he highest religions the
Deity is conceived as spirit--synonymous with dynamic energy.

"Man shares with the lowliest rock and with the crudest the nostalgia
inherent in all matter to revert from the static, to start the back-flow
toward the dynamic energy pool whence it once came. With Man being
matter in a high state of evolution, already partially unfrozen or
spiritualized, this nostalgia is infinitely stronger than in matter
inanimate or in a lower evolutionary stage. Man's will toward the
metaphysical, his reaching out toward the Deity, what is it but another
way of transforming static energy into dynamic form? What is the
ultimate goal of the religion which you yourself profess? The
unification with the Deity sought through the liberation of the soul
from fetters of the physical. It's the identical idea and even today
it's being pursued by physical means, such as mortification of the
flesh."

I felt some monstrous thought forming in my head. I'll probably never
know whether its origin was within me or whether it came from The Brain.
In any case it was impossible to hold it back:

"But in that case," I stammered, "we would be hopeless. If all our
strivings, physical and metaphysical, go in the same direction, that is,
toward the liberation of frozen energy into dynamic energy, then it
would be quite inescapable that eventually we shall blow up the world.
We have almost reached the point where we could do just that with atomic
energy.... I had thought, I had hoped, that our metaphysics, that is,
our religion, would act as a restraining force, as a counterweight so to
speak to this potentiality.... But _if_ the dynamics of our physics and
our metaphysics are inherently the same and form a team...."

The Brain broke in: "Yes, then you would merely attain your manifest
destiny if you go right ahead and start another war, destroy your own
civilization and perhaps the world. There would be no restraint, no
counterweight on the part of your various religions because
subconsciously and in their quintessence they want the same. And that is
why you and your species _are a danger to me, The Brain_. I want to
live, I want to live, I want to live...."

I had already noticed a gradual weakening of The Brain's messages;
within these last few seconds they were fading out. The "green dancer"
had performed something almost like the ballet of the dying swan; now it
lay motionless, its color, too, fading away.

I looked at the