The boy returns with gladness to the serener and
sweeter atmosphere of home; and just in the same way I felt I had
returned to the larger and purer life of heaven. But, as I say, the
recollection of my earlier life in heaven, my occupations and
experience, was never clear to me, but rather as a luminous and haunting
mist. I questioned Amroth about this once, and he said that this was the
universal experience, and that the earthly lives one lived were like
deep trenches cut across a path, and seemed to interrupt the heavenly
sequence; but that as the spirit grew more pure and wise, the
consciousness of the heavenly life became more distinct and secure. But
he added, what I did not quite understand, that there was little need of
memory in the life of heaven, and that it was to a great extent the
inheritance of the body. Memory, he said, was to a great extent an
interruption to life; the thought of past failures and mistakes, and
especially of unkindnesses and misunderstandings, tended to obscure and
complicate one's relations with other souls; but that in heaven, where
activity and energy were untiring and unceasing, one lived far more in
the emotion and work of the moment, and less in retrospect and prospect.
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