The world’s lamps are flickering, and no oil and no light are to buy. Behold the Bridegroom cometh.
Is the Universe terrible?
No sense capping Yea with Nay and Nay with Yea. Each soul must answer for itself. Some there are who see Glory not as the foil, the predestined victim, the glittering shadow of Evil, but as the soul and substance prevailing. I know Evil the more powerful; the positive and pervasive force. Sometimes I am filled with it, sick with it, mad with loathing and agony and horror—pursued, obsessed, surrounded by the nameless infinite shape which hunts my soul, and which some call the Devil but which I fear may be the King. Worst is the realized fact of existence itself, the fact that I am alive, that there is a world, that there ever has been a world, ever has been Anything. Here no pity, no loophole, no hidden door of hope. No saviour can unmake that, ever made, I am made for evermore; no judge can commute my sentence of life into sentence of death. No trick, no faith, can assuage; can alter that, having been, I have been; and am, and shall be, I Geoffrey, for evermore. A tremor through all my body; I know He is coming. I turn pale; my spirit trembles—a weak prayer for courage to face Him. The cold wind from the mystery of darkness blows through my heart; then He seizes my soul; I am delivered over. Frozen with everlasting terror I look into His Eyes, and through them forever into space and time forever. I scream in my heart for eternity. Sometimes no sound escapes me; I have taught my will to stifle it; I may be in company, in the midst of friendly or frivolous talk. Uttered or unuttered, the moan in my heart continues to madness-place; then stops. The vision vanishes. Blood rushes back through my veins; then a moment almost of pleasure, warm joy of deliverance.
Is the Universe God?
His body it is, crucified for us, for which we are crucified. His Spirit it is, Which we apprehend with fear, worship and love pushed to that place—plane, state, moment (no words)—wherein we behold and, in final translation, ourselves become the Living God.
Is there, was there ever, a Universe?
It is a dream. A dream of a dream, dream within dream forever, with no reality ever behind. Even the dream is an illusion; an illusion that it is a dream, an illusion that it is not a dream, an illusion that the dream, dream or not, is being dreamt, dream within dream forever.
It is not the dream but the Dreamer, Who Himself forever is dreamt. The joy and the truth is Zero, Non-Being, Nihility.
There is no Universe.
Endnotes
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Since this was written, New World telegrams have been announcing the new world as discovered. ↩
Colophon
The End of the World
was published in by
Geoffrey Dennis.
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