"On What Is True," part 17

Countless great prophets of various eras and places tell one or another version of the following. Unable to rise, the man, lying on the cracked floor, saw a red light above him. It was the red Eye of God, staring down at the supernaturally broken man. He saw that the Eye, although a pure homogeneous red, was not solid at all. As he looked deeply into It, he could see that God's Eye was composed of raw nerves. But there were infinitely many, packed with infinite density so only to seem like a solid mineral. The man could see that God being so composed was capable of infinite pain and infinite pleasure. From an unseen mouth God said, "still you go on. But why? Tell me now, as surely you by now have learned: what is the true?"

The man replied: "pain."

"Yes. And what is the false?"

"Nothing is false."

"And what is really the case?"

"What is the case is that to any pain is the increase it beckons."

Of all the man's thoughts, feelings, and experiences thus far, this realization was easily the most painful, for it is the knowledge that under the right conditions, pain can continuously multiply without end, and he knew he in fact existed under those very conditions and could expect his pain only to increase unfathomably. With that thought, his pain at last was too much to bear. Paradise was closed off, so his self-erasure now would redeem nothing for him. But by necessity's force, under this most painful realization, the man, né Corry Shores, being resolved and yet pushed involuntarily by the boundless depths of his pain, jumped on his block for the last time, finding himself not there. The prophets all finish this account with some variation of: "This is no end just as much as this is all true."