Doris Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell

“Each individual of this species is locked up inside his own skull, his own personal experience — or believes that he is, and while a great part of their ethical systems, religious systems, etc., state the Unity of Life, even the most recent religion, which, being the most recent is the most powerful, called Science, has only very fitful and inadequate gleams of insight into the fact that life is One. In fact, the distinguishing feature of this new religion, and why it has proved so inadequate, is its insistence on dividing off, compartmenting, pigeon-holing, and one of the most lamentable of these symptoms is its suspicion of, and clumsiness with, words.” Here he smiled again, winningly enough. A few laughed.

“To sum up these few remarks: our task, that of the Permanent Staff, is always to inculcate and maintain a truth to which these creatures are so far able only to pay lip service, a phrase of theirs which is their way of summing up their most powerful defect, the inability to see things except as facets and one at a time. The truth is that We — speaking of course in our roles as delegates and deputies—” and here the all-pervading Light brightened for a moment, as it were in acknowledgement of their stewardship—“We can only tolerate them insofar as they obey instructions, manage their affairs, their communal life, in such a way as to adjust to the System’s needs. But they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again and again, and this is because of another and most powerful feature of their thinking, which is that anything they are told is distorted to fit their own particular personal or group bias and then added, like another pebble to the pile of the half-truths they already cherish. So that we confidently expect — or could have expected in the past, before this present great (forgive me for another lapse into the literary) leap forward, under the influence of the Solar Wind of Change—” and here the Light brightened and, as it were, smiled—“that anything we have to say will be retained in its pure form for only a short time and by a few people, because in the nature of things, or rather, it is in their nature, this simple fact — human duty as part of the Harmony — will be off running like a mad dog, will be twisted out of itself, will have become the property of a hundred warring sects, each claiming that their version, which they have concocted, is correct. But that time is past, or nearly so. An ability to see things as they are, in their multifarious relations — in other words, Truth — will be part of humanity’s new, soon-to-be-developed equipment. Thanks of course, not to Us, but to …”

The Light deepened a chord, and held it. Everyone showed that he or she was conscious, with Merk Ury, that the main point, the central issue, had been reached. There was a general brightening and steadying of their individual atmospheres, forcefields or auras.

“As everyone here knows, has had drummed into him or her from the moment he or she volunteered — it is not at all a question of descending into that Poisonous Hell and remaining unaffected. Every one of us takes his life in his hands. For these creatures are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight difference in skin colour or appearance. Also they cannot tolerate those who do not think as they do. Although they know perfectly well, theoretically, that the surface of the inhabited globe is divided into thousands of areas, each with its system of religious or scientific belief, and although they know that it is entirely by chance that any individual among them was born into this or that area, this or that area of belief, this theoretical knowledge does not prevent them from hating foreigners in their own particular small area, and if not harming them, isolating them in every way possible. This means, that unless we can perfect our own adaptation to them, they will attack us, the Team’s members. This we must expect. Further, we must expect that the colonies on Earth that are the result of previous Descents will have acquired — or many of them will — these same qualities of separativeness, and unharmony and hostility to others. Or, retaining in that poisonous brew they call air only the memory that they should not allow themselves to be affected, they devote all their energies to elaborate systems whose function was once to keep them sane, but which now have become their own justification.

“Now, as you know, this will not be my first Descent.”

Here, again, many glances were exchanged. This time for mutual comfort and support. For not one of those present were unaware of the dramatic histories of some of the previous Descents. Or rather of those which were documented — for most were not, since they had been designed to remain unknown to the inhabitants of Earth. But throughout the Solar System, tales of the various Descents were told and retold — as fables, as far as most people were concerned. But to the few who knew they were literally true, they were grim enough hearing. For the first Law enjoined on them all, the children of the System, by their Father, was to love one another — that is, to respect the laws of Harmony. And yet so very close to them, their neighbour, strand of their strand, pulse of their pulse, energy of their energy, was Earth, whose inhabitants not only did not respect the Law, but who tended to persecute or kill, if they did not ignore, Those who came to remind them of it. And such a backsliding and a falling-away on the part of close neighbours tended to make them uncertain of their own continuing safety and health of mind — for after all, every one knew perfectly well that accidents could happen anywhere, that the planetary housekeeping and estate managing was, and had to be, subsidiary to a structure of Law much greater than that of the Solar System. In short — they, too, could become victims; there but for the grace of Light, went they.

Merk continued: “When the time comes, it will be our task to wake up those of us who have forgotten what they went for; as well as to recruit suitable inhabitants of Earth — those, that is, who have kept a potential for evolving into rational beings; and to generally strengthen and defend our colonies on Earth for their task. That has always been so, of course. But this time it will be all that and more — it will be an assisting of the Earth’s people through the coming Planetary Emergency in which all life may be lost. But we have already dealt with that earlier in the Conference.

“At the risk of boring you, I must repeat, I am afraid — repeat, reiterate, re-emphasise — it is not at all a question of your arriving on Planet Earth as you leave here. You will lose nearly all memory of your past existence. You will each of you come to yourselves, perhaps alone, perhaps in the company of each other, but with only a vague feeling of recognition, and probably disassociated, disorientated, ill, discouraged, and unable to believe, when you are told what your task really is. You will wake up, as it were, but there will be a period while you are waking which will be like the recovery from an illness, or like the emergence into good air from a poisoned one. Some of you may choose not to wake, for the waking will be so painful, and the knowledge of your condition and Earth’s condition so agonising, you will be like drug addicts: you may prefer to continue to breathe in oblivion. And when you have understood that you are in the process of awakening, that you have something to get done, you will have absorbed enough of the characteristics of Earthmen to be distrustful, surly, grudging, suspicious. You will be like a drowning person who drowns his rescuer, so violently will you struggle in your panic terror.