Q had always said to himself - "You cannot find Enlightenment in a backwater..." - but what place wasn't that - even within the college town of B_____ in which he had floundered for so many years... It's because in "backwaters" (towns, villages, suburbs - even large metropoles) so to speak everyone's concerns were so eminently distractible, time-bound, self-referential, fleeting, impermanent, driven by habit. In such places, there was no erstwhile mountaintop to climb, no desert to cross, no golden, mystical, oceanic shoreline to trek along - which is not to say that such exotic excursions were guaranteed to have the desired effect either. Q had no intentions of making a long pilgrimage anywhere such as to Canterbury or a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. This town was filled with smart-enough folks no doubt, some even with a hint of spiritual knowledge - experts resting on their little perches and pinnacles who made Q nervous and a good deal resentful - given his own hapless track record as a failed archivist. Although safe and well-manicured, somehow the "sacred energy" was lacking - no ancient ruins, no venerable artifacts, no secretive, glowing, druid-inspired, fairy-like creatures in the forest to show him the way... There were places however - coffee shops, libraries, hospitals, dog parks, outpatient centers - where inspiration could be had now and then - albeit at very random intervals. Was it not at a hospital that Q had met his one true confidant - Synderman - whose real name was Przawara (but more on that later...) - that elvin mystical truth-seeker - whose near death experiences and visitations with higher intelligences during brief intervals when he was clinically pronounced "dead" - had convinced him unmistakably of the existence of the higher angelic orders. But what are such "beings" - like the skeptical Q demanded to know...
"They are the hardest working creatures in existence" - Synderman said pounding the table with emphasis. "And they go about their jobs with unrelenting focus - but not a shred of EMOTION. Don't you se..."
"So - they have NO FEELINGS (?) toward the lower animals - towards mortals such as ourselves" - asked Q.
"Correct. They are pure stoical problem-solvers...you would almost say robotic, unstinting in their ability to concentrate on the matter at hand. Human reactions are quite a secondary matter. They are simply not drawn into our petty dramas..." -
"But what about OUR SUFFERING?"
"Yes - yes they are well aware, more aware than we ourselves understand of pain, misery, frustration, regret, disappoint - the whole kit-and-caboodle of moods and their DURATION and their EFFECTS - but this is not - if you can believe it their FIRST PRIORITY. Many more things are at stake. You would not believe..." Synderman was in rhapsodies about these remembered conversation which gave him such renewed hopes - his new lease on life. "You see there is such work to be done - to keep the universe calibrated and plugging along...And we have such incredible work to do. That's what I have learned from them. Our involvements are part of this elaborate calibration process."
"Because ... ?" asked Q. "Because things would absolutely fall apart without these infinitesimal adjustments being made in the blink of an eye. That's another thing I forgot to mention - they work at such a rapid pace compared to ourselves. To hear them toiling away is akin to the buzz of bees, the chirping of birds or ocean waves in the distance."
Q could not at this point help blurting out - "One is tempted to say given all of this toil you have put upon angels as it were - that it would seem your system allows for some supreme intelligence running the whole show - yes? "Oh - yes - yes - of course - I would say that is true - although the celestials can be somewhat evasive on that topic." "But what of GOD then -- are you saying has He delegated all the work that is to be done? Is there nothing left for God to be in charge of?" "Well - first one must be careful in speaking about the Absolute Maximum as Cusanum calls it - which includes maximum of intelligence and goodness and power, etc..."
"So these - angels - during your visitations - with all of their workloads and their bureacratic tinkerings here and there - haven't mentioned God to you? Aren't you curious?"
"Well -- well -- well - you see they have taught me that there is no direct way to tell a person of our limited intelligence or to impart such knowledge all at once. What is necessary is to MAP OUT ALL OF THE POSSIBILITIES..."
It was this snippet from a previous conversation that struck Q as especially wise and practical. Amid the levels of skepticism, agnosticism, higher-criticism, atheism, nihilism and anything-goes-ersatz-morality that had so permeated everyone's life in this era - taking up where traditional faith had left off seemed like too easy a way out. To satisfy the demands of logic - which simply would not disappear or spare a person from a large degree of mental torment on a daily basis - one must rather go about CATALOGING the entirety of the possible beliefs about God - and then decide upon where the accumulated weight of empirical data, common sense and whatever mystical inspiration one is privy to - inclines one to conclude. It seemed an easy-enough enterprise to chart out - beginning with Nature itself and distinguishing Nature from Convention or else sticking with Nature again as the Hen-Kai-Pan which included human societies themselves, technology and the sum total of human cultural artifacts and dividing Nature also into the modes of Matter and Mind - the only thing left to be answered was the metaphysical question of the "HIGHER REALMS". But whereas Synderman was enthralled and delighted to have stumbled the ANGELIC ORDERS OF CREATION by means of his own personal, self-imposed accidental kabbalistic (?) ascent via heart complications on an operating table - Q found himself obsessed with the question of IF GOD - then WHAT WOULD GOD LOGICALLY CARE ABOUT - because there was so much going on in the lower world that seemed too petty to take notice of - except perhaps for some "divine scientific observational purpose" - but not for the sake of reacting to with approbation or disapproval. For example - did it make any sense to impute a love of sports to the Almighty - as so many people seem to think - such that the outcome of games was of interest to Him. Was God drawn into talk of fashion or traffic patterns in major cities? Was God interested in gambling or music or celebrity gossip or alcoholic beverages enough to follow mortals down these respective rabbit holes? Would it make sense to say that God was rooting for this nation or this empire to succeed? Was God simply an emotion-free, cosmic observer - a free-floating intelligence keeping the world in motion - akin to a top angel - as Synderman had almost implied?
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