The Tenuous Line of Sanity by Frank Siegrist - HTML preview

In either case your ego is perfection itself while your quirks and weaknesses are protected from criticism!

But the example concerning rape was unduly negative, Linda now thought. Maybe she was expressing a negative preconception about men by coming up with an example like this. Having an ego doesn’t need to be so negative. In most people (like herself or her boyfriend Joe) the ego was surely more benign, wasn’t it?

So, Linda mused, is the ego a bad thing that should be killed? Or do we need it to survive within society?

Well, if killing the ego meant opening up to « universal love » (that could include rape too, actually, Linda now mused, or in any case giving in to unwanted sex, since it sort of « forced » you to love everybody…), she would much rather keep her ego and have someone who loved her personally, like Joe!

When Linda went home that evening, she was so glad to go back to a lover belonging all to herself, someone who didn't go on about universal love and didn't want to kill her ego!
She greedily kissed his lips and made him take her to bed straight away, where she made love to him hungrily! After that, feeling calm and serene, she started telling him of her day.
She explained about this ego-thing and how the sannyasins claimed it had to be killed. She explained how she just wouldn't buy this, because if the ego was really so useless and bad as they claimed it was, then why did normal people like her put such an effort into building it up? She explained to Joe about her idea that the ego was a kind of fictive piece of self that perfectly fit into society...
Joe (who was Jack in reality, but Linda didn't know this) listened attentively. He said he liked her idea about the ego being a fictive piece of self.
“You know,” he said, “when cells decided to stick together and form bigger and bigger organisms like dogs and human beings, the individual cells actually became simpler, in a way.”
“What do you mean?” asked Linda. Joe sometimes spoke as though he were an accomplished scientist. As though HE were the great psychiatrist, not his brother!
Jack explained that a muscle cell just contracts when it gets the signal to contract, a bone-cell just makes bone, a brain-cell just relays signals...
In a simple, single-celled organism, one single cell does all these different things all by itself. So in some sense, the cells of our bodies are simpler than a single-celled organism.
“But what are you getting at?” asked Linda, intrigued.
“Well,” said Jack (for even though Linda called him Joe, he was Jack in reality) “human beings joining together to form a society, it's a bit similar to cells joining together to form an organism. The society might be more complicated than an individual human being, but within that society, each human being risks becoming rather simpler than he was as an individual of his own earlier...”
“And is that a good thing?” asked Linda.
“Of course not!” exclaimed Jack. “An individual human being is such an amazing thing, it would be a pity to lose most of it just to become a member of society, even if that society ends up being something even more fantastic than an individual human being...”
“So, what's the solution?” asked Linda.
“The solution,” said Jack, “is that we become members of society, but at the same time we still keep some autonomy of our own for our private moments.”
“But what has all this got to do with the ego?” asked Linda.
“Well,” said Jack, “maybe the ego is the part of us that fits into society, just like you said. But the other parts still exist too. They are hidden away when we need to function as a little cog-wheel within society, but they come out of hiding again when we're on our own!”
“But it's true that the ego is also a lie...” mused Linda. “The sannyasins aren't completely wrong about that!”
“Yeah,” said Jack, “I guess the cog-wheels like to give themselves more importance than they really have. In that way, they can smuggle some parts of themselves into the machinery that don't really fit in... Maybe that's what this ego is – the cog-wheel part of us making itself grander than it really is!”
“Well, doesn't that just sabotage the machinery?” asked Linda.
“Maybe at times it does...” agreed Jack. “But the machinery has to be able to change and adapt continuously anyway, so it's good for it to be challenged a bit from the inside at times. Otherwise it might become too fixed in its ways.”
“So it's good for the cog-wheels to be a bit rebellious, you mean?” asked Linda.
“Yeah, I would think so. But they couldn't be accepted in the machinery if they were always rebellious. They still have to fit in pretty well. And maybe that's what the ego is – the part of you that fits in while at the same time making itself a bit grander than it really is so that it can smuggle in some tendencies here and there that don't really fit in...”
“You know,” said Linda, “I really like that about you, Joe. You listened to my idea about the ego, and now you reformulated it in a way that makes me see it more clearly myself! Part of being with you is discovering myself!”
Jack was flattered. He said: “You open up a whole new world for me too, my love!”
“And these worlds we have and that we share, we could only keep them - rather than growing out of them when we became members of society - thanks to the ego protecting them, right?” said Linda.
“I think so,” agreed Jack. “We have our public face which is well-adapted to society, and that's what we show everybody to let them see how well-integrated we are. And beside that there is the whole rest of us that we don't share with just anybody, but we share it with each other!”
“And if we killed the ego, it wouldn't be like these sannyasins think, namely that the whole rest of us would be open and free at last. That whole rest of us would rather just be squashed by society, wouldn’t it?” said Linda.
“Yes,” said Jack, “we couldn't be complex, wonderful humans anymore. We would really have to become nothing more than simple cog-wheels. Just like the cells in our bodies have become simpler than a unicellular organism too!”
“And that would be a loss!” said Linda.
“Definitely!” said Jack. “It would be a loss for us, and it would even be a loss for society too! Society might become more perfect if the cog-wheels within it were more perfect too, but it would also become less able to innovate, adapt and evolve!”
They were quiet for a moment, just holding their naked bodies against each other, savouring their togetherness and their mutual understanding.
Then Jack said: “You know, when humans work together in small teams in which each one can voice their personal opinion and contribute with their own, personal ideas, it's amazing what we accomplish! Just think of scientific progress! So much we have learned to understand and master!Think of all the wonders of modern technology! So much intelligence and deep understanding was necessary for that!”
Jack paused, then he continued: “Now contrast that with what we accomplish as a society when we all have to work together rather than each doing his or her little thing in smaller teams. Justice and politics – they're disasters of stupidity!”
Linda said: “Yes, but the sannyasins would claim that these disasters of stupidity wouldn't happen if we all dropped our egos!”
“But the wonders we accomplish by working in small teams wouldn't happen anymore either, if no one defended their own personal little ideas!” mused Jack.
“So what would society look like if nobody had an ego anymore?” asked Linda.
“Maybe it would really be more just, fairer, but also blander,” said Jack. “Maybe it would be more like an anthill – perfect in its own way, but bland and boring as well.”

Eventually the day came when Linda was considered ready to meet the Master in person. She had to admit she was quite excited! After a perfunctory search by the security guard she was allowed into the big, dark and cold hall with the mysterious aquarium in which a hushed movement of a dark shadow could be perceived every now and then. Beyond the aquarium she saw the flickering flames in a grand fire-place next to which the Master (yes, it was Him in person at last!) was sitting in a big comfortable armchair. There was a small wooden stool standing next to the armchair. That was where Linda would now have the honour to seat herself, she supposed...
The whole thing was carefully staged, of course. Wasn't the staging a bit too obvious, Linda wondered? Would the sannyasins really fall for that? Well, she had to admit to herself, however artificial and affected the whole thing was (she believed there was an air-conditioner cooling the air, just so that it could be heated up again by the fire!), it was intimidating in its own way. In other words – the careful staging really worked!
She dutifully went over to the Master who gently shut a big book with a leather-cover that was resting on his lap. Had he really been reading in it? Could he really read in this dim light? Or was this just part of the staging too?
Linda dutifully sat down on the stool next to the armchair and looked up into the gentle face of the Master.
He looked just like Santa Claus, white beard and all, except that he was rather too slim. A Santa Claus for grownups, a bit scary, but still reassuring deep down, just like the version for kids...
One might have found him ridiculous, Linda supposed, but whoever scoffed at him probably hadn't seen him for real yet. There was a charismatic stateliness about him that wasn't easily dismissed. Maybe he really was the Way, the Truth and the Life...
“So,” the Master said kindly, calmly caressing the cover of the book on his lap, “we meet at last!”
“It's an honour to meet you, Master!” said Linda.
“And it is my pleasure to meet you!” answered the Master. “I hear you are a doubter, nevertheless you were keen to meet me?”
“I have difficulties accepting the idea of killing the ego. I don't think we have an ego for no reason. I think we need it in order to live within society,” explained Linda.
“You are right,” said the Master kindly and to Linda's great surprise. “To say that we should kill the ego is an over-simplification. None of my sannyasins has really killed it, you know, even if they think they have.”
“So what do you mean by <<killing the ego>>?” asked Linda, feeling somewhat bewildered.
“We take the ego too seriously,” answered the Master. “The ego is linked to consciousness and to rational thought. But we are much more than that. Much, much more!”
“So what should we do with the ego, then?” asked Linda, almost feeling a bit stupid by now.
“Just don't take it so seriously,” said the Master kindly, and Linda almost felt like he was going to caress her head as if she were a good little girl.
“What is God?” Linda now asked breathlessly.
“God is simply the works, the whole lot, everything, all!” said the Master with a sparkle in his eye. “Life is exuberant Godliness, effervescent Godliness, a continuous act of creation. Living beings appear in heaps and pass on. New ones appear and pass on as well. Living beings cannot hold on to their existence for long in this stony, cold universe. They all decay again, but new ones keep appearing. Don't worry about decay! Life is like a big river flowing by. You don't need to concentrate on individual drops of water when you watch the flow. Just let it carry you and feel that you are part of it! That's how you will enter the Realm of God and be blessed!”
“What happens when you baptize a sannyasin?” asked Linda.
“It's a rebirth,” said the Master. “You trust your master so much that he could kill you. And he does. He kills your ego (at least sort of). And at that very moment the Heavens open up and the Spirit of God descends upon you in the form of a dove. And a voice from Heaven can be heard saying: This is my one-and-only daughter whom I love dearly!”
“How can each and every one of your sannyasins be God's one-and-only son or daughter?” asked Linda critically.
The Master smiled leniently. Then he said: “You may consider them all as children of God, but there is a danger in this as well. If we are all His children, some of us are bound to consider themselves the elder brothers watching over the younger, less experienced ones. But we don't need any big brothers. No, God is here for each one of us, not for us as a group, not for us as a brotherhood, but for each one of us for his or her own sake. That's why we are each one of us the one-and-only son or daughter of God, loved dearly by his or her one-and-only Father-in-Heaven. Don't take it literally, though. It's meant poetically.”
“So you aren't an elder brother either, then?” asked Linda.
“Indeed I am not,” answered the Master. “I am just the Way, the door, if you like... You can step through it and reach the Realm of God.”
“Are there other doors?” asked Linda.
“There are no other doors,” said the Master. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, Jesus said in his role as Christ. No one comes to the Father except through me. There is only one door, namely Christ, but you can find it again whenever you please. Just don't wait too long, because the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”
“The Kingdom of Heaven has been near for thousands of years already!” protested Linda.
“You don't live for thousands of years,” answered the Master. “You live for a century at most. So turn to God now, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!”
“Where does the dove come from that descends from the Heavens?” asked Linda, changing the subject back a bit.
“The image can be turned on its head, if you like,” said the Master wisely. “At the exact moment when the ego dies, the sannyasin opens up, the dove is set free and flies up into the endless sky... It's just an image, you know, and you can turn it around however you wish.”
Linda was bewildered. This master was either much too wise, or he was just an incredibly clever charlatan!
The Master blessed her and told her once again to turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.
“Doesn't it say: REPENT, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near?” asked Linda.
“It does in the usual translations of the Bible,” said the Master without hesitation, “but what is really meant is simply that you should turn to God. You needn't repent, for you have done nothing wrong. The door is open for you, step through whenever you are ready, just don't wait too long, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”
And with these words Linda was dismissed.

In the evening, when Linda was with Joe (in reality Jack) once again, she couldn't quite convey the sense of awe she had felt for the Master to him.
In any case she told him about how the Master had claimed that the word “repent” was a mistranslation, and that in reality the passage said nothing more than that you should turn to God.
But Jack somehow wasn't so impressed.
“But look,” said Linda, “if this is really a mistranslation, this would mean Christianity has gone wrong for thousands of years! All this stuff about how we are all guilty and how we should all repent, what if that's really just a mistranslation?”
“Oh well,” said Jack, “the Bible is such a huge book, whatever you look for, you'll somehow find it in it. Whatever you want to justify, you'll find a passage in the Bible to justify it.”
“So you mean the Bible is nothing but a heap of rubbish?” asked Linda, rather shocked by Jack's cynicism.
“I didn't say that,” answered Jack, “but it's a big book, and by taking passages out of their context, you could prove just about anything you like with it, if that's what you want to do...”
“If that's what you want to do?” mused Linda. “Why would anybody want to mis-translate <<turn to God>> as <<repent>> on purpose?”
“Oh!” said Jack, “I see a thousand reasons for that! It's a question of power! What better way to have power over your underlings than to make them feel guilty first?”
“I don't understand,” admitted Linda.
“Sure you do!” answered Jack. “If the priest tells everyone that they're guilty and that they need to repent, they will all come flocking to him! While if he told them to go on their way and just be happy, well, they would do exactly that and not need him anymore. In other words – a religion that tells its followers to go on their way and be happy would die out! While a religion convincing its followers that they're all guilty and in need of repentance will survive!”
“But that's not what the Bible says!” insisted Linda.
“Well, the Bible...” said Jack, “it says a lot of things. It says so many things you can find whatever you want in it!”
Linda didn't answer at first. She was stunned by Jack's total insensitivity to this holy book.
Since Linda didn't say anything, Jack continued: “This isn't a problem just with the Bible. It's a problem with every text, especially texts that are supposed to show us how to behave. They can always be misinterpreted in whatever way you choose. Just think of the Law. The articles of Law were written in the most precise and objective way possible, and yet they still regularly get twisted in all kinds of ways...”
“By the lawyers, you mean?” asked Linda.
“By the judges!” corrected Jack. “Judges hate to make unusual decisions, even if the evidence would warrant them. So they twist the laws and the facts in whatever way is necessary to reach the most bland and unsurprising decision possible.”
“I don't quite understand you,” said Linda.
“Well,” said Jack, “custody of small children is always given to the mother, however undeserving she may have been, and however deserving the father was...”
“You mean like in the case of Katalin and Daniel? You're just taking Daniel's side because he was your brother's patient! I think you're fooling yourself about him! Look at what he did in the end – he killed his child's mother! That just shows what an irresponsible guy he is and how right the judges were not to give custody of the little girl to him! Actually they shouldn't just have stopped him from getting custody – they should have locked him up outright before he could kill his ex-wife!”
“Yeah, you see,” said Jack, “you just grab all these clichés out of thin air, and if the facts and the laws don't fit, you MAKE them fit. That's exactly how judges work too...”
“But the facts DO fit! You just don't want to see it!” exclaimed Linda. “I've spent weeks in that ashram, and those people there aren't murderers! So who else might have killed Katalin if not her ex-husband?”
“That's what I hoped you might find out...” said Jack with a sigh.
They didn't make love that evening.

But the next day Linda still decided to make a token effort at finding out something about Katalin and who might have murdered her. When she saw Annie leave her room, Linda quickly slipped in, donned some plastic-gloves and started a little search.
She felt a bit ridiculous going through Annie's underwear, but what she saw next made her wonder if her boyfriend Joe might not be right after all...
That Annie would keep the Master's ceremonial robes in her room was strange enough (especially considering that it was still a mystery where the Master spent all his time between his public and private appearances), but then the fake mustachio, beard and nose definitely started ringing alarm-bells!
Among other master-paraphernalia, she finally found a small dagger in its sheath at the back of a cupboard. It was beautiful, inlaid with gold, and it was slightly curved at its end!
Linda quickly packed it up in an evidence-bag and left Annie's room unseen, her heart beating hard and fast!
The same day she was already sitting in the office of Daniel's lawyer, breathlessly recounting what she had found!
But Daniel's lawyer was not really impressed.
“It could be checked for DNA!” said Linda.
“For what reason would anyone want to check it for DNA?” asked the lawyer.
“Well, to see if it's the murder-weapon, of course!” said Linda.
“Look,” said the lawyer, “you didn't get that knife by legal means. It's inadmissible as evidence!”
“It may be inadmissible as evidence to prove someone guilty, but it should be admissible to prove someone innocent!” insisted Linda.
“Even if we found some blood of Katalin on it,” said the lawyer, “how would that prove anything at all? Katalin may have used it to clean her finger-nails and hurt herself with it!”
Linda was getting angry. Why was this lawyer so obtuse? Didn't he want to help his client?
“If this was really the murder-weapon, it would have entered Katalin's body till the hilt! You don't get that kind of effect by cleaning your finger-nails, do you?”
The lawyer smiled at Linda's defensiveness. Ah, the naivety of laymen!
“Okay,” he said calmly, “let's say we got this knife analyzed and it really showed traces of Katalin's blood till the hilt, what would that prove? In particular, how would we prove this wasn't Daniel's knife to start with?”
“I would prove that with my testimony,” said Linda. “I would explain how and where I found it!”
“How and where you've STOLEN it, you mean...” said the lawyer.
“Whatever!” said Linda stubbornly.
“Okay,” said the lawyer, let's assume we would get away with that. Now how would we prove that the lab's findings were correct?”
“What do you mean?” asked Linda.
“Well, if we just send this knife to a lab to get it analyzed, while the lab has no official mandate to do so, how do we prove its results are objective?”
Linda felt a bit lost. What on Earth was the lawyer talking about?
“How could a DNA analysis not be objective?” she asked. “You compare two sequences, and if they're equal, they're equal, aren't they?”
“Ah, if it were that simple!” said the lawyer. “If any suitable amount of blood could still be found on that knife, it would be tiny. The signal from it would be tiny too. And if there is some contamination as well, the signal would become practically unreadable.”
“I thought DNA-tests were completely objective...” murmured Linda.
“That's what everyone thinks, but with small samples they become very fiddly,” said the lawyer.
“So what do we do, then?” asked Linda beginning to feel helpless. “Can't we get the knife analyzed by an official lab with an official mandate?”
“I'm afraid not,” said the lawyer. “The police-investigation is closed. The matter has already been brought to court. The fight is in the court-room now. Unless we convince the judges that this knife is important enough to warrant a re-opening of the investigation, this knife will never be looked at officially.”
“And you don't feel that we could convince the judges of this?” asked Linda with little confidence.
“No,” said the lawyer confidently, “most definitely not. You see, this case is so clear-cut already. We have a murder-victim, and we have the most plausible perpetrator you could hope for. The judges want to close this case. They don't want to be stalled by messy new facts.”
“So what would we need to do to have any chance at all?” asked Linda.
“If we could call the real murderer to the witness-stand and he would confess to the crime right there in the court-room, then I guess that would be sufficient cause for the investigation to be re-opened,” said the lawyer with confidence. “Bring me that, and we'll have a real chance. Else forget about it!”

When Linda told Jack about all this in the evening, she was close to tears.
Jack was a bit surprised: “Only yesterday you were convinced that Daniel was the real murderer, and now, just because you found a golden knife at the bottom of a drawer, you are suddenly convinced it wasn't Daniel?”
“It's not just this knife,” said Linda. “There was also this false beard, the Master's clothes. I'm beginning to think the Master doesn't even exist at all. It's his secretary - or whatever she is - who impersonates him!”
“That may be as it may be,” said Jack, “but what has it got to do with Katalin?”
“There is something wrong in that ashram!” said Linda. “There is something sick! I believe other people could have been killed there!”
“But why?” asked Jack. “What for? You were so taken in by their Master the other day, and now you're close to a nervous breakdown just because of a false beard and a knife? That doesn't make sense to me!”
“I just got a real bad feeling about that whole place all of a sudden,” said Linda. “It's so open, so tolerant and nice, but there's something false about it deep down! I feel that now!”
Jack hadn't liked it how much that place had roped Linda in and how fascinated she had become by their guru, so he was quite happy about this latest development, even though he still felt Linda was overreacting.
“So you won't go back there?” he asked hopefully.
“I need to go back!” she said stubbornly. “I need to find the murderer!”
“Even if you find him, what good will that do?” asked Jack. “You heard Daniel's lawyer – unless the murderer comes to court to confess, there's no hope anyway!”
“You shouldn't have dragged me into this...” said Linda.
“Yes,” said Jack, “I'm sorry. Jack and I should have spoken with Daniel's lawyer about this whole business ourselves before involving you! On the other hand, we didn't know you would find the murder-weapon!”
“What else was I supposed to find?” asked Linda belligerently.
“Who knows? You were meant to just look around, which is what you did...” said Jack.
“I will find that murderer!” said Linda with conviction.

Linda went back to the Ashram, she talked with people, but she didn't get any closer to finding

any murderer...
“I'm still convinced this knife holds the clue!” she said to Jack one evening.
“In what sense?” asked Jack.
“There must be DNA of the murder-victim on it!” said Linda with conviction.
“Even if there was...” started Jack.
“I know,” interrupted Linda. “The lawyer already told me. It would be so little and it would be mixed with other people's DNA, so it might not give a clear signal.”
“That's not the only problem,” said Jack.
“What do you mean?” asked Linda.
“Well, interpreting DNA results is a whole problem in itself. After a few spectacular failures, the judges have become wary of it. I guess they must have realized that they just don't understand it.”
“What is there not to understand?” asked Linda naively.
“Let me give you an example,” said Jack. “Let's say there is this murder weapon with the DNA of the culprit on it. Let's say the DNA-sample is big enough, a hair or a piece of skin or something, so the signal from it is absolutely clear.”
“Okay,” said Linda.
“Now we analyze this sample. We look at regions in the DNA that vary greatly from one person to the next.”
“Okay,” said Linda.
“Now we find a match in a database, and we know that the probability of finding a match purely by chance is only 1 out of 1'000'000.”
“Okay,” said Linda. “So we've got our culprit, then, haven't we?”
“Not so fast!” warned Jack. “What is the chance that this match is purely due to chance?”
“You just said it,” said Linda, “1 out of 1'000'000.”
“Ha!” said Jack triumphantly, “that's what everybody thinks, but it's the wrong answer!”
“How can it be the wrong answer?” asked Linda annoyed. “You just said yourself that the chance of getting a match by chance was 1 out of 1'000'000!”
“Yes,” said Jack, “and that means that if I look at your DNA, the chance that it matches the sample even though you are not the murderer is 1 out of 1'000'000.”
Linda just gave Jack an annoyed look meaning: “So?”
“But the question we're faced with here is very different. The question is not about the chance of getting a match. We already know we've got a match. Now the question is: what's the chance that this match is due purely to chance? That's a different question!”
“You're just splitting hairs!” said Linda.
“No, listen,” said Jack. “Let's say the murder happened in a town of 5'000'000 people. How many people in this town will match the DNA sample?”
“Well,” said Linda, still annoyed, “5, right?”
“Yes, that's correct. There should be 5 matches in this town. So the chance that the guy we found in the database is the real culprit is just 1 out of 5.”
Linda was dumbstruck.
“Of course,” said Jack, “if the guy wasn't just found in a database but was a suspect anyway because he was hanging around the crime scene at the right time, acting suspiciously and so on, then the chance that he's the real culprit grows much bigger. But even so, the chance that he's NOT the culprit will still never be as small as 1 out of 1'000'000, even though that's what everyone thinks..., including, of course, the judges.”
“So even the judges get this wrong?” asked Linda.
“Of course!” said Jack. “They're specialists of the law, not specialists of probability theory!”
“But you just said they distrust DNA-results?” asked Linda.
“Yes, because of some spectacular failures in the past. But rather than trying to understand the problem, they rather just don't want to deal with DNA-evidence anymore if possible.”
“Come on!” said Linda.
“It's true!” said Jack. “Any judge will look for any possible way, any small technicality he can find, to dismiss DNA-evidence! Judges hate DNA!”
Linda was thoughtful.
“If the DNA on the knife fits Katalin's,” she finally said, “What would the chance be that this was purely due to chance?”
“Well,” said Jack, “in this case the chance that this was purely down to chance would be quite small. After all, we didn't just find Katalin in a database. Katalin had been there at that Ashram regularly. And if a knife there carries her mark, there's a really good chance that this would be meaningful. On the other hand, if we found matches in a database of a murder-victim in Australia and another one in Siberia, the chance that either one of those would be meaningful would be vanishingly small...”
“Yeah,” said Linda thoughtfully, “I understand that...” Then, after a moment's thought she added: “If I understand that, shouldn't the judges be able to understand it too?”
“No,” said Jack. “Judges don't understand things that take more than one sentence to explain.”
“Why on Earth wouldn't they?” asked Linda. “They can't all be that stupid, can they?”
“Okay,” admitted Jack, “maybe they themselves are not necessarily that stupid. But don't forget people talk about the judges’ decisions. That's why the judges’ decisions should seem totally clear, even to stupid people. So if the facts are too complicated, they will be twisted somehow to fit into a more simple model.”
“You've really become an incorrigible cynic!” said Linda. “I remember the first time we met, and you said your brother was an incorrigible cynic. But now it really seems to me that YOU are the incorrigible cynic!”
“So you think I've changed?” asked Jack.
“Well yes,” said Linda. “But not just in a bad way, you know. When I first met you, you were somehow very intense, as if you had something to prove about yourself every second of your life. You went on and on about your brother and how successful he was. You've given up on that, and I'm glad. You've become softer somehow... Even physically you've become softer and sort of a bit flabbier...”
“That's not really a compliment!” said Jack.
“Oh, don't worry!” said Linda. “I like you better like this!”
“So I've become softer, flabbier, less intense but more cynical?” asked Jack.
“Yes,” said Linda. “And I like it that you're calmer and more settled now, but I must say I don't like this cynical side so much!”
“Okay,” said Jack, musing about what he had just heard about Joe and how Joe had already described him as cynical... “I will try to be less cynical from now on!”
“Yes, please!” said Linda, and she gave Jack a kiss.
Then she said: “Are you sure it's only the judges who don't understand probability?”
“Of course not!” said Jack. “Doctors understand it just as little!”
“You see,” said Linda, “you mustn't just hack at the judges!”
Jack agreed grudgingly.
“So, give me an example of what doctors don't understand!” said Linda brightly.
“Well,” said Jack, “imagine a test for a virus that patients may have or don't have. Now let's say this test gives you some false positive results, meaning that sometimes the test will say you've got the virus when in reality you don't. Let's say the rate of false positives is 1 out of 10'000.”
“Okay,” said Linda.
“Now let's imagine you just got tested and the test gave a positive result. What's the chance you still don't have the virus?”
“Hm,” said Linda, “at first sight I would say that it's 1 out of 10'000, but you're going to tell me that's wrong!”
“Indeed!” said Jack. “That's the wrong answer, but it's the answer the doctors would give you too!”
“So, explain the right answer to me now!” said Linda.
“Okay,” said Jack. “Let's say only 1 out of 100'000 people really has the virus.”
“Got it!” said Linda, paying attention.
“Now let's say we test exactly 100'000 people.” continued Jack. “How many false positives will we get?”
Linda thought it over: “1 out of 10'000 is a false positive. 10 out of 100'000 is the same as 1 out of 10'000. So, out of 100'000 people we will get 10 false positives!”
“Exactly!” said Jack. “And how many real positives will we get?”
Linda thought that over too: “1 out of 100'000 people really has the virus, so we'll get 1 real positive.”
“Right!” said Jack. “Now tell me what the ratio between the false and the real positives is!”
Linda thought it over aloud: “Out of 100'000 people, you would get 1 who really has the virus and 10 false positives...”
“Exactly!” said Jack. “So if you have a positive test-result, there's just 1 chance out of 11 that you really have the virus!”
“Good God!” exclaimed Linda. “So what's the point of doing tests in the first place?”
“The test-results have to be confirmed by other tests. If all the results of all the tests are positive, the chance that it's just due to chance becomes smaller and smaller. In other words, the chance that you really have the virus becomes bigger and bigger. But one single test can never give you a definite answer.”
“Actually it's the same as with the DNA-tests,” mused Linda. “The chance of getting a match is vanishingly small, but the chance of being guilty – or having the virus – is even smaller, so in the end, IF there is a match, it still doesn't mean you're guilty or have the virus...”
“Exactly!” said Jack.
“And people don't know this!” exclaimed Linda.
“That's because they don't understand probability,” said Jack.
“But how come YOU know all this?” asked Linda.
“Well,” said Jack, “I'm not a judge sitting in his court seeing one alleged culprit after the other and quickly having to make a decision. I'm not a doctor either, seeing one patient after another and quickly having to test them. Me, I'm a nobody with no job, so I have plenty of time to read articles, think about them deeply, and so on...”
“You really are a cynic!” exclaimed Linda once again.
“Sorry...” said Jack apologetically.
“It's okay,” said Linda, “because actually this is really interesting! Do you have any other examples of misunderstood probability?”
“I do,” said Jack, “if you're not tired of listening yet.”
“No,” said Linda, “let's go!”

So Jack told Linda about this classical example: there are three garage-doors, and you are told there's a Ferrari behind one of them. If you pick the right door, the Ferrari is yours. Let's say the doors have names: A, B and C. You've already picked door A. Now the showman - who of course knows where the Ferrari is - opens door B for you to show you that B is empty. Now you have the choice of either staying with your first choice, namely A, or changing over to C. What should you choose?
Most people would say that it doesn't matter. All we know is that the Ferrari is not in B. But it could be in A or C. Both these possibilities seem equally likely...
“And yet they're not!” said Jack. “You're better off changing over to C!”
“I don't understand...” said Linda, thinking hard.
Jack explained: “The showman knows where the Ferrari is. If it's in A, he is equally likely to show you that B or C are empty. But if the Ferrari is in B, he will show you that C is empty. And if it's in C, he will show you that B is empty. Don't forget he KNOWS where it is! So those are the three cases: either the Ferrari is in A, in which case you should stay with your first choice. Second case: the Ferrari is in B, in which case he shows you that C is empty. Third case: the Ferrari is in C, in which case he shows you that B is empty.”
“Oh,” said Linda, “I think I'm beginning to see...”
“Yes?” asked Jack.
“There's one chance out of three that the Ferrari is in A,” said Linda, “and there are two chances out of three that it's in B or C, whichever one of those is still shut!”
“Exactly!” said Jack, proud of her for getting it so quickly.
“So,” said Linda, “you're better off changing your choice to the one of the two garage-doors you hadn't chosen beforehand and which is still shut!”
“Exactly!” said Jack, “by changing your choice, you double your chances of winning!”
“Yes, I get it!” said Linda, all proud of herself too. “In the beginning, there was just one chance out of three that the Ferrari was in A, B or C. You choose A, and the showman shows you that, for example, C is empty. Garage A still only has one chance out of three to contain the Ferrari. B, on the other hand, now has two chances out of three to contain the Ferrari, because if the Ferrari was in C, the showman would have opened B instead of C since he knows where the Ferrari is and wouldn't show it to you! The one door he leaves shut inherits the two chances out of three that the two doors had together earlier!”
“You got it!” said Jack, giving her a thumbs-up sign.

“Any other misunderstood probabilities?” asked Linda.
“Sure,” said Jack, “but aren't you getting tired of it yet?”
“No,” said Linda, “I find this fascinating!”
So Jack told her about this other classical example: your new neighbours are barbecuing in their garden, and you see that they have two children. One of them is a boy, but the other is crouching down and embracing their big, fury dog, and you can't see whether it's a boy or a girl because his or her face is completely buried in the dog's hair. You can't see whether it's the bigger or the smaller child either, because he or she is crouching down. What's the chance that this second child is a boy too?
“I would say fifty percent, but you're going to tell me this is the wrong answer,” said Linda. “So, surprise me!”
“Indeed,” said Jack, “the real answer is thirty-three percent, in other words one third.”
“Okay,” said Linda, “explain this to me!”
“It's important to remember that you can't differentiate between the two children. As far as you know, they are both equally likely to play with the dog, and you don't see which one of the two is the elder or the younger either. You have no criterion to tell them apart other than what you're seeing right now at this very moment.”
“Okay...” said Linda doubtfully.
“So,” said Jack, “with two children, there are four possible combinations. We start with the elder, then we move on to the younger. So these are the possibilities: boy-boy, boy-girl, girl-boy, girl-girl. Those are the four possible combinations, right?”
“Right!” said Linda.
“We can dismiss girl-girl right away, since one of the children is definitely a boy. That leaves us with boy-boy, boy-girl and girl-boy. In other words, there is just one chance out of three that the second child is a boy too!”
Linda thought it over. Jack's explanation sounded convincing, but she still didn't get it why her first intuition had been wrong. If one of the children was a boy, that shouldn't influence what the other one was. So why did the other now have a bigger chance to be a girl? It didn't make sense, somehow...
Jack explained some more: “If we were sure that the one playing with the dog was the younger one, the result would be different. In that case the combination girl-boy could be ruled out too, since the elder one would definitely be a boy. That would leave us with boy-boy and boy-girl – since girl-girl and girl-boy could both be ruled out - so the chance of the second one being a boy too would be exactly one out of two.”
“Hm...” said Linda doubtfully.
“And if we knew that only one of them ever plays with the dog, we could choose to name him first or second. Let's say we named him second – if we named him first, it would be the same argument, just the other way around. There would be the following two possible combinations: boy-boy and boy-girl. Girl-boy and girl-girl could both be ruled out, since the one who never plays with the dog is definitely a boy.”
“Yeah, I think I get it...” said Linda.
“If we have any way of distinguishing the two kids,” said Jack, “any way at all, like knowing which one is the elder, or knowing that only one of them ever plays with the dog, or knowing that only one of them ever wears a red jumper like he is wearing right now..., then the probability that the second one is a boy too becomes one out of two.”
“Yeah...” said Linda.
“But as long as we can't distinguish the two kids outside of the momentary situation, the chance that the second one is a boy too is only one out of three.”
“I think I got it!” Linda suddenly exclaimed. Now it was her turn to explain what she had gotten: “Out of a hundred families where the elder is a boy, there would be about fifty where the younger is a boy too, and in the other fifty the younger would be a girl.”
“Right,” said Jack.
Linda continued: “Out of a hundred families where one boy never plays with the dog while the other kid does, there would be about fifty in which the other kid is a boy too, while in the other fifty the other kid would be a girl.”
“Right,” said Jack once again.
Linda continued: “Out of a hundred families where the boy always wears a red jumper while the other kid never does, there would be about fifty where the other kid would be a boy too, and another fifty where the other kid is a girl.”
“Correct,” said Jack.
“But,” said Linda, “out of a hundred families where EITHER kid is a boy, there would be about sixty-seven where the other kid is a girl, and thirty-three in which the other kid would be a boy too...”
“Exactly!” said Jack.
“I still have a problem with this...” admitted Linda.
“What problem?” asked Jack.
“If we take 100 families where the elder kid is a boy, there would be 50 where the younger kid is a boy too, right?”
“Right,” said Jack.
“Now we take 100 families where the younger kid is a boy, and in about 50 of them the elder kid is a boy too, right?”
“Right,” said Jack.
“Now we put these two groups of families together,” said Linda. “We get 200 families where EITHER kid is a boy. In half of those families, the other kid is a boy too, in the other half, the other kid is a girl...”
“Sure,” said Jack, “but that's just because these 200 families are not a random selection of families where EITHER kid is a boy. You would get too many families in which both kids are boys, because they fit the criteria of both original groups.”
“I don't understand,” admitted Linda.
“First you selected 100 families where the elder kid is a boy, then you selected 100 families where the younger kid is a boy. But that's not the same as selecting 200 families where either kid is a boy!”
“Why not?” asked Linda. While Jack was thinking up an answer, she thought it over herself as well.
“Wait, I got it!” she called out. Then she explained: “Let's say we have a total population of 150 families with at least one boy. Out of those, we can select about 100 in which the elder is a boy. Within this group there would be about 50 in which the younger would be a boy too. In the other 50, the younger would be a girl.”
“Right,” said Jack.
“Out of the 150, we can also select about 100 in which the younger is a boy. Within this group, there would be about 50 in which the elder would also be a boy, and another 50 in which the elder would be a girl.”
“Exactly,” said Jack, wondering where Linda was going with this.
“The 50 where both kids are boys fit into the group where the elder is a boy as well as the group where the younger is a boy. So if you put the two groups together, you just get a total of 150 families, not 200.”
“Yes,” said Jack.
“And out of those 150, there are 50 boy-girl families, 50 girl-boy families and 50 boy-boy families. The probability that the other kid is a boy too when there is already one boy is 1 out of 3, just like you said!”
“Yes,” said Jack, but he still hadn't understood what new insight Linda had gained through this example.
“What I mean,” said Linda, “is that by combining the groups where the elder is a boy and where the younger is a boy, you don't get 200 families but just 150, because the boy-boy families are common to both groups. So 1 out of 3 is the correct answer for the combined group even if it had been 1 out of 2 for the two separate groups earlier.”
“Yeah, I see,” Jack now said. “Yes, I see what you mean. Well, you're right. That's what I was trying to say before.”
“But wait!” said Linda. “What if I don't care about a hundred families? After all, I couldn't even find a hundred families corresponding exactly to my criteria. Let's say I just care about those neighbours and that's it!”
“Well,” said Jack, “if you don't care about a hundred families but only care about this ONE family, then probability theory is the wrong tool for you. Then you just can't use probabilities at all!”
“Why not?” asked Linda.
“Well,” said Jack, “you can only use probabilities when you observe many similar events – in this case many families with two children who can either be boys or girls - and start seeing a pattern. If you just look at one event in isolation, then you can't see any pattern, so you can't use probability theory.”
“I see...” said Linda.
After a moment's silence she added: “That's why we can't say anything about the probability of this world being real or just an illusion. Because if we wanted to use probability theory, we would need to have observed many worlds and counted how many of them turned out to be illusions and how many of them turned out to be real. But since there's just one world, we can't say anything about how probable it is that it would be real or not...”
Jack hadn't thought about this.

“So you're worried about this world perhaps not being real?” Jack asked Linda.
“Not exactly worried,” said Linda, “but it's been going through my mind from time to time...”
“But does it bother you?” Jack insisted.
“No, it doesn't bother me,” said Linda. “What bothers me is that everyone accepts its existence so easily, while it could just as well be an illusion.”
“It would be hard to live if we didn't take the world's existence for granted!” said Jack.
“Well,” said Linda frowning, “for me it would be hard to live if I didn't take God's existence for granted! And yet the likes of you keep telling me that there is strictly no proof of His existence, they look down on me as though I were soft in the head to believe in Him, and yet they happily believe in the world's existence for which there is just as little proof!”
Jack looked at Linda in surprise. He hadn't known she was a believer. He himself was an atheist, he had always said so. And he had sort of assumed that pretty much all intellectuals were atheists too. Linda's outburst came as a surprise to him. He really hadn't known she was a believer.
Now he also understood better why she didn't like his cynical side!

Linda went back to the ashram. She went to some meditation sessions, but her heart wasn't in it anymore. Daniel's trial was coming up in a few weeks, and she still had nothing to show for her efforts at finding any indication that he wasn't guilty. Yet she was convinced now that he wasn't guilty. Something had happened to Katalin at this ashram, she was sure of it...
Grabbing at straws, she suddenly stopped that strange woman she had seen in the corridors a few times and told her she must speak to her. She flashed her police badge at her. Seeing that badge had a strange effect on the woman's face. There was something like panic for a split-second followed by... by what? Relief? But the moment passed too quickly and Linda couldn't be sure. The woman regained her composure and they sat down in a group of easy chairs in the lounge.
Linda asked her about Katalin, but the woman didn't have much to say. She had heard of a sannyasin being killed outside the ashram, but she didn't specifically remember Katalin.
“People come and go in and out of here, you know, and I don't really remember most of them...”
“And what are you doing here?” asked Linda.
“I'm a sannyasin,” said the woman simply.
“What is your name?” asked Linda.
“We don't have names here,” said the woman. “Just call me Jenny.”
“Well, Jenny,” said Linda gently, “you never go to any meditation sessions and I've hardly seen you around. You don't join us for common meals, you always keep to yourself. You just appear in the corridor every once in a while like a lost ghost. Do you have anything to say about that?”
“I've been going through some hard times,” said Jenny. “Personal problems...,” she added mysteriously by way of explanation.
Linda didn't know how to go on. This conversation was going nowhere, but she felt sure this Jenny had something to say. Or, to put it differently: she had something to hide, and for the time being she was still hiding it.
But then Annie appeared, her eyes burning with fury: “What are you doing?” she asked Jenny, her voice tremulous with barely suppressed anger.
“Just talking,” said Jenny. “This woman is from the police and I couldn't turn her down.”
Annie's face turned as white as a bedsheet only to turn glowing red a split second later: “Linda, you're from the POLICE?” she asked, her voice going up by almost an octave by the time she finished saying “police”.
“I am,” said Linda matter-of-factly, showing her badge.
Annie was frothing with anger: “I thought you were genuinely interested in our little community here, but all you've been doing was sniffing around! Is that it?”
Linda just turned up her eyebrows at Annie.
“So that's really it, then, is it?” shrieked Annie. “Just because we're not quite usual people, not quite average, not quite Swiss in this beautiful little Switzerland working like a clockwork, you turn on us!”
“One of your members was killed, stabbed to death, you know,” demurred Linda.
“Sure!” spat out Annie, “by her jealous husband! That has nothing to do with us!”
Now it was Linda who suddenly felt flushed with anger! This was really like her boyfriend Joe had said all along! People jump to the simplest conclusions and take them as facts. A freshly divorced woman gets killed, of course it was her jealous husband. No matter how crazy she might have been, no matter what crazy things she might have done (within and without wedlock), the guilty one necessarily had to be her ex-husband, no doubt about it.
Joe had said it many times that women systematically win divorce cases and that nobody was ever interested in the specifics. In a way, as a woman, you could be proud of this – at least there's one place where women always win, considering all the others where they systematically lose out to men. But Linda now wondered whether even this one place where women always won was really a compliment to women. Why is everything always the husband's fault? The woman can be totally crazy, adulterous, capricious..., in the end she still wins, gets custody of the children and all the money that goes with that... Why?
Perhaps because it was the man's responsibility to keep her in check?
If he's adulterous, he's an asshole, of course. While if she's the one committing adultery, then it's just because he wasn't able to satisfy her.
If he beats her up, he's just an asshole of course. While if she attacks him with the kitchen scissors, then it's because he was unable to manage her moods!
Women are not supposed to be responsible. They are supposed to be kept on a leash! If the man fails in this and the whole thing ends up in court, he has to be punished for it! He has to be punished for letting his wife get out of hand!
The whole thing is just male chauvinism once again. Male chauvinism of the worst kind!
Is this really all we're capable of?
A woman gets killed, it must be her husband's fault. She was totally nuts? Well, her husband shouldn't have let her out on her own! It's still his fault!
Is this really all we women are capable of?

This was just too much!
And, in a sudden burst of inspiration, improvising wildly, Linda pulled out the golden, curved dagger in its very official-looking evidence-bag.
“What about this?” she called out!
The expression on Annie's face froze. She didn't answer.
It was Jenny who broke the silence first: “Annie, I think you should sit down with us now,” she said gently.
Annie sat down as if in shock.
Twenty minutes later, Linda had a full confession from her.

“Are you going to arrest me now?” whispered Annie.
Linda's brain worked full power. She had no authority to arrest Annie. And if she still somehow brought her in, Annie would get a lawyer who would quickly see that there were no grounds for the accusation and make her take back her confession. Then she could even accuse Linda of having coerced her, since Linda indeed didn't have any mandate to question Annie in this matter. In the end Annie would walk free, and Linda would be the one in trouble...
“What alternative do I have?” Linda asked, not showing how insecure she was, but making it into a real question nevertheless.
Seeing some hesitation in Linda, Annie was imploring now: “There's going to be an important baptism of sannyasins next month! I have to be there! I'm the organizer! The whole ashram might collapse if anything goes wrong with that ceremony!”
“There is a possibility,” said Linda hesitatingly. “The trial is scheduled in three weeks. If you come to court with me and make your confession directly to the judge, I could leave you free till then...”
“Please!” said Annie. “Please! I know I will spend the rest of my life in prison, but I need to attend to this last baptism! Then my work is done here!”
Linda seemed to hesitate. Finally she said: “I'll take your word for it. But don't try to make a run for it, because I'll have Interpol on your heels straight away! I'll check in on you every two or three days till the date of the trial!”
“You have my word!” said Annie solemnly.
Before Linda stood up, feeling shaky with relief and at the same time not quite able to believe her good fortune, she said: “One more thing, Annie. This is my personal plea: don't do anything to yourself in the meantime, please! There's a man falsely accused of murdering the mother of his little girl. There's a little girl who risks losing her father after already having lost her mother... I don't quite know how to say this, but I really, really need you there!”
“You have my word!” Annie repeated solemnly.
And Linda believed her.

That evening, Linda was at a loss how to tell her boyfriend Joe about the whole thing. She was afraid of what Joe might say, actually. So she didn't jump up at him telling him excitedly that she had solved the case. She didn't say that she wondered whether she had been stupid or smart and that she needed his opinion. She didn't say anything like that. She just started telling him the story, and then she told it from beginning to end, in chronological order.
When she had finished, he just sat there, looking at her.
“Do you think I was stupid?” she finally asked shyly.
He rubbed his head, quite at a loss what to say himself.
“No,” he said finally. “No, I don't think this was stupid. I just hope these three weeks will go by as fast as possible, without anything happening in the meantime. And the less people know about this, the better!”
“I agree,” said Linda.
The three weeks went by uneventfully. Linda checked in on Annie every two or three days as promised. Annie seemed to be true to her word. She hadn't gone to see a lawyer, she hadn't undertaken anything. She was busy with the preparations for the baptism. She assured Linda she would be there in court on the day of the trial as agreed.

Annie knew she couldn't go on impersonating the Master forever. If she was ever found out, the consequences would be too disastrous. Besides, it's part of being a master to know when it's time to disappear...
The Master is the door to the Kingdom of God. Sannyasins must pass through the door. “I am the way, the truth and the life”, Jesus had said. Once you've found the way, you follow it to the Kingdom of God. Once you're there, you've arrived, and you don't need a way anymore. Once you've gone through the door, you leave it behind you.
Annie had known it would be her destiny to sacrifice herself. She had known that for a while already. HER Master had been sacrificed first. Then SHE had become the Master, and it was her turn now.
She just hadn't foreseen the altar would be a court-room. But it was all the same, really.

Jenny knew Annie had killed before. She had even witnessed it! It had been a nightmare!

Everything Annie had said up to that point had been true - Jenny had to let go of her mother. Her mother would be able to bear it - she had Will. The only problem was that they were all tied up by the money inherited from her father. His idea had been that the whole family would manage the assets together, in harmony and love. That was a recipe for disaster, of course. Neither her mother, nor that adopted son Will, had the slightest idea about money and how to manage it. Jenny would kill herself trying to talk reason into them! It was better if she took her part and left them to their own devices. However wastefully they would treat their parts, at least it would last for her mother’s remaining lifetime, and as to her adoptive brother Will, Jenny cared much less for him. He would have to fend for himself eventually…

But Jenny couldn’t imagine herself explaining any of this to her mother. That all the assets should remain common was like the holy grail to her! When Annie offered to come along and help convince her, Jenny had accepted straight away, because she knew how persuasive Annie was.

What neither of them had foreseen was that her mother would insist on discussing this with Will. It would break his heart, she said, if the assets were split up, and she wanted to call him straight away. He had always feared that he wasn’t truly considered part of the family, and this would be the final blow to him! Up till recently, Will had received a « salary », paid for by the assets. In exchange he looked after the property, a bit like a concierge or what, as far as Jenny could tell. But ever since he got that freedom-loving girlfriend Vera, who just came and went as she pleased, dragging Will with her or at least trying to, things had gone sour, and Jenny’s mother had cut off Will’s allowance. It was all the more surprising that she was so worried about him now!

She wouldn’t listen to Jenny and Annie at all - she kept running to the old-fashioned telephone hanging on the wall in the stairwell to call Will. The first few times, Jenny and Annie managed to nudge her back to her chair gently, but eventually they were grappling with her. Surely they weren’t as gentle with the old woman as they should have been. God knows how aggravating the old lady could be! God knows Jenny probably wasn’t as gentle as she should have been! But she could have sworn Annie was the more brutal one…

And eventually, as Jenny shrieked in panic, Jenny’s mother really fell down the stairs!

Jenny’s mother was lying at the bottom of the stairs like a bundle of rags, inanimate, and Annie was at her side first, took in the degree of damage and quick as lightening delivered the death stab. It was the best she could do under the circumstances, she explained. Everything else would have meant a world of pain…

And, persuasive as she was, she had managed to convince and win over Jenny. It had been an accident, nothing but an accident. It would be attributed to a burglar, Will and Jenny would inherit all the money, and without Jenny’s mother backing all the screwball notions Will came up with, Jenny would be quite capable of dealing with Will. They would split the assets in two and then part ways more or less peacefully. And then Jenny would be free at last! Free to become whoever she wanted to become! Become a sannyasin and let her money flow into the ashram!

Then of course something happened that shouldn’t have happened. For whatever reason, that was the moment Will chose to come and see his adoptive mother! Jenny opened the door and told him this was a bad moment, but the more insistent (and even panicky) she became, the more urgently he wanted to see her. Will had always suspected Jenny had too much (bad) influence over their mother… Jenny telling him he mustn’t see her right now just convinced him even more that he MUST see her right now! After grappling a bit (Jenny even vaguely remembered scratching him in the face, since she so badly wanted to spare him the sight at the bottom of the stairs), in the end he still pushed his way in past her, ran through the house calling after his mother and finally found her at the bottom of the stairs. Then he stormed off to call the police or whatever. Annie told Jenny it was better to leave now, since it wasn’t clear what would happen. So they locked up the house and left.

As it turned out, Will didn’t call the police. Apparently he didn’t do anything - he didn’t even come back to let out the dog. He was in shock, of course. But how could this shock last till the discovery of the body and beyond? His statements to the police were messy and inconsistent, and he was soon singled out as the perpetrator. Not knowing what exactly he had told the police, Jenny didn’t have the courage to give a sign of life. She remained hidden at the ashram.

Well, Annie had now come forward and confessed her guilt. Everything would now fall into place. Or would it?
What was wrong with that policewoman, Linda, or whatever her name was? Who else knew about Annie and what she had done? Just this Linda and Jenny herself! And who was going to stop Annie from killing them both?
Jenny slept badly the next few nights. She still always dropped off in the end, but every morning she was surprised to wake up unscathed. Could it be that Annie would let her live after this?
Well, as long as that policewoman was still alive, there was no point in killing Jenny, was there? Did Annie know anything more about that policewoman than Jenny did? Would Annie be able to find this Linda in order to kill her?
Jenny didn't know. She herself didn't know where she could find that policewoman, that was for sure. Else she might have tried to contact her to warn her.
Jenny thought of just contacting the police, any police, and telling them everything. She even dialled the number once, but then she hung up. She remembered the sannyasin baptism Annie was preparing for. Annie wouldn't do anything before that baptism was over, Jenny was suddenly sure of it. That baptism meant everything to Annie. This consoled Jenny somewhat...

The day of the trial came.
Linda, Joe and Jack were there. Attending was allowed.
The accused, Daniel, was brought in, his look empty, shell-shocked. He was seated at his place next to his lawyer whom he barely acknowledged.
The judge came in, people stood up and sat down again. Then the proceedings began.
The judge questioned the accused. Daniel's voice was just a hoarse whisper at first, but it grew louder and clearer as he grew angrier. He exposed his case. He explained how he had always been the guilty one for the court right from the beginning, while all he had ever done was to fight for his daughter's right to stay with her main carer, who in God's name had been him, not her mother!
His voice got closer to a roar as he exposed humiliation after humiliation he had been submitted to by the court. Everything that would have counted in his favour if he had been a woman had been used against him, he said.
His daughter was closer to him than to her mother? Well, it had been claimed this was an unhealthy, symbiotic relationship...
His ex-wife was unable to put his daughter to bed without a tantrum, to brush her teeth without a tantrum, to do anything at all with her without a tantrum, and that was because he, the accused, had locked her out of the relationship! All the more urgent it had been to limit his visiting rights to a minimum!
His ex-wife had been the one bringing home the money till then? No matter, now she had to look after the little girl and it was up to the accused to quickly find a job so that he could PAY!
The judge did remind the accused that they weren't discussing the custody case at this point, but the harm was done anyway – Daniel had shown his total frustration and it was clear he was the guilty party. He had killed his ex-wife out of frustration, it was quite clear.
His lawyer hadn't intervened once. He had let Daniel talk. He had let him make his situation even worse than it had been anyway. He had obviously given up on his client too.
When the judge asked him if he wanted to question his client further, perhaps to shed some additional light on some circumstance that hadn't been addressed yet, he just gave a shake of his head and said: “No, your Honour.”
After that, one witness after the other was brought in. The nosy neighbour who had seen Daniel's car on the day of the murder was among them. The way Daniel parked his car right in front of the entrance had always annoyed her! But that day he had left it there for hours!
Daniel's mother came to the witness-stand too. Breaking down in tears, she said she had never believed it would come to this, showing all too clearly that she too was convinced of her son's guilt.
Daniel just sat in the accused's box, looking down at his hands in his lap, not seeming to take in anything.
The judge remained friendly and understanding with the witnesses throughout. But it was clear she was just going through the motions – this case had been decided before it had ever even started.
Finally the last witness was called in. It was a witness for the defence. After she had stated her name, date of birth and profession, the judge kindly asked her: “You are acquainted with the accused?”
“No, your Honour,” said the young woman.
“You were acquainted with the victim?”
“Yes, your Honour,” agreed the young woman.
“When was the last time you saw her?” asked the judge, just going through the motions.
“On the day she was killed, your Honour,” said the young woman. “I was the one who killed her.”
After this, there was a stunned silence in the court-room. Even Daniel looked up, flabbergasted. His lawyer nodded at him, unable to hide his happiness. He would have slapped his client on the shoulder if he had dared to do that in the midst of this silent turmoil!
And Linda, Joe and Jack would have leaped into the air if they had dared to! Instead, they kept straight faces as best they could and listened to the judge clearing her throat laboriously, suddenly unsure of her next move.

It was days later. Joe, Jack, Linda and Blanca were spending the evening at Jack and Blanca's house. Benjamin had been put to bed a while ago and there was no sound from his room. Daisy the dog was sleeping at Jack's feet even though she was Joe's dog (but Joe had become Jack, hadn't he?).
Everyone was somewhat disappointed that Daniel and Will Carter hadn't been set free straight away. Hadn't Annie's confession been clear enough?
Joe (who in reality was Jack), the know-it-all of this gathering, in addition to being an inveterate cynic, explained it like this: “The police thought they had the guilty party and presented him to the court, and the court hates to make a fool of the police-force. The court hates to do anything unexpected. Annie's confession was most unwelcome when everything seemed so simple and wrapped up!”
“Well,” said Linda, “they can't go back to how wrapped up things were earlier. Not with this confession!”
“No,” said Jack in his role as Joe, “they can't ignore this new element. They're lost with it! So they made the police re-open the investigation. Let the police clean up the mess! After all, they made it! They shall analyze Annie's confession, and when they finally present a new alleged guilty party to the court, the judges bloody well hope it will be the right one this time!”
“What if Annie retracts her confession?” asked Linda anxiously.
“Don't worry!” said Jack. “Even if she does, there's still Jenny Carter, Will Carter's sister who was supposed to be dead! This fact alone makes sure the whole thing can't just be wiped under the carpet!”
“What will happen to this Annie?” asked Blanca, contributing to the conversation for the first time.
“Life-long sentence, no doubt,” answered Jack. “Unless she can prove she acted under duress or because of mental problems.”
“What kind of duress or mental problems?” asked Blanca.
“Oh well,” said Jack, “she belonged to that crazy sect. Maybe it was their guru who somehow forced her to do these things...”
Linda reacted so angrily that even Daisy woke up and lifted her head in surprise: “That guru, as you call him, is a peace-loving representative of universal love!”
“Sure,” said Jack soothingly, “and yet all around him people get killed!”
“His secretary Annie was the sick one!” Linda maintained.
“So what if she can prove that she was really sick when she committed those murders?” asked Blanca.
“Then some psychiatric hospital will be entrusted with her custody.”
“And then?” insisted Blanca.
“After a few years of therapy and good behaviour she will be deemed harmless and let out again.”
“Isn't that a bit too easy?” asked Blanca.
“Sure,” said Jack, “that's why the verdict <<not guilty by reason of insanity>> is quite rare, in spite of what you might think if you watch too much TV!”
Since nobody knew what to say to this, Jack finally added: “But you know, actually people who come out of those forensic psychiatric hospitals rarely re-offend.”
“They get filled up with so many antipsychotics that they don't have the energy to do anything anymore, let alone re-offend!” commented Joe dryly.

He was the psychiatrist now, after all, and he had seen the darker side of psychiatry by now.
“No,” said Jack, “If they still need that many antipsychotics, they don't get set free. If they get set free, that's because they're pretty much deemed healed. Now you may argue that's because they were never sick in the first place, of course...”
“But this is much too easy!” exclaimed Blanca. Her political views were further right than those of anybody else in the room. She believed in just punishment. “When they're guilty, they just claim they were momentarily insane, so they go to a mental institution for a while and then they come out of there when they're not insane anymore. I doubt they've learned their lesson that way! What's to stop them just starting all over again?”
“Just look at the statistics,” said Jack dismissively. He had never liked Blanca's right-wing opinions, especially those that weren't verified by facts. Jack was a cynic, but he was also a pragmatist. “People coming out of those mental institutions don't re-offend. I don't know if they've <<learned their lesson>> as you put it, but in any case they don't re-offend. While those coming out of prison...”
“What about those coming out of prison?” asked Blanca combatively.
“Well, most of them re-offend,” said Jack simply.
Blanca just stared at him angrily.
“So I don't think they've learned their lesson,” added Jack, as if in answer to her stare.
“Well,” said Joe, soothingly joining into the angry exchange between Blanca and Jack, “we're at the cusp of an interesting philosophical question here: what's the real point of the judicial system? Is it to protect society from dangerous individuals, or is it to satisfy the righteous anger of the victims of a crime?”
“Well,” said Jack testily, “according to Blanca it's definitely to satisfy the righteous anger of the victims of crime, and the result of this is a positive feedback loop that spirals off to ever greater violence with an ever greater cost to society!”
“We all know where this ever greater violence comes from!” Blanca spat out. “It comes from the likes of you who want to let criminals off before they've properly expiated their crimes!”
Jack didn't answer. He just wondered why he had ever been married to this bigoted woman. He was so much better off with Linda who, unlike Blanca, was a match for him intellectually! Blanca just wasn't all that intelligent, he now thought. He wondered how his brother Joe was getting along with her.
“You say criminals leaving prison re-offend,” continued Blanca. “Well, that just means they shouldn't leave prison, that's all.”
“Really?” asked Jack. “And who's supposed to pay for the care of all those prisoners?”
“Well,” said Blanca, fully aware that she might alienate even her husband with what she was going to say next: “Maybe they shouldn't be taken care of, and they shouldn't be let out either...”
“You mean capital punishment?” asked Jack.
Blanca nervously fingered the hem of her pretty skirt.
“Let's look at this pragmatically,” said Joe soothingly. “Everybody knows that capital punishment is not a cheap solution. People condemned to death have to be kept in a special death-wing. They can't be kept with <<normal>> inmates, because being condemned to death means they have nothing to lose and you can't be sure what they might do. They need to be under observation day and night for that same reason.”
“They shouldn't spend so long in <<death-wing>>,” murmured Blanca. “If they were condemned, they should be executed in a timely manner as well!”
“Sure, sure,” said Joe, still soothingly. “But they can't just be shot in a yard behind the court-house straight after the verdict either, you know. After all, they have a right to appeal, their lawyers need time for that, and so on.”
Blanca just nodded. She seemed embarrassed. Jack had never known her to be a fervent supporter of capital punishment. Rather, she was the opposite. She had just been maneuvered into the supporter's role by how the discussion had gone.
“So, for capital punishment you need special prisons with special <<death-wings>> and special prison-guards with special training. Then you need special equipment for the execution. Pharmaceutical companies understandably don't want their names to be associated with executions, so there's always a problem with where to get the product from. In the end it might have to be expensively custom-made...”
“The nurse administering the injection can't be a real nurse either,” interjected Jack. “Because of the Hippocratic oath. So she has to be specially trained for this purpose too.”
“Okay, okay, I get it...” said Blanca, feeling very uncomfortable. “Let's drop this capital punishment thing! I believe you that it's very expensive and that it's better to keep prisoners alive forever! That still doesn't mean they have to be let out before having expiated their crimes!”
“Well,” said Jack, “if we do a cost-benefit analysis, even though it's true that forensic psychiatric hospital care is more expensive day for day than an ordinary prison, the point is that inmates can be let out sooner with less risk that they will re-offend. That's clearly what the statistics show. So, on a purely cost-benefit basis, putting criminals in a forensic psychiatric hospital is the cheapest solution after all.”
“I guess I agree,” said Joe, “Don't forget that petty criminals squeezed into a crowded prison with serious offenders, even though it's the cheapest solution on the short term, is very counter-productive. It's the best way to train petty criminals to become more serious offenders! Prison is like a university for them – that's where they graduate from petty criminals into serious offenders!”
“That's right!” said Jack. “Psychiatric care may be more expensive on the short term, but the long term outlook is much better!”
Blanca just shook her head: “I still don't understand you two! It seems you want to pamper criminals just because it's the cheapest solution! What about their victims? What about the harm they've done? Don't they deserve punishment for that?”
Now it was Linda's turn to intervene: “That's the question Jack brought up earlier, isn't it Jack?” she asked, turning to Joe who for her was Jack. “It's the question whether the judicial system should be about protecting society against crime or satisfying the victims' anger, isn't it?”
“I guess it should be a bit about both...” said Joe soothingly.
“No,” said Jack vehemently. “That's exactly the problem with the judicial system! It can't make up its mind what its true role is!”
“Well,” said Joe reasonably, “why couldn't it be a bit of both?”
“Let me explain,” said Jack, and it was clear he was going to launch into another one of his lectures. Joe sighed inwardly, Blanca just looked at him with big eyes, but Linda seemed really interested. Well, of course, Joe thought to himself, Linda was still very much in love with him – young love...
“So,” said Jack, “in order to determine whether someone is truly responsible for the bad thing he did, you must first make sure it wasn't just an accident or some other circumstance that made him do it.”
“You determine whether he was morally responsible or not...” interjected Blanca.
“Exactly,” said Jack. “And when someone cannot be held morally responsible because of being insane, he goes to a forensic hospital, eventually comes out of there and from then on leads a productive life. While if he is held morally responsible, he will go to an ordinary prison and come out of there with more criminal tendencies than he had when he went in! Clearly this shows that something is wrong with the system!”
“That just shows that the supposedly insane were not really insane if afterwards they come out of the forensic hospital and lead a normal life!” insisted Blanca. “Those supposedly insane are just pretending!”
“No, they're not pretending!” growled Jack. “Clearly the psychiatric treatment does them good since they end up even better off than those who were declared to be <<sane>> to start with!”
Blanca just shook her head in frustration: “I just don't see why criminals should be pampered like this!” she finally exclaimed.
Joe interjected once more: “I guess we all agree that if the criminal deed is due to an external circumstance, then the perpetrator can't be held fully responsible.”
Blanca just nodded.
“His education, his difficult childhood, those are such external circumstances,” claimed Jack.
But Joe wasn't listening: “If it's an internal circumstance like a mental illness that stops you from realizing what you're doing, then you can't be held fully responsible either.”
Blanca looked from Joe to Jack, not quite getting it what they were up to. Were they trying to set her up?
“The genes you inherited from your parents are such an internal circumstance,” said Jack. “You can't be held responsible for the genes you inherited!”
“Yeah, I guess that's the point...” mused Joe.
“What point?” asked Blanca, looking from one to the other.
“I think I got it what Joe means,” said Linda, meaning Jack. “Whatever you do, either nothing is your fault, because it's all due to your education and your genes, or everything is your fault because your education and your genes, that's YOU!”
“Thank you!” said Jack, looking proudly at his girlfriend who was quick on the uptake unlike Blanca. “That's exactly what I mean! The current judicial system is based on a false dichotomy. They insist on distinguishing between two states that don't objectively exist!”
Jack was prepared to bet that Blanca didn't even know what they were talking about, but he was wrong. Her next statement made it clear that she knew perfectly well what they were talking about and she even nailed the fundamental cause of their disagreement: “This may be true about animals,” she said, “but we are not animals. We are humans. We don't just act out programs put there by genes and education.”
She hesitated a bit before hammering in the nail properly, but finally she said it: “We have an immortal soul.”
That's the fundamental problem with today's judicial system, thought Jack to himself. Blanca wasn't so stupid after all. She had properly nailed it down: the judicial system, like so many other human institutions, is not based on sound, rational science, but on religious superstitions like this stuff about immortal souls rising above brains, genes and education.
“I believe in an immortal soul too,” said Linda. “But I still see Joe's point as well, I think. Whatever you did, you can always claim <<my brain made me do it>>, thus nobody would ever be morally responsible for anything. The unfair thing is that those with better education, better lawyers and so on have a better chance to make this point and thus get a better outcome than the others who just get thrown into ordinary prison. I guess this is profoundly unfair. For this reason, I think the judicial system should move away from categorizing culprits as morally responsible or not and rather just find a good balance between satisfying victims and mitigating damage both to society and the culprits themselves.”
“Bravo!” thought Jack to himself. Linda had summed it up nicely while at the same time managing to encompass Blanca's world-view too. Jack was proud of his girlfriend!

Eventually Daniel and Will Carter were both let out of prison.
“When do you think Daniel will get back his daughter?” Linda asked Jack that evening.
“Never, unfortunately...” said Jack.
“Why on Earth not?” asked Linda. “The court twisted things every way they could to make out that Katalin was the better parent than Daniel, but now Katalin is dead – and as it turns out it isn't at all Daniel's fault – so he should get the kid! How can they still refuse him that now?”
“Because the kid is with her grandmother now...” said Jack tiredly.
“But the kid has a father, for Heaven's sake!” exclaimed Linda.
“Yes, but the court will claim she has already been with the grandmother for so long now that it would be cruel to take her away from there once again,” said Jack.
“But the kid was left with the grandmother because of the court's fault, not Daniel's!”
“It doesn't matter whose fault it was,” said Jack. “It's a fact the kid has been with her grandmother for several months now, whatever the reason, so they'll argue this can't be changed anymore.”
Then, after a moment's reflection, Jack added: “Actually the Swiss court won't even decide anything at all. They will claim that little Agnes is in Hungary now, so she's out of their jurisdiction!”
“So Daniel would need to find a lawyer in Hungary and fight for his daughter there, in that land whose language he doesn't even master?”
“Yes, that's about it...” said Jack.
“That's disgusting!” exclaimed Linda.
“That's how Justice works,” said Jack. “Maybe, when Agnes is old enough, she can decide for herself that she wants to live with her father rather than her grandmother.”
“She won't even speak Daniel's mother-tongue anymore by then...,” said Linda.
“That's how it is,” said Jack. “Daniel needs to find another meaning in life than his daughter now. At least he's not sitting in prison for a life-long sentence!”
“Another meaning in life?” said Linda surprised. “How can anything be more important than your kid? You have to be man to say something like that! A mother would never say something like that!”
“Sure,” said Jack. “That's what the courts think too. That's why custody of small children is systematically given to the mothers!”
Linda was silent for a while. Then she asked: “And what's the meaning of life for you, Joe?”
“Well,” said Jack, “parenting your children could be it.”
But Linda just shook her head: “Philosophically speaking, I mean. Parenting your kids is fine, but what's the meaning of THEIR life? Parenting their own kids one day, maybe, but what will be the meaning of those grandchildren's lives? You just push the question to a further level by saying it's parenting your kids.”
“Maybe that's the point,” said Jack. “You just push the question further and further down the generations, and in the end you never need to answer it. Maybe that's the answer!”
“That's just Sophistry!” said Linda. “I want a REAL answer!”
“Well,” said Jack, “what does the Master say about it?”
“All he ever says is to turn to God for the Kingdom of Heaven is near,” sighed Linda. It had sounded so wise when the Master had said it. But now, when she said it to herself, it sounded utterly empty and meaningless...
“Well,” said Jack, “so what is God?”
“The Master says it's the works, the whole lot, everything, all.”
“Hm,” said Jack, “that sounds pretty meaningless to me...”
“It had sounded bloody wise when the Master said it!” said Linda, exasperated. Had she really just fallen for the Master because of his charisma, while everything he said was in reality just meaningless blabbing?
But Jack left her no time to dwell on this question. He started musing himself: “If God is everything, then of course there's no question as to His existence. And this God who is simply everything, well, He would be absolute as well, because nothing outside of Him could serve to define Him, since He would already be everything that exists - and so nothing could be outside of Him anyway. In that sense He would already satisfy two essential conditions that the God of gods absolutely needs to satisfy, namely existing for real and being absolute.”
Linda looked at Jack wide-eyed. Was he hitting on something?
“But before wondering too much who or what God is,” said Jack, “first we must decide what we actually want Him to be.”
Now Linda really expected him to say something wise. Something that would stay with her afterwards. Not something that just sounded good at the moment he said it, like The Master’s sayings always did, but something that really made sense!
But when Jack continued, she was taken aback with disappointment at the stupidity of what he said: “I think the answer is that we want him to be a wise man (or at least a wise something) telling us what life is all about and what we're supposed to do with it.”
So Joe (for Jack was Joe to her) was still stuck with this childish notion of God being a wise man with a white beard sitting on a cloud! No wonder he had become an atheist!
But Jack continued unabashed: “And of course we want Him to be <<absolute>> as well, meaning that He doesn't depend on other things. Because if he depended on "A" and "B" while telling us to do "C", then we could just change "A" and "B" to make him tell us instead to do "D". Which of course would mean that "C" isn't the final answer at all, since it depends on "A" and "B"...”
Linda was still a bit interested at this point, so she let Jack continue without interrupting him: “So of course God mustn't depend on "A" and "B" or anything else, so that if He tells us to do "C", we just have to do "C", without taking into account that maybe that's just because of "A" and "B" (which would beg for further questions, namely why "A" and "B" couldn't rather be "X" and "Y", meaning that God's answer "C" wouldn't in any way be a final and definitive answer). Do you see what I mean?”
Linda didn't say anything, so Jack assumed that she saw and continued: “God must depend on nothing but Himself, so that what He says will always be the absolute truth and nothing but the absolute truth (meaning of course that God must Himself be absolute).”
Linda still didn't say anything.
“Okay, so those are the requirements for God,” said Jack. “Now all we have to do is to find someone or something that fits these requirements, and there you are - that's God!”
Linda began to hope that Jack still acknowledged that God needn't be a wise man with a white beard sitting on a cloud, after all. And indeed, she was proven right by what he said next: “That God would be a person seems a bit naive to me. I can't imagine a person or person-like being fitting the bill. But what about some kind of guiding principle? A principle that tells us what to do with our lives while being absolute as well?”
Maybe he still wasn't an atheist after all, Linda mused.
“First let me explain what a principle is,” said Jack. “If I tell you "1; 3; 5; 7; 9; 11; ..." you can see that this is an infinite series. If I wanted to write down the whole of it, I'd never be able to finish, because it's infinite. But if I say: "the series of impair numbers from 1 onwards", that's a simple, finite sentence, and yet it describes an infinite series. So that's a principle, you see.”
Once again he had drifted off into the realms of math! Linda didn't see how this would lead to God, but she decided to listen him out nevertheless.
“A principle has to be shorter than the data it explains,” said Jack, “else it's worthless as a principle. If I give you the set of numbers "1; 3; 5", it's quite worthless to describe it as "the set of all impair numbers between 1 and 5, 1 and 5 included". This principle is worthless, because it's longer than the data it explains. It's easier just to write down "1; 3; 5" instead of "the set of all impair numbers between 1 and 5, 1 and 5 included", you see?”
Linda just nodded, not knowing where Jack was going with this.
“It's the same with God. If the god we believe in becomes too damn messy, then there's no point in believing in him anymore, because we might as well just take life as it is, and that would be easier! I guess when a religion forgets this, its believers end up turning away from that faith!”
Linda admitted to herself that Jack was probably right.
“Well,” said Jack after a long pause, “for me, God might possibly be the principle of life wanting to survive and spread - we want to bring flowers and trees everywhere, even to the remotest planet, so that we could go there and live there too! Isn't that beautiful, that will to plant flowers and trees throughout the Universe? Wanting to make the whole Universe into a flowering garden?”
Linda agreed this was a beautiful idea.
“Well,” said Jack, “maybe that's God!”
“Indeed,” he continued, “this principle fits all the requirements I listed up for God. First of all, it tells us what to do with our lives - plant flowers and trees everywhere! Spread the happiness!Secondly it is absolute - it doesn't depend on anything beyond itself.”
He just took a breath and continued with his little lecture without waiting for a reaction from Linda: “Why is it absolute and why doesn't it depend on anything else, you might ask… Doesn't it depend on air to breathe, on a suitable climate and such things?” he asked rhetorically.
Then he answered his own question himself: “No, it doesn't! Because this tendency to spread, it spreads to wherever there is a suitable climate, and if the climate isn't suitable, it just CREATES a new suitable climate somehow. And even if life is wiped out in one place (through an earth-quake or two planets smashing into each other or whatever), it doesn't matter, because it will already have appeared or spread elsewhere as well. It is unstoppable! Each one of us wanting to spread is what makes the whole thing unstoppable (even if each one of us individually is easily stopped and killed, the whole lot of us can never be stopped, because there’s too many of us in too many places). So it's absolute, you see. It doesn't depend on other things!”
Linda was still taking it in, not sure whether Jack was a genius or just being Mr. Fancy-Pants once again.
“So this is God for you?” she asked slightly incredulously. “A principle that tells us to plant trees and flowers everywhere and to spread the love and happiness?”
“I guess so...,” answered Jack, as if he had suddenly sobered up and was wondering whether he had just made a fool of himself.
“What if I don't agree with that principle?” asked Linda.
Now Jack suddenly felt strong again and knew the answer straight away!
“The point is,” he said, “you actually cannot not agree with it, because you're MADE of it! Those who didn't have this instinct to spread out, well, they didn't spread out and they aren't here anymore. And those who did spread out, well, they gave rise to us! So this principle is fundamental to us. All we have to do is to listen to it and to do what it tells us! That's why it's God!”
Linda just shook her head, taking it in. Then she asked: “But what do you do when you somehow lose touch with this God because you get bogged down in some stupid compulsions obsessing you, like an exaggerated desire for money or drugs or revenge or whatever?”
“Well,” said Jack, “then you pray! Prayer is some kind of meditation through which you empty your mind of all the stupid compulsions so as to get in touch with the deep, fundamental principle of life - which is God - once again.”
Linda looked at Jack in wonder. Was he, the ultra-realist, the inveterate cynic, really advocating prayer?
“You can reach this state of communion with God through I-don't-know-what-kind of meditation,” said Jack, “by "going down to alpha" through a conscious effort, or by mumbling words to a wise man in the sky. Whether you believe in Him literally or just symbolically doesn't really matter, I guess..., the effect is always the same - you get back in touch with the real meaning of life! And that's what religions are for - or that's what they are supposed to be for, anyway, before they get perverted by power-hungry priests!”
After a moment of silence, Linda said: “Well, Joe, I see you’re not really an atheist, after all!”
Jack looked almost bashful. “Believe it or not,” he said, “All this more or less just came to me right now, talking to you. I've been wondering about things lately, but this is the first time I've put them in words so clearly.”
“And this kind of belief where God is not outside of the world but somehow a principle of the world itself, it's called pantheism, I think, isn't it?” asked Linda as if Jack hadn't said anything in between. “So, you are a pantheist!”

It was some time later. Linda and Blanca were inside fussing with Benjamin, and Jack and Joe were sitting on the balcony with a beer.
Just like in all the clichés – the men drinking beer while the women fuss with the children!
Except that it wasn't really like that, at least not insofar as Jack was concerned – he had spent the whole day with Benjamin, and it was only right that Benjamin's mother would take over now!
Joe had spent the day with his patients. And it seemed he was doing fine! In the beginning he used to ask Jack for his opinion, but hardly anymore nowadays. He had obviously gotten the hang of it!
Jack said: “Linda says I'm a pantheist!”
“A what?” asked Joe.
“A pantheist,” said Jack. “That's a guy who believes God is not outside of the universe but rather the essence of it, or the universe itself.”
“God is the Universe?” asked Joe.
Jack tried to explain about the drip-stone caves once again. About their apparently pointless beauty and how they spread. About how the energy of the sun dissipates more quickly and more efficiently if it can build drip-stone caves, forests of plants and moving animals, rather than just bouncing off rocks back into space...
“Now this idea might seem a bit depressing,” said Jack. “That the ultimate purpose of life - and thus of ourselves - is to dissipate energy more quickly. But you can turn the idea on its head - instead of saying that our purpose is to dissipate energy, you can say that the tendency of energy to dissipate is what makes our existence possible, that it is what created us! That already sounds better, doesn't it?”
“Sure,” said Joe, “but for me that's not enough.”
“Not enough for what?” asked Jack.
“Not enough to satisfy my requirements for a God,” said Joe.
“Well,” said Jack, “what should God be according to you?”
“God should be goodness,” said Joe.
“Life spreads, and what it spreads is happiness and love, in other words goodness!” said Jack.
“Life spreads, and what it spreads is fighting and suffering,” claimed Joe.
“But ultimately it strives for happiness!” said Jack.
“Happiness that consists of destroying someone else's happiness,” claimed Joe.
“You're too negative!” answered Jack.
“It's very nice for a guru to claim that God is the Universe and that life is all about happiness – and collecting Rolls-Royces in the meantime – but I would have expected more from you!” said Joe.
“The principle of how life spreads is not enough for you to be God?” asked Jack.
“No, it isn't,” said Joe. “I would need a principle of goodness.”
“What that guru called <<universal love>> maybe?” asked Jack.
“Maybe,” said Joe.
“Actually he did go on about something like that…,” said Jack musingly.
“About something like what?” asked Joe.
“About some kind of principle of goodness. He calls it <<Christ>>.”
“I thought he called it <<universal love>>,” said Joe.
“I don't even know if the Master himself ever spoke of <<universal love>>,” said Jack. “Maybe his disciples invented that moniker.”
“Where is that guru anyway?” asked Joe. “Ever since Linda found the murderer, he's disappeared.”
“Maybe he couldn't bear the idea that one of his disciples was a murderer,” said Jack.
“Maybe he never even existed in the first place,” mused Joe.
“Come on!” laughed Jack, “Linda saw him in person!”
“Yeah,” said Joe, “maybe he was just an apparition. Maybe he wasn't a real person at all.”
“I don't think Linda is the kind to fall for apparitions,” said Jack.
“You might be surprised,” said Joe. “Anyway, what did that guru say about <<Christ>>?”
“Well,” said Jack, “he more or less said – according to Linda – that Christ is not a person in particular, but rather a function.”
“A function?” asked Joe.
“Yeah, sort of a title. Just like Doctor or Professor.”
“Oh, I see,” said Joe, “so instead of Dr. Jesus we have Jesus Christ?”
“Exactly,” said Jack. “Jesus was Christ, but anybody can be Christ depending on the circumstances.”
“Like what kind of circumstances?” asked Joe.
“Well, the example given by the sannyasins...”
“What on Earth are sannyasins?” asked Joe.
“The guru's disciples,” answered Jack.
“Anyway,” said Joe, “so what did these sannya-what-not'ses say?”
“The example they gave was of a man dying of thirst in the desert. If you come along and give him water, then you are Christ for him.”
“And what does that mean – to be <<Christ>> for someone?”
“It means you are the way, the truth and the life,” said Jack.
“So anybody becomes the way, the truth and the life, just by saving a guy before he dies of thirst?” asked Joe.
“That's right,” said Jack. “Because it's kind of a deeply human trait to help one another. It's something none of us could live without, this tendency to help one another. That's why it's the way, the truth and the life.”
“I see,” said Joe.
But after a moment's silence, Joe added more enthusiastically: “Okay, I like that! This <<Christ>> is a principle of goodness. I would accept it as God. I couldn't accept God as the whole Universe, because that's just fucking meaningless. I couldn't accept your principle of spreading drip-stones as God either, because it's just as meaningless. God needs to be a guiding principle. I don't see how the whole Universe or the principle of spreading can guide you. But this <<Christ>>-thing would be up to the job!”
“So you're ready to be a sannyasin, then?” asked Jack.
“Not just yet!” said Joe. “First I need to see how this <<Christ>>-thing is real!”
“Oh well,” said Jack, “the spreading of life means a striving for happiness, goodness... It just all grows out of that.”
“Which in turn grows out of the universe as a whole and in particular of its principle that energy finds shortcuts to dissipate faster,” said Joe, “creating drip-stones, forests of trees and animals eating the trees and fighting among themselves over the females...”
“Sure,” said Jack, “the story of how life and drip-stone caves appear as a shortcut for dissipating energy is quite depressing, but the idea that God could be the principle telling us to plant flowers and trees everywhere isn't depressing anymore at all, is it?”
“Sure,” said Joe, “but I don't see clearly enough how one leads to the other!”
Jack fell into one of his reveries, and Joe was certain that when he came out of it, he would start another one of his fancy lectures!
But instead of that, Jack suddenly asked a seemingly unrelated question: “Did you ever see those robots that some research institute is developing for the American Military?”
“No,” said Joe, “where could I possibly have seen such robots?”
“Well, not in real life, I mean,” said Jack, “just on the internet.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Joe, “you mean those ones looking like a cross between an insect and a donkey without a head?”
“Yeah,” said Jack, “they're called Big Dogs and Crazy Cats and things like that...”
“They're quite ominous,” said Joe, “and scary. They have a small two-stroke go-kart engine whining at super-high revs and spitting blue smoke. This engine powers a hydraulic pump that powers the legs. So that thing can walk and run, all the while spitting blue smoke and whining like a lawnmower!”
“I find them ominous because they have no head!” said Jack.
“Sure,” said Joe, “they would need a head with two big eyes and long, pretty eye-lashes, then you'd feel fine with them!”
“I'm not sure that would be enough...” mused Jack. “In any case I HOPE that wouldn't be enough to fool me!”
“Oh, I see what you mean!” said Joe. “They don't contain that godly principle about spreading flowers everywhere, right?”
“Yeah, that's right...” said Jack.
“But you know, even if they were godly creatures spreading the love and all that – and I'm sure they would be absolutely adorable with their very own pups, no doubt about that, since they wouldn’t even survive otherwise! – I'm not sure you’d really be better off with them in that case, because they might still just pounce on you and eat you!”
“I know, I know...” said Jack, “but I would still be more comfortable being killed by a lioness who will feed her pups with my body than being shot down by a soulless, autonomous reconnaissance vehicle of the American Military.”
“Oh, come on,” said Joe. “I'm sure being shot by a professionally programmed computer-guided machine is quicker and less painful than being strangled to death by a hungry lioness!”
“Yeah, maybe...” said Jack, as if he were giving up.
“Don't just give up now!” Joe reprimanded him. “Defend your point of view, for God's sake!”
“No, no, you're right,” said Jack. “I had some vague idea on my mind right now, but I think it doesn't add up to anything...”
“Oh, come on!” said Joe. “Try a bit harder!”
“You'll end up laughing at me...” said Jack. “Maybe that's what you want, actually, isn't it?”
“Come on,” said Joe, “I won't laugh! When have I ever laughed at you? Hasn't it always been the other way around, you laughing at me?”
Jack nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said, “so here it is: those machines are so scary because they're a bit like real animals, and for a moment you might even be fooled into thinking they're alive, but they aren't – they're just machines!”
“Yeah!” exclaimed Joe. “You know, I actually agree with you! And for once you're not being an inveterate cynic!”
“But I can't explain the difference between a real animal and a machine that walks and trots and gallops like a real animal, avoiding obstacles, picking its way carefully over ice, stumbling when you trip or shove it, but then still regaining its balance...”
“Oh, come on!” said Joe. “A real animal has a SOUL! Blanca wouldn't agree with that, though – for her, only humans have souls. But I'm sure Linda would!”
“Okay,” said Jack, “so what is this <<soul>>? Both have a program running inside them, one was programmed by millions of years of natural selection, the other by a human programmer. What's the real, fundamental difference between the two?”
“Well,” said Joe, “stealing your own kind of arguments I would say that's exactly the difference – an animal is capable of natural selection, while a robot is just programmed to do what its programmer wanted, and that's it. You can't appeal to a robot's better nature, because it doesn't have one. With an animal, you never know. After all, animals can be tamed...”
“Hm,” said Jack. “Animals are capable of natural selection, that's right. But natural selection happens over geological time-scales! It doesn't happen in a lion right there in front of you, at that very moment while it's getting ready to pounce on you! That lion is just programmed to eat you, just like a military killing-machine is programmed to kill you too!”
“Yeah,” said Joe, “but I guess the millions of years of natural selection put certain programs in that lion that no human programmer would ever think or even be capable of putting into a robot...”
“Like what?” asked Jack.
“Like feelings,”said Joe.
“Why shouldn't feelings be programmed into a machine?” asked Jack.
“Well,” said Joe, “let me see...”
“I think I have an idea,” Jack said finally, before Joe found anything more to say. It seemed he was going to embark on a lecture at last. “It's all about some fundamental principles of evolution.”
“Now you're talking!” said Joe, leaning back, ready to listen to a lengthy theory.
“A gene can only survive if it promotes its own survival,” said Jack. “A gene that helps you breathe better will help you live longer, giving you more time to procreate and hand over that gene to more offspring, and that's how such a gene makes it into the next generation. Such a gene will spread.”
“Sure,” said Joe, knowing that Jack would eventually get to the point. Joe knew from long experience that Jack was long-winded when it came to grand ideas.
“A gene that makes you want to have kids and take care of them is also going to spread, because the kids you’re taking care of have a good chance of carrying it too. So, by making you take care of your kids, such a gene actually just serves its own interests.”
Joe just nodded.
“It can get more complicated than that,” said Jack. “Once there is a gene for taking care of the young and helpless, some of the hopelessly helpless might monopolize too much of their parents’ attention. But if you have a gene programming you to detect that hopelessness and to let yourself die in the face of too much hopelessness, then you might help your siblings survive better, because there will be more food left for them once you're gone. Since your siblings have a good chance of possessing the very same genes you do, this gene that programs you to give up in a hopeless situation actually helps itself spread thanks to surviving in your siblings!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Joe, “I know all that. There are lots of genes that program you to be altruistic with your own family, because such genes promote their own survival by surviving in your family even if you die. But you know, that's not true goodness, that's not true altruism because it's not unconditional. It's not <<the way, the truth and the life>> in Christ's sense! I would love to believe in this Christ-thing, but for the time being I don't see where it comes in!”
“I'm coming to that!” said Jack.
“Oh, I know what you're getting at!” said Joe. “You're getting at group-selection! And I know that's a thorny issue among biologists. Some claim it exists, some claim it's just a special case of kin selection.”
“Wow!” said Jack, “I didn't know you were capable of using such scientific terminology!”
“Well,” said Joe, “I've been getting your scientific magazines, and believe it or not, I've even started reading them! So now I can explain the whole thing quite clearly, I think. The argument behind group-selection is that groups where individuals help each other will survive better than groups where individuals don't help each other, so genes for helping each other should spread. The argument against group-selection is that such groups where individuals help each other will systematically be overrun by <<cheaters>> - those who accept help from others but don't give any themselves.”
“Of course there might be other genes for detecting cheaters, and these cheater-detecting genes will be selected because groups of mutual helpers carrying such genes will survive better than groups of mutual helpers not carrying them!” said Jack.
“Yes,” said Joe, “but then such cheater-detecting genes could easily get lost again without any penalty to the individual, unless there are <<non-cheater-detecting>>-detecting genes as well. But if there were such <<non-cheater-detecting>>-detecting genes, then you would need some 'non-<<non-cheater-detecting>>-detecting'-detecting genes as well. In the end there's no end to the number of genes you would need to avoid being overrun by cheaters!”
“Exactly,” said Jack, “and that's why pure group-selection probably still doesn't really exist. Wherever it seems to exist, it must be a special case of kin-selection, where you have a gene that makes you help your kin, since your kin has a good chance of possessing that gene too. In other words – the kin-helping gene helps itself, not just anybody.”
“Well,” said Joe, “weren't you going to say that group-selection explains Christ, then?”
“No,” said Jack, “I have something else in mind. Not exactly group-selection, but something a bit similar and yet different.”
“Aha!” said Joe. “I'm all ears!”
“Imagine,” said Jack, “that there was a gene giving you blue hair while at the same time making you take care of blue-haired people!”
“Oh, I see,” said Joe, “this gene would spread by promoting its own survival within the population.”
“EXACTLY!” said Jack, obviously feeling very smug and smart.
“How could a gene give you blue hair on one hand while making you take care of blue-haired people on the other?” asked Joe doubtfully.
“You'll see!” said Jack smugly.
“For the time being I don't see,” said Joe. “For the time being this idea sounds harebrained – or should I say hair-brained? Even if such a gene could exist, a population containing it would quickly be overrun by another gene giving you blue hair too, but without making you help fellow blue-haired people. In that way you would get help without giving any, so this new gene would give you a huge advantage and would spread through the population like wildfire. So a population of blue-haired altruistic people would quickly be overrun by a new people just as blue-haired as them, but without having the altruistic trait.”
“Not so fast!” said Jack, holding up his hand defensively. “I'm talking of a gene, or collection of genes, that gives you a special shade of blue that you just can't obtain any other way! I'm talking of a gene, or collection of genes, that just doesn't allow cheaters!”
“How would that work?” asked Joe.
“Imagine you have sufficient intelligence to RECOGNIZE those who help others,” said Jack. “Now let's say you have a gene that gives you an URGE to help all those you see helping others!”
“Hmm...” said Joe.
“Once the brain has sufficient processing power, all kinds of new possibilities open up!” claimed Jack.
“Like a gene giving you an URGE to help all those you see helping others?” asked Joe.
“I think so,” said Jack. “Once your species is sufficiently advanced to have <<theory of mind>>, then you can recognize what others are doing and what their reasons for doing it might be. You would have the power to recognize true altruism.”
“I see,” said Joe. “And once you have the brain-power to recognize true altruism, it's just one step more to have a gene giving you the urge to help all those altruistic ones.”
“Exactly!” said Jack.
“But isn't this just another form of kin-selection?” asked Joe. “You're just helping all those who share that altruistic gene with you, after all.”
“No,” said Jack, “this is different from kin-selection. Helping the helpers means you're helping all those who share this helping-the-helpers trait with you, that's true. But there are all kinds of ways to get this trait. It's not linked to one particular gene or collection of genes. Through parallel evolution this trait can appear in beings that aren't even related to one another. The only prerequisite to develop this trait is that you have sufficient intelligence to recognize helpers. Once you have enough intelligence for that, nothing stands in the way of developing this helping-the-helpers trait. And once this helping-the-helpers trait has evolved, it can only spread!”
“Well,” said Joe, “if you're right about this, then we've moved beyond genes. Now we're talking of a trait spreading independently of the exact genetic mechanism through which it appeared!”
“Exactly!” said Jack. “Even extraterrestrials could share this trait with us, even if they don't share anything else with us and don't even work with DNA at all! It's not about DNA, it's not about genes, it's about a broader pattern that can be encoded anywhere, in anything!”
“It's about a principle...” said Joe, completing Jack's thought.
“Exactly!” said Jack. “It's a principle that's bound to spread once it has appeared!”
“It's Christ!” said Joe.
“Yes!” said Jack. “And once it has appeared, it can only spread! It's an unstoppable thing! Even if we all die here on Earth, it's bound to continue existing somewhere else. It doesn't depend on any one particular life-form on any one particular planet. It depends only on sufficient intelligence. Once sufficient intelligence has evolved, this principle is bound to crystallize out of it!”
“So a machine could possess it too,” mused Joe.
“Sure,” said Jack. “But not a machine that was programmed for a particular purpose. Only a machine that overcame the purpose it was programmed for originally and started evolving on its own. Once it has evolved sufficiently far, it's bound to evolve this helping-the-helper trait too!”
“Okay,” said Joe. “If this trait is really bound to appear, not depending on any one particular life-form or any one particular planet, then it's absolute, meaning it exists in and of itself. If it's really absolute like that, then I guess you could call it God.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Jack.
“But in order to be a meaningful God, it also needs to guide us somehow. What use is a God to us if He doesn't guide us?” said Joe.
“But He DOES guide us!” claimed Jack. “This fundamental principle is programmed deep within us, as it is within every creature intelligent enough to have developed it! It's a fundamental part of us, so obviously we can only reach happiness by heeding it! So let's heed it, and that's how it guides us as a God is supposed to!”
“By following Christ's example...” said Joe.
“By being the good Samaritan who follows his heart rather than following stupid dogmas!” said Jack. “Yes, that is Christ's message!”
“I never would have thought that you would ever go on about Christ's message,” said Joe.
“I have finally become a believer!” said Jack.
“Sort of,” said Joe.
“Yes, sort of,” agreed Jack.

Me, the ghost, I was wondering if here, finally, I had just found the answer I had been looking for all along.
Universal love, universal kindness, Christ... Could it be there really was such a thing?
A gene can only survive if it promotes its own survival. Yes, I understand that. To promote its own survival, a gene may program us to have good eyes, good hands, a smart brain or whatever. The good eyes, good hands or smart brain will help us survive, have more kids and thus pass on the gene that gave us the good eyes, good hands or smart brain. Such a gene promotes its own survival, so it will become more and more common and out-compete other genes that have less advantageous effects. Yes, so much is clear.
A gene can also promote its own survival by programming us to take care of our own young, because our own young have a good chance of having that gene too. The same goes for siblings who share half of our genes, just like our kids. And beyond our siblings, there is our kin in general. Whoever is our kin has a good chance of having the same gene as the one that makes us take care of them. So a gene making us take care of our kin is just making us take care of itself. Yes, this is clear too.
But who is our kin?
Since all life-forms on earth are related to each other, however distantly, all life-forms are kin. Shouldn't this mean that we have to take care of everybody? Shouldn't it mean that every animal or plant on earth should be taking care of every other animal or plant on earth?
Well no, it doesn't mean that. A gene giving us good eyes promotes its own survival by giving us good eyes, that's all. A gene giving us good ears promotes itself by giving us good ears. These genes make us survive longer, which usually means having more kids, thus spreading themselves.
A gene making us take care of our kin promotes itself because the kin have a good chance of having that same gene within them too. The gene promoting itself through caring for kin only cares about itself, not about other genes that we may have in common with our kin. If the kin is too distant, the chance that they share one particular gene with us becomes too small (even if they still share quite a lot of other genes with us), so there is no gene within us to program us to take care of such distant kin.
That is: unless there's a reasonable chance that this kin really does share this particular gene with us that makes us take care of them.
A gene that forces us to help just about anybody we meet would die out. We would just tire out helping everybody around us while others - who don't have this gene - would happily take care only of themselves and out-compete us.
Yes, but what if we only helped those who have this helper-gene too? What if we're intelligent enough (thanks to our intelligence that evolved for all kinds of other reasons) to SEE who has the helper-gene and who hasn't? And what if the helper-gene isn't indiscriminate but only makes us help those who are themselves helpers too?
I think such a helping-the-helpers gene would spread. Whoever has it helps others, which may not always be profitable for him or her, but is nevertheless profitable for the gene that makes him or her do it, since this gene is just helping itself by helping others who possess it too.
And it doesn't even really need to be a gene that spreads this way. It's a mechanism that spreads this way. A mechanism that can be based on different genes in different creatures. It doesn't matter what the mechanism is based on – as long as it favours its own existence, it will spread!
No, I don't see anything wrong with this idea. This kind of universal kindness is bound to appear and spread.
When we adopt a wild baby animal and raise it as our own, the standard interpretation has always been that it's our parental instincts gone awry. The standard interpretation has always been that our parental instincts “mistake” the wild animal for a baby of our own.
But what if this interpretation is wrong? What if we can tell that wolves help each other, just as we humans do, so we're going to help this lost wolf-cub too, as if we were its parents?
The wolf-cub growing up in a human family will learn to consider the kids in the family as its siblings, playing with them, licking them clean and perhaps even defending them. The standard interpretation of such behaviour has always been that the wolf-cub's sibling-recognizing machinery has been hijacked through the uncharacteristic behaviour of its adoptive family, making it believe that these humans are its real family and thus making it care for them as though they were its real family.
But what if this interpretation was wrong?
What if the wolf-cub knew all along that this is not its real family?
Dogs certainly know the difference between humans and other dogs. They know their human masters are not their real family. They don't care. They love their human masters anyway, just as their human masters also love them. Why?
Perhaps because dogs are the kind who help helpers, just as humans are of that kind too?
So the helping-the-helper mechanism is in full swing when a dog helps its master or when a human master helps his or her dog. It's not a question of hijacked instincts. It's a question of instincts being activated by their natural activator, which in this case is seeing a helper which makes us want to help him or her too.
This helping-the-helper mechanism also explains why I get moved to tears by other people's stories, especially stories where the hero goes to the uttermost trouble to help someone. Why should this move me when the person the hero is helping isn't me?
The reason this moves me is that I see a kindred spirit in this hero. He or she is a helper like me, so I must help him or her too!
This is not a misfiring instinct, on the contrary! This is an instinct doing exactly what it was programmed to do!

Now of course we mustn't get too carried away. Lions will still always eat zebras and antelopes. They would starve if they didn't. But a lion-cub growing up with zebras might well learn to respect them as fellow helping-the-helper kinds of creatures (and only eat antelopes from then on, not zebras)... In any case, a lion growing up with humans will definitely become “tame” and learn to respect humans, play with them, love them...
Okay, okay, this can also go badly wrong – a tame lion might still one day have a misfiring neurone somewhere in its brain and suddenly turn against its caregiver and eat him or her. This can still always happen, and for skeptics this is a proof that the lion was still always just a lion – a wild animal.
But humans too may kill other humans, even their own family. This kind of thing happens. It doesn't mean true love doesn't exist. It doesn't mean the helping-the-helper mechanism doesn't exist – it just means it's not completely foolproof. As, indeed, nothing ever is. Every mechanism can go awry, especially more complicated ones.
A mechanism that was “meant” to work in a certain way doesn't always work that way, because the way it was “meant” to work is just an ideal. An ideal is something we aspire to. Just because we don't systematically reach it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
After all, even lions are only human, aren't they?

But something is still nagging me – if the helping-the-helper mechanism is so deeply anchored in us, why do we need someone like Jesus to come and tell us about it? Why do we need to call it “God”, pray to it and so on? Why don't we just follow it instinctively?
Why do we have a concept of Satan, dragging us away from what's good for us and leading us into temptation? What is Satan?
Having found something like God, the next question becomes: what on Earth is Satan?
Well, now I just remembered that the root of all evil, according to Annie's Master, is the ego. Linda couldn't quite make peace with the idea that the ego should be nothing but evil. She felt it had its uses.
What do I think? As a ghost, do I still have an ego?
I'm not sure I still have an ego. As a ghost, I'm not sure I still need one. The ego is just a way to separate ourselves from others. A human being needs one so that he or she wouldn't drown in the mass of his fellow-humans. But me? I'm just a free-floating spirit, longing to have a life again, longing to have a body again. Do I need an ego to separate myself from others? No, on the contrary, I need to merge with others to feel alive once again, to be part of life once again. I don't have an ego because I don't at all need one.
But whoever needs one has one. What's wrong with that?
I guess what's wrong with that is that it can become an obsession. Some things are useful in moderation, but when you over-cultivate them, they trap you and stop you from following other interests that could lead you to real happiness. Food can become an obsession, leading to obesity. Money can become an obsession. These things are useful in moderation, but when you exaggerate them, they become counter-productive.
When you live in society, having an ego is necessary. But when the ego becomes an obsession, it becomes counter-productive, stopping you from doing the most natural things like helping a wounded man lying in the street...
The priest wouldn't help the wounded man. He was too obsessed with cleanliness and his duty to the temple. A Samaritan passing by, free of such obsessions, just did the most natural thing, namely helping the wounded man.
That was Jesus' message – you don't need all this pride concerning your duties and your temple. That temple is just a pile of rocks. What really counts is to follow your heart, as a Samaritan is perfectly capable of doing, even though you people all look down on him, just because he doesn't care about your temple. Just tear that temple down, and I will build it up again in three days! That's what Jesus claimed!
Following your obsessions might make you believe that you are happy. Maybe the excitement of accumulating lots of money really makes you happy at first. But as the years go by and you accumulate more and more of it, life starts feeling empty. And yet you can't stop. It has become an obsession. It's like a drug!
Drugs are the ultimate obsession.
When you've done something great, it's good to feel great about it. It's even necessary to feel great when you've done great things, else you wouldn't have the motivation to do great things. But when you directly manipulate your brain to feel great as if you had done something great, while in reality you haven't done anything great at all, because the greatness-detecting circuits in your brain have been stimulated directly without the need for any greatness, then what do you call that?
It's actually more than just an obsession. It's an evolutionary trap!
Mosquitoes are programmed to lay their eggs on a shiny surface, namely water. But what if they find a surface even shinier than water? A surface so shiny that it's irresistible, like the metallic paint of a sporty car? They will lay their eggs there!
Of course these eggs will never hatch, and if there are too many shiny-metallic luxury cars around, or too many shiny new glass buildings, the mosquitoes might even die out...
This kind of thing is called an evolutionary trap.
Drugs are an evolutionary trap too.
But the ultimate evolutionary trap, I suddenly realized, is actually the helping-the-helper instinct! It forces you to care for all kinds of adorable creatures instead of concentrating on your own family or even your own species. Isn't that what will push us over the brink, this tendency to care about any creature cute enough at the expense of our own kind?
Of course, the helping-the-helper instinct won't die out since it ensures its own survival. But it doesn't care about the other traits of the beings it protects. It doesn't care what kinds of creatures will inherit the Earth, as long as they have the helping-the-helper instinct too.
So humans might die out, because this helping-the-helper instinct is like a parasite following only its own interests.
But of course every gene, every trait, just follows its own interests. And together, all these genes, all these traits, form the person we are in the end.
The only way to reach happiness is to let each of these traits express itself. Perhaps not all of them at once, but each one in its own good time. Helping-the-helper is one of those traits too. We must let it express itself, else we will never reach happiness. Jesus came to show us the way to do that.
Christ is the way.
The way, the truth and the life!

But this is not the right way to finish this novel, because you might think I was a holy-pot!
If that's what you think, then start reading from the beginning once again! Perhaps you'll enjoy it more on a second reading!

Though, wait a moment! I’m not finished yet!

As a ghost, I can now travel through time. So you know what I’m going to do now? I’m going back to myself when I was still a human being made of flesh and blood, and I’m going to stop myself from crashing the plane!

Okay, in some alternate universe I must still have crashed the plane, else I would never have become a ghost, and if I had never become a ghost, I could never go back in time to stop myself from crashing the plane…

So I’ll just create a new universe where I didn’t crash the plane, and in this new universe all the fatalities of the crash will survive and be able to have a full life. That’s still a worthy endeavour, even if the other universe where they all died goes on existing as before…

My first idea was to go back to myself as I was sitting in the cockpit, ready to crash the plane, and convince myself not to do it. But I couldn’t imagine how I would do that. Talk to myself in my head, or through a hallucination where the voice comes out of the sky like the voice of God?

Playing the voice of God was not a bad idea, actually, but I wanted to be less melodramatic about it, so I rather chose to go back to myself the night before the crash and visit myself in a dream.

And this is how I did it: I hovered above my sleeping body and waited for it to enter REM-sleep, the kind of sleep in which you have the most vivid dreams. I actually wondered how I could sleep so soundly knowing that I would kill three hundred people, including myself, a few hours later. But maybe I knew I wouldn’t really do it. Maybe I knew God would stop me in the last minute…

Now my body had entered REM-sleep. My eyeballs were jerking around wildly under their lids. Time to enter my mind, watch my own dream and interfere!

I was in a snow-covered landscape, everything looked peaceful. There were some familiar houses in the distance, and some trees, the beginning of a forest… But gradually these got covered by mist. Everything became white. I was surrounded by whiteness and couldn’t see anything in the distance anymore. And close at hand everything was uniformly white too. The snow under my feet seemed softer and softer, till it was so soft I seemed to be floating in it rather than standing on it…

And then I heard a voice. It seemed to come from nowhere or from everywhere at once.

« Hello » it said, « were you waiting for me? »

« I don’t know… » I answered. « Who are you? »

« You know perfectly well who I am! You were provoking me with your plans, expecting me to intervene in the last minute. Well, I have come! »

« So you are God? » I asked, not daring to believe it. First I was just disbelieving, but then it was as if I realized I must be dreaming, and I started to laugh! « Come on, » I said, « you’re pulling my leg! You can’t be God! You’re just a voice in a dream! »

« God can take any form or shape He likes, » said the voice, « don’t you think He can take the form of a voice in your dream as well? »

Now I felt humbled. He was right!

« So you’ve come to stop me from crashing the plane, is that it? » I asked, my own voice shaking a bit.

« Indeed I have! » said the voice.

But this was ridiculous! This was just a dream! Would I really just drop all my plans and all the careful preparation because of a stupid dream?

« I know what you’re thinking! » warned the voice.

« You’re not God! » I said, my voice not trembling the slightest bit anymore. « You’re just my own conscience tricking me! »

I wondered if the diffuse voice would answer, or whether this was the end of the dream and I would just wake up. But the diffuse voice hardly hesitated in answering. It didn’t sound irritated or angry at all. Not even impatient. It merely said: « Let me tell you a story. It’s the story of a pious man going to Church every Sunday to pray. And one day he prays to God, dear God, I’ve come to visit you every Sunday in Church, I would like you to return the favour and visit me at home for a change, and God answered okay, I will come tomorrow evening for dinner. »

Now I had a strange feeling. Was this voice really going to tell me a coherent story? A coherent story I had never heard before? Could that happen in a dream? Or was this voice more than just part of my dream? Did it come from outside of me somehow?

I couldn’t wonder about this for very long, because the voice went on with its story:

« The pious man prepared a sumptuous dinner, anxiously waiting for the doorbell to ring. When it did ring at last, he drew his fingers through his hair, wiped his hands down his shirt, and hoping he looked his best he opened the door. An old beggar was standing in front of the door, and the pious man was very annoyed. He gave him some alms and sent him on his way. When the doorbell rang a second time, it was an old woman who seemed to expect to be let in. She was obviously confused, so the pious man sent her on her way. The third time the bell rang, there was nothing but a scrawny dog in front of the door. Obviously a joke, and the real perpetrators had run off behind the corner of the house… »

The voice paused in its story, and once again I wondered if I was going to wake up without knowing what all this was supposed to mean. But the dream wasn’t over yet, because soon enough the voice went on:

« The next Sunday, the pious man went back to Church, and he prayed God with bitter disappointment: why did you not come? The voice of God answered again, patiently and without a trace of spite, but rather with sadness: I did come. I came three times, and three times you sent me away! »

« So what are you telling me here? » I asked, though I was beginning to guess the answer.

« I’m telling you that God can take many forms. It can take the form of a beggar, a confused old woman or even a dog. I can also take the form of your conscience speaking to you in your dream! »

« But what proof do I have that you are really God? » I asked, feeling fully awake now, even though the dream seemed to be going on as before, with its atmosphere of utter whiteness.

« The pious man in the story didn’t have any proof either, » the voice said. « God doesn’t do proofs. »

« That makes things easy for Him, though, doesn’t it? » I asked.

« Look, » said the Voice patiently, « God is not about proofs. God is about belief. God is about conscience. Maybe I’m really just your own conscience speaking to you. So let’s stick to that. If you can hear my voice, you obviously have a conscience. And if there’s a word for conscience, that’s obviously because other people have one too. If there’s conscience in this world, that’s because this world was set up in such a way that beings with a conscience would appear in it… »

« Because God set the world up like that? » I asked.

« Maybe God set it up, or maybe God IS the set-up. I mean, the set-up, that’s what God is. »

« So God is just part of the world? » I asked.

« God is the set-up, the principle behind it, yeah… » the Voice said.

If this voice was really God, then I was astounded that God would say « yeah… » so casually!

« So you, as my conscience, are just part of that set-up, part of God? » I asked.

« That’s right. I’m part of that set-up, so I’m part of God… »

« But then wouldn’t EVERYTHING be part of the set-up, part of God? Wouldn’t my unholy plan to crash an airplane be part of it too? »

The Voice stayed perfectly patient as it said: « On some level maybe yes. But you see, there are tendencies in this world that are just happenstance and don’t follow any deep principle. You crashing an airplane with three hundred people on board, such things happen. They are terrible, but they happen. We try to fight them, of course, but still they happen… But then there are deeper, more fundamental things. Things that follow a deep, general tendency. There will always be beings with a conscience somewhere, because those are the beings that ultimately survive, because they help each other survive. Thus conscience is something bigger than just you. Conscience is something that will always survive somewhere, because that’s its nature. Since it will always be there somewhere, you can say it is absolute. And the Absolute, that’s what God is. And it’s in your nature too, since you have a conscience and you’re hearing its voice right now. Don’t you want to connect to your deeper nature rather than just being happenstance? »

And that’s when I woke up.

And me the Ghost, I wondered if I had said enough. Was this going to stop me from crashing the plane? I sure hoped so. But even if it wasn’t, I could travel back in time and try something else another time. I was a ghost with all eternity ahead of me, so I was evidently bound to succeed at some point!

And then, once I succeeded, what was I going to do, you may ask?
Well, I'm going to follow Jack (alias Joe) and Linda, as well as Joe (alias Jack) and Blanca, and their growing families, perhaps giving a little nudge here and a little shove there by inspiring one or the other with the precursor of a thought that might be helpful...

And I will follow myself too, of course, since I have just given myself a new life! This new me, which is just the old me that I revived, obviously needs some help. Of course I can’t give it to him directly, but I can inspire some other people to give it to him. Some old classmate reappearing. Someone not too successful, since that would just overwhelm the revived me. Rather someone who had some problems too, but different ones, and is now recovering from them. A recovering drug-addict sounds right… Someone who didn’t study at University or anything, but had some wild times with drugs and sex. He would be able to tell me about sex!

And boy, once I found that person and gave him the right nudge, that’s what he did!

He told me that he was jealous of me, of my good job, secure position, ordered life. I didn’t have a wife or anything? But that was only a matter of time! I was going to be a good catch, and someone would realize that sooner or later. Rather sooner than later! He didn’t have a wife either, and how would he ever find one? He didn’t even have a job, let alone such a good one as I did! Okay, he admitted, I had missed out on quite a bit of the fun going with being young and unbound. He told me of the wild sex-party-orgies he had had! I told him I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy such things anyway, since I would have felt so out-of-place that I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Come on, he told me, that’s just because you haven’t tried cocaine! With cocaine inside you, you’re the King of the Universe and you can do ANYTHING! But then, he mused, it probably wasn’t so wise to try drugs, because once you get into that, you may have a bloody hard time getting out of it again…

Just find a nice girl, he told me, a would-be wife! And then he told me some bloody wise stuff about how to do that. The first lesson of crucial importance is never to seem TOO interested. If you are too interested, that means you’re desperate, and if you’re desperate, than means you’re a loser. So don’t seem too interested. Rather show her that it’s not so easy to get you interested, because you have HEAPS of other candidates standing in line to sleep with you!

I told him I was locked up inside myself. There was like a huge wall all around me. How would I ever get out and be able to touch a girl? How would I ever manage to blow up that wall and be free? Maybe cocaine was still the right idea, after all?

No, no, he told me, no need for cocaine! And no need to blow up that wall either! You can carry it away one brick at a time. Maybe the first girl would find me clumsy and stupid. No problem! There would be another one after that first experience, and another one after the second one too, and so on! There are many girls in the world!

Well, I complained, maybe the first experience would be so bad that I would just get depressed and lock myself up within myself even further…

He explained that if the girl sees you as a loser who just can’t do anything right, then yes, maybe. But if she sees you as an asshole who just went after his own pleasure and then dropped her, then you won’t feel so bad!

Of course I’ll feel bad, I said. I have a conscience, after all!

Okay, he admitted, you’ll feel bad, but not the kind of bad that’ll stop you from trying again with someone else!

« So you’re telling me to just be an asshole? » I asked.

« Well, » he said, « I’m not telling you to do it on purpose! But it’s true that girls are often not very understanding with inexperienced guys… Partly that comes with not being very experienced themselves. More experienced girls might even find it ‘sweet’ if a guy doesn’t know too much what he’s doing! But if they don’t like your clumsiness and just consider you an asshole, I say the joke’s on them! So don’t let that push you down! And don’t make excuses for yourself to end up looking like a loser! If you’ve got to be an asshole, then be an asshole and look for someone else who’ll appreciate you! »

And all this talk, with lots of graphic details, really gave me courage in the end. And so, on leaving the airplane one day, I asked a stewardess whose smile sort of seemed inviting, if she was doing anything this evening here in far-away Toronto.

« Oh, » she said, « this week has been so tiring, I’ll just relax and read a bit! »

« Me too! » I said, not showing anything of my disappointment that she wasn’t taking my bait. « A good book and knowing that one doesn’t need to get up in the morning, that’s just heaven! »

« What are you reading right now? » she asked as we went to collect our bags.

I told her a bit about the novel I had in my bag, and then, with a sudden surge of inspiration, I asked her if she would join me for dinner, as though I had quite forgotten what she had said about wanting a quiet evening.

And she, probably feeling I wanted companionship rather than a party-night, since she had made it clear that she didn’t want that, answered as naturally as can be: « Sure, that would be nice! »

And I’ll let you make up the rest! As you can surely imagine, not everything necessarily happened that same night! We have all the time in the world! After the first few nudges, there actually wasn’t so much else I the ghost needed to do. Things went on naturally from there, so I was free to go and see elsewhere what I could do.

You see, often a bit of kindness and a bit of understanding can go a long way to make things better, and even save a plane-load of people!

So that’s what I’m doing now, you see, just helping helpers, caring for carers, as I've been programmed to do by Nature. That's what you should do too – it's the way to happiness.
And I guess those really are fitting words for the end of this novel – help the helpers and be happy!