|
Gnosis - by William Small
Sophia
We were in a run-down motel near the Mexican border when Sophia told me the Truth. I’d picked her up in Tijuana, on the corner of 9th and Guadeloupe. I don’t make any apologies. I just happened to feel like having someone that night, and I ended up finding her. I was pretty drunk by then, so I didn’t object when she took me to what looked like the cheapest, dirtiest roach house north of the Rio Grande. The fat hick Georgian on reception waved us past without looking at us – I figured he must be used to her bringing guys here, so it was probably ok.
The room she took me to wasn’t as bad as I expected – no rats, no roaches, clean sheets. She sat me down on the bed, took my money, and sat down next to me.
And then she kissed me. My buddy Grant says she must’ve had acid in her lipstick, but he also says Monica Lewinski was just a big distraction from Bill’s secret plan to murder Newt Gingrich. Actually, I wish that was true. Ol’ Newt is a fucking embarrassment. Anyway, she kissed me, and the world exploded. It was like the Fourth of July, and she shone as brightly as the Texan sun.
And then she started to speak.
*
Did you ever wonder about the problem of evil? You know, the old chestnut the Christians fuss over so much – if God’s all-powerful, all-knowing and loves us all so much, then why is the world such a shithole? Why? Well, forget it. It’s not a problem.
I mean sure, it’s a problem for the fundie Christians and anyone else who wants God to be a nice big father-in-the-clouds, but for those of us who know a bit of what’s going on, it’s not hard at all. You see, God isn’t nice. He isn’t really even a God, if by God you mean all-powerful and all-knowing and all that jazz. The God of the Big Three, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, the Lord of Hosts – he’s just a demiurge. A subcontractor. A lackey. And he damn well isn’t perfect.
He – and you, and me, and the CEO in his penthouse and the junky trash on the corner – is just another Emanation from the Universal Well of Being. He’s not all that much more powerful than any of us, he just knows what’s really going on and how to keep all our eyes shut. He is despair and degradation and exhaustion and contentment and petty complacency. He has polluted the world and turned it into dust. He has made the Spiritus Mundi mundane.
Worse? There’s nothing you can do about it. The Gnostics and the Buddhists and the TM people have it all wrong – you can’t transcend the material and tap into the Great Oneness of Light and Truth and Puppies by closing your eyes and humming. There’s no way out. The world may be shit, but it’s all there is for us.
*
That’s not exactly how she put it, but I think you get the picture. And for a heap of metaphysical bullshit, it made a lot of sense. Of course, I knew without having to ask that she wasn’t telling me the whole truth. Why tell me any of this, if it’s all over and done and 1 | 2 NEXT |
|
etcetera.online
