Afterlife

At the Easter Cemetery in Amsterdam you can walk into other dimensions. It begins at the gate, where a golden guard watches over the visitors. But before you enter the burial ground, look right. Just in front of the entrance is plenty of space to park your rational mind.

Once inside you’ll notice some blossoming trees. The garden looks beautiful this time of year. And then you’ll meet this ‘common maple-tree that is not common at all’. It understands what it is like to have lost a dear one. Open your senses and feel how it caresses your cheeks and embraces you softly.

Lady’s from another era stroll the lanes, with rustling skirts and sunshades. A carriage with horses passes the graves. A little soul, not longer on this plane, is playing with a dog. Giggling fills the air. I feel the spirits so closely I can almost see them. The cemetery vibrates with aliveness.

When you continue the sound journey, you’ll end up at a little green building. It’s the ‘galactic computer, portal machine’. Step in, close the door; push the black button, and solfeggio tones fill the space. In old ages these sounds were used to enter deeper levels of consciousness and to travel to other dimensions. After fifteen minutes of toning I am balanced and totally at peace. My feeling of dying has deepened again: it is a passage, not the end.

Afterlife is an exposition about our final destination, at the Ooster Begraafplaats in Amsterdam (till 1 July). The sound tour and the portal machine are an art project by Nathalie Bruys: www.nathaliebruys.com.