It was not exactly heaven. More like a dream.

It was not exactly heaven. More like a dream. You know how in a dream you know you are there but you are both real and more or less not real? And yet some dreams have this quality of being more real than anything.

Anyway, this is what happened to me after I was deemed dead, duly cremated and my ashes scattered in the East River. I will never know why I casually said to do that. It is a good thing sensations I had were not related to being incinerated. I am happily without memory of the entire sordid process.

Do I know where I am? Let's put it this way. I know that I am! I know that whoever I was, I am conscious in much the same way as I was when I lived. The difference, I think, is that now is completely now. I can be completely unconscious at will or completely conscious. I can go anywhere without being any more aware of substance than in a dream. And I do. I can stand on a field where Herodotus stood contemplating a view of the Persian landscape. I can move with thought.

And yes I see now exactly what heaven and hell are in terms of my own experience. I can access anything I ever knew and anything I ever lived. And the result is that I am fully aware of myself in a way that was never possible when I was alive. When you think about where Hitler ended up, just realize that punishment is living with everything you ever did. And that heaven - if it is real at all - is everything wonderful you knew and experienced, available to you with the precise intensity that existed when it happened.

Is this all there is? No. It cannot be. For things to be this way overturns everything I ever imagined. True, I always valued dreams. But I never knew that they were a sort of preview of what lies beyond our days on Planet Earth.