Once the electrical activity in your brain shuts down entirely, you awake and find that you are floating through this long tunnel of incredible, blazingly beautiful fire--clearly some kind of purification. You have no body, so you feel no physical pain. But the psychic pain is enormous, as every unloving deed you ever committed is wrung from you like filthy water from a dishrag. Apparently you were a "sinner" of some kind after all. Then you realize you aren't floating, but being carried on a carpet made of some kind of translucent silk, spun from the fingers of the indescribably beautiful creatures that carry you.
All at once the atmosphere turns blindingly bright and resplendent with colors you have never seen before, intoxicating scents you have never smelled before, and music you vaguely recognize from your childhood . . . is it Ethel Mermaid singing "Cod Bless America?" You wonder why. And you wonder how it is that you can "see" or "smell," or "hear" at all, aware that you are no longer flesh and blood, but something else entirely . . . and what are you made of now? Is it light? Naturally, you begin to suspect that you are dreaming; yet no dream, no actual experience in life was ever this vivid, solid, and real. You just may just be in touch with baseline Reality.
As you approach the end of this tunnel of light, you see what you take for a reception line stretching so far into the distance that you cannot see its end. The tunnel of light opens into a long, gray-tiled hall cinder block walls, and florescent lights overhead, and one red balloon. Not as pretty as that tunnel of light was, not even close. But the atmosphere is festive. The beings carrying you let you step down onto the gray tile. You wonder who sent these receivers and why, particularly since the first few miles consist entirely of creatures so small you can hardly see them, slimy and disgusting creatures of light gradually increasing in size; and you sense they are glad to see you and somehow seem festive. You could be wrong, as there's a lot of room for interpretation here. Next come the frightening but festive ape-like creatures of light, and then "people" that look like they haven't quite crossed over that human barrier yet. But they are festive, too, and they really love shaking hands.
Finally you reach, let's call them "Adam and Eve." Adam is the first discernibly "human" guy there. Next to him stands Eve. They both give you an ethereal welcoming hug and a wink. Then on to the others. You meet generations of hunter/gatherers, peasants and slaves in the hundreds, serfs, chieftains, one or two kings, a few festive lunatics of light, more peasants, some landed gentry, festive beggars, another king, maybe a few more generations of city dwellers and guild members, more slaves, and you eventually meet the factory workers, like your ancestor Alice who started at the factory at eight years old and worked sixteen hours, six days a week until she died of consumption at the age of seventeen--though she had it a little better than Ninbanda the Sumerian you met earlier, whose father (your direct ancestor) sacrificed her to the grain god at the age of five.
But once again, despite the pain of their lives, they all seem festive, and they are made of the same stuff you are. Light. Is it light? It seems like light. Finally you reach your key ancestors, the ones who still exist in someone's memory, of whom there may have been tintypes or paintings. It took a long time to finally shake hands with anyone you have ever heard of, and your light-hand would be raw from shaking were it made of flesh. Still, you are beginning to feel claustrophobic in the long gray hall. Finally, you clasp hands with great-great-great-great grandfather Jesse. You once saw a picture of him and were given some snippet of a story about who he was. As you progress along the line the faces get more and more familiar. You really are happy to see a few of them, especially your dogs Buster, Joey, Abby, and Dash who jump on your body of light self with their bodies of light selves and lick your light "face" until you can't take it anymore. There are airy tears, and more disembodied hugs. You have reached the end of the line, and now you're bursting with questions.
You look up and down the line, then decide to address them to your grandfather, who was pretty damn smart in his day. He doesn't look old or young. He just looks like himself, and though you'd never seen him like this, he seems much more himself than when you knew him as a child. Your bodies of light embrace. You exchange greetings and expressions of love, fill in a little history, then you get down to business.
"What's with the big receiving line?" is your first question.
"As in life, so in death. Big events . . . you know the drill. Farther down there's a reception room with cake and punch. Less impressive than that tunnel of light, though," he smiles.
"Yeah, the tunnel was great. But this hall isn't all that impressive."
"What? You mean the Hall of Magnificent Fluorescence?"
"Don't forget the red balloon."
"Ah, the Red Balloon of Good Cheer; that's not usually there--only for the receiving line, to create a festive atmosphere. The invertebrates love it--and, in case you haven't noticed, we're all invertebrates now!" He laughs.
"Okay, Grandpa, level with me. What's going on?" you say, realizing you would be terrified were it not for his comforting presence.
"What? You haven't caught on yet? This is all for you! You finally made it out of the flesh, threw off the earthly coil, kicked the bucket, bought the farm, cashed in your chips! Back there they all call it 'dead.' But they're all a little confused."
"I'm dead? But how . . . what happened?"
"You're not listening. The word has no meaning here. Nothing happened."
"No meaning? But you used the word. I'm dead!" You begin to panic.
"Settle down. What makes you think you were ever alive, whatever 'alive' is? You have no idea what eternity is like, but you'll catch on before you know it."
Your anxiety abates somewhat. "Okay . . . so what's next? Here we are--and where is that, by the way? What is there to do here?" You already want to get busy.
"Oh, we're everywhere. Don't worry, they will cover all of these issues at orientation."
"Orientation? When is that?"
"Never mind. There is no 'when' here. Look, I understand your confusion. Everyone deals with it. Doing implies a time element of some kind . . . you do and then you are done; but that has no meaning here."
"But time is the thing that keeps everything from happening all at once--right? I think it was you who told me that. You can't do and be done all at once. How do you deal with that?"
"Well, nothing happens here. 'All at once' has no meaning. We don't deal with anything. Once again, 'happens' implies a moment or moments in time." He was using a lot of air quotes.
"Okay, then what is or was time? How long have I been here?"
"Oh, a little over three hours. Just kidding! Ha! It's a meaningless question. You be, that's all."
"I'm not buying this. All language is contextualized by time. Even 'You be.' implies time, the present." You annoy yourself by using an air quote, like him.
"Oh, well, you got me there. Language has its limitations. All of it implies time. That's why we don't, we can't, use it here. You're not even using it 'now'." Again with the air quotes. He senses your frustration.
"Sorry about the air quotes. We didn't ever use 'em back in my day. A absolute necessity up here until you know the ropes."
"So, there is no time and no language, which is contextualized by time and therefore has no meaning. Right?"
"'Think'"--air quotes again--"about it. Words and thoughts are separated by moments of time, by sequence."
"But here we are, talking. So time obviously holds here, too!" You are feeling like you're a box full of tangled electrical cords.
"No, no, we're not talking, not talking at all. No time, only sequence." He is patient with you.
"Sequence requires time! You're screwing with me! Sorry Gramps, but I'm beginning to suspect I'm dreaming all of this." But you don't have the sense of dreaming--how you often feel when you are both experiencing and observing a dream.
"Is that so? Then who and where and when are we? Where are you?"
You look around. You see a punch bowl, a cake and decorations of light. "Damned if I know. You're probably just a very vivid dream, and I'm sleeping . . . or maybe dead, or having a near death experience. I have no idea. The last thing I remember was going in for an appointment--"
"Oh, that reminds me--there's a joke here--it's a knock, knock joke. It might help. You start."
"Okay. Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Uh . . . me, I guess."
"Me who?"
"How should I know? It's your stupid joke!"
"Brilliant, no? It's a koan. You noodle on it."
"Sure, whatever . . . wait, how is it that I can noodle on anything, seeing as I don't have a brain anymore?"
"Okay, see? There's your time problem: Thinking with a brain does requires time. The brain is an accommodation to time, which was required in the universe we came from--even though they are very fast, electrical impulses have to travel through synapses and nerves in a physical body, in the 'physical world.' But without a brain, thinking requires no time at all. The brain slows everything way down. The truth is, that a brain left to itself cannot produce a single thought. It requires a Presence."
"A Presence? What's that? The ghost in the machine?"
"Exactly. That's what you and I and every other sentient thing ultimately are. It is the source of your rare experiences of intuition or transcendence--that's your out-of-time Presence poking through a bit."
"But, again, what do all of these Presences do here? What's the point?"
"First of all, there aren't 'all these Presences' there's only One, and we're all unique expressions and participants in the One. So, when we're not 'doing' the receiving line thing, we explore and learn about all the Presence and everything else that ever was. I was personally delighted that there is literally no end to what a Presence can learn, and its all worth knowing. Just catching up with everything that happened on Earth is huge, then there are the rest of the universes. But, of course, it takes no time at all. If we were still in time, there wouldn't be time enough, even if time never ended, to take in much of it. But, thank Cod, time is not an issue here."
"Right! God! Tell me about God!"
"Not God, Cod. A misunderstanding on your end. But it's just an expression, my boy. It has no real meaning here."
"What? No meaning? You're telling me there's no God?"
"Cod, my boy, Cod. And come on, did I say that? No. I just said that the word has no meaning here." You want to cry.
"I'm so confused . . . Gramps, just tell me honestly, does anything have any meaning anywhere?"
"More than you can possibly know, and even a little more than we all know together."
All at once, as he says this, you zip back down the reception line, at light speed, then through the tunnel of light, then the tunnel of fire. You emerge into the air, into a room. You are floating near a ceiling, above your body. A heroic Carl's Jr. employee is frantically pumping your chest, apparently trying to revive you. Then you remember . . . the hamburger craving: you had a jones for a Double Super Bacon Cheeseburger, and perhaps the tipping point had finally arrived? Apparently those 71 grams of fat finally plugged the last free flow of blood through some critical artery. Now you hear a voice. It's your grandfather giving you a choice to return to your pathetic body or head back up through the tunnel. You think about the long receiving line, the confusing knock-knock joke, Hall of Magnificent Fluorescence, and the Red Balloon of Good Cheer. Then you see the almost fully consumed bacon cheeseburger there on the table--only a bite or two left, and you hadn't even touched the onion rings yet. You see your inert body on the floor next to the booth, and the Carl's Jr. employee weeping beside it. Your floating body of light (is it light?) begins to feel very hungry for something not made of light, if that's what it is. The next thing you hear is the airy sucking gurgle your straw makes as you finish off your Banana Chocolate Chip Hand Scooped Ice Cream Malt. It seems that you will live to die another day, very likely within the next year.
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