Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (13 page)

The audience became wild at this.
Enosh continued.

"If the healer presents borders,
ethical or other, by commanding a person to continue living or by
the guilt that he projects with regard to suicide, you can expect
never-ending treatment, where the healer functions as the border
that the patient can argue against. The patient will refuse to
accept the healer as a limitation. If he could turn to people to
serve as a border for him, he would not be turning to death as a
border. The healer must take a very specific stance, both with
regards to himself and with regards to his patient. Not just that
there is no border, but rather that even death is not a solution to
the lack of border".

"So as far as the healer is
concerned, the patient can just die?!" someone shouted out from the
shocked audience.

"No," said Enosh soothingly, "as
healers, we don't want the patient to commit suicide or to die, but
not because it's forbidden, as a result of which we would feel
guilt, but rather because we want them to live, and if they died we
would feel sorrow. We must first guide him to accept the fact that
there is no natural border anywhere. Not the skin on his body, not
the time in his life, not the territory in his house. Hundreds of
years ago, when space exploration first began from the planet
Earth, there were astronauts who were forced to deal with anxiety
attacks when they left the space shuttle to spacewalk. Why?" he
asked the audience.

"Because they felt the anxiety of
the infinite, anxiety over losing the spatial border".

"Very good," Enosh praised the
student, "that is where we want to lead our patient".

"To anxiety?" another student
called out in alarm.

Enosh smiled. "Yes. To start with,
we want the patient to experience the loss of border to such an
absolute extent that even death will not be a solution. We want
them to feel the anxiety entailed in the lack of a border. That is
not to say that he or she will spend the rest of their life in
anxiety. The infinite will cure them of suicide and infect them
with anxiety, but the free choice of where to mark and maintain the
border will cure them from anxiety, and will impose the burden of
free choice on them. Yes," he turned to one of the students who had
raised his hand.

"If I understand correctly, we want
to change the patient's distress. We want to move it from the
distress of the border of death to the distress of anxiety that
comes from a lack of a border and from there to the distress
entailed in the burden of choice. Free choice is the place where
the border should be placed".

"Exactly! Thank you".

And what about the distress
entailed in the burden of choice?" asked one of the teachers.

"I don't know of any solution to
that yet, so I wouldn't suggest trying to shake free of that
burden".

After examples from treatment
stories and answers to the audience's questions, the lecture ended.
Enosh descended from the podium to the sound of applause and
cheers, and gazes accompanied him as he made his way through the
crowded aisle, until he finally reached the back of the hall and
dropped into the chair next to Diotima's. She patted his hand
gently and smiled. Enosh smiled back and heaved a sigh of relief.
The students took note of the intimate relationship between the
senior teacher and her former pupil.

"You need to go and be tested by an
eye doctor," whispered Diotima to Enosh. Enosh's room was not far
from the lecture hall, and they took advantage of the break to walk
around in the yard and drink a cold beverage. Diotima's entourage
trudged after them.

"Excuse me"?

"Didn't you see the looks she was
giving you?" asked Diotima.

"Who"?

"Enough! Come on, even an eye
doctor couldn't help you".

"Are you talking about the girl who
crossed our path"?

"Her and the ten before her".

Enosh went quiet out of
embarrassment. He didn't want Diotima to start nosing into his
business, but he said nothing.

"What's the matter?" Diotima went
on, "You don't like the look of her? Maybe she isn't smart
enough"?

"She actually didn't look bad at
all," replied Enosh.

"So if you like the look of her,
why are you traipsing around with an old woman instead of going
after her"?

"Today is dedicated only to you,"
said Enosh, and they both knew he was avoiding the topic. "Besides,
how do you know she's interested"?

"At the height of my dignified age,
I know a thing or two about consciousness and its signs. As she
passed by us, her mouth opened, her pupils dilated, her skin
blushed, the small cough"…

"Okay, okay," he stopped her.

"Her walk became unstable, her hand
pushed her hair behind her ear, she looked down to her
cleavage"…

"Stop, enough." Enosh began to
laugh and Diotima joined him.

The entourage stayed outside when
they entered Enosh's room. Luka ran to Enosh happily and licked his
hands.

"Hello Luka, good dog." Enosh bent
down and stroked his head.

"Are you sure you've got a dog
underneath that walking carpet?" Diotima joked as she petted Luka
affectionately. The room looked like a battle had been waged in it.
The floor was covered in books and paperwork, charcoal pencils and
pencil shavings rolled around in the corners. On the shelves, there
was a thin layer of dust mixed in with dog hair. The walls were
filled with diagrams. It was clear that Enosh preferred to sketch
his diagrams directly on the wall with charcoal pencils, and only
later to transfer them to the computer. When he wanted to erase
something or to fix it, he painted the place in white and wrote on
it again. The complicated diagrams described relationship and
consciousness processes in topological language. Enosh had taught
topology, the use of graphic language to express logical ideas even
before he came to the Socratics. He had always been interested in
connecting dots into lines, to areas, to bodies, to dimensions, and
into the processes that apply to topological elements, like
unification, separation and intersection. The paradoxical shapes
that represent logic beyond the possibilities of visual
representation fascinated him. He was charmed by the views of Bohm,
a quantum physicist from the middle of the twentieth century,
according to which the world was made up of far more than can be
described visually. He used his topological knowledge for
consciousness healing by mapping out the components in the
patient's mind. He outlined the process of the creation of
consciousness, the creation of the faith in the difference between
inside and outside, relations of attraction and pleasure, and
relationships between partners and rivals. He drew structures of
dual relationships, three-way relationships, and so on, more and
more complicated, and super-dimensional data about society,
politics and religion. Some of the diagrams, the largest, were only
theoretical, and included only the letters that represented
elements in the processes of consciousness as well as the arrows of
flow charts connecting them. Other, smaller sketches were
accompanied by encrypted text and described consciousness processes
with details from specific patients. In the breaks between
patients, he would scrawl down his thoughts and that was how he
prepared for his next session.

Enosh didn't feel any embarrassment
at Diotima's scrutiny. She knew him well anyway, and knew that he
didn't keep things in order. On the other hand, in the treatment
room beside his living room, the walls were pristine and colored in
warm, soothing earthy colors, and order prevailed above all.

"Madam Defense Minister, a cold
beer or whiskey with ice"?

"Cold water for me. I still need to
lecture today".

"Could it be that you're nervous?"
Enosh mocked her.

"Of course, like a little girl,"
she smiled at him. "I reserve the right to a beer for after the
lecture".

Enosh took a balloon of beer and a
balloon of cold water out of the refrigerator. He handed the water
to Diotima who sat on one of the sofas. She ripped the corner of
the balloon with her teeth and suckled distractedly.

"It seems to me that it's not just
the lecture that you're nervous about. There's something else in
the air".

"You see everything!" She
protested.

"Tell me"?

"Later, when we get to the beer."
She took a sip of water. "Well, Professor, when will you finally
make time for love?" she returned to the same subject.

Out of habit, Enosh stroked Luka,
who pushed his snout into his hand.

"That's what I love about Luka,"
said Enosh, "he never bothers me with questions like that".

"Seriously, Enosh. Love is
important. Our friendship is important. Let me get involved in your
life".

"Patience, my dear," replied Enosh,
"I'm sure that when I'm ready for love, the right girl will be in
place".

They continued talking. Enosh told
her about a new series of lectures he was planning for his
exceptional students, and Diotima complained about the difficulty
of achieving her goals embroiled in the bureaucracy and intrigues
of the government.

"Alright, if you've finished your
beer, we'd better get back to the hall, otherwise you'll be late
for my lecture", she said.

Enosh chuckled. "Do you think I'd
mess around with you?! Even when you didn't have the entire Atheist
fleet at your command it was dangerous to be late for your
class".

The Socratic Festival of Knowledge
lasted all day. The huge hall became more and more crowded.
Students peeked in through windows, others sat on the window ledge,
others sat on the floor in the aisles, and some even planned to sit
on the sides of the podium. On the wide grassy meadow, giant
screens had been installed which would broadcast the lectures to
the hundreds of students who could not get a place in the hall.

The climax of the festival was
Diotima's lecture on "consciousness healing in Ancient Cultures".
Diotima enjoyed standing in front of students at the Socratic
Academy again. Years before, when she had served as head of the
Socratic Academy, she was the most popular lecturer on the planet
thanks to her knowledge of ancient cultures and her ability to
clarify how to design new cultures. In those days, her position
allowed her to influence the shape of the Socratic culture. At a
certain stage, she understood that in order to influence the entire
Atheist planet, it was not enough to teach at the Socratic Academy.
She needed to be at the decision-making juncture. When she was
offered the position of Minister of Culture again, she accepted.
She showed leadership, instigated a revolution when she was able to
take advantage of political opportunities, and thus arrived at her
current position, Minister of Defense.

"I am happy to stand here before
you again, Scholars of consciousness. For me this is an opportunity
to sharpen history to one specific aspect, the history of
Consciousness. Today we will speak about consciousness healing in
the ancient world." Everyone in the hall was in full attention. All
those present were focused on her voice, a hypnotizing voice that
demanded attention. A voice that broadcast power, no less than
wisdom and authority.

"Who knows as you do that there is
no reality that is not dependent on the subjectivity of the
beholder, or in your case, the position of the healer. Therefore
arises the question, from what standpoint should we observe the
ancient world? You would not be wrong if you said we must take the
only relevant standpoint for us, our standpoint today. Indeed, what
distorts our standpoint? You wouldn't be wrong if you answered that
our standpoint only exists if it is distorted, like every
standpoint. And still, what must we remove from our standpoint to
make it less biased, less driven by the will to see something
specific and ignore something else? Allow me to open with an
introduction taken from the middle of history, the topic of which
is Monotheism, and the connection between it and blindness, and
then I will return to our topic, consciousness healing in the
ancient world.

"The belief in one God appeared
first with the Atenistic Pharaohs, but was accepted and survived
amongst the ancient Hebrews. The God who was chosen at the
beginning to be the first, and later the only God, reflected the
megalomaniacal tendencies of the leader who stood at the head of
the nation, Tut Akhenaton, and then Moses. What monotheism
instigated in the consciousness is a diversion to belief in one
true approach. This condescending approach blinded one culture from
looking at another culture.

"Monotheism, mixed with
imperialistic urges from the days of Greece and Rome, created the
Byzantine Empire on one side, and Militant Islam on the other. We
all know how this led to the creation of the Eastern Bloc and the
Western Bloc, to the Human-Gods' Wars, and eventually, to the
destruction of Earth. What we may know less is that science itself
is based on monotheistic belief. Science may have taken God out of
the equation as far as the source of knowledge, but it did not
cancel the exclusivity of a monotheistic God. Quite the opposite:
the One and Only God lives on safely until today in the monolithic
form of science.

"When we read the clay tablets that
the Ancient Sumerians left us, to teach us about supernatural
powers as part of their Theory of Consciousness, I would request
that you de-identify with the scientific standpoint that like
Atheism, ranks itself above all others. I would request that you
give full credit to polytheistic cultures as having access to
knowledge that escapes science".

Diotima stopped for a moment, drank
from the glass of water that lay before her on the lectern, and
scanned the faces of the students. Like every lecturer, she too was
afraid that her listeners would find no interest in her words.