10.

Joe

Thursday, March 14 - 3:30a.m.

When Mike woke up, something was wrong. He remembered reading. He remembered falling asleep on the couch, but that’s not where he was now. He found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say there were no surroundings at all. Somehow, he was weightless, floating in space and surrounded by pitch black on all sides. There weren’t even visible stars, and there was an incredible silence, a silence that no Las Vegas resident or Harley rider knows. He wondered if all his reading had somehow affected his eyes, caused them to go completely black. The thought of going blind, and losing the ability to ride his Harley and read books was alarming. He looked down and, seeing his own body, breathed a sigh of relief. His eyes were okay, but where was he? “What the hell is going on?” he said aloud.

“You’re having an o.o.b.e.” an invisible voice said. It sounded like a man’s voice, maybe age forty.

He wondered where the voice was coming from. “What?”

The voice said, “An o.o.b.e., an out-of-body experience.”

“What’s that?”

“Basically, your spirit, soul–whatever you want to call it–has left your physical body. But don’t worry, your body is all right and you’ll return to it soon enough.”

Mike looked around and saw no one. “Where are you?”

“Everywhere.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Why can’t I see you?”

“The same reason you can’t see ultraviolet or infrared light. Because my vibration level is out of your visible range.”

“Vibration level? Visual range? Can you make yourself visible? Talking to a disembodied voice is a little too weird.”

“I’ll try.”

A fuzzy image started forming in front of Mike. It started out grainy and torn up like a television signal that’s too weak, but eventually it solidified into a tall man with a round Caucasian face and curly red hair, but his most interesting feature was his eyes. They looked half-Asian, like the product of an American soldier and a Vietnamese civilian woman.

It took Mike a minute to recognize him. “I remember you. I saw your face while I was passed out on stage. You told me it was time to wake up.”

“I was speaking metaphorically. It is time to wake up.”

“Wake up from what? Where am I, anyway?”

The man’s eyes twinkled and his smile was warm. He looked up, starry-eyed and gestured upward with his hands. “Everywhere.”

To Mike, this was very weird. This stranger wasn’t giving him straight answers. The guy was obviously toying with him, the kind of toying that only happens between longtime friends. He said, “Who the hell are you?”

A smirk crossed the man’s face. Mike recognized the look and prepared for another curve ball.

Slowly, the strange man said, “God.”

“Yeah, right, and I’m Jesus Christ. With the week I’ve had, somehow I expected God to have a little bit deeper voice, maybe some reverb and echo. Hey, I guess that makes you my dad!”

The Asian-eyed man laughed. “No, you’re God too.”

“Oh, you mean like God-in-three-persons? You’re part one, I’m part two. God-the-Father, God-the-Son, that kind of thing?” He was still being sarcastic.

“That’s not what I meant. I’m not God the Father, and there’s more than just three. Everyone is God.”

Mike was getting unnerved. He decided to take a step back. He was no great orator, but this banter had gone on long enough. “Let’s start over. I’m Mike Tomson. What’s your name?”

“I don’t have a name. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say I’ve had ten thousand names. But you can call me Joe if you like.”

“All right, Joe, pleased to meet you.”

Joe laughed. “Meet me? You really don’t remember me, do you?” He studied Mike’s face. “No, I suppose you don’t. We’ve already met. In fact, we’ve been best-friends since the beginning of time. The problem is, you forgot all that.”

“Forgot what?”

“Forgot lots of things. You forgot that you’re God, for one. That’s what I meant when I said it was time to wake up. It’s time to remember.”

This confused Mike. “I thought you said you were God. You and I can’t both be God at the same time.”

“We most certainly can. Everyone else is God too.”

“How do you figure?”

“To answer that, I’ve got to pose a question. What is physical reality made of?”

Mike scratched his head and said, “I suppose a physicist would say physical matter and energy, but Einstein said they were two sides of the same coin.”

“All right, I’ve been a physicist or two. Let’s talk like physicists then. Tell me then, Mr. Physicist: How do you make a physical object?”

To Mike this seemed pointless. “I don’t understand.”

Humans are so slow, Joe thought. “I’ll simplify. How do you make a guitar?”

“I suppose you’d have to cut and shape pieces of wood, metal frets, and glue them together in the right shape, stain it, varnish it, add some strings and you’re done.”

“Exactly. In other words, to make physical matter, you rearrange other physical matter. You’re not creating anything, really, you’re just rearranging. Conservation of energy. Galileo didn’t get it. Isaac Newton didn’t get it. Einstein cast some doubt on it, but it’s a law of physics and you incarnates have to live by it. But where do you suppose God got all the physical matter to begin with?”

“He created it.”

“From what?”

“From nothing. He materialized it.”

“You don’t sound much like a physicist anymore, Mike, but you’re close. Before energy and matter existed, there was nothing at all but God. To create matter, God had to use the only building materials available at the time.”

“And that would be?”

“Physical matter isn’t separate from God because that’s impossible. She has only Herself to work with.”

“Herself? Are you saying that God is a woman?” Mike chuckled sarcastically. “No wonder I have such a hard time developing a relationship with God.”

“No, certainly not a woman as you think of them, but She certainly is a female.”

“Ridiculous.” Mike scoffed. He thought, I was beginning to doubt my own sanity, but this guy takes the insanity grand prize.

Joe shook his finger at Mike. “Look it up in a dictionary. A female is, by your human definition, the member of a species that brings forth children or bears young. Since we are all God’s children and since God created us, She’s therefore a female. Case closed.” He extended his index finger in a downward motion; Joe one, Mike zero.

“That’s warped, Joe. But I guess it does make a strange sort of sense.”

Joe ignored his comment, still reveling in his victory. “Now. Since God created you from Her own body, that does make you Her son. Makes me Her son too. Got it?”

Mike was confused by Joe’s statement, but before he could analyze it, Joe continued. “Let me ask you another question: How can you create something from nothing?”

“Didn’t you already answer that? You said we weren’t created from nothing.” Mike asked.

“The only way to create something from nothing is by illusion. You do it every night in your sleep. In your dreams, you create an entire universe out of absolutely nothing.”

“But that’s not real, Joe. That’s like a hallucination.” He muttered under his breath, “Just like this freaking experience. . . . ”

Joe ignored his sarcasm. “Exactly. And so is the physical world. God created this world from nothing because it’s all an illusion. She’s dreaming the big dream, Mike. And you’re what She’s dreaming. You, me, and everyone else. In fact, this entire reality.” He circled his hands again.

“So you’re saying this is all a dream in the mind of God?”

“Exactly.”

“What if Her alarmclock goes off and She wakes up? Do we all go–poof–up in smoke?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. She’s already wide awake and you’re still here. You’re a part of Her. That’s why I told you that you are God. She’s pretending that you are separate from Her, but you’re really not. Your mistake and everyone else’s mistake was, you bought into the dream. You mistook dream for reality.”

“But if God is all there is, then how could He. . . er, She. . . mistake the dream for reality? And what is reality and why did He. . . She create it in the first place?”

“God is the only reality. Everything else is an illusion. The illusion of separateness provides the medium for spiritual growth, which is Her ultimate purpose.”

“I don’t follow. What does separateness have to do with it?”

“I’ll give you an example. Take a simple bucket of water. Nothing too remarkable about it, right? You’re certainly not going to start a fire with it. But if you impose separateness, things get interesting. Water is H2O. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. If you separate one hydrogen atom from the others throughout the whole bucket, it’s a very flammable gas. That’s what blew up the Hindenberg. What remains of each molecule is one oxygen atom bound with one hydrogen atom, which is also known as alcohol: also very flammable. A little separation can have a powerful result.”

“Where are you going with all this?” Mike asked.

“My job is to help you remember.”

“Help me remember what? That I was Christ in my past-life? Believe me, the jury’s still out on that one.”

“Yes, you were one of them, all right. The man they called Christ. No doubt about it. Remember Professor Bailey saying there was a second Jesus?” He smiled and pointed his thumb at his own chest, then winked at Mike. “We were a tag-team. The dynamic duo. But that’s not what I’m here to remind you of either. I’m here to remind you that you’ve got a job to do.”

“What job?”

Joe had thought long and hard about what he had to say and how to best say it. He knew he would have to say it just right or screw the whole thing up. He needed to give Mike part of the picture, but not the whole picture. If Mike knew too much, that would interfere with the plan. If he knew too little, he wouldn’t accomplish his mission. He had to discover it on his own. So he needed to choose his words carefully. He knew Mike would probably misunderstand, but that was all part of the plan. “Every once in a while, the world needs a wake-up call. It needs to be shown its own blindness, vanity and materialism. So we send a special delegate down to the Earth to deliver a message. We want you to help deliver that message.”

“Come on, I hardly think I’m qualified to be anyone’s Messiah. Go talk to Ozzy Osbourne. Besides, who would want the job? Maybe I don’t want to be a Messiah.”

Joe had purposely avoided the word Messiah, but since Mike had brought it up, he knew his plan was working. “All right, then. You don’t have to be the Messiah. All you have to do is deliver a message to the people of the Earth. It will be fun. What have you got to lose?”

“My mind? My life? Messiah’s get crucified, and frankly, Joe, that doesn’t sound too fun. Been there, done that. Don’t need to do it again. I tell you what: why don’t you deliver the message? Why don’t you play Messiah for a while?”

“That’s not my job, at least not at this time. I’ve chosen to be between incarnations to help you through this. Besides, I don’t have a physical body. You do. I tell you what: You do it this time, and I’ll take the next tour of duty.”

“What’s in it for me?”

Joe just stood with his hands on his hips. “Incarnates. This really is the ‘me’ generation, you know that? What’s in it for me? That’s the most ridiculous question. How about making a real difference? Changing the world? When you started The Original Artists, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? There are fringe benefits to the job too: walking on water, raising the dead, healing the sick? Doesn’t that sound fun?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Timeout. Why do you want or need another Messiah?”

Good, Joe thought. He’s buying into it. “Because you screwed it up last time.” He paused for a second to see if Mike’s face would be crestfallen or defensive. “When you were Christ.” When he saw that Mike wasn’t falling for it, a big mischievous grin crossed his face. “Or to be more precise, your followers screwed up your message. They tried to understand a divine message with limited physical-world points of view. In other words, they botched it big time. This is your chance to make it right and set the record straight.”

“Suppose I agree. What’s in the job description? Am I supposed to start the whole end-of-the-world Armageddon thing? I’ve been reading the gospels, not Revelations, so I wouldn’t know where to begin. Besides, that’s not my cup of tea.”

“No, nothing like that. Your job is simple. All you have to do is deliver a message to the people on Earth and make sure it reaches the millions of people who need it.”

“What message?”

“Love.”

“That’s it? Love? Isn’t there more?”

“Nope, that’s it. Just love. That’s not so hard now, is it?”

“Every rock band in the seventies gave that message. The fact is, people just didn’t listen. They saw what they wanted to see: that love doesn’t pay the bills. People ignore whatever doesn’t agree with their closed-minded view of the world. They’re still just as screwed up as ever. ‘All you need is love’ became ‘All you need is love, a pretty wife, a fast car, a big house, a white picket fence, a green lawn. . . and screw everyone else who stands in your way. . . and give me more, more, more.’ The ‘love children’ of the seventies are just like their parents: shallow and materialistic.”

“Maybe they didn’t learn from the Beatles, but they might learn it from you.”

“Why?”

His half-Asian eyes were full of mirth. “Because you’re going to bend the rules a little bit.”

“Bend the rules?”

“Like you did when you were Christ. You broke some laws of physics. A radical idea for its day, and definitely against the Counsel’s wishes, but it did have an impact. People talked about you. They wrote about you. It took them two thousand years to decide, but the Counsel has agreed to allow it a second time so you can deliver your message again.”

“What Counsel?”

“Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”

“All right, then tell me this: Why me?”

“Well, I could tell you that the reasons are too complex for you to understand. I could tell you that you already agreed to do it before you were born. I could even tell you that we flipped a coin for it and you lost. Or that you won. Either way, the job is yours.”

“So what do I have to do?”

“First, forget everything you know about yourself and God.”

It came out cynical again when he said, “Oh, sure, now you tell me. You know I just finished reading half the Bible, don't you. You should have stopped by last week and saved me some time. How am I supposed to forget everything?”

“I’ll help. One question at a time. The same question we started out with. Who are you?”

Mike scratched his head. “God?”

“Good answer.” Joe was pleased.

“Okay, it’s easy for me to say I’m God, but it just sounds so conceited. Isn’t it one step away from being a megalomaniac?”

“There’s a difference, Mike. You see, we’re all God and therefore no part is greater than any other. That’s the humility of being God. The biggest waste of energy in your physical world is maintaining self-importance. That’s the secret of aging. No self-importance, no aging. It’s also futile. It’s like your hand saying that it’s more important than your foot. Your hands and feet have different roles to play, but they’re equally important, and they’re all just facets of the whole you. Similarly, you and everyone else are just fragments of the one and only God, and no one is greater than any other.”

“So why do people bother fighting about things like ‘My God is better than your God?’ I mean, let’s not forget about India and Pakistan, Northern Ireland’s Orange and Green, and of course, everyone’s favorite, Israel and Palestine.”

“Stupidity, Mike. Or more accurately, they made the same mistake as your disciples: interpreting the divine with a physical point of view.”

“If it’s true that we’re just fragments of God, why is there so much misery in the world? If God’s just dreaming all this, why doesn’t He. . . ” Mike caught himself again. “Why doesn’t She make a more pleasant dream for Herself?”

“You wouldn’t want Her to get bored, would you? We identify so much with the small self-pitying egos that we only focus on the people, places and things we have in front of us. Once we get the big picture, we realize that it’s all one big homogeneous universe out there, and what we see in our daily lives is trivial and unimportant. How interesting would a book or movie be that had no conflict?”

“Not very interesting.”

“Exactly. Boring as hell. To make any story interesting, you’ve got to have conflict. There’s nothing wrong with conflict, but our lives become miserable if we take that conflict out of context. Life is all a matter of context. What I’m saying is, if you start viewing the world through the context of God, then the misery of everyday life vanishes. Nothing has changed, only our perspective. In other words, you can choose to wallow in your own misery and self-pity or you can use it for spiritual growth. That’s what life is about, Mike: choices.”

Joe looked at his bare left wrist as if he had a watch there. “I’d love to stay and chat, but time’s almost up. To aid in your mission, I’m going to open up your memories. That is what you were praying for, wasn’t it?” With a mischievous smile, Joe cupped his hands around Mike’s head and a ball of light began to form.

Mike’s entire head was engulfed in a bright light that grew in intensity. His head began to ache with energy. For an instant, he felt like his head was going to explode but then he woke up on the couch, drenched with sweat.

When he came to, his head was pounding; the mother of all migraines. He wondered what the hell happened and if he had been dreaming. Maybe he had been thinking about Jesus so much that it had started to enter his dreams, but wow did it ever feel real–more intense than his normal dreams. The guy in his. . . episode (he didn’t know what to call it). . . said it was an out-of-body experience. If that was an out-of-body experience, he wondered, did I just come close to dying again? If he had stayed a little longer would rigor mortis have set it? Would his body forget to breathe? It was very unsettling.

Within a few seconds, his headache faded but his wrists started to ache. He looked down at them, and as he watched, holes started to form and they began to bleed. And as they did, his mind was flooded with memories of his past-life; with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he realized that he had, in fact, been Jesus Christ in his past-life. He was certain because the complete memory of his life, teachings and crucifixion returned to him. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

He remembered his life as Jesus: preaching to the crowds, healing the sick people, casting out demons, being crucified as a heretic, but most of all, he remembered that when he meditated, he had experienced divine grace, divine communion, oneness. In short, God. During meditation, his consciousness had risen to a feeling of total oneness with the Universe, a universal understanding of everything, the knowledge of all creation. Complete at-one-ness. So many words have been used to describe it throughout history: Nirvana, Samadhi, Satori, Union, Bliss, Ecstasy, and yet words were so utterly inadequate. It was like trying to explain the ocean to a desert tortoise. And with the experience came an intense desire to change the world, to give people his message, to tell them to wake up to their spiritual nature. Mike had never meditated in this life, but he decided he needed to start.

Suddenly, he had a flashback to that past-life. He was in a room so dark that he couldn’t see the dirt walls that surrounded him. A stench of urine filled the air and there was an ache of hunger in the pit of his stomach. He was locked away in a horrible prison and his muscles ached from the agony of severe beatings.

He thought he heard something close by. To his tortured mind, it sounded like the scurrying of rats, the slithering of snakes or the rustling of a captured beast. When he controlled his fear and stopped to listen, he could hear it was not a beast at all; it was the labored breathing of another prisoner. He whispered, “Is someone there?”

A voice echoed back through the dark. “Yes, my given name is James. . . ” the voice paused and he heard a groan, the painful aftermath of the whip. “. . . but everyone calls me Barabbas. What is your name?”

“Yehoshua ben Joseph. From Nazareth.” He peered into the blackness and was able to make out the faint whiteness of two eyes watching him. Strange looking eyes, almond shaped. “What did they lock you up for?”

“Speaking the truth. I’m a preacher of sorts. Apparently the temple Rabbis don’t see it that way. They called it blasphemy. And you?”

He could believe it. Conditions were harsh under the thumb of the Romans and the people were hungry for a deliverer, so preachers were common. “Same thing. It seems the authorities lock up anyone who doesn’t agree with their closed minds. After beating them half to death. Will you be all right?”

Barabbas was bruised but not bleeding. “I’ll live. For now, anyway.” He heard more rustling as Barabbas shifted the weight off his blood-streaked back. “What do you think they’re going to do to us, Yehoshua?”

Yehoshua wondered if they would torture him the way they did Barabbas. How far would God go to martyr people before his message was heard? He was angry at the stupidity of his captors and he was afraid of what that stupidity might lead to. “I imagine they’ll kill us. Does that bother you?”

“No. My concern is not for my own life. I was prepared to die. My concern is for my followers. Their faith is not as strong as it should be. Besides, maybe my Father will choose another path for me. The guards have been taunting me. They speak of a tradition to set a prisoner free before the feast. I know they’re just trying to play a cruel trick, but as long as I’m alive, I can hope.”

The two men sat in the dark for hours, talking about life, love, politics and religion. Mike remembered feeling like he had known Barabbas forever. They were like two brothers reunited and they had a lot in common. Both had rebelled against authority and preached reform. Both had reputations as healers. Both had disciples who lacked faith.

Yehoshua thought of a way to bring faith to his followers. “Let us make a pact. Whichever one of us is released should contact the disciples of the other and console them, keep their faith alive.”

“Agreed.” Later, when the two were brought out into the bright sunlight, he was amazed at how much Barabbas looked like himself. Except for those almond-shaped eyes.

He snapped back to the present. Joe, you scoundrel, he thought, you impersonated me after my death and you blamed me for screwing it up. He wondered how these newfound memories would affect his life. He wondered if he should tell someone. Like Professor Bailey? Just think of what she could learn from my unburied memories, he thought. Then he dismissed the idea; she would think he was crazy.

Then the thought occurred to him: Maybe I am crazy. How many crazy people claim to be Jesus Christ? And what makes me different from any of them? People would say he was crazy too, and he couldn’t fault them for it either. Yet he still couldn’t deny the memories that now filled his head. The memories were all there; he had been Christ. Even if he wasn’t insane, thinking about his past might just drive him crazy.

The first thing he did was call Doctor Flite on the phone. “Doctor Flite, this is Mike Tomson. You hypnotized me yesterday, remember?” he said. “Something really weird happened to me last night. I need you to tell me I’m not going crazy.”

To Doctor Flite, Mike sounded even more mixed up than when he flew out of his office. He remembered, all right. The guy who said he was Christ in his past-life. Yeah. The lawsuit waiting to happen. What now? he wondered. “Tell me what happened.”

Mike started babbling and didn’t make much sense. “It was this really weird dream, that wasn’t really a dream. Joe called it an o-o-b-e. Ah, no, an out-of-body experience. Have you ever heard of that before? Is that something normal? Then I had a really strange conversation with this guy, Joe, who looked like a ghost–well, he started out invisible but turned into a ghost. Anyway, he said that God was a woman who gave birth to all of us. Then I woke up and remembered being Christ in my past-life. My wrists started to bleed. This is all happening so fast. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. What should I do? Do you think I might be crazy?” He was out of breath.

Flite was concerned. Obviously, Mike’s psychosis was getting worse. Now he was having out-of-body experiences and bleeding wrists. Sheesh, he thought, What’s next? Multiplying loaves and fishes and casting out demons? But he didn’t voice his thoughts. As much as he wanted to help this diseased mind, his next patient was standing impatiently in his office waiting for her session. He didn’t have time to talk, but he thought that perhaps he should give Mike some therapeutic advice until he could get him back in for a full session.

“Listen, Mike,” he said, “Try to keep yourself together. There are a few things you can do. First of all, remember to take it slow. Don’t try to rush things and don’t jump to conclusions. Just try to use your common sense to sort things out. What I sometimes recommend to my patients is writing. Start a journal. Write down your experiences, and especially how you feel about them. Given the nature of what is happening to you, you may also want to talk to a priest or a pastor about it. Look, Mike, I really think it would be a good idea for you and I to talk again. Can I have my secretary schedule you another appointment?”

Mike considered whether to make an appointment. Maybe he did need professional help, he thought, but the problem was, he was dirt poor. The twelve hundred dollar jackpot crossed his mind but that had started to disappear fast. His only steady job was singing with the band, and that barely paid the bills. His first visit with Flite had a ninety dollar price tag and he didn’t have any insurance to cover it. He really didn’t want to rack up any more charges seeing a professional. He said, “Thanks, I’ll think about it,” and hung up.

After thinking it over, he decided that he should take Dr. Flite’s advice and start a journal. He hoped that writing about the out-of-body experience and some of his past-life memories would be therapeutic and help him sort out his feelings. He also made a mental note to talk to a priest some time. He turned on his computer, started up his word processor program, and began writing. The more he wrote, the more he became sure: his experience with Joe was more than just a dream. And if Joe was right, and he really was the reincarnation of Jesus, how could he handle that kind of responsibility?

Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mike

He said, “All people are molecules in the vast ocean of God’s body and soul. Did I not say in Matthew 25 that what you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me? And did I not also say that what you did not do for one of these, however humble, you did not do for me? What you do to one, you do to all.”

“Men and women are equal souls. Their life-lessons provide different abilities, challenges, limitations and circumstances, but none is better or worse. Likewise, straight or gay, young or old, black, white, yellow and red are equal souls. See yourself in others. See others in yourself. Above all, see God in all people and all things. Remember that it is God who is playing hide-and-seek from behind the masks and hearts of everyone we meet.”