From Hell to Heaven · Volume 1 · Chapter 125

The monk’s spiritual awakening. Self-dialogue as the soul’s mirror. Christ, the life-anchor of the shipwrecked.

1. Robert bends down and breathes over the previously cast-out monk. The latter at once begins to stir, like someone awakening from sleep.

2. Straightening out after a while, the monk asks: “Who breathed life into my innards, since I had been killed by my enemies? (Since in the world of spirits, all who are thrown out of a house are for a while as if dead. For in the spirit world, to thrust or throw someone out means to forcibly judge or kill them) – “Where am I now? It is night and very dark, wherever my eyes turn. My ears hear no

sound. I don’t know whether I am also lame, as I can feel no ground under me. Oh, if only I could perceive a feeble shimmer somewhere!

3. “In the world I was a priest, carrying out my prescribed service with zeal. Of course this was related mainly to worldly interests and there was not much faith in it. I nevertheless carried out my office conscientiously. But what reward have I now reaped in the kingdom of death! Oh God, if You exist, or inexorable fate! Why did I have to become a thinking, self-conscious being? Why led through the most unnatural life-states, burdened with every curse? Who wanted me to become this and not something else? Is it the child’s fault to be born into the world blind and then find no doctor? Oh you hard fate, where are you, that I would turn on you and curse you! My entire life so far has been uninterrupted curse, but I will curse no more, being myself a curse.”

4. Say I to Robert: “Now breathe upon his ears!” – Robert does so.

5. The monk listens, saying after a while: “Where have I gotten to? For now I hear something like a great sweeping, together with voices like all sorts of birds! Truly strange, even whilst the storming of the sea and the bird tones get mightier! Will I be flooded and the birds then feed on my cadaver? Oh shocking fate, if I have to go under, why must I first hear the shocking sound of my demise! Can you not come over me, an impotent one, by stealth, like a murderer? But why am I quarrelling? Even the wily judges of the Earth read out the death sentence to the evildoers before killing them! Cruel human hard-headedness is not satisfied with a defenceless brother’s death – he must first be tormented. If men do so, why should fate mince its words?”

6. After which I say to Robert: “Now breath over his eyes.” Robert does so.

7. The monk starts rubbing his eyes, saying: “What was that? I clearly felt a breath going over my eyes. Suddenly I see as if at dusk, and feel solid ground under me again. Look, there is the same house again, from which I was thrust out by my enemies! It is so exactly, and in place of the ominous water-rustle I hear my enemies’ many voices! And the bird-sounds are voice nearby! Yet I discover no one.

8. “Now I start to believe in a God again! The general in there who, not entirely unjustly, denounced my Mass, was right to praise God much more highly than I tried to present God to him. But the reward is like unto the work! They were right to throw me out! Why did I try to be a dim donkey even over here!?”

9. Say I to Robert: “Now breath over his mouth and chest.” – and Robert quickly does as I say.

10. Says the monk: “Oh how agreeably and delicately a gentle breeze now blew over my mouth! Was it perhaps an angel’s gentle kiss? Indeed this is how angels must kiss! I was also conscious in my breast – saturated with blissful life, that an angel must have kissed my mouth, or I could not have experienced such delight. Truly remarkable, and it is also getting amazingly brighter within me! And my hands are getting more rounded out, and there is a pleasant stirring in my feet! Its as if I was being flooded by a new life-power.

11. “And the entire area is getting brighter and the house more delineated! Ah, is not this a grandiose house! These storeys! And those splendid arcades and balconies below the windows! Such memorable grandeur and height! No, it all seems like a dream! Did I not earlier see this house already, when the general brought us all here, yet I cannot recall that it had such splendid appearance.

12. “I am minded to go back inside, but shall probably at once be thrown out again. Therefore I shall remain here in the open and quietly admire this splendid structure, which appears to get larger with the growing morning-light. I will indeed stay, feeling so exuberant.

13. “I don’t however understand why I feel so cozy, it seeming to me as if I had been at home here for god knows how long. And yet this region is as strange to me as anything previously not seen can be. Ah it is glorious here! Everything harmonises: this extensive garden with its layout, the beautiful chain of mountains surrounding this villa in the distance, rising steadily towards morning and flattening out to a boundless plain towards evening and midnight. – Oh, how indescribable!

14. “Close by I see a glorious pavilion! How about my climbing it? That would give me an even more marvellous view of this region! My legs are sufficiently strong. It takes some scaling, but up we go! – But no, I shall stay down here – it may offend the owner. Everything is fine here. But, brightening within, I realise that man can get hungry and thirsty also in this spirit kingdom. A piece of bread and some beverage to light up this world of spirits would go down well!”

15. Say I to Robert: “Serve him some bread and wine.” – Robert takes the bread and wine from his Helena, placing it in the monk’s lap. The latter is astounded at seeing the gift, not seeing the givers surrounding him.

16. Watching the bread and wine for a while, the monk says to himself: “Praise God, this indeed completes the picture! Oh for being onto a good thing! So that’s the way things are in the spirit world! An enthralling prospect for a light stomach. Verily, this should be eminently tolerable forever, amen! But no further night in this region, thank you – it was ghastly!

17. “But I want to know who is so obliging over here. It is bound to be spirits, good ones! How come I can’t see these spirits or angels serving me? I am probably far too unholy yet for beholding the holy angel spirits! Yet I am seeing the bread and wine! Well, let it be, the rest will work itself out later! I shall in god’s name get stuck into the bread, followed by the superbly looking wine! God bless it! All honour and praise be to Him!”

18. The monk breaks off a large piece from the loaf, eating and finding it incredibly tasty. Wherefore he tackles the entire loaf, saying happily when finished:

19. “Praise God! This bread has the superb flavour of a Brazilian pineapple! But now, in God’s name, into the wine! It is nearly over one measure, but not to worry, did I not frequently go over a measure during sacraments for a kind of St. John blessing? Well, in God’s name, it should be alright here too. Oh you lovely wine, what a splendid golden colour!”

20. Here he takes the bottle, not putting it down before the last drop. He is astonished at the extraordinary quality, getting past all cheer, yet also reverential, continuing to stammer: ‘praise God, praise God!”

21. After a while of reverie he straightens out, saying to himself: “What power in this meal. This was no earthly bread and wine! This verily was bread and wine from the highest heavens, for the bread was all nutrition and the wine life itself! Only now am I alive, and death seems to have left me forever. Perhaps the ancient myth of Christ, giving his disciples a last supper for the gaining of eternal life, is not as vain as it is made out to be by the clergy in the know!

22. “There are of course contradictions in this doctrine of Christ, which has maintained itself right up to this time, which a healthy spirit cannot as easily digest as I did with this bread and wine. Yet it contains consistencies which make it clear that the sponsor of such doctrine could not have been an ordinary human but obviously a God. And now this revival through bread and wine give me almost incontrovertible evidence that Christ really did once exist on Earth, and that His Sonship of God is not as far-fetched as the clerical hierarchy would have it.

23. “Who can say that I may not once encounter the Spirit of Christ somewhere! Oh God, if so, I would ask Christ to let me pay the Pope and sundry cardinals an unexpected visit, to show them Who Christ is and of what ilk their own spirits! It would be useless of course, but it would do one of our kind good to show these obviously anti-Christian red-coats that Christ is not the myth they make Him, but truly the One Who He revealed Himself as. Their eyes would boggle to full moon size!

24. “But I seem to hear human whispering around me, and morning light continues to grow. – Therefore quiet! Perhaps I shall hear proper words and phrases?”