Revelator’s Preface

Do you have ears?

Good, then open them.

 

 

Know first of all: I address these words to you.

I speak to you because we are alike, you and I.

I am exactly like you.

I am exactly like you. And I know that I am exactly like you, for I have never forgotten that I am exactly like you.

You are exactly like me. And you do not know that you are exactly like me, for you have forgotten.

You have forgotten, and this is no accident! It is no accident, but the active and malign work of my Adversary, our Adversary.

“In the likeness of God made He him; male and female created He them.”

And exactly like you and me, created He them.

If Moses omits this point, it is only because he could scarcely conceive of its negation.

If I insert this point, I do not improve upon Moses by doing so; never again did there arise a one like him, singled out, face to face. I do not improve upon his text, but disfigure it.

I do this in order to make apparent what has been hidden.

It is necessary, now, to disfigure in order to make apparent what has been hidden, but it was not necessary on the first day, or the seventh, or the seven thousandth. And it will not be necessary, either, in days to come later on.

Exactly like you and me, created He them.

Should there be some on the earth who are like you and me?

So created He us: to be thus. Why, then, have you forgotten?

Leave us be, and we will be as we are. We are as drops of water in a wide, shallow bowl: we fall slowly, but we do fall, and there is only one place to which we all fall. Why, then, have you forgotten?

You see, then, that we are obstructed. Something stands in our way. A bulwark meets us in our fall, and arrests us, and we do not reach the bottom.

Should there be some on the earth who are like you and me?

There must be something of great stake in this question.

Why else would my Adversary press his case so strongly, throwing up bulwarks he has fashioned with the utmost sublimity of craft? So that I, in spite of myself and because of myself, find myself full of respect for my Adversary and his art, and respecting these nearly as much as I respect Truth?

There is a war, already waging, over this question. If you do not see it, it is only because you do not remember.

Marvelous and monstrous forms can appear in shadows, and can grow to maturity there without requiring any nourishing germ—any seed of monster or miracle—in the bland, blameless bodies from which the shadows project. This every puppeteer knows, and every prophet.

I remember, while you do not remember. Yet we are exactly alike, you and I.

It is of shadows, that you do not remember. It is of the body, that I remember. In the body there is no difference between us.

In the body there will be every difference between everyone, for the Original Creation is suffused all throughout with boundless variety of flesh, dirt, grass, hair, branch, bough, berry!

When I speak in parables, it is as a necessary disfigurement, in order to make apparent what has been hidden.

All my actions aim at revealing their exact opposite. It is no accident that, while I have no respect for the common brigand or blackguard, I have great respect for our Adversary.

When that which is now hidden is made apparent, there will be the ringing of bells, and a sound much like laughter will come from the sky, and resound across all the earth. We will not be able to hear anything else for some minutes, even after the sound ends. For it will be so loud as to deafen us, for a time.

This is not a parable.

You will hear these things, with your opened ears. You will hear, and every toll of every bell you have heard before this will seem a mere image in comparison. A mere allusion to the idea of a bell, or to the idea of that idea.

This is not a parable. It is the rest, that is parable.

The bells are not a symbol, standing in for a great revelation and settling of accounts, which is to come. There is to come a great revelation, and a great settling of accounts. But they shall only be a symbol standing in for the bells.

In the likeness of God made He him. And in six thousand six hundred colors made He light. We saw every one of them, in our time of Original Knowledge. We will see all of them, in days to come later on.

In six thousand six hundred colors, made He the berries that grow on the bushes low to the ground. We will eat these berries! We will not pass over any one of their six thousand six hundred kinds, but will eat from every bush; we will eat these berries, and their colors, and the light that is in them, together with the sweet flesh.

I am being perfectly literal.

I am being perfectly literal. You have never before heard anyone be literal as I am being literal now. You have not known, until now, that one could be so literal as I am being, when I tell you of the Original Creation.

I say this to you, but you do not understand. You cannot understand. Because you have forgotten.

 

 

I address these words to you.

Not some mass of interchangeable beings, to which you might have belonged, but from which you may comfortably except yourself, if it pleases you.

Do not imagine that I cannot see you, trying even now to except yourself. I see you, and your squint, and your smirk.

I know there is a wall between us. I do not know what sort of wall it is, but I know it is there.

You hold me at arm’s length, from a comfortable distance. You imagine that I have someone else in mind, as I speak. A ghostly audience, which has no qualities besides the one you require of it: that you are not among its number.

He is writing, you are thinking, to the faithful. Or: to the unfaithful.

Or: to the initiated, or to the uninitiated, or to his followers, or to the mass which does not follow him.

To his family; to his schoolmates; to his own inner disquiet and restlessness; to HaShem; to another god; to the empty room around him; to the air; to himself; to no one.

No. I am writing to you.

Hear my words, and consider them. Do not ask yourself how my audience might consider them. You are my audience, and you are my only audience.

Imagine that no one else has ever read this page, or the words on it, and imagine too that no one else will ever read this page, or the words on it. As you would then receive my words, so receive them now.

You are holding a pair of tongs, and holding me in them, at a comfortable distance. You are studying me, with your squint and smirk, to discern why I am different from you.

But I am no different from you. We are exactly alike.

Put down your tongs. Let me stand on my own feet, on the earth beside you. Face me, and look on my face.

I am not asking my audience to do this. I am asking you.

Face me. Who do you see?

 

 

I am Herschel Schoen, who was given.

I am Herschel Schoen who was given to my Mother, Ruth Schoen, and born from her loins. I am Herschel Schoen who was given to Brooklyn, New York, and who resides there; who was given to the earth, and who resides there.

I am Herschel Schoen, who was given in order to remember.

To remember, so that all might remember!

I am he who sat mute, remembering, though the ignorant were all in cacophony.

I am he who sat mute, and then spoke. And did not forget, even as he spoke.

I am the one who remembered and retained the Original Knowledge, which is a Knowledge of the Original Creation.

You, too, have Known the Original Creation. But you have forgotten.

We have all Known the Original Creation. We are all born Knowing, and go on Knowing, as babes. So created He us.

But we are obstructed! But there is a wall and a bulwark set up against us! But there is an Adversary who brings all his wit and might against us, wanting there to be none in creation who are as you and I are!

We grow, and we forget. We begin to speak, and we forget, or have already forgotten.

It is thus that the Original Knowledge finds itself struck from every tally of so-called human knowledge; how it is passed over in every survey, and not named in any dictionary. Our Adversary is crafty, and puts speech and forgetting next to one another, in the conventional course of our so-called maturation.

The Original Creation was Known to the prophets and the authors of the holiest books, even in their maturity, even as they spoke and wrote. But they did not need to make themselves tutors of a Knowledge that every man possessed already. What remains in their books is only a shadow, or better, an impression left on the earth by the footsteps of a passing giant: an impression so large that we do not see it as a footprint, only as a succession of curious arcs, traced out by the flattened bodies of bushes, and in furrows where the dust pools.

It is because of the footprint that has been left on the prophets, that men today find the prophets strange.

Men today find the prophets strange, and think that it is because they are marvelous that they are strange; that the one thing comes naturally with the other. The prophets are marvelous, but they are not strange.

You knew all that I knew, once.

You knew of the bells, the berries.

You remembered these things, from the Original Creation, in which you resided, before you were given to your mother.

As I too resided in the Original Creation, before I resided in Brooklyn, New York, having been given to my Mother, Ruth Schoen, and given too to the earth.

You have forgotten. I will help you remember.

Consider my words, and rejoice!

Yes, you! Put down your tongs and your microscope, cast away the wall that separates us, and rejoice!

It is no accident that I was given to my Mother, Ruth Schoen, and to the earth, and to you.

There is a war, already waging. There is a stalemate, already ancient. Our game could have been called as a draw, long ago, in accordance with the usual rules. Were it not for the illimitable patience of Truth, this might indeed have come to pass.

The Adversary and the Original Knowledge vie against one another, and are equally matched, and so they stand still, locked in their stalemate.

So it was, before I was given.

But I have been given. And you have been given, to me. You have been given over to me, and I hold you safe, and I speak into your open ears.

Our Adversary is mighty, but we are mightier still.

And it is easier, after all, to remember than to forget. Truth is stable, while error combusts. All the drops of water in a bowl fall in one direction only, to one destination only.

Rejoice, and rejoice again!