PART
TWO: ESSAYS
*
FUTURE
TRANSFORMATIONS
(Or an
attempt to outline a post-human future)
Transcendental
meditation wouldn't suffice to take man to the heavenly Beyond
... of the Omega Absolute, but it would certainly suffice to take him to the
post-Human Beyond ... of the Superman. For the Superman is the evolutionary development immediately above
man, towards which transcendental men are advancing.
With the decline of egocentric religion, the post-egocentric
religion of Transcendentalism becomes the final form religion will take in the
evolutionary history of man. Instead of
praying and singing hymns, like Christians did, the Transcendentalists of the
centuries ahead will directly cultivate their spirit through the medium of
transcendental meditation. They will
learn to meditate and regularly practise meditation in suitably-designed
meditation centres, the institutional successors to churches. Praying, singing, chanting, etc., will have no appeal to them whatsoever. Only the expansion of the superconscious through
meditation will be relevant to them, and this they will prefer to do communally
- as part of a large gathering of fellow Transcendentalists.
Man in his third stage of evolutionary development (the stage
beyond paganism and Christianity) will be succeeded, however, by the Superman,
that is to say, by a brain artificially supported and sustained, with possible
access to artificial hearing, seeing, and speaking
devices, subject to external control.
The Supermen - for there should be many such brains in existence - will
be clustered together in tree-like formations, their brains being sustained and
supported from a central energy source.
There will be numerous tree-like clusters of this nature in existence
throughout the world, and they will each signify a life form antithetical, in
essence, to animals, particularly with reference to such tree-climbing,
tree-inhabiting animals as apes. The
'tree' in question will be artificial, but the brains being supported on it
will be natural and capable of self-identification. Each brain will be a separate Superman, and
all Supermen will be resigned to a communal life, just as apes are resigned to
such a life in the crowded branches of the trees they inhabit. The great antithetical difference, however,
between these two life forms will be that whereas apes are resigned to a
sensual communality, the Supermen will partake of a spiritual communality, and
this spiritual life will constitute the first phase of the post-Human
Millennium, being conditioned and encouraged by the regular intake of
suitably-regulated doses of LSD, or some equivalent synthetic upward
self-transcending, vision-inducing stimulant, which will be externally
administered to the artificially-supported brains by the future equivalent of
priests - the superpriestly spiritual leaders, so to speak, of the Millennium
in question.
Meditation, then, will terminate with the termination of man,
to be superseded by the visionary contemplation, revealed through LSD-type
hallucinogens, of the Superman. Meditation
is fundamentally too naturalistic to be wholly compatible with an advanced
spirituality in a more sophisticated evolutionary context. As evolution progresses, so the lifestyles of
its participants become increasingly artificial, subject to the substitution of
synthetic for natural products and experiences. A being freed, so to speak,
from the natural body wouldn't be qualified to practise yoga, with its
complicated posturings, and neither would he be able to regulate the flow of
oxygen to his brain through the manipulation of various breathing techniques
designed to facilitate increased awareness.
Rather, oxygen would have to be fed to him artificially, through the
medium of special containers, and its flow regulated according to uniform
standards of intake acceptable to the brain commune as a whole. It would pass into the blood vessels of the
various brains, where it would be converted into corpuscles and suitably
exploited in the interests of proper brain functioning. There could be no question of a natural
respiratory system being in use at that point in time, for the lungs would have
'gone the way' of the rest of the body, left behind with the creature known as
man. And, of course, an artificial pump,
replacing the human heart, would serve the brain commune by maintaining a
uniform flow of blood through such artificial vessels as were deemed necessary
to link the pump to the natural blood vessels of the individual brains. The Supermen would never experience the human
failing of heart attacks but, at worst, only a temporary mechanical failure of
the artificial pump which, hopefully, could be quickly repaired - assuming, for
argument's sake, it were to break down in the first place!
The introduction of hallucinogens like LSD into the Supermen's
brains would, of course, have to be through the blood, so we may surmise that
the future equivalent of priests will inject the desired quantities of them
into the artificial blood vessels at salient, predetermined points in the
sustain apparatus, thereby guaranteeing each Superman a uniform,
carefully-regulated dose of the benevolent, mind-expanding synthetic stimulant,
which would be designed to take over from where television and/or meditation
had left off. What follows would be a
sustained period of gentle acclimatization to its vision-inducing properties,
as the Supermen contemplated the jewel-like crystalline images of their
turned-on superconscious. With the termination of 'the trip', which would
probably occur after several hours, the Supermen would be left to sink into
their subconscious minds and either doze or sleep, in the interests of psychic
integrity. The following day, however,
they would be given another 'trip', and so on, until, with a gradual increase of
the dosage to peak levels, they became spiritually ripe for the next
evolutionary transformation - namely from Supermen to Superbeings.
Before I go on to discuss Superbeings, a word or two must be
said about man and his future transformation into Superman. The average transcendental man of the
late-twentieth century is rather like an embryonic superman, and, to be sure,
there are already people living a life which approximates to the one just
outlined and therefore intimates of it.
At the time of writing, I happen to reside next to a couple whom I
understand to be unemployed. They rarely
go out during the day and hardly ever at night.
As a rule, they spend their mornings in bed and their afternoons either
listening to the radio or watching television.
At night they invariably sit in front of their television for several
hours. Now, for me, a quite
conscientious intellectual, their lifestyle appeals to my critical sense and
generally causes me to feel somewhat indignant and even censorious. What right have they, I ask myself, to spend
their days either lying in bed or watching television when I, compelled by a
sense of duty, spend 5-6 hours a day at my writings, with from 1-2 hours study
every evening? Clearly, my moral sense
is offended and I feel tempted to preach to them on the virtue of work,
irrespective of whether or not there may be any work available to such people
under the present economic climate. And
yet my attitude - by no means untypical of people like me - is really quite
beside-the-point and hopelessly one-sided.
I regard my television-addicted neighbours from a reactionary
point-of-view, quite overlooking the more relevant progressive one which, even
if they personally aren't directly aware of it, is at least applicable to the
trend of evolution towards the Superman.
Now since transcendental man is pre-eminently a proletarian phenomenon,
and since the proletariat tend, on the whole, to watch more television than the
bourgeoisie, I must make some attempt, if I'm to do proper justice to this
phenomenon, to view my neighbours' behaviour in the light of contemporary
transcendentalism and thus equate their lifestyle, no matter how alien it may
be to myself, with a proletarian spirituality that is a prelude to the
visionary lifestyle of the Superman.
For, viewed in this light, the hours my neighbours spend in front of
their colour television correspond, on a lower external level, to the hours the
Supermen will spend contemplating the luminous contents of their superconscious
minds, as induced by the higher internal stimulant of LSD. And, of course, the hours they spend in bed,
both before and after television, will correspond to the rest-periods which the
Supermen will require to safeguard their psychic integrity, following the
visionary exigencies of their respective 'trips'. My neighbours are therefore resting, each
night, from their television experiences of the previous day, while preparing
themselves, throughout the morning, for the afternoon and evening viewing
to-come. They are the Supermen in
embryo, and allow me to add, at the risk of scandalizing middle-class
sensibilities, that they are by no means untypical of their class! Perhaps they are just a shade more radical or
thoroughgoing than those who, largely because of job commitments, are obliged
to confine their TV-viewing to the evenings and weekends.... Which
just goes to show that one should be wary of looking at unemployment solely
from a socio-economic point of view, quite overlooking the spiritual or
modernist dimensions which accrue to it and would seem to be compatible with
the unofficial development of transcendentalism in a civilization which, in
regard to the bourgeoisie, is becoming increasingly decadent.
Transcendental man is therefore clearly in evidence in the
context of extensive television-viewing.
Meditation, though undoubtedly relevant to his future development, isn't
the only kind of spiritual stimulus, even if it is an inherently superior kind
to television, by dint of the fact that it expands spirit directly, through
internalizing the mind, rather than indirectly, through the medium of
artificial appearances. Nevertheless the
incentive provided by television for a mild degree of upward self-transcendence
cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to spiritual development, but should be
regarded as a prelude to higher things, the temperaments of some people
probably being such that they could never come to fully appreciate the virtues
of meditation anyway, given that such virtues tend, as a rule, to be
appreciated only by a more sophisticated type of mind in the twentieth century,
and not by what we may call the lumpen proletariat. If television succeeds in gradually leading
the majority towards transcendental meditation, then it will have achieved more
than at first meets the eye! It does at
least condition people to sit still and remain intellectually passive for a
number of hours, which is what meditation also does, albeit minus an external
stimulus and therefore with an emphasis on one's own spiritual resources. But if the general proletariat are closer, in
their dependence on visionary experience, to the future Supermen, then it could
well be that the meditating elite of the present century are closer, in their
self-containment, to the ensuing Superbeings, and will doubtless experience a
higher degree of collective meditation, pending transcendence. But there is no reason why the proletariat
shouldn't indulge in periodic bouts of meditation in due course, even if only
as a supplement to their television-viewing.
Towards the climax of the transcendental civilization the vast majority
of people, of whatever temperament, should be indulging in a degree of
meditation on a regular basis, pending their transformation into Supermen.
When this transformation will be brought about I cannot, as
someone born into the twentieth century, know for certain. Yet if decadence, in one of its principal
manifestations, can be equated with the coming to fruition of the spiritual
development of a given class, a kind of spiritual climax to the overall
cultural or intellectual progress of each succeeding class, and we accept as
fact that the aristocracy attained to the zenith of their spiritual development
towards the end of the sixteenth century and, following their example, the
bourgeoisie towards the end of the nineteenth century, then there would seem to
be some justification for our supposing that the proletariat, i.e. urban men,
will attain to the zenith of their spiritual development some time in the twenty-second
century, and that the transformation from man to Superman will therefore occur
at approximately the same time, which, at the very latest, could be towards the
end of the twenty-second century. Hence
we may reasonably contend that man in his final form has about two centuries to
go, after which time he should be ripe for transformation into the Superman
that will constitute the first phase of millennial life - a phase in which the
brain will be artificially supported and sustained.
With the second phase of millennial life, however, the Supermen
will be transformed, by the technological leadership, into Superbeings, and
will consequently become a new and higher life form, antithetical, in essence,
to plants and especially to trees. No
longer will each brain be capable of self-identification and limited egohood
but, with the removal of the old brain (in which resides the subconscious part
of the psyche), become elevated, instead, to complete superconscious
identification in blissful contemplation of spirit. From being a separate member of a commune of
independent brains, the new-brain Superbeings will become components in a
larger whole (just as the leaves of trees are components in the larger
collective entity known as a tree), and thereupon cease to differentiate
between themselves, to know themselves, in the manner of Supermen, as separate
individuals. These clusters of new
brains will in effect assume the character of one giant entity, and where
previously each brain cluster could be regarded as a commune of individuals,
and thus bear the plural title of Supermen, each new-brain cluster, by
contrast, will constitute a separate Superbeing, the plural being reserved for
reference to whatever number of such clusters may happen to exist in the world
at any given time. So, considered
separately, a Superbeing will constitute a much higher approximation to the
ultimate unity of the Omega Point (de Chardin), and thus reflect an ongoing
evolutionary convergence (in centro-complexification) from the Many to the
One. Furthermore, the new brains of the
Superbeings will doubtless be closer together on the artificial supports than
would have been possible with the larger ego-bound brains of the Supermen, and
will therefore more easily lend themselves to the appearance of a collective
entity - each new brain being inseparable from the whole.
How long it will take before the Supermen can be transformed,
i.e. engineered, into Superbeings ... I cannot of course say. Though there is no reason for one to assume
that the Supermen will last for centuries.
After several decades they would doubtless begin to tire of their LSD or
equivalent hallucinogenic experiences and to long for a higher type of
consciousness, completely beyond the visionary.
The leadership would remain in regular contact with them to ascertain
exactly what their psychic position was at any given time, and would
consequently know when the transformation to the Superbeing was apposite. However, the post-visionary consciousness of
the Superbeing wouldn't be forced upon any brain cluster prematurely. For evolution has to proceed by degrees, as
the Hindu metaphor of reincarnation adequately confirms - the inability of the
devotee's psyche to come to terms with the posthumous Clear Light ... being a
reflection of his egocentric past and necessitating, in the paradoxical logic
of reincarnation, a return to this world, where it is to be hoped that
personal, i.e. evolutionary, progress will better qualify his soul for
unification with the Divine in due course.
Likewise, the actual progress of the Supermen towards the Omega Point
would be a gradual affair, requiring their full acquiescence in
artificially-induced internal visionary experience, before any transformation
to the Superbeing could reasonably be endorsed.
Appearance must precede essence, even when it is internal, and therefore
as spiritualized as possible.
With the eventual removal of the old brain, however, the
liberated new brain would be conscious of nothing but the light of its own
superconscious mind and such a light would be essence, not appearance. It would constitute a higher type of
meditation than anything the more sophisticated transcendental men had known
prior to the post-Human Millennium, being the final form consciousness will take. Eventually - though again it's impossible to
be explicit - this highest collective meditation of the Superbeings should lead
to transcendence, and thus to the establishment, in space, of Spiritual Globes,
which would be the bigger the more spirit they each contained, that is to say,
depending on the number of Superbeings, from whichever part of the planet, that
had attained to transcendence at any given time. Yet these Spiritual Globes would not be the
Omega Point or, rather, Omega Absolute (to drop de Chardin and revert to my
preferred terminology), but that stage of evolution immediately preceding the
establishment of definitive God, which would be ultimate Oneness. The Spiritual Globes issuing from the Superbeings
would constitute an evolutionary antithesis to the planets, or material globes,
and would tend towards one another in the heavenly Beyond. Those which issued from the same part of the
earth would probably coalesce into larger wholes as a matter of course, the
larger Spiritual Globes, composed of the spirit of numerous Superbeings from
any one area of the world, exerting a more compelling attractive influence on
the smaller ones which, in being pulled in their direction, would eventually
bring about the formation of still larger Spiritual Globes until, by a similar
process occurring throughout the Universe over an immensely long period of time
or, rather, eternity, all separate Spiritual Globes had converged together to
establish the Omega Absolute, in complete contrast to the alpha-stemming
divergence of the innumerable stars. And
with the Omega Absolute, evolution would be complete and, following the
disintegration and dissolution of the stars, the Universe become perfect -
perfect in an ultimate unity which would last for ever.
It is therefore my contention that God doesn't yet exist as the
Omega Absolute and won't exist as such until every single Spiritual Globe, from
whichever part of the Universe, had been absorbed into ultimate Oneness some
thousands or even millions of years hence.
Gone are the days when it was possible to be agnostic, contending that
one cannot know for sure whether God, in any ultimate sense, does or doesn't
exist. On the contrary, I believe that
one can know, and this essay
is intended to furnish proof of the fact.
From now on it will be possible for every man to be atheist, for
knowledge has at last put paid to agnostic doubts. Every man will know that, while alpha
absolutes exist, the Omega Absolute is a creation of the future, stemming not
from men but, more directly, from the Spiritual Globes of the heavenly
Beyond. Transcendental man may be a long
way from the realization of that blessed creation at present, but, as a
participator in evolutionary progress, he is certainly tending in the right
direction. When he becomes the Superman
of the post-Human Millennium, he will have entered the eternal plane. For, although such a context is at a
considerable evolutionary remove from the Omega Absolute, his brain won't die, as
does man's, but be artificially supported and sustained through to the
subsequent transformation ... of the Superbeing, until, with transcendence,
spirit becomes completely independent of the brain or, more correctly, new
brain and capable, thereafter, of indefinite self-sustain. Here we are left with the ultimate paradox,
which is that while the Superman won't last for ever, the spirit appertaining
to him, which can be expected to achieve transcendence with the Superbeing,
most certainly will. For
everything must pass but the Omega Absolute, towards which everything tends.
IRISH
AND ENGLISH
Ethnic generalizations
are sometimes misleading, though not necessarily impertinent. The distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Celt
is a particularly revealing one, and, in its extreme manifestations ... between
Protestant Englishmen and Catholic Irishmen, it furnishes us with an objective
understanding of the relative merits and predilections of these two, in many
ways, antithetical peoples.
If there is one word that sums up
Of course, there are several disadvantages and detrimental
consequences from belonging to a people who generally put being above doing in
their scale of values. On the lowest level
such a preference often leads to drunkenness and laziness, an unwillingness or
inability to come properly to terms with the practical demands of life, and no
Englishman needs to be reminded that a significant proportion of Irishmen are
either regularly drunk and unemployed or irregularly drunk and under-employed,
as the case may be! Nor would he need to
be reminded that his ancestors were able to dominate Ireland in consequence of
its comparative military weakness. For
the fact that Irishmen have lived so long under external rule must be regarded
as a further disadvantage of what it means to belong to a people for whom being
takes precedence over doing, and quality thereby prevails over quantity - not
least of all in terms of population density.
Had the Irish been more industrious and pragmatic, they might have
driven out the invader sooner than they did.
But that wasn't to be, and so the yoke of imperial enslavement had to be
endured, in accordance with historical necessity.
Yet this is just the negative side of Irish experience, as
largely appertaining to the masses. For
on the positive side came the intellectual, cultural, and religious
achievements of men of genius such as Burke, Boyle, Swift, Goldsmith, Moore,
Maturin, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce, Synge, Yeats, O'Faollain, O'Casey, and
Beckett. Naturally the English, with
their much larger populations, have produced more writers than the Irish, and
some of them have been very good ones, too.
But, with few exceptions, they haven't produced as many outstanding
writers as the Irish - certainly not in the twentieth century, which, if
anything, marked a turning-point in these two peoples' fortunes, and not just
with regard to creative writing.
Fundamentally the twentieth century was the first post-dualistic century
in history, and since the Irish are nothing if not extreme, it is inevitable
that the twentieth century should have been more to their liking than it has
been, on the whole, to the rather more middle-of-the-road English. If England dominated Irish political life
during the centuries when dualism (particularly in its liberal manifestation)
ruled supreme, then it should come as no surprise to us when we find that, with
the emergence of a post-dualistic age, the Irish have dominated and continue to
dominate English cultural affairs. I
need only city Joyce in respect of the novel, Yeats in respect of poetry,
Starkie in respect of biography, O'Faollain in respect of the short story, and,
in the semi-literary context of theatre, Shaw in respect of the play ... to
confirm this Irish domination of literature.
And although I have racked my brains over literally dozens of English
authors, from the best, like Aldous Huxley, to the worst, like D.H. Lawrence,
it would be impossible for me to ascribe pre-eminence in any one field to an
Englishman. For modern English writing
is not only comparatively second-rate; it is also deeply pessimistic,
reflecting the disenchantment, anxiety, and regret that many Englishmen feel
for the passing of dualistic civilization and its replacement by an
increasingly volatile world which is difficult if not impossible to reconcile
with the English temperament.
It isn't by mere chance that Joyce's greatest novel, Ulysses, concludes with
a wholehearted affirmation of contemporary life, its very last word being 'Yes'
with a capital Y, whereas Joyce's contemporary and in many ways English
counterpart, Huxley, allows Point Counter Point - as indeed most of his
novels, including Island, the last one - to end on a note of defeat and
despair, reflecting the end of a civilization beset by the twin enemies of
barbarism and decadence. This
pessimistic syndrome in the face of post-dualistic evolution cuts right across
contemporary English literature, from Waugh and Muggeridge to Orwell and Amis,
signifying, as it does, what may be called the mainstream trend of the
age. Not so where the Irish are
concerned, and not so either - at least nowhere near to the same extent -
with British writers of Irish
extraction, like Lawrence Durrell, Anthony Burgess, Cecil Day-Lewis, and John
Middleton Murray, who seem to reflect an in-between psychological realm of
pessimism tempered by optimism, rather than to stand at either Irish or English
extremes.
It is tempting to see in this Irish literary revival a golden
age of Celtic literature which would correspond to the golden age of ancient
Greece in the fifth century B.C., and, indeed, to equate the 1916 Uprising with
the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 B.C., so that the Irish are
perceived as being, in some sense, the modern equivalent of the ancient
Greeks. But this would be an over-facile
and quite erroneous analogue, scarcely one based on real historical logic! That Joyce may have conceived of such an
analogue at the time he was writing Ulysses ... is a possibility we shall not
ignore. But there is no reason for us to
endorse it on the grounds of historical recurrence. If there is a kind of cyclical
recurrence in history, and one with reversible applicability, depending on
whether the context be pre- or post-dualistic, then there would be a strong
case in favour of our equating the victory of the Americans over the British in
the War of Independence with that of the ancient Greeks over the Persians in
479 B.C., and of seeing in America the modern equivalent of ancient Greece.
Thus, in the trend towards dualism of the ancient world, the
Greeks won their independence from a predominantly pre-dualistic people, only
to lose it, eventually, to the Romans, who were early dualists. Reversing this cycle through the trend away
from dualism of the modern world, we find the Americans, as antithetical
equivalents to the ancient Greeks, winning their freedom from the late-dualistic
British, who can be regarded as antithetically equivalent to the Romans, and,
in all probability, destined to lose it in the future to an early
post-dualistic people, like the Russians or, more probably, the Chinese, who
would then be the modern equivalent of the ancient Persians. As history tends to reverse itself on the
post-dualistic level, we might well be justified in equating the modern Irish
with the ancient Egyptians or, at any rate, with a development which is tending
towards an antithesis to the world's first great religious civilization and
which, if it continues, may well constitute the basis for the world's last
great religious civilization in due course - a civilization not peculiar to the
Irish alone, but partly stemming from Ireland, or Irishmen, and spreading
throughout the world.
Thus the pre-dualistic development from Egypt and Persia to
Greece (a kind of transitional civilization) and on, with early dualism, to
Rome, would seem to have its post-dualistic parallel with Britain, as late
dualism, leading via America (another transitional civilization) to Russia
and/or China, and on, finally, to Ireland, the future equivalent, now in
embryo, of ancient Egypt, which will round off the cyclical recurrence of
evolutionary civilizations and lead, in due turn, to a post-Human Millennium,
with the transformation of universal man into the Superman. Ireland, then, will have the responsibility
of determining the shape of the last great civilization, which will be
cosmopolitan, just as Egypt determined the shape of the first, purely national
one, and in such speculation I believe we are some way along the road to
understanding the contemporary Irish domination of literature in
twentieth-century Britain.
As an extreme people for whom quality prevails over quantity,
the Irish are already laying the foundations of the next civilization, a
civilization that will follow on behind the American one of transition between
dualism and transcendentalism. With the
ancient world we are always conscious of a lacuna between the Egyptians and the
Greeks, the Persians not having fashioned a civilization to compare with either
their predecessors or successors, and consequently not being known as a highly
civilized people to contemporary minds.
In the modern world a similar lacuna may be projected as existing
between the American civilization of today and the Irish or Gaelic civilization
of tomorrow, since the Marxist-Leninist materialism of both the former Soviet
Russia and, more especially, contemporary China falls short of genuine
civilization, and corresponds to a neo-barbarism analogous, one can only
surmise, to the relatively barbarous society of ancient Persia. The twenty-first century may well constitute
a new Dark Age for the passing civilizations, both British and American, but at
least, if the logic of scientific history is to be trusted, we can express hope
about the rebirth of civilization on higher terms in the not-too-distant
future.
Not so long ago, in an earlier volume of essays, my application
of a modified cyclical recurrence to various nations in the overall progression
of history led me to refute not only Spengler, with his assessment of Nazi
Germany as a 'New Rome', and Britain, traditionally, as the 'New Greece' (or
modern equivalent of ancient Greece), but also Malcolm Muggeridge and Simone
Weil, the former upholding the theory of Britain as equivalent to ancient
Greece and America to ancient Rome, while the latter maintained faith in France
as the modern equivalent - particularly during the Napoleonic period - to
ancient Rome, and Britain, by contrast, as equivalent to ancient Greece. I disagreed with each of them and, I think,
wisely, as things turned out. But I
wasn't entirely justified in aligning France with ancient Greece, even though I
still adhere to the alignment of Britain with ancient Rome. Frankly, I should have equated France with
Carthage, so that America was free to be equated with ancient Greece.... As for
Nazi Germany, it might have become the 'New Persia', so to speak, had it
defeated the allies in World War Two.
But this it ultimately failed to do, and so Germany lost its claim to a
major place in historical recurrence, much as Spengler may have wished
otherwise! Unfortunately, his reading of
history was insufficiently profound to comprehend Nazi Germany in the light of
a potential modern equivalent to ancient Persia, and so he drew the erroneous
analogy with Rome. Likewise, Muggeridge
and Weil failed to probe deeply enough into historical evolution, and so came
up with mistaken contentions. However,
it is interesting that they attributed Grecian characteristics to Britain when,
except for one short period in its history, namely the Romantic era, Britain
has steadfastly resembled ancient Rome, having come to power, as its
antithetical equivalent, at the tail-end rather than inception of dualistic
civilization. Yet whereas ancient Rome
took over Greek civilization and embellished, modified, and extended it into
the Christian era, with the reversal of cyclical recurrence on the
post-dualistic level we find that it is America, the 'New Greece', which has
taken over British civilization and embellished, modified, and extended it into
the transcendental era. The Romans made
no attempt to found a new religion completely independently of the Greeks, even
though they eventually converted to Christianity, and neither have the
Americans made any serious attempt to break away from Protestantism, as
inherited from Britain in the seventeenth century. Despite its indubitable transcendental
leanings, not to mention its large Catholic population, America still
officially clings to Protestant Christianity, and will doubtless continue to do
so for some time to come.
Yet the Irish will, I believe, adopt a completely new religion
in the future, one stemming from Christianity but independent of humanistic
influence, and will expand it abroad, just as Irish monks brought Catholicism
to Britain and various Continental countries during the Dark Ages. This new religion, though reminiscent of Buddhism,
will be more than just a copy or derivative of oriental religion, since far
less influenced by natural criteria and correspondingly more sympathetic to
artificial and technological ingredients, pointing the way towards the
Superman. It won't make the mistake of
imagining that man can attain to God, for it will know that man is but a stage
on the road to something higher (the Superman), who is but a stage to something
higher again (the Superbeing), and so on, until the attainment of the Omega
Absolute at the climax of evolution. If
such a transcendental religion is destined to catch on anywhere, it can only be
in a country with a long tradition of religious devotion, a country in which
quality takes precedence over quantity and, consequently, being over doing. I believe Ireland is such a country, and it
will doubtless remain so in the future, whatever happens on the world stage.
An Irish priest is always somehow more credible, more
authentically theocratic, than an English one, and it would be scant
exaggeration to say that an Irish priest is worth an English bishop, or even
several English bishops. Conversely, the
Irish politician is usually inferior to his English counterpart and not taken
quite so seriously either by his own people or by the British. This is, however, relative to the
antithetical predilections of the two peoples, and isn't likely to change very
much in the future - whatever their respective fates may happen to be. The Irish will continue to value their
religious representatives above their political ones, while the English will
take politicians more seriously than priests.
How it is that the Irish and English do differ so radically in
this way must, in some degree, remain an enigma, although there is evidently
something in the blood of the Celt that corresponds to a spiritual
predilection, whereas the typical Anglo-Saxon feels more at home in the realm
of tangible reality. Doubtless the
respective histories of the two peoples have contributed to this distinction,
as, one suspects, have the geological and geographical differences between
their respective islands or ancestral backgrounds, not least of all in respect
of climate. Yet whatever the main
reasons, the moderation of the Englishman and the extremism of the Irishman
remain fundamental characteristics of a centuries-old ethnic divide.
In a transcendentalist age, however, it is inevitable that the
Irish will dominate English cultural and intellectual affairs, as they did in
the twentieth century. The new men will
take over from where their predecessors left off, bringing works of quality to
a people who would otherwise be condemned, in materialistic stagnation, to mere
quantity alone.
A
TEASING PARADOX
It was by mere chance
that the terms 'Left' and 'Right' came to be applied to political allegiances
of, in the one case, a progressive and, in the other, a reactionary or
conservative bias. For it was the
progressive party (Jacobin/Cordelier) that sat on the left of the chamber in
the new French Assembly of October 1791, while the moderates (Girondists) sat
on the right, following the political turmoil of the French Revolution. Thenceforth, as a result of this contingency,
each successive progressive party the world over acquired the description 'left
wing' and, conversely, each conservative party the description 'right
wing'. We have lived with this habit for
so long now that we tend to take it for granted, convinced that it reflects a
logical, meaningful way of describing the antithetical parties. The thought that evolution, whether political
or otherwise, may not be proceeding from the Right to the Left never really
enters our heads, and we would be inclined to brand anyone who had the nerve to
suggest, on the contrary, that political evolution proceeds from the Left to
the Right as an ignoramus or, more likely, an idiot. Yet the curious fact of the matter is that,
strictly speaking, evolution does indeed proceed in this latter fashion - not
according to the chance arrangement of an historic division in the new French Assembly!
It isn't simply a matter of bringing a Nietzschean
'transvaluation of all values' to bear on the traditional viewpoint. For such a 'transvaluation' can only
reasonably be applied to natural phenomena and their relationship to
civilization as it is now constituted. A
contingency doesn't permit of a transvaluation, and so we shan't attempt to
turn the logic or, more correctly, illogicality of 'Left' applied to
progressives and 'Right' applied to conservatives the correct way up. Instead, we shall simply reverse the
descriptions, so that, for once, the progressive party are regarded as right
wing and the conservative party, by contrast, as left. This merely as an experiment in logic, not as
a recommendation for a revolution in our political thinking!
Why, then, have I come to this subversive decision? Because the brain, as currently constituted,
is divisible into a left and a right compartment - the old brain or, in
psychological terminology, subconscious mind being on the left, and the new
brain/superconscious mind, by contrast, being on the right. Translated into physiological terms, this
means that the old brain is located to the left of the new brain, not
underneath it. Strictly speaking, there
is no physiological entity corresponding to the ego, since it is a function of
the brain, a spiritual attribute that arises from the latter's physiological
workings, which also produce the independent attributes of subconscious and
superconscious psychic functioning. Thus
as spirit arises from matter, it is dependent on matter, and will remain so
until transcendence is attained ... as the long-awaited goal of human
evolution.
Now since evolutionary progress presupposes the gradual
expansion of spirit towards its transcendent goal, it follows that the psyche's
evolution proceeds from left to right, which is to say, from the subconscious
to the superconscious via a continuously-modified ego which reflects, at any
given point in time, the existing degree of consciousness, or the extent to
which the one side of the psyche prevails over the other, in any
individual. This degree of consciousness
isn't only a personal affair, depending on the intellectual or spiritual
potential inherited from one's parents, nor, for that matter, is it solely
related to the cultural standards of the society into which one was born, but
is also - and perhaps predominantly - a consequence of the environment in which
one lives - the successive historical transformations from rural to urban via
suburban and/or provincial engendering a corresponding shift in the psyche's constitution,
so that consciousness will reflect either more or less superconscious influence
according to the individual's environmental position, extended over many years,
at any given time. With the rapid growth
of urban environments, in recent centuries, we may note a more radical shift in
consciousness from a kind of twilight balance between the subconscious and the
superconscious to a light imbalance, so to speak, on the side of the latter, an
imbalance which constitutes the psychic integrity of transcendental - as
opposed to Christian - man. Thus a shift
away from the old brain towards the new or, rather, deeper into the new brain
... is a principal characteristic of evolutionary progress at this juncture in
time, and, as the former is on the left and the latter on the right, we may
infer that, strictly speaking, political evolution also tends from left to
right, reflecting, as it must, the psyche's evolution.
The fact that the old brain/subconscious mind is situated on
the left and its antithesis on the right ... makes for a corresponding
distinction between the left- and right-hand sides of one's face, most
especially with reference to the eyes.
The left eye, it will be observed, is usually somewhat gentler and even
sleepier-looking than the right one, and in the morning, if you bother to
scrutinize your face before washing, you will find that it usually contains
more sleep than its neighbour, the reason being that it is closer to the
subconscious and therefore more under subconscious domination during
sleep. A factor which I have often
observed in myself, and which I can only suppose common to others as well, is a
predilection I have to sleep on my left side, so that consciousness slides down
naturally into subconscious domination with the coming of sleep. When, by contrast, I have attempted to sleep
on my right side ... the almost invariable consequence has been a nightmare,
and this I can only suppose to be related to the fact that, in such a position,
the subconscious is on top of the superconscious and, with the coming of sleep,
tends to oppress one through its essentially active, negative
characteristics. A reversal of this
position doesn't necessarily prevent one from experiencing a nightmare, but it
does at least guarantee that the subconscious, in being underneath, remains in
a less oppressive context, thereby facilitating a more agreeable dream-life.
As to the right eye, the fact of its proximity to the
superconscious guarantees it a more penetrating, lucid, aggressive appearance
than the left one, an appearance which, as a rule, will be more marked the
greater the intelligence of the individual concerned, that is to say, the more
his particular psyche is under the sway of the superconscious, with its
intellectual/spiritual bias. A poster I
have of Lenin is particularly revealing of the distinction between the left and
right eyes. For whereas the former is in
shadow the latter stares fiercely out at one from a brightly-lit section of the
face, almost menacing in its fixity. Men
like Hitler, Dali, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche also provide conspicuous examples
of the psyche's dichotomy, as reflected in facial appearance, and more than a
few well-known politicians, including former American president Richard Nixon,
have furnished convincing illustrations of this fact when photographed in a
stern mood! It would be misguided,
however, to equate this forceful stare in highly intelligent men with the evil
eye of superstitious tradition. For it
isn't the right eye but the left one which connects with the subconscious, and
the only valid criterion for objectively assessing evil must pertain to the
sensual, not to the spiritual! A
penetrating right eye is no more evil than a highly intelligent mind.
Whether the distinction between the two eyes is sharp or
blurred will, of course, depend on the psychic constitution of the individual,
the vast majority of people probably not presenting the critical observer with
very much contrast, and especially will this be true of people accustomed to a
rural environment. A more marked
contrast will only be observed, as a rule, among the most spiritually-evolved
people who, now as before, constitute a minority of higher types. In the course of time, this distinction
between the two eyes will doubtless spread to greater numbers of people, in
response to social amelioration in educational and genetic contexts. Post-dualistic man will be aptly reflected in
his facial bias - a bias corresponding to the stronger influence of the superconscious
in his overall psychic integrity.
Before the discovery or perhaps I should say acknowledgement of
the superconscious, psychologists were inclined to attribute positive
characteristics to the subconscious in an attempt to explain away the psyche's
positive predilections. Since, to their
way of thinking, consciousness was simply something that sat atop the
subconscious, it seemed perfectly feasible to attribute positive motivations to
the latter, seeing that such motivations had to come from somewhere and, given
that the subconscious was the only other known part of the psyche, so the
psychologists reasoned they must come from there. Thus Freud and, following his example, Jung
each endowed the subconscious with positive inclinations.
For my part, I contend that positivity, in the truest sense of
that word, is the principal attribute of the superconscious and will generally
- though not invariably - be found on the right-hand side of the psyche, which
is to say, in the new brain. Positivity
is not, as was formerly believed, an active thing but a decidedly passive
phenomenon, like love, and corresponds to the spiritual life. Only negativity is active, since aligned with
the sensual, and it is precisely this characteristic that should be associated
with the subconscious. The proof of
this, if it isn't already self-evident, lies in the fact that one's dreams are
always active, and thus negative, whereas the experience of anyone who has
expanded his consciousness through LSD, for example, will show that the
contents of the superconscious, as revealed in this hallucinogenic way, are
perfectly still, passive luminosities whose positivity fascinates the receptive
consciousness. Thus an antithesis may be
posited between the restless, active contents of one's subconscious mind, as
experienced during sleep, and the tranquil, utterly passive contents of one's
superconscious mind, as revealed through upward self-transcending synthetic
stimulants like LSD, whilst awake.
Aldous Huxley's mescaline experiments, as recorded in The Doors of Perception,
provide quite conclusive proof of this matter and clearly point in the general
direction that transcendental man is taking towards the millennial Superman,
when equivalent artificially-induced upward self-transcending visionary
experiences will become the social norm, shared by the vast majority of
fellow-superhuman beings. If Aldous
Huxley deserves to be especially remembered for anything, over the coming
centuries, it must surely be for his experiments with synthetic stimulants,
which arguably constitute the most interesting and enlightening side of his
work. Hallucinogens like LSD may not be
suitable to society as it is currently constituted, but they must surely
presage a future applicability in response to the dictates of a more evolved
psyche than generally exists at present.
I have contended that whereas the subconscious is active, the
left eye, as the one nearest to the old brain, is relatively passive and
sleepy-looking, which would seem, on the face of it, to be a contradiction in
terms. Yet this is only so if one fails
to perceive a contradiction within each part of the psyche, which corresponds
to the mind/brain dichotomy. For whilst
it is perfectly true to say that the subconscious is active during sleep, we
cannot accredit it with anything like the same degree of activity during our
waking hours, when the conscious mind takes over. Thus we needn't be surprised that the eye
most under subconscious influence should be comparatively passive during the day,
whereas the right eye reflects the visio-spatial/analytical activity of the
superconscious or, at any rate, of its lower regions thereof, which correspond
to the higher, logico-verbal regions of the subconscious. Admittedly, the eyes don't exclusively
connect with that part of the cerebral cortex nearest to them. For they also cross-connect in the chiasma
and thereby link-up with the opposite brain.
But the distinction between the contradictory appearance of the left and
right eyes in highly intelligent people confirms a bias reflecting the
predominant influence of the nearest brain, whether old or new. The fact that the left side of the brain
controls the body's right side, and, conversely, the right side of the brain
the body's left side, does not invalidate this contention, since the eyes are
arguably too close to the brain to be subject to the same rules as govern the
physical body in general.
The converse of the intellect's conscious activity in the lower
regions of the superconscious, however, is the utterly passive nature of the visionary
contents of the upper regions of superconscious mind, as revealed by
mind-expanding drugs, which tend to fade into post-visionary consciousness at
the topmost level ... of mystical beatitude.
Thus not only is there an antithesis between the active dream-world of
the subconscious and the passive visionary world of the superconscious, but
there is a parallel distinction within each part of the psyche between, on the
one hand, active dream and passive thought, and, on the other hand, passive
visionary experience and active intellectual behaviour, depending on whether
one is in a state corresponding to sleep or to wakefulness. In a wider context, an active superconscious
mind is paralleled by a slothful subconscious body, and, conversely, an active
subconscious body normally presupposes a slothful superconscious mind. When the superconscious is passive, the
subconscious comes awake, so to speak.
And, similarly, a passive subconscious mind makes possible the true
awakening of the superconscious in visionary experience. One might say, to extend this paradox, that
the superconscious is only half-awake in visio-spatial/analytical activity,
while the subconscious is only half-awake in logico-verbal/intellectual passivity. To come fully awake, the former needs the
passive visionary experience encouraged by synthetic hallucinogens like LSD,
whereas the latter needs the active dream behaviour of sleep. Let us therefore leave the matter with this
teasing paradox: that whereas the subconscious only comes fully awake with the
sleep of the superconscious, so the latter likewise only attains to full
wakefulness with the sleep of the former.
Our higher mind is generally only half awake. It will be our duty and privilege, in the
future, to bring it fully awake, as we are transformed into Supermen.
MILLENNIAL
THOUGHTS
It isn't merely to
escape from the natural body that Supermen would be elevated to the status of
brains artificially supported and sustained in our projected post-Human Millennium,
but also to preclude the possibility of physical irresponsibility or otherwise
riotous behaviour, among the populace, in consequence of high-level LSD
tripping or equivalent synthetic experiences.
The gradual supersession of the natural body by an artificial, communal
one will enable the religious life of Supermen to be conducted with a minimum
of physical friction and social disturbance.
No-one will be liable to throw himself out of an upstairs window or
under a car or on unsuspecting females or whatever in the post-Human
Millennium, for no-one who regularly participates in the hallucinogenic
experience will have a body to abuse.
The leadership, responsible for the maintenance and supervision of the
social order, won't have to worry about irresponsible or riotous behaviour from
the 'trippers', since their artificially-supported brains will be immobile and,
consequently, no Superman would be disposed to physical revolt. A perfectly docile society will become the
cherished norm, and this norm won't be violated by any of its members.
Of course, people have taken LSD in the twentieth century and,
as a rule, they've behaved responsibly, refraining from physical violence. The more intelligent members of the hippy
subculture which arose in the late 1960s but declined in the early 1970s would
certainly have behaved in this way, not imposing any severe strain on their
friends or, indeed, on society generally.
But not everyone would have done so and, had LSD been legalized, the
chances of riotous behaviour resulting from a more widespread use of this
particular hallucinogen could only have been greater, doubtless leading to
serious abuses of personal freedom by people not psychically qualified to make
sensible use of it. Of course, LSD
wasn't legalized, and we needn't expect any radical change in the law relating
to its use over the coming decades.
Quite probably, it will remain illegal until the advent of the
post-Human Millennium, when men become transformed into Supermen and the
natural body, or what remains of it, is consequently superseded by an
artificial support/sustain system for the brain. For so long as man exists, there will always
be the possibility of social repercussions of a violent nature resulting from a
premature legalization of LSD, or equivalent upward self-transcending synthetic
stimulants. We can't anticipate the
widespread use of LSD under present conditions, even if certain individuals,
more intelligent than their fellows, are perfectly capable of responding to it
in a civilized manner - as various people showed themselves to be during the
hippy era. Unfortunately the
persecution, by the liberal authorities, of hippies for 'drug abuse' was a
virtual inevitability in a society where the legalization of such a potent
mind-expanding stimulant remains, for reasons already discussed, out of the
question in the short-term.
There are, however, two kinds of alleged drug abuse. There is the reactionary abuse involving
recourse to stronger natural drugs than any given society is prepared to
tolerate, and in a society where, in consequence of evolutionary progress, even
comparatively mild drugs like tobacco and alcohol are becoming less
respectable, it stands to reason that the use of opium, morphine, cocaine, and
heroin will be penalized as incompatible with the moral standards of that
society, and stiff sentences accordingly be meted out to those convicted of
'drug abuse'. Yet such an abuse should
be distinguished from, if not treated more leniently than, abuses involving
synthetic drugs, [Strictly speaking, my understanding of drugs is of something
that deadens the mind in the manner of a narcotic, whereas substances which,
like LSD, enliven the mind or open it up to visionary experiences I regard as
stimulants - the opposite, in effect, of a drug.] some of which may well be
applicable to a future age. LSD is, I
believe, an example of the latter, and whilst its use cannot reasonably be
legalized at present, nevertheless a distinction should be upheld between what
may well presage a future spirituality and what is patently a manifestation of
reactionary sensuality. In a society
tending, all the while, in the general direction of greater spirituality, the
use or, rather, misuse of 'drugs' reflecting that tendency shouldn't be
confounded with the use or misuse of drugs whose natural constitutions are far
more harmful to both the individual and society in general. While, from society's standpoint, a smashed
window must be treated with equal severity by the law whether it be the result
of hallucinogenics or narcotics abuse, from the individual's standpoint,
however, the distinction between the two kinds of drug is a marked one,
reflecting the difference between progress and regress. Generally speaking, the man who is
prematurely progressive is a superior phenomenon to the one who is belatedly
regressive, and should, within reasonable limits, be recognized as such!
Yet I am not here encouraging the use of LSD. What is destined to find its niche in society
will do so as a matter of course, irrespective of the opposition or repression
it may meet with in the meantime. The
absence of 'progressive' drug abuse from society would doubtless prove a grave
obstacle to evolutionary progress, which is always carried out, no matter what
the context, in the face of natural opposition.
A society without LSD adherents would not be tending towards the
Supermen but, on the contrary, standing somewhat closer to the apes! Modern industrial society, however, should be
progressive, and it would be an encouraging factor to learn that, of the total
number of people convicted for drug abuse each year, the majority were for
synthetic rather than natural abuses.
For a ratio biased on the side of the synthetic could be interpreted as
a good omen of things to come and, instead of fretting themselves over its
increase, the responsible authorities might be prevailed upon to take a more
lenient line which, while still penalizing the offence, got it into better
perspective from an evolutionary point-of-view.
Positive lawbreakers, who presage the future, are no less
culpable, in the eyes of the law, than negative ones who resurrect the
past. They are evolution's slaves rather
than its masters, a medium through which change may be effected in due
course.... Not wishing to directly align myself with the lawbreakers, however,
I prefer, in my philosophical endeavour to comprehend evolution, the role of
seeking to influence the lawmakers for the better, so that, through this and
similar methods, they may become more receptive to the possibility of amending
or changing the law in the future, at a time when such a policy appeared not
only feasible but desirable. An attempt
to have the law changed prematurely, on the other hand, would be to nobody's
advantage, not even the drug-taker's, since he would then be confronted -
assuming he knew how to respect the drug - by those who simply maligned or
squandered it, to the detriment of his own self-esteem.
For transcendental man, then, we can take it as axiomatic that
television will remain the principal medium (above both video and cinema)
through which a degree of upward self-transcendence may be achieved. Television is visionary experience coming at
one from outside the self, and, since
appearances precede essences, we needn't expect the widespread evolutionary
leap to artificially-induced visionary experience inside the
self to come about for some time yet - certainly not until the majority of
people are capable of appreciating it!
Which probably won't be during the remaining course of this century, nor
even, perhaps, during the early course of the next (although that isn't
something about which anyone can be certain at present). With the increased pace of evolution
nowadays, we are by no means guaranteed that modern, i.e. transcendental, man
will remain content to continue watching television throughout the course of
the next hundred years. It could well
transpire that the novelty and excitement of television-viewing, even via
satellite, will wear thin some time before then, to be replaced either by the
higher visionary experience of Supermen or, what's more likely, by a wider
interest in transcendental meditation as a prelude to the post-Human
Millennium. At this juncture in time,
transcendental meditation remains a comparatively elitist interest, restricted
to those who are capable of directly cultivating spirit without need of
external assistance, such as television.
It presages not the Superman but the Superbeing of the succeeding phase
of the post-Human Millennium, and is accordingly somewhat closer, in essence,
to the blessed state of the heavenly Beyond.
But evolutionary progress should lead, in due course, to an ever-growing
number of people taking-up with transcendental meditation in the decades or
centuries to come, so that it will co-exist and possibly alternate with
television spirituality within the framework of a higher religion - one
institutionalized and collectivized.
A materialist would probably contend that television will
suffice to lead transcendental man directly to the LSD visions of the Superman,
thereby making transcendental meditation totally irrelevant. But I don't believe that meditation can be
dismissed so easily, as though it were simply an anachronism which artificially-induced
visionary experience, whether apparent or essential, external or internal, was
destined to replace. The need for a
religious institution, such as would be provided by meditation centres, still
requires to be addressed and is absolutely indispensable to religious progress
in the world. By becoming part of a
meditating community, one would be on the next evolutionary rung, so to speak,
above the church congregation, and such a communal context necessarily
signifies an approximation, no matter how crudely, to the envisaged ultimate
unity of the Omega Absolute, the divine culmination of evolution. Yet no such approximation is reflected,
however, in the context of an individual sitting either alone or with one or
two others in front of a television screen every night, which is why, it seems
to me, television can't be regarded as the logical successor to religion, but
only as a component of contemporary spiritual progress. What would condemn transcendental meditation
outright, as a useless anachronism stemming from an obsolete society, would be
a lack of applicability to the future, its failure to presage a superior
spiritual development which a later stage of evolution will encourage. If, then, the post-Human Millennium could be
conceived solely as an affair of the Superman, with his artificially-induced
internal visionary experience, we would be justified in condemning
transcendental meditation as a futility.
But since the Millennium in question should extend into a more spiritual
phase, in which the ensuing Superbeing will directly cultivate spirit pending
transcendence, we would be mistaken to consider transcendental meditation
irrelevant, even though it can be shown that, by itself, such meditation
wouldn't suffice to take man to the heavenly Beyond. This knowledge, however, needn't preclude us
from meditating, since the experience is sufficiently rewarding in itself to be
self-justificatory.
But whether the entire human population can be induced to take
meditation seriously, over the coming centuries, is another matter, and not one
about which I feel confident to speculate, even given the inevitability of
meditation centres as a precondition of the post-Human Millennium. Not everyone attends church, and perhaps it
will transpire that not everyone will attend the 'church' of tomorrow, although
we may expect a greater degree of directive persuasion on the part of the
relevant authorities than has ever existed before, with, it should be added,
more incentive for the devotees to attend!
And so transcendental man, full-blown, would be participating in the
transcendental civilization, a civilization presupposing the simultaneous
existence, in harmonious co-existence, of socialism and transcendentalism or,
rather, of a fusion of the one with the other.
For unless there is a community religion, there is no civilization, in
the true sense of that term, but only what precedes it - namely barbarism.
Since pre-dualistic man had a civilization, in which paganism
and royalism (or some autocratic equivalent) prevailed, and dualistic man also,
with his Christianity and parliamentary liberalism, it would seem only fair for
us to ascribe a future civilization to post-dualistic man, since man is man at
any stage of his evolution and ever in need of a church, where he can rub
shoulders with his fellows. The coming
together of men into crowds isn't by itself a good thing, however. What determines the moral status of the crowd
is the reason why men come together,
that is to say whether for sensual or spiritual purposes. Since a communal context is relevant both to
the lower communality of the plants and to our projected higher communality of
the coming Superbeings, there is nothing in communal life per se that
distinguishes it as a virtue. One might
say that it becomes a vice when the motivation driving people together is
sensual, and such a motivation was certainly paramount during the era of pagan
pre-dualism when, as often as not, men visited the temple or whatever to
express their sexual predilections, with or without the assistance of resident
priestesses! The pagan orgy utilized the
crowd for sensual purposes, so that men came together on the basis of the
lowest-common-denominator, and thereby resembled the leaves of trees.
With the advent of Christian dualism, however, the emphasis in
crowd formations was spiritual rather than sensual, although a degree of
sensuality was necessarily still upheld, as, for example, in the celebration of
the Mass, with the symbolic offering of Christ's body and blood conducted
through the sublimated mediums of wafer and wine - a far more frugal approach
to sensuality than would have been intelligible to pagan man. But if a diluted sensuality was the norm of
Christian communal life, then for a post-dualistic age it follows that the
motivation driving people together must be exclusively spiritual and thus, for
the first time in history, entirely good.
The coming together of people for purposes of meditation in
specially-designed centres will reflect the highest mode of communal life given
to man, and be the nearest approach to the subsequent spiritual communality of
the Superbeings. Because no such
motivation has previously existed in the West, nor, properly considered,
anywhere else in the world, there can be little doubt that it will be endorsed
over the coming centuries, so that man will pass through the entire spectrum of
his evolution, from the beastly to the godly, as he enters its highest phase
with widespread transcendentalism.
Tomorrow's crowds will, in this religious context, be purely virtuous,
superior even to Christian congregations.
There are, however, strict limits to the degree of togetherness
men can experience, since they have bodies and remain imprisoned in them,
prevented, by the flesh, from experiencing a truly close approximation to the
omega goal of evolution in indivisible spiritual unity. For transcendental men, the regular practise
of meditation in communal contexts will simply constitute a stepping-stone to a
still-closer approximation to ultimate divinity ... as experienced by the
ensuing Supermen of the post-Human Millennium.
These Supermen will, as already noted, be elevated above the natural
body in extensively artificial contexts designed on a collective basis. As brains artificially supported and, no less
importantly, artificially sustained, they will stand in a much closer
relationship to ultimate divinity than transcendental men, with their
individual bodies. Unfortunately the
body is always a grave obstacle to the attainment of an advanced degree of
spiritual togetherness, of communal oneness, since its varieties of forms and
appearances aren't always pleasant to behold, least of all when radically ugly,
and serve rather to excite disgust, which negative feeling drives men
apart. Likewise its exposure to germs of
one kind or another is a repellent rather than an attractive feature, since men
fear contagion and are consequently inclined to maintain their physical
distance, when possible, from the victims of colds, flu, and other common
illnesses. Even the division of the
sexes is, in its relativity, a contributory factor in the inhibition of closer
approximations to the Omega Absolute.
Obviously, the only solution to these problems lies with the Superman,
who will be elevated above them through the supersession of the natural, individual
body by an artificial and communal one, and accordingly experience a greater
degree of unity with his fellows - a degree presaging the even greater
spiritual unity of the Superbeings, when individual consciousness will be
eclipsed by the collective, post-visionary consciousness of the tightly-packed
clusters of new brains. After which it
will simply be a matter of time before this comparative spiritual unity makes
way for the most complete spiritual unity ... of the Spiritual Globes as,
following transcendence, they tend towards one another in accordance with the
positive drift of a gradual convergence towards ultimate Oneness.
However, where space is concerned, it isn't true, contrary to
what modern scientists tend to believe, that the Universe is expanding. The stars, we may rest assured, are
contracting, and if they are tending farther apart, they are not expanding but
... diverging, after the fashion of their infernal natures. The concept of an expanding Universe should
only apply to man and man-equivalent life forms (if any) elsewhere. Now when we narrow the Universe to man we
find, despite appearances to the contrary, that spirit is expanding, in
accordance with the chief characteristic of being, while simultaneously
converging towards its goal in the indivisible unity of the Omega
Absolute. Thus an antithesis exists
between the divergence of the physical universe on the one hand, and the
convergence of the spiritual universe on the other, as, likewise, between the
contraction of stars and the expansion of spirit.
On what may be termed the microcosmic plane of global
civilization, we see the contraction of the diabolic side of the Universe in
the curtailment of nature, the overcoming of various pestilential diseases, the
penalizing of serious natural drug abuse, the decline of authoritarianism, the
reduction of competitive individualism, and the gradual undermining of private
property. Conversely, we see the
expansion of the divine side of the Universe in the growth of cities, the
increase in the use (or abuse) of synthetic stimulants, the development of
collective contexts, the increase in public spending, the substitution of
artificial for natural modes of sexuality, the growing interest in meditation,
and so on - all factors which point in the general direction of both a
post-Human Millennium and subsequent heavenly Beyond. What is happening on this planet is probably
also happening on the thousands if not millions of other possible
life-sustaining planets throughout the physical Universe, so that the divine
side of the Universe is simultaneously converging towards its future
culmination in the most absolute noumenal indivisibility. We needn't expect this culmination to come
about for some considerable time yet, however, since there are definite stages
to evolutionary progress, presupposing, in the future, the emergence of new
life forms out of man which will be as spiritually superior to him ... as apes
and trees were and, in some sense, continue to be his spiritual inferiors.
It would be erroneous, however, to suppose that man will
venture to the far corners of the Universe in the future, and thereupon come
into contact, whether on a friendly or a hostile basis, with beings from outer
space. For although there will doubtless
continue to be a degree of space exploration during the coming centuries, the
fact of evolutionary progress will preclude him from making the exploration of
space his chief priority, since higher stages of evolution presuppose greater
degrees of psychic interiorization, and consequently less interest in the
phenomenal worlds that lie outside it.
As human evolution draws toward its climax so noumenal essence
predominates over phenomenal appearance, making the cultivation of spirit the
overriding priority of the age. In all
probability, the life-sustaining planets in other parts of the Universe won't
differ too radically from the earth, seeing that life, particularly on the
human plane, requires fairly predictable conditions, neither too hot nor too
cold. This being the case, we would be
foolish to concern ourselves with the altogether futile, time-wasting
explorations of kindred planets! As
transcendental men we would have better things to do with our time than to
dabble in appearances, cosmic or otherwise!
And as Transcendentalists we would not have an indefinite life-span, but
no more, at most, than a few centuries before the transformation to the
Superman became apposite. Our current
space explorations should be designed primarily to assist our spiritual
development, not be pursued for the mere sake of exploring! And it is sincerely to be hoped that if, in
the not-too-distant future, we put an end to war between human beings, we won't
proceed to start wars between ourselves and the nearest aliens, since an end to
war as such is commensurate with a higher, more advanced stage of evolutionary
progress. Yet while this is undoubtedly
so, it is also worth remembering that an extension of war from tribal and
national to international and, in all likelihood, planetary levels is also
compatible with evolutionary progress, and consequently that some kind of
compromise, involving a more civilized or sublimated kind of warfare than man
has hitherto waged against himself, may well be required throughout the
duration of the next civilization, in the interests, needless to say, of
safeguarding his spiritual progress.
As to the phasing-out of aspects of life on the diabolic side
of the Universe, the growing freedom from nature which man will achieve in the
centuries to come will doubtless lead to his dispensing with what might be
described as unnecessary animals, such as dogs, cats, horses, mice, rabbits,
and other pets, whilst any dispensing with necessary animals, including pigs,
cattle, and sheep, will probably follow with the advent of the Superman and
consequent supersession of the natural body by artificial supports and sustains
for the brain. There are besides pets,
workers, and livestock, many other types of animal in the world and these,
whether wild or captive, will also be dispensed with in the course of
time. What began in the transcendental
civilization would doubtless be finished, by the relevant authorities, during
the post-Human Millennium, so that towards the climax of spiritual evolution on
earth very few beasts would remain in existence. For their continued presence there would be
incompatible with the radically spiritual bias of a society tending towards
transcendence, as well as a potential threat, if left unchecked, to the safe
and proper functioning of that society in an extensively artificial
context. As man tends towards the spirit
so he makes war on the beast, both internally and externally, since it stems
from the alpha side of the Universe in its intrinsic sensuality. If animals are acceptable to a dualistic
civilization which, in its openness, has pagan roots, they would most assuredly
prove incompatible with and therefore unacceptable to a transcendental
civilization.... Although we needn't expect a radical purge of pets or other
animals to take place over the coming decades, we can certainly anticipate a
gradual reduction in their numbers, as society takes appropriate measures to
transcendentalize itself, so to speak.
Likewise the gradual elimination of private property is
compatible with evolutionary progress towards the Divine, insofar as property
reflects a diabolical inclination on the part of its owners, who function in
the guise of individual suns competing with one another for planets. Since the most powerful suns or stars in the
Universe are likely to be those which control the biggest and/or greatest
number of planets, so the most powerful men are usually those with the most
property, which stands to them in the ratio of a planet to a sun. A man with three houses is equivalent to a
sun with three planets, and he can only be more powerful, from an
alpha-stemming viewpoint, than the man with a single house (provided, of
course, that the scale of the latter is smaller than that of the former,
whether collectively or individually).
Nowadays there aren't that many people with three or more houses, but
even one house will be considered excessive in the future, and its owner
doubtless penalized as a matter of social necessity. With the post-Human Millennium there will be
no private property in existence at all, not even for the leaders, who will
live in communal dwellings while their superhuman 'charges' live in the
communal clusters of artificially-supported brains in the various meditation
centres. Thus the world will tend ever
more radically in the direction of God, or the transcendence of all
materialism, in the heavenly Beyond.
Verily, the overcoming of nature and the natural body will be a
significant step on the road to that spiritual destination!
POST-DUALISTIC
SEXUALITY
Since everything on
earth stems from the polar constitution of the Galaxy, including the
distinction between female and male, which is the essence of Original Sin, it
follows that the gradual overcoming of this constitution signifies an
evolutionary progression away from the natural-world-order towards the
supernatural context of God. Since stars
correspond to the female side of the Galaxy and planets to the male side, we
find that the struggle away from the natural towards the supernatural entails a
rebellion, on the part of males, against female attractive power, a rebellion
which has led to a loosening of traditional sexual ties and to a gradual move
towards a predominantly male-oriented society, a society in which the
post-dualistic bias of industrial, urban man finds its chief sexual outlets in
either homosexuality or pornography, while women, becoming increasingly
masculinized, effectively function as 'lesser men', or 'quasi-males', thus
giving rise to an extension of 'homosexual' tendencies within the framework of
heterosexual relationships - as manifested, for example, in the ubiquitous cult
of unisex and the practice, intermittently or otherwise, of anal sex. Thus bisexuality cuts across heterosexual as
well as homosexual relationships, reflecting, as it must, the growing
post-dualistic bias of contemporary man.
If the pre-dualistic age was congenial to lesbianism, then the
post-dualistic age will necessarily favour homosexuality, in accordance with
the expansion of the male over the female side of life, as essential to
mankind's struggle towards the Divine.
Thus, in the Western world, it is fashionable - one might
almost say obligatory - to refer to homosexuals as 'gay' rather than 'queer',
since the derogatory implication of the latter term would reflect too
naturalistic a mentality, suggestive of a poor opinion of deviations from the
natural or traditional norm. But to have
such an opinion would be to put oneself in the position of a man, devoid of
evolutionary perspective, who imagines that life should always be lived on
natural terms, and that deviations from such terms are inherently blameworthy
and, consequently, something to be regarded as a perversion. It would be to condemn evolutionary progress
in matters relating to sex, and thus remain entrenched in a short-sighted
materialism that was all-too-ready to brand manifestations of sexual progress
as 'insane' because, according to one's traditional criteria, arguably
perverse.
No, in this age only the less spiritually-evolved people are
partial to the word 'queer' for what they regard as a deviation from the
natural right. They are the
twentieth-century's sexual fascists - people who are unable or unwilling to
recognize sexual progress when they see it, but persist in applying their own
rather short-sighted denigrations to it as a matter of course. 'Queer' is equivalent to 'perverse', and
being homosexual is, according to this value-judgement, somewhat inferior to
the natural, heterosexual norm. In fact,
it is to be a kind of sexual spastic.
Not surprisingly, Marxist-Leninist societies tend to frown upon
homosexuality and pornography as constituting a perversion of the natural norm,
which is also symptomatic, in their view, of bourgeois decadence. Lacking any kind of transcendental criterion,
such societies have no basis for justifying or understanding it, since, without
reference to the spiritual dimension of evolutionary progress, homosexuality
may well appear a perversion of the natural rather than a development towards
the supernatural, in which increasingly artificial standards come to
apply. But such artificiality isn't
readily encouraged in Marxist-Leninist states, since it connotes with an
elitist tendency that would appear to run contrary to the inherent naturalness
of the general proletariat, whose social backwardness or, rather, innocence
must be protected from such 'corrupting' influences as allegedly stem, in the
main, from the decadent West.
To be sure, there is a certain degree of logic behind this type
of thinking, especially with regard to the presumed inability of the general
proletariat to properly appreciate the merits of so-called perverse
activity. Yet decadence isn't the root
from which homosexuality and pornography spring, even though such phenomena may
arise during the decadence of a given civilization. The fact of contemporary Western
civilization's being decadent does not, however, imply that everything which
exists in or springs from it is inevitably decadent, too. Decadence can only extend to certain
contexts, with politics and religion especially conspicuous, and is chiefly
characterized by the inadequacy or irrelevance of the official system, whether
political or religious, from a majority standpoint - by its inability, in other
words, to correspond to the evolutionary changes wrought by environmental and
other factors among the masses. That
certain sections of the masses may develop more relevant unofficial systems to
compensate themselves, in some measure, for this lack ... is a fact which
cannot be denied, and sometimes a context or system that began unofficially, as
a reflection of evolutionary progress outside the prevailing system, is
subsequently absorbed into the decadent civilization in response to both
popular demand and financial expediency.
Pornography is, I believe, one such phenomenon, and its prevalence
throughout the West reflects a manifestation of evolutionary progress which
co-exists with the manifestations of decadence also to be found there. For as a means of intellectualizing
sexuality, pornography - and I use the term loosely in the sense of general
erotica - must signify a development away from traditional materialism ... in
which not concrete but sublimated sexuality comes to pass, as the highest, most
appropriate sexuality for an increasingly transcendental age, with other types
of post-dualistic sexuality, including the homosexual, in fairly close
attendance.
Of course, homosexuals have existed in the past, long before
the dawn of post-dualism, and not all latter-day homosexuals can be considered
truly post-dualistic. Nevertheless it
remains a fact that, in recent decades, homosexuality has become more
widespread than ever before, a fact which must be associated, to some extent,
with the gradual undermining of the traditional female side of life and
consequent upsurge of the male side in its place. If homosexuality is a reflection of this,
then so, too, is pornography, bisexuality, unisex, celibacy, and, indeed, the
sodomizing of women. Whatever the
particular sexual preference of the individual male, it is evident that he can
choose between a number of alternative modes of post-dualistic sexuality within
the broad contexts of the Western dualistic and, most especially, transitional
civilizations. Admittedly, he can also
remain traditionally dualistic and only consort with actual, palpable females
in a consistently orthodox fashion if he so desires or, what's probably nearer
the truth, if his class instincts and environmental/professional conditioning
so dictate. He can thus behave, on the
conventional bourgeois level, like any good traditional Marxist-Leninist male,
who would never dream of doing anything unnatural to a woman or of having
sexual relations with a man, never mind casting an appreciative eye over
pornography! But such conventional
types, who are more apt than anyone to regard homosexuals as 'queer' and
pornographers as 'pervs' or 'jerks', are unlikely to be around for ever, least
of all towards the latter stages of the next civilization when, with the
full-blown acceptance of post-dualistic criteria, adherence to traditional
dualistic criteria would be regarded as a gross misfortune, the subject of
derisory contempt if not actual suppression.
To be shamelessly heterosexual in that more advanced age would
be tantamount to being the victim of atavistic paganism, a kind of anachronism
in a wholly transcendental society that was progressing, all the time, closer
to a post-Human Millennium, and thus to the complete supersession of the
natural body by artificial supports and sustains for the brain - arranged, no
doubt, on a communal basis. To be
shamelessly heterosexual at that time would be even more uncomfortable, from
the social point-of-view, than being homosexual now. For at least the twentieth century gave rise
to the transitional civilizations of America, Germany, and Japan, which
recognize the legitimacy of a degree of sexual transcendentalism unprecedented
in the dualistic civilizations of the more traditional European West. And even these latter are being obliged, in
coming under the influence of the more advanced civilizations, to extend the
transcendental side at the expense of the pagan side of things, so that
post-dualistic sexuality is a tolerated, if not wholeheartedly encouraged,
aspect of contemporary life. But in a
full-blown post-dualistic civilization the prevalence of natural sexual
activity could hardly be considered compatible with transcendental criteria,
and so more rigorous steps would have to be taken to phase it out. Doubtless artificial modes of reproduction
would be preferred, though not necessarily along the lines envisaged by Aldous
Huxley in Brave
New World, while women - assuming they still existed at such a time - would
be a great deal more liberated than at present - so liberated, in fact, as to
take artificial sexual practices, including recourse to vibrators, for granted.
Yet the Western world, being partly tied to its pagan past,
will have its Mary Whitehouses and Malcolm Muggeridges, not to mention Andrea
Dworkins, for some time to come - certainly for the foreseeable future! It will also, thank goodness, have its
Havelock Ellises and Henry Millers, who reflect the transcendentally
progressive side of this world.
Doubtless hard-line Marxists would, in the event of taking over the
West, carry on from approximately where sexual puritans left off, thereby
postponing the advent of the highest civilization for as long as possible or,
at any rate, until such time as internal or international pressure obliged them
to change their tune. But it is doubtful
that they would be able to stamp out pornography, homosexuality, etc.,
altogether, and so a flickering of post-dualistic sexuality would probably
continue, sometimes threatening to burst into flame and set the whole world
alight - an eventuality which well-intentioned people could only look forward
to, since a world in which transcendental sexuality predominates is superior to
one still under the dominion of natural, sensual, palpable sex.
There are, of course, various drawbacks to the prevalence of
pornography in the West at present, but they are largely inevitable. The man who misuses pornography is an example
of what I mean, and such men, insufficiently sublimated to properly appreciate
it, tend to react from pornographic idealism with a greater degree of
heterosexual realism than might otherwise have been the case, in consequence of
which they then commit rape or put their pornographically-induced fantasies
into action in socially unacceptable ways.
Instead of being absorbed into the higher sexuality of the pornographic
world, these men rebound off it, so to speak, with redoubled physical violence,
their sexual appetites inflamed by the seductive spectacles to-hand. They are akin to the egocentric mind that,
according to the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, rejects the purity of the
Clear Light of the Void and is therefore obliged to return to the world in the
guise of a new person. What the Clear
Light ... is to the insufficiently-evolved person, the pornographic stimulus is
to such men as these, who must needs refer everything back to palpable reality,
rather than strive to live on the higher plane of sexual sublimation. As I said, this is a drawback. But it is one that has to be endured by
society in the name of evolutionary progress and fidelity to transcendental
criteria. There is no justification for
stamping out pornography on the hypothetical grounds that it leads to an
increase in sexual crimes, since such crimes as are committed against unsuspecting
people tend to be committed by a small minority of men, not by the majority of
pornography enthusiasts who, on the contrary, are perfectly capable of
containing themselves and directing their sexual impulses towards the
Ideal. That such masturbation as may
take place in this context is regarded, by less-evolved people, as a perversion
... is perhaps inevitable, if regrettable.
For the people in question remain too tied to the natural to see that it
is only through the perversion or, rather, subversion of natural behaviour ...
that man can progress towards the supernatural, and thereby achieve redemption
as an evolutionary being. Not to be
capable of unnatural or artificial sexual behaviour is to condemn oneself to
the level of a beast, in whom natural determinism prevails.
Yet masturbation, much as it may take place amongst a majority
of the pornography-buying public, does not have to take place, and, with the
more highly-evolved men, it generally transpires that voyeurism alone is
sufficient to cater for their pornographic needs. A man who can scrutinize pornography without
feeling compelled to masturbate ... may well be more spiritually evolved than
one who can't, since he reduces sensual commitment to the barest minimum of
optical engagement. But even
masturbation, morally considered, is a less sensual activity than copulation,
and undoubtedly represents a more civilized, because artificial, mode of sexual
behaviour. [For one thing, it cannot be equated with Original Sin and neither,
for another, does it involve the literal use of another body, and of another
body, if female, likely to be more fleshy than one's own.] Of course, D.H. Lawrence wouldn't have
agreed with me here. But, then, Lawrence
was one of the twentieth-century's least civilized writers, a kind of modern
savage for whom sex in
naturalis, and as often as possible, was the key to salvation. Such a key, however, simply opens the door to
damnation, and has been condemned by all true spiritual leaders for
centuries. We don't cultivate spirit
when we make love, and neither did Lawrence, whose writings are among the most
naturalistic of his time, intend us to do so.
Instead, he wanted us to become 'whole', which, according to him, meant
perfect. Alas, such ‘wholeness’ would
not lead us towards God, but simply keep us tied to the beastly as perpetual
men! Yet man is something that 'should
be overcome' said Nietzsche, an altogether more enlightened philosopher, and
pornography, by freeing him from the palpable, is a contributory factor in his
overcoming - a means of encouraging him towards the complete transcendence of
sex in the post-Human Millennium.
Of course, man is human at any stage of his evolution and
cannot completely escape from the sensual world into a post-human spiritual
one. There are sensual, sexual obligations
to be honoured whether one is in the pagan, the Christian, or the
transcendental stages of human evolution.
But whereas the sexual obligations of pre-dualistic pagan man would be
largely if not exclusively natural, those, by contrast, of post-dualistic
transcendental man should become increasingly artificial, as befits his greater
freedom from natural determinism. The
former is only capable of heterosexual copulation, whereas the latter, while
still capable of such activity, prefers to gloat over a pornographic magazine
and/or video, and thus displays more free will, as is compatible with a higher
degree of evolutionary progress. For in
the age-old struggle between free will and natural determinism, free will can
only triumph over natural determinism as men grow ever more civilized, and so
approximate, by ever-increasing degrees, to the ultimate freedom of God. In a transcendental society the ratio of free
will to natural determinism should be in the region of at least 3:1, in
accordance with the post-dualistic status of the age. Eventually, with the advent of transcendence,
natural determinism will be completely escaped from, as the Spiritual Globes
issuing from Superbeings tend towards ultimate Oneness in the heavenly
Beyond. For Salvation (as definitively
signified by transcendence) is, above all, deliverance from the flesh, from, at
that incredibly-advanced juncture in time, the clustered new-brains whose
physiological constitutions would retain a degree of natural determinism right
up to the moment of transcendence, and hence complete spiritual freedom. But, of course, the degree of natural
determinism imposed upon the meditating wills of the Superbeings would be
considerably less than the degree of it imposed upon man, whether transcendental
or otherwise, and be proportionate, moreover, to the stage of evolutionary
progress consonant with that age when, with extensive technological assistance,
the new-brain clusters were artificially supported and sustained, 'the flesh'
having been reduced to the barest minimum compatible with a truly intensive
cultivation of spirit.
Returning from the upper reaches of our projected post-Human
Millennium to the present, we find that the most advanced men are those in whom
free will predominates over natural determinism to the greatest extent. As a rule, men of genius are the ones who
display the most free will, and this is virtually a primary criterion of
genius, whether we are alluding to a man like Schopenhauer, who willed to spend
most of his adult life in undeviating fidelity to certain solitary habits, or
to one like Salvador Dali, who once lectured a gathering of students with a
loaf of bread tied to his head. Natural
determinism, carried to any extent, is incompatible with greatness, and never
more so than today, when transcendental criteria are on the rise. The leading minds must be the freest minds,
mini-versions of God on earth who intimate, through no matter what
idiosyncratic circumlocutions, of greater freedoms to come; Christ-like figures
with a divine mission - artists and philosophers. Thus they draw the masses up towards
themselves, and so away from the tyranny of natural determinism.
However, just as it follows that not all men can be as free as
the great, so it usually happens that not all women can be as free as men -
even in the twentieth century, the first post-dualistic century in
history. As a rule, women are more under
the sway of natural determinism than of free will, and especially were they so
in the past, prior to the growth of female emancipation. Today, however, while natural determinism
still prevails over free will in most women, evolutionary pressures are
ensuring that women, too, become freer than ever before, thus behaving
increasingly like men, whose work-a-day world is no longer an exclusively male
preserve. Nowadays comparatively few
women can expect to have more than three children. For the emphasis on free will in an
incipiently post-dualistic age ensures that child-rearing becomes rather more
the exception than the rule, and that women accordingly look upon their
professional calling as the main one, with child-rearing a temporary
interruption of their public duties. On
the other hand, in an age with high mortality rates, like the nineteenth
century, this attitude and behaviour wouldn't have been possible, even if other
factors had encouraged it. But, in the
modern age, with extremely low infant mortality rates in the more civilized
parts of the world, it stands to reason that large families and/or regular
pregnancies aren't going to be necessary either to increase or maintain the
population level, and that 1-3 successful first-time pregnancies and
deliveries, per adult woman, will suffice to maintain the population ... as
well, possibly, as enable it to increase.
Thus women are now freer than ever before of maternal responsibilities
and able, in consequence, to regard their public functions, as wage-earning
employers/employees, as their principal ones.
Free will is gradually getting the better of natural determinism in
women as well as in men, and although a significant proportion of women don't
much welcome this fact, it nevertheless remains an inescapable aspect of
evolutionary progress which comparatively few of them can do anything to
reverse. For the post-dualistic age is
hostile to traditional female aspects of life in proportion as it is biased on
the side of those male elements which are gradually bringing the world closer
to Heaven. Future women, you can rest
assured, will be a great deal less naturalistic and correspondingly more
liberated than contemporary ones! We may
not yet have reached a supermasculine stage of evolution, but we are certainly
tending in its direction, as various aspects of the modern world, including the
sexual, adequately confirm.
An historical man (assuming he could come back to life from a
previous century) could only cast a scandalized gaze over the shapely rump of a
liberated young woman walking along the street in tight-fitting denims. The more enlightened modern male, however,
hardly deigns to be impressed by the seductive spectacle of such a
clearly-outlined female figure. He is
simply conscious of looking at another man, albeit an attractive one, in front
of him. He is post-dualistic and,
consequently, if not literally homosexual, then his relations with such
quasi-masculine 'women' are effectively bisexual. For homosexuality, in one degree and form or
another, is not so much the exception in a post-dualistic age as ... the general
rule!
TOWARDS
A TRUE EQUALITY
Are introverts morally
superior to extroverts? This is an
interesting question and one which I believe can be answered in the
affirmative. Yes, introverts generally are morally superior to
extroverts, and for the simple reason that whereas the former are aligned with
essence, or the internal, the latter remain aligned with appearance, or the
external. Essence and appearance are
forever antithetical and can never be considered equal. Of course, no-one is completely an introvert
or an extrovert, but the fact that, when not striving for a balance, most
people are predominantly one or the other permits us to distinguish between
them as, in effect, 'the good' and 'the bad'.
To be an introvert is to value the internal world above the
external one, to prefer being 'in one's head', through reflection or
contemplation, than outside it ... in curiosity at the world around one. An introvert is thus biased in favour of the
spirit rather than of the flesh, and may be defined as of masculine character,
in whom the profound predominates over the superficial. Conversely, an extrovert spends more time in
the external environment and may accordingly be described as of feminine
character, with a corresponding predilection for the superficial over the
profound. The extrovert is usually a man
of action and may well be highly observant.
He notices what goes on around him with a comprehensiveness and
penetration which the introvert will rarely if ever possess. To him external events are important, whereas
the internal world, to the extent that he has one, seems relatively
trivial.
Generally speaking, this extrovert/introvert antithesis
appertains to the division of the sexes.
Women are fundamentally extrovert and men, by contrast, introvert. A woman notices appearances with more
consistency and penetration, as a rule, than does a man, and this is because,
for her, appearance is what really matters, what really counts in life, so
that, as Schopenhauer well-remarked, she usually takes appearances for reality
(and even, in a certain sense, too seriously).
On the other hand, a man, if truly masculine, will treat essence with
more respect than appearance, and thus adopt an introverted attitude to
life. He will be predominantly immersed
in the spirit, whereas a woman will remain aligned with the flesh. Indeed, it could be argued that whereas women
are rooted in the eyes, men are centred, by contrast, in the brain.
These distinctions between the sexes are gradually being eroded
and all because the influence of modern industrial civilization, in slowly
masculinizing women, is driving society towards a post-dualistic status in
which the ultimate objective can only be the complete transcendence of the
feminine element in life. Needless to
say, we have a long way to go before we attain to a supermasculine and highly
introverted society, which, so I contend, will only come about with a
post-Human Millennium, and the correlative elevation of humanity to the
superhuman level ... of human brains artificially supported and no-less artificially
sustained in communal contexts. In the
meantime, women will doubtless continue to exist, but not as traditionally!
Nevertheless, one would be a hypocrite to assert that all
modern women were already radically masculinized, since the evidence of the senses
would seem to indicate that a majority of them are still sufficiently feminine
to be able to continue behaving in a traditionally seductive, sensual manner,
and to perform the usual female duties in life.
Some women may be more advanced and liberated than others, but they
remain a comparatively small minority of, for the most part,
university-educated intellectual types.
Most women, it seems to me, have not yet betrayed their sex or been
obliged to do so to any radical extent, which is why they continue to treat
appearances as being of more importance than essence.
I shall give you a typical example of an average woman's
concept of the world, as appertaining to sex.
Such a woman will regard the solitary man as 'bent' by assuming that he
masturbates. Whether or not he does so
... isn't particularly important. What is
important, however, is the light thrown on the woman's psychology by the word
'bent'. It reveals, I mean, that she
cannot conceive of sex in transcendent terms, but must refer it back to nature,
so that anything which may be regarded as a deviation from the natural norm is
deemed perverse, and duly castigated with the crude epithet in question. Lacking a more evolved spiritual dimension,
this average type of woman is unable to relate to a lifestyle or attitude to
life which refutes conventional sexual behaviour. Rather than interpreting the man's celibacy
in terms of spiritual aspirations, she regards it as a failure, a perversion of
the natural sex instinct, and does so because of an inherent bias, in her
psyche, for appearance over essence, the flesh over the spirit. Such women are incapable of appreciating the
virtue of sublimated sexuality. They
remain chained to the concrete, the apparent, the phenomenal, and are thus more
traditionally feminine.
Of course, even the most advanced women have spiritual
limitations, and I do not for one moment believe that they would be capable of
attaining to the same level of spiritual freedom as a man of outstanding genius
- say, a Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Schopenhauer, Dali, de Chardin, or
Prokofiev. The tendency of publishers to
employ an ever-growing army of women readers, these days, can only be a source
of lasting regret to those men - more spiritually advanced than the majority of
their fellows - whose works are bound to prove unattractive to such readers by
dint of being either too complex or too artificial, too transcendental or too
progressive, too moral or too elitist, as the case may be. With a high percentage of women employed in
editorial roles there are always going to be significant drawbacks from a
serious writer's standpoint, not the least of which will entail the female
reader reacting against the content of too radical a typescript for her liking
under the impression that it is erroneous or dangerous when, in point of fact,
it is simply the product of a more spiritually-evolved psyche, one that would
probably find a greater degree of sympathy and understanding from an
intelligent male reader - provided, however, that he was habituated to
appreciating men of genius and could therefore boast of intimate scholarly
connections with the likes of Huysmans, Roussel, Spengler, Sartre, and
Koestler. Alas, not many female readers
could do that!
Despite the progress which has been made, during the
past century, in drawing women up higher towards more masculine criteria, the
fact nonetheless remains that a division between the sexes still exists and will
doubtless continue to exist until the post-Human Millennium, when only Supermen
will prevail. Yes, the traditional
feminine/masculine division still exists, but so, too, does a new dimension, as
applying in particular to so-called liberated women in their relation to the
most intelligent males, in which a kind of spiritual disparity exists along a
post-dualistic spectrum in response to male superiority in things of the
spirit. The more advanced women are
doing their best to close the gap, but even they have to admit, sooner or
later, that they are still fundamentally women and cannot therefore hope to
compete with the contemporary world's outstanding male geniuses. If these geniuses are to be described as
'greater men', then the leading female intellects effectively become 'lesser
men' in relation to them, and so they must remain. This is not male chauvinism, but fidelity to
truth as I endeavour to push free thought to greater heights, in revolt against
natural determinism. No woman, barring a
sex change, will ever become a man, though she can certainly become more
man-like in the course of evolutionary time, and thus sacrifice a number of
traditional feminine norms or be obliged to modify them in response to
masculine pressures.
As for sex, however, women are on the whole extrovert and,
hence, superficial. They are likely to be
more impressed by a neat, clean appearance than by what a man may know about
the Universe or God or the Millennium, and, consequently, they are inclined to
regard a well-dressed man as superior to a poorly-dressed one, even though the
former may be a money-grubbing scoundrel and the latter a poverty-stricken
genius! This is the inevitable
consequence of taking appearances for reality and evaluating people according
to superficial criteria. One cannot be
surprised that some men, predominantly given to essence, choose to dress poorly
or informally as a means of expressing their contempt for appearances. For one can't please the world and genuinely
aspire towards the transcendental Beyond at the same time. A truly introverted man will know in which
direction salvation lies.
The fact that evolution is tending in the direction of greater
spirituality ... inevitably means that women must be treated increasingly like
men, since the post-dualistic age requires that they effectively become 'lesser
men' rather than remain just women, as before.
The move towards sexual equality in certain contexts is therefore both
morally desirable and inevitable, but one must understand the exact terms on
which the world is moving towards it, else the chances of one's interpreting
equality in a ridiculous way can only be pretty high!
Let me give you an example.
A husband and wife decide that, since the sexes are equal and women
should be liberated from traditional domestic slavery, they will share whatever
domestic duties they may have, including care of their offspring. Consequently the husband takes turns with the
cooking, washing-up, sewing, hoovering, bed-making, nappy-changing,
bottle-feeding, etc., while his wife dedicates a correspondingly greater amount
of time to reading, watching television, listening to the radio, practising
yoga, or whatever. Here, in this absurd
situation, evolution has only gone forwards for the wife, whereas for her
husband it has effectively gone backwards, since he now has to take a share in traditional
female duties. But this is precisely
what shouldn't happen, since
evolution is primarily furthered by men, and the modern age signifies not the
triumph of women over men but the coercion of women away from their traditional
roles, in response to a male-oriented technological world. For a modern husband to take turns with his
wife in tackling domestic responsibilities is really quite ridiculous, since
evolutionary progress should be serving his interests by making him even more
masculine, and hence spiritually-biased, than were his male ancestors, thereby
leading him towards a greater degree of spirituality, whether through culture
or religion, than would previously have been possible. With the comparatively recent invention of so
many electrical appliances for domestic use, such as dishwashers,
washing-machines, spin-dryers, hoovers, fridges, cookers, electric fires, and
so on, the woman is spared much of the time-consuming manual work which her
sexual ancestors formerly had to do, and should thereby have more free time in
which to cultivate masculine, i.e. spiritual, interests, like watching
television, reading books, playing chess, or painting pictures. This is what liberation should really mean
for the wife - not the absurd imposition onto her husband of traditional female
duties!
So although we speak of equality, we should be careful not to
misspeak of it, and thereupon run the risk of reversing or impeding
evolutionary progress. What we must
understand is that the sexes are only equal, these days, to the extent that
women are now effectively becoming 'lesser men' through the influence of
environmental and technological progress, rather than remaining firmly
entrenched on the female side of history.
But that same coercive influence which has slowly dragged them across
the borderline, so to speak, which separates the feminine from the masculine,
has driven men even further ahead on the masculine side of it, so that an
evolutionary gap still exists between
women and men, but this time on the post-dualistic level ... as a distinction
between 'lesser men' and 'greater men' or, as one could alternatively phrase
it, quasi-men and genuine men, according to the logic of a male-biased society.
We can exploit a useful analogy here with a tug-of-war, in
which a male team is striving to pull a female team over a white line which
divides the feminine from the masculine side.
Let us imagine that the women are three feet away from being pulled over
the line and that the men are also three feet away from it on their side. Thus a gap of six feet exists between the
sexes, since the two teams are balanced either side of the line. With their greater strength, however, the men
gradually pull the women closer to the line and eventually right over it, so
that everyone is on the male side. But
the distance the women have been pulled is also the distance the men have moved
deeper into their masculine territory, which means that a gap of six feet still exists between the two
teams, since the women are now some three feet over the white line and the men
at least (barring a large team) nine feet away from it. This analogy suffices to explain the
spiritual gap which exists between 'lesser men' and 'greater men' on the
post-dualistic side of evolution. The
men have dragged women into a masculine-biased lifestyle, but they have evolved
apace at the same time, and thus exist on a higher level of post-dualistic
evolution. Because women are now
effectively 'lesser men', it is expedient to treat them as men rather
than to discriminate against them as women. What it is not proper to do, however,
is to treat the men, who are now effectively 'greater men', as if they were women, and so
oblige them to share in a variety of traditional female responsibilities! In truth, an inequality between the sexes still
exists, the only difference being that it is not now the old gender-based
inequality, in which women were women and men were men, but a completely new,
post-dualistic inequality reserving to 'greater men' the right to take upon
themselves tasks and responsibilities which, owing to their comparative
physical or mental weakness, 'lesser men' would be insufficiently advanced or
qualified to do. The 'lesser man' who
now plays a competent acoustic guitar in the manner of, say, Judi Collins or
Joni Mitchell is dwarfed by the 'greater man' who plays a brilliant electric
guitar like, say, John McLaughlin or Carlos Santana. No equality of guitar-playing could ever
exist between these two dissimilar masculine creatures, though masculine they
both arguably are!
There is, however, a reverse case to the downgrading of the
husband in a domestic egalitarianism which results in his sharing feminine
duties with his wife and, fundamentally, it is no less absurd, insofar as it
entails the downgrading of women. I
refer to that aspect of sexual equality which results in women becoming freak
athletes, whether as cricketers, footballers, long-distance runners, or
whatever. Now whilst I'm not altogether
opposed to the concept of women in sport, there are certain sports which seem
less to reflect evolutionary progress, where the emancipation of women is
concerned, than simply to degrade women into types of 'lesser men' who are far
below the 'lesser men' whose lifestyles reflect a spiritual bias. Better for women to become the latter than
the former, since evolution is tending towards the spiritual and thus away from
the physical, as reflected, amongst other things, in contemporary sport.
We are on difficult ground here, so I beg the reader's patience
whilst I redefine my position, this time solely with regard to men. We can omit the inverted comas here, for we
are now dealing with the literal - namely the distinction between lesser and
greater men, defining the former as physical and the latter as spiritual. The fact is that, just as an introvert is
morally superior to an extrovert, so a brain worker is morally superior to a
muscle man or a manual labourer, since evolution tends towards a spiritual
culmination. A literary genius is thus a
superior type of man to a sportsman, say, a cricketer or a footballer, no
matter how accomplished the latter may happen to be. The one uses brain power, the other muscle
power. The one is introverted, the other
extroverted. The one aspires towards the
divine consummation of evolution, the other stems, in a manner of speaking,
from the diabolic roots of life in the cosmos.
But the preponderance of sport over war in modern life does at least
indicate that the lesser men are now generally behaving in a less evil, because
more sublimated, competitive fashion than was formerly the case. It is better that this lesser type of man
should be a cricketer or a footballer than a swordsman or a spear thrower in a
much more lethal form of competition - namely, gladiatorial contests or even
war.
Thus for men,
competitive sport represents a degree of evolutionary progress which has to
some extent sublimated evil along less violent and dangerous lines. For women, on the other hand, competitive
sport does not reflect such sublimation, but is simply something imposed upon
them in response to the post-dualistic nature of the age. Where, formerly, men were opposed to one
another more violently, whether as soldiers or gladiators, they are now
increasingly brought into opposition on terms which don't, as a rule, lead to
bloodshed or loss of life, though injuries of one sort or another do of course
frequently occur. But women were never -
or rarely - opposed to one another in war or gladiatorial combat, so one cannot
regard their adoption of competitive sport as a form of moral progress. Rather, it signifies a regression for them
which is a consequence of their masculinization and the correlative tendency of
men to treat or regard women as 'lesser men'.
Where, formerly, women were confined to maternal, domestic, and sexual
roles, they are now free to play football or cricket or hockey in a competitive
context. Thus they become 'lesser men',
but only in relation to men who were already lesser when compared with brain
workers. As 'lesser men' in this context
they are decidedly inferior to those women whom we earlier discussed in terms
of intellectual or spiritual predilections, since their masculinization is
physical and therefore not strictly compatible with evolutionary progress. Indeed, it could well be that women whose
lifestyles are now spiritualized to the extent that they become 'lesser men'
are superior to the actual lesser men whose lifestyles, in contrast, are
predominantly physical and competitive.
For if the actual lesser men become 'greater men' in relation to the
sports-playing 'lesser men' on the physical level, why shouldn't 'lesser men'
on the spiritual level become 'greater men' when compared with the actual
lesser men of sport? The distinction
between the physical and the spiritual should still hold true, regardless of
gender. For if a philosopher of genius
is superior to a female novelist, how can the latter not be superior to a
sportsman, whose emphasis is physical rather than spiritual?
One is therefore unable to contend that all men, just because
of their maleness, are, ipso facto, superior to all women. There are men who are superior to other men,
as spiritual to physical; there are women who are superior to other women, as
spiritual to physical. But there are
certain types of women who are superior to lesser types of men, as spiritual to
physical, and certain types of men who are superior to all women,
regardless of how intelligent or intellectually accomplished some of the latter
may happen to be! The fact is that, much
as a female intellectual can outshine lesser types of men, she can never
outshine the greatest, who are always in the vanguard of evolutionary
progress. A Simone de Beauvoir is
obliged to take second place to a Sartre, a Woolf to a Huxley, a Plaith to a
Pound, a Weil to a de Chardin, a Gregory to a Yeats, and so on. Here we come back to the inevitable gap along
the post-dualistic spectrum which cannot be closed while women remain at least
partly female. Only with the post-Human
Millennium will there be an absolute equality, and then only because all bodies
will have been transcended in the artificially-supported and no-less
artificially-sustained brains of the Supermen and nothing approximating to the
feminine will accordingly remain. And
because the artificial contexts will necessarily impose a uniform psychology on
the brains being supported, there will be no distinction whatsoever between
male and female - everything having by then become supermasculine, in advanced
spirituality.
Hence the equality of the sexes that we superficially speak of,
these days, is but a prelude to the complete overcoming of the feminine element
in life, as essential to evolutionary progress.
To treat women as women would be an unfortunate anachronism in a world
with post-dualistic aspirations. We do
not wish to be reminded of dualistic criteria, since our bias is towards the
post-Human Millennium. We are all the
time becoming more introverted, and we desire that women should become more
introverted or, at the very least, less extrovert as well. They will always lag behind us on the human
plane, but on the superhuman one there will be no distinctions. Men will become Supermen and so, too, will
women. Sex will be transcended, for sex
is specific to the body and the psychology which that body, be it male or
female, imposes upon the mind. An
artificially-supported brain could only be masculine, never feminine! It is precisely by overcoming the feminine
that a true equality will exist - an equality of supermasculine Supermen. We may have a long way to evolve before such
equality comes to pass, but at least it is my belief that we are slowly tending
towards it.
CONCERNING
TRANSCENDENTALISM
Transcendentalism
should not be confused with or mistaken for Buddhism or Hinduism or any other
Asiatic religion. On the contrary, the
religion of the future will involve meditation, but that won't make it Buddhist
or Hindu. There can be no question of
Transcendentalism being equated with any of those old religions. For it will be superior to all traditional
world religions, whether considered separately or taken together. It will reflect a religious convergence from
the Many to the One, and therefore could not be described as one of the old
religions up-dated. The Many - and they
include Christianity (in all its various denominations), Mohammedanism,
Shintoism, Judaism - must be transcended in the One, the one true world
religion, which, unlike the many fundamentally false so-called world religions,
will take humanity to the post-Human Millennium. Religious evolution demands that
Transcendentalism supersedes all so-called world religions, whatever their
constitutions. There can be no question
of any of the old religions taking over from and supplanting the others. All traditional faiths must be superseded as
humanity moves in
toto towards the ultimate world religion, based on meditation.
What will especially distinguish Transcendentalism from the
above-named religions, however, is the knowledge its devotees will have of
mankind's position in relation to the post-Human Millennium and, beyond that,
the heavenly Beyond at the transcendental culmination-point of all
evolution. A Transcendentalist will have
an objective perspective of future evolutionary requirements, and will thus be
absolved from the error of imagining that one can attain to God if only one
meditates long and hard enough. Having a
theoretical foreknowledge of the post-Human Millennium, the Transcendentalist
will have no illusions about the likelihood of his subsequently attaining to
God if only he devotes himself to the task with sufficient determination, but
will know that man is but a link in the evolutionary chain stretching from the
stars to God, a link which fits in between the apes and the Supermen, and
therefore not someone or something capable of personally achieving
transcendence. The Transcendentalist
won't meditate with a view to attaining to God, but simply in the interests of
spiritual expansion, so that he may experience a state of mind approximating,
no matter how crudely or humbly initially, to the condition of transcendent
spirit. He will know that, hitherto,
whether through paganism or Christianity, men have come together in religious
buildings partly for sensual as well as spiritual reasons, and that now,
virtually for the first time in history, their motive for coming together will
be purely spiritual. No longer will men
sing or chant or inhale incense or partake of the Mass or pray or dance or listen
to sermons. All that will be a thing of
the past! Instead they will simply
meditate, and, in meditating, they'll learn something of the peace and
stillness of the transcendental Beyond.
But they won't expect meditation to work miracles for them and
literally take them to that Beyond. They
will know that, as men, they are subject to certain limitations which can never
be transcended except in the post-Human
Millennium, when human brains become artificially supported and sustained, and
thus cease to be human. For in the
Millennium in question a more extensive, not to say intensive, spirituality
will be possible, since the artificial supports will have freed the Supermen
from the great majority of sensual or natural obligations to which men are
perforce enslaved, including the obligations to eat, drink, defecate, urinate,
copulate, and take exercise. If, having
an old brain as well as a new one, the Supermen still sleep, that will be a
limitation of their particular stage of evolution. But such a stage will have to be lived
through, and presumably with the aid of synthetic stimulants like LSD, before
the next and more advanced stage could get properly under way. For, with the Superbeings, meditation will
return, but on a much superior level than before. Each Superbeing, or new-brain collectivization,
will experience the maximum degree of meditation compatible with its more
absolutist constitution ... as the ultimate earthly life-form, until,
eventually, such meditation leads to transcendence and thus to the Spiritual
Globes of the heavenly Beyond, the Beyond of Heaven per se. Yet these Spiritual Globes won't be God, but
only become the Omega Absolute when they have merged into one another, through
a process of convergence throughout the Universe, and thereby established
ultimate spiritual unity, in complete contrast to the divergent behaviour of
the stars.
All this and more the Transcendentalist will know, and so his
religious sense will be radically different from a Buddhist's or a
Hindu's. Only Spiritual Globes attain to
the Omega Absolute, while man must be content with attaining, in due process of
evolution, to the Superman. He won't be
deceived on this issue and therefore have to approach meditation on the human
level with the same fanaticism as a Buddhist set on attaining to the heavenly
Beyond. Yet, at the same time, he won't
treat meditation frivolously either, as though the impossibility of literal
transcendence on the human plane justified his doing so! On the contrary, if to approximate to the
ultimate heavenly condition in such a fashion is the best that can be done at a
certain stage of evolution - technology being insufficiently advanced to
establish a Millennium on the aforementioned post-human terms - then
approximate one must, and therefore treat one's relatively humble endeavour
with respect. In due course,
spirituality will be upgraded, as the Supermen carry-on from where men left
off. But everything must take its proper
course. Some form of religious
orientation in a communal context will continue to be both morally desirable
and socially necessary so long as there is intelligent life on earth, and the
transcendental orientation of the next civilization will be no exception! Man must pass through this ultimate phase of
his evolution before the more advanced spirituality of the post-Human
Millennium becomes either possible or desirable.
Another distinction between the Transcendentalist and the
oriental mystic which needs clarification is the complete absence of any
reference to or identification with either the Ground (of all being) or the
avatar who functions in an anthropomorphic role approximately equivalent to
Christ. The Ground in the East is
basically equivalent to the Father in the West, to Allah in the Middle East,
and to Jehovah in Israel. In all
probability, it is an abstraction from the central star of the Galaxy, thereby
corresponding to the creative-force at the diabolic roots of the Universe. Likewise, Allah and Jehovah correspond to
that same force and are only intelligible within the context of dualistic
religion, where a limited or transmuted degree of Creatorism reflects the
egocentric balance between subconscious and superconscious minds, as the pagan
and the transcendental form opposite poles of a dualistic reference-point whose
axis is anthropomorphic.
Anthropomorphism, or the fusing together of pagan and transcendental
within the context of a saviour, human and yet divine, transcendent and yet
mundane, is also only intelligible within the context of traditional dualistic
faiths, and would have to be excluded from Transcendentalism, with its
post-dualistic bias. Thus the
Transcendentalist would not recognize a Buddha or a Mohammed or a Christ as
God, but would know that anthropomorphism was a thing of the past. Consequently he would not identify (except
initially and provisionally) any teacher of the true world religion ... with
God, but would know that, historically, he was the man who pointed humanity
towards the post-Human Millennium by upholding meditation and showing them the
true way to Heaven through successive evolutionary transformations. A Transcendentalist would not worship the
teacher of the true world religion - or what purports to be such and may well
become such - the way a Christian worships Christ, or a Mohammedan Mohammed, or
a Buddhist Buddha, but would simply acknowledge his teachings and follow his
guidance. And, in doing so, he would
also turn away from the abstraction appertaining to the root creative and
sustaining force of evolution, which, whether as Jehovah, Allah, the Ground,
the Father, or whatever, could no longer be recognized, still less feared. The omega orientation, on the contrary, would
require all or most of one's attention, and it would entail a religion of love,
not of love and hate, as with dualistic faiths, and certainly not of hate
alone, as in pagan contexts. Man would
thus have no need of reference to the Creator, and neither would he acknowledge
His 'Son' - the human avatar.
Meditation, however, requires a specific building appropriate
to a transcendental orientation. It is
no good one's imagining that, in the future, meditation can be carried out in a
church, and that churches should therefore be converted into meditation
centres. As a rule, churches appertain
to the dualistic stage of evolution with regard to their architectural
characteristics, including the degree of materialism inherent in their overall
construction. Transcendentalism, by
contrast, requires comparatively idealistic buildings suggestive of space and
light, which should be constructed from synthetic materials. Everything naturalistic and materialistic
would have to be excluded from them in the interests of as transcendental an
environment as possible. For meditation
carried out in a materialistic, brick-heavy building would be a lie, as would a
Christian service taking place in a pagan temple. Clearly, churches will have to be superseded
by meditation centres when the transcendental civilization gets properly under
way, the post-dualistic nature of which would require the removal of buildings
connected, no matter how indirectly, with pagan precedent.
Unlike dualistic civilization, the transcendental one would not
encourage antiquarianism or conservationism, and thus preserve old buildings,
whether pagan or Christian, virtually as a matter of historical course. There would be no pride in the past or in
anything stemming from the Alpha Absolute, but simply a post-dualistic
orientation towards the Omega Absolute, which will only materialize, so to
speak, in the future. The emphasis would
be on making the human world as transcendent as possible, and doing this will
inevitably require the removal of everything pre-dating post-dualistic
civilization, whether in terms of churches, castles, palaces, cathedrals,
monasteries, or whatever. There could be
no question of that which is not post-dualistic being protected or admired
when, eventually, the next civilization comes properly to pass! Nostalgia for the historical past would
constitute a grave heresy in a transcendental age! The necessity of improving the world, of
making it as transcendentally advanced as possible, will certainly preclude the
preservation of traditional architectural styles and monuments - as, indeed, of
traditional culture in general.
Transcendental man would stand to lose from an acquaintance with or
allegiance to earlier institutions and customs.
He wouldn't wish to be reminded of such things, the sight of which could
only detract from his omega-oriented aspirations. Better that meditation centres flourish where
once churches or temples or mosques or synagogues did. Better that the spiritual convergence towards
an Omega Point ... of absolute spiritual unity ... be reflected in one
transcendental institution of world-wide uniformity.
But it is evident that the old order could only be overcome
through radical measures at some future date, when the ultimate revolution of
apocalyptic transformation brings about the necessary boost to evolution which
would not otherwise materialize. The
Last Judgement of Christian prophecy is somehow relevant to the modern world,
though not in terms strictly compatible with Biblical teachings. A world exclusively dedicated to the
attainment of millennial transcendence would be one in which the Last Judgement
lay in the distant past, when opposition to post-dualistic criteria still
existed and had to be dealt with in appropriately judgemental terms. Such a judgement, unfortunately, has still to
come, since the world is by no means set directly on course for the post-Human
Millennium at present.
As for the Second Coming, it should be evident that he
corresponds to the world teacher destined, at this crucial juncture in time, to
set mankind on course for the transcendental civilization. There is no question of such a teacher being
universally accepted at present, though his teachings will have to take root in
his or one country before eventually spreading abroad ... in the struggle to
bring about universal Transcendentalism.
He won't promise the world any miraculous changes over the coming
decades, or petition peoples to live in peace when they are patently divided
into mutually hostile camps which are incapable of reconciliation and require,
in consequence, to be sorted out on the basis of moral judgements and
ideological transmutations. He isn't so
superficial as to imagine that evolution can progress without a revolutionary
boost, nor so corrupt as to consider candour naive. For he knows that only the victory of social
progress over the old civilizations will clear the way for the transcendental
civilization. He is no false messiah
preaching idealistic nonsense, but a realist teaching truth. And he knows that such truth will have to
wait a while yet for universal acknowledgement!
MUSICAL
TRANSFORMATIONS
Today's world is a curious,
even bizarre, mixture of the old and the new, the naturalistic and the
synthetic. It is very much a
transitional age, an age in which progress away from dualism is becoming
manifest in numerous different contexts, not least of all music. We have grown so accustomed to the
incongruities resulting from the co-existence of ancient and modern ... that we
tend, in spite of ourselves, to take them for granted. Take, for example, the distinction between
symphony orchestras and rock groups, a distinction which reflects class
differences as much as anything. The
orchestral performers, with their bow ties, black suits, acoustic instruments,
scores, and conductor, obviously appertain to a very different musical world
from the, for example, T-shirted, jean-wearing rock groups whose electric
instruments would be capable of drowning out any orchestra in a competition
designed to discover who could make the most noise or, at any rate, create the
greater volume of decibels. The
orchestra clearly appertains to the bourgeois, semi-naturalistic world in which
acoustic instruments are taken for granted, whereas the rock group is
comparatively proletarian, given their electric instruments of a largely
synthetic construction. The two worlds
exist side-by-side, occasionally overlapping but, for the most part, remaining
distinct - the rock group preferring, as a rule, to evolve further and further
away from classical musicians who, as often as not, remain tied to the
nineteenth century, if not to several previous centuries. How long, one wonders, can this paradoxical
state-of-affairs continue?
My guess is that it won't continue very much longer, since
evolution cannot be reversed or impeded for ever! The life-span of the symphony orchestra would
seem to be drawing towards a close, although its final collapse may not be for
several years yet - certainly not before the second-half of the new
century. Whatever happens between the
capitalist West and the socialist East in the historical unfolding of our world
over the coming decades, I cannot envisage symphony orchestras outlasting the
twenty-first century. Even today, with
computers, rockets, colour televisions, laser beams, holographs, microchips,
supersonic jets, and other such late twentieth- and/or early twenty-first
century phenomena, the orchestra appears increasingly out-of-place, a sort of
acoustic anachronism in an electronic age.
The bowing or blowing or banging of acoustic instruments contrasts
sharply with the latest push-button techniques in the manipulation of the most
up-to-date electronic instruments, and one cannot help but feel that whereas
the latter are very much an integral part of modern life, the former resemble
social dinosaurs in their remoteness from it!
Naturally, works for symphony orchestra continue to be
composed, but even the most avant-garde compositions are unlikely to be
performed beyond the twenty-first century.
If these comparatively modern works outlast the orchestra, it will be
because they have been recorded to disc or tape, and thus preserved for
posterity. The actual performance
life-span of these works can only, in the face of evolutionary pressures, be
short - far shorter, I would imagine, than the performance life-span enjoyed by
the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach.
For as evolution progresses in the modern age, so it becomes ever
quicker, and consequently the likelihood of Walton or Honegger or Prokofiev
still being regularly performed well into the new century can only be
increasingly remote. This is one reason
why a contemporary composer who makes the grade is quickly acknowledged with
international success and recording fame, his music soon to take its place
beside the 'immortal' recordings of a whole galaxy of illustrious predecessors. A Tippett recording is already somehow part
of the musical tradition, and Walton is now regarded as virtually one of the
'old masters', to be placed alongside the immortals. Simply to have been recorded is confirmation
of one's 'classic' status. And, given
the likelihood of the classical orchestra's impending demise, a delay in
recording a modern composer could well prove fatal - depriving posterity of
access to his works.
But if orchestral concerts are unlikely to be an aspect of
twenty-first-century life, the same must surely hold true of jazz concerts and,
indeed, the recording of modern jazz.
The electric guitar may be a relatively new instrument, peculiar to the
second-half of the twentieth century, but we need not expect it to outlive the symphony
orchestra by a great many years, since it has already become part of a long
musical tradition within the swiftly-evolving context of modern life. Doubtless some form of electric music will
continue to be composed and performed during the twenty-first century, but the
instruments and instrumental combinations will probably change, as new tastes
and evolutionary pressures dictate. The
possibility that modern jazz will merge with atonal electronic music, over the
coming decades, cannot be ruled out, since the latter seems destined to supplant
serious acoustic music and will doubtless undergo progressive modifications in
the course of time. Eventually all music
should be composed on the highest possible evolutionary level, which means that
even pop music will be transcended as society increasingly becomes more
transcendentally sophisticated overall, not just within certain sections of the
population. Pop music, arguably the
musical equivalent of socialist realism in art, may be necessary and even commendable
in a transitional age like this, but it must eventually be eclipsed by a more
spiritual music, equivalent to transcendentalism in art, if an ultimate
civilization, classless and universal, is to come fully to pass.
One reason why recordings of whatever type of music are
beginning to supplant live performances ... is that they make for a superior
means of listening to music, in which a perfect instrumental balance can be
obtained at a volume suitable to oneself and in the comfort of one's home. The use of headphones can further enhance one's
appreciation of music by seeming to interiorize it, and one is of course free
to select exactly the right recordings for one's particular taste or mood. It may be that in improving the technical
aspect of musical appreciation in this solitary fashion, one is obliged to
forfeit the social advantages accruing to a public concert, in which a large
audience comes to share the same enthusiasm, and, doubtless, studio recordings
will never be able to match live concerts for atmosphere. Yet, even then, the advantages of recorded
music are too great to warrant serious criticism, and reflect the ongoing
spiritualization of art through sublimated means of appreciation. The fact that recordings tend, paradoxically,
to undermine the musical necessity or validity of live performances, whether by
orchestra or group, cannot be denied, and is a further reason why the latter
will eventually die out. When, exactly,
the last public performance will be, I cannot of course say. But a world tending ever more rapidly towards
the post-Human Millennium, and thus towards the complete dominion of being over
doing, won't require people to perform in public for ever. Better that we should just sit still, in the
comfort of our homes, and listen to the latest studio recordings at an
appropriately transcendent remove from the actual recording session!
SAFEGUARDING
FREEDOM
To discover whether the
so-called Free World, by which is meant the West, is actually free, one must
have an objective criterion by which to assess freedom. One must know what freedom is and how it
stands in relation to evolution. One
must eschew the relative in favour of the absolute, and by comparing what
currently exists in the world, as a given system, with this desired absolute,
one will see how free, if at all, that system really is.
Evolution being a struggle from the Diabolic Alpha to the
Divine Omega, from the raging stars in one absolute context ... to the eventual
emergence of pure spirit in another, it must follow that freedom, in any
ultimate sense, can only be interpreted as a freedom from the former and a
dedication to the latter. In other
words, the freer a man is ... the less will he be under the influence or
domination of the Diabolic, with its selfless naturalism. Degrees of freedom can therefore be
ascertained along an evolving spectrum ... from the ultimate negativity in
stellar energy to the ultimate positivity in transcendent spirit. How, then, does the 'Free World' stand up to
the test of freedom, as defined above?
To answer this question, one must understand what freedom
usually means in the West. Generally
speaking, it means the freedom to worship as one chooses, to vote for one of a
number of political alternatives, to exercise freedom of opinion, to buy and
amass property of one's own, to conduct business in the interests of personal
profit, to become an avant-garde artist, to read what one likes, to practise
transcendental meditation, and so on.
These, I think, are most of the main or, at any rate, obvious freedoms
normally found in Western society. Let
us now put them to the test, using our ethical criterion.
The freedom to worship as one chooses is not really a
manifestation of omega-oriented freedom, as we may call that which aspires
towards pure spirit, but an example of alpha-stemming boundness. To worship is either to worship God the
Father or Jesus Christ. In Christianity
it is mostly to worship Christ, although the Father or, to give Him an alternative
name, the Creator (Jehovah) ... is by no means ignored. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit cannot be
worshipped, for the simple reason that it is a state of blissful being to
aspire towards, rather than an already-existent fact. One can only worship what exists, either as a
theological entity (Christ) or as an abstraction from cosmic reality (the
Father), and to do this is to be bound to the Alpha Absolute, even if, as where
Christ is concerned, there is an omega-oriented element involved. With the Creator, however, there is no omega-oriented
element at all, no transcendent spirituality, since this anthropomorphic deity
appertains to the subconscious ... as an abstraction, in all likelihood, from
the governing star of the Galaxy ... out of which both the lesser stars and the
planets originally 'fell'. To worship is
therefore to be bound (to that star) rather than to be free (from it).
To vote for one of a number of political alternatives, which is
the next 'freedom' under consideration, isn't quite what it may at first
appear, since in a capitalist democracy one of the parties concerned will
always be more bound to aristocratic and/or bourgeois materialism than the
others, which means that a vote for that party is, in effect, a vote for
slavery to capitalist materialism to a greater extent than would be the case
with liberal or left-wing parties, although they, too, are partly allied to
such a materialism. No, so long as there
are parties with either aristocratic or bourgeois loyalties, the politics in
question will be largely bound instead of free.
Freedom comes with an aspiration towards the supernatural, towards pure
spirit, and although politics can never be conducted on strictly religious
terms, nevertheless parties with allegiance to the proletariat, within a
context of social democracy, will reflect a greater degree of political
freedom, as a rule, than any others.
As to the right to exercise freedom of opinion, this is partly
tied-up with dualistic politics and religion, since appropriate to a stage of
evolution when no absolute aspiration towards the divine omega is under way in
post-dualistic terms. It entails freedom
to defend or champion what is bound to the sensual, the material, the diabolic,
the galactic-world-order, and thus, in practice, can fall a long way short of
truly free opinion, which will be aligned with a post-dualistic, omega-oriented
system of beliefs.
The 'freedom' to buy and amass property of one's own likewise
entails loyalty to what stems from the Diabolic Alpha rather than to what
aspires towards the Divine Omega, since private property emphasizes the
individual, with his materialistic acquisitions, and is accordingly an aspect
of a process at a sublimated remove from the possessive tendency of stars to
amass either weaker stars (suns) or planets to themselves, as a matter of
cosmic necessity. To have one's own
property is to be bound to materialism, like a star, and to amass additional
property, whether large or small, is to extend the dominion of the
materialistic in one's life at the expense of spiritual freedom.
Likewise the 'freedom' to conduct business in the interests of
personal profit enslaves one to materialism and makes the acquirement of profit
an end-in-itself, quite divorced, it may transpire, from work satisfaction or
quality of work or, indeed, the nature of the product itself. Christ is reputed to have said that it was
'easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the Kingdom of Heaven', and that may well illustrate why, in the
interests of spiritual freedom, it is better not to become bound to
wealth. Those who do so will never be
free to any significant extent!
On the other hand, the freedom to become an avant-garde artist
reflects, in the main, a freedom from the sensual, apparent, concrete realm of
artistic activity, and may well be indicative of an omega-oriented tendency
compatible with evolutionary progress on the post-dualistic level. Even when the object of this art is to
discredit the external, natural world; even when, in other words, it is
anti-natural rather than pro-transcendental, it connotes with evolutionary
freedom from the natural-world-order to the extent that it attacks, distorts,
and belittles whatever is bound to that order, whether human, animal, or
vegetable, and thus indirectly assists in the re-orientation of the mind
towards supernatural criteria.
As to the freedom to read what one likes, this too can entail
the study of books, magazines, papers, etc., which do in fact subscribe to
anti-natural and/or pro-transcendental tendencies; although, unfortunately, it
can also entail the study of traditional, reactionary, or anachronistic kinds
of writings which bind one to what stems, in selfless aggression, from the
diabolic roots of evolution, and thus preclude, for large numbers of
less-informed people, true enlightenment.
A post-dualistic society, on the other hand, would only encourage the
reading of books, magazines, etc., compatible with transcendental criteria,
thus preventing the everywhichway cultural or intellectual confusions which
arise in and necessarily appertain to liberal societies, with their atomic
relativity. Freed from the pernicious
influence of writings bound, in one degree or another, to the Diabolic Alpha,
the people would be enabled to acquire an exclusively omega-oriented education
worthy of the highest civilization.
Finally, the freedom to practise transcendental meditation in
public halls, or wherever, is another aspect of Western life that, carried-on
in the right non-mystical spirit, is conducive towards a freedom from the
sensual realm and aspiration towards the spiritual one. We need not doubt that this, too, should be
encouraged in the future.
Getting back to the question of whether the 'Free World' is
really free and, if so, to what extent, we can now answer it by contending that
in some contexts, not least of all the freedom to worship as one chooses, to
vote for one of a number of alternative class parties, to amass property, and
so on, the so-called Free World is really bound, in varying degrees, to the
diabolic roots of evolution in the stars.
Whereas in certain other contexts, notably avant-garde art and
transcendentalism, it is probably more free from those roots than anywhere else
in the world, and accordingly reflects an aspiration, whether directly or
indirectly, towards the divine consummation of evolution in the transcendental
Beyond. In all probability, the
omega-oriented tendencies outweigh the alpha-stemming ones in a majority of
Western countries these days. But the
continual existence of the latter provides adequate grounds, as I see it, for
ideological opposition and their subsequent elimination, in the event of a
truly moral society coming to pass.
PROTONS
AND ELECTRONS
There are two kinds of
antithesis, and they may be defined as relative and absolute. The vast majority of antitheses are relative,
though as evolution approaches the antithesis of the Alpha Absolute(s) in ...
the Omega Absolute, we may note an approximation to or from the absolutes at
either end, as it were, of the evolutionary spectrum. Only the Alpha Absolute(s) ... of the stars
and the projected Omega Absolute ... of undifferentiated transcendent spirit
would constitute an absolute antithesis, however. Such an antithesis is absolute in every
sense, there being no point of contact or similarity between the two extremes
of evolution. On the other hand, a
relative antithesis, such as exists between stars and planets, or men and
women, presupposes points of contact, and may be likened to the North and South
poles of a magnet - the unlike poles of which attract, while the like poles
repel. Those poles which are opposites
are yet similar to the extent that they are both comprised of the metallic
substance of the magnet, and accordingly form a relative rather than an
absolute antithesis.
Such an antithesis we may note at the basis of the Solar System
and, on a larger scale, of the Galaxy.
There is a kind of magnetic reciprocity between the sun and circling
planets of the Solar System formed by the relative contrast between the
negative, i.e. active, charge of the sun, in which, according with the
principles of a proton-proton reaction, hydrogen is transformed into helium,
and the positive, i.e. passive, charge at the core of this planet, which is
gradually cooling. The sun's core would
therefore be radically different from the earth's, and I wager that while the
one is hard, the other is soft, and this contrary to traditional notions on the
subject! Indeed, in describing the sun
as possessing a negative charge and in equating that with the active, I have
already reversed the traditional notions as to what constitutes a negative
charge, and this reversal, corresponding to a Nietzschean 'transvaluation of
all values', is at the core of my philosophical endeavour, and may be traced
back to the essay 'The Negative Root' from BETWEEN TRUTH AND ILLUSION - my
first step in this revolutionary direction.
The sun, then, generates energy from deep within its
tightly-packed proton core, and is thus active, whereas the earth has a soft
core which feeds upon the surrounding hardness of its outer layers and is thus
dependent on those layers for sustenance, i.e. the continuation of its
existence. This distinction between an
independent hard-core sun and a dependent soft-core planet is fundamental to
the mechanistic workings of the Solar System, which function in the guise of a
magnetic reciprocity - the hard core of the sun attracting the planet's soft
core to itself but having to contend, in the process, with the attractive
forces of other suns (stars), which establish a dynamic equilibrium between
suns and planets, after the manner of an atomic integrity involving protons and
electrons.
Here, of course, the equation of the sun's hard core with
protons gives the lie to the traditional notion of protons as positive and
electrons, by contrast, as negative. For
any 'transvaluation of values' applying to the macrocosm must also apply to the
microcosm, since the inner workings of the latter are at the base, so to speak,
of the solar and indeed galactic orders, which would not exist at all were they
not derived from a microcosmic blue-print in the atom. Admittedly, it may have been acknowledged
that protons were active and electrons passive, but activity is not, contrary
to traditional belief, a positive phenomenon.
On the contrary, it is only passivity which is positive and the more
passive ... the more positive is it.
That is why only a planet, as a place with a positive core, could be
used as a base from which to launch an aspiration, in the form of mankind,
towards a condition of ultimate passivity in the heavenly Beyond (of
transcendent spirit). No star could be
so used, for stars are the very converse of such an aspiration, because the
diabolic active roots of the Universe.
No, if the sun is a negative phenomenon, corresponding to the
proton of an atom, then the planets must be positive phenomena corresponding to
electrons, the overall integrity of the Solar System corresponding to the
interactions of an atom, and the still greater integrity of the Galaxy corresponding
to a cluster of atoms forming a kind of molecular structure. This structure, kept in dynamic equilibrium
by the relatively antithetical constitutions of stars and planets, only exists
by dint of the common will of stars for dominion over planets. For without planets to keep them in
equilibrium, the stars would fly-out in every direction, in accordance with the
divergent inclinations of a negative charge, through anarchic revolt against
the dominating influence of the governing star of the Galaxy, which probably
exerts a greater attraction over the planets of whichever solar system than any
of the smaller stars considered either separately or taken together. Thus arises the paradoxical situation in
which like are kept in the vicinity (a galaxy) of like because of their mutual
interest in the dominion of planets - phenomena which have the effect of
preventing the stars from breaking away.
When this pattern is repeated on earth, as it must be whenever
evolution is insufficiently advanced to warrant an exclusive aspiration towards
the Divine Omega, we get what I have termed the galactic-world-order, in which
a monarch, as personification on earth of the governing star of the Galaxy,
lords it over both nobles, who correspond to the lesser stars of the Galaxy,
and populace, who of course correspond to the planets. The nobles and monarch are fundamentally
akin, and would tend away from one another were it not for their mutual
interest in the domination of the populace for their own aggrandisement, an
interest which constrains nobles to an oath of allegiance to the throne. Naturally, the populace are also bound by
loyalty to the throne, but their allegiance is of a very different order from
that of the nobility, who, after all, stand to gain a share of the spoils. The allegiance of the populace more resembles
the submission of slaves to the will of the conqueror, and we may infer from
the term 'subject' the subjection of such slaves to monarchical dominion, a
subjection which entails an indirect rather than a direct allegiance to the
throne. Only those who are fundamentally
'of the same stuff' as the monarch are entitled to a direct oath of allegiance,
and this applies no less to a constitutional monarchy than to an authoritarian
one - the only difference being that the sphere of direct allegiance is
widened, though not necessarily deepened, by the admission of the parliamentary
bourgeoisie, who have partly taken over the traditional preserve of the
aristocracy.
The relationship of peer and/or parliamentarian to the populace
of his particular sphere of geographical influence thereby comes to resemble
the relationship of sun to planets in a solar system, and is thus atomic. While the wider relationship of monarch to peers,
parliamentarians, and populace as a whole comes to resemble the galactic order
in being molecular, or composed of separate atoms which interact and are
obliged to remain in place by the stronger attractive power of the governing
proton - namely, the monarch. Since a
star is negative, and therefore active, it may be described as of essentially
feminine constitution, and never is the galactic-world-order so faithfully
reproduced on earth than when the reigning monarch happens to be a woman, as
was usually the case in more primitive societies, given their greater
disposition to violence. Then the pomp
and ceremony essential to maintaining the cohesion of nobles, politicians, and
populace to the monarchy was reinforced by the charismatic power of the reigning
queen.
I do not wish to go into the distinction between monarch,
nobles, and populace to any extent, though I should remark that the antithesis
formed between the personifications on earth of the stars of the Galaxy and the
populace itself is relative rather than absolute - there being various points
of contact, not least of all in the common structure and substance of the human
body. That the monarch rules by 'divine
right' isn't, however, strictly true, although there is a sense in which it
could be said that he/she does rule by 'diabolic right', which is to say, as
the personification on earth of the governing star of the Galaxy, and therefore
according to the principles of the galactic-world-order. He/she functions in the guise of an
arch-devil. For even if the governing
star of the Galaxy isn't literally the Devil it corresponds to the diabolic
roots of evolution in the Universe and is therefore antithetical, in an
absolute way, to the future divine culmination of evolution there. In truth, the Creator is an abstraction from
this governing star and consequently appertains to the subconscious mind, a
mind, however, which is being outgrown, as modern man tends ever more deeply
into the superconscious, expanding consciousness upwards rather than remaining
a victim of the Given. The monarch is
therefore the nearest person on earth to that abstraction, since he/she
functions in the role of the governing star vis-à-vis society in general. Compared with the monarch, the various grades
of nobles, from a duke down, correspond to petty devils, having status
positions relative to the lesser stars of the Galaxy. Reversing this correspondence, one might well
argue that our sun is but a baron-equivalent in the overall hierarchy of the
Galaxy, being but a small peripheral star of only moderate power. A duke-equivalent would be much larger and,
needless to say, would stand closer, as it were, to the governing star of the
Galaxy than a mere baron-equivalent. The
Solar System of this important star would doubtless be somewhat larger and more
imposing than that pertaining to a star like our own.
But, cosmic speculation aside, we can say for certain that the
twentieth century signified a turning-point in the evolution of man in which,
for virtually the first time in history, the galactic-world-order was
completely overthrown in a number of countries, in order that he could be set
on course for a post-atomic society tending, eventually, towards the Divine
Omega in conscious transcendentalism.
The example of Eastern Europe stands as a lesson to those countries
which have retained some form of monarchical allegiance. The atom has been split, but that is merely a
prelude to splitting one part of humanity, corresponding to electrons, from the
clutches of another, corresponding to protons, in the interests of evolutionary
progress towards an exclusively omega-oriented (divine) society.
Of course, I have described the workings of the Solar System
and the Galaxy in rather Newtonian terms in these pages, stressing the
force-and-mass aspect of magnetic reciprocities in preference to the
curved-space notion of latter-day quasi-mystical physics, and I am fully aware
that many educated persons would strongly object to this, considering me
mistaken and hopelessly anachronistic.
After all, it is in our interests to regard the workings of the Cosmos
from a quasi-mystical point-of-view, which is a good deal more comforting than
to dig deeply into its basic diabolism and unearth findings not guaranteed to
flatter our transcendental bias or reassure us that we live in a good
universe. Yes, I know the position well
enough! But I also know it is important
that some people, broadly regarded as philosophers, should commit themselves to
a more literal investigation of the Cosmos, the better to understand how it
really works. For unless they do, the
truth of evolutionary progress will be obscured beneath the 'theological'
expedience of scientific subjectivity, and no truly objective knowledge of the
Universe will be accessible to us, a knowledge which a small number of higher minds
should be able to live with ... no matter how much the spiritual progress of
the age may demand a subjective interpretation of the physical cosmos, such as
corresponds to our superconscious bias and reflects our growing allegiance to
internal as opposed to external reality.
The literal truth of the workings of the Cosmos and of the relations
between planets and stars would seem to be very different from what the
curved-space mysticism of Einstein would have us believe! But the truth concerning the external cosmos
isn't necessarily what an age tending towards the post-atomic absolute should
want to uphold. Rather, it will
increasingly view life in terms of the freedom of electrons from proton control
- not their dependence upon them!
TWO
KINDS OF DEPENDENCE
It is often said that
we live in a woman's world, not least of all by men. Yet, despite appearances to the contrary,
this is basically untrue, because the world has a positive base in its soft
core which makes for an evolutionary tendency towards the Divine Omega, and
thus towards a transcendental society.
Women are rather like strangers in the world - visitors from the sun or
any nearby star. For, like the sun, they
have a hard core and a relatively soft or urbane exterior, whereas men are effectively
hard outside but essentially soft inside, more disposed to leniency and
compassion than the so-called fair sex.
Since women resemble the sun, it is perhaps natural that they
should generally be more heliotropic than men, and this can, I think, be borne
out by the greater importance they attach to sunbathing and to acquiring a
suntan. Sensing an affinity between
femininity and the sun, women draw sustenance, both physically and
psychologically, from its rays, which they often soak-up for hours on-end,
lying perfectly still and availing themselves of the sensuality imparted by the
sun's rays to sink into their subconscious mind, like animals, and doze or
daydream, unconsciously or perhaps even consciously transmitting signals to
nearby males. In this context they
reflect a sort of stemming from the diabolic roots of life, and are almost as
far removed from an aspiration towards the divine consummation of evolution, in
transcendence, as any animal or plant. Communion
with the sun is for many women a form of religion, though, unbeknown to
themselves, it is the lowest form - a kind of devil worship!
Like the sun, women have a tendency to contract and diverge
rather than, like men, to expand and converge - the former tendency existing on
the physical level, the latter on the spiritual one. Were it not for the fact that men are
attracted to them, we may assume that most women would remain solitary and
independent for life, scorning one another but making no real attempt to
acquire male company, either. They do of
course obtain male company in a majority of cases, but this is usually because
their urbane appearance has attracted a man who has expressed a dependence on
them. Such dependence is akin to that of
a planet upon a star, and will continue to be the norm for as long as an atomic
integrity holds good between proton equivalents and electron equivalents, viz.
females and males. Once evolution
reaches the stage where the atom can be split and mankind sundered, once and
for all, from the galactic-world-order, however, then it is highly probable
that men will emerge who'll be independent of women, going their own
omega-oriented way either in homosexuality or, preferably, celibacy, with or
without pornographic stimuli. Of course,
evolution also affects women; for if it didn't it is doubtful that we would
have the Women's Liberation Movement and other aspects of evolutionary progress
which, to some extent, have the effect of 'masculinizing' women, and thus
causing them to behave, in varying degrees, more like men. Where, formerly, it was the case that men
were dependent on women, just as society was dependent on monarchical
government, so, with the transformation to post-atomic freedom, men duly become
independent of them, just as society becomes independent of monarchical
control. Women, however, correspondingly
become more dependent on men, though not so much in a sensual as in an
intellectual or a spiritual sense.
Here we have slightly returned to the theme of the previous
essay, in which the enslavement of the populace to the nobility was stressed at
the expense of the reverse situation - namely, that of the dependence of the
populace upon the nobility during a given phase of evolutionary
development. Since I was emphasizing the
absolute at the expense of the relative there, I should now remark that, as the
relative preponderates in life, so a paradoxical situation is the norm. For, indeed, both aspects of the
noble/populace antithesis to some extent apply.
The nobility do enslave the populace, much as stars enslave planets, but
so too, at this comparatively early stage of human evolution, do people in
general show themselves to be dependent upon a monarchical government, since
insufficiently advanced, in artificial terms, to be capable of an independent,
self-willed, socialist destiny. Only
when evolution has arrived at a more advanced stage, in which people are for
the most part isolated from nature in their giant cities, can their dependence
on monarchical government be broken and the emphasis accordingly be placed on
freeing them from autocratic control or tyranny, as though only those factors
had played a part in the traditional relationship of nobles to populace! The truth is of course rather different, but
it wouldn't flatter the masses to say so!
Neither would the average man be flattered to learn that he was only
dependent on women because insufficiently advanced to be capable of an
independent, post-atomic lifestyle.
Better for him to believe that women were dependent on men, even though
their basic behaviour and attitudes would hardly substantiate such a belief!
The fact that men have been dependent on women for thousands of
years is no fault of men, any more than it is the fault of planets that they
have been dependent on stars. Evolution
proceeds from the natural to the supernatural very slowly, and while nature
dominates human affairs ... the atomic integrity of the galactic-world-order
will continue to prevail. Women will
function as protons and men, by contrast, as electrons - the latter dependent
on and revolving around the former. The
man will say that he lives for his family, and the woman will believe him. Only when evolution progresses to a point where
the artificial predominates over the natural will a situation arise in which
the man - assuming he has a wife and children at all - will say he lives for
his work or the cause, whether political or religious. To live for something greater than himself
rather than for someone lesser than himself ... is the distinction between the
free man and the bound man, and it will correspond to the splitting of the atom
in a post-atomic society, whereby electrons are severed from their proton
control. The inceptive stages of this
tendency are already manifest in the contemporary West, where the frequency of
divorce is testifying to a disruption of traditional marital fidelity, and
where wives as well as husbands are obliged to take regular employment, a fact
which, logically enough, results in small rather than large families. And wisely, since the minimum commitment to
propagation ensures a greater freedom for both husbands and wives from the
atomic integrity of long-term parental responsibility. Given the much-improved ratio of infant
survival over infant mortality these days, there is no real necessity for large
families anyway. A child or two from
most couples will maintain and possibly even increase the birth-rate level,
while leaving the woman relatively free to conduct her life along quasi-electron,
as opposed to traditional proton, channels.
Eventually, however, the further development of post-atomic tendencies
will lead to the supersession of marriage by a much freer interaction between
men and women, compatible with their higher status in conformity to electron
principles. A long-term relationship
between specific couples in such a free society would not only be anachronistic
... but morally reprehensible, since indicative of a regression to dualistic
criteria. Reproduction would, for the most
part, be taken care of artificially, which is to say, with the aid of sperm
banks, test tubes, incubators, and so on, while relationships between the sexes
would be increasingly spiritual rather than, as before, predominantly
physical. Functioning as
quasi-electrons, the women would be intellectually and/or spiritually dependent
on men, while the men, as free electrons, would be physically independent of
women. Such a society is not as far off
as it may now seem!
MATERIALISTS
AND SPIRITUALISTS
The distinction between
materialists and spiritualists is an age-old reality which stems, in large
measure, from the fundamental dichotomy in the Galaxy between stars and
planets, the relatively antithetical constitutions of which give rise to a
magnetic reciprocity responsible for maintaining the orbital integrity of the
Galaxy as a whole - as, indeed, the entire universe of galaxies of which this
one is but an infinitesimal part. On the
microcosmic plane this same distinction is to be found in the relatively
antithetical constitutions of protons as negative charges and electrons as
positive charges - the former active and the latter passive, though galvanized
into action by the competing attractive powers of the nearest protons. On the human plane, the distinction between
active materialists and passive spiritualists has traditionally manifested
itself in the relatively antithetical constitution of women and men, the women
constraining the men to themselves, after the fashion of stars or protons, and
galvanizing them into action on their behalf, i.e. as fathers to their family,
the children of which resemble tiny protons, or neutrons, in that they revolve
around the mother much the way that a tiny extinct sun, such as the moon,
revolves around the earth. However, I
have elsewhere sought to demonstrate that as evolution progresses towards a
predominantly artificial phase, the atomic integrity of the traditional family
unit is gradually undermined until, with the dawn of post-dualistic
civilization ... following a sudden revolutionary break with tradition which
resembles the splitting of the atom, the electron equivalents are set free of
proton constraint and the former proton equivalents are themselves
electronized, functioning, thenceforth, in the guise of quasi-electrons. The spiritualistic world predominates over
the materialistic one at that juncture in time by quite a considerable margin!
The aforementioned atomic distinction, however, between female
and male on the family plane may be equated with the human microcosm, whilst a
similar distinction between politicians and priests or scientists and artists
will pertain to the human macrocosm, i.e. to society as opposed to the family,
society itself coming to resemble a galaxy in that it is composed, on the
independent level, of numerous proton-dominated atoms and, on the dependent
level, of various professional interests and contributions, some of which
resemble protons, others electrons, but all of which are subject to
evolutionary pressures and may therefore undergo gender changes corresponding
to the transformation, on the microcosmic plane, from closed atomic families to
open post-atomic promiscuity.
Thus it can happen that a traditional proton profession, such
as politics when patterned after the galactic-world-order, will acquire a sex
change, so to speak, and become a quasi-electron opposing the proton political
order in the interests of evolutionary progress. Hence socialist politicians, although
nominally materialists, function in the guise of what may be called 'lesser spiritualists'
in opposition, in such a transitional age as this, to the materialistic
politicians per
se, though on a lower level, needless to say, than genuine spiritualists,
including latter-day gurus. Likewise, in
science, a sex change corresponding to the progress of electron freedom over
proton determinism ensures that quasi-electron scientists, who function in the
guise of 'lesser spiritualists', oppose the materialism of traditional science
in deference, amongst other things, to the higher spirituality of avant-garde
artists, who are their spiritual peers.
As quasi-electrons, revolutionary politicians and scientists oppose
proton determinism and thus behave like spiritualists, which, however, they can
never be in an authentic or genuine sense, seeing that their professions are
largely governed by materialistic considerations. And just so for so-called liberated women
who, in this transitional age, are by no means absolved from certain
traditional female duties and responsibilities!
Only with the advent of post-atomic civilization would the lifestyles of
quasi-electron equivalents be radically influenced by electron freedoms - a
situation which today applies neither to the bourgeois West nor to the
proletarian East, the former being insufficiently civilized and the latter not
really civilized at all, despite the considerable changes for the better which
have come to pass since the eclipse of Soviet Communism by Social
Democracy. Consequently, in the East
artists and priests have traditionally had a comparatively raw deal.
The distinction between materialists and spiritualists does not
of course only apply to politicians and priests or to scientists and artists,
nor indeed to proton politicians and quasi-electron politicians, proton
scientists and quasi-electron scientists, the former of whom will be more
indebted to Newton than to Einstein. It
applies equally well within the profession of art, where social realists align
themselves with the quasi-electron level of socialist politicians and produce a
materialistic art of superior quality to traditional materialists, but
necessarily inferior to the genuine spirituality of the free-electron, or
avant-garde, artists. Likewise, a
similar distinction exists in literature between writers, on the one hand, under
quasi-electron materialistic domination, like Koestler and Sartre, and
free-electron spiritualists, on the other hand, like Huxley and Camus. And, of course, in the religious profession
we will generally find the distinction between priests and gurus to be one
between electrons under proton dominion (the Creator), and electrons free of
such a dominion. A decadent civilization
may produce either bound- or free-electron equivalents, depending to a large
extent on the bent of the artist - the distinction between Sartre and Camus, in
France, being adequate confirmation of this fact, even though Sartre wasn't
particularly bound to quasi-electron politics and Camus wasn't a particularly
radical free-electron equivalent. No
doubt, this distinction between the two writers goes some way towards
explaining their differences of political opinion and concomitant professional
antagonism!
A post-dualistic civilization, however, could only produce
free-electron artists, since religion and art take considerable precedence over
politics and science with the advent of such a high degree of civilization as
would be achieved on the post-atomic plane.
In a post-atomic barbarous society, on the other hand, art and religion
can only be bound to politics and science, since a new state has come to
replace the old one and officially outlawed the religion appertaining to it
without, however, creating a new religion to replace what went before. In such a society - and the Soviet Union was
the classic example - the artist must necessarily be bound to the
quasi-electron materialism of the politician and accordingly produce some kind
of socialist realism. The free-electron
artist, to the extent that he exists at all, can only be unofficial and, hence,
taboo. His spiritualistic bias is
incompatible with a barbarous state integrity, which derives, through Marx,
from the teachings of Lenin. Only with
the coming of Social Democracy, and thus an end to 'scientific communism', will
this artist be able to come into the open - to 'come out' - and join the
crusade of those who wish to see a genuinely free-electron society come to
pass, in which the spirit is freed from all proton constraint and enabled to
achieve full self-realization in the name of that greater being which is the
'Kingdom of Heaven'.
