The Divine Invasion

What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.

Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim.

Isn't a beautiful dream better than a cruel reality?

It's impossible that James Joyce could have mentioned "talk-tapes" in his writing, Asher thought. Someday I'm going to get my article published; I'm going to prove that Finnegan's Wake is an information pool based on computer memory systems that didn't exist until a century after James Joyce's era; that Joyce was plugged into a cosmic consciousness from which he derived the inspiration for his entire corpus of work. I'll be famous forever.

A beam of pink light blinded him; he felt dreadful pain in his head, and clapped his hands to his eyes. I am blind! he realized. With the pain and the pink light came understanding, an acute knowledge; he knew that Zina was not a human woman, and he knew, further, that the boy Manny was not a human boy. This was not a real world he was in; he understood that because the beam of pink light had told him that. This world is a simulation, and something living and intelligent and sympathetic wanted him to know. Something cares about me and it has penetrated this world to warn me, he realized, and it is camouflaged as this world so that the master of this world, the lord of this unreal realm, will not know; not know it is here and not know it has told me. This is a terrible secret to know, he thought. I could be killed for knowing this.

I will always speak the truth to you, Herb Asher," the boy continued. "There is no deceit in God. I want you to live. I made you live once before, when you lay in psychological death. God does not desire any living thing's death; God takes no delight in nonexistence. Do you know what God is, Herb Asher? God is He Who causes to be. Put another way, if you seek the basis of being that underlies everything you will surely find God. You can work back to God from the phenomenal universe, or you can move from the Creator to the phenomenal universe. Each implies the other. The Creator would not be the Creator if there were no universe, and the universe would cease to be if the Creator did not sustain it. The Creator does not exist prior to the universe in time; he does not exist in time at all. God creates the universe constantly; he is with it, not above or behind it. This is impossible to understand for you because you are a created thing and exist in time. But eventually you will return to your Creator and then you will again no longer exist in time. You are the breath of your Creator, and as he breathes in and out, you live. Remember that, for that sums up everything that you need to know about your God. There is first an exhalation from God, on the part of all creation; and then, at a certain point, it starts its journey back, its inhalation. This cycle never ceases. You leave me; you are away from me; you start back; you rejoin me. You and everything else. It is a process, an event. It is an activity - my activity. It is the rhythm of my own being, and it sustains you all.

You admit, then, that your world is not real? That it is a forgery?" Zina hesitated. "It branched off at crucial points, due to our interference with the past. Call it magic if you want or call it technology;

I pity the small creatures the most, he thought. Those who have done the least harm. They above all do not deserve this. The goat-thing will single them out for the greatest suffering; it will afflict them in proportion to their innocence...this is its method by which the great balance is tilted from rectitude, and the Plan undone. It will accuse the weak and destroy the helpless; it will use its power against those least able to defend themselves. And, most of all, it will devour the little hopes, the meager dreams of the small. Here we must intervene, he said to himself. To protect the small. This is our first task and the first line of our defense.

I don't think anyone creates a fake universe," Herb said, "since it isn't there." "But you're saying something is causing us to see a universe that doesn't exist. Who is this someone?" He said, "Satan." Cocking his head, Elias eyed him. "It's a way of seeing the real world," Herb said. "An occluded way. A dreamlike way. A hypnotized, asleep way. The nature of world undergoes a perceptual change; actually it is the perceptions that change, not the world. The change is in us." "'The Ape of God,'" Elias said. "A medieval theory about the Devil. That he apes God's legitimate creation with spurious interpolations of his own. That's really an exceedingly sophisticated idea, epistemologically speaking. Does it mean that parts of the world are spurious? Or that sometimes the whole world is spurious?Or that there are plural worlds of which one is real and the others are not? Is there essentially one matrix world from which people derive differing perceptions? So that the world you see is not the world I see?

When has the government ever told anyone the truth?

Sometimes in the equation that the strong protect the weak there is the difficulty in determining who is strong and who is weak.

The hallmark of the fraudulent is that it becomes what you would like it to be.

Too bad Mahler never saw a Morley wah-wah pedal, he thought, or he would have scored it into one of his longer works.

The Christian-Islamic Church, of course, wanted both the Bible and the Koran frozen forever.

Better a live dog than a dead prince

Smiling at her the boy said, "Games, then? Would that be better? There are events that I must shape. I must arouse fire that burns, that sears. Scripture says: For He is like a refiner's fire. And Scripture also says: And who can abide the day of His coming? I say, however, that it will be more than this; I say: The day comes, glowing like a furnace; all the arrogant and the evil-doers shall be chaff, and that day when it comes shall set them ablaze; it shall leave them neither root nor branch. What do you say to that, Herb Asher?" Emmanuel gazed at him intently, awaiting his response. Zina said: But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings. "That is true," Emmanuel said. In a low voice Elias said: And you shall break loose like calves released from the stall.

God is God of history and of nations. Also of nature. Originally Yahweh was probably a volcanic deity. But he periodically enters history, the best example being when he intervened to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. They were shepherds and accustomed to freedom; it was terrible for them to be making bricks. And the Pharaoh had them gathering the straw as well and still being required to meet their quota of bricks per day. It is an archetypal timeless situation. God bringing men out of slavery and into freedom. Pharaoh represents all tyrants at all times." Her voice was calm and reasonable; Asher felt impressed.

I chose God over the material universe.

Hallelujah,” Rybys said. “What?” he

–Sí. Levítico diecinueve, dieciocho. Dios dice: «Amarás a tu prójimo como a ti mismo». No lo sabías, ¿verdad? Casi dos mil años antes de Jesús.

–Bien, ¿qué instrucciones le doy a Gran Fideo? –Será más bien qué instrucciones va a darnos Gran Fideo, ¿no te parece? –repuso Bulkowsky.

Mira –dijo–, yo pertenezco al Legado Científico. El Partido. ¿Entiendes? Fue decisión mía; es el bando que he escogido. El dolor y la enfermedad son algo que debe ser erradicado, no comprendido. No hay otra vida y Dios no existe, salvo quizá bajo la forma de una extraña perturbación de la ionosfera que está jodiendo mi equipo en esta montañita de mierda. Si cuando muera descubro que me he equivocado, alegaré como circunstancias atenuantes mi ignorancia y el hecho de que me educaron mal. Mientras tanto, me interesa mucho más proteger mis cables y eliminar la interferencia que no mantener largas conversaciones con ese tal Yah.

What a tragic world this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don’t know it; they think they are free because they never have been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison, and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. Because that is why I am here. To burn the walls, to tear down the metal gates, to break each chain.