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 All traditional faiths must be superseded as humanity moves in toto towards the ultimate world religion, based on meditation.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 that 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!