by Stephen Biro
Sitting behind the desk, the young me screams, “Shut the fuck up!” The words are aimed at two beings not in the room.
I explain things in the kitchen.
“Most people would have killed themselves by now. I’m really going nuts behind that desk, arguing with both of them. I don’t know if the voices were actually myself, or if I am possessed by the Holy Spirit and the Unholy Spirit at the same time. I could have easily split my personality with what I was doing. So I was trying to cope, to learn and to figure it out. Maybe it was a puzzle? Maybe I was just insane or became a schizophrenic. I was experiencing what some schizophrenics have been said to experience so maybe I went mad during all of this. Let’s just say, this moment in my life, I was utterly and hopelessly insane.
Sitting behind the desk, I continue screaming, “How am I supposed to do anything if you’re constantly talking to me! Stop fucking with me!”
As we stand in the kitchen, I open the refrigerator, looking for something to eat. It’s pretty barren as the empty cold box stares back at me.
“Oops, I forgot. I never kept much in the refrigerator.”
I close the door and lean against the nearest wall. It’s easy to find, as the small kitchen is two feet wide by eight foot long.
“Today was the day my mind split,” I tell you. “Freud brought up the whole Id and Superego analysis. I didn’t really know anything about it at the time; all I knew was that I was thirty years old and felt insane. I came across a lot of religious websites that day. They explained possession by the Devil but not by God.”
“I also tried looking for scientific answers. I began to look up psychology. Although it was growing exponentially, the Internet was still in its infancy at that time. But I did manage to look up Freud and his ideas on the Id and the Superego.”
*
During the next week, I argued and fought with my screaming Devil side, as it tried talking me into killing or into killing myself. It made me feel horrible. Meanwhile, my good side stayed mostly quiet and never lifted its voice beyond a whisper for support.
Both sides rooted for me to choose a side and to either better my life or destroy it. I searched the web but never found anyone who experienced such a dramatic splitting of the mind. I was probably looking for the type of account that you’re reading in this book now.
I had either created a dialogue with God and the Devil with no way to shut down the communication, or my personality split into the Id and the Superego, my higher moral self and my base instinct.
But here’s a puzzler about the Freud approach. If my so-called Devil side was the Id, why was it harping on killing myself or killing others? Why was it calling me names? Why was it trying to destroy me from the inside out? There was no pleasure in any of this. If this was the Id, it should want me to seek pure selfish pleasure.
This wasn’t my pleasure principal coming to life. This was something more devious, more chaotic than I could understand. My mind continued to fight and my spirit was desperately trying to stay alive. I searched for everything I could find on the subject; otherwise, I was going to end up in a rubber room with a nice new straight jacket for my fall fashions, but for my winter fashions as well.
Before this, my consciousness had been alone with my memories and knowledge. I had chugged though life, alone in my mind, doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
My unconscious mind burst out of me, and all my fears, selfish desires and immoral wishes became a distinct and separate reality. At the same time, my morals became higher and even all encompassing, taking over my personality. I could see myself being the best I could be, while a part of me wanted to be at my lowest. The true shame was my Demons were a hell of a lot stronger than my Angels.
Let me tell you a little of what I learned and made my own. Here it goes:
The Id and the Superego are more scientific ways of considering the Devil and God, or personal angels and demons. Science has turned the relationship between God, the Devil, and you into a viewpoint for all to understand without the framework of religious belief to sidetrack the layperson into another whole realm of thinking.
The Id is directed into the most primitive, basic desires; lust, greed, envy, pride, sloth, wrath, gluttony and even death. The Superego guides you towards chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, humility and even life.
Freud was just trying to map the human mind but instead came across something inside many of us that hadn’t been documented before. I say “many of us” because some people don’t seem to have a conscience and have committed the world’s greatest horrors and atrocities. To commit murder, torture, rape, or genocide is pure Id and the Devil. Every aspect of every situation that is wrong comes from either of those two places.
Science and psychology were not looking to verify religious notions. But they did. They weren’t trying to verify the war between God and the Devil but again, they did. Freud was just trying to make us all better. He was trying to figure out the happening in our mind. He was charting previously unknown territory, and he found a bigger continent within us all that he never could have fathomed. If you think about it, it has made us better and will continue to do so.
Yes, he was wrong about a lot of things. He was doing coke and talking to himself a mile a minute. But look what he accomplished.
THE QUEST BEGINS WITH A STEP THROUGH THE LEVEL OF ATROCITY
Now before we get ahead of ourselves, as I want to, I need to say I am relating exactly what happened when it happened. I’m not including here the insights I learned ten years later. I am telling you what I was thinking as it was unfolding. I’ve learned a lot more since then, and it will come later. A baby has to crawl before it can walk, and at this time, I was a baby. This was just the beginning of reasoning and understanding.
I understand how crazy this sounds at times, and my journey might even be called sacrilegious by certain sects. But my heart was on one simple track, and that was to find God.
Again, my personal demons were stronger then my personal angels. At the time, they were God and the Devil—they even called themselves that. And it was even more confusing: while the thoughts from God always seemed like they were from Him, the thoughts from the Devil pretended as if they were my own. I was exhausted by the internal combat I faced in every waking moment.
I was trying to hang out with friends or family, but the battle inside my head was killing me inside. Every minute was excruciating, as I didn’t even know if my thoughts were my own. And I had to keep it to myself. If I stood up in a restaurant and began to fight with myself, I’d be locked away as a mental case. I’ve seen the homeless walk around, arguing with themselves. I now understand where they are coming from.
In fact, they could even be exactly where I was: stuck there and not being able move ahead in life because they didn’t understand what was going on in their heads. We don’t teach metaphysics in school so Average Joe has no clue if he comes across this sort of actuality.
So I bided my time until I was alone. Then I would argue with myself. I’d talk to God and yell at the Devil. If I hadn’t been working from home, recording video tapes for people as my business, I wouldn’t have been able to go insane and still make a living if that’s what we call it. Imagine if that’s the problem of most of the psychiatric patients in the world. Imagine if people are actually taking to entities and God and other beings beyond.
Let’s imagine these entities are masquerading as the people that they are terrorizing in their own head?
Now… let’s imagine that they would tell you, you’re somebody else.
Now, let’s imagine that they would tell you about germs, bugs, communism, terrorism, depression, danger, murder, rape, death, kill, kill… kill!
How can anyone live his or her life in a loop?
What I mean by a loop is: a strong, subconscious idea that circles around every real idea or thought, no matter if it’s good or bad. Slowly squeezing the life out of it and replacing it as the original i
dea. Yes, this is an understanding of our mind that I have understood. I see it every day and in everyone I see. It gets worse as we get older, a lot worse
I pray none of you have to go through this. I’ve read that this usually happens in the teenage years and earlier. The younger the mind, the easier the split is between the Id and the Superego. The older the mind, the more set it is in its ways; it doesn’t want to change.
Perhaps not coincidentally, in The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo, “There is a rule that we do not free a mind once it reaches a certain age. It is dangerous. They have trouble letting go. Their mind turns against them. I’ve seen it happen.”
As for me, my internal volume was turned up really high—as loud as my own voice—drowning out everything around me, and sometimes that was the problem. It’d been a week of pure schizophrenic chaos for me. I couldn’t concentrate or focus because the voices were just so fucking loud.
Then one night came and I made a decision to open all of the doors in one night. I knew I would go further than I ever had before. I was ready to die to truly find God and I wasn’t going to stop. I already made myself insane so what more could happen?
I had a hundred count sheet of acid that only had twenty hits left. I went and bought five boxes of Whip Its and a bunch of punch balloons. I visited the laser disc store and bought a copy of The End of Days because I knew the Rob Zombie video Superbeast was on it that I’d watched the first time I met that entity. I suspected the hallucinogenic visuals would open up a hypnotic state within myself if I repeated it long enough.
My God side was telling me I was the one, that I would become famous and help millions of people. My Devil side… you already knew what he was saying, so I ate eight hits of acid and set up a lot of balloons and began my search for God. I popped in the laserdisc and made myself comfortable. I have always heard that if you ask, doors will be opened for you. I slowly opened the biggest door of my life.
*
We find ourselves thrust into a vortex of light and sound. We both fall upwards towards the darkness, which envelops our minds as shards of reality splinter all around us. We begin to see humans, but at first, they are more primitive than ourselves. We then witness a frightening montage of orgiastic violence:
* An early man held a tree branch. He lifted it high and brought it down onto another’s head, cracking open the skull while brains splattered everywhere.
* Two Israelites grabbed another in a dark alley. The third man had his body slit from throat to spine with a blunt knife. Blood squirted everywhere as he slumped to the ground. The other two rifled through his pockets as he died.
* In a Roman coliseum, several people were tied to stakes. Lions were circling them as one lunged and sank its teeth into a victim’s neck. The lion shreds his flesh off his body.
* Ancient armies were clashing together. Swords were waving in the air when they weren’t hacking off limbs or being thrust into bodies.
* A man in a loincloth was tied to the ground while being ripped apart by vultures. One of the birds buried its beak into his eye socket and pulled out the eyeball, trying to swallow it whole.
* A man was being ritually castrated in a ceremony for the good of royalty. Another was sacrificing his son in an ancient ceremony to Baal. Another man was being impaled with a huge stake and lifted up in front of a town. His screams bellowed out as each movement slid the stake deeper inside of him.
* A woman whose face was filled with pustules was ripping out her eyes in a desperate attempt to no longer see.
* Two men were dueling with swords when one swiped at the other’s stomach. His intestines slipped out of his body as he attempted desperately to hold them in.
* Waves of European soldiers attacked each other as cannonballs ripped into the legions of men. Body upon body lay in all manner of decomposition, disease and mortification.
* Slaves were split from neck to crotch while still alive. Their guts were pulled out in an array of gore and blood.
* A woman was being tied to the ground as ants ate her alive for committing adultery. Another was in seizures from a snakebite as the poison ran through her veins.
* A man was strapped in a guillotine and the executioner pulled the lever. The blade came down, chopping off his head. The crowd screamed with delight as the executioner lifted the dismembered head to the audience, hoping the facial features were still moving.
* A man and a woman were tied to a stake and burned alive while the surrounding people screamed “Witch!”
* Several people were in a dungeon as priests were torturing them, trying to make them confess. A tongue was ripped out, a back was broken. A woman was slammed on the rack. The screams of the innocent wailed as the chuckles of the damned echoed in the damp room.
* Infantrymen shot and stabbed anyone in a different uniform. Bombs dropped on innocent families. Mortars ripped into buildings, devastating and destroying men, women and children in a disgusting display of force. A tank ran over a soldier, cutting him in half. Ships sunk, dragging men to the bottom and drowning them as they pushed and clawed the people in the way of the doors.
* Massive graves of Chinese were set ablaze as the dead were lined up for over a mile from the invading army’s front line. More people lined up in showers as poisonous gas flooded out of shower nozzles. Others were being used as experiments. Pressurized chambers, rape, torture, amputation and slow agonizing death were the fate of some. Hunger and disease took the rest. People were lined up, front to back, as guns were fired to see how far bullets would go. Teeth were pulled while charting the excruciating pain factor. People were being boiled alive, frozen and stripped of their skin.
* Japanese citizens were staring at the sky as the high-pitched wail of an atomic bomb whistled its way to the ground. The explosion melted the eyes of everyone in a mile radius as their skin bubbled and burst into flames. Some were disintegrated immediately while others, farther away, were thrust into brick walls with shrapnel.
* Men butchered mothers and their children for being in the wrong village at the wrong time. Others were trying to commit genocide as wave after wave of teenagers, wearing a couple of pieces of militia insignia, were trying to cleanse the world of another race. Hands were cut off for stealing. Eyes were gouged out for looking at royalty. Heads were hacked off with swords. Scalps were taken with glee while whole villages were hacked and shot to death for land or food.
* Men stepped on land mines and were forced to play Russian roulette until it became deadly. Women with razor blades in their vaginas seduced soldiers, to slice their cocks apart during sex. Mothers held down daughters, cutting their clits off. Others mutilated themselves for the approval of their elders in the same village. Parents were eating the rotting flesh of their kids to keep their memory alive, while others killed the children of other tribes to eat them for their power.
* Men and children, strapped with bombs, walked into crowded places, setting themselves off in an array of shrapnel and gore that killed everyone in a 25-foot radius.
* Husbands were killing their wives as wives mutilated their husbands in their sleep. Children where hacking their parents to death. Other children were killing their peers as if it were a game. Lonely people were shooting others because they hated themselves, while others were killing people for political motives. The insane were killing others, as the depressed were killing themselves, hanging, slicing, poisoning and shooting just to put a stop to their lives of unredeemable agony.
As the scenes of death and carnage float away from us, I notice I am drooling on myself. I wipe my mouth with my hand and spread it on my jeans. We sit there for a second, stunned.
I turn to you, and your head is in your hands. I hear you faintly sobbing, or is it laughter? I can’t tell, and I think I’m better off not knowing.
“I’m sorry for thrusting you into that,” I say. “I know it’s something you didn’t want to see and if you did, I understand. I’m going to keep you as a normal reader from now on until the time is r
ight.”
You look up and want to say something, but you don’t. I wave my hand slowly in front of your face and your eyes close. You hear me make myself comfortable in my chair as I begin again.
*
I found myself standing up and shaking my fist at the truth of reality that we don’t all see. Violence from the ages flashed before me in an array of atrocity. I was excited, exasperated and totally clueless to what was really going on. Why did I just witness this? Was it to make me more impressionable or more open to what was coming next? Did it open certain synapses in my mind, awakening a section of my brain that I will need later? Was it a warning sign for me to stop? Violence usually makes a person run away. But I knew I couldn’t.
So I set everything up again and I opened another door.
HE COMES AND SHOWS DESPAIR, EXHILARATION, ULTIMATE POWERS AND ISOLATION
I woke up, totally blind. A crushing weight enveloped my body. As my senses came to, I found I was buried or what seemed like it. I couldn’t open my eyes because of the crushing weight. I could only wiggle my body a bit. It felt as if I was trapped under mud or a thick slime. As I moved around, my body created more wiggle room.
I don’t remember breathing, just the struggle to get out. The substance that jailed me began to lift away as my body became more forceful. I could feel the weight ease as my hand broke the surface. I made my way towards the light on the other side.
I broke free! My head lifted out of the muck and into the daylight. My lungs filled with the sweet air of eternity as I pulled myself out of my encasement and onto my carpet. I watched as the slimy prison pulled into itself, slowly dissipating. I stood up, finding a familiar entity dancing around. I stared at him, taking him all in, and indeed it was the angel in the Technicolor dreamcoat disguised as Rob Zombie.
The music pumped as it raised its hands, urging me to look around. I then realized I could see through my apartment walls. I could see my neighbors on every side of me. I could see further too, as all the trees, fences, walls and furniture were then totally invisible to me. Nothing was visible except people, for miles around.
