign of Napoleon III. Jean-Paul Sartre, who presumably rejected belief in an afterlife, set the action depicted in Huis Clos (In Camera) in Hell, thus providing a context for one of his most memorable lines L’enfer, c’est les autres. (Hell is other people). With the precedents so far adduced in mind, I offer my own vision of events that purportedly take place in a dimension outside the known world in which we mortals live. One argument put forward for the doctrine of the necessity of an afterlife is rooted in a sense of justice that cannot abide the shortcomings of legal systems in the face of crime and the unavenged suffering of the innocent.

Within a celestial clearing office dealing in claims for a place in the World to Come

Angelic clerk: Next!
Enter an angel bearing a sack

Clerk: All hail! What brings you hither and what’s in the sack you bear?
First angelic attorney: These are the bones of my clients, of them who seek a place in the World to Come in the name of justice.
Clerk: Very well, but I need more details.
First attorney: O hear then the collective voice of those whose bones this sack contains.
Clerk: Bid the voices speak.

Voices:
We were slain in battle.
We were slain on the streets by careless drivers.
We died waiting for urgent medical treatment.
We are the victims of murder, administrative muddle, neglect and desertion.
We perished in earthquakes, mainly in poorly built housing.
They did not really mean to kill us. We are collateral.

Clerk: Do you believe in the resurrection of the dead?
Voices: We do.
Clerk: Do you believe that your bones will form into skeletons and that these skeletons will put on flesh and the spirit of life will enter these, much as described by the prophet Ezekiel with respect to the valley of dry bones, and you will live again? If so, say amen!
Voices: Amen, amen! ….Amen!
Clerk: Your case will be reviewed and I believe the verdict will be in your favor.
Next!

An angel appears with sack full of dust.
Clerk: All hail! And what brings you hither?

Second attorney: Hear, I plead, the collective voice of those whose remains are in this sack.
Voices:
We have no bones.
Our bones, like the rest of our bodies, were vaporized at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Our mortal remains were incinerated at Auschwitz and other death camps.
We perished when Dresden was firebombed on Saint Valentine’s Day in 1945.

Clerk: Do you believe in the resurrection of the dead at the Last Day?
Voices: We do (with differing degrees of intensity).
Clerk: Do you believe that the Almighty can not only revive the dead by joining bone to bone according to the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, but also that He can join together every particle of dust and every imperishable molecule and atom as when God created Adam from the dust of the earth and so remake your bodies? If so, say amen
Voices: Amen, Amen.
Clerk: Your case will be reviewed and I have every reason to hope that the verdict will be in your favor.
Next!

A third angel appears holding a consh shell.
Clerk: All hail! What, no sack?
Third attorney: I have no bones to show, or even dust. My clients had no mother, father, no body or place in womb or tomb, no place on earth.
Clerk: You surprise me! You have no clients then and therefore no plea. Attorney: Listen, sir, if you will. Place this seashell to your ear.
The sounds from the seashell are like the rustling of leaves or the wind passing over seas, grass and sands.

We are the songs no one heard.
We are the thoughts begun but never brought to an end in expression.
We are the good intentions thwarted by circumstances.

We are articles censored by repressive governments.
I am a dissertation stifled by opinionated professors.
I am a love letter that never reached its goal.
We have no bodies. We left no trace, not even dust. Shall we be forgotten in the World to Come?

Clerk: This is a tough one, I have no authority …

A Mighty Voice like the flow of many waters:
Even for you, children of thought, offspring of prayer and the heart’s devotion, even for you, no especially for you, there is a rightful place. You inhabit an unseen cloud from which living poets and prophets draw inspiration, in whose minds the seeds of your thoughts find roots and grow eternally. They shall bring your sheaves to the last harvest. The Spirit cannot die.

A fourth angel appears:
Clerk: You, what are you doing here?
Black angel: My clients have a place in your system of justice too, I think.
Those you call murderers did their duty by pressing buttons, pushing pens and obeying orders issued by legal state authority. Without Judas to do the dirty work there would have been no death on the Cross or resurrection, would there now?

The Mighty Voice: You old rogue, at it again with your specious arguments! Tell your clients that murderers and other evildoers still have a chance to repent. Being somewhat out of practice, they will find it ever more difficult to do so, but what hope is there for those who attempt to quench the Spirit of Truth and poetry? Time shall not heal when poets wield the flail.

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