Chapter 09: The Interview with God

 

When I returned home, I was given a new assignment. Most of the stories written so far were about the individuals who were reborn. No one had sought out the individual who was responsible for this.

This was my new assignment.

The first problem I had was to find the being that called itself God, and no one knew where to find him. We knew it for its thoughts, and we knew that it had no form, so I reached out with my mind and called on God.

“My name is Mys.” I said, “I am a reporter, and I feel that the life of the Mega-Universe is interested in what has occurred and the life that could cause this. I would like to know where I can meet with you so we can discuss what has happened and what will happen.”

“I have no form.” God said, ”I can meet you anywhere, even here and now.” Suddenly, I felt a new presence very close. I could not see this being, but I felt its presence and knew it was near to me.

I started by asking, “What is your name?”

“I call myself God.” God replied, “I am the thought, which is to all beings, an original creator.”

“How did you come into existence?” I asked. “You say that you created everything. Who created you?”

His answer was, "That is an interesting question, but I have no idea where I came from.  My origins are as hidden in antiquity as is my original name. Before me, there was nothing.  I made everything except myself."

"Why have you appeared at this time?" I asked.

Once more, His answer filled my mind, "This is an interesting time in history.  When I created all that is, there was a plan, and now you are coming to the end of it.  For the first time, all the life of the Mega-Universe is capable of agreeing and acting as one.  Never before in the history of life has it been possible to agree fully. Even between the life on one planet, it has never been possible.  Now you have worked it out so that an entire universe can agree and live in harmony.  I am very proud of this.  The main goal throughout your evolution was to reach this point of perfection.  The plan is being completed by you and the life of your time."

"Why did you create us?  You were there, and you existed. Why make us?" I asked.

"When you were a sperm and an ovum, you needed to join.  When you were a child, you needed your mother.  When you reached adulthood, you needed your other half.  it is the same with me.  I felt tremendous loneliness.   You must understand, I am the only being of my kind that exists.  I searched all of the nothingness to find another like me, and there was none.  I was dying of loneliness, nearly to the point of willing myself into nothing rather than continuing on alone.  I felt that I should try one last experiment before I killed myself." He said. Then he continued, "I made the Mega-Universe and set on it the billions of planets, billions of life forms.  They are the ones alive today."

"You created all sorts of life forms," I thought, "but I do not know of any other gods."

"That was the difficulty," He said, "I am enjoying the fact that I have other life forms that I can communicate with.  Before this point, there was nothing.  Now there are other life forms.  I can speak to them and relate to them in small ways, but I  could not make another me.  If I did, it would be exactly the same as me and not someone who could fill my loneliness, but a reflection.  Some day, I hope this Mega-Universe may, in some way, bring about the creation of another being like myself."

When He had finished, I asked, "You are the creator.  What are your plans for the near future?"

He said, "I have no plans for the future.  I intend to allow the life forms of the Mega-Universe to continue in the way they have been.  I believe just as much as you do in the freedom that you have created and in the peace that is here and now.  I do not wish to be a Lord and Father.  I do not want to control you, because that would make you my minions instead of my companions.  It would separate you from me even more than we are, and that is one thing I do not want."

Quietly, I asked, "What would you like to see happen?"

I felt his presence nearer to me than ever before as He said, "I would like to see the life forms that I have brought back fully adopted into your culture.  I would like to see the return of the life that traveled on to their own heaven.  If you have noticed what has been happening, most of them have returned after finding that heaven was what they thought it would be, and it was boring."

He went on, "I am looking forward to the development of your children, my grandchildren.  Your technology remains, and I want to watch it grow.  I have to find some place in the Mega-Universe to use my power in a special way.  I am still looking.  I basically have been hiding from you up to this point."

Surprised, I asked, "Why have you been hiding?"

"The main reason," He explained, "was then when I set life in motion, I knew the only way that it could reach adulthood was to allow it to continue on its journey without interference from me."

Then I asked, "Do you mean that all the beings through history who called themselves gods or your messengers were frauds?"

"No," he said, "some of them did give my message. But I used them only to guide the picture.  The major plan had to be run by you.  I could not interfere, or I would simply have created robots. By leaving you alone and just guiding you, I was able to give you the room you needed to become adults that I could be proud of.  I have allowed you to grow as one would let a child grow, educating you slightly on some planets and more on others. I watched you grow throughout your early life and let you grow on your own.  Today, you have nearly reached adulthood.  You still have a way to go, but you are close.  At this point, you can now look at your parents as friends. Now, we can continue together in a love that has never been known before!"

Again, I questioned him, "Was there ever a time when you thought that this would never happen?"

"Yes, for most worlds there were times."  I could feel the warmth of His smile. "Most of life's first thought was to destroy itself.  But eventually, all made it through.  I watched this and wondered if I had made a mistake in allowing them to have the tools to create terrible weapons.  I realized that each individual must decide for themselves whether to continue or to destroy each other.  No one can ban the cannonballs from flying; they must be stopped by the person firing the gun.  Love must conquer all."

"In many of the old religions," I said, "they believed that their life forms were made to look like you, but you have no form.  How do you explain this?"

"In some cases," He said, "It is just vanity of the life form.  In other cases, they were able to tell that, like them, I too was lonely, and they felt that this made us alike, which it does.  One of the few things that all life shares is the ability to be alone and know it."

I said, "You said that you were alone when you discovered yourself.  If you were alone, how did you know that you wanted someone like yourself?"

"To begin with," he answered, "I did not know.  All that I knew was that I needed something that rested in the fabric of my mind, but now, I know I have it right."

My thoughts reached out again, "Today, those of us who live in the Mega-Universe just before the return of the dead heard from those who were dead of a thing called evil.  Why did you create that?"

"If you had spoken to those who say they know of evil," He said, "they all seem to know what that evil was, but even today, I do not see it.  Let me tell you a story.  I was recently involved with three people, each of whom thought that the greatest evil in the Mega-Universe had occurred to them.  The first was a woman named Mary."

"My God," said Mary, “I gave you my son, how could you let this evil happen and take his life.  He loved you more than any man I have ever known, and you let him die.  You and that miserable friend of his, and that poor excuse for the law that he trusted.  All of you killed him!  How could he have trusted that fellow?  How could I have trusted him?  At first, I could not believe that my son's friend would turn him in to be killed, but I found out.  He said that he loved my son, but how could he turn him in to be killed if he loved him?"

"And that governor," she continued, "he knew that my son did nothing for which he should be killed, but he killed him anyway.  All this he did in the name of order.  For the first time since the occupation, we had a democracy.  The mob voted and he gave in and killed my son."

The next person was the governor.  "My god Jupiter," the Governor said, "I should have listened to you when you tried to tell me not to kill him. You tried to stop me, but was not the evil really the job that had to be done?  I did my job.  The true evil was his mother and his friend.  How could someone who was a friend turn in a man to be killed?   What kind of a man could be so callous as to kill in that way?

"What of his mother?" the Governor asked, "It was her fault as well.  She let him dream when she knew the world.  She never trained him for it.  He believed that all men were good and she never showed him what life was really like.  He paid for it, but not only him, but I also paid.  He died, but I was hated by billions for thousands of years.  All because I had a job to do.  I had to keep the peace, and this one man was splitting his people in half.  Part of them loved him, and part of them hated him and wanted to kill him.  If the half that hated him went after the half that loved him, there would have been a war in the streets.  I could not have stopped such a crisis, so finally, I had to kill him."

"Both of these people," God said, "thought that this evil was caused by the other and by the friend of this man who died.  Neither of them could believe that the friend had saved them and all their race by finding the love within himself to let the one thing he loved most in the world die."

"My God," Judas cried, "how is Christ?"

"He is well," was the answer.

"I have heard that both Mary and Pontius blame me for Christ's death," he said. "No one ever found out how much I loved him.  They never knew how hard it was to turn him in, even though I knew what it meant to him, to you, and to all mankind.  I have often thought that Christ may have been the savior.  That was why I had to decide how we were to be saved.  In my sacrifice came the light that saved the world and condemned me to be hated for all time.  It seems that even now, in this place, I must be hated by those I saved."

"Mary hates me," Judas cried in anguish, "because I killed her son, but he was risen from the grave.  Surely, I could not kill him unless it was what was supposed to have happened.  But she was poisoned by the disciples. They never understood.  All of them became saints, but it was I who made their cross.  Yes, even Peter, the rock of the church, lied when he said he carried Christ's cross.  It was I who walked with him to the hill while the others hid.  The hardest thing of all is that to this day, Mary still hates me.  She does not understand."

God asked him, "Would you like to talk to her and tell her what you told me?"

"Yes, my God," was his answer.

So he told her, and finally, she thanked him for what he had done.

"Why was there ever the concept of evil?" I asked God.

"The reason," God explained," was that when life was young, I felt that it needed to learn about good.  So, I have it something that it would call evil.  Although it was not due to the fact that from it always came good, and from good always came good."

"If you wanted life to learn," I asked, "why did you make death?"

He answered, "The reason is simple.  Death was the way you would learn to live and learn how great it was to live."

I asked another question, “In most religions, there is some form of prayer to you.  Do you pay attention to them?"

"Yes, I always listened, and when I could, I would act. But, you must understand that I had a plan, as I have told you, and I had to follow it for what are totally selfish reasons." God replied.

At this, I decided to end the interview.  I thanked the being that called itself God, and we went our own separate ways.

 


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