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
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!
