EARTH. SELF-SACRIFICE...!

Creator, Father, Son, Soul, Sacrifice - what do we bring to the understanding of these symbols, and what, in fact, are they? We will never know how the world works! But there is always space within us to question and search for answers...

THE CREATOR

        Father believed that it was long past time for me to become part of my destiny. And Mum was convinced that I wasn't ready at all! That the fate of those born into our family was too responsible. And that I still had to grow up before I could accept what I was to become! 

    I don't know how long Father hesitated, but one day he did, and he called me to him! What he showed me then, changed me forever. I could no longer imagine myself without these new emotions. They were not just breathtaking. They beckoned me again and again with infinite power... Since then, in secret from Mother, Father called me to him more and more often, initiating me into what he called our destiny.

    But today... Today I overheard them talking... Father said that what he had been working on lately... What he had put the most effort and energy into... What had absorbed all his mind, heart and soul... He must destroy! That tomorrow he would put an end to the endless attempts to save his most perfect creation. 

    At first I was stunned by what I heard. My brain refused to believe it, and it seemed impossible. How? It can't be! But his voice... I could hear so much disappointment and grief in it. And a desperate certainty that there were no alternatives. I've never heard him say anything like that before. He'd never given up before!

    But alas, the further I listened to them, the more it became clear that his decision was final. Mum asked: ‘Is there any chance of saving what you've created?’. But he replied, ‘Alas, no!’ He said that too much time and experiments, too many useless attempts... And every time a dead end. And all for nothing! And that he had given up hope of finding the reason for his constant failures.

    And now I was standing in front of the entrance to a place I was strictly forbidden to enter myself. A place that shocked me and, in a way, frightened me at the same time. I'd never been there without Father. But now I had no choice... After all, impossible risks of punishment were nothing compared to the fact that I would never see his latest creation again! Exhaling, I silently slipped inside.

    I could talk about this special place for a long time. The space here seemed to have many layers. There was and at the same time there was none - no floor, no walls, no ceiling. Being here could be described as floating in interstellar space.

    Once, on my first visit to Father, I was numb and stood for a long time at the entrance, afraid to take a step into infinity. But he took me by the hand and led me forward. In his always calm voice he explained to me that everything I see here is only a small part of what is available to my consciousness. And only my consciousness forms the appearance of what surrounds me. And someone else might see it completely differently. According to him, this place has been here since before the beginning of the universe. And the whole world that surrounds it came much later. He said that this place has a consciousness and intelligence that is incomprehensible to us. And in a way, it was the universe.

    At the time, it was difficult for me to realise what he was talking about. It was only the name Father used to call it that gave me the straw to which my mind clung.

    My father called him the Creator. Ancient power and inexplicable energy. It was the Creator, according to Father, who started everything! Everything that existed, exists and will exist in the realities accessible and not accessible to us... And Father also called him the Cradle of Worlds. The place where all living and non-living things in our universe and other universes were born.

    According to him, the infinite power and might of the Creator knows neither good nor evil. And the destiny of those who are chosen by the Creator is to direct this power! The Creator can both create and destroy. 

    For him, there is no difference between matter and energy. It simultaneously represents order and entropy, life and death. An impersonal and incredibly powerful force, a balance that someone had to maintain. And this gift was inexplicably inherited by my father. And according to him and me.

    Through this universe and countless others, the Creator's energy strings stretched. But it was here, in this place, that they originated. This is where the power that sustains the existence of all things was centred. In time immemorial, the Creator had chosen the Father. No one else in all the universes but he could connect his consciousness to the Creator. No mind among the innumerable worlds could withstand the flow of merging with infinity.

    My Father's mission was to Create! Where there was emptiness, his mind, with the help of the Creator, created life and matter. Every element of matter, every living and non-living thing that my Father created kept a piece of him in it. And when a new world left its cradle, continuing on its own way in the infinite Universes, a part of it remained with them forever. Through the worlds and universes he felt them all. And they, if they did not close their heart and soul from him, continued to feel this connection.

    My Father called it the Soul.

    The thing that made the inanimate alive. The thing that gave life and came back to him after death. To tell for a moment about the life he had lived and to go on a new journey again.

    It was hard for me to understand. But looking into his eyes, I saw an infinite number of lives lived, by different creatures, in different worlds. The lives of those he, like me, called his children. He loved them all, no matter what path they travelled, for that was his destiny.....

    In time, Father showed me all the worlds he had created... Some were extinguished and represented the difficult and thorny path and the failures that had befallen him. To my question, what was the reason for these failures? And why many worlds float lifelessly through the darkness of infinity - Father could not answer for a long time. I remember his look of sadness and regret. And the words that life is not easy enough to create. That its future cannot be planned. And that the key to everything is not in the work of the Creator. But in the endless and independent mistakes of life itself. And only the right conclusions, made by her from the bitter and thorny path, can pull her out of the fatal future.

    But among them were those worlds he had created that had managed to overcome all the obstacles of their subsequent, independent formation. His eyes always shone as he looked at each of these worlds. I saw in their reflections all the paths they had travelled. I saw love, the same love with which he looked at me. And also the hope that the right handed down to them to make their own destiny, they would carry on an endless journey among the stars. They would not be extinguished like those worlds that time itself had long forgotten existed.

    Of course I asked him the question, ‘What would it take for me to become like You and make my first world? Just grow up?’ But he replied that it's not about age. It is the fact that at the moment of Transformation of the world created by the Creator, the Creator transfers to each living being of the new world a particle of the Soul and Heart of the Father... This is the price of the barrier, and the world cannot be created without the particles of the one who created it. But this process is associated with the fact that if you are not ready, you will leave your body forever and completely dissolve into your creatures. So it will be a long time and a journey of endless mistakes before I am ready.

    He showed me all of them. Each of the worlds he had created was beautiful and marvellous, not only for the beauty of the world itself, but also for the people who inhabited them. But none of them compared to him... To the world he was creating now. The world he had been working to create for a long, long time.....

    It wasn't just his most complex and longest creation. It contained everything he had failed to realise in all previous worlds and universes. It was deservedly his greatest pride and his greatest love. A world in which every little thing and every detail was perfect. A world he had purposely shown me last.

    Everything about it was perfect!

    He called it - Earth... The most perfect world, the scars of which would never heal on his heart.

***
EARTH

    I will never forget that first journey with Father into this beautiful world. How he took me in his arms and walked into the Creator's beam. We stood in front of a floating blue sphere. He asked me to close my eyes and look inside myself. It was at that moment that my destiny became intertwined with the destiny of this world. At first there was a feeling of falling... But I was not afraid, I felt the Father's hand on my shoulder and his voice in my head calmed me.

    If I were asked to describe this first journey, I probably couldn't find the words! The beauty of this world was breathtaking and breathless. My father was right that it was his most perfect creation. It was infinitely beautiful. No doubt he took me with him on trips to the various worlds he created, but this one... This one was special in every way!

    And are there words to describe the degree of perfection that has been achieved many times over? Perhaps realisation of this can only come when you can feel every living thing at the same time. When you absorb every breath of wind and every drop of water. You touch every leaf and listen to the whispering of the crowns... The infinity of plant species, the infinity of the inhabitants of the living world... My father helped me to tune in to every creation he created.

    Huge oceans, rivers, lakes... Endless forests and mountains... Sunsets and dawns... This world was not enough to absorb with the eyes. It had to be listened to and touched with all the senses. On that supra-natural level that was given to us by the Creator. Their endless stream was so caught up in a whirlpool of happy emotional madness that I thought I would not be able to cope with them all at once. But the Father was there to protect me, not allowing me to cross a threshold that would have been excessive and perhaps even dangerous for me.

    On this and all subsequent journeys, I felt that Father and I were not in it for ourselves. I felt the invisible presence of the Creator. He was energising this whole world and waiting for Father to complete it. Waiting for the moment when the world would be ready to embark on its own independent journey into the infinite universe. The very beginning, when its fate would depend only on itself.

    On one of these journeys, Father told me that when he creates worlds, he can speed up and slow down time on them. And that this gave him the ability to experiment with evolution, creating the most beautiful living creatures from those he had previously created in other worlds and universes.

    Over the course of our travels, he continued to create life in many different parts of this beautiful world called Earth. It seemed to me that by now I knew every blade of grass and every stone on its vast expanse. I swam, flew, ran in the bodies of all living beings inhabiting it.

    And then one day, he said he was embarking on the most important stage of all. The evolution of created beings and the creation of the mind. I asked if I could be a part of it. But he said that creating the mind was a process of maximum concentration. So he had to do it himself.

    And I began to wait... Time passed, but Father no longer called me to him. And I could no longer do without the emotions that travelling to his worlds brought. But he closed himself off. He seemed to not only stop talking to me about Earth, but he even began to avoid me. As if afraid of the questions that were building up more and more inside of me....

    And now I stood here myself before the Creator's beam, because I heard his desperate decision. A decision that would destroy everything he had created in this, the most beautiful world I had ever seen. A decision in which there was an impossible future for Earth. Except a lifeless and cold surface, without life or hope of it for as long as the universe will exist.

    I don't know how much time I spent falling into the memories. But eventually I woke up, out of their clutches. And now all I had to do was step forward. A step that would give me the opportunity to be for the last time in the place where life was still blooming, but tomorrow there would be only emptiness....

    A few more moments of uncertainty and I took a decisive step forward into the Creator's beam. Standing in its light and feeling its consciousness, I raised my hand and touched the celestial sphere floating in its rays!

    Thus began my final journey to Earth! 

***
PAIN

    I became the Earth again, and it became me! As before, I could feel every living thing, every plant. Waves of sensations that I had missed so much began to come over me. And I immersed my consciousness more and more into this infinitely beautiful world. I was flying over forests and mountains again, diving into the oceans. I was everything that surrounded me, and it was me at the same time.

    However, I could not fully immerse myself in these favourite and all-consuming sensations. After the first few moments, I began to realise that the world around me had subtly changed. Through the familiar sensations insistently knocked completely new ones. Something that had never been there before... Apparently, in all the previous times, Father had partially shielded me from full union with his creation. I couldn't understand what the difference was. I used to feel everything through union with every element of this world. But at the same time, I had always continued to be myself. And now all sensations were not mine, but theirs... I felt everything that every creature felt and saw. Their perception of the world became mine. Including their pain.

    But that wasn't all!

    Father had created them after all. Sentient beings. And the next wave of emotion almost paralysed my mind.

    For the first time in all his experiments, he had created them in his own likeness. He had said many times that he wanted nothing less than perfection for this world. And in creating them, he had chosen to make no compromises. He didn't just endow them with the primal ability to feel heat or cold, pain or fear. He did not just endow them with intelligence and the ability to improve themselves... He gave them the highest feelings that he had never given to any of the previously created beings.

    Father called them human beings.

    He gave them love. He gave them compassion. He gave them the gift of feeling sorrow and joy. He endowed them with all those perfect emotions he was always afraid to endow the mind in the worlds he created. My father used to always say it was an unpredictable experiment. But in this perfect world, he had completely departed from his rules and given them an infinite gift.

    A gift that was as priceless as it was destructive.

    An emotional tsunami of their inner world washed over me. I lived their lives and loved them. I enjoyed sunsets and wrote poetry. Travelling and learning. Tasting new foods and learning to dance. Riding the waves and conquering the elements. Marvelled at the arrival of new life. I cried with happiness and joy... But this realisation lasted only a moment. The infinity of time in my Creator-controlled consciousness showed me their entire history. The evolution of their consciousness from the moment of their Father's creation.

    Darkness enveloped my mind....

    People loved as much as they wanted to kill... They wanted to live as infinitely as much as they cursed their existence.... I learnt anger, hatred, murder... The world seemed to break in half for me, breaking my consciousness at the same time....

    And they invented war. Their father gave them life to live. But they used that gift to kill and destroy everything around them. The dark streak of their wars and anger closed my mind. I began to drown in their grief and despair. In their fear and hatred. These emotions were too strong to control. And the Father to shield me from it wasn't around.....

    Trying to save myself from the madness, I tried to shield my mind from their crazy story. And to understand the end of the whole journey of humanity's suffering. To understand their lessons, to understand their conclusions.

    And so I stood in the midst of the scorched earth. And realised that their world had not changed, even after thousands of years of their existence. That war was the goal of their emotional minds. And that Father was right. That the pain they brought to each other was greater than anything he had ever created before in the universes.

    I tried to find an excuse for them. I tried to understand how in the midst of this beautiful world there were those who sought to destroy themselves and the world around them. Why, in a perfect world, perfectly created creatures chose such a path ...

    But the answer was only unbearable pain.

***
VICTIM

    My mind began to fall apart. And to preserve what was left of it, I tried to find islands of meaning amidst the war and pain. But to no avail. I tried to leave this world and step out of the Creator, but all attempts were futile.....

    And amidst the endless grief that people brought to their world, my weakening mind slowly dissolved.

    But for a moment, the remnants of my consciousness sensed them. The ones whose elusive and still faint voices could not break through the furious roar of the crowd. The sprouts of hope. They were so infinitesimally few. But their inner peace was stronger than the cruelty of the world around them. They were my salvation.

    ...She was nine years old. She stood in front of the grave of her bombed-out parents. And holding her little brother in her arms, she promised him that he would grow up happy. And she would someday tell him about them and what they were like....

    ...He was 25. And his last image was her face. The face of the girl he helped carry out of the burning house. The house that he couldn't get out himself...

    ...He was 15. He held his mother's hand, which was sticking out of the rubble. He knew she was gone, but he asked the universe to take him instead of her.....

    ...She was 8. She lay in the basement, shot, with her family and not knowing that she was the only survivor. She prayed that everyone would survive, even if it cost her life. ...

    ...He was 12 years old. His hands were on fire, but he tried to pull his parents out of the burning car despite the pain....

    And so endlessly... They were able to create a feeling that had never existed in the universe before them.

Self-sacrifice...

    The entire history of mankind has been filled with grief. They sacrificed themselves for their loved ones. They gave their lives for those they loved. They sacrificed even to save people they didn't know.

    Because of this feeling, I was able to find my way between darkness and despair. And an understanding of a world that to me seemed forever cursed. But now I looked at it with different eyes. I was looking at it through the eyes of a human being. My mind and my consciousness had changed after learning about the infinite number of lives they had lived.

    Now I realise that Father was wrong, and no matter what, this world deserves a future. Even if it's still not perfect. That they are still at the beginning of their mistakes, but despite them, they can still change! The curse of the mind at the beginning of their journey can change from destruction to creation... And the infinity of grief can lead to the realisation of their destiny... And one day they can continue our path, creating new worlds in the Universe!

    Now I knew that my destiny was forever linked to this world. I had already become part of it and could no longer be myself. And just like them, to take the next step, I had to make a sacrifice. I focused on the Creator and asked mentally to disconnect the created world from the source. I asked to complete the creation and let the world decide its own future. So that no one else could choose their own destiny but them!

    I was not afraid of the sacrifice I was making for them. I knew that I had been created to create life. And to preserve it here, in this world, was my most important purpose.

    And now, in every particle of this world, in every living thing, there will be a part of me besides a part of my Father. And when their souls return to my Father, I will be able to ask him to forgive them for their sins. For they deserve to live. And I want to live their lives with them and try to give them hope. Try to remind them of their real purpose!

***

    He went inside and saw his son lying in the light of the Creator. The father took the lifeless body in his arms and held it close to him. The child's fingers loosened and the blue sphere rolled out of his hands. It was now just a reminder of the world once created here called Earth. A world that had set off on its own across the universe.

    He sacrificed himself for humanity, giving his life for all their present and future lives...

    The father closed his son's eyes, knowing that now, the world he had created was a new home for his essence... He cradled him one last time with the hope that his sacrifice would not be in vain and that people could realise that life is more important than death!

    ‘You have realised everything and now you are ready,’ he whispered in the child's ear.... So late in answering his question about what he needed to do to start creating worlds himself...

***

    Creators don't die. They simply become part of each of us. And whether we are worthy of this sacrifice or not and what we will say when we meet them again, we will all find out at some point...!

    p.s. Legends say that mankind exists only because he sacrificed himself for us..... So maybe it's true?

    But if this sacrifice is not in vain, so why are we still killing each other and bearing so much grief? Will we never be able to justify his faith in us?
_

® Anatoly Kavun All text of the story is author's. Copyright officially registered.

p.s. The text posted on the resource is a version for the Internet edition.

There is also a more detailed version for print publishers.