I use the words “ascension” and “arising” in the superficial sense of earthly imagery. Of course, carefully speaking, there can be no up or down to the motion of beings detached from a revolving globe, and set adrift in space. I thought of this in the first moment, with the keenness which distinguishes between knowledge and experience. I knew when our journey came to an end, by the gradual cessation of our rapid motion; but at first I did not incline to investigate beyond this fact. Whether I was only tired, or giddy, or whether a little of what we used to call faintness overcame me, I can hardly say. If this were so, it was rather a spiritual than a physical disability; it was a faintness of the soul. Now I found this more energetic than the bodily sensations I had known. I scarcely sought to wrestle against it, but lay quite still, where we had come to a halt.

I wish to say here, that if you ask me where this was, I must answer that I do not know. I must say distinctly that, though after the act of dying I departed from the surface of the earth, and reached the confines of a different locality, I cannot yet instruct another where this place may be.

My impression that it was not a vast distance (measured, I mean, by an astronomical scale) from our globe, is a strong one, which, however, I cannot satisfactorily defend. There seemed to be flowers about me; I wondered what they were, but lay with my face hidden in my arm, not caring yet to look about. I thought of that old-fashioned allegory called “The Distant Hills,” where the good girl, when she died, sank upon a bed of violets; but the bad girl slipped upon rolling stones beneath a tottering ruin. This trifling memory occupied me for some moments; yet it had so great significance to me, that I recall it, even now, with pungent gratitude.

“I shall remember what I have read.” This was my first thought in the new state to which I had come. Minna was the name of the girl in the allegory. The illustrations were very poor, but had that uncanny fascination which haunts allegorical pictures—often the more powerful because of their rudeness.

As I lay there, still not caring, or even not daring to look up, the fact that I was crushing flowers beneath me became more apparent; a delicate perfume arose and surrounded me; it was like and yet unlike any that I had ever known; its familiarity entranced, its novelty allured me. Suddenly I perceived what it was—

“Mignonette!”

I laughed at my own dullness in detecting it, and could not help wondering whether it were accident or design that had given me for my first experience in the new life, the gratification of a little personal taste like this. For a few moments I yielded to the pure and exquisite perfume, which stole into my whole nature, or it seemed to me so then. Afterwards I learned how little I knew of my “whole nature” at that time.

Presently I took courage, and lifted my head. I hardly know what I expected to see. Visions of the Golden City in the Apocalypse had flitted before me. I thought of the River of Death in the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” of the last scene in the “Voyage of Life,” of Theremin’s “Awakening,” of several famous books and pictures which I had read or seen, describing what we call Heaven. These works of the human imagination—stored away perhaps in the frontal lobes of the brain, as scientists used to tell us—had influenced my anticipations more than I could have believed possible till that moment.

I was indeed in a beautiful place; but it did not look, in any respect, as I had expected. No; I think not in any respect. Many things which happened to me later, I can describe more vividly than I can this first impression. In one way it was a complex, in another, a marvelously simple one. Chiefly, I think I had a consciousness of safety—infinite safety. All my soul drew a long breath—“Nothing more can happen to me!” Yet, at the same time, I felt that I was at the outset of all experience. It was as if my heart cried aloud, “Where shall I begin?”

I looked about and abroad. My father stood at a little distance from me, conversing with some friends. I did not know them. They had great brightness and beauty of appearance. So, also, had he. He had altered perceptibly since he met me in the lower world, and seemed to glow and become absorbent of light from some source yet unseen. This struck me forcibly in all the people whom I saw—there were many of them, going to and fro busily—that they were receptive and reflecting beings. They differed greatly in the degree in which they gave this impression; but all gave it. Some were quite pale, though pure in color; others glowed and shone. Yet when I say color, I use an earthly word, which does not express my meaning. It was more the atmosphere or penumbra, in which each moved, that I refer to, perhaps, than the tint of their bodies. They had bodies, very like such as I was used to. I saw that I myself was not, or so it appeared, greatly changed. I had form and dress, and I moved at will, and experienced sensations of pleasure and, above all, of magnificent health. For a while I was absorbed, without investigating details, in the mere sense of physical ease and power. I did not wish to speak, or to be spoken to, nor even to stir and exercise my splendid strength. It was more than enough to feel it, after all those weeks of pain. I lay back again upon the mignonette; as I did so, I noticed that the flowers where my form had pressed them were not bruised; they had sprung erect again; they had not wilted, nor even hung their heads as if they were hurt—I lay back upon, and deep within, the mignonette, and, drowned in the delicate odor, gazed about me.

Yes; I was truly in a wonderful place. It was in the country (as we should say below), though I saw signs of large centres of life, outlines of distant architecture far away. There were hills, and vast distances, and vistas of hill tints in the atmosphere. There were forests of great depth. There was an expanse of shining water. There were fields of fine extent and color, undulating like green seas. The sun was high—if it were the sun. At least there was great brilliance about me. Flowers must have been abundant, for the air was alive with perfumes.

When I have said this, I seem to have said little or nothing. Certain it is that these first impressions came to me in broad masses, like the sweep of a large brush or blender upon canvas. Of details I received few, for a long time. I was overcome with a sense of Nature—freedom—health—beauty, as if—how shall I say it?—as if for the first time I understood what generic terms meant; as if I had entered into the secret of all abstract glory; as if what we had known as philosophical or as poetical phrases were now become attainable facts, each possessing that individual existence in which dreamers upon earth dare to believe, and of which no doubter can be taught.

I am afraid I do not express this with anything like the simplicity with which I felt it; and to describe it with anything resembling the power would be impossible.

I felt my smallness and ignorance in view of the wonders which lay before me. “I shall have time enough to study them,” I thought, but the thought itself thrilled me throughout, and proved far more of an excitant than a sedative. I rose slowly, and stood trembling among the mignonette. I shielded my eyes with my hand, not from any glare or dazzle or strain, but only from the presence and the pressure of beauty, and so stood looking off. As I did so, certain words came to mind with the haunting voice of a broken quotation:

It was a relief to me to see my father coming towards me at that moment, for I had, perhaps, undergone as much keen emotion as one well bears, compressed into a short space of time. He met me smiling.

“And how is it, Mary?”

“My first Bible verse has just occurred to me, Father—the first religious thought I’ve had in Heaven yet!” I tried to speak lightly, feeling too deeply for endurance. I repeated the words to him, for he asked me what they were which had come to me.

“That is a pleasant experience,” he said quietly. “It differs with us all. I have seen people enter in a transport of haste to see the Lord Himself—noticing nothing, forgetting everything. I have seen others come in a transport of terror—so afraid they were of Him.”

“And I had scarcely thought about seeing Him till now!” I felt ashamed of this. But my father comforted me by a look.

“Each comes to his own by his own,” he said. “The nature is never forced. Here we unfold like a leaf, a flower. He expects nothing of us but to be natural.”

This seemed to me a deep saying; and the more I thought of it the deeper it seemed. I said so as we walked, separate still from the others, through the beautiful weather. The change from a New England winter to the climate in which I found myself was, in itself, not the least of the great effects and delights which I experienced that first day.

If nothing were expected of us but to be natural, it was the more necessary that it should be natural to be right.

I felt the full force of this conviction as it had never been possible to feel it in the other state of being, where I was under restraint. The meaning of liberty broke upon me like a sunburst. Freedom was in and of itself the highest law. Had I thought that death was to mean release from personal obedience? Lo, death itself was but the elevation of moral claims, from lower to higher. I perceived how all demands of the larger upon the lesser self must be increased in the condition to which I had arrived. I felt overpowered for the moment with the intensity of these claims. It seemed to me that I had never really known before, what obligation meant. Conduct was now the least of difficulties. For impulse, which lay behind conduct, for all force which wrought out fact in me, I had become accountable.

“As nearly as I can make it out, Father,” I said, “henceforth I shall be responsible for my nature.”

“Something like that; not altogether.”

“The force of circumstance and heredity,”—I began, using the old earthly patois. “Of course I’m not to be called to account for what I start with here, any more than I was for what I started with there. That would be neither science nor philosophy.”

“We are neither unscientific nor unphilosophical, you will find,” said my father, patiently.

“I am very dull, sir. Be patient with me. What I am trying to say, I believe, is that I shall feel the deepest mortification if I do not find it natural to do right. This feeling is so keen, that to be wrong must be the most unnatural thing in the world. There is certainly a great difference from what it used to be; I cannot explain it. Already I am ashamed of the smallness of my thoughts when I first looked about in this place. Already I cannot understand why I did not spring like a fountain to the Highest, to the Best. But then, Father, I never was a devotee, you know.”

When I had uttered these words I felt a recoil from myself, and sense of discord. I was making excuses for myself. That used to be a fault of the past life. One did not do it here. It was as if I had committed some grave social indecorum. I felt myself blushing. My father noticed my embarrassment, and called my attention to a brook by which we were walking, beginning to talk of its peculiar translucence and rhythm, and other little novelties, thus kindly diverting me from my distress, and teaching me how we were spared everything we could be in heaven, even in trifles like this. I was not so much as permitted to bear the edge of my regret, without the velvet of tenderness interposing to blunt the smart. It used to be thought among us below that one must be allowed to suffer from error, to learn. It seemed to be found here, that one learned by being saved from suffering. I wondered how it would be in the case of a really grave wrong which I might be so miserable as to commit; and if I should ever be so unfortunate as to discover by personal experience.

This train of thought went on while I was examining the brook. It had brilliant colors in the shallows, where certain strange agates formed pebbles of great beauty. There were also shells. A brook with shells enchanted me. I gathered some of them; they had opaline tints, and some were transparent as spun glass; they glittered in the hand, and did not dull when out of the water, like the shells we were used to. The shadows of strange trees hung across the tiny brown current, and unfamiliar birds flashed like tossed jewels overhead, through the branches and against the wonderful color of the sky. The birds were singing. One among them had a marvelous note. I listened to it for some time before I discovered that this bird was singing a Te Deum. How I knew that it was a Te Deum I cannot say. The others were more like earthly birds, except for the thrilling sweetness of their notes—and I could not see this one, for she seemed to be hidden from sight upon her nest. I observed that the bird upon the nest sang here as well as that upon the bough; and that I understood her: “Te Deum laudamus—laudamus” as distinctly as if I had been listening to a human voice.

When I had comprehended this, and stood entranced to listen, I began to catch the same melody in the murmur of the water, and perceived, to my astonishment, that the two, the brook and the bird, carried parts of the harmony of a solemn and majestic mass. Apparently these were but portions of the whole, but all which it was permitted me to hear. My father explained to me that it was not every natural beauty which had the power to join in such surpassing chorals; these were selected, for reasons which he did not attempt to specify. I surmised that they were some of the simplest of the wonders of this mythical world, which were entrusted to new-comers, as being first within the range of their capacities. I was enraptured with what I heard. The light throbbed about me. The sweet harmony rang on. I bathed my face in the musical water—it was as if I absorbed the sound at the pores of my skin. Dimly I received a hint of the possible existence of a sense or senses of which I had never heard.

What wonders were to come! What knowledge, what marvel, what stimulation and satisfaction! And I had but just begun! I was overwhelmed with this thought, and looked about; I knew not which way to turn; I had not what to say. Where was the first step? What was the next delight? The fire of discovery kindled in my veins. Let us hasten, that we may investigate Heaven!

“Shall we go on?” asked Father, regarding me earnestly.

“Yes, yes!” I cried, “let us go on. Let us see more—learn all. What a world have I come to! Let us begin at the beginning, and go to the end of it! Come quickly!”

I caught his hand, and we started on my eager mood. I felt almost a superabundance of vitality, and sprang along; there was everlasting health within my bounding arteries; there was eternal vigor in my firm muscle and sinews. How shall I express, to one who has never experienced it, the consciousness of life that can never die?

I could have leaped, flown, or danced like a child. I knew not how to walk sedately, like others whom I saw about us, who looked at me smiling, as older people look at the young on earth. “I, too, have felt thus—and thus.” I wanted to exercise the power of my arms and limbs. I longed to test the triumphant poise of my nerve. My brain grew clearer and clearer, while for the gladness in my heart there is not any earthly word. As I bounded on, I looked more curiously at the construction of the body in which I found myself. It was, and yet it was not, like that which I had worn on earth. I seemed to have slipped out of one garment into another. Perhaps it was nearer the truth to say that it was like casting off an outer for an inner dress. There were nervous and arterial and other systems, it seemed, to which I had been accustomed. I cannot explain wherein they differed, as they surely did, and did enormously, from their representatives below. If I say that I felt as if I had got into the soul of a body, shall I be understood? It was as if I had been encased, one body within the other, to use a small earthly comparison, like the ivory figures which curious Chinese carvers cut within temple windows. I was constantly surprised at this. I do not know what I had expected, but assuredly nothing like the fact. Vague visions of gaseous or meteoric angelic forms have their place in the imaginations of most of us below; we picture our future selves as a kind of nebulosity. When I felt the spiritual flesh, when I used the strange muscle, when I heard the new heart-beat of my heavenly identity, I remembered certain words, with a sting of mortification that I had known them all my life, and paid so cool a heed to them: “There is a terrestrial body, and there is a celestial body.” The glory of the terrestrial was one. Behold, the glory of the celestial was another. St. Paul had set this tremendous assertion revolving in the sky of the human mind, like a star which we had not brought into our astronomy.

It was not a hint or a hope that he gave; it was the affirmation of a man who presumed to know. In common with most of his readers, I had received his statement with a poor incredulity or cold disregard. Nothing in the whole range of what we used to call the Bible, had been more explicit than those words; neither metaphor, nor allegory, nor parable befogged them; they were as clear cut as the dictum of Descartes. I recalled them with confusion, as I bounded over the elastic and wondrously-tinted grass.

Never before, at least, had I known what the color of green should be; resembling, while differing from that called by the name on earth—a development of a color, a blossom from a bud, a marvel from a commonplace. Thus the sweet and common clothing which God had given to our familiar earth, transfigured, wrapped again the hills and fields of Heaven. And oh, what else? what next? I turned to my father to ask him in which direction we were going; at this moment an arrest of the whole current of feeling checked me like a great dam.

Up to this point I had gone dizzily on; I had experienced the thousand diversions of a traveler in a foreign land; and, like such a traveler, I had become oblivious of that which I had left. The terrible incapacity of the human mind to retain more than one class of strong impressions at once, was temporarily increased by the strain of this, the greatest of all human experiences. The new had expelled the old. In an intense revulsion of feeling, too strong for expression, I turned my back on the beautiful landscape. All Heaven was before me, but dear, daily love was behind.

“Father,” I said, choking, “I never forgot them before in all my life. Take me home! Let me go at once. I am not fit to be alive if Heaven itself can lead me to neglect my mother.”