Laura Sheahen

At the very beginning of my life, I wanted to have answers for everything. And now I respect the fact that I can’t have answers for everything. So for this question I go to the mystery of it and say I don’t know. I only know that I am alive and there is something that manifests in my life, that it is God and one day I am going to understand my life, probably in the day that I die, or afterwards. But I try to find good questions and not good answers. You say we might know more “afterwards.” You’re saying you think certain things might happen in the afterlife?

We cannot know anything for sure. But I don’t believe in time either. You say “when we die,” but time is another of these things that we need to help ourselves to go through life, but it does not exist. I am talking to you, but the moment that I am talking to you, the universe is being created and destroyed. I am living out my past and future lives. Whatever I do now, even in this conversation, can affect all my past and future lives.

I do believe in life after death, but I also don’t think that it’s that important. What is important is to understand that we are also living this life after death now. So we have to get rid of the notion of time? We have to try to get rid of the notion of time. And when you have an intense contact of love with nature or another human being, like a spark, then you understand that there is no time and that everything is eternal. It sounds like this idea probably helped you overcome your fear of not existing, which you describe in the introduction to The Alchemist.

Yes, of course there was this fear of death. — Beliefnet.com