Living. Existence is only possible if there is Not-Existence. Hence, things, even men must ‘become’...there must therefore be a ‘before’ and a ‘beafter’.
If the conscious mind of each man were to win over each Body against Death than become, before, beafter have no separation.
The conscious mind, in destroying Death, destroys Time, destroys existence, destroys itself.
The Body remains its enemy in this. Yet the Body is destroyed nonetheless...why resists the beguile and lies of the conscious mind?
It is because the Body is partially owned by a Man and also partially owned by Men. The Species of Men has a gamble, a stake upon each man. Man’s social success, the City, has built a world where the conscious mind has become ‘self-obsessed’ with its own demise. It ‘hallucinates’ a soul out of a madness of dread, self-delusion of importance and obsession against time. Time as a pathological sense of moment...moment...moment...yet all past, all future yaws on both directions like a man on a tight rope.
In a sense that is the ‘existence’ of consciousness. As a man riding upon a deaf, blind, bleeding man on a tight rope; the rope above a great fall, the rope coming from ...and leading to... a close dense obscure fog...
No wonder it learns...early...to pray.
So, within Dread, soul is created as an illusion of immortality. But immortality is prevented by the Body which understands that for men, for the Species, the end of Death is the end of Existence.
Each man dies for the Species. Each man gives his life back into Non-existence so there will continue to be Existence...continue to be Species. Full living Men.
Beggar:” If all men die than why does existence not end?”
Short man:” If non-existence dies than existence must live. It is existence and non-existence which are immortal...some would even say it is this flow which is the home of the gods...”
Beggar:” Each man ...after man...after man....becomes...the gods?”
The Tall Man “ ” Aw, so you at least agree to there being gods?”
Beggar “ We should be careful here as I believe our friend means the god exists as the flow of the Species of Man, do you not?”
Short Man: “ Yes. Souls exist not because gods exist but because men, for their very souls, wish gods to exist...
The ‘gods’ if you will, then are of two sources...
The lie of the soul as a vehicle of immortality; for as a mortal thing, men...cannot create an immortal thing. Therefore the Creator of the lie of immortal souls must be itself immortal...
The other source of the gods is the collective future of Man ...man by man...living...dying...as a flow...a river which if one man lived forever would cease...
This we have called: The Species, a natural god, if you will, and the Body its ally, perhaps even to call it...its Soul.”
Species, where soul is the flow of men as a natural immortality opposes City. City is the conscious mind of men devouring all in an unnatural immortality.”
Beggar “Why unnatural?”
Short man: “ Species is as all things are...perhaps even as a god itself...City wishes to re-create itself as The One God above all gods, souls and species...it must destroy all or be itself destroyed by All...City is beyond aman’s fear of death, beyond men’s dread, it has become the ultimate terror of Life itself. Understand this, my young friend, City fears Death so much, it will choose the destruction of Life itself, the Cause, so that Death, the Effect, cannot exist.
For one can end Dread by Soul or end Dread by City-God...in other words, proclaim men as already immortal, indestructive...all you have to do now is convince each man that his own consciousness exists in that god only...that collective of souls of men called City, called History.”
Tall man:” History now. City. God and gods...why bother...allowing that men create soul, why create gods? Why complicate things?”
Short Man: “A thing is created out of fear but if remaining framed in fear, how can Dread become Hope? Like the paint of smile upon a courtish clown, we must use illusion to change one thing into the opposite. As if again ,our mirrors, one after the other around in a circle till a gaunt man looks fat and fed well in the last. We must add something to reality since Fear only gave us reality and Reality, for the conscious man, only reaps fear.
Reality did not explain Death and Time...it only gives the conscious man, fear. To ‘ believe’ we must have more. Let us have illusion. To elude we must have mystery. What do we need for mystery? The Unknown. The Unknown Creator of Hope, not Dread. The Gods.
Tall man: But again, I ask why cant
the man create this mystery?”
Short Man: “ Because, my friend, it is not logical. Though I agree, the End is illogical, the means to it must not be. For it is created by the conscious mind of man. You may plunge off a cliff but you cannot fly to the edge...the way to it is step by step. If a man could create a soul which is immortal, then why does not the man just become immortal? For it would be within his means. Instead, is it not more logical that a Creator created a man AND created a soul...and the man must be led step by step to it.
If the soul is shrouded in mystery... and the Creator...and the Way to it, then the possibilities grow and grow.
Remember falsehood is clearly seen but truth can be as easily imagined as falsehood. In this light you clearly see before you, to say I am not would be seen to be utterly false. But in darkness...? If I did not speak? You, in truth, can know me to be here or not.
So beware what is called truth, what is called false, what is called reality. Truth is what we choose to believe is truth, in that there is no absolute...nor absolution.
Creating god, we have created a louder, better voice in the darkness. If so many hear it, can it be silent? Even if they but willed to hear it.
Religion is a land of willed and willing shadows then. A land where logic works well like the world outside mirrored inside a bubble. It all works the same, is the same, feels the same.
A man may feel his soul but he cannot see it, so they must balance that blindness with a cast of their gods’ shadow.
In this place of shadow, though they cannot see the god, it is enough that they believe the shadow is of the god...not of their own blindness.
It is that simple act of believe, that the shadow is a god ‘leaning’ over them which creates all this. This Market Place, these idols, this annual pilgrimage, this discussion, even my tall companion’s scowl all seemingly originate from this belief.
That being said it stands also that the greater the god’s shadow, the greater their own soul, for what is large in obscurity can it not be also large in possibilities?
For the eye of Man is the prism in his world...between his worlds. The worlds of known and felt-to-be-known; wished-to-be-known. Just as a prism opens the narrow Unseen into a rainbow of fantastical so to our prism opens the shadow of ‘what is’ into a larger ‘what could be’.
Now does thou know a little of the mathematics of levers, my young friend?”
The young beggar replied “ A little. Some things on one end can seem to outweigh more concrete things on the other end simply by being further from the centre of the truth.”
The short man laughed “ Well put, beggar boy. Well then the eye is a prism between worlds and also that fulcrum of truth you spoke of, or at least, if not the actual truth..the belief that it is so.
Let us put the soul on one end and the god on the other. For balance then a larger god necessitates a larger soul, does it not?. No man desires the soul of an insect...all wish to be lions or suns or what not.
So a great shadow signifies a great god and that yields a great soul. Yet, too, with our lever, a small god a good distance away does that not also create a large soul closer to the eye?”
The boy looked puzzled “ Do you mean to say that the further one is from the truth of their god, than the closer they are to their actual soul?”
The short man answered “No, the further away we place our gods the less knowledge w
e will have of them. They become greater shadows. The greater shadow weighs heavier upon the fulcrum of truth and thus lifts a man’s soul to higher heights. Wether their soul is actually greater or not is of no concern...it appears to be greater. Just as a dog is very tall to a man sprawled on the ground.”
The tall man interrupted, his arms waving his impatience “Curs and the shadows of curs! I do not hold that my religion grovels so low in the ground as that!”
“ No, no. That is not my meaning, dear friend. What we discuss is that it is the nature of comparisons to allow The Infinite when one cannot define one side of the equation.” replied the short man.
He continued “ Even thus onto the shadow becoming full darkness, this does not lend onto each man despair as you would think it should. No one ‘sees’ god yet all believe such to exist. How can eyes see without seeing? They must be led to believe they see. If at the end of the lever there is only darkness, than there is infinity”
The beggar asked” Why not see the darkness, as emptiness, nothing?”
The short man replied “For two reasons. One, the darkness began as a shadow, but not as a shadow of hopelessness, but rather as hope. The eye does not in itself turn that shadow of hope into a dark night of hopelessness. Rather, it remains in the greater possibilities. The other thing is that the man still feels the soul...and that feeling of soul lends a weight to the lever to keep it ‘up’; uplifting. To see hopelessness at one end is to deny soul. Few men