The Search for God

    In this short story, I present a humorous little story about a man's quest to understand our existence. The underlying message is that sometimes we can get in a lot of trouble by expressing our religious beliefs. 

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The Search for God

Dear reader, I have a secret. Do you want to know what it is? Then keep reading, but I must warn you to never tell anyone or you’ll be crucified--or worse.

The secret is the answer to three questions mankind has been asking for thousands of years:

      Who am I?

      What am I doing here?

      Where do I go at death?

      You’re probably wondering how I discovered these answers when billions of other people haven’t. Oh, they’ve imagined they had the answer – all the way to their graves. They believed the teachings given to them by organized religious leaders. Belief was not good enough for me, I had to know the truth beyond any shadow of a doubt.

      Bear with me while I explain.

      I began searching for the truth at age 12, and it took 58 years to find it. Skeptical? I don’t blame you; I’m the world’s biggest skeptic myself. So, when I tell you something, it’s a fact and I’m going to prove it.

      My search led me to far-off countries in search of the answers. I went to India, where I sat at the feet of Yogi masters. I traveled to the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal to see six-year old Kumaris, who are believed to be omnipotent deities. I lived with the mysterious Touareg tribes in the Sahara and the Yazidis of Iraq. I spun with the Whirling Dervishes of old Persia, now Iran. I knelt with the mullahs in Saudi Arabia, and I studied the mystical Kabbalah in Israel.

      I burned candles with the Wiccans. I was audited and “cleared” by Scientologists. I chanted with the Hare Krishnas. I shaved my head for tutoring in Buddhism while in Cambodia. I was taught the wisdom of Confucius before sailing to Haiti to learn about voodoo, zombies and witch doctors. I spent time with shamans in the Amazon jungles of Brazil and Peru. I ingested peyote and danced with the Pueblo Indians. I ate hashish and took LSD.

      I tried to connect with the infinite by fasting and by floating inside sensory deprivation chambers. I joined obscure cults, investigated psychics, mediums, and even the magical claims of Simon the Sorcerer, Aleister Crowley and Madame Blavatsky. I joined the Raelians and researched the possibility we were created by aliens. I read everything written by Zachariah Sitchin and Erich von Däniken. I even had long conversations with agnostics, atheists, humanists, and even hobos for their views on life and death.

      None of these investigations provided a satisfactory answer to the three questions. I turned to the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein and others. I studied Greek mythology for clues. I devoured books on psychology – from Sigmund Freud’s sexual theories to the “collective unconscious” claims of Carl Jung.

      Then I turned to science. I read Albert Einstein’s Relativity Theories and Stephen Hawking’s writings on Black Holes in space. I studied weird quantum physics and its evidence suggesting the observer and the observed were one and the same. I understood Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Niels Bohr’s discovery of the particle-wave duality, and Schrödinger’s Cat that can be alive and dead at the same time. I untangled the evidence of quantum entanglement that establishes faster than light communication between particles. I delved into the writings of physicists concerning multiple universes, string theory, dark matter, dark energy, and other theories on the nature of reality. They failed to answer the questions.

      I explored the secrets of the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and the apocryphal writings of the early Christians, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. These strange beliefs led me to interview professors in theology, archaeology and the history of religions. Then I investigated the beliefs of Greek and Roman Orthodox churches, Catholicism, Mormonism, Unitarianism, and the teachings of Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and Pentecostal snake handlers.

      I got bit, by the way.

      I finally read the Christian bible. To my shock, I found that it provided the answers to the three questions I had diligently searched for. Most likely, your minister never cited John 10:34, in which Christ told us who we are: “Ye are Gods and all of you are children of the Most High.” Or John 14:20, where Christ says “...I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you.” Or Romans 12:5, it says “so, we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.” Then I read Romans 8:20-23 where it explains why we’re here and where we go.

      All my 58 years of research is condensed in these verses. The upshot is not merely that spirit is real, but that we are one spirit. It’s you, me, and everyone else. It is God. I am God. I could explain a lot more, but a lady in a white gown is speaking to me right now.

      “It’s time for your medications, Mr. Lancaster.”

      See! I told you they’d crucify you, or worse, for telling the secret to the wrong people. I made that mistake and the doctor here in the psychiatric ward thinks I’m crazy!

The End

Copyright © 2018-2019 by Ken Pealock