Soul Matters: Book Three: Towering Confusion

Phil didn’t know if Metatron and the Sarim would actually figure out how to defeat Jehovah, and he wasn’t sure he cared. The chaos fundamentalism caused on Earth was acute enough he figured the only way to avoid it was to live on the Coast. At least here, in southern California, there was the competing emphasis of all kinds of alternative religions -- from Wicca to Buddhism.

He pulled into his specially marked parking place and pushed the experiences from the night before to the back of his mind. He got out of his Mercedes and went to work.

The building was high-rise, a dozen floors or so, and glistened of steel and glass. Phil’s office was halfway up the building. After securing a coffee from the ground floor cafeteria, he hopped on an elevator with a few colleagues. The talk was about baseball and how well the Angels were doing. Phil chuckled at the double entendre.

Off the elevator, a reception area guarded a bank of offices along all three walls. Phil proceeded to his, which also boasted a secretary outside his office door.

Beth Ann, the secretary, was elderly and possessed a quick wit along with unquestioning loyalty. She smiled at him and said there was nothing needing his immediate review.

Near lunchtime he was buzzed by one of the senior vice presidents. Phil hurried upstairs.

“Phil,” the portly VP said as Phil entered the spacious room. A walnut desk sat before a window. Wood file cabinets, a book shelf and a liquor cabinet lined the walls. Plush chairs faced the desk, and antiques decorated the flat surfaces and the walls.

“Come in and take a seat,” the VP continued as he finished up on his computer.

Ron Dobson was a relative of Betty’s, and he did what he could to help Phil on his climb up the corporate ladder. Unfortunately, Phil didn’t like the man. His manner was ponderous, and his business decisions were strictly conservative. He preferred to stay in the middle of the pack. Phil wondered if he ever had an original thought in his whole life. Still, it would be unwise to alienate the man, and Phil knew it.

After he was seated, Phil plastered on a pleasant face and waited.

Ron turned from his computer. He was dressed in an expensive long-sleeved striped shirt, pinstriped pants held up by dark blue suspenders. His bullet head looked out of place hovering over a keyboard, as did his meaty fingers stabbing at the keys.

“We haven’t seen you at church lately,” Ron began and hit a few more strokes of the keyboard.

“It’s a busy time,” Phil smiled.

“Nothing to do with the unpleasant business with Dr. Loreen, I hope,” Ron went on. “She blamed all her problems on you, I heard.”

“I know,” Phil continued to grin, this time more apologetically. “She was pretty high-strung.”

Ron dismissed the topic and launched a new one, turning to face Phil, “I’ve never had much faith in any shrink. All they seem to do is get you more confused; then they give you drugs to fix it. The only thing we need is our faith in God.”

Phil’s mind tripped over Ron’s use of the word ‘faith.’ Clearly this meant something entirely different to him than it did to the angelic host.

“Betty called me,” Ron was saying. “She said you started meditating again. She’s worried about you.”

This was indeed a surprise. Phil hadn’t thought Betty paid much attention to what he did. He wasn’t sure what to say.

He decided to go back to the first topic -- Dr. Loreen.

Phil let the smile vanish from his face and asked in a serious tone, “Did you know the Israelites didn’t believe in an afterlife until the Prophet Isaiah? After Isaiah, a belief sprung up about a new heaven and earth between the unattainable heavenly sky and the red earth, which had always existed. The new heaven was where the ancestors lived, and they coexisted with now-living people on the new earth. This was what the Zoroastrians believed, and the Jews borrowed the idea. Ezekiel also pushed a slightly different view of the afterlife. But it was Daniel who connected the dots and added the idea of judgment -- there are those who deserve heaven and those who don’t.”

Ron’s face twisted into befuddlement, as if he was looking at a burning bush speaking English. He blurted out, “What are you talking about?”

“These were the kinds of questions I had for Dr. Loreen,” Phil explained. “It looked to me like the Jews evolved the whole idea of heaven with the help of pre-existing religions.”

“Ridiculous,” Ron remarked. “Why would you even think such a thing?”

Phil didn’t restate what he just said as the reason. Instead, he went on, “I guess Dr. Loreen’s own doubts about her faith got stirred up in her attempt to solve my doubts.”

As Ron sat in perplexed silence, Phil connected his own dots. Faith for fundamentalists was a ‘noun,’ as in an ‘article of faith.’ They believed in dogma. Whereas the way the angels used the word ‘faith,’ it was a verb. It was the action of exhaling, or letting go.

Just then, Manuel flew through the window and alighted next to Ron.

“Don’t worry,” the angel said in reassurance to Phil’s quick moment of panic. “He can’t see me.”

Ron finally gathered himself to say, “I’m not sure you’re even supposed to be asking such questions. It just seems wrong somehow.”

“I know,” Phil allowed, trying to keep himself from looking at Manuel, “but once those questions come up -- well, what do you do?”

“It’s from meditating, Phil,” Ron asserted. “The Devil came in and put those questions in your mind.”

Manuel turned to stare at Ron, then he put a hand on the man’s shoulder. Ron didn’t seem to notice, though. He was too intent on Phil.

As Manuel removed his hand, he said to Phil, “Ask him about Ginger.”

Phil ignored the angel and said, “Regardless of where the questions came from, they are valid questions. Was the whole idea of judgment, the way we now understand it, developed over time?”

“Ask him about Ginger,” Manuel reiterated. “Or I will.”

Ron squirmed in his leather chair and heavy sighed.

Phil asked, “Who is Ginger?”

“Who?” Ron countered, frowning once again. Then, “Where did you hear that?”

“Ah, in the employee’s bathroom,” Phil answered.

“Who said it?”

“I don’t know. I was in a stall and just heard voices,” Phil extemporized.

Ron smiled at Phil and said, “There’s always malicious rumors flying about. Don’t put any stock in it.”

“I won’t,” Phil agreed. “But as for the church, I’m not sure I can go back until I resolve this crisis of faith I’m in.”

Ron stood to usher Phil to the door, “I understand. I’ll reassure Betty for you.”

In the hall, Manuel said, “We need you back as soon as possible. I guess old Ronnie-boy will have to wait.”

“What will you do to him?” Phil wondered, not sure he really wanted to know.

“Pop his pompous balloon one of these days,” Manuel answered and disappeared.

Phil returned to his office and told his secretary he wasn’t feeling well and was going to take an aspirin and lie down for an hour or so. She made the usual suggestions and female-comfort noises, and he knew he wouldn’t be interrupted. Since it was the middle of the day, and he wouldn’t fall asleep if he meditated in a prone position, he stretched out on the sofa in his office and began the process.

Shortly, he materialized in Manuel’s garden-patio. The angel was impatiently awaiting him.

“Let’s go,” he said without preamble.

“Back to the Sarim’s chambers?”

“No, we’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Manuel said as he put his hand on Phil’s shoulder. They flew through the ceiling and across the PMS level at a faster pace than Phil was used to. It was a disorienting trip.

“Where are we going?” he shouted to the angel.

“To rescue some angels.”

They flew on in silence, primarily because Phil didn’t know what to say. He remembered Manuel said Jehovah was remaking Hell into its apocalyptic shape -- a lake of fire, probably an abyss or two. Phil hoped they weren’t headed there.

In fact, they were. They landed on a black ledge before a lake of fire. The sky was dark, rolling with black thunderclouds. In the lake were dozens of angels, or Phil figured they were angels. From the shore of the red lake, they looked like black specks.

Manuel finally spoke, “I haven’t told you much about Evil except for the highlights. Since free will demands choice, evil must exist as a choice opposed to good. You figured out on your own ‘evil’ in most cases is the choice to refuse an evolution of consciousness in favor of remaining in the Flesh. And fallen angels serve such an end. But there’s more to it.”

Phil laughed a short, mirthless sound and said, “There always is.”

Manuel went on, “There are people; there are entities; there are spirits in the Universe whose sole purpose is to hurt, destroy, disrupt, sabotage, and generally reverse the natural order and return us all to chaos -- to entropy. These beings are the natural allies of fallen angels, but angels, by our nature, do not conspire on behalf of entropy. In fact, fallen angels keep those entities in check. So, while angels do serve either the light or the dark, none of us serves entropy. Mainly because it would mean our own doom as well.”

“Okay,” Phil shrugged. “What does this have to do with why we are here?”

“You must save those angels from the lake of fire,” Manuel explained. “You must do it, because we cannot. They are there on Jehovah’s orders. However, if you save them, you also bring back the leaders of the dark angels. And I need to make you aware of what you will be doing so you can make an informed choice.”

Phil’s high forehead furrowed into a frown, for what Manuel was asking him to do went directly against the grain of everything he had ever been taught. Fallen angels were the enemy and deserved to burn forever in a lake of fire -- it was their punishment duly prophesied in Revelations.

Additionally, he had no idea how he could rescue anyone from the fiery lake he saw before him. It stretched for what seemed miles. He couldn’t even see the far shore.

“Which is it?” Manuel asked in a terse voice.

“I’ll do what’s needed to restore order to heaven, Manuel, but I don’t know what to do.”

“Not to worry,” Manuel smiled. “I’ll walk you through the process. They have gathered into a bunch, which will make it easier.”

Phil looked at the indistinct figures in the lake, and they were gathering together. From here they looked like cracked pepper on tomato soup.

“Phil,” Manuel called him back from the distraction. “Go to the step on your stairway where the tree is. Connect with the Universal Life-force. Channel the energy into your hands and make a bubble.”

Phil did so. He imagined himself on the step, imagined himself surrounded by a redwood tree, and immediately felt the surge of Life-force energy, the ch’i, prana, or Force energy that powered all life in the natural world. He assumed Manuel wanted him to use this energy because it was the energy that Jehovah used to dump the angels into the lake of fire.

He drew it into his chest and channeled it to come out his hands. Once there, he fashioned a ball of amber-white energy.

“Send the bubble to them,” Manuel said. “And as it gets closer to them, imagine the bubble expanding so it’s big enough for all of them to get inside.”

Phil opened his eyes and released the golden-orange ball from his hands. He willed it to expand as it traveled towards the angels. From his perspective, the ball or bubble stayed the same size as it floated away. It remained the same size when it reached the black specks in the lake.

As a group, they all jumped into the bubble. Then, Phil drew the bubble back to shore. This time the globe grew.

When it reached the shore, as a ball ten-foot in diameter, Phil willed it to stop. Then he released his connection to the Force-energy, and the bubble dissolved.

Sammael came forward first. He was livid with rage. Phil could tell because the Prince of Evil’s aura was crimson and popping with lightning streaks. Behind him were Beelzebub, a massive dark figure, Azazel, who was also enraged, and dozens more fallen angels Phil didn’t know.

“Why isn’t that maniac contained?” Sammael shouted. His tall commanding presence, swirling black robes, and explosive rage caused Phil to take a step back.

Manuel smiled, “Good to see you, too, Sammael. Want to thank Phil for getting you out of the barbecue pit?”

Beelzebub did. His ponderous bulk, clothed in embroidered black silk, slid forward calmly, and he gave a slight bow, “Thank you, Phil. It was a most unpleasant experience, but at least we know how to counter his actions.”

“Reacting is not what we need,” Sammael snapped. “We need him contained.”

Manuel laughed and said, “If you weren’t so good at your jobs, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Sammael raised his hand to strike at Manuel, but Beelzebub restrained him, “He is right, my lord. Rather than attack Manuel, we must join forces to contain Jehovah.”

Sammael shook off Beelzebub’s hand and said, “We go to the Void. Jehovah can’t follow us there, and maybe Sophia will have something useful to tell us.”

They all disappeared.

Manuel put his hand on Phil’s shoulder, and they made the quick trip to the Sarim’s headquarters.

As they flew, Manuel said, “You set us on the right track. By using Force-energy, we can undo what Jehovah is doing. But Sammael is also right. We haven’t found an archetype who can take Jehovah on and force him back into his Compound.”

“Why did you need me to rescue those angels?” Phil wondered.

“Because Jehovah ordered them there,” Manuel said. “We can’t countermand his orders. Only humans can disobey God.”

They flew into the domed headquarters of the Sarim. The main floor was still bustling with activity. On the ledge with the hologram, there were only two figures. One was the stooped form of Metatron; the other was an angel. They landed on the ledge, and Manuel told the pair Phil was successful in freeing the angels from the lake of fire.

“Good,” Metatron grunted. “Now for the more difficult task. Raphael, if you would.”

Raphael, who had bronze skin, a light-blue robe, and light-brown curls to his shoulders, glided over to Phil and placed both hands on Phil’s shoulders.

The angel’s aura flared to a burnt orange color, and Phil closed his eyes to the bright glare. Still, it seemed the angel’s aura pierced all the way through his ‘body’ and left nothing untouched or unexamined.

Then Raphael removed his hands and said, “It’s as Manuel told us. He has life-times of woundedness. And I can do nothing with his karmic debt.”

Even with this dismal report on his psychic health, Phil felt restored in some way. Like he just snorted a line of cocaine, except there was no jittery buzz to it -- this was the long sought after ‘natural high.’ On the other hand, what did Raphael mean by his comment?

“You can’t put this on his plate,” Manuel was saying to Metatron. “He doesn’t know enough. He isn’t strong enough.”

“We can’t just clean up after Jehovah makes a mess,” Metatron said in his flat, patient voice. “We must do something soon to force him back into his Compound.”

“Then give me a couple of days,” Manuel pleaded. “I think if we deal with the Tower of Babel, it will be the object lesson to give him a fighting chance.”

Raphael spoke, “You would be willing to do so, Manuel? Especially, given your role in it?”

“Yes,” Manuel sighed. “Maybe I can heal as well.”

Phil was getting irked at them for talking around him. He jumped in, “What do you want me to do, and what am I not ready for?”

Metatron turned his gray head to Phil and answered, “We have found we need a human to be the ‘battery,’ so to speak, of the mask of God who will do battle with Jehovah. You, my friend, are the only incarnated human available.”

“And you have to be an incarnated human,” Manuel elaborated. “We couldn’t do it with Sandalphon. There has to be the combination of Flesh, Force, and Spirit.”

Phil frowned, “I don’t have any experience with the energy of Spirit.”

“I know,” Manuel said tightly. “It’s why we’re going to Babylon the next time you’re here. Your first lesson in Spirit awaits you there.”

Raphael spoke, “Do you want me to come with you?”

“Thanks,” Manuel answered with irksome gratitude. “It’s about time somebody wants to help with this project.”

They returned to the patio. As Phil started to step back through the portal to his own body, Manuel said, “You remember how I spent a lot of time getting you to see the God of Genesis was nothing more than a spoiled brat?”

Phil stopped and turned back to the angel, “Yes.”

“I did it for the shock value,” Manuel continued. “You needed to be able to see things fresh, not rote-learned. So what I want you to do before you come back here is to find a text of the complete J story.”

Phil remembered from before there were at least four authors of the Old Testament theologians identified. They went by an alphabet-soup designation. The J version of the Bible was the supposedly oldest.

“When you find the complete text,” Manuel was saying, “read it like a children’s story -- a really good children’s story, one with something for adults, as in political satire, word-plays, and irony.”

Phil shrugged his acknowledgement and left the patio. Returning to his body, he breathed deep to get himself fully present in the ‘real’ world, then sat up. Opening his eyes, he went to his computer and logged onto the Internet.

It took some time, but he found a text of J and skimmed it through. The commentary to the text alluded to the word-play as indictments of King Rehoboam’s mismanagement of the kingdom. He was heir to Solomon’s throne and under his inept leadership the kingdom split in two. In general, he paved the way for the future Babylonian conquests.

With the task complete, Phil let his secretary know he was back at his desk.

Finishing work, he returned home. Betty must have had a talk with Ron, because she was more solicitous than usual. She even asked him about his day, which was rare. On the other hand, she didn’t broach the subject of meditation at all. Indeed, Phil reflected, it was also rare for them to talk about their relationship. Or if they did, the rules of that game clearly stated his life was up for discussion; hers was not. He wondered absently if narcissism was a precondition to fundamentalism.

After a chatty dinner, during which he did receive Betty’s report on her exciting day as a volunteer at the crisis pregnancy center, Phil announced his intent to meditate. Betty smiled in return and hurried to clean the table.

Once in his study, Phil reviewed the highlights of the J text and its commentary. He didn’t know why Manuel had given him the assignment, but contravening the angel would land him back in the ‘stupid’ category. Manuel could tolerate ignorance, but not stupidity, which was a loosely defined term as far as Phil could determine.

He sat on the leather pillow and dropped into a deep meditative state. The singular door opened, and he entered Manuel’s patio.

“J’s story begins with Adam,” Manuel said. The angel was at his flowers, which today were dominated by deep reds. “If you check Psalms 74 and 89, you will see how J actually began the story. Yahweh engages in a titanic struggle with Leviathan in the primal seas. They cut this part out and used the P version instead to begin Genesis -- a transcendent God creates it all in seven days.”

Phil remembered the P version, which represented the Priests, was the last version of the Bible before the Redactor, or R, compiled the Bible into its present Jewish form.

Manuel finished puttering and came to sit on the marble bench, “The person who wrote J was a high-ranking member of the court. In fact, she was King David’s granddaughter.”

Phil frowned at that, “A female?”

“Think about it,” Manuel said. “Adam gets made from adama -- the red earth, but Eve gets fashioned from living tissue. And her ‘creation’ takes six times longer than Adam’s. Eve is also the precocious adolescent who touches what she was told not to touch, and is first to eat the apple from the forbidden tree. Later, when we get to the Patriarchs, these men are no better than children. The women are the cunning, strong and resourceful ones.”

Phil could see the logic. Even the idea of ‘sin’ had feminine roots. Sin was ‘contempt’ in J’s rendering; whereas, virtue was ‘hospitality.’ These were classic female values.

“In her time,” Manuel was saying, “she was called Gevurah, which means ‘great lady.’ And she was. A great lady and a great story-teller -- a Shakespeare, in fact. And her story ultimately launched all three religions that follow Abraham’s teachings.”

“Maybe,” Phil said, “but how is this relevant to our problem?”

Manuel smiled, then he caught himself and sighed, “It has to do with the ego. And we’ll define the term to mean the situation when man could create a self-concept. For once man did so, he not only had a marvelous tool to complete the evolution to Spirit, but he also produced, paradoxically, his archenemy for the same task. Gevurah knew this, and she realized it was only through irony the ego’s negative attributes could be countered and put in its rightful place. She was like a Jewish Socrates.”

Phil considered the implications of Manuel’s equation. And, although this was a fascinating philosophical topic, the relevancy of it escaped him.

The angel picked up on Phil’s confusion, “We already know mankind repressed both Mother Earth and the Goddess with her. We also know the sky-gods came into power after the Flood. The sky-goddesses didn’t develop in Western thought really at all. As a result, there was a split. The Tower of Babel was our way of trying to heal the split.”

Phil had some trouble tracking the angel’s argument. However, he did comment, “J’s version of the Tower of Babel is pretty terse.”

“More of her irony,” Manuel said. “The Elohim take a field trip to watch construction of the tower. Once there, they decide the combined efforts of man could threaten the heavens, and so they confuse mankind by messing up their languages.”

“Yes. More or less, it’s her account,” Phil confirmed. “But it doesn’t make any kind of sense. Surely there were different languages already. Plus, surely heaven cannot be endangered by a tower.”

“What she’s really saying is just the reverse of the story,” Manuel clarified. “She saw confusion about one’s Divine origins will cause man to build immortality projects to capture godhood, in its eternal aspect, for themselves.”

“But you just said the Tower of Babel was your attempt to heal the split,” Phil countered.

“Yeah,” Manuel sighed. “We blew it again.”

Phil didn’t press further. He waited for Manuel to gather himself and proceed.

Manuel waved his hand, and the blank stucco wall to his right blurred. The magic-wall became like a giant TV screen, and a picture slowly faded into view -- the angelic host in conference. Many angels were gathered in a large colonnaded room. Manuel was addressing them.

“The Sumerians built ziggurats so the gods could have an easy way to descend to Earth. The Habiri will soon start this practice because they are neighbors and mostly hold the same gods in common. What I’m proposing is we push the idea that the towers they build actually represent their own egos. It is by using the ego as a stairway, both man can ascend to God and God can reach down to man.”

There was murmuring among the angels until one said, “It’s a bold idea, Manny, but I think you underestimate the structure of the ego. It seems to be a fortress for the separate self.”

“Perhaps,” Manuel allowed. “But the ones who know there must be something more than the separate self will need to be shown the ego is the vehicle to get past it. They can use it to connect to the many manifestation of the Divine until they find their way home.”

“I don’t think it will work,” another angel said. “They haven’t even made room for the Divine Feminine yet. At least, in the East they accomplished that much. In the East, maybe your idea would work.”

Manuel was nodding his head in agreement, but replied, “There’s still a few Nephilim left. If we get them to help, we might be able to accomplish both tasks at the same time – allow for the Goddess and there will be even more manifestations of the Divine for them to discover through the agency of the ego.”

The murmuring continued until another angel said, “The Nephilim are your responsibility, Manny. If you want to employ them in this way, then go ahead. However, most of us think it’s an ill-advised move on your part.”

“Perhaps,” Manuel allowed. “But I think it’s worth the risk.”

The scene blurred and Phil turned to see Manuel holding his head in his hands.

“It was more than an ill-conceived plan,” the angel said.

Phil didn’t know how to respond. He thought about the implications of Manuel’s original plan, though, and did have questions about that.

“If the ego is a fortress for the separate self, then how do you explain cooperation?” Phil began. “I mean, we are just as much social animals as we are separate individuals.”

“You just defined the yin and yang of the ego,” Manuel smiled. “Pro-social or ego-centric -- it can go either way. When humans work together for the common good, great things happen. When humans are ruled by some narcissistic god-king, domination and destruction happen. Yet the ego remains a ‘tool,’ and that’s the bigger issue. What will you use your ego for?”

“Immortality projects or transcendence,” Phil answered.

“And that’s what we were trying to influence during that time,” Manuel concluded. “We were opening a path to transcendence – or at least trying to.”