Op. 30

 

THE WILL TO TRUTH

 

Multigenre Philosophy

 

Copyright © 2013 John O'Loughlin

____________

 

CONTENTS

 

PART ONE: DIALOGUES

 

1. The Freeing of Art

2. Of Jews and Israelis

3. Feeling and Awareness

4. Relative Perversion

5. From Gravity to Curved Space

6. From the Personal to the Universal

7. Petty-bourgeois Art

8. Religious Evolution

9. An Ultimate Universality

 

PART TWO: ESSAYS

 

10. Future Religious Progress

11. The Evolution of Art

12. Human Extremes

13. Post-Atomic Progress

14. Two Approaches to Salvation

15. An Absolute Aspiration

16. Concerning Swearers

17. The Future Absolute

18. Two Types of Criticism

19. Between Two Gravities

20. Understanding Jazz

21. Philosophy - Genuine and Pseudo

22. The Ultimate Music

 

PART THREE: APHORISMS

 

23.  On Sexuality

24.  On the Self

25.  On Racism and Anti-tribalism

26.  On Religion

27.  On Literature

28.  On the Arts

29.  On Jazz

30.  On the Psyche

 

PART FOUR: MAXIMS

 

31.  On God and Evolution

32.  On Being and Doing

33.  On Ideology

34.  On Sex and Gender

__________

 

PART ONE: DIALOGUES

 

THE FREEING OF ART

 

DEREK: If, as you claim, art evolves from the mundane to the transcendent, from materialistic sculpture to impalpable holography, and does so via a number of intermediate stages ... like murals, paintings, and light art, it must have begun bound to the Diabolic Alpha and only gradually emancipated itself from that ... as it tended towards the Divine Omega.  Thus the higher the development of art, the more free must it be from utilitarian concerns, which pertain to the mundane.

KENNETH: Oh absolutely!  The lowest stages in the development of art were, by contrast, the most utilitarian, as in the case, for example, of ancient Greek sculpture.

DEREK: But how was this sculpture utilitarian?

KENNETH: Through its connection with pagan religion.  The ancient Greeks, particularly the earliest ones, were given to idolatry, both completely and partly.  By personifying their gods in sculptural form, they acquired a concrete reference-point for purposes of religious devotion.  The simpler Greeks would have worshipped the statue as the god, which was pretty much the religious norm in pre-atomic times.  Especially would this have been so in the earliest phases of Greek civilization, before statues acquired the lesser status of images of the gods, who dwelt elsewhere.

DEREK: Presumably on Mount Olympus?

KENNETH: Yes.  But whether these statues, these sculptures, were worshipped directly as gods or indirectly as images, their function was strictly utilitarian, in accordance with the nature of art in its lowest stages of development.  Besides worshipping gods, however, the ancient Greeks also worshipped heroes, who would sometimes become gods in the course of time, and they built additional statues personifying abstract virtues, such as Strength, Courage, and Fortitude.  There was no free sculpture, as we understand it.  They would have been deeply shocked by the concept of art-for-art's sake!  Art had to be connected with a utilitarian purpose, even if one less exalted than the worship of natural phenomena.  Incidentally, although the Renaissance attempted to revive certain Graeco-Roman values and to reaffirm the importance of beauty as a creative ideal, the resulting sculptures weren't used for purposes of worship, as their pagan prototypes had been, but stood as a kind of Renaissance art-for-art's sake in revolt against Gothic iconography.  The men of the Renaissance honoured the form but not the spirit of Greek sculpture!  They wanted to create a free sculpture.

DEREK: And succeeded admirably!  However, as the utilitarian must precede the free, it is evident that art continued to be largely if not exclusively utilitarian throughout the pre-atomic age, and even into the atomic age of Christian civilization.

KENNETH: That is so.  Or if not directly then, at any rate, indirectly connected with utilitarian ends, as with the vase paintings of the Greeks, who naturally made use of their vases for carrying water and storing wine, to name but two uses.  The concept of a free vase wouldn't have appealed to them.  Yet vase painting definitely marked a development beyond sculpture which was closer to murals, since a combination of the two, in that two-dimensional figures were applied to a curvilinear form resembling, and doubtless deriving from, the human body, with particular reference to the female.  It was left to the Romans, however, to develop murals and mosaics to any significant extent, thereby beautifying their walls and floors.

DEREK: Which could be described as the raison d'être of murals and mosaics.

KENNETH: Yes.  Just as the Greeks had beautified their vases with figure paintings commemorating heroes and battles or, alternatively, referring to aspects of their religion, so the Romans adorned the walls of their dwellings with murals depicting much the same thing.  Even explicitly erotic figures possessed a religious significance, insofar as paganism was nothing if not sensual and, hence, sexist.  But a mural signifies a superior stage of aesthetic evolution to vase painting, because the figures are applied to a flat surface, namely a wall, rather than to a curved one, which stands closer to nature in imitation of the human form.  There is something partly transcendental about a flat surface, even when it forms part of an utilitarian entity, like a wall.

DEREK: Doubtless one could argue that, considered separately from the overall function of a dwelling, a wall is less utilitarian than a vase, which may be subject to direct use.

KENNETH: I agree.  And for that reason the mural was a stage before painting ... as the application of figures to a flat surface not directly connected with utilitarian ends, because forming the basis of an aesthetic entity hanging on the wall.

DEREK: And yet such an entity could be indirectly connected with utilitarian ends, couldn't it?

KENNETH: Yes, to the extent that its owner may look upon it as a means to beautifying his house, rather than as something which exists in its own right as a completely independent entity.  It would then be like a kind of removable wallpaper, existing in a transitional realm between the mundane and the transcendent, the bound and the free.

DEREK: Though presumably this would only be so while its content appealed to the aesthetic sense by actually being beautiful or, at any rate, partly beautiful, which is to say, until such time as art became either ugly or truthful, and thereby bedevilled aesthetic considerations.

KENNETH: Precisely!  Though while art remains attached to canvas it can never become entirely free from aesthetic considerations, even when it aims, as some modern art does, at Truth, because the very medium in which it exists - the canvas, oils, et cetera - suggests a connection with the past, with past phases of painterly development, and is itself to a certain extent materialistic and naturalistic.  A modern painting may intimate of Truth rather than approximate to the Beautiful in one degree or another, but, in hanging on a wall in someone's house, it won't be entirely free from utilitarian associations.  It will be less free, in fact, than an identical or similar painting hanging in a public gallery, where it would be absurd to suggest that its presence there was intended to beautify the gallery.

DEREK: You are suggesting that one should bear in mind a distinction between the private and the public, between art in the home and art in the gallery.

KENNETH: Particularly with regard to modern art, which will approximate more to the free or transcendent than it would otherwise do ... if attached to the wall of a private dwelling.  A truly free art, however, could not adopt canvas form but would be detached from walls, floors, et cetera, in a medium which transcends the utilitarian and thereby exists in its own right, in complete independence of its physical surroundings.  Such an art to a certain extent already exists in the context of light art, which has no connection with the utilitarian use of artificial light but, quite the contrary, shines independently to the lighting necessary for the illumination of a public gallery at any given time of day.  Indeed, such art is never better served than when displayed in conjunction with the utilitarian use of artificial light, its presence thereby being shown superfluous by any utilitarian criteria.  And yet, important as this art may be in the gradual liberation of art from the mundane, it is still connected to its surroundings, if only to the extent that it hangs from the ceiling or is supported on a tripod or has an electric current flowing through it via an insulated wire that connects to the mains at some point in the gallery.  The evolution of art is incomplete until the illusion of a totally free art is created through holographic techniques, which should project an impalpable image, or hologram, of a material entity into surrounding space, and thereby present to the viewer the arresting spectacle of its detached transcendence, the image, independent of floors, walls, wires, pedestals, et cetera, having no utilitarian associations whatsoever!  Thus not, in its ultimate manifestation, a representational image, like a telephone, but a completely abstract one, such as would intimate of transcendent spirit.

DEREK: And this ultimate stage in the evolution of art would have to be public, like the preceding stage ... of light art?

KENNETH: Yes, and preferably within the context of a meditation centre, which is to say, as an ingredient in religious devotion - at any rate, certainly if abstract and thus unequivocally religious in character.

DEREK: But wouldn't that make it utilitarian, much as Greek sculpture was when housed in a temple?

KENNETH: No, because not an entity to be worshipped, either directly or indirectly, but simply to be contemplated, as an intimation of Truth.  Both the pagans and, to a lesser extent, the Christians worshipped statues; but Transcendentalists would simply contemplate an appropriate hologram from time to time during the course of their meditation session, not as an alternative but in addition to meditation, kept mindful, by its presence, of the goal of evolution in transcendent spirit.

DEREK: So that which, as sculpture, began publicly in a religious context would, as holography, end publicly in such a context?

KENNETH: Yes, the distinction being one between the mundane and the transcendent, sensual public art and spiritual public art, which is nothing short of an antithesis between the bound and the free - the former approximating to Absolute Beauty, the latter intimating of Absolute Truth.

DEREK: Just as a similar antithesis presumably exists between vase painting and light art.

KENNETH: Yes, the vase being an opaque container illuminated externally by paint but intended, all the same, to hold sensual phenomena like wine or flour in a predominantly utilitarian context.  By contrast, light art may be defined in terms of translucent containers, whether bulbs, tubes, or tubing, illuminated internally by artificial light - which, depending on the type of light art, can be regarded as symbolizing the spirit - and not intended for any utilitarian purpose.  Quite a contrast, when you think about it!

DEREK: Indeed!  And yet, despite its association with utilitarian purposes, vase painting was presumably a fine art during that pre-atomic epoch in time when it was especially fostered - as, for that matter, were murals.

KENNETH: And quite unlike modern vase paintings or murals, which correspond to a folk art.  The distinction is more one of chronology in evolutionary time than quality of work, though the latter will still of course apply.  I mean, the vase paintings and murals of the ancient Greeks and Romans respectively, being an integral part of evolutionary progress in the development of art from highly materialistic origins, were the work of the most aesthetically-gifted people of the time, whereas modern vase paintings and murals are the work of relatively uncivilized people, i.e. the folk, and therefore devoid of chronological relevance in the overall evolution of art - the foremost developments of which having attained to the level of light art and, to a limited extent as yet, even gone on to that of holography.  A typical modern mural, on the other hand, whether on the gable wall of a house or stretching along a public wall in some street, suggests a creative affinity with ancient-pagan and early-Christian times, and is more likely to be the work of someone whose creative disposition corresponds to the relatively primitive level of the ancients ... than of a civilized artist who has temporarily abandoned light art, or whatever, for murals.

DEREK: One is reminded of what Freud once wrote concerning the unequal levels of spiritual development which exist in human society - some people virtually living on the primitive level, others in the Middle Ages, yet others in the eighteenth century, and so on.  Only a comparatively small minority of people truly live in their age, as its creative masters.

KENNETH: A situation that will doubtless continue so long as class distinctions remain inevitable, as they will do for some time yet - certainly until such time as a post-atomic civilization gets properly under way.  For where there is a distinction between a civilized class and a folk, a distinction will also exist between fine art and folk art, the latter embracing not only vase paintings and murals, but certain types of sculpture and painting as well.  Such art may be described as barbarously naive, because it doesn't pertain to civilization in its successive transmutations.  Now since contemporary Western civilization is predominantly petty bourgeois, it follows that the foremost art of the age will be produced by petty-bourgeois artists, whose religiosity - and civilization in any true sense is inseparable from a relevant religion - derives, as a rule, from the Orient.  They pertain to the leading civilized class of the age, a class which has taken over from the middle and grand bourgeoisie in the evolution of Western civilization.  One day, however, the folk will become civilized, and when they do it won't be folk art but holography that will appeal to them.  Their art will be completely detached from material constraints.  Their religion no neo-Orientalism but full-blown Transcendentalism, the religion of an ultimate civilization - one antithetical, in character, to that of the ancient Greeks.  Not the alpha of Beauty, but the omega of Truth!  Not the bound appearance, but the free essence!

 

 

OF JEWS AND ISRAELIS

 

KEITH: Of all peoples in the West, Jews strike me as being the ones who most cling to Creator worship, to a religion which stresses the Creator, or Jehovah, rather than some avatar, or Christ-equivalent figure, who stands, chronologically speaking, in between the Creator and the future Ultimate Creation ... of the Holy Spirit ... in the overall evolution of gods.  Judaism would appear to be a largely alpha-oriented religion, a religion anterior to Christianity in terms of evolutionary development and, as such, many of its adherents would seem to be biased towards materialism and more capable, in consequence, of pursuing wealth as a desirable end than most of their Christian counterparts - much as though the pursuit of material gain was of moral value in itself.

ROBERT: I agree that Judaism is fundamentally more alpha-orientated than any other so-called World Religion, with the possible exception of Islam, and could therefore be regarded as pre-atomic rather than atomic.  Now if there is any connection between a people's lifestyle and their religion, then it could well transpire that there is some truth in what you say about Jews being more disposed to the pursuit of wealth in consequence of their paganistic cast - not all of them, of course, but still quite a fair percentage, and irrespective of whether or not they still cling to religious devotion.

KEITH: But what makes them like that?  I mean, why should they continue to cling to a pre-atomic faith when other peoples have long abandoned such a thing in favour of an atomic faith, like Christianity?  Why must Jews be so materialistic?

ROBERT: A very difficult question, but one that I am not entirely bereft of ideas about!  In fact, I have only recently come to the conclusion that the tradition of clinging to Judaism stems, in large measure, from the Diaspora, from the fact that Jews took their religious roots into the countries to which they were obliged to emigrate and, not possessing a national state of their own, had to cling to such roots if for no other reason than the preservation of a common ground between them.

KEITH: You mean that rather than becoming Christians or Mohammedans or whatever, and thereby severing connections with their principal form of cultural identity, they clung to Judaism even in the face of persecution, in order to retain a cultural identity with Jews everywhere, irrespective of to which country they had migrated.

ROBERT: Yes, I broadly subscribe to that contention.  For although I am aware that Jews were often prohibited from becoming Christians or Mohammedans in the various countries to which they migrated, the fact that they had been forced into exile by the Romans must have produced an inhibiting effect on the degree to which they were prepared to assimilate themselves to, or be assimilated by, the country of their hosts, with a consequence that, ever desirous of a future return to Zion, they determined to cling to their religious roots in the interests of ethnic identity.  Thus whilst other peoples were acquiring and furthering a semi-transcendental religious perspective, Jews remained, and to a significant extent still remain, fundamentalist at heart, clinging to alpha-oriented criteria in the hope that, one day, they would regain their homeland and become a united, independent people again, with the prospect of a new religious development, once the Messiah had come to lead them forward.  Of all the civilized peoples in the world, they are the only ones who, Second Comings notwithstanding, are still awaiting a Messiah, having rejected Christ and other such atomic messiahs in loyalty to their people, traditions, and apocalyptic hopes, not to mention historical antipathy to the Romans, who of course became Christians.

KEITH: And yet we live in a century when, after nearly two millennia, the Jews once again have a homeland, which is the State of Israel, and are enabled to return to it if they so desire, that is to say, if they have remained loyal to their people and want to fulfil Biblical prophecy by returning home and awaiting messianic redemption.

ROBERT: That is so.  But, of course, not all of them have remained loyal to their people after all this time.  Some have become Christians and thus abandoned the religious hopes of their ancestors; some, while remaining Judaic, have become more closely integrated into the country of their adoption, or, more usually these days, birth; some, preferring to abandon all religious traditions, whether Judaic or Christian, have adopted atheistic positions in loyalty to Socialism, and thus become still more closely integrated into the country of their adoption or birth, be it Western or Eastern; and some, of course, are of mixed descent and thus hardly Semitic at all by any racial reckoning.  There exists a whole range of Jews who aren't particularly interested in Zionism and a possible future return to Israel; though there also remain many who are still interested in such a prospect and are merely awaiting an opportunity to make their move.  Yet others have already gone, are now in - or were before they died for one reason or another - the State of Israel, even if only briefly.  Some of the Israeli Jews are still Judaic, still practising adherents of pre-atomic religion in loyalty to tradition.  Others are nominally Judaic but, in practice, secular - free of conscious religious commitment or, indeed, of any orthodoxy.  So it is among peoples all over the world, irrespective of their perceived race.

KEITH: Yet many Jews, whether in Israel or the Diaspora, whether Zionist or Internationalist, European or American, are still basically materialistic, given to the pursuit of wealth as a kind of virtue in itself, and consequently despised, not least of all for their unwillingness to substitute Christian criteria for Judaic criteria.

ROBERT: That may be so, but while they live in atomic civilizations, as in the Christian West, they cannot be persecuted outright, as by the Nazis both before and during the Second World War, since Christian nations are still partly pagan, or alpha-stemming, and therefore disposed to tolerate, if not openly admire, Jews in their midst, irrespective of how un-Christian or pre-atomic some of them may happen to be.  Only nations tending away from atomic civilization in a barbarous political guise would be inclined to persecute Jews for being pre-atomic in cultural allegiance.  For such nations tend, whether or not they're aware of the fact, towards the transcendent, and must find fault with what they take to be pagan or, in the Jewish case, quasi-pagan alpha-oriented 'laggards'.

KEITH: But surely the Nazi persecution of Jews, to which you are doubtless alluding, was conducted on a racist basis, without regard to moral or religious criteria?

ROBERT: To a large extent it was, even given the fact that one can't wholly separate religious from ethnic considerations, bearing in mind that race and culture are deeply interwoven.  Yet while that may have been the case on the surface, as it were, of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, I incline to doubt whether there wasn't a deeper motive underlying it which many Nazis may not have been consciously aware of themselves, but which they were fated, as tools of malign history, to enact - a motive, I mean, connected with the moral implications of leaving a predominantly pre-atomic people at large in a world tending, from a barbarous base, towards post-atomic criteria.  Admittedly, it is easy for civilized Westerners to see nothing more than a racist dimension to Nazi anti-Semitism, since this was the apparent dimension, the one most superficially recognizable.  But history often makes use of superficial means to attain to profounder ends, and uses, in the process, unsuspecting accomplices in the pursuit of its ultimate goals!  Wasn't Nazism supposed to be a quasi-religious ideology, opposed to 'Bolshevik materialism'?  And might it not be that such an ideology was fated to pursue policies which Marxists wouldn't have understood, since subject to a different ideological prerogatives, but which history nevertheless required, if only on a short-term basis?

KEITH: Your speculation induces one to suppose that, despite its inevitable failure, Nazism may have been of some service to history whilst it lasted, and primarily as regards the liquidation of approximately six million covertly or overtly cultural adherents of a pre-atomic religion who would not have been dealt with in such fashion by Marxists!

ROBERT: Ah, but the point is: Who were those six million Jews? Were they the cream of their race, those who had fulfilled Biblical prophecy by returning to Palestine either before or during the Second World War?  Or, alternatively, were they effectively betrayers of their race, of the prophecy concerning a return to Palestine which, although given ample opportunity of fulfilment, they had chosen to ignore by remaining in Europe, only to be exposed to persecution from a nation which had turned against Jews on the pretext of race?  Time alone will tell, though I, for one, wouldn't be surprised if, in the decades or centuries to come, it came down in favour of the latter assumption and passed negative judgement on those who had failed, through no particular fault of anyone else, to return to Palestine.

KEITH: Yet even though millions of Jews succumbed to Nazi persecution and were exterminated in a variety of hideous contexts, one could nevertheless argue that many Jews who would not otherwise have returned to Palestine did in fact do so in consequence of Nazi pressures, and that the Nazis accordingly assisted, if indirectly and in the crudest possible terms, in the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy ... by inducing the more sensible or courageous or fortunate or fit Jews to escape to freedom.

ROBERT: Indeed, and many Jews would doubtless have required such a radical incentive for leaving Europe after so many centuries of exile there!  But those who remained behind did so at their own peril and, in a majority of cases, they paid the penalty - whatever moral interpretation one chooses to attach to their demise.  My admiration is less for the recalcitrant, the lazy, the apostate, the ignorant, the weak, or whatever, than for the Zionists, especially those who had voluntarily returned to Palestine, as it then was, even before the Nazi incentive came along, and in the face of British restrictions, the sort of restrictions that, duly maintained even during the Second World War, subsequently paved the way, it seems to me, for the holocaust.  They are the ones who eventually became Israelis, leaving Jews behind in the Diaspora in order to forge a national identity, an identity which, though superior to an ethnic one, may yet give way to a still superior identity in Transcendentalism, assuming Israelis prove willing to accept transcendental truth and gravitate from Judaism to the new religion with an alacrity that only a people long accustomed to waiting on messianic deliverance could be expected to show.

KEITH: You mean the State of Israel will be redeemed if Israelis take a lead in adopting Transcendentalism, and thus set a spiritual example for other peoples to follow?

ROBERT: Yes, though I wouldn't go so far as to say that they should set such an example to the whole world.  For, speaking as an Irishman, I would like to see Ireland setting such an example as well, in the not-too-distant future, and see no reason why it shouldn't do so.

KEITH: So while you don't have a particularly high moral regard for Jews ... conceived, in a way, as exiled tribalists, you are prepared to concede Israelis the possibility of spiritual redemption, even though, in the present circumstances, many of them cling to Judaism for want of anything better.

ROBERT: Yes, I would rather Israel became a bulwark of transcendental progress in the Middle East, and thereby fully justified its presence there, instead of simply existing in an open-society context, as at present.  After all, the adoption of Transcendentalism by Israel could have extremely important repercussions on world Jewry, to the extent that a timely directive from Israel for diaspora Jews to abandon Judaism could save the latter unnecessary denigration from barbarous opponents of traditional faiths.  Of course, there is always the possibility that the adoption of Transcendentalism might lead to friction with such opponents, if pursued too ardently or hastily.  But if diaspora Jews are to be redeemed at some future date, then they will have to abandon Judaism for the religion in question.  However, it is unlikely that Marxists would behave towards Jews as did the Nazis - regardless, in other words, of their religious, class, national, or other allegiances.  While Marxists may oppose capitalists and adherents of traditional religious faiths, of which Judaism is a conspicuous example, they should not be racists and/or unconscious tools of a malign history that would be prepared to liquidate Jews on sight.

KEITH: Yet, presumably diaspora Jews would be more subject to harassment than Jews or, rather, Israelis in Israel?

ROBERT: That always remains a possibility.  Though if such Jews aren't specifically intended, by historical necessity, to be in the Diaspora to further Transcendentalism among European and other peoples when the opportunity of doing so arises, then most of them would probably be better off going to Israel and working for Israeli freedom, or the right of Israel to exist.  For it seems to me that the more Jews there are in Israel, and the less Jews in the Diaspora, the better it will be for Israel, which still hasn't entirely convinced the Arab world of its entitlement to exist, and could therefore do with all the able-bodied help it can get.

KEITH: So you are convinced that the State of Israel deserves to exist?

ROBERT: Provided the conditions to which I have alluded are eventually met and Israel thereupon takes a lead in affirming Transcendentalism, as taught by the New Messiah, the 'Anti-Moses' of universal civilization.  Unfortunately, like Moses in the desert before him, this New Messiah, who in Christian parlance loosely corresponds to a Second Coming, won't personally enter the 'promised land' ... of the transcendental civilization himself, because its global realization is only likely to come to pass in the future, quite some time, in all probability, after his death.  But he must nevertheless point the way forward for his subsequent followers, of whichever race, to tend towards and eventually enter this spiritual 'promised land' themselves, to be set firmly on course for the post-Human Millennium and what lies beyond that epoch ... in the heaven of literal transcendence.  If some peoples are destined to start along the road to that ultimate civilization ahead of others, well and good!  There will continue to be a distinction between 'the quick' and 'the slow' for some time yet, and he sees no reason why Israelis, in conjunction with peoples like the Irish and Iranians, shouldn't be among the former.  After all, Jews have been dragging their feet, metaphorically speaking, for a sufficient period of time now to suggest that a radical leap to higher things is timely!  The Diaspora may have held their religious aspirations in check, but the State of Israel, if it is determined to fully justify itself, should permit them to flourish as never before - in the exclusively omega-oriented context of Transcendentalism!

 

 

FEELING AND AWARENESS

 

EDWIN: Since you are a self-proclaimed philosopher, what is the distinction between awareness and will, as applying to the spirit?

TONY: The distinction is between the negative and positive approach to and/or application of spirit.  When we use spirit actively it becomes will.  When, on the other hand, we use it passively, which I interpret in a positive light, it becomes awareness.

EDWIN: But isn't will awareness?

TONY: Yes.  But it is awareness directed towards practical ends and does not result in the direct cultivation of spirit. Awareness directed towards no other end than greater awareness makes for Truth.

EDWIN: Then what is spirit?

TONY: The awareness aspect of the most positive use of electrons, as when they are in a majority over protons in any atomic integrity.

EDWIN: And when or where do they exist in such a majority?

TONY: In the new brain.  Now the new brain is of course a physiological entity, but, like all such entities, it has a psychic aspect, which we call the superconscious.  This is synonymous with spirit or, rather, the superconscious is that part of the psyche in which spirit exists, just as the subconscious is that part of it in which the existence of soul is to be found.

EDWIN: What is soul?

TONY: The psychic aspect of proton-dominated regions of the body, which manifests in emotions.

EDWIN: As all emotions?

TONY: Yes, good and bad, or positive and negative.  The strong as well as the weak, the lasting as well as the transient.  Soul pertains to the flesh and thus stems from the Diabolic Alpha, which is to say, from the cosmic or natural roots of life.  Spirit, though lodged in a material entity, viz. the new brain, can be encouraged to reflect an aspiration towards the Divine Omega, which is to say, pure spirit as totally free electrons.

EDWIN: Thus our spirit and our soul are alike impure?

TONY: Yes, they are dependent on and connected with matter, which, as we both know, is atomic.  Pure soul, however, is subatomic and manifests in the proton-proton reactions of flame.  Pure spirit, by contrast, will be supra-atomic, as manifesting in the electron-electron attractions of transcendence.

EDWIN: You say soul is feeling, but would the sun, as a cosmic manifestation of pure soul, be capable of feeling?

TONY: Not in the conscious sense!  The sun or, for that matter, any subatomic absolute would be unconscious of itself as feeling.  So, incidentally, would mineral formations, in which protons greatly preponderate.  Consciousness of feeling only arises at that point in evolutionary development when atomic formations are less radically proton-dominated than with minerals - in other words, with plant life which, although still proton-dominated, is capable of feeling pleasure or pain by dint of a higher electron content than is to be found in stone.  But so much does the proton content preponderate over the electron content of this particular mode of life ... that feeling is only registered subconsciously, never breaks into actual conscious recognition, as with animals and men.

EDWIN: Thus there is a difference between being unconscious of feeling because either absolutely or near absolutely proton-constituted, and being subconsciously conscious of it, as when the electron content increases slightly?

TONY: Yes, a distinction, primarily, between the inorganic and the organic - the former being beneath even subconscious receptivity, the latter on or above it.

EDWIN: If, unlike a stone, a tree is capable of feeling pain or pleasure subconsciously, would a dead tree or a log also be capable of doing so?

TONY: Of course not!  To be conscious of feeling, on whatever level, one must be alive, and this applies no less to a tree or plant than to an animal or a human being.  A dead tree would be closer to the inorganic than to the organic - indeed, it would literally become inorganic, as when wood turns into coal, and accordingly be beneath the subconscious recognition of emotions.  A log would feel no pain from an axe-blow, but a live tree certainly would, if subconsciously.  We, too, feel pleasure and pain subconsciously ... in sleep, which is the nearest we can get to understanding what a tree would feel.  Plants are a life form that sleeps all the time, though if they dream they would have no consciousness of the fact, because there are too few electrons in their atomic constitution to enable a separate or viewing mind to emerge.

EDWIN: Would you describe positive emotions as good and negative ones as evil?

TONY: I am no Platonist, but I will concede to positive emotions the status of a relative good, that is to say, good in relation to negative emotions without, however, being good in any absolute or literal sense.

EDWIN: So still basically evil?

TONY: Yes, because dependent on and clinging to the flesh.  Whatever appertains to soul, whether negatively (as pain) or positively (as pleasure), is inherently evil because temporal.  Pleasure may result from the electron content of flesh responding to positive stimuli, but the fact that it has to do with the electron aspect of the flesh doesn't make it good in any absolute sense.  It is certainly preferable to pain, and we recognize as much.  But it remains sensual, quite distinct from any absolute good (of awareness) in the spirit.  Indeed, the spirit itself falls short of Absolute Goodness by dint of the fact that it is impure, or dependent on the new brain for physiological support.  We aspire, if virtuous, towards Absolute Good from the relative goodness of spiritual awareness.  But, by comparison with positive emotions, even the lesser degree of awareness to which I have just alluded, which appertains to the superconscious, is closer to an absolute good, and we customarily regard it as such.

EDWIN: Clearly, you are no aesthete!  For, if I understand you correctly, the contemplation of beauty would, to your mind, be but a means to effecting the relative, or lesser, evil of positive emotions.

TONY: Yes, and therefore not a means to transcending soul, such as any genuine aspiration towards the Divine must be all about.  Beauty in art is only practicable or acceptable for a given period of evolutionary time - in other words, until such time as men turn away from emotions towards the cultivation of awareness through one or another degree of transcendentalism.  Art then becomes a matter of Truth, a mode of intimating of Absolute Truth in the interests of increased awareness.  We don't want positive sensations from art in a developing transcendental age but, au contraire, something that encourages us to transcend emotions through passive contemplation, something, in short, that negates or stills emotions in deference to the spirit.

EDWIN: Yet not all twentieth-century art does so.  After all, there is a fair amount of ugly or anti-beauty art around, while some of it still appeals to our aesthetic sense.

TONY: That's true, and as far as the latter kind of art is concerned I have nothing to say, preferring not to lose my cool!  But ugly art, as you call it, is certainly an important aspect of modern art, reflecting the fact that contemporary man is at a further remove from the Beautiful, regarded as an abstract virtue, than were the ancients or, for that matter, his nineteenth-century predecessors, and is more disposed, in consequence, either to interpret beauty in a relatively ugly way or to consciously turn against it in a determined attempt to undermine and slander it.  I suspect that most petty-bourgeois artists who create a relatively ugly art are really interpreting the Beautiful in their own rather modernist way, and so extending the aesthetic tradition into increasingly rarefied regions of Being which, in some people's minds, may seem inseparable from ugliness.  I don't think we need criticize such artists for having a different concept of beauty than the ancients or their bourgeois and/or aristocratic predecessors.  Yet, regardless of their respective intentions, the art they are producing will be on a lower level, in my opinion, than that which is being produced in the realm of transcendentalism, or an art exclusively concerned with Truth and, as a corollary of this, the cultivation of greater degrees of awareness in the public at large.

EDWIN: So a distinction exists between 'emotional art', irrespective of the quality or type of emotions it encourages, and 'awareness art', which, by contrast, is the truly modern art.

TONY: 'Feeling art' is never absolute, nor, for that matter, is most 'awareness art' completely detached from feeling-engendering qualities, as we discover when we respond to, say, a Neo-Plastic work as though it were intended to reflect a higher concept of the Beautiful.  But to the extent that a distinction of sorts does in fact exist between them, then yes - aesthetic art pertains, even when only tenuously beautiful, to the tradition, whereas 'awareness art' pertains to what is truly modern, as signifying a post-atomic bias for electron freedom.  One could speak of materialistic art on the one hand and of idealistic art on the other - a distinction extending across the entire spectrum of petty-bourgeois creativity and even into the, by comparison, nominally proletarian realms of light art and holography.  From a proton/bound-electron distinction in atomic art, we progress towards a quasi-electron/free-electron distinction on the post-atomic levels of much twentieth-century art.  From works in the former contexts that directly appeal to the emotions and indirectly to awareness ... towards works in the latter contexts that indirectly appeal to the emotions and directly to awareness.

EDWIN: You are alluding, I presume, to works, in the former contexts, of concrete beauty and concrete truth respectively, but to works, in the latter contexts, of abstract beauty and abstract truth respectively.

TONY: To be sure, and to works, in the latter contexts, of abstract beauty that may well appear ugly and give rise, in consequence, to less than positive emotions!  Perhaps they are a better incentive than more concrete works to our turning away from emotions and embracing awareness instead?  I, at any rate, have always found so, which is why I prefer them to more traditionally aesthetic works, despite the difference in quality of the emotions engendered.  Even a negative, indirect incentive to awareness is preferable to no incentive at all!

EDWIN: Ah, I'm almost afraid that I shall have to agree with you, incorrigible aesthete that I am!

 

 

RELATIVE PERVERSION

 

CARMEL: You give one the impression, Graham, that you don't much care for women, that women somehow annoy you.

GRAHAM: Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I have long recognized in women a vicious streak and predisposition to sensual indulgence that, as a spiritual man, I tend to despise.  I don't greatly admire beauty these days, and find the attention or, rather, importance which women ascribe to appearances somewhat contemptible.  For instance, they are more disposed than men to taking umbrage at some defect in one's clothes or footwear when one passes them on the street.  I agree with Schopenhauer that they value appearances too highly, partly, I suspect, because their understanding of spiritual values is so little developed in comparison with the more sophisticated men.  You, I concede, are an exception to the general rule.  For not many women are as liberated, liberated, above all, from themselves!

CARMEL: What it really comes down to, with you, is that the only women you really like or admire are the liberated ones, the feminists, whom you have at various times called traitors to their sex.

GRAHAM: Yes, I agree!  I prefer women who, in their capacity as quasi-Supermen, are working against women ... to those who are all for upholding traditional values and behaving - dare I say it? - all too poignantly like women!  My impression is that the sooner the sexual dichotomy in life is overcome, the better life on this planet will be.  For such a dichotomy is by no means an ideal thing, contrary to bourgeois prejudices and superficial appearances to the contrary!  No more ideal, in fact, than the so-called balance between freedom and social justice that certain ideologues are fond of citing to justify the opposition between Tory capitalism and Liberal socialism.  Such deluded souls imagine that this opposition signifies the best of all political worlds.

CARMEL: Which, in a manner of speaking, it may do for a given period of evolutionary time.

GRAHAM: Admittedly.  But not for ever, contrary to what they would have us believe!  And the same of course applies to the opposition or, rather, dichotomy between the sexes, which, frankly, is a wretched thing and source of centuries-old misery, not the least aspect of which may involve unrequited love!  No, I do not admire women.  I look forward to the day when they will be overcome and only quasi-Supermen exist, in harmonious conjunction with Supermen-proper in a context of post-atomic sexuality.  Such a day isn't all that far off; for even in the bourgeois/proletarian West there exists a growing tendency towards post-atomic criteria in sexual, not to mention, social matters.  You would object to being discriminated against as a woman, and, willy-nilly, for the very sound reason that, to all intents and purposes, you are now a quasi-Superman.

CARMEL: Yet not, on that account, the complete equal of a genuine Superman, I presume?

GRAHAM: Objectively considered, no!  Though it would of course depend on the Superman in question and the context to which one was referring.  It is possible for me to consider a highly intelligent woman like yourself superior to any number of comparatively stupid men.  That is a relative distinction, I'll admit, but not one I find obnoxious.

CARMEL: I'm relieved to hear it!  Though that wouldn't prevent some stupid men from regarding me as their social inferior simply because I am a woman - at least in appearance.

GRAHAM: No.  But, then, absolute distinctions between men and women, no matter how anachronistic these days, cannot permit of any equality, which is one of the reasons why I prefer to ignore them.  It suffices me that you are a lesser equal rather than a different and, hence, quite unequal creature.  For long centuries women were regarded as inferior to men, not as social equals.  Yet the marital tradition presupposes the enslavement of a bound-electron equivalent, viz. a husband, to a proton equivalent, viz. a wife, who sustains an atomic integrity in which she figures as the husband's so-called 'better half'.

CARMEL: In theory, yes.  Though in practice it is usually the husband who dictates matters - at any rate, since the days when marriage became patriarchal in character.  You, however, prefer to regard me as a 'lesser whole', since there is no marital bond between us.

GRAHAM: Indeed!  And that is the way of things on the post-atomic level.  Our relationship is in effect quasi-homosexual, since a liberated woman and a married woman are, to all intents and purposes, two quite different creatures - the difference being between a quasi-electron equivalent and a proton equivalent.  Well, as you know, I don't mind the former, but I despise the latter!  I shall never allow myself to get maritally involved with a woman and thereby run the risk of becoming her bread-winning slave in an atomic relationship.  I intend to remain free, and to share my freedom with a lesser equal - namely you.

CARMEL: How kind of you!  Though you aren't exactly indifferent to certain kinds of pornographic stimuli in addition to me, are you?  Indeed, at one time soft pornography was your only sexual outlet.

GRAHAM: And so it will become again, if ever you get any ideas of marriage into your devious head!

CARMEL: As a liberated female, I could hardly do that!  Marriage and children are equally objectionable to me.

GRAHAM: Well, they can't be so for everyone, least of all where children are concerned, else the human race would quickly die out.  Children aren't necessarily incompatible with free sexual relationships, though they may tie the woman down a bit.  Sooner or later some artificial and communal way of producing and raising children will have to be introduced, in order to rid liberated females of the responsibility.  There is no eternal justification for producing and raising children on a family basis.  Neither, for that matter, is there any eternal justification for people remaining together throughout their lives.  If we are truly liberated, we should be able to change partners fairly frequently, since there will be no strong emotional ties binding us together, like prisoners of each other's souls.  Some men are so liberated that they don't even bother to form temporary relationships with women in the flesh, but rely on artificial or pornographic stimuli alone.  As you know, I was once similarly disposed and thus, in a sense, freer than now.

CARMEL: A traditionalist would say that you were simply perverted and, to a lesser extent, still are so!

GRAHAM: Perversion is a relative term, a value-judgement reflecting an individual's point of view as he stands in relation to nature.  What less-evolved people regard as perverse, someone like me sees as a more civilized type of sexual behaviour, a mode of sexual sublimation in which sex is elevated from the body to the mind, from the concrete realm of the flesh to the abstract realm of voyeuristic contemplation, as in various kinds of pornography.  James Joyce once said that madness, or what is sometimes taken for such by less-evolved people, can in fact turn out to be a higher form of sanity.  Certainly there are contexts in which this is true, as when a man is given to sexual sublimation because, in response to a combination of factors, environmental as well as personal, he becomes too spiritual to be content with merely natural or palpable modes of sex.  Perhaps, in certain cases, schizophrenia is a higher form of sanity, as when the intelligence draws away from the senses in anticipation of and response to an evolutionary drive tending towards the complete severance of intellect from sensuality at some future point in time, namely the Superbeing Millennium, when the new-brain collectivizations of the truly classless, stateless, free society of Superbeings ... will be hypermeditating towards transcendence and, hence, the attainment of pure spirit to the heavenly Beyond in the most absolute context conceivable?  The split between sensuality, i.e. emotions, and intelligence, i.e. awareness, which we witnessed in the twentieth century ... seems to me but a crude foreshadowing, a rudimentary intimation, of that ultimate split between the old brain and the new brain which evolutionary progress will require on the threshold of the Superbeing Millennium - the second stage of post-human development.

CARMEL: When, if I follow you correctly, the prevailing technicians will upgrade millennial life from the superman level to the superbeing level, and thus create the ultimate earthly life form.

GRAHAM: Precisely!  But radical and long-sighted as that perspective may be, it should at least suffice, in the short term, to underline or expose the crass short-sightedness and conservatism of people who now imagine that pornographic indulgence is a kind of sexual aberration not to be countenanced by right-living individuals!  To my mind, however, the use of pornography reflects this emerging cleavage between intellect and sensuality by transferring sexual stimuli from the senses to the intellect, and thereby endorsing the sovereignty, from an evolutionary viewpoint, of the spirit over the flesh.  It is clearly a manifestation of evolutionary progress in terms of sex.

CARMEL: Which is why, I take it, that you cling to pornographic erotica in spite of occasional - dare I say it? - relapses into concrete sexuality, compliments of myself.

GRAHAM: To be sure.  Though you will have to admit that such 'relapses', as you tactfully put it, aren't always conventional but reflect a more liberated approach to sex which, as I see the problem, in some measure redeems them.  Of course, a person who based his morality solely on naturalistic criteria, as all too many persons still do, would accuse me of perversion.  But, really, how can human beings evolve towards spiritual transcendence without having perverted or, more correctly, subverted their natural instincts along the way?  Is not the overcoming of nature an integral part of our evolution towards the supernatural - the negative and indirect side, as it were, of our evolutionary strivings?  You smile, but you know I am right, and that is why, in spite of occasional misgivings, you are fundamentally a liberated female, a quasi-Superman rather than a slave to nature, like a woman.

CARMEL: Experience has taught me that there is no arguing with a man like you, who always manages to vindicate his claim to being a genuine Superman when put to the test!

GRAHAM: Such compliments as you pay me are but the reverse side of the compliments I pay you when circumstances compel me to verify your claim to the status of a liberated female, as they do from time to time.

CARMEL: Some consolation!

 

 

FROM GRAVITY TO CURVED SPACE

 

BRIAN: If I understand you correctly, the Universe began with explosions of gas that gave rise to the proton-proton reactions of stars and only formed itself into galaxies when some of those stars, evidently smaller and weaker than others, cooled to the point of becoming partly material, and thus were attracted by the larger subatomic stars on account of their atomic constitution.

SHANE: Precisely!  As soon as the smaller stars began to harden into planets, the everywhichway divergence of stars that had hitherto prevailed in the Universe was halted, because the larger stars now found themselves competing for planets in a mutual attraction that kept them pinned, as it were, to circumscribed cosmic bounds.

BRIAN: So stars and planets weren't born simultaneously.

SHANE: No, of course not!  A planet presupposes a certain atomic integrity and cannot arrive at such an integrity without having first existed on the purely or predominantly subatomic level of a star.  The subatomic leads to the atomic, so planets would have evolved somewhat later than stars, originally being small stars that were destined to cool, at least in part, into matter.

BRIAN: I agree when you say 'at least in part'.  For the earth is itself a star in the process of cooling, one that possesses a subatomic core which is encased within an atomic crust.  It is divided, so to speak, between the subatomic and the atomic.

SHANE: One could alternatively describe it as being somewhere in-between a star and a moon, since a moon is a dead star, or a star which has completely cooled.  That, I think, would constitute the definitive definition of a planet.

BRIAN: Yet why is it that planets revolve around the sun?  What is it about these cooling stars that brought the everywhichway divergence of stars in general to a halt, and thus created the basis of a galactic integrity?

SHANE: Precisely the fact that they were and remain partly atomic, and so became attracted to the nearest stars.  For protons attract electrons, and since there were plenty of electrons in the atomic integrity of the earth's crust it followed that, in conjunction with other planets, the earth would be attracted to the nearest 'anarchic' star.  What prevented the earth from being sucked-in to the sun, as we may now call the star in question, was the fact that it wasn't entirely atomic but contained a large subatomic core which reacted against the sun's attractive force, and thereby established a tension the nature of which was to contribute towards its revolution around the sun.  For whilst one part of the planet was attracted to the sun, the other part reacted against it, while simultaneously attracting the earth's atomic crust.  This tension between attraction and repellence is precisely what caused our planet, and by implication other nearby planets, to revolve around the sun, and it keeps the earth intact.  For it is quite probable that the subatomic core would exert a stronger attractive influence on the crust, were it not balanced-out by the competing attraction of the sun.

BRIAN: An equilibrium of mutually attractive and repellent tensions!  But does this also explain the revolution of the moon around the earth?

SHANE: Indeed it does, since the atomic relativity of the moon is attracted by the subatomic absolutism of the earth's core while simultaneously being repelled by the atomic relativity of its crust - the protons in each of these relativities chiefly being responsible for the repelling.  Yet the moon is also attracted by the subatomic absolutism of the sun and revolves around the earth more in consequence of the competition between core and sun than in response to any repellent influence solely stemming from the earth's crust.

BRIAN: In other words, it is torn between two mutually exclusive attractions.

SHANE: Just as the earth's crust is torn between the mutually exclusive attractions of its own core and the sun, and the planet is thereby kept spinning on its axis around the sun, which is unable to pull the crust into itself from without ... for the simple reason that the earth's core is exerting a similar attraction on it from within.

BRIAN: And yet, what about the sun - what is there that keeps it revolving around the central star of the Galaxy?

SHANE: Certainly not the fact that the central star attracts the sun to itself, but, rather, because, being large and powerful, it attracts the numerous planets which revolve around smaller stars and would probably succeed in sucking them into itself, were it not for the fact that these smaller stars, one to each solar system, exert an attractive influence of their own on the planets as well.

BRIAN: So just as a moon is kept in revolution around a planet because of the competing attractions of core and sun, and a planet is likewise kept in revolution around a sun, so a peripheral star is kept in rotation around the central star of the Galaxy because of their mutually exclusive interest in planets and moons.

SHANE: That must be approximately correct.  And it should mean that part of the reason why a planet revolves around a sun is that the more distant central star of the Galaxy also exerts an attractive influence on it, an influence which is counterweighted, however, by the small star at the heart of any given solar system, as well, of course, as by its own subatomic core.

BRIAN: So the central star in each galaxy and the small peripheral stars are fundamentally the same - at least in constitution, if not in size and strength.

SHANE: Yes, for anything that is subatomic can only be such on approximately identical terms, i.e. as implying some degree of proton-proton reaction.  The central star, from which it appears the smaller ones emerged, would be no less subatomic than the others.  Only with planets does evolution attain to an atomic integrity.

BRIAN: And it is this integrity, this matter, that a sun attracts to itself.

SHANE: Yes, certainly not the electrons by themselves!  For electrons cannot be divorced from matter at such an early stage of evolution as planetary formations.  Rock does not burn, because the atomic integrity of such matter is too densely proton-packed.  It was once molten lava that cooled and hardened into rock, from which state it cannot return to fire again, having already burnt itself out.  But it can be attracted, in a kind of magnetic reciprocity, by the subatomic absolute, which exerts a force on its mass.

BRIAN: Here you are speaking of gravity.

SHANE: True, and the gravitational force exerted by the subatomic absolute acts as though that absolute would like to reclaim the mass, derived from its partial cooling, back into itself out of a wilful desire to prevent further evolution.

BRIAN: But why, if the sun attracts this mass to itself, does a stone return to earth when thrown into the air instead of continuing in the sun's direction, from which an attractive force is apparently all the time emanating?

SHANE: Precisely because the earth's molten core also exerts an attractive force on the stone which causes it to return to the surface, this force being closer to the stone than the sun and therefore exerting more authority over it.  And for that reason the earth's crust, composed of rocks and mineral formations, is prevented from being sucked-in to the sun; though, because an attractive force still emanates from it, the planet, caught in a tug-of-war between core and sun, not to mention sun and central star, is obliged to revolve around it.

BRIAN: Granted that the sun acts as a kind of magnet on the earth's crust, what happens as regards, say, wood and vegetables?

SHANE: They are also attracted by the sun, if in a heliotropic rather than a magnetic way, since no magnet has ever been made out of wood or vegetable life!  The sun doesn't attract plants to the degree it attracts rock or crystal formations, though some attraction does in fact occur, else they would be unable to grow.  Indeed, were there not a simultaneous attraction from the earth's core, they wouldn't grow anyway, since unable to remain rooted.  For a plant's growth isn't just upwards into air; it is also downwards into soil, and we may believe that the roots are encouraged to grow by the earth's core and the stalk, in contrast, by the sun, so that a plant grows simultaneously downwards and upwards, is the result of a tension of competing gravitational forces which, at some point in any particular plant's growth, are obliged to call it quits, so to speak, and leave the plant as testimony to a gravitational compromise between the competing attractions.  Even a sunflower, which is taller than other flowers and thereby suggests a bias towards the sun, has roots that go down deeply into the soil and thus testify to the simultaneous competing influence of the earth's core.  Even animals and men are subject to this tension of gravitational forces between the two main subatomic protagonists in the Solar System.

BRIAN: But they don't possess roots that go down into the soil.

SHANE: Not literally!  But, then, legs are root equivalents in autonomous life forms and lead, particularly in the case of Homo sapiens, to an upright, stalk-like entity that we call the torso, which in turn leads to what may be regarded as a blossom equivalent - namely the head.  Considered biologically, man is a kind of walking plant, and, believe me, he wouldn't walk long on this planet's surface were he not subject, like a plant, to the attractive force of the earth's subatomic core!  He would be more like a spaceman, gliding about in space, and always at the risk, if he ventured too far from the earth's gravitational field, of being sucked-in to the sun.

BRIAN: So our stability is to some extent determined by the competing gravitational forces of sun and core.

SHANE: Yes.  And that applies to every life form on this planet, from a tiny plant to a huge elephant.  It also determines, in some measure, our height and weight.

BRIAN: You mean a person's height is determined, in part, by the competing attractive forces simultaneously at work on him from opposite directions?

SHANE: Only from a species point of view, since individual variations are primarily determined by hereditary factors.  But as weight is generally proportionate to height, so height is dependent on the particular tension of competing subatomic forces that simultaneously exert themselves on the world.  Were there less attraction from below, in the earth's core, we would probably be a good deal taller, as a species, than we generally are.  In the case of pigmies, however, it will be found, I think, that they are shorter in height than the average of humanity because more subject to the attractive force of the earth's core than to that of the sun, and largely on account of the fact that they live in jungle regions which, while not totally shutting out the latter's attractive force, somewhat weaken it by dint of the density of plant life to be found there.  So they grow less tall than those of us accustomed to regular exposure to the sun.

BRIAN: A theory which should imply that the tallest men, by contrast, will live in regions of the world most exposed to the sun, like the Middle East.

SHANE: Indeed, and I think you will find that Arabs are taller, on average, than those of us who live in temperate regions.

BRIAN: Getting back to the attractive force which the subatomic absolute exerts on matter, we must distinguish, I take it, between this matter and its electron content.  In other words, the attraction is primarily on matter rather than on the electrons inside it.

SHANE: Absolutely!  And the more dense the matter, the more tightly proton-packed it is, the stronger is the attraction of the subatomic upon it, as in the case of rocks and mineral formations generally.

BRIAN: So there could be no question of free electrons, of transcendent spirit, being attracted by, say, the sun, in the event of transcendence occurring on earth.

SHANE: None whatsoever, because the distinction between the subatomic and the supra-atomic is absolute, and no attraction can possibly occur between absolutes.  It would be absurd to suppose that, in escaping from the atomic constraint of new-brain matter at the culmination of millennial evolution, transcendent spirit would straightaway be attracted by the sun and eventually merge into it.  The sun would be the last thing, metaphorically speaking, that pure spirit would be attracted by, since its sole predilection would be to converge towards other transcendences, other globes of pure spirit, and expand into larger wholes in consequence, a process that, repeated possibly millions of times throughout the course of supra-atomic evolution, would eventually culminate in a definitive globe of pure spirit - namely, the Omega Point, as defined by Teilhard de Chardin in terms of the spiritual culmination of evolution.  Now just suppose, for the sake of argument, that all transcendences, from whichever part of the Universe, were attracted to the nearest stars instead of to one another - what do you suppose would happen?

BRIAN: Provided enough large transcendences entered a star, the proton-proton reactions of the subatomic would be confronted by electron-electron attractions of the supra-atomic, which could lead to its being elevated above pure soul into matter, becoming, in the process, akin to a planet with some degree of atomic integrity.

SHANE: In theory.  But, in practice, I rather doubt it!  For stars only became planets through cooling, and matter was thus created, on its most rudimentary level, from a subatomic base, not through a sudden fusion of protons with free electrons entering the subatomic from without!  No, pure spirit would never be attracted by the stars, not even slightly.  Rather, it would fulfil its own destiny in loyalty to the divine principles of a convergence and expansion of separate transcendences towards total unity.

BRIAN: Then matter is only attracted by the subatomic so long as it is naturalistic and, as it were, rooted in the Diabolic Alpha.

SHANE: Yes, as soon as spirit begins to get the upper hand over soul, as it will do in man at a relatively advanced stage of his evolution, then life aspires towards the Divine Omega, towards transcendence, even if only relatively so at first, as in Christianity, rather than with absolute intent.  Atomic, or dualistic, man, who is part mundane and part transcendental, physically stemming from the Diabolic Alpha but psychically aspiring towards the Divine Omega, is still to a certain extent attracted by the subatomic.  But transcendental man, while possessing a natural body, will exclusively turn towards the Divine Omega, that is to say, towards creating the Supernatural, and thus cease to affirm a link with the Creator.  He will be set on course for the post-Human Millennium and, hence, the practical implementation of an exclusively omega-oriented aspiration through the supersession of man by largely artificial, or post-human life forms, the second and last of which, namely the Superbeings, will have no connection with the Diabolic Alpha whatsoever!

BRIAN: Thus evolution proceeds from pure soul to matter, and from matter to pure spirit, not back, as some people seem to imagine, into pure soul.

SHANE: Correct!  There would be no logic or sense to life if evolution were destined to return to the subatomic after it had attained to the atomic, instead of progressing to the supra-atomic.  There can be no greater distinction than that between Hell and Heaven!  We are set on course for Heaven, if from a kind of purgatorial compromise in the atomic.

BRIAN: And this despite the diabolical workings of the physical cosmos, in which the law of gravity holds sway and planets are accordingly obliged to rotate around suns.

SHANE: To be sure!  A literal knowledge of how the physical cosmos works is the prerogative of people like us, who are beyond the confines of Western civilization, with its petty-bourgeois transcendentalism demanding a subjective, quasi-mystical interpretation of how it works, as exemplified by the Einsteinian concept of curved space.  Such a civilization must kow-tow to transcendental sensibilities, and thus uphold a quasi-mystical interpretation at the expense of force and mass.  It will claim that Newton was wrong and Einstein right.

BRIAN: But won't proletarian civilization uphold a similar if not more radical quasi-mystical interpretation of how the Cosmos works, in due course?

SHANE: Oh yes, absolutely!  But, in the meantime, proletarian states will prefer the literal, objective 'truth' about the physical universe, since that accords with their materialistic integrity beyond the boundaries of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, which isn't, after all, the ultimate civilization but only a stage on the evolutionary road to something higher - namely, proletarian civilization.  Marxist states, as upholders of dialectical materialism, certainly won't venture into the realm of petty-bourgeois transcendentalism, but will remain partial to Newtonian explanations of the Cosmos.  I, too, am partial to such explanations, as this dialogue should indicate, but only on a relative basis!  For whilst it is useful for a proletarian thinker to get to the bottom of how things really work and why, it is even more useful to know why a quasi-mystical interpretation of such workings should be endorsed, if not now then certainly in the future.  Petty-bourgeois transcendentalism may be good but, believe me, proletarian transcendentalism will be a good deal better!  That I can assure you!  In the meantime, let us exploit our status as 'barbarous' outsiders in order to put our more comprehensive knowledge of the literal workings of the physical cosmos down on record once and for all!

BRIAN: I agree.  But don't you think you exaggerate the transcendental integrity of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, which, after all, isn't absolute but decidedly relative?  I mean, Einstein may be de rigueur for the scientific avant-garde, but Newton has by no means been outlawed, as he surely would be in an absolute proletarian civilization.

SHANE: You are right, and consequently a literal explanation of how the Cosmos works would still find sympathetic ears in the West, since the pagan root remains intact in a relative civilization, and that allows not only the relatively uncivilized masses, but the more conservative-thinking people to regard the Cosmos from a traditional force/mass point-of-view, if they so desire.  Probably a majority of the aristocracy and the grand bourgeoisie would be inclined to uphold a literal rather than a quasi-mystical view of the Cosmos, since they don't live on the same plane, generally speaking, as the petty bourgeoisie, particularly those who constitute the scientific avant-garde.  So while curved space may be de rigueur for petty-bourgeois pace setters, force-and-mass cannot be outlawed, since there will be those who, on class or religious grounds, relate more to a literal explanation of how the Cosmos works than to a quasi-mystical one largely conducted, one suspects, in the interests of transcendental complacency.  For this reason, anyone who chooses to walk into a book shop and buy the works of Newton is perfectly free to do so.  That wouldn't be the case, however, in the next civilization, which, being absolute, could hardly allow people to purchase and read anyone who explained the workings of the stars and planets in objectively diabolical terms!  A free-electron civilization would automatically proscribe proton explanations in loyalty to its post-atomic status.  Only the curved-space theory of the Cosmos would prevail.  Only Einstein-type works would be on sale.

BRIAN: Ah, how absolutely right you are!

 

 

FROM THE PERSONAL TO THE UNIVERSAL

 

MARK: There are those who claim that Absolute Mind, meaning God in any ultimate sense, is immanent as well as transcendent, is both in the world and beyond it.  Aldous Huxley upheld this claim, and he derived it from Buddhist and Oriental scriptures. Would you agree with him?

GERALD: No, not on an absolute basis.  There is, to be sure, a distinction between relative and absolute, that is to say, between human spirit and pure spirit, or what we each possess, as awareness, in the superconscious mind, and what is claimed to exist beyond the world in complete self-sufficiency, as the most aware mind of ... transcendent spirit.

MARK: In other words, God.

GERALD: No, not necessarily!  God, in any definitive sense of literally applying to a supreme level of being, would be the ultimate globe of transcendent spirit such as could only come about at the climax of evolution.  Transcendences could conceivably exist in space at present, compliments of more evolved civilizations than anything we have seen on earth, but they would probably be at one or two evolutionary removes from the climax of evolution in total spiritual unity, and therefore oughtn't to be mistaken for God.

MARK: So, conceived as the ultimate globe of pure spirit at the climax to evolution, God doesn't yet exist.

GERALD: No, and won't do so for a considerable period of evolutionary time!

MARK: A contention, apparently, which need not prevent a distinction between spirit and pure spirit from existing, as regarding the immanent and the transcendent.

GERALD: Indeed, there is no reason why planets more advanced than our own shouldn't have already put pure spirit into space.  Wherever life had evolved to the level of a Superbeing Millennium, pure spirit would sooner or later emerge.  Now that spirit would be Absolute Mind, because transcendent, and shouldn't be confounded with the immanent experience of spirit, which ought really to be defined as relativistic absolute mind, since the immanent absolutism is dependent on and connected with the new brain and can only be somewhat less divine than the transcendent.  One should accordingly distinguish between a relative absolutism and an absolute absolutism.

MARK: How is this absolutism relative?

GERALD: Because awareness would be in the brain and connected with the body.  The immanent experience is absolute on this basis alone: that we are solely concerned with awareness, as the psychic attribute of superconscious mind, rather than with any compromise between awareness and emotions such as pertains to the conscious mind, particularly in conjunction with thoughts.  Consciousness is a mixture of subconscious and superconscious, whereas the immanent experience of absolute mind demands that we transcend the subconscious and so exist solely for the superconscious, absorbed in painless awareness.  But such awareness is relative, because dependent on the new brain.  It can only fall short in quality of the sublime awareness of transcendent spirit, which is the perfected attribute of Absolute Mind.  The distinction between the immanent and the transcendent is one of degree, as between the personal and the universal.  They can never be the same, contrary to what superficial thinkers tend to imagine!

MARK: And yet we can progress from the one to the other in the course of time?

GERALD: Yes, in the course of evolutionary time, which will presuppose further progress on the human level in terms of a transcendental civilization, the ultimate civilization in the evolution of man, which should lead, in due course, to the more evolved life forms of a post-Human Millennium, when first the entire brain and then just the new brain will be artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, bringing life to its highest possible earthly pitch prior to transcendence - the goal of millennial striving in the supra-atomic Beyond ... of Absolute Mind.

MARK: And yet, even with the attainment of immanent spirit to transcendent spirit, further evolutionary progress will presumably be required, in space, to bring all separate transcendences to ultimate unity in definitive divinity.

GERALD: Yes, such separate transcendences as emerge from individual Superbeings will converge towards those nearest to them in space, and thus gradually expand into larger globes of pure spirit, evolving from what might be termed a 'planetary' level to a 'galactic' level and on, finally, to a 'universal' level, the climax of supra-atomic evolution in the Omega Point, which will be at the farthest possible evolutionary remove from the Alpha Points, as it were, of the central or governing stars throughout the subatomic universe - approximately one to each galaxy.

MARK: Could these Alpha Points, as you call them, possibly correspond, by any chance, to what Buddhists call the Ground of all Being, Christians the Father, Mohammedans Allah, and Judaists Jehovah?

GERALD: Indeed they could; though such terms as traditional religions uphold indicate the singular rather than the plural, because religious evolution stems from a galactic base in a kind of microcosmic isolation from the Universe in toto, the governing star of the galaxy in which we exist being the literal source from which theological symbols like Jehovah, Allah, et cetera, were extrapolated in monotheistic partiality.  And this would have been so even if, as was probably the case, men had no idea of the existence of a governing star, being unable to see it, but simply posited some creative force behind nature, including the sun and nearest stars - those visible to the naked eye or through some rudimentary telescope.  Of course, the ancients may have spoken of a 'Creator of the Universe', but their 'universe' was a good deal smaller, so to speak, than the one we are becoming familiar with today.  They had no idea that it was composed of millions of galaxies, not possessing a knowledge of galaxies.  Even up until comparatively recent times men thought the earth was at the centre of the Universe!  No, if we are to get anywhere near the mark, albeit in anachronistically theological terms, we should ascribe the creation of the subatomic universe to literally millions of Grounds, Fathers, Allahs, Jehovahs, or what have you, because pluralism is the essence of the alpha.  Even the idea of a divine Creator is essentially erroneous or, at the very least, morally suspect when regarded from an omega-oriented point of view, since evolution begins with the subatomic and, as pure soul, that corresponds to a diabolic absolute ... in contrast to the future climax of evolution in the supra-atomic, which, as pure spirit, will correspond to a truly divine absolute.  To speak of a divine Ground, like Aldous Huxley, is effectively to indulge in a contradiction in terms.  The term 'Ground' suggests a root or base, and could only apply to the diabolic absolute which, as pure soul, has nothing to do with pure spirit.

MARK: Presumably the term 'Clear Light of the Void' would be more suitable to the latter, since effectively corresponding, in Christian parlance, to the Holy Spirit?

GERALD: Indeed, it may well be that the distinction between the Ground and the Clear Light ..., as between the Father and the Holy Spirit, is equivalent to alpha and omega, with some avatar, or anthropomorphic man-god, coming in-between as the mid-point of religious evolution.  But such terms as the Clear Light ... and the Holy Spirit, while relevant to their respective faiths, would be quite irrelevant to Transcendentalism, which, as I conceive it, will be the ultimate religion requiring a convergence to omega, as it were, on the level of a fresh terminology, so that, not for the least of reasons, no traditional religion may be regarded as surviving at the expense of another.  Transcendentalism is not Buddhism or Hinduism or Shintoism or any other traditional faith taking over from each of the others but ... a completely new, all-embracing religious development which appertains to the world proletariat.  It signifies a complete break with the alpha roots of the Universe in the stars and, in addition to regular meditation in specially-designed meditation centres, embraces knowledge of evolutionary perspective ... as applying, in the main, to the Superbeing Millennium and the nature and direction of transcendence.  No Transcendentalist would ever make the mistake of confounding alpha with omega, or vice versa, and I very much doubt whether, given the right education, all that many Transcendentalists would consider God both immanent and transcendent when, in any ultimate sense, God doesn't yet exist, being the climax of evolution.  Neither would they regard their absolute mind as being identical to the Absolute Mind, failing to distinguish between the relative and the absolute, the mundane and the transcendent.  A man engaged in transcendental meditation won't mistake his spirit for pure spirit.  He will discover, sooner or later, that subconscious emotions are never entirely eclipsed by relative awareness and that even the superconscious is prone to intrusive emotions and thoughts from time to time!  He will know that there is a significant evolutionary difference between his absolute mind and the absolutism of a Spiritual Globe converging towards other such globes in the post-atomic Beyond.  But he will know, too, that such a difference is precisely what evolutionary progress on earth is determined to overcome.  Above all, he will know that man is but a stage on the way to the post-human.

 

 

PETTY-BOURGEOIS ART

 

LIAM: A relative civilization will always have two sides to it, viz. a material and a spiritual, and this no less so on the petty-bourgeois levels of, in the main, twentieth-century art than on the preceding bourgeois stage of relative civilization.

ALAN: You say 'levels', which should be distinguished, I take it, from sides?

LIAM: Yes, by 'levels' I refer to earlier and later phases, either of which will have materialist and spiritual sides which, to further complicate things, constitute a lower and a higher approach to art - materialist art always being lower, in any morally objective scale of values, than its spiritual or, to speak in grammatically parallel terms, spiritualist counterpart.

ALAN: And how would you define those levels?

LIAM: In regard to petty-bourgeois civilization (which is the bourgeois part, as it were, of what, these days, one would call bourgeois/proletarian civilization), either as a stemming from the bourgeoisie on the earlier level or as an aspiration towards the proletariat on the later level.  The former will be more representational than abstract, the latter more abstract than representational.  Indeed, it may even be entirely abstract.

ALAN: And yet be materialist or spiritualist, depending on the type of art?

LIAM: Yes, on whether, for example, the art in question is concerned with distorting the natural or, in the case of the spiritual approach, transcending it in a kind of painterly supernaturalism.

ALAN: Can you give me an example of each type of art, on whatever level?

LIAM: Most certainly!  But first I would like to point out that petty-bourgeois civilization is divisible into what may be termed a genuine and a pseudo camp, that is to say, a camp of legitimately and historically relevant petty-bourgeois nations on the one hand, and a camp of traditionally bourgeois nations on the other hand that, while to some extent changing with the times and embracing an authentic petty-bourgeois element, remain closer to their bourgeois roots, and this in spite of exposure to petty-bourgeois influences from without, i.e. from the more genuinely petty-bourgeois nations.

ALAN: I presume you are alluding, within the traditional framework of civilized painterly art, to nations like America and Germany on the one hand, and to nations like Great Britain and France on the other?

LIAM: Yes, I am distinguishing between such quintessentially twentieth-century nations as Germany, Italy, Japan, and the USA in regard to the genuinely petty-bourgeois camp, and nations like Britain, France, Belgium, and Holland in regard to what may be called the pseudo-petty-bourgeois camp, which is largely composed of nations that came to world prominence in the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries but declined, like their respective Empires, in the twentieth century.

ALAN: I see.  And would there be a kind of materialist/spiritualist division between each of these camps?

LIAM: No, each camp is itself divisible in that way.  For example, in the traditionally bourgeois camp, Britain and Holland pertain to the materialist side, France and Belgium to its spiritualist counterpart.  In the genuinely petty-bourgeois camp, the USA and Italy pertain to the spiritualist side, Japan and Germany to its materialist counterpart.

ALAN: Would one be correct in contending that there exists, as by natural right, a friction between the materialistic nations and their, so to speak, spiritualistic counterparts?

LIAM: Indeed, such a friction, occasionally degenerating into open hostilities, has long existed between nations with an ideologically antithetical constitution on the basis of a sort of feminine/masculine distinction which is traceable, it seems to me, to the cosmic tension between stars and planets at the roots of evolution.  Hence the traditional rivalry between Great Britain and France in the bourgeois camp, and the more recent rivalry, which came to a head in World War Two, between Japan and the USA in the petty-bourgeois camp, not to mention between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy - Germany, though to some extent spiritualized by Hitler, fundamentally aligned with the materialist side of things, a fact which had never escaped Italian attention!  However, not all friction between materialists and spiritualists leads to war.  It is more likely to lead to competition in business or sport or technology or art.

ALAN: You began by mentioning art.

LIAM: Well, it is my firm contention that the materialistic nations tend, as a rule, to produce a materialist art, spiritualistic nations being more given, by contrast, to the production of a spiritualist art.  But this is relative, not absolute, since in a relativistic civilization, on whichever class level, both types of art will be produced in any given country.  It is just that a nation will be predominantly dedicated to the production of one or other of the two types, according to its ideological integrity, which, so I maintain, is traceable to ethnic roots.

ALAN: So we may expect France and the USA, for example, to be predominantly concerned with producing a spiritualist art, Britain and, say, Germany more given, by contrast, to the production of a materialist art.

LIAM: Yes, but one must distinguish between the pseudo-petty-bourgeois nations and the genuinely petty-bourgeois ones, since, as a rule, the exact type of spiritualist or materialist art that each nation produces depends on which camp it is in, a distinction having arisen, in the course of time, between what we may term mainstream petty-bourgeois art, on whichever level and irrespective of which side, and subsidiary petty-bourgeois art - the former appertaining to the genuinely petty-bourgeois nations and the latter to those nations which retain some allegiance to their bourgeois traditions.

ALAN: Can we take each art one at a time, starting with the mainstream?

LIAM: Of course!  And on the spiritualist side, as mainly pertaining to the USA, we may note a progression from Impressionism on the earlier level to Abstract Impressionism or, as it is better known, Post-Painterly Abstraction on the later level; a progression, in other words, from an Impressionism stemming from the natural in semi-representational form to an Impressionism aspiring towards the supernatural from an abstract base - a distinction between, for example, Whistler and Rothko.  The essence of Impressionism, on whichever level, is to transcend the natural, to create an impression that, negating optical focus on the earlier level and transcending it on the later one, relates to awareness and thus to the visionary.  The earlier Impressionism, stemming from the bourgeois stage of relativistic civilization, will be apparent, as reflecting an external impression; the later Impressionism, aspiring towards a proletarian absolutism, will be essential, as reflecting an internal impression.

ALAN: You mention the USA, and yet most of the earlier kind of Impressionism, the concrete kind, so to speak, was created in spiritualistic France, apparently beneath the orbit of mainstream petty-bourgeois civilization.

LIAM: That is true, though it was created by petty-bourgeois artists who, like Monet and Pissarro, existed within the confines of an essentially bourgeois civilization.  Hence the opposition among traditional and naturalist painters which Impressionism initially aroused in France.  Most of it had to be exhibited at the Salle de Refusé!  However, if Impressionism began in France, it soon passed to the USA where, with the development of petty-bourgeois civilization from the earlier to the later levels, it was eventually superseded by Post-Painterly Abstraction, as America took over the lead from France in the production of mainstream spiritual art.

ALAN: An art which presumably had a mainstream materialist counterpart in ...?

LIAM: Expressionism, as pioneered by the Dutchman Van Gogh, and its offspring Abstract Expressionism, the progression from the one to the other largely taking place in Germany - Expressionism before and during the Weimar Republic, Abstract Expressionism during and following the Second World War.  Though the emigration of various German artists to the USA during the Hitler era necessarily resulted in this materialist art being planted in American soil and to some extent influencing certain indigenous artists, like Jackson Pollock.

ALAN: In what way is Expressionism materialist?

LIAM: By distorting the natural world rather than transcending it on the earlier level, in accordance with subjective expression of the artist's emotions vis-à-vis his external environment, and by taking the same distorting process to a point where it turns in upon itself, so to speak, and expresses distorted emotions independently of external stimuli on the later level.  Expressionism is the subconscious expression of the external natural world, Abstract Expressionism the subconscious expression of itself - the former being the converse of Impressionism, which is the impression of the external natural world on the superconscious, the latter being the converse of Abstract Impressionism, which is the superconscious impression of itself.  Just as Van Gogh and Monet are largely painting the external environment from different minds - the emotional mind and the awareness mind respectively, the one extrovert and the other introvert, so Pollock and Rothko are delineating, in their separate abstract approaches to the internal environment of the psyche, different minds - the distorted subconscious and the transcendent superconscious respectively.  Although they are both late petty-bourgeois artists, the one is romantic, the other classic.

ALAN: Thus Abstract Expressionism is romantic petty-bourgeois art, Abstract Impressionism its classical counterpart.

LIAM: Precisely!  Though one shouldn't make the mistake of assuming that romanticism is necessarily materialist and classicism, by contrast, always spiritual - as I hope to demonstrate shortly.  To be sure, there is certainly a romantic approach to the spiritual life or art.... However, now that we have discussed mainstream petty-bourgeois art, we can proceed to the subsidiary variety, which will mainly pertain to the traditionally more bourgeois nations like Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium.  Taking the materialist side first this time, we will discover Cubism and Vorticism on the earlier level, both of which partly transcend the natural environment, and Neo-Plasticism and Op Art on the later level, both of which completely transcend it.  Unlike spiritualist art, however, neither level of this materialist art is concerned with representing the superconscious, since both of them exist on their own terms, at face-value, and may therefore be said to reflect a classical approach to materialism - the 'thing-in-itself' approach of Braque on the earlier, semi-representational level, and of Mondrian on the later, exclusively abstract level.  Alternatively, one could cite Wyndham Lewis for Vorticism and Vasarely for Op Art, as reflecting a similar progression from the semi-representational to the non-representational, or abstract.  In each case, on whichever level, the technique is rigid, cubist, mechanistic, and strictly classical, sharply contrasting with the romantic distorting/subjective materialism of Expressionism and its abstract successor.

ALAN: A distinction, no doubt, between classical order and romantic disorder, the strictly governed and the anarchic - as between Braque and Nolde on the earlier level, and Mondrian and Pollock on the later one.

LIAM: Precisely!  A distinction which is reversed on the spiritual side of this subsidiary petty-bourgeois art, where we find Pre-Raphaelitism and Symbolism on the earlier level, but Metaphysical Painting and Surrealism on the later one, both levels romantic to the extent that they rely heavily on appearance, which is taken from concrete representational symbolism to abstract representational symbolism with the development from the one to the other, particularly from Symbolism to Surrealism, as from Redon to Dali.  The use of appearance necessarily limits the transcendental potential of each level, since Symbolism is the result, in many ways unfortunate, of applying a romantic technique to a spiritual art, or what is intended to be so, and such a contradictory use of appearances toward essential ends simply mirrors the limitations of a bourgeois or pseudo-petty-bourgeois approach to this art, just as the contradictory application of a classical technique to a materialist art, rigid and abstract ... such as one finds in Cubism, paradoxically enhances its materialistic integrity.  And this is the main reason why such art as has been produced by the pseudo-petty-bourgeois nations like Britain and France is subsidiary to mainstream petty-bourgeois art, since the latter, whether on its material or spiritual sides, employs the best possible technique for the art in question.  In the case of (materialistic) Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism - a subjective romantic technique.  In the case of (spiritualistic) Impressionism and Abstract Impressionism - an objective classical technique.  Thus the approach to materialist art is negative, the approach to spiritualist art positive, appropriately so in each case, since the contraction of materialism and the expansion of spirituality is particularly relevant to a petty-bourgeois age and civilization.  Where, however, the traditionally bourgeois nations are concerned, we find a positive, or classical, approach to materialist art and, by contrast, a negative, or romantic, approach to its spiritualist counterpart, approaches which mirror a relativistic duality favouring the materialistic, in accordance with bourgeois criteria.  Only with genuine petty-bourgeois art does dualism lean towards the absolute, as technique and subject matter interrelate on a homogenous plane - one necessarily favouring the spiritual.

 

 

RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION

 

GAVIN: Christianity, as taught by Christ, was a religion of love, the essence of Christianity being love, and especially the impersonal love of men for one another.

CONOR: While not overlooking the personal love of men for women, or of a man for a particular woman, sanctified by marriage ... in accordance with the relativistic principles of Christian dualism.

GAVIN: So Christianity was centred in the heart, that seat of the emotions.

CONOR: That is correct.

GAVIN: Where, then, would Transcendentalism be centred?

CONOR: In the head or, more specifically, the superconscious part of the psyche, as applying to awareness.  Transcendentalism would not be a religion of the soul, but the spirit.

GAVIN: So love would presumably be ruled out?

CONOR: Love would be irrelevant because connected with the emotional part of the soul.  Now soul, on whatever level, wouldn't be something for which transcendental man had any great respect.

GAVIN: What other levels does it have?

CONOR: The levels of sensation beneath emotion and of feeling above it, the one appertaining to the flesh and the other to the subconscious mind.  Generally speaking, the evolution of relativistic religion has been from the sensational to the feeling via the emotional.

GAVIN: In other words, from pleasure to happiness via love.

CONOR: Yes, as sanctioned by the institutions of Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and neo-Orientalism respectively, the class integrity of each phase of this evolution approximating to the grand bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie, and the petty bourgeoisie.

GAVIN: So it was only with the rise of Protestantism, corresponding to a bourgeois phase of relativistic evolution, that Christianity, as the religion of love, came properly into its own.  Prior to then, Christianity, in the guise of Roman Catholicism, had put more stress on the sensational, as implying pleasure.

CONOR: Yes, possessing a kind of pagan/Christian integrity appropriate to the extreme relativity of the aristocracy and grand bourgeoisie.  Roman Catholicism was and, to a degree, still is centred in sensation, the institution of the Confessional requiring that the penitent confess his sins, i.e. sensual indulgences; it being taken for granted that he will always have sins to confess.  For as sensation is of the essence of Catholicism, so the Church must ensure that the penitent always has something to confess and therefore will expect a confession from him, thereby to some extent pressurizing him into further sin in a vicious, non-evolutionary circle of penitence and absolution.  Paradoxically, the Catholic Church exists as much to maintain sin, i.e. crude sensation, as to absolve it.  Without the Confessional, the Church would have no way of keeping a tag, so to speak, on people to ensure that they were sinning.  The Catholic ideal of refined sensual indulgence, reflected more positively in the institution of the Mass, with its obligatory wafer of bread, has to be protected if the ideological integrity of Catholicism, as a pagan-based extreme relativity, isn't to be diluted or undermined.  Speaking personally, I have no use for a religion that upholds sensation.  The bourgeois ideal of love, centred in the heart, certainly reflects a superior development in the evolution of relativistic religion, albeit one that is still sensual, and hence soulful.

GAVIN: And yet, the bourgeois ideal of love was destined to be superseded, on a class basis, by the ideal of happiness, as applying to the petty bourgeoisie, an ideal which is as much post-Christian as the Catholic one was pre-Christian, using the term 'Christian' in a moderately relative sense.

CONOR: Yes, that is so!  Christ didn't teach men to meditate, only to love one another, and so the meditating, yoga-practising neo-Orientalist is experiencing a more refined soulfulness than Christ would have envisaged - namely, the soulfulness of feeling at its most positive, either as happiness or joy, and usually dependent on some special breathing technique to increase the oxygen/carbon content of the blood and thereby facilitate enhanced awareness and refined feeling.  This petty-bourgeois meditation, centred in happiness, is at the opposite pole from the pleasure-indulging Catholic - an extreme relativity favouring the transcendent (awareness), but rooted in positive feeling, the most sublimated soulfulness.

GAVIN: Thus from the concrete sensational soulfulness of the Catholic to the abstract feeling soulfulness of the neo-Orientalist via the compromise emotional soulfulness of the Protestant - the evolution of relativistic religion.

CONOR: Indeed, though of course before the relative there was the absolute, and after the relative has passed, there will be another absolute, antithetical in character to the first one.

GAVIN: You mean a transcendental as opposed to a pagan absolute?

CONOR: I do, and which, in class terms, we might distinguish as aristocratic and proletarian, the former implying stoicism, or an absolute endurance of pain, the latter, beyond the realm of soul, implying awareness, but an absolute awareness elevated above any intrusion of positive feeling.

GAVIN: Therefore not dependent on special breathing techniques or involving yoga posturings, but demanding, instead, the most complete negation of the body in a spiritual positivity solely concerned with itself, that is to say, with the cultivation of awareness.

CONOR: Absolutely!  An entirely post-atomic religion, in which the spirit is free to expand upon itself, conscious of nothing foreign.

GAVIN: And this would be the religion of civilized proletarian man, of social man become transcendental man.

CONOR: The ultimate religion in the evolution of man from aristocratic beginnings to proletarian endings, as pertaining to an absolutist civilization, and therefore not co-existing with any other religion.

GAVIN: Does petty-bourgeois meditation, or yoga, co-exist with other contemporary religions, then?

CONOR: Indeed it does, and as a predominantly classical religion co-existing with the romantic appearance-centred religion, if I may so call it, of LSD tripping, both of which religions exist on the highest level of petty-bourgeois civilization - the later phase of it, which is that of petty-bourgeois relativity leaning towards a proletarian absolutism.

GAVIN: Then what would be the earlier phase, on whichever side?

CONOR: Some kind of Friends or Unitarian neo-Protestantism on the spiritual, essential, and therefore predominantly classical side, which would co-exist with neo-Catholicism on the materialist, apparent, and therefore predominantly romantic side - neo-Catholicism being distinct from Roman Catholicism, particularly in its historical mould, in terms of the greater emphasis placed on appearances, including ceremony, as opposed to refined sensual indulgence, though some of this will doubtless still accrue to it.

GAVIN: So, like art, religion evolves from an earlier to a later phase of petty-bourgeois development, and does so, in accordance with the dualistic integrity of a relativistic civilization, on two sides - namely, a materialist/romantic, and a spiritualist/classic.

CONOR: Precisely!  And I venture to suggest that the spiritualist/classic side will signify a higher level of religion than the materialist/romantic side, just as spiritualistic art is inherently superior to its materialistic counterpart in any given phase of evolution.  Thus if I were a petty bourgeois of the earlier and more relativistic type, I would prefer to be a neo-Protestant than a neo-Catholic.  By a similar token, I would prefer to be a meditator than an LSD-tripper, if I were a petty bourgeois of the later and more absolutist type.  And this in accordance with my spiritually-biased temperament, the sort of temperament that, in sexual matters, keeps me away from wife-violating and homosexual activities.

GAVIN: And one, no doubt, which makes you a Transcendentalist rather than a Socialist.

CONOR: Yes, but that is on an absolute ideological level, which has nothing to do with petty-bourgeois civilization.

GAVIN: Then there is a relative distinction between them?

CONOR: To be sure, and it will persist until Socialists are converted to Transcendentalism sometime in the future, and the basis is accordingly laid for a proletarian civilization, a civilization upholding transcendental meditation.

GAVIN: This presumably being the absolute meditation, as distinct from the petty-bourgeois extreme relativity of happiness/yoga meditation.

CONOR: Yes, and it would not co-exist with LSD tripping.

GAVIN: Then there will be no recourse to synthetic hallucinogens in the future?

CONOR: Only in the first phase of the post-Human Millennium, that of the Superman, which, following an epoch of classical absolutism, will constitute a kind of romantic interlude preceding the higher classicism, so to speak, of the hypermeditating new-brain collectivizations in its second, or Superbeing, phase.  This romantic interlude, between the ultimate human classicism of the transcendental civilization and the ultimate post-human classicism of the Superbeings, will apply to the absolutely superhuman stage of evolution, in which human brains become artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, a post-human epoch during which time LSD tripping will be the religious norm, it being distinguished from petty-bourgeois tripping by dint of the evolutionary gulf between a flesh-bound human being and an artificially supported/sustained brain, the one relative, the other largely absolute, having LSD, or some such synthetic hallucinogen, introduced into it on a much more consistent, protracted, and regular basis than could be tolerated by a human being, and this in accordance with the spiritual criteria of the Superman Millennium.

GAVIN: And yet this romantic phase will be superseded by a period of intensified transcendental meditation, as Supermen are transformed, by qualified technicians, into Superbeings, following the surgical removal of the old brain and the ensuing re-collectivization of new brains into superior entities.

CONOR: Absolutely!  And such hypermeditation, as I prefer to call it, will put Superbeings on course for transcendence, that is to say, for the attainment of pure spirit to the heavenly Beyond, as evolution draws towards a climax.

GAVIN: In other words, the attainment of Absolute Mind to Heaven, if I may be permitted a Christian anachronism.

CONOR: Which would be a supra-atomic stage of evolution and, once all separate transcendences had converged towards one another and expanded into larger wholes, the ultimate stage ... of the Omega Point - the culmination of evolution in spiritual Oneness.

GAVIN: So it is towards this spiritual Oneness that all human progress tends.

CONOR: All virtuous human progress.  Certainly not on absolute terms while there is any soulful identification in religion and, consequently, a stemming from the alpha roots of evolution in pure soul, as there still is in petty-bourgeois civilization ... where the most positive feeling becomes the religious ideal.  Such philosophers as Bertrand Russell in The Conquest of Happiness and John Cowper Powys in The Art of Happiness may be relevant to a petty-bourgeois stage of religious evolution, but not to anything higher!  The proletarian stage of the future will require a philosophy of awareness, which, cultivated on absolutist terms, should bring human evolution to its religious climax.  We must leave what lies beyond man to the post-human life forms of the Superman/Superbeing Millennium.

 

 

AN ULTIMATE UNIVERSALITY

 

FRANK: As a self-taught philosopher, you are very much the type of the 'universal man' - perhaps his ultimate manifestation, insofar as you weave a variety of disciplines together and cause them to interrelate and overlap.

COLIN: I agree that my philosophical interests are wide-ranging rather than confined to any one discipline, like a logical positivist.  I prefer to integrate education eclectically, since the development of one discipline is tied-up with that of another and one cannot hope to further an integrated society unless each discipline is harmonized, as closely as possible, with the others in an all-embracing unity of purpose.  They must be co-ordinated with one another on a uniform ideological plane.  It is no good trying to separate politics from religion or science from art or sex from society.  They have to be harmonized on the same class-evolutionary plane, their respective spheres of influence respected while still being developed to an identical evolutionary stage.  This is why my work has remained universal, scorning narrow specialization in the interests of a more comprehensive evolutionary perspective concerned with the future development of proletarian civilization, and accordingly determined to bring all the major disciplines within the scope of a uniform assessment and standardization, which, needless to say, should be of crucial importance from a moral standpoint.

FRANK: Thus the type of the 'universal man' essentially pertains to the foundation of a new civilization; he is the root organizer and comprehensive criterion from whom specializations will eventually emerge, with the development of this civilization?

COLIN: Yes, as the next civilization will be the last in the history of human evolution, you are correct, I think, in contending that I am the ultimate manifestation of the 'universal man'.

FRANK: An essay on 'universal men' written by the art historian Kenneth Clark suggested that the age of such men had passed, in consequence of which there wasn't likely to be another 'universal man' in the future.

COLIN: Considering that British art historians, together with their counterparts in other Western nations, are unwilling to concede to the possibility of a future civilization, following their own rather bourgeois one, I cannot be surprised that Clark took such a negative line.  What can he be expected to know of a transcendental civilization, he whose grand-bourgeois pedigree had, until relatively late in his career, precluded him from involving himself to any positive extent even in petty-bourgeois civilization, with its so-called modern art?

FRANK: I agree, and when he did get round to a positive involvement in both the discussion and elucidation of modern art, it was with a materialist bias that left the superconscious out of account and accordingly induced him to describe such art in terms of the subconscious, which, from an objective viewpoint, totally fails to do proper justice to, if not the greater part, then at any rate the most spiritually important part of it.

COLIN: A typically bourgeois limitation, and not least of all where the British are concerned!  For an acknowledgement of the superconscious could, after all, suggest the possibility of subsequent evolutionary progress, and not only in the context of art, to the detriment, needless to say, of monarchic determinism!  So while Kenneth Clark may have been prepared to cite universal men like da Vinci and Jefferson, as pertaining to the relativistic developments of the Italian grand-bourgeois and American bourgeois renaissances within the overall context of Western civilization, he couldn't be expected to know anything about the ultimate 'universal man', whose work, breaking with bourgeois tradition, necessarily pertains to the future development of an absolutist civilization of truly universal scope and significance.

FRANK: And who would be less a philosopher than a philosophical theosophist, am I correct in saying?

COLIN: Very, bearing in mind that the life-span of philosophers does not extend beyond the confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, since they stem from the pagan root of things and are only permissible so long as that root remains intact, which it will do even into a petty-bourgeois phase of the civilization in question, wherein the most extreme relativity of transcendental bias is to be found.  The foundations of an absolute civilization, on the other hand, cannot be rooted in a philosopher, least of all an academic one, but only in a philosophical theosophist, whose creativity is more literary than a philosopher's, employing the use of certain genres that, taken in conjunction with traditional philosophical ones, elevate his work above traditional categorization in deference to transcendental criteria.

FRANK: So, as a philosophical theosophist, you are nevertheless equivalent to a philosopher.

COLIN: More like his successor actually, though I am unlikely to have any successors myself, since 'universal men' aren't entitled to eternal life but appertain, as a rule, to the inception of a given civilization, and, as already remarked, the transcendental one will be the last!

FRANK: So, after you, one must expect specialists to emerge who will tackle each particular discipline in the context of the whole.

COLIN: Yes, religion and art, not to mention science and politics, will continue to require specialist attention to further their advancement, though such attention won't be carried out in defiance or ignorance of the justification for other disciplines, but ... will be conducted within the all-embracing context of a wider perspective, harmonized to ends outside itself and therefore precluding the danger of any given discipline degenerating into some 'ism', be it scientism, politicism, spiritualism, or aestheticism.  Thus the integrating influence of the ultimate 'universal man' will never be very far away.

FRANK: Would you therefore describe the 'universal man' as inherently superior to the specialist?

COLIN: In a certain sense, I would.  That is to say, with regard to specialists of a preceding civilization, whose work he has personally transcended in his commitment to a future one.  He can afford to 'look down' upon the outmoded theological beliefs of an earlier civilization's priests, or upon the obsolescent art of that same civilization's artists, and so on.

FRANK: What about the specialists who succeed him?

COLIN: Well, that is another matter and, at the risk of succumbing to my old vice of offensive clarity, I shall concede the right of creative superiority to the spiritual specialists who succeed him, such as future artists and priest-equivalents, whilst according a less flattering status to their materialist counterparts in science and politics.  For, to my mind, the absolute man is inherently superior to the relative one, provided, however, that he pertains to a later spiritual absolutism!  The later materialist absolutism, on the other hand, of the scientist I regard as less entitled to such a claim - indeed, as not entitled to it at all - since his materialistic preoccupations, whilst equalling or surpassing those of the 'universal man', cannot be expected to match or surpass the latter's spiritual preoccupations, which constitute the most important aspect of his work.  Certainly I can vouch for that fact as regards my own universal tendencies!

FRANK: You must have a low regard for scientists generally.

COLIN: Well, I don't consider them superior to the foremost artists of any given age, if that's what you mean.  It is a distinction between the discoverer and the creator, the negative and the positive, the reactive and the active.  A similar distinction holds true between politicians and priests, though we should define it rather more in terms of doing and being than of, say, discovering and creating.

FRANK: In other words, a distinction between the active and the passive, the coercive and the instructive.

COLIN: Yes, that must be approximately so!  Now when we compare the reactive scientist with the active politician or the creative artist with the instructive priest, it is only logical to regard the latter as superior, in each case, to the former, their positivity entitling them to a hierarchic distinction over the negativity of the scientist and politician.

FRANK: What happens when we compare the artist with the priest?

COLIN: The instructive being of the latter takes precedence over the creative doing of the former.  There is no-one higher than the spiritual leader!  And wherever civilization prevails, his superiority will be acknowledged and taken for granted.  Likewise, the artist's status will be accorded due recognition.

FRANK: Interesting how, in another of the essays published in Moments of Vision, Kenneth Clark should have contended that modern art signified a decline in inspiration and quality over traditional art, and that one of the main reasons for this was the fact, as he saw it, of the twentieth century being a scientific rather than a religious age, in which scientific and technological endeavour took precedence over art, their pursuit being worthy of greater prestige in consequence.

COLIN: All of which only goes to confirm what you said about his materialist bias, and further underlines how out-of-touch he must have been with petty-bourgeois religious developments, including yoga and hallucinogenic contemplation, to see in the age such a scientific hegemony.  Besides, the contention that modern art signifies a decline in creative inspiration over what preceded it in earlier centuries simply reflects the psychological limitations of its author, since, lacking knowledge of the superconscious, he entirely fails to perceive, in the by-and-large post-egocentric nature of such art, an advancement towards greater simplicity.  His preference for more complex works doubtless accords with a representational bias which demands not abstraction but the grandiose spectacle of what Spengler would have called 'great art'.  Fortunately, we are unlikely to witness a recrudescence of such egocentric art in the future, contrary to Clark's suggestion that the rejuvenation of art may entail a return to representational form, with the termination of the modern 'iconoclastic' epoch.  On the contrary, the further evolution of art presupposes the upgrading of non-representational tendencies in media which transcend the painterly, and so reduce material commitments to a bare minimum.

FRANK: Such as light art and abstract holography?

COLIN: Yes, particularly the latter, which should become the principal visual art form of the transcendental civilization, bringing such art to a climax in the symbolization, through apparent means, of maximum essence.  This will be at the furthest possible remove from the inception of civilized visual art in the attempts, doomed to failure, of pagan man to emulate the beauty of nature through sculptural images, the most materialistic of beginnings, compared to which even representational paintings signify a marked spiritual advancement!

FRANK: Though presumably not one for which the ultimate 'universal man' is likely to have much philosophical respect, given his commitment to transcendental values.

COLIN: No, since he has better things to do than to dote on the achievements, aesthetic or otherwise, of relativistic civilization.  In pointing forward, he turns his back on the past.  And that, believe it or not, is precisely what the final human civilization will do - at the expense not only of art historians but of historians in general!  For relativistic history, my friend, will have no place in the coming transcendental age.  The only history worthy of academic sanction will be the absolutist history of proletarian man.  And that begins - does it not? - where bourgeois history leaves off.

 

 

PART TWO: ESSAYS

 

FUTURE RELIGIOUS PROGRESS

 

As life evolves, so it becomes more interiorized, and people therefore spend a greater amount of time indoors than outdoors.  Just as the Christians spent a greater amount of time indoors, as a rule, than the pagans of pre-atomic times, so in the coming post-atomic age will Transcendentalists spend even more time indoors than their Christian predecessors - perhaps the greater part of their lives.  Indeed, Transcendentalists will spend so much time indoors ... as to be the complete antithesis of pagans, who doubtless spent most of their time outdoors, living in closer proximity to nature and thus enslavement to the natural-world-order.  This was because they stemmed from the alpha roots of life in the stars and consequently reflected a preference for appearance over essence, the exterior over the interior.  We can't properly understand why the ancient Greeks, to name but one pagan people, built temples on a columnar basis if we do not appreciate the need felt by such peoples to exteriorize their buildings, and thus remain in contact with nature even when they entered them.  A classical temple remained open to nature even when, as was not always the case, it possessed a roof.  The Greeks would never have dreamt of completely shutting themselves off from the outside world in sealed buildings, and so they built openly, with the use of columns.  There is no deeper underlying reason behind their architectural styles than that!

     The Christians, however, being dualists, had more respect for transcendentalism than their pagan forebears.  In fact, they were prepared to spend as much time indoors as outdoors, and sometimes even more.  Their religious buildings, while partly imitating Graeco-Roman styles, albeit superficially and primarily for decorative purposes, shut people off from nature behind walls, though never entirely so!  For in every church there were windows, and in some churches, particularly Gothic, there were more windows than walls.  Yet, even then, these windows weren't plain and ultra-transparent, but either frosted or stained, and stained, often enough, in a most colourful and religiously educative manner - the tradition of stained glass lasting into the industrial age, though on a largely revivalist basis.

     With the ongoing development of Protestantism in certain countries from the seventeenth century, however, walls tended to preponderate over windows, the latter being frosted and mainly utilitarian.  People became even more shut off from nature in these buildings, though, thanks to their windows, not exclusively so!  There was a plentiful supply of natural light, duly supplemented, in the course of time, by different forms of artificial light.  Coming out of or going into a church, one might have encountered columns either embedded in the walls and/or forming a portico.  This may have been reassuring for some people, particularly those who admired the Greek ideal. Nevertheless inside the building, walls and windows preponderated, with perhaps a few decorative columns for aesthetic purposes.  That was the essence of late-Christian architecture.

     But we haven't reached the end of human evolution, least of all in religious terms.  For an age is coming when meditation centres will have to be built, and such centres will correspond to a transcendental civilization, a global civilization whose citizens will be even more shut off from nature in their buildings than the Christians were - so shut off, in fact, as not even to have windows in them.  Then what?  Not thick walls suggestive of materialism but, on the contrary, relatively thin, synthetic walls all the way around, with artificial light to illuminate the interiors when necessary ... Which shouldn't be when people are meditating and thereby striving to transcend appearances!  Electric or neon light should replace natural light, where such transcendental buildings are concerned.  There will doubtless be need of air-conditioning, perhaps even of sophisticated filter systems, but not of windows.  People will enter a building in which the lights have been dimmed and get dimmer as the meditation session proceeds.  They will understand that essence is what counts in a meditation centre, not appearance!  The Christian churches were, as a rule, less bright inside than the Greek temples, open or partly open to the sky, would have been - indeed, many of them might fittingly be described as dim or even dingy.  A bright meditation centre, however, would be a contradiction in terms!

     So Transcendentalists will be completely shut off from nature in their religious buildings, and thus exist in a context essentially closer to the post-human phases of evolution in the ensuing Superman/Superbeing Millennium.  Evolution will have progressed from appearance to essence, from exterior architecture to interior architecture.  This will signify a qualitative improvement - the inner manifestations of evolutionary progress.

     But there will also be need of manifestations which, being outer, may be defined as quantitative, in which the diversity and separateness of things at the roots of evolution are gradually transcended - the direction of evolution being from the innumerable stars to the ultimate globe of transcendent spirit via planetary life.  The lower the stage of human evolution, the more prevalent is this diversity and separateness.  Why, one may wonder, has the world given birth to so many distinct languages?  Precisely because lingual diversity is a cultural manifestation of diabolic influence, the great variety of things or distinctions on the pre-atomic and even atomic levels of evolution.  Before men evolved to national distinctions, they were subject to the far more numerous tribal distinctions, and of course each tribe evolved a distinct language of its own.  Literally thousands of conflicting tongues babbling away in pre-atomic times, a source of deep-rooted hostility and distrust - interminable intertribal strife!  Such was the case even when certain tribes joined together to form nations, or when the victory of one tribe over another paved the way for the nation states of today, and the number of languages was reduced in proportion to the number of vanquished or incorporated tribes - the tongue of the stronger tribe becoming the national language of the new nation.  And yet, even then, still too many languages, circumstances still reflecting the diversity and separateness of things ... as stemming from the alpha roots of evolution in the stars.  Is not the contemporary world torn between literally hundreds of tongues, even though the vast majority of people speak one or another of the half-dozen foremost languages in the world, including English, French, and Spanish?  Some people even speak two or more such languages, since capable of transcending national barriers and culturally embracing wider sectors of humanity.  But most people are still imprisoned in the language of their particular nation, a language among languages - no more and no less!

     Clearly, there is more scope for quantitative improvement here, for a further contraction of diversity and separateness.  Such an improvement must surely come when the world transcends national distinctions and becomes not simply an international community, but a supra-national community in the ultimate human civilization of the transcendental future.  What will be required is a convergence towards the Omega Absolute, or the goal of evolutionary development, on the level of language, the adoption, in due course, of a supra-national language to supersede the various national tongues which currently exist and will doubtless continue to do so until the world is brought under a central administration in the coming post-atomic age.  For there can be no question of one national tongue, like English or Russian, being adopted at the expense of all the others.  That would not signify a lingual convergence to the Omega Absolute, but, rather, an imperialistic extension of one national tongue into the future.  Yet all national tongues are equally irrelevant to a transcendental civilization, which must be supra-national.

     Likewise, all national or regional so-called world religions would be equally irrelevant to the formation of the next civilization.  There could be no question of Buddhism or Hinduism being adopted by peoples who had traditionally upheld Christianity or Islam or whatever.  Transcendentalism will mark a new beginning in religious evolution, and it will do so as a world religion in the truest sense, not as one of seven or eight contending religions, the co-existence of which simply reflects the divisive and separative nature of things stemming from the alpha roots of evolution.  All existing so-called world religions should be superseded by the True World Religion of transcendental man, in which quiescent meditation will enable its practitioners to approximate more closely to the ultimate tranquillity, peace, and blessed being of the Divine Omega, conceiving of the latter as the goal of evolution in transcendent spirit.  But there will be no oriental fanaticism about this type of meditation, no striving to attain to transcendence through meditation techniques alone, and for literally hours at a stretch every day of the week!  Unlike a Buddhist, transcendental man will know that his civilization is but a stage on the road to the post-Human Millennium, when brains become artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts, and a new life form, post-human and largely supernatural, continues the evolutionary journey from approximately where man left off.  Knowing that technology will have an important role to play in furthering spiritual progress, he won't be subject to the delusions of the traditional oriental fanatic concerning his prospects of salvation through natural meditating methods alone!  He will be able to meditate rationally, calmly, periodically, uncluttered by superstition.  And when the technicians have perfected the means of supporting and sustaining brains artificially, he will be superseded by the Superman of the first phase of the post-Human Millennium, in which not transcendental meditation but hallucinogenic contemplation will prevail, in accordance with the need to open-up the superconscious and have the psyche pass through an intermediate period of internal visionary experience en route, as it were, to higher things.

     One of these higher things will of course be the hypermeditation of collectivized new-brains artificially supported and sustained in the second phase of the post-Human Millennium, the truly classless society of the Superbeings, which will exist, in evolutionary terms, as antithetical equivalents to trees.  In this ultimate phase of millennial evolution, the interaction of new brains on any given support/sustain system will lead, after a certain period of time, to spirit being cultivated to a point where it becomes transcendent, when electrons detach themselves from atomic constraint and soar heavenwards in supra-atomic freedom.  Now whilst electrons climb free of new-brain matter and merge with and converge towards other such transcendences in the void, the protons left behind will probably react against one another in subatomic cursedness, thereby destroying whatever remains to be destroyed.  Spirit, however, will have attained to its goal in supra-atomic blessedness, a goal which first became apparent to Christians in the age of atomic balance, but which was sought after more keenly as time went by and life became increasingly post-atomic in constitution.  With the final overcoming of matter, ultimately reduced to its new-brain guise, salvation will be definitively attained.  All that remains to be done then ... is that the individual transcendences from whichever Superbeing in whichever part of the Universe should merge into one ultimate transcendence for evolution to run its course and achieve completion in a beingfulness that will last for ever.

     Not so the remaining stars, however, which will gradually fade, collapse, and disappear, leaving the Universe to the perfection of the divine presence alone.  This divine presence - God in any ultimate sense - will be the most interiorized existence possible, the ultimate experiential interiorization of a supreme level of being, towards which all progress in earthly interiorization tends, including that still to be made in the future transcendental civilization.

 

 

THE EVOLUTION OF ART

 

I believe it was Winklemann who once wrote that the moderns had failed to attain to the perfect aesthetic beauty of the ancients; that the Christian civilization of the West had not equalled, let alone surpassed, the ideal beauty achieved by the ancient Greeks in their, for the most part, sculptural traditions.  Now if I am not mistaken, it was with a critical and not altogether sympathetic eye that the great German aesthetician looked upon this fact.  And looked upon it even with regard to the Renaissance, when, as we all know, ancient values were resurrected and geniuses of the stature of da Vinci and Michelangelo endeavoured to equal, if not surpass, what was regarded as an art superior in beauty to the Christian.

     I shall not attempt to disagree with Winklemann's assertion concerning the aesthetic pre-eminence of Greek sculpture.  But I do see reason to question the contention that because Christian sculpture, even in its neo-pagan guise, was less beautiful than the finest works of ancient Greece, it had, ipso facto, failed to attain to the same level.  I question this contention, the very cornerstone of Winklemann's thesis, because I believe it completely overlooks the important moral distinction which should be drawn between ancient and modern civilization, between the pre-atomic pagan civilization of the ancient Greeks and, to a lesser extent, Romans on the one hand, and the atomic Christian civilization of the West on the other, a distinction which should always be remembered when one endeavours to compare the two civilizations - namely, that whereas the ancients were recipients of a religious integrity stressing appearance, Christians were subject to considerations of essence as well as appearance, the former appertaining to truth, the latter to beauty, and could not therefore be expected, if on none other than moral grounds, to strive after an ideal that stressed beauty alone.

     No, contrary to Herr Winklemann's assumption, the Christians did not fail to emulate or surpass the ancient Greeks.  On the contrary, they concentrated, if not exclusively then at any rate partly, on a creative dimension and objective, namely truth, for which the Greeks not only had little respect ... but no real understanding, and precisely because it would have been alien to their level of civilization, a level that required unbroken fidelity to pagan criteria.  Morally considered, the Christians were somewhat superior to the ancient Greeks; for the sculpture half-beautiful and half-truthful can only arise at a later juncture in evolutionary time than the sculpture exclusively or predominantly concerned with beauty - evolution being a struggle from appearance to essence, which is to say, from the absolute beauty of the stars to the absolute truth of transcendent spirit.  Even with the Renaissance - a half-hearted attempt to rival the ancient Greeks - the leading sculptors, not excepting Michelangelo and da Vinci, managed to avoid producing works as beautiful as their pagan prototypes, and this largely in spite of themselves and because they, no less than everyone else, were inheritors of a thousand or so years of Christian civilization, in which truth had come to supplant beauty in the scale of moral worth.  Admittedly, they were Italians, and thus arguably part-descendants of the ancient Romans.  So one could to some extent speak of a recrudescence of pagan civilization in defiance of Christian values and the (compared with certain other European countries) relatively thin veneer of Christianity that had been imposed on a traditionally pagan people from without.  Certainly, the fact that the Renaissance broke out primarily in Italy and in rebellion against the Gothic ideal (to truth) of Northern Europe, suggests that a vein of paganism remained firmly embedded in the Italian psyche and only required the relaxation of cultural pressure ... for it to bubble-up, like molten lava, and gush forth in the neo-pagan effusions of the Renaissance - a movement mistakenly identified, in my opinion, with one of the greatest periods in the history of Western civilization!

     Yet, much as they sought to rival the ancients, the leading sculptors of the Renaissance were no ancient Greeks or Romans but modern Italians, the inheritors of Christian values.  Their sculptures, detached from Christian iconography and free-standing, were very often beautiful, but by no means as beautiful, fortunately, as the works upon which they had been partly modelled.  The human soul had made some progress in the meantime, and neither da Vinci nor Michelangelo were content to carve sculptures the faces of which resembled soulless masks!  After all, the closer one approximates to Absolute Beauty with the use of the human form - a form which, by definition, will preclude all but a relative approximation to it - the greater the emphasis one must place on appearance alone, and the more lifeless the facial features of the sculpture in question will become, since expression is a concession to soul and thus to essence, albeit, in its emotional manifestation, to the lower essence of the subconscious rather than, as with spirit, to the higher essence of the superconscious.  Such higher essence would, however, be beyond appearance altogether, and so could never be defined in terms of the Greek ideal of mask-like vacuity, which, by contrast, is necessarily beneath essence conceived as soul.  It could be defined, as I hope to demonstrate presently, in terms of biomorphic or abstract sculpture, such as one encounters in the twentieth century.  But the men of the Renaissance had no desire to completely forsake the soul, which is why their works, though morally inferior to much Gothic and subsequent Baroque sculpture, remained morally superior to the pagan masterpieces they sought to emulate and, if possible, excel.  Unadulterated appearance appertains to the Diabolic Alpha!

     In tracing the history of art's development, we find that the ancients preferred sculpture to anything else - indeed, were predominantly and for long periods almost solely concerned with sculpture.  Why was this?  I think the answer must be: because sculpture, besides being the most materialistic mode of artistic endeavour and therefore the one most suited to a pagan age, is the art form that permits the closest possible approximation to nature and, by implication, to Absolute Beauty, irrespective of the limitations inherent in the (anthropomorphic) medium itself.  A civilization the ideal of which is 'the Beautiful' will find, in sculpture, its appropriate medium of expression, and the ancients took this medium to unprecedented and, as we now know, unsurpassed levels of aesthetic perfection - a truly diabolical perfection of pagan classicism.

     Painting, on the other hand, is less well-suited to the emulation of nature because it is inherently two-dimensional and partly transcendental, which is to say, detached from the material, utilitarian world in a creative realm unique to itself.  Of course, painting in the sense that we generally understand the term, i.e. oils on canvas, did not arise and could not have arisen in the pre-atomic age of the ancient Greeks, for the simple reason that the degree of spiritual evolution necessary to the adoption of such a partly transcendental medium didn't exist in pagan times.  Even the Romans, late pagans though they were, never took painting beyond the wall, where it existed in conjunction with utilitarian ends and reflected a largely materialistic bias.  The mural and the mosaic, which the Romans took to a very high level indeed, are the precursors of painting as we generally understand it and, to a significant extent, the successors to sculpture and amphora painting, both of which particularly appealed to the Greeks.  For the evolution of art is from the materialistic to the spiritualistic, from the mundane to the transcendent, and although the co-existence of sculpture and painting over a given period of time - never more consistently so than in a Christian, or atomic, age - may lead one to infer equal though separate status to each medium of expression, nevertheless the sculptural must eventually be transcended by an art form stemming from painting and, to a greater extent, light art, which yet transcends both painting and light art at the same time.

     Such an art form will, I believe, be holography, and it should become the principal and, ultimately, sole mode of artistic expression in the future transcendental, or post-atomic, civilization.  For what light art was to painting and painting to murals, namely a step away from the mundane in the direction of greater transcendentalism, holography must one day become to light art, as connections with the mundane are entirely severed in a wholly transcendental art form or, at any rate, in one which gives the impression of being wholly transcendental, such as should bring the evolution of art to completion in maximum spiritualization.

     Thus what began in three-dimensional sculpture as the closest possible approximation, using representational means, to Absolute Beauty, will culminate in three-dimensional holography ... as the closest possible intimation, using abstract means, of Absolute Truth.  The development of vase painting at a later stage than sculpture, of murals at a later stage than vase painting, of canvas painting at a later stage than murals, of light art at a later stage than canvas painting, signify but intermediate realms of creative evolution between the two extremes - that of pagan sculpture on the one hand, and of transcendental holography on the other.

     What, then, of modern sculpture, considered in its biomorphic or largely abstract guises?  Surely there exists an antithesis of sorts between, say, a Phidias and a Henry Moore, between a Greek youth or warrior and a nondescript biomorphic shape?  Yes, of course there does!  And such an antithesis appertains solely to sculpture, that is to say, to extremes of sculptural development rather than to extremes of artistic development per se.  At its best, modern sculpture intimates of truth - a thing, incidentally, which Moore doesn't always do; for, like Barbara Hepworth, he also inclines to a form of extreme naturalism, and thus approximates to varying degrees of natural beauty, not, of course, to anything like the same extent as the ancient Greeks (which is just as well), but certainly to an extent which makes one conscious of a particular work being partly beautiful rather than simply profound or true (though some intimation of truth there will probably be, if for no other reason than that the overall semi-abstract or non-representational shape of the work will suggest transcendental implications).  For what transcends nature, by going beyond it, necessarily intimates of truth.  The disadvantage with sculpture doing so is that it can never transcend its own materiality and is thus limited, to the degree that it is material, as a medium for intimating of spiritual truth.  Admittedly, there have been experiments with extremely lightweight sculpture, not least of all by Naum Gabo, and such experiments undoubtedly mark a progression in the evolution of sculpture from its crudely material beginnings.  But no matter how lightweight sculpture becomes, it cannot transcend its basic materiality or cease to have a tactile appeal, the sort of appeal which sculpture must retain if it is to do proper justice to itself as sculpture.

     By contrast, light art, although often mistaken for or identified with sculpture, has no tactile appeal but stems from painting in the overall evolution of art, being a better intimation of truth to the extent that it is even more detached from materiality, i.e. canvas, oils, walls, frames, etc., and consequently suggestive of spirit by dint of the impalpability of electric or neon light.  Of course, the use of artificial light to intimate of truth is inherently unsatisfactory, because transcendent spirit would not, when it eventually emerged from matter, i.e. collectivized new brains, be glaringly bright and therefore aligned with appearance.  On the contrary, it would be an entirely essential emanation.  Artificial light differs from natural light as an electric fire from an open fire - in degree rather than kind.  This is especially true of electric light, though the electron bombardment of phosphor (which is the metaphysical principle underlining fluorescent lighting) bespeaks a considerable evolutionary progression in the development of artificial light and is, by definition, better suited to intimate of pure spirit.  Yet, even then, art must necessarily fall short of that which it is intended to be an intimation; for the use of apparent means, no matter how refined upon, can never be anything more than a loose guide to essential ends.  If, judged objectively, art is inevitably a failure, it is nevertheless a necessary failure, inextricably linked to man's destiny.  And this is no less so at the pagan end of the spectrum of human evolution, where approximations to Absolute Beauty were never less than crude.

     Returning to sculpture, it should be possible for us to clearly distinguish between extreme petty-bourgeois sculpture, whether lightweight or biomorphic, and light art, which stems not from sculpture (as a higher manifestation of sculptural development) but from painting and, needless to say, a particular kind of painting - namely, that which one would associate, in its abstraction, with the most extreme form of petty-bourgeois transcendentalism.  Now whereas even the most radically biomorphic or lightweight modern sculpture stems from the fundamentally pagan tradition of sculptural development, and thus signifies the tail-end, as it were, of this art form's evolution, light art marks a fresh creative development in the overall evolution of art and may be defined as a post-atomic medium of expression, a medium forming an antithetical equivalent with the vase painting of the pre-atomic Greeks, and being but one evolutionary stage from the ultimate transcendental art ... in the abstract holography of the future post-atomic civilization.

     Thus sculpture cannot actually extend beyond a bourgeois/proletarian phase of evolutionary development, for its materiality would be incompatible with an exclusively transcendental age, an age free of the pagan root and of any art form, including painting, which stemmed from that root in fidelity to natural beauty.  Even art that was purposely ugly, as much modern art in the West certainly appears to be when judged by traditional standards, would be irrelevant to a civilization solely concerned with truth.  For while such art may be relevant to and even, by a curious paradox, meritorious in a bourgeois/proletarian (transitional) age or society, it would be quite unnecessary in a society that had ceased to concern itself with aesthetics or their anti-beauty negation, having gravitated to higher concerns in loyalty to transcendental criteria.  Whether it would be acceptable, from the historical standpoint, in a post-atomic age ... must remain open to debate.  But it certainly wouldn't be created in such an age.  For, as I hope to have demonstrated, creative endeavour would have progressed to a positive and altogether superior level - one diametrically antithetical to that of the ancient Greeks.

     As for the culmination of the sculptural tradition in the two main types of petty-bourgeois sculpture we have witnessed this century, it is doubtful that Winklemann, if he could return from the grave to witness certain typical examples of it, would appreciably modify his opinion concerning the failure of Western art to attain to the high level of beauty achieved by the ancients.  Confronted by a Giacometti, which, to my mind, aptly signifies the negative or anti-beauty side of this culmination, he would probably be appalled by the extreme slenderness and knobbliness of the figure, the facial expression of which was far too redolent of soul to satisfy even a crude approximation to human, let alone absolute, beauty.  Confronted, on the other hand, by an Arp, which, as biomorphic sculpture, seems to aptly signify its positive or pro-truth side, he would be at a loss to establish any formal connections between such sculpture and nature, and would have to confess that Arp, no less than Giacometti, was an abysmal failure by ancient Greek standards, as well as a further example of the lamentable decline in aesthetic merit which Western sculpture appeared to signify.  Ah, poor Winklemann!  He could never have understood the truth.  He died facing Hell.  His spirit, fortunately, cannot be resurrected!

 

 

HUMAN EXTREMES

 

It is not so often, these days, that one hears or reads of sadomasochism in sexual relations, which is perhaps just as well!  For the infliction of pain on another, even when the other is a willing accomplice to its infliction, isn't really the most honourable of pursuits and scarcely tallies with a developing transcendental age or, at any rate, with an age becoming increasingly transcendent in certain contexts, not the least of which being sex.  Sadism, one feels, is somehow too cruel and barbaric for sensibilities worthy of the name civilized, even when the civilization they may pertain to isn't the ultimate one but - certainly so far as the greater part of the West is concerned - something closer to being penultimate.  Sadists and masochists, we like to believe, are exceptions to the sexual rule, and probably their behaviour, in the main, is not as brutal or submissive as it could be or, indeed, once was for similarly-disposed people in the infancy, as it were, of man's sexual evolution.

     Ah, there we have the crux of the matter!  I have fathered a contention which suggests that, at one time, relations between the sexes were a lot rougher than at present, and so much so as to imply that sadomasochism, or its historical equivalent, was once the rule rather than the exception!  Frankly, I believe such a contention to be reasonable, and am prepared to argue in its defence.  For men were more disposed to inflicting pain on others, regardless of sex, in pagan and early-Christian times than they are these days, at least in the more civilized parts of the world, and we needn't doubt that, as a corollary of this, women were correspondingly more disposed to the endurance of pain during such times than (would be) their latter-day descendants.  The closer human society stands to the diabolic roots of life in the stars, the more likely it is that pain will predominate, and not merely as something to be endured but ... actively engaged in as a test of one's strength or courage or capacity of endurance (stoicism).  Before sex became a pleasure it was predominantly a pain, and we may conjecture that its practitioners acted more savagely and unsympathetically towards one another than most latter-day couples would be prepared to countenance!

     But not everyone behaves gently in love-making.  There are those who prefer to look upon sex from either a sadistic or a masochistic angle, depending, as a rule, on their gender.  The infliction and endurance of pain is, for them, the governing principle of sexual behaviour, without which sex would become far less exciting.  What can one say of such people - that they are barbarous or backward?  An approach to sex that consciously endorses pain as the governing principle is arguably less than civilized, in the modern sense of that term.  Certainly most men do not behave brutally towards their partners during sex but, for the most part, gently and sympathetically.  Sex, like so much else, has become civilized in the course of time.  Its sadomasochistic origins have been refined upon to the point where pain is eclipsed by pleasure, which has become the principal incentive for sexual intercourse.  Admittedly, there are exceptions.  But even those who consciously pursue sadomasochistic relationships do so on a comparatively restrained basis, never or rarely sinking to the level of savagery of our distant ancestors.  Nevertheless, their activities and attitudes are such as to suggest that, where sex is concerned, they are simply laggards - neo-pagan types who display less subtlety and restraint than the majority of their contemporaries; pain-wallowing anachronisms whose approach to sex, in an age of sexual pleasure, is barbarous rather than civilized.  Most people do not admire sadomasochism in others!

     This essay isn't specifically intended to be about sexual behaviour but also about other things, including pain and pleasure generally.  We may note that, as human evolution progresses, there develops a tendency among men to minimize pain and maximize pleasure - at any rate, to the extent that it can be maximized.  For while pleasure is preferable to pain, it is by no means entirely separable from pain, but also pertains to the flesh as a positive response to positive stimuli; though, unlike pain, it is strictly limited as to its intensive potential.  By which I mean that, whereas pain can descend to the absolute level of maximum suffering, pleasure is strictly finite, dependent on and limited by the physical constitution of the flesh which, being proton-dominated, leaves comparatively little scope for electron attraction in response to positive stimuli from without.  Because protons predominate over electrons in the crude atomicity of the flesh, the strongest sensation we can feel will always be the negative one, as evoked by a negative external stimulus, like the application of force to the skin.  Our capacity for pleasure can never become the ultimate goal of human striving but only, at best, a temporal, intermediate goal ... to be transcended for something higher when or as often as opportunity permits.  We may endeavour to curtail pain or the causes of pain as much as possible, but we can't thereby expand pleasure indefinitely, until, for instance, it attained to an intensity the equal of anything humanity had ever experienced of pain in the past.  There can never be a pleasurable sensation the equal, in intensity, of a hand or body consumed by fire!  The atomic constitution of the flesh will always preclude such a possibility and thereby render the pursuit of increased pleasure futile.  The wiser, more advanced members of the human race have long subordinated pleasure to the pursuit of higher ends, such as happiness and awareness, which stem from positive stimuli impinging upon areas of the body or brain with a greater ratio of electrons to protons and/or neutrons than the flesh.  Unfortunately even in the heart, that seat of the emotions, the ratio of protons to electrons is too favourably disposed towards the former to enable the positive emotion of love to outweigh, in intensity, the negative emotion of hate, which has hitherto been the ruling emotion of the heart, with love, or the actual condition of 'being in love', a periodic exception to the general rule!  This isn't to say, however, that hate has existed at the expense of love on a permanent basis; for, like the flesh, the heart requires a stimulus one way or another in order to respond in an emotional way.  But, certainly, a heart which is not 'in love', as we say, will be more disposed, in its neutrality, to the negative emotion of hate than would otherwise be the case.  Doubtless one of the great charms of 'being in love' for most people is that, whilst it lasts, the ruling emotion of hatred is quelled, if not ousted, and one becomes more disposed to look at life positively, in response to the rebellious 'electron uprising', as it were, of the heart against its customary proton master.  We acquire, through love, a reprieve from hate or, alternatively, a neutrality favouring hate or some weaker negative emotion.

     But even love is temporal and therefore inadequate as a goal of evolutionary striving or ideal to be pursued for its own sake.  We can never entirely escape from hate.  For, alas, the heart, too, is atomic and accordingly biased towards its proton master!  Love may be a pleasant reprieve from negative emotions, but it doesn't last for ever - certainly no more than a few years.  And as we get older our capacity for 'falling in love' is reduced, partly because we become more intellectualized and less disposed to appearances, partly because the heart contracts and beats less vigorously than before.  Falling in love would for many adults constitute a kind of indignity in the face of their intellectual and/or spiritual preoccupations and pretensions.  Not surprisingly, certain higher men, like surgeons, refuse to acknowledge that the heart could possibly be anything more than a pump.  We may be sure that youths, particularly female, would be highly sceptical if not downright critical of such an attitude!  A young woman in love would have little doubt that the heart was more than just a natural pump - namely the seat of the emotions!

     Yet relatively few people have no other desire than to live for their emotions, particularly among the older generation.  A person, who may have predominantly lived for pleasure at one stage of his life, may subsequently live for positive emotions.  It is even possible that such a person may come, in the fullness of time, to live for his feelings, placing due importance on happiness, the most positive feeling.  He may gravitate, as it were, from the heart to the head or, more specifically, to that part of the head in which the old brain is located and from the psychic aspect of which, in the subconscious, feelings of a more elevated and, on the whole, generalized nature may emerge, in response to a variety of external stimuli.  Not that all such feelings are positive; for the subconscious is no less disposed to negative feelings in response to negative stimuli than the heart or the flesh.  But these feelings won't be quite as strong as those connected with areas of the body in which protons greatly predominate over electrons.  Sadness is a strong feeling, but it isn't as strong, or bad, as the emotion of hate, and nowhere near as difficult to endure as the sensation of physical pain in response to some brutal external stimulus aimed at the flesh.  Most people would rather be sad than burning to death, and we may surmise that a majority of people would likewise prefer transient sadness to lasting hatred.

     The negative feelings of the subconscious are therefore less disagreeable, as a rule, than the negative emotions and sensations of the lower regions of soul, as evoked by and dependent on the body.  One suffers less from the old brain than from the heart or the flesh.  But, conversely, the positive feelings associated with the psychic aspect of the old brain are likely to be more rewarding than those associated with the parallel aspect of more deeply proton-dominated organs.  We cannot blame a man for preferring happiness to either love or pleasure, because such a feeling is more refined, in that it connotes with a greater degree of electron freedom than would be possible in lower regions of the body, and has, in consequence, a more diffuse, impersonal, universal quality.  Both love and pleasure are dependent on other people, but happiness can transcend others in response to quite disparate external stimuli.  Intellectual activity can bring a person happiness for the duration of his work, or whatever.  Like pleasure, happiness can be switched on and off, can come and go with changing circumstances.  One can be happy for apparently no reason at all; though, in point of fact, there will usually be some reason, if one bothers to analyse the situation carefully enough.

     Although superior to love and pleasure, happiness cannot, however, be turned into the goal of evolutionary striving.  For there is no absolute happiness!  It cannot be cultivated to the exclusion of other feelings, least of all sadness, which is always lurking in the background, ready to pounce, in response to appropriately negative stimuli, and devour one's peace of mind.  The man who strives to cultivate happiness is certainly on a superior level than the lover or the hedonist, but he is still some way short of salvation, and can no more expect to escape from sadness on a permanent basis than the lover ... from intermittent hatred or the hedonist ... from intermittent pain.  If pain is the lowest and most intense feeling the soul can experience, then happiness is its highest and most refined.  Yet such an antithesis cannot transcend the soul, for it exists within the soul's confinement and will relate to the temporal world, of which the soul is but a psychic manifestation.  One cannot be happy all the time, since each part of the soul demands some expression, and not only on a positive basis!  The old brain, even with a greater overall electron content than the heart or the flesh, is still a part of the body and one, moreover, in which protons predominate over electrons, so that sadness, when it arises, will remain the stronger feeling, irrespective of whether it is less strong, or disagreeable, than the negative feelings of the heart (hate) and the flesh (pain) respectively.  Precisely because the material constitution of the body is largely composed of protons and electrons, as in any natural matter, it is impossible to cultivate one feeling at the lasting expense of another.  Positive stimuli impinging upon the flesh or senses will evoke positive feelings, but negative stimuli will evoke the converse of these and, given the proton-dominated constitution of flesh, heart, and old brain (roughly corresponding to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost), these negative feelings will be stronger, as a rule, than their positive counterparts.  We can minimize, by degrees, the negative stimuli impinging upon the body, but we can't entirely escape from such stimuli or transcend negative feelings altogether.  Even the man who consciously cultivates awareness for long periods at a time cannot avoid sleeping or eating or hearing or seeing or walking.

     But if happiness is temporal and therefore inadequate as the goal of evolutionary striving, then the cultivation of awareness in the superconscious, or psychic aspect of the new brain, is quite a different proposition!  The man who lives predominantly for and in his spirit doesn't care too much for happiness or love or pleasure or any other positive feeling associated with the soul, because his attention will be focused on the eternal, on what is potentially absolute and therefore cultivatable as an end-in-itself.  With the spirit there is no converse side, no negative feelings, because, pertaining to the realm of awareness, it is above feelings.  Admittedly, the new brain, like the old one, is atomic in constitution and consequently composed of protons and electrons.  But electrons predominate over protons here and thus set the new brain apart from the old one as a brain predominantly given to awareness; though there will, of course, be overlappings with feelings in view of the (partly) proton content of brain matter, so that some soul may cling to the new brain and behave in an appropriately sensual way, extending the governing principle of the old brain into the new one on a largely tangential basis.  Nevertheless, awareness remains the leading characteristic of new-brain activity, and it will preponderate to a greater or lesser extent depending on the psychic development of the individual, that is to say, on the degree to which the superconscious preponderates over the subconscious - if at all.  Intelligence, which is broadly synonymous with awareness, varies considerably from person to person, though all people live in their superconscious at least some of the time, either directly, through meditation, or indirectly, as when the will is applied to the subconscious and thought is evoked in response to a variety of external stimuli.  All of us 'feed our minds', even if only to the extent of reading a newspaper or watching some television serial.  To 'feed one's mind' is not only to ingest, through one or other of the senses, information which is then digested and either made immediate use of or consigned to memory for possible future use; it is primarily a process whereby awareness is sharpened, whereby we, as spirit, grow increasingly conscious about various aspects of whatever we are ingesting, from a symphony to a television programme, from a novel to a painting, and become, during this process of enriched assimilation, more alive to ourselves than at other times!

     Being dependent on external stimuli for the cultivation of greater awareness does, however, have its drawbacks, not least of all because awareness is an internal quality and can only be cultivated to a relatively limited extent through the use or assistance of external stimuli, no matter how intellectually stimulating such stimuli may happen to be!  If we wish to cultivate awareness to a higher extent - which we won't do, as a rule, before it has been cultivated to a quite high pitch through external means - then we can do no better than to turn away from appearances and focus our attention upon the self, awareness thereby becoming aware of itself in a kind of spiritual narcissism, which is the opposite of any sensual narcissism.  We turn inwards to develop our awareness of self to the highest degree humanly possible, and become, in the process, quasi-divine, living only for and in the spirit, above and beyond the ambiguous realms of feelings and thoughts and dreams.  This is the meditative state and, although it isn't unknown to people in the West, relatively few are those who regularly experience it for any length of time in this day and age!

     Unlike pleasure, love, and happiness, maximum awareness can become the goal of human striving, indeed the goal of evolution itself, though we can none of us expect to attain to that goal before certain intermediate stages, transcending the human, have been introduced - a thing, alas, which won't happen for some time to come!  The 'being-for-self' awareness of the meditator is certainly a viable state, and one which more people are bound to experience as time goes by.  But it isn't the ultimate state, nor can we expect it to take us directly to that state in spiritual transcendence.  The best we can do, while still human beings, is to live for awareness, particularly the direct, essential awareness of meditation.  We cannot experience the post-human tripping state of Supermen, at any rate not on an official and universal basis, nor can we experience the subsequent hypermeditative state of Superbeings, the state immediately preceding transcendence.  But we can cultivate awareness to a greater extent than hitherto, and thus modify both the psychological and physiological constitutions of our brains.  For, unlike bodily matter, brain matter, particularly when of the new brain, can be significantly modified in the course of time ... as intellectual activity rearranges and refines upon its basic atomic constitution, transforming the predominant electron content of the new brain from a marginally to a substantially predominating content in the course of our psychic evolution.  Unlike the body, which grows naturally and independently of conscious volition, the superconscious mind requires to be artificially cultivated as a result of conscious effort on our part.  We cannot change our bodies, at least not beyond making them physically stronger or weaker, but we can certainly change our minds, and thus alter the physiological constitution of the new brain in the process!  This is, after all, merely the beginnings of a tendency which, at the climax of millennial evolution, will result in mind becoming completely independent of new-brain matter, as electrons break away from proton and/or neutron constraint and soar heavenwards towards their spiritual destination in the supra-atomic Beyond.

     All this takes us a long way from sadomasochism, which is where I began this essay, but not for nothing and not without a certain arcane logic!  For the sadist and the meditator exist at opposite poles of human behaviour - the one stemming from the Diabolic Alpha in an attitude to sex which emphasizes its reactive proton origins; the other aspiring towards the Divine Omega in a context which stresses electron attractions as applying both to his own and to other people's higher self.  In this day and age, each extreme is rather the exception to the rule.  But whereas the sadomasochistic exception is largely a consequence of man having, in the main, outgrown such diabolical behaviour, the meditative exception reflects the converse consequence ... of man not yet having become spiritual enough to directly aspire towards the Divine Omega on both a regular and a widespread basis.  We needn't lament the sadomasochistic exception, but we should, if spiritually progressive, look towards a future in which meditation will become the rule!

 

 

POST-ATOMIC PROGRESS

 

In this age, and as time goes by, everything becomes more biased towards the electron, regardless of its origins or basic constitution.  Sex is no longer the predominantly proton-biased sadomasochistic reaction of one body to another it formerly was, in the early days - extending up to comparatively recent times - of human evolution.  People are generally more disposed, when indulging in sex, to join together on an electron basis of mutual attraction, which necessarily stresses gentleness and sympathy.  Whereas the female was a proton equivalent in the disreputable days of sadomasochistic sex, the modern female increasingly behaves, in her liberated capacity, like a quasi-electron equivalent in the attractive sexual relationships of free sex.  Like electrons, electron equivalents behave positively, that is to say, passively, gently, tenderly, and so on.  The quasi-electron equivalent (of the liberated female) and the free-electron equivalent (of the unmarried male) behave lovingly towards each other and thus participate in a sexuality which could be defined as positively unisexual.  This contrasts with the negative unisexual activity of proton equivalents and pseudo-proton and/or bound-electron equivalents of earlier, more barbarous times.  But before evolution reached the stage of encouraging positive relationships, it did, of course, have to pass through an intermediate stage of heterosexual relationships, as manifested in the ambiguous coupling of proton and/or neutron equivalents, i.e. women, with bound-electron equivalents, i.e. men, which was institutionalized in the atomic tradition of marriage.  This stage of sexual evolution represented and reflected a compromise, we may surmise, between negative and positive approaches to sex, proton-proton reactions and electron-electron attractions - in other words, between the rough and the smooth, the aggressive and the gentle.  An atomic dualism, as opposed to either a pre- or a post-dualistic absolutism.

     The age, as I said, is becoming increasingly electron-orientated, and therefore more disposed towards the post-dualistic.  Unisexuality, both figuratively and literally, is on the increase, and we may suppose that it won't cease to be so for some time to come - certainly not until it has attained to a maximum development either before or with the termination of human evolution.  To expect a return to traditional sexual criteria in the future would be equivalent to expecting evolution to reverse itself and uphold atomic dualism again.  That is something it is most unlikely to do, though there may be periodic, if temporary, reactions and backslidings, according to fluctuations in fortune or circumstance, in the foreseeable future.  Sooner or later, however, all traditional values will be officially discredited, so no-one would think, for example, of getting married.  We can, I believe, be confident that marriage will die a painless death with the termination of atomic values generally.  For it affirms a union between man and woman, between a bound-electron equivalent and a proton and/or neutron equivalent.  With the overcoming of protons and the transformation of men into Supermen, there can be no question of its being valid or justified.  A quasi-electron equivalent and a free-electron equivalent do not, if and when they come together, form an atomic integrity.  They are entirely post-atomic.

     But if, in post-atomic sexuality, one body attracts another on the most positive physical terms, terms which lay emphasis on pleasure alone, in post-atomic religion the attraction of minds to one another will be no less - indeed, probably even more - positive and electron-centred.  For such an attraction is based on the superconscious, the upper part of what atomic dualists are especially fond of calling the conscious mind, and it manifests in awareness - the psychic quality of spirit.  Awareness is the positive attribute of electrons when they exist in a context considerably outnumbering protons in any atomic constitution, and the more considerably they outnumber protons, the greater is the degree of awareness to be found there.  Where, however, protons outnumber or dominate electrons, as in the body generally, the atomic integrity will be biased towards feelings, and electrons accordingly be obliged to exert themselves against their own deepest grain, as it were, by responding to positive stimuli from without in an appropriately sensual context.  The bound electron becomes a perpetrator of positive feelings.  By contrast, the free electron becomes, in the electron-biased context, a perpetrator of awareness which, as a spiritual quality, transcends feelings altogether.

     Thus awareness isn't simply a refined or very positive feeling, but a state-of-mind appertaining to an entirely different and superior realm of consciousness - namely that of the superconscious.  It is through and in this superconscious that awareness is cultivated in the form of a greater awareness of self, which is identical, in its spiritual essence, to all other selves.  The person experiencing such awareness cares nothing for the physical presence of human beings or material things in the external environment.  The attraction of selves is wholly spiritual and takes place in utmost loyalty to one's own self, through complete self-centredness, without regard for the physical presence of lesser, or personal, selves.  This is not God in any ultimate sense, but it can certainly be a stage on the road to divinity, an earthly manifestation of transcendent togetherness.  It signifies a far superior development to the egocentric togetherness of the praying congregation, whose wills are directed, through the act of prayer, down towards the subconscious, from which the requisite thoughts appropriate to the occasion are evoked and transmuted into spoken words.  The meditator, by contrast, turns away from the subconscious in a superconscious that is free to exist for itself on its own spiritual terms, that is to say, in the direct cultivation of awareness as a means to a higher end - namely the attainment, one way or another, of spiritual transcendence.  It is the difference between a bound-electron equivalent and a free-electron equivalent, between the atomic (egocentric) and the post-atomic (superconscious).

     No-one would ever think of praying in the post-atomic age, for prayer would be far too egocentric.  Besides, fictions derived from cosmic facts are of no importance to a psyche biased towards truth, which is to say, awareness.  Certain illusions derived from the truth and pertaining to the Cosmos will, of course, remain acceptable, in the interests of Transcendentalism.  But no fictions derived from cosmic facts would remain so, and for the simple reason that the psyche will be too superconscious to have much respect for subconscious contents, which, in any case, would have receded into the psychic distance of discarded archetypes.  Thus while the illusion of, say, curved space will prevail in the interests, effectively, of transcendental complacency, the fictions of the Creator and of Satan, respectively if unconsciously derived from the central star of the Galaxy and the sun, will cease to play any part whatsoever in our religious integrity, having been consigned, along with the fictional/illusory Christ, to the remote regions of our psychic past - much the way that certain outmoded political and social institutions were formerly consigned, by socialist revolutionaries, to the rubbish heap of history.

 

 

TWO APPROACHES TO SALVATION

 

We are entering an age and, to a limited extent as yet, already live in an age when, to put it bluntly, politics is no longer a matter for politicians, but effectively for priest-types functioning in a political role.  That is to say, when politics is being transferred from the State to the Church ... with intent to the latter's furtherance, as evolution tends towards an exclusively religious stage from a transcendental base.  The priest who involves himself in politics is less an anomaly these days - though Christian purists will maintain otherwise - than an intimation of things to come, and this even when he functions from a reactionary standpoint (as did a certain well-known cleric in Northern Ireland).  Previously, throughout the greater part of the Christian era, politics was a matter for politicians and religion a matter for priests.  There existed a sharp distinction between materialists and spiritualists, in accordance with the dualistic nature of Christian civilization, torn between state and church.  Prior to that, religion, to the extent that it existed, was predominantly in the hands of politicians, as in ancient Greece.  We, however, are entering an age the converse of the pre-atomic, in which politics will be in the hands of priest-types who will direct political affairs in the interests of subsequent religious development, seeking, by degrees, to expand the Church at the State's expense.  The dichotomy between politicians and priests will be superseded by an absolutism favouring the latter or, rather, their transcendental successors, who will be partial to meditation and have nothing to do with a priesthood in any traditional sense.  I merely use the term 'priest' on account of its long-standing antithesis to 'politician'.  However, antitheses of any description won't pertain to a post-atomic age, so we needn't expect politics to remain the preserve of materialists.

     Of course, in Marxist-Leninist states politics remained, until quite recently, in the hands of Soviet materialists, who functioned as quasi-electron equivalents in a post-atomic society, and even now, under Social Democracy, politics is still, by and large, in the hands of materialists, as before.  Doubtless politics will remain in such hands until states upholding Socialism are eventually transformed, through the acceptance of transcendental truth, into genuinely free-electron societies, with the correlative development of proletarian civilization.  Then the State will truly 'wither', in Engles' oft-quoted phrase, as spiritual types take over the reins of government and work for the expansion of the Church, as implying the development of transcendental meditation in suitably designed meditation centres.  At that point in time, Socialism will be well on the way to its total eclipse by Transcendentalism, as particularly applying to the completely free, stateless, classless, moneyless, paradisiacal society of the Superbeings, or new-brain collectivizations, in the second phase of the post-Human Millennium - the transcendental phase-proper.  For Socialism won't be entirely eclipsed with the advent of the first post-human phase of evolution, when the State, in both senses of the term, will be superseded by the Supermen, or brain collectivizations, the millennial machinery of which will stem from the expanding Church.  Thus Socialism will lead to Social Transcendentalism and that, in turn, to the post-Human Millennium, which, after a relatively 'socialist' phase, will culminate in the transcendental phase-proper ... of the hypermeditating Superbeings, who, as the ultimate earthly life-form, will be pending transcendence, and thus the attainment of pure spirit, i.e. free electrons, to the heavenly Beyond in ultimate salvation from atomic constraint.

     In speaking of the two senses of the word 'state', I was, of course, referring, in post-atomic terms, to what is literally the State in a socialist society, i.e. the proletariat, and to what can be superficially mistaken for it but is in fact the machinery of state which, in its bureaucratic and administrative capacity, is intended to serve the proletariat.  I have elsewhere used the word 'state' in a more traditional sense, as applying to politics rather than religion, and I am well aware that, from another traditional standpoint, it can be used to signify landed or property interests, which are its earlier and therefore more concrete manifestations - manifestations still accruing, in some measure, to atomic societies.  The socialist use of the word 'state' normally emphasizes, by contrast, an abstract manifestation, since the proletariat are an abstraction, not a concrete entity like an individual or, more specifically in this context, an area of land which, in national terms, signifies the root beginnings of the State from which bourgeois landed/property and property/people compromises were successively derived, these atomic manifestations of the State in turn being superseded, in socialist societies, by the ideologically Absolute State ... of the proletariat (initially in theory only).

     Thus the overall evolution of the State, to speak in atomic terms, is from the proton absolutism of the aristocratic concrete manifestation to the electron absolutism of the proletarian abstract manifestation via the atomic compromises of the bourgeois concrete/abstract manifestations.  With the post-atomic stage of this evolution, however, the approach to salvation, that is to say, to a post-Human Millennium, requires that Socialism should accommodate itself, through Social Democracy, to Transcendentalism, in order that materialism may eventually be superseded by the development of an exclusively spiritual orientation of post-atomic society, as quasi-electron politics gives way to free-electron politics and Socialism begins its 'withering' in the name of transcendental progress.  As intimated elsewhere in my work, the supersession of materialist leaders, or Marxists, by spiritualist leaders, or Transcendentalists, is the key to the evolution of the Church at the State's expense.  All states upholding materialistic socialism will become spiritual in the course of time.  Dialectical materialism will be superseded by post-dialectical transcendentalism.

     In the meantime, however, Transcendentalists and Marxists will have to learn to work together and to trust one another.  This should not be difficult, since both approaches to salvation have evolutionary progress at heart and should exist, in the future, on the same class level, not, as with Nazism and Fascism vis-à-vis Soviet Communism, in a bourgeois/proletarian antagonism, the fruit of which was the bitterest fighting of World War Two.  Transcendentalists would not be fascist but genuinely socialistic, if from a spiritual standpoint.  Strictly speaking, there are no Transcendentalists in the modern world but only, in absolute politics, Socialists.  For Transcendentalism (communism or communalism) does, after all, develop out of Socialism or, more correctly, Social Transcendentalism ... as the goal of earthly striving in the ultimate post-human society of the Superbeing Millennium.

 

 

AN ABSOLUTE ASPIRATION

 

Christians have a fatal tendency to confound the Diabolic Alpha with the Divine Omega, to interchange the two as mood and circumstance dictate.  Not that we need particularly blame them for that, since Christianity is, after all, a dualistic religion.  Christ was no transcendentalist but a dualist to the core, that is to say, a man who taught that the 'Kingdom of Heaven' lay within, in one's spiritual development, but who nonetheless remained loyal to the Father, to what I call the alpha root of evolution, as when he pleaded with the Father to 'forgive them', meaning the Jews, 'for they know not what they do.'  There could be no question of Christ turning his back on the Father in the name of a more exclusive orientation towards the Holy Spirit, or creation of the Divine Omega.  Christ had no knowledge of the Holy Spirit, only of the Father, which Jews would have identified, more fundamentally, with Jehovah.  But he differed from Judaists by teaching that the 'Kingdom of Heaven' lay within (as opposed to without, i.e. with the Creator), and therefore depended upon personal spiritual development.  Probably he confounded this 'Kingdom of Heaven' with the Creator to a degree, not realizing that, taken to its logical extreme, it would be at the furthest possible evolutionary remove from such a primal divinity.  Certainly the distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Father owes more than a little to subsequent ecclesiastical refinement and reappraisal of Christ!  Much of the dualism of Christianity only became possible following Christ's death, when the Church Fathers (as they're not inappropriately called) were in a position to remodel Christ according to evolutionary requirement and fresh insights concerning man's destiny.  I doubt, myself, if the Christ whom Christians have been traditionally raised on has much in common with the original, probably more Judaic Christ.

     However that may be, the 'Kingdom of Heaven' does indeed lie within, but it has nothing to do with the Father (nor Jehovah, Allah, and other more fundamentalist manifestations of the Creator).  No, a transcendental impetus, a desire to aspire via this mini-kingdom towards a definitive, or ultimate, Heaven does, it seems to me, derive from Christ, which is to say, from man-become-God.  For it is only in man that there arises a degree of awareness which desires a break with nature and an aspiration towards the supernatural.  Certainly the Creator would not desire any such aspiration by man, since the root of evolution - especially in its cosmic guise - exists at an absolute remove from the (future) culmination of it and, lacking relativity, couldn't possibly understand or condone the aspiration in question.  But, of course, some people would argue that the root of evolution and the Father aren't really the same, and in another sense this is arguably true.  Theology is concerned with figurative abstractions from the concrete, literal cosmos, and inevitably boils down to psychic contents of the subconscious, to which one can attribute any power or status one chooses.  The facts of the matter, however, are rather different, and in this day and age it is the facts one should be concerned about, not theological fictions!  At least that would be the case for people living in a post-atomic society; though those who live at the tail-end of atomic civilization may be more indulgent of theological fictions, especially when also practising Christians.

     I, however, am not a practising Christian, and neither do I write for dualists.  That is why I speak freely about theological matters, including the distinction between Satan and the Creator, which is commensurate with a difference in degree, though not necessarily in kind, between the central star of the Galaxy and the small peripheral star that we recognize as the sun - one of millions of 'fallen angels' which an explosion of gas sent hurtling out in every direction, with the inception of the Galaxy.  Probably there were millions of such explosions throughout the Universe, bearing in mind that we now recognize millions of galaxies, and their offshoots may have interwoven, so that differently-constituted balls of flame came into relative proximity with one another and thereby established the rudiments of a galactic integrity with its - dare I say it? - Newtonian tensions between force and mass.  Else we must ascribe the integrity of galaxies to the quicker cooling of certain smaller stars, which went on to become planets vis-à-vis larger stars and eventually put a halt to the everywhichway divergence of stars in general.  Gas was undoubtedly the creative force behind galaxies, but we cannot speak of gas out of nothing, or creation out of a void, which is a meaningless, not to say implausible, proposition.  Certainly gas came into existence in the void, but that does not mean to say it was dependent on the void, that the void encouraged or needed it.  Creation asserted itself against the indifferent backdrop of the void and did so, initially, in the form of gas or gases that went on, through explosive pressures, to become stars, doubtless very anarchic stars until brought into some kind of galactic order through the emergence of planets which, in cooling, hardened into some rudimentary manifestation of an atomic integrity, the electron aspect of which created an atomic tension between stars and planets, that is to say, between subatomic absolutism and atomic relativity.

     All this speculation is, of course, at a far remove from theology.  But theology is dependent on cosmic reality, it requires some concrete base from which to extrapolate gods and devils and demons.  Now the base from which these theological symbols were extrapolated certainly existed, and necessarily continues to exist, but man can outgrow theology in his quest for the supra-atomic absolute.  If the Creator (especially in the guise of Jehovah) is a figurative extrapolation from the central star of the Galaxy, and the Devil (as Satan) is a like-extrapolation from the sun, then it stands to reason that the distinction between the two is merely one of degree rather than kind, and that the Creator is therefore a more powerful 'devil', or alpha absolute, than Satan.  How is it, then, that Christians, deriving the Father from Judaic precedent, have traditionally looked upon this diabolic absolute as divine, as a being of an altogether higher order than the Devil, whom they have regarded as the root of all evil in the world?  The answer to this at first-sight insoluble problem seems to me rather straightforward: they have taken a better view of the Creator for the simple reason that He is not perceived as being directly responsible for all the misery of life, since existing at a farther remove from the world than the Devil.  Translated from the figurative to the literal plane, or from theology to science, this means that the central star of the Galaxy, about which such smaller stars as the sun revolve, is at too great a cosmic remove from the earth to do much mischief there, whereas the sun, a mere ninety-three million miles away, directly influences and affects this planet, thereby being the source of all or much of the evil that Christians have traditionally seen fit to ascribe to the Devil's influence.  It is therefore the 'Fallen Angel', and not the 'Almighty Creator', which is the root of all evil in the world, if in a comparative sense.

     Considered from an absolute point of view, however, it is the Creator, and indeed the millions of Creators, or central stars of galaxies throughout the Universe, which are the literal roots of all evil.  For what culminates, as evolution, in the future Divine Omega, or definitive globe of transcendent spirit, must begin in the Diabolic Alpha, with numerous explosions of what we now call central, or governing, stars.  Scientists would not speak of numerous Creators but, more literally, of numerous First Causes; though for some obscure reason (probably not unconnected with monotheistic tradition), the single Big Bang theory of the Universe's origins still holds sway in conservative minds - as though the millions of galaxies now in existence could be traced to a single root out of which they all exploded!  Granted an ignorance of the pluralistic nature of the Diabolic Alpha, it is still staggering that so many scientists should trace this immense multi-galactic Universe to just one single source!  Are we to suppose that galaxies tend away from one another as from a central void in space, the origin-point of their creation?  To be sure, diverge they do.  But that is surely more from one another, in a sort of kaleidoscopic interaction, than from a central void which, so we are led to believe, was once an immense star before the Big Bang got to it!

     Returning from cosmic speculation to Christians, perhaps it isn't altogether surprising that certain aspects of nature, such as the beauty of flowers, were claimed to glorify the Creator by their presence here, their raison d'être, as it were, being to glorify God and give men pleasure in the process.  Now if the Devil is a convenient fiction for taking the blame for whatever evil is afoot in the world, then it logically follows that the Creator must be accredited with whatever natural good can be found there, including the beauty of nature.  But, considered literally, it is not the central star of the Galaxy that causes flowers to grow but ... the star closest to us, which we recognize as the sun.  And so, it is the Devil, to revert to the theological equivalent, rather than God (the Creator) that is glorified by the beauty of flowers, since such beauty is partly the handiwork, as it were, of one who, as a 'fallen angel' ... from stellar to solar planes, is by no means impartial to beauty himself!

     Ah, himself!  How beguiling is theology!  'Itself' would be a more accurate description of the subatomic absolute in question - namely, the sun, with its proton-proton reactions.  Gender only applies to an atomic integrity, particularly to one in which protons and electrons are approximately in balance, as during the dualistic stage of human evolution.  An 'it' is certainly at the root of nature considered in mineral, vegetable, or animal terms.  The flowers would no more survive without sunlight than other manifestations of the natural world, and the sun, as already noted, is the source from which the Devil was originally extrapolated, in due process of theological abstraction.  Nature depends on evil, is itself fundamentally evil, as the Church has traditionally taught, and would only be praised as glorifying the Creator by essentially pagan types, whose allegiance to Christianity was less than transcendental.  With its 'survival-of-the-strongest' ethos, nature is precisely what must be overcome if evolution is to attain, via man, to a supernatural culmination in spiritual truth.  Flowers can be an obstacle to that overcoming, as can vegetables, animals, and women.  However, as a dualistic religious development, Christianity could not be expected to overcome nature in absolute terms, only relatively, with intent to curb the intensity and reduce the frequency of naturalistic indulgences.  It could not turn against the Father; for Christ was Himself, to a degree, 'three in One', being soul, flesh, spirit, and therefore Man.  One would have to turn against Christ, with his loyalty to the Father, in order to aspire towards transcendent spirit on an absolute basis, to absolutely turn away from nature.

     Evolution on earth is still a long way from directly pending transcendence, but a day will surely come when life is set directly on course for ultimate salvation, as the new-brain collectivizations of the ultimate life form on earth, namely the Superbeings, hypermeditate towards free-electron absolutism in the supra-atomic Beyond.  Of what consequence will all those who oppose utopian societies, from a humanistic standpoint, be then?  Evolution would have overcome them long before, since men will arise who know that while human nature can only be relatively changed on human terms, it can be absolutely changed with the aid of the most advanced technology, a technology which won't merely upgrade man ... but transform him into a post-human life form, transcending his body in the process.  As Nietzsche wrote: 'Man is something that should be overcome', and, thanks partly to my teachings, we are now, or soon shall be, in a position to know how to go about overcoming him ... in the interests of salvation and in opposition to any bourgeois humanism, such as would impede evolutionary progress by endeavouring to keep man chained to an atomic, dualistic, Christian integrity.  Such an impediment cannot be endured for ever!

     The men of the coming transcendental civilization cannot aim for Heaven conceived in literally transcendent terms, as did the Christians with their delusion concerning life after death, but will have to resign themselves to developing spirit and aspiring towards the goal of human evolution in the post-Human Millennium.  The goal of human evolution and the goal of evolution per se, however, are two quite different things, and we should not confound the one with the other, nor treat them as identical.  The post-Human Millennium is what lies beyond man in the life forms of, first, the Supermen and, then, the Superbeings (as brain collectivizations and new-brain collectivizations respectively), and is thus a goal for man to attain to - in short, a relative goal.  But the absolute goal of evolution is Heaven, or the spatially transcendent Beyond, and that can only be attained to by the Superbeings, who will be far superior to man in spiritual striving!

     This, needless to say, is not the teaching of Christ but of a wholly transcendental teacher who, in his omega-biased integrity, corresponds to a Second Coming.  This man does not pay tribute to the Father, and neither does he confound alpha with omega.  He is not 'God', in the sense that Christ was or became (on an anthropomorphic basis) God to Christians, but simply a teacher who points towards the literal creation of ultimate Godhead as transcendent spirit or, more specifically, the definitive globe of such spirit at the climax to all evolution.  Such a climax may still be a long way off at present.  Nonetheless, we are entering an age when an aspiration towards omega divinity will be the rule rather than, as at present, the exception!

 

 

CONCERNING SWEARERS

 

The masses, or what may be termed the militant lumpen core of the proletariat, are highly prone to swearing, particularly within the confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization.  The words one hears most often from their lips are sexually explicit four-letter ones.  Why, it may be wondered, do such words figure so prominently on many proletarian tongues?  Arguably a good question and I intend to answer it from two points of view - namely a negative and a positive.

     First the negative answer.  These proletarians generally lead hard lives under the capitalist/socialist yoke and, when various personal and/or environmental circumstances are taken into account, haven't a great deal for which to be grateful.  Hence the abusive recourse to four-letter words, the psychological smear or denigration which they cast over the object of abuse patently testifying to an aggrieved mentality.  Often the object in question is transcended in a general reference that embraces everything and anything, turning life, for the swearer, into an affair worthy of permanent denigration, and casting an ugly psychological smear over whatever he thinks or says.  The mentality of the habitual swearer is probably too familiar to most non-swearers to warrant further exegesis here.

     So let us turn to the positive answer.  We know what the words are, but do we sense any underlying implication in their use, any refutation or belittling, it may be, of sex?  I, for one, do; though that doesn't make me any more partial to their use than before!  To sense that either the female sex organ or the actual sex act is being denigrated, if unconsciously, by certain of these words ... doesn't necessarily make them any sweeter to the ear.  But it does throw a new light on their use, a light which suggests that perhaps the proletariat, for all their professed addiction to sex, are privately disgusted by it and anxious, in consequence, to verbally belittle it whenever opportunity or circumstances permit.  Someone described as a 'fuck*** cunt' is worse than just a 'cunt'; he is a sexually active 'cunt' - an active sex organ.  This, clearly, is one of the lowest possible things that anyone can be described as, and it indicates, I think, that the user of these words has an instinctive class aversion both to the object in question and to its active use, an aversion which, if not conscious, at least indicates a potential for post-atomic sexuality, such as the proletariat can be expected to uphold in the transcendental future.  It also reflects the fact that the user in question lives in a broadly homosexual/masturbatory culture which, though relative, precludes any genuine respect for the female sex organ.  Even petty-bourgeois liberated women tend, more often than not, to negate their vagina in a fixation on phallic oral sex, which conforms to the masculine bias of the times.  Were we living in an age the converse of our own, it would be the penis that served as a term of abuse on the lips of the proletariat.

     If most liberated women are averse to the employment of four-letter words themselves, the same cannot be said of the majority of proletarian women who, despite their sex, are as prone as their menfolk to denigrate others, and by implication their own sex organ, through the liberal use of such words.  On superficial accounting, this strikes one as singularly odd.  But when, applying a positive viewpoint to this tendency, one investigates the subject in greater depth, it occurs to one that, unlike liberated females, proletarian women are potentially Supermen, and will therefore be more inclined to take a masculine view of their sex organ and to employ it as a term of abuse, with an underlying implication of self-denigration in attendance.  The average proletarian woman of today no longer regards herself as a creature entitled to sexist respect but unconsciously, if not consciously, behaves as if she were already generically a Superman.  Hence her willingness to demean her sex organ by employing it as a term of abuse!

     Having tackled these two answers, we may generalize that the one implies the other, that without the negative the positive side would not exist; that the denigration of the female sex organ is implicit in the primary use of four-letter words as stringent criticism of some adversary which springs from a deeply aggrieved, aggressive, and resentful psyche.  On the surface, the object of abuse is being reviled, but the reviler is acquiescing, instinctively or otherwise, in the fittingness of the term employed in this abuse.  He is acting on the principle that there is nothing lower, from a human angle, than the organ from which the term has been extrapolated and to which it indirectly applies, compliments of the victim of such abuse who, willy-nilly, becomes that lowness in the reviler's imagination, since, as the direct focus of abuse, he symbolizes the lowness in question.  To act on this principle is to turn against the feminine root, to negate complacency in dualism and, by implication, to affirm the moral superiority of a post-dualistic society.  Such a person, of whatever sex, can only be the crude clay, so to speak, from which a post-sexist, truly saved humanity will be moulded.

     It is my opinion that swearing of the four-letter variety one hears, for example, in England is more prevalent among the proletariat of a bourgeois/proletarian civilization than among proletariats in socialist states, and largely because it reflects the oppression of the masses under a capitalist/socialist system.  The exploited swear both as a reflection of their exploitation and to avenge themselves, one way or another, on the objects of their oppression, either symbolically or actually.  Probably this isn't the whole truth, but I am firmly convinced that it is a significant ingredient in that truth.  Unless they are mad or incorrigibly bad-natured, ill-tempered, or youthfully exhibitionist, people swear from an aggrieved mentality, which may well be connected with capitalist and/or socialist oppression.  Some, admittedly, swear all the time.  But they are more to be despised than pitied!

     Of course, socialist societies aren't entirely immune to swearers, but will take measures, if genuine, to curb swearing and make it a kind of offence against the People, since it could be construed as reflecting poorly on the socialist system which, in theory if not always in practice, is designed to ameliorate the living standards of the masses and thus reduce or remove any excuse for swearing - a habit which, whilst it may be justified in a capitalist/socialist society, should have little or no place in a genuinely socialist one.  Thus the negative aspect of swearing becomes increasingly unacceptable, since there shouldn't be too many causes for grievance in a society run on behalf of the People by their elected servants.  That leaves - does it not? - the positive aspect, which has more to do with the belittling of the female sex organ than with the slandering of an opponent.

     A socialist state, if not an absolute civilization, is potentially such a civilization.  In other words, it is a state in which proletarian women are almost, though not quite, Supermen.  It is a state, in short, that denies relativity.  For while the implicit denigration of the female sex organ may be acceptable in an extreme relative state, the same cannot be said of a state tending towards the absolute, where denigratory references to the female sex organ would suggest a sexist relativity incompatible with a bias for the absolute.  Hence, even on positive grounds, swearing would become unacceptable, because involving sexist discrimination.  Doubtless as the socialist state matured towards or was converted into a transcendental civilization, swearing would become even more unacceptable, since by then those who, as proletarian women, had been potentially Supermen would have actually become Supermen, and all references to the female sex organ be taboo, not least of all because Supermen were indisposed to using it in a relative context, their vibrator sexuality being absolute - the vibrator becoming a kind of artificial penis rather than simply a penis substitute.

     So a day will come when, because all men are brothers and sexist discrimination has been overcome, the use of four-letter, or equivalent, swear words will be outlawed, their continual employment by some people becoming a crime against the People which, like other such crimes, may well be subject to corrective discipline.

 

 

THE FUTURE ABSOLUTE

 

A transcendental civilization won't punish offenders against it, but will endeavour to correct them.  The bourgeois/proletarian civilization of the contemporary West is certainly interested in correcting offenders, especially in its more progressive manifestations, that is to say, in countries whose relativity is inherently more extreme, like Sweden and Germany.  But it hasn't outlawed or transcended punishment, nor can we expect it to do so, since wherever the pagan root is still intact, no matter how extreme the relativity, punishment will necessarily survive, and often in its most absolute guise - as involving the death penalty.

     A transcendental civilization, to repeat myself, won't uphold punishment, and consequently there will be no death penalty.  Neither will there be life-imprisonment sentences, nor long-term prison sentences which virtually amount to the same thing.  Indeed, there won't be any imprisonment at all, because no prisons.  Instead there will be correction centres, whether psychiatric or otherwise, and an offender's detention in such centres will last for as long as it takes to correct him, and no longer!  Should he prove recalcitrant or well-nigh impossible to correct, then detention may have to be indefinite - that being the exception to the general rule.

     There are some crimes, however, that are less a product of mental derangement or misguided belief than of cold-blooded calculation, and murder and rape may be among them.  It occasionally happens that a murder is committed in consequence of tragic circumstances, whether developing over a period of time or resulting from a sudden flare-up of tension or, indeed, quite by accident, without the assailant's intending to kill anyone.  In a transcendental civilization, assuming murder was occasionally still committed, careful consideration would have to be given to the circumstances of the murder, so that the exact nature of the act was accounted for and the disposition or character of the murderer simultaneously taken into account, the better to determine whether extenuating circumstances should be upheld.  For, taken together, all these factors would determine whether the accused required one type of correction or another or, indeed, whether in fact he required any correction at all, it being necessary merely to detain him until a reasonable verdict could be reached.

     Of course, I don't wish to imply that certain kinds of murder should go without censure.  Detention could mean anything from 1-5 years, depending on the criminal circumstances.  One thing I am certain of, however, is that no-one, whatever the circumstances surrounding the act, would be sentenced to life-imprisonment in a transcendental civilization.  I would like to envisage five years as being the maximum term of detention, with the possibility of a longer period should such an act, or something similar, be committed by the same person again, following release.  Most people should certainly be released from detention within a few months or, at worst, years of their confinement.  Possibly no-one would think of committing murder in a society where all men were treated equally and no-one had any reason to be envious of anyone else - everyone living on approximately the same post-atomic plane.  We may suppose that, as society evolves towards a post-human epoch from a transcendental base, all or most forms of contemporary crime will disappear.  Its causes, including alcohol addiction, drug abuse, sexual rivalry, poverty, racial inequality, poor housing, inadequate education, envy, greed, etc., will have been eradicated.  When there are no longer barbarians in existence because the society or, rather, civilization in question is absolute rather than relative, there will be little or no barbarous behaviour.  A civilized proletariat would have no cause or excuse to indulge in crime.  The wonder of it is that, in a society where the majority are still effectively barbarous, there isn't more crime than already exists.  Certainly this may be said of most Western societies!

     If punishment would be incompatible with a transcendental civilization, could the same be said of euthanasia - the painless putting to death of the incurably ill, insane, or seriously injured?  In a relativistic society there are various arguments on this matter, a fact which accords with its relativity.  In an absolutist society, however, there could be no doubt whatsoever as to the validity of euthanasia for certain specific cases.  And the motivation, the chief moral justification, for sanctioning it would be to put an end to pain which, while tolerated and even admired by some people in a relativistic society, would amount to a kind of sacrilege in one exclusively orientated towards the post-Human Millennium ... in a post-atomic integrity.  While the diabolic pagan root is intact, while, in other words, deference is paid to the proton-proton reactions of stellar/solar energy through some theological abstraction (the Father, the Creator, etc.), stoicism of one degree or another will be upheld by the more traditional or conservative elements in relativistic civilization.  Once this root has been transcended, however, no argument for the endurance of pain could be justified, and consequently euthanasia would be officially endorsed for application to all extreme cases of incurable pain.  The very sight of pain in a transcendental civilization would be an offence against the spirit, a reminder of the centuries-old tyranny of the soul against which proletarian humanity had rebelled before becoming civilized.  Certainly there is no spiritual profit to be gleaned from constant and deep suffering!  A Christian who revels in pain will be brought closer to the crucified Christ, His transcendent salvation, however, receding into the psychological distance.  Such dualism will find no sanction in the future!  He who stems from the Father will have been superseded by he who points man towards the Holy Spirit - the man destined to fulfil the role of a Second Coming.  Such a man can have no truck with pain!

     There are, of course, other things with which a civilization founded on the teachings of this man would have no truck, including the maintenance of standing armies and the perpetration of war.  It is doubtful that symphony orchestras or other acoustic ensembles would be maintained, and we may surmise that all types of acoustic music would cease to be appreciated - the same, I dare say, applying to all types of naturalistic art, or art employing canvas and oils, not to mention all types of narrative literature, from novels and plays to poems and short stories, especially in relation to books, whether hardback or softback.  A transcendental civilization wouldn't uphold any form of traditionalism or conservationism, like a relativistic one, but would be exclusively concerned with what was relevant to itself.  And that could only mean what was absolutely on the post-dualistic level.  Whatever pertained to tradition, no matter how important it was once considered to be, would have been destroyed and/or consigned to the rubbish heap of open-society history.  To a civilized proletarian the past would be something to ignore, so concerned would he be with living in the present in the interests, needless to say, of subsequent evolutionary progress.  He would not be concerned with a cultural heritage - no more, for that matter, than were his barbarous predecessors who, when they weren't militantly Marxist-Leninist in an overly state-socialist context, existed as cultural outsiders within relativistic civilization - the bourgeois/proletarian civilization of the contemporary capitalist/socialist West.

 

 

TWO TYPES OF CRITICISM

 

One can be religious on one of two levels, though neither level is mutually exclusive.  The level, in the first place, of genuine religion, and the level, in the second place, of quasi-religion - a distinction, in large measure, between the absolute and the relative.  Most people, at any given time, are more likely to be religious on the second level, and certainly this may be said of twentieth-century people.  There are, in the petty-bourgeois phases of evolution, adherents of a genuine religion, be it neo-Catholicism and LSD tripping on the materialistic side, or neo-Puritanism and neo-Orientalism on the spiritualistic side, as it were, of each phase, but they are a minority, probably a tiny minority within the overall confines of Western society - the truly civilized members of bourgeois/proletarian civilization.  Co-existent with this minority is that overwhelming majority of people who, in the absence of a genuine religious discipline, may loosely be described as barbarous, and whose religiosity will accordingly take the form of adherence to one or more manifestations of contemporary quasi-religion, such as football, cricket, rugby, television, cinema, video, snooker, chess, quiz contests, art, music, literature, etc., depending on their class/temperamental integrity, that is to say, on whether their main 'religious' allegiance corresponds to the earlier or to the later phases of petty-bourgeois evolution, the lower or higher levels of quasi-religious indulgence, or whether, on the other hand, it is in fact largely proletarian, as in regard to pop music.  Probably these phases or levels can be divided into materialistic and spiritualistic sides, as in the case of genuine religion, and I shall venture the opinion that materialist indulgence in the earlier phase of petty-bourgeois evolution will take the form of a strong interest in football, cricket, rugby or some such physically-biased active sport, whereas its spiritualist counterpart will take the form of an equally strong interest in theatre, cinema, and television, which are all appearance-biased active arts.  Following on behind this, as it were, we may find materialist indulgence in the later phase of petty-bourgeois evolution taking the form of a strong interest in snooker, chess, darts, quiz contests, or some such intellectually-biased passive sport, whereas its spiritualist counterpart will take the form of a strong interest in abstract art, electronic music, experimental literature, and biomorphic sculpture, which are all essence-biased arts.  The 'barbarous' no less than the 'civilized' are entitled to class/temperamental distinctions.

     Of course, civilized people are not exempt from an interest in one or another form of quasi-religion, in whichever phase or on whichever side of petty-bourgeois evolution.  Quite the contrary, most of them are keen followers of some sport or admirers of various works of art, depending on their individual temperamental predilections for either the materialistic or the spiritualistic sides of life.  Doubtless, there must be some people whose temperaments fall, so to speak, between two stools, making them if not equally then at least unequally partial to both materialistic and spiritualistic achievements.  But, on the whole, it will be found, I think, that the majority of people given to quasi-religious devotion are not civilized, in the sense we have suggested, but non-participators in contemporary or traditional genuine religion.  Regarded in conjunction with the proletariat, they are 'the Many', whereas the others are 'the Few', for whom petty-bourgeois civilization is a spiritual reality - the class evolutionary stage centred on them.

     When we come to regard the age in this light, criticisms levelled against the bourgeoisie, whether on political or religious grounds (as applying to bourgeois art, science, literature, music, or anything else), which are so widespread an aspect of modern life, become intelligible from a class-evolutionary viewpoint as the rejection of the values of a preceding governing class by their petty-bourgeois successors, who, in all vital regards, rule the contemporary roost and are accordingly entitled to if not respect then at least toleration from the bourgeoisie, including the grand bourgeoisie, since there are worse things than criticism and we may be sure that the petty bourgeoisie won't indulge in them, being a relative class themselves - if on extreme rather than moderate terms.  Besides, the bourgeoisie would have a very difficult, not to say impossible, task endeavouring to refute most of the criticisms levelled against them by their petty-bourgeois successors, who are well aware that they have an ideological superiority.  Like it or not, they are obliged to bow before the new civilized class and put-up with such criticism, at times bordering on slander, as comes their way.  This is particularly conspicuous in the realm of so-called modern art, the abstract bias of which leaves many members of the older class either cold or, more usually I suspect, completely bewildered, unable as they must be, with their balanced relativity, to relate to works of art which are near absolute in construction.  Their own representational preferences are of course mocked and, at times, sardonically criticized by supporters of the avant-garde, who, as members of the new class, consider themselves entitled to deal condescendingly with what are perceived to be cultural inferiors.  The bourgeoisie, as already remarked, learn to live with this fact!

     Yet if they are prepared to tolerate criticism from 'above', the same most certainly can't be said of criticism from 'below', and by this I don't so much mean from their grand-bourgeois and/or aristocratic predecessors (though such criticism is at times strongly resented) as from the broad mass of people who, lacking genuine religious allegiance, may be defined as barbarous - in short, the proletariat.  Here, if anywhere, lies the distinction in bourgeois eyes between a reasonable criticism based (no matter how much they may privately resent the fact) on class-cultural superiority, and an unreasonable criticism directed against everything bourgeois, in whichever stage of its relativity, and threatening, by its radical vehemence, the social stability and cultural integrity of Western civilization.  The criticism of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat is no mere extreme relativity directed against an earlier and more moderate relativity, but something that appertains to an absolutism the essence of which is the undermining and eventual elimination of relativistic civilization in toto, regardless of whether the focal-points of criticism be the grand bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie, or the petty bourgeoisie.  All criticism aimed against the bourgeoisie strikes at the relativistic heart of petty-bourgeois civilization when it comes from the barbarous majority, or from certain activist quarters of it, and such criticism, it need hardly be said, is no less objectionable to the new civilized class than to the old.  Both will take measures to protect themselves from this absolutist onslaught, even to the extent of proscribing what is deemed to be particularly virulent and thus capable of undermining the relative integrity of the bourgeois state.  Toleration of freedom of criticism does not extend to the absolutist extreme in a relativistic civilization.  The so-called open society is really closed, in practice if not theory, at the top, open, in theory if not practice, to virtually any depths below.

     Were I to criticize the bourgeoisie from a petty-bourgeois standpoint, my work would doubtless be tolerated by some and even admired by others.  Yet speaking as one who, at least in theory, does not consider himself an integral part of petty-bourgeois civilization but a barbarous outsider (if a comparatively well-read and intelligent one), I cannot expect either toleration or admiration from upholders of one or another degree of relativity.  My spiritual temperament favours an absolutist religion which, as Transcendentalism, will form the focal-point of genuine religious allegiance in the civilization to-come.  I could not, in all honesty, describe myself as a yoga-practising petty-bourgeois extremist, still less as an extreme puritan.  I am less the upholder of a contemporary religion than the founder of a future one, in which transcendental meditation will play a part.  Being in favour of what pertains to tomorrow does not allow one to participate in that which pertains to today.  One can't live wholly in two worlds at once.  Paradoxically, it is from the ranks of the quasi-religious that the blueprint for the genuine religion of the future absolutist civilization has sprung.  That, after all, conforms to evolutionary logic!

 

 

BETWEEN TWO GRAVITIES

 

In a relativistic civilization too many people have an unfortunate tendency to regard soul and spirit as synonymous, and primarily because, being relative themselves, they fail to distinguish between the subatomic and the supra-atomic, as regards the two most antithetical absolutes conceivable.  They speak of the Father and the Holy Spirit, but they don't regard the latter as being radically different from - indeed, opposite to - the former.  They may agree that 'God is spirit', but are only too ready to treat soul as identical with spirit, and thus to see in fire or flame not pure soul but pure spirit!  This is in effect to confound the Diabolic with the Divine!

     We are familiar with terms such as divine Providence, divine Creator, God the Father, and so on, but not many of us bother to question whether the terms in question really do apply to the Divine or whether, on the contrary, there is a clear distinction between what is or would literally be divine and what has traditionally been considered such.  A monarch may justify his rule by reference to 'Divine Right', but is it really God, considered literally as transcendent spirit, or a metaphorically relative divinity which, if the truth were known, is less truly divine than effectively diabolic or, rather, archdiabolic?

     What is the difference, you may wonder, between the diabolic and the archdiabolic?  It is the difference, I maintain, between the Devil and the Creator.  In other words, between a 'fallen angel' and the primary 'angel' from which, in a manner of speaking, it 'fell'.  Transposed from the theological to the scientific plane, this becomes the difference between the sun and the governing star at the centre of the Galaxy - in short, between a petty peripheral star and the great central one.  Objectively considered, the sun (Satan) is no more evil than the governing star (the Creator); it is just that, from a subjective standpoint, the sun, being much closer to the world, has more influence on us and can therefore be accorded, in theological reckoning, a diabolic status.  The governing star, which is at a much greater distance from the earth, becomes entitled, by contrast, to a 'divine' status; though I should like to distinguish it from what, as transcendent spirit, would literally be divine.  By comparison to the divinity of the supra-atomic, the 'divinity' of the subatomic can only be described in terms of the archdiabolic when pertaining to the Creator-equivalent central star of any particular galaxy.

     If size and strength more than galactic position (though the two are of course linked) determines the distinction between the archdiabolic and the diabolic, viz. the Creator and Satan, then what they both have in common as stars is a subatomic constitution, as implying proton-proton reactions.  This is the quality of pure soul, the most negative sensation.  By contrast, the quality of pure spirit, as pertaining to the supra-atomic, is electron-electron attractions, the most positive awareness.  This is no mean distinction!  It signifies the beginning and the end of evolution - the one beneath, the other above the atomic compromise of temporal matter.  Such a compromise, manifesting itself on all levels of earthly life, is only subject to radical change in man, and then on a class-evolutionary basis.  Pagan/aristocratic man lived in an atomic compromise biased towards protons.  Christian/bourgeois man lives in an atomic compromise balanced between protons and electrons.  Transcendental/proletarian man will live in an atomic compromise biased towards electrons.  The first class-stage signified a radical stemming from the Diabolic Alpha.  The second class-stage, in whichever phase, signifies a moderate stemming from the Diabolic Alpha and a no-less moderate aspiration towards the Divine Omega.  The third and final class-stage will signify a radical aspiration towards the Divine Omega.  All forms of diabolism, whether conscious or unconscious, direct or indirect, will be completely alien to it.  Consequently, such a society can only be atheistic with regard to such a concept as the Creator.

     Man betrays himself at every stage of his evolution, not just in terms of worship and/or self-realization, but also in terms of his art, science, politics, sexuality, dress, even architecture.  I use the verb 'betrays' in the sense of revealing his evolutionary position at any given time, and one of the most striking forms of betrayal is indeed to be found in his architecture, about which I should like to theorize a little.

     There is no clearer, more striking architectural indication of a society radically stemming from the Diabolic Alpha than through the use of conical or pyramidal forms.  Such forms indicate a high regard for the gravitational force of the sun as they taper to a point high above the heads of men.  A particularly striking example is afforded by the pyramids of ancient Egypt, which are triangular in design as they taper to a point from three sides.  It cannot surprise us that the ancient Egyptians, besides being animal-worshippers, were confirmed sun-worshippers, and no greater concession to solar gravity could be imagined than that evinced by each of the main pyramids, originally erected as tombs to the Pharaohs.  Even the Aztec civilization of Central America, despite its overtly diabolical integrity, bespeaks a degree of evolutionary improvement on the architectural monuments of ancient Egypt, to the extent that the pyramidal forms taper to a point in step-wise, vertical/horizontal progression, suggestive of an indirect rather than a direct concession to the sun's gravitational force.  Other instances of a society radically stemming from the Diabolic Alpha are not difficult to find, and even certain Native American tribes, with their pre-architectural quasi-nomadic lifestyles, could be cited as a people whose conical dwellings, or wigwams, betrayed a shamelessly direct concession to solar gravity.  Given the fact that these wigwams were more usually conical than triangular, we may ascribe to Native Americans a spiritual approach to the Diabolic Alpha, an approach similar, in effect, to the revolution in architectural style wrought by the dome in late-pagan and early-Christian Europe - the tapering somehow less radical because curvilinear.

     With regard to the bourgeois stage of evolution, the acknowledgement of a transcendental ethos having reduced man's commitment to the Diabolic Alpha (in whichever manifestation) and imposed on him a moderate aspiration, through Christ, towards the Divine Omega, the 'Kingdom Within', we find that architectural styles came to mirror this dualistic integrity by the new emphasis placed on the vertical, gravitation-defying character of walls in their relation to stories, which accords with Christian respect for the transcendent.  And yet a concession to gravitational force, whether from the sun or the central star of the Galaxy, was still in order and appertained to the tapering design of roofs, with or without turrets, so that a compromise was effected, in accordance with Christian dualistic principles, between the diabolic-affirming and the diabolic-defying, as regards the diagonal roof and the vertical walls, variations on the former according with the epochal/class integrity of the buildings in question.

     This brings us, I think, to the exclusively gravity-defying architecture of the late-twentieth century and beyond, many of the most conspicuous examples of which can be found in the USA, which, though aligned with Western civilization and effectively a bourgeois/proletarian nation, upholds a considerable number of proletarian tendencies, some of which are quite civilized.  With this transcendental architecture, as I shall call it, man has turned his back on the diabolic and pursued a gravity-defying style of building that maintains unbroken allegiance to the vertical, as the parallel sides of these skyscrapers terminate in the horizontality of a flat roof.  So gravity-defying are some of these buildings that, not content to defy the sun, they also seem to float clear of the ground, as in Van der Rohe's work employing steel supports reminiscent of stilts.  Whether or not a central 'block' support is employed at the base of the building, the general impression created by such works is of the transcendent, as of a building engrossed in the gravity-defying achievement of levitation.

     As to the formal shapes employed, I would maintain that angular or rectilinear walls betray a materialist approach to modern architecture, cylindrical or curvilinear walls a spiritualist approach.  Probably the best approach of all, from a religious standpoint, would be the use of a curvilinear design pressing upwardly outwards, as implying a spiritual expansion, and I know of no better example than the church designed by Le Corbusier, namely Notre Dame en Haut, which, while not exactly harmonizing with the Catholic religion, suggests the possibility of future development in the context of religious architecture, as applying to the eventual erection of meditation centres - the appropriate type of religious buildings for a transcendental civilization.  Thus it may well transpire that a strict distinction between the secular and the religious will be upheld, as between rectilinear and curvilinear styles.

     Having briefly theorized on the relations of architecture to man's evolutionary position, I should like to conclude this essay by drawing attention to another context, often overlooked, in which either a concession to gravitational force or a denial of it is maintained, and with regard, in contrast to the above, to the gravitational force of the earth's molten core - namely, with regard to footwear and trousers.  For just as a concession to the sun's gravity induces a proliferation of architectural styles tapering, in various degrees, upwards, so the parallel concession to that of the earth's molten core induces a proliferation of footwear and legwear tapering downwards, either literally or metaphorically to a point.  In the case of legwear, as I have called it, a conspicuous example of this downwards-tapering is afforded by the importance men once ascribed to leggings and tight, knee-length stockings, which contrasted with their short, baggy trousers (breeches) in such a way as to suggest what I have described as a concession to the earth's gravitational force, and thus to betray a sartorial integrity, whether pagan or aristocratic, stemming from the Diabolic Alpha.  In the case of footwear, we can have no hesitation in defining high-heeled and pointed shoes as indicative of a similar trend, though one more conspicuously pervasive among women than men, and not least of all in our own time!

     This brings us to the point that, as with architecture, footwear and legwear will undergo a corresponding change in favour of gravity-defying or transcending styles ... with the progression from aristocratic to bourgeois and, finally, proletarian stages of evolutionary development.  If straight trousers and slightly downwards-tapering heels on shoes attest to a bourgeois stage of compromise or neutral relationship to the earth's gravity, then it need not surprise us to discover that flared trousers and slightly upwards-tapering heels attest to a proletarian stage relevant to a gravity-defying transcendental society.  In an extreme relativistic civilization, such as exists in the bourgeois/proletarian West, one can encounter virtually any style of footwear or legwear; though the style generally worn by any given person will correspond to his basic class, not to mention sexual, allegiance.  We may infer from this that while such a heterogeneous situation accords with the everywhichway integrity of relativistic civilization, no such heterogeneity could be encouraged in an absolutist civilization, where only gravity-defying trousers and shoes would be permissible, in accordance with its transcendental essence.  It is therefore highly unlikely that high-heels and downwards-tapering trousers would continue to be worn in a civilized proletarian society.  On the contrary, only such clothing as betokened man's freedom from diabolism, and thereby attested to an absolute aspiration towards the Divine Omega.

 

 

UNDERSTANDING JAZZ

 

There was a time when jazz could be described as the music of the black American, but in an age of multi-racial interest in and commitment to jazz, that is no longer necessarily the case.  If anything, jazz ceased to be a black man's music with the dawn of 'modern jazz', and we may note an acoustic/electric distinction between the traditional and the modern.

     Since the twentieth century was a predominantly petty-bourgeois age, I think it only fair to define jazz as a form of serious petty-bourgeois music.  I would even go so far as to say that it was the American equivalent of European classical music, which, in the twentieth century, also developed a specifically petty-bourgeois integrity, though one more conservative and, contrary to superficial appearances, deeply rooted in tradition than its American counterpart.  Although, following Schoenberg's lead, much of this European music is atonal or, at any rate, relatively atonal compared to nineteenth-century Romanticism, it has remained largely acoustic, not rivalled the best modern jazz in the use of electric instruments.  Furthermore, it has retained, in the great majority of cases, a dependence on scores and conductors, thereby betraying a respect for conceptual appearances which, except in a small minority of cases, is not to be found in modern jazz, or even, as a rule, in its traditional precursor.  Clearly, American jazz is more transcendental than European orchestral music and thus entitled, in my opinion, to be regarded as a mainstream, as opposed to subsidiary, form of petty-bourgeois serious music.  And this in conjunction with a similar distinction which I have elsewhere applied to art and which can, I believe, be applied to most other subjects as well, depending on whether they pertain to the genuinely petty-bourgeois nations of the Western world, like America and Germany, or to the pseudo-petty-bourgeois ones, like Britain and France, which are still firmly rooted in bourgeois tradition.

     Thus, in art, the distinction between Expressionism and Impressionism, as pertaining to the genuinely petty-bourgeois civilization in the earlier stage of its development, and Cubism and Symbolism, which pertain to their materialist and spiritualist counterparts respectively within the confines of the pseudo-petty-bourgeois nations, is paralleled, in music, by the distinction between jazz on the one hand and classical on the other, a distinction itself capable of being divided into a spiritualist and a materialist side in each case, so that we may speak of acoustic tonal jazz as the materialistic counterpart of late-Romanticism and, by contrast, of electric tonal jazz as the spiritualistic counterpart of neo-Classicism.  We may also mark the evolution of jazz from an earlier to a later stage, again paralleling the evolution of classical from late-Romanticism to non-serial atonal composition on the materialist side, and from neo-Classicism to serialized atonal composition on the spiritualist side, which I shall define in terms of atonal electric on the one hand and atonal acoustic on the other.  Thus where the one side signifies an expansion of spirituality with the assistance of electric instruments, the other side signifies a contraction of materialism through the use of acoustic instruments - something that has also happened in European serious music, though, in my estimation, to a less radical extent.

     If, then, jazz may be claimed to have progressed from a stage stemming from bourgeois tonality to a stage aspiring towards proletarian atonality, and to have done so from two points of view, viz. a materialist and a spiritualist, is there any possibility, I wonder, of its evolving beyond this latter stage to an absolutely proletarian one?  The answer to this has, I think, to be - no.  For jazz, whether acoustic or electric, would cease to be jazzy if it abandoned the one thing that keeps it tied to the relative, albeit extreme, petty-bourgeois level - namely, percussion.  Jazz, of whichever variety, is the wedding of pagan rhythmic vitality and consistency to either tonality or atonality produced on mostly artificial instruments, formerly saxophones and trumpets, latterly electric keyboards and guitars; though the two kinds of instruments, corresponding to an earlier and a later manifestation of the artificial, often overlap in practice.  Jazz is simply incapable of evolving beyond petty-bourgeois criteria.  It cannot be the ultimate music since, to all appearances, it is a penultimate music, relevant to an extreme relativistic civilization.  Beyond and above modern jazz must come the universal proletarian music of electric atonality.

     Why should music progress to an atonal integrity?  The straight answer to that is: in order to escape from rhythm and thus be in the best possible position to intimate of the Divine Omega, that is to say, to impress rather than to express.  Melody reflects an atomic integrity to the extent that it is composed of rhythm and pitch - the former horizontal, the latter vertical.  Melodic music is therefore quintessentially relative, a compromise, as it were, between rhythm and pitch, which is only possible and morally acceptable during an atomic stage of civilized evolution.  Before this compromise arose, music was absolutist on the horizontal level of rhythm, a music of the soul, feminine and sensuous.  After it has passed, music will become absolutist on the vertical level of pitch, a music of the spirit, masculine and intellectual.  Such music can only be atonal, or non-melodic, the complete antithesis of pagan music, having transcended rhythm in its absolutist dedication to pitch, whereby a musical impression of the transcendent will be achieved.  That is the moral significance of atonality, and such atonality can only be truly transcendent, and therefore in the best position to intimate of the Divine Omega, when projected from an electric basis - the most artificial, or synthetic, technical medium.

     By contrast, jazz never abandons the percussive root and is consequently always part expressive.  When atonal and electric it can be predominantly impressive but, as already noted, it would cease to be jazzy (and thus to swing) if ever it became exclusively so.  There are, of course, jazz albums which abandon the percussive root intermittently, and certainly this can be said of the now-defunct American band Weather Report.  But, overall, jazz predominates on such albums within any particular composition, and must necessarily continue to do so, in the context of relativistic civilization.  Conversely, when the melodic or atonal apex is abandoned, as it often is on albums that feature a drummer in the role of band leader, the resultant music sinks beneath jazz to a purely rhythmic level, approximating to the pagan, and may be defined as the most evil music conceivable.  Again, jazz usually predominates on these albums, and sometimes the overall balance is such that pure rhythm will be preceded or succeeded by pure pitch or, at the very least, unaccompanied melody.  For it often happens that one extreme calls forth another, and certainly I can think of a number of compositions in which frantic rhythm from the drums is countered by electric atonality from either sax, guitar, or keyboards, so that the impression created is of a music in which the parts are at loggerheads and seemingly indulging in a musical tug-of-war between rhythm and pitch, alpha and omega.  This is not, to say the least, a particularly laudable situation!  But neither, for that matter, is the analogous context of a 'melody' at war with itself, now predominantly rhythmic, now predominantly atonal, and indisposed to the preservation of a melodic compromise, or classical balance.  And yet these situations mirror the evolutionary struggle which is constantly taking place between rhythm and pitch, as between evil and good, soul and spirit, in an extreme relativistic age. Such struggles are also taking place in European classical music, though, as a rule, on less radical terms.

     When we ask ourselves what it is that makes jazz a serious or civilized music, I think the basic answer has to be: its commitment to instrumentality, and therefore relatively high degree of artificiality.  Vocals do of course occur, but usually as a minor rather than a major ingredient in the overall instrumental scope of an album, as pertaining, on average, to one or two tracks, and then more usually of a religious connotation - one compatible, needless to say, with petty-bourgeois criteria.  For it is virtually axiomatic that to be civilized, particularly on the extreme relativistic level we are discussing, music must be either exclusively instrumental or accompanied, in part, by vocals of a religious significance.  An album of romantic songs, on the other hand, falls somewhat short of the civilized by dint both of its excessive commitment to the voice - a natural instrument - and the sexual or emotional content of the songs.  Being civilized, at whatever stage of class evolution, is to a large extent synonymous with being religious (spiritual), though being sophisticated is a subsidiary requirement more likely to find favour among materialists, whose music, while being exclusively or predominantly instrumental, isn't consciously intended to convey a religious notion.  No doubt, much of the jazz I characterized, a short while ago, as materialist, through its dependence on acoustic instruments, is only entitled to consideration as a civilized music on account of its technical sophistication.  But by this fact alone it stands in an inferior relation to its spiritual counterpart, whether of the tonal or atonal varieties.

     While we may therefore be justified in discriminating between the civilized and the barbarous, as between jazz of one kind or another and such popular romance-biased kinds of vocal music as blues, soul, funk, reggae, rock 'n' roll, pop, rock, and punk, it often happens that respected jazz musicians abandon the civilized level not for the barbarous as such - though the incorporation of, say, rock elements into jazz creates a 'fusion' music which may broadly be defined as bourgeois/proletarian - but a kind of popular petty-bourgeois level, implying the production of albums with a preponderance of vocals, and vocals, moreover, of a romantic and/or sexist nature.  And yet, as a rule, these musicians cling by a slender thread to their civilized roots, even if ambiguously, and retain at least one track of either pure instrumentality or a vocal bias whose connotations are distinctly religious.  With the greatest, most civilized jazz musicians, however, there is little or no concession to the popular at all.  Musicians like Jean-Luc Ponty and John McLaughlin have been producing a succession of instrumental albums year after year.  They are fast becoming something of an exception in the realm of modern jazz, a small minority of the consistently civilized.  Perhaps it is no mere coincidence that both Ponty and McLaughlin are European?

     And yet a European in jazz is almost as unusual as an American in classical, not merely in terms of performance but, more significantly, of composition.  Why is it that, just as there were so many great European classical composers in the twentieth century, there were, comparatively speaking, so few great European jazz composers in it?  And, conversely, why should there be so many great American jazz composers but, by comparison, so few great American classical composers?  Is not the answer to both these questions that whereas classical is pre-eminently a European phenomenon, jazz is an American one pre-eminently, and that, though cross-fertilization does occur, the mainstream commitments to each type of music will be regional, accruing to the continental divide.  The American jazz composers who adopt classical influences are as rare a breed as the European classical composers who adopt the influence of jazz.  Rarer still are the American classical composers and the European jazz composers, both of whom, though working in an alien tradition, sooner or later tend to bend their respective types of music back towards their native influences, so that American 'classical' becomes jazzy (Copland, Gershwin, Barber, Bernstein, et al.), whilst European 'jazz' becomes classical or, at any rate, retains a respect and proclivity for classical procedure (Ponty, McLaughlin, Catherine, Weber, Hammer, Vitous, Ackermann, et al.).  And this no less so when the composer/performer concerned has spent many years on the other continent, particularly in the case of European jazz musicians who have emigrated to or chosen to work in America.  No great surprise, therefore, when we discover that the purest jazz is composed by Americans and the purest classical by Europeans!  And yet even this is not exempt from a degree of cross-fertilization, whether conscious or unconscious.  Certainly there is some classical in Chick Corea, just as there is some jazz in Michael Tippett.  A relativistic civilization, divisible into mainstream and subsidiary elements, could not be otherwise!

 

 

PHILOSOPHY - GENUINE AND PSEUDO

 

There is a difference between philosophy-proper and metaphysical philosophy, the pseudo-philosophy which has developed with increasing tenacity along mainly petty-bourgeois lines over the past 150 or so years - indeed, ever since Schopenhauer, that great 'anti-philosopher', took it upon himself to dig into oriental metaphysics and preach a doctrine of self-denial in the interests of spiritual salvation.  To the extent that Schopenhauer was metaphysical, he was an anti-philosopher, that is to say, a pseudo-philosopher.  For philosophy-proper in the West is not concerned with the essence of things but, on the contrary, with their appearance, and this whether it is on a grand-bourgeois, a bourgeois, or a petty-bourgeois level, as pertaining to a critique of nature, a critique of ethics, or a critique of language.  A distinction, in other words, between the natural, the human, and the artificial, as applying, in various degrees, to the works of, say, Bacon, Kant, and Wittgenstein respectively.  Of course, the critique of nature or, more precisely, the classification and study of natural phenomena, is the root concern of Western philosophy, and this is more likely to be carried through with consistency and thoroughness in a pagan age than in a Christian one.  Thus Bacon could not hope, in this respect, to emulate the work of Aristotle, who had the ideologically naturalistic integrity of pagan civilization behind him.  But neither did Plato go quite so far, in his ethics, as Kant, and doubtless because pagan ethical thinking reflected a lower scale-of-values, relative to an earlier stage of evolution, than its Christian successor in the West.  Needless to say, there was no attempt at a critique of language by the ancient Greeks, since such a critique can only materialize in an extensively urban civilization, presupposing a greater degree of evolution.

     Each civilization tends, within limits, to evolve according to its own capacities and technological capabilities.  If the civilization of the ancient Greeks was unable to evolve beyond a town stage of evolution, then it need not surprise us that its thought was likewise unable to evolve beyond a level commensurate with such an environment.  The Christian civilization of the West fared rather better in the long term, though not without having had to pass through intermediate environmental stages corresponding to those of the ancients, in which a philosophical concern with nature (Bacon) and ethics (Kant) took precedence.  The evolution of philosophy to the stage of a critique of language had to wait until Western civilization was at a comparatively advanced environmental stage, as it was in Habsburg Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth century, where Wittgenstein set the trend for subsequent philosophers, including Berlin, Barthes, and Merleau-Ponty, to follow.  Wherever philosophy has been diverted from this central twentieth-century concern with language, it has entered the realm of metaphysics, as in the cases, to varying extents, of Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre, and Weil, and thereupon become a pseudo-philosophy, descended, at least in part, from the metaphysical preoccupations of Schopenhauer.

     More overtly than this largely essayistic writing, the utilization of novels and short prose as vehicles for the exposition of metaphysical speculation, as in Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, and Simone de Beauvoir, developed in the twentieth century to a point where such writings may be said to constitute the bulk of contemporary pseudo-philosophy in the West.  As Western civilization is nothing if not relative, suspended between the pagan and the transcendental absolutes of naturalistic philosophy on the one hand and of abstract theosophy on the other, we cannot dismiss such pseudo-philosophy as an aberration or unwarranted intrusion of the theosophical into the realm of speculation.  On the contrary, pseudo-philosophy is an integral part of this relativistic civilization, particularly in its later stages of development, when an aspiration towards the theosophical, and thus extension of thought into essence, is becoming more intensified.  If formerly, under the influence of aristocratic absolutism, academic philosophy had little or no competition from a metaphysical rival (Christian theology being something else), then with the advancement of Western civilization into an extreme, or petty-bourgeois, age there can be no question that such competition will develop and be intensified to a point where the 'pseudo' predominates over the 'genuine'.

     In contrast to the West, the East has long maintained a metaphysical tradition - indeed, so long ... that one has reason to doubt whether there was ever a physical tradition behind it!  Strictly speaking, the East cannot be described as philosophical; for where there is no critique of nature or ethics or language ... there can be no genuine philosophy.  Rather, the Orient has long been theosophical, concerned with essence, and thus antithetical to the Occident, whether or not we include within that designation Graeco-Roman civilization.  As the West, even in its Christian guise, has been philosophical and scientific, so the East has been theosophical and poetic, theosophy being to poetry what science is to philosophy - the empirical or experiential confirmation of intuitively realized speculation and occasionally, no doubt, its correction.  And, being theosophical, the East has produced much instructive and devotional poetry, just as the West has produced - the famous exception of the so-called 'Metaphysical Poets' notwithstanding - comparatively little, since poetry in the West has more often than not been associated with nature and feminine beauty, partaking of a quasi-philosophical integrity which, in contrast to the East's theosophical one, may be described as physico-poetic.   To Keats, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty', and we have no reason to be surprised, given his apparent bias (and this regardless of Aldous Huxley's defence of Keatsian logic by reference, in The Perennial Philosophy, to a factual interpretation of truth!).

     By contrast to the East, however, the West has produced a substantial body of academic philosophy, the most recent manifestations of which will find few parallels in the East.  And yet there has been a slight shift of emphasis, in recent decades, from philosophy to theosophy in the West, and, as a corollary of this, a corresponding shift of emphasis from theosophy to philosophy in the East, so that an attempt at attaining to a compromise is under way in deference to evolutionary requirement.  For a world civilization - which is what evolution would seem to have in store for humanity - cannot come about if the two main hemispheres of the world are at loggerheads.  On the contrary, it presupposes a compromise between science and theosophy, as between physics and metaphysics, the one in the service of the other as man struggles towards the post-Human Millennium - an epoch when science, as technology, and theosophy, as meditation, will be brought to a pitch of harmonious compromise, transcending all hitherto-imagined formulae on the subject.  An epoch, I mean, when human brains will be artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts, first as Supermen experiencing upward self-transcendence through LSD or equivalent synthetic hallucinogens, then, following the removal of the old brain from each superhuman individual by qualified technicians, as Superbeings, or collectivized new brains experiencing not merely upward self-transcendence but the nearest thing, prior the heavenly Beyond, to pure self, as the interconnected new brains of each Superbeing hypermeditate towards total transcendence in salvation from the flesh (or its remnants thereof) and consequent attainment to Heaven ... conceived as pure spirit expanding and converging towards other such transcendences in order to establish, with the eventual culmination of heavenly evolution, the Omega Point, i.e. the definitive globe of transcendent spirit, the supreme being of the One, at the opposite pole of evolution to the most infernal doing of ... the Many, i.e. the stars (large and small), which constitute the Diabolic Alpha, but which old-world religions paradoxically describe in terms of the Divine, i.e. the 'heavens'.

     Be that as it may, men of the future absolutist civilization won't follow suit, since they will have their minds turned to an exclusive aspiration towards the Divine Omega through self-realization, with no time, in consequence, to worship the alpha or its theological successor in some kind of Christ-like anthropomorphic compromise.  For as the 'Three in One', Christ combines, to a relative degree, both Father and Holy Spirit within Himself as man.  Like all men, He is thus a combination, as it were, of alpha and omega, neither wholly one (the Father) nor the other (the Holy Ghost), and therefore a distinctly 'Second Person' entity worshipped by Christians as God.  The future transcendental civilization, however, won’t have any time for the worship of such a man-god, but will concentrate, through transcendental meditation, on self-realization as a step towards ultimate divinity.  That such a divinity won't be fully attained to during the duration of this final human civilization ... can be no argument against the practice of TM.  Men will simply have to make the best of their situation and do what they can to create a society closer than any previous one has ever been to the heavenly goal of evolution.

     The fact that this society will eventually be bettered, come the post-Human Millennium, is no argument against its short-term existence, since evolution proceeds by degrees towards a long-term goal and cannot proceed straight from the Christian or petty-bourgeois (yoga) civilizations to the Millennium in question, jumping over the need for and justification of a transcendental civilization.  Neither can it jump over the post-Human Millennium or, rather, act, through men, as though the millennial Beyond were unnecessary because some people wrongly assume that Heaven can be attained to, in the pure spirit of transcendence, from human effort alone!  Unfortunately that is far from being the case, and the Christian West is not alone is assuming the contrary!  Given its traditional disregard for technology, the non-Christian East is even more exposed to this fallacy, with consequences all-too-painfully familiar to warrant further mention here.  For unless men are eventually superseded by Supermen (brain collectivizations), and they in turn by Superbeings (new-brain collectivizations), there will be no eventual attainment of spirit to the heavenly Beyond, in the absolute purity of total transcendence.  Neither the West nor the East has realized this fact, but the world will have to realize it in the future, as it adopts my truth as a means to Heaven, that is to say, to the ultimate truth ... of pure spirit.

     Clearly this truth has nothing to do with academic philosophy, with a critique of apparent phenomena, whether natural or artificial or somewhere in-between, but corresponds to the furthest development of the pseudo-philosophical, the most metaphysical of writings, suggestive of prose poetry, to have yet arisen.  Not the climax to a petty-bourgeois tradition, but the inception of proletarian absolutism on terms which transcend the relative.  This absolutism I distinguish from the relative as philosophical theosophy - the root universal guide for the pioneers of the final human civilization, global and transcendent, to follow.  May they learn from me well; for theirs is the road of pure essence, the culmination of all spiritual striving!

 

 

THE ULTIMATE MUSIC

 

Bourgeois music is a music the melodic integrity of which is usually balanced between rhythm and pitch.  Either side of this music, in class-evolutionary terms, is music that is of a melodic integrity either predominantly given to rhythm, as in the case of the grand bourgeoisie, or predominantly given to pitch, as in the case of the petty bourgeoisie, both of which classes are themselves divisible into an earlier and a later stage, the musical constitution of which will be either more or less extreme but never, or rarely, totally extreme.  By which I mean absolutist, and therefore given to the production of either pure rhythm or pure pitch.  These extreme stages correspond, by contrast, to aristocratic (pagan) and proletarian (transcendental) absolutes - pre-atomic and post-atomic integrities either side of a bourgeois (Christian) atomicity.  Consequently they are not, as a rule, to be encountered within the confines of relativistic civilization!  The rhythmic purism preceded it and the atonal purism will succeed it.  The earlier stage of grand-bourgeois music stems from the former in its predominantly rhythmic content; the later stage of petty-bourgeois music aspires towards the latter in a predominantly atonal context; though such music, whether as modern jazz or avant-garde classical, is rarely atonal in the strictly post-rhythmic sense.  There accrues to it at least a vestige of rhythm in either melody or percussion, the latter particularly prominent in modern jazz which, owing to its negroid roots, is more susceptible to percussively rhythmic indulgence than most forms of  contemporary classical.

     Taking the evolution of music as a whole, we can contend that its progression is from evil to good via an evil/good compromise.  There is nothing lower or morally worse, in musical terms, than pure rhythm, while, conversely, there is nothing higher or morally better than pure pitch.  The one stems from the diabolic absolutism ... of proton-proton reactions, the other aspires towards the divine absolutism ... of electron-electron attractions.  In between, one finds the atomic compromise of melody, as pertaining to all stages of relativistic civilization.  Melody is to music what Christ is to religion - the humanistic, 'intellectual' compromise coming in-between the alpha/omega extremes.  Thus pure rhythm stands to music as God the Father to religion, viz. the alpha soulful extreme, while pure pitch stands to music as the Holy Ghost to religion, viz. the omega spiritual extreme.  Being relative, Christian civilization is content with a melodic compromise equivalent to Christ, either literally, as balanced between rhythm and pitch, or biased towards one or other of the two extremes, depending, to a significant extent, on the epoch in question.  It has no desire to embrace a post-atomic absolutism.  That must be left to a transcendental civilization, in which free-electron criteria will prevail.

     Thus notes are to music what electrons are to atoms - the spiritual, positive, expansive ingredient, and we may define them as electron equivalents.  By contrast, rhythm may be defined as the proton equivalent - the soulful, negative, contractive side of the atom, and in the musical equivalent of an atomic integrity notes will be bound to rhythm in melody, either with or without a percussive accompaniment.  Jazz and classical are alike subject to percussive accompaniment, which stands to melody as God the Father to Christ.  Usually, as noted above, there is more percussion in jazz than in classical, but quite often the treatment of percussion in the latter, particularly in the orchestral guise of symphonies, is more violent than in the former, if, as a mitigating factor, its use is rather more intermittent than continuous.

     Yet if classical is, on the whole, nobler than jazz in respect of a less frequent recourse to percussion, it isn't, as a rule, quite so transcendental as regards instrumentation and pitch, since not only tied to acoustic means but, through scores and conductors, to tonal or quasi-atonal notation as well.  Indeed, the term 'quasi-atonal' aptly serves as a definition of higher petty-bourgeois music, whether in jazz or classical, since complete atonality, though possible, would transcend relativity and thus render all forms of rhythmic accompaniment, whether percussive (overt) or notational (covert), taboo - a situation hardly compatible with a petty-bourgeois civilization, in which criteria of musical excellence and moral acceptability are ever relative!  Besides, no less than contemporary classical, jazz has its own safeguards or inhibitions against genuine atonality built-in to the instrumental integrity of the music, whereby the persistence of a percussive root makes the pursuit of atonality all but impossible.  A violin or a guitar that seems to be free on an atonal flight one moment ... will be brought back into line, as it were, with a concession to rhythm or melody the next.  This is a fair definition of the quasi-atonal.  And yet, morally considered, it signifies a distinct improvement on persistent melody, such as can be found in trad jazz and in most types of bourgeois and early petty-bourgeois classical.  The electron equivalent is therein straining at the leash, so to speak, of proton constraint, which can only auger well for the future freeing of pitch from all forms of rhythm.  Only when pitch is completely free to exist on its own spiritual terms ... will music attain to a climax, becoming, in consequence, purely transcendent.  Such a climax, it need scarcely be emphasized, cannot be achieved or furthered by the adherents of relativistic civilization.  It will fall to those nations/musicians specifically concerned with the development of an absolutist civilization.

     Which instrument or instruments, you may well wonder, would be most appropriate for a truly atonal music?  Certainly none of the traditional acoustic ones, whether predominantly made of wood or of brass.  Not, either, such typically petty-bourgeois or, rather, bourgeois/proletarian instruments as electric guitars, bases, pianos, organs, and the like.  Although signifying an evolutionary improvement upon their acoustic counterparts, these instruments require a degree of manual manipulation incompatible, it seems to me, with the transcendental criteria of an absolutist civilization.  The playing of an electric guitar, for example, presupposes a compromise between rhythm and pitch, the fingers of one hand being concerned with notes, either separately or collectively, and those, or one or more, of the other hand having to sustain the notes through a variety of rhythmical procedures either independent of or, if more civilized, dependent on a plectrum.

     Clearly, such musical relativity would be incompatible with an absolutist civilization!  The electric guitar is nothing if not a quintessentially bourgeois/proletarian instrument.  For though, as an electric instrument, it signifies an expansion of the spiritual, its technical manipulation presupposes a degree of respect for the rhythmical.  This, however, isn't the case or, at any rate, needn't be so where synthesizers are concerned, which can be programmed to realize a variety of atonal sequences independently of manual control, being susceptible, in any case, to the minimum of manual effort.  I would be extremely surprised if such highly synthetic instruments didn't play a leading role in realizing the music of tomorrow, a music programmed in advance and conveyed by remote control, thereby relieving composers of the obligation to perform their own music in public, an obligation which, though concerned with the cultivation of being, entails a degree of doing.  A civilization with an emphasis on transcendent being couldn't countenance very much mundane doing!

     And yet, the performance of a particular work by the composer himself, either alone or in conjunction with other musicians, is preferable, from an evolutionary standpoint, to the performance by a number of musicians of someone else's work, and we may note here an important distinction between modern jazz and its classical counterpart, the latter of which entails, more often than not, a division between composer and performers, thereby indicating a greater concession to relativity and making, in the process, for a dependence on scores and conductors - two factors which presuppose a degree of respect for appearances and, by implication, the proton root.  Were classical music determined to become completely essential, entirely rhythm-free, this situation could not be countenanced.  But the plain fact of the matter is that classical music has no such ambitions, being resigned to reflecting, in various degrees, an atomic relativity, the structure of which bespeaks a compromise between essence and appearance, inner and outer, in deference to relativistic criteria.  Here, as in certain other contexts, it is inferior to jazz, a music which scorns appearance in a partly memorized, partly improvised musical self-sufficiency approximating to essence and therefore closer, in consequence, to a musical absolutism, whereby no composer/performer, conductor/score lacunae exist between performer(s) and music.  It is on account of such facts that modern jazz is entitled to be considered a mainstream petty-bourgeois music, one more transcendental than its orchestral counterpart, as applying, in the main, to Europe.  And to the extent that, since the late-twentieth century, America is the leading petty-bourgeois or, at any rate, bourgeois/proletarian nation, and jazz is essentially an American phenomenon, then we can't be surprised if this should be the case.

     Speaking as an Irish-born writer, it is scant humiliation for me to discover and acknowledge such a fact, since I am led, with my spiritual bias, to identify more closely with American than with European culture, though not to the point of forgetting that the bourgeois/proletarian civilization of the contemporary West and the future transcendental civilization, which I hope Ireland will be instrumental in furthering, are two entirely different things, in consequence of which very little common ground can be established between them.  If modern jazz, as pertaining to bourgeois/proletarian civilization in its predominantly petty-bourgeois phase, is the 'best of a bad job' in musical class-evolutionary terms, it is still somewhat short of being a completely 'good job', which could only develop, it seems to me, in a society dedicated to absolute values and, hence, to the establishment of a free-electron music - electronic and, in its pure pitch, highly appropriate to a people who pay no respects to the alpha, nor to its part-alpha 'Son', but are dedicated, instead, to an exclusive, absolutist aspiration towards the omega.  Such transcendental music, significant of the post-atomic, will be vastly superior to melodic music and almost infinitely superior to its pagan precursor in the overly percussive past.  It will be the ultimate music, of universal import.

 

 

PART THREE: APHORISMS

 

ON SEXUALITY

 

1.   Sexuality in the post-atomic world would be - as to some extent it already is in the transitional world ... of bourgeois/proletarian civilization - free from emotional ties and consequently elevated above atomic constraints.  No-one would think of affirming 'What God has joined together let no man pull asunder', for the simple reason that God, in that Creator-oriented alpha-bound sense, would have been transcended - the city having supplanted nature and considerably weakened, through its artificial constitution, man's ability or inclination to form long-lasting emotional ties.  Marriage would become a thing of the past - as, to a limited extent, it already is, in practice if not always in theory!

 

2.   Post-dualistic sexuality is both sublimated and positively unisexual, positively unisexual even when women are involved ... to the extent that, if liberated, they effectively function as Supermen, or quasi-electron equivalents, rather than strictly as women, or proton equivalents.  By contrast, pre-atomic sexuality was largely concrete and negatively unisexual, to the extent that men effectively functioned as pseudo-proton equivalents - unable to equal women in sensual capacity or pleasure.  With atomic sexuality, however, men entered into a more equal social relationship with women, functioning as bound-electron equivalents, the family becoming more patriarchal than matriarchal.  By 'equal' I don't of course mean that they acquired a greater capacity for sensual pleasure ... so much as a distinct character as men, not yet superior to women but in no way inferior to them either.

 

3.   The main sartorial distinction in atomic sexual relationships is between skirt and trousers - the relationships in question being dualistic and therefore properly heterosexual.  No such sartorial distinction existed, however, in pre-atomic sexual relationships.  For both men and women wore dresses or gowns, as befitting the predominantly negative character of pre-atomic times, the length of this feminine attire often varying according to one's status ... as either a genuine woman or an effective woman, so that, as a rule, the former wore longer dresses, tunics, or whatever than the latter.  For feminine attire symbolizes the vagina, a dress or skirt forming a kind of tunnel, its length symbolizing the depth of the wearer's vagina.  Men, lacking a vagina, were obviously at a sexual disadvantage to women in pre-atomic times.  However, with the advent of a post-atomic age, the situation is reversed, so that trousers become the standard clothing for both men and women alike, the latter now functioning as quasi-Supermen and being at a sexual disadvantage to the former to the extent that their trousers, jeans, etc., could not intimate of or symbolize the length of the wearer's penis so convincingly or credibly as with a (genuine) man, or Superman.  For trousers do, after all, refer back to the penis through their emphasis, in clinging to the outlines of a man's legs, on the phallic rather than, as with a skirt, the vaginal - a distinction, one might argue, between the cylindrical (considered as a solid) and the tubular.

 

4.   Because women are effectively regarded as quasi-Supermen in a post-atomic age, it is fitting for them to adopt masculine attire and thus conform to the positively unisexual nature of that age.  Bourgeois women, on the other hand, tend, in their open-society contexts, to wear skirts or dress rather than trousers, and usually the more bourgeois or aristocratic the woman, the longer the skirt or dress she wears.  This is because such women are not ashamed to emphasize their basic femininity in conformity with heterosexual criteria.  Neither, up to a point, are petty-bourgeois women, who tend to reflect a transitional development between skirts and trousers, and may as often be seen in the latter as in the former.  With modern proletarian women, however, trousers, whether as cotton slacks, jeans, tights, or whatever, tend to predominate over skirts, thereby presaging an age when skirts will be entirely superseded by trousers or, at any rate, trouser-like attire ... as post-atomic criteria become more comprehensively established - a thing which is unlikely to happen much before the advent of a transcendental civilization.  Even within the confines of contemporary bourgeois civilization, proletarian women display a marked preference for jeans over skirts, though when skirts are worn they are more likely to be short than long.

 

5.   Unlike a long skirt, a short skirt, or mini, symbolizes vaginal shallowness, the tunnel it forms around the legs being relatively modest.  A mini thus reduces feminine sexuality, contracts it as a preparatory step towards transcending it through the masculine attire of trousers, which, by contrast, affirm a phallic bias.  As a rule, bourgeois women do not wear miniskirts, because they have no desire to contract their sexuality in conformity with quasi-unisexual criteria.  The mini is really more of a petty-bourgeois than either a bourgeois or a proletarian mode of attire; for while it plays down feminine sexuality - and this contrary to superficial appearances and notions to the contrary! - it yet retains a heterosexual dimension.  The proletarian quasi-Superman of tomorrow would, one imagines, consistently adopt masculine attire, unlike her contemporary counterpart who, in the West, exists within the confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, and is to some extent exposed to the socio-sexual influences of the ruling, i.e. bourgeois, class.

 

6.   As to the sublimated aspect of post-atomic sexuality, there is plentiful evidence of that in contemporary Western civilization where, whether in books, magazines, videos, or films, pornography continues to flourish as an alternative to, and possible substitute for, concrete sexuality.  A bourgeois will regard pornography as a mode of perversion because he tends to look upon it from a naturalistic standpoint, which, erroneously, he considers to be the only legitimate standpoint.  Unbeknown to himself, however, progress must be made, and in sexual matters no less than all others!  Considered from an evolutionary standpoint, pornography - and I use the term in the broadest possible erotic sense - may be seen as a means of 'spiritualizing' sex, of breaking down man's dependence on the concrete and leading him further into abstract modes of sexual indulgence.  Sex 'in the head' is a higher evolutionary development than bodily sex, and it will undoubtedly be recognized as such in the post-atomic civilization, when life becomes increasingly transcendental ... as man draws nearer to his self-overcoming in the post-human life forms of the ensuing Millennium.  No doubt, a certain amount of concrete sex, both literally and symbolically unisexual, will continue to prevail in that more evolved age.  But it would be illogical if pornography were to be looked upon as a mode of perversion.

 

7.   Just as, in pre-atomic unisexual times, men tended to dress in a feminine fashion and to wear their hair long, so, in the post-atomic unisexual age of the future, women will dress in a masculine fashion and wear their hair short - as, indeed, many of them do at present.  When humans are close to nature at a lower stage of evolutionary development, they allow what grows naturally, as hair, nails, beard, etc., to grow long.  When, however, they approximate more to the supernatural at a higher stage of evolution, they cut back what grows naturally and thus wear their hair short, keep their nails trimmed, and regularly shave.  It would not become them to cultivate the natural when they are struggling towards the supernatural in increasingly artificial contexts.  A bourgeois society, arising between pagan and transcendental extremes, will of course allow women to grow their hair long, and many women do in fact wear long hair in the open societies of the contemporary West.  But no such concession to nature could be encouraged in a transcendental society, where, by contrast, all women would be encouraged to wear their hair short, clip their nails, etc., in conformity with post-atomic criteria.  Likewise, men would be encouraged to shave off all facial hair.

 

8.   Many people in an open society, particularly when bourgeois, would be inclined to regard what I have suggested above as an encroachment upon human liberty - in short, as an attack upon freedom.  They tend to equate freedom too closely with individual interests and preferences rather than to see it in terms of spiritual progress towards the ultimate freedom (from protons and neutrons) of transcendent spirit in a supra-atomic Beyond.  Thus what is in fact a reflection of enslavement, in varying degrees, to nature and the diabolic roots of life in the stars, particularly the sun, is misinterpreted by them as freedom!  And some of them might even argue in favour of the 'freedom' to remain enslaved to such alpha phenomena!  But evolutionary progress cannot tolerate mistaken notions of freedom or sensualist/naturalist reaction for ever!  Sooner or later, such people will have to learn to respect a higher and more objective concept of freedom, such as tallies with supernatural strivings.

 

9.   And this higher concept of freedom will indicate, quite plainly, that love, in the old emotional sense, is just one more aspect of enslavement to nature, an aspect which must be guarded against and avoided as much as possible.  We see, in the present century, that such love is losing ground among people, particularly the proletariat, who are freer than earlier generations from emotional enslavement and more able, in consequence, to regularly exchange partners and experiment with various types of post-atomic sexuality.  The days of the married couple are numbered, like the distinction between skirts and trousers, which appertains to a heterosexual phase of human evolution.  Supermen may well live with quasi-Supermen in the future, but as free-electron equivalents vis-à-vis quasi-electron equivalents in a unisexual context of post-atomic freedom.  One cannot marry a quasi-Superman, but only a woman, and, like men, women are destined to become a thing of the past, relative to a bourgeois phase of evolutionary development.  This is already more than half the case now in the contemporary West.  It will become wholly the case in the transcendental future!

 

 

ON THE SELF

 

1.   Most people do not distinguish between themselves and their selves.  They live predominantly in the phenomenal self of the individual, the body, and consequently fail to perceive that there are in fact two selves, of diametrically antithetical constitution.  Their 'I' is always personal, pertaining to the body and its psychic master and ally, the soul.  They do not refer to the spirit when using the first person and, consequently, they are unaware that the word 'I' can be used in different contexts, and that two minds can make use of the same term to define different objectives.  Take these two statements: "I am going to eat" and "I am going to meditate".  Are not two distinct minds being referred to here - the first 'I' of the soul (subconscious) in relation to the body, and the second 'I' of the spirit (superconscious) in relation to itself?  For how can the spirit wish to eat or the soul to meditate?  Clearly, a distinction exists between sensual and spiritual commitments, and no one 'I' could possibly wish to concern itself with both!

 

2.   Being conscious of the distinction between the 'I's' is a mark of psychic development, which will not occur to a person who doesn't live predominantly in his superconscious, or spirit.  A man who regularly lives in his higher self will occasionally find himself referring to the body or body's desires in the second person, distinguishing between his self and 'the other', as when he thinks: "You want to eat".  It is as though the thought expressed in this context came from the superconscious rather than the subconscious, from an 'I' biased in favour of the self.  In actual fact, thought comes from the subconscious being activated, through the ego, by the superconscious.  Thought is spirit informing soul, like someone striking sparks from an anvil.  The more spirit (up to a point) a man has, the higher the quality and the greater the quantity of thoughts he will extract from the subconscious.

 

3.   But spirit can also turn away from soul, as when a man chooses to meditate and avoid using his spirit to extract troublesome thoughts from the psyche's verbal storehouse in the subconscious.  Spirit existing for its own sake rather than as the slave of soul - such is the principle of meditation ... as spirit strives to become more fully conscious of itself and to escape from atomic friction in pursuit of post-atomic (electron) freedom.  Also to escape from emotions and dreams which, unlike thoughts, exist independently of the spirit, since specifically appertaining to the subconscious.  For emotions, particularly when strong and negative, can trouble spirit, causing it to turn back towards the soul and evoke verbal comment in response to the emotional stimulus.  The thought follows the emotion, and spirit is once again enslaved to soul!

 

4.   The superconscious stands to the subconscious as the heart to the sex organs, that is to say, as a superior tribunal obliged to pass judgement on the stimuli from beneath.  Although not itself an organ of thought, the superconscious will elicit thoughts from the subconscious appropriate (as a rule) to the emotions it has succumbed to, these in turn being dependent, to a significant extent, on the organs of sense.  We feel disgruntled or disgusted by a certain spectacle and that feeling obliges the superconscious to turn towards the subconscious and evoke thoughts appropriate to the situation.  Feelings-proper are mental, unlike emotions, which pertain to the heart and, being bodily, are much stronger and, as a corollary of this, longer-lasting.  Happiness and sadness are respectively feelings which come and go with the occasion, but love and hate are emotions (at times so powerful as to become passions) which are not transient but lasting, if on a temporary rather than a permanent basis.  And this is because they pertain to the body (heart), which is more deeply sensual than the psyche (subconscious/superconscious) and disposed, in consequence, to stronger feelings.  Sensations, on the other hand, are purely external, as affecting the skin, and, when positive, are the shallowest of all feelings.  Emotions, being internal, are the deepest, and may be evoked in response to either sensual or sexual stimuli, though especially the latter - as when the sensation of pleasure leads to love.

 

5.   But negative sensations like pain far outweigh their positive counterparts and can cause much deeper suffering than, say, the negative emotion of hate.  Schopenhauer was certainly correct to maintain that pain is a far stronger sensation than pleasure.  This is because pain runs with the grain, as it were, of the flesh, and thus activates its proton-dominated constitution, from the relatively moderate degree of transient negative sensation to the absolutely extreme degree of destructive negative sensation, as when the flesh is assaulted by flame and burns in response to the proton-proton reactions impinging upon it.  Anything biased towards protons will respond to flame in a subatomic way and so become flame itself - the flesh being no exception.  Such terrible pain as people who suffer burns have experienced is the maximum of negative sensation the flesh can experience - a diabolically destructive sensation far outweighing the maximum of positive sensation obtainable, as pleasure, through sex.

 

6.   The reason wood burns so well is that it is even more dominated by protons than the flesh, and is therefore more susceptible to a subatomic response to proton-proton reactions impinging upon it from without.  Coal, as wood that has decayed into mineral formation, is even more susceptible to a subatomic response to proton-proton aggression than wood, since its physical constitution is still more radically dominated by protons.  Thus the proton-biased atomic integrity of coal can easily be broken down by proton-proton aggression and transformed into the subatomic absolute of flame, or pure soul, which corresponds to the Diabolic Alpha.  By comparison to this pure soul, the human soul (of the subconscious) is impure, that is to say, dependent upon matter and functioning within the physiological context of the old brain.  The spirit (of the superconscious) is likewise impure, because dependent upon the new brain for physiological support and therefore subject to a degree of proton constraint.  What flame is to proton-dominated matter, hypermeditation will be to the electron-biased matter of the new brain, the principle, in other words, undermining atomic integrities and aspiring, either manifestly or potentially, towards the absolute - in this case, towards the supra-atomic absolute ... of electron-electron attractions in the future heavenly Beyond.

 

7.   Thus while the psychic aspect of the old brain (a proton-dominated realm of the entire brain) is impure soul, as manifested in feelings, the psychic aspect of the new brain (an electron-biased realm of the entire brain) is impure spirit, as manifesting in awareness.  Likewise, while the 'psychic' aspect of the heart (a more deeply proton-dominated realm of the body) is impure soul, as manifested in emotions, the 'psychic' aspect of the flesh, particularly the sex organs, is impure soul, as manifesting in sensations, which are evoked directly from the flesh.  Soul extends, in varying degrees, from the sex organs to the old brain, and so extends on both a positive and a negative basis, though never more strongly than when negative.  Spirit, by contrast, is mostly confined to the new brain, from the lower psychic regions of which it may analytically impinge upon the old brain and evoke thoughts from the subconscious.  It may do this as the slave of feelings or, as in philosophy, independently of them and primarily in the interests of truth.  This latter policy will be transitional between spirit being used in the service of soul and spirit becoming completely independent of soul in an orientation which favours the Divine Omega, or the future attainment of impure spirit to the absolute purity of electron-electron attractions.

 

8.   Man, as we all know, is a talker, which is to say, a creature who often conveys thoughts through the flesh (tongue) for the benefit of communication with his fellow man.  Spoken word is thought made audible, thought manifested in the voice.  Before the evolution of language, however, man's prehistoric ancestors were dependent on the flesh for communication.  The caveman relied, for the most part, on facial or bodily gestures to transmit information of a largely practical nature from group to group.  This sign language, or language of the body, preceded the human compromise between signs and thoughts which we recognize as speech and which, even these days, isn't entirely free, with many human beings, from the accompaniment of what, in the guise of gestural confirmation or explanation, might be termed sublimated sign language.  The man who gestures as he speaks betrays, if unconsciously and rather tenuously, an ancestral connection with the pure sign language of the caveman.  However, while speech marks an evolutionary progression over purely apparent sign language, it is by no means the highest mode of communication between sentient beings, but merely a mode coming in-between two extremes, viz. the pre-human and the post-human, appertaining to man alone.  With the probable future termination of the human stage of evolution in the millennial Beyond, when human brains become artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts, we can anticipate that telepathic communication will prevail between the ensuing Supermen, and thereby signify the climax of communication in maximum essence, completely independent of the flesh (tongue) and thus elevated beyond the apparent.  Probably a minority of human beings will be capable of telepathy even before the post-Human Millennium - as, to a limited extent, are an extremely small number already.

 

9.   The long-standing controversy concerning the mind/body dichotomy can at last be set aside, and on these terms: that there is indeed a dichotomy between mind and body when the former pertains solely to the superconscious (spirit), as the upper part of the conscious mind situated in the new brain, but that such a dichotomy doesn't exist, at least not in opposition, between the subconscious (soul), as the lower part of the conscious mind situated in the old brain, and the body generally, including lower manifestations of soul in emotions and sensations, as pertaining to the 'psychic' aspects of the heart and the sex organs respectively.  There is therefore a dichotomy in the one context but not in the other!  The spirit is not of the body (though it has been traditionally enslaved by and subordinated to the body), so confirms a mind/body dichotomy.  By contrast, the soul is of the body and exists, in varying degrees, with the body in a mind-body reciprocity of interconnected feelings and sensations, from the weak to the very strong and even, in unfortunate instances, to the absolute level of maximum pain, as evoked by fire.

 

10.  We have returned, it would seem, to the distinction alluded to, several aphorisms ago, concerning the two minds or selves, viz. the lesser or bodily self, and the greater or spiritual self.  In the one case, we use the term 'myself', in the other ... 'my self'.  The first can refer either to the body or the soul, in whichever manifestations, and embraces the subconscious as the repository of thought.  The spiritual self does not think, however, so that even this recorded thought isn't of the higher self but of the subconscious being activated by a part of it, according to the strictest analytical principles of philosophical endeavour.  Were I to become indisposed to philosophical activity in the interests, amongst other things, of evolutionary progress, my true self could be more profitably employed on its own account and in relative freedom from the subconscious and, for that matter, soulful life generally.  I have known such freedom but, quite frankly, I don't wish to indulge it at the expense of everything else.  Literal transcendence is, in any case, too far into the future for me to have any radical ambitions concerning my spiritual life!  Of course, the successful practice of meditation is its own reward; but I am not one to 'go over' to the Eastern camp entirely at the expense of the West.  Rather, I endorse a synthesis between East and West (as between mysticism and technology) which, stemming wholly from neither, transcends both and thus brings the world closer to ultimate unity.  I will continue to respect 'myself' as well as 'my self'.  But 'myself' in the interests of 'my self'.

 

 

ON RACISM AND ANTI-TRIBALISM

 

1.   It is easy to confound anti-tribalism with racism and to treat them as synonymous - indeed, not to perceive a distinction between the two because one has no idea of what anti-tribalism implies.  But one can be anti-tribal, e.g. anti-Semitic, without being racist, which is to discriminate against others on the basis of racial origin irrespective of to what evolutionary integrity the person discriminated against may profess.  A transcendental ideologue in, say, Nazi Germany may have been logically justified in discriminating against people who clung to tribal identification, e.g. Jews and Gypsies, because such pre-atomic identifications are arguably incompatible with a post-atomic integrity.  But he wouldn't have been logically justified in discriminating against, say, blacks who regarded themselves less in tribal than in national terms - as citizens of a particular country.  He might have been justified in expelling all alien nationals from his ideologically radical state, but he couldn't have sanctioned their imprisonment or liquidation on grounds that they were black, since such a policy would be racist, and racism is strictly incompatible with ideological transcendentalism!

 

2.   Racism pertains to atomic states that have a minority of colonists in positions of power over an indigenous majority whom they are anxious to discriminate against in their own political, social, and economic interests.  Its most blatant manifestation takes the form of apartheid.  But racism doesn't have to involve colour differences.  People of, say, Irish nationality may be discriminated against by British imperialists, as happened in Southern Ireland during the greater part of British rule there, and thus suffer the humiliating consequences of racism.  A limited degree of racism may also accrue to the converse situation of minority rule, as when an imperialist country opens its doors to immigrants from the colonies, or former colonies, and rules over them from a majority standpoint.  Such immigrants may technically live in an anti-racist or equalitarian society, but, in practice, some degree of racism is almost certain to prevail, since an atomic society cannot treat everyone as equals, having ruling-class interests to protect.  When a predatory people can no longer profit from racism in the colonies ... they will tighten their belts, so to speak, and resign themselves to drawing what profits they can from it in their own country, compliments of the immigrants.

 

3.   My own position as an advocate of Transcendentalism leads me to deny racism but to affirm, at least in theory, anti-tribalism, whether applying to Jews, Gypsies, Celts, or anything else.  Thus I would regard myself as a theoretical anti-tribalist, since it would be illogical to uphold ideological transcendentalism and remain complacent about tribalists at the same time!  Of course, this theoretical anti-tribalism has no bearing, through anti-Semitism, on my attitude to Israel, which is unequivocally affirmative.  An Israeli is not tribal but national, and to my mind a Jew becomes an Israeli the moment he sets foot in Israel.  The more Jews Israel can absorb, the fewer tribalists there will be in the Diaspora and the less excuse for anti-Semitism from ideological idealists.  Such anti-Semitism could not, however, apply to European or to American nationals of Jewish descent, i.e. to 'Jews' who had converted to Christianity, but only to those who continued, on religious grounds, to regard themselves first and foremost as Jews (Judaic), yet had no intention of returning to Israel, either because they were too deeply into capitalism (a moral failing) or too stupid to recognize the moral obligation upon Jews to do so, or for some other associated reason.

 

4.   The smartest Jews, it seems to me, were the early Zionists, who must have sensed, with the approaching termination of the Christian civilization, that the moral climate in Europe was no longer congenial to Jews, and that a new age was dawning in which transcendental values would prevail, an age in which the Jews would find salvation in Palestine if they were smart or brave enough to return there, but possible damnation in Europe if they were stupid or timid enough to remain in the Diaspora.  Those early Zionists were as intelligent, in my opinion, as the early anti-Semites - people like Wagner and Leuger who were also reading the changing times, if from a contrary point of view.  Evolution was tending away from tolerance of the mundane tribal root, inherent to atomic civilization, towards a transcendentalism in which only ideological values would apply.  Needless to say, some European countries were more qualified to divine this change than others, being better suited, by historical circumstances, to further and act upon it.  Germany was one such country, and it was from there that a fully-fledged anti-Semitism eventually arose, following the rise to power of the Nazis - upholders of an ideological radicalism in opposition to traditional atomic values.

 

5.   Approximately six million Jews perished in the Nazi holocaust, some of them illogically, because long-standing convertees to Christianity, but most of them effectively as tribalists who hadn't had the good fortune or sense or courage or whatever to immigrate to Palestine and work for a national identity.  Undoubtedly their sacrifice precipitated the transformation, in 1947, of Palestine into the State of Israel, though the British, who held a mandate on the territory, must bear some responsibility for obstructing the entry of Jews into Palestine (ostensibly in consideration of Arab feelings) during the Nazi era, and thus for indirectly contributing to the Final Solution as adopted by the Nazis as a last resort, other solutions having failed or been proven inadequate for the vast numbers involved.  Nevertheless, had it not been for the holocaust, Jews might even now be deprived of a literal homeland and be dependent on Arab, i.e. Palestinian, hospitality for their future salvation!  Indeed, as Jews in Palestine, they would be deprived of a national identification anyway, the very thing they require in order to escape the curse of the Diaspora, with its anachronistic tribal allegiance.  The creation of the State of Israel made a national identification possible, and thereby established the basis for subsequent religious salvation ... in Transcendentalism.

 

6.   Clearly, the destruction of the State of Israel for the sake of a return to the Arab status quo would be deeply illogical, because contrary to the historical justification for such a state, which is to enable Jews to escape their traditional tribal identification in and through Israeli nationality.  Having earned the right to an Israeli State through the six million sacrifices the Jews were obliged to make on the altar of Nazi persecution, it would be monstrously unjust for such a state ever to be taken away from them in the future, particularly in a world which may require that a sanctuary be found for Jews in Israel, assuming that Israel was willing to take-in such late-comers and had enough room, territorially speaking, to house them all - something which is not guaranteed at present!  Certainly the State of Israel is very small, considering the number of Jews in the world, and it won't get any larger if obliged to make swingeing compromises with the Arabs to the detriment of its national security!  Whatever the fate of diaspora Jews in the future, I can't help thinking that the really good Jews, the cream of their people, were the ones who migrated to Palestine in the early days of Zionism and bore the brunt of Arab opposition to their Zionist ideals.  They and their offspring have made what is now Israel a state worthy of lasting respect!

 

7.   It isn't surprising that, of all European nations, it is from Russia that most of the Jews emigrating to Israel come these days [early 1980s], and not simply because there are more Jews there than anywhere else but, more significantly, because, under Soviet Communism, Russia has tended to make life harder for tribalists than would a Western atomic state, in spite of the fact that the ideology it professed to - and in some degree still upholds - is materialistic rather than pseudo-spiritual, and therefore more disposed it to an indirect opposition to Jews than to a directly anti-Semitic opposition - in other words, one availing itself, contrary to Nazism, of some Marxist pretext for finding fault with certain categories of Jew, Zionists and religious fundamentalists not excepted!  Yet this served to cloak a basic antagonism towards Jews in general that bordered on anti-Semitism but which, for ideological reasons, could never be proclaimed as such.  Paradoxically, however, the Soviet Union was inclined, despite its ideological opposition towards nationalism, to uphold the right of Jews to a homeland, and therefore it tended to allow Jews to migrate to Israel if they really wanted.  Naturally, it didn't encourage Jews to emigrate, since too many people leaving for some other country would have reflected poorly upon the Soviet system, and, besides, not all Jews who left Russia went to Israel.  Some went to America or to Western Europe which, from the Soviet standpoint, was worse again, like losing people to the enemy camp.  But although emigration controls were usually pretty tight, many Jews now in Israel came from the Soviet Union, and doubtless this owes something, though not everything, to the fact that life in an ideologically transcendental state is far from being a bed of roses for tribalists.

 

 

ON RELIGION

 

1.   Strictly speaking, religion is concerned with absolutes, whether diabolic or divine.  There is a relative phase of religious development, as in Christianity, but the anthropomorphic god, viz. Christ, is endowed with divine attributes, becomes transcendent in His alleged conquest of death.  Christians don't simply worship a man but a man who became divine through His Ascension into Heaven, that is to say, through attainment of the supra-atomic plane in pure spirit.  This is perhaps a Protestant bias on Christ, whereas a Catholic bias will often lay greater emphasis, by contrast, on His stemming from the Father and, hence, link with the Mother.  Either way, whether the stress be on alpha or omega, the relative is endowed with absolute significance.  But, for all that, the Christian stage of religious evolution essentially corresponds to the relative, and we may take it that both aspects of Christ's theological integrity have been equally stressed whenever an evolutionary balance has obtained between the Father and the Holy Spirit, but that this has not precluded a simultaneous worship of the Father.

 

2.   In religious affairs, we may distinguish between worship of the Father and/or Christ and self-realization, as to some extent taught by Christ but necessitating, at some point in evolutionary time, a denial of the Father and wholly transcendental orientation rooted in the impersonal cultivation of spirit for beatific ends, whether or not such ends are formally acknowledged.  Thus in an extreme stage of human evolution, worship and self-realization become mutually exclusive.  The breaking of the link with the Father presupposes a simultaneous denial, in a manner of speaking, of the Son, since He is rooted in the alpha and thereby entitled to worship.  However, that is precisely what a transcendental stage of religious evolution can have no truck with.... I concede, though, that worship can imply more than service.  Christ has been worshipped for his divine attributes, as, from a Christian standpoint, the first 'man' to attain to transcendence.  Thus the positive attitude to worship presupposes homage, or admiration for a quality or achievement beyond one's own powers.  And yet even this style of worship would be irrelevant to a society which had made self-realization the foundation of its religious integrity, since worship (as implying prayer, adulation, or devotion to an image, a book, hymn, etc.) can impede self-realization to the extent that awareness is directed at something - namely, the object of worship - outside itself, and so functions as will, which is precisely what must be overcome if self-awareness is to be cultivated to any significant spiritual extent.

 

3.   If religion is primarily concerned with absolutes, either in terms of worship of the alpha or, in its highest manifestation, an aspiration towards the omega, we cannot discount the fact that it is possible to worship, in a quasi-religious context, manifestations of life which stem from the subatomic absolute in varying degrees of materialism.  Thus it is possible to worship - as at various times men have in fact done - nature, animals, women, and (last but not least), men or, at any rate, certain categories of men, including avatars.  Now my fundamental contention here is that the lower the stage of human evolution the more likely it is that men will worship the subatomic in one form or another, whereas as human evolution attains to higher stages of advancement, so the focal-points of worship correspondingly change, in consequence of which first nature, then animals, then women, etc., become the principal focal-points of human worship.  Of course, they don't have to change in a strictly logical order or within the compass of any given civilization.  There are civilizations that specialize in one or other of these focal-points of quasi-worship - the ancient Egyptian in animals, the ancient Greek in nature, the Roman Catholic civilization of medieval Europe in women (the Blessed Virgin), with the possibility of a shift from one level to another or, indeed, the simultaneous combination, in varying degrees, of more than one of these natural objects of worship, as in the case of the ancient Roman, with its compromise between nature, animals, and women.

 

4.   I do not wish to over-simplify, but there are many people alive today, within the confines of the bourgeois/proletarian West, who are essentially worshippers of nature, animals, and women, though their mode of worship may be less sacramental and correspondingly more unconscious than were the parallel modes of the ancients, with their pagan bias.  Of the three focal-points listed above, I would argue that the third is the most popular, because the least natural, and I am prepared to see in coitus a sacrificial confirmation of a quasi-religious attitude towards women.  After all, a man doesn't make love to a woman unless he finds something to admire in her!  More usually this something is physical.  Admittedly, it is possible for a woman to worship a man, but more often than not a woman, as a creature capable of self-consciousness, will worship herself - the attention she lavishes on make-up, clothing, and hair being the visible embodiments of this self-worship.

 

5.   Of all modes of natural worship, the highest is for man, who is the least natural of nature's phenomena.  The motivations for worship may vary considerably with the individual concerned, but most worship of men will have transcendent motivations, as when someone is admired because he is clever or can box well or has just scaled a high mountain, etc.  Institutionalized worship of a religious figure, like Christ, signifies the apotheosis of male hero-worship, beyond which it is impossible to go.  Of all the Christian faiths, it is Protestantism that best illustrates institutionalized worship of man as God ... in the person of Christ.  Roman Catholicism is more given, as already noted, to upholding worship of the Virgin, a fact which accords with its semi-pagan, grand-bourgeois, alpha-stemming integrity in sensation.  Probably Eastern Orthodoxy is more biased, in its relative fundamentalism, towards the Father.

 

6.   Thus in this ultimate form of natural worship it is homage rather than service that constitutes the basis, indeed the essence, of worship.  It is of course possible to pay homage to beauty, and hence to women.  Yet the actual worship of women usually takes the form of service, as manifesting in propagation and the material support, by a husband, for his wife and offspring.  Similarly, animals are more usually served than paid homage to.  But man, except when service of a tyrant is at stake, is more usually the focal-point of homage worship, and primarily on account of what he signifies, what he has achieved or is capable of achieving.  Higher still than the homage paid to a particular man for his achievements ... is the homage paid to the achievements themselves, whatever their nature, and here worship becomes artificial.

 

7.   The highest mode of artificial worship is the homage paid to great art, and this whether the art in question be pictorial, literary, musical, or sculptural, though a sort of hierarchical distinction will obtain between each mode of fine art in a descending order, so I contend, from painting to sculpture via music and literature.  Also significant in our assessment of artistic hierarchies will be the historical or epochal integrity of any given mode of art, so that worship, say, of twentieth-century abstract painting will rank higher than the corresponding worship of nineteenth-century romantic or eighteenth-century classical or seventeenth-century baroque art.  Nevertheless, when all's said and done, one cannot go beyond the worship of fine art on worshipful terms; for homage paid to the creative achievements of man is the ultimate homage, the raison d'être of our commitment to and interest in art.  Art doesn't fulfil itself for us until we desire to pay it homage, having come to perceive its creative or symbolic value.  I don't regularly listen to music I dislike, either because I cannot understand it or because I consider it of inferior quality.  I have to like the music and, in regularly listening to it, I pay homage to its excellence, since it represents an achievement worthy of admiration.

 

8.   Thus regularly listening to certain kinds of music or contemplating certain paintings or reading certain books or stroking certain sculptures ... constitutes a quasi-religion, the essence of which is worship of a remarkable artificial achievement.  Such worship, manifesting in homage, corresponds to the ultimate form of worship and constitutes the final stage of worship-centred religious development, a stage superior to each of the preceding naturalistic stages ... from absolute service-worship of the Father (or some theocratic equivalent thereof) to relative homage-worship of a particular man or group of men for his/their sporting, creative, educational, or other achievements.  I would say that, in the case of worship of a particular football team, the homage paid in this relative context is divisible between the individuals and their achievements, in consequence of which a degree of service of the individuals, manifesting in the turnstile fee, enters into one's worship.  By contrast, the ultimate stage of worship, as applying to fine art, implies the attainment to a kind of homage absolutism which embraces only the achievement, without simultaneous or accompanying reference to its creator.  We are at leisure, in an admission-free public gallery, to contemplate many fine paintings without having to pay anything to their creators (or trustees) or, indeed, even think about them.  So we can take it as a general rule that the purer the worship of fine art, the less the artist, as an individual, will enter into account.  Worship thereupon becomes predominantly absolute, albeit on grounds diametrically antithetical to its earliest manifestation in service of the Father.

 

9.   Needless to say, not everyone is given to this highest mode or worship, a mode which appeals, as a rule, only to a small percentage of humanity, and to them in varying degrees.  The majority of people are given to the service/homage relativity of worship of a football team or pop stars or film stars or sportsmen generally.  The worship of women cannot be excluded from a reckoning of majority habits, though women are gradually losing ground to the above-listed focal-points of popular worship.  Beneath them, however, comes the worship, mainly from a service angle, of animals and nature, which nowadays appeals only to a minority of people, albeit a minority at the opposite remove from the admirers of fine art - a grand-bourgeois as opposed to a petty-bourgeois minority who, from the evolutionary standpoint, constitute a backward and generally primitive class of people.  Yet not so backward or primitive, for all that, as the even smaller minority who could be described as genuine Father-worshippers, like Christian fundamentalists.

 

10.  Considered from a class-evolutionary standpoint, the evolution of worship from absolute to extreme relative stages may be said to extend from aristocratic absolutism in Father-worship through various relativistic bourgeois stages, beginning with an earlier and a later grand-bourgeois phase (the earlier implying nature-worship and the later animal-worship), progressing to a bourgeois stage-proper (as implying the worship of women), and culminating in a petty-bourgeois stage also divisible into an earlier and a later phase (as implying some kind of hero-worship in the earlier phase and, by contrast, an almost absolute worship of fine art in the later phase).  The present century being, despite its bourgeois/proletarian status, a largely petty-bourgeois age, it is hardly surprising that worship has entered into extreme relativities of human achievement, the earlier relativity biased towards the achievements of various people without, however, allowing the individuals concerned to be eclipsed by them, the later relativity more radically biased towards the achievements of various, in the main, artists, who are largely, though not exclusively, eclipsed by their works.  It is here, with the later petty-bourgeois relativity, that civilized worship ends.  However, with the future development of proletarian civilization, only self-realization will be upheld, as a return is made, though on completely antithetical terms, to a religious absolutism - the absolutism, one might say, of a direct aspiration towards omega divinity.

 

 

ON LITERATURE

 

1.   There are only two genres which are absolute, and these are the aphorism and the lyric poem, as pertaining to philosophy-proper and to poetry-proper respectively.  The more absolute the philosopher, the more he will adhere to aphorisms or maxims, as in the cases of La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère.  This is par excellence an idealistic, not to say an aristocratic, mode of philosophy, and thus its employment in a materialist age will be the exception to the rule, increasingly so as relative civilization becomes extremist, in deference to petty-bourgeois criteria of literary progress.  Anyone who submits a volume of aphorisms or maxims (the two are approximately the same, though I tend to treat aphorisms as being longer than maxims but shorter than essays/essayettes) to a publisher these days is either a fool or a saint, since even petty-bourgeois philosophers, not to mention their bourgeois predecessors, steer clear of such flagrant concessions to philosophical absolutism.  How is it, then, that one of the best-known and most widely discussed works of twentieth-century philosophy happens to be aphoristic?  (I am, of course, alluding to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophicus.)  I think any cogent answer to this question would have to take account of the fact that the milieu from which it arose, namely Habsburg Vienna, happened to be a very aristocratic one, and that Wittgenstein amply reflected this in his choice of, from the modern standpoint, an obsolescent or overly idealistic genre.

 

2.   Between what might be called the aphoristic and poetic absolutes ... there exists a series of literary relativities: some, like essayettes and essays, stemming from the aphoristic absolute; others, like short prose and novels, aspiring towards the poetic absolute; one genre, the dialogue, approximately balanced between the two tendencies in a quintessentially bourgeois relativity.  For thinking in class-evolutionary terms, one may define those genres which stem from the aphoristic absolute as grand bourgeois, and those, by contrast, which aspire towards the poetic absolute as petty bourgeois.  And yet, the individual treatment of any particular relative genre will depend on whether it is in the hands of a philosopher or an artist; for it sometimes happens that the essayette and the essay are treated in a poetical way, short prose and the novel, by contrast, in a philosophical way.  But, by and large, each of these genres either side of the dialogue is treated in a manner appropriate to its station.  In the case of petty-bourgeois philosophy, however, it is usually short prose and the novelette that serve as vehicles for philosophical expression, the essayette and essay being more relevant to a grand-bourgeois epoch.  As to the dialogue, it, too, can be written, despite its balanced chronological status, from either a philosophical or a poetical angle, depending on the type of author in question. (Schopenhauer wrote from a philosophical angle, Wilde from a poetical one.)  But, like the essayette and essay, it has less applicability to a petty-bourgeois age than short prose or a novel.

 

3.   If a petty-bourgeois philosopher can write philosophy, relative to the age, in short-prose and/or novelistic guise, could one assume, in jumping ahead, that a proletarian philosopher should write philosophy, relative to the proletariat, in poetic guise, since poetry corresponds to an absolute, and proletarian writing, like proletarian society, could not be other than absolutist in its definitive form?  No, I shall assume no such thing, because the treatment of an absolute poetic genre in a philosophical way would amount to a contradiction in terms, unworthy of serious consideration.  Poetry, especially when proletarian, could only be written poetically, in deference to poetic absolutism, not be bastardized through philosophical expression.  That poetry has been bastardized, in this manner in the past, isn't altogether surprising, since whenever philosophical criteria have predominated, as in the grand-bourgeois and even bourgeois epochs of creative evolution, philosophy has overflowed its bounds, so to speak, and invaded the realm of poetry, or a poetry susceptible to philosophical intrusion by dint of its own relative backwardness, as intelligible within a grand-bourgeois or bourgeois epoch, and consequent adhesion to appearance, manifesting in regular rhythmic and rhyming devices.

 

4.   True poetic writing only becomes possible in a proletarian epoch, when poetry transcends appearance in a context of maximum essence, achieved through abstract rhythm- and rhyme-defying arrangements designed to free words from all forms of grammatical constraint and, by implication, to elevate poetry from a relatively atomic to an absolutely post-atomic (free-electron) level of impression.  Where poetry, enslaved to appearance, had formerly expressed some quasi-philosophical meaning or described some apparent phenomenon, its absolutist manifestation would free it from such expression and elevate it to a kind of 'thing-in-itself' abstraction only capable of impressing upon the reader some notion of the transcendent.  It will become, in its absolute commitment to essence, fully poeticized.

 

5.   Although I alluded to the possibility of a proletarian philosopher a short while ago, in reality there can be no such person; for philosophy, dedicated when most closely itself, to the classification and elucidation of the apparent, i.e. the world, cannot outlive a relative epoch or civilization, since it stems from the apparent absolute and can fulfil no useful purpose in an epoch or civilization exclusively aspiring towards the essential absolute.  If, however, the philosopher must be buried along with relative civilization, then the philosophical theosophist, who may in some sense be regarded as his successor, stands as the root universal influence for an absolute civilization, which cannot come into being without his guidance, since he expresses the theories and beliefs by which it will live.  In transcending all relative genres, including literary ones, he transcends the category of philosopher, which is rooted in the aphorism and inclined to the production of successive volumes of individualistic philosophy.  One could describe this transcendence as signifying a convergence to omega on the level of philosophy, but that would entail the notion that the Transcendentalist, far from being the universalizing influence at the root of a future absolute civilization, was the climax to philosophical endeavour, and thus the ultimate philosopher.  However, such a notion would hardly do justice to the fact that the Transcendentalist's theories are incapable of being assimilated into relative civilization, but are very often diametrically opposed to what philosophical tradition has upheld.  Because the progression from bourgeois/proletarian civilization to transcendental civilization presupposes revolutionary upheaval, the philosophical theosophist cannot stand at the climax of a relative tradition, as the ultimate philosopher, but appertains to the spiritual inception of a new civilization, antithetical in constitution to everything that preceded it.

 

6.   By comparison with the philosophical tradition, the Transcendentalist's work marks a more radical development of philosophical thought towards essence.  In its earliest stages philosophy was predominantly apparent, that is to say, concerned with a classification and description of the phenomenal world.  Metaphysics, as an attempt to understand and elucidate a world beyond appearances, only entered philosophy at a later date, and then very gradually, wherever civilization had attained to a fairly extensive degree of urbanization and acquired, in consequence, a metaphysical dimension.  There were, in the Christian West, different stages of metaphysical development, corresponding to class-evolutionary progress from grand-bourgeois Catholicism to petty-bourgeois mysticism via bourgeois Protestantism, and, not surprisingly, philosophy mirrored and to some extent anticipated this development, becoming, in due course, more essential, that is to say, less concerned with the phenomenal world and correspondingly more concerned with a noumenal one.  However, in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, there issued a materialist reaction against petty-bourgeois metaphysics, which took the double form of a Marxist reaction against Hegel and of a Nietzschean reaction against Schopenhauer - the one leading, with the twentieth century, to Communism, the other ... to Fascism.  A similar reaction of Wittgenstein against Kierkegaard, though subordinate in consequence to each of the other two, confirms the anti-metaphysical bias of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophy, a bias that went on to develop, via Jaspers and Heidegger, into Sartrian existentialism, which is still, to all appearances, the leading tone of contemporary petty-bourgeois materialist philosophy.

 

7.   The Philosophes of the Enlightenment signify a bourgeois reaction against bourgeois Protestant and grand-bourgeois Counter Reformation metaphysics, as do Voltaire and Rousseau, the two outstanding materialist philosophers of the eighteenth century.  Descartes, Pascal, Berkeley, Hobbes, Hume, Leibniz, Spinoza, and other such metaphysicians all came under attack, much as their grand-bourgeois predecessors had not escaped the scathing criticism of Bacon, Montaigne, Machiavelli, and other such sixteenth-century materialists.  But the Enlightenment led on, in due course, to the metaphysics of Kant and Schopenhauer, Fichte and Hegel, Emerson and Carlyle, as well it might, since evolutionary progress within relative civilization passes from one class-stage to another, and petty-bourgeois metaphysics had no less of a right to exist, for a given period of time, than its bourgeois and grand-bourgeois precursors.  The contemporary materialist opposition to such metaphysics, however, will be superseded by the acceptance of proletarian metaphysics, which is what, in transcendental terms, the greater part of my work is essentially all about.  Thus does philosophy progress, in a kind of zigzagging fashion, towards its culmination in an anti-metaphysical petty-bourgeois guise and subsequent (metaphysical) transformation into philosophical theosophy - the most essential of all philosophical developments!

 

8.   Oriental philosophy, unlike its Western counterpart, is still metaphysical, and on approximately petty-bourgeois terms.  The essence of oriental philosophy, now as before, is denial of the will in a Buddha-like quiescence stressing awareness as the only good worth pursuing.  This is not, of course, an erroneous assessment of the good life, but it has the disadvantage of being shackled with traditional adherence to naturalistic criteria, including a more or less complacent acknowledgement of the 'divine Ground', the oriental equivalent of the Christian Father, the Judaic Jehovah, and the Islamic Allah.  Nor is Buddhism absolved from the contradictions arising from a confounding of this 'divine Ground' with the 'Clear Light of the Void' or vice versa, so that alpha and omega, no less than in certain other world religions, are all-too-predictably exposed, within the relativity of human life, to the possibility of periodic interchange and/or substitution.  So, despite the appearance of absolutism, Buddhism, like Hinduism and Shintoism, retains a relative integrity rooted in nature, which precludes its evolving towards a proletarian absolutism and thereby embracing extensively artificial criteria, relevant to the technological aspect of long-term religious evolution.  Although yoga, meditation, Buddhism, and other forms of oriental philosophy are in some ways preferable to the anti-metaphysical bias of contemporary occidental philosophy, the fact that no such anti-metaphysical philosophy has arisen in the East to challenge and discredit the traditional metaphysical integrity of oriental philosophy (Marxism being a Western import) precludes the possibility of a higher metaphysics eventually arising to replace both traditional metaphysical and anti-metaphysical philosophy alike.  Paradoxically, the Western attack on petty-bourgeois metaphysics to some extent served me as an incentive to work out a proletarian metaphysics for the future absolutist civilization.

 

9.   The fact that, hitherto, poetry has been written under the domination of literature in relative civilization means that it has been confined to either philosophical or pseudo-poetical guise, depending on the epoch in question and the temperament or proclivities of the individual poet.  As philosophy evolved from its root aphoristic absolutism in a predominantly descriptive, analytical, interpretative relationship to the phenomenal world ... through successive bourgeois stages to its culmination in the novel, with a corresponding shift of emphasis away from the phenomenal towards the noumenal (though subject, as already noted, to periodic materialist reactions), so poetry evolved from a predominantly descriptive stance in nature to an increasingly instructive, expositional stance in the metaphysical, that is to say, from the apparent to the quasi-essential, from hymns to beauty to intimations of truth ... considered as the divine goal of evolutionary striving.  This latter development, however, is still inadequate from a purely poetic standpoint, but may be described, if somewhat colloquially, as 'the best of a bad job', since the use of appearance, i.e. grammatical constructs of an expositional nature, to intimate of essence marks, despite its inherent contradiction, a significant evolutionary improvement on the use of a more radical appearance, employing (besides the aforementioned ingredient) regular rhymes, metres, stanza divisions, and other such traditional devices, to glorify the apparent, i.e. nature and natural beauty in general.  So while, during the later stages of relative civilization, poetry has become more essential, and therefore superior to what it formerly was, it is still short of being genuinely poetical, by dint of the fact that such a status presupposes a complete severance from the apparent in maximized essence, which is to say, total abstraction.  For not until poetry becomes abstract, in an absolutist age, will it have come into its own, and on terms diametrically antithetical to the absolutist inception of definitive philosophy as maxim or aphorism concerned not with essence but with appearance, as pertaining to the description and analysis of the phenomenal world.  By contrast, genuine absolutist poetry will provide, through impression, an intimation of the noumenal world to come.

 

10.  Although I referred, a short while ago, to the materialist reaction against metaphysical philosophy, I do not wish to leave the reader with the impression that petty-bourgeois philosophy ceased to be written, in the twentieth century, along metaphysical lines; for that would be very far from the truth!  On the contrary, from being essayistic such philosophy became largely novelistic, as is only to be expected with the gradual evolution of philosophy away from appearance and further into essence, this requiring, if consistency was to be maintained between form and content, a corresponding advancement from relatively philosophical to relatively literary genres, including works of short prose (the philosophical equivalent of short stories) and the novelette.  Characteristic of petty-bourgeois philosophers with a metaphysical bent are Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, André Gide, and Jack Kerouac.  There were others, of course, with a non-metaphysical bent, including Sartre, Koestler, Faulkner, D.H. Lawrence, and Camus.  Generally speaking, I would define those who, irrespective of their ideological bias, also wrote essays as belonging to an earlier or lower stage of petty-bourgeois philosophy - one stemming, as it were, from the bourgeoisie.  By contrast, those who only specialized in novels and/or short prose I would define as belonging to a later and higher stage of petty-bourgeois philosophy - one aspiring, as it were, towards the proletariat.  Thus Hesse, Huxley, and Miller would correspond to the earlier stage, Kerouac, Faulkner, and Lawrence to the later one.  I think it only fair to add, however, that each stage is divisible into a spiritualist and a materialist side, corresponding to the metaphysical and the anti-metaphysical, so that while Huxley, Hesse, and Miller may be categorized as appertaining to the spiritualist side of the earlier petty-bourgeois stage, Sartre, Koestler, and Camus, to take but three authors, can be characterized as appertaining to its materialist counterpart.

 

11.  All these petty-bourgeois philosophers, regardless of whichever side or stage to which they would seem to belong, have taken theoretical speculation further into essence than their bourgeois predecessors, and thus closer to poetry.  They may be defined, with reason, as pseudo-philosophers, since philosophy-proper is concerned not with intimations of or theories about the Divine Omega, conceived as transcendent spirit, but with a catalogue and analysis of the phenomenal world ... as applying, in the main, to nature.  The fact that philosophy gradually evolved away from this root concern and abandoned its absolute form in the process ... is an indisputable fact.  And we may contend that the further away from phenomena it evolved, the more pseudo it became, especially from the bourgeois epoch to the current day.  Yet philosophy-proper still survived on something approximating to its own terms by progressing from a critique of nature through a critique of morals to a critique of language; a progression, in other words, from the natural to the artificial via an ethical compromise.  There was thus a kind of class evolution of philosophy, within the Western context, from grand-bourgeois (Bacon) to petty-bourgeois (Wittgenstein) via bourgeois (Kant) stages.  And it was possible to retain the aphorism throughout this evolution or, at any rate, even with its climax, as Wittgenstein demonstrated.  And yet, even though such a thematic evolution had been possible, indeed inevitable, the critique of language becomes a pseudo-philosophy in relation to the critique of nature, that root concern of philosophical exegesis.  It is only 'genuine' philosophy in relation to the novelistic writings of the pseudo-philosophers, both metaphysical and anti-metaphysical, though particularly with regard to the former.

 

12.  Unlike philosophy, the evolution of poetry began in the pseudo, as a description of and hymn to the beauty of natural phenomena, particularly nature and woman, and only gradually progressed away from a 'philosophical' bias, under the hegemony of philosophy, towards a poetic one, in which spiritual instruction began to outweigh the descriptive element and, in some cases, to entirely supplant it.  But even with this gradual progression towards essence, poetry remained pseudo, because composed from a relative angle, in accordance with the dictates of a bourgeois age and civilization, and thereby falling short of total abstraction, the criterion of any genuine poetry.  In retaining meaning, poetry was obliged to remain expressive in consequence of its enslavement to appearance, the instructive approach to essence no less than the descriptive approach to appearance.  Only when it becomes impressive, with the development of an absolutist civilization, will poetry be genuine - wholly genuine in total abstraction, not merely the least pseudo of poetic stages.  Mallarmé ten times over, so to speak, with a word sequence that intimates, as no instruction ever can, of the transcendent.  A word structure, in short, that breaks the connection with appearance by depriving words of their meanings.

 

 

ON THE ARTS

 

1.   If literature can be divided into three main branches, viz. philosophical, fictional, and poetical, then the same must hold true of art and music, so that we distinguish between sculptural, painterly, and holographic branches of art on the one hand, but between choreographic, symphonic, and improvisational branches or, roughly, rhythmic, melodic/harmonic, and aleatoric branches of music on the other hand, the latter equivalent to a bias for pitch over rhythm rather than, like the symphony (particularly in its classical manifestation), a compromise, in varying degrees, between the two extremes.  Instead of branches, I would prefer to speak of spectra in the arts, equating each spectrum with a specific class integrity or orientation, subject to modification in the course of time.  Thus, with regard to literature, I shall speak of an aristocratic philosophical spectrum, a bourgeois fictional spectrum, and a proletarian poetical spectrum, the same applying to each of the other arts when evaluated from an evolutionary point-of-view.  If philosophy and poetry are antithetical and, when true to themselves, absolute in character (fictional literature being a compromise or hybrid genre in between the two class-evolutionary extremes), then so are sculpture and holography in art, or ballet and jazz in music, (painterly art no less than symphonic music being a compromise, and, in some degree, cross between the two extremes).

 

2.   Let us take one art form at a time and analyse the component parts of each of the three spectra (or branches) it entails, beginning with literature.  Here we find philosophical, fictional, and poetical spectra horizontally existing one above the other, as it were, in relation to class-evolutionary stages, the philosophical being the oldest mode of literary writing, a mode centred on appearance as an investigation and comprehension of external phenomena, and stretching from its aristocratic roots in pagan civilization, with particular reference to the ancient Greeks, towards its petty-bourgeois culmination at the tail-end, so to speak, of the Christian civilization, where it takes the form of a critique of language, i.e. an investigation of and attempt at comprehending the logic inherent in an artificial form of appearance, the final subject for philosophy in the strictly academic sense of that discipline.  For after an early-stage petty-bourgeois era, philosophy ceases to be possible or, if still pursued, acquires an anachronistic status.  A late-stage petty-bourgeois era, on the other hand, will be increasingly given to pseudo-philosophy, in which occult and/or metaphysical issues and investigations predominate, the former during its lower phase, the latter as the chief concern of its higher, or absolute, phase when, in effect, philosophical writings are acquiring a quasi-poetic status.

 

3.   By contrast, fiction begins on relative grand-bourgeois terms in the form of the play - a kind of transitional genre in between philosophy and literature-proper - and comes into its own with the development of the novel, initially a late-stage grand-bourgeois art form of philosophical bias, though one destined, having passed through a bourgeois compromise status, to culminate on early-stage petty-bourgeois terms as it evolves towards poetry, its final form that of the poetic novel and/or novella.  After this, novelistic literature ceases to be possible (though anachronisms do of course continue to appear) and fiction can only be upgraded or made appropriate, if in a rather 'pseudo' fashion, to a late-stage petty-bourgeois age in the guise of short-story writing, a kind of continuation of the fictional tradition in other (usually magazine) terms.  In short, not a new genre but an extension and modification of a traditional genre which will necessarily co-exist with the specifically higher-phase petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian art form of film, cinema being the antithetical equivalent of theatre; films, or at any rate those of a narrative import, the primary mode of pseudo-literature, germane to an extreme relativistic age, and divisible, as with rock music, into film classical (adaptations of famous novels), and film originals, the latter properly commensurate with proletarian culture in its early, or filmic, stage.  Pseudo-literature, no less than pseudo-philosophy in relation to philosophy-proper, signifies an evolutionary progression beyond the bounds of genuine literature, entailing a more contemplative mode of literary appreciation, its integrity (certainly in regard to film classical) more poetic in character.

 

4.   Coming to poetry, we may note that its origins were more or less grand bourgeois in character and thus given to a relativity biased towards appearances, e.g. beauty, expressed in highly rhythmic terms, such as suggest an indebtedness to dance music besides, formally considered, an obvious affinity with sculpture.  Unlike the other branches of the literary spectrum, however, poetry began on 'pseudo' terms and continued along 'pseudo' lines until the advent of a late-stage petty-bourgeois age, when it became genuine, i.e. concerned with essence and hence truth, albeit on terms, necessarily relative to the phase in question, such as led to a distinction between metaphysically expressive poetry and grammatically impressive poetry, the one indirectly intimating of truth through description, the other directly intimating of truth through abstraction; the former materialistic, the latter spiritualistic.  From there the evolution of poetry towards a proletarian climax presupposes the development of anthologies, beginning on fairly descriptive terms and proceeding, with the growth of civilized absolutism, towards the abstraction of pure poetry on computer disc, the ultimate form of literature.  Thus from a materialistic relativity to a spiritualistic absolutism, the overall relativity of an absolutist civilization being successive in time rather than, as with bourgeois/proletarian civilization, simultaneous.

 

5.   If literature began with philosophy, then art began with sculpture, an art form concerned with form and, hence, the emulation of natural beauty, specifically animal and human, whether combined, as in ancient Egypt, or separate, as in ancient Rome.  Like philosophy, which is chained to aristocratic pagan roots, sculpture cannot evolve beyond an early-stage petty-bourgeois age; for the eclipse of form through abstract or non-representational techniques, as in so much modern sculpture, is no less anti-sculptural than occult philosophy is anti-philosophical and, so I maintain, a stepping-stone to a quasi-poetic metaphysical bias - the higher phase, as it were, of a late-stage petty-bourgeois epoch.  Beyond sculpture there is only pseudo-sculpture, the contemporary mode of abstract work which, in its higher or non-tactile manifestations, intimates of light art, and thus assumes a quasi-luminous status.  By contrast, that which can be touched acquires a status analogous to the short story in literature, signifying a kind of upgrading and transformation of sculpture rather than its complete negation, and this no matter how abstract or synthetic the work(s) in question.  The use of contemporary plastics and/or metals certainly distinguishes this sculpture from its more naturalistic forerunner, but tactility remains, and that is the essence of sculpture.  Again I would say it is a kind of pseudo-sculpture by dint of its abstract and synthetic construction, though not a mainstream mode of pseudo-sculpture, such as could only apply to works employing electric-light bulbs and/or neon tubes in a sculptural way, with regard to volume and the affirmation of a mundane context - usually the ground or floor of an exhibition space.  Such 'light sculptures' hover between sculpture and holography, intimating of the latter while stemming from the former.

 

6.   Art, properly so-considered, begins on approximately grand-bourgeois terms, as mural and/or cameo, and proceeds to a painterly status on canvas with the development of late-stage grand-bourgeois civilization, its culmination being on early-stage petty-bourgeois terms, as implying frameless or frame-free abstract works of either an expressionistic (materialist) or an impressionistic (spiritualist) constitution.  After this culmination, there can be no more art in the painterly sense, though anachronisms will of course continue to appear, not least of all in the more aesthetically traditional countries, where respect for bourgeois criteria inevitably runs deeper.  As elsewhere, a kind of pseudo-art will prevail in the form of posters, an upgrading and modification of painterly art on terms suitable to a more spiritual age, the poster being equivalent to the magazine short-story in literature and taking second place beside the truly contemporary pseudo-art of photography, that antithetical equivalent of the early-stage grand-bourgeois cameo, with its materially realistic integrity.  Photography, then, is to art what film is to literature - in effect the art of the age, mechanical as opposed to manual, objective as opposed to subjective, impersonal rather than personal, and more proletarian than (higher-phase) petty-bourgeois when concerned not with classical reproductions but with original productions.  After this pseudo-art there can be no further evolution along the middle spectrum, as it were, of art.  For it signifies the culmination of a tradition, as film does in relation to literature.

 

7.   The third and highest spectrum of art, namely the holographic, begins, like poetry, on approximately grand-bourgeois terms, as stained-glass windows, and proceeds from this pseudo-holographic status, relative to a predominantly sculptural age, to a no-less 'pseudo' but nevertheless comparatively superior manifestation in drawing, as pertaining to a painterly age, which necessarily conditions the form of the extreme arts, the sculptural no less than the holographic.  Thus drawing, as pseudo-holography, remains the idealistic norm throughout the duration of late-stage grand-bourgeois/bourgeois/early-stage petty-bourgeois civilization, until such time as, with the emergence of a late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian age, it is eclipsed and superseded by light art, properly so-considered, as a closer approximation to the truly holographic - indeed, as a kind of quasi-holographic art antithetical, in construction, to early-stage grand-bourgeois 'holographic' art, viz. stained glass in relation to the Christian West and, to a degree, amphora painting in relation to ancient Greece in its more relative, even arguably grand-bourgeois, stage.  However,  if light art signifies, with its translucent tubing, an antithetical equivalent to such art, then the culmination of this third and highest spectrum of the visual arts can only be in terms of holography, which will establish an antithesis (not an antithetical equivalent) with formal sculpture, and proceed from a relatively representational status to an absolutely abstract status in the course of evolutionary time, doing for the visual arts what abstract poetry will do for literature - namely, creating an impression of the spiritual absolute towards which evolution would seem to be tending.

 

8.   If art begins with sculpture, then music begins with dance, the earliest dance music being the most rhythmic, in accordance with absolute pagan criteria, dance only gradually proceeding, with the development of Western civilization, towards less rigid rhythmical patterns, appropriate to ballet and the waltz.  Modern dance music, particularly in the guise of funk, is more conducive to absolute improvisational dancing than to relative formal dancing, and this is what really distinguishes it from traditional dance music, endowing it with a 'pseudo' status germane to a late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian age.  As with sculpture and philosophy, there is also an aspiration towards its opposite, which takes the form of a fusion between funk and jazz, making for a quasi-jazz status in which pitch, and hence improvisation, assumes an importance hitherto unrelated to dance music.  Thus 'fusion music' is the late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian equivalent of pseudo-sculpture and pseudo-philosophy, the one in the guise of light (bulb and/or tube) sculpture, the other as a commitment to occult and/or metaphysical issues, though especially the latter.  Such funk-jazz, germane to an extreme relativistic civilization, is the final and ultimate kind of dance music, the tail-end of a spectrum originating in pagan antiquity.

 

9.   The second spectrum in the evolution of music, which lies in between the extremes of rhythm and pitch, is concerned with melody, and we may hold that, as with literature and painting, its origins were approximately grand bourgeois, taking the form of such vocal music - oratorios, cantatas, madrigals, early operas - as would have appealed to people in the European sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and only gradually coming into its own with the development of the symphony, parallel to that of painting and novelistic fiction, which signifies a compromise between rhythm and pitch in terms of harmony (necessarily biased towards rhythm) and melody (necessarily biased towards pitch), the ratio of the one to the other changing quite dramatically in the course of evolutionary time ... as symphonic music progressed from a late-stage grand-bourgeois to an early-stage petty-bourgeois status, becoming, with its culmination, increasingly biased towards pitch, and to a point where even melody is left behind, or very nearly so.  Beyond an early-stage petty-bourgeois epoch symphonic music cannot go without seeming anachronistic, though it can be modified and upgraded, as with fictional literature, to a pseudo-classical status in the guise of programmatic or incidental music in one movement, usually as symphonic poems.  The truly contemporary pseudo-classical music, however, takes the form of rock (beginning with rock classical) which as a late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian art form signifies, in its largely vocal constitution, an antithetical equivalent of pre-symphonic vocal music, including opera, and has a status analogous to that of film vis-à-vis novelistic fiction and of photography vis-à-vis painting, the ultimate development of the middle spectrum in each case.

 

10.  Finally we come to the third and highest spectrum of music, in which pitch, or the development of pure music, takes precedence, much as impression took precedence in the poetic spectrum and abstraction in the holographic one.  We can term this spectrum the jazz spectrum, though its beginnings, in approximately grand-bourgeois terms, would not have suggested much of a connection with modern jazz, that quintessentially late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian music.  Beginning with chamber ensembles, as a kind of pseudo-jazz, the instrumental music of an essentially operatic age, its gradual evolution embraced the concerto during the era of symphonic music, becoming more biased towards pitch in single-note scales, though never to the point of improvisational freedom.  Like rhyming poetry and representational drawing, it had to toe-the-bourgeois-line of orchestrated melodic/harmonic dualistic integrity, even if the soloist was tied to stipulated notation in essence rather than, like the orchestra, in appearance, the notation memorized instead of actually being read at the time of performance.  A step towards that freedom which every modern jazzman knows when he launches into an improvisational solo to the accompaniment of a deferential rhythm!  So the emergence, following trad jazz, of jazz classical in the higher phase of a late-stage petty-bourgeois era brings modern jazz in its proletarian train, and the jazz soloist is freer to pursue pitch than ever the concerto soloist was - indeed, so free that, at times, his playing may intimate of the pure music of an absolute civilization, in which not a hint of rhythm, whether diluted through melody or harmony or otherwise independent of such a dilution, will apply, music by then becoming a matter for synthesizer programming on a pure pitch basis.  But our jazzman is more a quasi-purist than a pseudo-classicist, and the status of modern jazz, analogous to that of modern poetry and light art, is decidedly quasi-purist.  We must await the pure jazz of the future with no less longing than ... the pure poetry and pure holography it will also surely entail!

 

 

ON JAZZ

 

1.   Just as light art succeeds avant-garde painting in the evolution of art towards absolute holography, so jazz, and in particular jazz classical, succeeds classical in the evolution of music towards absolute jazz, a pure pitch climax.  This is especially true of the mainstream bourgeois/proletarian civilization of late twentieth-century America, where, like painting, classical music was adopted from European sources and rendered jazzy in the course of time.  In Britain and much of Europe, however, jazz is really more of an outsider's music than a representative national growth, a music adopted from America by Europeans who seem to be playing at being American and who almost invariably stamp a markedly classical imprint upon their 'jazz'.  For classical accords with the European tradition, and if there is a development from classical to anything ... it is not to modern jazz but to rock, that European and, in particular, British equivalent of jazz.  Thus rock, a rhythmically electric music, stems from classical and may be said to stretch from a late stage (albeit higher phase) of petty-bourgeois musical evolution to an early stage of proletarian musical evolution, avant-garde classical having its inception in an earlier stage (albeit higher phase) of petty-bourgeois musical evolution.  Hence from trad jazz and jazz-classical to modern jazz in the American tradition, and from avant-garde classical and rock classical to rock in the European tradition - an evolution from one genre-type to another, a barbarous phase of proletarian rock music (rock 'n' roll) preceding its relatively civilized phase; though it has to be admitted that the European development is inferior to its American counterpart because generally atomic rather than post-atomic - relative, in other words, to a different socio-political tradition.

 

2.   Rock musicians can extend their musical commitment either down towards the classical or up towards modern jazz.  In the one case they are drawing on classical precedent and transforming a chosen piece of acoustic music into a type of pseudo-rock, electric and, as a rule, highly rhythmic.  They are, in a sense, upgrading the classical, and such a procedure is by no means untypical of European rock musicians.  Indeed, it is probably the most representative trend in instrumental rock, since the extension of rock towards modern jazz, as in the other case, presupposes identification, in one degree of another, with an alien tradition, namely the American, and requires, moreover, a degree of improvisational facility which most European and, in particular, British rock musicians tend to lack.  Nevertheless, hybridization of this nature does in fact occur, and the result, though falling short of modern jazz, is usually preferable to both rock and pseudo-rock.  We can call this hybrid music 'jazz-rock' or, alternatively, 'progressive music' - the European equivalent of modern jazz.

 

3.   When American jazzmen extend their musical commitment in any direction, it is usually down towards rock - the converse of the European extension of rock up towards jazz - and the result, while being musically inferior to modern jazz, is generally superior to rock, being, in effect, a kind of vocal jazz.  One could claim that they have relapsed from the spiritualistic to the materialistic or, rather, pseudo-spiritualistic, that is to say from a free-electron equivalent to a pseudo-electron equivalent.  The resultant music we can call 'rock-jazz' or, alternatively, 'fusion'.  Sometimes the extension of commitment is even further down than rock, embracing classical music of one kind of another, but the resultant music is still fusion, if on 'pseudo' terms, like rock-classical in Britain.  However, not all fusion music is culturally hybrid; for it can just as easily transpire that the renegade jazzman decides to adapt a piece of American classical music, which, in any case, is usually jazzy and thus a national step down from modern jazz.  Such an adaptation can make for a superior type of fusion music to that availing of rock techniques.  Yet it is not as culturally national as the kind of fusion music suggesting a compromise between modern jazz and trad jazz, seemingly alternating between the one and the other.  Likewise, the fusion musician may decide to go even further down the path of American music, way past the trad to the painful birth of jazz in the blues, and thus incorporate blues techniques or structures into his music - a procedure appealing more, on the whole, to black jazzmen than to their white counterparts, who, at the risk of oversimplification, will incline to the adaptation or incorporation of classical precedent.

 

4.   Fusion music, like progressive music, is not, as a rule, a fusion of the serious with the popular, the instrumental with the vocal, but a fusion of different types of serious music, whether contemporary or traditional.  American jazzmen do not, as a rule, deign to fuse jazz with soul, that American equivalent of pop, any more than their European counterparts deign to fuse rock with pop.  Generally, soul and pop are left to their proletarian practitioners, since the fusion of civilized with barbarous music is both illogical and incongruous, not liable to make for an aesthetically satisfying result!  Folk music is one thing, fine music quite another, and rarely do the two fields cross-fertilize, even though attempts have been made, in recent years, to cross-fertilize them, with, by and large, unconvincing results.  If the chief criteria of the most civilized late-twentieth-century music are instrumental sophistication and facility combined with an almost Buddhist religious commitment which may or may not seek vocal expression, then it follows that jazzmen will be careful, as a rule, to ensure that their excursions into fusion music do not resemble excursions into popular music, with particular reference, in the American context, to soul.  They will ensure that at least one track on their fusion album is instrumental or, failing which, that certain of the songs will have fairly lengthy instrumental solos and be of a religious rather than simply romantic significance.  An album conceived solely as songs of a romantic nature would be unlikely to pass muster as fusion music!

 

5.   Hitherto I have not spoken of British and European jazzmen, nor of American rock musicians, but the reader will have gleaned that I regard them as exceptions to the rule and, therefore, as generally unrepresentative of their respective traditions.  In my estimation, European jazzmen are exponents of an American music, even if they play it in a European, i.e. classical, fashion.  Similarly, American rock musicians I regard as exponents of a European music, though their handling of it is more likely to veer in the direction of jazz than classical, sounding somewhat akin to progressive music; just as the European jazzmen tend, willy-nilly, towards a kind of fusion music, with or without vocals.  Probably there are many more American rock musicians than European jazzmen, but this fact wouldn't render their music any the less unrepresentative of primary American trends.  Even if their music is serious, it is of an inferior order of seriousness than the mainstream bourgeois/proletarian achievements of modern jazz, a sort of quasi-European seriousness co-existing, on a lower plane, with America's foremost musical developments.  At the risk of appearing racist, one might define it as white serious music, the Euro dimension in America as opposed to the Afro, and hence black, dimension there, which chiefly manifests itself, these days, in modern jazz.  For jazz, despite the growing influx of whites into its ranks, remains fundamentally a black serious music, owes its origins to the blacks and is still identified, in most people's minds, with black creativity, even though many talented whites have converted to it and contributed something of their own in the course of time, a development which, while not necessarily leading to fusion music, isn't altogether divorced from the possibility of a fresh approach to jazz - one bringing new technical procedures to its largely improvisational nature.  For improvisation is, after all, the essence of jazz, its ticket to musical freedom, and no matter whether whites or blacks or, indeed, a combination of both are playing in a largely improvisational context, the end-result is jazz if high-quality improvisation predominates.

 

6.   At its best, improvisation is all on the one level, concerned with pitch and therefore disposed to fast-note 'runs', each note being of approximately equal duration and, thus, equal value.  Such improvisation is highly democratic, if by democratic we mean equalitarian.  The introduction of varied duration would entail melody, and melody entails rhythm.  A music that is truly free, functioning as a free-electron equivalent, cannot invoke melody or rhythm.  It needs to keep the pitch as pure as possible, undiluted by rhythm.  Such a procedure is usually upheld with the best improvisation and, as already noted, improvisation is the essence of jazz, the 'modern' no less than the 'trad'.  However, behind and beneath this improvisation one finds the rhythmic accompaniment of drums and/or bass, but this accompaniment is itself often improvisational in nature, functioning on the level of a pseudo-electron equivalent given to the creation of intricate patterns of volatile rhythm which assume a quasi-pitch status deferential to, rather than dominant over, the lead soloist(s).  Such is the norm with modern jazz, and it conforms to the relatively post-atomic integrity of contemporary American civilization.  Since the essence of this jazz is improvisation, it follows that the music is essentially a free-electron equivalent.  But, of course, it cannot be absolutely so, since involving the relative use of a quasi-electron equivalent, namely rhythmic pitch, and this relativity is consonant with the socio-political integrity of mainstream bourgeois/ proletarian civilization.

 

7.   A music that could be defined as equivalent to an absolutely free-electron status, involving pure pitch and nothing else - neither rhythm, melody, nor harmony - could only pertain to an absolutely post-atomic civilization, a civilization rooted in Social Transcendentalism.  Such music would be conceived/performed on a synthesizer - in other words an instrument which is both highly artificial and electronic, as well as being a kind of composite of earlier instruments which yet transcends them all in its own unique technological integrity.  Thus a kind of omega instrument, akin to the dovetailing of traditional visual arts/entertainments into a medium, viz. television, which yet transcends them or, alternatively, to the dovetailing of all so-called world religions into a True World Religion which is yet distinct from them and uniquely itself.  Just so, the synthesizer, although capable of sounding like a guitar, an organ, a piano, flute, trumpet, sax, or whatever, is also distinct from these traditional instruments and able, in consequence, to produce a truly unique sound.  Such an instrument would be suitable for the production of pure jazz, the successor, we may believe, to modern jazz.  Notes would be played or programmed to play equally, as so many free-electron equivalents floating on air and floating, needless to say, without any rhythmical accompaniment.

 

8.   This absolutely free-electron music will be the only music of the next and ultimate civilization, since both folk music and traditional civilized music would be irrelevant to an absolutely post-atomic age dedicated to the social wellbeing and moral progress of a truly civilized proletariat.  There could only be one type of music in this transcendental civilization, which would be of a quintessentially religious significance.  Earlier types of music, whether barbarous or civilized, would be discouraged and thereafter consigned to the rubbish heap of history.  The People would soon forget that such music had ever existed, assuming they were in a position to remember!  Their ears would be solely attuned to pure jazz; though it is questionable whether they would spend as much time listening to this music as people of earlier times spent listening to their kinds of music, and for the simple reason that the emphasis in a transcendental civilization would be on still higher things, including meditation.  Pure jazz would serve as an appetizer, so to speak, for the 'main course' ... of contemplation and meditation, rather than as an art form to be listened to for its own sake.  Once again music, together with each of the other fine arts, would become inseparable from religion, functioning as an ingredient in the religio-cultural integrity of the True World Religion, as practised in meditation centres - those future successors to churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, etc.

 

9.   In the present century, however, music is as often as not secular as well as religious, though the development of a religious dimension to the best modern jazz indicates, plainly enough, that music is on the way back to a religious allegiance - one neither pagan nor Christian but transcendentalist.  Of course, modern jazz is not concerned with Transcendentalism in any absolute sense - since nothing is known of such a True World Religion in contemporary America - but with its petty-bourgeois precursor in what may be termed Buddhist Transcendentalism, as taught by Eastern gurus, whose dedication to transcendental meditation is unconnected with a knowledge of technological requirements to-come (before the attainment of transcendence becomes possible), and who, in any case, tend to a rather complacent acquiescence in certain traditional oriental beliefs and practices more attuned to the occult than to the supernatural.  No, while the best modern jazz has associations with relative transcendentalism, the pure jazz of the future will be exclusively associated with an absolute transcendentalism which, to the extent that it upholds the practice of meditation, will stem from the former while surpassing it in terms of a freedom from occult theology and simultaneous awareness of evolutionary transformations to-come.  What rhythmic pitch is to modern jazz, theological occultism was to its religious inspiration in neo-Buddhism.  Neither ingredient could be encouraged in an absolute civilization!

 

10.  Having spoken of American jazzmen on the foregoing pages, I should add that, after one or two countries have taken the lead in developing pure jazz, such absolutely free-electron music should become the prerogative of all peoples.  Thus one won't be entitled to define pure jazz as basically an American music, but will regard it as a universal music, played and respected the world over, even if, for a time, it has the appearance of being unique to one country.  Such, in reality, it cannot be; for this music, together with everything else pertaining to an absolute civilization, is intended for global appreciation, being, in essence, something that transcends race and nationality - like, to a certain extent, modern jazz.  If it begins in one country it will end everywhere, the first truly universal music, transcending all previous cultures and, as already remarked, instruments and instrumental combinations.  Not on an electric piano, organ, or guitar, those quintessentially higher bourgeois/proletarian instruments, still less on a sax, flute, or trumpet, the class precursors of the above, but on a synthesizer or combination of synthesizers ... is the most likely way in which the ultimate music will be performed or, more probably, programmed in advance for autonomous performance, since manual manipulation of the keyboard would doubtless prove incompatible with absolute proletarian criteria.

 

 

ON THE PSYCHE

 

1.   Insight is to the superconscious what intuition is to the subconscious - its 'inferior function', to coin a Jungian term.  Insight is aware feeling, whereby the minority subatomic content of the new brain, viz. instinctual protons/visionary neutrons, responds to its majority subatomic content, viz. aware electrons, in a quasi-spiritual way.  By contrast, intuition is instinctual intelligence, whereby the minority subatomic content of the old brain, viz. aware electrons, responds to its majority subatomic content, viz. instinctual protons/visionary neutrons, in a quasi-instinctual way.  Hence the feeling bias of intuition, as opposed to the spiritual bias of insight.  Generally speaking, women have traditionally had more intuition than men because more biased towards the subconscious or, rather, unconscious, with a more densely proton/neutron-packed old brain.  Men, on the other hand, have developed more insight than women because more biased towards the superconscious, with a more densely electron-packed new brain.  In the first case, such intelligence as existed in the old brain, by dint of an electron content, was conditioned, as intuition, toward feelings.  In the second case, such feeling as existed in the new brain, by dint of a proton/neutron content, was conditioned, as insight, towards awareness.  The 'superior functions' of each part of the psyche are, of course, feeling and awareness respectively.

 

2.   Thinking, however, is not a function of the subconscious but of the superconscious, the application of electron awareness, as will, to the minority feeling proton/visionary neutron content producing thought (consciousness), since a capacity for conceptual memory resides in the minority subatomic content (protons/neutrons) of the new brain by dint of its being conditioned by the essential bias of the majority subatomic content (electrons) there.  By contrast, dreaming is a function of the subconscious or, more correctly, the unconscious which, unlike thinking, happens naturally and, as it were, spontaneously, because perceptual images are absorbed by and stored in the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain, which therein functions according to its natural inclination (not with concepts) and imposes itself, in dream sequences, upon the minority electron content of the old brain during sleep, which then functions, in contrast to the superconscious, as a subsidiary feeling-biased awareness (subconscious), a spectator of the flow of perceptual images which issue from the majority proton/neutron content of the unconscious-proper.  Thus whereas thinking occurs artificially, subject to conscious control of a minority proton/neutron content functioning, in conceptual terms, against its own apparent grain, dreaming, by contrast, occurs naturally, in an unconscious functioning, on perceptual terms, according to its own apparent grain.

 

3.   With daydreaming, on the other hand, the superconscious consciously activates perceptual images from the unconscious, and thus directly involves itself with the unconscious in an evocation of artificial dreams, i.e. fantasies.  The psychic contrast to this, however, is when the unconscious naturally imposes itself upon the superconscious mind in the production of visionary experience - consciously perceived visions rather than subconsciously perceived dreams.  With the evolution of the psyche away from unconscious dominion towards greater degrees of superconscious freedom in awareness, visions are, of course, much less frequent occurrences, these days, than in the early days of human evolution, including and up to early Christian times.  But though they may not occur with anything like the same frequency or intensity as before, their occasional occurrence is more likely, I dare say, to be in young women and children than in men, because both of these categories of human life are generally more under the influence of the unconscious than of the superconscious.

 

4.   As to LSD visions, or artificially-induced visionary experience such as results in static, translucent perceptual images, we may infer that the application of a synthetic catalyst to the minority proton/neutron content of the new brain causes that content, ordinarily accustomed to functioning against its own natural grain in conceptual terms, to function independently of the conditioning of the majority electron content and thus, in appearance, as perceptual images which the electron content is obliged to passively witness in a kind of waking-life dream state.  These images which arise from a minority proton/neutron content freed from the conditioning of the electron majority are not only different from dreams in respect of their colour, rendered translucent by the spiritual bias of the superconscious; they are different in respect of their content which, as a rule, is mythological, exotic, and literary, that is to say, what one would expect from a proton/neutron content that had for so long served to store the conceptual rather than the perceptual, and consequently become civilized, since the use of concepts by man is usually steeped in literary, exotic, and mythological connotations.  Hence the preponderance, in LSD-induced visionary experience, of such concept-weighted images as jewels, sickle moons, fairy palaces, pagan statues, clusters of grapes, star shapes, and what appear to be houses of glass.  These and other such images are rooted in conceptual usage, whereas dream images tend, as a rule, to float free of conceptual reference in a perceptual naturalism.

 

5.   What, then, can we deduce from all this - that LSD is bad, immoral, dangerous...?  Certainly a minority proton/neutron content that has been set free of electron conditioning behaves in an apparent and therefore regressive way.  Yet we are none of us absolutes, and the veneer of conceptual civilization which electron dominance has imposed upon these minority protons/neutrons cannot be sustained for ever, since the strain would take its toll one way or another, not least of all in terms of the probable eruption of a mental breakdown.  Admittedly, the apparent treatment of the minority subatomic content of the new brain is less good than the essential treatment of its majority subatomic content (electrons) through transcendental meditation, so LSD tripping could never become the ultimate psychic concern.  Its widespread usage will, I believe, be confined to the superhuman phase of the post-Human Millennium, a kind of 'romantic', or quasi-apparent, phase in between two 'classical', or essential, phases of evolution, and should be regarded, if not as a good, then, at any rate, as a tolerable and necessary evil.  For only in transcending appearances, and thus all proton/neutron functioning, will advanced life eventually attain to the goal of evolution in maximum essence, the purity of transcendent spirit, the electron-electron attractions of pure awareness, above both the apparent (perceptual) and the quasi-essential (conceptual) treatment of the minority proton/neutron content of the new brain.

 

6.   However, what frequent recourse to LSD would do for the superconscious is condition the majority electron content of the new brain to passive contemplation of artificially-induced perceptions, contrary to its traditional role as activator of conceptions from the minority proton/neutron content, and thus break the habit of thinking, thereby preparing the ground, as it were, for the subsequent leap forward when, with the surgical removal of the old brain and elevation of advanced life to a superbeingful stage of millennial evolution, the majority electron content of the new brain contemplates, in maximum passivity, not proton/neutron appearances, but its own essence, in the cultivation of pure awareness through hypermeditation.  Thus by taking psychic development a step backwards from proton/neutron conceptualism to proton/neutron perceptualism, LSD usage in the Superman Millennium may well serve, better than anything else, to enable it to take a radical leap forwards at a later date, when, instead of applying their minds to thought, like men, the new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings will apply them to the cultivation of pure spirit and ignore, in the process, the proton/neutron content of the new brain altogether.  Who knows, but the passive contemplation of perceptual images may well signify not so much a step backwards ... as a step beyond the activation of conceptual thought?  Certainly, it would be a step forwards from the electron point of view, because signifying a further negation of the will.

 

7.   In daydreaming, we avenge our subconscious mind upon the dream tyranny of the feeling/apparent unconscious by imposing our superconscious mind on the latter in order to dredge from it such perceptual images as we may desire to witness.  Whereas sleep-dreaming happens naturally to the subsidiary or subconscious mind of the old brain, the superconscious mind of the new brain is applied, in daydreaming, to the feeling/apparent unconscious with a degree of supernatural effort, i.e. through the conscious use of awareness as will.  The converse situation to this, viz. natural intrusion of the feeling/apparent unconscious into waking consciousness, would lead to our witnessing visions, which may alternatively be described as waking dreams.  Fortunately, not many of us are prone to visionary experience these days, but with our more evolved psyche we often live in a world of daydreams, or fantasies, which are both frivolous and innocuous compared with nightmares.

 

8.   Having referred to both visionary/fantasy and dreaming/thinking antitheses, I may as well continue by pointing out that the artificially-induced perceptual experience of the minority proton/neutron content of the new brain in the 'trip' also has an antithesis in the naturally-induced dulled awareness of the minority electron content of the old brain through various degrees of drunkenness, so that we may speak of a drinking/tripping antithesis.  Nor is this the only one of its kind; for there exists a converse situation, whereby the minority electron content of the old brain can, through the use of certain natural drugs like hashish and cannabis, be brought to a heightened awareness, even though the majority proton/neutron content may be rendered more instinctual and even, in extreme cases, apparent, so that visions arise.  This heightening of the subconscious consciousness through doping forms an antithesis to the heightening of the superconscious consciousness through transcendental meditation, in consequence of which we may speak of a doping/meditating antithesis, the latter being superior to the former, just as, on a lower scale, tripping is superior to drinking.

 

9.   Indeed, tripping corresponds to a higher form of romanticism, meditating to a higher form of classicism, and we may well define the former as the antithetical equivalent of drunkenness, the latter as the antithetical equivalent of being 'stoned'.  Nor need it surprise us that LSD was a Western invention, since Western civilization has long been partial to psychic romanticism in the consumption of alcohol, and the one inevitably led to the other, just as, in the classical Orient, the traditional consumption of hashish, marijuana, kif, and other such natural drugs inexorably led to the practice of meditation, a superior classicism because appealing not to the minority electron content of the old brain, as does dope, but to the majority electron content of the new brain.  Conversely, whereas alcohol primarily appeals to the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain, LSD appeals, as a higher romanticism, to the minority proton/neutron content of the new brain, which it activates in perceptual terms, neutralizing the traditional active behaviour of the majority electron content in the process, so that conceptual usage of protons/neutrons (as consciousness) is kept to a minimum.  Thus whereas alcohol blunts the subconscious by appealing directly to the feeling/apparent majority proton/neutron content of the old brain (unconscious), LSD, its antithetical equivalent, blunts or neutralizes the superconscious by appealing directly to the feeling/apparent minority proton/neutron content of the new brain.  It signifies the lesser of two evils.

 

10.  Conversely, whereas hashish, cannabis, etc., heightens the subconscious mind by directly appealing to the aware/essential minority electron content of the old brain, transcendental meditation, its antithetical equivalent, heightens the superconscious mind by directly appealing to the aware/essential majority electron content of the new brain.  It signifies the superior of two goods, the ultimate classicism which, it seems to me, will constitute the focus of spiritual development not only in the global transcendental civilization of the final stage of human evolution but, even more importantly, in the Superbeing Millennium - the final stage of post-human evolution preceding transcendence.  That is to say, for both the Transcendentalists of the highest stage of human development and what may be called the hyper-Transcendentalists, so to speak, of the highest stage of millennial development.  In between will come the LSD-utilizing 'romantic' interlude of the Supermen who, as brain collectivizations, will regularly 'trip' and thus passively contemplate, with their superconscious minds, the perceptual images culled from the minority proton/neutron content of the new brain.  The post-Human Millennium will therefore be Occidental in its first phase but Oriental in its second phase, this latter in turn leading, via transcendence, to the heavenly Beyond ... of pure spirit.

 

11.  The fact that occidental man has taken so much longer than oriental man to attain to his antithetical equivalent of old-brain somnolence in new-brain LSD tripping can be explained, I believe, by his traditional bias towards alcohol which, in dulling the subconscious, kept the focus of his psychological attention on the old brain, in sensual self-indulgence.  By contrast, oriental man attained to the antithetical equivalent of doping, in transcendental meditation, so much earlier than his Western counterparts did to theirs because his traditional bias towards hashish, cannabis, etc., in heightening the subconscious, pushed the focus of his psychological attention towards the new brain, in the cultivation, through its majority electron content, of spiritual awareness.  Thus whereas majority proton/neutron indulgence didn't automatically lead, via the new brain, to minority proton/neutron indulgence, minority electron indulgence in the old brain certainly did lead, as a matter of course, to majority electron indulgence, to the cultivation, within the new brain, of an enhanced awareness, an awareness purged of sensual dross in fidelity to transcendental purism.  However, now that Western man has attained to an antithetical equivalent of alcohol indulgence, he has progressed, within a romantic proton/neutron-biased framework, from the sensual to the apparent, from drunken stupor to visionary contemplation.  This may, with due respect, be described as 'the best of a bad job'.  By contrast, meditation signifies (in relation to dope-smoking) 'the best of a good job'.  We may look forward to more of the latter in the future, in both its regular and 'hyper' manifestations.

 

12.  If alcohol tends, in appealing to the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain, to increase its sensuality and drag the subconscious down to a lesser degree of sensual awareness in the process, dope tends, by making the subconscious more aware, to heighten the capacity of the feeling/apparent unconscious for the production of visions, i.e. to appeal primarily to its apparent rather than simply sensual side.  Visionary experience has long been vouchsafed users of hashish, including such Western ones as Baudelaire and de Nerval, though we may contend that the prospect of such experience arising is proportionate to the amount of dope taken and its inherent quality, so that unless a large quantity of, say, good-quality hashish is orally ingested, the prospect of experiencing visions, especially for modern urban man, must be pretty slim.  Formerly, we may be confident that, even with comparatively small amounts of the drug, visions would have been pretty much the norm, and especially must this have been so in the Orient, both near and far, before the evolution of the psyche into new-brain liberation, with the attendant practice of transcendental meditation for if not the majority then, at any rate, the truly civilized minority.  Probably the masses continued to dope and experience visions long after the introduction of meditation had established an antithetical equivalent to doping, and long after the more evolved had lost interest in dope by dint of the fact that, on the one hand, it no longer engendered visions in the old brain and, on the other hand, they had discovered a much greater awareness satisfaction in transcendental meditation.

 

13.  Dope may be despised by the civilized minority in the Orient, but its widespread use in the Occident, during the past century, suggests an appeal to both civilized and barbarous alike.  Why is this?  Certainly not because the West has discovered in hashish an antithetical equivalent of alcohol, but rather because, in making the subconscious more aware, it signifies a moral improvement on alcohol, with the possibility, in some cases, of visionary experience in addition to increased subconscious awareness.  Yet there is also widespread opposition to hashish, cannabis, marijuana, etc., and for good reason, given that the Western bent is for the romantic, i.e. alcohol, and a switch to the classic on the same evolutionary level, i.e. with regard to old-brain stimulation, does not signify an evolutionary step forward so much as a surrender to oriental classicism on its lowest level, a level long since abandoned in the Orient by those given to transcendental meditation.  From the Western point of view, the use of LSD would signify an evolutionary step forward - indeed, the antithetical equivalent to the use of alcohol, since it accords with the Western bent for proton/neutron indulgence, in this case of the new brain rather than of the old one, and must rank as the occidental counterpart to transcendental meditation.

 

14.  Yet LSD, no less than the various kinds of dope, is still illegal in the West, and no real distinction is maintained, by the law, between the use of natural and artificial drugs - a fact which seems somewhat strange, to say the least.  There is a moral improvement, from the Western standpoint, in the experience of new-brain visions over the indulgence of old-brain sensuality.  It corresponds to an extension of the romantic bent from sensual feelings to spiritualized appearances.  No such evolutionary improvement could be detected, however, in the use of dope, since its subsidiary appeal is to sensual appearances, as culled from the old brain, whilst its principal appeal is to the subconscious, which (sensual awareness mind) it heightens.  Admittedly, sensual appearances no less than heightened sensual awareness signify an improvement of sorts on sensual feelings, but only, as it were, laterally, not in an evolutionary way, in line with Western proton/neutron predilections.  So the use of dope cannot be encouraged if the role of authority, besides safeguarding law and order, is to encourage evolutionary progress.  The fact that an element of East meeting West enters into the availability and use of dope ... cannot be denied, and doubtless the converse situation of West meeting East in the consumption, illegally or otherwise, of alcohol in the Orient accords with a gradual convergence of the world towards a synthesis in universal civilization, even if, at present, on fundamentally bourgeois and, hence, relative terms.  Nevertheless the dopers are more likely to be barbarous than civilized, yobs than nobs, and must needs suffer the consequences of doping in a civilization partial to romantic values, where the use of LSD - at least among the foremost class of the day - should meet with less disapproval, if not, for a variety of reasons, more encouragement!

 

 

PART FOUR: MAXIMS

 

ON GOD AND EVOLUTION

 

1.   'All men are equal before God' - what does this really mean?  Precisely that, so far as the central star of the Galaxy is concerned, one man is pretty much the same as another, and simply because that star isn't in the least aware of the existence of human beings.

 

2.   To imagine that the Creator, conceived as the theological, or figurative, aspect of the central star of the Galaxy, wishes to see men fulfil a divine purpose ... is the height of nonsense!  The subatomic absolute has no desire to encourage the formation of a supra-atomic absolute, for it exists within the strict confines of its own subatomic integrity.

 

3.   Progress towards a Supreme Creation only happens in spite of and without the consent of the Primal Creator.  Man struggles towards the supra-atomic absolutism of 'the Holy Spirit' by pitting himself against the subatomic absolutism of 'the Father' and what stems, as nature, from it.

 

4.   To the extent that the subatomic absolute may be said to have a plan for man, that plan would never extend beyond sensual indulgence in adherence to naturalistic criteria.

 

5.   Fulfilling the Creator's plan would simply mean living in harmony with nature in pursuit of sensual ends.

 

6.   But there is a superior plan to that, which may be described as fulfilling atomic man's (Christ's) plan and intermittently transcending nature by rebelling against it and aspiring towards the supernatural at least as much or as often as one lives in harmony with it.

 

7.   Yet there is a superior plan to that, which may be described as fulfilling post-atomic man's (the Second Coming's) plan and transcending nature by rebelling against it and aspiring towards the supernatural as much or as often as possible, until, in one degree or another, one actually attains to the supernatural!

 

8.   This plan would be transcendentalist as opposed to Christian, a plan in which man turns exclusively towards creating the supra-atomic absolute, as signified by transcendent spirit.

 

9.   Man, however, couldn't directly attain to the full-blown Supernaturalism of the supra-atomic absolute, but only to the lesser Supernaturalism of the Superman in the first phase of the post-Human Millennium - a time in which, if all goes according to plan, human brains will be artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts.

 

10.  The ensuing new-brain collectivizations of the second phase of the post-Human Millennium - the transcendental phase-proper - will constitute an evolutionary stage immediately preceding transcendence, and thus the attainment of the superbeingful life of the Superbeings to the supra-atomic absolute of ... Spiritual Globes converging towards total unity in the heavenly Beyond.

 

11.  Thus it is the Superbeing rather than man who attains to definitive salvation in the supra-atomic absolute, man being but a link in the evolutionary chain stretching from alpha to omega, or the cosmos to transcendent spirit.

 

12.  Evolution begins with the numerous beauties of the alpha absolute  and culminates in the one truth of the omega absolute.  It progresses from maximum appearance to maximum essence, from the proton-proton reactions of stars to the electron-electron attractions of transcendent spirit.

 

13.  Post-atomic man does not cease being atomic, that is to say, a largely materialistic entity.  He simply ceases to regard an atomic integrity with complacency and aspires, instead, more keenly towards the supra-atomic.

 

14.  Pre-atomic, or Judaic, man was conscious of a 'fall' (from the absolute beauty of the stars to the relative beauty of man), but not of an aspiration towards the absolute truth of transcendent spirit.  He lived negatively - in guilt.

 

15.  Atomic, or Christian, man remained conscious of a 'fall' (from the absolute beauty of the stars to the relative beauty of man), but also became conscious of an aspiration towards the absolute truth of transcendent spirit.  He lived both negatively and positively - in dualistic compromise.

 

16.  Post-atomic, or transcendental, man will not be conscious of a 'fall' (from the absolute beauty of the stars to the relative beauty of man), but only of an aspiration towards the absolute truth of transcendent spirit.  He will live positively - in joy.

 

17.  The pre-atomic mentality of the Judaic mind persists into the modern age in many Jews who, not having converted to Christianity, are still more conscious of a 'fall' (from absolute beauty) than of anything else.  Witness Kafka, who affords us a poignant example of Judaic guilt in the face of baffling and potentially hostile societal changes.

 

18.  Leonard Bernstein's Kaddish symphony provides us, in both libretto and music, with a no-less poignant example of Judaic guilt and bemusement in a world turning against the Creator, in defiance of natural beauty.

 

19.  But the post-atomic man of the third and final level of human civilization will not be concerned with beauty, either in its absolute or relative manifestations, but solely with the cultivation of truth, and so much so that, should he have a girlfriend or female companion, she will be at best ugly, at worst merely attractive.  A beautiful woman would not appeal to him - assuming any such women were still to be found in the world.

 

20.  For it cannot be denied that beauty appertains, in the main, to the bourgeois and aristocratic classes, who directly stem from the beauty of the stars in largely natural environments ... rather than indirectly aspire towards the truth of transcendent spirit from an artificial environment, such as the city.

 

21.  The fact that the proletariat only indirectly aspire towards the truth of transcendent spirit in the twentieth century has to do with their being less civilized than barbarous, and therefore beneath conscious transcendental commitment.  This is so in both the capitalist West, where they constitute an 'internal proletariat' (Toynbee), and the socialist East where, from the Western viewpoint, they exist in the context of an 'external proletariat'.

 

22.  Only when the proletariat are made conscious of Transcendentalism (not to be confounded with petty-bourgeois Orientalism), and thus become truly civilized, will they directly aspire towards the truth of transcendent spirit.  But that won't be before the next and ultimate human civilization gets properly under way.

 

 

ON BEING AND DOING

 

1.   'Doing for others' stems from the diabolic principle of proton-proton reaction and is the antithesis of 'being for self', which, in aspiring heavenwards, conforms to the divine principle of electron-electron attraction.

 

2.   'Being for others' is passive diabolism and contrasts with 'doing for self' as the active, or indirect, manifestation of a divine orientation.

 

3.   To 'do for others' is to directly affect others and impose one's activity, or the results of it, upon them.  'Being for others' is the receiving context of the doer's action.

 

4.   To 'do for self' is to indirectly develop the spirit through some form of conscious intellectual activity, and contrasts with 'being for self' as the direct form of spiritual development employing conscious non-verbal passivity.

 

5.   The man who 'does for self' is morally superior to the man who 'does for others', just as the man who is 'being for self' is morally superior to the man who is 'being for others'.

 

6.   The man who is 'being for others' is less immoral than the man who is 'doing for others', whereas the man who is 'doing for self' is less moral than the man who is 'being for self'.

 

7.   To sleep is effectively to 'be for others'.  We sleep to dream, which is 'the other' acting upon one's self, the passive spirit.

 

8.   The Supermen of the first phase of the post-Human Millennium will imbibe synthetic hallucinogens in order to 'be for their selves'; they will drug to trip, which is the self made manifest to the self through visionary experience.  Trip and drugger are one.  Dream and sleeper, on the other hand, are two.

 

9.   Subhuman, human, superhuman; which is to say, pre-human, human, and post-human.  Human is never more so than when the psyche is balanced between subconscious and superconscious in conscious egocentricity.  But an imbalance either side of egocentricity is still human, provided the ratio of subconscious to superconscious is not more than 3:1 either side.

 

10.  Thus pagan man and transcendental man are still human, not subhuman or superhuman respectively.  We don't consider the ancient Greeks or Romans subhuman, and neither need we consider the coming transcendental men superhuman.

 

11.  Supermen will be post-human, and to a no-less significant extent than apes are (or were) pre-human.  An ape in the branches of a tree and a human brain artificially supported and sustained are, to my mind, antithetical equivalents either side of human evolution.

 

12.  A tree, as a subconscious life-form preceding apes, and a Superbeing, as a superconscious life-form succeeding Supermen, are also antithetical equivalents either side of (immediate) pre- and post-human life forms.

 

13.  An alternative name for ape could be subman, a creature pre-dating the human phases of evolution and embracing everything from apes to subhuman primitives, but particularly apes that were destined to evolve towards man.

 

14.  Thus the subman is a particular kind of ape, viz. an evolutionary ape, who gradually abandoned the tree in order to develop a primitive form of bipedal society between the animal and the human.

 

15.  The subman became human at that point in time when civilization was first established ... in the guise of paganism.  Civilization, which embraces some form of institutionalized religious commitment, is inseparable from the human.

 

16.  Just as the subman was beneath civilization, so the Superman will be beyond it - no longer subject to a compromise between politics and religion, and not a periodic visitor to a religious building (in the highest phase of human evolution, the meditation centre of transcendentalists), but permanently spiritual.

 

17.  Trees were (and are) even more deeply sensual than submen and apes.  The Superbeings will be even more deeply spiritual than the Supermen.  Not drugging for trips, but hypermeditating for transcendence!

 

18.  Any attempt to 'gate-crash' the highest phase of the post-Human Millennium by prematurely removing the old brain and re-collectivizing new brains would, even if technically feasible, be doomed to failure, because hypermeditation could not be endured, let alone properly experienced, before the superconscious had been both explored and expanded on visionary terms with the assistance of mind-expanding drugs like LSD.

 

19.  By neutralizing the subconscious, a synthetic hallucinogen like LSD would allow the superconscious to become more conscious of itself and if not to come fully awake then at least tend in the direction, via visionary experience, of complete wakefulness in the subsequent exclusively spiritual context of the Superbeing.

 

20.  Perhaps, in comparison to that hyperwakefulness of the Superbeing, the tripping of the Supermen would constitute the highest form of 'doing for self', in complete contrast to the 'being for others' of the sleeper, whether human or pre-human.  An internal 'doing', static and yet apparent, because visionary.

 

21.  And so from this superhuman 'doing for self' to the superbeingful 'being for self' in the second, or 'classical', phase of the post-Human Millennium.  Is not ape life predominantly a 'being for others' ... of eating and sleeping and resting in the branches of trees?  And does not the life of a tree on which apes exist conform to a 'doing-for-others' principle both in terms of supporting the apes and producing oxygen without which autonomous life on earth would be impossible?

 

22.  Stemming from the Diabolic Alpha, no tree exists for itself on a 'being-for-self' principle (not possessing a self) but only in relation to others, i.e. to animals and humans, who are dependent on the oxygen it produces for survival, and this contrary to superficial appearances.

 

23.  By contrast to the 'being-for-self' meditating religion of future transcendental men, the sacrificing and dancing religion of pagans was an extreme manifestation of 'doing for others' - 'the others' being either invisible powers or gods made manifest in the idol.

 

24.  The Christian and similar atomic phases of religious evolution signified a compromise between 'doing for others' and 'being for self', as appropriate to a middle phase of religious evolution in between pagan and transcendental extremes.

 

25.  But the Transcendentalists' 'being for self' will constitute but a mild foretaste of things to come, once evolution attains to the stage of transcending all doing and facing directly towards the ultimate 'being for self' of transcendent spirit in the supra-atomic absolute.

 

 

ON IDEOLOGY

 

1.   Nationalism is the mundane/transcendental compromise between tribalism and ideological transcendentalism.

 

2.   Nationalism is mundane to the extent that it affirms an allegiance to a given area of land, which exists as a country, but transcendental to the extent that the nationals of any given country may stem from diverse tribes.

 

3.   Ideological transcendentalism transcends the boundaries of any given country by embracing peoples of all national backgrounds and integrating them along ideological lines.

 

4.   Evolution thus proceeds from the absolutely mundane to the absolutely transcendental, both materialist and spiritualist, via a relative compromise between mundane and transcendental.

 

5.   A concrete example from each stage of this evolution could run as follows: Semite - Englishman - Socialist; Celt - Frenchman - Nazi; Slav - German - Fascist.

 

6.   Keeping these stages of evolution to the confines of any one geographical area could give rise to a progression such as the following: Slav - Russian - Socialist; Latin - Italian - Fascist; Teuton - German - Nazi.

 

7.   In each case, we are dealing with a progression from the concrete to the abstract via a concrete/abstract compromise - a progression, in other words, from the natural to the supernatural via a natural/supernatural compromise.

 

8.   Toleration of the natural, i.e. tribalism, inheres to the compromise stage of evolution, and occasionally nationals will speak in tribal terms, as when an Englishman refers to either himself or others as Anglo-Saxon.

 

9.   Opposition to the natural, i.e. tribalism, inheres to the ideologically transcendental stage of evolution, as when Socialists denounce tribalists, or people who identify either themselves or others in tribal terms.  A Socialist doesn't like to regard either himself or others as a Slav or a Celt or whatever.

 

10.  Anti-Semitism, while being illogical in the compromise stage of evolution, becomes logical in the ideological stage, because toleration of the natural tribal root ceases to apply.

 

11.  A man who identifies himself as a Jew in societies that have become absolutist on the ideologically transcendental level is unlikely to be treated with the same respect (or toleration) as would be the case in a relative society.

 

12.  Nazism, with its anti-Marxist and pseudo-spiritual bias, was particularly sensitive to tribal anachronisms, as its appalling record of anti-Semitism attests.  Both Jews and Gypsies were systematically persecuted from an ideological point of view.

 

13.  Socialism, with its materialistic bias stemming from Marx, is less intolerant of Jews or other tribalists than (was) Nazism, but is by no means immune to anti-Semitic tendencies.

 

14.  The salvation, relatively speaking, of Jews, now as before, is to become Israelis and thus gravitate from the tribal to the national stage of evolution in anticipation of further advancement, in literal transcendental terms, once the adoption of the teachings of the Omega Messiah, or True World Teacher, becomes possible.

 

15.  An Israeli is not in Israel simply for the fun of it - as most Israelis who have had any experience of Arab antipathy will testify - but to escape the curse of diaspora tribalism and prepare himself for a superior religious allegiance than Judaism.

 

16.  Jews who cling to tribal identification in an age when the State of Israel exists ... put themselves in an increasingly illogical and morally untenable position, which may have grave consequences in any 'host' state either moving towards or actually in an ideologically transcendental context.

 

17.  Whether the Jews in question be German Jews, French Jews, American Jews, or whatever, the fact that they regard themselves, through Judaism, first and foremost as Jews signifies a tribal allegiance the main justification for which is to enable the persons concerned to identify themselves as Jews when the opportunity comes for them to emigrate or, rather, return to Israel (Zion).  Clinging to a tribal identification for its own sake is both illogical and morally untenable!

 

18.  Undoubtedly there are, for a variety of reasons, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, etc., of Jewish descent, and for them the criteria applying, from a transcendental standpoint, to Jews is largely irrelevant.  A Christian of Jewish descent cannot, strictly speaking, regard himself as a Jew.  A Jew who becomes a Christian automatically becomes a national of the country in which he is resident - the country, in all probability, of his birth.

 

19.  Thus, to take but a single example, the composer Gustav Mahler became, following his conversion to Christianity, an Austrian of Semitic descent, and, by rights, no such person should ever be persecuted, from the standpoint of ideological transcendentalism, as a Jew.

 

20.  As to the moral significance attached, from the Jewish standpoint, to such a conversion, the convertee necessarily forfeits the possibility of becoming an Israeli in a Judaic culture, and may therefore be said to have betrayed his people in their determination to regain a homeland and become not merely united again but ... witnesses to transcendental truth.

 

21.  But, by a similar token, could not those who have remained Jews but failed to return to Israel at the appointed time be said to have betrayed their people by remaining in the Diaspora after such a fate was no longer obligatory?

 

22.  Either way, there may be penalties to pay, both relative and absolute.  The convertee to Christianity may find further spiritual progress barred to him; he may even have to suffer the humiliating fate of defeated nationals at the hands of a bellicose ideologically transcendental people.  The Jew who remains a stuck-in-the-mud of tribal identification may pay for his, from the ideological standpoint, anachronistic allegiance with his life or, at the very least, freedom.

 

23.  What, then, is the moral position as regards anti-Semitism?  Clearly, the position is logically valid when directed against Jews from a radically ideological base, but invalid and, indeed, quite illogical when directed against said tribalists from a national base, whose respect for the natural compels if not admiration, then at least toleration of Jews.

 

24.  Thus regardless of the apparently nationalist motive for anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Nazi opposition to Jews (as to Gypsies) was logically valid, and followed from the evolutionary right of a pseudo-spiritual and ideologically-transcendental state to transcend tribalism in outright hostility to the mundane root.

 

25.  No-one, however, who professes to a national integrity in atomic societies has the right to uphold anti-Semitism.  Those who don't profess to such an integrity but, nevertheless, still exist within the confines of an atomic society, may pay the penalty for being anti-Semitic if they are such on blatantly activist terms.

 

 

ON SEX AND GENDER

 

1.   There are two approaches to sex, viz. a materialist and a spiritualist.  The former approach involves copulation, the latter approach oral sex or some derivative thereof.

 

2.   On the materialist petty-bourgeois levels, both earlier and later, the approach to sex takes the form of heterosexual perversion on the earlier level, in which a man's penis enters a woman's rectum in a relatively homosexual context, and outright homosexuality on the later level (a level biased towards proletarian values), as between two men who establish an absolute relativity between themselves.

 

3.   Similarly, on the spiritualist petty-bourgeois levels, both earlier and later, the approach to sex takes the form of an oral bias favouring the masculine (fellatio) on the earlier level, as a woman takes a man's penis into her mouth, and pornography on the later level (a level biased towards proletarian values), as between the male utilizer of pornography and his preferred female models, who establish a radical relativity between themselves.

 

4.   Proletarian civilization, however, would only endorse pornography, though of an abstract nature, in order to establish between the voyeur and his model an absolute relationship, i.e. one that transcends radical relativity.

 

5.   No proletarian state, whether transcendentalist or socialist, could endorse petty-bourgeois sexuality, and so neither relative pornography nor homosexuality should be encouraged by such a state.

 

6.   A person's sexuality is relative, as a rule, to his temperamental and class integrity.  A man who regularly indulges in anal sex with his woman is unlikely to become a pornographer.  Conversely, the man who regularly encourages his woman to fellate him is unlikely to become a homosexual.

 

7.   The earlier level of materialist petty-bourgeois sexuality may lead to the later one in due course.  Likewise, the earlier level of spiritualist petty-bourgeois sexuality may lead to the later level in the course of time.  Usually, however, a man stays on a given level within any particular context.  This is also true of art, politics, religion, etc.

 

8.   A socialist society, being materialistic, is more exposed to the danger of homosexuality than to that of pornography.  Conversely, a transcendentalist society, being spiritualistic, will be more exposed to the danger of relative pornography than to that of homosexuality.

 

9.   Within the context of petty-bourgeois civilization, one cannot, of course, speak of homosexuality or pornography as 'dangers', since they are relevant to the class integrity of such a civilization.  Naturally, people on earlier sexual levels will fear or despise those who, unbeknown to their critics, pertain to a later level.

 

10.  An anal violator of women may have no taste for outright homosexuality.  The man who enjoys having his penis made the focal-point of oral attention may have no taste for pornography.  Needless to say, the antithetical tendencies on an identical level, whether earlier or later, will usually be deemed mutually exclusive by their respective practitioners.

 

11.  The Church has never been too fond of homosexuals, partly because it is fundamentally bourgeois (as opposed to petty bourgeois), and partly because it pertains to the spiritualist (as opposed to materialist) side of things.  Being bourgeois, it has championed heterosexual relationships under the umbrella of marriage.  Being spiritual, it would not, I dare say, have anything against oral sex, particularly of the balanced (cunnilingus/fellatio) heterosexual variety.

 

12.  The evolution of sex may be traced from negative concrete beginnings to positive abstract endings via a heterosexual compromise coming in-between.  The beginnings presuppose a pre-atomic, or pagan, civilization; the endings ... a post-atomic, or transcendental, civilization; the in-between an atomic, or Christian, civilization in any of its three stages (with or without accompanying phases), the beginnings and the endings absolute, the in-between period relative, as between materialism and spirituality.  Thus from hand in vagina to hand on penis via relative relationships.

 

13.  Probably the hand in vagina was motivated by materialistic stimuli from without, such as the enticing curves of a pagan goddess displayed, in marble, in some public place.  As sex becomes less reputable and more spiritualized, it is driven underground, so to speak, in the context of private stimulation, whether as regards vibrators/inflatables or pornography.

 

14.  In the relativistic civilization of the Christian, or bourgeois, stages of evolution, sex, while no longer the public thing it was in pagan times, never became entirely private.  Some sex, or degree of sexual behaviour, remained in the open, such as holding hands, kissing, cuddling, patting, squeezing, etc.  There were, however, firm moral bounds as to the degree of sex one could reasonably indulge in public.

 

15.  A transcendental civilization would necessarily discourage all forms and degrees of public sexual relations, since, even on the homosexual level, they would be deemed irrelevant.  And this would also apply to a person's private life, where sex, if indulged in at all, should be independent of other people, since strictly artificial.

 

16.  The pursuit of sensual gratification presupposes self-indulgence.  The pursuit of love presupposes concern for another.  The pursuit of happiness presupposes concern for some others.  The pursuit of self-realization presupposes identification with the universal self ... of the spirit.

 

17.  Man evolves from the personal to the universal in the course of time, his eventual attainment to the absolutism of self-realization making the pursuit of all relative 'goods' irrelevant to him, and therefore as things to be avoided.

 

18.  Generally there exists between the sexes an evolutionary time-lag, whereby the female pursuit of sensual gratification and/or emotional fulfilment may be contrasted with the male pursuit of happiness and/or self-realization, depending on the individuals in question.

 

19.  More specifically, the attainment to each of these objectives presupposes sex and companionship in the female case, and work and recreation in the male case.

 

20.  In a sense, recreation is the essence of human and, in particular, male endeavour; for as God (the Father) created nature, so man must re-create it, transforming, by degrees, the natural into the supernatural via the artificial.

 

21.  Sex and child bearing/rearing is a woman's doing, companionship her being.  By contrast, work is a man's doing, recreation his being.  There exists a kind of romantic/classic dichotomy between each of these poles - the former, or female, poles physically selfish; the latter, or male, poles physically selfless.

 

22.  Of course, in an age when the traditional polarities, including the sexual, are disintegrating, many (though not all) women are adopting male criteria of living, in one or another degree of physical selflessness.

 

23.  Man aspires towards the spiritual absolute but is himself relative, and thus exposed, no matter how dedicated he may be to physical selflessness, to periodic relapses into the selfish, as a concern for and identification with the lesser self of the body-soul integrity.

 

24.  Thus a philosopher or artist dedicated to the progress of physical selflessness in his work may occasionally relapse into autobiography, or lower self-identification, in a reaction against the persona being projected by his professional self, which corresponds to a kind of alter ego ... of the higher self in the realm of doing.

 

25.  And such autobiographical relapses, betraying a personal self radically different to and seemingly at loggerheads with the persona of the professional self, will entail a doing relative to the female - indeed, the male equivalent of female selfishness.

 

26.  Thus largely autobiographical writers like Henry Miller may be defined as of feminine (selfish) constitution, and we cannot be surprised if a more than average concern with sexual activity - usually heterosexual - is the converse side of their professional selflessness.

 

27.  The more psychological distance there is between the personal self and the persona projected by the professional self, the greater the writer; for the latter can only expand at the former's expense.  And yet, if he isn't to go insane, the writer must admit to the fact of his human relativity and take steps to acknowledge it, from time to time, in his work.

 

                          

LONDON 1983 (Revised 2012)

 

The Will to Truth