The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century Page 11

  “Then they are energy. Do you agree?”

  “Makes sense to me,” Paul said.

  “And all of this around us,” she waved at the tunnels, the packing-crate homes, the fire, the people seated in the circle, “is matter, which is also made up of energy, just like your thoughts.”

  “Yes. It all began as energy, then became hydrogen, then matter, then, eventually, this.”

  “And thought is a form of energy.”

  “Right.”

  “And belief?”

  “Isn’t that thought? I mean, you have to think that you believe.”

  Salome shook her head. “No. I’d put belief into a category like love. It’s qualitatively different than thinking. You can think about belief, but to believe is not to think. It is to believe. Do you understand?”

  “Like I can’t think love, I can just love?”

  “Right.”

  “Ok, I’m with you. Belief and love are both forms of energy that can run through my brain and body, just like thinking, but they’re not thinking. They’re different from thinking.”

  “Right. Just like your breath coming out of your mouth is air, and the room is filled with air, but the breath coming out of your mouth can bend over the leaf you hold by its stem. But the air in the room isn’t bending the leaf, because it’s not being moved by the energy of your lungs and diaphragm. So your brain can carry the energy of thinking, or the energy of love, or the energy of belief, but they’re different.”

  “Right.”

  She scooted forward to the edge of her lawn-chair and rested her elbows on her knees. “Actually, thinking pretty much resides in your brain, whereas belief and love encompass your entire nervous system. You feel them in your heart, your stomach, and your muscles. All through your body. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Paul, thinking about Susan and feeling his stomach twist. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “So love, that energy we call love, that is the connection you have to God. If you’ve absorbed the Wisdom teachings you’ve already been given, you understand that. Right?”

  “Yes, I figured that out last night.”

  “Ok, here’s an eternal truth: ‘With faith, all things are possible.’ Belief is the energy that allows you to manipulate other forms of energy. Even those forms of energy which have congealed into what we call matter.”

  “If you had faith you could say to that mountain, ‘move over there,’ and it would move,” Paul said, remembering the teaching of Jesus from church. He wrote down With faith, all things are possible in his notepad, and put it back in his shirt pocket.

  “Exactly,” Salome said. “Faith and belief mean the same thing, in this context. If you have faith, you can move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead, and the whole shootin’ match.”

  Paul thought back to a discussion in a philosophy class he’d taken in college about something similar from the end of the eighteenth century. “I remember,’’ he said, “a debate about something like this. Wasn’t there a British mathematician who wrote that reality was all energy, and Samuel Johnson got quite upset about it?”

  Salome held out her hands. “You gone beyond me.”

  She glanced at Joshua, who said, “It was George Berkeley, and he was an Anglican bishop and mathematician. They named Berkeley, California after him. He was a friend of Halley and Newton. He suggested that all physical matter was just an idea in our minds. He said, ‘esse is percipi’, or, ‘to be is to be perceived.’ He was close, but he got stuck thinking that the work of the thinking mind was the same as all other forms of consciousness, and that we’re the only ones the universe cares about. It was essentially the old, ‘If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?’ argument. It assumes the primacy of humans, which is incredibly arrogant, like the Greek notion that if humans vanished, the entire universe would vanish. And so Samuel Johnson challenged Berkeley by kicking a stone hard enough to hurt his own toe, shouting, ‘I refute it thus!”’

  “So if we vanished, the universe would continue?”

  “It was sure here before we came along,” Joshua said.

  Paul laughed. “Yeah. Got it. So with the power of my mind I can create miracles?”

  “Not the power of your mind,” interjected Salome. “A power of your being, your soul. Miracles are among the many things your soul can do, but just one of them. This isn’t about thinking or understanding or knowledge, which are all other powers, and are pretty much limited to your mind. It’s about belief, or faith, which involve your mind, your heart, your entire being. You can’t do miracles with thinking, but you can with believing.”

  Paul looked at Salome, at her soft brown face, her ragged clothes, and said, “Can you do miracles?”

  She shrugged. “I’m here. I consider that a miracle.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Frankly, I’ve never tried. At least the way you mean. Been no need. But I have faith that it’s within my ability.”

  “How’d you come to be here?”

  She scratched the side of her face, and brushed her hair back. It was thick and curly, what was called an “Afro” back in the 1960’s. “I grew up in a middle-class home in Atlanta. Lot of middle-class black folks down there, people go to good schools, make a good living, talk like white folks.” A mischievous grin crossed her face. “’Course, I kin talk jive, too.”

  “You’re bilingual,” Paul said.

  She laughed. “That’s truer than you realize. America has become many different nations, maybe always was.”

  Paul nodded. “So you came here from Atlanta?”

  “Yeah, I came to the Big Apple. Right after I graduated from college, got my degree from Morehouse in marketing and communications, minored in philosophy. And thought I’d come up here where the big money was, good jobs with the big ad agencies, you know the drill. But what I found instead was crack cocaine. Within a year I went HIV positive, then lost my place and was living on the streets, tried the shelters but they’re a hellhole, and ended up here. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “You have AIDS?” Paul said, feeling a deep sadness at Salome’s story.

  “No, just the virus.”

  “But it’ll come?”

  “If I believe it will.”

  “This is sounding an awful lot like Christian Science.”

  “Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam in general, actually,” Salome said. “Or haven’t you read the Bible?”

  “But I can still kick a rock and hurt my toe.”

  “And I can still move a mountain.”

  “Or heal yourself of AIDS?”

  “That will be an interesting test, won’t it,” she said. “I guess there’s part of me that figures if I can’t, then that’s life. There’s the paradox of doing your best and still accepting whatever you’re given, you know? If you live in love with God at all times, it doesn’t matter whether you’re living or dying, because it’s all God. I will die, you know. So will you. Nothing is going to stop that. The question is whether you’ll wait until you’re dying to fall in love with God, to practice God’s presence every moment of your life, or whether you’ll do it now, right this very minute. I choose to do it now, so the when of my death doesn’t matter a whole lot to me, frankly. In a way, I’m looking forward to it, to the adventure. And I don’t mean that in any morbid or suicidal sort of way. I just know it’s coming, and I’m ready.”

  “You’re ready to die?”

  She smiled and looked around the circle, then back at Paul. “Paul, can you honestly say that today would be a good day for you to die?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She pointed to her face. “I may look African, but I’m part Indian, too. Many of my people are. Do you know the story of what Crazy Horse said when Custer attacked the Sioux at Little Big Horn?”

  “No,” Paul said.

  “Crazy Horse was a man of peace. But Custer had split his army, and part of it he s
ent in to murder the women and children in the Hunkpapa camp, the southernmost of the Sioux villages near Little Big Horn, to try to frighten and demoralize the warriors. And so Crazy Horse said to his men, ‘Corne on, Lakotas! Today is a good day to die!’ And they charged forth, fully knowing that they would probably die, as the Indians almost always did when they confronted the US Army. So when I first leaned that story, I asked myself, ‘Is today a good day to die?’ and I have to say that the answer was, ‘No.’ I had too much unfinished business. Stuff with family, stuff with friends, stuff with God. You know?”

  “Yes,” Paul said. “Today is not a good day for me to die.”

  “But it will happen,” Salome said. “Someday. And that day won’t be any better, unless you decide to make today a good day to die. And then every day is a day that you’re both in and out of this world. That’s when you are born again.”

  “Born again?” Paul said. “I never understood that, but this way it makes sense.”

  “When you wake up from the dream of our culture and see the world, the creation, all life as it really is, then you are born into spirit and all things become new,” Salome said.

  “I’ve gotta write that down,” Paul said, and pulled out his notepad, and wrote, When today is a good day to die because I’m right with all things and everybody and feel the love of the Creator of the Universe all the time, and I’ve woken up from the greedy dream of our predatory culture, then I’m born again. He read what he wrote to Salome and said, “Does that capture what we’ve been talking about?”

  She smiled. “Very eloquently.”

  Paul looked at her smile–her beautiful smile–and felt a pang at the possibility of her death. “But why would you surrender to AIDS?” he said. “Why not create a miracle?”

  She shrugged. “If it’s the way it’s supposed to be, I’ll do it. Or maybe I’ll pass into another consciousness. Or maybe Joshua will heal me. It doesn’t much matter. To day is a good day to die, and so will be tomorrow.”

  “No, you should live,” Paul said, realizing as he said it that he didn’t want Salome to die because he would miss her, not because he feared death may be a bad thing for her. But, still, Joshua could do miracles. “Why don’t you ask Joshua to get rid of the HIV?”

  “I’m living in the hands of God. In the heart and soul of The Creator of the Universe. So what Joshua does or doesn’t do isn’t all that important. All the people Jesus and his disciples healed eventually died anyway. I think he did it more for the teaching, you know? Like with Mark here.”

  “But Joshua can heal? That was real?”

  “Yeah. They say he was born knowing how.”

  Paul turned to Joshua. “Can you tell me the story?”

  Juan let out a loud breath, lifted himself off his chair and, on one knee, stirred the curry pot on the grate.

  Joshua said, “Wouldn’t you rather continue in your training in the Wisdom School?”

  “And it’s getting close to time for lunch,” Juan added.

  Chapter Nine

  The Manmade Demiurge

  “I’m also curious about you,” Paul said to Joshua. “Are you an angel or a ghost?”

  “I told you before that I am not. I was born of woman, just like you.”

  “But you’re doing miracles, like you’re some kind of god.”

  “Is it not written in the book of Psalms, ’I said, “Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most High”’?”

  “I don’t know. Is it?”

  “Yes,” Joshua said. “And you’ll hear Jesus say it in the Gospel of John, too.”

  “So who are the gods? Us?”

  “Now you come close to one of the greatest Mysteries,” Joshua said. “Some say that there is only one god in all the universe, and we are just wretched, sinful lumps of flesh. Others who say that there is no supernatural god, but that the gods are the human race.”

  “Who says that?”

  “Well, first off, it’s a popular notion among some of your recent religions. More importantly, though, it’s a basic tenant, albeit unspoken, of your modern culture. Who but a god would have the temerity, or assume for himself the capacity to destroy the planet?”

  Paul said, “I think people just think they’re given that right by the One God.”

  “That’s what they say. But it’s not how they act. Do you really think that anybody who would genetically alter plants, for example, purely for the sake of making a corporation more profitable, does not believe himself to be a god?”

  “I guess it depends on how you define the word ‘god.’”

  “How about, ‘Gods are those who can do anything they want without fear of consequences’?”

  “Then we have a lot of gods running around loose. But I thought gods caused storms and struck people down dead and helped people kill their enemies.”

  “Then technology is your god. You can rain fire from the sky on your enemies, alter the course of mighty rivers, tear down mountains.”

  “Okay, well that’s all in the world when we’re alive,” Paul said, thinking of the street preacher. “But what about a definition that says, ‘God is the one who decides where you go and what you do after you die’?”

  Joshua shook his head, as if he were sad. “Do you realize what a pathetic statement that is?”

  “Sounds like that god has a lot of power to me.”

  “But it also means, if that’s the only place you’re going to put your god, that you’ve completely stripped him from the world of the living. You’ve pushed him out, or killed him off, or replaced him with gods you call science or technology or humans.”

  “I’d never thought of it that way.” Paul paused for a moment, reviewing his times in church. “But what about the people who pray for things they want? They pray that God will save their child or give them success in business or sports or whatever.”

  “Do you really think the Creator of the Universe is going to throw a basketball game toward the team that prays the hardest?”

  “They sure seem to think that,” Paul said. “Before the game, they’re all praying up a storm.”

  “ ‘And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the churches and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by other people. Verily I say unto you, “They have their reward.” ’ ”

  “That’s from the Sermon on the Mount.”

  “Yes.”

  “In other words, public prayer is just a show of piety. God isn’t listening. Whether it’s before a basketball game or grace at dinner or a preacher in a church. Don’t pray out loud if you’re in public. Is that what you mean?”

  “Most often. Jesus did pray in public once, with his disciples, just before his crucifixion. But in that prayer, he said, ‘and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.’ In other words, there are times when it’s appropriate to pray in public, but you must know that your prayers then are for the benefit of the people with you, or for you, but they are not the most direct possible connection to your Creator. That is done in private.”

  “So how should people pray? What should we say?”

  “The best prayer is, ‘Thy will be done.’ Said in secret, because you know God and love God and trust God.”

  “And who is the God who hears that?”

  “That brings us back to the earlier point. The fundamentalists say that humanity is sinful and not at all divine. God is entirely out there and,” he pointed to his chest, “not at all in here. Some of the New-Agers, on the other hand, say that God is entirely in here and not out there at all. In other words, we are gods. Those are the two extremes of the argument, and both break down when you examine them carefully.”

  “So who or what or where is God?”

  Joshua stood up. “You must know, you must see, you must hear this truth: any attempt to envision a sentient god will only create an anthropomorphic projection, a man-like god. In other words, The Creator of the Un
iverse is greater than any human can imagine or describe.”

  “What does ‘anthropomorphic’ mean?”

  Salome leaned forward. “It’s like when people think that their dog understands everything they say. They’re projecting human qualities into something that’s not human. To anthropomorphize a god is to do the same thing.”

  Paul said, “So when we try to imagine who or what a god is like, we use ourselves as the template, just like when the old lady downstairs has long conversations with the pigeons she’s feeding and thinks they understand her?”

  “Yes,” Joshua said. “When people try to define a god, they usually do it so they can have that god do, say, or take credit for something which will benefit them. And so they create a man-like god.”

  “And, presumably one who is a member of their particular congregation,” Paul said, trying to lighten the conversation. He took his notepad out and jotted down, The Creator of the Universe is greater than any human can imagine or describe.

  “This is not a joke,” Joshua said. “The Creator of the Universe does not say, ‘I think I’ll kill this child with a cyclone, and save this woman with a miraculous cure of her cancer.’ The Creator of the Universe doesn’t intentionally condemn these people to starve, and bless these others over here with incredible riches or victory in battle.”

  “Where, then, did that idea come from?” Paul said.

  “Most recently, from the Romans via the Greeks,” Joshua said, “although several other city/state cultures came up with similar ideas. The question the Greeks asked themselves three thousand or more years ago was, ‘Why is there suffering in the world?’ They couldn’t explain why they had accidents, disease, defeats in war, earthquakes, floods, crop failures, and the whole thing. At least with natural phenomena like volcanoes erupting, they were pretty sure that people weren’t doing it, so they concluded it must be the gods.”

  “Some cultures think people cause those things?” Paul said.

  “Oh, sure,” Joshua said. “It’s the basis of the idea that people can cast evil eyes or throw curses, that sort of thing. But the Greeks were pretty sure that it was the gods. One story was that a lot of what we saw was a spillover from battles between the gods. They’d get in fights with each other, and the result would be an earthquake. The old ‘when elephants fight, the mice get trampled’ theory. But most Greeks didn’t really believe that. They believed, instead, that there were really two ‘creator’ gods. One was the Creator of the Universe, who was remote and inaccessible. He produced some supernatural beings, called Aeons, one of whom was a virgin named Sophia. She, in turn, gave birth to a twisted god, which was called the Demiurge. The Demiurge was, essentially, psychotic. Nuts. He was a sadistic crazy. But because he was a god, he had the power to create, so he created this world, just to populate it with us, so he could then torture us. This is how the Greeks and Romans explained the fact that life often includes suffering.”