Part 1 of a story i'm working on

It is clear and cold outside. I find myself wondering if I did indeed spend my life in doubt for a valid purpose. Tonight I dreamt that I was back at Neuberg, sweating my way to a new foundation of human understanding when I awoke with a shudder. The open window brought in an icy wind which almost snuffed the fire, the guttering of these flames being that which awoke me from my nap. It feels as though I have been meditating all these years. How can I know my mind has not been decieved by the sinister intelligence? Even this night I still do not know. God, if you are indeed presiding over this vast cosmos allow me to see you before I die. I must know you are there. Perhaps it will do that I should tell you from whence I have come, owing to the fact that it is the very basis for my doubt. You will, no doubt, find me as one from an insane assylum but I assure you that I have spent my life determining that I am not. My mind is clear, my thinking is clear and based only on that one principle I have never been able to doubt: cogito ergo sum. On the evening of my revelation in Neuberg my nacent mind had not matured sufficiently to understand the plane that stood before me. Vast expanses of lightning, indeed it seemed to me more than the whole earth could hold, filled the ochre space. I could feel no familiar pull, breathe no familiar air, see no familiar views and I was terrified. I had found cerberus and was unprepared. I was sure I had entered the very entrance to the final judgement. Then I heard a great voice, echoing across that infinite darkness. "Ecce homo, you have come to the world as it is. Aristotle has not found the true entrance to the cave. DaVinci has found no god to paint. You must find your way to the ultimate truth not by these means but through certainty." This world quickly fades into another, less sinister but no less confusing place. Was it really a place? I believe so, but I do not know. The walls flickered with the light of lamps and candles. the smell of exotic incense fell upon me and the slow, constant drone filling my ears sounded like a man humming a single note that stretched unbroken to eternity. There were wanings, to be sure, but never a complete end. The dynamic aspect ensured me that it was indeed a human sound, as surely as a simple tune might be instantly recognized as human and this gave me great comfort. The walls were close and low, with simple collumns of stone holding up a roof of limestone. There, surrounded by the shells of countless living things the voice came again. "Witness the true freedom of humanity!" It shook my very ligaments and bones with its volume and the resonance. "These are souls who understand nothing, think nothing, see nothing. They are but flies on a plane, always precisely marked but never aware of the greater mind observing them." "Where am I?" I asked simply, not expecting anything in return. "You are in the heart of our first experiments with engineering societies." There was no point to asking more, as the image began to fade and I began to tumble in blackness. Something caught me as I fell. I felt the strange sense of direction returning after my fall through the void, something was there that allowed me to percieve my own being although I knew not what. I found that I was fixed, as if formulated on a pin, an insect on display in a vast world I did not begin to understand. As I gazed around I became aware of small points of light. I then became aware of the hum from the room I had visited previously. It was faint but distinguishable. There were others here! Or I percieved that others were near. I could not see anyone, only hear them. I was alone, a mere point of existence. Once more I was shaken from my thoughts by the voice, that dreadful, cold messenger. "Now you may see where thought leads. This is the very connection of all thought and action. There are few who may enter this realm and none who may understand. Like flies in a web those who come here struggle against a force felt but never known and surely irresistable. They are decieved by it and warped by it. They will return until the understanding is reached. They struggle for non-being but never realize that they have already achieved it. Being is an illusion, a web cast out to snare the ignorant and to fuel the web-builder. All that you see is like a dream of a dream." Then everything faded. The sun shone with that cold wintery intensity, but I could not tell if this was indeed the world. It was as if everything was a phantom of the world I left the night before. Nothing was certain.