The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (14 page)

“You're just imagining you're on top of a woman,” said Joseph.

“I cannot enjoy sexual intercourse as the average man does,” Leon explained, “because the cosmic robot image stands between me and the woman I give seed to. This body is my home and I don't want no gangsters in it.” He said he felt that observing others doing negative things makes the person negative because there is no observing without involvement. Even an observer of fornication will become a disfigured midget unless he turns his head away. “Natural law will involve the person in the feelings of lust. You will consent if you look long enough. Once I saw two fellows sunning themselves. I saw two of them commit sodomy and even though I turned my head after four or five seconds, I was already a disfigured midget.”

Degeneration, Leon believed, is caused through “the misuse of sex—putting the penis in the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, belly button or rectum, and the latter is sodomy. If a person does not withdraw before the ‘come' the person will become a disfigured midget, and if the speck of that particular ‘come' happens to fall on one of his legs, it will cause a shriveling of legs of from six to eight inches. It is written: from the same tree from whence cometh forth fruit unto eternal life, from the same tree, if misused, can come forth fruit unto eternal damnation.[
2
] Masturbation is selfabuse but it does not result in disfigured midgets unless the person thinks about fornication or sodomy while masturbating. There are many types of degenerate sex: blowed-off, licked-off, sucked-off, smelled-off, winked-off, with eyelashes, heard off, brushed off with hair.”

According to Leon, sex has three purposes: “urinate through; seed-giving; praying through.” He disagreed with Freud because Freud did not differentiate between masturbation and
trimming the candle
. Trimming, said Leon,
is not
masturbation because the word masturbation means: disturbing the brain through abuse of bodily mast, ‘mastdisturbation.' Positive-idealed trimming, on the other hand,
does not
disturb the brain—
does not
burn small organic high-voltage static holes in the brain, and this can be proven on a oscillograph—the pattern before-during-after ‘come' is balanced.

“Truthful repentance in the heart, trimming his bodily candle with the bodily liquid waxy-looking substance throbbing out of the tip of his penis, upon the tips of his thumb and pointer finger in upstroke only at tip or penis head—if that male person can ‘come' without trimming his penis Jesus, he is a self-educated trained man of hot physical prayer.”

Although none of the men went to church, they frequently discussed religion.

“My main job is engineering,” Clyde said. “I work twenty-three hundred to thirty-three hundred people every day, both men and women, between here and Heaven, and in Heaven there are spirit rooms, homes, churches, and preachers.”

—
Did you ever live in Heaven?
—

“Yes, as a boy. I think I like it better here on earth, and I believe most people like it here. I control a lot of money—three hundred and three billion, one hundred and sixty million—and I am building a Kingdom of Heaven near Mount Pleasant.”

Joseph said: “I was crucified in Palestine by the Roman soldiers. When I invented the world there was no paganism—just people who were helpers. Eventually when the world is on a firm basis there won't be any need for religion—no priests, no ministers. I'm God and I don't want anybody to worship me. The world was created by work and doing good, not by worshipping me and kissing me. I don't want to go to church. That's my business! I don't need a church! I don't need a cross! What the hell is a cross for? It is simply a symbol of Christianity to hurt you.”

“The cross stands for two arms and the main stem,” said Leon.

“The cross,” Joseph continued, “is just a tool of the old Romans to crucify a criminal. Instead of hanging or cutting off heads the Romans used this method. I cherish the beautiful dream, or I would be awfully gleeful if the reality came about that there would be just singing and preaching in the church—no crosses. Martin Luther went screwy in Germany. He thought he was God. Somebody knocked the shit out of him in C building. Luther lacked the experience of running the Reformation. Luther was insane. St. John was the same way.”

Leon, after defending Luther and St. John, agreed that “the hierarchy of the Catholic Church are against us. Listening to their misrepresentation of the truth, sentimental trash. I don't care for no part of it, whether it's from a priest, a minister, or whomever it may come from. Worshipping the body of Jesus Christ! That's
idolatry! It's a dirty shame they do not recognize reincarnation. Devils go to church, too, by which I mean that it isn't the building that sanctifies the person; it's the condition of the heart and the grace of God. There were some good points about the Reformation, deploring some of the works of the Popes, their misdemeanors at the time. History says that he was selling indulgences and Martin Luther had every right to speak up against … and as far as that goes, the present-day Pope is also a sentimentalist. I don't care for his ideology.”

And what is the truth? “God is truth,” said Leon. “He cannot lie.”

“Why can't He lie for a purpose?” asked Joseph.

“Because He
is
the truth. You can't use a bad means to a good end.”

“It's a good means to a good end,” Joseph persisted.

“When you speak a lie,” Leon said, “it's in the wrong direction.”

“You're awfully limited!” Joseph snorted. “You don't seem to be sure there is a God. You don't believe in God being on earth, but only in the clouds.”

“God is everywhere. Ponder that over, sir.”

“You don't believe that God could be in the hospital, as I am now?”

“I believe that God is in this chair. He is in my dung and urine and farts and burps and everything,” Leon said.

“That's crazy. You don't believe that God can be a patient in this hospital.”

“God is truth. He's not sick, Mr. Cassel. Please understand that!”

“I'm the real God,” Joseph said positively, “and I know I can be in many forms.”

“You're a false individual,” replied Leon. “I've got news for you. You're on my uncle's dung list.”

Joseph and Leon likewise were in sharp disagreement over the nature of hell and the identity of the Devil.

“There is only one hell,” said Joseph. “It is where it is. I had a fight with the Devil in C building. What I didn't like about the Devil was that he would say: ‘You're not seeing me. You're just
imagining.' Then I would say: ‘Now be a good sport. We've always been good friends and worked together. Somebody has to take care of those condemned to hell. Why don't you go back to your business and take care of that?”' It had taken him years, Joseph said, to convince the Devil to go back to hell, and he had worked day and night to get conditions set up right in hell. “The fallen angels are in charge now, paid by the government there to take care of the fires and run things.”

“God sets conditions in hell!” Leon countered vehemently. “Have you ever met Satan who was walking about in human form? Do you know who he is? I want to see how well you're equipped on your deviltry.”

“Satan?”

“He's a colored fellow,” Leon said; “works in the hospital in Detroit. If you're so well informed, what's his name?”

“He's controlled,” Joseph yelled, “he's restricted to hell, not walking around. He's in hell.”

“He's in a hospital in Detroit.”

On “Thou Shalt Not Kill
.” “I'm the law,” said Clyde, “and I can do it. It isn't sin, either.”

“Oh, it's very nice,” Joseph said, “a very nice Commandment to observe. You can go right ahead and kill. ‘Thou shalt not kill.' and the punishment is death. You should kill every time. I'm not one for modification. In Michigan they send them to prison for life. Isn't that worse than being killed? It costs too much money for the state to give food to these people.”

“We should follow the habeas corpus in front of our face,” said Leon. “If it specifies that the person is worthy of death, he should die. It is all right to kill all the people who conspired with anyone who killed or stole. The Israelites bashed in the heads of babies of their enemies and bathed in their blood. They, the Israelites, had strong hearts.”

On art
. Modern art, Leon said, represents the suppressed desires that would get a person in trouble if he acted upon them. “An
unconscious desire may slip into paintings because the artist needs release; a reflected, indirect suppression expression.”

On hallucinations and delusions
. “It's like a mirror of life, but it's different than the mirror of life,” said Joseph. “Hallucinations are not ideas that a person should have in life. It should be discouraged.”

“Why sure, I work on the air,” Clyde said. “I hear them all over. It's the spirit coming close. I talk to people spiritually. I know them without their telling their name. They see me better than I see them.”

“Hallucinations,” said Leon, “represent a subconscious desire to have someone to talk to, something to drink or eat, which puts whatever the person wants in front of him as a picture. With a hundred per cent concentration, I have heard of the picture actually becoming real. I admit seeing things through duping. I do acknowledge it when it happens—I don't care for it.”

On changing into other shapes
. “I prefer to be a swallow,” Joseph said, “a bird that comes north in the summer and goes south in the winter. A little swallow so they won't see you or bother you.”

“At the State Fair in Detroit,” said Leon, “I came to the cage where they had the largest type of pouter dove, a white dove. I saw myself in the dove. Me and my wife changed into doves. We vacationed in Acapulco.”

Joseph said: “A man's a man, a woman's a woman, a child's a child. I don't believe in changing things around.”

“It's my sincere belief,” Leon said, “that Clyde's foster father is a sandpiper.”

“I don't know what you mean,” said Clyde. “Castles are built on sand. We build on a solid foundation.”

“I was an elephant once in Cambodia,” said Joseph, “and I was a lion once, in the Congo, among the old gunshots there. There was a lion there. He was formerly a man and he changed himself into a lion, and he always wanted to take my place as God. So I kind of had to talk to him for a while, and I finally took enough power out of him and I finally changed myself
into a lion so as to be near him and beat him. We had a fight there and I got my godliness back and I left.”

Several days later Leon remarked: “Mr. Cassel, you mentioned that you changed into the shape of an elephant or a lion?”

“Jesus Christ! How would I turn into the shape of an elephant?”

“You can check it,” Leon said. “It's on the tape recorder several days back. And now you deny it. That shows you have a short memory.”

“I'm not an elephant!”

“I didn't say you were.”

On tape recorders
. Joseph said: “I was in the tape recorder once. There is a world in the machine.”

—
Would you like me to play back the tape?
—

“Yes,” agreed Joseph.

“I'm for it,” Leon said, “if you are going to study the truth and I'm against it if it is put on for a big laugh.”

—
Where did you get that idea?
—

“Two attendants on Ward C laughed at me in a maniacal cackle when I was writing my self-analysis, which took me a year and some months.”

After the playback the men were asked what they thought of it.

“Excellent speech!” said Leon.

Joseph protested. “There was an enemy in that machine. We finally stopped him. Someone impersonating me. All my words are being said by someone else. There is only one God, not anybody else. I am God.”

“I am the one,” said Clyde.

“Don't worry,” Joseph said, “if a patient says he's God.”

Leon and Clyde agreed that it was Joseph's voice, and Leon explained how the machine works, adding that no one could force Joseph to believe it if he chose not to. When Joseph was asked
if he'd like to say something into the microphone and have it played back, he picked up the mike and made a speech about Aristotle going too far in claiming to be God, saying he himself had done better than Aristotle. When the speech was played back and he was asked who it was, he replied that it was Joseph Cassel, that there wasn't any little man in the machine, that it was his own voice. Asked why he had changed his mind, Joseph said: “You told me that it was my voice so I gave recognition to my voice.”

On Christmas
. “Santa Claus represents God on assistance,” said Clyde.

“Santa Claus is a negative-idealed god, the pagan god of material worship,” Leon stated. “Christmas means the rebirth, regeneration. Some people have Christmas every day. The Christmas tree stands up and either the wife trims it or they trim it together with righteous-idealed sexual intercourse. Or the husband prays to God through his Christmas tree and trims his bodily Christmas tree. Christ-mast; the mast of Christ, the upstanding penis—that's what it means to me.”

“Santa Claus is a
good
symbolization for Christmas,” said Joseph. “Department stores, shopping, the coming of the New Year. Christmas means better business in the stores.”

Leon asked Joseph what would be the “most helpful gift—ideological, physical, or spiritual?”

“Physical,” Joseph said.

“Is that your—?”

“That's my answer—physical. I want a bottle of Lydia Pinkhams.”

[
1
] Luke 3:22. “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.' ” Leon apparently took from the Bible much of the material for his delusional system. There are numerous Biblical references, for example, to the “vine” and to the “rock,” as well as others on which he could have based such conceptions as “light brother” and the “center eye of light” which he used later in the process of changing his system.