A Passage to India – The Eternal Sleep

‘Those in the Civil Station kept watch a little, fearing an attack, but presently they too enteredt the world of dreams – that world in which a third of each man’s life is spent, and which is thought by some pessimists to be a premonition of eternity.’ – p.239

It is interesting then that quickly following this passage, Fielding has this to say:

‘Liking here better he smiled and said, ‘It’ll get us to heaven.’
‘Will it?’
‘If heaven existed.’
‘Do you not believe in heaven, Mr Fielding, amy I ask?’ she said, looking at him shyly.
‘I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.” – pp.240-241

 

Hypnos, Greek god of sleep, and his brother, Thanatos, god of death, as painted
by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)