The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [8]
“You’re going to stay and do just what I want you to do!” Clyde said.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” Joseph insisted. “You and everybody else will not refrain me from being God because I’m God and I’m going to be God! I was the first in the world and I created the world. No one made me.”
“There’s something in you, all right,” Clyde said. “I’m the first now to this bank, and Jesus the second. There’s two sides there. I’m on the testament side and the other the old Bible side, and if I wasn’t I couldn’t make, I couldn’t make my credits from up there.”
As the session ended, Leon—who had been sitting attentive but motionless during the outburst between Joseph and Clyde—protested against the meeting on the grounds that it was “mental torture.” He announced that he was not coming to any more meetings. We had decided in advance that we would not try to make the men do anything against their will, even if it meant abandoning the research project. I hoped Leon would reconsider, however, because the first encounter had served only to arouse my curiosity. The confrontation had turned out to be less stormy than I had expected. Despite Leon’s remark and despite the differences of opinion which had emerged, the three Christs did not seem to be particularly upset as we adjourned. Perhaps they did not fully grasp the extraordinary nature of this confrontation—at least, not in the way we did.
The next day when I entered the ward and informed the three men it was time for another meeting, Leon offered not the slightest protest. Like Clyde and Joseph, he followed me willingly. To open the session I proposed we resume the discussion where we had left off yesterday, and Clyde responded by repeating substantially what he had said the day before. Then Joseph picked up with a new thread, gesturing toward Clyde.
“He raised me up,” Joseph said. “He raised me up in England.”
—What does that mean—he raised you up?—
“Well, I died and I was reproduced by him.”
“Oh, you’re a rerise?” Clyde asked, in wonderment.
“Yes.”
“Well, I didn’t know that!” Clyde said. “See now, he is a rerise from the cemetery and I didn’t know that.”
—Now, Joseph, as I understand what you said yesterday, you’re God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost. You created the world. Nobody made you, because you’re God.—
“That’s correct.”
—That means everybody was made by you?—
“Right!”
—Clyde, did you make the world, too?—
“Well, I’m going to hold it now. I shoot—I shoot quicker than the devil. Now I’m in business. I won’t monkey with any patients.”
“I don’t care,” Joseph interrupted. “I know what I am.”
“I don’t think you do,” said Clyde. “I take all the credit. It takes a lot to rock my sanity. Why, there’s money coming from heaven and from the old country and from the sea of heaven. The carloads, trainloads, and boatloads. It’s seventy-seven hundred cars a mile and that runs from Upper Stock Lake…. God marked eight of our trails himself.”
—Rex, what do you think of all this business?—
“Sir, I sincerely acknowledge that they are hollowed-out instrumental gods,” Leon answered. “That’s my sincere belief.”
—Are you an instrumental god, Joseph?—
“There is only one.”
“Sir, according to what the book says, it states that there are two types of god: God Almighty who was spirit without a beginning and without an end—” Leon said.
“Well, that is the right one.”
“Sir, I was interrupted,” Leon continued. “I was going to say—there are two types of god. God Almighty, the spirit, without a beginning and without an end. Nobody created God, the God Almighty. Then there are creatures who are instrumental gods. There are some who aren’t hollowed out and there are some who are hollowed out.”
“As far as your talk—it’s all right,” Clyde said. “Your psychology is all right.”
“There are two types of psychology,” Leon went on. “I understand your situation pertaining to dying the death and making the person a hollowed-out instrumental god. You are correct there. As far as my understanding from what I have read, and from practical experience, it is that I am a creature