The Household of God
Volume 2
Rise and spiritual prime of the first world empire Hanoch
- Chapter 127 -
THE INDOLENT ENOS REPUDIATES LIFE AND PRAISES NON-EXISTENCE
These words went like glowing arrows through the heart of Enos and many another person, and he and everyone else began to seriously ponder this question.
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He went back to his former place, but his heart began to be mightily astir. Like fiery meteors, a thousand thoughts and ideas emerged from the depth of his soul and, flashing around in it like lightning, had the same effect on him as when lightning momentarily at nighttime lights up regions of the earth, making them clearly visible for a moment, - but as soon as the lightning has gone the darkness of night is ten times worse than before.
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Despite these light-meteors no permanent light took on form in him, so that our Enos came up with nothing but contradictions; and this because the brief flashes occurred here and there, thus always illumining a different region of the heart so that he continually beheld different ideas within him.
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Having been assailed, like many others, by all the thousands of thoughts and ideas for nearly a whole hour, he finally exclaimed:
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"O repose, you glorious repose, how blissful I always was in your arms! How blissful I must have been when I did not exist, and how much more blissful I would become if I could again revert to complete non-existence!
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"Is man not already happier within the walls of his house when outside there rages a gale than when he is outside in the midst of the uproar of the elements, - and even happier fast asleep, while outside the elements threaten to destroy the earth?
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"What an endless difference there is between me and a stone!
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"I must think or at least dream. I am endowed with indelible perception and consequently with hunger, thirst, heat, cold, night, day, pain and grief. If I deviate only a little from the given order, I am promptly rebuked with more or less menacing words which promptly exact remorse in my heart.
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"If I err frequently, I am always chastised, and that because I must unfortunately have life and therefore perception. O you miserable advantages of life compared to death!
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"You fortunate stone, you are there, firm and strong, without life and perception and without the need for food and drink!
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"You are not assailed by thoughts and ideas. You know of no law save, mutely, that of the most blissful, undisturbed repose. You are forever oblivious to hunger, thirst, heat and cold. Your being devoid of perception feels no knocks and no pain.
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"You do not know grief and sorrow; you do not age; love does not tear your heart apart since you, lucky one, have none.
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"O you most enviable stone, could I be like you, truly, had I thousands of the most perfect lives -, I would give them all for a single atom of your most fortunate being, provided you are really as inert and unfeeling as you seem to be!
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"O great, sublime Creator of all things, now I have a completely different question, the answer to which might surely be more difficult for You than the preceding one.
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"You want to give me life in its fullness so as to give me blessedness? - Oh for the most unfortunate bliss!
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"Rather give me a complete non-existence and you will make me completely blissful!
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"How blind and foolish must be he who praises the always worrisome life happy, which, the more perfect it is, must be all the more worrisome and thus unhappy.
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"Therefore, I shall ask You, You Life of all life, not for life, but always only for the most complete death.
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"For, when I had no existence I was happy; and once I shall again have none, I shall again be happy.
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"O Lord, do keep to Yourself Your fullness of life, this greatest calamity for every being; but to me give the fullness of death, of non-existence, and you will make me truly blissful, indeed forever blissful!
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"Make me into a stone without life and feeling, and I shall through my mute existence praise and glorify You for it forever! Amen."