October 1961
I
had a dream last night.
I
was walking in a flat and vast desert, towards a volcano to the south. As I reached the foot of the volcano, I came
upon the ruins of an ancient city.
It
was square shaped, set to the four points of the compass. It had high external walls over ten feet
thick and a mile long per side, built of huge and precisely cut blocks of
stone. I entered through its north gate,
the one facing away from the volcano.
Whiling passing beneath the huge archway, I looked up, and saw the name
of the city, carved in stone: TRUTH.
Within
the city, the avenues were all east-west running; likewise the city
blocks. The blocks were of odd lengths,
ranging as if randomly from as few as one house to more than ten houses per
block, there were no straight north-south streets to speak of, except for the
two running along the inside of the east and west city-walls. Unlike the conventional back-to-back
twin-rows of houses in the normal city block, these blocks comprised single
rows of free standing houses, with their fronts facing one avenue, and their
back gardens facing the avenue behind.
The
houses were also built of precisely cut and fitted blocks of stone, so the
ruins were in excellent condition, though their roofs, made of lumber, had all
long since collapsed. And where in the
middle of a vast desert did the lumber come from? Apparently, the desert was where a lush forest used to be. But the houses of stone, so well were they
preserved that even the delicate carvings on their walls had survived
intact. These carvings, all in verbal
form, were ubiquitous on the front walls of all the houses. Upon close inspection, they were verses from
the Book of Genesis, beginning with the verse on the front wall of the house on
the north-west corner of the city, which read, “In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth.” And on it went till the last verse on the
front wall of the house on the south-east corner of the city.
And
at the north gate of the city, carved on the perimeter wall in a cruder hand
was a forbidding passage which read:
“If amongst thee arises a
prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, who giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the
sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee saying, ‘Let’s go after
other gods, which thou has not known…’
“… that prophet, or that
dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death…
So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.
“If thy brother, the son of
thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy
friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, ‘Let us go
and serve other gods, which thou has not known…’
“Thou shalt not consent unto
him nor hearken unto him; neither shalt thine eyes pity him, neither shalt thou
spare him, neither shalt thou conceal him.
“But thou shalt surely kill
him; thine hands shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards
the hands of all the people.
“And thou shalt stone him
with stones, until he dies.”
The
thirteenth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Finally,
over the arch of the south gate, which faces the volcano, there was a very
large carving:
“THOU SHALT NOT CLIMB THE MOUNTAIN OF KNOWLEDGE OF REALITY AND
ILLUSION. ALL THOU NEED KNOW ARE WITHIN
THESE WALLS. THE PENALTY IS DEATH BY
FIRE.”
This
is a bit of a puzzle. What harm would
it do for the citizens to climb the mountain?
How could that impact on the belief system cast in stone within the
city? Was there some carvings up in the
crater of the volcano that told the real truth of the city? Or was this just a blatant demonstration of
controlling power for its own sake? It
reminded me of the ancient Chinese army general Ngok Fay, who, in the middle of
a major military victory over the Manchurian kingdom of Kim, was recalled by
the jealous prime minister Chin Kwui and sentenced to death. When Ngok Fay asked Chin Kwui what the
charge against him was, Chin Kwui said, “No charge is required.” Was this ‘Thou shalt not climb, or else…”
commandment just a flaunting of absolute power?
I
wandered amidst the ruins for weeks, documenting every little new find, but I
did not climb the volcano, although, with every passing day, the urge to climb
it grew stronger and stronger. The
Mountain of Knowledge of Reality and Illusion was constantly looming over my
head. Its mystery became daily more
tempting, its beckoning more and more irresistible. And finally, at long last, I succumbed.
And
what did I find on the Mountain of Knowledge of Reality and Illusion? Or should I say: What did I see from the mountaintop?
I saw the city of TRUTH laid out on the plain like an open book on a table, where each house was a letter, each block a word, and the entire city a full message, which read as follows:
NOW THAT YOU
HAVE CLIMBED THE MOUNTAIN OF KNOWLEDGE, YOU HAVE PASSED YOUR TEST OF FIRE. Your
salvation IS through disillusion-ment.
BEHOLD THIS CITY OF ILLUSION, WHERE REALITY IS AT STAKE, AS ARE ITS
SEEKERS AND SPEAKERS. GO BACK DOWN TO
THE MASSES AND SAY UNTO THEM, THAT EXCEPT THEIR REALITY SHALL EXCEED THE
REALITY OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS AND THE CREA-TIONISTS, THEY WILL IN NO-WISE KNOW
THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF TRUTH.
* Transcribed from the Plain Truth
magazine.