TRANSFORMATION POINTS

PHILIP: What is there about meditation that makes it so important in your eyes? I mean, why should transcendental meditation become the religious norm of the future, as you assume it will?

SEAN: Precisely because it makes an approximation to the heavenly condition of the transcendental Beyond possible by emphasizing stillness, peace, freedom from worries, wellbeing, self-contentment, identification with an agreeable state-of-mind, and so on. Admittedly it will be a crude approximation, quite inferior to the actual condition of transcendent spirit, of which we mortals can have only a faint inkling. But even a crude approximation to that is better than nothing at all.

PHILIP: Presumably people would experience this approximation to the transcendental Beyond in communal contexts within the overall setting of a meditation centre?

SEAN: Yes, for solitary meditation is really a contradiction in terms. It is not to emphasize the solitary individual that one meditates, but to partake of the multitudinous collective. Being solitary is a limitation of our worldly phenomenality, whereas being part of a group in spiritual togetherness is to aspire towards the divine consummation of evolution in the maximum unity of undifferentiated spirit. Meditation should only be practised in the latter context.

PHILIP: Thus one would be indulging in a form of spiritual communality?

SEAN: Absolutely! However, the spiritual communality of the transcendental devotees in meditation centres would be merely a prelude to the ultimate spiritual communality, on earth, of the Superbeings in the second phase of millennial life. For this latter communality would involve what I like to call hypermeditation, or supercharged meditation made possible by the removal of the old brain from individual Supermen at the termination of the first phase of millennial life, and their consequent elevation to the intensely collectivized new-brain status of Superbeings.

PHILIP: How many new brains would constitute a Superbeing?

SEAN: A great many - possibly several thousand. For the object of placing so many new brains in close proximity to one another on a common artificial support would be to approximate more closely to the projected unity of transcendent spirit in the heavenly Beyond, and so bring the communality of meditating brains to the highest possible pitch on earth. The old saying that two brains or, rather, heads are better than one ... for solving a problem ... would certainly apply, if only slightly, to the creation of a large 'brain' out of thousands of individual brains whose capacity for meditation was enhanced in proportion to the number of brains or, more correctly, new brains interacting with one another to the level of what I have called hypermeditation - the direct means of attaining to transcendence.

PHILIP: Whew, this is beginning to surpass my powers of comprehension! What you are saying, I take it, is that only the interaction of so many new brains in an intensely collectivized context would generate the necessary spiritual potential for transcendence, and the consequent almost nuclear detachment of spirit from the new brain as such.

SEAN: Precisely! Without the interaction or mutual stimulation of the numerous new brains upon one another, there could be no ultimate salvation. For salvation requires not meditation but hypermeditation, such as only the Superbeings would be capable of experiencing. Each Superbeing, incidentally, would be the antithetical equivalent to a tree.

PHILIP: How do you mean?

SEAN: Well, a tree is a natural entity composed of a support, viz. trunk and branches, and innumerable leaves, which may or may not flower. The leaves are subconscious and therefore devoid of autonomy. They are components of the tree. One can't speak of leaves as though they were individual life forms subject to egocentric consciousness. The tree is a communal entity and functions in terms of a sort of sensual communality. The antithetical equivalent to a tree will also be a communal entity, composed, as I have said, of numerous new brains which will be artificially supported, through a trunk- and branch-like apparatus, and exist on a superconscious plane, likewise devoid of autonomy, in which spiritual communality prevails. What flowers are to the leaves of a tree, transcendence will be to the new brains of a Superbeing.

PHILIP: Fascinating! And these new brains presumably won't think of themselves as distinct or separate entities - anymore than would leaves on a tree?

SEAN: No, they will be no less above egocentric consciousness than leaves are beneath it. Only the Supermen of the first phase of millennial life would be capable of or, rather, disposed to self-identification. For the persistence of the old brain from earlier stages of evolution would entail a degree of egocentric consciousness - at least during those periods when the Supermen were relaxing or recovering from their LSD trips, or equivalent synthetically-induced visionary experiences.

PHILIP: And would these Supermen be collectivized, too?

SEAN: Of course, since evolutionary progress would be emphasizing collectivization on the preceding level of the transcendental civilization, and that could only be stepped up, as it were, within the first phase of the post-Human Millennium. Here, then, brains would be artificially supported on a common branch-like apparatus, but instead of being the antithetical equivalent to leaves on a tree, they would exist as an antithetical equivalent to apes on a tree, i.e. as so many individuals gathered together in a loosely communal context. As apes precede man in chronological time, so the Supermen will succeed him - each artificially-supported brain being a distinct Superman.

PHILIP: And why will they be injected, or whatever, with LSD?

SEAN: Because it makes for upward self-transcendence on the visionary plane, and before the psyche could be expected to live on a wholly post-visionary, or essential, plane ... it would doubtless have to pass through an intermediate stage of internal visionary experience, in which a limited degree of appearance would prevail. Such appearance, however, would be static, in accordance with the predominantly omega-oriented constitution of the lower regions of superconscious mind, not be active like dreams, which reflect, by contrast, the alpha-stemming constitution of the subconscious. Having a subconscious mind, because an old brain, the Superman would still sleep, like us, and so experience his own dream world. But during the day he would trip, i.e. experience artificially-induced visions, and thereby thoroughly familiarize himself with his superconscious. The leaders - priest equivalents of the post-Human Millennium - would be on-hand to tend him, injecting the requisite dosages of LSD into each Superman, presumably via an arrangement of plastic tubing responsible for conveying blood and nourishment to the brain. After all, it isn't enough that the Supermen should be artificially supported; they must also be artificially sustained, so that one is led to envisage a large mechanical pump, common to all brains, being used to convey blood and oxygen, via plastic tubing, to the individual Supermen. If apes and trees are naturally sustained, through sunlight, oxygen, rain, earth, and so on, then their antithetical equivalents ... could only be sustained artificially - in the aforementioned manner. It's as simple as that!

PHILIP: I wish I could believe you! However, now that I am more or less in the picture, what particularly puzzles me is the transformation from Supermen to Superbeings. I mean, when would the leaders know the time had arrived for them to remove the old brain from each Superman and create that more intensely collectivized entity which you have termed a Superbeing?

SEAN: One would have to be alive during the post-Human Millennium to know the answer to a question like that, since only the most complete understanding between the Supermen and their overseers would put the latter in a position to know when to set about creating the Superbeing. Obviously, no attempt would be made to transform Supermen before they were thoroughly acquainted with internal visionary experience and therefore sufficiently acclimatized to the superconscious to be capable of gravitating to post-visionary consciousness, following the surgical removal of the old brain. A premature transformation from the one post-human life form to the other would be foolhardy, assuming it were possible, which is by no means guaranteed, since the technological know-how of performing such a delicate operation would take time to develop, and preliminary experiments would doubtless have to be carried out long before the Supermen were considered ripe for transformation. Only when the leaders were technically capable of effecting the desired transformation from the one post-human life form to the other would they proceed with their task, since evolutionary progress requires a certain amount of initiative from the leadership at any given time, and cannot depend upon the wishes of the led alone. Doubtless those wishes have to be taken into account, but they must be supplemented, as it were, by the progressive ambitions of the leadership, if evolution is to continue. Yet what applies to the transformation from Supermen to Superbeings applies no less to the earlier (in relation to this) transformation from men to Supermen, which is also something that would have to await its proper time. We can have no certainty, at present, of when this earlier transformation will be brought about, though we need not expect it to happen for 2-3 centuries yet.

PHILIP: You mean, towards the culmination of the next and, presumably, final civilization?

SEAN: Yes, the universal civilization of transcendental man, in which meditation will be practised in suitably-designed meditation centres and the State continue to 'wither away', as religion gradually takes over from politics. By the time the People have grown accustomed to this civilization, and their leaders have developed the technology for supporting and sustaining brains artificially, the transformation to the post-Human Millennium will be possible, and therefore man's correlative upgrading into Superman. At present, we are still at quite an historical remove from that momentous turning-point, however.

PHILIP: So it would appear! For, in the West, one has the old dualistic, or Christian, civilization of countries like Britain and France, together with the more recent transitional, or Christian/transcendental, civilization of the United States. Whilst in the East one has ...

SEAN: What, under Soviet Communism, could formerly have been regarded as the barbarous opponent of those civilizations but which, with the development of Social Democracy, may well be something on the way to becoming the ultimate civilization.

PHILIP: Let us sincerely hope so!