THE AFTERLIFE

“There was no pain any longer, no need to gasp for breath.  All sound had died away, and it was quite dark.  But, in the void and the silence there was still a kind of knowledge, a faint awareness.

“Awareness of a name or person, not of things present, not of memories of the past, not even of here or there—for there was no place, only an existence whose single dimension was this knowledge of being ownerless and without possessions and alone.

“…In the dark silence, in the void of all sensation, something began to know it.  Very dimly at first, from immeasurably far away.  But gradually the presence approached.  The dimness of that other knowledge grew brighter.  And suddenly the awareness had become an awareness of light…instead of privation there was this light…yes, there was joy in being known, in being thus included within a shining presence, in thus being interpenetrated by a shining presence…not privation, but bliss.

“And then as the light increased, hunger again for profounder satisfaction, for a bliss more intense…and through everlasting durations the light kept brightening from beauty into beauty…brighter, brighter through succeeding durations that expanded at last into an eternity of joy…an eternity of radiant knowledge, of bliss unchanging in its ultimate intensity.  Forever, forever.”

---Aldous Huxley in his novel Time Must Have a Stop, Harper & Brothers, 1944, pp 138-142.