The Last Rational Man Page 2

Heaven, is to become close to God, to have your own personal spirit join with his Spirit. It is clear that the dead can reach a much higher spiritual level than the live do.

  “In our case, Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) is already dead, even though he is still on Earth, and has already achieved a union with God.”

  “Ah. So Timothy Adams is not dead in the physical sense. You are saying that he is dead in a spiritual sense, and by that you mean that he has achieved a high level of spirituality.”

  “No. You are close, but you refuse to accept the truth. It is not ‘as if’ he is dead. He is in fact dead. Dead as a doorknob, kicked the bucket, went on to meet his maker, etc. It is just that to our mortal eyes he appears to be alive.”

  “This is a bit hard to accept.”

  “Now you are showing your bias against a new religion. Millions believe that God walked on Earth in the form of a man, and it does not strike you as strange. You may even understand why in some religions worshippers believe their leader is still alive, even though they themselves buried him years ago. So what is so difficult about this?”

  Well, he had a point, though one could easily make the case that he had merely demonstrated the lunacy of other religions, rather than the sanity of his own. As usual, though, I did not really need to know more. I was not a candidate for conversion, nor was I going to convince this gentleman that his beliefs were the bunch of nonsense that they obviously were.

  “So, the bottom line is that your Messiah, Timothy Adams, is dead. He had a revelation in which his status as a dead Messiah was revealed to him on a tablet made of ice, which only he has ever seen.”

  “Yes. You see, it is really very straightforward, once you spend the effort to understand.”

  The conversation had saved me some trouble. I felt that there was no need to visit all of the religions in the world. The irrationality of this one, as my host had inadvertently pointed out, could be easily projected on most other religions. They would all fall like houses of cards when the time came. Yet there was one more on my list.

  …….

  He must have seen the shock on my face.

  “Yes, I know it’s a little disturbing. It is sometimes best to deal with a new concept directly, without beating around the bush. You’ll get over your shock, and learn to understand our beliefs. Most of our converts had the same reaction as you. In fact, some of our most enthusiastic members actually came up to my office and vomited when they first visited. It is not an easy thing to accept, and yet, you will see that it is the only possible way, the only true way.”

  His office looked normal in every respect. He sat behind a maple veneer desk, which looked like it had been ordered on-line from Office Depot. The usual mass-produced black office accessories were on the desk: stapler, hole-puncher and tape dispenser. He sat in a light swivel armchair, upholstered in blue.

  I avoided looking at the wall to my left, and inspected the prints on the wall behind him. They were Norman Rockwell style prints, also probably ordered off some Internet site. The only expression of his religious beliefs was the organization’s symbol, two linked rings, which I had noticed on the wall opposite his desk when I first came in.

  I had gone up a flight of stairs to reach his office, which was perched above the main hall of the chapel, if one could call it that. One wall of the office was glass, and the overall effect was that of a supervisor’s office overlooking a factory floor.

  I felt my eyes drawn to the glass wall against my own will. I glanced down at the chapel, and quickly looked back at my host.

  “Well, how would you describe what you see down there?”

  “Describe? You are used to this, but it is difficult for me to talk about it. Maybe members of your faith are used to this, but…”

  “Well, just say it. Break the ice. You can use naughty words if you like.”

  “Well, your congregants are, they seem to be, well, sex. They are having sex, as a group, in the chapel. I guess it could be called an orgy.”

  “Very good! Precise, and to the point. I have a feeling that you will be joining us soon, maybe even today.”

  “But I don’t understand at all. What are they doing? I mean, why are they doing this? Did I come for the equivalent of the Church picnic?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Well then, am I supposed to believe that this is actually a religious rite?”

  My host beamed at me.

  “Yes, that is it exactly. It is a religious rite. In fact, it is The religious rite, the center of our beliefs and worship.”

  “You must realize that it looks rather odd to the outsider.”

  “Of course it does. But once I explain the inner meaning to you, I think you will change your viewpoint. Perhaps you will no longer view it from the outside. But first, before I can explain the ultimate purpose of all this, you must tell me more about what you see.”

  I got up, and went to the window, against my better instincts.

  The chapel was a large room, almost completely empty. The church’s symbol was painted on one wall, and large sodium lamps lit the room from a high ceiling. The room resembled nothing more than a high school gym that had been converted into a place of worship. There were even exercise mats on the floor, the kind you use for practicing tumbling. The only thing was, they weren’t being used for tumbling.

  There were about fifty couples on the mats, all engaged in what looked like sexual intercourse. I watched for a few minutes. The scene was very odd. All of the worshippers were in exactly the same position, and they all moved together, synchronized by the beat of a large drum that was placed in the middle of the room. After about two minutes, the man beating the drum paused, and hit a gong. The worshippers all got up, changed partners, and continued in a new position, to the renewed beat of the drum.

  The worshippers came in different shapes, sizes and colors. There were teenagers there, as well as a few people who were certainly in their seventies, if not older. The switch in partners took place in a complex pattern that reminded me of the way you rotate tires on a car. There seemed to be no sense at all in who ended up with whom. There were tremendous mismatches of size and age, but no one seemed to be concerned.

  There was something very wrong with it all. It didn’t really look like lovemaking, or even sex, at least in any normal use of the term. It was missing a critical ingredient. Nobody seemed to be having a good time. Not a single one of them was enjoying themselves.

  My host pointed to a loudspeaker on the wall, and motioned me to switch it on.

  At first all that I could hear was the drum beating out the rhythm of their motion. But then I realized that there was an underlying rustling noise. I concentrated, trying to place the sound. It took a minute before I realized that I was hearing the congregants whispering their prayers.

  “What are they saying?”

  “It is our central prayer. It is recited in Aramaic, but I can provide you with a loose translation: ‘to join the Lord together with his Presence.’ It is a statement of intent.”

  “Why in Aramaic?”

  “It is critical that all the churches across the world use the same exact formula. You will understand this better once you have joined the church, and you can study the holy texts. One fact that will help you understand a small part of this right now is that the ‘Lord,’ in Aramaic, is male, while the term for ‘Presence’ is female.”

  I turned my attention back to the window.

  “They do not seem to be enjoying themselves.”

  “Enjoyment is not part of this at all, if they enjoyed it, it would ruin everything.”

  My host seemed to be sane. He was speaking in logical terms, and was very calm and pleasant. Still, their beliefs were strange, and gave me some hope.

  “In order to understand our practices, you have to look beyond the ritual itself, and understand the inner structure of the world. I use the term ‘world’ loosely, meaning the universe, all of creation.

  After the
Creation, the world was at peace. This was the period echoed in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. The Creator was one, the world was one, and there was complete harmony among all. Even Adam and Eve, though they were two, were united in a way that is hard for us to comprehend today. The Bible tells us that they became ‘one flesh.’ Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, so in an inner sense, they were in fact one person.

  This all fell apart when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Yes, the apple that Eve induced Adam to eat. It is very convenient to blame the snake for the story, but the fault must have existed, at least in potential, in Adam and Eve themselves. The truth is even worse. They were created in the image of God, so the fault in some sense was in God.”

  “You blame God for the Fall?”

  “No, not exactly. I didn’t mean blame, I meant fault, as in San Andreas, an invisible crack that can have disastrous consequences.

  “In any case, the world split. Both the physical world, in which we live, and the metaphysical level in which the creator exists. Now the world is populated by men and women, who live separate lives and never fully join together, physically or spiritually. This situation has been exacerbated in recent years by the rise of homosexuality, which has driven men and women off into even more separate worlds.

  “The situation that I have described to you is only a small part of the problem. The world we live in is a reflection of the higher level of existence, the sphere of God’s holy existence.