A Fantasy (1999)

I here present this fantasy just as I wrote it down after it came to me on the evening of August 23, 1999. I’ve made no changes other than a minor deletion for the purpose of avoiding offense to a certain religions group, and corrections of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

8/23/99. This evening I became prematurely sleepy a couple of hours after dinner, so I lay down and slept for about three hours. After I woke up I lay in a drowsy state for fifteen minutes or so, and these are the thoughts that came to my mind:

I thought of resting, of drifting away relaxed and immersed in peace and beauty, and, as always, peace and beauty were associated in my mind with images of the forests and mountains of Western Montana. These are ideas that have religious quality, and they led me to think about God — if there is a God.

If there is a God, it can’t be the god of the Christians or Jews. That god is not God but a cruel devil. The real God — if there is a God — is the unknown life-force that brought into existence the Sun, the solar system, and the Earth with its varied forms of life. Maybe — in fact probably among some others of the billions of stars in the universe — this God, the life-force has brought into existence other planets like Earth that are richly endowed with life. But it does not seem that it — the life-force — has meant us to know or encounter these other islets of life in the universe. It has given us only our own little islet of life — the Sun and the Earth. If there is a God then the only one of its manifestations that we can ever know is here. We can see and meet the life-force only in what we find around us: the sky, the Sun, the rain, the mountains and plains, the plants, the animals, the birds, insects, fish … . In other words, Nature. It is through Nature that we meet God — if there is a God.

The priceless gift that the life-force has given us is that of freedom. To do what we will, to follow our God-given instincts. All animals have this freedom. So did early humans — the forest pigmies of Africa, for example. The so-called god of the Christians and Jews is in reality a devil because it tries to rob us of our freedom through cruelty and threats. This devil-god is a tyrant and a totalitarian, and is in reality a creation of diseased human beings — it is an expression of their sado-masochistic impulses. The real God, the life-force, gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden the right to do whatever they wished, but warned them against eating from the Tree of Knowledge. It was the Judeo-Christian devil-god in the form of a snake that persuaded them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. “Knowledge” of what? Of “good and evil,” shame, sin (see Genesis 3) — the tools that the devil-god uses to control us, to rob us of our freedom. After Genesis 3 the god of Judeo-Christian scripture is no longer the life-force that gave us freedom but the devil-god that enslaves us. The snake usurped the place of the real God.

What about Jesus? That depends on how you understand him. The Gospels can be interpreted in a thousand different ways. Sadistic priests use Jesus merely as another tool for imposing their will on us, for convincing us that our wholesome instincts are “sin.” Other interpretations are possible. Neitzche’s interpretation, as expressed in The Antichrist, is as plausible as any of the other 999 interpretations of the scriptural Jesus, and also is plausible as a conjecture about what the historical Jesus may have been. If we accept Nietzche’s interpretation, then we can imagine that Jesus was sent by the real God, the life-force, to liberate man from sin, not in the way conceived by orthodox Christianity, but by undoing what was done in the Garden of Eden and freeing human beings from the social discipline imposed by civilization: “Ye shall be as little children and have no thought for the morrow.” We might then imagine that the devil-god invented by the priests and authoritarians had Jesus crucified in order to prevent him from liberating the human race.

Freedom, again, is the priceless gift given to us by the life-force, and it includes freedom from the fear of death. Animals do not fear death. They will fear a predator and run from it, and they will do what they have to do in order to survive, but they do not fear death itself. They are not even capable of forming a conception of such a thing as death. Primitive man, too, has little fear of death. He does what he has to do in order to survive, but when death becomes inevitable he accepts it stoically and without fear. Death is the natural conclusion of the life-cycle. By dying one gives room to new life and one’s body provides nourishment for other organisms. We must liberate ourselves from fear of death, be as little children, and give no thought to the morrow. This is part of what is necessary for the recovery of our lost freedom.

But wait. The time has not yet arrived. The recovery of our freedom requires more than being as little children. The forces that enslave us are intelligent, calculating, ruthless, and disciplined. To defeat them we will have to be even more intelligent, calculating, ruthless, and disciplined than they are. We will have to exercise enough self-discipline to endure hardship, suffering, and protracted struggle. Only after the evil in the world has been overthrown will we be able to let down our guard and be as little children.

Added January 22, 2000. The sentence, “Ye shall be as little children” does not appear in the Gospels. However, it certainly concords with the spirit of the Gospels. “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.” (Luke 18:17) “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) “Take therefore no thought for the morrow … .” (Mathew 6:34)

As for my comments concerning Nietzche’s interpretation f Jesus, see sections 32–35 of Nietzche’s The Antichrist.

In any case, let it be remembered that what I’ve written about is only a record of some ideas and feelings that came to me when I was in a drowsy state. I do not claim they make any sense or that they are consistent with other things that I’ve said or written.

Added 7/4/05. When I made this transcription I should not have deleted “Muslims” on pages 2 & 3. Not that it matters now. — TJK