James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

No, I wasn’t, though I did care a great deal about your family and its well-being, as I do about all of the families who belong to the synagogue.

Tell me what’s happening to me.

Only you can know, Ben, and at some point, if not already, you either will or you won’t, and you will either be, or you will not be.

I’m not ten or twelve years old anymore, Rabbi Schiff. Tell me what’s happening to me.

You need to tell me what’s happening to you, Ben, and if I can inform you or help you in any way, I will certainly do so.

He sat perfectly still, and stared at me in a way that felt very soft, and very gentle, almost quiet, if it is possible to stare quietly. I felt he was somehow looking into me, to see or learn my intentions. He took a deep breath, but only through his nose, which gave me the last piece of information I believed I needed, and then he exhaled, and then he spoke, spoke the words I had been waiting for thirty years to hear from him, he spoke.

I think God is speaking to me.

And even though I didn’t want to do it, and tried to resist doing so, I smiled, perhaps as wide and true a smile as has ever appeared in my life.

I have always believed this day would come.

I feel like I’m crazy, and I need to know why this is happening.

First, tell me what he is saying.

God is not a man.

A woman?

No. God is not man or woman. Something beyond that, beyond our humanity, our notions of male and female.

If not a man or a woman, what does God sound like?

It’s not some silly voice from above, like it is in the books of the Bible or in the movies, or like it is when delusional religious fanatics talk about it. It’s not even a voice at all. It’s just this presence, this feeling, this state where I learn things, where I’m shown things, where I see things.

What?

When I was in the coma, I was conscious. Not conscious like I am now, but definitely aware, definitely awake in a way. It was this state where sometimes there was silence and blackness, this infinite blackness, but other times I would see and hear and understand things I shouldn’t.

It was beyond individuality, or identity. I wasn’t Ben, not Ben Zion Avrohom or Ben Jones, or a man or a human being in any way, I was just part of this greater thing, or place, or force, or energy. I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to see you.

I’m hesitant to comment, because this doesn’t sound like God as I know or understand God.

This sounds like something that might be organic to your injuries, which I don’t know the specifics of, but were obviously rather traumatic and related to your brain.

He smiled at me, pointed to a copy of the New Testament sitting on a small table next to his bed.

Pick up that book.

I reached over and I picked it up.

Open it.

Where?

Wherever.

I opened the book.

Put your finger down, and tell me the chapter and verse.

I followed his instructions.

Luke 12:5.

But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into Hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

You’ve been studying it, with your brother, perhaps?

Never read it. Never even held a copy of it. I can do the same thing with the Old Testament, with the Mishnah and Gemara, and the commentaries in the Babylonian Talmud. I know, by date, every day of all twelve cycles of the Daf Yomi, from today backwards to the day it started.

And you knew all of this when you woke up?

Some of it. The rest has come with the seizures. Every time I have one I know more.

You’re going to have to excuse me, Ben, but this is my first time seeing you in many years, and I’m not familiar with everything about you anymore. What type of seizures are you having?

The doctors think it’s some type of epilepsy. They’re giving me CT scans, MRIs, all sorts of tests. I don’t know what I should tell them, if anything, but what happens is that I feel them coming, I know a few minutes before. It’s this heavy calm that very gradually covers me. It feels like someone is pouring water very slowly over my body. And when I’m covered, I have this moment, just a brief, brief moment, an instant, where I feel everything, see everything, know and understand everything, and where the world, or the universe, or whatever we are and are a part of, feels perfect, and I feel perfect within it. The only thing it’s like is having an orgasm, but this is a thousand times more intense, and it’s beyond just the physical. It’s like a giant, unreal orgasm where all the knowledge and wisdom there ever was and ever will be is mine, but only for that instant. And then the seizure hits. And I feel everything in the seizure, and the pain of it is unreal, and as beautiful as the moment before is, the seizure is its horrific complement, its terrible companion. Somewhere near the end, everything goes black. And when I wake up, I know more, like I’ve kept some of what I saw or felt or knew.

I imagine you have capable physicians caring for you. What do they say about this phenomenon?

I haven’t told them. Just you and Jacob.

Perhaps you should.

They’ll tell me I’m crazy.

I could speak to them for you. My position as a rabbi might lend some credibility to what you’re saying.

Words of God mean nothing in the face of science.

I would disagree with you on that point, Ben.

Can your words of God cure cancer? Or AIDS ?

Can your words of God save a dying child?

Some people believe they can.

They’re delusional fools.

And if that is so, what are you, who is hearing the words of God?

I might be a delusional fool as well.

The door opened and a doctor came into the room, followed by Jacob and his companion, the young man with the Bible. I stood and decided it was best for me to depart, with the hope that I would be able to return sometime in the near future. I said goodbye to Ben, and remarked that I would like to see him again. Jacob objected, but Ben said he would like me to come back, the next day if possible. Jacob said his fellow pastors from the church were coming the next day, and Ben said he would like me to be there with them. Jacob said absolutely not, and Ben leaned back onto the bed and closed his eyes and asked the doctor to begin doing whatever it was he needed to do.

I left the hospital and started heading home, taking the subway, as I usually did when I moved about New York, and especially when I was outside of the borough of Brooklyn. As I rode the train, I thought about Ben, who, while clearly the same person, hardly resembled, physically, emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise, the child and young man I had known and tutored for so many years. He was, I believed, or had been since the moment I heard of his conception, the type of individual that came along, depending on one’s theological position, once in a generation, once in a lifetime, once in a millennium, or just once, once over the course of all of mankind’s existence. The signs had led me to this belief, and while some of them were open to interpretation, some were absolutely not, and I had never questioned the signs, for I had no reason to question them. This Ben, though, this new man, this new incarnation of a person I had not seen for so many years, and who refused to discuss what he had done or where he had been for all of those years, brought up a number of questions for me, and certain things about him, including the extensive knowledge, gained, he said, during a coma, of a book not recognized as valid by my religious authority, conflicted with some of the signs I believed would confirm his identity. I had had tremendous expectations going into my meeting with him, some of which I should have certainly tempered. I knew his brother harbored great resentments towards me, which he had extended out to include all Jews, and Judaism as a religion, despite what I was told were his new beliefs regarding God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, the End Times, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and Israel’s required existence for those events to come to pass. I wondered if this wasn’t some elaborate trick that would result in Jacob exacting some form of sad, unnecessary, and ultimately misguided revenge upon me, and if Ben hadn’t been convinced to play along in order to regain his brother’s, and thus his mother’s and his sister’s, favor. On the other hand, something about him did seem otherworldly, divine. His scars and his skin and his eyes, which were remarkable, and the fact that he had survived such massive trauma, it all supported my initial reaction, and I had no real reason to doubt what he was telling me, as it was, and still is, my inclination to take someone’s word as truth until I have reason not to. And that moment, just before he told me that he believed he might be speaking to God, when he took a deep breath, and the way in which he took that breath, was indicative of something astounding, and unless he had somehow gained knowledge that only I or another rabbi could have passed to him, he would not have known it would mean anything to me.