The Unpretenders - Chapter 18

I didn't know which was worse: the madness at home, the madness at school, or the madness of society itself, to which the former owed their existence, and into which the former sought to lead me. Actually, scratch that! Worse still was the fact that none of them saw it as madness at all; that none of them could self-diagnose their own sickness, or refrain from spreading the infection to others. "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."

Needless to say, I wasn't the first person who had come to view sociocultural conditioning as a virus, and I surely wouldn't be the last. Although, from my own experience, exposure to the pathogen could also serve to strengthen a healthy immune system - that is to say, consciousness - to the point where an individual wasn't merely resistant to the illness, but potentially able to treat and effect a cure in others.

For that was the nature of the disease, it seemed: to target, diminish, and ultimately usurp human consciousness altogether, replacing it with the edicts of a socially engineered operating system. At which point man became little more than a machine. A process so often depicted in popular science fiction - allegorically, I would suggest - as if to poke fun at our own stupidity. For we ourselves, through this mental illness, had become the manufacturing plant itself, producing obedient human robots who were not only unaware of being anything more than the sum of their own programming, but actually oblivious the fact that there could even be anything more.

The social virus, then, waged war on consciousness like HIV waged war on the immune system. And, in either case, once an individual had succumbed, a downward spiral became almost inevitable. The end result being either physical death, in the case of HIV, or a far more hellish living death, which most people had come to think of as normal life. Hence, I would suggest, the urgent need for fresh 'white blood cells' in the form of incarnating souls from elsewhere in Creation.

I was different though, it seemed. For I hadn't come here from another world, nor was I willing to go along with the behaviour and customs of my own. Which meant, of course, that I was despised by society. And the more I demonstrated my independence of thought, the more hostility I experienced from others. In the absence of Julian, therefore, I sought comfort in Scripture: "If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you."

Not surprisingly, Christians felt that this passage applied to them. But the world didn't hate Christians. Why would it? They represented a third of the population, after all. However, it had certainly always hated highly conscious individuals who dared to speak out against it; who revealed disturbing truths about the nature of reality; who exposed people's beloved normality for the diabolical sham that it was. Historically, such dangerous talk might well have gotten a person crucified. I guess I was lucky, therefore, because I was merely expelled for my efforts.

The first day back at school had started well enough, despite some predictable insults and insinuations. A few people had even expressed sympathy over the abuse that I had apparently suffered at the hands of our former tutor. Little did they know that Julian was perhaps the first person I had ever met who hadn't abused me in some way, or who didn't want something from me. School itself, I realised, was nothing less than institutionalised child abuse, disguised as education. And because I had done my research on the subject, I knew that people who thought differently simply hadn't done theirs. Not that research was even necessary for anyone with a modicum of consciousness. 

Then there were those who didn't see me as a victim at all, but rather as the perpetrator. For it appeared that my brother had shared one of my erotic stories with his friends, and it had subsequently gone viral. All of which meant that I suddenly found myself accused of being an adultophile. I honestly assumed that they were joking, at first, and had simply made the word up. But no! As it turned out, my accusers were being quite serious, and the word itself was very real; used to describe the perversion of children who lusted after adults.

Oh dear. Sometimes the most sensible course of action was to back slowly away from people, cartoon style, having realised the extent of their psychopathy. And, as I did so, I began to see all of my classmates as a gaggle of drooling imbeciles. Nay, a hoard of zombies - impossible to reason with and quite relentless in their pursuit of fresh, uncontaminated brains. Unlike fictional zombies, however, their modus operandi was far more subtle and insidious. For infection came through proximity and prolonged exposure. Hence the importance of compulsory schooling; which, statistically, few could hope to survive.

I hadn't given up completely, however. In fact, during lunch break, in the school library, a number of people had showed up in response to an invitation I'd put out to hear what I had to say. I should have been intimidated by the situation, but my passion for the subject seemed to give me the confidence to stand up and speak. And what I spoke about started with a clever analogy that Julian had once made.

"Here's a blank sheet of paper," I said, holding it up. "This is you. Now I'm going to scribble all over it with these coloured pens. Suddenly, what do you see? Not the paper any more, but just the pattern. This pattern is what you mistake yourself to be. And yet it has nothing to do with the paper that you ultimately are. Now, here's an identical sheet of paper, only it's been laminated. Look at the difference when I try to scribble on it. Nothing! And even if a little ink does appear, it wipes clean off again. This laminated sheet of paper represents somebody who hasn't lost touch with their true self; their god self. It represents somebody who laughs at the idea of being given a detention, or homework, or having to regurgitate irrelevant facts in order to prove their worth. It represents somebody who sees through the nonsense of national, racial and religious identity, knowing that they are merely scribbles on the page. It represents somebody who needs nothing from others, but has everything to give, knowing as they do that otherness itself is an illusion. For there is ultimately only one sheet of paper, and we are it. We are God. But because the concept of God has been so aggrandized, through religion, it seems almost ludicrous to think of ourselves in that way. And yet that's exactly who and what we are, beyond the scribbles of worldly conditioning. Not God in a kingly sense, but God in a universal sense. God in the only sense that actually makes any sense! This is the wisdom of the ages. This is what every true teacher has been speaking and writing about throughout human history; the only teachers, therefore, that you should be giving your attention to. So forget about exams, and coursework, and careers. Go home, right now, and share this good news with others. Share it with everybody you meet along the way, because they are all you. Don't worry about the necessities of life; just put the Kingdom first, and all of those things will be added to you. And the Kingdom, of course, is within. There is nothing ultimately outside but illusion and suffering. I urge all of you to begin your journeys home, therefore, both literally and metaphorically, by simply walking away from this abomination, in the sure knowledge that you are God."

It was a speech that earned me a standing ovation. It was a speech that got me expelled. It was a speech that raised eyebrows, rattled cages and, thanks to social media, sent shock waves throughout the entire school system.

I was beginning to believe.