“I think I’m a fourth-level,” I said, “at least according to you.”
“Yes, you are a fourth,” he confirmed.
“But now that you’ve told me all your secrets from the fifth level, maybe I get bumped up a level. Is that how it works?”
“No,” he said, “awareness does not come from receiving new information. It comes from rejecting old information. You still cling to your fourth-level delusions.”
“I feel vaguely insulted,” I joked.
“You shouldn’t. There is no implied good or bad about one’s level of awareness. No level is better or worse than any other level. People enjoy happiness at every level and they contribute to society at every level.”
“That sounds very charitable,” I said, “but I notice your level has the highest number. That’s obviously the good one. You must be feeling a little bit smug.”
“There is no good or bad in anything, just differences in usefulness. People at all levels have the same potential for being useful.”
“But you have to feel glad you’re not on one of the other levels.”
“No. Happiness comes more easily at the other levels. Awareness has its price. An Avatar can find happiness only in serving.”
“How do you serve?”
“Sometimes society’s delusions get out of balance, and when they conflict, emotions flame out of control. People die. If enough people die, God’s recombination is jeopardized. When that happens, the Avatar steps in.”
“How?”
“You can’t wake yourself from a dream. You need someone who is already awake to shake you gently, to whisper in your ear. In a sense, that is what I do.”
“As usual, I’m not sure what you mean.”
He explained, “The great leaders in this world are always the least rational among us. They exist at the second level of awareness. Charismatic leaders have a natural ability to bring people into their delusion. They convince people to act against self-interest and pursue the leaders’ visions of the greater good. Leaders make citizens go to war to seize land they will never live on and to kill people who have different religions.”
“Not all leaders are irrational,” I argued.
“The most effective ones are. You don’t often see math geniuses or logic professors become great leaders. Logic is a detriment to leadership.”
“Well, irrational leadership must work. The world seems to be chugging along fairly well, overall.”
“It works because people’s delusions are, on average, in balance. The Avatar keeps it so by occasionally introducing new ideas when needed.”
“Do you think an idea can change the world that much?” I asked.
“Ideas are the only things that can change the world. The rest is details.”
Going Home
Time and need dissolved in the old man’s presence. We talked for what could have been several days. I remember one sunrise, but there might have been more. I never felt tired in his presence. It was as if energy surrounded him like an invisible field, feeding everything that was near. He was amazing and confounding and, ultimately, beyond the realm of words.
We talked more about life and energy and probability. At times I lost the sense of belonging to my own body. It was as if my consciousness expanded to include items in the room. I stared at my hand as it rested on the arm of the rocking chair and watched as the distinctions between wood and air and hand disappeared. At times I felt like a kitten lifted by the fold of skin on the back of my neck, helpless, safe, transported.
I don’t remember leaving his house or walking to my van, but I do remember how everything looked. The city had bright edges. Sound was crisp. Colors were vivid. Objects seemed more dimensional, as if I could see the sides and backs from any angle. I heard a phone call being made a block away and knew both sides of the conversation. I could feel every variation in airflow.
I drove home by a route I wouldn’t normally take. I glided through green lights without ever touching my brakes. Pedestrians stayed on sidewalks and a policeman waved me around an accident scene. I knew that all the people involved were safe.
As my key entered the lock, I could see all the other locks like mine and all the other keys that were coincidentally the same. I could see the internal mechanism of the lock as it turned, as though I were a tiny observer inside, looking at industrial-sized equipment.
Everything in my apartment seemed three-quarters of its original size. It was mildly claustrophobic.
I sat down at my kitchen table with the package that the Avatar refused to accept and I stared at it for a while, wondering about its contents. I wanted to open it but didn’t want anything to spoil a perfect mood. In time, however, curiosity won.
A folded yellow note tumbled out of the box and into my lap. I unfolded it and read its barely legible message. It was just one sentence, but there was so much in the sentence that I found myself reading it over and over. I stayed up all that night, wrapped in the red plaid blanket that was also in the package, reading the sentence.
“There is only one Avatar at a time.”
After The War
“I love that rocking chair,” the young man said to me. “How old is that thing? It looks like an antique.”
“I got it one year before the Religion War,” I said.
“I’m glad that war ended before I was born,” the young man sighed. “I can’t imagine what it was like to be alive then.”
“You are lucky to have missed it.”
“Were you in that war?”
“Everyone was in that war.”
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “Why do you think the war ended? We learned in school that everyone just stopped fighting. No one knows why. Although there are all kinds of theories about secret pacts among world leaders, no one really knows. You were there. Why do you think everyone suddenly stopped fighting?”
“Put another log on the fire and I’ll tell you.”
The young man looked at his watch and hesitated. He had many more stops before lunch. Then he turned toward the fireplace and chose a sturdy log.
“If you flip a coin,” I said, “how often does it come up heads?”
THE END
I hope you enjoyed God’s Debris. If you would like to get the hardcopy version as a gift for a friend or family member, or its sequel The Religion War, just click the appropriate link below.
The Religion War (The Sequel to God’s Debris)
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