EXTRACTS FROM A JOURNAL

They are fools who imagine that the physical universe is expanding and that the stars are therefore getting bigger and hotter. They've got the wrong end of the cosmic stick! But Michael James Carey, solitary thinker and private writer, knows better. I know that, whilst one part of the Universe is expanding, another part of it is contracting. And I don't confound the one with the other, like the untransvaluated shallow-pates! For the fact of the matter is that while the infernal side of the Universe is contracting, its divine side is expanding - and quite rapidly, too! The sun is losing millions of tons of its matter each second, is shrinking through the conversion of hydrogen into helium by the so-called proton-proton reaction. Most other stars are doubtless doing something similar, for one star is pretty much akin to another, no matter how varied they may be in size and intensity. And since stars represent the infernal side of the Universe at its most intense, we may conclude that it's this side of it which is contracting, whilst our side is rapidly expanding.

Yes, we are a part of the Universe, too. Everything to be found in this world is a part of it. But human beings may be said to represent its highest part - the part beyond stars and planets and nature. Naturally, there's a world of difference between one human being and another. But even the most dissimilar human beings have more in common with one another than with animals, whichever animals you care to name. Even the most stupid and ignorant of men is closer to a genius than to a dog or a cat. He is certainly superior to the animals! So human beings represent the furthermost point of evolution on earth to-date - the highest life form, in all probability, that the Universe contains.

Astonishing? Ah, I can imagine an imaginary reader wondering about the possible existence of other life forms in the Universe superior to ourselves. Hasn't he encountered stories and films depicting fantastic beings from outer space who put man in the shade in virtually every respect, including cruelty? Yes, of course he has! Yet whilst I'm not altogether immune to the imaginative appeal such stories and films may have, I rather incline to the view that, if the Universe is in fact peopled with other intelligent and evolutionary life-forms, they'll be more human in appearance than monstrous, being something like ourselves, only less evolved or more evolved, as the case may be.

So you see I incline to believe the highest life forms throughout the Universe to be human, and therefore akin to one another in respect of their superiority to animals. They may not look exactly like us or speak with similar accents, but I'm confident that they would be able to recognize one another as kindred, human-equivalent life forms, if brought into contact. And I'm confident, too, that they would be of approximately the same scale, not vastly dissimilar in height or build. I don't foresee earthmen grovelling before sixty-foot giants or, conversely, staring down at six-inch midgets in the course of their future space explorations. I'm cautiously hopeful, even optimistic, that they'll be able to see eye-to-eye, as it were, with their galactic neighbours.

I wrote the above yesterday afternoon, while the rain was pouring down outside my window in the swift wake of a violent thunderstorm. I expect there is rain and storms on other planets elsewhere in the Universe too, though it didn't occur to me to consider that possibility then. I was much too engrossed with the subject of scale, as recorded above. However, what applies to one life-sustaining planet is likely to apply just as much to others as well, its being assumed that life requires a given environment in which to evolve. There is no life on Mercury because the red planet is too close to the sun, and therefore far too hot to permit its development. Conversely we may admit that a planet at too great a distance from the sun, like Pluto, will be too cold to permit any life to emerge. A planet has to be in a solar position somewhere in-between the two extremes, if oxygen is to arise and thus encourage the development of life. So it has to be in an Earth-equivalent position, relatively speaking, no matter in which solar system it exists. And because of this, life throughout the life-sustaining planets in the Universe will have to share more things in common than not, will have to be quite similar, since in any one context, be it air, sea, or land, it requires a fairly uniform pattern of life-sustaining encouragement. It's no good expecting people to live where there is no rain or oxygen. And where there is rain and oxygen, it's a bit silly expecting monsters instead of people! A similar environment should give rise to similar life forms.

But I'm becoming too technical and speculative. I wanted to record in my journal that the Universe is both contracting and expanding simultaneously, in order to make clear to the misguided souls of this world exactly what the Universe is doing, and which part of it is doing what. For I will subsequently be developing this theme in a major essay, for the sake of literary respectability. My journal - a slightly pompous habit - is a first and rather tentative step in that august direction. Or perhaps I prefer to keep certain things to myself, from fear of arousing too much opposition? I am a rather controversial writer, I'll have to admit. Which, in a sense, is something to be proud of, since it proves that one is capable of independent thought and thus of innovation in matters intellectual - quite unlike the majority of writers who, by contrast, remain all-too-depressingly predictable, whether through cowardice or stupidity or commercial pressures ... I leave for them to decide! However, enough boasting! As long as I know my own worth, intellectually speaking, the intellectually pusillanimous can go to hell!

The Universe, then, is expanding spiritually. Let this be made absolutely clear! For there has been a great deal of shilly-shallying uncertainty this century. At one time it has been fashionable to contend that the Universe is contracting and, at another time, that it's expanding. Both views, I maintain, are equally correct, providing they are applied to the relevant parts of the Universe - a thing, alas, which hasn't always been the case! For example, some people have believed that the sun, growing in size and intensity, will one day burn up the earth, including them or their future descendants. Unable to take spirit seriously, they have applied the theory of an expanding universe to the stars! I, however, must do what I can to emphasize the erroneous nature of this misguided belief which, when considered in the light of factual reality, becomes positively absurd. How, one imagines, can a star which is losing millions of tons of its matter a second possibly be expanding? And even the tendency of stars to rush away from one another, as from a central void, is less an expansion, I contend, than a divergence. No, let's encourage people to get the right end of the stick and thereby view the Universe the right way up instead of, as in all too many cases, upside down, if not back-to-front as well. Let them see that, while stars slowly burn towards extinction, the human population of the globe continues to rise, and thus to increase the sum total of spirit currently in existence. Yet spirit isn't just related to population growth. It can grow, or be encouraged to expand, within the individual, so that any given person can become more spiritual than would otherwise be the case ... if he ignored his spirit or smothered it beneath sensual distractions. We are born with spirit, but we're also responsible for cultivating it, if we so choose. Hence the expansion of spirit is also dependent upon human effort, and we may assume that, with each succeeding generation, the level of spirit being cultivated generally rises, because the pressure of evolution is all the time directed towards increasing the spiritual at the expense of the sensual. The Universe is in a constant process of spiritual expansion through the medium of man.

I must have been in a highly idealistic frame-of-mind yesterday when I wrote the above, and now I feel quite proud of myself for having written it. I was talking to a friend, during the evening, who referred my attention to Teilhard de Chardin's theory concerning a convergence of the Universe to what he calls the Omega Point. He pointed out the difference, as he saw it, between the great French theologian's contention and my own, reminding me that while de Chardin stressed a convergence, I emphasize an expansion. We couldn't both be right, in his view, and I found myself to some extent agreeing with him.... Although, like so many things in life, I think both approaches are correct, provided one knows which approach to apply to which context. Let me explain.

If the Universe begins with the stars and progresses, via man, to the Omega Point, which should be regarded as the spiritual culmination of evolution, then a convergence from the Many to the One there most certainly is, since stars are separate, whereas the ideal climax to evolution would be unified, in accordance with the essence of absolute goodness. The agonized doing of the Alpha Absolutes would lead, via the world and its historical struggles, to the blissful being of the Omega Absolute, thereby reflecting a process of convergence from the Many to the One. To that extent, I have to agree that de Chardin is probably correct in his choice of terminology, since we can detect a process of social convergence at work in our own world, as manifested in the coming together of disparate races under similar living conditions and ideologies. This process may still have some way to go before a complete unification of spirit is achieved in a transcendental context, but at least we can detect a trend towards that desired culmination in the changing configurations of mundane society. A communal attitude is gradually gaining the ascendancy over the traditional individualistic, isolationist attitudes hitherto so prevalent in our world, thus vindicating the logic of Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary thesis.

But if there's a limit to the context in which a convergence towards the Omega Point can be maintained, it must lie in the fact that we are encouraged to visualize a tiny point of transcendent spirit as the climax to or culmination of evolution. Yet this would be misleading, in my opinion, since it contradicts the logic of a spiritually-expanding universe. One is confronted by the absurdity of a tiny point of transcendence existing in the immensity of infinite space, inwardly shining there like a lone star. Such an absurdity, however, is clearly inadmissible! We must confine de Chardin's theory to its rightful context, and use a different terminology for the actual development of spirit itself - one implying expansion. For there is, indeed, sound sense to the argument that, while stars continue to contract, spirit will continue to expand, in accordance with its blissful essence in eternal being.

Yes, there, if anywhere, lies the fundamental difference between the two viewpoints and, to my way of thinking, both of them are correct - in context. The Universe converges in space, but expands in spirit. Teilhard de Chardin stresses the external aspect, I, Michael James Carey, the internal aspect. He takes the converging process of evolution from A - Z, as it were, whilst I dwell on the nature of Z and its continuous expansion. In that sense there will never be an end to evolution, for the Omega Absolute will continue to expand into the void throughout eternity. Yet to the extent that its essence will be fixed ... in transcendent spirit, then it will certainly signify the climax of evolution, whether one chooses to regard such a climax as the Supreme Being, the Holy Spirit, Ultimate Reality, or even the Superman, to use a term coined by Nietzsche, who taught that the Superman would be the outcome of historical evolution, and hence 'meaning of the earth'.

Yes, how compelling his teachings were there, even given the philosophical inadequacy of their terminology! For this terminology has since lent itself to excessive vulgarization at the hands of men who have interpreted the Superman in terms of a Mr World-type figure, and thereby falsely endowed him with muscular significance. But, in reality, a muscular significance is the last thing that the Superman would have - as is the anthropomorphic projection of the pronoun 'he' which such a terminology encourages. For beyond man there can be only 'it' - the pure transcendence of ultimate divinity. After all, man, remember, is 'something that should be overcome', as Zarathustra well knew!

However, there are a number of things which Nietzsche's Zarathustra didn't know but which I do, having given some profound thought to them. My journal is full of notes relating to the means through which man is to be overcome in the struggle to attain to salvation, not the least important of which are the ones appertaining to his technological progress in the face of natural opposition. For instance, I have no doubt that, one day, man will overcome his natural body through the gradual perfection of an artificial one, since only by distancing himself from sensual needs and obligations, in part through technological progress, can he hope to arrive at a position whereby an exclusive and extensive spirituality will be possible to him. This advanced spirituality will only be possible, it should be emphasized, in the upper reaches of his psyche, which, in physiological terms, are compatible with the new brain and, in psychological terms, with the superconscious. The lower reaches, or old brain/subconscious, are aligned with the body in sensuality, and would therefore have to be guarded against and duly 'overcome' when the technological moment was ripe. One cannot compromise with the sensual and hope to attain to spiritual salvation at the same time. Evolution demands that man becomes ever more biased towards the latter, as he slowly but surely acquires the means to defeat the former. It demands, at its highest post-humanist level, a single-minded commitment to the cultivation of spirit, so that the human universe may expand more rapidly in the direction of spiritual transcendence. For attaining to a condition of pure bliss in supreme being is such an alluring prospect ... that we would be mad or foolish to wish for anything less! On the contrary, the nearer we get to our ultimate destiny, the more quickly do we evolve. For we are then in a better position to comprehend the direction we must take in order to achieve the maximum self-fulfilment in transcendent spirit.

Yes, the spiritual universe is certainly converging/expanding. But we should also remember that its root, or physical, part is simultaneously diverging/contracting, and will one day diverge/contract out of existence altogether. Exactly when that day will come, I cannot of course say, although it's to be hoped that we - and other beings like us elsewhere in the Universe - will already have attained to our goal in the never-ending expansion of transcendent spirit ... before the complete disintegration of stars and planets becomes a reality. Once that is achieved, the fate of the physical universe won't concern us. 'We' will no longer exist - only the complete and utter unity of the Omega Absolute, as it expands eternally in the void and ultimately replaces the infernal imperfections of the contracting stars with the divine perfection of its blissful being.

Thus speaks Michael James Carey!