Beyond the Pale

BEYOND THE PALE (1996)

Since 1993, the year of my last series of autobiographical sketches, I have stuck to my philosophical guns, as it were, and fired away at the truth until, at length, I hit the bull's-eye and brought things to a fitting climax. Even the aphoristic purism of Maximum Truth and subsequent works of a kindred nature ... was less true than I had optimistically supposed at the time, given the absence of 'elementinos' from the elemental quadruplicities which characterize it. Until comparatively recently I was therefore guilty of hyping the elements to omega standings with regard to sensibility, to making elements count for elementinos! All they needed was a wavicle bias and, hey presto! an omega standing was theirs.

Well, all that of course embarrasses me in retrospect, as do a number of other things about my work in the period from 1993-95, before things finally began to turn away from error towards the most comprehensively exacting philosophy one could ever hope to achieve. It was with the cyclical works that follow the series of aphoristic books written during 1993-94 that a significant change for the better set in, even though I still had a way to go before 'the better' turned to 'the best', and I abandoned the linear thinking of my elemental spectrums for the lateral thinking of elemental planes, moving diagonally between parallel planes that don't touch, spectrum-wise, in the middle. Now I have a watertight framework that will stand the test of time and ensure my place at the forefront of serious philosophy. No-one who reads my work could be in any doubt as to its merits, and although I am self-taught, I have achieved what most philosophers can only dream of - namely, the attainment of philosophical perfection in a systematic comprehensiveness which does justice not only to truth, but to strength, knowledge, and beauty as well!

Frankly, philosophy is like an obsession, it dogs one's steps, one's every move, so that it is difficult, to the point of impossible, to get away from it. I exaggerate slightly, but rarely does a day pass without some new idea, some fresh revelation, thrusting itself upon me and demanding some kind of concretization, usually, as here, in the form of transference to paper, and from paper to disc and/or tape. You can't just put it to one side or cease to philosophize. Philosophy becomes one's life, and one takes it to bed, like a lover. One dreams and breathes philosophy as well as thinks and writes it. Sometimes I even think one shits philosophy. One is a philosopher, just as others are politicians or policemen or barbers or doctors or whatever. I became a philosopher, just as Beethoven became a composer and Dali a painter, and what a philosopher! I no longer have to philosophize: I am philosophy!

Out of my philosophy this year (1996) grew the desire to grow and then the reality of having a moustache, which, at the time of writing (March) is still growing. In fact, I only began to grow it earlier this month, having decided that moustaches correspond to 'rising vegetation' and were therefore eminently masculine or, at any rate, suited to someone with a predilection for independent thought! I don't expect my moustache to win any awards for thick growth or even texture, but at least I am now doing my bit to defy the clean-shaven trend of the 'bent majority' of feminized men, whose faces more correspond, it seems to me, to 'falling water' than to 'rising vegetation'. After all, if you don't sport some form of facial hair, you might as well be a woman, for whom 'falling water' is the feminine norm, a norm which seemingly justifies women in shedding tears and being chatter boxes - not altogether unlike a number of so-called men I know! Anyway, I saw the light, so to speak, and decided that a moustache was in order, both to counter the 'falling-water' trend of clean-shaven femininity and to affirm a sort of sensibly masculine bias with regard to my intellectuality, or self-styled standing as a radical intellectual.

I could have grown sideboards, but decided, after due reflection, that 'rising vegetation' around the ears was more sensual (and possibly Judaic) than sensible. Likewise, I could have grown a beard, but came to the conclusion that beards were rather more sensual than sensible in view of their positioning (lower down the face) on or under the chin, where one might be forgiven for drawing an antichristic analogy with some kind of republican and/or sexually active bias such that would detract, in its sensuality, from the Christian and even middle-class correlation of a moustache. Besides, I sported a beard, and quite a shaggy one too, during my late twenties and early thirties, so could hardly be expected to backtrack, as it were, and revert to something I had effectively outgrown.

Thus, scorning both sideboards and beard alike, I persist with my moustache, which I hope will enhance my masculinity and show to the world that, despite living in an intensely urban environment, I am no clean-shaven dupe of 'falling water' in overly civilized femininity, but a man of inner nature who wishes to shore-up his growing commitment to inner culture on a ridge of 'rising vegetation', the next-best thing to 'rising air'.

Really, if one were heavily into music, to listening to music every day, one could do no better than to grow sideboards, since a little 'rising vegetation' around the ears would suggest a bias for aural sensuality with regard to the alpha of 'rising air'. For air rises, in moral terms, from the ears to the lungs, as from sensuality to sensibility, outer to inner, airwaves to the breath, and therefore a commitment to the aural appreciation of music is effectively a commitment to outer air, the air of sensuality, as the airwaves go crashing against one's eardrums in due idealistic fashion. Well, much as I haven't 'kicked the habit' of listening to music on a fairly regular basis, I would not want to give anyone the impression, through the cultivation of sideboards, that the nadir of 'rising air' was where I was at! On the contrary, I am a little 'too long in the tooth' for that kind of naiveté, given my preference for sensibility over sensuality, particularly with regard to writing/thinking and, more importantly, meditating. For meditation does of course pertain, when properly indulged in, to the zenith of 'rising air', having to do with the lungs, whereas writing/thinking only pertains to the zenith of 'rising vegetation', significant though that is when compared to, say, its sexual nadir! Sometimes I am a man, sometimes a god, both externally, in listening to music, and internally, in meditating. Hopefully, I will become more of a god and less of a man in the course of time, as well as more of an inner god and less of an outer god, since the aural indulgence of outer air via music is a divine sin compared to the grace of indulging inner air via the breath. Even I am a sinner to the extent that I listen to music (not as much as I used to!), which constrains one to aural idealism. Were I to spend more time meditating, I would be correspondingly more graceful. Doubtless, I shall slowly climb the time-space continuum towards spiritual salvation, as I meditate more and listen to music less. For that is the only way one can be divinely saved!

The above entry would confirm, as much as anything, that there is divine sin no less than divine grace, albeit each has applicability to a different God, the one outer (in sensuality) and the other inner (in sensibility), the senses being sinful and the sensibilities graceful, an evolutionary progression (rise) in this case (of the time-space continuum) from ears to lungs. Naturally, there is also diabolic sin and diabolic grace, eyes and heart; feminine sin and feminine grace, tongue and womb; and masculine sin and masculine grace, phallus and brain. A devolutionary progression (fall) in the case of the diabolic options (of the space-time continuum) from eyes to heart; a devolutionary progression (fall) in the case of the feminine options (of the volume-mass continuum) from tongue to womb; and an evolutionary progression (rise) in the case of the masculine options (of the mass-volume continuum) from phallus to brain. Sin and grace, which is to say, sensuality and sensibility, vice and virtue, and, in a wider context, the context of glory as opposed to power, evil and good.

However that may be, I shall now do my best to revert to something more autobiographical, principally with reference to the subject of hair, about which a few interesting theories! Recently I had mine cut again, which was something it badly needed in view of the fact that my last visit to the hairdresser had occurred over six month previously. My hair had in the meantime grown to a point where I was able to bind the bulk of it into a ponytail, as has been my usual custom in recent years, despite intermittent visits to the barber for a conventional haircut. Well, I don't think I shall be doing that again, not if I can afford to get my hair cut before it gets too long anyway, since I have only recently come to the conclusion that long hair (even when not particularly long) is either akin to 'falling fire' (in the space-time continuum) or 'falling water' (in the volume-mass continuum), and, frankly, I want little or nothing to do with either! After all, I am now growing a moustache, which is akin, in my estimation, to a mode of facial 'rising vegetation' (in the mass-volume continuum), so how can I allow my hair to grow long in gender contradiction of what is patently a masculine resolve? The simple answer to what some might in any case regard as a rhetorical question is, of course, that I can't! Therefore short hair is obligatory if I am to achieve anything approaching 'rising vegetation' on my head. Though, given that my hair tends to be pretty straight (fine), it might be more accurate to think in terms of curtailing its capacity to suggest 'falling water'. For it seems to me that hair can suggest one of a number of correlations, depending on its type. Long and wavy, and it could be analogous to 'falling fire'. Long and straight, and one probably has a parallel with 'falling water' - the use of a ponytail, in each case, approximating it to the centripetal bias of sensibility. On the other hand, long (but not too long) and curly, and one probably has a parallel with 'rising air', whereas long (but not too long) and frizzy, and an analogy with 'rising vegetation' leaps to mind, this latter masculine where the former would be divine. And, doubtless, in sensibility, the curly and frizzy types of hair would be somewhat shorter than their centrifugal manifestations in sensuality, given the unlikelihood of a ponytail with these types of hair. Anyway, I do like this idea that hair can reflect a specific gender and/or ethnic orientation, with frizzy hair corresponding to the masculinity of 'rising vegetation'; straight hair corresponding to the femininity of 'falling water'; curly hair corresponding to the divinity of 'rising air'; and wavy hair corresponding to the devility of 'falling fire'. I don't wish to elaborate, but one doesn't need too much imagination to comprehend the parallels being drawn, and to understand how an alpha/omega, sensuality/sensibility dichotomy can be adumbrated in terms of a centrifugal/centripetal distinction not only between longer and shorter and/or loose and ponytailed versions of any given type of hair, but also with regard to its susceptibility to dryness or greasiness in what would amount to a kind of particle/wavicle distinction. Perhaps only those with greasy hair have any marked sensibility? Whatever the case, my own hair is usually pretty greasy, which is one of the reasons why I prefer to keep it short. I can now add that another reason is that, since it is of a fine texture which is neither wavy nor frizzy, still less curly, I would not wish to create an impression of 'falling water', in due feminine fashion. I may not be as masculine as someone with frizzy hair, but I'll be damned if I'm going to go out of my way to look feminine at the risk of undermining my moustache and detracting from my resolve to be as masculine as possible, masculine, that is to say, on higher, or intellectual, terms. For it is from a basis in masculinity that we build towards God, climbing from 'rising vegetation' to 'rising air', whether in sensuality or, preferably, in sensibility.

Although I am very short-sighted, I prefer to wear spectacles less and less or, put another way, only when I feel I have to, as when writing or shopping. My reasons for this are varied, not least of all a disgust with the rampant commercialization of spectacles that tends to prevail these days, but there is obviously a sense, over and above that, in which I tend to regard spectacles as likely to detract from my masculine self-esteem, by imposing a veneer of civilized femininity not unconnected with the notion of solidified liquid upon one! Frankly, however subjective such a notion may seem, I don't want to be overly dependent upon glasses, especially since there is so much one can do without them. Also significant is the fact that, besides the more obvious physical pressures associated with weight and fit, spectacles can cause psychological pressures to form from the effect of the lenses, or of refracted light, upon one's retina, and these pressures can have a mentally debilitating influence after a while - something that only becomes fully apparent when one removes one's spectacles and experiences a psychological relief. Spectacles are certainly not an unmixed blessing! What one gains on the roundabout of enhanced vision, one loses on the swings of mental equanimity and personal self-esteem. They are better used, I find, as a last resort. That way, one suffers less. Also one's eyes are likely to improve a bit if not constantly subjected to the burden of filtering reduced images through what can be powerful lenses, one or both of which may be soiled or stained or scratched, in any case. Certainly, mine are rarely completely clean! Though I make a point of washing my spectacles in soapy water whenever I have a bath, being careful to rinse them thoroughly afterwards!

These days I very seldom have a wet dream. My sleep, though far from dreamless, tends to exclude sex, as, in fact, does my life. So I suppose my dreams are only a reflection, after all, of what must be one of the most consistently celibate lives on earth. I am, I guess, just a little too spiritually earnest and morally insightful for things to be otherwise. Besides, I tend to regard sex as something that matters more to women than to men, bearing in mind their maternal ambitions. The fact that I don't have a woman hanging round my neck is, to me, a kind of moral victory, proof of my spiritual resolve, and thus something of which to be proud. I am not and never really have been a dupe of woman!

Nor do I seek compensatory satisfaction in homosexuality, though I have occasionally probed my rectum either out of pure frustration with domestic pressures or to combat persistent itching in the recent past and learnt, the hard way, to avoid doing any such thing again since, through recourse to some olive oil which I had been using at the time for an ear infection, I only brought pain and suffering upon myself which even now, two years later, continues to inconvenience me, principally in terms of excessive bowel rumblings, increased flatulence, internal soreness, and looser motion - factors which may not have arisen at all had my early childhood not been characterized by bowel problems caused, in part, by the application of such oils to my rectum by my mother, as she struggled to combat constipation through the application of a variety of ad hoc enemas, which only had the effect, as far as I can recall, of destabilizing my bowels and causing me to become rather looser than would otherwise have been the case!

Be that as it may, I don't practise sex of any description now, not even of a perversely personal kind, though I would have nothing against plastic inflatables. In fact, I am surprised at myself for not having purchased a so-called 'sex doll' by now, bearing in mind its reliance on air and consequent association with 'rising air' as probably the nearest thing to a divine mode of sexuality, more sensible than, say, so-called 'phone sex'.

Certainly, I would not now make use of pornographic erotica, whether in sex magazines or on video. For pornography is the sexuality of 'falling fire', which is to say, of the Devil, and anyone who is into God can have no truck with His diabolical antithesis, neither in the superfeminine context of centrifugal masturbation vis-à-vis a sex magazine, nor in the subfeminine context of centripetal (gadget-based) masturbation vis-à-vis a video. Only the submasculine context of 'phone sex' or the supermasculine context of plastic inflatables will be of any relevance to him, and the more he is into supreme being rather than primal being, the more, in other words, the lungs predominate over the ears in his divinity, the less likely it is that 'phone sex' will have any appeal to him (like music) and the more likely it will be, by contrast, that he both owns and utilizes a 'sex doll', suitably attired and inflated. Thus does divine sexuality stand apart from the diabolic sexuality of masturbation/pornography.

However, for those whose sexuality is less supernatural than natural, something more conservative is obviously in order, though not only in conventional heterosexual terms but also with regard to lesbianism and homosexuality. I don't, myself, see any problem in accommodating lesbians and homosexuals to the mundane and purgatorial tiers of the triadic Beyond, my projected concept of 'Kingdom Come', since it would be desirable for a certain amount of sexual segregation to obtain in relation to what are broadly feminine and masculine contexts, the former in mass and the latter in volume. The nuclear split beyond heterosexuality that we recognize in terms of lesbianism and homosexuality can thus be interpreted as a portent of the gender split between female and male that would characterize the bottom and middle tiers of the triadic Beyond, with the top, or heavenly tier having reference to supermen, and thus to persons whose preferred sexuality would or should be indulgent of plastic inflatables ... in due transcendental fashion. No, I'm not against lesbianism or homosexuality, since these modes of sexuality would probably be more suited to persons who had made it through to the lower tiers, the 'New Earth' and the 'New Purgatory' of 'Kingdom Come' than would be heterosexuality, with its liberal contours of compromise between men and women, 'rising vegetation' and 'falling water'.

A man should be more 'rising vegetation' in sensibility than 'falling water', but if he becomes more 'rising air' in sensibility than 'rising vegetation', then he is a superman and thus superhuman (divine). Conversely, a woman should be more 'falling water' in sensibility than 'rising vegetation', but if she becomes more 'falling fire' in sensibility than 'falling water', then she is a subwoman and thus subhuman (diabolic). On the other hand, a man into 'falling water' in either sensuality or sensibility is being effectively feminine, and thus 'bent' (from what a man should be) by masculine standards. Into 'falling fire' in either sensuality or sensibility and he is doubly 'bent', since effectively diabolic, something a man should never be, since that will exclude him from the possibility (always very real from a male standpoint) of God. Conversely, a woman into 'rising vegetation' in either sensuality or sensibility is being effectively masculine and thus 'bent' (from what a woman should be) by feminine standards. Into 'rising air' in either sensuality or sensibility and she is doubly 'bent', since effectively divine, something a woman can never be, bearing in mind the fact that women are fundamentally creatures of the Devil who do to give, not aspirants towards God who take to be. A divine woman is really a contradiction in terms, as is a diabolic man. The Devil (whether in sensuality or sensibility) is behind woman, whereas God (whether in sensuality or sensibility) is beyond man. Therefore worse than woman is the Devil, while better than man is God. A man who is determined to become more supermasculine than masculine, to become God (in sensibility), will not want women to become diabolical (in sensibility), but to remain feminine. Otherwise, there will be scant prospect of God for him!

Which contention returns us to myself, and to the recollection that I have only become godly by remaining loyal to my sensibility and building upon it towards superman, building upon mind towards spirit. I did not get to this position by cultivating the feminine in myself, least of all through garrulity, and still less did I attempt an accommodation with the diabolic, thereby removing myself even further from the possibility of divinity. Doubtless the fact that I'm by nature optically very short-sighted had something to do with it, since I am anything but observant, and rarely if ever stare at other people. Neither, however, do I make a habit of falling in love with anyone, and I'm only too aware that, compared to a woman, I would make a second-rate emotional devil!

No, rather than succumbing to that fate at the risk of being consumed alive by the Devil, I have kept women at a distance, concentrating, as far as possible, on being a sensible man, with the result that I am also, when it suits me, a sensible god, someone who, when he isn't writing or thinking, meditates, and is therefore superhumanly divine. Of course, I still have my failings, as the reader will recall, and occasionally I am subhumanly divine, listening to music in what is a sensual, if not sensational, manifestation of 'rising air'. But I am aware that this sort of thing is a failing (from the standpoint of divine sensibility), and such awareness is a significant achievement in itself!

Certainly, I am not now naively ignorant of my situation, which is why I would hesitate to boast of my musical tastes, the way I would have done several years ago. I listen to music without any real enthusiasm, only too aware of how irrelevant to my lifestyle most of it, whether instrumental or vocal, actually is. After all, I'm not sexually active but celibate, and therefore I don't convert to the ears from the phallus, to outer divinity from outer masculinity, the way I often convert to the lungs from the brain, to inner divinity from inner masculinity. On the contrary, I listen to music from habit, because it is something I have always done, and because it can afford one a barrier against neighbour noises, and so on. Maybe I lack the courage, at present, to stop listening to music altogether, although I am only too aware of how quickly one tires of most records (CDs, tapes, etc.), bearing in mind that appeals to sensuality through the senses lack eternal appeal on account of their external, and therefore comparatively superficial, nature. Ultimately, lasting satisfaction can only be found within, in sensibility, not through your ears! Nor, of course, through your eyes, etc.

These days I am almost ashamed of the fact that I own (dreadful word!) both a television and a video-recorder, even though I don't watch TV all that much and only rent one video a week, and that on a Sunday for Sunday-evening viewing. It is a sort of principle of mine, to watch a video on Sunday evening instead of watching TV. Although, usually, I have already watched TV earlier in the day, often with reference to Sunday-afternoon football, and don't, for that reason, particularly want to sit in front of more television in the evening. However, that isn't the entire picture, since my principle of preferring to watch a video in the evening is founded upon the assumption that, of the two manifestations of 'falling fire', video is the closest to sensibility and therefore a quasi-fundamentalist alternative to what could be called the materialism of TV. In short, if one cannot do without the Devil altogether, one day a week, then at least settle for a video devil, since that will vouchsafe one a kind of diabolical salvation, as though in the fiery soul! But, really, I ought to be ashamed of myself for not having the gumption to dispense with both television and video altogether! In some respects I am all too liberal, my possessions ranging across the board, so to speak, in deference to the Devil (television/video), woman (computer), man (LPs/CDs), and God (radio/audio). Were I the possessor of only a radio or, preferably, a radio-cassette player, I would be morally better off than I am at present, what with the devility of television/video, the femininity of a computer, and the masculinity of a midi/CD-player ... completing the picture and detracting from my divine aspirations.

But there you are! You don't realize, initially, exactly what you have let yourself in for ... by possessing all those things. You don't understand them. Later you may do, but by then it's too late! You're already hooked and committed to their preservation. And even if you become discriminating and choose to spend more time with one rather than another, say, radio rather than television, or CD-player rather than computer, you are still compromising your integrity with something that, by its very mechanical nature, appeals more to sensuality than to sensibility, with all-too-transient consequences. Tiens!

This year saw me revert, after several years’ abstinence, to buying a Sunday newspaper, namely The Sunday Independent, which (Irish production) recently became available in Britain. What I like about it is that it doesn't jerk you off with a magazine, in true British fashion, but tactfully (I presume) avoids compromising both itself and its readers with the Devil. Instead, one can proceed, in 'rising air', from the sensuality of the newspaper to the 'sensibility' (relatively speaking) of the pull-out paper supplement, thereby achieving a sort of divine salvation. The British newspapers, on the other hand, always defer to the Clear Light, which is not something I would ever want The Sunday Independent to do! In fact, I would stop buying what is, in any case, a rather expensive newspaper (£1), were it to include a magazine!

As to my notion that newspapers correspond to 'rising air', this has to be weighed against the notion of magazines corresponding to 'falling fire', specifically in terms of a devolutionary progression from photographic magazines to co-mags, or something of the sort, whilst always bearing in mind that the context of magazines will differ from the context of, say, journals ... by being sharp-spined. For, in expanding our perspective to include books and journals, it becomes evident that newspapers and magazines share a noumenal, or supernatural, standing due to their sharp spines, whereas books and journals share a phenomenal, or natural, standing due to a flat-spined mean, the former in relation, I shall contend, to 'rising vegetation', and the latter in relation to 'falling water'.

Hence the likelihood of an evolutionary progression from hardbacks to paperbacks, as from fleshy sensuality to cerebral sensibility in 'rising vegetation', in what would be a masculine context overall, with the countervailing likelihood of a devolutionary progression from wordy journals to pictorial journals, as from lingual sensuality to maternal sensibility in 'falling water', in what would be a feminine context. Both of which, however, would share a flat-spined basis in the phenomenal, in contrast to the sharp-spined noumenalism, as it were, of newspapers and magazines, the former effectively divine and the latter diabolic. All the difference, in short, between the lightness of 'rising air' and the glossiness (brightness) of 'falling fire'. By contrast, books would reflect the heaviness of 'rising vegetation' and journals the dullness (darkness) of 'falling water', books standing to newspapers as man to God, and journals standing to magazines as woman to the Devil. Hence a lightness/heaviness contrast between newspapers and books, subjectivity in its supernatural and natural manifestations, with a glossy/matt contrast between magazines and journals, objectivity in its supernatural and natural manifestations.

For someone like me, who considers himself a man of God, magazines are virtually taboo, and therefore I am glad to be able to buy a Sunday newspaper, at last, without having to endure a magazine. Likewise, I am happy to dispense with television on Sunday evenings, even if I still compromise with the Devil in terms of a video. Previously, I would read a paperback on Sunday morning, usually a worn classic, and therefore level with a sort of intellectual humanism. Now I am able to level with a sort of intellectual idealism/transcendentalism, and feel a lot better for it! You could say that I have 'gone up' in the world or, at any rate, in relation to the quadruplicity of intellectual options I have been discussing in this entry. I have converted from man to God.

The only thing that stops me from praying is the fact that I think. For when you think, there is no need for prayer, since you are being as intellectually subjective as it is possible to be anyway, and without the fundamentalist drawback of deferring to the heart. Besides, I am a little beyond prayer, bearing in mind the fact that I am rather more Superchristian than Christian or, put more concretely, a (self-styled) Social Transcendentalist rather than a (practising) Roman Catholic. I would not want to pray for my own coming, since I tend to regard myself in messianic terms anyway, and, apart from that, I would not want to pray to the Virgin/Mother or, worse again, the Father, since I have no time for such a comparatively fundamentalist deity, never having known my own father, not being partial to fathers (in terms of Catholic priests), and being anything but disposed to an objective, or left-wing, bias. I am, as the reader may have gathered, an intensely subjective, or right-wing, type of person, for whom the subjective intellectuality of thought is a bridge, at any rate in part, to the subjective spirituality of meditation, the 'peace that surpasses all understanding' in what is, from my standpoint, the Holy Spirit of Heaven.

Yes, the real virtue of thought, as to a lesser extent of cerebral prayer, is that it brings one, through the intellect, to the borders of spiritual subjectivity, allowing one to, as it were, jump, or convert, from mind to spirit, as from subjective naturalism to subjective supernaturalism, Christ and/or the Second Coming to the Holy Spirit and/or the Holy Spirit of Heaven. As I said, I am more Superchristian than Christian, and therefore my conversion from masculine to divine sensibility is rather more radical, having effect with regard to the abandonment of my philosophical thoughts for the transcendental realm of pure meditation, wherein the Holy Spirit of Heaven is revealed through the breath, as it rises and falls within the lungs, my mind stilled and transcended as spiritual consciousness, the superconscious, takes over. Only be being one with the universal self, the self that, being open to the air, is partial to Holy Spirit, can I escape the love of intellectual gravity (heaviness) in the joy of spiritual lightness. Only thus do I become divine. And in becoming supreme being, or being of a supreme order, I achieve metaphysical subjectivity, the subjectivity of subjectivities and binding of bindings! If I was a man of the sensible Right in mind, I most certainly become a god of the sensible Extreme Right in spirit. There is nowhere else to go.

Really, I am like the Christ Child, the Catholic Christ and symbol of prayer, because I lead ever rightwards, towards supreme being, the being of the Holy Spirit of Heaven. The Catholic Christ leads to the Holy Spirit, but the Protestant Christ, the Son of a writerly puritanism, doesn't. Even though he is centrist, He is more likely to lead, if one abandons Him, towards the Father, which is to say, from the intellectual brain to the emotional brain, the masculine to the (relatively speaking) submasculine, in what is then a left-wing position in readerly objectivity. Such is the fatality of Protestant nonconformism, and it contrasts with the Catholic humanism which leads from the prayerful brain to the spiritual brain, the masculine to the (relatively speaking) supermasculine, in what is then a right-wing position in meditative subjectivity.

Certainly, the Trinity appertains to the brain in one way or another, but the Holy Spirit is rather 'beyond the pale' of the Father and Son of Protestant nonconformism, just as thinkers, or philosophers, are somewhat 'beyond the pale' of the fathers and sons of what is effectively a Protestant literary nonconformism, namely poets and novelists/essayists. Hence the comparative paucity of philosophical subjectivity where Protestant civilization is concerned, and hence, too, the irrelevance of poetry and fiction to a properly Catholic civilization, centred, as it should be, in philosophy, but in philosophy as a stepping stone to theosophy, and thus divine praxis!

My philosophy, being 'beyond the pale' of Catholic philosophy, it follows that my theosophy will also be beyond the Catholic pale, in what is no 'third person' of the Trinity but the supra-cerebral absolutism of the Holy Spirit of Heaven, as centred in the lungs. For the lungs transcend the brain as, in power, God (truth) transcends man (knowledge), or, in glory, Heaven (joy) transcends purgatory (love), or, in another sense, Saturn transcends the Moon, or Social Transcendentalism transcends Roman Catholicism. And, transcending the brain, the lungs exist in complete independence of the Father, that emotional aspect of cerebral trinitarianism, and antithetically to the heart, the seat of genuine fundamentalism. I do not, like a Catholic, seek peace in the mind, with pure consciousness. I seek, and find, peace in the spirit, with the superconsciousness of my universal self. For the lungs are the cynosure of the spirit, and there is more spirit there than anywhere else, the spirit of God as against the spirit of man. Air enters the lungs and becomes holy, the Holy Spirit of Heaven. Focusing on this spirit, I am lifted up by the superconscious joy of a sublime lightness. My being is supreme, for it is the being of Heaven, and Heaven transcends purgatory as joy transcends love.

Yet I did not get to this supremacy simply by abandoning my thoughts, my superchristic subjectivity. I was able to abandon my thoughts because I never became too phenomenally sensible but was also noumenally sensual enough to be into my ears, and thus the passive receiver of musical and other sounds coming to me from without. A mind that is too dedicated to praying and/or thinking will never make it through to God, least of all completely, i.e. in terms of the Holy Spirit of Heaven. Only that mind which has cultivated aural passivity in relation to music ... will be truly open to the prospect of meditative passivity in relation to the lungs. For it is easier to be saved to meditative passivity of this ultimate order from the ears than to convert to it from the brain, which is to say, from intellectual subjectivity. A tired brain will enjoy a rest in the cerebral peace of the Holy Spirit, that component of the 'Three in One'. But a passive mind that is the beneficiary of aural receptivity will more readily accommodate itself to the respiratory sensibility of the lungs, thereby standing aside, so to speak, as superconsciousness rushes over it from the Holy Spirit of Heaven. Verily, such superconsciousness is 'beyond the pale' of pure consciousness, for it is not a stilled mind but an awakened spirit!

LONDON 1983–96 (Revised 2011)

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