FROM
THE
DEVIL TO GOD
Short
Prose
Copyright
©
1980–2012 John O'Loughlin
______________
CONTENTS
1.
The
Turning-Point
2.
Caught
Unawares
3.
From
the Devil to God
4.
An
Unexpected Crisis
5.
To the
Millennium and Beyond
6.
Perfection
Our Goal
_____________
THE
TURNING-POINT
Father
Kells wrapped the dark-green
dressing gown around his naked body, tied its cord tightly about his
waist,
and, switching off the light, emerged from the bathroom fresh and
sweet-smelling into the passageway which led to Room 25 - the single
room he
had booked into that very evening. With
a swift turn of the key he quickly entered the room and, sighing in
relief,
gently closed its door behind him. Then
he went across to the only mirror the room possessed and began to comb
his
short brown hair into place, taking note of his face to ascertain that
everything
was more or less as it should be. No, he
had little cause to worry about his facial appearance, which now, as
previously, was passably handsome.
Prolonged celibacy and solitude may have left some ugly marks on
it,
but, for all that, he was still only thirty and by no means a victim of
wrinkles, puffy eyes, double chin, grey hairs, greasy skin, or anything
of the
like. True, his lips might be a trifle
tightly drawn and almost too severe for comfort. But,
on
the whole, his face still had a
certain youthfulness which inspired a degree of confidence, as well as
allayed
the doubts and fears that had momentarily assailed him.
Having attended to his
coiffure, he retired to the room's only armchair and prepared himself
for the
impending arrival of the person from whom he had earlier booked a
professional
call. What she would look like for
certain, he couldn't of course be sure.
But he hoped, anyway, that his approximate specifications would
be
honoured, and that an agreeably attractive young black woman would
knock on the
door in due course.
And so he waited,
slightly apprehensive lest the experience should turn out to be a
disappointment or even an ordeal, but, at the same time, curiously
excited by
the prospect of what lay in store for him.
He couldn't quite slot into any particular mood or feeling about
it; for
no sooner had a positive thought occurred to him ... than a negative
one would
take its place, causing him to lose heart slightly and once again
question the
moral justification of what he was doing.
But, really, he had to start somewhere after all, and even if
this
wasn't quite the best or most honourable of ways, at least it was a way
of
sorts and, God knows, he needed it! For
he was still, to all intents and purposes, technically a virgin, having
adhered
to the priestly ideal of strict celibacy ever since he came-of-age, so
to
speak, and entered the Church as a raw youth of eighteen.
Yes, he was still a
virgin, though not, alas, a particularly happy one, since the
exigencies of
clerical chastity had left their psychological marks on him and
resulted, over
the years, in his becoming progressively more depressive and sexually
frustrated. Apart from a few minor
aberrations of a petting order with some young women of his parish, he
had consistently
denied the Old Adam in himself, denied it in deference to his vocation
as a
spiritual leader, a man of God. Yet such
a denial had not brought him the peace he expected but, on the
contrary, had
led to his becoming increasingly restless and dissatisfied with his lot
-
indeed, had led to serious doubts as to whether he should
have
become a priest in the first place. To
be sure, he didn't feel he had it in him to remain celibate for ever,
as his
vocation demanded. No, the going in that
respect was indeed tough and becoming steadily tougher!
And not simply on account of the sexual
abstinence itself, but also, and no less significantly, on account of
the
seemingly ever-growing number of perversions and temptations by which
he was
assailed - most of which caused him to shudder with disgust at the mere
thought
of them! But, of course, there was the
depression as well, and that, as he well knew, wasn't becoming any the
less
painful with the passing of time.
Whether, in fact, it
could be wholly ascribed to his celibacy or whether the noisy urban
environment
in which he lived and worked was responsible for some of it, he didn't
know for
sure. But he was anxious, all the same,
to do what he could to correct it and, if possible, restore himself to
a healthier
state-of-mind - even if this did mean that a number of radical changes
would
have to be made in his life, and that he might accordingly find himself
obliged
to work outside London and adopt friendlier relations towards women
than
hitherto. After all, he was a man, not a
god, and although he might be a priest with certain very idealistic
standards
to live up to, and consequently be closer
to the godly
than the majority of men, yet his manhood was still a fact of life
which
couldn't be entirely denied. He was a
man, and therefore he had a body to live with and, in some sense, even
to
honour.
True, he was not by
nature the most sensual of men. But
neither was he the most spiritual - at least not in any absolute sense. If he was predominantly spiritual, it was not
so to such an extent that he could systematically deny himself sexual
gratification without unduly jeopardizing his health and peace of mind. He had certainly discovered that fact! If he was a spiritual leader, he was one who
still had to honour the body to some extent and, as regards sex, this
he had
signally failed to do. Now perhaps, in
this small hotel room, he might be able to redress the balance
slightly, and
thus go some little way towards appeasing the flesh.
No man can properly
serve two masters at once, least of all two such exacting and
uncompromising
ones as God and the Devil. But, then
again, no man can wholly serve only one or the other, either. Sooner or later the fact has to be accepted
that one's nature demands a compromise of sorts between these two
extremes, and
that failure to honour such a compromise can lead to the most
unpleasant
consequences - consequences of which Father Kells
was
only too aware, as he ambivalently awaited the arrival of the visiting
masseuse. As Baudelaire - his favourite
French poet - had so truthfully put it: 'There are in every man,
always, two
simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to the Devil', and even
a
priest was not exempt from this general rule.
No, he might strive to honour the spiritual as much as possible,
but he
was still tied to the sensual and the obligations it imposed. He was still a man.
But what of the
injunction to celibacy - was that therefore wrong?
Father Kells,
tonight divested of his customary frock and posing under the alias
Edmund
Healy, stared thoughtfully at the dark-blue carpet in front of his feet
and ran
the forefinger of his right hand across the sharp bridge of his
aquiline nose,
as he often did when plunged in reflection.
In one sense it was, and in another sense it wasn't. To begin with, one was a man, and
consequently injunctions that ran contrary to one's basic human nature
and its
needs were potentially harmful and could only result, in the long-run,
in one's
nature rebelling against them. Yet
though, on the other hand, it might prove impossible to adhere too
stringently
to it, the injunction to celibacy had the merit of encouraging, if not
maintaining, a standard of spiritual leadership compatible with one's
priestly
vocation. For what right had one to lead
the flock and lay claim to spiritual authority if one was as prone to
sexual
indulgences as the next man? Could one
really consider oneself a spiritual exemplar if one was yet guilty of
carnal
commitments to an average extent? No, of
course not! There had to be a standard
of celibacy set, even if one was likely, as a human being, to relapse,
from
time to time, into average or, more likely, above-average sexual habits. Otherwise one had no business considering
oneself a worthy example of spiritual guidance to one's parishioners. The standard was there and, as a priest, one
had a duty to adhere to it to the extent one could.
Too bad if perversions and temptations
occasionally got in the way!
He glanced at the small
wall clock above the dresser and noted that it was now five-to-eight. It was over an hour ago that he had
telephoned the massage bureau. Soon, he
hoped, the masseuse would arrive. Quite
how he would respond to her he didn't know, but he hoped, anyway, that
she
would be able to alleviate the burden of his celibacy a little. For if she didn't, he would be no better off
than previously - indeed, he would probably be worse off, and not only
financially but also, and more seriously, as regards the progressive
worsening
of his depression, the feeling that, short of leaving the priesthood,
all
routes for easing it had been blocked to him.
But could he leave the
priesthood now? He didn't think so. At least he had no idea what he would
alternatively do. After all, he hadn't
received
any other training and felt that it was a bit late now to embark on
something
new - another career, that is.
Alternatively, he could opt to take a secular clerical job which
wouldn't require too much training. But
whether he would be able to step down from the rung of his professional
status
onto the relatively humble one of a drudge-ridden white-collar worker
... was
something about which he couldn't be absolutely sure.
More than likely he wouldn't be able to,
since his pride would rebel against it.
More than likely he would have to continue as a priest,
irrespective of
the psychological and physiological difficulties with which such a
vocation
presented him. He couldn't see any real
alternative at present.
Just as the clock
reached eight, there was a gentle rap on the door, followed by a couple
of soft
coughs intended to clear the throat.
"It must be her," he thought, and quickly got up from his
armchair and hurried over to the mirror to take a last critical look at
his
face. His heart had started to beat more
rapidly - indeed, so rapidly that he was afraid she might hear it. His hands began to tremble and his legs to
grow weak with the apprehension he was feeling.
"Oh God," he groaned, as he crossed the carpet, "I hope I
don't make a damn fool of myself!"
He reached the door, hesitated a moment to swallow a ball of
saliva
which had welled-up in his mouth, and, with sweaty hand, unlocked and
pulled it
slowly open.
"Ah hello!...
Mr Healy?"
He nodded bravely and
stood back to admit her to his room. He
couldn't see properly, for the wave of embarrassment that had suddenly
surged
over him carried all objectivity before it.
"My name's Veda by
the way, and I've come as requested," she sweetly and almost
gratuitously
informed him, entering the room with an air of confidence.
He quickly closed the
door and stood for a moment undecided what to do or say.
It was as though he had lost the power of
speech, so great was his mental confusion.
"Ah yes," he at length managed to respond, casting her a hollow smile while simultaneously making a
swift
attempt at physical appraisal.
"Well ..." and he made an involuntary gesture of helplessness
"... what should I do first?"
The young masseuse
smiled and put the leather bag she was carrying onto a nearby table. "I take it you've had your bath?"
she said, extracting a plastic sheet from its interior and walking
towards the
bed.
"Yes," he
nervously admitted.
"Good! Then
if
you'd like to remove your dressing
gown and stretch out on this sheet for me, I'll set about massaging
you,"
she said.
It was only now that
Father Kells was able to acquire a better
look at
her. Bent over the bed, she was dressed
in a short fur coat with a dark-green cotton skirt, black stockings,
and
contrasting white high-heels. Her calf
muscles were both firm and well-defined, and, as she stretched farther
across
the bed to draw the expanse of plastic sheet smoothly into place, the
shapely
outline of her rump became agreeably apparent, suggesting a certain
fleshiness
which an upright posture would probably have hidden.
Her thick black hair hung down her back and
spilled over the side of her face as she bent forwards.
"There!" she
exclaimed, turning a bright pair of dark-brown eyes towards him. "If you'd just care to
stretch out for me."
He hadn't as yet taken
off his dressing gown, but stood with it loosely draped around his
nudity, as
though afraid to proceed further.
Sensing his
embarrassment, she came across to where he was standing and offered to
help him
out of it.
"You d-don't mind
that I'm not w-wearing anything underneath, then?" he pitifully stammered, as she moved to one side to assist him
unburden
himself.
"Of course
not!" she smilingly averred.
"That's how I need you to be."
Hardly reassured, he
allowed her to take the dressing gown from him and then hurried across
to the
bed, where he stretched out on his stomach with his face turned away
from her,
so as to hide his embarrassment. Again,
he was conscious of the rapidity of his heartbeat and felt himself
breaking
into a cold sweat.
"What's your first
name, by the way?" Veda asked, as she slipped out of her clothing and
began to prepare herself for the task ahead.
Father Kells
was just on the point of replying Patrick when he
checked himself at the last moment and stuttered "E-Edmond" instead.
"Oh,
really? You're the first
There ensued a painful
silence for 'Edmond', as she proceeded to arrange the tools of her
trade and
make ready her professional appearance, but he didn't have the courage
to turn
his face towards her in order to see exactly what she was up to, not
even when
she inquired whether he had ever been massaged before, and he replied
in the
negative.
"So what d'you do with
yourself all
day?" she asked, after another painful silence had supervened - one
even
more difficult for Father Kells to cope
with than the
previous time.
He felt the blood rush
to his face in response to this probing and seemingly intimate
question, but
managed to stammer "I'm a w-writer," in spite of his shame at being
obliged to improvise another lie on the spur-of-the-moment. He could hardly tell her the truth!
"What kind of a
writer?" she wanted to know.
"Oh, just a f-fiction writer," he stammered.
"Really?"
The exclamatory nature of
her response suggested that she was interested to hear this, but he was
relieved when she didn't pursue the inquiry further, either because the
subject
of fiction-writing didn't particularly intrigue her or because she had
other,
and possibly more important, things to think about.
For she burst into a little bout of
absentminded humming which suggested as much?
Almost simultaneously he heard the tap running in the washbasin
behind
him, in indication of the fact that she was washing her hands. Dare he turn his head to see exactly what she
looked like at this juncture? But for
his being able to remember the fact that the washbasin had the smallest
of
mirrors high above it, he would have kept his face turned in the
opposite
direction. With this fact in mind,
however, he decided to chance a glance at her and slowly turned his
head
towards the source of the running water.
What he saw there was
enough to make him gulp with surprise!
For the masseuse had, in the meantime, changed into a short
white
overall which barely covered her legs, and, as she bent over the basin,
the
greater part of her thighs was exposed to view, revealing a seductive
fullness
it would have been impossible to ignore.
An inch or two further in her bending, and the young priest
would have
been confronted by the lower and fuller half of her bulbous rump! But the masseuse had no intention of bending
any further, since she wasn't washing her face, so he had to remain
content
with what he could see, which, in any case, was considerably more than
he had
bargained for! Never before had his eyes
beheld so much bare flesh in actuality, though he had seen photographs
of naked
models in a variety of men's magazines on a number of occasions. The sight of it was sufficient to make his
heart beat even faster, not to mention louder, and cause his flaccid
penis to
stiffen slightly beneath him. He
couldn't have hoped for a sexier masseuse!
Such tepid voyeurism
wasn't to last long, however. For he had
hardly been given a chance to focus his sex-starved eyes on her
seductive
thighs when she straightened up, turned off the tap, and dried her
hands,
obliging him to turn his face back towards the opposite wall again. He couldn't allow himself to risk being
caught staring at her. It would have
unduly compromised him, in his own estimation.
"Right, now let's
get down to business!" she said, approaching the bed with a small bowl
of
massage lotion in her hands. "I'll
start with your back and gradually work downwards."
He grunted approval and
automatically closed his eyes. He was
afraid of what he might see out of the corner of the nearest one to
her, if he
kept them open.
"Now then,"
she remarked, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "let's rub some
grease
into this parched hide, shall we?"
He shuddered at the
touch of her fingers on his back - as much from the fact of their
initial
coldness, which was largely due to the massage lotion itself, as from
the
physical contact their tender femininity had upon him.
But as his discomfort subsided and he became
more familiar with them, he felt a curiously-reassuring
warmth
pervade
his back which induced him to smile a little, in spite of the
effort he was making to keep a straight face.
Yes, it was pleasant, this physical contact, and he couldn't
disguise
the fact. Pleasant to feel the cool
lotion enter his skin and set-up little ripples of excitement there. Pleasant, above all, to be
treated like this.
Yet it was even more so
when, responding to his growing satisfaction with her treatment, Veda
climbed
onto the bed and, kneeling astride him, proceeded to apply the lotion
with
greater firmness, stretching up to his shoulder-blades and caressing
the quite
wide expanse of his back with a two-handed ardour.
Not only was his back in the firing-line of
her massaging assault, as it were, but certain other parts of him were,
too! For it seemed that he could feel
the touch of something other than hands upon him at this moment, like
the
tickling sensation of pubic hair on his backside and the even more
intriguing
sensation of pubic flesh there, which suggested the absence of
underclothes on
the young masseuse. Could it be, then,
that she was completely nude under her skimpy white overall? Judging by the tickling sensations on his
backside, there seemed to be adequate grounds for such an assumption. Yet before he could arrive at any definite
knowledge on that score, the masseuse had changed her position again
and begun
to rub lotion into his buttocks and even, he could hardly fail to note,
between
them, causing him to blush anew and almost, though not quite, protest
against
her. For not only had she rubbed lotion
dangerously close to his anus, she was now proceeding to come
dangerously close
to his flaccid pudenda - in fact, so close as to tickle one or two of
his scrotal
hairs! The alarm, however, was a false
one, and it was with a certain moral relief that he felt her hands
moving from
his buttocks to the back of his thighs and then on down his legs to the
calf
muscles, which she proceeded to massage in long, smooth strokes.
"You like it?"
she asked.
"Yes," came
his answer in a slightly strained tone-of-voice.
"Good! Now
let's
do your front."
She had stopped rubbing
his legs and was waiting for him to turn over.
He hesitated on the brink, suddenly overcome with embarrassment
at the
prospect of being fully exposed to her.
Never before had the experience of turning over onto his back
proved so
daunting! Yet he realized, as the
seconds ticked away, that he had no option but to shift his position,
and so,
overcoming his misgivings, he turned over and bashfully presented a
hairy chest
to her. Blushing deeply, he couldn't
force himself to look her straight in the face, but turned his head to
one
side. What would she think of him, he
wondered? Had she ever dealt with such a
recalcitrant client before?
"What a nice dark
chest you have!" the masseuse enthused, and, pouring some fresh oil
into
her palm, she climbed over him again and began to apply a pair of firm
though
sensitive hands to it, smiling encouragement all the while.
Slowly, he turned his
face towards her. It seemed to cost him
a great effort but resulted in his feeling reassured and newly
interested in
her appearance. She didn't look back at
him but kept her eyes steadily focused on his chest, and while his gaze
slowly
encompassed the spectacle of her smiling face and the even more
alluring
spectacle of her copious breasts, which, like two ripe coconuts, were
virtually
hanging out of the low-neck overall she was nominally wearing, he was
made
conscious once more of a tickling sensation about the region of his
groin, a
sensation brought on, he felt sure, by contact with her pubic hair. And as though to verify it, he found himself
sliding his hand up one of her thighs and under her overall, ever so
slowly and
gently at first but, nevertheless, with calculated intent.
Indeed, the hand seemed
to have a life of its own and so, too, did his penis, which, partly in
response
to what his eyes were beholding higher up and partly in response to
what his
flesh was experiencing through naked contact with an alien body lower
down, had
begun to stir gently beneath him. Now as
his hand climbed her thigh and, disappearing under the white overall,
came into
contact with her hip, it became perfectly clear to him that she was in
fact
naked underneath after all, and that his penis was now responding to
nothing
less than her pubic self! She was
tickling him with the dark hair and warm flesh of her labia, as she
knelt
astride him and continued to smile whilst applying the massage lotion
to his
chest.
But that wasn't all she
was doing! For now that his chest had
been taken care of, she moved herself further down his body and, still
kneeling
astride him, applied her hands to his abdomen and lower regions,
causing him to
blush anew. Now the spectacle of his
penis growing progressively more inflamed was exposed to full view, and
he
could hardly fail to take note of it!
Neither could he fail to note the fact that she had now begun to
massage
it, thereby encouraging its expansion.
And as she took it in her hands and tenderly applied more lotion
to its
bulging contours, she shifted her position once more, so that the
kneeling
became a squat and, for the first time, the cavernous depths of her
pubic
region were exposed to his avid gaze.
That did it!
He could contain himself no longer but
immediately reached out to draw her towards himself and, taking hold of
her
with a firm grip, dragged her down onto the bed and climbed on top of
her. He thrust himself upon her in a
frenzy of
physical passion and sunk his erection deep inside her with a resolve
he
wouldn't ordinarily have considered himself capable of, much less
succumbing
to! He sunk his blood-engorged penis
inside her with a determination born from years of sexual abstinence,
of
fidelity to priestly chastity, and he didn't withdraw it again until
every last
drop of semen had been ejaculated and he had gone some way towards
appeasing
and even exorcising the demons of his lust.
If he was denying himself the benefits of a heavenly salvation,
he at
least had the consolation of an earthly one, and that, as he now knew,
was
considerably better than nothing!
CAUGHT
UNAWARES
Gently,
Jeffrey
Collins rubbed the sleep from his bleary eyes and
calmly opened them upon the intriguing spectacle of his wife getting
dressed. She had pulled back the
curtains of their bedroom windows to let-in the early-morning light,
and now
that he was awake he noticed how bright it was in the room and how
clearly
everything stood out and captured his attention, especially the slender
though
shapely figure of Rachel, at present clad in nothing more than a pair
of pink
nylon panties and a matching brassiere, the slender strap of which was
partly
visible to either side of her long black hair.
At that moment she had her back to him and was pulling a nylon
stocking
into place over her right thigh with attentive care, no doubt from fear
of
laddering or poking a hole in it, and with an air that suggested that
she was
putting the finishing touches to a work of art.
Which, in a sense, she was. For dressing was a kind of art in itself with
Rachel Collins - applied rather than fine art, so to speak. And she knew how to dress herself, indeed she
did!
As yet, however, she wasn't
aware that Jeffrey was watching her, and so there was something
pleasingly
natural and unselfconscious about her movements, something agreeably
unpretentious, one might almost say. Had
she suddenly turned around and caught her husband staring at her with
that
complacently-admiring expression on his face, she would almost
certainly have
smiled in self-satisfaction at him or, rather, to herself, as women
often did
when they thought they were being admired.
And her subsequent actions would probably have been
correspondingly more
self-conscious and artificial. However,
she did not turn around, but straightaway proceeded to the other leg,
balancing
precariously on one foot as she gently pulled the stocking over her
calf muscle
and attended to its heel. The
self-conscious sex, as Jeffrey Collins liked to think of women, was in
this
case objectively engaged in the art of dressing, and thus otherwise
preoccupied.
Oh, but what a rump she
had! He could hardly fail to appreciate,
perhaps for the thousandth time, the shapely outlines of her buttocks
and the
gentle curve of her hips, as she bent forward to put the finishing
touches to
the garbing of her left leg. Right from
the beginning, from the very first days of their romance, he had been
keenly
appreciative of the quality of her rump, which, though firm and ample,
was not
over-large. To him, it signified a
golden mean of feminine beauty, and was always a pleasure both to look
at and
to touch - that is, to hold, stroke, pat, squeeze, press, prod, rub,
smack,
etc., as the situation seemingly warranted.
Of all the weapons at her disposal for the conquest of the male
it was
subordinate only to her face and legs, perhaps the third greatest
physical
asset she possessed. Its enticing
contours had more than once overcome his carnal reserve, so to speak,
and
induced him to launch a coital attack that could only result in a
sexual
victory for her. For she was by no means
unaware of the power it exerted over him or of the esteem in which he
held it,
deeming it a rump in a million. Perhaps
in reality it was a rump in two or five or even ten millions, though he
had
never bothered to wonder if it might be, preferring to settle into the
cliché
of a nice round figure and leave the matter at that.
But he had little doubt
that it was a rather special rump and possibly compensated for her
breasts,
which were so small that one often wondered why she bothered to wear a
brassiere at all. Perhaps because she
didn't have the courage not to wear one, to come face-to-face, as it
were, with
their diminutive size and the consequent realization that, by adult
female
standards, she was something of a freak?
Perhaps the brassiere served to hide or, at any rate, minimize
this
physical defect by creating appearances to the contrary?
Jeffrey didn't know for
sure and, from fear of hurting her feelings, he had never dared to
inquire into
the matter. But, being a rather
perspicacious psychologist in his own right, he couldn't dismiss the
possibility as a mere figment of the imagination. In
all
probability, it was one of a number of
motives she had for wearing a bra, if not the chief one then almost
certainly a
significant and valid one. The fact that
it also served to enhance her femininity and appeal to the fetishist in
him
couldn't be ignored, either. And he
would have been the last person to pretend he didn't like it, or that
it wasn't
a viable weapon in her assault on his sensibility.
Nevertheless the fact
that she had extremely small breasts couldn't be denied, and Jeffrey
fancied it
to some extent explained not only why she had such a seductive rump,
but also
the reason he had gradually come to attach so much sexual importance to
it,
ascribing to it a status which it might not otherwise have warranted,
had she
been more generously endowed elsewhere.
No doubt, that was why he spent more time caressing her rump
than
fondling her breasts. For it had largely
taken over the role of the latter, concentrating her sexuality about
the middle
of her body. There was, however, a
chance that if she subsequently bore offspring, the exigencies of
motherhood
would bring about a transformation in the size of her breasts, thereby
endowing
her with a new sexual dimension. If so,
then so much the better! thought Jeffrey. He reckoned he could do with a change of
sexual perspective!
She had pulled the
second stocking into place and was now bending over further than
before,
stretching a hand down to straighten-out and smooth-over the nylon
material in
the region of her toes. Looking at her
thus, it was impossible for Jeffrey Collins not to become sexually
aroused, and
he felt his penis acquiring a kind of autonomous life of its own under
the
quilt as it slowly expanded and slid across part of his lower abdomen. Now he could see the patch of firmer material
sown into her panties about the region of her crotch, as well as the
outlines
of her labia, with their at times fairly-pronounced clitoral cynosure
snugly
nestled in-between. It was, to say the
least, an alluring sight, and one that rarely failed to exert a spell
on him,
even at this virgin time of day. To
claim she was seductive, viewed thus, would have been an understatement. She was positively ravishing!
The mystique of her feminine charm was
undeniably potent, and had she remained in that position a moment
longer he
might have felt obliged to jump out of bed and have his way with her,
like a
behaviouristic rat responding to a programmed stimulus.
But, fortunately or unfortunately, depending
on one's standpoint, she soon straightened up and walked towards the
dresser.
From fear she should
notice him staring at her in the reflection of the dressing-table mirror, he closed his eyes and feigned sleep. Of course, it wouldn't really matter if she
did notice him, considering that they were married and extremely
well-acquainted with each other by now.
Yet, all the same, he wanted to prolong this context, in which
she was
unselfconsciously preoccupied and unaware of his attention, a little
while
longer. It was pleasant, after all.
Yes, and as he lay
there, listening to her movements in front of the dresser, an image of
her
slenderness came into his mind's eye and he half-smiled his
satisfaction of her
beauty, satisfied, as much as anything, that he was actually married to
this
woman whose beauty left little - if one discarded her diminutive
breasts - to
be desired. Was there another woman in
the world to whom he would rather be married?
No, he didn't think so, and this realization enhanced his
satisfaction,
emphasizing his complacency in partnership.
She was just right for him and he, for his part, was just right
for
her. A pair of slender
people together. She was
undoubtedly one of the highest type of women in the world, being so
lean and
yet shapely, such a paradoxical combination of fleshiness and
slenderness,
seduction and primness. Her
beautifully-round
fleshy arms narrowing down to a pair of
angular wrists of seemingly extreme fragility.
Her oval-shaped calf muscles, slender yet
well-formed, leading up to her amply seductive womanly thighs, on which
reposed
that alluring rump in a million with its overarching buttocks which, in
tight-fitting jeans, were the envy of many a passing female. And of course her curvy hips and narrow
waist, the delicate nape and firm shoulder blades which, in addition to
her
more private charms, contributed to the overall harmony of her person
with a
subtlety worthy of great art.
Yes, coupled to her fine
intelligence and spiritual disposition, her slenderness virtually
guaranteed
that she was of the highest type of women - the result of generations
of
careful breeding. Beneath her were all
the medium-built women, those average sensual females with fleshier
thighs and
rump, larger breasts, more powerful arms, thicker necks, etc., who
constituted
a majority and appealed, as a rule, to medium-built men.
They were closer to the ideal of Rubens or
Boucher than to that of, say, Rossetti or
Bourne-Jones: closer, in a manner of speaking, to the Devil. And beneath them, as the lowest stratum of
women, were the corpulent, those who were obliged to carry an excess of
fat
about with them wherever they went and who were more often than not fit
prey
for similarly-constituted men. Their
sensuality was usually of an above-average nature, and so they stood
closest of
all to the Devil. There were more than a
few such corpulent bodies falling heavily to Hell in Rubens' great
painting The
Fall
of
the Damned, and, no doubt, he would have had more sympathy with them
than
certain other artists.
But there it was, facts
were facts and they couldn't be denied.
One had a body and whether that body was fat or thin or
somewhere
in-between ... made a significant contribution towards determining
one's
evolutionary status in the world. For as
Jeffrey Collins liked to maintain, evolution was a sort of journey from
Hell to
Heaven, from the sensual to the spiritual, and consequently the more
spiritual
one was, the higher one stood in the human hierarchy and the closer, in
consequence, to the future culmination of evolution in pure spirit. By not having too much flesh to carry about,
one was less prone to sensual distractions and indulgences than those
who were
physically dominated by the flesh. It
was fundamentally as simple, in Jeffrey's estimation, as that!
And so, by definition,
higher-class women were slender, lower-class women plump or fat, and
middle-class women ... somewhere in between.
One might even argue that corpulent people were effectively
pagan, or
sensuous; medium-built people effectively Christian, or intellectual;
and
slender people effectively transcendental, or spiritual.
One's physique and psyche were intimately
connected, and this fact largely determined how one saw the world and
what one
did in it. A person with an excess of
fat could hardly be expected to ascribe as much importance to the
spirit as a
slim person, and, considered objectively, it was evident that his/her
physical
constitution was inferior to the latter's, since signifying a greater
attachment, in its sensuality, to the natural world.
For nature was, after all,
of sensuous origin and couldn't possibly be equated with spirit - not,
at any
rate, in this day and age. The
more natural one was, the lower one stood in relation to human
evolution, which
was a progression, so Jeffrey liked to believe, from the natural to the
supernatural, and thus towards the eventual establishment of Heaven. Like it or not, the truth was manifest and
couldn't be denied. The spirit was
slowly triumphing over the flesh.
But there were, however,
moments when it was right for the flesh to triumph over the spirit,
which it
could do even where such an intelligent, slender, and beautiful woman
as Rachel
Collins was concerned. For even if one
approximated, in evolutionary terms, to the top of the human hierarchy,
one was
still a man or a woman, not yet a component of the transcendental
Beyond, and
consequently one was under some obligation towards the flesh. As a woman, one might go in for all the
slimming and yoga one liked, but still one was a woman and one's vagina
more
than mere decoration. There was a raison
d'être to it all right, which resided in ensuring the propagation of
the
species. At least, that was the
essential function of the sexual apparatus, though these days, what
with the
further development of civilization away from nature, no person worthy
of the
name 'civilized' could possibly content himself with regarding sex
merely from
a utilitarian or naturalistic standpoint, as though something to be
indulged in
for no other purpose than the propagation of the species!
On the contrary, while the essential function
of the sexual apparatus was still acknowledged and occasionally given
its due,
one increasingly permitted oneself a less natural and, on the whole,
more
artificial attitude towards sex, which reflected the degree of one's
spiritual
sophistication in the face of purely naturalistic criteria. Not to be capable of sex-for-sex's sake would
indeed, to Jeffrey's way of thinking, have constituted a failing in
regard to
the evolutionary progression from Hell to Heaven. As
a
contraceptionless
propagator, one was simply closer to the natural-world-order, and thus
to
Hell. But as a person who could to some
extent triumph over the natural-world-order
and
thereby spiritualize sex, one was clearly of a generation or
civilization on
the path to Heaven, to the eventual transformation of man into pure
spirit at
the culmination of human evolution.
Yes, there were all
sorts of ways of spiritualizing sex, not least of all through the media
of sex
magazines and sex films and sex tapes and even sex dolls.
Our age was indeed prolific in devising
alternatives to natural sex, and in that, as in so many other respects,
it had
brought civilization to its highest ever level - a level, however,
which the
future would doubtless surpass as things became ever more
spiritually-inclined,
and so drew closer to the establishment of ultimate divinity. Of course, the degree of
one's sexual evolution wasn't only determined by the extent of
civilization
being manifested at any given time, but was also a personal matter,
relating to
one's temperament and physique, class and environment, as well as
reflecting
one's attitude to life and even, in some measure, one's private
circumstances.
As far as Jeffrey was
concerned, sex-in-moderation was his preferred mean, a mean also
honoured by
his wife, who was likewise both physically and spiritually qualified to
endorse
it. A lesser woman would undoubtedly
have been more demanding of him, requiring sexual satisfaction on a
more
regular basis than merely once a week.
But, as already noted, Rachel was effectively of the highest
type of
women, and thus given to the spiritual to a much greater extent than to
the
sensual. They had come to terms with
each other on a mutually acceptable basis, and it was only very rarely
that
this basis was infringed! They both knew
what they wanted from life and where it was tending - how it would end. Teilhard de Chardin's philosophy, with its endorsement of a
spiritual
convergence towards an omega point, the transcendent goal of evolution,
had
made a profound impression on them, clarifying their obligations to
each
other. It was their duty,
they felt, to act the part of spiritual leaders in or near the vanguard
of
evolutionary progress. Not too
exclusively of course, but certainly with a reasoned consistency which
never
completely lost track of the correct path to follow.
When they made love, for instance, they did
so on the understanding of paying their dues to the flesh, not simply
enjoying themselves. There
was
a
higher love than sensual love, and that was the love with which they
were
primarily concerned - namely spiritual love.
Perhaps Rachel, being a woman, was slightly less concerned with
it,
overall, than Jeffrey. Nevertheless she
was certainly concerned with it to some extent - a fact which elevated
her
above the average sensual level of femininity, giving her a specific
orientation in life.
But poor Jeffrey Collins
was almost ashamed, these days, that he had
actually
been in love with Rachel at one time and, to some extent, was still in
love
with her even now. For this love wasn't
a spiritual thing, but came from nature as a very sensual, physical,
passionate
thing! In this day and age love in that
sense was indeed a blow to one's spiritual self-esteem, a kind of
romantic
disease that was increasingly regarded, by the more
spiritually-sophisticated
and progressive people, with a certain ironic detachment coupled, at
times, to
a degree of pity or contempt for its victims.
Here we were, becoming ever more godly, ever more given to the
spirit,
when suddenly an eruption of romantic love threw us into confusion and
reminded
us that, for all our evolutionary progress, we were still human and
thus
subject, in some degree, to the laws of nature!
Yes, we were still
human, though not, thank God, passionately romantic!
We were steadily outgrowing our sensuous past
and becoming more acutely aware of the difference between Hell and
Heaven. We didn't regard sensual love with
the
complacency that our grandfathers or great-grandfathers might have done. We knew that it acted as a kind of hindrance
to our spiritual progress, even though it was generally less powerful
these
days than in times when men lived closer to nature.
The chances of an intelligent big-city person
being struck down with a romantic passion akin to Dante's for Beatrice
were, to
say the least, pretty remote. And even a
passion akin to that of Lord Byron's for Lady Hamilton would have had
the cards
stacked against it. Only someone from a
predominantly rural background would be likely to succumb to the
romantic bug
on a Dante-esque or even a Byronic scale,
and thus
bring the past to light in the present, though at the risk of public
ostracism
or even mockery.
Yet even if Jeffrey's
love for Rachel had never attained to anything like the passionate
levels
experienced by the aforementioned poets (not to mention the great poets
of the
past in general), still it had been sufficiently strong to cause him to
gloat
over her body with a frequency and ardour which imposed a degree of
humiliation
upon his latter-day ego whenever he reflected upon it.
To think that, a little over a year ago, the
body of this woman should have had such a powerful effect on him,
causing him
to forsake all higher matters! It was
almost enough to make one blush with shame!
And when he wasn't actually admiring her body or making love to
it, he
was dreaming or thinking about her, and to such an alarming extent that
his
professional commitments often suffered, and he found himself
reprimanded, on a
number of occasions, by both the principal violinist and the conductor
of the
New City Orchestra, in which he was a first violinist, for slack
musicianship -
playing out-of-tune or time or whatever.
Indeed, he had nearly lost his post over her!
But now, thank God, all that was history and
he could once more fiddle with a clear head.
Gone, too, were the days
when he would drag her along to the opera in the evening, to sit
through a
performance of Faust
or Carmen or Manon
or some such romantic masterpiece in one of the leading venues. If he took her anywhere on his evening off,
these days, it was usually to an instrumental concert, where he could
have the
privilege of watching and listening to an orchestra for a change, and
where the
programme would more than likely be dedicated to such
spiritually-uplifting
masterpieces as, say, Poulenc's Organ
Concerto
or Rubbra's Seventh Symphony or
Schoenberg's Werklärte Nacht or Vaughan
Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Then they could acknowledge the superiority
of the spirit over the senses, even though the spirit of such great
music
patently issued from sensuous means! But
occasionally his humanity reasserted itself at the expense of his
ideals and he
was accordingly obliged to take her to a concert featuring a less
spiritually-elevated programme - one in which, say, Tchaikovsky's Manfred
Symphony or Strauss' Don Juan or Liszt's Faust Symphony
were
the principal attractions. It had even
happened, doubtless following a period of rather too intense and
ambitious
spirituality, that they had relapsed into romantic opera together, one
evening,
and accordingly sat through a performance of Debussy's Pelléas
et Mélisande, though not without noting
in advance
that it was the lesser of a number of alternative evils.
On the way back from the Opera, Jeffrey had
discreetly though sincerely confessed to having quite enjoyed the
performance,
but added, as though to forestall criticism and boast of his spiritual
endeavour, that he had spent more time studying the lighting and stage
scenery
than listening to either the words or the music. Rachel
had
returned him a sympathetic glance
and let the matter rest. But they had
purged themselves of a sensual temptation anyway, and soon became
weekly
visitors to the concert hall again.
These past few weeks,
however, Jeffrey Collins had been too busy rehearsing and performing
with his
orchestra to be in any way disposed to attending a concert, so had
contented
himself with taking his wife to the theatre once or twice and spending
the rest
of his free time with a book - a habit which Rachel didn't seem to
mind, since
she was pretty bookish herself and quite able to relax indoors of an
evening. As a rule, her reading mostly
paralleled his and, consequently, they were in a position to exchange
views
about whichever author happened to be of mutual interest to them both
at any
given time. Lately he had conceived a
passion - if that's the right word - for Lawrence Durrell,
and
had
accordingly read Monsieur
and Livia
in quick succession, passing the former on to her when he had finished
it and
continuing with the latter. These two
novels had made such a strong impression on him that he immediately set
about
reading
No, he was quite
convinced that everything was gradually working out for the better and
that
good, in the guise of the godly or spiritual in man, was slowly gaining
the
ascendancy over evil. Accordingly, the
Templar heresy remained for him genuinely heretical, despite his
acknowledgement of Durrell's genius, which
struck him
as second-to-none. Indeed, he was
immensely relieved to have found a successor, at last, to Aldous
Huxley in his literary admirations. For
ever since reading through the last of Huxley's eleven or so novels,
some
months ago, he had been searching for another novelist in whom to take
a
special interest and had almost lost hope, at one point, that he would
ever
succeed. Now, however, he believed he
had at length found what he was looking for, and it quite delighted
him,
filling a literary void which no other novelist in-between times had
managed to
do, not even Christopher Isherwood, whom
he quite
admired as a prosodist.
But Lawrence Durrell
- well, it seemed not improbable that he was an even greater artist
than Aldous Huxley, since a more genuine
novelist with a no-less
intelligent mind. Perhaps a shade less
spiritual on the whole, but certainly no less interesting and
distinguished! Admittedly, his thematic
approach to the novel was totally different from Huxley's.
Yet it was an approach which all genuine
lovers of the serious novel could only admire.
And his technique betrayed a painstaking professionalism worthy
of great
literature. Yes, Jeffrey was indeed
pleased with his latest discovery. Now
he was not just a Huxley enthusiast but a Huxley-Durrell
enthusiast. Yes, why not?
He smiled to himself at the thought of it and
opened his eyes again.
Meanwhile his wife had
abandoned the dresser and was now rummaging around in the wardrobe,
presumably
hunting for a skirt to wear. She still
had her back to him in this capacity and he could see that she had put
on a
pink slip, which came two-thirds of the way down her thighs. It, too, was nylon, and he could easily
distinguish the outline of her panties through it and the thicker
material of a
suspender belt which she had also put on while his eyes were closed,
and,
evidently, by threading the suspenders through the legs of her briefs! A tiny strip of this belt was now directly
visible above the waist of her slip. She
was in the habit of wearing such belts whenever she put on stockings
these
days, which was more often than used to be the case.
Indeed, Jeffrey could remember, from when
they first met, that she used to wear long dresses most of the time
without
stockings underneath, occasionally wearing knee-length denim skirts and
showing
off bare calf-muscles. As a teenager,
she had grown up on the hippy wavelength and accordingly established
her
dressing roughly along hippy lines, her penchant for long dresses
naively
betraying a bias, in Jeffrey's estimation, for autocratic criteria
which would
have entitled any knowledgeable and unscrupulously predatory male who
happened
to relate to such immoral attire to descend upon her, like a beast of
prey, and
take her from behind. She had even been
to
But she had abandoned
all that Oriental excess some time ago, and now her saris stayed folded
over
their hangers for months on-end, only
occasionally
being dragged out of hibernation, so to speak, as the result of a
nostalgic
whim on her part or a special request from her husband.
He thought them sexy, and not only on account
of the degree of their transparency, which conveniently allowed one to
glimpse
the outlines of legs and rump, but also as regards the expanse of naked
belly
and back they permitted one to see in consequence of the winding
technique of
dressing imposed by the elongated material.
It made a pleasant change to the usual Occidental habits of
dressing,
anyway. Still, he wouldn't have been led
to reflect on her previous clothing at all, had it not been for what
she was
currently wearing, the semi-transparency of her slip having connoted
with the
like-quality of her saris and thereupon caused him to extend his
thoughts
beyond the confines of stockings and suspender belts.
Now, however, she was very definitely a
different woman from what she used to be - altogether more discreet and
conservative. She would no more have
considered going out in nothing more than a flimsy sari than coming
home in
nothing more than a flimsy slip! She had
lost much of that youthful daring, not to mention naiveté, no longer
desiring
to impose her beauty on the world in such brutally seductive and
forthright
terms, but preferring the way of restraint and subtle enticement. She had got what she wanted from the world
anyway, and consequently had no further need to advertise herself in
block
capitals, so to speak. As a
happily-married woman she had already been bought - almost literally so! For Jeffrey Collins increasingly tended to
look upon her as his property, to be fondled or manipulated at will.
At the present moment in
time, however, he was still looking upon her as a woman, watching her
drag
first a white vest from the wardrobe and then a short light-grey skirt,
which
she proceeded to step into on-the-spot, not bothering to turn around. Yes, he might have known she would choose
that one, since it went so well with her dark stockings and granted her
an
endearingly academic look. It was warm
too, and this time of year, what with snow on the ground, one needed
something
secure about one. And not just to keep
the cold out! He half-smiled to himself
again as he remembered that young woman he had noticed in the street,
the day
before, who was dressed in a flimsy cotton skirt with which the wind
played
havoc. Whether or not she specifically
wanted to draw attention to herself, attention was certainly what she
drew
whenever the wind lifted her tiny flounced skirt beyond the bounds of
least
modesty, as it so often did. Standing at
a nearby bus stop, he could see, as she entered a shop - perhaps as
much to
escape the weather as anything else - that she was wearing beige
knickers and
wasn't at all badly built! Maybe, after
all, there was something about the wind for which one had to be
grateful?
He almost chuckled at
the thought and once more closed his eyes.
For Rachel, having secured the tight-fitting skirt about her
waist,
suddenly abandoned the wardrobe and came over towards him, carrying a
pair of
pink shoes which she intended to step into and fasten while sitting on
the edge
of their bed. The image of that young
woman in the street was duly eclipsed by an image of himself at
rehearsal with
the
No, it was certainly not
his musical cup of tea, this new
Still, there had been
one or two light-hearted moments during yesterday's trying rehearsal
for which
to be grateful. Like the occasion, for
instance, when Tony King, who was suffering from a violent cold, had
sneezed while
playing his tuba, and thereupon added a couple of unofficial notes to
the score
which almost gave the markedly atonal passage upon which they were all
painstakingly engaged at the time a hint of melodic vitality. And then old John Crawford had snapped a
string on his viola during one of the more intensively discordant
passages and
exclaimed: 'Oh, damn it all!', to the
visible
amusement of those who thought he was referring to the passage in
question. And of course Margaret Boyle
had contrived to knock over a music stand or two in quiet passages, as
she
usually did when obliged to shift the position of her 'cello to any
appreciable
extent. Well, whether there would be
more of that kind of thing today ... remained to be seen or, rather,
heard. At least it sufficed to add a
little humour to an otherwise austere experience! Though,
of
course, not everyone was amused by
it, least of all the composer, who, even in the midst of the most
cacophonous
passages, retained an acute ear for any little deviation from the
printed
score, and would almost certainly cast a critical, not to say stony,
eye on the
offender(s)!
However, one of these
days Jeffrey Collins would present the world with an avant-garde
composition of
his own, which would be far superior to anything
He heard a slight rustle
of nylon stockings somewhere to his left and slyly opened his eyes in
the hope
of catching Rachel unawares again. To
his shocked surprise, however, he discovered her standing beside the
bed with
hands on hips and staring down at him with an ironic grin on her face. He almost blushed with shame.
How long had she been standing there, he
wondered?
"Ah, so the sleeper
finally wakes!" she exclaimed, bending down closer in order to peer
into
his relatively sleepless eyes. "I
wondered when he would damn-well get around to it!"
He blankly stared back
at her, a victim of his own deception.
"What time is it?" he at length asked, endeavouring to act the
part of one who has just woken up.
"High time you were
out of bed," Rachel replied without bothering to consult her watch.
He grunted reluctant
acknowledgement of this all-too-evident fact, and inquired how long she
had
been staring down at him like that?
"Oh, no more than a
couple of minutes," she confessed, grinning anew. "You
had
such a curious expression on
your smug little face that I became quite intrigued by it, wondering
what-the-hell you could be dreaming about!"
"Oh, really?"
he feebly responded, suddenly becoming a twinge embarrassed. "As a matter of fact, I've completely
forgotten." Which lie obliged him
to lower his eyes from fear she might see through him.
"Nothing very erotic at any rate,"
he added, as an afterthought.
Rachel bent down further
and kissed him on the brow. "Never
mind, darling, you've always got your loving wife where that's
concerned,"
she averred.
"Yes," he
admitted, nodding gratefully in spite of the pillow on which his head
was still
resting. And, as
though to confirm the basic truth of her statement, he gently ran his
hand up
the back of her dark-stockinged legs. Touch, he reflected, was always better than
sight where women like her were concerned!
FROM
THE
DEVIL TO GOD
Gavin
Danby
smiled complacently and then sipped a little of the
red wine I had just poured him. His face
fairly shone with self-confidence, doubtless born of intellectual
certitude. Quite a contrast, I felt, to
the rather baffled, not to say dour, visage of David Lee, who sat no
more than
a few feet away. One might have supposed
that Lee had just received a blow on the chin or been verbally
insulted, the
way he looked at present. Perhaps the
truth of what Danby had said was getting through to him.
Either that, or he
was in mounting revulsion against it!
"So you don't
believe in God after all," he at length rejoined, "but only in the
godly."
"Quite," Danby
confirmed, continuing to smile.
"The difference is important."
"And yet, if you
don't believe in God, surely you must be an atheist?" Lee countered,
frowning. He cast me a puzzled glance,
as though for support, and I obligingly returned him some non-verbal
sympathy.
"Well yes, I
suppose so," Danby conceded, suddenly becoming serious, "though only
to the extent that I don't believe in the traditional concepts of God -
that's
to say in God the Father and God the Son.
As far as they're concerned, I concur with Nietzsche that 'God
is
dead'. But ..." and here he paused
to gather his thoughts together "... that doesn't mean to say I'm
prepared
to consider the religious issue closed, as though there were no
possibility of
a more relevant or contemporary concept of God in the making."
"Ah, but aren't you
contradicting yourself again by talking in those terms?" objected Lee,
who
looked momentarily pleased with himself, like a man who had just scored
a point
against his opponent in some tournament or other. And,
of
course, to some extent he had.
"Well, let's put it
this way," said Danby, who turned uneasily in his armchair. "I'm an atheist inasmuch as I cannot
approve of a concept of God which posits an external, all-powerful
force
currently acting in and on the Universe.
But I do believe, however, that there's a manifestation of the
godly to
be found in man which corresponds to the Holy Spirit, a part of the
psyche
which is essentially spiritual and may be cultivated to a greater or
lesser
extent, depending on both the individual and the stage of evolution
into which
he is born. This realm of spirit I like
to call the superconscious, and it's my firm belief that the ego, or
conscious mind,
is fundamentally nothing more than the result of a fusion, or mingling,
of the
subconscious with the superconscious."
"In other words a
kind of dualistic compromise," I ventured, offering Danby a share of my
sympathy. I could tell by the
appreciative look he cast me that he was pleased with my modest
contribution to
the debate.
"To be sure,
Jason," he responded, briefly nodding his head. "And
it's
precisely that compromise
which we moderns are in the process of outgrowing.
Or, to put it another way, we're evolving
away from the balanced egocentric dualism of our Christian forebears
towards a
context in which the superconscious
predominates over
the subconscious, with a consequence that all dualistic criteria,
including
those appertaining to Heaven and Hell, are rendered irrelevant."
"Presumably Hell is
to be equated with subconscious domination and Heaven with superconscious
affiliation," Lee commented, still looking slightly puzzled.
"Absolutely,"
Danby confirmed with a confident smile.
"And the further we evolve away from the subconscious, the less
relevance Hell has for us and the more relevance, by a corresponding
degree, do
we ascribe to Heaven. Not that we think
of Heaven as a place to which 'the good' are sent after death. On the contrary, that would be a very
Christian interpretation and one, moreover, that would presuppose 'the
bad'
being sent to Hell. No, we moderns
prefer a term like the post-humanist or, better, post-human millennium,
which
avoids dualistic association and presupposes a future salvation in
which all
men
can
expect
to share. And not after death
either but ... after human life has run its evolutionary course, and
the
transformation of man into the godlike superman becomes a fact."
David Lee's face once
again assumed an expression of puzzlement.
Evidently his Marxism hadn't quite led him to envisage such a
transcendental culmination to human evolution.
"But how would this
transformation be effected, and what, exactly, would it presuppose?" he
wanted to know.
This was, to be sure, a
tricky question, and I waited anxiously for Danby to reply. When he did, it was with a modesty I hadn't
come to expect from him.
"Well, such a
transformation is probably so far into the future that we can't be
exactly
certain of the final form it will take, nor exactly how it will come
about," he at length responded.
"But at least we can hazard an intelligent guess.
We can suppose, for instance, that the most
likely way of attaining to the post-human millennium will be through a
systematic, thoroughgoing cultivation of the superconscious
with the aid of a meditation technique in which the bliss of spiritual
transcendence is encouraged to develop and expand.
This technique, applied over a long period of
time and gradually refined upon, should lead to each aspiring
individual
spending more time in the superconscious
than in the
subconscious, and thus becoming progressively less egocentric,
progressively
more biased, as it were, towards the spirit.
Well, whether or not such a condition, practised globally, would
be
taken for the post-human millennium, I don't know; though it's probable
that a
lot of people would be superficially prepared to regard it as such. However, my own opinion is that such a
condition would be more symptomatic of humanity en
route
to the post-human millennium than of that millennium itself, no matter
how
advanced along the route to it the universal practitioners of
transcendental
meditation may happen to be. As long as
there is some contact with and dependence upon the subconscious, even
the most
spiritual of men will still remain human and not become truly divine. The ultimate consummation, it seems to me,
would reside in one's transcending the body altogether and living
entirely in
the bliss of the superconscious, becoming
one with
that bliss, free from subconscious influence.
"Viewed in this way
then," Danby continued, following a short pause, "the post-human
millennium would correspond to the simultaneous transformation of
brains into
pure spirit and thus to a merging of individual spirits round a common
axis of
spiritual bliss. Freed from the
isolation of one's individual self, one's spiritual integrity would
automatically be led to merge with other spirits in due process of
transcending
the flesh, and so become part of and fully integrated into a globe of
spiritual
bliss. And this globe would signify the
culmination of evolution, justifying and fulfilling the Universe. One might therefore argue that, in cosmic
terms, evolution signifies a journey, as it were, from the impure,
chemical,
passing light of suns to the pure, unchemical,
eternal
light
of unified spirit via the worldly medium of planets and the
development thereupon of organic life where such life is possible, as
on the
Earth."
"All this sounds
rather like Teilhard de Chardin's
concept of a universe converging to some omega point," I remarked, for
once taking over the reins of response from my friend David Lee, who
seemed
more puzzled than ever and consequently unable or unwilling to
formulate a
response of his own.
Danby smiled
appreciatively. "It does," he
admitted, nodding, "and only goes to show how great minds think alike -
at
least to some extent." At which
point he laughed impulsively, and I knew at once that he had returned
to his
old immodest self again. "For
although I have much in common with Teilhard
de Chardin as an evolutionary thinker," he
went on,
"I'm by no means in accord with him all the way, especially where his
apologetics and theory of Christogenesis
are
concerned. His phenomenology, as expressed
in Activation
of
Energy, is something with which I'm generally in
accord. But I draw a line where the
Christian in him is concerned, and am
extremely
sceptical concerning the subject of an already-existing Omega Point
which
exerts an attractive influence on man, drawing him up towards it. On the contrary, it's my firm contention that
the progression towards this hypothetical culmination of evolution is
inherent
in human life itself and significant of the evolutionary nature of such
life. Rather than being pulled by an
already-existent Omega Point towards our ultimate transformation, we
are
goaded-on by our essential nature towards the attainment of such a
condition. We have to bring it about. As yet, the basis for a transcendent climax
to evolution only exists potentially in us, being dependent on the
extent of
our evolution. Insofar as we have a superconscious, we all carry a germ of the godly
about in
us which can be cultivated and encouraged to blossom by degrees, as I
said
earlier. Now the more that germ is
cultivated, the more is the godly made manifest in life.
Yet it isn't something that can be equated
with God in an external, all-powerful, authoritarian sense - with
reference,
for example, to what Christians call 'the Creator', otherwise known as
'the
Almighty'. Which is why I said I didn't
believe in God but only in the godly - a paradoxical statement which
was
intended to apply not only to former and, in my opinion, inferior
concepts of
God, but also to such a concept as an already-existent and influential
Omega
Point.
"No, so far as I'm
concerned God is in the making and therefore dependent on human
evolution for
His or, rather, its ultimate manifestation as spiritual bliss ...
posited in a
future Beyond," Danby continued.
"At present, it's only potentially existent in the myriad
spiritual
fragments of individual human selves and has yet to emerge as a kind of
conglomerate spiritual entity. The
Universe is simply the arena in which God strives, through man, for
total
Self-realization. When the Many have
become One, an ultimate globe of pure
spirit, then God
will be fully manifest and completely whole.
Evolution can accordingly be viewed as a journey from the Devil
to God,
a journey beginning in the hideous chemical heat of countless flaming
stars and
culminating in the cool bliss of the Holy Spirit. In
light
of this fact, we should speak of a
diabolic origin to the Universe and of a divine consummation to it, a
journey
from absolute evil to absolute good."
It was a stunning
thesis, almost Nietzschean in its transvaluating
implications and willingness to uphold a sort of alpha-to-omega
generalization
in preference to a more academic objectivity, such as would have
distinguished
between the Divine and the Diabolic rather more in traditional cosmic
terms, as
between Jehovah (the Creator) and Satan (the Devil), relative, so I
would have
argued, to theological extrapolations from the central star of the
Galaxy and
the sun respectively. Why, if what Gavin
had said was really the case, then we had no reason to doubt that the
world in
which we men lived was gradually becoming a better place, that human
progress
was steadily bringing us closer to the godly in superconscious
bliss and not, as some people thought, leading us farther down the road
to
Hell! Despite all the manifestations of
evil that indubitably still existed, modern life was closer to the
post-human
millennium than life had ever been in the past.
If we were for the most part biased, even if only incipiently,
towards
the superconscious, then we were certainly
in a
better psychic position than our Christian forebears, egocentrically
balanced
between Heaven and Hell, had generally shown themselves to be. If they had been as much under diabolic as
divine
influence, then we had at least attained to a stage of evolution in
which the
Diabolic generally played a less powerful role, and society could be
regarded
as being more under the Holy Spirit's influence, perhaps by as much as
three-quarters to one-quarter or, alternatively, two-thirds to
one-third. Life had accordingly never been
so good,
despite all the temporal ups-and-downs to which we were still subjected.
"I suppose it's
easier to accept an evil origin to the world when you dwell on the
active
volcanoes and fearsome dinosaurs of primeval times," Lee commented,
returning to the fray. "But when
you come more up-to-date, as it were, and consider, say, the plants,
trees, and
flowers of, in particular, temperate climes, it doesn't seem nearly so
easy. You feel that nature, as we commonly
understand it, isn't really a bad thing, irrespective of the sarcastic
viewpoint expressed by Aldous Huxley in
one of his
early essays - Wordsworth
in
the Tropics, I believe it was - in which he draws
our attention to the diversity of nature in relation to widely
different
climates. Somehow, you find it difficult
to associate the Hogs Back or the
Danby nodded
sympathetically. "And not least of
all because we're men of only a rather moderately-advanced spiritual
nature, and
can thus take a fair amount of the external manifestations of
subconscious life
for granted," he opined, smiling weakly.
"Yet whether we like it or not, the fact nevertheless remains
that
nature, in all its global diversity, is fundamentally of diabolic
origin,
insofar as it conforms to subconscious or, if you prefer, unconscious
domination and should accordingly be regarded, by all earnest strivers
after
spiritual perfection, with something of a Manichaean eye.
In temperate zones it may be less radically
evil than either its tropical or primeval manifestations, but that
isn't to say
it's comparatively good! It's still
nature and, as such, subject to sensual dominion. It
isn't
a manifestation of the godly. And
anyone who makes a point of worshipping it
is effectively a Satanist, no matter how much he may talk about God. Pantheism is simply a mode of devil-worship,
and pantheists are really demonomaniacs in
worldly
disguise. Such, in my opinion, was what
D.H. Lawrence and John Cowper Powys would appear to have been, to name
but two
modern nature-mongers. Their attitude to
nature was frankly pre-Christian - as, to some extent, was their
attitude to
sex, especially
Both Lee and I raised
our brows in startled surprise, and Danby, perceiving our incredulity,
proceeded to modify his tack slightly.
"Now, of course, I
don't wish to imply that we should completely turn against nature and
sex as
though we were already on the verge of
spiritual transformation," he continued, smiling defensively. "For such a radically Manichaean
procedure could lead, even in this relatively late day-and-age, to all
kinds of
psychological and physiological disturbances.
I simply wish to stress the fact that to make a cult of either
nature or
sex is to affect such a radically reactionary stance ... as to align
oneself
with the forces of evil, and thereby render oneself contemptible to all
truly
progressive spirits. Pay your respects
to nature and sex in moderation by all means, but don't get involved
with them
to the deplorable extent that you're prepared to throw away 2000 years
of
Christianity and become a damn pagan, fucking himself
to death! For paganism, in all its
forms, is certainly not above Christianity but, on the contrary, very
much
beneath it - in fact, so far beneath it that I've often been struck
with a
mixture of horror at and pity for those who, in this age of transition,
have
made a virtue of extensively studying the customs and beliefs of pagan
peoples
like the ancient Greeks and Romans, as though that held the clue to
some higher
life which the past two millennia have somehow denied us!
No, let's not make the tragic mistake of
endeavouring to look-up to the pagans!"
He had become quite
flushed with conviction and, for an instant, I saw him in the role of
some
great messianic prophet haranguing the masses with all the righteous
indignation his genius could muster, as though the better to instil
some moral
sense into them. And it occurred to me,
too, that his denunciation probably had a bearing on twentieth-century
authors
like Gide and Camus
who, in
addition to the aforementioned British authors, had turned their
attention back
to the ancient world in order, it seemed, to discover there certain
alternative
modes of life to what existed in the present.
But I didn't probe him on this matter, for my conscience pricked
slightly in consequence of various pagan predilections which I, myself,
had
once entertained, not least of all with regard to sexual promiscuity
and
gluttony - those two supreme vices which the medieval aristocracy had
inherited, in some degree, from their pagan forebears and continued to
espouse
in the face of official Christian disapproval.
No doubt, Danby would have placed my self-indulgences on a
similar level
to pantheism and dismissed me as an incorrigible heathen!
But I was interested,
all the same, to learn what he regarded as sexual moderation, and put
the
question to him.
"It depends on the
individual and where he lives," came his
considered response, after critical reflection.
"A city person is less likely, on the whole, to be given to
sexual
promiscuity than a provincial or country person, if for no other reason
than
that he lives in an extensively artificial environment.
But a sophisticated city person will be less
sexually active, as a rule, than a relatively unsophisticated one, for
the
simple reason that he'll be more spiritual.
Moderation for him might mean twice a month, whereas for the
average
sensualist it would probably mean twice a week.
All I can say for sure is that the former would be a superior
kettle-of-fish to the latter, since his greater spirituality should
indicate
that he was closer to the godly. On the
other hand, the more sexually promiscuous one is, the closer one
approximates
to the beastly, and consequently the lower one stands in the human
hierarchy. Christianity has always
understood this. For the division
between the Damned and the Saved in eschatological paintings is ever
one
between the low and the high, the evil and the good, those who are
predominantly sensual and those, by contrast, with a predominantly
spiritual
disposition. I say 'predominantly'
though, in point of fact, Hell and Heaven signify absolutes in which
the word
'exclusively' would be more apposite.
But, for temporal purposes, a less extreme interpretation has
greater
relevance to evolving humanity and is closer, moreover, to matters as
they have
stood for the better part of these past 2000 years."
"You mean that none
of us can be either exclusively evil or good?" Lee queried, anxious to
seek clarification.
"No, as human
beings we can't become exclusively evil," Danby replied.
"But I do believe that we can evolve to
a stage of life which transcends the human and thus become exclusively
good -
in other words, pure spirit. It may take
centuries, but I do believe it's possible.
On the other hand, to become exclusively evil, totally under
subconscious domination in sensual stupor, we would have to regress to
the
level of plants or stars, and, short of a nuclear conflagration, I
don't think
we're ever likely to do that - at least not willingly!
Thus Hell and Heaven, regarded as the
inception and culmination of evolution, the inception of it in
subconscious
agony and the culmination of it in superconscious
bliss, could be more literally interpreted as spheres of being in
which, on the
one hand, stars and, on the other hand, a globe of pure spirit may be
said to
exist. Yet Christian man, arising at a
stage of evolution in which man had attained to an
approximately-balanced
dualism in egocentric compromise between the two main parts of his
psyche,
would not have been capable of envisaging such non-human extremes as
constituting Hell and Heaven respectively, but was obliged to project
himself
into the opposing realms, and to have their human occupants brought
into direct
contact with either demons or angels, depending on the context. Now while demons and angels may be inventions
of an extreme significance, they are considerably less extreme, in my
opinion,
than what I contend the literal constituents of both the inception and
culmination of evolution to be, and thus stand closer to the human. It's as though demons should be equated with
the very lowest stage of human life, and angels, by contrast, with the
highest
- a stage before the ultimate transformation, as it were."
"Because
they're represented in bodily, and hence anthropomorphic, terms?"
Lee suggested, with a sly smile on his lips.
"Precisely,"
Danby confirmed. "They're to some
extent humanized and thereby rendered accessible to the understanding
of
Christian man, whose balanced dualism precluded him from literally
projecting
his conception of the hellish and the heavenly towards their ultimate
extremes,
and thus necessitated the formulation of egocentric myths relative to
anthropomorphism. However, now that an
ever-growing number of us are partial to a superconscious
bias, such mythical projections are no longer relevant - indeed, appear
a
trifle absurd. Yet at the time of their
inception they were the only possible formulation of the
less-than-human or the
more-than-human of which dualistic man could reasonably conceive, and
admirably
served to symbolize the opposing natures of the respective extremes. Had it been possible, the introduction of
stars into the realm of evil would hardly have served to inspire a fear
of the
Devil into most men's minds but, on the contrary, would have looked
perfectly
tame and cosmic, suggestive of some clear night sky.
Conversely, the introduction of a
self-contained globe of light into the realm of goodness would have
been too
abstract and impersonal to appeal to the understanding of a majority of
men in
that age. They could only conform to
egocentric projections, remember."
Yes, it all sounded
feasible enough, and seemingly justified the anthropomorphic symbolism
which
Christian man had been obliged to adopt.
I had, I dare say, seen hundreds of paintings which depicted the
Last
Judgement, not least among them the memorable Giotto
in the Arena Chapel at Padua, and been somewhat puzzled by their
symbolism. Somehow it always seemed like
a foreign language to me, a language I hadn't learnt, in spite of the
fact that
I was ostensibly a Christian, having been born into a predominantly
Christian
country. Like most people, now as
previously, I would have been more inclined, if pressed on the issue,
to
contend that the juxtaposition of Hell and Heaven, presided over by
Christ in
Judgement - that Abraxas-like figure of
evil and
good, damning with one hand and saving with the other - signified a
kind of
simultaneous event, rather than the beginning and ending of evolution. And although the subject-matter obviously
pertained to the Last Judgement, I would have seen it as a kind of
traditional
manifestation of something reputed to be going on all the time,
following
mortal death; that is to say the lesser individual judgements leading
up to the
greater collective one ... in which 'the good' are saved and 'the bad'
damned. Personally, I didn't believe
there would be an afterlife in that sense, since I wasn't a practising
Christian and had long ago come to the conclusion that if, by any
chance, we
did survive death, it would probably be on other, non-Christian terms -
terms
which excluded the possibility of Judgement and were more-or-less the
same for
everyone. Having known Gavin Danby for
some time, I'm quite aware that he would have dismissed the concept of
individual judgement in a posthumous Beyond.
He had no use, he once told me, for spiritualists and
séance-mongers. The idea of one's spirit
surviving bodily
death seemed to him utterly senseless and would have amounted, in his
opinion,
to a futile and altogether illogical hope.
What purpose, he wondered, could such a survival serve in this
personal
afterlife of ghostly existence? To be
sure, I couldn't, at the time, find a credible answer, and so confessed
to
being in the dark about it - a confession which, with his subtle irony,
Danby
considered perfectly understandable!
Only later did I discover what his alternative to posthumous
survival
really amounted to, for I had been under the impression that he simply
regarded
death as a blank, a return to the darkness of non-being, and had
accordingly
let the matter drop. But I was soon to
learn that, while such an attitude to death was in fact the one to
which he
barbarously subscribed, he had another concept of the Afterlife, a
concept
which posited a millennial Beyond after
human life
had run its course. This is the one with
which I've since become familiar, this idea that we're no more than
tiny links
in a chain of evolution stretching from the beginnings of organic life
to its
ultimate climax in spiritual bliss, and that when we die we die, and
that's all
there is to it. We die, but not for
nothing and not for ever! Eventually,
beings will emerge from man who won't die, as we do, but become
transmuted into
pure spirit and thus live for ever in the bliss of the Infinite, at one
with
the ultimate manifestation of divinity in the Universe, as already
defined. From
Nothingness
to Eternity was
the title of an album by the Mahavishnu
Orchestra,
that brilliant jazz-rock group led by John McLaughlin, which I had seen
in
Danby's extensive record collection, and that just about explains the
direction
of evolution. Out of gaseous nothingness
came the stars, and out of the stars came the planets, and out of the
planets
came organic life, and out of organic life came man, and out of man
should come
the godly life that will lead to the transcendent culmination of the
Universe.
How long will the
Universe take to reach this culmination?
Hundreds, thousands, millions of years? Astronomers say the sun is unlikely to change
much for another eight-thousand million years.
Eight-thousand million! Now if
other stars have even longer life-spans than the sun, how long will it
take
before the converging universe, about which de Chardin
speaks, actually attains to the Omega Point, and the ultimate level of
life,
totally superconscious, becomes a cosmic
fact? Ten-thousand million years? Twenty thousand? No-one is, as yet, in a position to say, nor
can we be sure whether this hypothetical culmination of evolution could
only
come about following the disintegration of stars. For
although
it seems likely that the
ultimate globe of superconscious
spirituality would
be sufficient unto itself, and therefore not in any need of solar
assistance,
we cannot be certain that it would exist on its own at first, as the
logical
successor to the stars. Indeed, reason
compels
us to assume that its inceptive formation would materialize some time before
the final
collapse of solar energy, else how could we expect to survive on this
or other
planets in order to effect the envisaged transformation to true
divinity? Somehow it seems unlikely that
we shall have
to await the dissolution of stars, before such a transformation becomes
either
possible or necessary. In all
probability, its inceptive establishment will come about long before
the
cessation of solar energy, and continue to co-exist with the Cosmos
until such
time as the stars finally collapse and only pure spirit remains.
It might even transpire
that the Omega Point will start out as a relatively small globe of
transcendent
spirit created from the superconscious
mind of the
most advanced civilization in the Universe, and gradually expand, over
the
millennia, as more civilizations attain to spiritual transformation and
thus
become one with it. After all, we have
no reason to assume that the Earth is the only planet in the Universe
with advanced
or advancing life. There are probably
thousands if not millions of others, so why shouldn't their higher
inhabitants
also be partial to the influence of a converging universe and be
simultaneous
participants in the evolutionary drive towards its culmination? And why, for that matter, shouldn't a number
of these other civilizations be ahead of us in evolutionary terms, and
thus
stand closer to an ultimate transformation?
If the evolving universe can't converge en
masse
to the Omega Point, it could at least do so by degrees, so that the
latter
would be in a process of continual expansion until such time as the
last
civilization had undergone spiritual transformation and so become a
part of
it. Then, in definitive oneness, it
would exist through all eternity as the culmination of heavenly
evolution,
while the few remaining stars continued to disintegrate, leaving the
Universe
to its ultimate perfection - the complete and utter triumph of true
divinity.
Until the last star had
ceased to burn, however, there would still be a degree of evil in the
Universe,
a manifestation of the original creative force behind all life. So long as a single sun remained, the
Universe would still be imperfect, subject to the solar influence
behind the
laws of nature, the unclear light of chemical conversion, the infernal
heat of
solar energy. But with the disappearance
of the last sun, all that remained of the sensual, the material, the
impure,
would also disappear, and the Devil's grip on the Universe be
completely broken. Only the Omega Point
would prevail, and it would shine in self-contained blessedness for
ever. Beginning in strong divinity, the
Universe
would culminate in true divinity, and thus attain to moral perfection. 'Out of evil cometh good',
and not merely in a temporal sense.
Out of the Almighty would come, via evolving life, the Holy
Spirit.
Yes, and if Gavin Danby
was to be believed, our Christian civilization had evolved to a stage
where the
old dualistic compromise between Heaven and Hell no longer obtained,
having
been superseded by a transcendental bias.
The Abraxas-Christ, with His
dual-natured
damning/saving disposition, was slowly being superseded by the Holy
Spirit ...
of which He was a part, but only a part!
Another part of Him, being man and flesh, was of the world and
distinctly mundane. There was even a
part of Him which was of the Father and therefore reactive. It approximated to strong divinity, no less
than His higher, attractive self approximated to true divinity. Between the flesh and the spirit Christ came
as a 'fisher of men', more correctly of men in their prime as
men,
balanced
between
flesh and spirit. As, however,
for men who have transcended the dualistic balance through evolution's
slow
progress, Christ is no 'fisher' but must give way to the Holy Spirit,
to that
which stands above Him in superconscious
bliss. Today, of course, a great many of
us realize
this, if not consciously then unconsciously.
For we are unable to become or remain
Christians, but
are striving for some higher ideal, some new religion. In reading what the finest intellects of the
past few centuries had written, we have become resigned to the fact
that
Christianity no longer speaks to the more evolved, but only to those at
a lower
and more primitive stage of evolution.
It speaks to the ignorant, the down-trodden, the backward, and,
to be
sure, it still has quite a fair-sized audience!
But where is the voice that can speak to the more intelligent
and
sophisticated people? Officially it
doesn't exist, but, unofficially, it is becoming increasingly manifest
in
people like Gavin Danby, who would direct us towards the Holy Spirit
and the
practice of transcendental meditation.
He, I know, often refers
to himself as a transcendentalist, implying that he takes his cue not
from
Christ but from that part of the psyche which he terms the superconscious
and knows to be of the essence of true divinity. His
argument
with Teilhard
de Chardin has already been noted and
remains, I
believe, a valid one. He has no use for
an apologetics of Christianity leading to acceptance of a Christogenesis,
or evolution of Christ in the Universe.
He wants to see Christ replaced by the Holy Spirit, so that we
cease to
think in egocentric, anthropomorphic, and personal terms, including
recourse to
prayer. He believes that our growing
bias for the superconscious justifies
this, and,
personally, I have to agree with him, much as I may balk at his
diabolic/divine
generalizations with effect to evolutionary progress from alpha to
omega, which
obviously puts the Father in a rather unflattering light.
Yet, I must say, it took me a long while to
come round to his viewpoint, not because I was a Christian - other,
that is,
than in a rather nominal sense - so much as because I held certain
atheistic
beliefs which left little or no room for the Holy Ghost.
I simply regarded transcendental meditation
as a fad which would quickly die out.
Now, however, I'm not so sure.
Indeed, I incline to a more sympathetic view, though I have
certain
grave reservations concerning its immediate future.
Of course, I realize
that David Lee wouldn't sympathize with me here, since he has long been
a
Marxist and therefore decidedly materialistic in his ideological
leanings. I knew when first introducing
him to Danby that
they would differ violently on the subject of what Gavin calls God or,
rather,
the godly, meaning true divinity. But I
was interested, all the same, to see if he would crack and slightly
relent
under pressure of Danby's logical acumen, sacrificing some of his bias
for
strength in the process. I believe to
some extent he has, though I know for a fact that Danby sympathizes
with
Marxists and has been going through an identity crisis of sorts
recently which
could well result in his becoming a kind of Marxist or, at any rate,
socialist
himself in due course. I say 'kind of'
because I know for a fact that he could never totally reject
transcendentalism,
even if, in the short term, he decided that materialistic
considerations and
obligations were more relevant to the world.
There would still, I feel, be a recognition at the back of his
mind
that, ultimately, transcendentalism had to be the leading string, with
politics
and economics considerably in its service.
But he hasn't spoken to me about this, nor, to the best of my
knowledge,
has he written about it. No, if one
thing more than another gave me a clue to his approaching
change-of-heart, it
was what he said, the other week, about Propter,
the
guru-like
character in Huxley's After
Many
a Summer, criticizing
him for an individualist and elitist approach to salvation which, with
its
emphasis on contemplation for the privileged few, struck him as
socially
inadequate and altogether too bourgeois.
I think he would rather the great majority of people were in a
position
to do a Propter, but a Propter,
without de-centralist inclinations, who related to Teilhard
de Chardin's evolutionary cosmogony of centro-complexification.
This, I think, would be compatible with the concept of a
converging
universe to the Omega Point, that is, with
the world
gradually evolving from the Many towards the One. Obviously,
this
can only be brought about via
an ideology which gives its attention to the masses and their social
advancement, so that, ultimately, the great majority of people will be
in a
position to take transcendentalism seriously, and thus converge en
masse
towards the Omega Point. No use
expecting the cream of the bourgeois world to get us there then, since
they are
all-too-few in number and more obsessed, in any case, with their own
personal
salvation.
But this discussion has
blossomed quite nicely, and I really think they are having a mutually
beneficial effect on each other, an effect of give-and-take, so to
speak. For their
initial
suspicions have abated, during the past fifteen minutes, with David Lee
now
more willing to lend an ear than before.
Naturally, Danby knew he was dealing with a Marxist, because I
told him
before they met. But Lee's atheism seems
not to have unduly worried him. After
all, he's an atheist himself insofar as his rejection of traditional
religious
criteria is concerned. He doesn't
believe in God the Father ... for the simple reason that he is too
evolved for
that; in fact, so evolved that, considered as Creator, the Almighty,
etc., the
Father seems to him indistinguishable from and equivalent to the Devil,
in
contrast to which he perceives God the Holy Ghost as in a process of
formation
throughout the Universe, in the context of our mounting allegiance to
the superconscious, and therefore only
existing in embryo, as
it were, in that part of the psyche given over to the spirit. The Holy Spirit has still to be fully
created, but, in the meantime, it will continue to expand with the
addition of
successive layers or contributions of superconscious
mind, until such time as full spiritual maturity is reached, and true
divinity
ultimately reigns supreme in the Universe.
True divinity, then, is
ultimately dependent on man for its birth, and, verily, the ancients
were right
to claim that man is a god-creating phenomenon.
He has been creating gods ever since he entered the spectrum of
manhood
- at first rather crudely and materialistically, to be sure, but with
greater
refinement as time wore on. When he was
in the pre-dualistic, or pagan, stage of evolution his gods were
correspondingly material, to be worshipped in the flesh, so to speak. He erected statues and saw the gods in
them. Later, when he had evolved to the
dualistic, or Christian, stage of evolution he still erected statues -
witness
the Blessed Virgin and Christ - but now that he was less dominated by
the
subconscious mind, the sensual, the material, he felt able to detach
his
worship from them to some extent and regard them as merely
images
of the real gods that apparently dwelt elsewhere,
compliments of
their respective resurrections, in pure spirit.
He was no longer the simple pagan idolater, bowing before stone
or wood
as before the actual god, but had acquired a new dimension which, as
the
spiritual, existed in its own right and on a superior plane to the
material. Latterly, however, he has for
the most part outgrown this dualistic stage of evolution and attained
to a
post-dualistic, or transcendental, stage in which the superconscious
predominates over the subconscious, and he is accordingly no longer
able to
take material images of divinity seriously.
Now he has arrived at an understanding of God based entirely on
the
spirit, and thus brought himself closer to the ultimate truth of God,
that
truth perceived by Christ when He said: 'God is a spirit, and they that
worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth'.
However, the Christians weren't, as a rule, able to do so. For dualistic man hadn't evolved to such a
transcendental level but was still tied to the material, and thus to
some
extent dependent on images like the Crucifix, the Virgin Mary, St
Joseph, the
Saints, and the Apostles to orientate his worship.
Only comparatively recently, with the further
progress of human evolution away from nature and materially-orientated
criteria, has it become possible for more people to turn to the truth
of
Christ's statement and thereby re-orientate their worship on the
spirit, which
is found within. If they can bring
themselves into closer contact with their spiritual essence they
achieve,
through self-realization, a direct knowledge of the godly.
But the godly, according to Danby, should not
be confused with ultimate divinity. It
is only potentially that, a tiny fragment of spirit which, earnestly
cultivated
over many years, should grow and become ever more intensive, eventually
becoming so intensive ... that the essence of man is obliged to
transcend the
body and establish the Omega Point, which will be the beginnings of the
actual
manifestation of ultimate divinity in the Universe.
Man will thus have created the Holy Spirit,
though not in his own image, as Christian man created his
god,
but in the literal context of ultimate divinity - transpersonal and
transcendent.
Yes, at last it all
begins to make sense and I can now see more clearly the reason why
Danby
rejects de Chardin's Christogenesis
on a literal basis. Yet even if he can't
literally accept the divinity of Christ, like a genuine Christian, I
think he
would have no option but to concede that, on a symbolic plane, the
Resurrection
does in fact illustrate the future course of evolution in spiritual
transcendence, the abandonment of the body for ultimate self. Therefore it could be said that it is
the fate of man to follow Christ's example and attain to spiritual
bliss in the
post-human Beyond, so that Christ's evolution through the Universe, or Christogenesis, can be regarded as a preordained
plan and
implicit fact. We are in the process,
willy-nilly, of following in Christ's transcendent footsteps. However, where Danby differs from de Chardin is in asserting that, in reality, there
was no literal
Resurrection
and, consequently, that there can be no already-existent Omega Point
compounded
of Christ's transcendent presence. On
the contrary, it's our duty to establish such a condition in due course. As already noted, Danby isn't a
Christian. We evolve towards the Omega
Point, we are not teleologically pulled
towards it by
a Christ in situ, so to speak.
However, let us leave
the final word with him. For I have been
digressing too much and have quite abandoned my two friends to their
discussion. They were talking, if you
recall, about the literal natures of Heaven and Hell, Danby explaining
the
imaginative limitation of the Christian dualists on the basis of their
egocentric
projections, whilst at the same time justifying it in regard to its
utilitarian
viability. Since then, David Lee has
gone on to question him more generally about paintings of the Last
Judgement,
especially about which ones he considers to be the most logical and
which the
most illogical from a contemporary viewpoint, and, latterly, whether he
didn't
think the whole concept of eschatological judgement illusory. After all, didn't it rather reflect the
dualism of Christian man, and thus speak in terms to which we
post-dualistic
moderns couldn't be expected to relate?
"Yes, to some
extent it does," Danby replied, visibly impressed by the apparent
interest
in religious issues this professed Marxist was now displaying. "One might be led to believe that a
simultaneous judgement was taking place, in which the sensualists were
damned
and the spiritualists saved. Yet that
would be out-of-step with the trend of evolution towards the godly and
eventual
establishment of ultimate divinity.
Since life is a journey from Hell to Heaven, we cannot suppose
that at
the end of it anyone will be damned and obliged to roast in Hell. On the contrary, we are increasingly led to
assume that humanity in
toto will have become ripe, at
that more advanced juncture in evolution, for spiritual transformation,
and
thus salvation from the flesh. There
will be no Christ in Judgement for the simple reason that such a
dual-natured
deity only pertains to the mentality of dualistic man, not to those who
have
evolved beyond that mentality to a transcendent frame-of-mind. But at the time of its formulation, many
centuries ago, you can be sure that the Last Judgement was a viable
concept and
strongly appealed to the Christian mentality.
Even the notion of a posthumous, individual afterlife of either
Hell or
Heaven was absolutely justified, insofar as men couldn't be expected,
at that
more egocentric juncture in time, to conceive of a post-human
millennium, or
complacently accept the fact that, considered individually, they were
no more than
relatively insignificant mortal links in a chain of life ultimately
leading to
Paradise. Their egos would have rebelled
against any such concept which, had they been capable of formulating
it, would
have proved much too demoralizing to uphold.
It's only because we're closer to this evolutionary
consummation, if you
will, that we can at last be expected to bear the truth, painful though
it may
still be on occasions! As to the Last
Judgement, however, I think we can safely say that we've generally
outgrown the
necessity of believing in it. Even de Chardin would, I think, agree with me here,
since his
concept of a spiritual convergence to the Omega Point leaves no room
for Hell
and, hence, damnation. But that is no
reason, in my view, why we should reject the necessity of temporal
judgements en
route to the post-human millennium, as I'm sure you'd agree."
David Lee allowed an
ironic smile to take possession of his thin lips, before replying:
"Yes,
the wheat has to be divided from the chaff and/or the chaff from the
wheat
somehow, and it's the duty of all right-thinking people to ensure this
actually
comes about. Just as, in the Christian
schema, the sensualists are doomed to perdition and only the
spiritualists saved. For the world is
still largely divisible into
these two antithetical camps, so the need for temporal judgements en
route
to the post-human millennium undoubtedly exists. But
'the
good' shall triumph in the end, of
that there can be no doubt!"
"Indeed,"
Danby concurred, warming appreciably to his interlocutor's confidence. "And out of their efforts will come a new spiritual impetus, through which
higher man will
eventually attain to the goal of evolution in spiritual triumph."
"And woman?"
Lee wanted to know. "Where does she
fit into all this?"
"Obviously as the
means, now as before, of getting us there," Danby replied
confidently. "The act of
propagation may, by dint of its sensual nature, be steeped in original
sin, but
at least we can be assured that without the help of women we would
never attain
to our evolutionary goal. Like food and
sleep, woman is a sort of necessary evil - at any rate, with regard to
sex. But out of evil cometh good,
remember, and although woman is by no means entirely sensual,
nevertheless she
stands closer to nature than man, since aligned, in her fundamental
bias for
appearances, with the phenomenal world."
"From which fact we
can assume, I take it, that the post-human millennium isn't for her," I
suggested, making an effort to become a part of the conversation again,
"since its spiritual nature would seem to portend a radically
essential,
if not supermasculine, state-of-affairs."
"Absolutely,
Jason," agreed Danby, turning towards me.
"The Holy Spirit would be consummate good and therefore the
ultimate positivity, quite the converse of
the stars,
which, in their primal negativity, are consummate evil.
Regarded as the sum-total of flaming stars,
Hell should be seen as a fundamentally reactive phenomenon, and its
offspring,
like the earth and nature, as feminine.
All that pertains to the sensual is feminine, whereas whatever
pertains
to the spiritual is masculine. So the
evolution of the Universe is from ultimate negativity to ultimate positivity - a fact which is adequately
demonstrated by the
current state of Western civilization, in which masculine
artificiality, in the
forms of large cities, industry, science, technology, etc., has
increasingly
come to predominate over the feminine realm of nature, with its
subconscious
illusion. We are indeed biased towards
the spirit at last, so let us be sincerely grateful for the fact, since
there
is only one way forward, and that's up through expanded consciousness! No alternative exists. Yet
the
considerable efforts women are
nowadays making to 'masculinize'
themselves, as it
were, and thus wear jeans, vote, take jobs, write books, play sport,
etc., is a
further indication of our evolutionary progress, which harbours good
tidings
for the future. In that, as in so many
other respects, things can only get better, you mark my words!"
"Yes, I incline to
think you're right," Lee admitted, smiling glowingly before raising his
fist in a dramatic gesture. "The
future belongs to us!" he added.
"To be sure,"
I seconded rather doubtfully; for I wasn't altogether convinced that
the maculinization of women, to use
Danby's unhappy expression,
was necessarily for the best or in any way fully commensurate with
spiritual,
as opposed to material, progress.
Nevertheless I joined with David Lee in drinking some more wine,
this time
white, to the health and genius of our mutual friend.
The discussion, we concluded, had dragged on
quite long enough and, now that the evening had at last arrived, it
seemed as
though we had indeed passed from the Devil to God and were about to
enter the
realm of heavenly peace, wherein even positive argument could have no
place.
AN
UNEXPECTED
CRISIS
"To
be
truly modern," Michael Reid was saying, "one
must live in the city, preferably the metropolis, and thus cease to
have
regular contact with nature. For the
city does, after all, bear witness to the extent of contemporary
civilization,
being the focal-point, as it were, of human evolution to-date. Beyond the city there is nothing higher, at
any rate not on earth, whereas beneath it ... well, one finds a
descending
scale of town, village, farm, and country, with the most uncultivated
country
at the bottom."
Tina Hewitt briefly
turned her pretty brown face towards him in polite acknowledgement of
these
remarks and said: "Yes, I suppose so.
But, fortunately, there isn't that much uncultivated country
around
these days. Most of it seems to have
been quite pleasantly cultivated. Like
the fields round here, for instance."
They each looked out
through the car windows in opposite directions, in confirmation of the
fact
that the country through which they were currently driving was
pleasantly
cultivated. On the left-hand side of the
road an expanse of freshly-ploughed earth, whilst on the opposite side,
nearest
to Reid, a gleaming wheat field stood almost motionless in the noon-day
heat. Farther on, other fields and
expanses of ploughed land could be discerned to either side, all of
which
attested to the agricultural mastery of man.
Keith Shearer, who was
driving, was less interested in looking at land, however, than in
continuing
the conversation with his back-seat passenger.
"Presumably those who don't live in the biggest cities are
behind
the times to varying extents, then," he remarked.
"That's more or
less my opinion anyway," Reid responded.
"Naturally, we all live in the current century so far as dates
and
the use of modern inventions are concerned.
But we don't all live in it on the same spiritual or
evolutionary
level. A farmer lives in it on a
different and, in my opinion, lower level
than an
avant-garde artist, whilst a small-town shopkeeper lives in it on a
different
level than, well, a metropolitan chain-store worker.
I mean, it isn't just a question of class or
occupation. We're also dealing with the
varying influences of widely different environments on the lifestyles
and
mentalities of their respective inhabitants.
There have been farmers and farm labourers from virtually the
very dawn
of human civilization, but there haven't always been avant-garde
artists. The former still tend to live on
a level not
all that far removed, in certain respects, from primitives, whereas the
latter
are the fruit of thousands of years' civilized evolution and
progressive
sophistication. One could have milked
cows or tilled the earth three or four thousand years ago, but one
couldn't
have painted like Piet Mondrian
or Wasily Kandinsky
then,
nor have composed music like Michael Tippett
or
Pierre Boulez, nor have written novels like Alain Robbe-Grillet
or Lawrence Durrell."
"Quite so,"
Shearer conceded, as he artfully steered his bright-red 2cv6 Citroën round a sharp bend in the road, to the
slight
displacement of his passengers.
"What you're in fact saying is that the modern artist only
became
possible because of the city, that the city gave birth to the
contemporary
artist."
Michael Reid nodded his
head at the reflection of Shearer's face in the driving mirror. "Yes, I doubt if the bulk of
contemporary art would have come about at all, had it not been for the
continuous development of our towns and cities into ever-larger
conurbations of
the artificial, the man-made. For
abstract art reflects this development and therefore speaks directly to
the
intelligent man of the big city. If it
had to wait until the twentieth century to come about, that was only
because
until then none of the towns or cities was large enough to warrant it,
not
having expanded away from the sensuous influence of nature to an extent
which
made such a spiritual, transcendental art possible.
Man was still tied to dualism in a kind of
balanced compromise between nature and civilization, and thus given to
both
sensual and spiritual kinds of representational art - the former
issuing from
the natural world, the latter from the civilized one, and embracing not
only
urban and domestic scenes but religious projections as well."
Tina had listened more
attentively to these remarks than her boyfriend, and now ventured to
inquire of
the controversial young artist whether such a dualism wasn't to be
found in
abstract art, too? In other words,
whether there wasn't both a sensual and a spiritual mode of it?
"Indeed, there
certainly is," Reid replied, shifting his attention from the driving
mirror to the dark-haired young woman who sat in front beside the
driver. "Impressionism was a mode of
sensual
abstraction to the extent that it primarily dealt with the natural
world,
including animals and men. However, it
rendered that world not in concrete representational terms but in
abstract and,
hence, impressionistic terms. And after
Impressionism of one sort or another had run its dreary course, well,
there was
Expressionism to take over and focus not so much on the external or
natural
world ... as on the transformations such a world underwent through the
influence of emotions, especially the strongest and most negative. This, too, was a kind of abstraction, for it
dispensed with literal concrete representations, preferring to distort
external
reality under pressure of internal reality.
However, since they were still partly representational, one
might
describe these art-styles as transitional between sensual
representation and
the sensual abstraction that was to follow in the guise of Abstract
Expressionism, where a depiction of the feelings,
or
the effects of external reality upon the self rather than vice versa,
was
attempted. Such an art-style, largely
focusing upon strong emotions, may indeed be described as sensual
abstraction,
in contrast to the spiritual abstraction which was to materialize in
the guise
of Neo-Plasticism and the genius, most
especially, of
Piet Mondrian. Now since the path of evolution tends away
from the sensual towards the spiritual, it follows that
intellectually-biased
subjective art signifies a superior development to emotionally-biased
subjective art, and accordingly has more relevance for our time, as
indeed for
the future. It's the higher abstraction,
being religious as opposed to secular, insofar as whatever pertains to
the
spirit stands in opposition to whatever pertains to the senses, the
sensual,
the worldly. So, in following the
overall tendency of evolution towards the spirit, one might claim that
it was
and remains the fate of sensual abstraction to give way to spiritual
abstraction, which is the ultimate art."
They were still passing
fields as Michael Reid spoke and, from time to time, would glance to
either
side of the road in order to feast their nature-starved eyes upon the
scene
before them. It was over a year since
any of them had actually been out of London and, despite their
sophisticated
urban sentiments, they were privately grateful for a change of scenery,
especially Tina, who lived in a more built-up part of the metropolis
than her
two companions, and had a greater need of vegetation in consequence. She was particularly looking forward to the
afternoon walk they were intending to take across the Sussex Downs. It would be agreeably refreshing, she
thought, being in such close contact with relatively-uncultivated
nature again,
acquiring a strong dose of more concentrated plant life to replenish
her
languishing soul in some measure. For
although she had regular sex with Keith and ate and slept relatively
well,
there was still room for something better than mere walks in the local
park
from time to time - room for an altogether different mode of sensuality
such as
could only be gleaned, as it were, from a rural environment. She felt that a good long walk in open spaces
would help her fulfil a basic human need, and freshly equip her to deal
with
prolonged confinement in the city.
Admittedly, she was familiar enough with Michael Reid's thinking
by now
to know that he was pretty Mondrianesque
in his
almost Manichaean contempt of nature and determination to remain as
dedicated
to the progress of the spiritual in life as was humanly possible,
without, of
course, unduly jeopardizing his integrity as a human being. But she wasn't quite as ardent a believer in
spiritual progress herself, nor nearly so dedicated to its furtherance. She didn't subscribe to that reasoned
consistency of Reid's which, amongst other things, led him to indulge
in
sensual matters as though unwillingly and with an attitude which
suggested
that, whilst a certain amount of sensual indulgence was obligatory, one
was
simply paying one's dues to the Devil in consequence of one's basic
humanity. No, she wasn't that
spiritually advanced, being fairly complacent, as a rule, where the
satisfaction of bodily needs was concerned.
And, as she had noted on a number of occasions, even Michael
Reid wasn't
as spiritually consistent as he would probably like to have been or in
fact
made himself out to be. He certainly ate
with a healthy appetite anyway, and had never said anything to her
which
suggested that he ate with reluctance, a reluctance born of his
spiritual
aspirations. He may not have been the
most highly-sexed of people, but he was still human enough to find
eating a
generally agreeable occupation, not to mention the weekly strolls he
took
through the small local park. He wasn't
quite the most spiritually-advanced of men on those counts, even if
certain of
his actions and attitudes marked him out as a being-apart from the
common herd
of worldly hedonists - actions, for instance, of a scholarly and
intellectually
creative order, but attitudes such as his loathing of dogs and hope
that, one
day, when people had advanced to a more spiritual level than a majority
of them
were at currently, such creatures would be done away with, banned from
the
metropolis and other large cities on the grounds that urban man had
become
sufficiently spiritual to wish to minimize contact with beasts as much
as
possible, and thus rid himself of their physical presence.
According to him, dogs
were altogether too subconsciously-dominated to be acceptable
companions of
people who had evolved to a radical level of superconscious
affiliation, and were therefore unworthy of incorporation into any
truly-advanced civilization. Already, he
was looking on them from a kind of advanced viewpoint himself,
suffering from
the gross noise they made every time they barked, suffering from the
excretory
filth they left behind in the street which not only looked bad but
smelt bad,
suffering, above all, from the fact of their subconscious orientation,
which
led to their spending so much time every day either dozing or sleeping,
cocooned,
as it were, in sensual torpor. A
dualistic people inevitably tolerated dogs because, being balanced
between the
subconscious and the superconscious in the
ego at its
prime, they took a large amount of the evil in life for granted,
deeming it
indicative of the nature of reality. But
a transcendental people would increasingly come to look upon all forms
of evil,
including the beastly, as subject to human control and, ultimately,
elimination. They would not claim that
good was dependent on evil for its existence but, on the contrary, that
the
less evil there was in life, the more room would there be for good, to
the
benefit of the living. These big-city
people would inevitably set about increasing the sum-total of good in
life at
the expense of evil, and gradually reduce the latter to negligible
proportions,
eventually doing away with it altogether ... as they transcended the
body for
the realm of pure spirit.
And so a day would
eventually come when they decided to rid themselves of dogs and thereby
minimize
or eliminate contact with the beastly.
When that day would come for certain, and in what form, Michael
Reid
didn't of course know. But he hoped,
anyway, that it wouldn't be too far into the future, since he was
hopeful that
such a 'Judgement Day', as he liked to think of it, should come about
in his
own lifetime and thus grant him the satisfaction of dying with the
knowledge
that the world had extended its progress over evil and consequently
become, for
succeeding generations, a better place in which to live.
However, he didn't expect small-town,
village, or country people to sacrifice their dogs together with city
people
or, indeed, be required to do so at exactly the same time.
To his way of thinking, they generally lived
on a lower evolutionary plane in closer contact with nature, and
therefore
weren't subject to the same pressures as city people.
To be sure, it was a
point he had touched upon earlier that morning, as they drove out of
Surrey,
and now Tina took-up the thread again and, partly for her boyfriend's
benefit,
asked him to clarify the matter a little.
After all, if we were to a large extent conditioned by the
nature of our
environments, then what applied to people in one type of environment
could
scarcely be considered applicable to those in a radically different
type. For instance, abstract art would be
to some
extent out-of-place in a rural setting.
"Yes, I absolutely
agree," said Reid, grateful for an opportunity to expand on his
contentions. "For it's the product
of large-scale urban civilization and consequently isn't likely to win
much
support in the country, where people are, for the most part, less
spiritually
evolved, since more under nature's sensual sway. An
abstract
or biomorphic sculpture stuck-out
in the middle of a field or on the brow of a hill somewhere - what can
it
possibly mean? What relationship can it
have with its surroundings? One might as
well transplant a modern skyscraper to the country ... for all the
applicability such a work would have there!
For abstract art is essentially an anti-natural or
transcendental
phenomenon and, as such, one can hardly expect it to harmonize with
nature! Its proper place is in the city,
not in the wilderness. Likewise, the
proper place of the abstract artist is in the city, not in the country,
village, or small town. For it's the
artist's duty to relate to his environment and further the cause of
progress by
being in the creative vanguard of his time.
Such, at any rate, is the case for any genuine, truly great
artist, who
functions as a kind of psychic antenna, or reflector of the extent of
evolutionary progress in the world at any given time, and who may even
anticipate progress by being a step or two ahead of his contemporaries. Like Mondrian, he
lives in the city and relates to the artificial nature of his
environment by
producing a correspondingly artificial, non-figurative art. But if he learns the tricks of his trade in
the city and then goes to live in the country, where he continues to
produce
abstractions - well, to some extent he is a sham, a hypocrite, and not
a
genuine or great artist, because creating out-of-context with his rural
environment. He may even find himself
relapsing, after awhile, into some form of representational art in
consequence
of its sensuous influence, which would simply result in works of, by
city
standards, a largely anachronistic order.
This would automatically lead to his becoming a minor artist,
because
all the major ones would be producing work which stemmed from or owed
something
to contemporary urban civilization."
"Is all this
intended as an oblique criticism of the estimable likes of Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Ben Nicholson?" asked
Shearer on a faintly reproachful note.
They were passing through Crawley now and to either side of them
the
familiar sight of shops and houses had usurped the place of fields.
"Not really,"
Reid replied, blushing slightly in spite of his back-seat immunity from
the
driver's quizzical gaze. For he knew that Keith Shearer was a great admirer of
these three
artists. "Though I'm
convinced it must have some relation to them, insofar as they lived and
worked
outside London and were much given to nature and the countryside in
general. Nicholson even dedicated some
of his creative energy to landscape drawing, albeit in a suitably
modern
technique, which simply sketched-in the outlines of the countryside in
linear
fashion."
"And would the fact
of his dedication to landscape detract from claims to true artistic
greatness
in your eyes?" Shearer asked him.
"To a certain
extent it would," Reid admitted, "since the highest art of the age is
decidedly anti-natural and/or pro-spiritual, like Mondrian's
and Kandinsky's, particularly the latter's
late
work. It's obviously less good to
preoccupy oneself with trees, fields, hills, etc., than with
abstractions, no
matter how linear one's technique may happen to be.
It's less good, but, there again, if one's
insufficiently spiritually-advanced to be capable of concentrating
solely on
non-figurative work, then it's virtually inevitable, and must be
accepted. Nicholson's best work is, I
believe, his
abstract reliefs, of which there are many
choice
examples, all of them a silent testimony to his transcendental
capability. But bearing in mind his
penchant for the figurative
and natural, it's only fair to conclude him a lesser artist than, say, Mondrian or Kandinsky,
who
were
more consistently and systematically transcendental.
I mean, the fact that he lived in such
relatively small places as St Ives and the Ticino
for
so long would seem to suggest a desire to be closer to nature, which
can only
be out-of-keeping with the greatest artists' urban opposition to it. Okay, he may not have liked city life, but
that's only another reason for considering him a comparatively minor
or, at any
rate, lesser artist. All truly great
artists should
like the city, should
see in it
the sum of our evolutionary progress to-date.
It's our passport, if you like, to ultimate salvation in the
millennial
Beyond, the future culmination of human evolution.
Without it we would be lost, remaining in
some kind of dualistic twilight between nature and civilization in
small towns
and villages. Needless to say, a lot of
people do
remain in that state and will doubtless continue to remain in it until
their environments are changed and, thanks to the expansion of their
towns or
villages, they become more cut-off from nature and thus correspondingly
more
civilized - biased towards the spirit.
Ultimately, you can only be what your environment permits or
encourages
you to be. But if, because of its
proximity to nature, it doesn't permit or encourage you to be
particularly
transcendental, well then, you can only be dualistic or perhaps even
pagan, as
I'm sure a fair number of real country people effectively are, despite
appearances to the contrary. Which brings us back to what I was saying earlier, about
the
evolutionary differences between people, differences moulded, over and
above
class, by environment."
"And presumably the
fact that we don't all live in the same time," Shearer remarked,
recalling
the gist of the previous topic of conversation.
"Quite so,"
Reid responded, casting the driving mirror an emphatic nod. "The provinces are always more
traditional or, depending on your viewpoint, less advanced than the
cities. Indeed, in some respects, they
hardly seem a part of the current century at all, even given all the
modern
trappings to be encountered there. For
whatever is truly modern stems from the big city, and although
small-town
people may to some extent be influenced by it, they remain moored, as
it were,
to the relatively conservative influence of their dualistic
environments and
therefore aren't in a position to appreciate it properly.
This applies, I believe, as much to religion
and politics as to, say, science and art.
For there are undoubtedly a great many people in the provinces
for whom
Christianity and parliamentary democracy have more relevance than some
of our
metropolitan progressives would like to believe!"
"Yes, I'm quite sure
that's true," Tina conceded, smiling a shade maliciously.
"And it must go some way towards
explaining why such countries as Eire and Spain, for instance, are
given to
Catholicism, since largely rural and thus more natural."
Michael
Reid nodded his head again, albeit this time less emphatically. He had already come to a similar conclusion
some months ago, having equated Catholicism with a lower, quasi-pagan
form of
Christianity and Protestantism, by contrast, with a higher,
quasi-transcendental form of it which signified, in his estimation, a
kind of
transition to transcendentalism-proper.
Catholic countries, he had noted, were generally or
traditionally less
urbanized and industrialized than their Protestant counterparts,
altogether
closer to nature. Like everything else,
religion and environment hung together, the one couldn't be completely
dissociated from the other. Overlappings and exceptions there undoubtedly
were, but,
basically, the big city wasn't a Catholic phenomenon.
On the contrary, it was decidedly
transcendental, and could only become more so the further it expanded.
Yes, he was quite proud
of the fact that he was a city man and, as he stared through the car's
side
windows at the Sussex countryside, he felt a contempt for the world
rising in
his soul, a good healthy Christian contempt for the natural status quo
which,
at this juncture, appeared in such rural profusion.
Oh yes, the contempt he felt was justified
all right, even in this day and age!
Nietzsche had never been able to understand the Christian
contempt for
the world and had consequently castigated it, deeming it symptomatic of
decadence. But Michael Reid understood
it all right, and was able to reinterpret it in contemporary
post-Christian
terms.... Not that one had to feel it all the time, or indeed could do
so. Still, it was reassuring to note that
evolution was a fact, and that its goal in spiritual bliss was what
ultimately
mattered. We knew the future would be far
superior to the present, and so we avoided the error of systematic
complacency
in the present, as though this was the best of all possible worlds
which could
never be improved upon. Sure, the world
had made considerable progress over the past two-thousand years, and
many of
the things currently to be found in it were quite admirable and
pleasant. Yet there was still room for
contempt. There was still reason to think:
'The world
is undoubtedly better now than it has ever been, but, by God, that's no
excuse
for believing it can't become even better in the future, or that what
we see
before us is the best that can be done!'
Yes, a little contempt
every now and again for the status quo, especially in its natural
manifestation, was by no means a bad thing! For
the
world man had made was, by and large,
a more admirable or, depending on your standpoint, less contemptible
thing than
the subconsciously-dominated world of nature and, as such, it was
fitting that
one's greatest contempt should be reserved for the latter and, needless
to say,
its principal upholders, whether literary or otherwise.
Admittedly, the man-made world was still a
material, and hence imperfect, phenomenon.
But at least it was a means of getting us, or our future
descendants, to
the climax of evolution in transcendent spirituality.
Without the big city, we would always be
nature's playthings.
But
the big city, being of the world, wasn't an end-in-itself, and
accordingly it
was worthy of at least some contempt every once in awhile. For beyond and above the highest civilization
on the planet would come the formation, in Michael Reid's considered
opinion,
of the highest possible development in the Universe - namely the
development of
pure spirit, which, in its transcendence, would not be of the world or
anything
in it. This ultimate manifestation of
divinity would certainly constitute a beyond, nay, the
Beyond
that Christian man had long believed in, albeit in his own necessarily
narrow,
personal, and egocentric way, with particular reference to posthumous
salvation. This would be above any
'happiness on earth' or 'happiness of the greatest number' that modern
socialists believed in and strove after, since the logical development beyond
it. Not so much a millennial climax to
evolution,
then, as a transcendental climax, issuing in the Omega Point, de Chardin's term for Heaven.
Yes, not so much a
'happiness on earth', stuck in front of the most sophisticated
ultra-modern
television with the ultra-modern furniture of a state-subsidised
apartment all
around one, and regular food, drink, sex, sleep, perhaps even work
(assuming
such an activity hadn't been exclusively entrusted to the machine by
then), to
prevent one from feeling underprivileged.
No, not so much all these constituents of a 'happiness on earth'
but, as
the eventual outcome of socialist progress, a happiness far superior to
the
earthly, in which the spirit reigned supreme and only the Holy Ghost or
the
Omega Point, as you prefer, prevailed ... as ultimate divinity. A perfect happiness in spiritual bliss rather
than an imperfect happiness in material comfort. All Becoming having been
resolved in perfect Being, all Becoming having achieved the calm beingfulness of Eternity.
Such, he believed, would
be the final outcome of evolution, for which, in the meantime, a
material
comfort was necessary, if only to prepare the ground, as it were, for
the
spiritual impetus that would take us on the last lap to Heaven. A comfort strictly regulated, however, always
kept within certain carefully-prescribed bounds for fear that a
reaction to
excessive materialism should set-in and thereby impede evolutionary
progress. Not materialism in any feudal
or capitalist sense, then. Only the
materialism necessary to a society bent on launching itself into the
millennial
Beyond through the systematic practice of transcendental meditation. A lesser materialism, by
all accounts, than anything that had preceded it in the overall
development of
civilization. The socialist
materialism appertaining to the ultimate civilization!
Yes, and as Michael Reid
continued to stare through the windows of Shearer's small red Citroën at the predominantly rural environments
through
which they were driving, he felt his contempt of nature giving way to
an
admiration for human progress and the admirable creature that man in
fact was,
especially higher or progressive man. To
be sure, man had done brilliant things in the world and even beyond it,
in
space. He had written truthful books,
composed lovely music, painted beautiful paintings, fashioned graceful
sculptures, erected enduring monuments, invented sophisticated
machines, built
impressive buildings, launched fantastic ships, acted breathtaking
parts,
climbed prodigious mountains, designed superb costumes, won important
victories,
sustained ingenious systems, etc. etc., to the greater glory of man! But all that, no matter how brilliant, was as
nothing compared with what he had still
to do
and, if fortune favoured him, undoubtedly would do in establishing the
Omega
Point in the Universe and thus becoming ultimate
divinity. All that he had done would pale
to
insignificance by comparison with what he would become at the climax of
evolution. Only the Holy Spirit that
evolved out of man's spirit would live for ever. Everything
else,
including the stars and
planets, would eventually fade away, leaving the Universe to its
ultimate
perfection in true divinity. Even the
greatest works man had ever fashioned would fade away, be destroyed as
the
stars burnt themselves out and collapsed into nothingness.
And all of it - works, nature, planets, and
stars - was contemptible in relation to the Omega Point.
Not just the world of which we were a part,
but the material universe as a whole, especially that part of it which
may be
deemed the original creative force behind all the habitable planets,
and which
Reid regarded as synonymous with the Devil.
Yes, the stars!
Especially were they contemptible in all
their infernal heat and manifold separateness!
Not quite consummate evil though, at least not these days. For time had eaten into them and rendered
them less hot and powerful than they used to be in their cosmic youth,
so to
speak. If the Devil was still alive he
or, rather, it wasn't as evil as formerly, but had devolved a fair way
along
its diabolic life-span of so many million years. Yet
it
was still evil enough, and no matter
for human complacency! Stellar
devolution had quite some way to go before the Devil reached old age
and
eventually died. In the meantime, we
could only do our best to further the cause of God, continue human
evolution
along the most transcendental lines, extend the realm of civilization
over
nature, and so become ever more civilized.
The European nations,
reflected Reid, were on the whole pretty good at this and had a worthy
tradition of civilized evolution behind them.
Britain, in particular, had played a leading role in extending
civilization, especially in the nineteenth century, when its colonial
power
extended across four continents. A year
ago, Reid would have been anti-colonial.
Now, however, he understood that the soldier who was facing-up,
in some
hostile African or Asian terrain, to native opposition ... symbolized
the cause
of good and not, as might at first appear, the reality of evil. In the context of colonial war, it was the
British who symbolized good because closer, in evolutionary terms, to
our
projected omega culmination of evolution than were the natives. The fact that evolution is effectively a
journey
from the Devil to God, as from alpha to omega, inevitably implied, in
Reid's
view, that those further up its ladder were morally superior to those
beneath
them and therefore closer, in a manner of speaking, to the ultimate
creation of
God. They might not be entirely good,
but, in comparison to their pagan opponents, they were certainly
symbolic of
progress, light, change, etc., and consequently worthy of greater
respect. Their overriding task is to bring
the
primitive to a higher level of evolution by imposing superior criteria
upon
him, and if they achieve this, the struggle, no matter how costly, will
have
been worthwhile. They are friends of the
primitive in disguise - hard, cold, merciless friends,
it may be, but friends nonetheless! For
in the long run they deliver him from his backwardness and coerce him
into
something better, drag him up by the scruff of the neck, as it were, to
a
higher stage of evolution. This, to
Reid, was good and necessary, and Britain had done more than its share
of dragging
up primitives, over the centuries, to deserve a rest and perhaps even
the
gratitude of those now profiting from its example.
The responsibility of leading the way in this
respect had now passed, it seemed, elsewhere, to hands no less capable,
one imagined,
of achieving their objectives. But the
new world leaders, while they may be to some extent justified in
dealing with
Europe, weren't perhaps the most relevant influence in places like
Africa,
whose historical and environmental precedent would suggest that
Christianity
and democracy have a future there which it would be foolish to deny. After all, Africa isn't on the same
evolutionary level as Western Europe, having only comparatively
recently been
dragged out of its primitive past.
To be sure, as the car
sped towards the
Yet, then again, one
could hardly expect a sophisticated big-city person to eulogize such
obviously
rural-inspired works as In
Defence
of Sensuality or A Philosophy
of Solitude, which have the ring of another age about them, an age
when
nature played a far greater role in most people's lives than it did
today. Naturally, there are
people for
whom Powys would be more relevant, but they're a dwindling minority
confined,
for the most part, to small towns and villages scattered around the
country. By far the largest number of
people are city dwellers and, if sophisticated, more likely to find the
sort of
authors Powys denounced to their taste.
That, at any rate, was what Michael Reid found to be the case
for
himself, since he hadn't touched a Powys tome or any kindred
rural-inspired
work in years, fearing that it could have a negative influence on his
transcendentalism and accordingly weaken his resolve to look upon
nature with a
kind of Mondrianesque disdain.
No, he wasn't going to
run the risk of becoming a nature-monger himself, no matter how
depressed the
city made him feel at times. If Tina and
Keith wanted to indulge in a bout of Elementalism,
or
nature-worship,
from time to time, good fucking luck
to them! But he wouldn't allow himself
to be dragged into such a venture on a regular basis if the idea caught
on. Oh, no! Once
in
a while was okay, provided one kept a
relatively straight face about it and didn't convey the impression,
like Tina,
that one was only too keen for an opportunity to flounder about amid so
much
plant life, as though it were a matter of life-and-death to one! Tina being a woman, Reid supposed that she
probably had greater need of the elemental than him.
And it wasn't as though she was one of the
most spiritual of women, either! On the
contrary, there was a fair amount of flesh on her - enough, at any
rate, to
make her more sensual than himself. A
year or two ago he might have fancied her.
Now, by contrast, he was quite resigned to her being Shearer's
girlfriend. She was insufficiently
slender for him. He had acquired other
standards.
"Not much farther
now, is it?" he thoughtfully inquired of the driver, feeling it was
time
he said something again.
"Almost there
actually," Shearer replied, half-looking over his shoulder. "Just another mile or
two."
Tina's face appeared to
acquire a new lease-of-life with these words.
"We could certainly do with some exercise, being cooped-up in
here
for so long," she affirmed.
"My legs have gone all stiff."
"Yeah, well I'm
sure we'll have plenty of opportunity to stretch our legs," her
boyfriend
rejoined with a reassuring smile.
"Let's hope the weather stays fine."
There were a few, thin,
innocent-looking clouds in the sky, but nothing to excite undue alarm
or
pessimism. The sun shone down brightly
in front of them, and it was an altogether very warm day, even with the
breeze
that had sprung-up, causing sporadic fluctuations in temperature. The car's interior was rather stuffy though,
despite the half-open status of the driver's window.
"I do hope there
won't be too many other people there," said Tina, following a
conversational pause. "It would be
so nice to have most of the place to ourselves."
Shearer smiled
sympathetically. "I rather fear,
from the amount of traffic on the road, that there'll be no shortage of
like-minded
people about," he declared. "Unless, of course, most of them are going to the coast. However, let's not jump to conclusions. Even if there are
a lot of
others there, it'll still be relatively deserted by comparison with
London,
won't it?"
"Yes, I guess
so," Tina conceded with a forced sigh.
"As long as we can find somewhere nice to
picnic
in peace. I'm quite famished
now."
"So am I,"
Shearer said.
"Me too," Reid
admitted, though he was also beginning to feel a shade apprehensive, as
they approached
their destination, and more concerned about his spiritual integrity
than the
well-being of his stomach. He hadn't set
foot on the land of a large open space in over a year and wasn't
particularly
confident that he would like the experience.
On the contrary, he was becoming more pessimistic the nearer
they got to
the Sussex Downs. So much so that, by
the time they actually arrived at their journey's end, his heart was
beating
twice as fast as normally and he had virtually broken into a cold
sweat, much
as if he were afraid of turning into a cat or something.
"Here at
last!" Tina exclaimed with obvious relish, as the car drew to a stop on
the near side of a large parking area, with the spectacle of open
grassland
looming before them. "And not too
crowded either, by the look of it."
"No, I think we'll
find plenty of space to wander about in and act the part of 'noble
savages' all
afternoon," Shearer confirmed humorously.
They got out of the car
and stood for a moment gazing intently about them, breathing-in the
fresh Downs
air which the breeze wafted hither and thither with wilful ease. Then Tina attended to the picnic hamper,
lifting it from the boot, while Shearer, having secured his window,
locked the doors. Only Michael Reid
continued to stand where he
was and survey his new surroundings - not, however, with pleasure but
with
mounting horror! For the prospect of
having to walk across the space before them and thereby abandon himself
to the
vegetation there quite chilled him, making him feel strangely faint. How could he,
the
disciple
of Mondrian and staunch advocate
of
transcendentalism, possibly allow himself to be surrounded and
well-nigh
swamped by so much raw nature, so much subconsciously-dominated
sensuality? How could he
possibly set
foot across the Sussex Downs in order to sit and have lunch amid the
Devil's
own creations, when he was a man of God, a pioneer of the spirit in
Manichaean
disdain for the sensual? The question
arose in his mind and fairly tormented him.
He hadn't bargained for anything like this when he set out with
Tina and
Keith earlier that day, not having been confronted by such a dilemma
before. He hadn't realized just how
spiritually earnest he had become over the past year, how much a man of
the
city. Now that he found himself
confronted by so much untamed nature, it seemed as though his very
existence as
a spiritual leader was being not merely threatened, but called into
question. He scarcely heard what his
companions were saying to each other, as they came up alongside him
with the
hamper. He was far too engrossed in his
thoughts.
"Now then, let's
get going, shall we?" Shearer suggested, smiling confidently at the
vast
expanse of green scenery that stretched away before them.
"I say,
are you alright, Michael?" asked Tina, noticing
the worried expression on the artist's thin face. He
was
also quite pale and appeared to be on
the verge of some kind of nervous crisis.
"Well, as a matter
of fact, I'm feeling a bit queasy," he confessed, becoming shamefaced
and
slightly embarrassed.
"Good heavens! I
hadn't noticed you were ill," Shearer declared with an expression of
spontaneous concern on his handsome face.
"Was it the journey or something?"
"Possibly a
combination of that and something I ate for breakfast," Reid
impulsively
lied. He couldn't very well tell them
the truth!
Tina looked genuinely
concerned and suggested to her boyfriend that perhaps Michael ought to
return
to the car and rest there awhile. She
had half-divined his problem.
Shearer looked
puzzled. "I'd have thought a little
fresh air and exercise the best remedy," he opined, casting the artist
a
slightly quizzical glance. "Come
on, he'll soon be feeling better once we get under way."
And without further ado, he started off
across the grass, almost dragging Tina along with him.
Automatically, if
somewhat reluctantly, Reid followed suit and accompanied them in the
general
direction they were heading. But it was
as though he had entered a realm that was hostile to him, a realm where
civilization counted for nothing and spiritual aspirations were negated. The further away from the car he walked, the
more hostile the environment seemed to become, and he began to feel
that he was
suffocating in some foreign element, growing estranged from his normal
rhythms. All around him the thick
stubbly grass assumed a deeply menacing aspect, as though contact with
it was
slowly sucking the spirit out of him, draining him of life energy,
mocking and
undermining him. He shuddered with
disgust and came to a sudden halt. He
felt on the point of throwing-up, so vertiginous had he become. Already the car was some 80-90 yards behind
them. It looked somehow remote and
abandoned, almost betrayed. How could he
go on?
Responding to his
hesitation, Tina halted beside him, obliging her hamper-carrying
companion to
reluctantly do likewise. She could
plainly see how distressed he was by the situation.
"Would you rather return to the
car?" she asked on a note of unfeigned concern.
He stared apologetically
back at her for an instant, then quickly
nodded his
head.
Realizing the situation
was beyond his control, Shearer dipped into his pocket and handed
Michael Reid
the keys to the car. "I'm sorry
you're not well enough to come with us," he murmured, frowning
gently. "But I hope you'll soon get
over whatever has upset you."
"Thanks," the
artist responded, making a brave attempt at smiling.
"You'd better take
a couple of sandwiches and a carton of milk with you," Tina advised
him, opening
the hamper and dipping her hand into it for the items in question. "Here.
We can't let you starve to death while we're away."
As
he
took the proffered provisions, Reid
thought he could detect in her expression an intuitive comprehension of
his predicament.
"If you become well
enough to join us later-on this afternoon, don't hesitate to do so,"
Shearer suggested innocently.
"Assuming you can
find us, that is!" Tina joked. "Though I don't suppose we'll stray too far away. We'll probably be back by half-five or six at
the latest." It was now nearly
half-past one.
"I'm sincerely
grateful to you both," Reid managed to say, "and apologize for any
inconvenience this may have caused you."
"No problem,"
Tina affirmed, smiling reassuringly.
So it was that, with
provisions and keys in hand, Michael Reid quickly returned to the Citroën and gratefully let himself in. He was still feeling somewhat dizzy and
embarrassed, but gradually, adjusting himself to its 'civilized'
interior, this
gave way to a feeling of relief, as though he had actually been sick
and thus
unburdened himself of an upset stomach.
Never had the interior of a car seemed so pleasant to him as
now, and it
wasn't long before he was able to avail himself of the food and drink
which
Tina had so thoughtfully and generously given him.
Here at least he would be relatively safe
from the Downs, surrounded by a protective shell of civilization. Later, for want of something to do, he would
read the novel he had brought with him and possibly listen to the car
radio for
a while. Maybe he would take a walk
round the parking area after he had visited the nearby public
conveniences. And later still, when they
all got back to London, he promised himself that, to compensate his
sensual
side for the indulgences he had just denied it, he would eat a large
dinner,
take a stroll round the local streets, and go to bed an hour early. But never again would he allow himself to be
cajoled into setting foot on the Sussex Downs!
TO
THE
MILLENNIUM AND BEYOND
Mrs
Reynolds
returned from the kitchen bearing a small circular
tray upon which stood three mugs of steaming coffee, and gently placed
it on
the coffee table between the two men, who were still deeply engrossed
in
conversation. She glanced from the one to
the other and, catching their attention, suggested that they help
themselves to
the coffee whilst it was still hot.
"I do hope you won't find it too strong," she added for the
benefit of their guest - a thin, dark-haired forty-year-old, who was
privileged
to be visiting the Reynolds' house for the first time.
Robert Moore reached out
a slender hand with more hairs on the back of it than Jacqui Reynolds
had ever
seen on any man before and, lifting the bright-blue mug to his lips,
duly
confessed to finding the coffee just to his taste.
(In point of fact it was slightly sweeter
than he would have liked, though he didn't say so for fear of giving
offence. No doubt, the two spoons of
sugar she had put into it at his request were bigger than he had
anticipated!)
Mrs Reynolds smiled her
relief and, helping herself to the remaining mug, betook her slender
form to
the space beside her husband on their dark-green settee.
From his matching armchair opposite them, the
young freelance writer on art sipped steadily at his drink and
momentarily
allowed his attention to be caught by Mrs Reynolds' shapely legs, which
for a
brief second or two, before she tactfully readjusted her skirt, were at
least
three-quarters exposed. He could very
rarely resist the temptation to stare at or, at the very least, notice
an
attractive pair of legs when the opportunity arose, and this time was
to prove
no exception! A faint blush suffused his
cheeks as Mrs Reynolds eased her skirt into a more modest position, and
he was
glad in a way to have the mug of coffee to hide behind.
It was just like a woman, he mused, to
distract one from more spiritual matters!
But Mr Reynolds hadn't
been distracted to anything like the same extent, and was now informing
his
wife that Robert thought the interior arrangement of their house could
be
bettered by having the sitting-room, in which they were all currently
seated,
on the first floor rather than downstairs, as at present.
"Oh,
really?" Mrs Reynolds exclaimed, her velvety lips briefly
parting
in a show of surprise. "And why's
that?" she asked, turning her attention upon their guest.
"Well, as I was
just saying to Philip while you were in the kitchen," Moore replied,
"it's a firm belief of mine that the best possible arrangement for a
two-storey house of this nature would be to have all the rooms
dedicated to
sensual or bodily needs on the ground floor and, by contrast, all those
associated with spiritual or intellectual pursuits upstairs, on the piano
nobile. Such
an
arrangement
would sharply distinguish between sensual and spiritual,
the lower
needs of the body and the higher needs of the spirit, leaving one in no
doubt
as to the greater importance of the latter."
"The idea apparently
being," Mr Reynolds said, clearing his throat and focusing a pair of
intense brown eyes on his wife's intrigued face, "that the ground floor
should be seen in a morally inferior relation to the one above, which
would
symbolize our nobler aspirations."
"Yes, the former
might be defined as a feminine floor and the latter as a masculine
one,"
Moore opined for the nominal benefit of his hostess.
"And since evolution is essentially a
journey from the senses to the spirit, it would seem sensible to
reflect this
fact in an arrangement which gave greater importance to the latter."
Mrs Reynolds smiled
sceptically and a shade wearily over her coffee, her gaze turning from
their
guest to her husband and back to their guest again, as she pondered the
arcane
logic of his contention.
"Presumably such a topsy-turvy arrangement would necessitate
one's
having the kitchen, dining-room, bedroom, toilet, and bathroom on the
lower
floor, with the sitting-room, library, and study upstairs?"
"Absolutely,"
Moore confirmed, briskly nodding his large round head, which seemed
curiously
out-of-place on such a thin body.
"For cooking, eating, sleeping, copulating, urinating,
defecating,
washing, and bathing are all sensual or bodily matters which should be
equated
with the mundane side of life, whereas reading, watching television,
listening
to the radio, listening to discs and/or tapes, talking, thinking, and
playing a
musical instrument are all spiritual and intellectual matters which
should be
equated with the transcendental side of life.
You might add to the rooms already listed on the first floor a music and/or meditation room, thereby ensuring
alternative
higher rooms." Here he broke off
speaking to sip some more coffee and savour the agreeable taste and
smell of
that mildly sensuous drink, a drink which resulted in one of the
mildest forms
of downward self-transcendence, to coin a Huxleyite
phrase, in contrast to, say, gin or whisky, which were far more potent
and
thus, to his way of thinking, correspondingly more detrimental to the
spirit. Coffee and tea were
comparatively harmless.
"Supposing one has
more than one bedroom?" Mrs Reynolds queried, slightly amused by her
previous oversight. "After all, if
one's house contained two or more bedrooms, as most detached and
semidetached
two-storey houses in fact do, how could one be expected to find enough
room for
them all on the ground floor, what with everything else there?"
"An
interesting point!" Mr Reynolds averred, putting his
half-consumed
coffee to one side and helping himself to a mild cigarette. "It's generally the case, you know, that
people have a greater number of rooms dedicated to sensual needs than
to those
of the spirit."
"That may well
be,"
"Yet in a
three-storey house with two or more bedrooms, you'd presumably still
like to
see the spiritual floor, as it were, upstairs, at the very top," Mrs
Reynolds suggested with a smile.
"Yes, that has to
be admitted," said
Mrs Reynolds had to
admit it was a novel idea, though she didn't much care for the prospect
of
sleeping on the ground floor in a two- or three-storey house. She had always slept upstairs, right from
childhood to her current age of thirty-eight, and couldn't imagine
herself
doing anything else, least of all sleeping down in a basement. For some obscure reason basements always
connoted, in her vivid imagination, with rats, and she was rather
relieved that
the Finchley house in which she and Philip had lived ever since their
wedding,
some three years previously, didn't possess one. If
it
had, she would have slept well away
from it. But what
about Robert Moore? Did he live
in a house in which this kind of hierarchical arrangement obtained?
"Unfortunately
not," he confessed, blushing faintly without this time being able to
mask
his embarrassment. For
the coffee had by now ceased steaming and, besides, he had drunk most
of it. "I happen to live in a flat
where the
rooms are all on the third floor, so I'm unable to put my ideas into
operation. However, as your husband is
an architect, I was hoping that a few words from me on the subject
would induce
him to plan some of his future projects along similar lines - lines,
that is,
in which rooms are arranged in an ascending order of importance,
according to
their contextual use."
Mr Reynolds allowed a
terse chuckle to follow in quick pursuit of some freshly-exhaled
cigarette
smoke. "I don't normally permit
other people to influence my architectural ideas," he smilingly
revealed. "But where you
are
concerned, Robert, I just might make an exception!
However, during the next few weeks I shall be
busy designing plans for a new church in Hampstead, so your suggestions
may
have to wait awhile."
"I see,"
responded Moore, and his heart metaphorically sank a bit, not because
he had
any serious hopes that the architect would eventually adopt his
suggestions,
but because he didn't like to hear it was a church the man would be
working on
over the coming weeks. He would much
rather it was a meditation centre, or a place in which people could
directly
cultivate the spirit. But meditation
centres were probably projects for the future.
The architect had simply not been authorized to design one. Things would just have to take their logical
course. And so, returning his by-now empty
mug to the small coffee tray, he at length asked: "What kind of a
church
is it going to be?"
"Frankly, I'm not
yet absolutely certain," Mr Reynolds replied, screwing-up his features
in
deference to the fact, "though I've one or two useful ideas in mind. I haven't yet decided on whether to adopt a
modern or a traditional plan, if that's what you mean."
"No, I was thinking
more specifically in terms of denomination," Moore confessed.
This time it was the
architect's turn to feel embarrassed.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" he said. "I
thought
you were alluding to
style." His wife laughed shrilly at
his expense, while their guest chipped-in with an understanding chuckle. "Well, as a matter of fact, it's going
to be a United Reformed Church actually.
Why, do you have any specific interests at stake?"
"Not
particularly," Moore replied.
"Just curious, that's all."
"I'd have thought
that, what with a name like yours, you'd have preferred to hear it was
a
Catholic church," Mrs Reynolds remarked.
"You are Irish, aren't you?"
"Yes, to the extent
that I was born in Ireland of predominantly Irish parents," the latter
conceded, blushing slightly. "But,
seeing as I was brought-up in England and speak with an English accent,
I tend
to regard myself as a sort of Hiberno-Englishman."
Mr Reynolds raised a
pair of dense brows in mute puzzlement.
"What's that
supposed to mean?" he
half-humorously asked.
"Essentially the
reverse of an Anglo-Irishman," Moore declared in a self-evident
tone-of-voice. "Whereas an Anglo-Irishman
is a man of English descent born and raised in Ireland, an
Hiberno-Englishman is someone of Irish
descent born
and raised in England."
"But I thought you
said you were born in Ireland?" Mrs Reynolds objected.
"I did," Moore
admitted, blushing anew. "But since
I was still a mere toddler when I was brought to this country in the
wake of my
mother's marital break-up, I incline to give myself the benefit of the
doubt
and accordingly claim greater English allegiance on the strength of my
provincial upbringing."
"And presumably
that was Catholic?" Mrs Reynolds conjectured.
"Both Catholic and
Protestant
actually," Moore confessed, becoming still more embarrassed. "Roman Catholic until
my tenth year, Protestant thereafter."
"How
unusual!" Mr Reynolds exclaimed, suddenly looking at his guest
as
though he didn't quite believe him.
"And how, exactly, did that come about?"
Robert Moore shrugged
doubtful shoulders. Although he knew how
and why it had happened, he didn't want to go into any of the sordid
details
now. Undoubtedly the death of his
Catholic grandmother, to whom he had been strongly attached, had more
than a
little to do with it; though he didn't know exactly how much. Nevertheless it was evident to him that his
mother, whose father had originally been Protestant, didn't feel under
the same
obligation to maintain his Catholic upbringing as formerly, nor even to
hold on
to him once her mother had died and - not having had the benefit of
marital
security or indeed any love from her estranged husband - she was
accordingly
free to dispatch him to a Children's Home, the denominational bias of
which was
Baptist, and effectively wash her hands of the past, the better to
continue
afresh in the present with someone else.
"And do you still
consider yourself a Protestant?" Mrs Reynolds wanted to know.
"As it happens, I
haven't been to church since I left school at seventeen, which should
be ample
indication that I've little enthusiasm for Protestantism," Moore
answered
her. "In fact, I tended to regard
it as something that had been thrust upon me when I was sent away
rather than
voluntarily accepted. Yet too much water
had flowed under the bridge of my life for me to be able to return to
the Catholic
fold from which I had been plucked several years before.
And so I was obliged to turn my back on
Christianity and seek my own spiritual path.
These days I incline to regard myself as a transcendentalist,
since I
have certain transcendental sympathies which lead me to consider
meditation of
more spiritual significance than prayer.
I believe, if you must know, that Christianity will eventually
be
superseded by transcendentalism."
"The widespread
institutionalized practice of transcendental meditation signifying
direct
contact with the Godhead in a more evolved civilization, is that it?"
Mr
Reynolds ventured to speculate on a mildly ironic note.
"Not
entirely," Moore corrected.
"It would simply signify a more direct contact with one's own
spiritual self than could be achieved through traditional Christian
practices,
including prayer. For, so far as I'm
concerned, the Holy Spirit doesn't really exist. It's
simply
our destiny to create it in due
course, to attain to it through the future transformation of our
spiritual
selves from impure flesh-clogged phenomena into transcendent spirit -
detached
and pure."
"How, exactly, do
you suppose we'll do that?" Mrs Reynolds asked, her face expressing
bewilderment.
"Presumably through
meditation," her husband interposed, smiling wryly.
"Undoubtedly
meditation would play a significant part in the process of our future
transformation from human beings into the Holy Spirit," Moore
asseverated,
principally for the benefit of his hostess.
"But I rather doubt that we would get very far simply by relying
on
meditation. After all, the flesh would
continue to detract from one's transcendental aspirations and
accordingly place
a strict limit on one's spiritual potential."
Mr Reynolds repeated his
earlier look of puzzlement whilst exhaling a final lungful of tobacco
smoke. Then, when he had stubbed-out the
pitiful remains of his tipped cigarette, he asked: "In what way?"
"Well, simply by
being there," Moore replied, simultaneously waving his right hand
horizontally backwards and forwards through the air in an attempt to
disperse
the haze of cigarette smoke which had gradually built-up between the
Reynolds
and himself. "For the flesh is ever
in mortal opposition to the spirit and must inevitably limit the extent
to
which the latter can be cultivated with impunity.
You always have to attend to its needs,
which are necessarily sensual and worldly.
You have to eat, drink, sleep, take exercise, urinate, defecate,
copulate, etc., and consequently turn away from cultivating the spirit
-
certainly in any true sense - while doing so.
And so your spiritual aspirations are held back, as it were, by
fleshy
requirements. You can never become
ultra-spiritual
and have a body at the same time."
Mrs Reynolds felt
obliged to emit a faint giggle, in spite of the seriousness of Robert
Moore's
tone-of-voice. There was something
quaintly self-evident about his last remark and she followed it up by
suggesting that, in that case, one could never become ultra-spiritual
at all,
since one couldn't live without a body.
"After all," she continued, "without a body we wouldn't
be able to cultivate the spirit to even a tiny extent, because it
depends on
the body for its survival. You can't
have the one without the other."
"Not under our current
historical circumstances," Moore conceded.
"But evolutionary progress should lead us to a stage where the
natural body will be replaced by an artificial one which will both
support and
sustain the brain, thus making a much more exclusive cultivation of the
spirit
possible to us."
His host and hostess
stared at each other in bewilderment, before turning their attention
upon their
guest again. "D'you
mean to imply that we'll probably end-up
looking like
robots or something equally mechanical?" Mr Reynolds asked, his
bewilderment changing to hostile scepticism.
"We could well
do," Moore replied, endeavouring not to be intimidated by a response
which, in any case, he had anticipated all along.
"But that's
preposterous!" Mrs Reynolds averred.
"Not as preposterous
as it might at first seem," Moore rejoined. "For
if
we don't eventually overcome
nature in all
of its manifestations, internal as well as external, we'll never
get to the supernatural, to that which stands at the farthest possible
remove
from nature and its sensuous offspring.
The attainment to transcendent spirit could only be effected
through our
overcoming everything which pertains to nature, including ourselves. 'Man is something that should be overcome,'
said Nietzsche, and, by God, how true that statement is!
So long as we remain victims of the mundane,
we shall never attain to the transcendent, never create or establish
the only
possible and sensible climax to evolution in an eternity of bliss. For bliss is the highest condition of which
we can conceive, and it's perfectly understandable that we should want
such a
supreme condition to last for ever.
Admittedly, as human beings, we can only experience bliss in
relatively
small doses over short periods of time.
But as post-human transcendent minds, we would undoubtedly be
better
equipped to experience it on a much more intensive, not to say
extensive,
basis. And it's only in terms of the
post-human that one should conceive of the Beyond."
Yes, how true that
statement was for Robert Moore! He
wasn't one of those who conceived of the Beyond in terms of a
posthumous
survival of death, an afterlife in which the individual's spirit merged
with
the Clear Light or whatever in heavenly absorption.
Indeed, whenever he thought of what people had
traditionally believed about salvation and God, he was almost amused. For there was something pathetically naive
about the optimistic presumption people had once had - and, in many
cases,
continued to have - with regard to their prospects of salvation in the
next
life, and, no less significantly, their methods of getting there! To be sure, most people had been incredibly
optimistic as to the criteria of admittance to the transcendental
Beyond, never
for a moment imagining that it would require the highest possible
technology in
the most advanced civilization to effect a
complete
and literal victory over nature. Indeed,
they hadn't even considered it necessary to get beyond nature. Yet that was the way it had to be,
considering they knew no better and were themselves victims of a stage
of
evolution in which a more comprehensive and rational knowledge of the
Beyond
would have been impossible. Their
delusions were necessary and, in a sense, quite admirable.
At least they had some bearing on human destiny,
no matter how tenuously!
Even today, in this
so-called enlightened age, there was no shortage of like-delusions
concerning
salvation and the means of attaining to it.
But that, too, was understandable and, to a certain extent,
inevitable. However, such delusions had to
be combated by
those who knew, or imagined they knew, better and, if possible,
replaced by
truths or, at the very least, delusions which were less delusive and
possibly
closer to the Truth. That was the way
evolution progressed, no matter how slowly in a world still largely
under
nature's influence. For
human
progress
was ever a struggle waged by those who were less sensuous over
their more sensuous opponents. It
was a struggle of sorts that was taking place in the Reynolds'
sitting-room at
this very moment, as a more enlightened guest sought to convince his
less-enlightened hosts as to the validity of what he believed. Not being particularly profound thinkers,
they had never conceived of the Beyond like him, in a sort of
transcendent way,
and were accordingly somewhat sceptical about what he was saying. [When
people
who do not think profoundly, either through force of professional
circumstances
or basic intellectual inability, are confronted by the thoughts of
someone who
does, the chances are strongly in favour of their not seeing eye-to-eye
with
him, considering that 'the superficial' and 'the profound' are ever on
very
different wavelengths.
This is a perfectly logical, not to say fairly inevitable, state
of
affairs, by which a deep thinker needn’t be unduly perturbed. For once he realizes that 'the superficial'
aren't on his wavelength, he won't be surprised, still less offended,
by their
opposition to his views but, on the contrary, will take it more or less
for
granted - a position our leading character, Robert Moore, was indeed
inclined
to adopt.]
"Yet if, as you
maintain, the Beyond is a phenomenon that's destined to materialize, as
it
were, at the climax of evolution, where does the Millennium come in?"
Mr
Reynolds now asked, displaying fresh signs of puzzlement.
"I mean, isn't the Millennium supposed
to be the logical outcome of history, a period of happiness on earth
rather
than in Heaven?"
Moore nodded his large
head in tacit agreement. "Viewed
from a strictly Marxist angle, the Millennium is the outcome of
historical
development or, at any rate, a period of maximum social progress
towards which
the world would seem to be advancing," he declared.
"I want the Millennium to come about,
that's to say I want to see life on earth better than ever before, so
good as
to be almost heavenly. But I don't
conceive of the Millennium simply in terms of material well-being for
the
masses, equal opportunity, regular food and drink for all, sexual
freedom, or
what have you. No doubt, we'll have to
pass through a phase of social evolution, as at present, when such
material
considerations are paramount. But, you
know, 'Man does not live by bread alone', and this is no less true or
relevant
now than when Christ first said it. In
fact, it's even more relevant, since evolutionary progress should
entail
greater degrees of spiritual commitment.
After all, we aren't beasts but men and, as such, we're given to
the
spiritual to a degree which no beast ever can be. It's,
above
all, our spiritual capacities and
aspirations which distinguish us from the beasts and elevate us above
them. God forbid that the end of human
evolution should be conceived merely in terms of material well-being,
as though
we were simply intelligent animals with a belly to feed and the need of
a roof
over our heads! No, for me, the
Millennium would be a stage beyond that of material well-being, in
which the
utmost efforts were being made by society to attain to the climax of
evolution
in spiritual transcendence. It would be
a time when everything possible was being done to facilitate our
transformation
into pure spirit. A
means to a higher end, not an end-in-itself."
Mrs Reynolds swallowed a
last mouthful of coffee and returned her by-now empty mug to the tray. She found this kind of talk a little above
her head but didn't like to say so, especially since her husband always
prided
himself, somewhat perversely she thought, on having an intellectual
wife. "So presumably it would entail the
widespread practice of transcendental meditation?" she suggested, by
way
of a constructive response.
"That's
right," Moore confirmed. "And
quite possibly the widespread use of 'Moksha’
or
some
such synthetic upward self-transcending drug intended to expand the
mind and
facilitate otherworldly sentiments."
He was of course alluding to a term coined by Aldous
Huxley to define psychedelic drugs like LSD and mescaline, a term with
which
both Philip and Jacqui Reynolds were vaguely familiar.
"But meditation and synthetic drugs
wouldn't be enough," he went on.
"For, as I said earlier, it would also be necessary to minimize
fleshy influences, and for this purpose the introduction of artificial
limbs
and mechanical parts would, I contend, prove especially efficacious. We couldn't end-up approximating to cyborgs, however, without having gone through
progressively
more artificial stages of evolution in the meantime, so it's reasonable
to
believe that the introduction of mechanical parts would take place
slowly and
by degrees, in accordance with the social and technological position of
civilization at the time. One has to
earn the right to look like cyborgs and,
by God, we still have a long way to go
before we can manage to
dispense with natural limbs!"
Mrs Reynolds just had to
laugh at this juncture in their conversation.
For the earnestness with which Robert Moore spoke seemed utterly
absurd
to her. She couldn't possibly imagine
herself looking forward to a cyborg-like
existence,
as he appeared to be doing. "One
would think you were an admirer of The
Bionic
Man," she
remarked, referring to an American television serial in which a man
partly
constructed from mechanical parts assumes a superhuman role of dynamic
strength
and power against evil.
"In point of fact,
I don't watch all that much television," Moore confessed.
"But from what I can remember of the
serial in question, it confirms my opinion of the tendency of evolution
away
from nature. They spoke, during the
introduction, of the insertion of mechanical parts into the shattered
astronaut's
body resulting in his becoming quicker, stronger, better than ever
before, or
something to that effect, and, believe me, that's a truly remarkable
sentiment,
a sentiment whereby man assumes mastery over nature by producing,
through his
growing technological expertise, a cyborg-like
being
superior
in essence to a natural man.
When people get to this stage, a stage of believing they can
produce
superior works to nature, then there's certainly hope for the future
development of humanity in self-transcendence.
To worship the natural is to be a sensuous pagan.
To turn away from it is to approach spiritual
transcendence. Yes, The
Bionic
Man is indeed a foretaste of things to come!
Though perhaps, being female, you'd prefer Wonder Woman,
Jacqui?"
"Frankly I'm not
particularly keen on either concept," she confessed, frowning. "If you must know, I prefer the human
body as it is."
"What, even with
all the colds and bouts of 'flu, fevers and aches, pains and stings,
cuts and
bruises, malfunctionings and diseases,
breakdowns and
lesions, etc., not to mention all its tediously diurnal wants and
needs?"
Moore objected, raising incredulous brows.
"Really, I am surprised at you!
One would think that you wanted us to suffer the harsh
consequences of
being enslaved to nature for ever, as though it were an ideal
condition!"
"On the contrary, I
just don't want us to end-up looking like machines," Mrs Reynolds
retorted.
"Ah, but unless we do
replace
the natural body with artificial parts in due course, we'll always be
subject
to the numerous ills which befall it," Moore averred.
"And not only that, we'll always be
prevented from cultivating our spiritual self to the degree we need to,
if
transcendence is ultimately to be achieved.
So it seems to me that the adoption of artificial parts is a
must in
ensuring that we get to the transcendental Beyond, which would, after
all, be
the most supernatural of all conditions."
"But how would the
brain survive without a body, assuming, as you're doing, that we become
increasingly artificial and wish to remove every last obstacle to our
spiritual
development?" Mrs Reynolds protested.
"I am of course supposing that the spirit is a function of the
brain."
"More correctly, a
function, in Koestlerian parlance, of the
new brain
which, in psychological terms, can be equated with the superconscious,"
Moore declared deferentially, alluding to the writer, Arthur Koestler, whom he much admired.
"The old brain would, I believe, prove
an obstacle to spiritual development, since aligned with the sensuous
subconscious, and might therefore be subject to curtailment and even to
surgical removal in due course, depending on the circumstances. But you're rather jumping the evolutionary
gun, as it were, by asking me that question, because there would
doubtless be
many intermediate stages of body-mechanization ... before we arrived at
our
goal of being able to dispense with everything but the brain. However, the most feasible conjecture leads
one to the conclusion that the brain would be kept alive via a sort of
mechanical heart, which would pump blood through it in much the same
way as the
natural heart, but without the disadvantages of being mortal. It could well transpire that such a
mechanical heart would permit a longevity of the brain which would
prove
crucial in the spirit's quest to attain to the transcendental Beyond,
by
granting it the requisite time, so to speak, in which to cultivate a
truly
transcendent potential."
"What a terrible
prospect!" Mrs Reynolds protested, making an ugly show of her face. "A mechanical heart? Whatever next!"
"A stage beyond the
transplantation of natural hearts, I should imagine," Moore rejoined. "And, hopefully, a more reliable means
of sustaining the brain! But, seriously,
we're already committed to artificial limbs and mechanical parts, as a
visit to
virtually any large hospital would confirm.
There are glass eyes, metal legs, plastic bones, etc., not to
mention
wheelchairs of various kinds for the severely disabled.
Indeed, it might well be that our concern for
the disabled, in this respect, is partly founded on an unconscious,
barely-articulated drive towards the widespread adoption of mechanical
limbs,
and that they to some extent serve as guinea pigs for continuous
experimentation. Paradoxically, the
disabled themselves could be regarded as, in some sense, our
evolutionary
superiors, insofar as they're dependent on artificial limbs or parts
and are
thus ahead of us in their use. A man
with an artificial leg has less of the natural about himself than
someone like
you or I."
Mr Reynolds, who had
been respectfully quiet for some time, suddenly gave vent to a short,
sharp
burst of incredulous laughter.
"You're not seriously implying that we able-bodied people should
get ourselves incapacitated or crippled in order to join the morally
superior
ranks of the disabled, are you?" he cried.
"Of
course not!" Moore retorted, becoming embarrassed.
"I was merely suggesting that there is
something about the use of artificial limbs which has a bearing on the
future
and could perhaps be viewed in a more optimistic light.
After all, it does seem that a person
dependent on a wheelchair is a bit closer to the supernatural
culmination of
life on earth than someone who walks about on natural limbs. He's entirely reliant on a mechanical mode of
conveyance, which should correspond, I believe, to what will generally
become
the case for people in the future. Yet,
even today, an ever-growing number of perfectly able-bodied people are
more
dependent on mechanical modes of conveyance than ever before, as can be
verified by the increasing amount of traffic on our roads.
Is there not a correspondence here between
the brain-directed automatons of H.G. Wells' The
War
of the Worlds and
the modern motorist? Is not the
Martian-like creature of the future already incipient in the motorcar?"
Both the Reynolds smiled
what appeared to be simultaneous concessions to that assumption, with
Mr
Reynolds also vaguely nodding his sparsely-haired head.
He was the proud owner of a Porsche and
couldn't very well deny the element of truth in
"But what about
you, Robert, you're not a motorist by any chance, are you?" Mrs
Reynolds
asked.
"Unfortunately
not," he replied, frowning slightly.
"I happen to be one of those inferior creatures who depend on
the
pavement more than the road, although I do avail myself of public
transport
from time to time. Like this evening,
for instance." Yes, he did that all
right! But he very often found it to be
an unnerving and depressing experience, seated in the company of people
who
were suffering from foul germs of one kind or another and tended, in
consequence, to snivel or cough or blow their snot-clogged noses all
around
one. Normally he tried to get a front
seat in order to minimize contact with them.
But that wasn't always possible, especially when the bus was
crowded. Then one just had to sit where
one could and
take whatever germs came one's way for granted.
Rather hazardous, but there it was!
We weren't exactly living in the most advanced of times. Colds and 'flu were
rife among the masses and would doubtless continue to be rife among
them for
some time to come. In fact, until such
time as a preventative was found or, more likely, men grew beyond the
reach of
germs by adopting mechanical limbs and/or synthetic parts.
Meantime, people would always be subject to
victimization from this rather sordid aspect of the natural world - a
world
abounding in germs.
And not only in germs
but also in various kinds and degrees of downward self-transcendence,
as Mr
Reynolds seemed only too keen to demonstrate by helping himself to
another
cigarette, which, having lit with the aid of a silver lighter, he
vigorously
proceeded to smoke, exhaling obnoxious fumes in Robert Moore's
direction. Admittedly, a mild kind of
downward
self-transcendence by comparison with some kinds, but a downward
self-transcendence nonetheless! Another obstacle in the way of spiritual progress. One could never hope to attain to the
transcendental Beyond and smoke at the same time. For
tobacco
grew from the earth and was
therefore naturalistic. It carried one
away from the spirit, like beer or food or sleep or sex.
So long as one indulged or needed to indulge
in sensual pursuits, there wasn't a chance of one's attaining to any
sort of
heavenly bliss, not even the slightest!
One would inevitably remain rooted in the mundane, the world. Now as a human being one had no option but to
remain rooted in it to some extent, one had no option but to eat, drink
(not
necessarily alcohol), sleep, walk, etc.
Indeed, if in one or other of these obligatory natural contexts
one was
failing to pay one's dues to the Devil, as it were, to the extent that
one
should, either through unfortunate circumstances or wilful choice,
there was
always the likelihood that, if one didn't wish to suffer the
consequences of
starving one's sensual self, one would have to compensate it by
indulging in
one or other of the less respectable, because least obligatory, kinds
of
sensual pursuit. Consequently a person
who didn't get enough sleep or sex might well find himself obliged to
indulge
in the consumption of tobacco and/or alcohol of one kind or another as
a form
of sensual compensation. It wasn't
necessarily the case that because one smoked or drank, one was more
sensual
than those who didn't.
Whether Mr Reynolds
smoked because he needed to compensate himself for some more obligatory
sensual
lack or, alternatively, because he was a relatively shameless
sensualist, it
wasn't of course possible for Robert Moore to tell.
So he hesitated to pass moral judgement on
the man. Yet he knew for a fact that
unless men eventually overcame both necessary and
unnecessary sensual indulgences, they would never attain to salvation
in the
pure spirit of ultimate transcendence.
Unless the natural body was eventually superseded by a
mechanical one, men
would always be subject to the demands - and limitations - of the flesh. There could be little doubt, therefore, that
evolution was slowly working towards overcoming the natural in all
its
aspects, and would culminate in the complete and utter triumph of the
spirit. Any other interpretation of
human destiny was futile or inadequate, partial or incomplete. Willy-nilly, God had to be the outcome of our
endeavour, not simply material comfort.
Yet it was precisely
this belief that puzzled the Marxist-oriented Philip Reynolds, who had
never
looked beyond the concept of a socialist millennium and, in dismissing
the
hypothetical Christian Beyond ... of posthumous salvation, had
satisfied
himself that a heaven on earth, founded on socialist principles, was
all that
really mattered. In the silence
following Moore's last comment, this discrepancy of belief between
their two
viewpoints prompted him to question his guest as to the justification
for his
assumption that God would be the outcome of evolution.
After all, wasn't a 'heaven on earth'
sufficient?
"No," Moore
replied at once, firmly shaking his large round head in the process. "The earth would always prevent a true
heaven from coming about, would always be subject to winds and rains,
storms
and quakes, floods and droughts, not to mention the 1001 other
distasteful
phenomena which occur on it. No matter
how far man evolved, there would always be opposition to his
civilization from
the elements, including the sun, which would undergo continuous changes
of
temperature and eventually oblige him to seek alternative
accommodation, if
possible, elsewhere in the Universe. Yet since stars are all destined to collapse and
disintegrate one
day, so it's inevitable that a 'heaven on earth' wouldn't last for
ever, being
at the mercy of stellar devolution."
"Not a particularly
satisfactory arrangement," Mrs Reynolds opined, wincing at the prospect
of
an advanced civilization suddenly crumbling to ruin with the onslaught
of solar
disintegration - a vision of some apocalyptic scene by John Martin
briefly
appearing before her mind's eye, like a thunderbolt from the blue.
"Indeed not!"
Moore confirmed, grimacing.
"Especially after all the effort we'd put into evolving to an
advanced level of life over the millennia.
We wouldn't want the most sublime civilization to be at the
mercy of the
stars, and therefore it should be fairly obvious that we'd want to get
beyond
their influence, to evolve to a level where we weren't affected by
their
inevitable cessation. And what could
that level be if not some heavenly transcendence which would
constitute, in its
timeless eternity, the Omega Point, to use a term favoured by that
great
Frenchman, Teilhard de Chardin,
for that which corresponds to the hypothetical culmination of
evolution."
"But where exactly
would this heavenly transcendence be?" Mr Reynolds asked in a slightly
exasperated manner.
"God knows!"
his guest somewhat ironically exclaimed.
"I can only suppose that it would be somewhere in space,
possibly
at or close to the centre of the Universe - assuming the Universe has a
centre,
that is. But it would be immense, an
immense globe, as it were, of transcendent spirit ultimately composed
of all
the superconscious mind of which the
evolving universe was
capable, which would have converged towards it over a long period of
heavenly
time, adding to its sum-total of bliss.
Indeed, I reckon it would be so blissful that no human being or
man-equivalent life form would be able to go within millions of miles
of it
with impunity."
Mr Reynolds raised
strongly incredulous brows. "You
mean, any prospective long-term contributors who wished to get a
glimpse of
Heaven from their spaceships, or whatever, would be obliged to keep
their
distance?" he at length conjectured.
"They certainly
would, and possibly to the extent of not being able to see more than a
tiny
globe of pure light shining inwardly in the distance," Moore averred,
sticking to his mystical guns, which even he sometimes considered to be
over-ranged. "For I'm confident that
this ultimate bliss would prove too much for non-transcendent minds who
went
too close to it, and would probably result in their derangement. So, in all likelihood, no-one would dare go
too close to it, no more than anyone dares - or could dare - go too
close to
the sun, albeit for the opposite reason - namely that they'd get
roasted
alive. But as extremes are equally fatal
to anyone or anything in-between, so it should be pretty obvious that
premature
bliss of the magnitude of Heaven wouldn't be greatly conducive to one's
personal well-being. On the contrary, it
might even prove as detrimental to it as Hell."
"Hell presumably
being the sun," Mrs Reynolds responded, a serious if slightly sceptical
expression on her attractive face.
"I prefer to think
of it in terms of the totality of stars," Moore declared flatly, "the
star directly responsible to our planet therefore being but a component
of
Hell. For as Christian
theology has long maintained, Hell is a context of flame, of
excruciating heat,
and very definitely exists. To
study it, albeit from a relatively safe distance, one need only acquire
access
to a powerful telescope and direct one's attention on various
of the nearest stars, like an astronomer.
But you aren't ever likely to end-up in it or in one of its
innumerable
components. The nearest you could go to
it, short of taking a spaceship in the general direction of Venus,
would be to
stand out in the middle of some desert, like the Sahara, and feel the
sun
burning into your skin. Of course, you
could alternatively elect to get burnt alive.
But that would be a slightly different matter - more a case of
'hell on
earth' than Hell itself, if you see what I mean."
"Oh, Robert, do you
have to be so damn negative!" Mrs Reynolds objected, frowning.
"Sorry, Jacqui, but
where the subject of Hell is concerned, you can't expect to hear
anything
positive," Moore remarked.
"For Hell is the ultimate negativity, creating, in its raging
fury,
not bliss but agony, the most excruciating agony conceivable."
"And it was
apparently from this negative power that the planets were derived, was
it?" Mr Reynolds commented, warming to his guest's thesis.
"So it would
appear," Moore opined. "And
not simply the planets, but also whatever life forms they
subsequently possessed. As far as we
know, there are no intelligent life forms on the other planets in the
Solar
System. But it's quite possible that the
Universe as a whole contains earth-equivalent planets on which such
intelligent
life forms exist, and they would likewise have sprung from the solar
roots of
cosmic Hell. Now because Hell is
compounded of innumerable stars and is thus manifold and separate, it
need not
surprise us if its offspring take on the attributes of the diabolic
inceptive
force and are likewise manifold and separate.
Even in this world the diversity of animals and peoples
testifies to the
diabolic influence of Hell, being a source of continuous friction and
strife. One might say that the lower the
stage of evolution, the more influence does Hell have on life and the
greater
is the degree of strife resulting from it, as the blood-drenched pages
of human
history sufficiently attest. The further
evolution progresses, on the other hand, the more emphasis do we place
on unity
and the correlative reduction of strife, and the closer we therefore
draw to
the One which, as God the Holy Ghost, would be the outcome of organic
evolution, the end-product, as it were, of the drive away from
diversity."
"Then, judging by
the amount of friction and strife still prevailing in the world, we
must be a
long way from the One at present," Mr Reynolds surmised, as he exhaled
a
final burst of tobacco smoke.
"Unfortunately,
that would indeed seem to be the case," Moore conceded, nodding with
sagacious regret. "For we haven't
yet evolved to a particularly high level of civilization and are
accordingly
still subject to a great deal of diabolic influence, some of us,
admittedly,
more than others. But I believe that
we're heading in the right direction and, providing we don't completely
destroy
ourselves in any future war, should continue to head in it, becoming
all the
while less diversified and more unified."
"And would the
gradual introduction of mechanical parts into the human body and,
eventually,
its supersession by artificial supports,
or whatever,
for the brain ... be further conducive towards the development of this
higher
unity?" Mrs Reynolds asked, once again revealing a measure of her
former
scepticism and irony in the face of Robert Moore's radical argument.
"Most
certainly!" he replied. "For
it would remove the physical inequalities which currently exist and
have
existed, often in more marked forms, for centuries, thereby enabling
people to
treat one another as equals with more ease and conviction than would
otherwise
be possible. After all, if 'A' is
better-looking than 'B' and 'A' knows it, the chances of 'A' taking 'B'
for an
equal will be pretty slim. Now 'B' won't
exactly consider himself the equal of 'A' either, but will almost
certainly be
envious of 'A' for being better-looking, and privately annoyed,
moreover, that
such physical inequalities should exist.
Yet if, thanks to social and technological progress, both 'A'
and 'B'
look exactly alike, then the chances of their treating each other as
equals
will be correspondingly greater, and so a truly classless society could
develop. Needless to say, such a society
isn't likely to materialize for some time to-come!
But we can at least console ourselves in the
hope that one day it will, thereafter ridding humanity of the frightful
differences of appearance which have contributed so much to the
sum-total of
friction in the world. And when, thanks
to further industrial and technological progress, mankind have been rid
of the
frightful differences of occupation which currently exist, compliments
of
bourgeois civilization, the prospects for a truly unified society will
be
infinitely greater than at present. For
so long as we continue to do different things, we'll always be divided
against
one another. Thus not only uniform
appearance on a variety of levels and,
I
should
add, intelligence but, no less importantly, uniform occupation,
preferably
through meditation, would be indispensable prerequisites of the highest
civilization - a civilization whose members were dedicated to attaining
to
transcendence, and so to the abandonment of this world once and for
all."
"I'm not sure that
I'd want to be part of such a civilization," Mrs Reynolds declared,
frowning down at her beautifully slender hands, which at that moment
were
resting limply on her lap.
"I rather doubt
that women would be a part of it anyway," Moore rejoined bluntly. "For the way I see it, women would have
been transcended at some previous stage of evolution.
The quest for the transcendental Beyond is,
in my opinion, a radically male one, and thus it's more likely that the
highest
civilization would be entirely beyond women, making use of artificial
reproductive methods to safeguard its survival.
Women, who are fundamentally appearance, would have little place
in a
society so exclusively dedicated to essence, and so it's unlikely they
would
exist there. Short of transforming
themselves into men or, rather, supermen, women will always remain more
closely
aligned with the natural or sensual world, even in the heart of a big
city."
"Thank goodness for
that!" Mrs Reynolds exclaimed.
"You men wouldn't get very far along the road to your ultimate
salvation, or whatever, if it were otherwise!"
"Indeed not,"
Moore conceded, offering his outraged hostess a mildly ingratiating
smile. "For it's only through woman,
through
propagation, that we can keep humanity going, and thus progress a
little closer
to the Beyond in question with each succeeding generation.
Woman serves our cause, and so too, believe
it or not, does the Devil, which, as Hell, keeps everything and
everyone going,
though in a rather more fundamental sense.
For without the Devil's help, so to speak, we would never get to
God,
seeing as there would be no cosmos at the back of us and therefore no
stellar
and/or solar support for the world. The
Devil supports the world and we struggle against it, principally
through
civilized progress. But we shouldn't
make the mistake of becoming Devil-worshippers, as though the natural
world
were the best of all possible worlds and our evolutionary strivings
merely an
idealistic aberration! We needn't be
grateful to the Devil for plaguing us with materialistic life, as
though such
life were its own reward ... without reference to anything better! No, if there's something we should
be
grateful for, it's that we're not beasts but men, and that it's our
destiny, in
consequence, to create God ... the Holy Ghost ... in due course. And not just figuratively or materially this
time, but literally, out of our own spiritual selves.
For we have always been creators of God or,
more accurately, gods, as the statues of our distant ancestors
well-attest. We ourselves were created
via the diabolic inceptive force but, being men, we aspire towards the
divine
culmination of evolution, no matter how humbly or crudely at first. We approach divinity through
materialism. We imagine the statue is
God. Terrible delusion!
Yet inevitable at a
primitive juncture in time."
"This is apparently
the pagan stage of evolution," Mr Reynolds commented, showing signs of
interest despite his congenital distaste, born of empirical
objectivity, for
metaphysical speculation.
"Precisely,"
Moore confirmed. "But it doesn't
last. For along comes a dualistic, or
Christian, stage to supplant it. Now
although men still fashion statues, they distinguish between the statue
and the
god, never imagining that the spirit of the latter resides in the body
of the
former. The statue becomes for them
merely an image, a reminder, as it were, of the spiritual
essence of the
deity which resides elsewhere - namely, in Heaven ... compliments of
transcendent concepts like the Resurrection.
But this dualistic stage is no more an eternal phenomenon than
the
pre-dualistic, or pagan, stage before it was.
As men cease to live in a balanced relationship with nature,
that's to
say balanced between nature and civilization, along comes a
post-dualistic, or
transcendental, stage of evolution in which men cease to depend even
partly on
materialistic images, but dedicate themselves to actually creating God
through
direct cultivation of the spirit, thus paving the way for their future
transformation from the world to the Beyond, from spirit to the Holy
Spirit,
which should signify the climax of evolution."
"Some task!"
Mr Reynolds exclaimed, automatically drawing the back of his hand
across his
brow as though to underline the fact. To
be sure, it was enough to make one sweat, listening to Robert Moore
speak. Few men were as spiritually
farsighted!
"Though, apparently,
not a task that we women need bother our pretty heads about," Mrs
Reynolds
deduced, somewhat cynically. "No
doubt, you'd disapprove of the Assumption of the Virgin, Robert."
"As a matter of
fact I do," he admitted, blushing faintly.
"Though theology would doubtless insist that
Mary
was no ordinary woman but the Mother of God, and thus a case apart. However, not being a practising Christian but
a self-professed transcendentalist, I wouldn't allow myself to be
impressed by
it. Or, rather, I'd maintain that whilst
theological symbolism has its justification, it's necessarily
restricted to a
given time-span, i.e. the period of Christianity, and should make way,
thereafter, for the Truth. And, so far
as I'm concerned, the fact of the matter is that God doesn't exist - at
least
not yet! The Christian god is one thing,
the actual establishment of Ultimate Godhead quite another!"
"In other words,
the difference between Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost," Mr Reynolds
observed.
"Quite," Moore
confirmed. "Between
knowledge and truth. And this is
something the finer Christian minds have long recognized, though
without
perhaps realizing that the Holy Ghost is more a projection towards the
future
culmination of evolution than an already-established fact.
I mean if, as Teilhard
de Chardin maintains, the Universe is
converging
towards the Omega Point, progressing from the Many towards the One,
then what
can the domes of the finest churches signify if not just such a
convergence -
that inward-turning curvature from diversity to unity which is
symbolized by
the apex of the dome, with its lantern of light. Take
the
case of San
Ivo della Sapienza
in Rome - undoubtedly one of the world's finest churches.
Not only is the Holy Spirit symbolized by the
lantern, but also by the convergence of the dome towards its apex, thus
signifying the diabolic nature of the Cosmos in contrast to the divine
essence
of God. One couldn't ask for a more
objective depiction of evolution than that, and Borromini
can only be praised for having had the genius to execute it. I'm confident that de Chardin
would have found ample confirmation of his convergence theories there!"
Mr Reynolds raised his
brows in response to the mixture of scepticism and surprise he was
feeling with
these comments. "I must confess to
never having viewed domes of that nature in such a pleasingly
optimistic and
radical light before," he confessed, smiling faintly in response to the
clash between his own rather more alpha-stemming view of domes and
Moore's
seemingly omega-oriented one. "But,
now you mention it, I can only marvel at my narrow-mindedness! Yes, what an apt device the dome can be for
illustrating evolutionary progress, for anticipating, as it were, the
outcome
of evolution. Really, I'm quite ashamed
of myself for not having realized as much, considering that I'm a
professional
architect who has spent years studying churches - romanesque,
gothic,
renaissance,
baroque, neo-classical, neo-gothic, modern ... you name
it."
"Well, perhaps
you'll make use of your new-found knowledge by incorporating a dome
into the
church you're about to start work on," Mrs Reynolds ventured to
suggest,
but in a tone-of-voice intended to reveal that she didn't for one
moment
believe that domes, not even in the case of San
Ivo
della Sapienza
(which,
after all, was a Catholic church, and thus one germane, in her
estimation, to
the theocracy of the Father), were as omega-orientated as their guest,
with his
transcendental radicalism born of a post-Christian Prometheanism,
liked
to
imagine!
"Yes,
why not?" Moore seconded, unable or
unwilling to
grasp the implications of what Mrs Reynolds had just said. "Though you might go
one better than Borromini by placing some
kind of
artificial light at its apex, thereby granting the symbol for the Holy
Ghost a
less-natural and correspondingly more-spiritual essence. For ordinary daylight is too naturalistic,
being a product of the sun, whereas artificial light stems from man's
evolving
civilization and is therefore more suited to the transcendent. Any dome with an electric light at its
culmination-point would certainly be spiritually superior to one
dependent on
natural light."
"Yes, you're
probably right there!" Mr Reynolds conceded. "Seeing
as
I have ambitions to do better
than previous architects, I'll take your word for it and incorporate a
dome
into the design. Better, I'll make the
entire church a kind of dome, so that the converging universe to the
Omega
Point can be seen as the principal aspect of the building."
"Then I wish you every
success," Moore rejoined, rising from his chair and extending a
friendly
hand to the architect. It was getting
late and he had to take his leave of them now, if he was to catch the
last bus
home. "I'd rather it was a
meditation centre you're about to design, but since the theological
establishment requires a church - well then, good luck to you! I hope the vicar approves of the
result."
"Yeah, so do
I," Mr Reynolds responded, graciously accompanying his guest to the
door,
doubtless for the first and last time.
For her part, however, Mrs Reynolds just smiled in sceptical
derision
and began to clear away the empty coffee mugs.
PERFECTION
OUR
GOAL
The
café
table they were sitting at provided them with a clear
view of the street, which, in this London rush-hour, was absolutely
teeming
with traffic and pedestrians. Overhead,
a remorseless summer sun shone down fiercely onto everything, making
them
grateful for the refreshing coolness of the soft drinks they had just
ordered. The two women at table - Paula Hynde, a blue-eyed blonde of slender build, and
Wendy Callot, her dark-haired colleague at
the art college where
they both taught - were in conversation with a young philosopher whom
they had
recently met at a party - a thin, nervous, scholarly-looking individual
by name
of Daniel Forde.
He wore shades and sat with his back to the sun.
He was a very interesting man to talk with,
but, for the women, rather perplexing and, at times, even downright
worrying! For instance, he had said that
he usually avoided
hot countries during the summer, and, when Paula asked why, had replied
that
they were generally more evil than places like England, and their
people
correspondingly less pleasant.
"But what makes you
say that?" Wendy asked, hot on the heels of her friend's curiosity.
The philosopher smiled
sheepishly and lowered his eyes a moment, as though ashamed of the
radical
nature of his beliefs. "Well, the
fact that I tend to equate the sun with the Devil and am consequently
all-too-inclined to see more evil in those countries where it has most
influence, which is to say where the temperature is hottest," he at
length
replied. "Countries, for instance,
in the Middle East, North Africa, or the Mediterranean, which have very
hot
weather throughout the year, not just in the summer, as here in England. And even now, in the middle of July, the
temperature here is relatively mild by comparison.
In the desert, on the other hand, it would be
literally scorching."
"But what kind of
evil do you particularly associate with the hottest countries?" Paula
asked, screwing up her fine brows in manifest puzzlement.
"Oh, mostly of the
sensuous kind," Forde replied, becoming
slightly
embarrassed. "A
certain slothfulness among the people would be an example of the
kind of
evil I have in mind. Though there are
doubtless other kinds of a more active nature as well."
By now his blush had deepened a little, becoming
quite rosy. "But the urge to
downward self-transcendence is, of necessity, stronger in a hot country
than in
a comparatively cool one, so one needn't be surprised if the moral
standards of
the former are less high than those of the latter, or if, as a
compensatory and
protective factor, the laws relating to morality are correspondingly
stricter. Whatever the case, the Devil's
influence is greater there than elsewhere."
"So, presumably,
the sun is Hell," Wendy deduced, allowing herself
the benefit of a sceptical and slightly teasing smile.
To her surprise, Daniel Forde resolutely shook his head.
"No, one might argue that the sun is
merely a tiny component of Hell, which extends to the totality of
flaming stars
in the Universe," he averred. "Hell
would accordingly be a term - admittedly rather mythical but
nonetheless
satisfactory in this context - which applies to the multitude of stars,
not
simply to the sun. For it seems to me
that the main characteristic of evil is diversity and separateness, a
characteristic which, alas, extends to the world around one, to that
which has
issued from the Diabolic Alpha and consequently bears all the hallmarks
of the
Devil's influence."
"You mean the
city?" Paula suggested, looking a trifle worried.
"To
some extent that, but to a much greater extent the natural world and
whatever
stems from nature," the philosopher solemnly averred. "Although there is much diversity and
separateness in the city, it does at least indicate a tendency towards
God and
hence unity, whereas nature, being the work purely and simply of the
Devil or,
at any rate, a component of Hell, namely the sun, can only reflect the
Diabolic
Alpha in diversity and separateness, not to say sensuality. The city is, if you like, a very crude
approximation to the millennial Beyond, and therefore a phenomenon in
opposition to nature, a phenomenon tending away from it.
Civilization aspires towards the Divine
Omega, no matter how crudely or obliquely to begin with, whereas nature
stems
from the Diabolic Alpha. It's as simple
as that!"
The two females frowned
sullenly and sought temporary refuge from this polemical broadside in
their
soft drinks. Paula Hynde,
in
particular,
was a trifle worried by Forde's
remarks and sought to unburden herself of this worry by asking him
whether he
really thought nature stemmed from what he called the Diabolic Alpha. After all, hadn't it been traditionally
assumed that nature was of divine origin and that God created the world?
"Yes, it had,"
Forde replied immediately, turning his
shaded eyes on
the prettier of the two women. "But
that was only because men used to be more under nature's sway than at
present,
and were more disposed, in consequence, to view it as the work of God,
conceiving of God in merely creative terms, whether or not you make a
distinction between the central star of the Galaxy and the sun, or
simply
derive God from the latter, as, to a large extent, the West has done,
given its
preference for the Father over Jehovah or Allah - a preference partly
conditioned by pagan precedent and partly owing something to the need
to
accommodate God, as progenitor, to both a Mother and a Son, viz. the
Virgin and
Christ. Now if by 'God' you mean the
Holy Spirit, the highest possible mode of life, then it's difficult if
not
impossible to ascribe the creation of nature, and hence the world, to
God. For the Highest of the High, or that
which
appertains to eternal bliss in transcendent spirit, would be most
unlikely to
create, or to have created, the Lowest of the Low, or that which
appertains to
cosmic agony in solar energy. This being
the case, one can only conclude that the Lowest of the Low, being most
primal,
created itself and, having done so, proceeded to create or give rise to
the
world and nature - in short, to create the natural world.
So the lowest absolute - and stars are, after
all, a kind of absolute or cosmically independent existence - gave rise
to that
which, in its most evolved manifestation, namely man, aspires towards
the
highest absolute, which, as the Holy Spirit, is eternal and perfect. Therefore evolution is a journey, so to speak,
from the one to the other, from the Diabolic Alpha to the Divine Omega,
which
realizes itself through man and, in all probability, man-equivalent
life forms
elsewhere in the Universe. Now,
obviously, when you are less than half-way along that journey, you're
disposed
to grant more importance to the lowest absolute, which created the
world. That is perfectly logical because
you aren't
really in an evolutionary position to aspire towards the highest
absolute, which
is dependent on the precondition of a great deal more civilization. So one worships the Creator which, being cosmic, is actually diabolical, contrary to one's
beliefs. One uses the word 'god', but
what one is really referring to is the Devil.
And so one is an unconscious diabolist."
"Charming!"
cried
Wendy,
making a most uncharming spectacle
of
her plump red face.
"Absolutely!"
concurred Paula, who briefly turned towards her colleague.
"But quite fascinating
all the same. After all, if the
Creator is a euphemism for the Devil, then the Devil must surely exist."
"To be sure," Forde confirmed, nodding gravely.
"The Devil most certainly does
exist, and
the Universe is
largely a diabolic phenomenon.
Thus Christians are to a certain extent right when they say that
God
exists. For what they often mean,
despite a professed adherence to Christ, is
the
Creator, the Father, the Almighty, and other such variations on an
alpha
theme. But if the Creator is to be
equated with the Diabolic Alpha, then it should be apparent that what
they
really mean by God is, unbeknown to them, the Devil, which is hardly
compatible
with the Holy Spirit. For you can't have
two gods, let alone three. There can
only be one
Supreme Being, one
God that's
divinely supreme, because what it signifies is the highest, most
blissful mode
of life. Whatever is not as high isn't
supreme but inferior. Thus if what they
generally mean by 'God' is really the Devil, then it should be obvious
that God
doesn't exist in the sense of the Creator, or Almighty or whatever, but
only as
the culmination of evolution, which, as adequately demonstrated by the
world
around us, has yet to come about.
Consequently it should be apparent that God doesn't exist, since
dependent on our evolutionary progress for its ultimate manifestation
as transcendent
spirit. Willy-nilly, it is our destiny
to create
God and, as such, it's in our interests to
avoid worshipping the Devil - which, alas, is precisely what, to
greater or
lesser extents, the greater part of humanity has
been doing
since it first acquired a religious sense, way back in the dark days of
our
pagan ancestors!"
At that moment Daniel Forde recalled to mind the gist of a
conversation he had
once had with a certain Pat Hanley, a former acquaintance of his, who
had
voiced the ludicrous notion that God was the sun! Unbeknown
to
himself, Hanley had been a
devil-worshipper and, like many such people, confounded the Lowest of
the Low,
the most agonized of the agonized, with the Highest of the High, the
most blissful
of the blissful. His God was simply the
Father, not the Holy Spirit. And it was
manifold, as befitting the Diabolic Alpha, not unified, like the Divine
Omega
would be. It embraced a polytheism or,
more correctly, polydiabolism of the stars
in
toto. Clearly,
Hanley's
concept
of God was far from being the most truthful of concepts!
It was one which Daniel Forde
could only be offended by these days, not vaguely amused by, as he had
been at
the time of conversation, a couple of years ago.
But to some extent Paula
Hynde had been offended by what Forde
said, and now she inquired of him, in a slightly sceptical
tone-of-voice, how
he expected us to create God in due course.
"Yes," Wendy
seconded, offering her fellow-female some moral support.
"Just what d'you
mean?"
The philosopher smiled
understandingly, then replied: "Well, we're creating God at this very
moment. Ever since civilization got
properly under way an effort has been made to create God, to aspire
towards the
Divine Omega, no matter how feebly or paradoxically.
Insofar as civilization is a man-made
phenomenon which aims to overcome and exploit nature, we civilized
peoples have
endeavoured to create God. The higher
the civilization, or the further removed it is from nature's sensuous
influence,
the closer do we grow to God. At
present, we're still a long way off, as a glance at the street before
you will
indicate. But, fortunately, we're
heading in the right direction, and so long as the city continues to
develop,
to gain further victories over nature, we'll eventually attain to our
goal. And we'll attain to it via
transcendental meditation and technology, not just the former. For the direct cultivation of spirit without
technological assistance is defeating its own ends, as has been
demonstrated by
the greater part of Asia during the past several centuries, if not
millennia."
"In
what way?" Paula wanted to know, becoming slightly angry. For she had long been a
keen student of Oriental religion, particularly Buddhism, and felt
personally
slighted by Forde's remarks.
"Principally by
endeavouring to ignore nature rather than overcome it through science
and
industrial progress," he replied.
"The Asians had many right ideas about cultivating the spirit
but,
unfortunately, their efforts to cultivate it only led to their ignoring
the
body to a point where starvation, disease, deformity, and poverty were
rife
among them, causing millions of people unspeakable suffering and even
death. They wished to attain to a
heavenly Beyond alright, but their concentration upon spiritual
transcendence
led to them putting ends before means, which, in a world where the
Devil has so
much influence, can only prove fatal.
Rather than attaining to Nirvana, they remained, with
comparatively few
exceptions, the unfortunate victims of poverty and physical suffering. The Devil overcame them. Consequently
it's
imperative that we learn
from
"Oh, but aren't
there enough buildings in London already?" Wendy objected, making an
objectionable spectacle of her face.
"And isn't the population too high anyway?"
The philosopher
deliberated awhile before attempting to answer her questions. They were frightfully difficult ones and he
wasn't sure they afforded an objective response. So
at
length he replied: "Whether or not
there are too many buildings in London is a matter you must decide for
yourself, as, to some extent, is your question relating to population. Such questions are relative.
I mean, if it can be proved
that there
are too many buildings and that the population is too large, then we
would have
a right to feel sorry for ourselves and to hope some kind of remedial
action
could be taken before matters got completely out-of-hand.
But populations are only too large, it seems
to me, when there are insufficient resources to sustain them and an
unacceptable percentage of people either starve to death or succumb to
other,
less lethal afflictions. They're
relative to the technological capacities existing at the time, which is
to say,
to the degree of civilization manifesting in the world.
There's no reason for one to suppose that large
populations are a bad thing per
se, as though birth control
should be carried out for its own sake rather than to combat or respond
to a
technological shortcoming in the system.
On the contrary, it's to be hoped that civilized progress will
subsequently
make the support of still greater numbers of people possible,
especially in the
towns and villages, where nature is at an insufficiently far remove to
allow
for the development of a truly advanced spirituality.
For with the greater numbers should come the
growth of villages into towns and of towns into cities,
and the consequent adoption of less-natural lifestyles by their
inhabitants."
"But one can't just
make war on nature as though we could manage without it!" protested
Paula,
screwing up her brows in evident perplexity.
"After all, we depend on it for so many things, including
food."
"Naturally, and I
wasn't for one moment suggesting that we could or should make war on it
under
false pretences," Forde countered
ironically, by
way of exonerating himself. "Nature
has to be treated with a certain amount of objective respect whilst one
is
still dependent upon it to any appreciable extent.
But, you know, evolution is concerned with
the gradual overcoming of nature, with its supersession
by a spiritual world, and so, while we are under obligation as living
organisms
to treat it sensibly, we're also obligated, as men, to rebel against it
and
aspire towards our ultimate salvation in transcendent spirit, we're
'born under
one law but to another bound', as Huxley, quoting the poet Greville,
was forever reminding us. Now, in this
latter regard, it's to be hoped that we'll gradually reduce our
dependence on
nature through the further development of technology, which, as already
remarked, is an indispensable tool in our struggle to attain to the
Beyond ...
of millennial futurity."
"Yes, but the
growth of villages into towns or of towns into cities, not to mention
the
continuous growth of already-existent cities, won't exactly make it
unnecessary
for us to eat or drink, will it?" Paula retorted.
"Indeed not!" Forde admitted.
"But the gradual replacement of the natural body by mechanical
or
synthetically autonomous parts could well do so, and to the extent of
making it
unnecessary for us to waste valuable time in sensual matters, as we're
currently obliged to do."
"You mean to
suggest that the overcoming of nature should also lead to our
overcoming the
body?" Wendy Callot exclaimed, with an
astonished look in her dark eyes.
"I most certainly
do," the philosopher calmly assured her.
"For the body is an aspect of the natural world and, as such, it
should also be revolted against, as is to some extent already happening
now,
what with our growing dependence on motorized transportation and
mounting
penchant for contraception and abortion, not to mention pornography and
sterilization. By replacing the natural
body with an artificial one, we'll be in a position to dedicate more
time to
spiritual concerns, including meditation, and also have far less
opposition
from nature with which to contend. Of
course, such a replacement can only happen by degrees, a little at a
time, in
accordance with the extent of our technological expertise.
But it's precisely this technological
progress which will make spiritual progress possible, as each
succeeding
generation becomes a little less dependent on and victimized by nature
than its
immediate predecessor. By itself,
meditation wouldn't be enough. There is
scant reason to suppose that one generation would have much advantage
over another. For it's unlikely that a
later generation
would inherit much in the way of 'acquired characteristics' from an
earlier
one. Machines might do most of the work,
and therefore make it possible for a later generation to meditate
longer and
more consistently than an earlier one did, but people would still be
subject to
the flesh, still be obliged to eat, drink, sleep, urinate, defecate,
copulate,
etc., to a degree which would prohibit any significant spiritual
advancement. One can't serve two masters
at once, least of
all two such diametrically-antithetical masters as the Devil and God. Either one strives to completely overcome the
Devil, or one remains forever its victim.
Thus, in the interests of evolution, it's inevitable that the
body
should fall victim to technology, which is on the side, if indirectly,
of
God. For the more artificial we become,
the less hold nature will have on us.
Eventually we'll be entirely independent of it - in a word,
supernatural."
"Whew! All
this
is more than my poor head can
take!" Paula confessed, casting her female companion a baffled look. "I cannot even begin
to
conceive of what life will be like in the distant future, when this
transformation to which Daniel alludes finally comes to pass. As yet, we're still too close to nature to be
able to understand the consequences of what such an existence would
entail. Personally, I'm quite resigned
to things remaining as they are at present!"
"Me too,"
Wendy declared, lifting the glass of orange squash to her pale lips. For she hadn't quite finished her soft drink
and now that she proceeded to do so its taste seemed more deliciously
refreshing than formerly - that is, before Daniel Forde
had got his lecture on spiritual progress under way.
"Yes, well, I
suppose we all have to be resigned to the way things are at present,
insofar as
we have to live with them and aren't really in a position to do very
much about
anything," the said-philosopher commented, offering both women an
ironic
smile. "Yet that doesn't mean to
say that we should take things for granted, as though this were the
best of all
possible worlds, with no prospect of being improved upon.
No-one who has his mind fixed on the
millennial Beyond will ever run the risk of falling into the barbarous
mistake
of imagining that life should be lived for its own sake, without any
reference
to spiritual progress. The fact of the
matter is that life is a perpetual battleground where the sensual and
the
spiritual meet in open warfare, a tug-of-war, if you like, between that
which
stems, as nature, from the Diabolic Alpha, and that which aspires, as
civilization, towards the Divine Omega.
The latter is ultimately destined to triumph, but not without
the long,
hard struggle which is the world around us, a world which, even at this
relatively advanced juncture in time, is a long way from God - from the
creation of the Holy Spirit. Just take a
look at the scene in front of you."
Obediently the two women
turned their attention on the busy street beyond their table. They were glad, in a way, for the opportunity
of looking rather than listening for a change, and soon became
passively
absorbed in the passing spectacle. The
pavements on both sides of the road were crowded with pedestrians, and
between
the two crowds of walking humanity two streams of traffic sped past or,
as was
often the case, ground to a halt in traffic jams. It
was
now the heart of the rush-hour, a time
when the vast majority of London's work-force was engaged in the
arduous and
even oppressive task of returning home.
Here and there a sight-seeing tourist appeared in the rush, the
representative of a different and more leisurely order of things, and
occasionally someone who might have been unemployed if not unemployable
could
be seen strolling along, seemingly oblivious of everyone else. For the most part, however, the street
seethed with bustling workers and employers escaping from the narrow
confines
of their offices and office routines.
This, at any rate, was what Paula and Wendy beheld as they sat
facing
the confused scene, a few yards in front of their noses.
Nothing out-of-the-ordinary so far as they
were concerned, but plenty to become engrossed by, not least the
handsome
appearances of the numerous expensively-attired young men who passed
with an
occasional friendly glance in their direction.
To be sure, it was good to see and to be seen at such times!
But what of Daniel Forde, what did he
see
there? Superficially he saw what the
others did - a crowded street, fruit of the London rush-hour. But he also saw something that they weren't,
perhaps, as well-qualified to see.
Removing his shades, he saw distinctions and separateness,
saw the multitude of individual factors which reflected the Devil's
influence,
and was decidedly depressed by it. Of
course, the women also saw distinctions, but not with moral eyes. They became absorbed in the differences for
their own sake, and were apt to take them for granted.
He, by contrast, was conscious of the extent
to which such distinctions came between the world and the millennial
Beyond. Merely to have a different
colour skin, to be taller or shorter, fatter or thinner, older or
younger, male
or female, handsome or ugly, pretty or plain, rich or poor, wearing
bright
colours or dark colours, jeans or trousers, a skirt or a dress, a
T-shirt or a
collar-and-tie, to be carrying a briefcase or an attaché case, a
handbag or a
shoulder bag, to be wearing shoes or sandals, high heels or sneakers,
etc.
etc., ad
infinitum.
Oh, this multitude of
individual factors - what an obstacle it was to the attainment of the
millennial Beyond! How it reflected the
influence of the Diabolic Alpha! And
what frictions it gave rise to - 'Ugh, how I detest his ugly face!' (Thoughts of a handsome young man.) 'Damn
it, how I envy him his good-looks!' (Thoughts
of
an
ugly man.) 'Ugh, how I despise people with long hair!' (Thoughts of a short-haired man.) "Damn it, if
only I
hadn't gone bald so early!' (Thoughts of a bald man.) 'Ugh, how I loathe red
stockings!' (Thoughts
of a woman
wearing dark-blue stockings.) 'Damn it, how
I envy her
those attractive legs!' (Thoughts of a
fat-legged
woman.) 'Ugh, how I despise fat people!' (Thoughts
of
a
thin man.) 'Damn it, to think that she should prefer him
because he's
thin!' (Thoughts of a fat man.) 'Ugh, how I
loathe big
noses!' (Thoughts of a small-nosed man.)
'Damn it, why
couldn't I have been given a smaller nose, like him!' (Thoughts
of a big-nosed man.) And so on, ad
nauseam.
Yes, how far such
thoughts and appearances were from the envisaged spiritual unity of the
millennial Beyond! And what an obstacle
they were to greater unity on earth, to the formation of a brotherhood
of
man! So long as distinctions and
inequalities existed, there would be no end to the divisive frictions
between
human beings. People would continue to
envy or despise one another, to hate or belittle. It
was
all too obvious to Daniel Forde, as he
noted numerous distinctions characterizing the
separate, that humanity had to aspire towards greater unity, to
inventions and
strategies for reducing the number of divisive realities between man
and
man. It would be a long hard struggle,
but, eventually, society would surely attain to a stage where the great
majority of such distinctions ceased to exist, and the amount of
friction in
the world was correspondingly reduced.
This would be a stage just prior to the transcendental Beyond,
to the
ending of all distinctions, when the individual's spirit merged into a
common
axis of transcendent unity and thus became one with all spirit, became
universal. It would probably result from
man's having, in the meantime, abandoned the flesh for an artificial
support-and-sustain system for the brain, a system or mechanical
apparatus
which, being the same for everyone, would prevent any particular mind
from
regarding its 'body' as either superior or inferior to another's, and
thus
remove the source of so much friction.
With uniform appearance and uniform occupation, centred in
transcendental meditation, a truly classless society would emerge which
would
reflect the highest possible stage of civilization, a stage immediately
preceding the end of all civilization.
But, at present, such a stage was rather a long way off, as this
busy
West End street more than adequately
indicated.
Looking at the scene
before him from a more positive angle, however, there were certain
encouraging
factors for Daniel Forde to note, which
augured well
for the future. There was the factor,
for example, that so many people were gathered together in one place
and
behaving, on the whole, relatively well to one another, not fighting or
cursing
or raping or murdering or pushing, but behaving as well as
circumstances
permitted. A little jostling and bad
temper there of course was from time to time, what with so many people
striving
to get home or whatever at once. But
proceedings were, for the most part, commendably civilized, with
indications
aplenty of respect, courtesy, patience, even generosity, as when a car
or other
vehicle gave way to pedestrians crossing the road without being under
any
specific obligation to do so, pulling-up in order to let them across or
slowing
down to allow them sufficient time to continue on their way. The crowd, too, was in itself a promising
sign, an indication of the age's tendency away from personal
selectivity
towards impersonal collectivity. One could get lost in it, swallowed up, just
as one's spirit would ultimately be swallowed up in the divine unity of
the
Holy Spirit.
Another factor one could
note with a certain satisfaction was the wide variety of races and
peoples
gathered together in the street, the different-coloured skins and
numerous
accents or languages which, while testifying to diversity, and hence to
the
influence of the Devil on life, provided further evidence of the
world's
growing unity, a unity which could be equated with a converging
universe to the
Omega Point, or transcendental culmination of all evolution. Not only Englishmen, but Europeans of
virtually every nationality, Americans, Canadians, Africans, Asians,
West
Indians, and Australians could be seen sharing the same pavement in
mutually-respectful fashion. This was a
comparatively new phenomenon in the world, one which, as yet, only
pertained to
the greatest cities, those places where evolutionary progress was most
advanced
for the time and which were consequently closer to the millennial
Beyond than
their less-urbanized neighbours - the rural and suburban towns. It was both an honour and a privilege to be
living in a multiracial society which functioned smoothly, with a
minimum of
tension or discrimination. At least
there wasn't much evidence of racial tension or discrimination in the
crowded
street before him today, and Forde noted
this fact
with evident pleasure. It was good, too,
to see so many of the coloured people wearing Western-style clothes,
not
emphasizing cultural differences between peoples but blending-in with
the
costumes of the more indigenous people on whose street they walked. There was certainly more indications of the
trend towards divine unity than evidence of diabolic separateness about
that
factor!
As also about another
factor which now appealed to Forde's
attention, as he
allowed his gaze to extend beyond the nearby pedestrians to the passing
traffic, noting, with further satisfaction, the numerous cars, buses,
taxis,
vans, etc., which attested to man's growing dependence on the machine. Here, it seemed to him, the future
mechanization of the human body was incipient, was in embryo, as it
were, in
the guise of the numerous vehicles which filled the road, taking-up
more space
than both throngs of pedestrians put together.
Man was outdoing nature in these vehicles and displaying an urge
towards
bodily transcendence, proving his dissatisfaction with walking. And whether or not he realized it, the driver
of or passenger in any given vehicle was a little closer to the
millennial
Beyond than the streams of pedestrians he passed on either pavement. He was effectively their superior, a being
with a preference for artificial over natural methods of conveyance,
and
accordingly reflected a higher level of civilization.
One could take comfort in this thought, for
it seemed to confirm the tendency of evolution away from nature. Although traffic congestion was something of
a drawback, it was encouraging to note that so many people did use
motor
vehicles of one kind or another, and thereby identified themselves with
mechanical progress. The way things
stood, there would soon be more vehicles on the road than pedestrians
on the
pavement, or so it seemed! The future
was on the side of the former or, at any rate, of increased
mechanization of
the human body. Eventually pedestrians
would cease to exist. And
so
too,
in all probability, would motorized transport as we currently
understood it.
But what else was there
to be grateful for, to take a certain satisfaction in, as one noted the
contents of this particular street?
Undoubtedly its buildings, which were relatively modern and bore
witness
to a utilitarian simplicity of design aptly appropriate to their
commercial
functions. It was encouraging to note
the fact that they were adjoined, not separate or distinct, but crudely
representative of a higher unity. They
formed a community of the man-made, having come to supplant nature, to
keep the
natural world at a distance, and thus permit the pursuit of artificial
matters
- matters with a bearing, even if obliquely, on the spirit. They were symptomatic, despite their
philistine functionalism, of civilized man's urge towards divinity, and
at
least in this street their general appearance was such as to suggest
the
greater importance which modern man attached to the spirit at the
expense of
the body. There was more glass and
window space in them than concrete or walls, and if one wished to
associate
glass with the spirit, as symbolized by its translucence, then they
were
arguably of a higher order of civilization, not to mention
architecture, than
those buildings which betrayed a greater material opacity, as did so
many of the
older ones, being rather more aligned, it seemed, with the flesh.
Be that as it may, it
was pleasant, too, for Daniel Forde to
take
additional satisfaction from this particular street with regard to the
fact
that nature had been entirely eclipsed by the artificial.
There wasn't a single tree or flower or bush
to be seen in it, not even a weed!
Whatever may once have pertained to the plant world had been
removed in
the interests of the man-made. Here was
another reason for one to say to oneself: 'This is a superior street. It has completely transcended the plant
world, the lowest offspring of the Devil.
It is highly civilized.' Yes, one
could, if one was of a sufficiently progressive turn-of-mind, think
like that,
and Daniel Forde certainly did. The great transcendental painter, Piet Mondrian,
would probably
have thought something similar in the context of such a street, though
not
everyone would have done so! There were
undoubtedly many people who would have been horrified to note the
absence of trees
from it, people who had more sympathy for nature and were not quite so
spiritually advanced or progressive.
Daniel Forde
thought of one such person at that very moment, an
attractive young woman he had once known quite intimately by name of
Heather Thomas,
who had been married, at the time, to a reactionary professor of
literature at
the University. No doubt, the
professor's opinions and beliefs had to some extent influenced her,
making her
less enlightened than she might otherwise have been.
For there was a dream, he recalled, in which
her husband had apparently come face-to-face with the Devil and been
instructed, via the medium of a film projection, on the apparent extent
of the
Evil One's power over the contemporary world.
She had told him about this shortly after her husband had
related the
entire contents of his dream to her, and it had amused him no end,
largely
because what the Devil had said was completely the reverse, in the
main, of
what was really the case, i.e. the growth of the divine element in life
at the
expense of the diabolic one. Perhaps,
however, that was generally the way with dreams; one entered a world
that was
upside down, so to speak, rather than the right way up; a world where
everything
was the reverse of what it would be in waking life.
Certainly the case, at any rate, as far as
this strange dream of the professor's was concerned!
Still, Heather needn't have taken it all so
much to heart, especially where her alleged adultery was concerned. Her husband didn't profit very much from his
dreams anyway, not even when he attempted to analyse them.
For that only succeeded in confusing him the
more!
Yet there were a lot of
people in a similar position to Professor Thomas, people who confounded
the
Devil with God and mistook progress for regress. Daniel
Forde had
met a fair number of them over the years, not the least memorable of
whom was a
certain Clinton McDuff, a critic by
profession and
member of the once-famed 'Aesthetica Club',
who
professed extremely Lawrentian sentiments
concerning
the nature of contemporary life. A real
enemy of the spirit, if ever there was one!
A man for whom nature, and nature alone, manifested God's
influence and
will! A devil-worshipper with nothing
encouraging to say to people, but a fatal
tendency, as
with all evil men, to depress and oppress his audience!
A man who, if he ever got real power into his
hands, could set the clock back hundreds if not thousands of years! However, the chances of a man like him
getting such power were, fortunately to say, extremely remote. But he would doubtless continue to depress
and oppress people with his pessimistic lectures for some time to come! One day, perhaps, such fools would be
silenced. In the meantime, it was to be
hoped that they wouldn't be able to do too much reactionary mischief in
the
world.
But
what of Paula Hynde and Wendy Callot? What
were they doing there? Forde
ceased to
think about the hidebound reactionaries he had been confronted by, in
the past,
and cast a brief glance back over his shoulder at the two young women
seated
behind him. They still appeared to be
absorbed in the passing show, though, in all probability, they were
daydreaming
or sunbathing, or both. He couldn't
quite tell, now that he had put on his shades again and reduced the
world to a
uniform tint. But his slight movement
was enough to attract the attention of Paula, who smiled and edged
forward in
her seat, the better to talk to him.
"So you've come
back to us again, have you?" she teasingly observed.
"We thought you'd gone to sleep."
"I never do that in
public," the philosopher averred, turning around in order to face
her. "I was thinking,
actually."
"Which is something
you do too much of!" Paula averred, light-heartedly reproving him with
a
slap on the wrist.
Forde
blushed slightly. "You
might
think so," he retorted, "but I am
a thinker,
after all. Indeed, one of the few
progressive, independent thinkers in the modern world, and, as such,
it's my
business to think as often and as well as possible.
By now it's second nature to me, a part of my
very being. I couldn't live without
it."
"I see," Paula
sighed. "So, presumably, you were
thinking about how far contemporary life, as manifested in this street,
is from
the divine culmination of evolution, were you?"
"Initially I
was," Forde replied, gently nodding his
head,
"though not only that. I also began
to consider the indications of progress to be found here, and there are
a
number of them, believe me! Yet the
signs are that civilization, as we currently understand it, will become
a good
deal more civilized in the future, once we make a
consciously-determined and
concerted effort to attain to the millennial Beyond.
We needn't be unduly pessimistic about the
general drift of things."
"So, presumably, we
should be conscious atheists rather than unconscious
devil-worshippers,"
Wendy remarked, taking over the reins of inquiry from her colleague.
"That's what I
am," Forde admitted, smiling.
"And that's what I'd like to see others
become as well! Atheists
who,
whilst
acknowledging the existence of the Diabolic Alpha, are primarily
dedicated to creating the Divine Omega.
Men of good conscience who wish to rid the world of illusions
and
superstitions. Builders of a society
which is beyond the half-way stage of evolution, and which no longer
looks back
to the diabolic creative force with quite the same deferential respect. Men who can tell the
difference between the Devil and God, and strive to bring the world
closer to
the latter. But, above all, men
who don't confound profane spirit with holy spirit,
or
put
ends before means. Men, in sum, out
of whose descendants the Holy Spirit will eventually emerge, bringing
the
Universe to divine perfection. Yes, we
must struggle towards perfection. That
is our goal."
