Chapter Ten

All The Lonely Angels

“But how,” Paul said, “does this relate to the question of whether our culture is so screwed up, and whether that’s because human nature is evil or we’re being punished by an angry god?”

“It’s at the core of that question,” Joshua said. “It points out that it’s not the people who are evil. In fact, they’re capable of resisting evil without ever having to resort to evil. And it’s not a god who’s crazy or evil, and the world wasn’t created and isn’t run by the Demiurge. The insanity is in the culture that’s taken over. It’s the culture that’s gone crazy, not the people and not the Creator of the Universe.”

“But all the religions say that human nature is sinful, and that we’re being punished for that by the One God.”

“Not all the religions. Just those religions that serve the people-dominating or slave-keeping cultures. You’ll not find those notions any where in the vast majority of religions of tribal peoples. You’ll not find those notions in the history of the pre-city-building peoples. The biggest problem the missionaries had with the Indians here and the Aboriginal people in Australia was in convincing them that they were sinful and that God was angry at them, and therefore they needed the Church to save them from God. Such ideas only come along when somebody rises up and says, ‘I’m taking over and you all have to do what I say. And step one of that is that you all have to work all day to make me richer and more powerful. And if you don’t pick that cotton, you’ll suffer and it won’t be my fault; it’s because my god loves me more than you and so made me rich and you poor, or it’s because it’s your karma, your fault.”’

“A religion of domination.”

“Exactly. It’s only natural that a culture of domination, of slave-holders, would produce religions of domination. Would sanction caste systems. Would say that people are poor because of something they, themselves, did in a past life and not because the power-holders in the culture have gone insane with greed and power. Would blame some ancient woman for the pain people experience, rather than the kings and wealth-holders.”

“But we don’t have slaves today. How come this persists?”

“You don’t have slaves?” Joshua said. “What is a slave, but a person who owes his life to another. In the city above you are millions of slaves. The corporations who own them even buy and sell them with their properties, just as in the old days. And when they don’t need the slaves they acquire with new properties-new businesses they buy-they expel them, leaving them alone and frightened to fend for themselves, just as they did in days of old.”

“We’re slaves?”

“Do you know anybody who works for a big company or government who would describe himself as free’?”

“You mean free cultures don’t have religions that blame bad things on god or on the person himself?”

“No, they don’t, by and large.”

“But what about people who experience supernatural things,” Paul said. “Evil things. Ghosts or the devil. Or good things, for that matter, who see angels? I thought that evil was the absence of good or love, so none of those things could be real. But it sounds like what you’re saying is that evil is in the culture when it’s taken over by a small number of evil people, but that it doesn’t exist on a spiritual level.”

“Now you’re getting close to a greater wisdom,” Joshua said. “Although instead of calling them ‘evil people,’ I prefer to call them ‘sleepwalking people.” They’re still asleep in the dream of our culture. They don’t yet know wisdom.

“which is?” Paul took his notebook back out. He was thinking that instead of a newspaper story, there was enough here to make a book. They gave Pulitzer Prizes for books, too.

“The Creator is the formless behind the form, encompassing everything, interfering with nothing. However, if enough people believe–or one person believes enough–it is possible to bring from the formless a ‘spiritual’ form, demonic or angelic, gods or demons, spirits or sprites, angels or ancient beings. All are human creations, as they represent projections of human consciousness, but all are real, nonetheless. The Mystery is that gods and angels and demons are the creations of humans.”

“This is getting really confusing,” Paul said. “Do you mean to say that if there were no people, there would be no angels, for example?”

“No human-like angels,” Joshua said.

“What other kinds are there?”

“What other kinds of conscious beings exist in the billion billion billion worlds of the universe?”

“I get it,” Paul said. “Do dogs have dog angels?”

Joshua smiled. “I don’t know. I’m not a dog.”

“So I created Noah?”

“No,” Joshua said. “But someone-possibly he, himself, when he lived as a human-or some group of people provided the belief that allows him to exist. Remember the power of belief.”

Paul thought back to his first encounter with Noah, and said, “I think he said something about that.”

Joshua shrugged. “He understands how it all works.”

“So, then, this means that the Demiurge, an angry god, demons, angels, fairies, the whole range of spiritual beings, that they are real? I mean, even though we made them, they exist? They’re really real?”

“Yes. It is stated this way. It is possible–paradoxically–to ‘prove’ there is an intervening spiritual realm and that there are spiritual beings, because with belief or prayer or ritual people can bring forth from the formless their own projected forms. And so it is real and true that people like Katherine Kuhlman could perform miracles, that Biblical stories could be true, that Hindu fakirs can be in two places at once, that the Virgin Mary can heal people who pray to her, and so on.”

“But I thought that when we attempt to envision a god, we create a man-made or man-like god.”

“These two truths do not contradict each other. People built these tunnels. It doesn’t make them not-real. You can still die in a tunnel collapse, or hurt your head banging against the iron beams, or find protection and shelter here.”

“But there’s such variety between cultures when they talk about their supernatural beings. I mean, the Irish have their fairies and the Norwegians their gnomes and the Native Americans have animal spirits…”

“Each reflected the culture which created it. And, when you talk with the people of each of those cultures, they will assure you that their creations are real. And they are, just as this tunnel is real. Gods and angels and demons and all the others are absolutely as real as any other reality.”

Paul wrote down in his notepad, We, or our culture, can create supernatural things, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real, anymore than the buildings and cars we create, and put it back in his shirt pocket. He looked around the circle and said to Pete, “Do you all understand this?”

Pete said, “I don’ need to unnerstand; I just believe, ya know? I live in the love of The Creator of the Universe.”

“Yeah,” Paul said.

“I mean, I seen Joshua do this stuff,” Pete continued. “I don’t care how, I jes seen it, and so I believe. I feel it. Dat’s ’nuf fo’ me.” He pointed to Joshua with an exaggerated swinging gesture and added, “I die for dat man, you know? He my man.”

“Got it,” Paul said.

“I’m with Pete,” Matt said. “But I also understand what Joshua says. This ain’t rocket science here.”

“I think it would be to most people,” Paul said. “It seems to me that most people want everything real simple, spoon-fed to them.”

“This is simple,” Salome interjected. “You ever try to make sense of the difference between the Baptists and the Seventh Day Adventists? I tell you, my mother was Baptist and my father Seventh Day Adventist, and there was never a moment’s peace between the two of them. Talk about making the simple into something complex.”

“You want power over others,” Mark said, “you make it complicated. You put yourself between people and the Creator of the Universe or whatever gods you claim exist. You make it so only the priests can figure it all out, and they got to go through years of study to get there. You tell the common people that if they don’t do it your way, they’re gonna burn in hell. Then you got the church, you know? And that’s complicated.”

Paul looked at Joshua. “What about Jesus, then? Who was he?”

Joshua sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “He is the living son of the Creator of the Universe.”

“The Messiah?”

“’Messiah’ is a Hebrew word that means ‘anointed.’ Every king the Jews had was anointed; it was how they were certified as the king. The high priest poured oil on his head, just like in the Twenty-Third Psalm. There were lots of messiahs before Jesus; he claimed the lineage. David was called messiah, as was Saul and Absalom and Solomon and so on. The anointed one was the king, the ruler of the Middle-Eastern tribe that called itself Jews.”

“The savior?” Paul said.

“If you believe in the Demiurge, like the Greeks, Romans, and Paul did, then the messiah’s job is to save you from the Demiurge. If you want to be saved from the domination of the Caesars, then Jesus gave specific instructions about how to walk away from the kings and the Caesars. Look what he told his disciples about how they should live. That they shouldn’t carry money or spend their lives trying to become rich, shouldn’t store up food, should pray in private and not in public. Those lessons are still applicable today as if you want to be free of the modem kings and Caesars, although you can search this city’s churches from one end to another and you will not find any preacher living as Jesus instructed. Nonetheless, in either case, I’d say the answer is a definite ‘yes.”’

“And if I don’t believe in the Demiurge and I don’t mind being oppressed by the modem-day kings and corporate Caesars?”

“Then you have nothing to worry about, but it’s the confidence a dreaming man has when he thinks his dream is real. Remember the parable of the man who built his home on a foundation made of sand.”

“So Jesus was the Son of God.”

“Yes,” said Joshua. “As am I and as are you. And so we, now, must awaken people to save the world because the kings are not only oppressing the people, but they are endangering All Life. They are tearing out the heart of our Mother Earth Herself. The stakes are even higher now than they were two thousand years ago.”

“Does that mean I’m a messiah?”

Joshua shook his head. “No. You can’t imagine how difficult that would be, how much self-sacrifice is involved. The first must be last, must become the least.”

“Is this the Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century?”

“No,” Joshua said. “This is common knowledge that any scholars of ecology or Biblical times can tell you. You are not yet ready for the Secret.”

“When will I be?”

“That is not for me to know,” Joshua said. “I’ve given you my part.”

“Who’s hungry?” Juan said as he pulled a box of mismatched plates and silverware from under his chair.