Humankind’s ascent into divinity had some hiccups for the new gods. Ascended or not, living beings never do well in the vacuum of space. (sadface)
Hello again, friends! This is Part 3 of Divine Consciousness for Busy Professionals. I invite you to catch up on Pt.1 and Pt. 2 if you are new to this supra-natural realm. As always, I don't mean to offend your faith with my serial fiction. I just ask that you read with an open mind to the possibilities. I value your feedback- it is what drives me!
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More than a few unencumbered souls drifted up into the atmosphere to realize their souls were still wholly dependent upon the physical cage of meat and bone and organs that keeps the mind alive. Some who decided to rise too quickly lost consciousness at or around the troposphere.
Quick-thinking souls erected mystical barriers around their physical selves to keep the remaining oxygen from escaping their bodies- just enough to float back to earth and thicker atmosphere.
The brave, senseless ones succumbed to nature and their souls went into whatever afterlife there may be. Their bodies might still be in orbit.
Becoming divine does not mean you are immortal, it turns out. Sure the illusions of gravity and matter and time could be warped by the mind of an ascended being, but the aether, from which all existence draws energy and matter from, has its limits.
From the aether, a god could quickly conjure a workable space capsule and propel it with impressive speed into the reaches of space. But in the physical, constrained world of which all beings, ascended or not, dwell- there is simply physics. The ascended space man in a divine space craft still needed food and water and air, easily conjured.
So then what? The reality of space travel is that you are confined to tiny compartment if you want to live. But space is big. Within the aether limits to the divine ability to propel the mass a self-made space craft, a trip to the Moon would take days. During those days, there wasn’t much for a god to do. Some gods did it, happily orbiting the moon for days while conjuring air and sustenance from the aether at regular intervals.
Others got bored, returned their spacecraft to earth and drifted off just before the capsule smashed into the ocean at terminal velocity.
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Back on Earth, for the regular mortals, life was getting better. Gods prevented the nuclear reactors from melting down. The traffic eased. Farmers continued to farm. Truckers trucked. Bakers baked. Store clerks stocked the shelves and sold their wares. But. there were short lines in the stores as it turned out that mere mortals did well off the leavings of the gods. Houses and estates were left empty. The departed gods did not covet their material wealth. And communication with an ascended friend was easier than a phone call.
“Derek, this is Ted,” a mortal would say aloud (or pray silently), “I know you ascended and whatnot, but I’m still sticking it out here on earth. Can I raid your fridge?”
Almost always, the god would materialize and hand over the keys. “Knock yourself out and don’t touch the meatloaf. It’s been in there for… too long. And let me know when you want to ascend. It’s easy and totally worth it.”
“Thanks, Derek. Do you mind if I crash here for a while? I... stopped paying my rent.”
Strangely enough, the stock market didn’t crash. The grand illusions that sustained the human endeavor continued intact. Banks stayed open and for the most part, money changed hands. Governments continued to function (with a noted lack of salaried civil servants). Hard core humanists like doctors and police continued doing their thing, attached lovingly to the occupations that served humans, regardless of how many.
There were about a billion humans left of earth, and they intended to go about life as they always did, it seemed.
Still, the needy still cried out for help as there will always be needy humans as long as there are humans. Gods would swoop in speak a few inspired words, then drift away again, unheard. “If you get sick of this mortal existence, let me know. I can help!”
With more resources and time on their hands, another caring human would find another way to help a needy human in some short way. Just as always.
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The gods had other machinations. After swimming in a worldly pool of gold coins or visiting every known wonder of the world, gods grew bored. There was progress to be made!
Ascended humans were tied to their physical being. Air, water and sustenance (and recreational vices) still dictated the lives of these ascended, divine humans. There must be some way to cast off these mortal requirements!
The gods dug deep into the sublime consciousness of humanity; the mystical traditions that over the millennium had been pieced together, lost, rediscovered and discarded again.
The gods plumbed the depths of the Great Pyramids, memorized the Veda, viewed the Dead Sea Scrolls and read from the Tibetan Book of the Dead- in an afternoon.
Human Mysticism had been an undergraduate survey in the real meaning of divinity, and if all the term papers were stripped of human-made preconceived notions and exclusionary principles, then combined by a well-adjusted soul, the result might have been a close approximation to the Steps to Divinity authored at MIT by the first gods.
You guessed it! The Tibetan Buddhists were the closest. Divine souls congregated in the rarefied air of the Tibetan Plateau, in the ancient monasteries or self-actualized dwelling of gods. There, the gods got to work on getting rid of that pesky mortal coil.
Pt 4 in a bit. Stay tuned, fellow mortals!