The Key by Whitley Strieber Page B

shape, or even be able to conceive of it. By definition, a two-dimensional being cannot look up, for then it would see into the third dimension, which is impossible for it to do. What it would see, always looking straight ahead, would be a dot that would grow into a line, then slowly contract again into a dot and disappear. It would never understand the true nature of the ball, because its two-dimensional mind cannot contain the concept of a solid object.
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    I don’t want to seem thickheaded, but I don’t think you answered my question.
    The inference should be enough.
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    It isn’t!
    The emergence of life on earth and the fall of man are the same, in two ways. First, outside of time, all events are one, so they happen simultaneously. Not that they have happened, but that they are always happening. Every moment is forever, as you will recall after you die and begin to live in your memories. You will see the importance, then, of living a life that satisfies you and fulfills your destiny, because everything you have done will be immediately present in your consciousness all the time. Second, the emergence of the word—that is to say, the possibility of all things that may exist in concrete form—into physical reality placed it in the position of needing to struggle to survive. When the word became flesh, it became vulnerable. If physical beings don’t struggle, you die. So you cannot surrender. And yet you cannot stop your fall unless you do surrender. If you continue to struggle against nature, you will die. But if you don’t struggle, you will die. This is tragedy of the word in physical form, and is the essential human problem. This is the problem you must solve, if you are to avoid going extinct.
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    I think that’s the most profound statement I’ve ever heard. You are defining the word as God manifesting into physical reality and thus including physical vulnerability and weakness in his perfection. I see this as the key to our salvation. Am I right?
    The word is potential. Just as your uttering of the word “automobile” is not an automobile, but contains the possibility of one, so also this word contained the possibility of everything. The word was not God. The word was an idea that turned into sound when it penetrated the physical.
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    I’m disappointed. I saw more in what you said than was there. No, you saw exactly, and your observation was precisely correct. But I want you never to forget that there is no world but this one. The radiant world is not separate. It’s all around you. Energetic being is just as detectable and accessible to science as elemental being.
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    God can be measured by science?
    If you dare.
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    If we dare? What’s to dare?
    If you develop a means that will enable you to communicate with your dead, which, as I have said, is quite possible, you will begin to know, in life, what you are only meant to know in death. But the unready souls fear this congress. It is also why you tell yourselves that the soul is on some strange ethereal plane far distant from you. You fear to find it, because then you will have to face yourselves as you are.
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    Are we so terrible?
    You are not terrible. Your fear is terrible. Instinct makes you fear congress with the dead, because they see more than you dare to see.
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    What did the word sound like?
    I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
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    But what will actually happen to us? Will we return to the forest? The civilization of the northern peoples will be reduced to shadows and memories in the minds of the living. It will follow its own past because of its flaws.
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    What are its flaws?
    Greed and secretiveness. All who keep secrets that others should know keep evil in their hearts. All who amass more than they need, take bread from others. The wealth of the first world is its sin, and it will go the way of sinful things.
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    What are good and evil?
    They are teaching tools. You