© 2002 Dominique Ronfet
© 2002 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
**I didn’t think my death would happen like this. Well, it would be more accurate to say that I didn’t see my new life starting in this way. You might say: it was the first time. My surprise was therefore completely excused.
**The first glance I took revealed to me in a soft, muffled light what I assumed to be a large white room. It took me a few moments to get used to this unexpected lighting.
“Don’t worry, you’ve arrived.”
**The face that leaned towards me was calm and the features familiar.
**The voice was meant to be reassuring, and the allusion to an arrival awakened in me the strange idea of a journey completed correctly.
It seemed like I was lying down. But nothing was less certain.
**This beginning of “re-consciousness” (if I may say so) which was emerging in me still lacked consistency.
I was like a fog emerging from a cloud, if you’ll excuse the expression.
**The fact is that it took me…some time to realize what was happening to me.
**And what I had become now.
But again everything is not clear.
Ive had times when I had flashbacks, hazy reminders of my other life.
**This gives rise to very enjoyable group humor sessions.
Car nothing beats sharing good old memories with other travelers (because I wasn’t alone, you can imagine) to relearn how to live by integrating the wanderings of the past through humor.
**But I’ll come back to it.
Car yes, I was dead, and this much-promised rebirth had turned out to be a reality.
**The permanent residents who guided us were infinitely patient.
On offered me a nice home in which I could get my new body used to finding its bearings in this new space.
I was really clumsy.
**Luckily none of the materials I could spill broke!
**All the better because the bill would have been heavy.
**No, I’m joking, because there are no financial or commercial transactions here. In exchange for regular work I naturally had the right to what I needed.
**I mean: what I needed, not necessarily what I wanted right away.
**I could safely express all my desires but they did not necessarily cover what I needed, so they were not satisfied immediately.
**This is one of the big differences with my previous life on Earth where everyone could, at their own peril and that of their brothers and sisters, give free rein to their immediate and thoughtless satisfactions.
But I will undoubtedly have the opportunity to return to this aspect of universal philosophy on which we should meditate regularly.
**Let’s go back to my new home.
A delicious decoration without being pretentious.
A form-color-space relationship elevated to the level of an art, participated in this constant search for harmony. Finding the perfect dosage which allows our senses to be nourished while finding rest.
**Quite surprising at first: there was no roof covering your view of the sky.
**The climate on this planet being completely controlled and the temperature always very pleasant, this posed no practical problem.
**And this dive into the depths of a starry sky allowed us profound childish astonishment about the immensity of the universe and its meaning.
**Similarly, certain walls, overlooking the exterior of the building, had a transparency function. This allowed you to see and be seen at home at will, if ever you wanted to escape a moment of too much solitude, without having to go out.
**Because one word was very taboo here: mistrust.
**Our new masters or teachers kept telling us: “Where you come from you learned to live hidden and in fear. Here you must first learn to unlearn that.”
**Did I tell you vegetarian food is great?
**Because if my new body had lost certain useless attributes there was no question of me losing too quickly the relationship with the various senses that I had so poorly educated. I could therefore eat but… without emitting any subsequent waste.
**Don’t ask me how it works, I still don’t know.
**But the most moving moment was undoubtedly the possibility of making contact with loved ones whom I had left in pain.
**Knowing that we were alive again, and that in the future (near or distant, it doesn’t matter!) we would be able to see each other again, to hold our unknown bodies together filled me with joy.
**Like Alice in the tale, I had therefore gone through the looking glass.
**The why, the how, it was all just starting to become clear to me.
**And the wonders that awaited me now would have the superb color of reality.
…TONEXT…
Dominique Ronfet