Consultation 48.

“God, what are mentally challenged people really?”

“What do you mean what are they? Why do you even want to know that? No, actually, how do you not know what they are?”

“I don’t know. My Mommy refuses to explain what it means to me. She says I’m mentally challenged.”

“Your Mommy… how old are you?”

“I’m 25.”

“And you call her your Mommy still?”

“Yeah, is something wrong with that?”

“No… there’s nothing wrong with that.”

How did she even book a consultation? No, it’d be too rude to pry.

“Hey God, so what are mentally challenged people?”

“Well… the people in your world characterize mentally challenged people as those with below-average intelligence or mental ability and a lack of skills necessary for day-to-day living. Though these sorts of people can and do learn new skills, they learn them more slowly.”

“You said the people in my world, but how do you gods view mentally challenged people?”

“Oh, you’re sharp in a rather unexpected way.” She blinked once in silence, still waiting for an answer.

“Well… to be quite frank, in the eyes of us Gods, mentally challenged people are no different than anyone else. They are just at a lower point in the overall natural evolutionary process. You see, when mortal creatures die, they reincarnate. Reincarnation is simply the act of your awareness, or better put, your consciousness, slipping between worlds and planes into a new body. If the consciousness is still young in terms of the number of reincarnations and it hasn’t developed enough resistance to spatial turbulence and gravitational storms when shifting, it will affect what grade of body your consciousness can slip into.”

“Slipping between worlds and planes? Spatial turbulence? Gravitational storms?” She was doing her best to comprehend, but she was obviously having a hard time putting it all together.

“Mortal beings typically lose their memories when shifting due to their initially low resistance to spatial turbulence and gravitational storms. With memories of your past typically existing on the surface of one’s consciousness you typically lose as they are the first to be damaged and fragmented. Adaptability, instincts, foresight, and the ability to learn exists on a deeper level of one’s consciousness. Essentially, the things that come most naturally to the person are retained on a deeper level of consciousness.”

“An example of this would be your ability to ride a bike, once you learn how to, you won’t forget it even if you develop amnesia because it has been ingrained into your consciousness on a much deeper level. That is why that ethereal thing you humans call talent exists among children at a very young age.”

“To make things simpler, you can compare humans to artificial intelligence. The first few generations of an AI can be considered those humans categorized as the mentally challenged. Every time a member of a generation dies, they retain that experience and adapt for their next life. They learn through death and their consciousness builds their resistance up in the process. These early generations are not supposed to live long. They are supposed to have short lives.”

“God, what exactly is this consciousness you keep talking about?”

“Hmm, the best way to sum it up would be the term humans like to use a lot, I guess you’d call it... a soul? Yeah, you can think of your soul as your consciousness.”

“A soul? I think I get it a bit.”

“Where was I again? Ah, right, short lives. There exists a fundamental problem that eventually arises as civilizations develop. As generations grow more complex over time, they begin to forget about the laws of nature and even want to defy the world’s natural order. They want to do everything they can to leave no man behind. While seemingly a beautiful ideal, it is actually detrimental to evolution.”

“By helping them continue living to such a great degree, they are impairing their ability to advance and evolve their consciousness. They were supposed to die early, realize where they went wrong, and enter a new body to try again. But because they retained data on a deeper level detrimental to their ability to survive alone without the need to be forever babied, they become bogged down.”

“God, are you telling me I’m supposed to just go die?”

“...”

“Answer me.”

“I’m not. It’s just that you’re supposed to do everything within your own ability to live until you eventually meet your untimely end. When you die, you will just need to soak up those experiences and try again when you reincarnate. Take those experiences with you and ingrain it deep within your consciousness. That way you will be able to evolve and advance faster. Death is a perfectly natural part of the evolutionary process.”

“The more you die, the faster you will grow. Eventually, you will even surpass those who looked down at you with disdain from above. The same people who were too afraid to die and only wished to live long extended lavish lives in luxury would one day be beneath you from an evolutionary standpoint.”

“Living for too long is not necessarily the smart thing to do after all. You are able to grasp far more things in your early years, much more so than in the latter years of your life. That is why aging exists, to signal that it’s time to move onto your next life. If you ask me, the ones extending their lives the longest are the greatest fools. They think they’re among the smart or great of their time, but in reality, they’re just cowards who no longer wish to evolve and are satisfied sitting at the bottom of their little closed off wells.”

“If you wish to pursue immortality through natural evolution the most optimized way, it is to experience countless deaths and live through as many lives as you can for the ideal amount of time. Though I have to admit, it is rather ironic that one of the many paths to immortality requires you to experience countless deaths.”

“Immortality?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re saying I can pursue immortality by dying a lot?”

“Yeah. A lot of mortals typically don’t want to go down the natural evolutionary path because they’re afraid of the unknown; that is, the great question as to whether there is anything after death.”

“God, how do I die?”

“The ideal way is to live life to the fullest doing what you enjoy and let nature run its course. If you die at some point, then so be it. Don’t let others control you and tell you how to live your life. If you want to die, then die. If you want to live, then live. How you live or die is not for anyone to decide. Life and death is your own personal struggle against nature. It’s not something those around you get to decide for you. If they want to interfere, tell them to fuck off. If they call you selfish, tell them straight that they’re the selfish ones. It’s your struggle to face, not theirs. They have no right to take that struggle away from you or deprive you of it.”

“With that struggle, you will never evolve or change.”

Her eyes lit up.

“Then, even if I’m mentally challenged like Mommy says, it’s fine for me to live life as I want?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for your guidance, God.”

She stood up from her seat and headed to the exit. On her way out she said, “Great. I’m going to go kill Mommy now and live how I want. That way Mommy can evolve faster too.”

Eh? Sorry. What did you?

Stunned by her words, it was already too late to stop her, she’d already left. Patricide... you say? What patricide? I saw... nothing. It’s got... nothing to do with me.

I took out my phone and started playing a game of Connect 4^8 to forget about it.