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"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."
"It is not a good universe
that I strive for, nor a just one, nor a pretty one; the
existence of the universe itself is at stake. Final victory
for Belial does not mean imprisonment for the human race,
continued slavery, but nonexistence; without me, there is
nothing, not even Belial, whom I created."
"The
power of evil," Emmanuel continued, "is the ceasing of
reality, the ceasing of existence itself. It is the slow
slipping away of everything that is, until it becomes, like
Linda Fox, a phantasm. That process has begun. It began with
the primal fall. Part of the cosmos fell away. The Godhead
itself suffered a crisis; can you fathom that, Herb Asher? A
crisis in the Ground of Being? What does that convey to you?
The possibility of the Godhead ceasing -- does it convey
that to you? Because the Godhead is all that stands between
--" He broke off. "You can't even imagine it. No creature
can imagine nonbeing, especially its own nonbeing. I must
guarantee being, all being. Including yours."
"A war is
coming," Emmanuel said. "We will choose our ground. It will
be for us, the two of us, Belial and me, a table, on which
we play. Over which we wager the universe, the being of
being as such. I initiate this final part of the ages of
war; I have advanced into Belial's territory, his home. I
have moved forward to meet him, not the other way around.
Time will tell if it was a wise idea."
-- The
Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick |
