THE END OF THE WORLD by
GOD
It wasn't my fault. I want to be perfectly clear about that. I did what I had to do, and I had the authority to do it, and if you don't like it you can look for some other God to preside over your universe. I did not want the job in the first place. I am sorry to begin this narrative in a grouchy tone, but that's the way I feel about it.It is odd how often the first signs of Cosmic Catastrophe come quietly, without trumpets or drums or tremors of the earth. The first hint I had was at breakfast on a Tuesday.
It was a perfectly ordinary breakfast, my usual three eggs sunny side up with two pieces of toast, pan-fried in fresh butter. The clear sun was just topping the mountains when My trusted handmaiden Chandriya brought the plate in from the celestial kitchen. The first flash of day darted through My window and made a golden halo around her head, picking out reddish highlights on her ebony dark forehead.
"Lord of the World, You have a visitor," she said, in her soft voice.
"After breakfast, please," I said. "You know I don't like to do business before breakfast."
"It's the High Priest from the Temple," she said. "I think You'd better see him."
"Oh, all right," I said, a little impatiently. "You really think so?"
"Yes," Chandriya said. "I'll send him in." And she did. She has always done exactly as she pleased anyway, and she usually turns out to be right. I've gotten used to it.
The High Priest, to My surprise, was in his full ecclesiastical regalia; the purple robe trimmed in ermine, the jeweled mitre that made him look eight feet tall, the long cuffs that covered his hands. He paused at the door with a deep, formal bow.
"Oh Lord of the World look with favor on your humble servant," he said, coloring his voice with deep respect.
"Your Holiness," I answered in the same pompous tone. "Come on in, Walter, and take a load off. Eggs?"
"No thanks," he said, "but You go ahead."
"What's the occasion, Walter?" I said. "I haven't seen you for -- what? two, three hundred years?"
"Sorry, Lord. I've been pretty busy the last couple of centuries," he said, a little embarrassed.
"I know, I know. Just one damned thing after another in your business, eh?"
As usual, he didn't think it was funny. Walter's lack of a sense of humor has been a mild friction between us for a long time. In the God game you have to take things with a grain of salt, but I guess it's different in the priestly trade.
"Don't you want to take your Big Hat off?" I offered.
"I'd better not, Lord," he said. "This is an official visit."
"Suit yourself," I said. I tore a corner from My toast and dipped it into the golden pool of My first egg. Nothing better. "What's up, Walter?"
"Lord, the End of the World is coming."
"Of course it is," I said. "The End of the World is the inevitable result of the Beginning of the World."
"No, I mean it's coming pretty quick, now."
"You're kidding," I said. "Like when?"
"I figure about 4:30 P.M., a week from this coming Thursday. If it's all right with You, of course."
"Hmm." I admit, it took Me aback. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but -- still, it came as a little surprise.
"What makes you think so?" I asked.
"The Sands of Time are running out," Walter said solemnly.
"Wow!" I said. Not very Godlike, I suppose, but I'd only been in office for the last billion years or so, and I'd been looking forward to the long haul in a small universe.
"Well," I said, "I guess I'd better come down and have a look."
"I'd appreciate it," Walter said. "I don't want to set the Rites of the Final Days in motion without Your say-so. But go ahead and finish Your eggs."
"Thanks," I said. "Chandriya! Chandriya! I'm going down to the Temple with his Holiness."
"O.K. by me," Chandriya said, poking her lovely head around the door. "End of the World or something?"
"Walter thinks so."
"About time," Chandriya said. "This hasn't been the greatest incarnation for me, you know. Can I have the rest of your toast?"
"Sure," I said. "But I thought you liked incarnate life. Desires and fulfillmments, pains and pleasures, victories and defeats, good and evil, all that dualistic stuff."
"Oh, it's all right," Chandriya said. "But after you've completed the Ultimate Work of Transformation, it's kind of a pain in the butt, you know?"
"Don't be vulgar in the presence of God, Chandriya. I've told you before."
Chandriya just sniffed. She deftly snatched the last scrap of toast from my plate and departed.
"All right, Walter, let's go take a look."
My World is a small one, only a few billion galaxies, but is has worked out pretty well. We have our share of disasters and catastrophes, of course -- how else could you work at The Transformation? -- but by and large, it has been a pretty good gig. I think I've had worse, though naturally I can't know for sure. I mean, when the World Ends, it's over, baby, and -- God or mortal -- you can't go dragging a bushel of memory over the Gap.
The citizens of our cosmic neighborhood have taken the Great Work seriously. A little too seriously, in My estimation, but they understand why they are born, the Meaning of Life, and they've put their shoulders to the Wheel of Existence and rolled it right along.
Over time, most of the citizens have realized the Non-Dual nature of Reality, the Silence of Egolessness and the other three Truths of Existence.
The Work of Transformation is why we're here, and after you've become united with the Cosmic Oneness, the rest is pretty much optional. So She told me, anyway, when She interviewed Me for the God job here.
"What do you think, Walter?" I said. "You think the Work of Transformation is complete? Or what?"
Walter shook his head, making the tall mitre sway like a jeweled eggplant in the morning breeze. "Not for me to say, Lord. I count, is what I do."
"And a darned good job you do of it, Walter," I said comfortingly, for I am a Compassionate God.
"Still," I said, "I wouldn't like to see the End of the World before the Transformation was complete. Hm."
As we made our way down from My Holy Throne to the Temple, I admired My Creation with a certain satisfaction. Many of the citizens were already out working in their gardens, suffused by the peace that passeth understanding, in tune with the One, and generally in a pretty good mood. They genuflected as I passed, with the usual number who pretended they couldn't see Me. It's a minor sect I allow just for the hell of it.
When I designed the Holy City I didn't want a whole lot of tall buildings blocking My view of the mountains, because I knew I was going to be here a while. I gave the specs to the Sacred Architects in a vision, mostly so they'd think it was their own idea and wouldn't give Me a lot of hooraw about it. Architects are like that.
I've never regretted it. The Holy City is a very satisfactory environment for pursuing Ultimate Enlightenment. Most of the buildings are no more than two stories, and carved of a delicious white marble from the mountains, so the morning sun illuminates the whole place like a flawless, radiant sculpture. It's a great little Holy City.
The single exception to the height zoning is the Temple of Time, which stands directly in the center of the central square of the central city of the central country on the central continent of the central planet of the central sun. The Temple of Time towers over the rest of the city as I tower over mere mortals. Everything is very neat in metaphor and symbolic meaning and hidden revelation, and you can't beat that. It was one of the best visions I ever gave anybody.
Central to the Temple itself is the Divine Clock, that immense crystalline hourglass that soars from the third sub-cellar of the Temple through eight stories of sparkling, rainbow-hued splendor to the very peak of the Temple's tallest spire.
When we entered the inner sanctum, from which we could see the Divine Clock from bottom to top, I saw instantly that Walter was not kidding. From the first time since I came on watch, I could actually see the top of the sand. Even as I watched, a single golden grain of the Sands of Time dropped through the minuscule waist of the hourglass and fell slowly in the flask below.
During my tenure as God, no one had ever before seen the top of the sand; the hourglass was always full, inexhaustible, self-replenishing, the Mirror of the World. I didn't know how She did it, but it was the universal metaphor of endless time, that which was ever consumed and never exhausted. In the hourglass the Sands of Time were eternity, infinity, omniscience, omnipotence, world without end and all other unthinkable things. But I could see clearly that Walter was right. The sands of Time were running out.
"O.K., Walter," I said. "This is it, all right. Commence the Rites of the Final Days."
The first hitch showed up almost immediately, and I wasn't expecting it. Shows you what Omniscience is worth when the chips are down.
Anyway, a Schism developed. By the end of the first day the citizens of the Holy City (and, I suppose, of the whole planet) had split into two factions, and I began to get annoyed. I had already begun to think of the End of the World as My party, and second guessing from the mortals was not welcome.
The Schism had to do with the Final Day. One delegation, mostly from the bureaucratic caste, was opposed to taking the Final Day off. They argued that, since Ultimate Disappearance wasn't until 4:30 or so, everybody could get in a good day's work before The End; that to continue with life as usual was an Affirmation of Purpose; that to take the day off just because the World was ending was trivializing the Work of Transformation.
The opposing faction -- you can guess what they were like -- wanted to take the whole Final Day off and dance in the streets.
I am, by and large, an Impartial God, but to tell you the truth I was biased on this issue. Except for that Seventh Day of Creation I have not had a full day off since the Beginning. It is true I sometimes quit a little early, but I would rather like to spend the Final day wandering in My Creation, watching My Enlightened Ones dancing in the street.
Walter and the whole Church establishemtn was naturally in favor of putting in a good day's work at The End. They worry a lot about the sin thing, and somehow connect dancing with uindisciplined freedom, which is O.K. by Me but not O.K. by them.
I decided, in my compassion, not to decide. In my Wisdom, I would allow an Enlightened mortal to decide, and I'd back her up. I had Chandriya in mind, of course. Some called it the Divine Somebody Stacking the Deck, but I thought of it as a responsible delegation of authority.
When the question was put to her, Chandriya looked at the ceiling for about a micro-second and said, "Dancing. I've got a new tango dress."
So be it. At the End of the World there shall be dancing in the streets, by Divine Decree.
I thought that would be the end of it (no pun intended), and we could settle down to the deeper Mysteries of the Rites of the Final Days, both exoteric and esoteric -- a little meditation, a little work in the gardens, a bit of Adoration of Me. Nothing too elaborate, but sincere and appropriate to the sublime solemnity of the occasion. The End of the World, after all (no pun intended), should be met with dignity as well as joy and absolute terror.
No such luck.
The polka dancers got their backs up, claiming the tango was being given unfair preference among dances, and that a certain conflict of interest was involved on Somebody's part. We lost the better part of the second of the Final Days in that debate.
The tango faction argued that the profound Mysteries of sexuality reflected the inner reality of My Creation; the passions of incarnate existence, the suffering and joys of mortals. Besides which, the polka used a keyboard accordion which everybody knew was completely inferior to the button accordion, the bandoneon, of the tango, both in tone and harmonics. The tangueros claimed that the polka was merely pedestrian and cheerful, and that was a hell of a superficial way to meet the End of the World.
Hah! said the polka faction, exactly so! What better way, they asked, to signal the Ultimate Disappearance of Existence than with a little good-natured cheerfulness and shortness of breath? The tangueros, they said, had always taken themselves far too seriously, and it was basically a sexist dance, and there was nothing whatever wrong with the tone of a keyboard accordion; the tangueros just didn't know how to play it right.
The tangueros then opined that the polka faction had the musical sensitivity of a barn door, and the fight was on. In My Presence, mind you, at the very foot of my Holy Throne!
In spite of what you may have heard, I do not demand perfection of My Creation. The Asbolute Truth of human existence is that they are made of spirit, and thus eternal. But the Conditional Fact of human existence is that they are made of meat, and all meat goes bad over time. It's a little paradox I put in.
So while I do not demand perfection in the meat, I do require a good try from the spirit. And I wasn't getting it. These Enlightened Ones had all realized the non-Duality, and the first chance they got, they went dualistic on Me as if they'd never united with the Cosmic One at all!
I was pissed. I came that close to creating earthquakes and torrents of fire from the heavens, with a plague or two and bloody tons of boils. But with the End of the World only a couple of days off, it seemed redundant.
Calmly, for I am a Dispassionate God, I decreed that both tango and polka were officially recognized sacred dances of the Final Days; and if anybody wanted to waltz, that was O.K. too.
The last straw. I hate this part.
In our Rites of the Final Days the next-to-last Day is called Giving up the Ego. I already had some misgivings because of the tango/polka confrontation. I was ready for trouble. The one thing you can be sure of in Creation is that it is going to give you trouble. It can't be helped. When you make a universe by playing Chaos off against Order, it is going to give you trouble sooner or later. Most of the time, actually.
Still, it's the only way I ever got a universe to work at all. If I knew a better way, believe me I'd use it.
Anyway, if the dancing was a dilemma, Giving up the Ego was a damn fiasco.
In My World, we use "Ego" more or less interchangeably with the idea of personality and individual existence. In a moment of inattention a long time ago, I permitted the existence of two theories of individual existence; the Acorn school and the Cookie-cutter school. Why I did it I'll never know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The Acorn school of individual existence holds that each person is a separate Being; a kind of growing-outward from someplace in the meat, a gradually blossoming of an Entity that is unique and independent and completely separate from the rest of creation. Frankly, I meant this as a joke. I certainly never expected anybody to take the idea of being separate from Everything seriously. Who would?
Ludicrous as it seems, the Acorn school finds something noble and comforting in this separateness-of-Ego. I think it gives them a sense of their own self-importance; they're always arguing about their individuality and how Somebody has it in for them, and how their property rights are being trod upon. It's a lonely bunch, to be sure, but I let them keep the idea of personal individuality because they seem to get such a lot of satisfaction from the idea they are alone in the World.
The Cookie-cutters, on the other hand, allow for no separation between themselves and the universe. They see Ego merely as a widely-held illusion, a common agreement to play a certain temporary role for the sake of the game. For them there is no separation from the World; they are a kind of orderly pattern impressed upon the universal Chaos, as a cookie-cutter impresses a certain pattern upon the dough. After all is said and done -- it's still the same dough, but with the illusion of separateness that makes it possible to play the Incarnation Game.
I finally lost all patience when Walter came to tell Me he couldn't go ahead with the Rite of Giving up the Ego.
The Acorns insisted the Ego was Real(!), somehow valuable, and didn't want to give it up! The Cookie-cutters said it was Un-Real, merely an illusion, so giving it up was pointless, and Somebody had better do some Divine Re-thinking.
"All right!" I roared. "That's it, you guys! I've had it with you! Chandriya! Chandriya!" The rumbling of My voice was like the sound of thunderstorms in the mountains. Windows shook in the Holy City, and the citizens looked up from their gardens with fear widening their eyes.
Chandriya came in, ostentatiously tugging her forelock. "Yassuh, Lord Boss, yassuh."
"Don't get wise on me, Chandriya. Get Me My bat."
"Yassuh, Lord Boss," she said, and hustled out of the room. When God roars in the Thunder Voice, even Chandriya listens. She came back with My bat almost immediately. I've had the bat around for some millenia, in case I ever wanted to create baseball. It always seems too silly, so I never did, but I kept the bat.
When I left the Holy Throne the sound of My footsteps shook the earth. Beyond the mountains a dark cloud gathered, black as ink, and flashes of lightning bloomed within it. A wind rose in the south, and the waters of the great seas began to foam and steam and the rivers of the land turned to blood.
I took the Aspect of a many-bodied thunderstorm and stomped down the streets of the Holy City. With every step a building fell, the white marble crumbling like sand, and desolation marked the Path of My Going.
Citizens shrank back from My terrible passage, tango dancers and polka people alike, meditators and doers, Egoists and non-Egoists. Gardeners stood in awe, their hoes still in their hands, and in the depths of the City the lamentations began to rise like ravens flying in the dark sky.
As I passed, My Divine Wrath seared the ground, and ashes rose into the air from the heat of my anger. Trees vaporized, and carrots and cauliflowers.
By the time I reached the Temple of Time, the cries of terror and awe rose from the city in a great murmur like the sounds of ten thousand leviathins in the sea.
At the last house before the Temple, a gardener stood paralyzed, his mouth hanging open, his spade caught in mid-stroke.
"Adam!" I hollered, and the sound reverberated through the air like the crash of mountains falling. "Get your ass out of that garden, and I mean NOW! And take Eve and that stupid snake with you!" Adam started scuttling off toward the East as fast as his skinny little legs would carry him.
The gates of the Temple of Time fell crashing before My Divine Gaze as though turned to dust by the passing of endless ages.
Walter was counting grains of sand, as usual, and when the Gates of Time fell before My Gaze of Destruction, he spun around with his eyes as big as plates.
"Oh, Lord my God, have mercy!" he prayed. "My Lord God is a Merciful God!"
"Stuff it, Walter, not today. Move it!"
As Walter scampered out of My Way, I stormed over to the Divine Clock, the crystalline purity that counted out the days of existence in grains of golden sand.
With a mighty swing of My Celestial Bat I smote the crystal, and at first it was a though Time stood still. Then, slowly, and with a sound like the shattering of stars, the Divine Hourglass that marked the days of the universe began to collapse.
The crystal shards of destruction began to fall from eight stories above Me, the Mirror of the World disintegrating in slow motion and falling like a rain of diamonds from the heavens above. As it collapsed, the golden sands burst out from their confinement in billowing waves of iridescence.
As the crystal and sand fell like a tidal wave over My Divine Personage it burst into flaring, gyrating rainbows of swirling color, wafting into flickering nothingness as it approached My Radiant Self. I started to laugh.
Even before the last of the golden sands of Time had fallen, I turned and went out of the Temple into the street. Those whom fear and awe had not paralyzed were streaming into the Central Square, and when I appeared at the Gates of the Temple in My Small Aspect, a great and sorrowful wailing rose from the crowd, with prayers and chanting.
"Oh, Lord, oh Lord...."
"IT'S OFF!" I roared. "THE END OF THE WORLD IS OFF!! YOU BLEW IT!"
Women sobbed, and brave men turned away.
"What now, Lord? What now? What about the tango?"
"NO MORE TANGO FOR A HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS."
"Please, Lord, mercy...."
"TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND. AND NO POLKA EITHER!!"
"The Lord Our God is a Vengeful God!"
"YOU BET YOUR BOOTY I'M A VENGEFUL GOD! AND DON'T YOU EVER, EVER FORGET IT AGAIN!"
"Lord," Walter said from behind Me, his voice shaking. "What do you want from us? What shall we do now?"
"What else?" I said. "Get in there and clean up the mess and START AGAIN!"
The moaning of the crowd rose to the skies.
"AND NEXT TIME," I said, "GET IT RIGHT!!"
And that was that. That's how I called off the End of the World.
Only problem is, now I have to find some plausible way to explain the whole mess to Her.
end
The End of the World
©1995 Don Berry