CHAPTER
FIVE
After lunch the three
guests were invited by Mr Grace to take a stroll with him across some nearby
fields and through the surrounding woods.
Only Mrs Grace stayed behind, apparently to take care of the housework
and attend to any additional guests or callers who
might arrive, as the party of five, including Pauline, set off to savour the
warm afternoon sunshine and leisurely traverse the peaceful countryside.
As previously, Mr Grace, who led the way, devoted most of his
conversational attention to Harding, with whom he appeared to have struck-up a
good relationship - one doubtless owing something to their mutual knowledge of
and concern for art, since it constituted their main topic. But every now and then, as though for form's
sake or to prevent the other two guests from feeling left out, he directed a
few words at Carol and Andrew, included them in his discussion of art or probed
them about their respective interests.
He seemed especially polite towards Carol, even though she didn't go out
of her way to chat with him but remained strangely aloof, as though
the walk was all that really mattered to her and the conversation simply a
tedious distraction from it.
However, for Andrew, who found himself accompanied by Pauline,
the conversation into which he had drifted before lunch was resumed on a
slightly different footing afterwards, as he listened to her quiet but clear
voice expressing various opinions on literature, poetry, writing technique,
etc., and responded, to the limited extent circumstances allowed him, with his own
opinions in due course. Not that he was
particularly keen on listening to what young Miss Grace had to say, nor eager
to contradict or question her views.
Quite the contrary, it was rather a bore to him, since the twelve years
which separated them, their dissimilar temperaments and unequal experience of
writing, rendered intimate, interesting, and educative conversation virtually
impossible. Yet he had to persevere
somehow, pretend he wasn't bored, and thus make some effort to grant the young
woman the pleasure she evidently acquired from walking and talking with 'a
writer'. Besides, if her conversation,
relative to her youth, was somewhat superficial, at least there was the
compensation of her physical attractiveness – an attractiveness which Andrew Doyle
couldn't help noticing and secretly admiring as they strolled along together, a
few yards behind the little group in front.
Yes, there was indeed something about her physical appearance
which gave one pleasure, reminded one of her mother, and caused one to
speculate as to whether she had ever had a lover. No doubt, a pretty creature like her would
have attracted men before now, perhaps even older ones. And not only on account of her classical face
or long dark hair, either. Her body was,
to all appearances, by no means lacking in feminine charms, now somewhat
paradoxically clothed in a tight-fitting pair of quality denims which amply
sufficed to highlight her highly seductive rump and womanly thighs, with the
addition of a semi-transparent nylon vest such as could only draw attention to
her breasts, nestling snugly in a white brassiere edged with frills. To be sure, she was by no means a slow
developer for her age but, if anything, a shade precocious, suggesting someone
of about twenty - a fact which may have owed more than a little, Andrew
speculated, to her mother's relative maturity, since Mrs Grace must have been
in her late thirties or early forties at the time of Pauline's birth.
But her body had evidently developed way ahead of her mind, which
was very decidedly that of an eighteen-year-old. And it was to her mind, rather than her
attractive body, that Andrew was obliged to give most of his attention, as they
trailed along behind the trio in front and continued their predominantly
literary conversation. However, there
were periodic breaks in it which enabled him to return to his private thoughts
or overhear snippets of conversation from the leading group, snippets which, at
times, bordered on the ridiculous, as Harding and his critic friend continued
to exchange views on art with a conservatism and reactionary tone which the
writer had by now come to expect. What
Carol thought of it all, he couldn't know for sure. Yet it was becoming sufficiently apparent,
from the stand-offish nature of her relationship to the others, that she wasn't
particularly impressed. No doubt, she
would have been more a part of the scene had they been discussing models or
modelling. But Mr Grace could hardly be
expected to do that! Beyond the world of
art he seemed to know very little and not to care for very much. His life was dominated by his criticisms, and
it was his role as an art critic which made his life bearable. Without them he would be nothing, reduced in
size to the level of an ordinary man, an intellectually insignificant man. Needless to say, he couldn't afford to
forsake them, to run the risk of becoming or appearing ordinary - least of all
in front of an artist! And to take an
interest in other matters, to squander too much time on the concerns of other
professions, would have been to do just that, to become ordinary, to forsake
his role - in short, to become an amateur.
No, Henry Grace had no intentions of sacrificing his professional pride
and status for the sake of a young woman who preferred modelling to art! Besides, bearing in mind Harding's commitment
to painting, she was outnumbered 2:1, a fact which spoke eloquently for
itself. Two people's professional
self-esteem couldn't possibly be sacrificed for the sake of one person's,
particularly when that person was a relatively insignificant model. Common sense forbade!
Yes, and it was also common sense which forbade Andrew from
launching out, at various times in the afternoon's proceedings, with a defence
of modern art, and impressing upon the other two men the antiquated, not to say
futile, nature of their opinions. For if
he had, he would almost certainly have compromised himself in his host's eyes,
deeply wounded his next-door neighbour, and embarrassed the young woman whose
company he was obliged to entertain, with an overriding consequence that the
walk would have been thoroughly spoilt.
So he wisely restrained the impulse to champion the cause of abstraction
and retained, instead, a discreet silence on the issue which, with better effect,
might be broken at some more propitious opportunity. Like, perhaps, when he was questioned on his
own views and obliged to do himself proper justice in consequence.
It was towards tea-time when, tired and sunburnt, they returned from
their country stroll. Meanwhile Philip
Grace, the son of the household, had returned from his morning visit to a
neighbouring friend and was on-hand to greet the guests as, once more, they entered the large detached house via its imposing
front door. Unlike his sister, this
young
In addition to this athletic and serious-looking young man who,
in-between casting shy glances at Carol, endeavoured to strike-up a
conversation with Harding, the gathering had also been augmented by the
presence of a certain Edwin Ford - a short, stocky, dark-eyed young man who
transpired to being the neighbouring friend whom Philip Grace had gone to visit
that very day, and who duly introduced himself as a fellow-undergraduate.
"What subject are you reading?" Andrew politely
inquired of him in due course.
"Philosophy," he replied, with a slightly ingratiating
smile. "I'll soon be in my third
year, unlike Philip here, who is due to begin his second shortly. But we've known each other since we were so
high (here he lowered a horizontal hand to the height of about three feet from
the floor), and although he's at Oxford and I'm at Cambridge, we still continue
to see each other during vacations. As
you probably realize, we're both on vacation at present - at any rate, as far
as legitimate absence from college is concerned!" He smiled anew, as though to provide a
visible full-stop to his statement.
Then, by way of changing the subject, asked Andrew whether he was the
artist everybody had been talking about?
"No, I'm a writer actually," the latter confessed,
wondering who the 'everybody' could be.
"Of mostly philosophical tendency," he added, in an effort
both to preclude the student from asking what type and simultaneously curry
favour with him.
"Oh, how interesting!" Edwin exclaimed. "Not Marxist, by any chance?"
"No, not exactly," Andrew replied, a slight
embarrassment in the presence of the others taking the place of the weariness
he had felt, the moment before, at the prospect of being obliged to go through
what he had already gone through with Pauline all over again.
"In point of fact, he's a socialist and a transcendentalist,"
the latter suddenly remarked, coming to his rescue. "A sort of socialistic
transcendentalist."
Andrew Doyle's embarrassment shot up a few degrees, with the
reception of this statement, and he automatically cast a furtive glance in the
general direction of the other group - for, in effect, two groups had formed -
to see if he could detect any visible change in their collective
demeanour. But they seemed not to have
heard or, at any rate, been affected by it.
"A socialist and a transcendentalist?" Edwin duly
exclaimed, his loud tone-of-voice betraying a degree of astonishment which
caused Andrew further psychological discomfiture as, with less than steady
gaze, he noted its effect on the other group - an effect of bemused curiosity
which prompted one or two of them to turn their head in his direction, as
though to say: 'Well, what's all the fuss about then?' Oh, how he wished, at this moment, that he
hadn't told Pauline so much about himself during the course of their walk that
afternoon! His lack of tact in one
context had certainly not compensated him for his excess of it in another. Quite the contrary! But it was evident, by the startled
expression on the chubby face of the philosophy student before him, that an
answer or, at any rate, explanation was expected.
"Yes," he at length admitted, doing his level best to
ignore whatever curiosity certain members of the other group might still be
displaying at this point, and looking at the expressive face of the student in
question in as calm and collected a manner as possible. "I happen to subscribe to both."
"Do you mean to tell me that you subscribe to atheistic
socialism and God-bound transcendentalism simultaneously?" Edwin objected,
still manifestly incredulous.
"Of course not!" Andrew retorted, becoming slightly
defensive. "I don't believe,
however, that socialism need necessarily be opposed to religion. On the contrary, I believe that it should
eventually serve our spiritual aspirations by complementing Transcendental
Meditation."
"Then you're definitely no Marxist," declared Edwin,
suddenly appearing a shade offended.
"For, as you may know, Marx warned his followers to be on their
guard against transcendentalism, as constituting a threat to socialism. Anyone who puts salvation in the sky instead
of here on earth, and thereby discounts atheism, is a threat to
socialism."
"Oh, I quite agree," Andrew conceded, too much
committed to the argument he had entered into with the philosophy student to be
able to pull out or change mental track.
"But, even so, Marx had a rather mundane personality, didn't
he? You couldn't very well expect a man
of his corpulent type to think particularly highly of transcendentalism,
whatever he considered it to be.
Somehow, he doesn't strike me as the meditating type. He's much too materialistic and
intellectual."
"Well, that doesn't detract anything from the claims of
Marxism, does it?" Edwin hotly retorted, his face betraying signs of
impatience, even embarrassment, by a faint colouring of the skin. "The Marxist viewpoint is still the
Marxist viewpoint, whether or not he was too materialistic."
Andrew nodded vaguely.
"Oh, I quite agree," he repeated. "But it's a rather limited one, all the
same. After all, just because a fat man
of German-Jewish descent proclaims that transcendentalism is something to be
guarded against, it doesn't necessarily follow that transcendentalism's
bad. On the contrary, it more than
likely indicates that such a man wasn't qualified to either understand or
practise it, given the limitations of his predominantly endomorphic temperament
and build, in the, er, Sheldonian sense of the term," he added, alluding
to one of the American psychologist W.H. Sheldon's principal physiological
classifications.
"But, damn it all! ‘God is dead’" the student, echoing
Nietzsche, vigorously objected, "and, in a sense, has been so for some two
thousand years. All this nonsense about
transcendentalism, spiritual aspirations, TM, and so on, is irrelevant,
out-of-date, passé. You remind me of Philip when you speak of
such things. Christianity and Christ are
inimical to socialism, incompatible with it.
The co-operative society must be atheistic!"
"Thoroughly mistaken," asseverated Andrew, who had by
now cast off his remaining inhibitions and was in a fighting mood. "And I wasn't alluding to Christ when I
spoke of transcendentalism, but to the Holy Ghost."
"What difference does it make?" Edwin retorted. "God is God no matter what you call
Him."
Andrew had expected some such mistaken opinion, and sighed in
heartfelt exasperation at it.
"Quite wrong!" he averred.
"The God of the pagans, or pre-Christians, was the Father, or
whatever you'd like to call their equivalent of the Creator, the so-called
Almighty. The God of the Christians is -
or, if you prefer, was - Jesus Christ.
And, finally, the God of the transcendentalists, or post-Christians,
will be - and for some already is - the Holy Ghost. The Blessed Trinity, which Christianity in
its wisdom and foresight has bequeathed to us, isn't strictly a simultaneous
phenomenon but, rather, a successive one.
It was initiated by Christianity because, as the middle development in
Western man's evolution, Christianity was in an historical position to both
look back towards the earliest stage of man's religious evolution as well as
forward towards the future stage of it - the stage which we, in the West, have
already entered upon, though not officially or with unanimous consent, during
the course of the past 100-150 years, and most especially in the latter-half of
the twentieth century. In effect, we in
the post-industrialized West live in the age of the Holy Ghost, and, if the
human kind is to survive any subsequent apocalyptic upheaval, we'll
progressively continue to do so, to grow ever more attached to the
superconscious as opposed to the ego."
Edwin Ford was completely taken-aback by this barrage of
evolutionary theology from the comparative stranger in front of him. What was all this nonsense about the
superconscious, age of the Holy Ghost, middle development in Western man's
evolution, etc? He hadn't read anything
about such things during the course of his studies at Cambridge! Was this philosophy, too? He looked at Pauline as though for support,
confirmation that he was dealing with a madman or at least a fool. But she merely stared back at him, as if to
say: 'Well, what d'you find strange about all that?' Even Philip Grace, who had disengaged himself
from the other group and come over to join them, showed no signs of being
outraged, baffled, or amused. Quite the
contrary, he merely requested Andrew, in a voice which bespoke genuine
curiosity, to make some effort to explain, in greater detail, what he meant by
'the superconscious as opposed to the ego', together with certain other related
aspects of his philosophy.
"Yes," Pauline seconded, deferring to her brother.
"Enlighten us accordingly!"
Only too willing to oblige, Andrew cleared his throat before
proceeding to deliver the broad outlines of his philosophy concerning the
progress of human evolution from the subconscious to the superconscious. It was something which, to varying extents,
affected men everywhere, though the example of Europe, particularly Western
Europe, was most apt because relevant to everyone present. "Beginning in the subconscious, in
subservience to sensuous nature," he began, "man's consciousness was
relatively dark - the darker the more sensuous the type of nature man found
himself surrounded and, to a large extent, dominated by. One might argue that his ego, or conscious
mind, was composed of approximately three-quarters subconscious and one-quarter
superconscious, making it decidedly lopsided on the side of the former. Consequently fear predominated over hope,
hate over love, sadness over happiness, pain over pleasure, evil over good, and
illusion over truth, so that a religious sense reflecting this negative
imbalance necessitated a religion in which God, as 'Creator', was dark and
cruel, requiring regular propitiation. For
this act of propitiation blood sacrifices, also dark and cruel, were deemed
appropriate - the more prized and important, from a human standpoint, the
greater was thought their prospect of success.
Witness the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Old Testament, the
record of first-stage man in the Middle East.
Witness the example of the Aztecs in South America. Think of the Druids in ancient Britain, who
are more relevant to us. Wherever man
has been under subconscious domination in subservience to nature, a similar
pattern of blood sacrifice, founded on fear of God, has followed suit. For the subconscious is dark, and it's to
'the dark gods' - which, incidentally, D.H. Lawrence seems to have found so
attractive - that it inevitably leads.
One might say that, at this stage of evolution, God is essentially
hateful, a power to be feared and, if possible, won over to one's side. The sacrifice follows as a matter of course.
"But, fortunately, man doesn't come to a halt, like the
beasts, but continues to evolve," Andrew went on, "and through the
progress he makes in the expansion of his settlements or villages into towns,
he manages to push the sensuous influence of nature away from himself to an
extent which makes it possible for him to live in a more balanced psychological
condition, and thus relate to a dualistic rather than a pre-dualistic religious
framework, a framework manifesting itself in the antithesis between a bad god
and a good god which, in Christian terms, is equivalent to the Devil and Christ
- the one representative of the sensual, the other of the spiritual. It's after the transcendent example of
Christ, of course, that human evolution tends, and consequently it's the duty
of all Christians to live as much as possible in His light, to fight shy of the
Devil's darkness. For Satan, symbolizing
the mundane, would drag one back to pre-Christian paganism, which would
conflict with one's deepest interests in spiritual salvation. Willy-nilly, with the Church's guidance, one
must follow the example of Christ, the man-god whom allegiance to the psychic
balance between the subconscious and superconscious minds had made possible,
since that balance constitutes the highpoint of the ego and accordingly entails
an anthropomorphic projection perfectly relative to one's self-centredness as
man in his prime as man.
"But Christianity, being dualistic, doesn't stop at the
dichotomy between Satan and Christ," Andrew continued, warming to his
thesis, "but also, and in another context, divides the Saviour Himself
into two tendencies, the evil and the good, so that to some extent - though to
a lesser extent than in the pre-Christian context of a god of hate - one must
fear Him as well, and thus, by living in His light, avoid the consequences of
His wrath at the Last Judgement. For
wrath, on whatever grounds, appertains to the realm of hate, the transmission
of negative vibrations through anger, and hate, as we all know, is evil. But it isn't, however, the same kind of evil
as generally manifested in and represented by the Devil, being a spiritual rather
than purely sensual evil, and therefore is of less consequence, in the
Christian schemata, than the latter. For
the essential dichotomy of Christianity is between the sensual and the
spiritual, not between hate and love.
Thus the essence of Christ is His opposition to Satan, and this is what
makes Him the spiritual leader of all true Christians.
"But man, as I've already said, doesn't remain static but
continues to evolve," Andrew went on, warming still further to his
subject, "and thus his towns gradually expand into cities or, at any rate,
some of them do, so that the sensuous influence of nature is at a still-further
remove from him and, in accordance with the artificial dictates of his
predominantly urban environment, he begins to forsake the balance between the
subconscious and superconscious minds in favour of the latter. Hence the ego, reflecting that former
balance, goes into decline as more and more of the light of superconscious
allegiance makes its mark on his psychology, and he begins to transcend
dualism. Yes, now one might argue that
he's approximately one-quarter subconscious and three-quarters superconscious,
decidedly biased in favour of the latter and therefore not in a psychic
position to relate to the Christian dichotomy between Devil and God, sensual
and spiritual, hate and love, Christ the Banisher and Christ the Redeemer - in
short, to anthropomorphism. No, it's at
this third stage of his evolution that he turns, in response to his predominating
spirituality in a superconsciously biased psyche, to the creation of a god of
love, a god who doesn't require to be propitiated with blood sacrifices or
confessions or prayers or charitable deeds, a god who doesn't judge and condemn
to eternal torment those who haven't followed his example on earth, a god who
doesn't take the form of man, a god who isn't opposed by an evil god of
sensuous predilection but, rather, a god who is wholly transcendent, and thus
completely beyond the realm of nature.
This god will be the Holy Ghost, the third and highest so-called
'Person' of the Blessed Trinity - though, should you wish to avoid Christian
terminology, with its anthropomorphic limitations, you might prefer to follow
Teilhard de Chardin's lead and refer to Him or, rather, it as the Omega Point, and
thus transcend purely Trinitarian connotations.
The essential thing to remember, however, is that this god, reflecting
our growing allegiance to the superconscious, is a god of love and that,
because it's non-human, because the projection of human traits, whether
physical or psychical, is irrelevant, one doesn't pray to it, as a Christian
would pray to Christ, but simply experiences what is potentially it ... as the
essential self within the psyche, an intimation of the Infinite which man, in
consequence of his superconscious mind, is enabled to experience, a condition
of higher awareness wherein all distinctions of good and evil, love and hate,
are transcended in an all-embracing peace - the peace that 'surpasses all
understanding' and, hence, intellectual ego."
"Yes, it's essentially the age of the Holy Ghost,"
Andrew pressed on, oblivious of all but his immediate audience, "the age
when man turns away from his former dualism towards the realm of peace, and so draws
one stage closer to the culmination of his evolution in transcendent bliss,
which is, of course, the condition of Heaven.
Christianity has pointed him towards this culmination for centuries, it
has held up to him the dual image of Hell and Heaven, symbolizing the
beginnings and endings of evolution, and placed Christ in the middle of this
development. One might say that it is a
terribly long journey from the tortuous writhing of the Damned in Hell to the
blissful passivity of the Saved in Heaven!
The juxtaposition of the two states in painterly depictions of the Last
Judgement doesn't so much signify a simultaneous occurrence - contrary to what
one might at first suppose - as the furthest possible remove from such
simultaneity. Strictly speaking, the
Saved are no longer human but godly, just as the Damned are not yet human but
beastly. And in-between lies man who, in
the long journey from the beastly to the godly, is now closer, when not either
dualistic or pre-dualistic, whether on 'neo' or 'classical' terms, to the
latter than ever before, more transcendental, and hence spiritual, than ever
before, and thus closer to that salvation which resides in the post-human, not
to say humanist, Beyond. An ever-increasing
number of us are no longer, from a species point of view, in our prime as
men, but are growing progressively lopsided on the side of the godly, ever
more spiritual as the decades pass. This
is certainly something to be grateful for, since it indicates that the promise
of Christianity is being fulfilled and that it is we, in this post-Christian
age, who are the ones actively engaged in fulfilling it. As far as the more spiritually evolved of us
are concerned, the example of Christ has served its day ..."
"Antichrist!" a voice suddenly erupted from an area of
the room to Andrew's left. It belonged,
as the writer quickly and somewhat disconcertingly discovered, to Mr Grace who,
together with Robert Harding and Carol Jackson, had also been listening to the
impromptu sermon he had delivered to the three young people in front of
him. He blushed perceptibly as the
realization of this fact dawned upon him, and turned a rather startled face
towards his accuser. "How dare you
come into my house and preach this kind of nonsense to a man who is a Christian
and has endeavoured to educate his children accordingly!" Mr Grace
protested. "Who-the-devil d'you
think you are?"
His nerves violently on-edge, Andrew retorted: "If I'm he
whom you accuse me of being, then I don't see that you should necessarily
regard me with hate and suspicion, as though I were some dangerously evil man
set upon destroying the spiritual life and reducing humanity to the level of
beasts. On the contrary, if I express
views to the effect that Christianity is no longer relevant to the age in which
we live, it isn't because I regard it as a source of goodness which I,
ostensibly an evil man, wish to oppose and, if possible, make a contribution
towards crushing. Rather, it's because,
as a man very much on the side of goodness, light, truth, the fulfilment of the
Christian prophecy, etc., I recognize, in response to the nature of the age,
that it is being transcended anyway, and that this is perfectly just, since
strictly in accordance with the progress of human evolution towards a higher
spirituality founded on the superconscious.
I don't turn against Christ because I am evil, as you, in your
antiquated traditionalism, would seem to suppose, but simply because I'm
evidently more enlightened than you, a person who is apparently at home with
anthropomorphism and the consequent ego-projection of human traits, some of
them rather nasty, onto the god you serve."
"More enlightened than me?" Mr Grace vigorously
demurred. "How dare you say such a
thing! Don't you know that I'm a
world-famous critic, a man who deserves respect and deference on account of his
status, age, wealth, class, not to mention his role as your host? Who are you to judge whether you're more
enlightened than me?" It was
evident, by this pathetically egocentric outburst, that Henry Grace had lost
all sense of restraint, of dignified perseverance, and would have been capable
of sinking to almost any level of abusive fury.
There was a titter of laughter from Edwin Ford, and Andrew
noticed that Harding was glaring at him.
But the other people in the room showed no particular emotion at this
point, being content merely to await whatever response he should decide upon
with a reserved demeanour.
"I wasn't specifically intending to flatter myself or to
criticize you when I spoke like that," the writer at length responded in a
pacificatory tone-of-voice. "I was
simply endeavouring to state a fact which would seem to be borne-out by your
professed allegiance to Christianity and consequent adherence to dualism rather
than to transcendentalism. In actuality,
however, I would wager anything that, like a majority of your kind, you aren't
really a Christian at all but more of a Christian transcendentalist, being
midway between Christ and the Holy Ghost."
Mr Grace, however, wasn't to be mollified by such a wager. "I am a Christian," he asserted, as
though to defend himself from some unsavoury accusation. "I attend church once a week, believe in
Christ, and look forward to meeting the Saviour face-to-face in the
Afterlife."
Andrew vaguely nodded his head, as though in weary anticipation
of some such admission. "But do you
sincerely believe that Christ is all there is to Western man's concept of God,
that Christ is the be-all-and-end-all of human evolution? Deep down, do you really think one cannot
evolve beyond Christ?"
"Yes, I do," Mr Grace averred, though, perhaps
understandably, without much conviction.
He hesitated a moment, then continued: "Of course, I accept the
Holy Ghost as the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, but ..."
"Ah, so you do acknowledge the fact that there's something
above Christ," Andrew interposed, with an expression of triumph on his
lean face. "You are prepared to admit
to the validity of the Holy Ghost?"
"By all means," Mr Grace confirmed. "But I don't see what that has to do
with it. After all, I believe in Christ,
the Son of God Who ..."
"Oh, of course you do!" Andrew interposed again,
growing slightly impatient with his host's theological conservatism, the
product, no doubt, of a sheep-like acquiescence in what he had been taught many
years before and had not bothered to question in the meantime. "Yet that doesn't mean to say you can't
have transcendental sympathies, or that Christianity is the final stage of
man's religious evolution. Quite the
reverse, there are a lot of people these days who, just because they attend
church once a week and pay lip service to Christ, imagine they're genuine
Christians when, if the truth were known, they're incapable of a genuinely
Christian faith and attitude to life because closer in reality to being
transcendentalists. They're caught
between two worlds, two stages of man's religious evolution, and are
consequently less Christian than they may think."
Mr Grace frowned sullenly, doubtless to distance himself from
being implicated in any such ambiguity, but Andrew prevented him from saying
anything by raising his hand in mild rebuff and continuing: "Now don't
think I'm condemning them for that, since it's only to be expected at this
transitional juncture in time that a lot of consciously Christian people should
be unconsciously less Christian than they may think, given the fact that
they're subject, like most other people, to the anti-natural influence of the
artificial environments of our big cities, and therefore aren't quite as finely
balanced between the subconscious and the superconscious as a genuine
Christian, living in the heyday of Christianity, would be. And if, for that reason, they're less
Christian, well then, they can only be more transcendental, which is a good
thing. For just as a
transcendentalist-proper is on a higher level of spiritual evolution than a
Christian transcendentalist, so, in a paradoxical sort of way, the latter is on
a higher spiritual level than a Christian-proper. In point of fact, most latter-day Protestant
sects are effectively Christian transcendentalist, in contrast to the Catholic
Church, which puts more emphasis on the feminine, viz. the Virgin Mary, and on
propitiation, viz. confession, and is thereby closer, in essence, to paganism,
to what preceded Christianity, even when one discounts the sublimated
cannibalism of the Mass, wherein the body and blood of Christ are sacramentally
consumed. One might say that the
fundamental difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is to do with a
distinction between early Christianity and late Christianity, as between
Christianity-proper which, with its beingful deference to the Virgin Mary, is
somewhat Buddhist in its accommodation of sentience to the world, and Christian
transcendentalism which, with its existential crucifix, transcends the world to
some extent, if only materialistically so and, hence, with effect to the
intellect primarily. Thus if you're a
Roman Catholic ..."
"My family and I am Baptist!" declared Henry Grace
with solemnity.
"Well then, you're certainly more transcendental,"
Andrew rejoined, offering his adversary a confirmatory smile. "You don't set much store by the Blessed
Virgin, and you don't make a point of regularly confessing your sins to a
priest. You have, it seems to me, a more
optimistic concept of God, which is exemplified by the fact that you don't go
in any great fear of Him. Why, He might
almost be a god of love, the way you trust Him not to punish you for being
opposed to confession. But not quite
because, being partly Christian, you still contrive to anthropomorphize God and
thus relate, in varying degrees, to Christ.
You still acknowledge a dualistic framework to some extent, though
obviously to a lesser extent than the genuine Christian - assuming, for the
sake of argument, that there are in fact any such people around these
days. For it goes without saying that if
the modern age, with its large-scale industrialization and widespread
urbanization, isn't particularly friendly towards Protestantism, it's even less
friendly towards Catholicism, which initially flourished in a much-less urban
environment - indeed, in a predominantly rural one, and was accordingly more
naturalistic. But all this is slightly
beside-the-point, a point I trust I made sufficiently clear to you when I said
that our evolution is leading us towards a higher spirituality founded upon the
superconscious, and it's therefore right and proper that Christianity, of
whatever description, should be left behind as a matter of course. Thus if you see me as an antichrist, Mr
Grace, I'm not in the least ashamed of it, nor in any way conscious that I'm
holding back evolutionary progress. On
the contrary, I'm only anti-Christian to the extent that I'm
pro-transcendental. I'm not a Christian
but a transcendentalist, a man of the Holy Ghost, as I hope to have made
conclusively evident by now."
Mr Grace refused to comment, but Edwin Ford, who during the
course of Andrew's explication had retained a discreet if resentful silence,
suddenly reverted to his earlier concern with Marxism and the correlative
assertion that a socialist society should be atheistic. He saw no future, he said, for the type of
person Andrew seemed to be so keen on defending, and flatly proclaimed himself
in favour of atheistic socialism - not, it might be noted, to the overall
pleasure of Henry Grace and Robert Harding who, at this unhappy juncture,
simultaneously expressed an implicit disapproval of the subject by reverting to
a discussion of their own - one, needless to say, on art. "The fact is that modern man,"
Edwin continued, ignoring the disturbance to his right, "is outgrowing the
illusions of the past and evolving, in consequence, towards a secular society
in which God, however you conceive of Him, has absolutely no place. Salvation is in our own hands, not in those
of an illusory deity, and will only come about when we attain to the communist
millennium, having, in the meantime, abolished competitiveness and established
a classless society founded on co-operation."
"Oh, I entirely agree," said Andrew, in enthusiastic
response to the latter part of the student's argument. "It is important to mankind's
future welfare that the co-operative ideals of socialism should flourish. For just as religion passes through three
distinct stages, so, too, does politics - beginning with royalism, evolving to
liberalism, and culminating in socialism."
Both Edwin and Philip looked puzzled. "How d'you mean?" the latter asked.
"I mean," Andrew confidently replied, "that
politics, like religion, corresponds to the nature of the environment in which
a given people happen to find themselves, corresponds, if you prefer, to their
psychic disposition in relation to it, so that a people predominantly existing
in the subconscious will have a different political bias from a people for whom
the superconscious has come to play a greater role. Now if subservience to the subconscious
results in royalism, genuine royalism, that is, not the neo-royalism and/or
fascism we have seen so much of in recent decades but a pre-democratic
authoritarianism which emphasizes differences of rank, wealth, race,
intelligence, etc., and is distinctly competitive, then the converse situation
... of allegiance to the superconscious ... results in socialism, in a politics
which strives to establish equality, abolishing differences of rank, wealth,
race, intelligence, etc., and encouraging co-operation. Well, just as our spiritual evolution from
the beastly to the godly embraces a compromise position in-between paganism and
transcendentalism en
route which, as Christianity, reflects man in his prime as
man, so our material evolution likewise embraces a compromise position
in-between royalism and socialism en route which, as liberalism, also
reflects man in his dualistic prime. Now
just as Christianity reaches its peak while the dualistic tension is strongest
and man is most finely balanced between the subconscious and the superconscious
in his ego, so liberalism reaches a peak while the tension between
competitiveness and co-operativeness, democratic royalism and democratic
socialism, is greatest, and the political battle accordingly most finely
balanced.
"It has been claimed, incidentally, that liberalism is
incapable of producing great leaders - a view, if I may say so, which is really
quite mistaken," Andrew continued, taking his exposition to a new
level. "For it's certainly capable
of producing them while in the ascendant or at its peak, as witness men like
Gladstone and Shaftesbury. But as soon as
it begins to decline, the odds are stacked against its doing so. Now the further it declines, the more
liberalism parts company, in other words, with its former dualistic balance and
becomes progressively lopsided on the side of the Left, the less chance there
is that it will produce great leaders, since they only appear, as a rule, when
the battle between the Right and the Left is at its height, not when one
doesn't have to exert oneself overmuch because the balance has been tipped so
far in one's favour that the sailing, if I may use a sporting analogue, is
smoothest. Political leadership always
requires a strong opposition if it's to distinguish itself."
"Yes, but what does all this have to do with Marxism?"
Edwin wanted to know, showing signs of impatience with Andrew's
contention. "I don't doubt that
socialism evolves out of liberalism.
What I'm interested in establishing with you is the fact that 'God is
dead' and the drive towards the communist millennium accordingly under
way."
Andrew Doyle felt somewhat annoyed with this cocky young
Cambridge undergraduate for not having given ground to any appreciable extent
on his misguided conviction that socialism and transcendentalism were
incompatible, even after all the efforts he had put himself through to describe
the three principal stages of religious evolution and to align them, so far as
possible, with corresponding political stages.
No doubt, young Ford was of such a distinctly political persuasion as
not to be able to abide the thought of religion, or the prospect of spiritual
aspirations, still figuring in people's lives.
Like Marx, he put all or most of his eggs in the basket of socialism and
left them there.
But was he wrong? Yes and
no. Yes, because politics weren't
everything and couldn't be expected to bring one to spiritual salvation in
transcendent bliss. No, because he was
to a significant extent the victim of his temperament, his physiological type,
possibly even his race, and couldn't be expected to properly relate to those of
a dissimilar constitution. The world had
need of men who would dedicate most of their energies to politics, who saw
salvation largely if not wholly in material terms, if only to ensure that
politics weren't ignored. Likewise, it
had need of the opposite kind of men, men who, for a variety of reasons, not
least of all temperamental, would dedicate themselves primarily to the cause of
spiritual advancement. Yet it also had
need of men like Andrew, who, being more temperamentally balanced between the
material and the spiritual, realized that, strictly speaking, the one couldn't
exist without the other, and that it was a rash presumption on the part of the
temperamentally lopsided to suppose the contrary - namely that only their individual concerns
mattered, not those of their opponents.
Taken to extremes, this would lead to mass purges of people who, for a
variety of personal reasons, couldn't be expected to share one's views, to
abandon their transcendentalism, shall we say, in the name of Marxism, and thus
subscribe to a society based solely on politics and/or economics. Rather than being accepted on their own
temperamental standing as a legitimate contribution to the overall welfare of
society or, at any rate, to a quite considerable section of it, such people
would probably be regarded as fools, if not class enemies, and be liquidated
for the good of Marxism. Which of course
would be partly true, since it would be for the good of Marxism. But not for the good of human progress! Not as a contributory factor to the
culmination of evolution in the subsequent post-human millennium! It would suit only one section of humanity -
people whose mundane temperaments permitted them to regard material concerns as
the be-all-and-end-all of mankind's salvation, who conceived of the Millennium
solely in terms of economic co-operation, decent wages, council estates,
equality of opportunity, freedom from want, etc., with never a thought for the
deepest and most important needs of mankind - those of the spirit. Man, apparently, was to be reduced to a beast
who simply required to be well-housed and well-fed, provided with a decent
kennel and regular meat. But could man
be so reduced? Was it likely that
progress demanded of man that he became less spiritual than of old, that
progress signified a regression to pagan criteria - nay, even a complete
elimination of man's spiritual potential?
It seemed unlikely! If
anything, progress could only mean a refinement on and improvement of his
spiritual potential, a better and more sensible way of satisfying it, of
encouraging it to develop, according to the capacities of the individual. Man was not to regress to a level scarcely
above the beasts, with never a thought for anything beyond his material
well-being and future survival. On the
contrary, he had to progress one stage closer to the godlike. After all, even 2000 years ago it was
acknowledged that man did not live by bread alone. How much more so was it the case now! How much more so would it be the case in
future!
No, the Marxist claim certainly had a point so far as outgrowing
the Christian god was concerned. But it
was decidedly mistaken if it thought that men should outgrow the concept of
spiritual salvation altogether! If God was dead, it should not be
taken to imply that God per se, or the Holy Ghost, was dead (since, in Andrew's
view, this God didn't as yet properly exist), but only the Christian way of
conceiving of God - the anthropomorphic, relativistic concept of God as Jesus
Christ, based on the ego projections of dualistic man, or man balanced between
the subconscious and the superconscious during that time he lived in a
compromise position between nature and civilization in what has been termed, by
philosophers of history like Spengler, a Culture. But if Western Culture was in decline, as
Spengler contended, then modern man was arguably on the rise, up beyond the
cultural phase of evolution towards the transcendental phase, in which the
superconscious considerably predominated over the subconscious, and the ego, at
its height while the dualistic balance still prevailed, declines in proportion
to the imbalance in favour of the superconscious. Thus there is progressively less motivation
for anthropomorphic projections, and consequently the Christian god is
transcended.
But not the Holy Ghost, Ultimate Reality, the Omega Point, or
whatever one would like to call the true concept of God which takes Christ's
place. There can be no question of one's
discarding that! For it is only through
progressive allegiance to that part of the psyche which presages the Infinite
that man will eventually attain to his spiritual salvation in transcendent
bliss, and thus enter the post-human millennium, that heaven-on-earth where
only peace will reign. The Christian
prophecy of salvation will indeed be fulfilled, though not in strictly
Christian or symbolical terms, but in post-Christian and hence literal terms,
such as are readily acceptable to an age in which truth must increasingly
prevail over illusion and ultimately, at the climax to our evolution,
completely triumph over the illusory - to whatever pertains, in short, to the
subconscious mind, the sensual, and the worldly. It was closer and closer to the godly that we
were heading, not closer to the beastly!
And because of this, the true concept of God was superior to anything
which had preceded it. (Note that one
can have a true concept of God without believing in the existence of God, i.e.
through refusing to confuse what is potentially this God, in the higher reaches
of the superconscious, with what will truly become divine at the climax of
evolution, following spiritual transcendence.
One can thus be an atheist and an upholder of
God-in-the-process-of-formation at the same time!)
Yet while the confusions resulting from and attendant upon the
transition from one concept or stage of God to another continued to exist, as
they would doubtless do until such time as the transition had been officially
outgrown, it was understandable, if regrettable, that purely materialistic
sentiments took possession of so many people and induced them to suppose that
religion was a closed issue. The fact of
Edwin Ford's believing that politics, and politics alone, would suffice to take
care of mankind's future welfare ... was by no means an uncommon assumption,
since one effectively shared by thousands, if not millions, of fundamentally
well-intentioned, though essentially deluded, people who took the gospel of
Marx and kindred Socialists too seriously.
Whether or not he liked it, socialism would eventually have to serve
transcendentalism, the Commissar, in Koestlerian parlance, would have to
subordinate himself to the Yogi, so that, thanks to co-operative well-being on
the material plane, man would be in the best possible position to develop his
spiritual potential and thereby prepare himself for that long-awaited
transformation from the human to the godlike, from man to superman, which would
constitute the post-human millennium and, hence, salvation-on-earth. Such a joyous climax to the long struggle
humanity had waged through the ages in the name of progress would not be
brought about, however, by the Commissars striving to eliminate the Yogis. As Koestler suggested, the predominantly
political temperaments and their religious counterparts would have to work
together for the common good, not battle one another after the fashion of
adversaries! The co-operative society
really had to be co-operative, unwilling to tolerate or sanction those divisive
dualities out of which, thank goodness, man was slowly evolving. There could be no question of people abusing
one another, like Catholics and Protestants, democratic royalists and
democratic socialists, in the transcendental society. For physical passivity, not conflict, is the key
to salvation - a salvation which, as deliverance from dualism, we were now
closer to than at any previous time in the history of our race.
So it was that Andrew strove to impress upon Edwin the limitations
of his materialistic viewpoint, agreeing with him where agreement was possible,
but strongly repudiating any claims to the effect that socialism should be
regarded as an end-in-itself, without recourse to religion. Clearly, materialistic Marxism had to be
superseded, in due course, by a socialist philosophy not hostile to
transcendentalism ... if what Andrew liked to think of as third-stage life, the
life of post-Christian man, was to get properly off the ground and reasonably
integrated (otherwise humanity would arrive at a dead-end in which the spirit
suffocated beneath the oppressive consistency of materialistic considerations,
cut-off from that higher destiny which alone constituted true salvation). That this was unlikely to happen in the near
future seemed only too obvious. But
eventually, once the world had rid itself of a number of existing conflicts,
there could be no reasonable alternative to the establishment of a new
socialism, one based not on hostility to Christianity, but on an acceptance of
and allegiance to transcendentalism. The
struggle towards the creation of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Grail of religious
striving, would have to be acknowledged - else politics was defeating its own
ends.
"Well," said Edwin at the conclusion to Andrew's
latest speech, part of which he found attractive and even strangely credible,
"what you say may well be true, but I'm damned if I'll submit to any
meditation routine in the meantime. I'd
rather stick to my Marxism and concentrate on damning Christianity or, more
specifically, bourgeois liberalism, with its parliamentary presumptions."
"You're perfectly welcome to," Andrew responded, a
faint smile of knowing resignation in accompaniment, "since no-one is
asking you to wear a coat which doesn't fit.
But I'd be grateful, all the same, if you didn't make the mistake of
damning transcendentalism in the process!"
"Yes, so would I," seconded Philip Grace, breaking the
respectful silence he had maintained, in company with his sister, while Andrew
was delivering his lengthy and, at times, perplexing harangue.
"Bah!" ejaculated the Cambridge undergraduate, with a
certain cynical relish. "You can
keep your heads in the clouds of idealistic illusion, for all I care!"
But before he or anyone could say anything else, Mrs Grace
appeared on the scene, to announce that tea was ready. The time had again arrived for them to take
care of the body!
