Á Deux

“I am confined in you; I suffer from Your body. You blame the earth as I blame you. So, burn! Put in a coffin, live! Is such a world acceptable to you?” “Accept...” M. Voloshin. “Leviathan” A name needed to be found. So, he acquired quite a few since none of them fully embraced all his estimated features. But his existence was still indubitable, at least his participation in creating the Universe, in which a man discovered himself living. The Creator, Demiurge – these were some of the names. Equally unquestionable seemed to be his might and therefore – power, so they also called him the Master, the Lord. However, the most popular and widespread became the generalized name, God, yielding a plethora of interpretations, but in its core meant abundance, good and the ability to dispense it. Common to all these names was a personification which provided it with the image of a certain being that, although exceeded all conceivable limits in its capabilities, still possessed characteristics of a personality. The language itself with its male pronoun also asserted such an impression. Rare attempts to rid of the personification with the help of a neuter gender failed since this gender brought up a sense of fuzziness and intimated to things passive, lifeless, not corresponding with his grandeur. No one could meet him though. Those who declared that they had seen him, always resorted in their descriptions to known images and did not dispute it had not been him in his true nature, but just an incarnation – an optical illusion in a way. However,, in line with the development and complexity of consciousness, such an impression of a male – or, for sensitive minds, female - God became a hindrance. It held back the imagination. It was too human, coincided no more with the already gained knowledge of the Universe. Accepting that the phenomena discovered lately by science could not be easily interpreted, a human being conceded that behind all these phenomena had to be equally indefinable something, rather a Substance than Being, conforming to the one that they had called the Creator. But this something was also needed to be introduced to the language to proceed with further comprehension. So, few more names surfaced; Being, Universal Consciousness, Life, Infinite Mind. The last one still had a hint of personification, but the term “mind” was much more abstract and made it possible to avoid a shadow of a personal character. Such intellectual liberation has led to many new theories of the Universe, its creation and development. One of them will serve the ends of the following story. Eternal and Infinite Mind, driven by similarly eternal ethical requirement of good, started once upon a time to form in its constant thinking an orderly, interestingly and elegantly organized by the laws of nature world, that along with the inanimate matter contained a live nature, including an enigmatic creature, inseparable from the nature, but kept connected with the Mind itself. Envisioned bond with nature doomed a human being to a specific fate, which limited existence of his separate entities and therefore put him on a path to endless suffering. The only reason for such cruelty might have been the very necessity for such a creature to participate in the life of this world. Without him, the Universe would be void of depth and contradict the ethical requirement. The same necessity however required the consent of this, so far hypothetical human being to take part in this creative process. Otherwise, his emergence in the world, unexpected and unexplainable for him, would look like violence and lead inadvertently to a rebellion. Such consent was granted. There were no forms yet that later constituted the Universe. But the certain substance produced by the Infinite Mind inside himself and destined to assume the form of a human being – that is, if agreed – was involved in the process of consideration. Neither image nor likeness was mentioned yet at that moment. It was just the Infinite Mind maintaining a conversation with himself. This prototype of a human being – in some religions he was named Adam Kadmon – which means “primordial man” – could not yet experience all aspects of his future life directly but his idea of them was as absolute as that of the Infinite Mind. There could not possibly be a more comprehensive idea until the Universe is created where human being would live and go through all its mayhems by himself. The image and likeness that this prototype would eventually obtain offered him in some sense even more capabilities than the Mind had. Within the frame of his future world, he would be left with the gift of creativity; his mind would not be cut off from the consciousness of his creator; and he would get access to the direct experience of the material universe which would greatly enrich his consciousness and give him an unlimited source of creative energy. Although, all of this would be given to him temporarily – that was, by necessity, the law of this interesting and elegant world. And a man agreed. We all agreed inasmuch as we are ready to consider ourselves human beings. For those who still adhere to the idea of original sin or fall, it should not seem strange. As well as it does not seem strange that all of us share this conjectural sin from our very birth. The fact of the matter is that the sin – it would be more proper to say “an error, a miss” (in original texts this word meant hitting the target, but missing the bull eye and was devoid of a moral tint, added by later dogmatic readings) – was nothing but real avalanche of knowledge befell the man upon his entrance into the world of forms, into the manifested reality. Did the Infinite Mind and his internal counterpart have a presentiment about it? They did. Only in their exchange, this situation existed just as a general idea, without its crushing weight. Such a risk was also reasonable because the overwhelming force of knowledge was not insurmountable. The final word in this confrontation rested with humans. And then the fortune of real, alive man began with the first – and still developing – drama of a rapidly widening field of cognition that obfuscated for a while his indirect and not so obvious connection to the Mind. The Universe’s richness and complexity unveiled using this knowledge led him sometimes to believe that there is nothing else besides it. Meanwhile the ability to comprehend this Universe and followed achievements that yielded him ever more comfortable and pleasant existence greatly reinforced man’s confidence and let him entertain the idea of his significance as the only master and manager of the world. And yet, along with this victorious march, an uncomfortable guess haunted him that the Universe had been at a certain point created by someone. It was a vague thought, unamenable to the human mind however developed and overfilled with information. It was easy though to link this thought with countless calamities that stubbornly followed his life, prosperous in all other aspects. The world remained imperfect, unexplainable sufferings and unavoidable death reminded of themselves endlessly. Thus, the man was tempted to assume that the world had been created imperfect in the first place and to submit his complaints to the Creator. It was the theme of the Myth of Job. Putting aside the artistic details of this myth – but keeping in mind that they represent the very essence of it – we have the right to say that it was the second direct talk between a human being and the Infinite Mind. The circumstances of the conversation had changed drastically. The human being has fully experienced the unique features of life in the manifested reality and significantly strengthened his rights to an independent judgment. But the Universe itself has also been finally created, however flippantly it was appraised by the man, upset by grief and demanding an explanation. So, the Creator (at that time this particular name was popular) had to shake his acting up creature good and proper, rub his eyes, remind him of the project’s magnificence and his, human’s consent to undertake the job. As for the mighty artistic images used by the Creator to make his point, it was designed to be an implication that a man should not rely too much on so-called “knowledge,” and that this knowledge does not define and constitute the ultimate truth of the creation. A man was ashamed of his forgetfulness and weakness and confirmed his loyalty to the initial agreement one more time. Since then both sides had no reason to get back to the dialogue.