Fantasy fiction; Near-death experiences -- Fiction; Religious fiction; Spiritual life -- Fiction
And then, too, I perceived another strange thing; that the landscape in
which we walked was very plain to me, but that she did not see the same
things that I saw. With me, the landscape was such as I had loved most
in my last experience of life; it was a land to me like the English
hill-country which I loved the best; little fields of pasture mostly,
with hedgerow ashes and sycamores, and here and there a clear stream of
water running by the wood-ends. There were buildings, too, low
white-walled farms, roughly slated, much-weathered, with evidences of
homely life, byre and barn and granary, all about them. These sloping
fields ran up into high moorlands and little grey crags, with the trees
and thickets growing in the rock fronts. I could not think that people
lived in these houses and practised agriculture, though I saw with
surprise and pleasure that there were animals about, horses and sheep
grazing, and dogs that frisked in and out. I had always believed and
hoped that animals had their share in the inheritance of light, and now
I thought that this was a proof that it was indeed so, though I could
not be sure of it, because I realised that it might be but the thoughts
of my mind taking shape, for, as I say, I was gradually aware that the
girl did not see what I saw. To her it was a different scene, of some
southern country, because she seemed to see vineyards, and high-walled
lanes, hill-crests crowded with houses and crowned with churches, such
as one sees at a distance in the Campagna, where the plain breaks into
chestnut-clad hills. But this difference of sight did not make me feel
that the scene was in any degree unreal; it was the idea of the
landscape which we loved, its pretty associations and familiar features,
and the mind did the rest, translating it all into a vision of scenes
which had given us joy on earth, just as we do in dreams when we are in
the body, when the sleeping mind creates sights which give us pleasure,
and yet we have no knowledge that we are ourselves creating them. So we
walked together, until I perceived that we were drawing near to the town
which we had discerned.
And now we became aware of people going to and fro. Sometimes they
stopped and looked upon us with smiles, and even greetings; and
sometimes they went past absorbed in thought.
Houses appeared, both small wayside abodes and larger mansions with
sheltered gardens. What it all meant I hardly knew; but just as we have
perfectly decided tastes on earth as to what sort of a house we like and
why we like it, whether we prefer high, bright rooms, or rooms low and
with subdued light, so in that other country the mind creates what it
desires.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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