The Western Book of the Dead

CHAPTER I
In the beginning i.e., before the beginning there was NOTHING. And
MATTER came out of NOTHING. And MATTER was CHAOS.

CHAPTER II
Strangely, and for no reason whatsoever, CHAOS started to change.
Simplicity begat complexity, randomness begat order, most peculiar of
all, inanimate MATTER begat organic MATTER.

CHAPTER III
Many, many, many years passed and quite by chance organic MATTER
developed in a strange direction. It became more and more complex,
and then for no apparent reason at all, it became conscious of itself. It
called the consciousness MIND and it gave itself a name and that name
was MAN.

CHAPTER IV
Now MAN equipped with MIND found that MIND played peculiar tricks
on him. He found that instead of just accepting himself as part of
MATTER, he had a longing for significance, a desire to live for a purpose.
Instead of being pushed about by blind chance, he wanted to direct his
own affairs. He also found that there was a state of being that was
entirely satisfactory and he called it LOVE.

CHAPTER V
MAN kept on searching for purpose and meaning and after a while
strange rumors began to spread rumors that spoke of a creator-GOD
who was LOVE, who had created MAN in his own image. Many men
believed the rumors. It gave their lives meaning; it told them the

universe was not purposeless after all. Inspired by hope, these

BELIEVERS started to write, to paint, and to chip away at blocks of
stone. Some of these craftsmen were extremely skillful. They seemed to
be expressing the longings and aspirations of all men. To these
exceptional pieces of craft a name was given, and that name was ART.
And the men who wrote them, painted them, or chipped them out were
called ARTISTS. And all their ART said: MAN IS SIGNIFICANT.

CHAPTER VI
It was also rumored that the son of LOVE became a MAN, showed men
how to live, then died. A legend has it that the son of LOVE came back
from the dead then disappeared in a cloud. In some parts of the
Western World the BELIEVERS of this legend spread a very influential
form of the message: MAN IS SIGNIFICANT.

CHAPTER VII
For many years this state of affairs existed, but MAN became restless.
Was it so? Was MAN a creation of LOVE? Why should he simply believe
a rumor? Had anyone used his REASON a very special activity of MIND
that had proved to be successful in understanding MATTER to find out
if the rumor was true? Did the rumor correspond to what really was? A
thorough investigation began and it lasted many years.

CHAPTER VIII
After an era of investigation MAN came to certain conclusions: (1) The
rumors were certainly false. REASON found no EVIDENCE to verify the
GOD hypothesis. God, they said, was the result of wishful daydreams, a
figment of IMAGINATION which itself was an early aberration in
primitive MAN, now happily under the control of REASON. And if the
rumor of GOD was false, so surely was the complex rumor about his
son. (2) MAN was not some mysterious higher being who was
significant. He was, on the contrary, of no importance at all simply a
complex product of cause and effect. A meaningless piece of MATTER
on a large but equally meaningless piece of MATTER called EARTH. He
had emerged from primordial slime and was really neither more or less
than that.

CHAPTER IX
At first nothing much changed. But a few years passed and a few
perceptive men began to notice a difference. Music didn't seem to
sound the same, painting didn't look the same, and books didn't read in
the same way. Some people started to complain, but the ARTISTS
always very honest transparent people simply said, "We are
interpreting REALITY. If REALITY is meaningless, then we must imitate
that meaninglessness. You must not give yourselves airs. You are
nothing. You are a conscious bit of protoplasm condemned to death on
this planet." At that, the critical group stopped carping and started to
say how beautiful the NEW ART was. They didn't want to use the word
beautiful because everybody knew it didn't mean anything, but it had
been around for so long why not use it anyway?

CHAPTER X
Then, too, a few perceptive men noticed changes in the way men and
women behaved. Once they had loved each other. And their LOVE was
thought to be a reflection of the LOVE who was GOD. But now there
was just SEX liaisons of the moment. And families began to die as
families and children were left to the whim of the courts. And men
called these liaisons LOVE, though they knew the word didn't mean
anything.

CHAPTER XI
All sorts of startling consequences followed. Some men said, "If MAN is
only a machine caught up in the vast mechanism of nature, why not
treat him accordingly? So the MANIPULATORS set to work and used
men just like objects of nature. And behold there came a very efficient
system called UTOPIA, and the occupants were called NECROPHILES. Of
course, it was really nothing new, for the MANIPULATORS had picked up
their model from the ANTS, a natural group of beings who years
previously had attained the perfect state of affairs. Another group of
men resisted UTOPIA. They said, "In spite of all that REASON has proved
we will continue to believe that our longings and aspirations are
meaningful." So they tried to forget their DESPAIR (a feeling that MAN

experienced when he wanted to hope and did hope knowing it was

hopeless) by taking chemicals and behaving like animals, living only for
each successive moment and trying hard to make each moment
pleasurable. Most of them got tired playing these games after a while
and disposed of themselves in various ways. Some went to DEATH,
some to PSYCHEDELIA (a beautiful country with a synaesthetic
landscape), some to NIRVANA. Some even went to UTOPIA. And so
nonsense was worshipped instead of sense (they called it the absurd).
REASON was abandoned because, you see, it couldn't give answers to
the really big questions after all. In its place came UNREASON (they
called it irrationality). And MORALITY was abandoned because that
particular ability to distinguish between THE GOOD and THE BAD was
simply regarded as a mere matter of taste or caprice. THE GOOD and
THE BAD had been popular once, but that was when rumors of GOD
were rife. THE GOOD was GOD's holy character and had to be obeyed.
THE BAD was disobedience or revolt against THE GOOD. But THE GOOD
and THE BAD departed with REASON and GOD. And now there was no
longer TRAGEDY only MISERY.

CHAPTER XII
So MAN ceased to be MAN a rational, moral creature, a being who
once transcended the causality of nature. Instead he became a
meaningless, enigmatic machine-like piece of MATTER. Even the
MANIPULATORS who controlled UTOPIA ceased to be MAN in the old
sense of the word. After denying their mannishness for so long, they
finally lost it and so became the most terrifying animal on the face of
the earth.

POSTSCRIPT
The old rumors still persist found in outlying regions and small cliques
of NON CONFORMISTS in UTOPIA that LOVE is. Some still say MAN
is. But these are the same ones who say no MAN has ever really died,
that even the ancients are alive (some well, some not) and living in
OTHER WORLD. Such rumors are being suppressed wherever they are
found.
The Western Book of the Dead. Downers Grove, Il.: Inter-Varsity Press; 1970