Paradise Regained. TNT

it? That’s the real trouble. Ignorance, or lack of knowledge. Yet it is his job, the minister’s job, to know. I should have known, but I didn’t. A person in my position on earth should have been able to tell a person in Ruth’s position, or yours, Roger, all that we know at this moment. There are abundant opportunities for finding out.

      ‘What a mournful, miserable business it all is, when you come to think about it. Here is this magnificent world we’re living in, and yet on earth it has been shrouded and obscured. with a multitude of extraordinary beliefs, conditions, limitations, misconceptions, and I don't know what else besides. The one cannot be reconciled with the other. Like oil and water, they do not mix. Unlike those two substances, there is nothing with which to emulsify them, so to speak. They are not to be found.

      Odd, isn't it, how the religions of the earth have assumed authority over us—so they think? They cannot regard us in terms of solid reality, of rational living, of breathing, working, playing, helping one another. They would look upon that bird you have there, Roger, as being too outrageous, too preposterous to bear thinking about, even remotely. Yet that little grey fellow is part of life in these lands, and a beautiful part of it, too. How many folk have their animal friends on earth as part of their very lives? Thousands, but the same thing would be denied to us here, if some people on earth had their way. It's not religious; it's not what one would look for in spiritual realms. It's not the kind of thing that God would allow, because it's too earthy and frivolous. It brings us back to that appalling angel I spoke to you about, Roger, when you had opened your eyes as you lay on the couch.

      'The whole thing can be summed up in this way, Roger, my boy: the earthly religions know nothing about this world at all, about the life we live. They do not seem to be able to conjure up in their minds any sort of vision or image of what it might conceivably be. But they are certain of what it cannot be—upon what authority no one knows—that it cannot be anything like this at all. No man on earth would be prepared to suggest—if he were sane—that the only thing to look forward to is a life of doing nothing for all eternity, in a place or region that was simply vaporous, a void. The very thought of such an existence—and it would be barely that—would fill him with deep horror, and decide him that he would not wish to survive under such ghastly conditions. And no one could blame him.

      'Now, Roger, let's go out and do a little visiting. Bring the bird with you. He could show you the way, without us. Come along.'