FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS -
The Undiluted Truth
Multigenre Philosophy
Copyright © 1982-2009 John
O'Loughlin
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: MAXIMS
1. Maxims 1-150
PART TWO: ESSAYS
2. Future Transformations
3. Irish and English
4. A Teasing Paradox
5. Millennial Thoughts
6. Post-Dualistic Sexuality
7. Towards a True Equality
8. Concerning Transcendentalism
9. Musical Transformations
10. Safeguarding Freedom
11. Protons and Electrons
12. Two Kinds of Dependence
13. Materialists and Spiritualists
PART THREE: DIALOGUES
14. A Changing World
15. Proletarian Writing
16. The Evolution of Art
17. From the Alpha Absolute(s) ...
18. From the Apparent to the Essential
19. Transformation Points
20. A Fundamental Dichotomy
21. The New Subjectivity
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INTRODUCTION
If there is such a thing as a truth that is too pure for certain
people, less psychically evolved, to take, then may we not suppose this
situation may extend to an entire work, an entire book, in which undiluted
truths are the creative norm. Such books
haven't, admittedly, been too plentiful in the past; for we are only now
beginning to live in a purely truthful age.
Nevertheless books with diluted truths, proportionate to the degree of
evolution manifest in the writer and his society at any given time, have caused
similar problems for people who weren't 'up to' the level of 'truth' therein
recorded. In this respect, such a book
becomes akin to the Hindu metaphor of the Clear Light of the Void, which is too
pure for the egocentric mind to abide with, inevitably resulting in its return
to the world in some other flesh, as part of the recurrent process of
reincarnation, until such time as, become more evolved, it can abide with the
Absolute and thus escape the cycle of rebirths.
Returning to factual
reality, this means that the evolution of human life on earth proceeds by
degrees and that, strictly speaking, one can't 'gate-crash' the Divine. One must earn the right to become an integral
part of the Supreme Being, and one can only do this by improving the quality of
life over the generations, from century to century.
Likewise one must earn
the right to properly appreciate a certain type of truthful book, which
necessarily remains a 'closed shop' to those who are insufficiently
intellectually or morally evolved to do so.
As, in occult mythology, Count Dracula shies away from the Cross,
symbolic of Truth and Goodness, and, in religious mythology, the egocentric
mind shies away from the Clear Light, so, on the intellectual plane, the
reactionary or traditional mind shies away from such revolutionary truths as
are expressed in the foremost books, usually philosophical, of the age. A man who cannot 'take' such truths ...
inevitably passes negative judgement on himself, and reverts, in all
probability, to fiction or perhaps even to poetry.
The great writer and
thinker is thus in the position of being a kind of intellectual Supreme Being
on earth, to whom many are drawn but with whom only comparatively few can
abide. The majority shy away from his
stronger grasp of truth from fear that it will disrupt their particular psychic
or intellectual integrity, causing them to extensively revise or even change
their position. Perhaps it will be only
after several generations that the majority of men can come to abide and
understand his truth. In the meantime,
he remains a kind of lone beacon, shining in the vanguard of psychic evolution,
revered by some, but feared and even hated by many.
I like to see myself as
such a writer, and I know that not all men can come to me at present and
wholeheartedly acquiesce in what I write.
Nevertheless I live in the hope that, eventually, most men will come to
me if they are to grasp the prerequisites of salvation, and thereby set
themselves on the right road for the only reasonable evolutionary goal. For, unless they abide with the driving light
of my truth, they will continue to flounder in the comparative darkness of
pedestrian illusions, shut out from the promise of Eternity.
John O'Loughlin, 1982 (Revised 2006-08).
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PART ONE: MAXIMS
(Speculations
Concerning the Future)
1. The Supreme Being should
not be thought of as a creature but as a state of mind, a supreme level of
beingfulness.
2. The equation of being
with a creature is pagan. The equation
of being with a state of mind, by contrast, is transcendental.
3. Evolution proceeds from
the materialistic concept of being to the spiritualistic concept of being as a
matter of course.
4. An ultimate communism,
or communality, can only come about with the post-Human Millennium, which will
succeed the transcendental civilization.
5. This ultimate communality
will entail the artificial support and sustain of vast clusters of new brains,
and will stand as the polar antithesis to the primal communality of plant life,
with particular reference to trees.
6. Sensual communality appertains
to the lowest life form on earth, and is manifested in trees and bushes, whose
subconsciously-dominated leaves are supported and sustained naturally, that is
to say, through trunk, branches, sunlight, rainwater, etc.
7. Spiritual communality will
appertain to the highest life form on earth, which will be manifested in the
millennial communes of the Superbeings, whose superconsciously-biased new
brains will be supported and sustained artificially, that is to say, through
technology.
8. Beneath sensual
communality are the Alpha Absolute(s) ... of the stars, with their diabolic
sensuality. Above spiritual communality
will come the Omega Absolute ... of the Holy Spirit, with its divine
spirituality.
9. Just as the sensual
communality of the plants evolved out of the Alpha Absolute(s), so the Omega
Absolute will evolve out of the spiritual communality of the clustered new
brains.
10. The term 'new brains'
appertains to the collective. But,
individually, the new brain is the intellectual/spiritual, as opposed to
instinctual/ sensual, part of the brain.
11. The eventual removal of
the old brain, or instinctual/sensual part of the brain, will put the resultant
life form in a directly antithetical position to the leaves of trees, which are
subconscious and, hence, devoid of autonomy - rooted to their branches.
12. In becoming
superconscious, the Superbeing will also be devoid of autonomy, its new brains
rooted to their artificial branches because devoid of egocentric consciousness,
and therefore indisposed to the comprehension of external surroundings.
13. Whereas the leaves of a
tree exist for the sake of the trunk and branches, the artificial supports of
the millennial communes will exist for the sake of the new brains.
14. The millennial communes of
the Superbeing will signify a distinctly different and higher life form than
man, whom one is obliged to associate with the natural body.
15. Indeed, there will be as
much difference between transcendental man and the Superbeing as there was
between, say, pagan man and the tree.
16. The fact that man is not
static but an evolutionary phenomenon ... is borne out by the successive
transformations from pagan and Christian to transcendental - the latter only
incipient in the West in the twentieth century.
17. An alternative
terminology for the successive transformations listed above would be:
pre-dualistic, dualistic, and post-dualistic, with individual variants on the
respective religious developments.
18. Beneath pagan, or
pre-dualistic, man is man's direct ancestor, the ape, who appertains to the
animal kingdom and is largely dependent on trees. Above transcendental, or post-dualistic, man
will come man's immediate successor, the Superman, who will pertain to the
godlike kingdom and be largely dependent on artificial supports and sustains.
19. But what will
distinguish the Superman from the succeeding Superbeing ... will be retention
of the old brain, and the consequent existence of visionary, or egocentric,
consciousness.
20. This consciousness, albeit
greater than the natural consciousness of transcendental man, will be less
evolved than that of the new-brain components of the millennial communes, and
will consequently signify a stage of evolution directly preceding the latter.
21. The Supermen will be fed
intermittent quantities of LSD, or some such synthetic hallucinogen, in order
to facilitate upward self-transcendence in the lower, i.e. visionary, reaches
of the superconscious, and thereby will be encouraged, by degrees, to break
with traditional subconscious and conscious modes of awareness.
22. Although clustered
together on artificial supports, the retention of the old brain by the Supermen
justifies one in regarding them as individuals, since each brain will be
subject to periods of personal consciousness, and therefore be capable of
regarding itself as a distinct entity.
Indeed, as one of a number of such entities which bear the generic title
'Supermen'.
23. Likewise apes are
capable, with their animal consciousness, of distinguishing between themselves
as individuals, while simultaneously sharing a common habitat in the branches
of a tree.
24. With the eventual
removal of the old brain, however, the Supermen will be transmuted into a
collective entity, by dint of sharing an identical post-visionary
consciousness, and thereupon become, in the context of millennial communes, a
completely new life-form, antithetical, in essence, to the tree, which,
however, is likewise regarded by mankind as a collective entity, rather than as
a loose conglomeration of separate creatures, i.e. leaves.
25. The Superbeing of the
millennial communes will therefore stand one stage closer, in evolutionary
terms, to the ultimate unity of the Supreme Being, in which transcendent spirit
will constitute an indivisible whole.
26. How many millennial
communes there will be on earth, preceding spiritual transcendence, will depend
on the technological facilities available to the age and the number of new
brains to be supported.
27. It isn't impossible
that, with the eventual removal of the old brain from individual Supermen, the
ensuing increase in space available on the supports will allow for the
introduction of additional new brains on each support, thereby making possible
a decrease in the overall number of supports in existence.
28. Such a hypothetical
decrease in the overall number of supports world-wide would correspond to an
evolutionary progression away from the materialistic Many and towards the
spiritualistic One, thereby signifying a reduction of the materialist component
to an absolute minimum.
29. It should be feasible to
contend that each support, no matter how many new brains it may contain, will
be connected to a single sustain system, so that the individual organic or,
rather, super-organic components of the commune are nourished from a central
source, not dependent on separate sources.
30. Thus, our collectivized
or communal entity would be completely interrelated, and could only function as
an integral whole.
31. To a certain extent, men
protect apes and apes protect trees.
Likewise, one can assume that transcendental men will protect Supermen
and the Supermen duly protect Superbeings.
32. Put another way, this
means that the creation and protection of the Supermen will be in the hands of certain
trusted men, specialists in their chosen field, who will tend their superior
creations and know how they feel, what they require, etc., at any given time.
33. But the Supermen will
themselves create or, at any rate, protect the Superbeings by the very fact of
their existence ... to the extent that they will be the logical evolutionary
forerunners of the latter, rendering the ensuing maintenance of the artificial
supports and sustains obligatory for the trusted men.
34. And, presumably, if
everything hasn't become completely autonomous and directed by computers and
robots by then, these trusted men - a technological elite - will be entrusted,
at the appropriate hour, with the surgical removal of the old brain from the
clustered Supermen and consequent creation of the collective entity I have
termed a Superbeing.
35. But they, or their
mechanical equivalents, will never act arbitrarily or over-hastily, but will
always bear in mind the evolutionary status of the life forms under their
protection, thereby regulating their professional activity in strict accordance
with the requirements of the hour.
36. This patient,
considerate attention to their 'charges', by the technological leadership, is
not, however, incompatible with an element of coercion, which is an essential
element not only to responsible leadership, but also to evolutionary progress.
37. Thus a delicate balance
must be struck between the requirements of the post-dualistic life forms and
the ambitions of the leadership, too weak a leadership resulting in the danger
of an evolutionary stasis or even regression; too strong a leadership resulting
in the possible destruction of the said life forms and, as a paradoxical
corollary to this, the undermining of the leaders, who would then be deprived
of anything to lead.
38. Just as an able gardener
both protects the plants under his keeping and encourages them to grow, so must
the successive leaderships of the transcendental men, the supermen, and the
superbeings strike a workable balance between the two responsibilities, in
order to ensure the steady spiritual growth of their human and post-human
'plants'.
39. That the state, as
signified by the leadership, will eventually 'wither away', in Engles'
oft-quoted phrase, can be confirmed by the foregoing speculations concerning
future developments, and will doubtless result in the supervision of the
evolutionary life forms by trusted humans eventually being eclipsed by an
entirely autonomous, mechanistic supervision carried out by robots and
computers.
40. When current political
and other leaders retire, they do so in the knowledge that their work is in
safe hands and will be continued by their successors. Doubtless this will still apply in the
foreseeable future, even if or when their successors are known to be robots and
computers.
41. Political evolution
presupposes an extension of democratic power to greater numbers of people, so
that, at its highest level, the maximum numbers of people are being represented
by the government.
42. A dualistic system of
democracy, torn between capitalism and socialism, inevitably limits the number
of people being represented, by the acting government, to those whose votes
proved successful, which may be no more than a narrow majority.
43. In accordance with
political progress, a post-dualistic democratic system, centred in socialism,
extends the number of people being represented by the government to the vast
majority of voters, since every vote balloted proves successful to the extent
that it elects or re-elects a socialist candidate.
44. This post-dualistic
system is called Social Democracy, as opposed to Liberal (Capital) Democracy,
and is largely a consequence of the transference of political power to the
proletariat, who are no longer obliged to share power with the bourgeoisie, and
thus suffer the consequences of capitalist exploitation.
45. The transference of
political power to the proletariat is the ultimate political revolution, in which
the vast majority acquire representation and thereby experience maximum
democracy.
46. An erroneous concept of
'more democracy' is to confound maximum representation with the absence of all representation,
and thereupon assume that it should signify freedom from all government.
47. This erroneous concept
of 'more democracy' can only lead to anarchy, which is contrary to political
progress. Consequently it will be
opposed by post-dualistic leaderships.
48. It isn't freedom to do
what they like that will lead the People to their future salvation in a
post-Human Millennium, but ... directive leadership.
49. This post-dualistic
directive is socialism, as opposed to anarchy.
50. And socialism, conceived
politically, cannot 'wither away' until men attain to the post-Human
Millennium, and thus become recipients of spiritual salvation in the millennial
communes.
51. The State is a
materialistic phenomenon that will continue to exist so long as men are capable
of identifying with matter, which is to say, so long as they retain the old
brain and are therefore partly disposed to subconscious allegiance.
52. Thus the State will
still exist, albeit to a less apparent extent, when men are elevated to the
Supermen, or clustered brains artificially supported, in the first, or
'socialist', phase of the post-Human Millennium.
53. But the State, having
'withered away' throughout that time, will completely cease to exist with the
second, or 'communist', phase of the post-Human Millennium, in which the
radically superconsciously-biased new-brain clusters of Superbeings will have
supplanted the partly superconsciously-biased brains of Supermen.
54. For with the removal of
the old brain, the ensuing higher post-human life form would be incapable of
identifying with matter and, therefore, be oblivious of the State.
55. Likewise trees, which
signify the sensual communality antithetical, in retrospect, to the spiritual
communality of our projected Superbeings, are incapable, lacking consciousness,
of recognizing the State.
56. So, on the next
evolutionary level, are apes, whose rudimentary consciousness,
subconsciously-dominated, keeps them beneath civilization.
57. For civilization, at any
level, appertains to man, and signifies a compromise between politics and
religion, the State and the Church.
58. Such a compromise will
still exist for post-dualistic man, taking the form of socialism and
transcendentalism.
59. With the transformation
of transcendental man into the Superman, however, the State will 'wither away',
as transcendentalism continues to expand, and by the time the evolutionary
metamorphosis of the Superbeing comes properly to pass, the State will have
completely ceased to exist, and with it civilization, as life becomes
exclusively transcendental.
60. And as life becomes
exclusively transcendental, so there will be no further need of directive
leadership, but only of supervision - surveillance by the relevant computers
and/or robots, as required.
61. For the State is not
only a subjective phenomenon, dependent on the ability of consciousness to
perceive and identify with matter, but is also, and more particularly, an
objective phenomenon, embracing the directive capabilities of government.
62. When direction is no
longer necessary, because the materialistic component of the psyche has been
removed, government ceases to exist and the State along with it.
63. And thus civilization
comes to an end with the full-blown spirituality of the Superbeings.
64. At some subsequent point
in millennial time the Superbeings will attain to transcendence, and so bring
about the Spiritual Globes of the heavenly Beyond.
65. Broadly speaking, the
development of evolution runs as follows: the Alpha Absolute(s) of the stars
leading via planets (cooled stars) to the sensual communality of the plants;
the plants, including trees, leading to the animals, of whichever type and
degree of intelligence; the animals, including apes, leading to man, of the
lowest, and therefore pagan, type; pagan man, in his successive manifestations,
leading to Christian man; Christian man, and other dualistic equivalents,
leading to transcendental man; transcendental man, in his subsequent
manifestations, leading to the Superman; the Superman, with his
artificially-supported and sustained brain, leading to the spiritual
communality of the Superbeings which, in their exclusive spirituality, will be
antithetical to the plants; and, finally, the Superbeings leading via
successive Spiritual Globes of transcendent spirit to the Omega Point (as
defined by Teilhard de Chardin ... as the spiritual culmination of evolution) -
Universal and One.
66. This evolutionary
progression signifies a convergence from the Many (stars) to the One (Holy
Spirit), with all due gradations of improvement in the quality and type of life
coming in-between.
67. Whatever the Alpha
Absolute(s) are, viz. many, separate, sensual, infernal, etc., the Omega
Absolute is their complete antithesis.
There is nothing further apart, in evolutionary terms, than the Devil
and God, alpha and omega.
68. Likewise a less extreme
but, nevertheless, consistent contrast is to be adduced between the various
antitheses which gradually develop along the evolutionary spectrum created on
earth.
69. On the dividing line
between that which stems from the Diabolic Alpha, and that which aspires
towards the Divine Omega, is early transcendental man.
70. Of course, Christian man
also aspires towards the Divine Omega, but not to the extent of completely
turning his back on the Diabolic Alpha.
As a dualist, he always remains rooted in nature.
71. What the television is
to transcendental man, LSD, or some such hallucinogenic equivalent, will be to
the Superman.
72. Transcendental man
allows his consciousness to be invaded from outside himself ... by artificial visionary
images, which affect a mild upward self-transcendence in the lower regions of
the superconscious.
73. The Superman will allow
his consciousness to be invaded from inside his brain ... by the visionary
images of hallucinogens, which will constitute a stronger upward
self-transcendence in higher regions of the superconscious.
74. Appearance always
precedes essence, but can never expand spiritual consciousness to the same
extent, the reason being that appearance appertains to the flesh, whereas essence
appertains to the spirit.
75. Thus, no matter how
ingenious or educative the appearance may happen to be, its ability to expand
consciousness upwards is severely hampered by its contrary nature to that which
it is intended to expand.
76. Only essence can
radically expand essence (spirit), which is why the use of an internal
stimulant, like LSD, would be far more efficacious than the contradictory and
inevitably futile use of an external one, like TV.
77. LSD will be the 'art' of
the future, transcending art as we have known it.
78. If LSD was prohibited in
the twentieth century, it was because such a mind-expanding hallucinogen would
be premature and a danger to society as it is currently constituted.
79. Only with the first
phase of the post-Human Millennium would an official, widespread use of LSD
and/or equivalent synthetic hallucinogens be possible; for the Superman would
be indisposed to riotous or otherwise irresponsible behaviour.
80. It should always be
remembered that whereas natural drugs, i.e. those grown from the soil, appeal
primarily to the subconscious and are accordingly of diabolic orientation,
synthetic ones, by contrast, appeal to the superconscious, and are therefore of
a comparatively divine orientation.
81. Even the mildest natural
drugs, like tea and tobacco, are fundamentally of a diabolic orientation,
insofar as they result in a correspondingly mild downward self-transcendence.
82. Even for transcendental
man, a degree of downward self-transcendence becomes necessary ... to the
extent that he is the possessor of a natural body with natural needs,
including, not least of all, sleep.
83. It is quite conceivable
that a person who, for one reason or another, lacked the requisite intake of
sensuality for his particular body in one or more important contexts, would be
obliged to seek compensatory sensuality in the regular use of tobacco, alcohol,
coffee, etc.
84. In the future, however,
all natural drugs will be transcended ... as man transcends his body in the
Superman.
85. And the Superman will be
cultivated from birth with the aid of test-tube reproduction, so that he will
be accustomed to existing in an extensively artificial, not to say
transcendental, context from the very first.
86. It would be quite
immoral to create the Superman from a grown man, depriving that man of his body
through an extensive amputation.
87. No grown man will be
forced to sacrifice his body in order to become superhuman. The Superman will be created, in all
probability, from birth.
88. Even a brain that, under
natural circumstances, would have acquired a female body ... will become a
Superman and not a Superwoman. This
first phase of the post-Human Millennium will be predominantly transcendent -
as will the second phase, although, given the removal of the old brain, to a
somewhat greater extent.
89. Transcendence will
signify the complete spiritualization of life ... in and through the Divine
Omega; for it will entail the total overcoming of matter, with freedom even
from the new brain.
90. Transcendence will
inevitably lead to the heavenly, i.e. transcendental, Beyond, though it won't
necessarily lead straight to the Omega Absolute ... in ultimate Oneness.
91. Bearing in mind the
immensity of the spatial universe, it is more than likely that transcendence
will lead to the establishment of 'local', or galactic, globes of pure spirit,
which will gradually converge towards other such globes from remoter parts of
the Universe.
92. Thus a gradual
convergence to the Omega Absolute may also be manifested on the transcendent
plane, constituting (for a time) an antithetical development to planets, which
are themselves intermediaries between the Alpha Absolute(s) ... of the stars
and the sensual communality of the plants.
93. With the eventual
establishment, however, of the Omega Absolute, the evolution of the Universe,
in the fullest sense of that word, would be complete.
94. And the supreme being of the Omega Absolute
would continue, in all likelihood, to expand into space, in contrast to the
gradual contractions and dissolutions of the stars.
95. With the ultimate dissolution of the remaining
stars, the Universe would attain to perfection ... in the sole presence of the
Omega Absolute. And the Omega Absolute
would last for ever.
96. As spirit expands, so matter contracts. As spirit converges, so matter diverges.
97. Social evolution begins in tribalism, proceeds
to nationalism, and culminates in internationalism.
98. Parliamentary democracy is a compromise
between conservatism and socialism, and is therefore inherently liberal.
99. Just as the pre-dualistic age was
fundamentally lesbian in character, and the dualistic age ... heterosexual, so
the post-dualistic age can only be homosexual (though not necessarily
literally), if more in terms of a male-biased unisexual absolutism.
100. Each time a man falls in love, he becomes a
spiritual nonentity. To fall in love is
to succumb to the body and its beauty thereof.
Spirit is eclipsed by flesh.
101. Just as the ape is beneath sensual love, so
the Superman would be above it.
102. Literature is the greatest of the arts, because
it appeals directly to the mind.
103. The modern literary masterpiece must
necessarily be both short, reflecting a materialistic contraction, and true,
advancing a spiritualistic expansion.
104. Western nations are divisible, in the present
century, between those that are dualistic, like Britain and France, and those
that are transitional between dualism and post-dualism, like the United States
and Germany.
105. As life evolves, so it becomes more
interiorized. The men of the
transcendental civilization won't just be more introspective than those of the
Christian or Christian/transcendental ones.
They will also spend more time indoors.
106. In the post-dualistic civilization, books will
be superseded by computer discs, which will be the medium through which
literature is read.
107. In the post-dualistic civilization, nothing
appertaining to pre-dualistic or dualistic civilization will be read. An exclusively omega-oriented civilization
requires an exclusively omega-oriented literature. Works appertaining to the past will, for the
most part, be taboo or, at any rate, 'beneath the pale'.
108. A new civilization requires not just a new
literature, but a new art, music, architecture, politics, religion, science,
sexuality - indeed, a new everything.
109. The typical leader of the post-dualistic
civilization will be more of a religious than a political figure.
110. By the time mankind attains to the post-Human
Millennium, the leaders will be exclusively religious types.
111. That there will always be leaders and led,
coercers and coerced, is a cardinal fact - and necessity - of evolution.
112. The demolition of the State for its own sake
would not lead to a post-civilized society in the post-Human Millennium, but to
a pre-civilized society in barbarous chaos and anarchy.
113. The demolition or, rather, contractive
'withering away' of the State ... is only justified on the basis of the
expansion of the Church towards an exclusively religious stage of evolution, as
in the post-Human Millennium.
114. But such an advanced stage of evolution,
commensurate with the superhuman and superbeingful phases of the post-Human
Millennium, will still entail a distinction between leaders and led, the only
difference being that the leaders will then be exclusively religious.
115. The leaders of a civilization, however, are
divisible between politics and religion.
116. In pre-dualistic civilization, the political leaders
or, rather, rulers preponderate over the religious ones in the ratio of at
least 3:1.
117. In dualistic civilization, the political and
religious rulers/leaders are approximately in balance, although nominal
priority of status is granted to the latter.
118. In post-dualistic civilization, the religious
leaders will preponderate over the political ones in a ratio of at least 3:1.
119. In the post-Human Millennium, however, only
religious leaders will exist, and their task will be to ensure that the
collectivized brains of the Supermen and, later and most especially, the
new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings ... are set directly on course
for transcendence, and hence the attainment of spirit to the post-millennial
Beyond.
120. Unfortunately latter-day Marxists, especially
in the West, do not possess such an evolutionary perspective, which is why they
make the lamentable mistake of assuming that the proletariat should be left
entirely to its own devices, without either political or religious guidance,
following the advent of socialism.
121. The consequences of such an hypothetical
eventuality would be too bleak to bear contemplating, but naive Marxists, who
foolishly elevate the common man to the level of a saintly ideal, could not be
expected to know that!
122. Rather, if anything, would these naive Marxists
be inclined to equate the Millennium with literal power to the People, with an
absence, in other words, of any control on and/or guidance of the People, in
the interests of what they mistakenly consider to be true socialism.
123. By treating Marx as an infallible guide to
evolutionary truth, his most literal followers are doomed to repeat all of
Marx's worst errors and limitations.
124. Without my own contribution to the evolution of
post-dualistic thought, one is in the realm of socialist barbarism - a
necessary realm for a certain period of time, but a realm which must eventually
be transcended, if civilization is to reappear on a higher level.
125. As the spiritual expands, so the material
contracts; the bound electron becomes free and the proton is transformed into
or replaced by quasi-electrons.
126. The post-atomic society will be free of proton
control, and thus able to aspire towards the maximum electron freedom.
127. If the sun, and indeed most stars, convert(s)
hydrogen into helium through proton-proton reactions, then the future Spiritual
Globes, so far from a helium hell, will entail an electron-electron attraction
... as they converge towards one another in the transcendental Beyond.
128. Quasi-electron equivalents, whether socialist
politicians or avant-garde scientists, function in opposition to proton
equivalents, but remain, at bottom, proton-natured.
129. Free-electron equivalents, whether radical
politicians or transcendentalists, oppose bound-electron equivalents, such as
Christians and liberals, and desire to orientate mankind towards the Divine
Omega.
130. By themselves, quasi-electron equivalents would
only minimize the Diabolic, whereas it is imperative for evolutionary progress
that the expansion of spirit towards the Divine should subsequently be aided by
free-electron equivalents.
131. Only when the political quasi-electron
equivalents make way for free-electron equivalents ... will post-atomic civilization
make its first appearance in the world.
132. The present century signifies a transitional
age between the end of proton determinism and the beginnings of electron
freedom, and is accordingly neither atomic nor post-atomic but ... somewhere
in-between.
133. It is thus, par excellence, a
bourgeois/proletarian age, an age of transition from the capitalistic
bourgeoisie to the socialistic proletariat, and its chief representatives are
countries like America, Japan, and Germany.
134. To an officially proletarian state, all types
and degrees of petty-bourgeois art, which includes what is commonly regarded as
'modern art', are irrelevant.
135. This would be so even if the proletarian state
were civilized and not barbarous, since the irrelevance of petty-bourgeois art
to a proletarian civilization would then be founded on its inadequate degree of
transcendentalism rather than, from the barbarous point-of-view, on a
materialistic opposition to petty-bourgeois transcendentalism, i.e. painterly
abstraction.
136. The proletarian society of a transcendental
bias, however, would wish to develop post-dualistic spirituality, and
consequently would uphold the more radical transcendentalism of the
proletariat, utilizing a variety of electronic means.
137. This superior transcendentalism would be
derived from the superconscious, which constitutes the higher subjectivity of
transcendental man, rather than from the conscious mind at or near its
'Pentecostal' peak, as it were.
138. The oldest idealism, as pertaining to the
objectivity of the subconscious, would have no hold on the civilized
proletariat, and consequently they would not be partial to the lower
objectivity of the external cosmos.
139. Rather, they would tend to impose on that
external cosmos the ultimate idealism abstracted from the subjectivity of the
superconscious.
140. Only the internal reality of the superconscious
is really pertinent to a post-atomic society, for which the proton-dominated
external reality of the Cosmos - and nature - will be taboo.
141. The civilized proletariat would look upon that
lower diabolic reality with a divine bias, seeing only the idealism they have
imposed upon it, in fidelity to their superconscious subjectivity.
142. And thus post-atomic society would draw ever
closer to the ultimate reality of transcendent spirit, derived from the
superconscious and destined for unity in the Omega Absolute at the spiritual
culmination of evolution.
143. Literature in the proletarian civilization
would be collective and essential rather than individual and apparent, as with
previous levels of civilization.
144. Meaning in literature is the proton of a
sentence, words the bound electrons which revolve around it, so to speak, in
the interests of meaningful sense.
145. Post-atomic literature requires that words be
freed from the constraint of meaning and elevated to the status of free
electrons. This is especially desirable
in the context of poetry, hitherto the most proton-dominated branch of
literature.
146. The convergence towards an Omega Point on the
level of literature not only requires that words be freed from proton
determinism but, as a corollary of this, that literature be freed from the
constraints of one language and composed in multi-lingual terms.
147. For with the eventual emergence of post-atomic
civilization throughout the world, literature would have to be international in
the profoundest sense.
148. As they grow old, women contract physically
whereas men expand spiritually. Just so
does the material side of life contract as the spiritual side of it expands.
149. Socialism signifies a contraction of the
material, transcendentalism an expansion of the spiritual.
150. As the State 'withers', so the Church will
blossom into the exclusive spirituality of the post-Human Millennium,
post-civilized because post-human.
PART TWO: ESSAYS
FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS
(Or an attempt to outline a post-human future)
Transcendental meditation wouldn't suffice to take man to the heavenly
Beyond ... of the Omega Absolute, but it would certainly suffice to take him to
the post-Human Beyond ... of the Superman.
For the Superman is the evolutionary development immediately above man,
towards which transcendental men are advancing.
With the decline of
egocentric religion, the post-egocentric religion of Transcendentalism becomes
the final form religion will take in the evolutionary history of man. Instead of praying and singing hymns, like
Christians did, the Transcendentalists of the centuries ahead will directly
cultivate their spirit through the medium of transcendental meditation. They will learn to meditate and regularly
practise meditation in suitably-designed meditation centres, the institutional
successors to churches. Praying,
singing, chanting, etc., will have no appeal to them whatsoever. Only the expansion of the superconscious
through meditation will be relevant to them, and this they will prefer to do
communally - as part of a large gathering of fellow Transcendentalists.
Man in his third stage
of evolutionary development (the stage beyond paganism and Christianity) will
be succeeded, however, by the Superman, that is to say, by a brain artificially
supported and sustained, with possible access to artificial hearing, seeing,
and speaking devices, subject to external control. The Supermen - for there should be many such
brains in existence - will be clustered together in tree-like formations, their
brains being sustained and supported from a central energy source. There will be numerous tree-like clusters of
this nature in existence throughout the world, and they will each signify a
life form antithetical, in essence, to animals, particularly with reference to
such tree-climbing, tree-inhabiting animals as apes. The 'tree' in question will be artificial,
but the brains being supported on it will be natural and capable of
self-identification. Each brain will be
a separate Superman, and all Supermen will be resigned to a communal life, just
as apes are resigned to such a life in the crowded branches of the trees they
inhabit. The great antithetical
difference, however, between these two life forms will be that whereas apes are
resigned to a sensual communality, the Supermen will partake of a spiritual
communality, and this spiritual life will constitute the first phase of the
post-Human Millennium, being conditioned and encouraged by the regular intake
of suitably-regulated doses of LSD, or some equivalent synthetic upward
self-transcending, vision-inducing stimulant, which will be externally
administered to the artificially-supported brains by the future equivalent of
priests - the superpriestly spiritual leaders, so to speak, of the Millennium
in question.
Meditation, then, will
terminate with the termination of man, to be superseded by the visionary
contemplation, revealed through LSD-type hallucinogens, of the Superman. Meditation is fundamentally too naturalistic
to be wholly compatible with an advanced spirituality in a more sophisticated
evolutionary context. As evolution
progresses, so the lifestyles of its participants become increasingly
artificial, subject to the substitution of synthetic for natural products and
experiences. A being freed, so to speak, from the natural body wouldn't be
qualified to practise yoga, with its complicated posturings, and neither would
he be able to regulate the flow of oxygen to his brain through the manipulation
of various breathing techniques designed to facilitate increased
awareness. Rather, oxygen would have to
be fed to him artificially, through the medium of special containers, and its
flow regulated according to uniform standards of intake acceptable to the brain
commune as a whole. It would pass into
the blood vessels of the various brains, where it would be converted into corpuscles
and suitably exploited in the interests of proper brain functioning. There could be no question of a natural
respiratory system being in use at that point in time, for the lungs would have
'gone the way' of the rest of the body, left behind with the creature known as
man. And, of course, an artificial pump,
replacing the human heart, would serve the brain commune by maintaining a
uniform flow of blood through such artificial vessels as were deemed necessary
to link the pump to the natural blood vessels of the individual brains. The Supermen would never experience the human
failing of heart attacks but, at worst, only a temporary mechanical failure of
the artificial pump which, hopefully, could be quickly repaired - assuming, for
argument's sake, it were to break down in the first place!
The introduction of
hallucinogens like LSD into the Supermen's brains would, of course, have to be
through the blood, so we may surmise that the future equivalent of priests will
inject the desired quantities of them into the artificial blood vessels at
salient, predetermined points in the sustain apparatus, thereby guaranteeing
each Superman a uniform, carefully-regulated dose of the benevolent,
mind-expanding synthetic stimulant, which would be designed to take over from
where television and/or meditation had left off. What follows would be a sustained period of
gentle acclimatization to its vision-inducing properties, as the Supermen
contemplated the jewel-like crystalline images of their turned-on superconscious.
With the termination of 'the trip', which would probably occur after several
hours, the Supermen would be left to sink into their subconscious minds and
either doze or sleep, in the interests of psychic integrity. The following day, however, they would be
given another 'trip', and so on, until, with a gradual increase of the dosage
to peak levels, they became spiritually ripe for the next evolutionary
transformation - namely from Supermen to Superbeings.
Before I go on to
discuss Superbeings, a word or two must be said about man and his future
transformation into Superman. The
average transcendental man of the late-twentieth century is rather like an
embryonic superman, and, to be sure, there are already people living a life
which approximates to the one just outlined and therefore intimates of it. At the time of writing, I happen to reside
next to a couple whom I understand to be unemployed. They rarely go out during the day and hardly
ever at night. As a rule, they spend
their mornings in bed and their afternoons either listening to the radio or
watching television. At night they
invariably sit in front of their television for several hours. Now, for me, a quite conscientious
intellectual, their lifestyle appeals to my critical sense and generally causes
me to feel somewhat indignant and even censorious. What right have they, I ask myself, to spend
their days either lying in bed or watching television when I, compelled by a
sense of duty, spend 5-6 hours a day at my writings, with from 1-2 hours study
every evening? Clearly, my moral sense
is offended and I feel tempted to preach to them on the virtue of work,
irrespective of whether or not there may be any work available to such people
under the present economic climate. And
yet my attitude - by no means untypical of people like me - is really quite
beside-the-point and hopelessly one-sided.
I regard my television-addicted neighbours from a reactionary
point-of-view, quite overlooking the more relevant progressive one which, even
if they personally aren't directly aware of it, is at least applicable to the
trend of evolution towards the Superman.
Now since transcendental man is pre-eminently a proletarian phenomenon,
and since the proletariat tend, on the whole, to watch more television than the
bourgeoisie, I must make some attempt, if I'm to do proper justice to this
phenomenon, to view my neighbours' behaviour in the light of contemporary
transcendentalism and thus equate their lifestyle, no matter how alien it may
be to myself, with a proletarian spirituality that is a prelude to the
visionary lifestyle of the Superman.
For, viewed in this light, the hours my neighbours spend in front of
their colour television correspond, on a lower external level, to the hours the
Supermen will spend contemplating the luminous contents of their superconscious
minds, as induced by the higher internal stimulant of LSD. And, of course, the hours they spend in bed,
both before and after television, will correspond to the rest-periods which the
Supermen will require to safeguard their psychic integrity, following the
visionary exigencies of their respective 'trips'. My neighbours are therefore resting, each
night, from their television experiences of the previous day, while preparing
themselves, throughout the morning, for the afternoon and evening viewing
to-come. They are the Supermen in
embryo, and allow me to add, at the risk of scandalizing middle-class
sensibilities, that they are by no means untypical of their class! Perhaps they are just a shade more radical or
thoroughgoing than those who, largely because of job commitments, are obliged
to confine their TV-viewing to the evenings and weekends.... Which just goes to
show that one should be wary of looking at unemployment solely from a
socio-economic point of view, quite overlooking the spiritual or modernist
dimensions which accrue to it and would seem to be compatible with the
unofficial development of transcendentalism in a civilization which, in regard
to the bourgeoisie, is becoming increasingly decadent.
Transcendental man is
therefore clearly in evidence in the context of extensive
television-viewing. Meditation, though
undoubtedly relevant to his future development, isn't the only kind of
spiritual stimulus, even if it is an inherently superior kind to television, by
dint of the fact that it expands spirit directly, through internalizing the
mind, rather than indirectly, through the medium of artificial
appearances. Nevertheless the incentive
provided by television for a mild degree of upward self-transcendence cannot be
dismissed as irrelevant to spiritual development, but should be regarded as a
prelude to higher things, the temperaments of some people probably being such
that they could never come to fully appreciate the virtues of meditation anyway,
given that such virtues tend, as a rule, to be appreciated only by a more
sophisticated type of mind in the twentieth century, and not by what we may
call the lumpen proletariat. If
television succeeds in gradually leading the majority towards transcendental
meditation, then it will have achieved more than at first meets the eye! It does at least condition people to sit
still and remain intellectually passive for a number of hours, which is what
meditation also does, albeit minus an external stimulus and therefore with an
emphasis on one's own spiritual resources.
But if the general proletariat are closer, in their dependence on
visionary experience, to the future Supermen, then it could well be that the
meditating elite of the present century are closer, in their self-containment,
to the ensuing Superbeings, and will doubtless experience a higher degree of
collective meditation, pending transcendence.
But there is no reason why the proletariat shouldn't indulge in periodic
bouts of meditation in due course, even if only as a supplement to their
television-viewing. Towards the climax
of the transcendental civilization the vast majority of people, of whatever
temperament, should be indulging in a degree of meditation on a regular basis,
pending their transformation into Supermen.
When this transformation
will be brought about I cannot, as someone born into the twentieth century,
know for certain. Yet if decadence, in
one of its principal manifestations, can be equated with the coming to fruition
of the spiritual development of a given class, a kind of spiritual climax to
the overall cultural or intellectual progress of each succeeding class, and we
accept as fact that the aristocracy attained to the zenith of their spiritual
development towards the end of the sixteenth century and, following their
example, the bourgeoisie towards the end of the nineteenth century, then there
would seem to be some justification for our supposing that the proletariat,
i.e. urban men, will attain to the zenith of their spiritual
development some time in the twenty-second century, and that the transformation
from man to Superman will therefore occur at approximately the same time,
which, at the very latest, could be towards the end of the twenty-second
century. Hence we may reasonably contend
that man in his final form has about two centuries to go, after which time he
should be ripe for transformation into the Superman that will constitute the
first phase of millennial life - a phase in which the brain will be artificially
supported and sustained.
With the second phase of
millennial life, however, the Supermen will be transformed, by the
technological leadership, into Superbeings, and will consequently become a new
and higher life form, antithetical, in essence, to plants and especially to
trees. No longer will each brain be
capable of self-identification and limited egohood but, with the removal of the
old brain (in which resides the subconscious part of the psyche), become elevated,
instead, to complete superconscious identification in blissful contemplation of
spirit. From being a separate member of
a commune of independent brains, the new-brain Superbeings will become
components in a larger whole (just as the leaves of trees are components in the
larger collective entity known as a tree), and thereupon cease to differentiate
between themselves, to know themselves, in the manner of Supermen, as separate
individuals. These clusters of new
brains will in effect assume the character of one giant entity, and where
previously each brain cluster could be regarded as a commune of individuals,
and thus bear the plural title of Supermen, each new-brain cluster, by
contrast, will constitute a separate Superbeing, the plural being reserved for
reference to whatever number of such clusters may happen to exist in the world
at any given time. So, considered
separately, a Superbeing will constitute a much higher approximation to the
ultimate unity of the Omega Point (de Chardin), and thus reflect an ongoing
evolutionary convergence (in centro-complexification) from the Many to the
One. Furthermore, the new brains of the
Superbeings will doubtless be closer together on the artificial supports than
would have been possible with the larger ego-bound brains of the Supermen, and
will therefore more easily lend themselves to the appearance of a collective
entity - each new brain being inseparable from the whole.
How long it will take
before the Supermen can be transformed, i.e. engineered, into Superbeings ... I
cannot of course say. Though there is no
reason for one to assume that the Supermen will last for centuries. After several decades they would doubtless
begin to tire of their LSD or equivalent hallucinogenic experiences and to long
for a higher type of consciousness, completely beyond the visionary. The leadership would remain in regular
contact with them to ascertain exactly what their psychic position was at any
given time, and would consequently know when the transformation to the Superbeing
was apposite. However, the post-visionary
consciousness of the Superbeing wouldn't be forced upon any brain cluster
prematurely. For evolution has to
proceed by degrees, as the Hindu metaphor of reincarnation adequately confirms
- the inability of the devotee's psyche to come to terms with the posthumous
Clear Light ... being a reflection of his egocentric past and necessitating, in
the paradoxical logic of reincarnation, a return to this world, where it is to
be hoped that personal, i.e. evolutionary, progress will better qualify his soul
for unification with the Divine in due course.
Likewise, the actual progress of the Supermen towards the Omega Point
would be a gradual affair, requiring their full acquiescence in
artificially-induced internal visionary experience, before any transformation
to the Superbeing could reasonably be endorsed.
Appearance must precede essence, even when it is internal, and therefore
as spiritualized as possible.
With the eventual
removal of the old brain, however, the liberated new brain would be conscious
of nothing but the light of its own superconscious mind and such a light would
be essence, not appearance. It would
constitute a higher type of meditation than anything the more sophisticated
transcendental men had known prior to the post-Human Millennium, being the
final form consciousness will take.
Eventually - though again it's impossible to be explicit - this highest
collective meditation of the Superbeings should lead to transcendence, and thus
to the establishment, in space, of Spiritual Globes, which would be the bigger
the more spirit they each contained, that is to say, depending on the number of
Superbeings, from whichever part of the planet, that had attained to
transcendence at any given time. Yet
these Spiritual Globes would not be the Omega Point or, rather, Omega Absolute
(to drop de Chardin and revert to my preferred terminology), but that stage of
evolution immediately preceding the establishment of definitive God, which
would be ultimate Oneness. The Spiritual
Globes issuing from the Superbeings would constitute an evolutionary antithesis
to the planets, or material globes, and would tend towards one another in the
heavenly Beyond. Those which issued from
the same part of the earth would probably coalesce into larger wholes as a
matter of course, the larger Spiritual Globes, composed of the spirit of
numerous Superbeings from any one area of the world, exerting a more compelling
attractive influence on the smaller ones which, in being pulled in their
direction, would eventually bring about the formation of still larger Spiritual
Globes until, by a similar process occurring throughout the Universe over an
immensely long period of time or, rather, eternity, all separate Spiritual
Globes had converged together to establish the Omega Absolute, in complete
contrast to the alpha-stemming divergence of the innumerable stars. And with the Omega Absolute, evolution would
be complete and, following the disintegration and dissolution of the stars, the
Universe become perfect - perfect in an ultimate unity which would last for
ever.
It is therefore my
contention that God doesn't yet exist as the Omega Absolute and won't exist as
such until every single Spiritual Globe, from whichever part of the Universe,
had been absorbed into ultimate Oneness some thousands or even millions of
years hence. Gone are the days when it
was possible to be agnostic, contending that one cannot know for sure whether
God, in any ultimate sense, does or doesn't exist. On the contrary, I believe that one can know, and
this essay is intended to furnish proof of the fact. From now on it will be possible for every man
to be atheist, for knowledge has at last put paid to agnostic doubts. Every man will know that, while alpha
absolutes exist, the Omega Absolute is a creation of the future, stemming not
from men but, more directly, from the Spiritual Globes of the heavenly
Beyond. Transcendental man may be a long
way from the realization of that blessed creation at present, but, as a
participator in evolutionary progress, he is certainly tending in the right
direction. When he becomes the Superman
of the post-Human Millennium, he will have entered the eternal plane. For, although such a context is at a considerable
evolutionary remove from the Omega Absolute, his brain won't die, as does
man's, but be artificially supported and sustained through to the subsequent
transformation ... of the Superbeing, until, with transcendence, spirit becomes
completely independent of the brain or, more correctly, new brain and capable,
thereafter, of indefinite self-sustain.
Here we are left with the ultimate paradox, which is that while the
Superman won't last for ever, the spirit appertaining to him, which can be
expected to achieve transcendence with the Superbeing, most certainly
will. For everything must pass but the
Omega Absolute, towards which everything tends.
IRISH AND ENGLISH
Ethnic generalizations are sometimes misleading, though not
necessarily impertinent. The distinction
between Anglo-Saxon and Celt is a particularly revealing one, and, in its
extreme manifestations ... between Protestant Englishmen and Catholic Irishmen,
it furnishes us with an objective understanding of the relative merits and
predilections of these two, in many ways, antithetical peoples.
If there is one word that
sums up England and the English better than any other it must be 'quantity',
with its strong materialistic implications.
The word I would choose for the Irish, on the other hand, is 'quality',
which, by contrast, has spiritual implications.
Quantity appertains to appearance, quality to essence. Here, if anywhere, one has the chief
distinction, it seems to me, between the English and the Irish (not to mention
Welsh and Scots) in a nutshell, a distinction which has been the source of much
bitterness and misunderstanding, down the centuries, as well, paradoxically, as
a certain amount of mutual admiration and respect - the English casting
a-not-unenvious eye on the Irish for their intellectual, cultural, and
religious genius; the Irish likewise sometimes feeling that a more pragmatic,
factual, materialistic approach to life wouldn't be a bad thing. Yet whereas it is conceivable that more than
a few Englishmen have wished they were Irish, it is unlikely that all that many
Irishmen have wanted to be English, and for the very sound reason that quality
is a better asset than quantity, an altogether superior predilection.
Of course, there are
several disadvantages and detrimental consequences from belonging to a people
who generally put being above doing in their scale of values. On the lowest level such a preference often
leads to drunkenness and laziness, an unwillingness or inability to come
properly to terms with the practical demands of life, and no Englishman needs
to be reminded that a significant proportion of Irishmen are either regularly
drunk and unemployed or irregularly drunk and under-employed, as the case may
be! Nor would he need to be reminded
that his ancestors were able to dominate Ireland in consequence of its
comparative military weakness. For the
fact that Irishmen have lived so long under external rule must be regarded as a
further disadvantage of what it means to belong to a people for whom being
takes precedence over doing, and quality thereby prevails over quantity - not
least of all in terms of population density.
Had the Irish been more industrious and pragmatic, they might have
driven out the invader sooner than they did.
But that wasn't to be, and so the yoke of imperial enslavement had to be
endured, in accordance with historical necessity.
Yet this is just the
negative side of Irish experience, as largely appertaining to the masses. For on the positive side came the
intellectual, cultural, and religious achievements of men of genius such as
Burke, Boyle, Swift, Goldsmith, Moore, Maturin, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Synge,
Yeats, O'Faollain, O'Casey, and Beckett.
Naturally the English, with their much larger populations, have produced
more writers than the Irish, and some of them have been very good ones,
too. But, with few exceptions, they
haven't produced as many outstanding writers as the Irish - certainly
not in the twentieth century, which, if anything, marked a turning-point in
these two peoples' fortunes, and not just with regard to creative writing. Fundamentally the twentieth century was the
first post-dualistic century in history, and since the Irish are nothing if not
extreme, it is inevitable that the twentieth century should have been more to
their liking than it has been, on the whole, to the rather more middle-of-the-road
English. If England dominated Irish
political life during the centuries when dualism (particularly in its liberal
manifestation) ruled supreme, then it should come as no surprise to us when we
find that, with the emergence of a post-dualistic age, the Irish have dominated
and continue to dominate English cultural affairs. I need only city Joyce in respect of the
novel, Yeats in respect of poetry, Starkie in respect of biography, O'Faollain
in respect of the short story, and, in the semi-literary context of theatre,
Shaw in respect of the play ... to confirm this Irish domination of
literature. And although I have racked
my brains over literally dozens of English authors, from the best, like Aldous
Huxley, to the worst, like D.H. Lawrence, it would be impossible for me to
ascribe pre-eminence in any one field to an Englishman. For modern English writing is not only
comparatively second-rate; it is also deeply pessimistic, reflecting the
disenchantment, anxiety, and regret that many Englishmen feel for the passing
of dualistic civilization and its replacement by an increasingly volatile world
which is difficult if not impossible to reconcile with the English temperament.
It isn't by mere chance
that Joyce's greatest novel, Ulysses, concludes with a wholehearted
affirmation of contemporary life, its very last word being 'Yes' with a capital
Y, whereas Joyce's contemporary and in many ways English counterpart, Huxley,
allows Point Counter Point - as indeed most of his novels, including Island,
the last one - to end on a note of defeat and despair, reflecting the end of a
civilization beset by the twin enemies of barbarism and decadence. This pessimistic syndrome in the face of
post-dualistic evolution cuts right across contemporary English literature,
from Waugh and Muggeridge to Orwell and Amis, signifying, as it does, what may
be called the mainstream trend of the age.
Not so where the Irish are concerned, and not so either - at least
nowhere near to the same extent - with
British writers of Irish extraction, like Lawrence Durrell, Anthony
Burgess, Cecil Day-Lewis, and John Middleton Murray, who seem to reflect an
in-between psychological realm of pessimism tempered by optimism, rather than
to stand at either Irish or English extremes.
It is tempting to see in
this Irish literary revival a golden age of Celtic literature which would
correspond to the golden age of ancient Greece in the fifth century B.C., and,
indeed, to equate the 1916 Uprising with the Greek victory over the Persians in
479 B.C., so that the Irish are perceived as being, in some sense, the modern
equivalent of the ancient Greeks. But
this would be an over-facile and quite erroneous analogue, scarcely one based
on real historical logic! That Joyce may
have conceived of such an analogue at the time he was writing Ulysses ...
is a possibility we shall not ignore.
But there is no reason for us to endorse it on the grounds of historical
recurrence. If there is a
kind of cyclical recurrence in history, and one with reversible applicability,
depending on whether the context be pre- or post-dualistic, then there would be
a strong case in favour of our equating the victory of the Americans over the
British in the War of Independence with that of the ancient Greeks over the
Persians in 479 B.C., and of seeing in America the modern equivalent of ancient
Greece.
Thus, in the trend
towards dualism of the ancient world, the Greeks won their independence from a
predominantly pre-dualistic people, only to lose it, eventually, to the Romans,
who were early dualists. Reversing this
cycle through the trend away from dualism of the modern world, we find the
Americans, as antithetical equivalents to the ancient Greeks, winning their
freedom from the late-dualistic British, who can be regarded as antithetically
equivalent to the Romans, and, in all probability, destined to lose it in the
future to an early post-dualistic people, like the Russians or, more probably,
the Chinese, who would then be the modern equivalent of the ancient Persians. As history tends to reverse itself on the
post-dualistic level, we might well be justified in equating the modern Irish
with the ancient Egyptians or, at any rate, with a development which is tending
towards an antithesis to the world's first great religious civilization and
which, if it continues, may well constitute the basis for the world's last
great religious civilization in due course - a civilization not peculiar to the
Irish alone, but partly stemming from Ireland, or Irishmen, and spreading
throughout the world.
Thus the pre-dualistic
development from Egypt and Persia to Greece (a kind of transitional
civilization) and on, with early dualism, to Rome, would seem to have its
post-dualistic parallel with Britain, as late dualism, leading via America (another
transitional civilization) to Russia and/or China, and on, finally, to Ireland,
the future equivalent, now in embryo, of ancient Egypt, which will round off
the cyclical recurrence of evolutionary civilizations and lead, in due turn, to
a post-Human Millennium, with the transformation of universal man into the
Superman. Ireland, then, will have the
responsibility of determining the shape of the last great civilization, which
will be cosmopolitan, just as Egypt determined the shape of the first, purely
national one, and in such speculation I believe we are some way along the road
to understanding the contemporary Irish domination of literature in
twentieth-century Britain.
As an extreme people for
whom quality prevails over quantity, the Irish are already laying the
foundations of the next civilization, a civilization that will follow on behind
the American one of transition between dualism and transcendentalism. With the ancient world we are always
conscious of a lacuna between the Egyptians and the Greeks, the Persians not
having fashioned a civilization to compare with either their predecessors or
successors, and consequently not being known as a highly civilized people to
contemporary minds. In the modern world
a similar lacuna may be projected as existing between the American civilization
of today and the Irish or Gaelic civilization of tomorrow, since the
Marxist-Leninist materialism of both the former Soviet Russia and, more
especially, contemporary China falls short of genuine civilization, and
corresponds to a neo-barbarism analogous, one can only surmise, to the
relatively barbarous society of ancient Persia.
The twenty-first century may well constitute a new Dark Age for the
passing civilizations, both British and American, but at least, if the logic of
scientific history is to be trusted, we can express hope about the rebirth of
civilization on higher terms in the not-too-distant future.
Not so long ago, in an
earlier volume of essays, my application of a modified cyclical recurrence to various
nations in the overall progression of history led me to refute not only
Spengler, with his assessment of Nazi Germany as a 'New Rome', and Britain,
traditionally, as the 'New Greece' (or modern equivalent of ancient Greece),
but also Malcolm Muggeridge and Simone Weil, the former upholding the theory of
Britain as equivalent to ancient Greece and America to ancient Rome, while the
latter maintained faith in France as the modern equivalent - particularly
during the Napoleonic period - to ancient Rome, and Britain, by contrast, as
equivalent to ancient Greece. I
disagreed with each of them and, I think, wisely, as things turned out. But I wasn't entirely justified in aligning
France with ancient Greece, even though I still adhere to the alignment of Britain
with ancient Rome. Frankly, I should
have equated France with Carthage, so that America was free to be equated with
ancient Greece.... As for Nazi Germany, it might have become the 'New Persia',
so to speak, had it defeated the allies in World War Two. But this it ultimately failed to do, and so
Germany lost its claim to a major place in historical recurrence, much as
Spengler may have wished otherwise!
Unfortunately, his reading of history was insufficiently profound to
comprehend Nazi Germany in the light of a potential modern equivalent to
ancient Persia, and so he drew the erroneous analogy with Rome. Likewise, Muggeridge and Weil failed to probe
deeply enough into historical evolution, and so came up with mistaken
contentions. However, it is interesting
that they attributed Grecian characteristics to Britain when, except for one
short period in its history, namely the Romantic era, Britain has steadfastly
resembled ancient Rome, having come to power, as its antithetical equivalent,
at the tail-end rather than inception of dualistic civilization. Yet whereas ancient Rome took over Greek
civilization and embellished, modified, and extended it into the Christian era,
with the reversal of cyclical recurrence on the post-dualistic level we find that
it is America, the 'New Greece', which has taken over British civilization and
embellished, modified, and extended it into the transcendental era. The Romans made no attempt to found a new
religion completely independently of the Greeks, even though they eventually
converted to Christianity, and neither have the Americans made any serious
attempt to break away from Protestantism, as inherited from Britain in the
seventeenth century. Despite its
indubitable transcendental leanings, not to mention its large Catholic
population, America still officially clings to Protestant Christianity, and
will doubtless continue to do so for some time to come.
Yet the Irish will, I
believe, adopt a completely new religion in the future, one stemming from
Christianity but independent of humanistic influence, and will expand it
abroad, just as Irish monks brought Catholicism to Britain and various
Continental countries during the Dark Ages.
This new religion, though reminiscent of Buddhism, will be more than
just a copy or derivative of oriental religion, since far less influenced by
natural criteria and correspondingly more sympathetic to artificial and
technological ingredients, pointing the way towards the Superman. It won't make the mistake of imagining that
man can attain to God, for it will know that man is but a stage on the road to
something higher (the Superman), who is but a stage to something higher again
(the Superbeing), and so on, until the attainment of the Omega Absolute at the
climax of evolution. If such a
transcendental religion is destined to catch on anywhere, it can only be in a
country with a long tradition of religious devotion, a country in which quality
takes precedence over quantity and, consequently, being over doing. I believe Ireland is such a country, and it
will doubtless remain so in the future, whatever happens on the world stage.
An Irish priest is
always somehow more credible, more authentically theocratic, than an English
one, and it would be scant exaggeration to say that an Irish priest is worth an
English bishop, or even several English bishops. Conversely, the Irish politician is usually
inferior to his English counterpart and not taken quite so seriously either by
his own people or by the British. This
is, however, relative to the antithetical predilections of the two peoples, and
isn't likely to change very much in the future - whatever their respective
fates may happen to be. The Irish will
continue to value their religious representatives above their political ones,
while the English will take politicians more seriously than priests. How it is that the Irish and English do differ so
radically in this way must, in some degree, remain an enigma, although there is
evidently something in the blood of the Celt that corresponds to a spiritual
predilection, whereas the typical Anglo-Saxon feels more at home in the realm
of tangible reality. Doubtless the
respective histories of the two peoples have contributed to this distinction,
as, one suspects, have the geological and geographical differences between
their respective islands or ancestral backgrounds, not least of all in respect
of climate. Yet whatever the main
reasons, the moderation of the Englishman and the extremism of the Irishman remain
fundamental characteristics of a centuries-old ethnic divide.
In a transcendentalist
age, however, it is inevitable that the Irish will dominate English cultural
and intellectual affairs, as they did in the twentieth century. The new men will take over from where their
predecessors left off, bringing works of quality to a people who would
otherwise be condemned, in materialistic stagnation, to mere quantity alone.
A TEASING PARADOX
It was by mere chance that the terms 'Left' and 'Right' came to be
applied to political allegiances of, in the one case, a progressive and, in the
other, a reactionary or conservative bias.
For it was the progressive party (Jacobin/Cordelier) that sat on the
left of the chamber in the new French Assembly of October 1791, while the
moderates (Girondists) sat on the right, following the political turmoil of the
French Revolution. Thenceforth, as a
result of this contingency, each successive progressive party the world over
acquired the description 'left wing' and, conversely, each conservative party
the description 'right wing'. We have
lived with this habit for so long now that we tend to take it for granted,
convinced that it reflects a logical, meaningful way of describing the
antithetical parties. The thought that
evolution, whether political or otherwise, may not be proceeding from the Right
to the Left never really enters our heads, and we would be inclined to brand
anyone who had the nerve to suggest, on the contrary, that political evolution
proceeds from the Left to the Right as an ignoramus or, more likely, an
idiot. Yet the curious fact of the
matter is that, strictly speaking, evolution does indeed proceed in this latter
fashion - not according to the chance arrangement of an historic division in
the new French Assembly!
It isn't simply a matter
of bringing a Nietzschean 'transvaluation of all values' to bear on the
traditional viewpoint. For such a
'transvaluation' can only reasonably be applied to natural phenomena and their
relationship to civilization as it is now constituted. A contingency doesn't permit of a
transvaluation, and so we shan't attempt to turn the logic or, more correctly,
illogicality of 'Left' applied to progressives and 'Right' applied to
conservatives the correct way up.
Instead, we shall simply reverse the descriptions, so that, for once,
the progressive party are regarded as right wing and the conservative party, by
contrast, as left. This merely as an
experiment in logic, not as a recommendation for a revolution in our political
thinking!
Why, then, have I come
to this subversive decision? Because the
brain, as currently constituted, is divisible into a left and a right
compartment - the old brain or, in psychological terminology, subconscious mind
being on the left, and the new brain/superconscious mind, by contrast, being on
the right. Translated into physiological
terms, this means that the old brain is located to the left of the new brain,
not underneath it. Strictly speaking,
there is no physiological entity corresponding to the ego, since it is a
function of the brain, a spiritual attribute that arises from the latter's
physiological workings, which also produce the independent attributes of
subconscious and superconscious psychic functioning. Thus as spirit arises from matter, it is
dependent on matter, and will remain so until transcendence is attained ... as
the long-awaited goal of human evolution.
Now since evolutionary
progress presupposes the gradual expansion of spirit towards its transcendent
goal, it follows that the psyche's evolution proceeds from left to right, which
is to say, from the subconscious to the superconscious via a
continuously-modified ego which reflects, at any given point in time, the
existing degree of consciousness, or the extent to which the one side of the
psyche prevails over the other, in any individual. This degree of consciousness isn't only a
personal affair, depending on the intellectual or spiritual potential inherited
from one's parents, nor, for that matter, is it solely related to the cultural
standards of the society into which one was born, but is also - and perhaps
predominantly - a consequence of the environment in which one lives - the
successive historical transformations from rural to urban via suburban and/or
provincial engendering a corresponding shift in the psyche's constitution, so
that consciousness will reflect either more or less superconscious influence
according to the individual's environmental position, extended over many years,
at any given time. With the rapid growth
of urban environments, in recent centuries, we may note a more radical shift in
consciousness from a kind of twilight balance between the subconscious and the
superconscious to a light imbalance, so to speak, on the side of the latter, an
imbalance which constitutes the psychic integrity of transcendental - as
opposed to Christian - man. Thus a shift
away from the old brain towards the new or, rather, deeper into the new brain
... is a principal characteristic of evolutionary progress at this juncture in
time, and, as the former is on the left and the latter on the right, we may
infer that, strictly speaking, political evolution also tends from left to
right, reflecting, as it must, the psyche's evolution.
The fact that the old
brain/subconscious mind is situated on the left and its antithesis on the right
... makes for a corresponding distinction between the left- and right-hand
sides of one's face, most especially with reference to the eyes. The left eye, it will be observed, is usually
somewhat gentler and even sleepier-looking than the right one, and in the
morning, if you bother to scrutinize your face before washing, you will find
that it usually contains more sleep than its neighbour, the reason being that
it is closer to the subconscious and therefore more under subconscious domination
during sleep. A factor which I have
often observed in myself, and which I can only suppose common to others as
well, is a predilection I have to sleep on my left side, so that consciousness
slides down naturally into subconscious domination with the coming of
sleep. When, by contrast, I have
attempted to sleep on my right side ... the almost invariable consequence has
been a nightmare, and this I can only suppose to be related to the fact that,
in such a position, the subconscious is on top of the superconscious and, with
the coming of sleep, tends to oppress one through its essentially active,
negative characteristics. A reversal of
this position doesn't necessarily prevent one from experiencing a nightmare,
but it does at least guarantee that the subconscious, in being underneath,
remains in a less oppressive context, thereby facilitating a more agreeable
dream-life.
As to the right eye, the
fact of its proximity to the superconscious guarantees it a more penetrating,
lucid, aggressive appearance than the left one, an appearance which, as a rule,
will be more marked the greater the intelligence of the individual concerned,
that is to say, the more his particular psyche is under the sway of the
superconscious, with its intellectual/spiritual bias. A poster I have of Lenin is particularly
revealing of the distinction between the left and right eyes. For whereas the former is in shadow the
latter stares fiercely out at one from a brightly-lit section of the face, almost
menacing in its fixity. Men like Hitler,
Dali, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche also provide conspicuous examples of the
psyche's dichotomy, as reflected in facial appearance, and more than a few
well-known politicians, including former American president Richard Nixon, have
furnished convincing illustrations of this fact when photographed in a stern
mood! It would be misguided, however, to
equate this forceful stare in highly intelligent men with the evil eye of
superstitious tradition. For it isn't
the right eye but the left one which connects with the subconscious, and the
only valid criterion for objectively assessing evil must pertain to the
sensual, not to the spiritual! A
penetrating right eye is no more evil than a highly intelligent mind.
Whether the distinction
between the two eyes is sharp or blurred will, of course, depend on the psychic
constitution of the individual, the vast majority of people probably not
presenting the critical observer with very much contrast, and especially will
this be true of people accustomed to a rural environment. A more marked contrast will only be observed,
as a rule, among the most spiritually-evolved people who, now as before,
constitute a minority of higher types.
In the course of time, this distinction between the two eyes will
doubtless spread to greater numbers of people, in response to social
amelioration in educational and genetic contexts. Post-dualistic man will be aptly reflected in
his facial bias - a bias corresponding to the stronger influence of the
superconscious in his overall psychic integrity.
Before the discovery or
perhaps I should say acknowledgement of the superconscious, psychologists were
inclined to attribute positive characteristics to the subconscious in an
attempt to explain away the psyche's positive predilections. Since, to their way of thinking,
consciousness was simply something that sat atop the subconscious, it seemed
perfectly feasible to attribute positive motivations to the latter, seeing that
such motivations had to come from somewhere and, given that the subconscious
was the only other known part of the psyche, so the psychologists reasoned they
must come from there. Thus Freud and,
following his example, Jung each endowed the subconscious with positive
inclinations.
For my part, I contend
that positivity, in the truest sense of that word, is the principal attribute
of the superconscious and will generally - though not invariably - be found on
the right-hand side of the psyche, which is to say, in the new brain. Positivity is not, as was formerly believed,
an active thing but a decidedly passive phenomenon, like love, and corresponds
to the spiritual life. Only negativity
is active, since aligned with the sensual, and it is precisely this
characteristic that should be associated with the subconscious. The proof of this, if it isn't already
self-evident, lies in the fact that one's dreams are always active, and thus
negative, whereas the experience of anyone who has expanded his consciousness
through LSD, for example, will show that the contents of the superconscious, as
revealed in this hallucinogenic way, are perfectly still, passive luminosities
whose positivity fascinates the receptive consciousness. Thus an antithesis may be posited between the
restless, active contents of one's subconscious mind, as experienced during
sleep, and the tranquil, utterly passive contents of one's superconscious mind,
as revealed through upward self-transcending synthetic stimulants like LSD,
whilst awake. Aldous Huxley's mescaline
experiments, as recorded in The Doors of Perception, provide
quite conclusive proof of this matter and clearly point in the general
direction that transcendental man is taking towards the millennial Superman,
when equivalent artificially-induced upward self-transcending visionary
experiences will become the social norm, shared by the vast majority of
fellow-superhuman beings. If Aldous
Huxley deserves to be especially remembered for anything, over the coming
centuries, it must surely be for his experiments with synthetic stimulants,
which arguably constitute the most interesting and enlightening side of his
work. Hallucinogens like LSD may not be
suitable to society as it is currently constituted, but they must surely
presage a future applicability in response to the dictates of a more evolved
psyche than generally exists at present.
I have contended that
whereas the subconscious is active, the left eye, as the one nearest to the old
brain, is relatively passive and sleepy-looking, which would seem, on the face
of it, to be a contradiction in terms. Yet
this is only so if one fails to perceive a contradiction within each part of
the psyche, which corresponds to the mind/brain dichotomy. For whilst it is perfectly true to say that
the subconscious is active during sleep, we cannot accredit it with anything
like the same degree of activity during our waking hours, when the conscious
mind takes over. Thus we needn't be
surprised that the eye most under subconscious influence should be
comparatively passive during the day, whereas the right eye reflects the
visio-spatial/analytical activity of the superconscious or, at any rate, of its
lower regions thereof, which correspond to the higher, logico-verbal regions of
the subconscious. Admittedly, the eyes
don't exclusively connect with that part of the cerebral cortex nearest to
them. For they also cross-connect in the
chiasma and thereby link-up with the opposite brain. But the distinction between the contradictory
appearance of the left and right eyes in highly intelligent people confirms a
bias reflecting the predominant influence of the nearest brain, whether old or
new. The fact that the left side of the
brain controls the body's right side, and, conversely, the right side of the
brain the body's left side, does not invalidate this contention, since the eyes
are arguably too close to the brain to be subject to the same rules as govern
the physical body in general.
The converse of the
intellect's conscious activity in the lower regions of the superconscious,
however, is the utterly passive nature of the visionary contents of the upper
regions of superconscious mind, as revealed by mind-expanding drugs, which tend
to fade into post-visionary consciousness at the topmost level ... of mystical
beatitude. Thus not only is there an
antithesis between the active dream-world of the subconscious and the passive
visionary world of the superconscious, but there is a parallel distinction
within each part of the psyche between, on the one hand, active dream and
passive thought, and, on the other hand, passive visionary experience and
active intellectual behaviour, depending on whether one is in a state
corresponding to sleep or to wakefulness.
In a wider context, an active superconscious mind is paralleled by a
slothful subconscious body, and, conversely, an active subconscious body
normally presupposes a slothful superconscious mind. When the superconscious is passive, the
subconscious comes awake, so to speak.
And, similarly, a passive subconscious mind makes possible the true
awakening of the superconscious in visionary experience. One might say, to extend this paradox, that
the superconscious is only half-awake in visio-spatial/analytical activity,
while the subconscious is only half-awake in logico-verbal/intellectual passivity. To come fully awake, the former needs the
passive visionary experience encouraged by synthetic hallucinogens like LSD,
whereas the latter needs the active dream behaviour of sleep. Let us therefore leave the matter with this
teasing paradox: that whereas the subconscious only comes fully awake with the
sleep of the superconscious, so the latter likewise only attains to full
wakefulness with the sleep of the former.
Our higher mind is generally only half awake. It will be our duty and privilege, in the
future, to bring it fully awake, as we are transformed into Supermen.
MILLENNIAL THOUGHTS
It isn't merely to escape from the natural body that Supermen
would be elevated to the status of brains artificially supported and sustained in
our projected post-Human Millennium, but also to preclude the possibility of
physical irresponsibility or otherwise riotous behaviour, among the populace,
in consequence of high-level LSD tripping or equivalent synthetic experiences. The gradual supersession of the natural body
by an artificial, communal one will enable the religious life of Supermen to be
conducted with a minimum of physical friction and social disturbance. No-one will be liable to throw himself out of
an upstairs window or under a car or on unsuspecting females or whatever in the
post-Human Millennium, for no-one who regularly participates in the
hallucinogenic experience will have a body to abuse. The leadership, responsible for the
maintenance and supervision of the social order, won't have to worry about
irresponsible or riotous behaviour from the 'trippers', since their
artificially-supported brains will be immobile and, consequently, no Superman
would be disposed to physical revolt. A
perfectly docile society will become the cherished norm, and this norm won't be
violated by any of its members.
Of course, people have
taken LSD in the twentieth century and, as a rule, they've behaved responsibly,
refraining from physical violence. The
more intelligent members of the hippy subculture which arose in the late 1960s
but declined in the early 1970s would certainly have behaved in this way, not
imposing any severe strain on their friends or, indeed, on society
generally. But not everyone would have
done so and, had LSD been legalized, the chances of riotous behaviour resulting
from a more widespread use of this particular hallucinogen could only have been
greater, doubtless leading to serious abuses of personal freedom by people not
psychically qualified to make sensible use of it. Of course, LSD wasn't legalized, and we
needn't expect any radical change in the law relating to its use over the
coming decades. Quite probably, it will
remain illegal until the advent of the post-Human Millennium, when men become
transformed into Supermen and the natural body, or what remains of it, is
consequently superseded by an artificial support/sustain system for the
brain. For so long as man exists, there
will always be the possibility of social repercussions of a violent nature
resulting from a premature legalization of LSD, or equivalent upward
self-transcending synthetic stimulants.
We can't anticipate the widespread use of LSD under present conditions,
even if certain individuals, more intelligent than their fellows, are perfectly
capable of responding to it in a civilized manner - as various people showed
themselves to be during the hippy era.
Unfortunately the persecution, by the liberal authorities, of hippies
for 'drug abuse' was a virtual inevitability in a society where the
legalization of such a potent mind-expanding stimulant remains, for reasons
already discussed, out of the question in the short-term.
There are, however, two
kinds of alleged drug abuse. There is
the reactionary abuse involving recourse to stronger natural drugs than any
given society is prepared to tolerate, and in a society where, in consequence
of evolutionary progress, even comparatively mild drugs like tobacco and
alcohol are becoming less respectable, it stands to reason that the use of
opium, morphine, cocaine, and heroin will be penalized as incompatible with the
moral standards of that society, and stiff sentences accordingly be meted out
to those convicted of 'drug abuse'. Yet
such an abuse should be distinguished from, if not treated more leniently than,
abuses involving synthetic drugs, [Strictly speaking, my understanding of drugs
is of something that deadens the mind in the manner of a narcotic, whereas
substances which, like LSD, enliven the mind or open it up to visionary
experiences I regard as stimulants - the opposite, in effect, of a drug.] some
of which may well be applicable to a future age. LSD is, I believe, an example of the latter,
and whilst its use cannot reasonably be legalized at present, nevertheless a
distinction should be upheld between what may well presage a future
spirituality and what is patently a manifestation of reactionary
sensuality. In a society tending, all
the while, in the general direction of greater spirituality, the use or,
rather, misuse of 'drugs' reflecting that tendency shouldn't be confounded with
the use or misuse of drugs whose natural constitutions are far more harmful to
both the individual and society in general.
While, from society's standpoint, a smashed window must be treated with
equal severity by the law whether it be the result of hallucinogenics or
narcotics abuse, from the individual's standpoint, however, the distinction
between the two kinds of drug is a marked one, reflecting the difference
between progress and regress. Generally
speaking, the man who is prematurely progressive is a superior phenomenon to
the one who is belatedly regressive, and should, within reasonable limits, be
recognized as such!
Yet I am not here
encouraging the use of LSD. What is
destined to find its niche in society will do so as a matter of course,
irrespective of the opposition or repression it may meet with in the
meantime. The absence of 'progressive'
drug abuse from society would doubtless prove a grave obstacle to evolutionary
progress, which is always carried out, no matter what the context, in the face
of natural opposition. A society without
LSD adherents would not be tending towards the Supermen but, on the contrary,
standing somewhat closer to the apes!
Modern industrial society, however, should be progressive, and it would
be an encouraging factor to learn that, of the total number of people convicted
for drug abuse each year, the majority were for synthetic rather than natural
abuses. For a ratio biased on the side
of the synthetic could be interpreted as a good omen of things to come and,
instead of fretting themselves over its increase, the responsible authorities
might be prevailed upon to take a more lenient line which, while still
penalizing the offence, got it into better perspective from an evolutionary point-of-view.
Positive lawbreakers,
who presage the future, are no less culpable, in the eyes of the law, than
negative ones who resurrect the past.
They are evolution's slaves rather than its masters, a medium through
which change may be effected in due course.... Not wishing to directly align
myself with the lawbreakers, however, I prefer, in my philosophical endeavour
to comprehend evolution, the role of seeking to influence the lawmakers for the
better, so that, through this and similar methods, they may become more
receptive to the possibility of amending or changing the law in the future, at
a time when such a policy appeared not only feasible but desirable. An attempt to have the law changed
prematurely, on the other hand, would be to nobody's advantage, not even the
drug-taker's, since he would then be confronted - assuming he knew how to
respect the drug - by those who simply maligned or squandered it, to the
detriment of his own self-esteem.
For transcendental man,
then, we can take it as axiomatic that television will remain the principal
medium (above both video and cinema) through which a degree of upward
self-transcendence may be achieved.
Television is visionary experience coming at one from outside the self,
and, since appearances precede essences, we needn't expect the widespread
evolutionary leap to artificially-induced visionary experience inside
the self to come about for some time yet - certainly not until the majority of
people are capable of appreciating it!
Which probably won't be during the remaining course of this century, nor
even, perhaps, during the early course of the next (although that isn't
something about which anyone can be certain at present). With the increased pace of evolution nowadays,
we are by no means guaranteed that modern, i.e. transcendental, man will remain
content to continue watching television throughout the course of the next
hundred years. It could well transpire
that the novelty and excitement of television-viewing, even via satellite, will
wear thin some time before then, to be replaced either by the higher visionary
experience of Supermen or, what's more likely, by a wider interest in
transcendental meditation as a prelude to the post-Human Millennium. At this juncture in time, transcendental
meditation remains a comparatively elitist interest, restricted to those who
are capable of directly cultivating spirit without need of external assistance,
such as television. It presages not the
Superman but the Superbeing of the succeeding phase of the post-Human
Millennium, and is accordingly somewhat closer, in essence, to the blessed
state of the heavenly Beyond. But
evolutionary progress should lead, in due course, to an ever-growing number of
people taking-up with transcendental meditation in the decades or centuries to
come, so that it will co-exist and possibly alternate with television
spirituality within the framework of a higher religion - one institutionalized
and collectivized.
A materialist would
probably contend that television will suffice to lead transcendental man
directly to the LSD visions of the Superman, thereby making transcendental
meditation totally irrelevant. But I
don't believe that meditation can be dismissed so easily, as though it were
simply an anachronism which artificially-induced visionary experience, whether
apparent or essential, external or internal, was destined to replace. The need for a religious institution, such as
would be provided by meditation centres, still requires to be addressed and is
absolutely indispensable to religious progress in the world. By becoming part of a meditating community,
one would be on the next evolutionary rung, so to speak, above the church
congregation, and such a communal context necessarily signifies an
approximation, no matter how crudely, to the envisaged ultimate unity of the
Omega Absolute, the divine culmination of evolution. Yet no such approximation is reflected,
however, in the context of an individual sitting either alone or with one or
two others in front of a television screen every night, which is why, it seems
to me, television can't be regarded as the logical successor to religion, but
only as a component of contemporary spiritual progress. What would condemn transcendental meditation outright,
as a useless anachronism stemming from an obsolete society, would be a lack of
applicability to the future, its failure to presage a superior spiritual
development which a later stage of evolution will encourage. If, then, the post-Human Millennium could be
conceived solely as an affair of the Superman, with his artificially-induced
internal visionary experience, we would be justified in condemning
transcendental meditation as a futility.
But since the Millennium in question should extend into a more spiritual
phase, in which the ensuing Superbeing will directly cultivate spirit pending
transcendence, we would be mistaken to consider transcendental meditation
irrelevant, even though it can be shown that, by itself, such meditation
wouldn't suffice to take man to the heavenly Beyond. This knowledge, however, needn't preclude us
from meditating, since the experience is sufficiently rewarding in itself to be
self-justificatory.
But whether the entire
human population can be induced to take meditation seriously, over the coming
centuries, is another matter, and not one about which I feel confident to
speculate, even given the inevitability of meditation centres as a precondition
of the post-Human Millennium. Not
everyone attends church, and perhaps it will transpire that not everyone will
attend the 'church' of tomorrow, although we may expect a greater degree of
directive persuasion on the part of the relevant authorities than has ever
existed before, with, it should be added, more incentive for the devotees to
attend! And so transcendental man,
full-blown, would be participating in the transcendental civilization, a
civilization presupposing the simultaneous existence, in harmonious
co-existence, of socialism and transcendentalism or, rather, of a fusion of the
one with the other. For unless there is
a community religion, there is no civilization, in the true sense of that term,
but only what precedes it - namely barbarism.
Since pre-dualistic man
had a civilization, in which paganism and royalism (or some autocratic
equivalent) prevailed, and dualistic man also, with his Christianity and
parliamentary liberalism, it would seem only fair for us to ascribe a future
civilization to post-dualistic man, since man is man at any stage of his
evolution and ever in need of a church, where he can rub shoulders with his
fellows. The coming together of men into
crowds isn't by itself a good thing, however.
What determines the moral status of the crowd is the reason why men come
together, that is to say whether for sensual or spiritual purposes. Since a communal context is relevant both to
the lower communality of the plants and to our projected higher communality of
the coming Superbeings, there is nothing in communal life per se
that distinguishes it as a virtue. One
might say that it becomes a vice when the motivation driving people together is
sensual, and such a motivation was certainly paramount during the era of pagan
pre-dualism when, as often as not, men visited the temple or whatever to
express their sexual predilections, with or without the assistance of resident
priestesses! The pagan orgy utilized the
crowd for sensual purposes, so that men came together on the basis of the
lowest-common-denominator, and thereby resembled the leaves of trees.
With the advent of
Christian dualism, however, the emphasis in crowd formations was spiritual
rather than sensual, although a degree of sensuality was necessarily still
upheld, as, for example, in the celebration of the Mass, with the symbolic
offering of Christ's body and blood conducted through the sublimated mediums of
wafer and wine - a far more frugal approach to sensuality than would have been
intelligible to pagan man. But if a
diluted sensuality was the norm of Christian communal life, then for a post-dualistic
age it follows that the motivation driving people together must be exclusively
spiritual and thus, for the first time in history, entirely good. The coming together of people for purposes of
meditation in specially-designed centres will reflect the highest mode of
communal life given to man, and be the nearest approach to the subsequent
spiritual communality of the Superbeings.
Because no such motivation has previously existed in the West, nor,
properly considered, anywhere else in the world, there can be little doubt that
it will be endorsed over the coming centuries, so that man will pass through
the entire spectrum of his evolution, from the beastly to the godly, as he
enters its highest phase with widespread transcendentalism. Tomorrow's crowds will, in this religious
context, be purely virtuous, superior even to Christian congregations.
There are, however,
strict limits to the degree of togetherness men can experience, since they have
bodies and remain imprisoned in them, prevented, by the flesh, from
experiencing a truly close approximation to the omega goal of evolution in
indivisible spiritual unity. For
transcendental men, the regular practise of meditation in communal contexts
will simply constitute a stepping-stone to a still-closer approximation to
ultimate divinity ... as experienced by the ensuing Supermen of the post-Human
Millennium. These Supermen will, as
already noted, be elevated above the natural body in extensively artificial
contexts designed on a collective basis.
As brains artificially supported and, no less importantly, artificially
sustained, they will stand in a much closer relationship to ultimate divinity
than transcendental men, with their individual bodies. Unfortunately the body is always a grave
obstacle to the attainment of an advanced degree of spiritual togetherness, of
communal oneness, since its varieties of forms and appearances aren't always
pleasant to behold, least of all when radically ugly, and serve rather to
excite disgust, which negative feeling drives men apart. Likewise its exposure to germs of one kind or
another is a repellent rather than an attractive feature, since men fear
contagion and are consequently inclined to maintain their physical distance,
when possible, from the victims of colds, flu, and other common illnesses. Even the division of the sexes is, in its
relativity, a contributory factor in the inhibition of closer approximations to
the Omega Absolute. Obviously, the only
solution to these problems lies with the Superman, who will be elevated above
them through the supersession of the natural, individual body by an artificial
and communal one, and accordingly experience a greater degree of unity with his
fellows - a degree presaging the even greater spiritual unity of the
Superbeings, when individual consciousness will be eclipsed by the collective,
post-visionary consciousness of the tightly-packed clusters of new brains. After which it will simply be a matter of
time before this comparative spiritual unity makes way for the most complete
spiritual unity ... of the Spiritual Globes as, following transcendence, they
tend towards one another in accordance with the positive drift of a gradual
convergence towards ultimate Oneness.
However, where space is
concerned, it isn't true, contrary to what modern scientists tend to believe,
that the Universe is expanding. The
stars, we may rest assured, are contracting, and if they are tending farther
apart, they are not expanding but ... diverging, after the fashion of their
infernal natures. The concept of an
expanding Universe should only apply to man and man-equivalent life forms (if
any) elsewhere. Now when we narrow the
Universe to man we find, despite appearances to the contrary, that spirit is
expanding, in accordance with the chief characteristic of being, while
simultaneously converging towards its goal in the indivisible unity of the
Omega Absolute. Thus an antithesis
exists between the divergence of the physical universe on the one hand, and the
convergence of the spiritual universe on the other, as, likewise, between the
contraction of stars and the expansion of spirit.
On what may be termed
the microcosmic plane of global civilization, we see the contraction of the
diabolic side of the Universe in the curtailment of nature, the overcoming of
various pestilential diseases, the penalizing of serious natural drug abuse,
the decline of authoritarianism, the reduction of competitive individualism,
and the gradual undermining of private property. Conversely, we see the expansion of the
divine side of the Universe in the growth of cities, the increase in the use
(or abuse) of synthetic stimulants, the development of collective contexts, the
increase in public spending, the substitution of artificial for natural modes
of sexuality, the growing interest in meditation, and so on - all factors which
point in the general direction of both a post-Human Millennium and subsequent
heavenly Beyond. What is happening on
this planet is probably also happening on the thousands if not millions of other
possible life-sustaining planets throughout the physical Universe, so that the
divine side of the Universe is simultaneously converging towards its future
culmination in the most absolute noumenal indivisibility. We needn't expect this culmination to come
about for some considerable time yet, however, since there are definite stages
to evolutionary progress, presupposing, in the future, the emergence of new
life forms out of man which will be as spiritually superior to him ... as apes
and trees were and, in some sense, continue to be his spiritual inferiors.
It would be erroneous,
however, to suppose that man will venture to the far corners of the Universe in
the future, and thereupon come into contact, whether on a friendly or a hostile
basis, with beings from outer space. For
although there will doubtless continue to be a degree of space exploration
during the coming centuries, the fact of evolutionary progress will preclude
him from making the exploration of space his chief priority, since higher
stages of evolution presuppose greater degrees of psychic interiorization, and
consequently less interest in the phenomenal worlds that lie outside it. As human evolution draws toward its climax so
noumenal essence predominates over phenomenal appearance, making the
cultivation of spirit the overriding priority of the age. In all probability, the life-sustaining
planets in other parts of the Universe won't differ too radically from the
earth, seeing that life, particularly on the human plane, requires fairly
predictable conditions, neither too hot nor too cold. This being the case, we would be foolish to
concern ourselves with the altogether futile, time-wasting explorations of
kindred planets! As transcendental men
we would have better things to do with our time than to dabble in appearances,
cosmic or otherwise! And as
Transcendentalists we would not have an indefinite life-span, but no more, at
most, than a few centuries before the transformation to the Superman became
apposite. Our current space explorations
should be designed primarily to assist our spiritual development, not be
pursued for the mere sake of exploring!
And it is sincerely to be hoped that if, in the not-too-distant future,
we put an end to war between human beings, we won't proceed to start wars
between ourselves and the nearest aliens, since an end to war as such is
commensurate with a higher, more advanced stage of evolutionary progress. Yet while this is undoubtedly so, it is also
worth remembering that an extension of war from tribal and national to
international and, in all likelihood, planetary levels is also compatible with
evolutionary progress, and consequently that some kind of compromise, involving
a more civilized or sublimated kind of warfare than man has hitherto waged
against himself, may well be required throughout the duration of the next
civilization, in the interests, needless to say, of safeguarding his spiritual
progress.
As to the phasing-out of
aspects of life on the diabolic side of the Universe, the growing freedom from
nature which man will achieve in the centuries to come will doubtless lead to
his dispensing with what might be described as unnecessary animals, such as
dogs, cats, horses, mice, rabbits, and other pets, whilst any dispensing with
necessary animals, including pigs, cattle, and sheep, will probably follow with
the advent of the Superman and consequent supersession of the natural body by
artificial supports and sustains for the brain.
There are besides pets, workers, and livestock, many other types of
animal in the world and these, whether wild or captive, will also be dispensed
with in the course of time. What began
in the transcendental civilization would doubtless be finished, by the relevant
authorities, during the post-Human Millennium, so that towards the climax of
spiritual evolution on earth very few beasts would remain in existence. For their continued presence there would be
incompatible with the radically spiritual bias of a society tending towards
transcendence, as well as a potential threat, if left unchecked, to the safe and
proper functioning of that society in an extensively artificial context. As man tends towards the spirit so he makes
war on the beast, both internally and externally, since it stems from the alpha
side of the Universe in its intrinsic sensuality. If animals are acceptable to a dualistic
civilization which, in its openness, has pagan roots, they would most assuredly
prove incompatible with and therefore unacceptable to a transcendental
civilization.... Although we needn't expect a radical purge of pets or other
animals to take place over the coming decades, we can certainly anticipate a
gradual reduction in their numbers, as society takes appropriate measures to
transcendentalize itself, so to speak.
Likewise the gradual
elimination of private property is compatible with evolutionary progress
towards the Divine, insofar as property reflects a diabolical inclination on
the part of its owners, who function in the guise of individual suns competing
with one another for planets. Since the
most powerful suns or stars in the Universe are likely to be those which
control the biggest and/or greatest number of planets, so the most powerful men
are usually those with the most property, which stands to them in the ratio of
a planet to a sun. A man with three
houses is equivalent to a sun with three planets, and he can only be more
powerful, from an alpha-stemming viewpoint, than the man with a single house
(provided, of course, that the scale of the latter is smaller than that of the
former, whether collectively or individually).
Nowadays there aren't that many people with three or more houses, but
even one house will be considered excessive in the future, and its owner
doubtless penalized as a matter of social necessity. With the post-Human Millennium there will be
no private property in existence at all, not even for the leaders, who will
live in communal dwellings while their superhuman 'charges' live in the
communal clusters of artificially-supported brains in the various meditation
centres. Thus the world will tend ever
more radically in the direction of God, or the transcendence of all
materialism, in the heavenly Beyond.
Verily, the overcoming of nature and the natural body will be a
significant step on the road to that spiritual destination!
POST-DUALISTIC SEXUALITY
Since everything on earth stems from the polar constitution of the
Galaxy, including the distinction between female and male, which is the essence
of Original Sin, it follows that the gradual overcoming of this constitution
signifies an evolutionary progression away from the natural-world-order towards
the supernatural context of God. Since
stars correspond to the female side of the Galaxy and planets to the male side,
we find that the struggle away from the natural towards the supernatural entails
a rebellion, on the part of males, against female attractive power, a rebellion
which has led to a loosening of traditional sexual ties and to a gradual move
towards a predominantly male-oriented society, a society in which the
post-dualistic bias of industrial, urban man finds its chief sexual outlets in
either homosexuality or pornography, while women, becoming increasingly
masculinized, effectively function as 'lesser men', or 'quasi-males', thus
giving rise to an extension of 'homosexual' tendencies within the framework of
heterosexual relationships - as manifested, for example, in the ubiquitous cult
of unisex and the practice, intermittently or otherwise, of anal sex. Thus bisexuality cuts across heterosexual as
well as homosexual relationships, reflecting, as it must, the growing
post-dualistic bias of contemporary man.
If the pre-dualistic age was congenial to lesbianism, then the
post-dualistic age will necessarily favour homosexuality, in accordance with
the expansion of the male over the female side of life, as essential to
mankind's struggle towards the Divine.
Thus, in the Western
world, it is fashionable - one might almost say obligatory - to refer to
homosexuals as 'gay' rather than 'queer', since the derogatory implication of the
latter term would reflect too naturalistic a mentality, suggestive of a poor
opinion of deviations from the natural or traditional norm. But to have such an opinion would be to put
oneself in the position of a man, devoid of evolutionary perspective, who
imagines that life should always be lived on natural terms, and that deviations
from such terms are inherently blameworthy and, consequently, something to be
regarded as a perversion. It would be to
condemn evolutionary progress in matters relating to sex, and thus remain
entrenched in a short-sighted materialism that was all-too-ready to brand
manifestations of sexual progress as 'insane' because, according to one's
traditional criteria, arguably perverse.
No, in this age only the
less spiritually-evolved people are partial to the word 'queer' for what they
regard as a deviation from the natural right.
They are the twentieth-century's sexual fascists - people who are unable
or unwilling to recognize sexual progress when they see it, but persist in applying
their own rather short-sighted denigrations to it as a matter of course. 'Queer' is equivalent to 'perverse', and
being homosexual is, according to this value-judgement, somewhat inferior to
the natural, heterosexual norm. In fact,
it is to be a kind of sexual spastic.
Not surprisingly, Marxist-Leninist societies tend to frown upon
homosexuality and pornography as constituting a perversion of the natural norm,
which is also symptomatic, in their view, of bourgeois decadence. Lacking any kind of transcendental criterion,
such societies have no basis for justifying or understanding it, since, without
reference to the spiritual dimension of evolutionary progress, homosexuality
may well appear a perversion of the natural rather than a development towards
the supernatural, in which increasingly artificial standards come to
apply. But such artificiality isn't
readily encouraged in Marxist-Leninist states, since it connotes with an
elitist tendency that would appear to run contrary to the inherent naturalness
of the general proletariat, whose social backwardness or, rather, innocence
must be protected from such 'corrupting' influences as allegedly stem, in the
main, from the decadent West.
To be sure, there is a
certain degree of logic behind this type of thinking, especially with regard to
the presumed inability of the general proletariat to properly appreciate the
merits of so-called perverse activity.
Yet decadence isn't the root from which homosexuality and pornography
spring, even though such phenomena may arise during the decadence of a given
civilization. The fact of contemporary
Western civilization's being decadent does not, however, imply that everything
which exists in or springs from it is inevitably decadent, too. Decadence can only extend to certain
contexts, with politics and religion especially conspicuous, and is chiefly
characterized by the inadequacy or irrelevance of the official system, whether
political or religious, from a majority standpoint - by its inability, in other
words, to correspond to the evolutionary changes wrought by environmental and
other factors among the masses. That
certain sections of the masses may develop more relevant unofficial systems to
compensate themselves, in some measure, for this lack ... is a fact which
cannot be denied, and sometimes a context or system that began unofficially, as
a reflection of evolutionary progress outside the prevailing system, is
subsequently absorbed into the decadent civilization in response to both
popular demand and financial expediency.
Pornography is, I believe, one such phenomenon, and its prevalence
throughout the West reflects a manifestation of evolutionary progress which
co-exists with the manifestations of decadence also to be found there. For as a means of intellectualizing
sexuality, pornography - and I use the term loosely in the sense of general
erotica - must signify a development away from traditional materialism ... in
which not concrete but sublimated sexuality comes to pass, as the highest, most
appropriate sexuality for an increasingly transcendental age, with other types
of post-dualistic sexuality, including the homosexual, in fairly close
attendance.
Of course, homosexuals
have existed in the past, long before the dawn of post-dualism, and not all
latter-day homosexuals can be considered truly post-dualistic. Nevertheless it remains a fact that, in
recent decades, homosexuality has become more widespread than ever before, a
fact which must be associated, to some extent, with the gradual undermining of
the traditional female side of life and consequent upsurge of the male side in
its place. If homosexuality is a
reflection of this, then so, too, is pornography, bisexuality, unisex,
celibacy, and, indeed, the sodomizing of women.
Whatever the particular sexual preference of the individual male, it is
evident that he can choose between a number of alternative modes of
post-dualistic sexuality within the broad contexts of the Western dualistic
and, most especially, transitional civilizations. Admittedly, he can also remain traditionally
dualistic and only consort with actual, palpable females in a consistently
orthodox fashion if he so desires or, what's probably nearer the truth, if his
class instincts and environmental/professional conditioning so dictate. He can thus behave, on the conventional
bourgeois level, like any good traditional Marxist-Leninist male, who would
never dream of doing anything unnatural to a woman or of having sexual
relations with a man, never mind casting an appreciative eye over pornography! But such conventional types, who are more apt
than anyone to regard homosexuals as 'queer' and pornographers as 'pervs' or
'jerks', are unlikely to be around for ever, least of all towards the latter
stages of the next civilization when, with the full-blown acceptance of
post-dualistic criteria, adherence to traditional dualistic criteria would be
regarded as a gross misfortune, the subject of derisory contempt if not actual
suppression.
To be shamelessly
heterosexual in that more advanced age would be tantamount to being the victim
of atavistic paganism, a kind of anachronism in a wholly transcendental society
that was progressing, all the time, closer to a post-Human Millennium, and thus
to the complete supersession of the natural body by artificial supports and
sustains for the brain - arranged, no doubt, on a communal basis. To be shamelessly heterosexual at that time
would be even more uncomfortable, from the social point-of-view, than being
homosexual now. For at least the
twentieth century gave rise to the transitional civilizations of America,
Germany, and Japan, which recognize the legitimacy of a degree of sexual
transcendentalism unprecedented in the dualistic civilizations of the more
traditional European West. And even
these latter are being obliged, in coming under the influence of the more
advanced civilizations, to extend the transcendental side at the expense of the
pagan side of things, so that post-dualistic sexuality is a tolerated, if not
wholeheartedly encouraged, aspect of contemporary life. But in a full-blown post-dualistic
civilization the prevalence of natural sexual activity could hardly be
considered compatible with transcendental criteria, and so more rigorous steps
would have to be taken to phase it out.
Doubtless artificial modes of reproduction would be preferred, though
not necessarily along the lines envisaged by Aldous Huxley in Brave New
World, while women - assuming they still existed at such a time - would be a
great deal more liberated than at present - so liberated, in fact, as to take
artificial sexual practices, including recourse to vibrators, for granted.
Yet the Western world,
being partly tied to its pagan past, will have its Mary Whitehouses and Malcolm
Muggeridges, not to mention Andrea Dworkins, for some time to come - certainly
for the foreseeable future! It will
also, thank goodness, have its Havelock Ellises and Henry Millers, who reflect
the transcendentally progressive side of this world. Doubtless hard-line Marxists would, in the
event of taking over the West, carry on from approximately where sexual
puritans left off, thereby postponing the advent of the highest civilization
for as long as possible or, at any rate, until such time as internal or
international pressure obliged them to change their tune. But it is doubtful that they would be able to
stamp out pornography, homosexuality, etc., altogether, and so a flickering of
post-dualistic sexuality would probably continue, sometimes threatening to burst
into flame and set the whole world alight - an eventuality which
well-intentioned people could only look forward to, since a world in which
transcendental sexuality predominates is superior to one still under the
dominion of natural, sensual, palpable sex.
There are, of course,
various drawbacks to the prevalence of pornography in the West at present, but
they are largely inevitable. The man who
misuses pornography is an example of what I mean, and such men, insufficiently
sublimated to properly appreciate it, tend to react from pornographic idealism
with a greater degree of heterosexual realism than might otherwise have been
the case, in consequence of which they then commit rape or put their
pornographically-induced fantasies into action in socially unacceptable ways. Instead of being absorbed into the higher
sexuality of the pornographic world, these men rebound off it, so to speak,
with redoubled physical violence, their sexual appetites inflamed by the
seductive spectacles to-hand. They are
akin to the egocentric mind that, according to the Hindu doctrine of
reincarnation, rejects the purity of the Clear Light of the Void and is
therefore obliged to return to the world in the guise of a new person. What the Clear Light ... is to the
insufficiently-evolved person, the pornographic stimulus is to such men as
these, who must needs refer everything back to palpable reality, rather than
strive to live on the higher plane of sexual sublimation. As I said, this is a drawback. But it is one that has to be endured by
society in the name of evolutionary progress and fidelity to transcendental
criteria. There is no justification for
stamping out pornography on the hypothetical grounds that it leads to an
increase in sexual crimes, since such crimes as are committed against
unsuspecting people tend to be committed by a small minority of men, not by the
majority of pornography enthusiasts who, on the contrary, are perfectly capable
of containing themselves and directing their sexual impulses towards the
Ideal. That such masturbation as may
take place in this context is regarded, by less-evolved people, as a perversion
... is perhaps inevitable, if regrettable.
For the people in question remain too tied to the natural to see that it
is only through the perversion or, rather, subversion of natural behaviour ...
that man can progress towards the supernatural, and thereby achieve redemption
as an evolutionary being. Not to be
capable of unnatural or artificial sexual behaviour is to condemn oneself to
the level of a beast, in whom natural determinism prevails.
Yet masturbation, much
as it may take place amongst a majority of the pornography-buying public, does
not have to take place, and, with the more highly-evolved men, it generally
transpires that voyeurism alone is sufficient to cater for their pornographic
needs. A man who can scrutinize
pornography without feeling compelled to masturbate ... may well be more
spiritually evolved than one who can't, since he reduces sensual commitment to
the barest minimum of optical engagement.
But even masturbation, morally considered, is a less sensual activity
than copulation, and undoubtedly represents a more civilized, because
artificial, mode of sexual behaviour. [For one thing, it cannot be equated with
Original Sin and neither, for another, does it involve the literal use of
another body, and of another body, if female, likely to be more fleshy than
one's own.] Of course, D.H. Lawrence
wouldn't have agreed with me here. But,
then, Lawrence was one of the twentieth-century's least civilized writers, a kind
of modern savage for whom sex in naturalis, and as often as
possible, was the key to salvation. Such
a key, however, simply opens the door to damnation, and has been condemned by
all true spiritual leaders for centuries.
We don't cultivate spirit when we make love, and neither did Lawrence,
whose writings are among the most naturalistic of his time, intend us to do
so. Instead, he wanted us to become
'whole', which, according to him, meant perfect. Alas, such ‘wholeness’ would not lead us
towards God, but simply keep us tied to the beastly as perpetual men! Yet man is something that 'should be
overcome' said Nietzsche, an altogether more enlightened philosopher, and
pornography, by freeing him from the palpable, is a contributory factor in his
overcoming - a means of encouraging him towards the complete transcendence of
sex in the post-Human Millennium.
Of course, man is human
at any stage of his evolution and cannot completely escape from the sensual
world into a post-human spiritual one.
There are sensual, sexual obligations to be honoured whether one is in
the pagan, the Christian, or the transcendental stages of human evolution. But whereas the sexual obligations of
pre-dualistic pagan man would be largely if not exclusively natural, those, by
contrast, of post-dualistic transcendental man should become increasingly
artificial, as befits his greater freedom from natural determinism. The former is only capable of heterosexual
copulation, whereas the latter, while still capable of such activity, prefers
to gloat over a pornographic magazine and/or video, and thus displays more free
will, as is compatible with a higher degree of evolutionary progress. For in the age-old struggle between free will
and natural determinism, free will can only triumph over natural determinism as
men grow ever more civilized, and so approximate, by ever-increasing degrees,
to the ultimate freedom of God. In a
transcendental society the ratio of free will to natural determinism should be
in the region of at least 3:1, in accordance with the post-dualistic status of
the age. Eventually, with the advent of
transcendence, natural determinism will be completely escaped from, as the
Spiritual Globes issuing from Superbeings tend towards ultimate Oneness in the
heavenly Beyond. For Salvation (as
definitively signified by transcendence) is, above all, deliverance from the
flesh, from, at that incredibly-advanced juncture in time, the clustered
new-brains whose physiological constitutions would retain a degree of natural
determinism right up to the moment of transcendence, and hence complete
spiritual freedom. But, of course, the
degree of natural determinism imposed upon the meditating wills of the
Superbeings would be considerably less than the degree of it imposed upon man,
whether transcendental or otherwise, and be proportionate, moreover, to the
stage of evolutionary progress consonant with that age when, with extensive
technological assistance, the new-brain clusters were artificially supported
and sustained, 'the flesh' having been reduced to the barest minimum compatible
with a truly intensive cultivation of spirit.
Returning from the upper
reaches of our projected post-Human Millennium to the present, we find that the
most advanced men are those in whom free will predominates over natural
determinism to the greatest extent. As a
rule, men of genius are the ones who display the most free will, and this is
virtually a primary criterion of genius, whether we are alluding to a man like
Schopenhauer, who willed to spend most of his adult life in undeviating
fidelity to certain solitary habits, or to one like Salvador Dali, who once
lectured a gathering of students with a loaf of bread tied to his head. Natural determinism, carried to any extent,
is incompatible with greatness, and never more so than today, when
transcendental criteria are on the rise.
The leading minds must be the freest minds, mini-versions of God on
earth who intimate, through no matter what idiosyncratic circumlocutions, of
greater freedoms to come; Christ-like figures with a divine mission - artists
and philosophers. Thus they draw the
masses up towards themselves, and so away from the tyranny of natural
determinism.
However, just as it
follows that not all men can be as free as the great, so it usually happens
that not all women can be as free as men - even in the twentieth century, the
first post-dualistic century in history.
As a rule, women are more under the sway of natural determinism than of
free will, and especially were they so in the past, prior to the growth of
female emancipation. Today, however,
while natural determinism still prevails over free will in most women,
evolutionary pressures are ensuring that women, too, become freer than ever
before, thus behaving increasingly like men, whose work-a-day world is no
longer an exclusively male preserve.
Nowadays comparatively few women can expect to have more than three
children. For the emphasis on free will
in an incipiently post-dualistic age ensures that child-rearing becomes rather
more the exception than the rule, and that women accordingly look upon their
professional calling as the main one, with child-rearing a temporary
interruption of their public duties. On
the other hand, in an age with high mortality rates, like the nineteenth century,
this attitude and behaviour wouldn't have been possible, even if other factors
had encouraged it. But, in the modern
age, with extremely low infant mortality rates in the more civilized parts of
the world, it stands to reason that large families and/or regular pregnancies
aren't going to be necessary either to increase or maintain the population
level, and that 1-3 successful first-time pregnancies and deliveries, per adult
woman, will suffice to maintain the population ... as well, possibly, as enable
it to increase. Thus women are now freer
than ever before of maternal responsibilities and able, in consequence, to
regard their public functions, as wage-earning employers/employees, as their
principal ones. Free will is gradually
getting the better of natural determinism in women as well as in men, and
although a significant proportion of women don't much welcome this fact, it
nevertheless remains an inescapable aspect of evolutionary progress which
comparatively few of them can do anything to reverse. For the post-dualistic age is hostile to
traditional female aspects of life in proportion as it is biased on the side of
those male elements which are gradually bringing the world closer to Heaven. Future women, you can rest assured, will be a
great deal less naturalistic and correspondingly more liberated than
contemporary ones! We may not yet have
reached a supermasculine stage of evolution, but we are certainly tending in
its direction, as various aspects of the modern world, including the sexual,
adequately confirm.
An historical man
(assuming he could come back to life from a previous century) could only cast a
scandalized gaze over the shapely rump of a liberated young woman walking along
the street in tight-fitting denims. The
more enlightened modern male, however, hardly deigns to be impressed by the
seductive spectacle of such a clearly-outlined female figure. He is simply conscious of looking at another
man, albeit an attractive one, in front of him.
He is post-dualistic and, consequently, if not literally homosexual,
then his relations with such quasi-masculine 'women' are effectively
bisexual. For homosexuality, in one
degree and form or another, is not so much the exception in a post-dualistic
age as ... the general rule!
TOWARDS A TRUE EQUALITY
Are introverts morally superior to extroverts? This is an interesting question and one which
I believe can be answered in the affirmative.
Yes, introverts generally are morally
superior to extroverts, and for the simple reason that whereas the former are
aligned with essence, or the internal, the latter remain aligned with
appearance, or the external. Essence and
appearance are forever antithetical and can never be considered equal. Of course, no-one is completely an introvert
or an extrovert, but the fact that, when not striving for a balance, most
people are predominantly one or the other permits us to distinguish between
them as, in effect, 'the good' and 'the bad'.
To be an introvert is to
value the internal world above the external one, to prefer being 'in one's
head', through reflection or contemplation, than outside it ... in curiosity at
the world around one. An introvert is
thus biased in favour of the spirit rather than of the flesh, and may be
defined as of masculine character, in whom the profound predominates over the
superficial. Conversely, an extrovert
spends more time in the external environment and may accordingly be described
as of feminine character, with a corresponding predilection for the superficial
over the profound. The extrovert is
usually a man of action and may well be highly observant. He notices what goes on around him with a
comprehensiveness and penetration which the introvert will rarely if ever
possess. To him external events are
important, whereas the internal world, to the extent that he has one, seems
relatively trivial.
Generally speaking, this
extrovert/introvert antithesis appertains to the division of the sexes. Women are fundamentally extrovert and men, by
contrast, introvert. A woman notices
appearances with more consistency and penetration, as a rule, than does a man,
and this is because, for her, appearance is what really matters, what really
counts in life, so that, as Schopenhauer well-remarked, she usually takes
appearances for reality (and even, in a certain sense, too seriously). On the other hand, a man, if truly masculine,
will treat essence with more respect than appearance, and thus adopt an
introverted attitude to life. He will be
predominantly immersed in the spirit, whereas a woman will remain aligned with
the flesh. Indeed, it could be argued
that whereas women are rooted in the eyes, men are centred, by contrast, in the
brain.
These distinctions
between the sexes are gradually being eroded and all because the influence of
modern industrial civilization, in slowly masculinizing women, is driving
society towards a post-dualistic status in which the ultimate objective can
only be the complete transcendence of the feminine element in life. Needless to say, we have a long way to go
before we attain to a supermasculine and highly introverted society, which, so
I contend, will only come about with a post-Human Millennium, and the
correlative elevation of humanity to the superhuman level ... of human brains
artificially supported and no-less artificially sustained in communal
contexts. In the meantime, women will
doubtless continue to exist, but not as traditionally!
Nevertheless, one would
be a hypocrite to assert that all modern women were already radically
masculinized, since the evidence of the senses would seem to indicate that a
majority of them are still sufficiently feminine to be able to continue
behaving in a traditionally seductive, sensual manner, and to perform the usual
female duties in life. Some women may be
more advanced and liberated than others, but they remain a comparatively small
minority of, for the most part, university-educated intellectual types. Most women, it seems to me, have not yet
betrayed their sex or been obliged to do so to any radical extent, which is why
they continue to treat appearances as being of more importance than essence.
I shall give you a
typical example of an average woman's concept of the world, as appertaining to
sex. Such a woman will regard the
solitary man as 'bent' by assuming that he masturbates. Whether or not he does so ... isn't
particularly important. What is
important, however, is the light thrown on the woman's psychology by the word
'bent'. It reveals, I mean, that she
cannot conceive of sex in transcendent terms, but must refer it back to nature,
so that anything which may be regarded as a deviation from the natural norm is
deemed perverse, and duly castigated with the crude epithet in question. Lacking a more evolved spiritual dimension,
this average type of woman is unable to relate to a lifestyle or attitude to
life which refutes conventional sexual behaviour. Rather than interpreting the man's celibacy
in terms of spiritual aspirations, she regards it as a failure, a perversion of
the natural sex instinct, and does so because of an inherent bias, in her
psyche, for appearance over essence, the flesh over the spirit. Such women are incapable of appreciating the
virtue of sublimated sexuality. They
remain chained to the concrete, the apparent, the phenomenal, and are thus more
traditionally feminine.
Of course, even the most
advanced women have spiritual limitations, and I do not for one moment believe
that they would be capable of attaining to the same level of spiritual freedom
as a man of outstanding genius - say, a Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Schopenhauer,
Dali, de Chardin, or Prokofiev. The
tendency of publishers to employ an ever-growing army of women readers, these
days, can only be a source of lasting regret to those men - more spiritually
advanced than the majority of their fellows - whose works are bound to prove
unattractive to such readers by dint of being either too complex or too
artificial, too transcendental or too progressive, too moral or too elitist, as
the case may be. With a high percentage
of women employed in editorial roles there are always going to be significant
drawbacks from a serious writer's standpoint, not the least of which will
entail the female reader reacting against the content of too radical a
typescript for her liking under the impression that it is erroneous or
dangerous when, in point of fact, it is simply the product of a more
spiritually-evolved psyche, one that would probably find a greater degree of
sympathy and understanding from an intelligent male reader - provided, however,
that he was habituated to appreciating men of genius and could therefore boast
of intimate scholarly connections with the likes of Huysmans, Roussel,
Spengler, Sartre, and Koestler. Alas,
not many female readers could do that!
Despite the progress which
has been made, during the past century, in drawing women up higher
towards more masculine criteria, the fact nonetheless remains that a division
between the sexes still exists and will doubtless continue to exist until the post-Human
Millennium, when only Supermen will prevail.
Yes, the traditional feminine/masculine division still exists, but so,
too, does a new dimension, as applying in particular to so-called liberated
women in their relation to the most intelligent males, in which a kind of spiritual
disparity exists along a post-dualistic spectrum in response to male
superiority in things of the spirit. The
more advanced women are doing their best to close the gap, but even they have
to admit, sooner or later, that they are still fundamentally women and cannot
therefore hope to compete with the contemporary world's outstanding male
geniuses. If these geniuses are to be
described as 'greater men', then the leading female intellects effectively
become 'lesser men' in relation to them, and so they must remain. This is not male chauvinism, but fidelity to
truth as I endeavour to push free thought to greater heights, in revolt against
natural determinism. No woman, barring a
sex change, will ever become a man, though she can certainly become more man-like
in the course of evolutionary time, and thus sacrifice a number of traditional
feminine norms or be obliged to modify them in response to masculine pressures.
As for sex, however,
women are on the whole extrovert and, hence, superficial. They are likely to be more impressed by a
neat, clean appearance than by what a man may know about the Universe or God or
the Millennium, and, consequently, they are inclined to regard a well-dressed
man as superior to a poorly-dressed one, even though the former may be a
money-grubbing scoundrel and the latter a poverty-stricken genius! This is the inevitable consequence of taking
appearances for reality and evaluating people according to superficial
criteria. One cannot be surprised that
some men, predominantly given to essence, choose to dress poorly or informally
as a means of expressing their contempt for appearances. For one can't please the world and genuinely
aspire towards the transcendental Beyond at the same time. A truly introverted man will know in which
direction salvation lies.
The fact that evolution
is tending in the direction of greater spirituality ... inevitably means that
women must be treated increasingly like men, since the post-dualistic age
requires that they effectively become 'lesser men' rather than remain just
women, as before. The move towards
sexual equality in certain contexts is therefore both morally desirable and
inevitable, but one must understand the exact terms on which the world is moving
towards it, else the chances of one's interpreting equality in a ridiculous way
can only be pretty high!
Let me give you an
example. A husband and wife decide that,
since the sexes are equal and women should be liberated from traditional
domestic slavery, they will share whatever domestic duties they may have,
including care of their offspring.
Consequently the husband takes turns with the cooking, washing-up,
sewing, hoovering, bed-making, nappy-changing, bottle-feeding, etc., while his
wife dedicates a correspondingly greater amount of time to reading, watching
television, listening to the radio, practising yoga, or whatever. Here, in this absurd situation, evolution has
only gone forwards for the wife, whereas for her husband it has effectively gone
backwards, since he now has to take a share in traditional female duties. But this is precisely what shouldn't happen,
since evolution is primarily furthered by men, and the modern age signifies not
the triumph of women over men but the coercion of women away from their
traditional roles, in response to a male-oriented technological world. For a modern husband to take turns with his
wife in tackling domestic responsibilities is really quite ridiculous, since
evolutionary progress should be serving his interests by making him even more
masculine, and hence spiritually-biased, than were his male ancestors, thereby
leading him towards a greater degree of spirituality, whether through culture
or religion, than would previously have been possible. With the comparatively recent invention of so
many electrical appliances for domestic use, such as dishwashers,
washing-machines, spin-dryers, hoovers, fridges, cookers, electric fires, and
so on, the woman is spared much of the time-consuming manual work which her
sexual ancestors formerly had to do, and should thereby have more free time in
which to cultivate masculine, i.e. spiritual, interests, like watching
television, reading books, playing chess, or painting pictures. This is what liberation should really mean
for the wife - not the absurd imposition onto her husband of traditional female
duties!
So although we speak of
equality, we should be careful not to misspeak of it, and thereupon run the
risk of reversing or impeding evolutionary progress. What we must understand is that the sexes are
only equal, these days, to the extent that women are now effectively becoming
'lesser men' through the influence of environmental and technological progress,
rather than remaining firmly entrenched on the female side of history. But that same coercive influence which has
slowly dragged them across the borderline, so to speak, which separates the
feminine from the masculine, has driven men even further ahead on the masculine
side of it, so that an evolutionary gap still exists
between women and men, but this time on the post-dualistic level ... as a
distinction between 'lesser men' and 'greater men' or, as one could
alternatively phrase it, quasi-men and genuine men, according to the logic of a
male-biased society.
We can exploit a useful
analogy here with a tug-of-war, in which a male team is striving to pull a
female team over a white line which divides the feminine from the masculine
side. Let us imagine that the women are
three feet away from being pulled over the line and that the men are also three
feet away from it on their side. Thus a
gap of six feet exists between the sexes, since the two teams are balanced
either side of the line. With their
greater strength, however, the men gradually pull the women closer to the line
and eventually right over it, so that everyone is on the male side. But the distance the women have been pulled
is also the distance the men have moved deeper into their masculine territory,
which means that a gap of six feet still exists
between the two teams, since the women are now some three feet over the white
line and the men at least (barring a large team) nine feet away from it. This analogy suffices to explain the
spiritual gap which exists between 'lesser men' and 'greater men' on the post-dualistic
side of evolution. The men have dragged
women into a masculine-biased lifestyle, but they have evolved apace at the
same time, and thus exist on a higher level of post-dualistic evolution. Because women are now effectively 'lesser
men', it is expedient to treat them as men rather than to discriminate
against them as women. What it is
not proper to do, however, is to treat the men, who are now
effectively 'greater men', as if they were women,
and so oblige them to share in a variety of traditional female
responsibilities! In truth, an
inequality between the sexes still exists, the only
difference being that it is not now the old gender-based inequality, in which
women were women and men were men, but a completely new, post-dualistic
inequality reserving to 'greater men' the right to take upon themselves tasks
and responsibilities which, owing to their comparative physical or mental
weakness, 'lesser men' would be insufficiently advanced or qualified to
do. The 'lesser man' who now plays a competent
acoustic guitar in the manner of, say, Judi Collins or Joni Mitchell is dwarfed
by the 'greater man' who plays a brilliant electric guitar like, say, John
McLaughlin or Carlos Santana. No
equality of guitar-playing could ever exist between these two dissimilar
masculine creatures, though masculine they both arguably are!
There is, however, a
reverse case to the downgrading of the husband in a domestic egalitarianism
which results in his sharing feminine duties with his wife and, fundamentally,
it is no less absurd, insofar as it entails the downgrading of women. I refer to that aspect of sexual equality
which results in women becoming freak athletes, whether as cricketers,
footballers, long-distance runners, or whatever. Now whilst I'm not altogether opposed to the
concept of women in sport, there are certain sports which seem less to reflect
evolutionary progress, where the emancipation of women is concerned, than
simply to degrade women into types of 'lesser men' who are far below the
'lesser men' whose lifestyles reflect a spiritual bias. Better for women to become the latter than
the former, since evolution is tending towards the spiritual and thus away from
the physical, as reflected, amongst other things, in contemporary sport.
We are on difficult
ground here, so I beg the reader's patience whilst I redefine my position, this
time solely with regard to men. We can
omit the inverted comas here, for we are now dealing with the literal - namely
the distinction between lesser and greater men, defining the former as physical
and the latter as spiritual. The fact is
that, just as an introvert is morally superior to an extrovert, so a brain
worker is morally superior to a muscle man or a manual labourer, since
evolution tends towards a spiritual culmination. A literary genius is thus a superior type of
man to a sportsman, say, a cricketer or a footballer, no matter how
accomplished the latter may happen to be.
The one uses brain power, the other muscle power. The one is introverted, the other
extroverted. The one aspires towards the
divine consummation of evolution, the other stems, in a manner of speaking,
from the diabolic roots of life in the cosmos.
But the preponderance of sport over war in modern life does at least
indicate that the lesser men are now generally behaving in a less evil, because
more sublimated, competitive fashion than was formerly the case. It is better that this lesser type of man
should be a cricketer or a footballer than a swordsman or a spear thrower in a
much more lethal form of competition - namely, gladiatorial contests or even
war.
Thus for men, competitive sport represents a
degree of evolutionary progress which has to some extent sublimated evil along
less violent and dangerous lines. For
women, on the other hand, competitive sport does not reflect such sublimation,
but is simply something imposed upon them in response to the post-dualistic
nature of the age. Where, formerly, men
were opposed to one another more violently, whether as soldiers or gladiators,
they are now increasingly brought into opposition on terms which don't, as a
rule, lead to bloodshed or loss of life, though injuries of one sort or another
do of course frequently occur. But women
were never - or rarely - opposed to one another in war or gladiatorial combat,
so one cannot regard their adoption of competitive sport as a form of moral
progress. Rather, it signifies a
regression for them which is a consequence of their masculinization and the
correlative tendency of men to treat or regard women as 'lesser men'. Where, formerly, women were confined to
maternal, domestic, and sexual roles, they are now free to play football or
cricket or hockey in a competitive context.
Thus they become 'lesser men', but only in relation to men who were
already lesser when compared with brain workers. As 'lesser men' in this context they are
decidedly inferior to those women whom we earlier discussed in terms of
intellectual or spiritual predilections, since their masculinization is
physical and therefore not strictly compatible with evolutionary progress. Indeed, it could well be that women whose
lifestyles are now spiritualized to the extent that they become 'lesser men'
are superior to the actual lesser men whose lifestyles, in contrast, are
predominantly physical and competitive.
For if the actual lesser men become 'greater men' in relation to the
sports-playing 'lesser men' on the physical level, why shouldn't 'lesser men'
on the spiritual level become 'greater men' when compared with the actual
lesser men of sport? The distinction
between the physical and the spiritual should still hold true, regardless of
gender. For if a philosopher of genius
is superior to a female novelist, how can the latter not be superior to a
sportsman, whose emphasis is physical rather than spiritual?
One is therefore unable
to contend that all men, just because of their maleness, are, ipso facto,
superior to all women.
There are men who are superior to other men, as spiritual to physical;
there are women who are superior to other women, as spiritual to physical. But there are certain types of women who are
superior to lesser types of men, as spiritual to physical, and certain types of
men who are superior to all women, regardless of how intelligent
or intellectually accomplished some of the latter may happen to be! The fact is that, much as a female
intellectual can outshine lesser types of men, she can never outshine the
greatest, who are always in the vanguard of evolutionary progress. A Simone de Beauvoir is obliged to take
second place to a Sartre, a Woolf to a Huxley, a Plaith to a Pound, a Weil to a
de Chardin, a Gregory to a Yeats, and so on.
Here we come back to the inevitable gap along the post-dualistic
spectrum which cannot be closed while women remain at least partly female. Only with the post-Human Millennium will
there be an absolute equality, and then only because all bodies will have been
transcended in the artificially-supported and no-less artificially-sustained
brains of the Supermen and nothing approximating to the feminine will
accordingly remain. And because the
artificial contexts will necessarily impose a uniform psychology on the brains
being supported, there will be no distinction whatsoever between male and
female - everything having by then become supermasculine, in advanced
spirituality.
Hence the equality of
the sexes that we superficially speak of, these days, is but a prelude to the
complete overcoming of the feminine element in life, as essential to
evolutionary progress. To treat women as
women would be an unfortunate anachronism in a world with post-dualistic
aspirations. We do not wish to be
reminded of dualistic criteria, since our bias is towards the post-Human
Millennium. We are all the time becoming
more introverted, and we desire that women should become more introverted or,
at the very least, less extrovert as well.
They will always lag behind us on the human plane, but on the superhuman
one there will be no distinctions. Men
will become Supermen and so, too, will women.
Sex will be transcended, for sex is specific to the body and the
psychology which that body, be it male or female, imposes upon the mind. An artificially-supported brain could only be
masculine, never feminine! It is precisely
by overcoming the feminine that a true equality will exist - an equality of
supermasculine Supermen. We may have a
long way to evolve before such equality comes to pass, but at least it is my
belief that we are slowly tending towards it.
CONCERNING TRANSCENDENTALISM
Transcendentalism should not be confused with or mistaken for
Buddhism or Hinduism or any other Asiatic religion. On the contrary, the religion of the future
will involve meditation, but that won't make it Buddhist or Hindu. There can be no question of Transcendentalism
being equated with any of those old religions.
For it will be superior to all traditional world religions, whether
considered separately or taken together.
It will reflect a religious convergence from the Many to the One, and
therefore could not be described as one of the old religions up-dated. The Many - and they include Christianity (in
all its various denominations), Mohammedanism, Shintoism, Judaism - must be
transcended in the One, the one true world religion, which, unlike the many
fundamentally false so-called world religions, will take humanity to the
post-Human Millennium. Religious
evolution demands that Transcendentalism supersedes all so-called world
religions, whatever their constitutions.
There can be no question of any of the old religions taking over from
and supplanting the others. All
traditional faiths must be superseded as humanity moves in toto
towards the ultimate world religion, based on meditation.
What will especially
distinguish Transcendentalism from the above-named religions, however, is the
knowledge its devotees will have of mankind's position in relation to the
post-Human Millennium and, beyond that, the heavenly Beyond at the
transcendental culmination-point of all evolution. A Transcendentalist will have an objective
perspective of future evolutionary requirements, and will thus be absolved from
the error of imagining that one can attain to God if only one meditates long
and hard enough. Having a theoretical
foreknowledge of the post-Human Millennium, the Transcendentalist will have no
illusions about the likelihood of his subsequently attaining to God if only he
devotes himself to the task with sufficient determination, but will know that
man is but a link in the evolutionary chain stretching from the stars to God, a
link which fits in between the apes and the Supermen, and therefore not someone
or something capable of personally achieving transcendence. The Transcendentalist won't meditate with a
view to attaining to God, but simply in the interests of spiritual expansion,
so that he may experience a state of mind approximating, no matter how crudely
or humbly initially, to the condition of transcendent spirit. He will know that, hitherto, whether through
paganism or Christianity, men have come together in religious buildings partly
for sensual as well as spiritual reasons, and that now, virtually for the first
time in history, their motive for coming together will be purely
spiritual. No longer will men sing or
chant or inhale incense or partake of the Mass or pray or dance or listen to
sermons. All that will be a thing of the
past! Instead they will simply meditate,
and, in meditating, they'll learn something of the peace and stillness of the
transcendental Beyond.
But they won't expect
meditation to work miracles for them and literally take them to that Beyond. They will know that, as men, they are subject
to certain limitations which can never be transcended except in the
post-Human Millennium, when human brains become artificially supported and
sustained, and thus cease to be human.
For in the Millennium in question a more extensive, not to say
intensive, spirituality will be possible, since the artificial supports will
have freed the Supermen from the great majority of sensual or natural
obligations to which men are perforce enslaved, including the obligations to
eat, drink, defecate, urinate, copulate, and take exercise. If, having an old brain as well as a new one,
the Supermen still sleep, that will be a limitation of their particular stage
of evolution. But such a stage will have
to be lived through, and presumably with the aid of synthetic stimulants like
LSD, before the next and more advanced stage could get properly under way. For, with the Superbeings, meditation will
return, but on a much superior level than before. Each Superbeing, or new-brain
collectivization, will experience the maximum degree of meditation compatible
with its more absolutist constitution ... as the ultimate earthly life-form,
until, eventually, such meditation leads to transcendence and thus to the
Spiritual Globes of the heavenly Beyond, the Beyond of Heaven per se. Yet these Spiritual Globes won't be God, but
only become the Omega Absolute when they have merged into one another, through
a process of convergence throughout the Universe, and thereby established
ultimate spiritual unity, in complete contrast to the divergent behaviour of
the stars.
All this and more the
Transcendentalist will know, and so his religious sense will be radically
different from a Buddhist's or a Hindu's.
Only Spiritual Globes attain to the Omega Absolute, while man must be
content with attaining, in due process of evolution, to the Superman. He won't be deceived on this issue and
therefore have to approach meditation on the human level with the same fanaticism
as a Buddhist set on attaining to the heavenly Beyond. Yet, at the same time, he won't treat
meditation frivolously either, as though the impossibility of literal
transcendence on the human plane justified his doing so! On the contrary, if to approximate to the
ultimate heavenly condition in such a fashion is the best that can be done at a
certain stage of evolution - technology being insufficiently advanced to
establish a Millennium on the aforementioned post-human terms - then
approximate one must, and therefore treat one's relatively humble endeavour
with respect. In due course,
spirituality will be upgraded, as the Supermen carry-on from where men left
off. But everything must take its proper
course. Some form of religious
orientation in a communal context will continue to be both morally desirable
and socially necessary so long as there is intelligent life on earth, and the
transcendental orientation of the next civilization will be no exception! Man must pass through this ultimate phase of
his evolution before the more advanced spirituality of the post-Human
Millennium becomes either possible or desirable.
Another distinction
between the Transcendentalist and the oriental mystic which needs clarification
is the complete absence of any reference to or identification with either the
Ground (of all being) or the avatar who functions in an anthropomorphic role
approximately equivalent to Christ. The
Ground in the East is basically equivalent to the Father in the West, to Allah
in the Middle East, and to Jehovah in Israel.
In all probability, it is an abstraction from the central star of the
Galaxy, thereby corresponding to the creative-force at the diabolic roots of
the Universe. Likewise, Allah and
Jehovah correspond to that same force and are only intelligible within the
context of dualistic religion, where a limited or transmuted degree of
Creatorism reflects the egocentric balance between subconscious and
superconscious minds, as the pagan and the transcendental form opposite poles
of a dualistic reference-point whose axis is anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphism, or the fusing together of
pagan and transcendental within the context of a saviour, human and yet divine,
transcendent and yet mundane, is also only intelligible within the context of
traditional dualistic faiths, and would have to be excluded from
Transcendentalism, with its post-dualistic bias. Thus the Transcendentalist would not
recognize a Buddha or a Mohammed or a Christ as God, but would know that
anthropomorphism was a thing of the past.
Consequently he would not identify (except initially and provisionally)
any teacher of the true world religion ... with God, but would know that,
historically, he was the man who pointed humanity towards the post-Human
Millennium by upholding meditation and showing them the true way to Heaven
through successive evolutionary transformations. A Transcendentalist would not worship the
teacher of the true world religion - or what purports to be such and may well
become such - the way a Christian worships Christ, or a Mohammedan Mohammed, or
a Buddhist Buddha, but would simply acknowledge his teachings and follow his
guidance. And, in doing so, he would
also turn away from the abstraction appertaining to the root creative and
sustaining force of evolution, which, whether as Jehovah, Allah, the Ground,
the Father, or whatever, could no longer be recognized, still less feared. The omega orientation, on the contrary, would
require all or most of one's attention, and it would entail a religion of love,
not of love and hate, as with dualistic faiths, and certainly not of hate
alone, as in pagan contexts. Man would
thus have no need of reference to the Creator, and neither would he acknowledge
His 'Son' - the human avatar.
Meditation, however,
requires a specific building appropriate to a transcendental orientation. It is no good one's imagining that, in the
future, meditation can be carried out in a church, and that churches should
therefore be converted into meditation centres.
As a rule, churches appertain to the dualistic stage of evolution with
regard to their architectural characteristics, including the degree of
materialism inherent in their overall construction. Transcendentalism, by contrast, requires
comparatively idealistic buildings suggestive of space and light, which should be
constructed from synthetic materials.
Everything naturalistic and materialistic would have to be excluded from
them in the interests of as transcendental an environment as possible. For meditation carried out in a
materialistic, brick-heavy building would be a lie, as would a Christian
service taking place in a pagan temple.
Clearly, churches will have to be superseded by meditation centres when
the transcendental civilization gets properly under way, the post-dualistic
nature of which would require the removal of buildings connected, no matter how
indirectly, with pagan precedent.
Unlike dualistic
civilization, the transcendental one would not encourage antiquarianism or
conservationism, and thus preserve old buildings, whether pagan or Christian,
virtually as a matter of historical course.
There would be no pride in the past or in anything stemming from the
Alpha Absolute, but simply a post-dualistic orientation towards the Omega
Absolute, which will only materialize, so to speak, in the future. The emphasis would be on making the human
world as transcendent as possible, and doing this will inevitably require the
removal of everything pre-dating post-dualistic civilization, whether in terms
of churches, castles, palaces, cathedrals, monasteries, or whatever. There could be no question of that which is
not post-dualistic being protected or admired when, eventually, the next
civilization comes properly to pass!
Nostalgia for the historical past would constitute a grave heresy in a
transcendental age! The necessity of
improving the world, of making it as transcendentally advanced as possible,
will certainly preclude the preservation of traditional architectural styles
and monuments - as, indeed, of traditional culture in general. Transcendental man would stand to lose from
an acquaintance with or allegiance to earlier institutions and customs. He wouldn't wish to be reminded of such
things, the sight of which could only detract from his omega-oriented aspirations. Better that meditation centres flourish where
once churches or temples or mosques or synagogues did. Better that the spiritual convergence towards
an Omega Point ... of absolute spiritual unity ... be reflected in one
transcendental institution of world-wide uniformity.
But it is evident that
the old order could only be overcome through radical measures at some future
date, when the ultimate revolution of apocalyptic transformation brings about
the necessary boost to evolution which would not otherwise materialize. The Last Judgement of Christian prophecy is
somehow relevant to the modern world, though not in terms strictly compatible
with Biblical teachings. A world
exclusively dedicated to the attainment of millennial transcendence would be
one in which the Last Judgement lay in the distant past, when opposition to
post-dualistic criteria still existed and had to be dealt with in appropriately
judgemental terms. Such a judgement,
unfortunately, has still to come, since the world is by no means set directly
on course for the post-Human Millennium at present.
As for the Second
Coming, it should be evident that he corresponds to the world teacher destined,
at this crucial juncture in time, to set mankind on course for the
transcendental civilization. There is no
question of such a teacher being universally accepted at present, though his
teachings will have to take root in his or one country before eventually
spreading abroad ... in the struggle to bring about universal
Transcendentalism. He won't promise the
world any miraculous changes over the coming decades, or petition peoples to
live in peace when they are patently divided into mutually hostile camps which
are incapable of reconciliation and require, in consequence, to be sorted out
on the basis of moral judgements and ideological transmutations. He isn't so superficial as to imagine that
evolution can progress without a revolutionary boost, nor so corrupt as to
consider candour naive. For he knows
that only the victory of social progress over the old civilizations will clear
the way for the transcendental civilization.
He is no false messiah preaching idealistic nonsense, but a realist
teaching truth. And he knows that such
truth will have to wait a while yet for universal acknowledgement!
MUSICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Today's world is a curious, even bizarre, mixture of the old and
the new, the naturalistic and the synthetic.
It is very much a transitional age, an age in which progress away from
dualism is becoming manifest in numerous different contexts, not least of all
music. We have grown so accustomed to
the incongruities resulting from the co-existence of ancient and modern ...
that we tend, in spite of ourselves, to take them for granted. Take, for example, the distinction between
symphony orchestras and rock groups, a distinction which reflects class
differences as much as anything. The
orchestral performers, with their bow ties, black suits, acoustic instruments,
scores, and conductor, obviously appertain to a very different musical world
from the, for example, T-shirted, jean-wearing rock groups whose electric
instruments would be capable of drowning out any orchestra in a competition
designed to discover who could make the most noise or, at any rate, create the
greater volume of decibels. The orchestra
clearly appertains to the bourgeois, semi-naturalistic world in which acoustic
instruments are taken for granted, whereas the rock group is comparatively
proletarian, given their electric instruments of a largely synthetic
construction. The two worlds exist
side-by-side, occasionally overlapping but, for the most part, remaining
distinct - the rock group preferring, as a rule, to evolve further and further
away from classical musicians who, as often as not, remain tied to the
nineteenth century, if not to several previous centuries. How long, one wonders, can this paradoxical
state-of-affairs continue?
My guess is that it
won't continue very much longer, since evolution cannot be reversed or impeded
for ever! The life-span of the symphony
orchestra would seem to be drawing towards a close, although its final collapse
may not be for several years yet - certainly not before the second-half of the
new century. Whatever happens between
the capitalist West and the socialist East in the historical unfolding of our
world over the coming decades, I cannot envisage symphony orchestras outlasting
the twenty-first century. Even today,
with computers, rockets, colour televisions, laser beams, holographs,
microchips, supersonic jets, and other such late twentieth- and/or early
twenty-first century phenomena, the orchestra appears increasingly
out-of-place, a sort of acoustic anachronism in an electronic age. The bowing or blowing or banging of acoustic
instruments contrasts sharply with the latest push-button techniques in the
manipulation of the most up-to-date electronic instruments, and one cannot help
but feel that whereas the latter are very much an integral part of modern life,
the former resemble social dinosaurs in their remoteness from it!
Naturally, works for
symphony orchestra continue to be composed, but even the most avant-garde
compositions are unlikely to be performed beyond the twenty-first century. If these comparatively modern works outlast
the orchestra, it will be because they have been recorded to disc or tape, and
thus preserved for posterity. The actual
performance life-span of these works can only, in the face of evolutionary
pressures, be short - far shorter, I would imagine, than the performance
life-span enjoyed by the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. For as evolution progresses in the modern
age, so it becomes ever quicker, and consequently the likelihood of Walton or
Honegger or Prokofiev still being regularly performed well into the new century
can only be increasingly remote. This is
one reason why a contemporary composer who makes the grade is quickly
acknowledged with international success and recording fame, his music soon to
take its place beside the 'immortal' recordings of a whole galaxy of
illustrious predecessors. A Tippett
recording is already somehow part of the musical tradition, and Walton is now
regarded as virtually one of the 'old masters', to be placed alongside the
immortals. Simply to have been recorded
is confirmation of one's 'classic' status.
And, given the likelihood of the classical orchestra's impending demise,
a delay in recording a modern composer could well prove fatal - depriving
posterity of access to his works.
But if orchestral
concerts are unlikely to be an aspect of twenty-first-century life, the same
must surely hold true of jazz concerts and, indeed, the recording of modern
jazz. The electric guitar may be a
relatively new instrument, peculiar to the second-half of the twentieth
century, but we need not expect it to outlive the symphony orchestra by a great
many years, since it has already become part of a long musical tradition within
the swiftly-evolving context of modern life.
Doubtless some form of electric music will continue to be composed and
performed during the twenty-first century, but the instruments and instrumental
combinations will probably change, as new tastes and evolutionary pressures
dictate. The possibility that modern
jazz will merge with atonal electronic music, over the coming decades, cannot
be ruled out, since the latter seems destined to supplant serious acoustic
music and will doubtless undergo progressive modifications in the course of
time. Eventually all music should be
composed on the highest possible evolutionary level, which means that even pop
music will be transcended as society increasingly becomes more transcendentally
sophisticated overall, not just within certain sections of the population. Pop music, arguably the musical equivalent of
socialist realism in art, may be necessary and even commendable in a
transitional age like this, but it must eventually be eclipsed by a more
spiritual music, equivalent to transcendentalism in art, if an ultimate
civilization, classless and universal, is to come fully to pass.
One reason why
recordings of whatever type of music are beginning to supplant live
performances ... is that they make for a superior means of listening to music,
in which a perfect instrumental balance can be obtained at a volume suitable to
oneself and in the comfort of one's home.
The use of headphones can further enhance one's appreciation of music by
seeming to interiorize it, and one is of course free to select exactly the
right recordings for one's particular taste or mood. It may be that in improving the technical
aspect of musical appreciation in this solitary fashion, one is obliged to
forfeit the social advantages accruing to a public concert, in which a large
audience comes to share the same enthusiasm, and, doubtless, studio recordings
will never be able to match live concerts for atmosphere. Yet, even then, the advantages of recorded
music are too great to warrant serious criticism, and reflect the ongoing
spiritualization of art through sublimated means of appreciation. The fact that recordings tend, paradoxically,
to undermine the musical necessity or validity of live performances, whether by
orchestra or group, cannot be denied, and is a further reason why the latter
will eventually die out. When, exactly,
the last public performance will be, I cannot of course say. But a world tending ever more rapidly towards
the post-Human Millennium, and thus towards the complete dominion of being over
doing, won't require people to perform in public for ever. Better that we should just sit still, in the
comfort of our homes, and listen to the latest studio recordings at an
appropriately transcendent remove from the actual recording session!
SAFEGUARDING FREEDOM
To discover whether the so-called Free World, by which is meant
the West, is actually free, one must have an objective criterion by which to
assess freedom. One must know what
freedom is and how it stands in relation to evolution. One must eschew the relative in favour of the
absolute, and by comparing what currently exists in the world, as a given
system, with this desired absolute, one will see how free, if at all, that
system really is.
Evolution being a
struggle from the Diabolic Alpha to the Divine Omega, from the raging stars in
one absolute context ... to the eventual emergence of pure spirit in another,
it must follow that freedom, in any ultimate sense, can only be interpreted as
a freedom from the former and a dedication to the latter. In other words, the freer a man is ... the
less will he be under the influence or domination of the Diabolic, with its
selfless naturalism. Degrees of freedom
can therefore be ascertained along an evolving spectrum ... from the ultimate
negativity in stellar energy to the ultimate positivity in transcendent
spirit. How, then, does the 'Free World'
stand up to the test of freedom, as defined above?
To answer this question,
one must understand what freedom usually means in the West. Generally speaking, it means the freedom to
worship as one chooses, to vote for one of a number of political alternatives,
to exercise freedom of opinion, to buy and amass property of one's own, to
conduct business in the interests of personal profit, to become an avant-garde
artist, to read what one likes, to practise transcendental meditation, and so
on. These, I think, are most of the main
or, at any rate, obvious freedoms normally found in Western society. Let us now put them to the test, using our
ethical criterion.
The freedom to worship
as one chooses is not really a manifestation of omega-oriented freedom, as we
may call that which aspires towards pure spirit, but an example of
alpha-stemming boundness. To worship is
either to worship God the Father or Jesus Christ. In Christianity it is mostly to worship
Christ, although the Father or, to give Him an alternative name, the Creator
(Jehovah) ... is by no means ignored. On
the other hand, the Holy Spirit cannot be worshipped, for the simple reason
that it is a state of blissful being to aspire towards, rather than an
already-existent fact. One can only
worship what exists, either as a theological entity (Christ) or as an
abstraction from cosmic reality (the Father), and to do this is to be bound to
the Alpha Absolute, even if, as where Christ is concerned, there is an
omega-oriented element involved. With
the Creator, however, there is no omega-oriented element at all, no
transcendent spirituality, since this anthropomorphic deity appertains to the
subconscious ... as an abstraction, in all likelihood, from the governing star
of the Galaxy ... out of which both the lesser stars and the planets originally
'fell'. To worship is therefore to be
bound (to that star) rather than to be free (from it).
To vote for one of a
number of political alternatives, which is the next 'freedom' under
consideration, isn't quite what it may at first appear, since in a capitalist
democracy one of the parties concerned will always be more bound to
aristocratic and/or bourgeois materialism than the others, which means that a
vote for that party is, in effect, a vote for slavery to capitalist materialism
to a greater extent than would be the case with liberal or left-wing parties,
although they, too, are partly allied to such a materialism. No, so long as there are parties with either
aristocratic or bourgeois loyalties, the politics in question will be largely
bound instead of free. Freedom comes
with an aspiration towards the supernatural, towards pure spirit, and although
politics can never be conducted on strictly religious terms, nevertheless
parties with allegiance to the proletariat, within a context of social democracy,
will reflect a greater degree of political freedom, as a rule, than any others.
As to the right to
exercise freedom of opinion, this is partly tied-up with dualistic politics and
religion, since appropriate to a stage of evolution when no absolute aspiration
towards the divine omega is under way in post-dualistic terms. It entails freedom to defend or champion what
is bound to the sensual, the material, the diabolic, the galactic-world-order,
and thus, in practice, can fall a long way short of truly free opinion, which
will be aligned with a post-dualistic, omega-oriented system of beliefs.
The 'freedom' to buy and
amass property of one's own likewise entails loyalty to what stems from the
Diabolic Alpha rather than to what aspires towards the Divine Omega, since
private property emphasizes the individual, with his materialistic
acquisitions, and is accordingly an aspect of a process at a sublimated remove
from the possessive tendency of stars to amass either weaker stars (suns) or
planets to themselves, as a matter of cosmic necessity. To have one's own property is to be bound to
materialism, like a star, and to amass additional property, whether large or
small, is to extend the dominion of the materialistic in one's life at the
expense of spiritual freedom.
Likewise the 'freedom'
to conduct business in the interests of personal profit enslaves one to
materialism and makes the acquirement of profit an end-in-itself, quite
divorced, it may transpire, from work satisfaction or quality of work or,
indeed, the nature of the product itself.
Christ is reputed to have said that it was 'easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of
Heaven', and that may well illustrate why, in the interests of spiritual freedom,
it is better not to become bound to wealth.
Those who do so will never be free to any significant extent!
On the other hand, the
freedom to become an avant-garde artist reflects, in the main, a freedom from
the sensual, apparent, concrete realm of artistic activity, and may well be
indicative of an omega-oriented tendency compatible with evolutionary progress
on the post-dualistic level. Even when
the object of this art is to discredit the external, natural world; even when,
in other words, it is anti-natural rather than pro-transcendental, it connotes
with evolutionary freedom from the natural-world-order to the extent that it
attacks, distorts, and belittles whatever is bound to that order, whether
human, animal, or vegetable, and thus indirectly assists in the re-orientation
of the mind towards supernatural criteria.
As to the freedom to
read what one likes, this too can entail the study of books, magazines, papers,
etc., which do in fact subscribe to anti-natural and/or pro-transcendental tendencies;
although, unfortunately, it can also entail the study of traditional,
reactionary, or anachronistic kinds of writings which bind one to what stems,
in selfless aggression, from the diabolic roots of evolution, and thus
preclude, for large numbers of less-informed people, true enlightenment. A post-dualistic society, on the other hand,
would only encourage the reading of books, magazines, etc., compatible with
transcendental criteria, thus preventing the everywhichway cultural or
intellectual confusions which arise in and necessarily appertain to liberal
societies, with their atomic relativity.
Freed from the pernicious influence of writings bound, in one degree or
another, to the Diabolic Alpha, the people would be enabled to acquire an
exclusively omega-oriented education worthy of the highest civilization.
Finally, the freedom to
practise transcendental meditation in public halls, or wherever, is another
aspect of Western life that, carried-on in the right non-mystical spirit, is
conducive towards a freedom from the sensual realm and aspiration towards the
spiritual one. We need not doubt that
this, too, should be encouraged in the future.
Getting back to the
question of whether the 'Free World' is really free and, if so, to what extent,
we can now answer it by contending that in some contexts, not least of all the
freedom to worship as one chooses, to vote for one of a number of alternative
class parties, to amass property, and so on, the so-called Free World is really
bound, in varying degrees, to the diabolic roots of evolution in the
stars. Whereas in certain other
contexts, notably avant-garde art and transcendentalism, it is probably more
free from those roots than anywhere else in the world, and accordingly reflects
an aspiration, whether directly or indirectly, towards the divine consummation
of evolution in the transcendental Beyond.
In all probability, the omega-oriented tendencies outweigh the
alpha-stemming ones in a majority of Western countries these days. But the continual existence of the latter
provides adequate grounds, as I see it, for ideological opposition and their
subsequent elimination, in the event of a truly moral society coming to pass.
PROTONS AND ELECTRONS
There are two kinds of antithesis, and they may be defined as
relative and absolute. The vast majority
of antitheses are relative, though as evolution approaches the antithesis of
the Alpha Absolute(s) in ... the Omega Absolute, we may note an approximation
to or from the absolutes at either end, as it were, of the evolutionary
spectrum. Only the Alpha Absolute(s) ...
of the stars and the projected Omega Absolute ... of undifferentiated
transcendent spirit would constitute an absolute antithesis, however. Such an antithesis is absolute in every
sense, there being no point of contact or similarity between the two extremes
of evolution. On the other hand, a
relative antithesis, such as exists between stars and planets, or men and
women, presupposes points of contact, and may be likened to the North and South
poles of a magnet - the unlike poles of which attract, while the like poles
repel. Those poles which are opposites
are yet similar to the extent that they are both comprised of the metallic
substance of the magnet, and accordingly form a relative rather than an
absolute antithesis.
Such an antithesis we
may note at the basis of the Solar System and, on a larger scale, of the
Galaxy. There is a kind of magnetic
reciprocity between the sun and circling planets of the Solar System formed by
the relative contrast between the negative, i.e. active, charge of the sun, in
which, according with the principles of a proton-proton reaction, hydrogen is
transformed into helium, and the positive, i.e. passive, charge at the core of
this planet, which is gradually cooling.
The sun's core would therefore be radically different from the earth's,
and I wager that while the one is hard, the other is soft, and this contrary to
traditional notions on the subject!
Indeed, in describing the sun as possessing a negative charge and in
equating that with the active, I have already reversed the traditional notions
as to what constitutes a negative charge, and this reversal, corresponding to a
Nietzschean 'transvaluation of all values', is at the core of my philosophical
endeavour, and may be traced back to the essay 'The Negative Root' from BETWEEN
TRUTH AND ILLUSION - my first step in this revolutionary direction.
The sun, then, generates
energy from deep within its tightly-packed proton core, and is thus active,
whereas the earth has a soft core which feeds upon the surrounding hardness of
its outer layers and is thus dependent on those layers for sustenance, i.e. the
continuation of its existence. This
distinction between an independent hard-core sun and a dependent soft-core planet
is fundamental to the mechanistic workings of the Solar System, which function
in the guise of a magnetic reciprocity - the hard core of the sun attracting
the planet's soft core to itself but having to contend, in the process, with
the attractive forces of other suns (stars), which establish a dynamic
equilibrium between suns and planets, after the manner of an atomic integrity
involving protons and electrons.
Here, of course, the
equation of the sun's hard core with protons gives the lie to the traditional
notion of protons as positive and electrons, by contrast, as negative. For any 'transvaluation of values' applying
to the macrocosm must also apply to the microcosm, since the inner workings of
the latter are at the base, so to speak, of the solar and indeed galactic
orders, which would not exist at all were they not derived from a microcosmic
blue-print in the atom. Admittedly, it
may have been acknowledged that protons were active and electrons passive, but
activity is not, contrary to traditional belief, a positive phenomenon. On the contrary, it is only passivity which
is positive and the more passive ... the more positive is it. That is why only a planet, as a place with a
positive core, could be used as a base from which to launch an aspiration, in
the form of mankind, towards a condition of ultimate passivity in the heavenly
Beyond (of transcendent spirit). No star
could be so used, for stars are the very converse of such an aspiration,
because the diabolic active roots of the Universe.
No, if the sun is a
negative phenomenon, corresponding to the proton of an atom, then the planets
must be positive phenomena corresponding to electrons, the overall integrity of
the Solar System corresponding to the interactions of an atom, and the still greater
integrity of the Galaxy corresponding to a cluster of atoms forming a kind of
molecular structure. This structure,
kept in dynamic equilibrium by the relatively antithetical constitutions of
stars and planets, only exists by dint of the common will of stars for dominion
over planets. For without planets to
keep them in equilibrium, the stars would fly-out in every direction, in
accordance with the divergent inclinations of a negative charge, through
anarchic revolt against the dominating influence of the governing star of the
Galaxy, which probably exerts a greater attraction over the planets of
whichever solar system than any of the smaller stars considered either
separately or taken together. Thus
arises the paradoxical situation in which like are kept in the vicinity (a
galaxy) of like because of their mutual interest in the dominion of planets -
phenomena which have the effect of preventing the stars from breaking away.
When this pattern is
repeated on earth, as it must be whenever evolution is insufficiently advanced
to warrant an exclusive aspiration towards the Divine Omega, we get what I have
termed the galactic-world-order, in which a monarch, as personification on
earth of the governing star of the Galaxy, lords it over both nobles, who correspond
to the lesser stars of the Galaxy, and populace, who of course correspond to
the planets. The nobles and monarch are
fundamentally akin, and would tend away from one another were it not for their
mutual interest in the domination of the populace for their own aggrandisement,
an interest which constrains nobles to an oath of allegiance to the
throne. Naturally, the populace are also
bound by loyalty to the throne, but their allegiance is of a very different order
from that of the nobility, who, after all, stand to gain a share of the
spoils. The allegiance of the populace
more resembles the submission of slaves to the will of the conqueror, and we
may infer from the term 'subject' the subjection of such slaves to monarchical
dominion, a subjection which entails an indirect rather than a direct
allegiance to the throne. Only those who
are fundamentally 'of the same stuff' as the monarch are entitled to a direct
oath of allegiance, and this applies no less to a constitutional monarchy than
to an authoritarian one - the only difference being that the sphere of direct
allegiance is widened, though not necessarily deepened, by the admission of the
parliamentary bourgeoisie, who have partly taken over the traditional preserve
of the aristocracy.
The relationship of peer
and/or parliamentarian to the populace of his particular sphere of geographical
influence thereby comes to resemble the relationship of sun to planets in a
solar system, and is thus atomic. While
the wider relationship of monarch to peers, parliamentarians, and populace as a
whole comes to resemble the galactic order in being molecular, or composed of
separate atoms which interact and are obliged to remain in place by the
stronger attractive power of the governing proton - namely, the monarch. Since a star is negative, and therefore
active, it may be described as of essentially feminine constitution, and never
is the galactic-world-order so faithfully reproduced on earth than when the
reigning monarch happens to be a woman, as was usually the case in more
primitive societies, given their greater disposition to violence. Then the pomp and ceremony essential to
maintaining the cohesion of nobles, politicians, and populace to the monarchy
was reinforced by the charismatic power of the reigning queen.
I do not wish to go into
the distinction between monarch, nobles, and populace to any extent, though I
should remark that the antithesis formed between the personifications on earth
of the stars of the Galaxy and the populace itself is relative rather than
absolute - there being various points of contact, not least of all in the
common structure and substance of the human body. That the monarch rules by 'divine right'
isn't, however, strictly true, although there is a sense in which it could be said
that he/she does rule by 'diabolic right', which is to say, as the
personification on earth of the governing star of the Galaxy, and therefore
according to the principles of the galactic-world-order. He/she functions in the guise of an
arch-devil. For even if the governing
star of the Galaxy isn't literally the Devil it corresponds to the diabolic
roots of evolution in the Universe and is therefore antithetical, in an
absolute way, to the future divine culmination of evolution there. In truth, the Creator is an abstraction from
this governing star and consequently appertains to the subconscious mind, a
mind, however, which is being outgrown, as modern man tends ever more deeply
into the superconscious, expanding consciousness upwards rather than remaining
a victim of the Given. The monarch is
therefore the nearest person on earth to that abstraction, since he/she
functions in the role of the governing star vis-à-vis society in general. Compared with the monarch, the various grades
of nobles, from a duke down, correspond to petty devils, having status
positions relative to the lesser stars of the Galaxy. Reversing this correspondence, one might well
argue that our sun is but a baron-equivalent in the overall hierarchy of the
Galaxy, being but a small peripheral star of only moderate power. A duke-equivalent would be much larger and,
needless to say, would stand closer, as it were, to the governing star of the
Galaxy than a mere baron-equivalent. The
Solar System of this important star would doubtless be somewhat larger and more
imposing than that pertaining to a star like our own.
But, cosmic speculation
aside, we can say for certain that the twentieth century signified a
turning-point in the evolution of man in which, for virtually the first time in
history, the galactic-world-order was completely overthrown in a number of
countries, in order that he could be set on course for a post-atomic society
tending, eventually, towards the Divine Omega in conscious transcendentalism. The example of Eastern Europe stands as a
lesson to those countries which have retained some form of monarchical
allegiance. The atom has been split, but
that is merely a prelude to splitting one part of humanity, corresponding to
electrons, from the clutches of another, corresponding to protons, in the
interests of evolutionary progress towards an exclusively omega-oriented
(divine) society.
Of course, I have
described the workings of the Solar System and the Galaxy in rather Newtonian
terms in these pages, stressing the force-and-mass aspect of magnetic
reciprocities in preference to the curved-space notion of latter-day
quasi-mystical physics, and I am fully aware that many educated persons would
strongly object to this, considering me mistaken and hopelessly anachronistic. After all, it is in our interests to regard
the workings of the Cosmos from a quasi-mystical point-of-view, which is a good
deal more comforting than to dig deeply into its basic diabolism and unearth
findings not guaranteed to flatter our transcendental bias or reassure us that
we live in a good universe. Yes, I know
the position well enough! But I also
know it is important that some people, broadly regarded as philosophers, should
commit themselves to a more literal investigation of the Cosmos, the better to
understand how it really works. For
unless they do, the truth of evolutionary progress will be obscured beneath the
'theological' expedience of scientific subjectivity, and no truly objective
knowledge of the Universe will be accessible to us, a knowledge which a small
number of higher minds should be able to live with ... no matter how much the
spiritual progress of the age may demand a subjective interpretation of the
physical cosmos, such as corresponds to our superconscious bias and reflects
our growing allegiance to internal as opposed to external reality. The literal truth of the workings of the
Cosmos and of the relations between planets and stars would seem to be very
different from what the curved-space mysticism of Einstein would have us believe! But the truth concerning the external cosmos
isn't necessarily what an age tending towards the post-atomic absolute should
want to uphold. Rather, it will
increasingly view life in terms of the freedom of electrons from proton control
- not their dependence upon them!
TWO KINDS OF DEPENDENCE
It is often said that we live in a woman's world, not least of all
by men. Yet, despite appearances to the
contrary, this is basically untrue, because the world has a positive base in
its soft core which makes for an evolutionary tendency towards the Divine
Omega, and thus towards a transcendental society. Women are rather like strangers in the world
- visitors from the sun or any nearby star.
For, like the sun, they have a hard core and a relatively soft or urbane
exterior, whereas men are effectively hard outside but essentially soft inside,
more disposed to leniency and compassion than the so-called fair sex.
Since women resemble the
sun, it is perhaps natural that they should generally be more heliotropic than
men, and this can, I think, be borne out by the greater importance they attach
to sunbathing and to acquiring a suntan.
Sensing an affinity between femininity and the sun, women draw
sustenance, both physically and psychologically, from its rays, which they
often soak-up for hours on-end, lying perfectly still and availing themselves
of the sensuality imparted by the sun's rays to sink into their subconscious
mind, like animals, and doze or daydream, unconsciously or perhaps even
consciously transmitting signals to nearby males. In this context they reflect a sort of
stemming from the diabolic roots of life, and are almost as far removed from an
aspiration towards the divine consummation of evolution, in transcendence, as
any animal or plant. Communion with the
sun is for many women a form of religion, though, unbeknown to themselves, it
is the lowest form - a kind of devil worship!
Like the sun, women have
a tendency to contract and diverge rather than, like men, to expand and converge
- the former tendency existing on the physical level, the latter on the
spiritual one. Were it not for the fact
that men are attracted to them, we may assume that most women would remain
solitary and independent for life, scorning one another but making no real
attempt to acquire male company, either.
They do of course obtain male company in a majority of cases, but this
is usually because their urbane appearance has attracted a man who has
expressed a dependence on them. Such
dependence is akin to that of a planet upon a star, and will continue to be the
norm for as long as an atomic integrity holds good between proton equivalents
and electron equivalents, viz. females and males. Once evolution reaches the stage where the
atom can be split and mankind sundered, once and for all, from the
galactic-world-order, however, then it is highly probable that men will emerge
who'll be independent of women, going their own omega-oriented way either in
homosexuality or, preferably, celibacy, with or without pornographic
stimuli. Of course, evolution also
affects women; for if it didn't it is doubtful that we would have the Women's
Liberation Movement and other aspects of evolutionary progress which, to some
extent, have the effect of 'masculinizing' women, and thus causing them to
behave, in varying degrees, more like men.
Where, formerly, it was the case that men were dependent on women, just
as society was dependent on monarchical government, so, with the transformation
to post-atomic freedom, men duly become independent of them, just as society
becomes independent of monarchical control.
Women, however, correspondingly become more dependent on men, though not
so much in a sensual as in an intellectual or a spiritual sense.
Here we have slightly
returned to the theme of the previous essay, in which the enslavement of the
populace to the nobility was stressed at the expense of the reverse situation -
namely, that of the dependence of the populace upon the nobility during a given
phase of evolutionary development. Since
I was emphasizing the absolute at the expense of the relative there, I should
now remark that, as the relative preponderates in life, so a paradoxical
situation is the norm. For, indeed, both
aspects of the noble/populace antithesis to some extent apply. The nobility do enslave the populace, much as
stars enslave planets, but so too, at this comparatively early stage of human
evolution, do people in general show themselves to be dependent upon a monarchical
government, since insufficiently advanced, in artificial terms, to be capable
of an independent, self-willed, socialist destiny. Only when evolution has arrived at a more
advanced stage, in which people are for the most part isolated from nature in
their giant cities, can their dependence on monarchical government be broken
and the emphasis accordingly be placed on freeing them from autocratic control
or tyranny, as though only those factors had played a part in the traditional
relationship of nobles to populace! The
truth is of course rather different, but it wouldn't flatter the masses to say
so! Neither would the average man be
flattered to learn that he was only dependent on women because insufficiently
advanced to be capable of an independent, post-atomic lifestyle. Better for him to believe that women were
dependent on men, even though their basic behaviour and attitudes would hardly
substantiate such a belief!
The fact that men have
been dependent on women for thousands of years is no fault of men, any more
than it is the fault of planets that they have been dependent on stars. Evolution proceeds from the natural to the
supernatural very slowly, and while nature dominates human affairs ... the
atomic integrity of the galactic-world-order will continue to prevail. Women will function as protons and men, by
contrast, as electrons - the latter dependent on and revolving around the
former. The man will say that he lives
for his family, and the woman will believe him.
Only when evolution progresses to a point where the artificial predominates
over the natural will a situation arise in which the man - assuming he has a
wife and children at all - will say he lives for his work or the cause, whether
political or religious. To live for
something greater than himself rather than for someone lesser than himself ...
is the distinction between the free man and the bound man, and it will
correspond to the splitting of the atom in a post-atomic society, whereby
electrons are severed from their proton control. The inceptive stages of this tendency are
already manifest in the contemporary West, where the frequency of divorce is
testifying to a disruption of traditional marital fidelity, and where wives as
well as husbands are obliged to take regular employment, a fact which,
logically enough, results in small rather than large families. And wisely, since the minimum commitment to
propagation ensures a greater freedom for both husbands and wives from the
atomic integrity of long-term parental responsibility. Given the much-improved ratio of infant
survival over infant mortality these days, there is no real necessity for large
families anyway. A child or two from
most couples will maintain and possibly even increase the birth-rate level,
while leaving the woman relatively free to conduct her life along
quasi-electron, as opposed to traditional proton, channels. Eventually, however, the further development
of post-atomic tendencies will lead to the supersession of marriage by a much
freer interaction between men and women, compatible with their higher status in
conformity to electron principles. A
long-term relationship between specific couples in such a free society would
not only be anachronistic ... but morally reprehensible, since indicative of a
regression to dualistic criteria.
Reproduction would, for the most part, be taken care of artificially,
which is to say, with the aid of sperm banks, test tubes, incubators, and so
on, while relationships between the sexes would be increasingly spiritual
rather than, as before, predominantly physical.
Functioning as quasi-electrons, the women would be intellectually and/or
spiritually dependent on men, while the men, as free electrons, would be
physically independent of women. Such a
society is not as far off as it may now seem!
MATERIALISTS AND SPIRITUALISTS
The distinction between materialists and spiritualists is an
age-old reality which stems, in large measure, from the fundamental dichotomy
in the Galaxy between stars and planets, the relatively antithetical
constitutions of which give rise to a magnetic reciprocity responsible for
maintaining the orbital integrity of the Galaxy as a whole - as, indeed, the
entire universe of galaxies of which this one is but an infinitesimal
part. On the microcosmic plane this same
distinction is to be found in the relatively antithetical constitutions of
protons as negative charges and electrons as positive charges - the former
active and the latter passive, though galvanized into action by the competing
attractive powers of the nearest protons.
On the human plane, the distinction between active materialists and
passive spiritualists has traditionally manifested itself in the relatively
antithetical constitution of women and men, the women constraining the men to
themselves, after the fashion of stars or protons, and galvanizing them into
action on their behalf, i.e. as fathers to their family, the children of which
resemble tiny protons, or neutrons, in that they revolve around the mother much
the way that a tiny extinct sun, such as the moon, revolves around the
earth. However, I have elsewhere sought
to demonstrate that as evolution progresses towards a predominantly artificial
phase, the atomic integrity of the traditional family unit is gradually
undermined until, with the dawn of post-dualistic civilization ... following a
sudden revolutionary break with tradition which resembles the splitting of the
atom, the electron equivalents are set free of proton constraint and the former
proton equivalents are themselves electronized, functioning, thenceforth, in the
guise of quasi-electrons. The
spiritualistic world predominates over the materialistic one at that juncture
in time by quite a considerable margin!
The aforementioned
atomic distinction, however, between female and male on the family plane may be
equated with the human microcosm, whilst a similar distinction between
politicians and priests or scientists and artists will pertain to the human
macrocosm, i.e. to society as opposed to the family, society itself coming to
resemble a galaxy in that it is composed, on the independent level, of numerous
proton-dominated atoms and, on the dependent level, of various professional
interests and contributions, some of which resemble protons, others electrons,
but all of which are subject to evolutionary pressures and may therefore
undergo gender changes corresponding to the transformation, on the microcosmic
plane, from closed atomic families to open post-atomic promiscuity.
Thus it can happen that
a traditional proton profession, such as politics when patterned after the
galactic-world-order, will acquire a sex change, so to speak, and become a
quasi-electron opposing the proton political order in the interests of
evolutionary progress. Hence socialist
politicians, although nominally materialists, function in the guise of what may
be called 'lesser spiritualists' in opposition, in such a transitional age as
this, to the materialistic politicians per se, though on a lower level,
needless to say, than genuine spiritualists, including latter-day gurus. Likewise, in science, a sex change
corresponding to the progress of electron freedom over proton determinism
ensures that quasi-electron scientists, who function in the guise of 'lesser
spiritualists', oppose the materialism of traditional science in deference,
amongst other things, to the higher spirituality of avant-garde artists, who
are their spiritual peers. As
quasi-electrons, revolutionary politicians and scientists oppose proton
determinism and thus behave like spiritualists, which, however, they can never
be in an authentic or genuine sense, seeing that their professions are largely
governed by materialistic considerations.
And just so for so-called liberated women who, in this transitional age,
are by no means absolved from certain traditional female duties and
responsibilities! Only with the advent
of post-atomic civilization would the lifestyles of quasi-electron equivalents
be radically influenced by electron freedoms - a situation which today applies
neither to the bourgeois West nor to the proletarian East, the former being
insufficiently civilized and the latter not really civilized at all, despite
the considerable changes for the better which have come to pass since the
eclipse of Soviet Communism by Social Democracy. Consequently, in the East artists and priests
have traditionally had a comparatively raw deal.
The distinction between
materialists and spiritualists does not of course only apply to politicians and
priests or to scientists and artists, nor indeed to proton politicians and
quasi-electron politicians, proton scientists and quasi-electron scientists,
the former of whom will be more indebted to Newton than to Einstein. It applies equally well within the profession
of art, where social realists align themselves with the quasi-electron level of
socialist politicians and produce a materialistic art of superior quality to
traditional materialists, but necessarily inferior to the genuine spirituality
of the free-electron, or avant-garde, artists.
Likewise, a similar distinction exists in literature between writers, on
the one hand, under quasi-electron materialistic domination, like Koestler and
Sartre, and free-electron spiritualists, on the other hand, like Huxley and
Camus. And, of course, in the religious
profession we will generally find the distinction between priests and gurus to
be one between electrons under proton dominion (the Creator), and electrons
free of such a dominion. A decadent
civilization may produce either bound- or free-electron equivalents, depending
to a large extent on the bent of the artist - the distinction between Sartre
and Camus, in France, being adequate confirmation of this fact, even though
Sartre wasn't particularly bound to quasi-electron politics and Camus wasn't a
particularly radical free-electron equivalent.
No doubt, this distinction between the two writers goes some way towards
explaining their differences of political opinion and concomitant professional
antagonism!
A post-dualistic
civilization, however, could only produce free-electron artists, since religion
and art take considerable precedence over politics and science with the advent
of such a high degree of civilization as would be achieved on the post-atomic
plane. In a post-atomic barbarous
society, on the other hand, art and religion can only be bound to politics and
science, since a new state has come to replace the old one and officially
outlawed the religion appertaining to it without, however, creating a new
religion to replace what went before. In
such a society - and the Soviet Union was the classic example - the artist must
necessarily be bound to the quasi-electron materialism of the politician and
accordingly produce some kind of socialist realism. The free-electron artist, to the extent that
he exists at all, can only be unofficial and, hence, taboo. His spiritualistic bias is incompatible with
a barbarous state integrity, which derives, through Marx, from the teachings of
Lenin. Only with the coming of Social
Democracy, and thus an end to 'scientific communism', will this artist be able
to come into the open - to 'come out' - and join the crusade of those who wish
to see a genuinely free-electron society come to pass, in which the spirit is
freed from all proton constraint and enabled to achieve full self-realization
in the name of that greater being which is the 'Kingdom of Heaven'.
PART THREE: DIALOGUES
A CHANGING WORLD
DONALD: I have always been puzzled by the uncertainty that exists
- and has long existed - in philosophical circles about the extent to which external
reality is actually there, outside ourselves, and the extent to which our
appreciation of it is conditioned by consciousness - in other words, about the
extent to which objective reality is really objective and not partly a creation
of our subjective minds.
MATTHEW: You have good reason to be puzzled about this matter,
since it isn't one that permits of a straightforward, eternally unchangeable
answer. Rather, one has to answer it
provisionally by saying that the respective ingredients in the determination of
objective/subjective reality will vary according to the evolutionary position
of the psyche in any given age, so that no fixed ratio of objective to
subjective is possible.
DONALD: You therefore agree that our awareness of the external
world is partly conditioned by consciousness.
MATTHEW: Of course! Reality
isn't just 'out there'. It is also in
the mind, and consequently external reality depends, to a certain extent, on
the applicability of this mind for its elucidation - as, indeed, philosophers
have known for quite some time! And not
only philosophers but also scientists, who, like Konrad Lorenz, would never
dream of completely detaching external reality from the internal world.
DONALD: Yet the doubt apparently lies with the extent to which the
one conditions or is conditioned by the other?
MATTHEW: Yes, and not altogether surprisingly since, as already
remarked, the extent varies from age to age, as from individual to
individual. Let me attempt to clarify this
point by dividing the history of the human psyche into three distinct stages,
viz. a pre-dualistic, a dualistic, and a post-dualistic. The psyche, it should be remembered, is
divisible into a subconscious and a superconscious mind, with consciousness
being the product of a fusion of these two minds in the ego, or in-between
realm of the psyche. If you accept this
proposition, we can continue.
DONALD: I think I can accept it.
MATTHEW: Good! Now the
first, or pre-dualistic stage will be one in which the subconscious
predominates over the superconscious in the ratio of approximately 3:1, since
at that juncture in time man is dominated by nature and insufficiently
civilized, in consequence, to lead an independent spiritual existence beyond
it. The ego, or conscious mind, of pagan
man will therefore be relatively dark, as befits the psychic ratio just
described, and, accordingly, the ratio of the external objective world to the
internal subjective one will also be in the region of 3:1, which is to say, his
consciousness of the external world will be very little affected by internal
subjective reality, since that reality will be insufficiently evolved to colour
or condition it to any significant extent.
Rather, the subconsciously-oriented objective psyche will cause him to
invest nature with hidden and usually malevolent powers, including demons. But the external world will appear to him
basically as it is - a materialistic world at no great remove from himself.
DONALD: Hence we get animism or pantheism at this primitive stage
of evolution?
MATTHEW: Precisely! But the
next, or dualistic, stage reflects a psyche more-or-less balanced between the
subconscious and the superconscious, in which consciousness comes to reflect a
kind of twilight state and, by dint of environmental progress away from nature,
man is in a position to distinguish between the mundane world and a
transcendent one separate from it, which he invests with supernatural and
usually benevolent powers, including angels.
Now because the ratio of subconscious to superconscious mind is
approximately 2:2, it follows that the external objective world will be
conditioned by the internal subjective one to a greater extent than formerly,
so that man inclines to distinguish himself from nature (to the extent that he
previously identified with it) and thereby ceases to fear it.
DONALD: Thus the demons or whatever that formerly infested nature
are transformed into angels and other benevolent powers who belong to a
separate transcendent realm, as determined by the growth of superconscious
mind?
MATTHEW: Yes, though not entirely!
For some malevolent powers are still associated with nature, in
accordance with the dualistic criteria of this stage of partly subjective
psychic evolution. But, fortunately,
human progress in the face of nature eventually leads to a situation, such as
we find today, in which the superconscious is getting the upper-hand over the
subconscious and a psychic ratio emerges which is the converse of the
pre-dualistic one. In this post-dualistic
age, the ego of transcendental man is relatively light, reflecting three times
as much superconscious as subconscious influence, and so the external world is
accordingly coloured by the internal one to a greater extent than ever before,
which makes for a complete reversal of pagan criteria in an assessment of
nature and matter in terms of the transcendent rather than the mundane, the
divine rather than the diabolic. Indeed,
we cannot now speak of an external objective world and of an internal objective
one, as formerly, but are obliged to reverse the qualities of these worlds in
response to the superconsciously-biased subjective nature of the modern
psyche. Hence it is the external world
that becomes subjective and the internal one that is seen to represent the
higher, truer reality of the spirit.
What we see outside ourselves is conditioned by our transcendent psyche
to a greater extent than ever before, becoming, in the course of time, but pale
abstractions of palpable materiality, which are to be explained away in terms
of mystical generalizations stemming from our internal subjectivity. For instead of being brute matter now, nature
must conform to our spiritual bias and display a similarly-biased constitution. To make it do this or, at any rate, appear to
do this ... we invent machines like the Bubble Chamber and ideas such as the
quantum theory, which goad nature into conforming, seemingly, to our
wishes. A people without a spiritual
bias would never have got around to it.
But we impose our bias on the external world as a matter of course,
quite happy to deceive ourselves as to its actual nature. Thus from being a reality to which our
ancestors applied idealistic theories involving demons and evil spirits, nature
has become a repository for an idealism abstracted from the higher reality of
our superconsciously-biased psyche.
Where, formerly, we abstracted from materialistic objectivity, we now
abstract from spiritualistic subjectivity, and accordingly bend nature to our
desires. To speak of an objective
internal world now would be an anachronism or, at best, a partial truth
applying to that part of the psyche which conforms to the subconscious. Consequently there is no justification for
our using the expression 'objective' vis-à-vis the internal world. For now it is the external, traditionally
objective world which becomes subjective reality for us, and it does so because
the subjective reality of the post-egocentric psyche stands to it in the ratio of
approximately 3:1, making our interpretations of it correspondingly biased on
the side of internal subjective reality, which is to say, on the side of
mysticism ... with a spiritualistic integrity.
It is as though, at some propitious future occasion, matter will
dissolve altogether if only we stare at it long enough from our
superconsciously-biased psyche. But, in
reality, matter hasn't changed one iota since our distant ancestors encountered
it under pressure of subconscious, objective domination and invested it with
demonic powers. Only we have changed and
so drawn away from it, in accordance with evolutionary progress.
DONALD: This is incredible!
Are you really saying that the external world isn't literally what our
foremost scientists would have us believe?
MATTHEW: Absolutely! And I
am saying this in camera, to the chosen few who can be trusted to appreciate
and respect the fact. Not for a moment
would I wish things to be any different - don't think otherwise! But I am too much a man of truth to be wholly
satisfied with the relative 'truths' of scientific idealism. I can now see why they should exist and am
thus in a better position to uphold them.
For it is no good imagining that a return can be made to scientific
realism in the objective spirit of Newtonian man. The age necessarily belongs to Einstein and
must continue to do so in the future, whatever the extremism of scientific
subjectivity may happen to be and, needless to say, irrespective of any Marxist
materialist opposition in the short term.
For the psyche cannot now be expected to regress to a predominantly
objective status, but must continue to grow ever more subjective as the
superconscious is developed further.
DONALD: And thus we must oppose purely materialist interpretations
of the external world which, though literal, are obsolescent from a
transcendent standpoint?
MATTHEW: Indeed, and which, if upheld, would constitute a grave
obstacle to our spiritual aspirations.
But, of course, such materialistic interpretations can only be upheld in
a materialist state where, under Marxist-Leninist influence, transcendentalism
is supposed not to exist. Hence in the
former Soviet Union, traditionally, it wasn't so much curved space ... as force
and mass that explained the workings of the Solar System from an orthodox, or
Newtonian, point-of-view. Perfectly
correct, of course, from an objective angle, but on a lower evolutionary plane
than the Einsteinian subjectivity which was to characterize Western science in
the twentieth century. Yet such
subjectivity is only relevant to a society that to some extent acknowledges
transcendentalism, not to one that outlaws it.
In other words, such subjectivity is relevant to civilization, which is
politics plus religion, not just politics!
More specifically, it is relevant to the transitional
(dualistic/post-dualistic) civilization which the leading Western countries,
including America and Germany, signify.
That there will be a final, or post-dualistic, civilization in the
future, I haven't the slightest doubt, and when it comes you can be certain
that scientific subjectivity will be pushed to the limit, as it abstracts from
the higher subjectivity of the transcendent psyche. We haven't seen the last of materialistic
idealism yet, believe me!
DONALD: But, presumably, we have seen the
last of spiritualistic idealism, the religious idealism of our ancestors, who
were under subconscious domination to an extent which made religious realism
impossible.
MATTHEW: Yes, there can't be too many people left in the
more-advanced parts of the world, these days, who believe everything recorded
in the Bible, even though the Bible still officially prevails in the West. What might be defined as lower mysticism, in
which objective interpretations of and abstractions from external reality
apply, is increasingly being superseded by the higher, subjective mysticism
which has conditioned the findings of modern science. Religious objectivity isn't particularly
influential in intellectual circles these days, whether scientific or literary.
DONALD: So you don't subscribe to the Fall of Man, which is
essentially a pagan concept?
MATTHEW: No, although I do respect the doctrine of Original Sin,
which is a Christian one. The Fall of
Man, however, could only apply to a pre-dualistic context, in which a guilt
complex exists as a consequence of the development from animal to man which
evolutionary progress imposed upon man in the face of nature. With the advent of man, the close
identification with nature, peculiar to the animal world, is lost, and so the
distinction he then feels between nature and himself is interpreted as a fall -
it being remembered that, at such an early stage of psychic evolution, the
subconscious predominates ... with its naturalistic affiliation. To have fallen out of nature's bosom is
regarded as more of a curse than a blessing, since pagan man lacked an
evolutionary sense corresponding to the transcendent and, in consequence, could
only regard his fate in terms of his immediate circumstances. Only with the advent of dualism was it
possible for man to look towards the transcendent for his (future) salvation,
rather than simply to regret that he had fallen out of nature. And in an incipiently post-dualistic age it
should be obvious that man is on the rise towards the supernatural and
therefore towards his transformation, in due course, into the Superman, as a
life form one stage closer than man to the ultimate Oneness of the heavenly
Beyond.
DONALD: And what of Original Sin?
MATTHEW: That is destined to be left behind with the future
transformation of man. Not that I adopt
an orthodox attitude to it, as if one should avoid sexual contact
altogether. For, after all, it is only
through sexual contact, resulting in propagation, that mankind survives and
thereby evolves towards Heaven. If now,
as formerly, sex is essentially an evil or sensual phenomenon it is
nevertheless a necessary evil which has to be endured for the sake, above all,
of evolutionary continuity. Life abounds
in such necessary evils, and while the odd individual here and there is entitled,
in his capacity of saint, to rebel against them to the extent he can, the
majority of people must bow to them in the interests of survival. These days, however, the justification for
sainthood is more fragile than at any former time in the history of civilized
man. For whereas the majority of
Christian saints firmly believed they would be rewarded for their mundane
hardships in a transcendent afterlife, living as we do, in a more-advanced age,
we lack this incentive and can only take a more realistic, down-to-earth
attitude to salvation in consequence.
Like it or not, salvation will only come about with spiritual
transcendence at some more fortunate future age, not happen following death. And knowing this, we would be extremely
foolish to starve ourselves of sensual needs for the mere sake of
starvation. The Christian saints were at
least wise enough to starve themselves or, more correctly, eat only the most
frugal meals ... for an ulterior purpose, which is something we oughtn't to
forget! They may have been deluded to
expect a posthumous salvation, but at least they acted in accordance with the
logic of their times.
DONALD: Which is also, I believe, the official logic of the
contemporary Christian West or, at any rate, of Christian officialdom in the
West.
MATTHEW: Yes, up to a point.
But, as I said before, it is only the unofficial logic which is truly
contemporary and which, in infiltrating the decadent dualistic and transitional
civilizations, has ennobled them with a transcendentally objective bias. We may be a long way, at present, from the
official transcendental civilization of universal man, but we are certainly
tending in its direction, whatever the upholders of religious objectivity may
happen to think of the fact.
DONALD: Yes, I can only agree!
PROLETARIAN WRITING
FRANCIS: Where modern writing is concerned, it would seem that the
age is more spontaneous than ever before and therefore, in a sense, more
careless than ever before. Would you
agree?
GERALD: Yes, in a way I would.
For spontaneity is pertinent to a comparatively advanced age, in which
intellectual dynamism has come to signify the appropriate momentum. Where, formerly, it was the body that was
especially active and the mind that remained relatively inert, nowadays it is
the converse which increasingly applies, and this is compatible with
evolutionary progress from the material to the spiritual realm, from the
physical to the mental one. To
deliberate overmuch on a script one was writing would be to acquiesce in a degree
of mental inertia out-of-step with the essential intellectual dynamism of the
age. As a truly contemporary writer, one
should be hard-pressed to keep-up with one's thoughts and, consequently, if one
writes before typing, one will be obliged to adopt a kind of shorthand in order
to ensure the quickest possible conveyance of one's thought to paper. For it normally happens that one's best
thoughts come to one 'on the wing', so to speak, and must be captured for letters
before they disappear again.
FRANCIS: Yet, to return to the second part of my question, surely
this results in a degree of carelessness unprecedented in literary history?
GERALD: In the aesthetic sense I suppose it does, since one won't
have either the time or inclination to carefully arrange and, as it were,
chisel one's sentences into harmonious shapes.
But in another, dynamic sense one must remember that the contemporary
literary mind is so much more highly charged than the traditional one ... that
it is able to both muster and master thought more quickly and efficiently than
ever before, and thus mould it into intelligible sentences with the minimum of
hesitation. The struggle is mainly
carried out before the words reach paper, so that only a minimum
revision is required for the completed script.
It is no use one's coming to the work with a lazy or disordered mind, as
various writers did in the past. The
test of one's credibility as a contemporary writer will rest with the fluency
of one's style, and that is dependent upon the dynamic workings of the mind.
FRANCIS: Yet, even so, it cannot be denied that such writings as
you endorse are less than perfect from a grammatical standpoint. I mean, there will be instances of split
infinitives, prepositions ending sentences, conjunctions out of place, adverbs
not close enough to the adjective or noun they are intended to define,
subordinate phrases occurring in ungainly or even unlikely places, punctuation
logically inconsistent, phrases less than wholly apposite, choice of words
sometimes inappropriate, tenses not properly followed through, elision, and so
on - through a whole host of academic failings.
GERALD: Yes, there will doubtless be lapses - sometimes frequent,
sometimes occasional - from textbook criteria ... as expounded by pedants. But so what?
Does that necessarily disqualify the contemporary writer from artistic
or intellectual credibility, turning his work into an example of how not to
write? No, I don't believe so, and for
the simple reason that textbook criteria and serious literary endeavour are two
entirely separate things, which rarely if ever overlap!
FRANCIS: Oh, but really...!
GERALD: I assure you this is no exaggeration, but a wholehearted
confession of fidelity to contemporary literary requirements, irrespective of
what the case may have been in the past.
Of course, it is true that bourgeois and, to an even greater extent,
aristocratic authors have taken great pains with their work in the past, not
least as it bears on grammar. But such a
fastidious attitude, by no means uncommon in the present century, is hardly
justifiable as an eternal verity, to be scrupulously adhered to in the
interests of professional dignity and integrity. On the contrary, we find that as writing
progresses from class to class, so it becomes increasingly bolder in defying
strict grammatical rules and establishing new criteria for itself in the face
of tradition. Where, in less enlightened
ages, writing was shackled by numerous grammatical fetters, it is now
comparatively free of them and must become even more so in the future, if there
is to be any further literary progress.
FRANCIS: But why must it become ever freer in this way? After all, grammatical rules exist to assist
our understanding of writing, not to hinder it.
GERALD: Doubtless that is fundamentally true. But it should also be remembered that, if
adhered too rigorously to, such rules can also serve to impede or obscure our
understanding. No, the real reason
behind the gradual emancipation of letters from grammatical fetters is that, by
so freeing itself, writing can become a medium for the conveyance of essence
over appearance, as it should be in any advanced stage of its evolution.
FRANCIS: How, pray, do you distinguish between essence and
appearance?
GERALD: Very simply.
Essence appertains to the thematic content of a work, appearance to the
means used to convey it. The one is
subject-matter, the other technique. Now
the fact is that the ratio of the one to the other has been steadily changing
ever since man first acquired the rudiments of civilization and put pen to
paper. If you'll permit me to
generalize, we shall discover that appearance predominates over essence in
pre-dualistic writings; that appearance and essence are approximately in-balance
during a dualistic age; and that now, as we enter a post-dualistic age, essence
predominates over appearance, in accordance with the spiritual bias of the
times. Thus less attention is given to
technique in post-dualistic writings than was given to it at any previous time
in the history of letters, and this is compatible with the fact that much more
importance is attached to content, to what is being said rather than the way in
which one says it. Content is the
all-important factor, and because it is recognized as such in the best and most
progressive writings of the age, less time is wasted on apparent factors than
ever before. Indeed, a concern with
appearances could only detract from the content, as well, no doubt, as impede
the fast flow of thought so crucial to the intellectual dynamism of the
times. To unduly deliberate over the
choice and arrangement of words like an aristocrat or pseudo-aristocrat, such
as Edgar Allan Poe, would constitute a gross anachronism in an age which is
tending, willy-nilly, towards greater spiritual mobility. What Poe was to pseudo-aristocratic writings,
Baudelaire was to bourgeois writings, and neither of them should be emulated
now - certainly not by proletarian authors, at any rate!
FRANCIS: Would this development away from appearance, as applied
to literature, also apply to poetry then, so that the absence of rhyme from
modern poems is regarded as a mark of their evolutionary superiority over
traditional, rhyming poems, rather than as a reflection of technical
disintegration or prosy degeneration?
GERALD: Most assuredly! And
never more so than when we are dealing with the free verse of the best
proletarian poets. Not for nothing is
Poe regarded as a jingle-jangle man. For
to write verse in the manner of Poe now would be to fall way behind the foremost
developments of the day, which are becoming ever more biased on the side of
essence. Rhymes of whatever sort
primarily appeal to the senses, to eyes and ears, rather than to the mind, and
so, too, do such apparent devices as alliteration, assonance, regular metres,
vowel placements, and stanza divisions - all of which have constituted an
irreplaceable and, I regret to say, irreproachable aspect of pre-dualistic and
even dualistic poetry. In the final
analysis, however, appearance can only detract from or limit the applicability
of essence, never enhance it! The
rhyming poetry of the past can never be resurrected in any seriously
progressive context, and in general one finds that only the most conservative
poets of the twentieth century continued to write it, as did W.B. Yeats and
Robert Graves, doubtless with some justification within the context of
dualistic civilization. But such rhyming
poetry can certainly be bettered, and it is and will continue to be the fate of
petty-bourgeois and/or proletarian poets to do so. Compare Yeats' early poems with Allen
Ginsberg's late ones, and you'll see what I mean! Yet poetry is only one branch of literature,
and what applies there must also apply elsewhere, in response to evolutionary
progress. Thus the spontaneous attitude
of D.H. Lawrence to novel writing is, despite the reactionary or traditional
nature of much of his thought, inherently superior to and somehow more
contemporary than the deliberative, rather formal attitudes of novelists like
James Joyce and Thomas Mann, whose large attention to technique could only
detract, in the long-run, from the importance attached to content. With Joyce, words become important in
themselves, as things to be looked at and listened to, juggled into amusing or
teasing juxtapositions, riddles or puns.
He retains a traditional poetic attitude to writing, so that his novels
become - most especially in the case of Finnegans Wake - exercises in
poetic prose. How different from D.H.
Lawrence, who conveys the impression that words are all on the same level, with
no hierarchic preferences, and need scarcely be looked at except as means of
conveying thought! Truly, Lawrence's is
the more progressive attitude, and although I despise much of his thought, I
can't help but admire his spontaneous approach to writing, which gives maximum
priority to essence.
FRANCIS: You would obviously admire the spontaneity of John Cowper
Powys' writing, too. He must surely be
among the most prolific novelists of the century.
GERALD: Yes, though once again I am obliged to admit that I
despise his thought and would not wish to champion it! The age of nature-worship is long dead and
unlikely ever to be resurrected in the future, as the world tends ever more radically
away from nature in pursuit of the supernatural. Powys is, it seems to me, a kind of neo-pagan
anachronism in the modern world, a remnant or rehash of the old world rather
than a pioneer of a new one. If his literary
facility is commendable, his philosophy, in my opinion, is considerably less
so, and we need not expect it to be influential in building the next
civilization. He is really one of those
curious hybrids or chimeras which the twentieth century, as a transitional age,
seemed prodigal in producing, whose class bias, while fundamentally bourgeois,
isn't exempt from proletarian leanings, whether technical, as in Powys' case,
or thematic, as in the case, for example, of Aldous Huxley. A wholly post-dualistic writer we haven't as
yet seen, which isn't altogether surprising, since the West remains
fundamentally bourgeois and, hence, dualistic.
Even America, which represents the higher, transitional civilization
between dualism and post-dualism, hasn't produced a full-blown
transcendentalist, although it has fostered a number of transitional
(bourgeois/proletarian) writers whose works are, on the whole, more progressive
than those of their European contemporaries.
FRANCIS: I presume you are alluding to writers like Henry Miller
and Jack Kerouac, whose novels are not only more transcendentalist than is to
be found in the general pattern of European writings, but more technically
spontaneous as well?
GERALD: Yes, especially is this true of Kerouac, whose
quasi-mystical novels are among the most free and enlightened literature of the
age. Kerouac went a step further than
Miller in developing the American novel, and, no doubt, others have since gone
a step further again, using a more spontaneous technique in the service of a
more enlightened transcendentalism. But
there are limits, as I said, to the development of such literature within the
confines of a transitional civilization.
For truly proletarian literature is only relevant to a post-dualistic
civilization, and nowhere in the world does such a civilization currently
exist.
FRANCIS: Not even in the former Soviet Union?
GERALD: No, since the Soviet Union was essentially a neo-barbarous
post-dualistic state, not a civilized or partly religious one. The absence of an official post-dualistic
religion, such as Transcendentalism, from the Soviet Union inevitably limited
the scope of proletarian writings to political and social propaganda,
precluding the development of an avant-garde technique in pursuance of
spiritual ends. What one usually
encounters in Soviet literature, as in the other Soviet arts, is a bourgeois
technique, in which deliberation and appearance balance content, put to the
service of proletarian propaganda - not the utilization of a truly proletarian,
spontaneous technique in response to the intellectual dynamism of the times. Technically, Soviet art was very
conservative, and this fact could only hinder the progress of proletarian
literature which, as in the Soviet Union, necessarily remained confined within
materialist limits. No, the highest
proletarian literature, whether novelistic or otherwise, will only come from a
post-dualistic civilization ... where technique and content can be developed
along the most transcendental lines. If
Ireland is destined to become such a civilization before any other country in
the world, then it will be there that this literature will first arise ... in
accordance with post-dualistic criteria.
FRANCIS: And what, exactly, will these criteria be?
GERALD: Adherence, above all, to the intellectual dynamism of the
age, with the inevitable corollary of spontaneity in writing and the reduction
of appearances to the barest minimum.
The further development of truth as essence is expanded as much as
possible. The organization of one's work
into a collectivistic format, so that the traditional procedure of keeping the
various literary genres separate is transcended in a divine-oriented literature
that reflects an evolutionary convergence to the Omega Point, to cite Teilhard
de Chardin. The use of computers, so
that discs replace books as the medium through which this ultimate literature
is read. An adherence, all along the
line, to post-dualistic ideology, whether political or religious.... Thus the
full-blown proletarian literature of the future will bring literature to its
consummation, and so prepare the way for the post-literary epoch of the
post-Human Millennium. It will
eventually spread throughout the world, becoming universally accepted, as the
ultimate civilization supersedes the neo-barbarism of socialist materialism in
response to historical necessity.
FRANCIS: So what the Americans, with their transitional
literature, are to the contemporary dualistic world, the Irish, in their
subsequent development of post-dualistic civilization, will become to the neo-barbarous
one - cultural leaders on the world stage.
GERALD: I see no reason why not, especially as I am an Irishman
and the world's first truly post-dualistic writer, whose literature awaits its
due recognition. Sooner or later my hour
will come, and when it does you can rest assured that proletarian literature
will be here to stay, never impeded, any more, by bourgeois realism or
neo-barbarous materialism. Who knows,
but if such writings are allowed to develop to the full, they may well
transcend appearances altogether one day, as increased spontaneity pushes them
towards the maximum freedom in total abstraction, thereby transforming
literature once again. For once truth
has been attained to, in meaningful sentences, there is nothing left for us to do
... other than begin to free ourselves from words by breaking-up meanings. Verbal concepts are all very well for man,
but they won't be of much use to his superhuman successor, believe me!
FRANCIS: I almost do, although, to be honest, I'm not entirely convinced
that such abstract writings would constitute the ultimate literature, since,
without meaningful sentences, they would be a bore to read.
GERALD: You are speaking more from an egocentric than from a
post-egocentric point-of-view. As it
happens, there are three main approaches to art, of whichever kind, in the
post-dualistic age. In the first
approach one can be post-egocentric in the sense of free from self-aggrandizing
penchants for aesthetic finesse and embellishment. One's work will accordingly be somewhat
simplistic in construction and seemingly slapdash or careless in
appearance. It will be a literature
approximating more to D.H. Lawrence than to James Joyce, with a fairly high
degree of spontaneity. In the second
approach, however, one can create in the post-egocentric context of disrupting
and discrediting the natural world, whether this is the external world of
nature or the internal world of the subconscious. With the former one gets Expressionism in one
degree or another. With the latter ...
Surrealism in one degree or another.
Perhaps where the development of a truly abstract literature is
concerned, one would be a proponent of this anti-natural type of
post-egocentric creativity, so that the meaninglessness of one's sentences was
largely designed to discredit and disrupt the subconscious as a means of partly
freeing man from its influence ... in the interests of superconscious
development. But in the third approach,
which I believe applies most especially to myself, one's commitment to
post-egocentric writings would be with intent to explore and expand the
superconscious, and for that it would be necessary to retain meaning, in
well-ordered sentences, as one sought to elucidate spiritual progress. This is the highest type of post-egocentric
creativity because wholly forward-looking, and a good example of it can be
found in the mature novels of Aldous Huxley, which aspire to the status of
religious literature on a transcendent plane.
In painting, we find Mondrian generally signifying the same thing, and,
in music, Michael Tippett has displayed a consistently transcendental
bias. One can only suppose that,
eventually, this third type of post-egocentric creativity will completely
eclipse each of the others, as evolution tends ever more deeply into the
superconscious.
FRANCIS: Thus a kind of creative hierarchy exists, on the
post-egocentric level, which stretches from the simplistic and/or slapdash to
the transcendental via the expressionist and/or surreal, and such an hierarchy
might well be reflected in twentieth-century literature by the novels of D.H.
Lawrence, James Joyce, and Aldous Huxley respectively; in twentieth-century
painting by the canvases of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Piet Mondrian
respectively; and in twentieth-century music by the works of John Cage,
Karl-Heinze Stockhausen, and Michael Tippett respectively.
GERALD: In general, I think that would be approximately correct,
even given all the creative changes which any one artist may undergo. But post-egocentric art, in whatever context,
has yet to develop to the full, and when it does you can rest assured that the
attainments of most of the leading artists of the twentieth century will appear
comparatively moderate. Only the next
civilization will be radically post-egocentric.
In fact, so radically post-egocentric as to be wholly superconscious.
FRANCIS: That I can well believe!
THE EVOLUTION OF ART
PETER: Do you agree with Keats that 'A thing of beauty is a joy
forever', or that 'Truth is beauty, beauty ... truth'?
GRAHAM: No, I don't! And
neither do I agree with his near contemporary, Goethe, who said: 'The eternal
feminine draws us up'.
PETER: Oh and why is that?
GRAHAM: Because the feminine aspect of life is merely a temporal
affair and, except in the erotic sense that Goethe probably intended, only
serves to draw us down towards the beastly rather than up ... towards the
godly. When one makes love to a woman
one is in the feminine world, which is inherently sensual, and consequently
turning one's back on the world of spiritual striving. One's responsibilities there are feminine
and, hence, negative, not masculine and positive. Baudelaire defines the situation well when he
says: 'Love greatly resembles an application of torture or a surgical
operation', and, later, when he goes on to record: 'There are in every man,
always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan', and
proceeds to define the latter as a 'delight in descent' involving, amongst
other things, woman, he directly refutes the aforementioned maxim of Goethe -
at least as it may apply to moral standards!
PETER: Which is, I suppose, only to be expected, since Baudelaire
was an ascetic Catholic and not, like Goethe, a hedonistic Protestant. But, really, I asked you a question about
Keats and still haven't received an enlightening answer.
GRAHAM: I told you that I didn't agree with Keats' lines, and my
reasons for saying so are similar to my reasons for not agreeing with Goethe's
oft-quoted line - namely that, like the feminine, beauty isn't eternal, and
therefore is incapable of being 'a joy forever'. You see, beauty appertains to appearance, an
attribute which is quantitative and, hence, temporal. Truth, on the other hand, appertains to
essence, an attribute which is qualitative and, hence, eternal. To write: 'Truth is beauty, beauty truth',
like Keats, is to write nonsense from any higher or objective point-of-view,
seeing that essence and appearance are forever antithetical, and therefore
incapable of being reconciled. The beauty
of a beautiful woman is apparent, whereas the truth of a truthful man is
essential, and never can the two attributes be harmonized, let alone become
equal. For whereas the former leads down
to sensuality the latter leads up to the spirit. Only a dualist could confound them and
strive, no matter how self-deceptively, to reconcile the two in one
equation. Yet as Baudelaire said
somewhere else: 'The more a man cultivates the arts, the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs
between the spirit and the brute'.
PETER: Doubtless that is true within certain limits. But surely it also contains a contradiction,
since the arts are more often apparent than essential, and thus more aligned
with beauty than with truth?
GRAHAM: Traditionally, and on the lowest artistic levels, that may
well be the case. But the highest art,
especially during the last century or so, is primarily concerned with truth,
not beauty. The criteria of artistic
excellence have changed, in accordance with the dictates of evolutionary
progress away from the natural, material world towards a supernatural, or
spiritual, one. To be concerned overmuch
with beauty, in this day and age, would hardly help to place one's work in the
vanguard of artistic progress. Rather,
one would be producing anachronisms, only fit for the most popular or
old-fashioned appreciation.
PETER: But the fact nevertheless remains that art is largely
apparent, if only because it stands outside the self and obliges one to
contemplate it from a distance.
GRAHAM: Ah, if you are specifically alluding to the art of painting, then that is undoubtedly true! But, you see, modern art utilizes appearance in the service of essence to the extent that appearance can be so utilized. Of course, one is going to be at cross-purposes to some extent, and this is an unfortunate limitation of art as we currently understand the term. For no matter how much the artist may strive to convey truth as