"Well, it was out of these questions, these endless and thoughtful conversations with the dead, that my criteria evolved.

  "First, to be worthy of Heaven—to have a ghost of a chance with God, I could say—the Soul had to understand life and death in the simplest sense. I found many souls who did. Next there had to be in this understanding an appreciation of the Beauty of God's work, the harmony of Creation from God's point of view, a vision of Nature wrapped in endless and overlapping cycles of survival and reproduction and evolution and growth.

  "Many souls had come to understand this. Many had. But many who thought life was beautiful, felt that death was sad and endless and terrible and they would have chosen never to have been born, had they been given the choice!

  "I didn't know what to do in the face of that conviction, but it was very widespread. Why did He make us, Whoever He is, if we are to be here like this forever, out of it and never part of it again, unless we wish to dip down and suffer all that torment all over again, for a few moments of glory, which we won't appreciate any more next time than last time, because we can't take our knowledge with us if we are reborn!

  "Indeed, it was at this point which many souls had ceased to develop or change. They felt great concern and mercy for those who were alive, but they knew sorrow, and joy was not something that they could even imagine anymore. They moved towards peace; and peace indeed seemed about the finest state which they could achieve. Peace, broken by the struggle to answer prayers, was particularly difficult, but to me, as an angel, very attractive. And I stayed in the company of these souls for a long, long time.

  "Now, if I could only tell them, I thought, if I could begin to instruct them, maybe I could bring them around, prepare them, make them ready for Heaven, but in this state they are not ready, and I don't know if they will believe what I say. And what if they do believe and are filled suddenly with the hunger for Heaven and then God doesn't let them in.

  "No, I had to be very careful. I could not proclaim knowledge from atop boulders as I had done in my short time on earth. If I was to intrude on the progress of one of these dead ones, there had to be a very good chance that that soul would follow me to God's Throne.

  "Understanding of life and death? That wasn't enough. Acceptance of death? That wasn't enough. Indifference to life and death, that wasn't good enough surely. Quiet confusion and drifting. No.

  That sort of soul had lost its character. It was as far from an Angel as was the rain that fell on Earth.

  "At last I came into a region smaller than the others, and peopled with only a few souls. Now I speak comparatively. Remember, I'm the Devil. I spend a lot of time in Heaven and Hell. So when I say a few, that is to make a picture that is manageable to your mind. For the sake of exposition, let's say a few thousand or more. But I speak of great numbers. Don't doubt."

  "I follow you."

  "And these souls absolutely astonished me by their radiance, their tranquility, and the degrees of knowledge which they had attained and retained. First of all, almost every one of them had a full human shape. That is, they had realized their original forms or perhaps ideal forms in the invisible. They looked like angels! They were invisible men, women, and children, and they had about them accoutrements that had been dear in life. Some of them were brand new and had come from death thoughtful and seeking and ready for the mysterious.

  Others had learned all in Sheol over centuries of watching and fearing to lose their individuality, no matter how terrible things did appear. But all were intensely visible! And anthropomorphic, though of course they were diaphanous, as all spirits are; and some were paler than others; but all essentially could be seen clearly by others and themselves.

  "I went amongst them, expecting to be snubbed, but I realized immediately that these souls saw me differently than the others.

  They saw everything differently. They were more attuned to the subtleties of the invisible because they had accepted its conditions totally. If I wished to be what I was, let me be it, they thought, and they judged me very seriously on how well I succeeded in being this tall creature, winged and longhaired and dressed in flowing robes.

  Within moments of my arrival, I felt happiness around me. I felt acceptance. I felt a total lack of resistance and a daring curiosity. They knew I was not a human soul. They knew because they had reached a point where they could see this! They could see a lot about every other soul they looked at. And they could see a great deal of the world below.

  "One of these souls was in the shape of a woman, and it was not my Lilia at all, by the way, for I never did see her in any form again.

  But it was a woman who had died I think in midlife having had nu­merous children, some of whom were with her now, and some of whom were still below. This soul existed in a serenity that was almost becoming bright. That is, its evolution was so high on the invisible level that it was beginning to generate something like the Light of God!

  " 'What makes you so different?' I asked this woman. 'What makes all of you here, clustered together in this place, so very different?'

  "With an acuity that astonished me, this woman asked me who I was. Dead souls just usually don't ask that question. They plunge right into their helpless preoccupations and obsessions. But she said, 'Who are you and what are you? I have never seen one like you before here. Only when I was alive.'

  " 'I don't want to tell you yet,' I said. 'But I want to learn from you. Will you tell me why you seem happy? You are happy, aren't you?'

  " 'Yes,' she said, 'I'm with those I love, and look below, look at all of it.'

  " 'Then you harbour no questions about all of it?' I pushed. 'You don't long to know why you were born or why you suffered or what happened to you when you died or why you're here?'

  "To my further amazement, she laughed. Laughter I had never heard in Sheol. It was soft, soothing, merry laughter, sweet laughter, laughter like the laughter of angels, and I think I sang to her softly in response, rather naturally, and at this her soul exploded like a blossom, the way fleshly souls had exploded below when they had learnt to love each other! She warmed to me and opened. 'You are beautiful,' she whispered respectfully.

  " 'But why, why are all these others in this place so unhappy, and why are you few here filled with peace and joy? Yes, I know, I have looked below. And you are with those you love. But so are all these others.'

  " 'We don't resent God anymore,' she said. 'Any of us here. We don't hate Him.'

  " 'The others do?'

  " 'It's not that they hate Him,' she said gently, being very careful with me, as if I were easy to bruise. 'It's that they can't forgive Him for all this ... for the world, for what's happened, and for this state of Sheol in which we languish. But we can. We have forgiven Him. And all of us have done it for various reasons, but forgiveness of God, that we have attained. We accept that our lives have been wondrous experiences, and worth the pain and the suffering, and we cherish now the joy we knew, and the moments of harmony, and we have forgiven Him for not ever explaining it all to us, for not justifying it, not punishing the bad or rewarding the good, or whatever else it is that all these souls, living and dead, expect of Him. We forgive Him. We don't know, but we suspect that maybe He knows a great secret about how all this pain could come to pass and still be good. And if He doesn't want to tell, well, He is God. But whatever, we forgive Him and we Love Him in our forgiveness, even though we know He may never care about any of us, any more than He cares for the pebbles on a beach below.'

  "I was speechless. I sat very still, letting these souls of their own volition gather around me. Then one very young soul, the soul of a child, said:

  " 'It seemed a terrible thing at first that God would bring us into the world to be murdered as we were, all of us—for you see, we three here died in war—but we have forgiven Him, because we know that if He could make something as beautiful as Life and Death, then he must Understand.'

  " 'You see,' said another soul to me, 'it comes to this. We would suffer it all again, if we had to. And we would try to be better to each other and more loving. But it was worth it.'

  " 'Yes,' said another. 'It took me all my life on Earth to Forgive God for the world, but I did it before I died, and came to dwell here with these others. And look, if you try hard, you'll see that we have made this something of a garden. It's hard for us. We work only with our minds and wills and memories, and imaginations, but we are making a place where we can remember what was good. And we forgive Him and we love Him that He gave us this much.'

  " 'Yes,' said another, 'that He gave us anything at all. We are grateful and full of love for Him. For surely out there in the darkness is a great Nothing, and we have seen so many below who were obsessed with Nothing and with Misery, and they never knew the joys that we knew or know now.'

  " 'This isn't easy,' said another soul. 'It's been a great struggle.

  But to make love was good, and to drink was good, and to dance and sing was beautiful, and to run drunk through the rain was joyous; and beyond there lies a chaos, an absence, and I am grateful that my eyes opened upon the world below and that I can remember it and see it from here.'

  "I thought for a long time without answering any of them, and they continued to talk to me, drawn to me, as if the light in me, if there was any visible light, was attracting them. In fact, the more I responded to their questions, the more they opened and seemed to understand their own answers more meaningfully, the denser and more intense the declarations became.

  "I soon saw these people had come from all nations and all walks of life. And though kinship bound many of them tightly together, that was not true with them all. In fact, many had lost sight of their dead kin entirely in other realms of Sheol. Others had never even laid eyes on them. While some had been greeted at the moment of death by their lost ones! And these were people of the world and all its beliefs gathered here in this place where light was beginning to shine forth.

  " 'Your lives on earth, was there one common thread?' I asked finally. They couldn't answer. They really didn't know. They had not questioned each other about their lives, and as I asked them quick, random questions, it became clear that there had been no thread!

  Some of these people had been very rich, others poor, some had suffered unspeakably, some had suffered nothing but had known a golden prosperity and leisure in which they had grown to love Creation before they were even dead. But I began to sense that if I wanted to, I could start to count these responses and evaluate them in some way. In other words, all these souls had learnt to forgive God in various ways. But very possibly one way was better for this than another, infinitely more efficient. Perhaps. I couldn't be sure. And for now I couldn't know.

  "I wrapped my arms around these souls. I drew them to me. 'I want you to come on a journey with me,' I said to them, having spoken now to each and every one and being completely certain of where we stood. 'I want you to come to Heaven and stand before God. Now it may be brief, and you may see Him for no more than an instant, and possibly He will not allow Himself to be seen by you at all. You may find yourselves returned here, having learnt nothing, but also having suffered nothing. The truth is, I can't guarantee what will happen! No one knows God.

  " 'We know,' they answered.

  " 'But I invite you to come to God and tell Him what you've told me. And now I'll answer your question to me: I am his Archangel Memnoch, of the very mold of other Angels of whom you heard when you were alive! Will you come?'

  "Several were astonished and hesitated. But the majority said in one voice, a mingling of answers that was this answer: 'We will come. One glimpse of God, the chance of it even, is worth anything. If that's not so then I don't remember the smell of the sweet olive tree, or how the fresh grass felt beneath me when I laid on it. I never tasted wine, and I never bedded the ones I loved. We will come.'

  "Several refused. It took a few moments before we all realized it but several had totally withdrawn. They saw me now for what I was, an Angel, and they understood what had been withheld from them, and they had lost their peace and lost their power to forgive in that instant. They stared at me in horror or anger or both. The other souls hastened to change their minds, but they wouldn't be changed. No, they did not want to see this God who had deserted His Creation and left it to rear up gods on altars all over the planet and pray in vain for intervention or final judgment! No, no, no!

  " 'Come,' I said to the others, 'Let's try to enter Heaven. Let's give it all our strength! How many are we? A thousand times ten? A million? What does it matter? God said ten but not ten only. God meant at least ten. Come, let's go!"

  16

  IN A FLASH, I shall have my answer, I thought. He will either admit us or cast us back down with His Might the way He once threw me to Earth. He might even dissolve the lot of us, for surely He can make His judgment on my success or failure before I ever reach the gates of Heaven. What had He said in His Infinite Wisdom? He had said, 'Come back as soon as you can.'

  "I drew these souls to me, tight as I drew you when I took you upwards, and out of Sheol we rose, into the full blasting light of Heaven as it came pouring over the walls and the gates. And once again, those gates, which I had never seen in my early eons, were thrown open, and we found ourselves, one Archangel and a few million human souls, standing once more in the very midst of Heaven before amazed and laughing and pointing and startled and flabbergasted angels who gathered around us in a great circle, crying to get the attention of everyone until Heaven finally fell quiet.

  "Well, I thought, so far so good. We're inside. And the human souls! The human souls could see the angels and the human souls were overjoyed. Oh, I can't even remember this moment without dancing. I can't remember it without singing. The souls were jubilant, and when the angels began their great potentially cacophonous singing of questions and exclamations, the human souls began to sing!

  "Indeed, Heaven was never going to be the same. I knew it. I knew it instantly. Because this is what took place. These souls brought with them the same powers of projection which they had learnt in Sheol, that is to create around them out of the invisible something of an environment that they wanted, longed for, and to which they were able to give their full wills.

  "And the geography of Heaven was changed dramatically and instantly and in an infinite capacity. There rose the towers and castles and mansions which you saw when I took you there, the domed palaces and libraries, and the gardens, oh, the breathtaking projections of flowers in all directions, things that angels simply never thought to bring to Heaven . . . well, it was all there. Trees rose in their mature fullness; rain came in whispering gusts, full of fragrance. The sky warmed and colors everywhere expanded or deepened. These souls took the invisible fabric of Heaven, whatever it is—energy, essence, the light of God, the Creative Power of God—and in a twinkling surrounded us all with wondrous constructions representing their curiosity, their concepts of beauty and their desires!

  "All that they had learnt on Earth they had brought into Heaven, creating it irresistibly in its most cherished form!

  "The commotion was beyond anything I had ever witnessed since the Creation of the Universe itself.

  "And nobody appeared more astonished than the Archangel Mi­chael, who was staring at me as if to say, 'Memnoch, you've brought them into Heaven!'

  "But before he could get those words out, and as the souls still stood together, only beginning to realize that they could shift and touch the angels and touch the things they envisioned, there came the light of God Himself—En Sof— rising and spreading out from behind the figures of the Seraphim and Cherubim, and very gently and considerately falling down upon these human souls, filling each and laying all secrets of each totally open, as angels are open.

  "The human souls cried with joy. Anthems rose from the Angels.

  I began to sing with my arms outstretched, 'Lord, Lord, I have your souls, worthy of Heaven, and look what they have brought to Heaven, Lord, look on your Creation, look on the Souls of those you evolved from the tiniest cells through flesh and blood and Sheol to your very Throne. Lord, we are here! Lord, it's done, it's done. It's happened. I have come back and you have allowed it.'

  "And having said more than enough, I fell down on my knees.

  "The songs had reached a frenzy, a sound no flesh-and-blood human could endure. Anthems rose from all quarters. The human souls were growing denser, more visible, until they appeared as clearly to us as we did to them and to each other. Some of them were locking hands and jumping up and down like little children. Others were merely crying and screaming and the tears were flooding down their faces.

  "And then the light swelled. We knew God was about to speak.

  We fell silent, en masse. We were all the bene ha elobim. And God said:

  " 'My Children. My beloved Children. Memnoch stands with his Millions, and they are worthy of Heaven.'

  "And the voice of God ceased, and the light grew stronger and warmer, and all of Heaven became pure acceptance and pure love.

  "I lay down upon the floor of Heaven in weariness, staring upwards into the great firmament of beautiful blue sky and ever- twinkling stars. I heard the souls of the humans rushing hither and thither. I heard the welcoming hymns and incantations of the angels.

  I heard everything, and then, in imitation of a mortal, I closed my eyes.

  "Did God ever sleep? I don't know. I closed my eyes, and I lay still in the Light of God, and after all those years and years in Sheol I was safe again, and I was warm.

  "Finally, I realized that the Seraphim had come to me, three or four of them, I didn't really notice, and they were standing over me, and looking down on me, their faces almost unendurably bright with reflected light.