After mortal life we die and become spirit-beings - and it is these post-mortal spirits who may choose to become resurrected.
What is life like as a post-mortal spirit? What will you and I be like at the time when we are confronted by the chance and choice of resurrected eternal life?
The condition of post-mortal souls seems to have been accessible and known in ancient times; and in the years before Christ; the ancient Greeks left us with descriptions of Hades, while the ancient Hebrews described much the same condition as Sheol.
The condition of such spirit life can be described in terms of a state of 'dementia' or 'delirium'; but is perhaps most easily comprehended in terms of dreaming sleep.
During dreaming sleep; our spirit is cut-off from the body, and from the environment. That is, in general; we lose sensations of what is going-on inside us, and in the world around us.
Our spiritual self mostly breaks free from the body - but in sleep the spirit does not wholly break-free, because the spirit must return to the body on awakening - and therefore there must remain a connection, and this residual connection of spirit with body can be greater or lesser.
When the connection is greater, then the body and/or the environment around the sleeping body can influence the dreaming spirit; and we find some degree in which the physical shapes our dreams. For instance, a stomach pain or a ticking clock may be taken-up in the dream, and (in part or in whole) become part of a dream.
But sometimes the connection between spirit and body is diminished to the merest thread; and to the extent that the spirit does break free; we are then in a similar state to post-mortal spirit life.
What are the characteristic experiences of this kind of dreaming sleep, in a qualitative and formal sense?
In dreaming we retain our sense of 'self', of being an individual with a personal persepctive, and we remain who-we-are; but the quality of experience changes.
The typical mood of dreaming is one of perplexity - a sense of insecure grasp of the situation; of our understanding continually slipping-away.
We forget important things in the dream, and then later in the dream they are recalled with a sense of puzzlement: how could I have forgotten that? Or else we may discover major things of great importance in the dream that, somehow, (in real life) we had never noticed before.
In the dream we may take-for-granted bizarre situations that we (somehow!) find ourselves in; or conversely, may find ourselves unable to comprehend and function in situations that we would normally find routine.
Recognition of people and situations is unmoored - much as the spirit is unmoored from the body. For example, we may recognize someone familiar who then turns-out 'really' to be someone else; or else it turns-out that a stranger in the dream is 'really' someone familiar (although they may look and behave completely differently).
(These dream experiences are very similar to delusional misidentifications observed in psychoses.)
These kinds of dreaming experiences derive, I believe, from the greatly diminished connection between the spirit and the body during dreaming sleep. If we can imagine this disconnection becoming total and potentially 'permanent'; then we may have some idea of what it may be like to be dead - but not resurrected.
And it may be from such a dreamlike state - or perhaps more exactly from a temporarily lucid dream state (made possible by divine intervention) - that we make the choice about resurrection.
That is; a state when the dream situation becomes suffused by an increased self-consciousness and ability to choose; when (perhaps) the dream-self becomes more detached-from dream-experience - and knows it as "a dream" - in other words, knows the reality of the situation.
Then, it may be, we are confronted by the decision of whether to follow Jesus Christ through the process of transformation that is resurrection, to render us eternally incarnated, and to continue into Heaven.
Perhaps this transformation can itself be imagined, as if from a dream; as our spirits meeting with Jesus Christ and knowing Him to be Jesus Christ - standing as the Good Shepherd in front of a portal, a doorway - the entrance into the 'sheep fold' that is Heaven.
We are granted the comprehension that we may choose to follow Jesus through that doorway; and the knowledge that if we do so - as we are solidifying ('condensing') into eternal bodies - we will be taking with us only that which Good; only that which is Love - Love of God, of fellow Men, of divine creation...
Also, if we choose to pass through that doorway; all that is of sin, death, corruption - will be left-behind.
What I would emphasize here, is that when we make that decision; it will be from an experienced-situation that is somewhat like a dream, and the decision will be made by selves that are somewhat like our dream selves...
But a dream-like-state that we know to be reality; and the choice will be made by what we then-know to be our real, eternal and divine self.
