To those who say they do not believe in the Resurrection because there have been other mythological tales of ones rising from the dead: I posit that there have been other myths throughout history, if we look, which became actual works when technology caught up to the idea. Surely, there were stories about people coming back from the dead (even on their own, not raised by another), but from what I have discovered in my own research on the subject, Jesus Christ was the only one who had had the science to actually make it happen. Only God in man’s form, only the Son of God had the genius enough to defeat death.
Perhaps we even have the proof, if the Shroud of Turin is the record of the Resurrection itself. Because firstly, the crucified man has all the hallmarks of the crucified Christ. Down to a T. The carbon dating made on it is no good, because there is a facial cloth that has the same pattern as the face on the Shroud, and it is dated to seven centuries before the Shroud was in that carbon dating. No one knows how the faint image got on the cloth. What if it’s actually Jesus’ burial cloth? What would you think, then, about life, the universe, and everything? Would you cling to your doubt like it were going to save you? Or to you that believes: does it make you smug? Because it really comes down, really, to luck why it is you believe as you do.
When you read the stories, and view from the point of view of hindsight, it is easy to think that you would have done better than the one you read about. For instance, when the disciples all scattered when Jesus was captured: maybe you think that you would have stuck by your man, right? How could they run? But you will find yourself, I think, at least as bad as Peter, Christ’s favorite — His favorite denied having anything to do with Him three times. Really, you think you could have done better than the one our man called a rock, upon whom He would build His church? Because to them, it wasn’t just a story. Real life has a way of making cowards of the truly brave, of the best intentioned, of the faithful, of anyone unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or even the right place and time, if you’re the one that reality is making an example of.
I once had a peek at the crucifixion, very near to the actual nailing. It wasn’t full Technicolor, more of a cartoony view, as I usually have, but I saw in my small vision Christ carrying his cross on his way to Golgotha, or up Golgotha, uncertain exactly where on the path he was. He was almost completely facing me. He paused, and he looked at me as I looked at him. I couldn’t see his eyes, or really any detail of his face, and that must have been mercy. A small pause. Then he carried on. And that was it. I can’t imagine that I could have done anything for him, just then, and I got first hand exactly what I was talking about: why the apostles scattered when he was captured. I could just watch. What could I do? And then he moved on.
> From this.
It is true that many a time, have my visions gotten me to do things, sometimes strange things. Some of them are rather embarrassing to relay, and perhaps will I only disclose them to make a point. But there was only time a dream ever told me to do something, like how I ever imagined a mission from God would be revealed to an errant servant. I saw before me in the dreaming a picture of this crucifix I had, a pendant, which was fit to be worn on a necklace. It had been given to me by a nun, almost two decades previous, when I was emerging from the pit of shame and failure that I had descended into. I was told to give it to my friend who went by the handle Strawberry, who lived in New England.
I woke up just then from this petite-vision, and I immediately emailed her to ask for her address. I just had that feeling that you don’t ignore things like these. This was as close to a traditional view of what I imagined contact with the divine would be. My normal, waking life, when the visions are in force — they don’t seem to me to be like what the prophets of the Bible seemed to have experienced. Maybe Philip K. Dick had some familiarity with the style of visions I have, but even there I think he had a different way of seeing things in the HALOSPACE. But anyway, when she received it, she gave me a great thanks, saying how it was meaningful to her because it contained some of my pain. Indeed, for holy is the vial in which has brewed the suffering of a saint.
> From this.
I have a great love of music. Not that I play any instrument — not in the real world, at least. When the visions started proper, I remember while listening to a violin concerto by Mozart, when I (on the fly, right there on the spot) added another violin to the tune, in my mind, completely original in melody — that fit just right with the melody that was playing with the other instruments. It came so naturally, this ability, that in my own head, I could improvise music as easily as talking. Like playing guitar, the theme of the movie Romeo & Juliet, in the style of Hendrix and Satriani, Clapton and Stevie Ray, instrumentals that they never played, perfectly rendered in the sound of my visions. Just a shame no one in the real world could hear it.
One interesting thing to be done in the visions was to put emotion behind and through the notes. This was done by summoning through will a flow of sentiment, like a pressure of passion directed toward a novel use. As if rendering a new or intensified meaning to the music as it played. Through any instrument: to render solemnity to a flute’s cool flow, to put passion behind an electric guitar’s thrash, augment the sadness in a solo violin’s weeping. And with vocals, also to make the words to carry meaning more than ever before was written in them: love, anger, victory. As Beethoven once told me, one must drive the music. So for my own enchantments, I will have no magic wand, but a conductor’s baton. For the holy sometimes peeks into the music, beyond magic, in these my private hearing, and I must find the path where all paths meet: where the holy begins and ends.
> From this.
I was possessed of what I like to call “fugues” back when, now and again. It was basically some element in my visions taking me over. I became like as a spectator to what was going on, though I would sometimes be thinking and talking. One was of this person I had met once, who got involved somehow when this had started. In the fugue, he called himself DEMON, except that it was as if I were like a full on person puppet to what he was saying and gesturing. We went on this monologue, to the spectators in my head, though I don’t remember what exactly we said; we ended our speech with “I am DEMON, hear me.” There was another one that was strangely enough in praise of Adolf Hitler. I do remember one line from that: “Adolf Hitler was born in the kiss with Eva Braun when they were wed.” Something like that. I have no idea.
There was once a passive fugue that was as if it were pouring through me: the secret lives of trees. An Escher book, made of paper, connected me to the voices of the trees. I talked in the secret of the trees. Why books were made of paper was for such a thing to occur, for us to be aware that trees were alive. I also remember praying to Alice Walker, the author who wrote The Color Purple. That one I didn’t regret, at all. But certainly, there were misdeeds I carried out, of my own free will, and but for the grace of God would they have had terrible consequences. What is our responsibility, even when we call ourselves mad? Lament, sinner, that you did not do as you could have, or done what you should not. There is a light. Try to walk in it. You are without excuse — but once you realize just that, suddenly you may see: you are forgiven. Just like that.
> From this.
Hey, you want to do something really outrageous? Play by the rules and win. Impossible, no? It is often written that that is not a feasible path. But then, exactly what rules are you playing by? Because the rules that I hold to were given by the Lord: love God, love your neighbor as yourself. And I will aspire to follow in this narrow way as best I can, and you know what? I think I have set my mind to consider that I will win, just to spite the bitterness of the world. This is the lamp I will light and set it on the rooftop: that I followed all the rules in this evil world, which conspires death, and found life in the midst of its darkness. I believed. It would not be me where the dream died.
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky were wrong: they hypothesized that the rules did not apply to those who were considered “great”, somehow that they played by their own rules, or none at all. False. How about the Lord, you may say? Did he not follow his own rules? Did he not break the rule of Sabbath? Except that he followed the rules that had been laid down before the foundation of the world. And he broke not one tittle of any true Law. For it is the reverse, that those who consider themselves great, that the rules apply all the more to them. The greater you are, the stricter should be your code of conduct. Do you have the courage to be so great? For many who are first in the world will be last in heaven. Those who thought that the rule of love only applied to the little people.
> From this.
In Kabbalah, I have read, there were ten jars that were to hold the emanations of God, which when they were filled up with His light, they shattered. It was written that if they had not so broken, there would have been no evil in the world. An interesting theory in the vein of the Problem of Evil. Mine is a little different, being not relying on inanimate things, but those who have the power to choose. It is that we do not prefer things to go wrong, but when they do, to make of things better than if nothing wrong ever happened. We do not give an excuse for those who do evil, mind you: it is rather to spite the evil that we do as we do.
So why God allows bad things to happen to good people, or why bad things happen at all: He will make good on it, just wait. Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD. Not just that to be made good, of course, but it is in this spirit we may understand one aspect of the Purpose. Paul said that any pain we go through is trivial in comparison to the glory that will be revealed in us. And it is not so simple a thing that we should let everything get as bad as it possibly can be. We look for a narrow way, that which can make best of all things that happen, either for the good or for the ill. This is the way the Purpose leads us. In the fog of love.
> From this.
I have thought I saw myself several times in the course of the War, what I looked like on the inside, the machinery of my essence displayed to me. And I have seen other beings, who bore a resemblance to that me I viewed, but were larger — these were angels. And one I saw was like me, but not me — this was Philip K. Dick. Each of us looked like pink spaghetti, but angular, connecting boxes and circles, mostly pink, too. I did get confused now and again, when someone else were basically on top of me, like I were wearing their innards like a strange suit, and thought I was someone, something I was not, but these times served their purpose, I believe. We all of us can make new apparati from broken things.
I seem to recall just one time where I could see inside myself and I had cognizance about every part that I was looking at. I could make sense of myself. Other times, I had to trust that I were being taken care of by the forces of good, as I could only guess at what was happening. Now I ponder how so much gets lost, it would seem, as time bears down and only gives you traces of clues as to what has been. Reality is like dreaming that has been allowed to sit and harden. So much more dreaming than what exists, when left alone, just evaporates, and nothing remains but a hint, that seems akin to some sort of longing.
