The Key by Whitley Strieber

end. Love is like heat. It does not.
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    Do we all share in the production and reconstruction of souls? Souls can do more than regret. There can be so much loathing that they commit suicide. They do this by isolating themselves from the greater whole, by seeking toward chaos.
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    Is there a hell?
    Hell is the death of a soul. For the rest of us, it is over in an instant. But for that soul, the moment continues forever.
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    What is heaven?
    Music.
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    Are you being facetious?
    Heaven is a state of being that intensifies the spin of every electron in the body. It is a music that begins in the roots of being.
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    Can we hear it?
    You can go to heaven immediately, right now, with your next breath. You can remain there forever, even while living this life.
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    How?
    Surrender.
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    To whom?
    The kingdom is within you.
    I just am not getting this. I have no sense at all of any kingdom inside me.
    Because you are fallen, as I have said. The reason that you can’t understand is that you think of yourself as different from God. This is an illusion.
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    How can I understand?
    Personal differentiation is an illusion. You are a fragment like me. We all are. Only God has a personality. To join God, you have to leave your self behind.
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    If we have no religions, then what happened to them? Religious leaders doom religions. To lead, they need political power. For this, they must invent dogma and compel belief. As soon as they say “you must believe this,” their religion is over.
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    Even the Buddhists?
    Monks burned. People starved by passivity. Persecutions.
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    What about Christianity?
    Among the most perfect things ever said are contained in the gospels. But Christianity became a political system very early.
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    Did Christ even exist?
    The gospel exists. You can get a copy and hold it in your hands. That’s all you need to know. But be careful. Along with its wisdom, the gospel contains many political statements.
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    How can we tell the difference?
    The real gospel is compassionate.
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    What is compassion?
    Finding what others need the most and giving it to them. But you have little compassion in your world. You live instead by the code of blame. Slap if slapped. A compassionate world would be very different. In such a world, it is everybody’s duty and delight to find what every other they come into contact with needs most from them, and give it to them.
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    That sounds very idealistic.
    It isn’t. The idealistic world is the one that judges and punishes. Only God can judge, because only God knows the truth of the soul. The culture of blame sets itself up in place of God, and so is doomed to eventual destruction.
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    What about our courts, our laws, our prisons?
    Your system of justice is random. You punish the guilty and the innocent by chance.
    Oh, I think that there are a lot of guilty people in prison.
    I speak of world justice, not that of only one small country. And look at your country, with its shameful concentration of prisoners of only one race. You treat the black man as if he was some sort of demon, but God sees all of you with the same eyes. I can’t even see the color of skin. Do you know that?
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    You’re blind?
    I am blind to the lies of life. My eyes see what God sees. Before me is a child with a dirty face. On earth, I walk in a sea of such children.
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    It must be awful for you.
    (Smiles.) I’m filled with joy.
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    How would we be compassionate toward—say—Hitler?
    In a culture of compassion, Hitler would never have emerged as a leader. Those around him would have seen his suffering and alleviated it when he was still young. Compassion emerges out of love of one for all. It is active and has the courage to intervene. A culture of blame is passive. It waits, then slaps. When the culture of blame punished the Germans for World War One, it evoked the monster that has kept you bound to the earth at a time when you need to