The other day I had a dream which went like this: I was in a foreign country, and had become friends with a group of young people who was curious about me, being a foreigner. I enjoyed their company, but quickly, my novelty factor was fading out, so I had to try all kinds of things to keep their interest, which is difficult, for I know very litle things which would interest any group of young people, anywhere.

So then, while they were in my room, I decided to show them astral travelling. In the dream, it was a kind of levitation. I arose from the floor, and then soon there was a young man who did it too. Then I tried to show him how to do a loop in the air. But the whole trick was not very interesting to the youngsters, and they were moving out of my room. So then, I decided to fly out of my room, by going through the walls. It seems that within the context of the dream, I was familiar with astral projection, but had never dared to get far from my bed. So then I sort of wooshed towards the ceiling, and my hands went through it, but then I met a resistance. It was caused by the kind of frustration factor which often sets in my dreams. This frustration could be “an overwhelming negative”, in the sense that I would not be able to overcome something unpleasant: I would be writing in an exam, but the papers would keep getting mixed up, or I would try to run away from something , but my legs would collapse. Or it could be “an unreachable positive”, in that I could not go to the end of something pleasant: while undressing a woman, her clothes would become endlessly complicated ! In this case, it was the latter: I felt a pleasant tingling, when my hands went through the wall, but I could not go further.

After a few other episodes, which are of no relevance here, I then received, in my dream, an official-looking letter, which looked like the roughly type-written despatches from police stations , or from a solicitor warning you to appear in court. The letter said that, in the course of my recent attempt at astral travel, my soul had been captured by the super-mutant. When I read this, I intuitively understood that the super-mutant was a sort of cosmically powerful evil creature, which had started as a normal part of the created world, but by the power of its enormous intelligence and powers, had quickly left the physical plane to try to invade the higher realms of creation. The letter suddenly took a mocking tone: it seems this super-mutant had sucked out my soul and that of hundreds of other creatures with absent-minded ease, the way a fat man throws a handful of peanuts in his mouth while looking at television. I felt a great deal of despair at these news – I felt that super-mutant’s gluey arm on me, thought I saw his dead eyes, so much so that, probably realising that I was going a bit too far in this direction, my mind twisted the dream. I remember that it felt a bit as if reality was changing gears, there was a slight suspension of things, then suddenly the letter’s contents had been changed: I would not be a slave of the super-mutant, but my soul had been soiled, or infected by him. The letter detailed the ills which would henceforth afflict me. I remember one, which said: hours of melancholy ( then, filled out over the dotted lines) : 1800-1900. At that time every day, then, he would visit me to give me thoughts of despair. I kept reading the letter, with that low, silly craving I always feel, when going through old-fashioned administrative correspondence, especially when about fines, lawsuits and taxes, to try to find out, somewhere, a relenting line, an understated, or ambiguous phrasing which would tell me, with a wink, that they were letting me off for this time. I guess it comes in the genes , from centuries of poor Indian peasants fawning at soldiers and tax collectors.
Thinking of this dream on the next day, I again felt quite afraid when I remembered the feeling of terror and despair I experienced when I learned that “my soul had been sucked dry by that super-mutant”. Later on, in order to dispel that fear, I started thinking of that idea of the Devil as a “super –mutant”, a freak of creation which has evolved so fast that it has become a threat against God. What a curious idea. I realised that it was the novelty of the idea, its mixture of Darwinism and religion which gave it the frightening, implacable edge which I felt in my dream.

In old days , we had the myth of Lucifer as the fallen angel. Maybe this myth was in fact influenced by aristocratic thought: Lucifer is the treacherous vassal. He is the symbol of evil because to rebel against one’s lord was the greatest possible sin in an aristocratic society. In “The Divine Comedy”, Brutus, Cassius and Judas are in the downmost pit of Hell, being eternally chewed like paan in the mouth of the Devil himself.

In Goethe’s “Faust”, the hero asks Lucifer at one moment who he really is. The Devil replies: “I am older than creation. I am that part of the Primeval Chaos which denies Creation and works against it”. That would mean that the Devil is a part of Chaos which refuses the order imposed by Creation and wants to go back to the ancient disorder. Goethe’s time was one of intellectual ferment, so maybe Goethe was trying to give a fresh look at the idea of Lucifer.

My idea of the “super-mutant” is a child of our times. I guess it comes from the “Terminator” series, in which machines gain consciousness and revolt against humans as well from Lovecraft’s cold monsters. Maybe somewhere on a planet , millions of years ago, a freakish form of life appeared , something unbelievably malicious and powerful. Although its intelligence is phenomenal, yet something about it retains the sluggishness of the lower forms of life, the snail, or the sea cucumber. It is never angry or joyful or sad, but relentlessly analyses the texture of creation and devises new ways to pierce deeper into the core of the universe, to enter the secret chamber in which dwells God. A slimy mould on the veil of Maya. Or maybe a cosmic cancer.

To think of the Devil, and believe in him, is the most primeval religious act: fear of the dark is the father of faith ( if you want to know who’se the mother, read my second novel –if ever it succeeds in finding a publisher) . We believe in the Devil first, then in God. The Devil is God’s hatchet man. God is the white-haired, benevolent CEO, who calls everyone, including the janitors, “my dear collaborators”. He has the vision thing , talks of the company as a great benevolent corporation reinventing the world for the 21st century. The Devil is the glum-faced Managing Director, who keeps a running tag of everyone’s late arrivals and has a trick of looking over your shoulder at your computer screen when you least expected it.

According to the corporate mythology, God founded the company a long long time ago, before any of the employees was born. But where the Devil comes from, why and how God recruited him is the company’s deepest mystery. Some say that the Devil had served time in jail after killing someone while he was working as a gang foreman on the railroads. God took pity on him, employed him as a foreman in his factory… it was not just pity but necessity :those were ugly times, at the beginning of the company, and even God needed a tough man to look after the rough types who worked in his foundries. Others tell similar legends going back to the beginning of the company. They say that the company almost went broke during the Depression, and that in fact the Devil saved it by running a liquor trail across the frozen lakes over to Canada, during the days of Prohibition. Basically, what these stories claim is that it’s not just through sweetness and light that God built the company. There are old, dark secrets at the heart of the whole outfit, they say. Some even whisper that the Devil knows a thing or two about God, and that’s why God lets him have his way, most of the times. Some even go further to say that nowadays it’s the Devil who actually runs the company, God’s hand is slipping, he lets the Devil run most of the show, while he goes golfing.

Others disagree, they say that God’s ways are difficult to fathom, but he sure is in charge. They say that if you’re a honest employee, and stick to the moral values which God has had pasted everywhere on the company’s walls ( it’s called “The Ten Commandments”) then the Devil can’t do you anything. Sure, he’ll try to tempt you, make you go out of the straight and narrow path, so that he can fire you , but God will not let him have his way if you’re a good employee ( they say the Devil hates everyone in the company, because he wants to replace everyone with his cousins and nephews, called the demons. Others say that he tries to get everyone fired so that he can then re- recruit you in a secret rival outfit which he’s running, called “Hell” where you work long hours, almost like a slave).

The oldest and most elaborate theory made up by those who believe that it’s God who’se in charge is that God employs the Devil as the Tempter: If you resist the Devil’s lures – and they are many: he sends porn to your email, it’s called “Lust”, he offers fatty foods at the cafeteria, it’s called “Gluttony”, he tells you that you don’t need to work so hard, it’s called “Sloth”, he calls you to his office to complain about your colleagues, how they’re getting promotions which , if he had his way, he’d have offered to you, but he can’t do anything because they’re God’s blue-eyed boys, it’s called “Envy” and so on – then after a long long time, they say you get a promotion and you get to work in the offices on the top floors. They say the place there is called “Paradise”, your work is interesting, you get fabulous salaries, in fact you have a wonderful life. But nobody really knows what it’s like, because nobody’s gone to the offices on the top floors. It’s not allowed. And you never meet anyone who works there, it’s just that , sometime, you see that one of your colleagues is no longer there, and if he was a good employee, they say that he’s been transferred to “Paradise”. Or, if he was a bad employee, they say that the Devil was able to get him fired and now he’s slaving away in “Hell”.

But lots of people disagree with this theory. They point out that this is an unbelievably crappy way to run a company: you hire people to work for you, then you put a glum-faced asshole as their immediate boss, and he’s supposed to try to make you do all kinds of bad things – and it’s amazing what good time the bad people in the company have: they steal, they even sometimes smash things around –it’s called “War” – and only after a long, long time, they then disappear, supposedly gone to “Hell”. And the Devil doesn’t get punished for inciting all that disorder, he just keeps sitting there in the corner office. What kind of management is that ?

Moreover, say the God- doubters, nobody’s ever actually met God . You see him in videoconferences, called Mass. He’s a kindly presence, with a white beard, and he has that look like he knows what’s going on in your mind, and you feel energised and feel like being a good employee. But, say the sceptics, in fact God is just an straw man whom the Devil employs just to keep the show running – they say that God retired a long time ago and is now in a condo in Florida, and the Devil was supposed to take over the post of CEO, but he hates to be on the forefront, he loves being the backstage operator, the apparatchik. Also, you can’t imagine him , with his look like he’s just swallowed a monkey wrench, on the cover of “Fortune” magazine. He’d make the company’s shares go down on the stock market. So, he’s made a deal with a retired talk-show host, whom he employs as the “God, the CEO”.