Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [55]
Here there was a discreet, slight, and not uniformly approving applause. For Merk had a literary turn. Merk smiled slightly on hearing it. He knew quite well that some of them there believed that as he was a technician he should not be indulging himself with the inexact arts. It was an affectation among some of them to use jargon, despise literature and to arm themselves with a jaunty facetiousness when approaching the serious.
“Each individual of this species is locked up inside his own skull, his own personal experience—or believes that he is, and while a great part of their ethical systems, religious systems, etc., state the Unity of Life, even the most recent religion, which, being the most recent is the most powerful, called Science, has only very fitful and inadequate gleams of insight into the fact that life is One. In fact, the distinguishing feature of this new religion, and why it has proved so inadequate, is its insistence on dividing off, compartmenting, pigeon-holing, and one of the most lamentable of these symptoms is its suspicion of, and clumsiness with, words.” Here he smiled again, winningly enough. A few laughed.
“To sum up these few remarks: our task, that of the Permanent Staff, is always to inculcate and maintain a truth to which these creatures are so far able only to pay lip service, a phrase of theirs which is their way of summing up their most powerful defect, the inability to see things except as facets and one at a time. The truth is that We—speaking of course in our roles as delegates and deputies—” and here the all-pervading Light brightened for a moment, as it were in acknowledgement of their stewardship—“We can only tolerate them insofar as they obey instructions, manage their affairs, their communal life, in such a way as to adjust to the System’s needs. But they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again and again, and this is because of another and most powerful feature of their thinking, which is that anything they are told is distorted to fit their own particular personal or group bias and then added, like another pebble to the pile of the half-truths they already cherish. So that we confidently expect—or could have expected in the past, before this present great (forgive me for another lapse into the literary) leap forward, under the influence of the Solar Wind of Change—” and here the Light brightened and, as it were, smiled—“that anything we have to say will be retained in its pure form for only a short time and by a few people, because in the nature of things, or rather, it is in their nature, this simple fact—human duty as part of the Harmony—will be off running like a mad dog, will be twisted out of itself, will have become the property of a hundred warring sects, each claiming that their version, which they have concocted, is correct. But that time is past, or nearly so. An ability to see things as they are, in their multifarious relations—in other words, Truth—will be part of humanity’s new, soon-to-be-developed equipment. Thanks of course, not to Us, but to …”
The Light deepened a chord, and held it. Everyone showed that he or she was conscious, with Merk Ury, that the main point, the central issue, had been reached. There was a general brightening and steadying of their individual atmospheres, forcefields or auras.
“As everyone here knows, has had drummed into him or her from the moment he or she volunteered—it is not at all a question of descending into that Poisonous Hell and remaining unaffected. Every one of us takes his life in his hands. For these creatures are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight