“Nonmatter is what the old religions of Earth spoke of as the soul. But the definitions of the soul were always vague, very abstract. The peoples of ancient and classical times, and their unliterate ancestors, thought of it as a shadowy thing, a ghostly entity reflecting palely the matter to which it had been attached before death.
“Later, more sophisticated peoples thought of it as an invisible entity, also attached to the body. But it could be re-fleshed after death, given a new and immortal body. Some Oriental religions thought of it/as something which would be reabsorbed into the Godhead after numerous trials on Earth, after a good karma had been achieved.
“All these had some truth in them; they saw parts of the total truth.
“But we are not concerned with such philosophical probings. What we need are facts. The fact is that every living creature, from the simplest to the most complex, has its non-matter twin. Even an amoeba has its nonmatter twin.
“But I don’t want to get into confusing issues or too much detail. Not at this time.
“The visitor said, ‘Nonmatter is indestructible. That means that your body on Earth had its indestructible nonmatter twin.’
“At this point, La Viro, who had said nothing before, interrupted.
“ ‘How many twins does a living creature have? I mean, a man changes in appearance. He gets older, he loses an eye or a leg. He gets a diseased liver. Is this nonmatter image like a series of photographs made of a man? If so, how often is the photograph made? Every second, once a month? What happens to the old photographs, the old images?’
“The visitor smiled, and he said, ‘The image, as you call it, is indestructible. But it records the changes in the physical body it’s attached to.’
“’Then what happens?’ La Viro said. ‘Wouldn’t images of the rotting corpse be produced?’
“As I told you,” Goring said, “La Viro was illiterate and he had never been to a big city. But he was not stupid.
“’No,’ the visitor said. ‘Forget for the moment about all matter and nonmatter except that composing humankind. The rest is irrelevant for our purposes. First, though, let’s give this entity which you call a soul another name. Soul has too many incorrect meanings for humans, too many verbal reverberations, too many contradictory definitions.
“Speak the word soul, and unbelievers will automatically become deaf to what follows. Those who believe in souls will always hear you through the mental constructs which they formed on Earth. Let us call this nonmatter twin the… ah… ka. That is an old Egyptian word for one of the several souls in their religion. Except for the Egyptians, it will have no special connotation or denotation. And they can adapt to it.’
“From which,” Goring said, “we know that the visitor knows something about Terrestrial history. Also, he could speak Canadian French, which means that he had studied much to prepare himself for this interview. Just as that Ethical who talked to Burton had learned English.
“’Now,’ the visitor said, ‘we have the ka. As far as we know, it forms at the moment of conception, the union of sperm and egg. The ka changes in correspondence with the change in the body.
“ ‘The difference in the body and the ka at the moment of the body’s death is this. During life, the body projects an aura. This is invisible to the naked eye—except in the case of a favored few—and floats above the head of the living person. It can be detected through an instrument. Seen through this device, the aura seems to be a globe of many colors and hues, whirling, swelling, contracting, shifting colors, extending arms, collapsing them. A wild and wonderful thing the beauty of which has to be seen to be appreciated. We call it the wathan.
“’A person loses the wathan or ka at the moment of death, which is when the body is beyond revivification. Where does the ka go? As seen through our device, let’s call it a kascope, it usually drifts off at once, carried by what etheric wind we don’t know. Sometimes it remains attached to a locality, why we can’t guess. But eventually it cuts loose and drifts off.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201