An appointment with the boss

Good day, how may I be of assistance?

I have an appointment with the Boss.

The secretary behind the table in the huge vestibule did not signal exactly what one usually understands by courtesy. It must then be said that it is not usually a place one gets on a civilian errand. It would go too far to explain how it was done, but through connections, perseverance, and a good portion of luck, I managed to reach as far as the courtyard of the Most Holy.

We do not accept visitors without special clearance, so please take a seat.

Which I did without protest. It was somehow in the air and the tone of voice that here there was no servicing or negotiation of anything. I will just take the opportunity, while I wait, to mention the mildly intimidating entrance to the sacred halls with angels equipped with flame swords and other security gear. I must admit that I probably did not expect to get further than to the courtyard but to be dispatched via the door on the left side with the sign ‘To Hell’.

Now I sat here with no choice but to let it rest on the iceberg with a tuber in the neck behind the counter. How long it took is hard to say, and I must have fallen into spells, for I had not noticed anything until a figure poked me on the shoulder.

Please follow along. The Boss wants to talk to you in his office.

Then it was time. I have to admit that it was not without some nervousness. I was expecting to be locked in something like a giant throne room with the Boss on the throne surrounded by additional security personnel. It was therefore a bit of a surprise to arrive along a narrow staircase to a library-like room with old books from floor to ceiling.

Come all in, I’m sitting back here.

The voice came from behind a bookcase that divided the room. And there he sat then, the Boss. A gentleman with a gray beard of indefinable age, a little to the elderly I would think. The smell of cigar was unmistakable.

As suggested, it was not the scenario I was expecting, but it was also my feeling that the scene was created for the occasion so as not to be too unfamiliar.

Well, I do hope they were not too harsh on you out there. I do not really like all that gear and hoist and all those formalities, but that’s how they like it. I also have to take the employees into account. They take care of theirs and I take care of mine.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to meet. But first I just have to ask how I can address you, Sir, because I have no idea?

Yes, that’s it, isn ‘t it? All the names I seem to be carrying around. But you don’t have to ‘Sir’ me. They call me everything below the clouds. What do you usually call me!

I guess I usually call you God. But I can hear when I now sit here, that it is not a name but a sort of a title.

That is fine by me. In reality, I’m nameless, but that’s unbearable too on the other hand. Say what you want to talk about. I’m into anything, and I have to tell you that it can get a little lonely once in a while in the back room. All the omniscience on the shelves, it can be stressful at times. I’m also a little curious, because it can be hard at times to make contact with people like you down there. So I’m really looking forward to a nice chat here in my back room. Cheers, let’s just taste the wine, it should be a good vintage.

God – now I just call you the usual – it is said that you are omnipotent.
But I never understood what that means?

Now that is an interesting question. It is a very misunderstood concept. You must understand that I am capable of, let’s say, a little of each. At the same time, you must understand that I have promised myself and my clientele, that is, the universal field of concept and cosmos as we know it, that I do not interfere in how the here-and-there living beings act. If they want to do it, then they can do it. But everything has consequences. The misunderstanding is that one thinks that it is me who is sitting up here behind the clouds and in the back room like a sour accountant holding accounts and pressing the buttons. People see it as a punishment from above. It is not. When you arrived at the place where you live – and you come from that pretty yet annoying place called the Earth – you already knew in advance what you were getting into. You also knew that when you chose to sink down through the layers of density and physical presence, you also chose to reset your memory of the choice you had made as well as the experiences you had made before. What you call God’s punishment for sinning is the punishment you have agreed to inflict on yourself when you choose to ignore the consequences of your own choices.

Does it make sense?

I think it makes sense, but at the same time I am a little confused, because I have been told that man does not have a soul before we are born, and that the soul after death either goes to Heaven or burns in Hell. And then there is the idea of the resurrection of the flesh. What are we going to do with all that meat if we’re just going to be ghosts?

Shall we start with the ghosts? These are souls who, with great reluctance and ambiguity, have not left their local existence and thus ended up in Limbo. They do not want to let go, they want to rewind the lost time, which is not possible. Some of the don’t even know, that they are dead, meaning they have left their body. Next, you need to know that your church knew of the existence of the wandering and rebirth of the soul, but that it was printed by the canonical field of approval in what according to your reckoning was the third century. The one with the resurrection of the flesh is simply nonsense. I know that it appears somewhere in your Credo, that is, what you confess that you believe in, but it will not be less confused by it. At the same time, there is something special about it, as the incarnated abode of the soul, which it left at the bodily death, can at its own desire be re-established in a new incarnated abode. It just should not have been called the resurrection of the flesh but the restoration of the flesh or something like that, and it makes no sense without taking into account the reincarnation.

Is that why people are so scared to die?

People are afraid of dying for a number of reasons, and one of them is, of course, that there are certain other people who want to take the lives of their fellow human beings and have what you call an invested interest in having a permanent fear of death present. But yes, you are right that the fear of death has to do with people not understanding the connection between life and death. Death is a continuation of life, life is a continuation of death. It’s a continuum. There is a reason why people who have tried to die prematurely and have returned no longer fear death. They have seen that death is not a destruction of life but a transformation of life.

We have also been told that we as humans are created in the image of God.
It may seem a bit blasphemous, and what does that really mean?

It depends on what it refers to. There’s the bad news, and then there’s the good news. Let’s start with the bad. Many years ago, some creatures arrived on your planet Earth that thought they had the power to tinker with your genetics. They called themselves gods as they were much more advanced than you. On the other hand, their morale was not particularly high, and although they seduced people into submitting their laws against bribery with – shall we say – certain kinds of technological toys, they violated the laws adopted by the Galactic and the Universal Council. You may not know it, but there are such councils. Nothing can take place in the galactic societies without all the parties involved agreeing and accepting the agreement, but these travelling beings found a loophole in which they misled people into believing that the agreement was in their favor. That’s why humans on your planet have been living under an unhealthy system of government with a global military state of emergency for 16,500 years.

The good news, in turn, is in a whole other category. That is what I want to call the true meaning of the statement. This means that there is no essential difference between me and you. We are of the same essence. A piece of me lives in you, and a piece of you lives in me. We are the same and yet different. This is where it becomes difficult to talk about, because we do not have the same language. In your language there is no room for paradoxes and multidimensional concepts of reality, so I speak with your language on the occasion of the day. The Universal Being, The Souce which I AM, have downscaled itself in this moment in order to meet you. You would not want to meet me in my scale, since it would blow you to pieces.

I still do not quite understand how we are to understand it. After all, we are not God or gods, except for certain types who believe that they have put themselves in the high chair while the boss was at a meeting – if you understand what I mean.

I understand exactly what you mean. That’s why they call me omniscient, not true 😉

It was precisely the types, as you say, who sat down in the chair that started the rumor that humans were born evil in the first place. Next, that humans were powerless. Next, that humans were stupid. And secondly, that humans had to live with all kinds of sufferings, diseases, wars, famines and all the plagues of Egypt, and that it was all something that I had decided on their behalf to punish them for their disobedience.

It makes sense, and this is probably where all the doubts and accusations arrive in the style of: How can the good, omniscient, and omnipotent God offer suffering human beings these atrocities. He’s abolished right on the spot!

Exactly. The types who sat in the chair managed to convince humanity that eternal suffering was a condition of life in this godforsaken place. They also managed to convince people that a blind and unconditional belief in this image of a malicious tyrant was necessary to avoid eternal damnation. You must know how many times I have taken to my head over this scam. But I have made an agreement with my staff of employees that I will not interfere. It’s called the non-intervention agreement. I and the Universal Council must be asked directly for a new agreement, and the request must come from a unanimous grouping of those involved.

But that’s not going to happen, is it? Mankind will never agree on anything like that. Are we not lost forever?

There you are wrong. I have more glad tidings for you, as you write in your Holy Book. The inquiry has already taken place, and a peace agreement to replace the millennium-long military state of emergency has already been reached. You just have not heard of it yet, because the mists of confusion on your planet are so thick. You must also know, that the beings you call humanity are not the only living intelligent beings on your planet. Although I can understand that the concept has fallen into disfavor with those who shout the loudest down there, there are different species of beings who have the ability not to appear to you. These have long been deeply concerned about the place, which they also call their home, and seven years ago in your time table the agreement was reached. There are still people in power over people who do not respect this agreement and some have already been expelled from the planet. Their surviving subjects currently pretend that nothing has happened, but they rule only on borrowed time.

But will these rulers not be able to do irreparable harm to humanity, even if, as I understand it, they are put off their jurisdiction? Everyone has heard of the Flood, and they said it was your fault too. For my part, I’ve always had a bit of a hard time with that story.

One question at a time. I can understand that. There are several strings in the story that might well need to be illuminated instead of being obscured. First, there is not just one deluge but several. One has to do with a lot of ice that once melted 12,000 years ago, and as the melt water began to cause the waters to rise, people had to leave their homes on the coast and seek refuge inland. The other has to do with the fact that some of the people who inhabited one of the terrestrial continents, which ironically today are covered in ice, chose to use their technical toys in a destructive set-and-way – extremely destructive. Afterwards, they chose to blame ME for it because they did not have the courage and manly heart to tell the survivors what THEY had done. Both parts of the story are extremely real, and all the stories from ancient times on your planet have a version of them.

Your second question was addressing, whether the current leaders, while feeling the earth burn beneath them, are in the process of exercising the same outrage. You’re absolutely right. But if you also ask if it will succeed for them, then my answer to you will be that I can not tell you. Your God is not a list of facts, and your destiny is not a roadmap. It would be against the rules of the game, because as always it is up to you to accept a handshake or reject it once again. This is what your philosophers call free will. If you were not equipped with such a thing, then your stay down there would be in vain.

It was with that remark, that I could sense that the conversation with the boss was finding a natural end. My list of questions was far from exhausted, but when I think about it afterwards, the answers also contained the hint of answers to many of these questions. For example, I would have liked to hear a little more about God and the Devil and what that story was about, but the answer may be hidden in the other answers. It is something with free will and the choice we have to make. I think I’ve got something to think about.

The trip out through the sanctuary and the courtyard took place more smoothly than the trip in. This was perhaps to be expected, as a poor man who has just been allowed to sit in a meeting with the Boss probably does not pose the great security risk anymore. One incident, however, was when one of the fiercely imposing intimidating cherubs or seraphim, or whatever they call themselves, asked me:

Well, you’ve just been inside with the boss. So what were you talking about?

After which I had to say to the magnificent being wearing wings and flame sword – and may I add not without a slight sense of empowerment of pride:

Unfortunately, I cannot say anything about that, because it would be against the rules of the game and the agreement I made with the Boss. I suggest, you go and ask Him yourself.