The Life of God

“Just as we experience thousands of dreams in this life of ours, so is this life one of thousands of such lives which we enter into from the more real, actual, true life from which we come when we enter this life, and to which we return when we die.

“Our life is one of the dreams of that truer life. But even that truer life is only one of the dreams of another, even truer life and so on to infinity, to the one last true life, the life of God.

“Birth and the appearance of one’s first notions of the world is a falling asleep and a most sweet sleep; death is an awakening.

“In the life which we call reality there is a semblance of love of one’s neighbor. But in the life we came from and to which we are going the relationship is much closer, and love is no longer something to be desired, but something real. And in the ultimate life for which even that life is a dream, relationship and love are greater still.

“I would like you to understand me. I’m not making it up to amuse myself. I believe in it, see it and know it for certain, and when I die I shall rejoice that I am waking up to that more real world of love.”

-Leo Tolstoy, Russian Novelist (Unsourced)