What Dreams May Come

by Richard Matheson

Return to my love

  THERE WAS ONE thing more I had to do before departure.

  Dictate this book and have it brought to you.

  Again, I will not detail how I was put in contact with the woman who brought you this manuscript. Originally, I'd planned to have it given to my children. But when it turned out that the only sensitive available was on the east coast, I decided to have the book brought to you instead.

  I hope it is published and read by many. I hope that, at the very least, a few people are prepared for the inevitable transition which will take place at the end of their lives.

  My account draws to a close.

  Remember this: What I have told you is partial. It could be no other way. I could only tell you what I, personally, saw and heard. It is my recollection of what happened, nothing more. Recall what Albert told me.

  The mind is all.

  I emphasize that strongly. The experience was my experience and no one else's. While it is all completely true, it is not, by any means, definitive regarding afterlife experience.

  Another person would tell a different story.

  Remember this as well: Things I have not told you would fill a hundred volumes. Accept my word that the variety in afterlife is boundless. There is so much more that my account is as a grain of sand to all the beaches and the deserts in the world.

  I must mention, too, that all I have described has taken place on a relatively low level of spiritual existence. There are planes which I have never known and may not know for eons.

  In brief, there is no standard afterlife reality. I told you my experience. Yours will be different. You can be sure of only one thing.

  It will happen.

  I feel it vital to enlarge upon my point.

  Nothing is as simple as I have stated it.

  In actuality, the conditions of survival cannot be explained in terms of time, space and form. I have described people, locations and events but these were subject to my ability -- or lack of it--to see things as they really are.

  In point of fact, the entire experience may have been precisely what I told myself it was following my death.

  A dream.

  When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn't it?

  So it may be here as well.

  By that token, it is only natural that what I have referred to as Summerland would appear as it does. Since the phenomena of this level are essentially thought pictures carried over by the consciousness of those newly arrived from earth, what else could Summerland be but an idealized version of earth?

  Albert told me, at the very outset, that heaven was a state of mind.

  It is.

  Consider though. Isn't earth a state of mind as well? Matter is no more than energy which, to the human intellect, appears static. Life is the state of consciousness which perceives this energy as matter. Death is the state of consciousness which no longer perceives it as such. Life on earth is only a panorama of vivid observations which seem real to you.

  Why should afterlife seem less real?

  Let me not confuse you though.

  It will seem real enough to you.

  And, please, my brother, do not fear it.

  Death is not the king of terrors.

  Death is a friend.

  Consider it this way. Do you fear to sleep at night? Of course not. Because you know that you will wake again.

  Think of death the same way. As a sleep from which, inevitably, you will awaken.

  True life is a process of becoming. Death is a stage in this progression. Life is not followed by un-life.

  There is only a single continuity of being.

  We are part of a plan, never doubt that. A plan to bring each one of us to the highest level of which we are capable. The way will be dark at times but it leads, assuredly, to light.

  Never forget, however, that we pay for every act and thought and feeling we commit.

  One statement from the Bible says it all.

  Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

  People are not punished for their deeds but by them.

  If only everyone believed that.

  If only every man and woman in the world knew--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that they would have to face the consequences of their lives.

  The world could change overnight. God bless you.

  I return to my love.