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
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
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
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
KEITH: You
mean the State of
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
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
KEITH: Yet, presumably diaspora Jews
would be more subject to harassment than Jews or, rather, Israelis in
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 '
However that may be, the '
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
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
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.
