Some people suffer sleepless nights pondering if the Big Bang proves or disproves God. Others have wondered how God said, “Let there be light,” in the beginning. If there was nothing, how was He there? I don’t begrudge people their skepticism; I even have questions of my own, though my concerns are bigger, all-encompassing.
To calm my existential worries, I used the following scenario: I wonder whether God would or even could care about me, an individual. Even if He had access to all my portals of perception: my eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and tactile nervous system—perhaps even my imagination—so what? Wouldn’t that just increase his apathy? Because it wouldn't just be me, but eight billion people alive now, all people who had lived, countless other creatures he has dominion over, too. How could He feel either cruel or benevolent when each of us must seem but yet another number to him?
Concerns like these are what brought me to this inpatient mental health facility, metaphysical concerns that manifested themselves in mundane ways. They started at a young age. My mind opened wide to the infinite possibilities of the universe, so much so that what I felt and saw there made it hard to function, like I was constantly distracted by unending miracles. Then, somehow, suddenly, it became worse. My window into the miraculous closed, and the snap back into reality broke something within me.
But before I go off on too long a tangent—a bad habit, but it helps my nerves—allow me to start over from the beginning.
When I was kid, right after I first heard about the Big Bang, I started talking to God. A PBS special introduced me to the theory. As I watched, an instinct told me to do the following: I spun the loveseat to face the back wall, lay upside down, facing away from the TV, closed my eyes, and listened. My head hung inches above the carpet, brushing it with my dangling hair. Though I didn’t understand what it was at the time, I entered a meditative state. It was both a joyful and horrific experience, becoming one with the entire universe, simultaneously blessed and cursed as adamantine bonds spread at infinitesimal increments, slowing, cooling toward the death-halt of the Universe.
In that moment of final victory of inertia, on that loveseat, as a young child, I knew the atoms that comprised me, present and future: whatever they would become after I was no longer a sentient being would travel alongside the atomic descendants of all other beings to the endpoint of existence. But why? Not why a Big Bang; nor why existence; nor why human intelligence; but why were we allowed only partial knowledge of our place in the grand scheme? Perhaps the partiality is inevitable. After all, the more mankind has learned, the more unsolved mysteries we’ve uncovered.
My doubts accumulated as I entered that state, almost at will, several times over. It was a condition I named Universal Connectedness. That made it sound more peaceful than it was. Though I was placid on the outside, inside I roiled, wracked with confusion. How could humanity’s greatest thinkers, minds endowed by God with exceptional reasoning skills, be as lost as me—an abject fool—as to the meaning of it all?
While I was in this state, my soul disengaged from my corporeal form, and before it would appear a Being I dubbed The Godhead. This being was neither a gray-bearded giant nor some abstract invisible entity I could merely feel, but an amalgamation of faces and forces worshipped the world over through all of time. And I mean that literally; it was a mosaic humanoid head constituted by, to name a few: Jesus crucified forming the bridge of its nose; Kukulcan, Ganesh, and Medusa were among those who formed its strands of hair; Laughing Buddha and Silenus formed bags under its eyes—eyes made out of the planets who bore the names of Roman gods; Mount Fuji formed its graven forehead; and a myriad of other formidable forlorn deities filled out the rest of the façade.
Faced by such an awesome power, I felt compelled to ask, “Godhead, if we are all reincarnated, then why suffer through billions of years of existence if it ends with us drifting toward the freezing of space-time?”
Those omnipotent, deified eyes, composed of a godly swirl, looked down on me, challenging me to make my plight seem in any way significant.
“Is this why our spirits return as animals, to unburden woes?” I continued. “Are my troubles leading me to an inanimate return?” I begged, desperation climbing into my voice, trying to find some query that would cause this all-encompassing Overlord to respond—even if only to crush my puny hopes. “Are Shintos right, could I be a rock in another incarnation?”
Implacable, The Godhead looked down on me, boring a hole of anguish into my soul and the whole of creation. It didn’t answer.
The memories of that meditative trance vanished for some time after my harsh awakening. All I remembered for a few days was trembling, gibbering, and crying as if stuck constantly waking from a nightmare. When what I had seen returned to me, I believed the silver lining was that I’d never again face The Godhead after that. But I would.
As I grew older, I found myself searching for answers to unasked questions about the universe and her deities. In searching, I encountered neither solace nor peace, only angst. Angst was the mildest way to put it. Education, while providing me knowledge, also fueled my rage. Good faith attempts to find a religion merely fractured me again into several more pieces.
Eventually, the fruitlessness of seeking meaning in existence took its toll. I decided to end it. My method? Alcohol and barbiturates, but rather than being rewarded with death, I only passed out. Then I was punished, flung headlong into a metaphysical plane. There, that daunting countenance loomed again. Entities aswirl, my increased theological knowledge populating more godly beings in those hideous faces: Yog Sothoth’s flagellating tentacles mixed into The Godhead’s flowing hair; Islamic crescent moons formed eyebrows; the Star of David shone from Its infinite maw as It spoke at last.
“Alas, the ungrateful seeker returns.”
“It was unintentional.”
“Nonsense, accidents exist not.”
The convulsive amalgamation of all the world’s worshipped pointed at me, a great mass of indifference.
“How thou, a mortal, hast made this immense journey twice, I know not. It seems to me a display of haughtiness.”
“All I wanted was to die.”
“Please speak not falsehoods, they make fools of us both, and neither of us are fools.”
For a millisecond it seemed I might blink out of existence, as if The Godhead could blow my soul throughout the universe like it was blowing dandelion spores.
“If it was death thou sought, it is easily found. Alas, thou desire aught else.”
Remembering the innocent child I’d been before turning on that PBS special, I realized The Godhead was right. I knew then what I wanted.
“I want to forget.”
At once, I felt a pushing sensation. Then I spun like my soul was a whirlwind until I awoke, reinhabiting my flesh body, serenaded by ambulance sirens.
After my stomach was pumped and I was back on my feet, I agreed to check in to a facility. They take care of me here in this sterile place. The pills they administer have stopped me from feeling frantic, but not from worrying. The Godhead didn’t grant my wish. I’ve not forgotten, and for that sin, they’ve branded me mentally ill, which I am, but I’m not a liar. Though I only saw it in space’s depths, The Godhead’s everywhere.
Bernardo Villela has short fiction included in periodicals such as LatineLit and in anthologies such as There's More of Us Than You Know. He’s had original poetry published by Exist Otherwise among others and translations published by AzonaL and Red Fern Review. You can find some of his other works here: https://linktr.ee/bernardovillela.
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