will do such for the feeling of soul remains. If not soul, than what is the feeling?
Let instead the room be dark, a solid block upon the end of our lever. This lever, men, with their eyes, travel down upon as if a road. Let the god within be cast permanent in shadow. Its darkness becomes the number: infinity. Thus, too, the eyes are blind in their staring focus upon darkness.”
The young beggar shook his head “ This is a puzzle. For we have a dark room and darkened eyes walking to it. Men err much however. In their souls walking through life, how does than a blind man find direction? Would it not be better to have a Light... or at least, a beckon of light?”
Short man: “When I do a mathematical equation such as so many numbers equal an unknown, I have many possibilities to define the numbers.
Make no mistake, young man, if the sum is defined, than the numbers will become defined.”
The tall man interjected “This is as absurd as four dogs and cats equal a horse. If the result is unknown, then all the parts are unknown. How does one make sense of such senselessness?”
The short man replied “Religion makes rules as one blind man leading another blind man from one false door to another. We, outside, as the Observors call such, absurd...but we have forgotten.
Forgotten the goal of the game, my friends. God. Mystery. Hope. Soul. End of Dread.
The ‘mechanics’ , the ‘science’ of belief my friends does not have to stand the test of reality. No. No. It must stand the test of Sense. If it is sensed to be true, than it is.”
The beggar asked “ But why then these rules and customs and inhibitions and restraints that one sees so much in religion?”
Short Man “ Aw, my boy, the more you build upon a false house, the greater all will come to believe of that house. We move about, around and with each other with false tools and false materials all seemingly working together to build a great church of worship. That great multitude in dance has become the belief itself. We want to be deceived. Remember always that. All men want to be deceived into belief.
From this deception comes forth the Law of Contrasts. Men feel they do not add up....that the parts do not yield a full sum...as if in building themselves they remain always short of materials...as if labourers who move materials from end to end but never complete the house...
soul is created to fill this gap, in and of the walls, in and of the roof of their dwelling place....
..the larger the gap is felt to be, then the larger must be the soul they create in their minds...
The Law of Contrasts demands that the lesser of a man, the greater is his god. For cannot greater gods than ensure greater souls, greater immoralities? Or, at least, a greater chance of immoralities?
The further a belief is from its knowledge of a god, does not that lack of knowledge, so so tiny on one end of the lever, yield a higher elevation of god? Will not mystic yield revelations? Will not penance yield salvation? Will not humility yield grandeur?
The less a Man believes of himself; of his self without soul; then the more he has of soul; for when his cup is empty of the day’s offering, it is thus full of tomorrow’s spirit.
Light a candle and the Ceilings Above illuminate.
Curse a god and Hell opens its mouth wider.
A desperate prayer moves another world. Would not, than, a death, any death, the last whispering breath in death of say even a loved one be amplified by this Law into a heavenly chorus of welcoming gods; bring to the Lake of Darkness a fleet of immortal ships to greet the solitary worm-man awash with moon-glow, his limbs as weeds of motion in the tide waves...
Remember two things of the Law of Contrasts...it is all illusion...and it is all believed. If all believe, then, it cannot remain illusion. The power in the Law is in its Lie.
There are three kinds of men in this Lie of Religion. Those who believe very well in the Lie; those (the most) who believe not so well; and, those who pocket the difference.
Most men do not believe well; spend their lives and dreams in the daily dust but, from time to time, when a Death or Calamity brushes their congealed eyes a little open, they peek a little at Hope, at Soul. It is not really a welcome Sight.”
The tall man “I thought you argued that all men seek hope from mortal death?” Why would they not welcome this?”
The short man “ Men who do not dwell often at Hope are not as “practised” in deception of Self or Others. They are as uneasy with this as if they have awoken in a room with a dead man who was alive before they slumbered.
Now those who believe well (and these are very rare) would not care. For they are lost and happy in a strange world where their only business is their own dying. This is not as morbid as it sounds, young man. Though seemingly mad at times because of their ‘extremes’ in Belief, most men call them both comic and visionary. Prophets, seers, mystics and hermits, they are not really men but more like carrion birds circling their own bodies. Birds without legs. One senses in them that Hope has won; that these are not men who are living waiting to die but are as a man dead waiting to be born. As I said, they are rare and everyone, for a moment, wishes to be like them. The way a shipwrecked man might envy the fish just before he kills and eats it.
Those many who do not believe well however are uneasy with this dead man. They wish first of all to be convinced it is not a mirror. Though it is strange in a way that the living wish to be convinced they are not dead even though this would proof their immortality.
For who knows what Life looks like from the shores of the Immortal Dead? Just as the arrow looks upon the bird as a still thing!?
So how do you proof a man is dead? Well, you can watch him rot. Not a very comforting or fast solution. Remember that those who do not believe well (and they are the many) will not believe (with their eyes a little open) for long and so need answers quickly.
So, my friends, let us not proof he is dead. Let us instead make him alive. If living, then there is Hope, there is still no Death. Our ‘watcher’ can go back to sleep.
Enter the third man. The Difference.
The Pockets of Difference. Even Hope is for sale. That is the way of men...and their City.
With many thin breaking wires the dead man can made to walk and dance again. With candles and shadows see the face of Death change expressions in the Conversations with the gods. Listen to the noises of singing and bells...no one can hear the silence of Death breathing above that.
This is the law of Contrasts, Beggar. As simple as that. Made for those to profit in the Lie of the Dead man. Made that the Body dies of its own will but the Mind decrees something else for itself. Made because Time does not end but no man can see further than from one wall to the other wall of his skull. Made to allow the Many to slumber while the Few feed. Made so that a Conscious Man can remain amongst Men. Made so a City can replace a Species. Made so that men can become immortal if only as One. Or a system of men as the One. Made so that the opposite of a Lie is...Lie. And that becomes the only truth left for men.”
Beggar’s son: “Let me ask you this...in your heart and mind, are there no gods then?”
The short man: “ Men create gods to create hope. Even a man at suicide jumps to some little hope, that hope. My intellect travels alone in hesitation. Few men in a room of absolute darkness can will their eyes completely shut...calling those eyes, useless.
I confess to you, my boy, that I yet strain to become an atheist. Hence, my purchase you see not so loosely tucked under my arm.
With that the men moved on, leaving the Beggar’s young son to seek the dust of his own travels.
The Second Day
The beggar’s young son had rested in that place free to all in the City. Given out by its Nature but used by only a few. The earth herself. Dirt. Dust.
Finding a semi-hole in an alleyway off an alley off an obscure street so as to hide from the City Guardians of the night. They, who at their worst, make sport of their victims with the iron tools of their trade or, at best, kick sleeping vagrants alo
ng to discourage any thoughts of a permanent habitat.
This beggar’s hole sufficed to give solitude as there are always in a City places where even spears dare not swagger. The Field of Darkness making a better coward than a soldier out of these City Brutalions.
Alone then, the Beggar had isolation but rested little. His mind was full of the Short Man’s philosophy. Debating its pros and cons; the backdrop of his night’s dwelling of filth and shadow an accurate painting of the day’s discussion ; a black landscape of death folded inside living shadows.
Though he had said little in rebuttal, he now debated the Short man’s
explanation of the Law. The man had described a religion completely opposite to what his father had taught. Or so it seemed at first exam.
Death dwelt little in his Father’s teachings, though he had at times spoken of such things as ‘his Father’s house’ or ‘believe in me and have everlasting life’.
It seemed to the Beggar, however, that his father emphasized life now, not later. The here after became an effect of the Cause of living like a human being now. As if one created a soul and a heaven and a hell by the living force of one’s own humanities. One should not add hell he corrected himself. His father often rebuked that in his disciples. they, he remembered, or at least some of them, were quick to build an ideology of punishment against any non-believers.
His father called The Many...Unknowing...in