Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (25 page)

“Like who?” she shifted and sat up
straighter.

“Believers in God. Their
consciousness operates differently. I wondered if they fell asleep
differently, since God was protecting them. My parents explained
that God watched over them with devastating zealotry.”

“Didn't you know anyone who
believed in God?”

“I was the first one of my family
to be born on Dust. I have never been to Earth. Religious people
were taboo. The Atheists were afraid of them.”

“So what do you believe in
then?”

“I found ideals that I believed in.
I formulated a world-view for myself in which man was responsible.
Firstly, he is responsible for determining the bounds of the
responsibility that he takes for his own life. Man may decide how
to expand or decrease his scope of responsibility. I see God as
something that is defined outside the bounds of responsibility, as
a replacement for recognizing one's own helplessness. I would not
want to impose limits over myself or my scope of responsibility. I
think that if man possesses a conscious mind, and apparently more
so than animals do, why must he blur the revelation in which he
approaches his own death?”

“What does that have to do with
it?”

“When I remember that I am mortal,
I feel better. God, as I understand Him, is a guarantee of
immortality that absolves me of momentary responsibility. Do you
relinquish the here and now as your price for eternity?”

Sophia hesitated. “For me, God is
harmony. Don't you see the beauty, the wonder of creation, the
magnificence of life? Aren't you awestruck by a blade of grass, by
the sun?”

“I am in awe of the phenomena, but
what does that have to do with God? That is my own experience.”

“The phenomenon itself. The galaxy,
the mathematical regularity, the repeating order of the
universe—that is perfection. Man can attain the experience of
perfection, recognizing the oneness and eternal harmony.” The
Pythagorean passion had returned to her voice. “Did you know that
the degree of curvature in each snail, the arrangement of the
scales on a pinecone and the plates of an armadillo's armor—all of
them are arranged according to the same formula?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that the geological
layers on all the planets that have been studied so far are also
arranged according to this ratio?”

“No.”

“And all of the moons that orbit
each planet, as well as all of the planets that orbit the suns and
all of the suns orbiting the galactic black holes?”

“I admit, I did not know this.”

“How can you explain that?” Sophia
asked reproachfully.

“I do not explain it,” replied
Enosh coolly.

“And you are satisfied with that,
having no explanation?”

“Yes.”

“I cannot live like that. In my
eyes, the world is arranged in a magnificent mathematical order,
which we are able to see and admire. That is God's way of revealing
Himself to us. Whoever does not see this or is satisfied with
having no explanation is evading the truth!” Sophia's face
flushed.

“Actually, the incredible order
frightens me most of all. I used to be afraid of death. Now I am
afraid of perfection. The appreciation of beauty requires distance,
a gap between the person having the experience and the experience
itself. This distance cannot exist in a state of perfection. I do
not believe in perfection. I see death as a sort of hole, a void, a
lack. A perforation in each and every moment. I see each moment as
a pearl, death as a hole in the pearl and time as the cord that
strings all the pearls together. For me, the beauty of the necklace
is worth more than eternity. To me, death, or void, prevents matter
from collapsing, keeping me passionate by maintaining a distance
from beauty.”

“Fear of death is rooted in
ignorance.” Sophia began to focus her argument. “Someone who does
not know that his soul is eternal will suffer from fear of death
his entire life. It pains me that your mother did not educate you
about the eternity of the soul. She could have freed you from your
childhood fear of death in a much simpler manner. She could have
told you the truth: that we are all part of the universal family,
and therefore there is nothing to fear about changing phases.
Whatever happens, we are all still part of the universe.”

She tapped her finger on one of the
balls in the planetary model and sent the whole system spinning.
“The soul exists and is eternal. I know this by virtue of my
education as well as through personal experience. During my
meditation exercises, I have seen my own soul, which has worn other
incarnations before me.” Sophia looked into his eyes imploringly,
explaining and calming. Her words offered a solution to the fear of
death. The melody of the spheres played in his ears, mellifluous
and infinite, cyclical and eternal like the smooth pearlescent hues
of the curved walls in the station.

“So what did you do following your
studies?”

“Planet Dust had many wealthy urban
centers replete with technological and materialistic degeneration,
as well as many young colonies that were established after the
separation from Earth. Each colony was founded on a different
Atheist ideology. I wandered between the colonies in search of a
path that spoke to me.”

“And what did you discover?”

“I learned from the Cynics to doubt
any pretense of perfection, but I did not like their bitterness.
They were not completely reconciled with the absence of God. They
felt as if they were promised a reality that was never fulfilled.
They complain that they were deprived of divine limitations on
human responsibility. They are basically closet religious
believers. They would have preferred their mothers to have lied to
them and to have told them that they were going to live forever,
and instead complain that she is silent.”

“What else?”

“I learned from the Humanists that
compassion is a precondition for any type of relationship and that
pleasure is derived from doing good for others. But the centrality
of man in their worldview did not sit well with me. It was clear to
me that it was a slippery slope from Humanism to
Anthropotheism.”

“Then where did you go after
Humanism?”

“I learned from the Existentialists
about free will and the tragic position of man versus his destiny.
The existential view emerged as a response to the World Wars at the
close of the second millennium. Devotees of existentialism had
great influence following the destruction of Earth in the beginning
of the third millennium. They offered wonderful suggestions in
favor of their approach as a way of life, but they lacked the
knowledge that I sought. They did not offer the answers to the way
that human consciousness operates in practice.”

“So then where did you find your
own personal God?”

“Actually, I found His absence, or,
more precisely, I found the ideal of absence.”

“You worship absence?”

“On the contrary. The absence
serves me. I am driven by what I lack and not by what someone or
something else lacks. I do not worship it like the Gnostics, rather
I recognize it. I give it its place.”

“What is the connection between
absence and the human consciousness that you sought?”

“Consciousness is a representation,
but since it is candid, there is a gap between the representation
and the object. This gap is absence. The gap between the object and
its name, between life and death, reality and symbolism. Narrowing
this gap could result in loss of movement, loss of will and loss of
consciousness. I say this with sorrow...” Enosh waited a second for
a reaction. He divided that second into fragments and waited,
ready, for the right moment; when he saw that the sorrow had
touched her, he continued. “Sorrow and compassion, acceptance of
loss, such as your loss, being orphaned from your father.”

Her eyes flashed.

“But without any recognition of
absence, of loss, one cannot feel desire. After all, it is the
basis of life, of the sense of vitality inside of you, the desire
that exists in the gap between the observer and the object of
beauty.”

“You did not finish your search
there, did you? Where did you get to?”

“Just when I was ready to join the
ranks of the Existentialists, I discovered the Socratics. The
capitalistic position held by the Existentialists regarding the
responsibility of free will is a good substitute for an
authoritative legal stance, but it is not sufficient and could be
used as an excuse for materialistic addiction. In my Existential
training dialogues, they repeatedly challenged me: 'Formulate an
equation of costs and returns, delineate the risks and dangers, and
now, choose!' But I did not choose to be born, to fall in love or
to be mortal. Some things are not elective. Existentialism fails to
properly address such issues. I went to Diotima.”

“Diotima? The Atheist minister of
defense?”

“Yes. Before she became a
politician, she was the chairwoman of the Socratic Academy. She is
an expert on ancient civilizations, languages, religions and the
shaping of cultural consciousness. I requested that she accept me
as a student,” he said as he sat back and recalled the chain of
events. “She only took in a limited number of students. They said
that it was impossible to know what motivates her to respond to
students. She asked me why I chose her specifically. I stated the
reason that I saw fit at the time. I heard that the Socratics
understood the meaning of life better than the others. She
repeatedly asked me what I wanted and pointed out the discrepancies
in my claims. Thus, she made it clear that according to my stated
reasons, I had not come to the right address. I had asked to learn
how to live and she, in the manner of the Socratics, testified that
she herself did not know anything. Truthfully, I don't know what
made me want to study under her, but I had no doubt that that was
what I wanted. She pitied my plight but did not relent. Finally, I
said—and I do not know how this idea came into my head—that I could
tell by the way she ate the grapes in front of her that she knew
something that I would like to learn but I could not pinpoint what
that thing is.”

“Did she accept you?”

“On the spot.”

“And what was it that you saw in
the grapes?” she asked curiously.

'How can I condense into one
sentence what I understood about the grapes,' he wondered. “I
understood something about Diotima's attitude toward her hunger,
her appetite, her desire, her pleasure or rather to the absence
that bubbled inside her. We referenced that point many times in the
course of our studies. She said that if I recognized something
within her that means that I already possess the knowledge that I
seek and I must try to articulate it. I said that something
mesmerized me in the way she enjoyed the grape as if it were
simultaneously the last grape in the world as well as the eternal,
infinite grape. She sent me to seek the infinite elsewhere but
agreed to teach me about temporality and consciousness.”

“And what did you learn about the
meaning of life?”

“I found that, as far as I can see,
the meaning of life can be found in two concepts: love and
consciousness.”

Sophia squirmed uncomfortably and
finally asked, “What did you learn about love?” The conversation
had piqued her interest.

“Love is a valuable relationship, a
relationship with someone dear to you, from whom you derive
pleasure, provide pleasure, fear his loss or suffer his
absence.”

“And consciousness?”

“I learned about myself, and by
extension about others as well, how the consciousness works and how
to shape it. I learned that people seek the impossible so that they
will always have a reason to search and so that they won't ruin
their searching experience. I learned that people sabotage
themselves by manufacturing absences in their lives so that they
will not have to face the reality that the absence still exists
even if they hadn't manufactured it themselves. People go away so
that their absence will be noted, as if others miss them, and not
that they miss others. People maintain holy and exacting protocols
of action according to specific codes in order to avoid personal
will. Diotima taught me to see all of these situations in myself
and in others,” he explained. “I cannot understand how you, the
Pythagoreans, manage to deny love.”

“To the Pythagoreans, there is no
connection between partnership and love. Love is an uncontrollable
emotion that leads to jealousy, competition and heartbreak as well
as damages the community's harmony.”

“But I saw many couples in
Samos.”

“The couples that you saw were
chosen and matched by experts based on their genetic compatibility
and according to the needs of the community.”

“For the needs of the community?
What about love? In my view, the emotion of love fulfills society's
needs in a much more complex and subconscious way than one could
ever consciously engineer.”

“Subconscious?” she asked.

“I learned that the subconscious
world is always there, beneath the surface, like the double bottom
of a suitcase. Sometimes you can understand what occurs within it,
but even when you cannot understand it, it is always active.
Desires, identifications, passions. This is how people interact.
Like words in a sentence or men in society.”

“I used to think that one could not
attain perfection if he allowed such subconscious processes to
dictate his destiny.”

“I learned,” replied Enosh, “that
the meaning of life does not lie in attaining perfection or even
striving toward perfection, but rather one's ability to bear
absence, which is the basis of the yearning for beauty. I learned
that the meaning of life lies in devotion, but it is up to us to
choose the object of our devotion; this responsibility is our
own.”