PART THREE:
APHORISMS
*
ON EVOLUTION - I
1. Evolution proceeds from alpha to omega, from
an inception in the first stars to a culmination in the ultimate Spiritual
Globe. It doesn't begin in absolute
beauty. It begins, on the contrary, in
absolute ugliness, a formlessness of raging flame appertaining to the 'first
cause' of any particular galaxy - in all probability the central star
there. Stars may appear beautiful from a
distance, i.e. from a human point-of-view, but viewed close-up they would
suggest the ultimate ugliness, a truly frightening, chaotic, seething mass of
flame, the visual intensity of which was matched only by the aural intensity of
infernal noise! In sum, the nearest
experience to Hell - short, that is, of one's being literally burnt alive!
2. Yes, stars are terribly ugly and, given their
primal nature, could not be otherwise.
It is not beauty that is absolute but ugliness, as germane to the
subatomic proton-proton reactions of pure soul.
Ugliness precedes beauty as surely as evil precedes
good, or illusion precedes truth. Theology
may distinguish between a divine Father and a diabolic Satan, between 'Creator'
and 'Devil', but that is largely for the sake of convenience, a mere relative
antithesis between fictions abstracted from specific cosmic facts - namely, a
central (unseen first-mover) star and the peripheral star known to us as the
sun, the latter equivalent, in Biblical terms, to a 'fallen angel', or a star
which exploded out of the primal one in or near this part of the Universe. In actual fact, however, both a tangential
star, like the sun, and the central star are pure soul, or subatomic
reactions. You cannot have atomicity in
a star, only in a planet, or partly cooled star, and then only in relation to
the mineral and organic, with the emergence of atoms. The Devil may be depicted in Christian
mythology as beastly, and hence highly ugly, and the Father as elderly and
handsome, but such a contrast, though theologically expedient, does little
justice to the similarity which must in reality exist between the sun and the
central star of the Galaxy - namely that the central star would be just as
ugly, viewed close-up, as the sun.
Leaving burdensome theology aside, we may maintain, with utter conviction, that evolution begins in ugliness and only
slowly proceeds towards the Beautiful through the development of benign nature.
3. I wrote 'benign' advisably. For anyone familiar, through encyclopaedias
and the like, with primeval times will know that the first manifestations of
life on this planet were anything but beautiful! Indeed, they were extremely ugly, and not
only with regard to reptiles but to nature in the raw, the earliest plants,
which formed dense and pitiless jungles, traps of pain and death for other life
forms, including early man, who was no less ugly than everything else, since
descended from apes. If reptiles were
the ugliest of primeval life forms, then the ensuing mammals were not much
better, and even the caveman, wrapped in furs and carrying a club or crude spear
for hunting, left a lot to be desired, what with his ape-like features and
hairy body, his painful soul and wild behaviour. Pain is of course the qualitative attribute
of ugliness, the stars being pure pain, though a pain that is beneath all
understanding, since they lack a consciousness and body to register it,
theology thereby entitled to endow the Father (as an anthropomorphic
extrapolation from the central star) with a painless, or 'heavenly', status,
against which the conscious pain of plants, animals, and men must seem a
'fall', even if, like all such Biblical falls, it is really a fall forwards, or
something tending towards the possibility of beauty and, therefore,
pleasure. Even early man had a capacity
of sorts for pleasure, as did - and still do - the animals and, to a lesser
extent, the plants. But he lived mainly
in pain, like a wild beast, hunting and hunted, fearful and feared, the victim
of just such a 'fall', conscious of his pain, less ugly than the beasts, but
still predominantly so!
4. In time, however, life evolved to beauty, not
just in man but also, to a degree, in plants and animals - a slow, gradual
process of transforming ugliness, refining upon such beauty as had been
achieved, ordering life in such a way as to make pleasure predominate when,
with regard to man, pagan civilization came to supersede the primeval barbarism
of primitive man in certain parts of the world, particularly the Middle East
and, thereafter, Greece and the Mediterranean as a whole.
5. Early civilization was not, of course,
hedonistic in essence but, rather, stoical and therefore largely a
continuation, on more refined terms, of primitive barbarism, a negative prelude
to a positive climax, the romantic, so to speak, preceding the classical,
stoicism leading, as in ancient Greece, to hedonism, once the pursuit of
pleasure had come to replace the endurance of pain as the chief virtue. At last, beauty triumphant over ugliness, man
living on the electron side of the atomic dualism of the flesh to a greater
extent than on its proton side - at least where the privileged Few were
concerned; though we should never forget that life was still a predominantly
painful affair for the slaves and soldiers and other categories of men whom we
may describe as less than civilized, i.e. not permitted or able to be hedonistic. Only a small minority could be civilized in
this pagan sense, indulgent of crude positive sensation and sensuality as the
lowest commitment to spirit, the pseudo-spirit of the minority electron content
of the flesh, given the absolutely autocratic integrity of pagan civilization,
one stemming from pure soul in aristocratic stoicism.
6. When we turn to Western civilization in its
early-stage grand-bourgeois manifestation, however, we find that beauty has
become more refined, that, even after a painful and largely stoical inception
during the Dark Ages, Roman Catholic civilization has a profounder concept of
the Beautiful than had either the ancient Greek or Roman civilizations, and a
no-less profounder concept of pleasure, a more refined sense of pleasure
through positive sensation in the rites and sacraments of the Church. Now that the slender Blessed Virgin has come
to supersede the fleshy Venus as the ideal of feminine beauty, the highest type
of the Beautiful, we find the concomitant attribute of the highest type of
sensuality, the ideal of refined pleasure in the smell of incense and the feel
of Holy Water, the appearance of the colourful priestly vestments and the
stained-glass windows, the celebration of the Eucharist through the sacramental
symbolism of Christ's body and blood, the lighting of candles and the murmured
chanting of Latin, the parallel placement of the hands in prayer and other such
refined sensual indulgences as signify an evolutionary progression over the
unabashed sensuality (hedonism) of the civilized pagans which, from a Catholic
standpoint, was regarded as sinful, its contemporary equivalent, in a similar
indulgence of crude sensuality, necessitating confession and neutralization, as
it were, through priestly absolution.
Being in part an extension of sensuality from crude to refined levels,
Catholicism anticipates sin and expects confession. Appertaining to the inception of the theocratic
spectrum, on which a knowledge and intimation of truth avowedly exists, it
cannot encourage a religious indulgence more applicable to the autocratic
spectrum. Not pseudo-spirit but
quasi-spirit is its religious ideal, through a very moderate indulgence of the
minority electron content of the flesh.
If the masses are too backward to appreciate truth in the unadulterated
guise of the Holy Spirit, then they must at least make efforts to curb their
sensuality and maintain allegiance to the refined beauty of the Blessed
Virgin. There is no higher beauty than
hers!
7. Which is, of course, a theological
acknowledgement of a biological fact - namely, that beauty, as the highest
manifestation of phenomenal form, attains to a climax in the female body, with
particular reference to the face. Beautiful
women are not only more beautiful than beautiful or handsome men; they are more
beautiful than beautiful animals and plants as well, the culmination of a
process of evolution that began in nature and proceeded, via the animals, to
mankind, where its purest and most absolute manifestation was to be found in
woman. For what is absolute beauty but a
form that is untarnished by ugliness, a perfectly formed human body and
face? If evolution began in absolute
ugliness, then it was not until mankind had reached the stage of producing
beautiful women ... that it attained to absolute beauty or, at any rate, to the
nearest equivalent thereof. We cannot in
all honesty claim that a cat or a flower is more beautiful than a beautiful
woman, even though we may recognize a lower manifestation of the Beautiful in
it, perhaps even a lower manifestation of absolute beauty - one less complex or
ingenious than in a woman. And yet, even
with regard to the Catholic Middle Ages, we must admit that refined beauty and
pleasure were the preserve of only a tiny minority of people, usually
aristocratic or grand bourgeois, and that, far from sharing in it, the masses
were little better off than the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome. Whether peasants or artisans, their
lifestyles would have been less than civilized when judged from an aesthetic
point-of-view. For civilization was
still an elite affair, surrounded by a sprawling barbarism of proton pain and
ugliness, slavery and disease, poverty and dirt. It could not have been otherwise; the
galactic-world-order still prevailed!
8. But evolution must continue, and whether
revolt is fuelled by resentment against the control or by a genuinely
revolutionary urge or, indeed, by a paradoxical combination of both, another
'fall' was in order, this time from beauty and refined pleasure to evil and
hate, the Lutheran protest against subservience of the Church to autocratic
dominion, a late-stage grand-bourgeois rebellion against early-stage
grand-bourgeois precedent, a period of religious strife and
inter-denominational persecution, the great schism known as the Reformation,
which gave birth to early Protestantism as a 'romantic' phase of religion in
revolt against the classicism of the Roman Catholic Church, a kind of Christian
equivalent to stoicism. Well, if
Lutheranism signified a 'fall' from refined pleasure to unrefined hatred, or a
puritanical hatred of pleasure, it was nevertheless the inception of a new
civilization, which was to flower into the religion of love, a fresh classicism
superior to the Catholic variety to the extent that emotional love is superior
to refined pleasure, or the Good to the Beautiful. This bourgeois civilization, centred in
Christ, was to last from approximately the 17-19th centuries, pushing Catholic
civilization into an inferior historical position, since the latter still clung
to beauty, in the person of the Blessed Virgin, and could not do
otherwise. Protestant classicism was
triumphant!
9. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century,
however, a new reformer and revolutionary writer was at work undermining the
ethical foundations of this second Western civilization, and another 'fall' ...
from the positive side of the emotional plane to the negative side of the
feeling one ... was in the making - namely, the Marxist fall from goodness and
love in Puritan classicism to illusion and sadness in Communist romanticism,
the revolt of the Anti-Christ against Christian precedent, an antithetical
equivalent of the Lutheran (anti-Virgin?) revolt against Catholicism,
necessarily early-stage petty bourgeois in time and, like all such revolts,
successful only after a protracted struggle with the status quo, both inside
and outside Russia, the country destined, through Lenin, to become the world's
first Communist state. Inevitably, the
10. However that may be, the age of relative truth
(neo-Buddhism) and happiness cannot last for ever, neither on its American nor
its Russian sides, since evolution must go forwards to an absolutely
transcendental age, an age when not happiness but awareness will be the primary
religious ideal. In other words, there
must be an extension of the theocratic spectrum beyond the Hitlerian
Second Coming to an Anti-Hitler and/or True World Messiah, in which the
relative absolutism, so to speak, of hypercontemplation,
corresponding to a 'fall' from happiness to visionary awareness, from the
majority electron content of the old brain to the minority proton content of
the new brain, will supersede the extreme relativity of positive feelings, and
thus signify the romantic inception of a new and higher civilization, as
germane to Social Transcendentalism.
11. Not, then, an antithetical equivalent of the
Blessed Virgin, but a straight antithesis between the inception of the
autocratic spectrum in ancient Greek/Judaic civilization and the future
culmination of the theocratic spectrum in Social Transcendentalist
civilization; the first phase, in stoicism, of the former civilization
corresponding to the second phase, in hypermeditation,
of the latter one; the first phase, in hallucinogenic enlightenment, of the
latter civilization corresponding to the second phase, in hedonism, of the
former one, though as a straight antithesis in each case. For just as stoicism preceded hedonism in the
ancient autocratic world, so hypercontemplation of
hallucinogenic enlightenment must precede hypermeditation
in the future theocratic world, the one significant of a romantic 'fall' from
late-stage petty-bourgeois classicism in transcendental meditation, the other
indicative of a classical 'rise' applicable to the higher phase of an absolutely
transcendental age, with the progression from Social Transcendentalism to
Super-transcendentalism, as germane to the True World Religion. Whether one chooses to regard the first phase
as specific to the Anti-Hitler and the second as specific to the True World
Messiah, with proletarian and classless distinctions respectively, or to regard
them both as but two aspects of the same absolute age ... is relatively
unimportant. Suffice it to say that the
one presupposes the other, and that both alike are two sides of the True World
Religion. If the goal is experience of
the majority electron content of the new brain, then the experience of the
minority proton content of that same brain will constitute a quasi-spiritual
phase of religious evolution, the necessary prelude to higher things.
12. But even the indulgence of absolute awareness
through hypermeditation is only a stage on the road
to higher things - namely, the supersession of men by
the Supermen and Superbeings of the first and second
phases of the post-Human Millennium, when, firstly, human brains and,
subsequently, new brains (or human brains minus the old brain) will be
artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, so that a
situation the converse of that which preceded pagan civilization, and indeed
mankind in general, duly arises - a situation as much above and beyond man as,
first, trees and, later, apes were beneath and before him ... in the early
evolution of life on this planet. So a straight
antithesis, in the first phase of the post-Human Millennium, between Supermen
and apes, and likewise a straight antithesis, in its second phase, between Superbeings and trees, antitheses which, in religious
terms, would in each case be between different degrees of awareness and
different degrees of stupor; between that which, in the trees, is beneath
consciousness and that which, in the hypermeditative
new-brain collectivizations, would be above it; or
that which, in the apes, is only crudely conscious and that which, in the hypercontemplative brain collectivizations,
would be highly conscious - the one natural, the other supernatural.
13. And so we can now take evolution on beyond the
post-Human Millennium to the post-Millennial Beyond, in accordance with the
guidance of written truth, and envisage the Spiritual Globes of pure spirit
emerging from the Superbeings with the culmination of
their hypermeditation. Such free-electron transcendences, the
antithesis to planets, will converge towards and expand into other such
transcendences in a cumulative process leading, in due course, to the formation
of Galactic Spiritual Globes, or globes of pure spirit that are so vast as to
rival the sun in scale, the antithesis, in short, of peripheral stars. Well, such a process, taken to its ultimate conclusion,
should result in a Universal Spiritual Globe, the sum-product of all
convergence and expansion of Galactic Spiritual Globes, and this ultimate globe
of pure spirit, corresponding to the Omega Point (de Chardin),
will constitute an antithesis to the central stars (one to each galaxy), and so
bring evolution to a climax on terms diametrically antithetical to its
inception in the raging flame of pure soul.
What began in the Many will culminate in the One. What began as proton-proton reactions will
culminate in electron-electron attractions.
What began as absolute ugliness will culminate in absolute truth. What began as the pain that is beneath all
understanding will culminate in the peace that is above all
understanding. What began in the archdiabolic will culminate in ultimate divinity. What began as a gaseous revolt against the
void will culminate in the utmost being.
Such an utmost beingfulness could never be the
source of an absolute fall into the lowest doing of pure soul. There is no 'eternal recurrence' in that
sense, even if earthly evolution may be regarded as progressing from one
absolute to another via a relativity, and the progression towards the second
absolute is interpreted in terms of a return to absolutism, albeit it be diametrically
antithetical to the first.
14. No matter, the ultimate absolutism of the
Omega Point will not be the source of innumerable alpha absolutes of pure
soul. On the contrary, it will be an
eternal peace, the culmination of all evolution in ultimate truth. Stars and planets will eventually
disintegrate, leaving the Void to the peace that surpasses all
understanding. The Universe won't simply
culminate in God; it will be God. For
the more Heaven expands the less room there will be for Hell, and we may be
confident that the expansion of the former will hasten the decline of the
latter. Eventually, not a single star or
planet will remain in existence, and the birth of new stars out of exploding
gases will cease to be possible in a void which is increasingly being filled by
God's presence, the steady expansion of pure spirit. Only when the last star collapses and
disintegrates ... will the Universe be brought to perfection in pure spirit
alone. The utter triumph of spirit over
soul will be but a reflection of evolutionary progress towards a divine
universe, a universe destined to last forever.
All appearances having passed away, only essence
remaining. Such is the way of
evolution - a way that culminates in bliss!
15. But not without the historical struggle that
takes place in the world and that, no matter how sure one may be of the final
outcome, remains of the gravest importance for those of us engaged in it on
behalf of the True, as of truth. The
struggle with the enemy, be he autocratic or democratic,
aristocratic or plutocratic, is never easy; for the alpha side of the Universe
and all that stems from it is tenacious and strong! Those of us privileged to struggle on behalf
of theocracy, particularly the ultimate theocracy of Social Transcendentalism,
will have to struggle long and hard to overcome the reactionary and traditional
enemies of evolutionary progress, whose numbers are legion. We shall have to endure much hardship and make great sacrifices.
But we shall have the consolation of knowing that the current of
evolutionary progress flows on our side, and that, come what may, truth alone
will eventually triumph!
