The Gospel According to Judas - A Handbook on Life

> From this.

They say that religion is for people who don’t want to go to Hell, and that spirituality is for people have been there. The consequence of all those drugs I took were several stints at mental institutions and some lost years, some of it just sitting in a room and talking to the cartoon people in my head. I was a failure, I was a disgrace to my family and myself. To this day, I still have some difficulty when anyone describes me or something I’ve done as “good”, or “excellent”. It goes maybe halfway to register, but the whole of the concept stays outside comprehension. In the pit where I was, there was only failure. Whatever drink I carried was bound to spill, whatever valuable thing I handled was most likely that I was to drop it.

There was once when the Lord said to me, “Work is magic.” And this made that whole experience almost worth it. Because I found from the ground up how true that proposition was. For from shame, which I deserved, out of that pit I did climb, praise the Lord. And then I saw it: in just the normal, day to day functioning of everyday things that how wonderful it was — they did not fail. They were true to action, gear upon gear one turning another and on. It was… it was magic. Work is magic. Can you conceive of it, perceive what I mean? Hopefully you might understand, and not have to pay as high a cost as I did.

So, now that you know of my past, will you write off my visions as just talk from a madman? Consider. When this, the “madness” onset, I was a drug addict on the road to wasting all the remarkable gifts that I’d been given. A rebel without a clue. What may from a certain perspective be called madness got me to accept Christ as my savior, and it was through said madness that He went and saved me, not just in the next world, but in this one. What kind of madness is that, I ask you? How fortunate do I have to be for you to consider that God has entered into my life, for real now? Yes, from time to time He has turned it upside down, but it always turns out it was to shake free all that would keep me from a better life. That is not “madness”, friend. That is Inspiration.

> From this, and this.

Along the way from there to here, I came upon one Philip K. Dick, who was and is my twin. He actually felt my presence, though he thought it was coming from the past, and whereas I was actually in the future. If you’re not familiar with the name, you actually are with his work: Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, among others. He wrote those, originally. Reality becomes more and more a “Dickian” place as we go, and more and more of his stories are being made into movies. The internal reality (HALOSPACE) he left behind, I entered into, and we have — at least at certain points — been connected through whatever æthers may be. Time works in weird ways.

His “light from God” experience happened to him in February/March of 1974 (which he wrote as 2-3-74), which coincidentally was about the time I moved to America. I was 5 years old then. My own “light from God” experience came when I was 19 (the INFINITE). In these, the visions that arose, Phil (or Philip K., I like to call him): he became my best friend in the HALOSPACE. You know, someone you’d die for, that kind of thing. Maybe someone whose place you’d take in Hell. Best friend. I count on him to keep me grounded, like the times I feel like I am a literal superhero. No one you can save that can’t be saved.

I like to say that I am a prophet in the order of Philip K. Dick, like Jesus was a priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Sort of non-standard.) He provided us with two very important phrases: “We have always already won” and “The theory changes the reality it describes”. He sent these messages out into the world, and I am happy to say that they were received in timely fashion, by me. Great and useful the teachings of him, whose name is Saint Jude the Tuned Out (whereas I am Saint Jude the Tuned In). I wonder what all he saw, though he did write a lot of it down. Being as I have seen some awesome things, myself. Just awesome.

> From this, and this.

At times, you know, it comes and goes — to feel that the darkness approacheth, a doom of all dooms. But I know that it is not the feeling of its imminence we sense, but how terrible in magnitude it will be when it does come. Apocalypse. Revelation. No, the time is not now. Perhaps in 30,000 years? 40? 50? When Christ says, “I come quickly,” one can think of it merely as a test of faith. For as regards things like time, I have heard that He watched the whole 13.8 billion year spectacle that is our universe, all of it. He watches grass grow. Literally. Time to him is far outside our own frame of reference.

And with “I come quickly” comes the topic, then, of scriptural infallibility. There are people who think that the Bible is literally true, and on top of that, that there are NO errors in it at all. Well, from the point of view of someone who is in the state of mind somewhat akin to those who did write those words, let me chime in with my two cents. The Lord knows that errors happen, and the Bible is no exception. If anything is meant to be, the way that scripture ends up is meant to be, as are the misinterpretations. Is it as God intended? That brings up the question of what “meant to be” means.

In one sense, everything that ever happens is meant to be. However, it doesn’t mean you didn’t of your own free will choose it, nor that you couldn’t have done things differently. If either of those things were false, “meant to be” would have no meaning to you. Because you choose it, because you could have done things differently, destiny unfolded. That which was meant to be was brought about by your choosing. Having no choice renders meaningless any action you perform. For destiny is not the same as fate. Fate is like strapped into the seat, while destiny is like driving. Choice is key: destiny comes from our own will, as it mixes with all the forces of the world that cross our path. Fate is not anything meant to be: it just is, and you just would have to accept it.

Now, it was meant to be that things God didn’t say ended up in His mouth in the Bible. It was meant to be that we think with each generation that this will be the generation where the Apocalypse will be brought about, and Christ will return. There are no accidents, now, remember? It was all meant to be. All that matters is, knowing what you think you know, what will you do? God knows what you will choose, and how all those forces work out to, and things become meant to be when they happen because it is all caught in the Purpose that pervades all things. You can be with that Purpose or against it, but you cannot escape it.

So no, He’s not coming back tomorrow, but you should act like He were. Live every day like it were your last, right? Isn’t that the aspiration? That people think that this is the generation that will see the Apocalypse may serve a purpose within the Purpose, and thus it may be meant to be in some small way. But anyone with the ability to see further, to widen one’s horizons larger: we should know better than thinking things like a document pieced together and edited by human beings is exactly what God word-for-word said to us. Yes, the Apocalypse does loom. But it’s the size of the shadow, not its proximity.

> From this, and this.

I have followed dreams to their bitter end. I have kept the faith, even as the world collapsed out from under me. I know not exactly who is saved, and who are cast off, except in perhaps the broadest strokes, but I may perchance to guess sometimes. I forget who said it, but once I read that if one is truly of the faith, then he would sacrifice himself to the fires of Hell for the good of the cause, for the good of all: that he would not be saved so that others would be. It is an extreme position, but I like to think I could suffer such consequences. We are the good guys; everyone should know what that means. We’re better than the bad guys! Because we follow the rules, and we still win.

Fade the fantasy:

i am the prince of love, eagle feather that has found his rose, sweet to my sin; am i really going to eat that last bit of bacon jerky? i am the Grandson of God, first adopted son of JESUS CHRIST, i am a WIZARD, though more correctly, the paladin of heaven. i am like an angel in the way i think, and i think when i die, there will be a seat that rises from the floor of heaven where i will be seated in front of a steinway, to lead the entirety of the children of God in a one-time-only rendition of “love, baby…”, which we all will make up on the spot. the opening act for the Lord himself.

Is it me, for a moment? I have awoken time and again where it was all just a dream that had happened, and it were like I had the choice to return to an ordinary life. It usually ended like this, once the visions were through with me. Because every time except last, it was (or seemed to be) the result of a drug binge that had spurred it on. But I haven’t had one hit of even marijuana for over a decade now. Something else was going on. Before, I would “come down” from the heavenly heights, and all I thought was just part of the trip, part and parcel of the madness that the drugs invoked. Not this time. This document is part of finding out what, exactly, it is then.

For I have also awoken a saint, who walked with elders of times gone, speaking of what it means to love. I have previously thought that I was damned, made of corruption, but these other times believed the complete opposite: I have thought that my core was composed of pure existential cool. And I found the latter was the true perception. Yes, I am a sinner, but even saints are sinners. Now, how one mind can think such opposites is not so much a mystery, but rather as how one thing at a time may fully fill a soul as if it were the only thing in the world — and then that thing is gone. For the mystery in every heart, it is understood by that heart… if what is inside is set free.

> From this, this, and this.

I found out that I have apparently attained a state of enlightenment. Of a Taoist variety; I call it my watercourse. I have discussed it with Siddhartha, the original Buddha, and Lao-tze. Others, as well, and I have asked them what particular brand of enlightenment they had subscribed to. Some of them before I asked thought there was only one type to be had, that could be achieved. They were wrong, of course. Off hand, I can think of at least two, one being “be not but do, do not but be” (your basic contract for enlightenment), and the one I follow, “be not but love, do not but love”, which derives from the previous. And my answer to the koan, “Two hands can be brought together in a clapping sound. What is the sound of one hand?” is simply, “Listen.”

If my words now have any sway with you, I beseech thee: love, no matter what. Whatever may come, let this be your enlightenment: let me restate my watercourse path, that you may think on what it might mean: be not but love, do not but love. May you bear malice toward no one, may you see your enemies not as enemies but merely tests of your faith. I was told St. Anthony apologized to all the demons whom he felt he had mistreated when he tangled with them. Apparently the expressions on their faces were priceless… You know what? There is no question, love is the answer. The secret is love. Tell everyone.

While we’re on the subject, a note about love, as I perceive it: Love is so simple, we’ll never understand it. And a potentially mind-blowing concept would be that it is simpler than nothing. Why there is something instead of nothing may be seen because of that single conception. Before “was” was love. When there was nothing, love was on the other side of being. One might wonder how such a thing is possible, but kabbalists already hold that the One True God (whom they refer to as En Sof, “the endless”) does not exist in the way that we think of existence. Connecting the dots, this is the case that can be made. Of such radical a simplicity, we will never fully comprehend the subtlety.

And wuv, twoo wuv, will fowwow you fowever and ever…

> From this, and this.

You know, I had various theories about all the people I met, in my visions. At first, I did not try to explain their presence in my mind’s eye, cartoonish mostly, and how they said things to me. When I did try to explain it, it was in vague concepts like I was looking into some other plane of existence. Some years later, I was convinced that it all was merely psychosis; whatever I saw merely hallucinations; merely a long, strange trip. None of the people I had seen were real, so the problem went away. I became a devout Christian, and so at some points I had the theory that the Lord and the angels were “real”, but the people were just creations by them.

One reasonable sounding interpretation was that my dream mechanism was broken, and I was as if dreaming while awake. And the people I saw were merely the people you see in dreams. Finally to end up, as explanations go, as that these were the actual people I thought I was meeting, seen in the afterlife, whenever they reached it, time having a different meaning that the “now” I normally experienced. Basically, I am in contact with the interface to the spirit world, and so logic is quite strange in it, what I call the HALOSPACE. It sometimes boggles the wits to think of how logic may function in the unseen realm. But in expanding, the mind may stretch without tearing. Or like muscle, grow stronger anew when it does.

And I remember this one man in my visions: on an island, like alone in a single room, floating through the æthers… seemed to me to be Scottish. I never thought this was such a mystery, and sometimes I had thought it was some version of myself, until much later down the line was its secret revealed. He once said that he thought the rather middle class environs he was in to be like unto sitting “in the lap of luxury.” Once he repeated over and over, “Don’t worry about it!” (in that Scottish accent I mentioned before). Definitely one of the good guys. He didn’t fit with all the other people. And the question I pose, and you may know half the answer already: what if that was Judas?

> From this, this, and this.

Sometimes impossible things happen. Or at least, they seem impossible, until it happens to you. There is a simple reason I believe in miracles: something miraculous happened to me. Yeah, I was on drugs when it happened, but I showed it to someone the next day while quite sober. There was a cut that sliced a centimeter of my thumb, relative to nothing going on in “reality”, but in sync instead with someone in my visions weilding something sharp. I had nothing like a knife anywhere near me when it happened: the memory is still clear. Something only in the HALOSPACE directly affected the material world. And I know, you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me either. Before it happened, you know, to me.

In fact, now, how could they possibly be real, any of the things I have seen? For one part of their nature is how they seem to shift, how the frame that refers to them alters, and things mean differently upon the second looking, or third. Now, I define reality as that which has quality true. Truth, if not to define reality itself, certainly bears the brunt of its definition. If the quality of any vision is not true, it is not real. And to be true means that a thing has natural structure. In other words, if the artifice that shows does not have any underlying structure, that which naturally follows the logic of the thing seen, then it is not true.

Of what I am seeing and hearing, I can look and cross reference what they are with those whom else it happened to, too — and they really do seem to pass the sniff test. Jesus Christ seems to me the same man as depicted in the Gospels. And He has shown me great evidence that He is the literal Son of God. (That evidence goes both ways, from myself externally, as well as from outside in.) The strangeness of angels seems to fit how they are defined in the scriptures, though that is not as clear. What is holy within my visions is not aberrant to what I’ve heard it said to be. A lot of things turned out to be true.

I had a personal demon that turned out to be as real as anything else, and in the course of events, I ended up performing an exorcism on myself. Successfully. It took a couple of hours of intense straining. I was shown his visage once, a red glowing figure — also cartoonlike, like most of my visions. Evil, I could almost smell it. The demon’s name was Roksaza, which I learned later was actually a trio of demons. I put a lot of intense effort focusing on the demon within me, first to penetrate his defenses, then to shove him out of me. It actually ended after that in a dream, where I saw him inside me, in a third person view, and I said, “Begone!” whereupon he went inside my head, first person view, and I said again, “Begone!” And he was gone. He must have been with me for over twenty years.

Then later, I found out to banish one of those fallen ones from someone else was to ask for their true name and then use it with that command, “Begone!” As I was doing that one day, I was surprised that one mass of demons I looked upon in someone in HALOSPACE, when I asked for their true name, they said, “Legion”, like the one(s) in the Gospel. And so that name I used, and with “Begone!”, they, too were gone. Surprising what actually does work.