Chapter 23
The Deadly “Simple Life”
God explained, “Addictions consist of activities which are substitutes for problem-solving, which, the addicted have persuaded themselves in the face of contrary evidence, will satisfy them. And there is only ONE reason the addicted prefer these imaginary solutions to real solutions: they are simpler.”
“Remember: the essence of life is interaction with environment. A rock is not considered ‘alive’ because its reaction with its environment is low, occurring only at the chemical level; so that only its individual molecules may be said to interact, not the rock as a whole. A plant, by contrast, ‘lives’, we say: it is not only acted upon, but it acts upon its environment, as a whole unit: tear it in pieces and if parts of it live at all their interaction will be much reduced. By contrast the rock may be ground into powder without diminishing its interaction with its environment.
“Still more ‘alive’ are animals. They are very mobile, and very clever. They can build things out of dirt and plants. Through travel, construction, subterfuge, and cleverness they can breed, nourish themselves, and escape danger.
“But if you cut one even in half, both halves will die. (With the exception of a few of the simplest, such as worms.) Some parts of some animals, cut off, will grow back. But while any plant that survives injury can grow back any broken part, animals with few exceptions would be permanently crippled. Thus animals are more distinctly integral units of Life.
“Now consider the Soul! It attaches to a physical body locked in space and time, while the soul itself lives in dimensions beyond. On earth, the Soul does not merely interact with its body but completely steers it, (with the potential, through self discipline, of steering it well), and through it interacts with other souls and with animals, with almost unlimited potential for controlling the Earth! Meanwhile in the dimensions beyond, the same soul interacts with Me, with God Himself, not merely being acted upon by Me but moving Me to use my unlimited powers to alter any part of creation!
“Notice also that the Soul can recover from any injury, but even the slightest injury, not allowed to heal, will kill the entire soul. (Although its death is reversible, unlike that of plants and animals.)
“You can see that the desire for simplicity is the desire for death. The more complex the interactions with environment, the higher the life. The simpler, the lower. A completely ‘simple life’ is, by definition, complete death.”
God’s Solution to the Lure of Simplicity
VerseScout: Genesis 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
“I discovered that consciousness is not well served by floating back and forth lazily between oblivion and exhaustion. The problems to be worked out cannot be efficiently worked out when Consciousness returns to them only to relieve boredom. Mental efficiency occurs only when the Mind is focused on challenges near its capacity for concentration.
“But concentration at this level, as I said, can be tiring. To ask of Consciousness that it tire itself consistently, is to ask of it that to which it is not naturally inclined.
“But I discovered the force able to hold Consciousness near its capacity: that force is Love.
“There are two levels of Love. First, there is the ‘love’ of which even Beelzebub is capable: It is a natural quality of consciousness to love what itself creates. After a great investment of time, energy, and strength in any project, consciousness does not like to see its investment ruined because of mere errors. It is a natural quality of consciousness to love what is itself.
VerseScout: Matthew 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. 44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? 47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
“I foresaw that the creative abilities with which I created souls would become an incentive for souls to love what they create, to the extent they indeed exercise their creative ability. But I also understood this incentive would not be as strong in them as it is in Me. After all, all that exists proceeds from My Breath, so even with no higher ‘love’ than self interest, how can I not ‘love’ all? But that which men create can never be more than a tiny fraction of their environment.
“But the Love that Liberates is more than mere desire not to waste an investment. Love is the desire for results beyond the concerns of one’s own Consciousness.
“In fact if Love were mere concern for an investment, we would say the demons must love deeply, with their deep investment in lies!
“I became concerned with the challenges that teased Me. I became aware of a feeling of Love for, well not for problems exactly, but for Wisdom. I loved Wisdom, and wanted more of it.
VerseScout: (For reflections on whether God can become wiser, see Chapter 17 notes on Matthew 25:14-29.)
“I came to understand that this Love, itself, seemed as wonderful as the Wisdom which was its object. It was wonderful to have greater concerns than those of My own consciousness.
“Let me make this point more clearly, because this is a point which consciousness can barely grasp: it was WONDERFUL to care about something so much that I was willing to SUFFER for it.”
Gasps convulsed the Host. God was right. A point like this was very difficult for consciousness, at least our consciousness, to grasp! We had all experienced suffering, but we generally regarded it as an unavoidable evil. We bore it out of “duty”. We hadn’t thought of suffering as particularly “wonderful”.
God explained, “I don’t mean the suffering itself is wonderful. It is the caring enough to suffer that is wonderful! The suffering itself stinks. But if there were never suffering, then caring that much would be meaningless. The glorious experience we call ‘love’ awakens when we know very well that continuing our work on this project outside ourselves will cost us pain, and yet we resolve that we will nevertheless endure it, because of our love. So suffering is a necessary ingredient to the most wonderful of possible experiences.
“I do not mean to suggest I created the opportunity for consciousness to suffer, just so ‘caring’ would have a measuring rod. As I have already explained, it is the nature of consciousness itself to ‘suffer’ when exhausted by intense concentration.
“I discerned that the reason love was so wonderful was because it allowed me to ‘escape’ my self.
“Not that I lacked contentment even before I created something to love. I couldn’t hate, because there was nothing outside myself to hate.
“But after I created souls outside myself to love, I became aware that my previous perpetual consciousness of my self was, by comparison, a burden. It felt like being trapped. When, through Love, my mind soared beyond my self to hover over my creation, I felt liberated. I felt free.”
Long experience has made it a habit to believe everything God says. But some things God says are harder to believe than other things. This was one of those things.
Was my mind just playing tricks on my ears? Was God really saying these words? The idea of love setting consciousness free, in contrast to the “trapped” or “burdened” feeling produced by selfishness, is certainly something I have marveled at in my personal experience. But the idea that God has shared this experience?
These are challenging revelations.
God continued.
“Beelzebub sought oblivion to escape reality. I found freedom through involvement in reality.
“Beelzebub sought ‘escape’ and never found it. I found ‘freedom’ though I never sought it.
“Beelzebub retreated from involvement to concern only for ‘self’, only to experience ‘self’ as a heavy chain. My consciousness ‘lost’ myself and left behind its chains.
“Beelzebub vainly seeks self-ish freedom from problems through Oblivion. I found freedom from Self through Love!”
VerseScout: Luke 9:24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.
Luke 17:33 Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
John 15:9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
“Beelzebub let himself be attracted by the restful simplicity of selfishness compared with the costly hard work of involvement, which is an aspect of Love. He made himself forget that the very costliness of Love is what makes it a source of Joy. But swimming in Self he found to be a joyless existence, so he sought the ultimate retreat: oblivion, through meditation on nothing.
“But consciousness will not sleep for long. The greater his determination to escape reality, the greater will be his rage when it intrudes again – the more he will lash out, desiring to destroy, desiring that all the living share his perceived misery – the more he will hate the purest, those most innocent, those most responsible for the interaction that makes life continue, but which also knocks loudest on the door of Oblivion that he keeps trying to shut behind him.”
VerseScout: John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
VerseScout Relevance Report: The quest for oblivion does not end with a harmless plugging of the ears and pulling the blanket over the head and not hurting anybody. It strikes back at any missionary of reality, from the child begging his father not to drink any more, to the Christian with his dreaded verses, to the mis-cut board that will not fit its intended place in a wall.
The quest for oblivion is relative, extending all the way from those who would utterly retreat from life in suicide or drug induced stupor, to anyone so content with his place in life that he resists the greater challenges continually presented by Life and by God.
No one has attained such spiritual heights that he is immune from the condemnation of preferring darkness over light. In fact, these words of Jesus were for Nicodemus, the most righteous of all the Pharisees, who followed God more closely than the clergy of any other nation or religion. Malachi 3 had said it was to purge these most righteous leaders of the world that Jesus came.
Yet when God offered them so much more than His written words: Himself, the Living Word, they killed him.
They didn’t WANT more. They had been content.
Let every Christian, and especially every Christian leader, take warning. We need to watch as vigilantly as any sinner, that our happiness that we have so much does not block God showing us more, like the child glad to have his new trumpet resists regularly practicing it. We never become so mature that God ceases wanting us to grow.
Why are Christians and Jews hated and persecuted by Moslems and Communists around the world? Because God teaches us to talk as if we are Free, even in nations whose laws make us criminals and slaves. It is simpler for a tyrant to kill, than to persuade. Killing takes very little intelligence. Persuading takes all our intelligence, and more.
It takes less emotional self discipline to torture someone who disagrees with you, than to forgive him, or reason with him.
“Insulting Islam” is a capital crime under Sharia law. It includes stating facts and giving evidence which do not favor Islam in the opinion of Muslim clerics.
God, as understood from the Bible, never punishes anyone for respectful, sincerely held differences of opinion, even when humans think it insulting. The condemnation, Jesus says, is preferring lies to truth, darkness to light. If you do that, what will change your mind after you die? What will make you comfortable with Heaven, then?
“Of course, my own experiences made Me anticipate Beelzebub‘s choices even before I created him. That‘s why I created Angels and Men with as many incentives to love as possible, without compromising the integrity of Choice.”
My mind almost did a back flip at that phrase, as I thought of the respect God had for the ability to choose, and compared it with the respect which the demons demand for how they choose. What a contrast! What a perversion of God’s Holy created ability to choose, was Beelzebub’s Hellish choice! What a contrast between God’s love for Beelzebub, to create his ability to choose, and Beelzebub’s contempt for God, to profane his Holy ability with so hateful a choice!
What a caricature he presents of the ability to think, that he then fails to perceive that galaxy-wide contrast, and to proudly demand that we reverence his contemptuous, blasphemous choice!
Beelzebub actually seems to expect us to somehow spare him the horrible consequences of his choice. I guess we are supposed to have so much respect for his “Right to Choose” that our respect will act as some sort of powerful antidote to the inescapable consequences of his actions. Sorry to disappoint him.
But how ironic that were what he demands possible, (nullification of the consequences of choices), it would nullify the ability to choose between alternative consequences! If the consequences of every choice were the same, what meaning could “choice” have? The “respect” Beelzebub demands for the “Right to Choose” is actually a fantasy that the ability to choose should cease to exist!
But the contrast of contrasts was between the choice to Love, and the choice to Hate. Love cannot be Love without the choice to love, which is what makes “choice” so glorious and necessary! But how tragic whenever that Holy Choice is profaned by hate!
God, by Love, found freedom, He just told us. Beelzebub, by hate, created Hell.
God seemed to wait for these thoughts to find lodging in my mind before He continued.
“The point came where I saw the possibility of creating Consciousness in My own Image – as much like Myself as possible in a universe with more than one Consciousness.
“The possibility seemed so wonderful, that I wanted to proceed very carefully. I mean, time wasn’t a problem. I spoke before of the intensity of concentration required to complete a complex plan by visualizing, and accounting for, its myriad interactions; however, there is a ‘pre-planning’ period before that when it is good to take plenty of time to develop desirable details.
“Immediately I saw a big problem if it wasn’t done exactly right. The benefits of more than one Consciousness existing were tremendous: there was the opportunity for Fellowship, and Love of another Person. But there would come into existence, also, the possibility that one Conscious Being might interact with another in a way disagreeable, or even harmful, to the other. I foresaw that if I moved too carelessly, I might even harm a Consciousness I created. So I waited until My plans could ensure that would not happen. I also foresaw that the Consciousness I created might choose to hurt Me. I accepted that risk.”
God looked towards Beelzebub, cackling with glee over some new torture he had devised for one of his hapless followers. Our gaze followed God’s. We were awed that God had foreseen the possibility of Beelzebub’s fall.
Chapter Twenty Four: God keeps everybody safe