8.3 Perceiving Perdition

(Story begins here) “You know the difference between a pond and a lake?” asked Bud. There was an awkward pause.

“Oh, that was an actual question? Sorry, no I don’t know the difference.”

“A pond is a body of water where sunlight can still reach the bed. A lake is so deep that no sunlight can reach the bed. So the human universe is like a pond and hell is like a lake, as above, so below?”

“I’m not quite with you.”

“So in heaven, true reality, there is the probability of one for everything. Because it is pure truth. God is one, love is one, we are one, heaven is one, certainty is one, to be precise, one point zero zero zero_”

“It’s okay, I’ll show you? It’s scary, so I don’t really like it, but I’ll show you for a little bit,” Bud conceded. The Scottish street faded away, but nothing replaced it. There was just blackness. Deep eerie echoes reverberated all around, like a sub-woofer speaker operating on its own.

“Where are we?” asked Pete. With a sinking feeling he was beginning to guess.

“Hell, a realm too deep for the light of any certainty at all to penetrate it.”

“But I thought the human universe had no certainty, just what our souls project?”

“That’s like, the point? Heaven is like dry land, our universe is like a pond, the water doesn’t have it’s own light, but heaven’s light can shine on it through forms projected by our human souls. So whilst there is no certainty in the fabric of the universe, we can still see certainty? Just like that Scottish farmer guy saw the certainty that he and the homeless soldier were one soul and so he should treat him accordingly.”

“But isn’t that just the opinion of the farmer?”
“No, that’s fact. His soul is old enough to see the facts. Remember, the financially valuable physical body that Burke and Hare saw was the illusion. So even in our universe, there is probability, there is a point where the particle might be? So as a computer scientist you know that probability of one means certainty and probability of zero means_”

“Impossibility.”

“Right. So in heaven, true reality, there is the probability of one for everything. Because it is pure truth. God is one, love is one, we are one, heaven is one, certainty is one, to be precise, one point zero zero zero_”

“I get the idea.”

“In the human universe, there is probability between zero and one as Schrödinger’s equations show, because there is enough divine light for souls to project certainty from above, fixing the location of a particle when observed. Here, we are in the lake, where sunlight can’t reach, in hell, where God’s light can’t reach? There is no possibility of anything being certain. It is the polar opposite of like, truth?”

“So that’s why in the New Testament, the Devil is called the Father of Lies?”

“Possibly man, I’ve not read that but heard good things? But it sounds like they knew the truth of quantum reality somehow when they wrote that. The devil is zero probability, one of the poles of probability from zero to one over which perceivable reality is stretched, so yes, those guys got it right when they called him the Father of Lies, it’s maths as much as theology?”

“So what’s a world of true darkness like?”
“We’re about to find out,” replied Bud. The deep resonant booming in the distance, began to sound clearer. A severely malnourished middle-aged woman slowly floated past them, weeping and groaning, reaching out desperately for an apple. She frantically bit into it, but spat it back out recoiling at the maggots that landed on the palm of her hand, and the remaining apple suddenly disintegrated into another pile of maggots in her other hand. She shrieked desperately again, the tendons on her scrawny neck sticking out grotesquely. Determined to avoid starvation, she took a big gulp from the pile of maggots in her hand, but then spat it out again in renewed horror. Only it was not maggots that she spat out, it was human flesh. In her hands now was a dying man, with blood spurting from his neck where the woman had bitten.”

“She’s like, killed her husband, because there is no certainty about what she’s biting into?” explained Bud as the woman’s screams of grief echoed throughout the dark realm, “so evil happens with absolutely no mercy, because there is just chaos?” Now a man was floating towards the woman, looking lustfully at her. He grabbed her and began kissing her deeply. The woman enthusiastically, responding, caressing the man’s hair. But then it was the man’s turn to scream as the woman bit his tongue viciously and recoiled in disgust. “See, even things like consent aren’t certain down here?” said Bud, “and I was only showing you the parental guidance rated version?”

“Can we… go?” said Pete blankly.

“Yeah, I don’t really want to be here anymore?” said Bud.

“Ooh, that’s bright,” said Pete as the two men found themselves in the grounds of a Cistercian nunnery with rolling fields all around “but I’m glad to be out of there, those poor people.”

“Yeah, it’s like, pretty bad,” agreed Bud, “but we’ve all been there, everyone’s soul must suffer like that at the start of its journey to gain the momentum to rise higher up to our world?”

“It seems cruel?” Bud shrugged.

“It doesn’t really matter what we think, it’s just how it like, has to be?”

“I’m still struggling with that one,” said Pete, “so where are we?”

“I thought I’d like, cheer you up, by taking you to see my friend Mechthild of Magdeburg?”

“Great name, but who is she?” asked Pete as the two men strolled through the nunnery grounds, oblivious to the women practicing cistercianism by working hard in the fields all around them.

“She’s like, a medieval mystic who had visions of God? She wrote a really cool book called The Flowing Light of the Godhead?” Pete hid his surprise at the unlikely friendship between such a woman and an insular but brilliant physicist from even Pete’s future, as Bud knocked on the door of Mechthild’s cell.

“Come in,”  came the quavering reply in a gentle, well-spoken German accent. At one end of a small bare cell sat an old woman in long black robes and a complex white bonnet. She stared blankly in front of her, smiling gently as she knitted at remarkable speed. “Welcome, Lieblings,” she said to her companions, “please take a seat.” The two men looked around, shrugged and sat on the floor.

“Ah, so there are no other chairs in my cell, my apologies, you are my first visitors. Do you know why you are here Pete?”

“Well, Bud said it would cheer me up, we’ve quite literally just been to hell and_”

“Alright Liebling, I am not just here for light entertainment,” chided the old lady with a chuckle, “what have you learned from my friend Bud?”

“Well, mainly that nothing in the physical universe is real, it’s all a construction that our mind creates based on what the soul shows it.”

“You have done well, Bud, my Liebling, that is a difficult lesson that you have taught Pete.” (to be continued)