“This place is a godland, you may call me god. Small g, for I am not proud. We are a race evolving in this Creation to serve the Maker of it. We act as temporary deities during the childhood of individual peoples and planets. I was the midwife who brought forth this world, who stirred the primordial ooze, and noted the life that crawled up from the sea. Our race is not unlike yours, but I am very old, and you are still very young.
”We come and go. I came to teach your people language. I raised up oracles, whispered to soothsayers, wove bright visions for sorcerers, and spoke marvels to your alchemists. I came again to raise up prophets in the Real One’s name: Bruno, Galileo, Newton, Fermi...”
The doctor interrupted, “The Real One? Who?”
”The Being whom I worship. The Ultimate who stands apart from time. The Deity some men think they are addressing when they pray with words. The Real One doesn’t even perceive words. If IT did, imagine what IT would have to listen to! The Real One sees only the pattern of what is, where it begins and where it comes to rest. The only prayer IT perceives is action.
“I don’t understand that,” said Nell, stubbornly.
“An example from your old world, Nell. A child being shot and everyone weeping. What does the Real One see? IT sees the maker and making of a device that kills, the device itself, the selling of the device that kills, the buying of the device that kills, the placement of it near the child, the occurrence, the death. Only actions enter the pattern the Real One sees. What is. What was done. IT perceives neither intentions nor remorse.”
Nell said angrily, “What do you mean, what is?”
The small god seemed to shift uneasily on its pedestal. “What is, is! Reality. Nature. The laws of a Universe that contains all things. Expansion and contraction, matter and anti-matter, light and dark, joy and sorrow, ecstacy and horror, supernovas and black holes, euphoria and pain, governing and politics, life and death. All the goads and all the stumbling blocks that force intelligence to grow by conquering.”
“Conquering what?” asked Arnole, his hand on Nell’s arm.
“Anything. Stink, or disease, or hatred. Pain, bugs, or brambles. The shortness of life or the frailty of age.”
“Why not just leave those things out?” Dismé protested.
“It’s been tried. If you give a being only feelgood-joy-life, nothing happens. Dinosaurs lived here for hundreds of millions of years in feelgood-joy-life, and at the end of it they had conquered nothing.

To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing.

He was told how childish and limited is the notion of a tri-dimensional world, and what an infinity of directions there are besides the known directions of up-down, forward-backward, right-left. He was shown the smallness and tinsel emptiness of the little Earth gods, with their petty, human interests and connetions — their hatreds, rages, loves, and vanities; their craving for praise and sacrifice, and their demands for faith contrary to reason and Nature.

I see it now — this world is swiftly passing. — the warrior Karna, in the Mahabharata

She shivered and turned away. These things I have seen in my life, she said. Someday a gentle God will grant me ignorance.
Do you worship gods? I said, still watching the golem burn.
Not lately, said Korinyes.

I’ve seen so many gods come and go, what’s one more?

love, life and everything human seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe'. (p.309)

The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.

Perhaps things will become worse and then better. Perhaps there’s a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.

It is as though they stood in a spinning world.

The other gods! The other gods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!... Look away... Go back... Do not see! Do not see! The vengeance of the infinite abysses... That cursed, that damnable pit... Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!

One lucent corner windowing hidden things Forced the world's blind immensity to sight. The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak From the reclining body of a god.