CYCLE FORTY-TWO

1. ART AND MUSIC. Just as we are constrained by art to an optical appreciation of its spatial plane, so we are constrained by music to an aural appreciation of its sequential plane, and, in both cases, we are enslaved to the senses of sight and hearing as to Superheathen powers of a Hindu and/or Judaic origin. Art and music do not lead us to God as supreme being ... so much as constrain us to what stems from God as primal being, and are therefore more scientific than religious. The more spiritual a person becomes the more he comes to realize that art and music, not to mention literature and the other arts, are merely a distraction from the spirit, the centre of which is in the lungs and which can only be approached, via the forebrain, through contemplation. The more absorbed one becomes in contemplation and meditation, the less likely one is to worship art and music, as though in deferential subjection to some primitive, and avowedly Superheathen, deity. Still, one will know that whereas art is rooted in the Superhell of superfeminine Space, music is rooted in the Subheaven of submasculine Time, and is accordingly less Hindu than Judaic in its origins - a subdivine fire which contrasts with the superdiabolic light of art, standing in its shadow like Satan in the shadow of the Clear Light. For which reason it is just as likely to be denigrated, in the popular imagination, as Devil ... as art to be hyped as God.

2. NO 'GOLD STANDARD'. Literature still hasn't been taken off the 'gold standard' of 'the book'. And the 'gold standard' of literature is still the novel, which conforms to the intellectual hegemony of writing over literature ... at the expense of reading (poetry), speaking (drama), and, most especially, thinking (philosophy), the latter of which is as avowedly quasi-spiritual as fictional literature is intellectual, manifesting subjective selflessness in due puritanical fashion. Now at last, however, literature can be taken off its 'gold standards' not only in terms of a quasi-spiritual 'bovaryization' of the intellect, as relative to a thinker, but with regard to the use of a medium, viz. computer disc, which is more suited to the advancement of spirituality via quasi-spiritual intellectuality than ever a book, including the Bible, would be - a medium, I mean, which is as far removed from the Heathen 'gold standard' of narrative intellectuality as (the Christian essence of) quasi-spirituality itself.

3. FROM GOLD TO SILVER. Like literature, Ireland has not yet been taken off, democratically and officially, the 'gold standard' of the republican tricolour, with its green, white, and gold (or is that orange these days, in a flagrant concession to Orangemen and partial liberation from gold?). In fact, one would think that Ireland was still loyal not only to the Father (a Heathen objective deity), but to the Clear Light as well, in what must seem like a Superheathen allegiance stretching right back to the origins of the Galaxy, if not the Universe. But that would hardly be Christian, and Ireland is nothing, after all, if not a predominantly Christian, because Catholic, country, whose allegiance is therefore rather more to the Christ Child, flanked by the Virgin Mary and the Holy Ghost, than to any Heathen deities, including the Puritan Son, the Presbyterian Father, and the Anglican Mother. Ireland is not a Heathen, still less a Superheathen country, but one of the few countries in the world which is capable of upholding a Christian view of life and of actively pursuing Christian ends. And this with, or in spite of, the tricolour, which effectively symbolizes the unity of Heathen and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, in a Republican State. But is Ireland united in such a republican fashion and, more importantly, could Ireland ever be united in such a fashion, without due regard to the contrasting allegiances which currently divide it - North from South in Heathen/Christian terms? Frankly, I have never thought so; for it seems to me that when one attempts to mix incommensurable elements together, like Heathen chalk with Christian cheese, the result is less progressive than anarchic, as though someone has taken Irish Trad, Rock 'n' Roll, and Jazz, and suffered them to be mixed together, with a consequence that the divine-oriented spirituality of Irish Trad is compromised by the barbarous rhythms and heathenistic instrumentality of Rock 'n' Roll and Jazz to such an extent ... that nothing demonstrably cultural can still be recognized. Such is the mongrel fate in store for anyone who takes the tricolour too seriously! Progress cannot come from the tricolour, neither culturally nor spiritually, much less politically, bearing in mind the opposition evoked in Heathen souls by the prospect of unity with their Christian counterparts south of the current border. Only the Supercross of Social Transcendentalism can offer hope to those who, as true Christians, wish to see Ireland progress towards a better future, one less Christian than Superchristian. Only the Supercross holds out any prospect of Ireland's rising above the mire of the tricolour in which it is currently bogged down, and of soaring to the heights of a brighter future. If Ireland is really to democratically move off the 'gold standard' of the tricolour, with its gold band, it can only be via the Supercross, whose green on a silver ground points the way forward, beyond the World, to the spiritual pastures of 'Kingdom Come'.