ment only becomes clear at the end of the story, which will be discussed later. But their faces of impossibilities suggests a conceptual connection with the afterlife in Matheson's Dreams.
In What Dreams May Come, Chris also begins the story as a dead person. Also as in Divorce he does not at first realize that he is, in fact, a ghost. He is insubstantial, as are the ghosts in The Great Divorce. One religious scholar, Archana Dongre, has likened Matheson's Summerland to the astral planes of Western metaphysics, the Swarloka of Hinduism or the Bardos of Tibetan Buddhism (C9). In addition, Sydney Coale, writing for Hinduism Today, notes the examples of Hindu philosophy and theology in Dreams. For example, she notes his reference to the lower realms of the astral plane and the energy rather than materialism of the heaven worlds (Coale 24). She also notes Matheson's description of people's auras, the laws of karma and his understanding of the rules about reincarnation (Coale 24). Most notably, Coale traces to Hinduism Matheson's idea that all people create their lower worlds by their own thoughts (Coale 24). Somewhat surprisingly, her article reveals that many of Matheson's incorporation of such concepts was unintentional.
Still, there is no doubt in Dreams that Earth is real. Instead when Chris goes to Heaven, cousin Albert, or Buddy, tells him that Heaven is a state of mind: "death is a refocusing of consciousness from physical reality to mental" (Matheson 71). But Buddy also reveals, that in this story, "[d]eath is merely a continuation at another level" (Matheson 71). Notably, this is the complete opposite of Divorce.
In Divorce Heaven is real and all else is a state of mind. In Divorce the White Spirit tells the Bishop that walking in Heaven "will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows" (Lewis 36). The Hard-Bitten Ghost also makes a good point about the life-threaten...