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Page 34
Anna was a woman of singularly unselfish and courageous temperament. She
had been, in the course of her last life upon earth, a hospital nurse;
and she used to speak gratefully of the long periods when she was
nursing some anxious case, when she had interchanged day and night,
sleeping when the world was awake, and sitting with a book or needlework
by the sick-bed, through the long darkness. "People used to say to me
that it must be so depressing; but those were my happiest hours, as the
dark brightened into dawn, when many of the strange mysteries of life
and pain and death gave up their secrets to me. But of course," she
added with a smile, "it was all very dim to me. I felt the truth rather
than saw it; and it is a great joy to me to perceive now what was
happening, and how the sad, bewildered hours of pain and misery leave
their blessed marks upon the soul, like the tools of the graver on the
gem. If only we could learn to plan a little less and to believe a
little more, how much simpler it would all be!"
These two became very dear to me, and I learnt much heavenly wisdom from
them in long, quiet conferences, where we spoke frankly of all we had
felt and known.
XIX
It was at this time, I think, that a great change came over my thoughts,
or rather that I realised that a great change had gradually taken place.
Till now, I had been dominated and haunted by memories of my latest life
upon earth; but at intervals there had visited me a sense of older and
purer recollections. I cannot describe exactly how it came about--and,
indeed, the memory of what my heavenly progress had hitherto been, as
opposed to my earthly experience, was never very clear to me; but I
became aware that my life in heaven--I will call it heaven for want of a
better name--was my real continuous life, my home-life, so to speak,
while my earthly lives had been, to pursue the metaphor, like terms
which a boy spends at school, in which he is aware that he not only
learns definite and tangible things, but that his character is hardened
and consolidated by coming into contact with the rougher facts of
life--duty, responsibility, friendships, angers, treacheries,
temptations, routine. 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.
What mattered was actual experience and the effect of experience; memory
itself was but an artistic method of dealing with the past, and
corresponded to fanciful and delightful anticipations of the future.
"The truth is," he said, "that the indulgence of memory is to a great
extent a mere sentimental weakness; to live much in recollection is a
sign of exhausted and depleted vitality. The further you are removed
from your last earthly life, the less tempted you will be to recall it.
The highest spirits of all here," he said, "have no temptation ever to
revert to retrospect, because the pure energies of the moment are
all-sustaining and all-sufficing."
The only trace I ever noticed of any memory of my past life in heaven
was that things sometimes seemed surprisingly familiar to me, and that I
had the sense of a serene permanence, which possessed and encompassed
me. Indeed I came to believe that the strange feeling of permanence
which haunts one upon earth, when one is happy and content, even though
one knows that everything is changing and shifting around one, and that
all is precarious and uncertain, is in itself a memory of the serene and
untroubled continuance of heaven, and a desire to taste it and realise
it.
Be this as it may, from the time of my finding my settled task and
ordered place in the heavenly community the memories of my old life upon
earth began to fade from my thoughts. I could, indeed, always recall
them by an effort, but there seemed less and less inclination to do so
the more I became absorbed in my heavenly activities.
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