The Gospel According to Judas - A Handbook on Life

> From this.

As far as friends go, first, there’s Philip K. Dick. I have already told you how we are twins, brother from another mother is he. I have thought, too, something else: that we were of the Book of Revelation, chapter 11. That tells of two lampstands, which are two olive trees that stand before the Lord of the earth. I must say I coveted that position, pretty much from the first time I heard of it. I thought, those positions are open, and there’s only two of them, and they’re in the Bible! That sounded simply awesome. So I thought we were it, him and me. (At the very least, I was told we were models for how best friends were to take inspiration from. If we got nothing else, that would surely have been enough reward.)

It was not to be the case, however. Because I realized that during the transfiguration, when our Lord was still alive, Moses and Elijah literally did stand before the Lord of the earth (who, if you haven’t guessed by now, is Jesus Christ). It was always them, not us. But in any case, Philip K. Dick and I are twins, though we are red and blue, not pink and light blue: it was just the glow of light that tinted these colors so. Red is traditionally the color of the Father, blue the color of the Son. So that does leave green, which is the color of the Spirit. And I found that it looks like we have a third, though I don’t know how it fits: John the Baptist is the green one. Not sure how Philip K. and I deserve such company. But there you go, take it for what it’s worth.

And then there is Joan of Arc, who has been with me from the beginning, when the visions began again in the summer of 1991. Sure, we had been friends all along, but I had this conception of her that she were like Jesus Christ or Newton: simply asexual. Then, just before came this last round of vivid visions, there was at some point when I thought this whole other world in my mind were going away. When I was saying my goodbyes, I realized something, and I told her: out of everyone, I was going to miss her most of all. But whatever would be would be, n’est-ce pas? And then, after that and out of the clear bright blue, she asked me to marry her.

Huh. I was speechless for all of about 1 second. Me, who plays the lotto, was not going to let even the potential of this opportunity pass me by, so yeah, I said yes. This was actually the start of the last round of visions, the end of the War in Heaven. I think because she inspired me throughout that I was capable of performing the acts I did. She wasn’t asexual at all, just a virgin for God, for what that meant when she was alive. And she became the third instance of what I have thought that it was true love. She was the first who touched on The Princess Bride rather than Romeo and Juliet (which is death, by the way). And which there was when I shared a simple moment with her, just talking, and that surpassed all the other moments of my life as THE BEST THERE EVER WAS. Wuv, twoo wuv…

> From this.

You can sort of hear the Lord complaining sometimes, like, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say?” And this little note is especially for those who point their finger, and wag their heads (figuratively — I can’t imagine anyone literally wagging his head in this day and age). Did he ever tell us to get in anybody else’s business? Did he tell us to become as judgemental as we possibly could? I think I might guess that at this point, it would behoove us to ask what exactly he said for us to do. Ahem. Sure, there are moral proscriptions, some things he told us not to pursue, but when he was asked to summarize his entire teaching, he boiled it down to two things: love, and love. #1: Love God, and #2: Love one another. You were expecting…?

That’s love, people. There in no way is any instruction to hate anyone. Even the haters — love even them. For God lets the sun shine on both the wicked and the just, both alike, and we must aspire to become perfect, like Him. Do you know what perfect is? It’s love. Only love. Like that idea that the ancients had, about gods being the embodiments of ideals, like beauty or war. What if it’s true, but there’s only one thing, and it’s love, baby? Like Einstein said, let us not get bogged down in this phenomenon, or that — let us know the mind of God. Yes, that would be love. Do I need to say it again? Cause if it takes you getting sick of hearing it to stick, I’m up for that. Love, love, love… love is all you need.

> From this.

You know, every major religion has at the root the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is a fact, backed by research. Do a little googling and you can find this to be so. It is not to say one religion is pretty much like another, but it is a key that many have found, just that one thing. I am, however, contractually bound to tell you that Christianity is the “correct” religion. Yes, I’m going to push my own religion on you to prove I’m just like the rest of them. Or maybe not? Because I have found two curious items that I don’t know why they’re not mentioned more in defending our particular faith.

Firstly, in Judaism, God says to Moses that His name is “I AM” — this is a brilliant conceit: no other god is named so, no other god is, this is saying. And no other god can have that name. By saying His name is “I AM”, He is saying that God exists, I’m Him, and there is no other God. Period. And beyond that, the name Immanuel means, “God with us”, which is saying that Jesus Christ, who has this name, is literally God in the form of a man. That is what being the Son of God means. So the messiah, which is what “Christ” means, must be the literal Son of God, which is what Christians believe him to be, with us on earth. The immanent God.

If you want to go further than that, we can see that from the behavior of the Son, since he shares the same nature as the Father, we may conclude that God is good, that God is love. For this is what the Son shows himself to be. He did not garner victory over evil by strength of might, friends. What would that have proven? He won by being the servant of all, put to death in an unjust world, giving his very life to bring salvation to the world, submitting to the will of God, whatever that might mean. The sign of Jonah, three days in the belly below. To overcome the world, to overcome death itself, for this is the Son of God: whose mystery is deeper than death. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

> From this.

Ultimately, your destiny is squarely in your hands. Once the Lord said to me a fascinating outlook, “What’s unfair about life is that it is fair.” This gave me tingles, and I thought it was the meaning of life, right there. (Turns out I didn’t understand the question.) True, we do not get put on earth with exactly the same advantages as everyone else: some people have it easier, no doubt about that. Those who do have it easier will be the first to tell you that things are fair, if you factor everything into account. No. What the Lord was talking about was that everyone has the freedom to choose what one does with what is given. Whatever comes, it is up to you how you deal with it.

What a lot of people seem to be lacking is a simple attitude adjustment — right there, that can do wonders. Decide that you will not pass up the next opportunity that comes up: to do right, to do better, to do good. Not to waste whatever talent you may have in making excuses instead. Do you actually have any idea what it could possibly mean, to do your best? I would hope that the answer is no, unless you have done already some monumentally paradigm shifting feat in your life. Because that’s what it means to do your best. Nobody is lacking that opportunity. Do something that will change, if not the world, then the whole of your life. Not all the time, but maybe at least once in the time you’re given. And then, welcome to the team. We have a lot of work to do.

> From this, and this.

The women I’ve had relationships with… I’m definitely a legend in my own mind. (Only in my mind, though. Reality was always tougher.) For one, I was pursued and did myself pursue Rosanna Arquette for the longest time. What did Eris’ Apple of Discord say? “For the prettiest”? Forsooth, that would be her, at least, circa 1987 or so. She came into the picture when the visions started, early on, in 1991. When I initially had thought I was talking to the same spirits of the people I saw as cartoons, as to be able to transmit and receive messages to their current earthbound forms, I ended up going to New York City a couple times to meet up with her because she said that she’d be there. Of course, those were just half baked, pipe dream journeys, but they were sort of fun, anyway.

I think she had that cultural issue that kept her from being attracted to asians, so it was basically doomed from any start, right there. But at the time, I really believed that it was true love, and that we were bound together in a strange method. There was this one time that someone came closest to breaking us up: I was involved in some drama with her on the side: and that was Audrey Hepburn. But I remember, I couldn’t help introducing her as, “cultural icon”, so that wasn’t going to work, either. Years went on, and the woman in my head became a woman who was real, and she was a hottie, too; then she broke up with me, then we got back together, then not, but still present in my fantasy world, eventually to find out that on earth she’d married and had a baby. C’est la vie. Then I had a rebound relationship, in my mind, with a Russian model I knew, and then… and then… I was found. That was Joan of Arc. Quite a journey. Such is love, no?

I guess I should talk about the fifth member of my inner cabal, too. I have had a friendship with Albert Einstein that has seen it all. It was known to go through a few troubles, mostly me being the one doing someone wrong — but not always. He was one of my closest friends, and though I spent probably the most time with him that any of my other 4 closest, I always saw him most as a colleague, a kindred spirit in science. He had the most input when I was working on my artificial intelligence. And metaphysics: I actually saw the black dot when we were discussing information and structure as what makes up the stuff of the cosmos. (I corrected him on a point there, whereupon the black dot popped up. I don’t think he ever forgave me for one-upping him there. Heh.)

Some people it was said thought of Albert as if he were not quite of this earth. That he seemed almost alien. Myself, I saw him quite differently: the most human human being that I’d ever met. And I mean human in the noblest of the meaning. (Why exactly do I have to say that? Are we really that bad, prototypically?) And you know, I loved him so much that I found a way to convert him to Christianity, just in case… but the Lord sort of made fun of me because I did: saying of him, “You didn’t think we saved Einstein?” Sort of an incredulous tone, yiddish accent. The implications, though, of that statement! You know what it means, right? Basically, He’s saying, “We’re going to save whomever we want to save.” Whatever, to your ideas that He must follow the letter of salvation’s law! What do you poor relations know about love?

> From this.

I had once, while I was in that room at that hospital, previously mentioned, a vision of Satan being fought at the cross. That day was quite momentous in ways more than one. I felt the special circumstance that that was, the Holy Spirit strong in the air — it was like once before that were applied to my person, years, decades before, that previous time looking like it were purposed for my understanding when such an event were occurring. It was just before, in that hospital, where I had been told that Judas had volunteered, though the exact wording was different than that, and I don’t remember what it was.

I met Judas for the first time there in that room at the hospital, and he seemed a very capable saint. What I originally was allowed to believe about that statement, “Judas volunteered”, was that it meant a horror beyond horrors. That he was heading into a vial where there would be no God, and that he were going to be without salvation, not even the mercy of a well-formed Hell. Something worse. These misunderstandings I would later see as being quite useful, like the “wrong” notes in jazz. I saw him in a confab with the higher-ups, I presume that Christ was there: this was when he was being told to betray our Lord. He would later have a hard time recalling this, after Satan entered his mind, when the actual betrayal happened.

And while I thought that was what he was heading into Cthulhu type eternal horror, he got ready to enter this vial. I found out later was like unto armor to protect him from Satan during the betrayal. Must have been very intense, the series of events of the betrayal. But before he went, he gave me something to give John the Baptist (which I don’t remember exactly what it was, it had something to do with emeralds), and he told me what sins I was to avoid further in my life. (I have kept to those things.) Then I saw his vial, then snap! He was gone, sealed therein. I felt something like desolation, for a fallen comrade, not understanding what was going on, like a twin in the womb when the other is born and gone out into the world. I was told he was smiling when he entered.

> From this.

In Tolkien’s Ainulindalë, in the creation of the world, Melkor introduces his own themes into the music primordial. It was therefore said that none of everything that existed on Middle Earth was of the exact form that was originally intended by the voices of the Ainur, the heavenly beings, and that of Ilúvatar, who was God. I remember reading this and thought it was quite the interesting notion, which would explain much about the world at large: for there is much beauty, but which is much mixed with the ugly. I dismissed that notion, though, off hand. Surely Satan could not have had his hands that deep in the batter?

But then there was this one time, something I heard — almost overheard, almost an aside — that pain was not created by the God who is love. It was, rather, Lucifer’s idea. Can I truly believe this? Because if this is THE WAY THINGS REALLY ARE, holy guacamole how much would suddenly come into focus why things are the way things are. Pain was not invented by God, and if the myths are true, neither is sin, nor death. Was this what was the War in Heaven? To determine what and how things would be in the world, the universe, all creation? This was what we were fighting for? When Satan was cast into the world, this was when he was no longer at his helm at the root controls of existence. These were the stakes. Glad I didn’t know this much at the time. That was mercy.

The idea validates the notion of a world where we basically live by the rules made by the Devil. This was what was meant by the fact of Satan being Prince of said world, for this was the place where his hand was upon anything that is. I remember when I first had that thought, that the world was one which was that unfair — for just that reason — and upon the idea coming to the fore in my sulking, we must live by the Devil’s rules, I heard the Lord say, “Welcome to life.” This was the world where God Himself was put to death after a life of HAVING DONE NOTHING WRONG. Where the best of us were tortured, and hanged, or worse, FOR BELIEVING; and it was easier to do the wrong thing than the right, to hate than love, to ignore than to care. And when we say things were meant to be, it is more often than not by how well we pick up the pieces. Welcome to life.