The Gospel According to Judas - A Handbook on Life

> From this, and this.

I got onto the Judas train pretty late in the game, but there were reasons for that, which I’ll go into by and by. But even as far back as just before my visions started in force, I was made aware of the possibility: was it a cue when Christ said, “One of you will betray me”? A roommate asked me that exact question. Even if it wasn’t, people have speculated that Judas repented. Throwing his 30 pieces of silver back at the elders who hired him. One might even think that Judas committing suicide was actually his ultimate act of repenting, the supreme show of regret — and one may then believe that he was forgiven, if only to the degree of the least part of Heaven.

But if it was a cue, or something to that effect, it would be the true fruition of the phrase, “Judas volunteered”? Else we mean it only cynically, only ironically, with quotes around the word “volunteered”. One night after the War I ended up in a hospital (long story), and during my stay, I saw Judas in my visions gathered together with some of the higher ups, though I didn’t see who at the time. I was told later that this was the bull session where Judas was told by the Lord to betray Him to the authorities. Judas would have trouble later in recalling this, thinking as he did at the end that he were guilty of the worst crime of all.

I have some specific insight as to why Judas thought as he did. For there were certain times that I was convinced that I was the Son of Perdition, the Antichrist. Always did I find out later that the paranoid trips were false — but oh how they seemed so certain at the time. So it was with that one: Judas Iscariot. There is an interesting order to things presented in the Gospel According to John. Only after the Lord says, “One of you will betray me,” only after that, does John write that Satan enters Judas. Of course, we don’t know how precise everything is in any of the Gospels, but this might be a hint that this was, indeed, a cue. Satan does not make Judas do it; Satan enters Judas when he knows who picked up on that cue. If Judas were already evil, why does Satan wait to go into him?

And when the Devil was within Judas’ mind, I can only imagine what havoc he must have wrought, unchecked against a naked soul. Because people don’t really appreciate how devious at deception the Father of Lies is, unless perhaps they experience it for themselves. It relies on focus, like a sleight of hand: he will get you to focus on certain things and interprets them into the most insidious vapors you can breathe. One wrong thing you’ve done and he can make you believe you’ve murdered the world. I can only imagine what kind of field day he must have had in the mind of the man who betrayed Christ with a kiss. Thus the suicide; Judas was not as fortunate as myself, who was let off the hook when I had such rupturing of conscience.

So there he was, on his little island, in his single room, inside his little vial. And so, I was having trouble reconciling Judas’ fate, trapped in that vial. I remember when he went in; I had thought he were meeting a horrible fate. It was actually to protect him from the worst of Satan’s onslaught, I found out later. Nothing actually can go out or in, but experience may be mirrored, from without within, from within without. It is windowless. He was in his own private Heaven. So this is how you treat a great hero? Solitary confinement? And a thought came over me, waves of thoughts, more like. Shadows of a conspiracy. That I had been wrong this whole time, I had been deceived. Judas trapped in his little world was actually a sign of the great mercy of the Lord, that Judas had done no such thing as volunteer to betray him. Judas had acted in malice. Why would the Lord treat a great hero like this?

Oh, but I dreaded to write that I had been so wrong; what of the name of this whole book, after all? But then, like unto a small glimmer of fresh intuition when we perchance the wink of God… we know that Judas can experience any and all of Heaven through a non-causal link: he is the only monad who is actually windowless. He cannot technically leave the vial, but he can experience anything of Heaven as if he could: go in and out, fly around, ride a Segway — whatever — with one difference from the rest of us: he experiences it like he were earth-bound. It is unique of any saint. He will be the only one will be able to experience pain! (Though I’m sure, not in excess.) Sensations no one else will feel. Indeed, he is in his own private Heaven. And that is how you treat a great hero.