God - for want of a better word

With only two or three seconds to live, it is quite amazing how much the human brain can accomplish. Your whole life does not pass before you like a newsreel - that is possibly a particular phenomenon experienced during the physical process of drowning - but a great deal can happen during the brief interlude between the sudden and certain knowledge that complete destruction will come about before you have next filled your lungs with air and that final moment of awareness.

Perhaps astonishment is misplaced. After all, if a small computer can process huge masses of data in a second or two, then surely the brain can do better. The concept of a brain being like a computer is gradually changing to a subtly different analogy; computers are now being created to be just like brains.

Of course we will never know what those last frantic thoughts may be. They can hardly be the subject of detailed research. There is precious little data for analysis. Black box flight recorders taken from fatal aeroplane crashes frequently disclose understandably crude last words. A simple four-letter expletive is the most commonly occurring sound on the unfeeling recorder. Other forms of violent and sudden death are, mercifully, generally unrecorded.

So it was with Richard. The circumstances of his departure from this world were, sadly, not uncommon. Driving a little too quickly down a wet, leafy autumnal Hertfordshire lane, he rounded a bend to see, or rather not quite see, an un-lit skip. It was a dark and rainy night. The skip was festooned with lamps, all of which were out.

Perhaps it was the momentary lack of concentration when he changed the player from Pavarotti to Little Richard. Whatever, he knew with an impaling certainty that he was not going to survive the impact.

‘Oh, shit.’ Anger at the sheer incompetence of the situation; concern about how Linda would take it. Thankful that she was not with him, and a crushing sadness that his life really was at an end. Some bastard would pay for this. He was aware of a flash of light from inside his head. If he had lived a second longer, tears would have filled his eyes.

There was a glimpse of something. A face, a sound, both distorted as if in a hall of funny mirrors inside an echo chamber. Complete oblivion followed. There was no time to experience a feeling of any sort. The next sensation came as a surprise in more ways than one. Surprise that there was any sensation at all, and surprise at the complete normality of the experience. Every detail was perfect, ordinary, and yet almost too structured to be a real event. Richard was driving down the lane again. He rounded the bend and there was the skip, lights all a-twinkle. As he drove past he thought how dangerous it would be if they went out. How long did their batteries last? He felt unreal. A feeling of fear crept up. He realised that he was just trying to write an alternative version of his own history, and it could not work. He smiled inside as he thought of himself as a television that could turn itself off. So he did. Just like an image that disintegrates if the aerial is un-plugged, he dissolved into a condition of no feeling or sensation of any kind. He was not simply in a non-feeling state; there was nothing to feel. Just as coldness and darkness are nothing other than the absence of heat and light, he was devoid of any mental or physical awareness; almost. There remained just the slightest background glimmer of knowing that although he was dormant, hibernating, in a state of suspended animation, he could, if he wished, switch himself on again. Although the television had turned itself off, the stand-by diode was glowing dimly, waiting, possibly forever, for an instruction to resurrect. He also knew, instinctively rather than consciously, that if he did so instruct, he would expose himself to a minefield of questions and fears.

If the greatest fear is of the unknown, then he had every reason to be absolutely terrified. There was a distant sensation of a kind of contentment, but that could hardly be experienced in the state of virtual unawareness in which he chose to stay. Oblivion was decidedly preferably to the other option, for the time being at least. And time was not something that was ever going to bother him again. After all, he was well and truly dead.

As the inevitable rising sun burns off the mist, so curiosity eventually dispels the natural tendency of the traumatised to be still and un-demanding of themselves. Still not one hundred per cent in control of his thoughts or actions, Richard drifted effortlessly into a state of greater awareness.

However much a cliché, “Where am l?” is still the first response of one who awakens in unfamiliar surroundings. Richard decided on a small experiment.

He would try to find out whether or not he was breathing. He could detect no sound, no feeling. He then tried experiment number two. He imagined that he was breathing. The rise and fall of his ribs, the feeling of air passing through his nostrils, the white noise of water rushing through his ears as his heart beat. Heartbeat !! He had not specifically imagined that. Still, breathing and heartbeat are so inextricably inter-related that he supposed one just triggered the other in his imagination process - involuntarily so to speak. ‘lf respiration is involuntary,’ he wondered, ‘do I have to keep on imagining or will it continue automatically?’ Only one way to find out. He stopped imagining.

The breathing and the heartbeat stopped as well. He was thinking fast and clearly now. ‘lf I imagine the breathing again, and the heartbeat, and then imagine that the process will continue indefinitely, will I still need to concentrate on each breath?’ Try it. Back came the air, the rise and fall of the chest. He could actually hear the steady thump of his heart. (‘l can HEAR !!’).

Sudden terror struck. Up to now this had been a private game. Like intimate scratching under the bedclothes at the dead of night. Now he must face some kind of reality. ‘lf I can hear, can I SEE? If I can see, what will I see?’ However bad the hangover, there is always the certain knowledge that you must get out of bed eventually, it is just a question of when. Richard knew that he must open his eyes sooner or later. Perhaps he should feel his surroundings first.

lt came as a great shock to discover that he did not actually have any surroundings. He did not even have a pair of hands to feel with. That was soon remedied; he imagined some. He continued; feet, face, lips, tongue and all the familiar parts that seek out and respond to external stimuli. lt struck him that humans have two distinct bodies, one comprising the primary sensory receptors, mainly external, of which one is constantly aware. The other being the parts that exist unseen, unknown, never consciously brought into play, like

a spleen or pancreas. He could not imagine a lymph gland for himself even if he knew what one looked like or what it did. That amused him and he felt better.

Amusement being a reducer of tension, he set about imagining for himself all the different parts of his body with which he was familiar. He was getting quite carried away with the fascination of improving on the body that he had left in the cemetery when he remembered the purpose of reconstructing himself. He felt around. There was nothing at first. He had always loved the feeling of nakedness under a duvet, so it was almost involuntary imagination that put him there. It was warm and soft, with a cool area to stretch into if he liked. Things were looking up. There was that word. He could not put it off any longer. He opened his eyes.

Fear rapidly became disappointment. He should have realised that there would be nothing. Now he would have to imagine all the visual aspects of his surroundings. ‘This is going to be tedious,’ he thought. Then another paradox struck him: ‘lf I have to create everything in this new condition in which I seem to have arrived, how is it that I am thinking, using my intellect to the full without having to imagine a brain to do it with?’ He laughed to himself - at the stupidity of the question. Without a brain, how could he possibly imagine anything at all? So his brain had survived, not physically, that version was rotting away in Highgate, but a complete faculty had somehow remained functional and was busily adjusting to the new environment in which it found itself.

‘l am sitting up in my own bed, alone, on a bright sunny morning.’ Richard would dearly have loved to have Linda his wife with him, but maybe that was too dangerous - after all she was still alive. There was no need to imagine all the surroundings; they were all in the programme. Just the basic location was all that was necessary. Just like a mind-map, once the central point was established all the peripherals just spread out and fell into place. It was encouraging to realize how accurately he could control his imagination. Not like a dream where thoughts and images stream past without any real control or direction on the part of the dreamer. Not even like waking thoughts, where no matter how disciplined the mind, diversions and trivia seem constantly to waylay the thinker on his intellectual journeys.

Richard imagined Thomas, his cat. Thomas had died last year aged twenty. He had caught the dreaded FIV and had to be put down. Richard adored Thomas and was delighted when there he was, just like in the old days. Thomas stretched, purred and then jumped off the bed and walked out of the room, tail erect with the characteristic “question mark” at the end, inviting Richard, with the familiar chirruping miaow, to follow him downstairs to give him breakfast.

‘This is so bloody normal. What am l supposed to do now?’ Richard decided to try something completely bizarre. He closed his eyes. ‘When I open my eyes, there will be a chimpanzee sitting on my mantelpiece’. He opened his eyes and the ape curved a long arm over its head and sleepily scratched its shoulder blade. He instantly shut his eyes again and wished it away.

He took stock. ‘l can imagine familiar surroundings. I can imagine familiar objects. I have my body, if I want it - or another one if I prefer. What about people? lf I can imagine a monkey for myself, what about a person? After all, I created Thomas well enough.’

He thought about Linda again - that was tempting, but he needed to know much more yet. He smiled to himself. ‘lf I can imagine people, perhaps I can make love to Marilyn Monroe, or have the relationship with my wife that I always wanted’. This seems too good to be true. ‘Perhaps this is what people meant when they tried to describe going to heaven when you die.’ An icy chill shivered through him, he realized that not for one moment had he thought about God.

He had never been particularly religious, almost an atheist in fact. He had retained a vestige of doubt, however, as something of a defence mechanism against the unthinkable rather than any real belief. But now he must acknowledge something, but what? He knew he was dead, but he knew he still existed. Did this mean there was a God? Not necessarily - maybe he was just experiencing a perfectly natural but atheistic sequence of events. He thought hard. lf he simply tried to imagine God, how could he be sure he would not simply conjure up some preconceived figment; the old man with a white beard or a metal-clad warrior. Such images were so deeply entrenched in his culture that he could not be sure that he would be able to distinguish between a recreated subconscious stereotype and something truly authentic. He was proud of his l.Q. and thought patronisingly about the lesser mortals and how they coped with this situation. Presumably they simply imagined their totem pole or fearsome gargoyle, and when it dutifully appeared they spent eternity in the blissfully naive ignorance of the unquestioning believer.

Perception is reality. He felt sorry for the sinner who had an equally unshakeable conviction in an after-life of perpetual Breughelesque hell fire and damnation. Richard was determined not to fall into any cerebral traps. He was going to find out about God, or lack of it, and he was going to do it scientifically and in such a way as to avoid any possibility of interference from preconceived cultural imagery, conscious or subliminal. He was pleased that he had not been intellectually hi-jacked by formal religion during his life. He was also thankful that although not a traditional believer, he had grown up surrounded by Christian culture. He knew the battlefield and the rules of engagement. Fortunately for him, as he thought, he did not have to be on any particular side.

After a while he decided upon his course of action. Even then there was a slight doubt in his mind as to whether he had decided for himself or whether God was simply leading his every thought. Still, if God really does control absolutely every detail of thought and action, then there is nothing one can do except go along with it. Richard could never bring himself to think of a God who directed every deed of every person who ever lived. What kind of a God directed Caligula or Adolf Hitler? He could just about accept the idea of a supervisory God, but even that concept seemed to be lacking in any real supportive evidence. During his lifetime, Richard’s observations of the existence of God were little more than an awareness of a selfish, childlike ability in his fellow men to create the deity and a religion to surround it that best suited their particular purposes. This, together with the deliberate manipulation of the many by the few for their own material and territorial advantages had made Richard particularly unreligious although not completely atheistic.

He was now about to put two ideas to the test at once. His local vicar had died a couple of years ago at the age of eighty. He had been one of the ‘old school’ in theological terms. James the First, Hymns Ancient and Modern and little sticky stamps depicting the ‘Light of the World’ for the diminishing number of five to nine year-olds at Sunday School. Here was an uncomplicated believer if ever there was one, ‘His idea of God must be indistinguishable from the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel,’ thought Richard. He closed his eyes and imagined the Reverend Arthur Ellingham. lt was very much in Richard’s mind that he must find out if he could imagine real people, alive or dead, and have a real conversation. lt may be easy enough to call up a fantasy figure and put words into their mouths by one’s own assumptions of what the person in question would be likely to say, but with someone like Arthur, who Richard knew only superficially, there would be very little danger of stage managing the dialogue.

Richard opened his eyes. There was the old man, sitting in a chair at the end of Richard’s bed, beaming, cherub-like, just as in life. ‘Hello, Richard. Fancy asking me round to be the first to see you. You never invited me to your house in forty-six years when you were in the mortal plane. Still, never mind, better late than never. I expect you have all sorts of questions to ask, and now you find yourself in God’s house you instinctively turn to your old Vicar, don’t you dear boy?’

‘l thought God’s house was St. James’s,’ said Richard. He hated himself for being sarcastic; no one should hurt such a dear old boy. Not even God, who had, in His mysterious way, allowed Mrs. Ellingham to spend three years in agony, incontinent, raving about rats crawling all over her body. Real mercy had eventually come in the form of a ward sister who had decided to mistake 50mg for 5mg. Richard remembered the quote by Arthur in the local paper about how, having given her life to the service of her Lord, she had, at last, found peace in the bosom of Jesus.

‘God is everywhere, Richard’, said the Reverend, predictably.

‘Tell me, Arthur - do you mind if I call you Arthur, this place seems to lend itself to informality,’

‘l quite agree. In fact I never really liked the formality of Church life. Have you any idea of how infrequently a vicar hears the sound of his own name?’

‘l never really thought about it.’ Richard replied, warming to this unexpected revelation. He continued; ‘Tell me, have you realised your ambition as a man of the church end actually come face to face with your maker?’

The Reverend Ellingham beamed. ‘There is no need, Richard. I was in harmony with God for sixty years before I died, what else do I need now to convince me of His love for me?’

‘Perhaps you are scared to find out.’ said Richard.

‘lt is not a question of finding out, dear boy. lf you are certain of something there is no need to prove it. Did you go to the window each morning to check up on the sun – to make sure it had not forgotten to rise? And before you ask, yes, I have spoken to Him since I have been here, but that is nothing new either. I have been in daily contact all my life. I believed what I would find in heaven, and sure enough it was all as expected. I do not have to worry about what God actually looks like - whether He looks like anything at all actually. I only know that He lS. lf I care to imagine Him with black hair, brown hair, or no hair at all for that matter, what good would that do? God showed himself to me through his Earthly works many years ago. I really don’t think He would want me to have a different image of Him now.’

‘Was your wife’s illness one of His Earthly works, Arthur?’ Richard knew this would hurt, but knowing that Arthur’s faith was unshakeable, what harm could be done by just one incisive question? The beam disappeared and Richard wondered if he had committed an unforgivable sin. To question the faith of a man of the church after he had already gone to heaven seemed somehow unacceptable, even if it was solely to establish the truth. But surely the search for truth was the highest ideal whatever the religion one espoused.

‘l am no stranger to evil, dear boy.’ The old man replied. ‘The devil thinks he can best show his hand by afflicting the virtuous, but that is where he makes his greatest mistake. It proves that he is never as powerful as the goodness of the Holy Spirit. The devil thinks that no one would notice if a sinner were struck down with unspeakable suffering, but to plague the righteous undermines the power of the Lord. In fact it is the opposite. Of course God could prevent the suffering, but that would eventually take away the meaning of the difference between good and evil. When others see the strength of the afflicted bravely bearing their crosses, they themselves gain strength, both in themselves and in their belief in God’s ultimate victory over evil.’

As if a window on the soul had been momentarily opened and then firmly shut, the serious face of the old parson returned instantly to its more familiar beam. Richard knew that it would be pointless to probe further. Any more questions would evoke only platitudes, probably biblical texts, chapters, verses and all. Old Arthur was happy in his perception of his God and his heaven, and nothing could ever shake the faith again.

Richard had one more question, though. ‘Tell me, Arthur, you came the moment I called, or, more accurately, when I imagined you. You did not answer my questions as an extension of my own thoughts and beliefs. I did not dream up your answers to my questions, you were authentic. So you really were you, weren’t you?’

‘Absolutely, dear boy.’

‘So, suppose,’ Richard continued, ‘that you had been talking with someone else when I called you. Could you have been with me at the same time, or would I have had to wait. I may have thought that it was impossible to call anyone if you had not shown up. You were my first contact here you know, apart from my cat and an experimental ape.’

‘You will come to learn that there is no such thing as physical being here, dear boy’ the old man answered. ‘You must not think of me as one me. There are as many “me’s” as are needed for interaction at any one time, if I can use the word “time” in its loosest sense. Your body is in Highgate Cemetery. Here you are spiritual, not material. Still if you had come to church a bit more often, that would not come as any surprise to you. I expect you want me to go now; you must have a lot of mental experiments to conduct. Do invite me again, I really like little conversations like this, dear boy.’ The beam stayed momentarily longer than the rest of him. Like the Cheshire cat in “Alice”.

Richard felt that the old chap had got the better of him slightly, but at least the experiment was a complete success. You can call up real people and have an interactive dialogue, and acquired beliefs come into the next life and stay unshaken. ‘So,’ thought Richard, ‘what takes shape if there are no preconceptions to insulate the intellect?’ Time for the next, and far less predictable, far more dangerous experiment. Richard was very tempted to call upon his own father who had drunk himself to death at the age of sixty-four, and had died an atheist. He resisted the temptation. There would be plenty of time for the family later. There were so many questions to ask. Questions about real feelings, love, infidelity and all the issues of real importance that very few have the privilege to explore with their parents when they are alive. ls it a residue of childhood that we never seem to relate as equals unless parental permission is obtained? And if permission is needed, where is the equality? There is probably not a child alive who has not experienced grief at the death of a parent without an accompanying feeling of anger. Anger at the knowledge that so many “if onlys” would survive the passion of immediate loss, and become frequent thoughts until death resolved the issues one way or another.

These thoughts were not new to Richard. He had survived his father by twenty years, and a few more days would not make much difference. ‘Do we have “days” here?’ He wondered. ‘l suppose I can put myself to bed and go to sleep if I feel tired. Will I feel tired? I suppose I will if I want to,’ He realised that it was very easy to think in great loops of connecting thoughts, which, although they departed from the subject under consideration, always seemed to come back to the point eventually. So his father would not be the best subject for the next experiment. He needed an atheist, but not someone with whom he was emotionally connected. He must first find out if the responses are truly the words of the personality of the individual concerned. He was pretty well convinced by the Reverend Ellingham, but, nevertheless, he could have been imposing his own preconceptions of the stereotype whilst having an apparently genuine conversation.

This time he must hear something completely original. As a senior manager with his company, Richard had once been asked to represent the firm at the funeral of an employee who happened to be a member of the Humanist Society. Held in the local crematorium, lt was a strange affair, even to an almost atheist like Richard. There had been a speech by a colleague from the Society about life ending on Earth. A denunciation of all belief in an afterlife, followed by a poorly amplified tape of Frank Sinatra singing “My way”. That day Richard vowed that he would retain a vestige of doubt at all costs, just so that a decent Christian burial would not be a total hypocrisy. It took a moment or two to remember the name of the dead man, and Richard was pleased to realise that he knew nothing about him at all. So there he was, Phil Carter, sitting at the end of Richard’s bed, as large as life. Richard smiled at the irony of the expression.

‘Well, Phil, what do you make of all this?’ Richard was totally convinced that he had no idea of what Phil was going to say.

‘l was bloody well conned, that’s what.’ Came the reply. ‘l was told that with all the suffering in the world there could not be a God. So therefore there could not be a heaven. It seems daft now that anyone should ever assume that there cannot possibly be one without the other.’

Richard was certainly taken aback at the proposition. This really was new. He was delighted that this was a quite separate thought, but disturbed at the originality of the suggestion. He pondered, nervous that he was trying to take on board a huge new theological concept. At least it was new to him. lt may have exercised the minds of obscure philosophers, but not within the orbit of his learning.

‘So is there, Phil? A God and a heaven? Or are we just stuck here forever to dream up situations and experiences. I tell you, Phil, if there is no God here now, someone will invent one before long.’ Richard was pleased with the humourless wit of his remark. ‘Just the thing to get our atheist going,’ he thought.

‘Very funny, Richard. Yes, I do remember you coming to my funeral. I still say it’s a darn sight better than all the incense swinging mumbo jumbo that your lot go in for. I don’t mind admitting that I was conned into believing that there was nothing after life on Earth, but that’s better than being hoodwinked into believing the rubbish that the formal religions have been pouring into gullible minds for centuries. Virgin birth, resurrection, turning water into wine. You must admit that to teach children all that, and then let them live in a world where they can be raped, murdered or starved to death, whilst the formal religions own billions of pounds worth of art treasures is nothing more than formalised sadism. lt’s like asking a child to look forward to a visit by Father Christmas, and then telling that child on Christmas Eve that it was all a joke. And that’s only Christianity. What about the Jews, the Muslims and Sikhs? All slaughtering each other, usually in the name of their own interpretations of the same God, and at the same time circumcising, wearing turbans, growing hair, or not growing hair, depending on which version of God you are listening to at the time. Oh, yes, and you have to kill your meat animals by hanging them up by their hind legs, cutting their throats, and letting them bleed to death. Apparently all this is the will of the same God who takes a personal interest in every sparrow that falls to the ground.’

Richard was impressed by this. He had said similar things himself, usually when simply wishing to take sides against an argument for the dogma of formal religion. He recognized that Phil was an articulate fellow in a rough sort of way. At least a Humanist has taken the trouble to think and arrive at a conclusion, albeit a wrong one. Richard pondered the amount of thought undertaken by the entire English nation when it changed from being Roman Catholic to Protestant; just to satisfy the lusts of a syphilitic monarch, He wondered if the yeoman ever thought of anything much. He thought of Northern Ireland. He mentally chastised himself for being patronising.

‘Well, is there or isn’t there, Phil? A God, I mean’ Richard recognised the blatant ploy of a soap-box orator like Phil never to answer a question, but to wax eloquent for so long that the questioner forgets the enquiry. As a skilled negotiator, Richard had long since learned to tenaciously return to the point until he was satisfied.

‘There is clearly an after-life, I can hardly go on denying that.’

‘He’s stalling.’ thought Richard,

‘But before you think l’m prevaricating.’

Richard had a distinct feeling that this man could read his mind. Perhaps he was just guessing at what Richard was thinking, but maybe it was more than that.

‘l can tell you that something or someone must be organising all this. lt can’t just happen can it? So if that fits in with your theory of God then there is a God, but as far as I am concerned He is nothing more than a mechanical genius. Good and evil, morality and all that stuff seem to have precious little to do with it. As for religion, well, I ask you, if we are all up here anyway what on earth is the relevance of dogma, ritual or any belief at all? lf l, as an atheist, get the same result as the Pope, l’m glad I had as much fun as I did when I was alive.’

Richard counted himself fortunate that he could wish his visitors away without courtesy. He was tired of Phil, Even though his argument made a lot of sense. Arthur and Phil. Self-sacrificing altruist and hedonist. They have not really changed, so entry into this new life certainly does not sanctify. Still, folk like Arthur caused a lot of people to be happy on Earth, which is more than you could say about Phil. Even though Richard had not known him, he could tell that he had been, and still was, a pretty un-likeable fellow.

Time to take stock again. Arthur did not want to see God because he already knew all he needed to know. But he may be wrong. Or are there an infinite number of correct interpretations? ls everyone right according to the beliefs that they bring with them? Phil does not seek God because he is angry with himself for being wrong during his lifetime, and does not want to see anything else, not yet anyway, which will further prove that he was on the wrong track. He has to accept an after-life, but God can wait. lt’s a bit like flying in a 747, you know someone must be piloting the thing, but you do not necessarily have to see what he looks like. So preconceptions travel well. Belief is not undone.

‘What happens to people like me,’ thought Richard. ‘l do not have a specific belief with all the rules and dogma, but l must find out what is really going on. If all we have are our beliefs, then I am the most unfortunate of all.’

Something that the un-loveable Phil had said was intriguing Richard. The mechanical genius. That was a God of sorts. The danger was in simply creating the belief in one and then living an eternity of adherence to one’s own personally constructed deity. lf there was no God, we would soon create one. That was really depressing. lf you come to heaven without a belief, then you just imagine a God of your own and exist with it forever. Richard wanted knowledge, something new to contemplate, not a continuum of existing data. He was annoyed with himself for repeatedly thinking about ‘heaven’. lt was too reminiscent of the opposite of hell, and he had already proved to himself that eternal damnation was something that only the dogmatist wished upon himself, even if unwittingly. He wondered if he really was stuck with nothing but his own private store of information, which he would simply churn over and over forever. He thought of himself as the last man on Earth, without a dictionary, yet wanting to increase his vocabulary.

‘Mind you, l could always make up words of my own,’ he thought.

Phil, too, had introduced some originality. He wished that Phil had used a word that he had never heard before, just so that he could have asked what it meant. That would have been real proof of external input.

‘Perhaps I could call up a foreigner and ask him to speak in his native tongue. That would be interesting.’

The idea cheered him. On the other hand, perhaps the brain can create new information in total isolation if it has enough time. After all the human animal has done it by evolution over the centuries. lt has simply used more than one brain in succession over the generations. lf one brain could survive a thousand years, or for infinity in the case of the dead, then maybe that one brain could achieve as much individually as any number of individual brains..

‘l’m getting in too deep,’ thought Richard. The time has come to sort things out one way or the other. lf I leave it any longer I really will be mentally clogged with stories and half-baked conceptions. At least if I try it now I am in the dark. I can have no idea of what is coming.′

How to phrase the question, that was the problem. Like a biased market researcher he could not think of a way to summon God without introducing an element of preconception.

‘lf I do it now,’ he thought, ‘l will probably get it wrong. Yet the longer I leave it, the more ideas I will have had which, in themselves, will distort the subject. Perhaps the Reverend Ellingham is right, just exist with your beliefs, or lack of them in my case.’

‘But your curiosity would get the better of you eventually, wouldn’t it?’ said the man.

‘Who on Earth are you’? Richard snapped, his irritation concealing his own joke from him.

The man smiled. Richard saw the joke now, and appreciated the implied compliment in the man’s silence. ‘You didn’t imagine me, you must be sure of that. You can put a lot of your fears behind you now, there really is as much as you want to know here. You are not alone, unless of course you want to be.’

Richard was listening to a good looking middle aged man, dressed in open-necked shirt, grey flannels, and rather expensive shoes. His voice was soft, authoritative without superiority and thankfully lacking the affectation which the shoes had presumed. Richard liked him instantly.

‘Why have you come?’ said Richard, not meaning to sound quite so melodramatic.

‘You wanted me, but you were in danger of tying yourself up in intellectual knots. So I thought I had better arrive before you programmed yourself into total disbelief of anything outside yourself.’

‘Are you telling me that you are God?’ Richard looked intently at the man. He was just sitting, relaxed, smiling. He would have looked quite at home at Henley, sitting on the balcony at Leander with a Pimm’s in his hand.

’God, for want of a better word. l’m only looking like this because it fits in with your particular perceived stereotype of the ideal man. lf you want thunderbolts and cherubs you can have them, but if you want a meaningful conversation wouldn’t you prefer it with me looking like this?

‘So, thought Richard, this is what God looks like. Just a man that I happen to think looks well dressed. How disappointing. This is just too much. l’m face to face with the creator of the Universe, and he looks just like my assistant manager!’

Richard was tempted to ask God to change into Michelangelo’s Moses, just to add some credibility to the scene. Instead he asked meekly:

‘What do you really look like, I mean it’s very thoughtful of you to appear like this so as not to intimidate, but I am looking for the truth, not just a comfort zone in which to exist for ever.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about comfort,’ the man smiled, ‘There will be plenty of excitement for you, Richard. Incidentally, you should try to learn to ask only sensible questions. Asking: “What do I really look like?” is pointless, because I am not tangible matter in the sense that you know it, so “looking” like anything is hardly relevant.’

The man noticed Richard’s puzzled expression and continued:

‘Let me explain in a way you will understand. Suppose I was made of infra-red light, not that I am, but it is a good enough analogy for now, then you would not expect to see me, because you are not sensitive to anything longer than red. So I appear in a form to which you can relate visually, rather than a disembodied voice, which would mean that I could not express visual nuances to you. I could come to you simply as thoughts, but that would have a disadvantage in that you would still be striving to communicate with me, as you would not recognize the thoughts as anything other than your own.’

‘l see,’ said Richard unconvincingly.

As the man’s words sunk in, he really did begin to understand. ‘I suppose you had better stay as you are, at least it was your idea to look like this, and anyway there is so much that I need to know. I take it I can spend as much time with you as I like. There is presumably an infinite number of you?’

‘You are learning! You picked that up from your friend Arthur no doubt.’

Richard began to see that the man, God, was talking in a style that exactly mirrored Richard’s own style of speech. Richard remembered his foundation course in NLP. ‘Still,’ he thought, ‘l cannot pick him up on everything. There are important issues to resolve.’

‘Look, you must have explained this situation so many times, wouldn’t it be better if I just listened for a while, and let you tell me what I need to know?’

Richard felt a little ashamed, he had been so looking forward to this, but he was feeling somewhat overloaded and needed a break. ln any case he could not think of a specific question which sounded anything other than infantile.

“Was Jesus your son?” actually seemed ridiculous in the context of this discussion.

’Good idea. First you must understand that you are here forever. That will be hard to come to terms with at first. But time is not the same as you remember it. We are in a different Universe to your concept of planetary or cosmic matter. You are intangible, spiritual if you like, and are inter-related to everything in an infinite matrix of consciousness. To avoid total confusion, you have control over that to which you wish to relate at any one time. So does everything else in this existence. You can relate to that which you imagine for yourself, or you can relate to other separate spiritual entities. As far as I am concerned, I am God in the sense that you have learned to understand the term. In other words I created the universe in which you existed in a material form. When I say ‘l’, you realise that I really should say ‘we’, although you will come to understand that there is no difference.′

As there was a pause, Richard thought he had better say something. ‘How can there be no difference between singular and plural?’ lt was hardly the question he had wanted to ask, but perhaps God wanted him to ask it.

’Look at it this way; if an ant colony had an infinite number of ants, would you refer to “it” or “them”?

‘l think I see.’ Richard felt like asking another question, but decided to stay at arm’s length for a while. He was by no means certain that the “wrath of God” was a mere Earthly concept.

‘Do ask anything you like’. God anticipated.

As if with permission Richard continued: ‘Ever since Darwin, the big question has always been creation versus evolution. I can accept the concept of both. lt seems quite logical to presume that God, you, created evolution and left it at that, but people still ask, if you created the Earth and all its beings, or at least began the process, why is it such a dreadful, cruel and painful place in which to live? There are few places where a person can live a whole life in relative comfort. Most people are in misery for most of their lives, and the animal kingdom is simply a hierarchy of predatory slaughter.’

God had a serious look on His face. The visual nuance.

‘You are part of the animal kingdom, you know. Not so long ago you were eating one another. You still eat your fellow creatures that are part of your hierarchy. lt’s just that you are at the top of the pyramid.’

‘So why create something that is all pain and suffering. Surely you can intervene if you want to. Or is it all just one big experiment that once started can only take its course?’

Richard felt bolder now, and had asked the question that had troubled him since childhood. He had often wondered if God was actually ‘good’. It was a wonderful release to ask the question.

‘You are partly right in both conjectures,’ God replied, still serious, still giving Richard the feeling that his question was individual and important.

‘Yes we created the basic particles. We set them on their way. From the first atomic collision to the present day in your time scale we have been watching the experiment. There is a long way to go yet. As for intervention, we do not want to see suffering, but for matter to evolve it must change, and that means it must combine with other matter, and that, in the animal world, means it must eat other organic matter. There is not much difference between a root absorbing moisture with dissolved nutrients and your colon absorbing protein from a lump of digested meat. It is just a question of degree. The human race is a problem in terms of some of the extreme cruelties, but a good scientist does not jump in half way just because the experiment is not proceeding to his liking. We have intervened from time to time, mind you. Every now and again things start to go too much the wrong way and a nudge in the other direction may be called for to put the experiment back on track. A naturalist would not prevent a lion from killing an antelope, and he will even stand by and watch as the beast chokes to death on a bone, knowing that it is natural, albeit tragic. He would intervene, though, if a plague threatened to wipe out the whole lion population’.

‘So what is the ultimate aim of the experiment,’ asked Richard, ‘is it just a big game, or does it have a serious purpose?’

‘Very serious. The aim is to see if we could have evolved from the simplest possible beginnings. We do not know where we came from. We have always been. Yet there must be something beyond even our seemingly infinite boundaries. lf we observe the experiment we can gain even more knowledge of ourselves. Believe it or not we even learn the odd thing from intellects like yours.’

‘Have you any idea yet if the experiment will be successful?’ Richard could hardly believe that he could add to the sum total of God’s knowledge, but he was flattered by the compliment at least.

’You, as a species, have evolved the ability to seek the truth about yourselves and the universe in which you live. That is encouraging. It is something we have in common. You have told yourselves that you are fashioned in the likeness of God, and that adds to the similarity. There is not much else. You have not grasped the concept of infinity, you cannot yet see beyond your own time and space and matter, but if, as it seems, you have become, through evolution, programmed to find the truth, then we have every hope that you will eventually evolve into something like us. Hopefully before the physical conditions in your world make it impossible for you to exist.

There were so many questions, but strangely they came as an unhurried sequence.

‘What about other planets, other life forms, we may not know much, but we do know something of the vastness of space, and it is inconceivable that we are the only ones to be evolving, whether to your likeness or not,’

’Of course there are other life forms, but they are all developing in ways which bear no resemblance to our spiritual construction. You are hardly ‘in God’s image’ yet, but, as I said, there are signs that you may come closer to us eventually. You humans are the only ones to experience their own after-life, by the way. As you evolved and as you started to acquire knowledge of your own existence and displayed a fear of death, we thought it was time to preserve your spirituality and include it in our matrix. That way you could bring your intellects and let them develop further. We have not gained much from you yet, but there have been a few small ideas which we found useful; enough at any rate to justify bringing you here.′

‘So’ asked Richard, ‘what actually exists in this state in which we all find ourselves right now? We are not physical, but even a spirit must have some kind of properties, otherwise it could not be experienced.’

‘You will have difficulty understanding the answer to that.’

That’s patronising, thought Richard, mind you, in the true sense of the word that was exactly the relationship.

God continued. ‘You have created large databases on Earth - DNA, population statistics and the like. It is easy to imagine a far greater expansion of your technology. It is theoretically possible even with your limited resources to have a complete DNA profile of every living thing on your planet’.

’So imagine an infinite data base, existing in a different universe to yours - mankind is just about beginning to discover the concept of parallel universes - which contained a virtual copy of every particle, past and present, in your own universe. Bear in mind that every object, every thought are just particles, interacting by the force of many influences. Gravity, mass, polarity, magnetism and many, many more that you have yet to discover. All the thoughts that you are now experiencing are only electrical and chemical reactions. All particles reacting and counter-reacting in complex patterns. Some predetermined and some random. Now imagine further that when we created this vast array of particles, we wrote rules by which it must behave so that patterns could develop and the interactions could evolve into new reactions and behaviours. Finally imagine that we can jump at will between your universe and ours so that we can observe everything that has ever happened and influence it if we so wish. From all the big bangs to our current conversation.

‘How do you influence us - do you intervene?’ Richard had so much to ask now, yet he was frightened by the sheer magnitude of the potential knowledge.

‘Do you actually send messengers? What about Moses, Jesus, Mohammad and all the so-called divinely inspired prophets? Were they sent by you, or can you just enter the minds of people who are still alive on Earth and influence events that way?’

‘lt’s not that simple.’ The man replied. ‘We prefer to influence the experiment indirectly. For example we would not strike down someone who you would call evil just because he was causing suffering to his fellow men. We would perhaps intervene if someone or something were a threat to the course of evolution itself. Our method would be to impose an extra layer of spirituality, our kind of spirituality, on an existing intellect. The people you mention were examples of this. There have been others. Some scientific discoveries must be made at a certain time, and this is an ever-increasing problem. When you were peasant farmers, a lost crop was no threat, except to those in the immediate community. Now you are interrelating on a global scale, one disaster can take on a chain reaction format and intervention by apparently natural means is becoming more frequent. We must be careful not to over-intervene, but we have come too far to let the experiment self-destruct.’

Richard realised then, for the first time, that in fact Jesus could quite legitimately be the Son of God.

‘Could someone like me be an intervention? Could I return to the Earth and still be aware of who I was?’ Richard dreaded the answer.

‘No, not as a kind of haunting spirit, nor as a fully aware intellectual implant into an existing live brain. There is a way, though. We can transfer you into the deep subconscious of someone still alive on Earth. We take a copy of the relevant particle set that comprises your mental activity and convey that to the host on Earth. Obviously we have to ensure a very close and sympathetic match. We would not implant your developed intellect into a simple peasant - the behavioural change would be too extreme, and apart from that the peasant would not have a suitable audience to influence. Your basic motivations will influence the conscious behaviour of your host, but you will not be aware of yourself as an individual intellect. Needless to say your host will be completely unaware of your existence. We feel this is the best way to influence the experiment whilst still retaining a completely natural state of affairs. You know what is coming, don’t you Richard.’

Richard knew, with terrifying certainty that he was to be an intervention. He also knew that there was no way to protest or avoid it.

He pleaded with God: ‘Just tell me this, who is it, what do you want me to do, and what will happen to ME when my host dies?’

‘You can summon the most extraordinary clarity and conciseness when pressed, can’t you?’ God actually made Richard feel quite relaxed with this remark, coupled as it was with the patronising smile. ‘You cannot know who it is, that would influence you, and the experiment must continue with the absolute minimum of interference. lt is bad enough to have to make an intervention at all, without you indulging any of your personal prejudices.’

Richard was rather hurt at this apparent admonition, but he could hardly start objecting whilst undergoing such a profound experience. The smartly dressed middle-aged man that Richard liked so much continued: ‘We want you to balance, to the best of your host’s ability, the crisis of starvation. There is plenty of food, but the economics and the politics of the world are strangling the natural order of things. It has always been that way in microcosm; rich landowner, starving peasant, but it has taken on quite a different magnitude of late. The starving will no longer tolerate the situation. They have their radios, their televisions and computers, and they are beginning to communicate globally. They will not only rise up against their persecutors, but, in so doing they will destroy the only means of solving the problem,’

‘And what is that?’ Richard enquired.

‘The goodwill, or what little is left of it, of those who are in a position to do something about it.’

Richard thought carefully. ‘What exactly do you want me to do, then?’ he asked.

‘That is the last question you should be asking. You are not going back with a set of instructions. You are just going to exist in your host’s subconscious mind, and let your overall desire for the betterment of mankind drift up into your host’s consciousness. That way he or she, not you, will influence the situation for the better.’

Richard understood. How often had he heard: “What can one man do?” Only to think of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther, his latter day namesake and Mother Teresa.

‘Were they all interventions?’ Richard was not in the least surprised to notice that he had asked God this last question without speaking.

God again assumed the slightly patronising look that Richard would have detested in anyone else.

‘I’m not going to tell you. Sometimes a person emerges quite naturally, and will have the same influence as an intervention but without any help at all on our part. On the other hand, some interventions are quite ineffective. Look Richard, you must go now. The more knowledge you acquire here now, the less authentic your influence will be over your host. There will be more than enough time for all the questions when you come back again.’

‘One last question, please,’ Richard started to feel very sleepy, ‘when I come back here a second time, will I remember all my past life as me, as Richard I mean, as well as the new experiences with my host?’

‘Oh yes, not only that, all will be revealed to your host as well, so you can share the knowledge of your joint achievements, if there are any. Both remembering both lives, only if you want to, of course. Now you really must switch off. I have to make the download.’

God disappeared and Richard felt himself falling asleep. His last thought before losing all consciousness was how he could possibly influence world events from the subconscious mind of a total stranger.