PART FOUR: DIALOGUES

*

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

BRIAN: How, Martin, would you define faith in God, if someone were to ask you?

MARTIN: Not in the way that most religious people would tend to do, anyway. For when they ask themselves whether God exists, they are more often than not either referring to the Creator, alternatively known as the Father, or to Jesus Christ, the Christian deity per se. To have faith in God in this sense is to answer such a question by saying: 'Yes, I believe that the Creator exists and/or that Christ lives and is awaiting the time for His return to earth'.

BRIAN: Yet, presumably, you don't share such a belief?

MARTIN: No, I possess a different and, to my mind, superior belief - namely, the idea that the real purpose of our living here is to evolve towards God considered, in a supreme sense, as the Holy Ghost, which would be the culmination of evolution. I said 'belief', but in point of fact I have knowledge of this purpose, since I am the possessor of an irrefutable logic appertaining to successive stages and types of life in an evolutionary spectrum which stretches from the Alpha Absolutes (of the stars) to the Omega Absolute (of the ultimate spiritual globe), conceived as the Supreme Being, or supreme level of Being in eternal bliss.

BRIAN: Briefly then, what are the successive stages and types of life in this evolutionary spectrum?

MARTIN: They are as follows: the stars at stage one, the planets (including mineral formations) at stage two, the plants at stage three, the animals (including fish and birds) at stage four, pagan men at stage five, Christian men at stages five/six, transcendental men at stage six, the Supermen at stage seven, the Superbeings at stage eight, the Spiritual Globes at stage nine, and the Ultimate Spiritual Globe at stage ten. Stages one and ten are absolutely antithetical, which is to say, antithetical in every sense; for what begins in the Many must culminate in the One. Stages two and nine constitute the most radical manifestation of what I term antithetical equivalents, which status is shared, albeit to a lesser degree, by the plants at stage three and the Superbeings at stage eight; the animals at stage four and the Supermen at stage seven; pagan men at stage five and transcendental men at stage six - the Christians combining stages five and six in their dualistic integrity.

BRIAN: If the Superman may be said to succeed transcendental man, then what animal life form preceded pagan man?

MARTIN: Man is descended from the apes, so it is with regard to a line of evolution stemming from the apes that pagan man should be seen. Now, of all the plants, the ones most appropriate for apes are trees, in which they virtually live. So trees, or a certain type of tree, preceded apes; apes preceded men, in all three stages of their development; and the Supermen, as brains artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, will succeed them.

BRIAN: But what is it that particularly distinguishes one stage of life from another?

MARTIN: Constitution of the psyche, which is to say, whether the life form concerned is predominantly subconscious, balanced between subconscious and superconscious, or predominantly superconscious. The higher the life form, the more the superconscious will predominate over the subconscious, although as evolutionary development approximates to the absolutes at opposite ends, as it were, of the evolutionary spectrum, the distinction between the subconscious and the superconscious ceases to apply. Thus while the plants are beneath superconscious affiliation and are accordingly incapable of autonomous behaviour, the Superbeings, as our projected antithetical equivalent to trees, will be above subconscious affiliation and therefore incapable of or, rather, indisposed to autonomous behaviour for the opposite reason.

BRIAN: So, as the projected antithetical equivalent to trees, the Superbeings will presumably be new brains artificially supported and sustained in more intensively collectivized contexts?

MARTIN: Yes, for the removal of the old brain from the Supermen would elevate life to a wholly post-egocentric status of exclusive superconsciousness. And from then on, the resulting Superbeings would be pending transcendence, and thus the attainment of pure spirit to the heavenly Beyond.

BRIAN: This is incredible! You have acquired knowledge, through such logic, that the outcome of evolutionary progress must be pure spirit, and that such spirit, converging from all parts of the Universe, must eventually attain to a maximum unification in the Ultimate Spiritual Globe.

MARTIN: Precisely! And that is why I am above faith, in my assessment of the purpose of our being here. I know that the evolving universe is destined to culminate in the Omega Absolute. There is no way that anyone could deny the essential truth of evolutionary progress from stages 1-10. My logic is irrefutable! Willy-nilly, 'Man,' to cite Nietzsche, 'is something that should be overcome.' And, doubtless, in due course he will be!

BRIAN: Provided the Superman can be brought to pass! Tell me, what do you believe concerning God the Father and Christ, in whom you have apparently little or no faith?

MARTIN: I have no faith in either of them because, once again, I possess a knowledge of what they are. For me, God the Father doesn't really exist because my psyche is too superconsciously biased to be much under the sway of subconscious psychic contents originally extrapolated out from cosmic reality. As I see it, the Creator as Jehovah was largely an extrapolation from the central star of the Galaxy, which, in all probability, was the original creative force behind lesser stars, planets, et cetera, whereas the Creator as the Father was largely an extrapolation from both the sun and the core of the earth combined. God the Father is - or was - an anthropomorphic white-haired, bearded figure responsible for Creation. So runs the theology. But, in reality, no such Creator has ever existed in the Universe, which probably came into existence through various explosions of gases giving rise to stars and planets. Stars most certainly exist there, but Jehovah/the Father doesn't exist anywhere except in the minds of those who are subconsciously biased.

BRIAN: Then what about Jesus Christ?

MARTIN: Christ exists in the mind for those whose psyche is approximately balanced between subconscious and superconscious in egocentric dualism. Again, for a person like me, Christ doesn't really exist, since the ratio of superconscious to subconscious is such in my psyche that no dualistic, egocentric affiliation is possible. If God the Father corresponds to the alpha-based inception of evolution, then Christ signifies a dualistic integrity which stands chronologically in between the Father and the Holy Spirit. So long as one's psyche reflects a dualistic integrity, one can relate to Christ and thus have faith in God conceived as man. But as soon as one's psyche becomes superconsciously biased, as it must do as evolution proceeds towards a transcendental stage, then Christ becomes irrelevant, since this more advanced psychic constitution requires that man turns his religious attention towards the creation of the truly divine God which will only fully emerge at the culmination of evolution. Man must therefore set about expanding spirit, and while he may do so to a quite significant extent during the ultimate phase of his evolution in the transcendental civilization to-come, nevertheless the literal attainment of spirit to the heavenly Beyond, in the guise of Spiritual Globes, will require that such a phase be superseded, in due turn, by the superhuman and superbeingful stages of the post-Human Millennium, which will permit of a much more radical expansion of spirit. In fact, the ultimate life form on earth will be able, through a form of supermeditation, to expand spirit to such an extent ... that transcendence should result - a transcendence corresponding to the salvation of pure spirit from the remnants of the 'flesh' ... as signified, at that highly-advanced juncture in time, by the collectivized new brains of each individual Superbeing.

BRIAN: So, in any ultimate sense, Heaven really is in the Beyond, and not in the self?

MARTIN: One can only get to Heaven through the superconscious self, which is to say, through the cultivation of spirit. But one should not make the mistake of taking our projected Ultimate Spiritual Globe of the future Omega Absolute for the comparatively tiny amount of spirit within the superconscious self, or vice versa! Man is not God in any absolute sense, though we know that man became God in the person of Christ in a relative and, hence, anthropomorphic sense. One day, however, proletarian man will become transcendental man, and one day thereafter transcendental man will become the Superman and the Superman become the Superbeing and the Superbeing become the Spiritual Globe and the Spiritual Globe, in converging towards other such transcendences, ultimately become the Omega Absolute. Ah, how the Truth liberates! Faith in God, you say? But one day soon people will acquire knowledge of what I know through the study of my teachings, and then they, too, will be above faith. Such a day is fast approaching, my friend, even though there are various people who, in their dualistic blindness, would like to prevent it!

RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE

STEPHEN: I have long been puzzled about the relationship of mind to body, wondering whether, in the final analysis, the two aren't completely independent, as I have occasionally had reason to believe.

PAUL: There is no such thing as a mind that is completely independent of a body, despite what certain mystical types may tell you. Mind and body hang together in an interdependent relationship.

STEPHEN: Then mind grew out of or developed from the body, instead of coming to exist with it from an independent source?

PAUL: There was no independent source! Reincarnation is a myth, not a reality. Mind evolved out of matter, and it continues to do so.

STEPHEN: But what is mind?

PAUL: The essence of spirit.

STEPHEN: The essence of spirit?

PAUL: This is the converse of the appearance of the flesh. Mind is the essence of the spirit; body the appearance of the flesh.

STEPHEN: Then mind and body are antithetical in constitution?

PAUL: Of course! Mind is a composite of the workings of the spirit, whereas the body is a composite of flesh shaped into recognizable features. The flesh is the substance of the body, but the spirit is the quality of the mind. The flesh is apparent, but the spirit essential. You can never see the latter. Yet it works both through and independently of the flesh, in the same person and, considered chronologically, at different stages of evolution. 'By the works of the flesh is the spirit known', though that can only hold true for a given period of evolutionary time ... before man or society becomes sufficiently advanced to be able to cultivate spirit independently of the flesh. While, however, the spirit works through the flesh, it corresponds to atomic mind. As soon as it becomes radically independent of the flesh, the mind becomes post-atomic.

STEPHEN: I have never learnt to distinguish between them. To me, all minds are alike.

PAUL: Quite wrong! The Orient has long sought to cultivate a post-atomic attitude of mind, whereas the Occident has concentrated on an atomic subservience of mind to body, and thus stressed doing rather than being. Individually, within the confines of a given culture, it is of course possible for some people to approximate to a post-atomic attitude of mind when the majority are atomic or, conversely, to approximate to an atomic attitude of mind in the face of post-atomic convention. My own mind is now more post-atomic than atomic in constitution.

STEPHEN: And thus functions independently of the body?

PAUL: Tends to place more importance on the direct cultivation of spirit independently of the body than on indirectly manifesting spirit through bodily works. You may call this a post-Christian attitude, though it isn't so much Oriental as transcendental.

STEPHEN: The difference being?

PAUL: That one bears in mind the necessity of technological assistance in the development of spirit independently of the body. One has got to a point where one can envisage spiritual progress only being made through a kind of symbiosis of East and West on a higher, or transcendent, plane. The flesh must be overcome if the spirit is to attain to salvation in the heavenly Beyond. But, ultimately, it can only be overcome on technological terms, such as would eventually imply the artificial sustaining and supporting of human brains in collectivized contexts, while spirit was being cultivated through intensive meditation. This period of time would be the post-Human Millennium, and it would signify, at its furthermost point of development, the maximization of the spiritual life with a correlative minimization of the flesh in a context pending transcendence and, thus, the attainment of pure spirit, as Absolute Mind, to the heavenly Beyond.

STEPHEN: Absolute Mind presumably being the essence of pure spirit?

PAUL: Yes. Spirit is, as it were, the 'apparent' or superficial definition, as though transcendence was being considered from the outside and a Spiritual Globe was accordingly regarded as a 'thing'. A Spiritual Globe would be composed of pure spirit, but the actual workings of that spirit, its interior condition, would correspond to Absolute Mind. To be 'inside' a Spiritual Globe would be to know Absolute Mind as the very essence of one's Being.

STEPHEN: Which, however, human beings can never or only very imperfectly know, since they are victims of relative mind, or of mind tied in varying degrees, depending on the individual, to the body, and dependent on that body for survival.

PAUL: Correct! No relative mind could possibly attain to Absolute Mind. There is no survival of the spirit at death, for the simple reason that it can't be cultivated to a point pending transcendence in a context, such as the human, where the flesh has not been minimized, i.e. reduced to the new brain, but, rather, maintained in its natural state with regard to the body as a whole. Death would be the last time when transcendence occurred, for it presupposes a maximum spiritual development on earth before it can happen, and no such development is possible on the human plane, least of all at a time when the body is wearing out, as it tends to do with age, and, at the point of death, ceases to function even subnormally. Death isn't so much the cessation of adequate physiological workings of the body to sustain life as ... the killing of the spirit by the cessation of those bodily workings. When the heart stops beating, death occurs to a person because the spirit can't survive without physiological assistance. The spirit of a human being, being relative, is dependent on the brain for survival, and the brain is in turn dependent on the proper functioning of the heart to receive fresh oxygen from the blood being pumped through the body. As soon as this functioning ceases, the supply of oxygen to the brain is cut off, and so the spirit dies. There is never any alternative.

STEPHEN: Because spirit is generated in and by the brain and depends on the workings of the brain for its survival?

PAUL: Yes, the spirit is the immaterial quality co-existing with the material brain. It is akin to the wavicle aspect of matter, matter being an amalgam, as it were, of particles and wavicles in oscillatory motion, forming what modern physicists term a complementarity. There is an atomic integrity about this interpretation of matter, which I incline to regard as bourgeois/proletarian. The future, I feel certain, will witness the birth and development of a post-atomic interpretation of matter along lines stressing the wavicle aspect at the expense of its particle aspect. Likewise, the mind/body dichotomy, as currently applying to the brain, will be superseded by an interpretation exclusively favouring the mind or, as we have been saying, the spirit. This post-atomic interpretation will stress the independence of mind from the brain, but it won't on that account fall into the traditional trap of deriving it from some primal source external to the body. On the contrary, this exclusive concept of mind will stem from the de-materialization of the brain and have attainment of Absolute Mind as its goal.

STEPHEN: But what exactly is mind?

PAUL: Simply the functioning of the spirit, the raison d'être of spirit, as pertaining to psychic interiorization.

STEPHEN: Is thought therefore mind?

PAUL: The physiological functioning of the brain gives rise to thought, so thought does not derive from the mind which, on the contrary, knows thought, is conscious of thought, and arranges it into coherent, meaningful, systematic patterns. Being conscious of thought appertains to the essence of spirit. But mind is never more itself than when it is conscious of itself as spirit, just as the body is never more itself than when it is conceived as flesh during or preparatory to sex.

STEPHEN: Now you are talking of meditation. Consciousness of the higher self.

PAUL: Yes! But such consciousness, which is mind at its most refined level, is only one aspect of the total mind experience. Being conscious of thought and ordering this thought into coherent patterns is another. Applying one's consciousness to the study of what other men have written is yet another vital aspect of mind behaviour, one connected with evolutionary progress and the mind's cultivation.

STEPHEN: Is what I see around me connected with this consciousness?

PAUL: No! Mind is not the world you see through your eyes because mind appertains to essence, the visual experience, by contrast, of the external world appertaining to appearance. This appearance actually dilutes mind, just as the use of the other senses - of hearing, touch, taste, and smell - dilutes mind by imposing apparent phenomena upon it. Mind, or consciousness, is still there when one closes one's eyes and stops one's ears and forbids oneself to touch, taste, or smell anything. In fact, mind is more there then than it would be when one was using one's senses, because one is not diluting it with apparent distractions. It is only by blocking out one's senses that one can become more conscious.

STEPHEN: Though if one keeps one's eyes closed for any length of time, one may fall asleep and thus lose consciousness.

PAUL: Only if one is intending to sleep, not if one is set on meditating! With sleep, one does of course lose one's conscious mind as consciousness slides down into the subconscious realm of dreams. But the subconscious is sensual, whereas the superconscious, towards which meditators aspire, is spiritual. Consciousness is really an amalgam of subconscious and superconscious influences. It doesn't exist in complete isolation from the lower and higher reaches of the psyche as an independent entity, contrary to what psychologists once imagined. It isn't the tip of an iceberg, to coin a well-worn cliché. It depends for its waking-life constitution on the degree to which the superconscious preponderates over the subconscious or vice versa, that is to say, on the ratio of psychic ingredients - these ingredients also balancing each other over a certain period in evolutionary time for the great majority of people, who then function according to atomic, or dualistic, criteria. Post-atomic criteria presuppose, on the other hand, a consciousness in which the superconscious is the predominating psychic influence, whereas in the pre-atomic ages of pagan civilization, the subconscious predominated in the overall constitution of consciousness.

STEPHEN: Would one therefore be justified in contending that consciousness is the psychic equivalent of the corpus callosum which, as the organ responsible for linking the old brain to the new one, functions as a bridge between the two main physiological components of the human cortex?

PAUL: Yes, in a manner of speaking! For what the corpus callosum is to the physiological constitution of the brain, egocentric consciousness is to its psychic constitution - a kind of fusion-point of psychic influences from both the subconscious and the superconscious.

STEPHEN: Then consciousness isn't so much homogenous as divisible into two main parts - one part stemming from the subconscious and another part stemming from the superconscious?

PAUL: Absolutely! There are, in effect, two minds at work in a psyche subject to an atomic integrity, so that consciousness is an amalgam of instinctual will, or id, and spirit, the former deriving from the subconscious, and therefore responsible for ordering and comprehending emotions; the latter, by contrast, deriving from the superconscious, and therefore responsible for ordering and comprehending thoughts. The atomic mind is dualistic, with the lower, or instinctual, consciousness functioning as a proton equivalent, and the higher, or spiritual, consciousness functioning as a bound-electron equivalent, which, in any atomic integrity, revolves around, and is therefore subservient to, the proton equivalent. Thoughts, in a typical atomic mind, are subservient to feelings. And consequently the atomic mind tends to be enslaved to the flesh in more senses than one!

STEPHEN: But, presumably, one day the higher consciousness will be freed from the lower one and thus exist in a post-atomic context?

PAUL: Yes, though not in an absolute sense before the Superbeing-phase of the post-Human Millennium, when, so I believe, the old brain will be surgically removed from individual Supermen and new brains become hypercollectivized into contexts suggesting a life form antithetical, in psychic constitution, to trees. The resulting Superbeings will be completely beyond subconscious influence and subject to post-visionary consciousness of a nature approximating to Absolute Mind. The collective mind of each individual Superbeing, or arrangement of artificially supported and sustained new-brains, would experience hypermeditation pending transcendence, and consciousness would therefore correspond to a free-electron equivalent, the proton equivalent having been escaped from with the removal of the old brain - a task reserved, in all probability, for the millennial servants of the post-human life forms. Human consciousness, however, can only remain divisible between subconscious and superconscious influence. There is no question of a truly post-atomic mind being attained to while the old brain is still intact and thus able, through the medium of subconscious sensuality, to dilute consciousness in the interests of an atomic integrity. Human consciousness is, in Koestler's memorable phrase, a 'divided house', and so, to varying extents, it must remain until all psychic dualism is transcended, come the Superbeing Millennium. Even the preceding Supermen would, as brains artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, be subject to some subconscious influence, and would undoubtedly spend time asleep each day. But they would be conditioned away from the subconscious and further into the superconscious through periodic recourse to such synthetic stimulants as LSD, which would make for upward self-transcendence on a visionary or, rather, hypervisionary level. Prior to them, the men of the transcendental civilization would be conditioned away from the subconscious and further into the superconscious through periodic recourse to transcendental meditation, a spiritual discipline which is designed to free consciousness from preoccupation with thoughts and feelings, and enable the higher part of the conscious mind, the part we identify with the superconscious, to come to the fore, though in a contemplative rather than a cogitative role. The stage will be set for a post-atomic attitude of mind, such as is already prevalent in the West among devotees of meditation, albeit on a minority basis and as pertaining mainly to the transitional civilization of contemporary America. Western transcendentalism is derived from Buddhism and other oriental sources, and thus corresponds to a bourgeois/proletarian, rather than to a full-blown proletarian, level of transcendentalism. The Transcendentalism that I advocate, and envisage as applying to a future post-atomic civilization, transcends all traditional world religions, including Buddhism, and is intended to signify a convergence to Heaven on the basis of an ultimate world religion - a religion embracing, besides the practice of meditation, a knowledge of subsequent stages of evolutionary development.

STEPHEN: Such as would be signified by the Supermen and Superbeings of the ensuing post-Human Millennium?

PAUL: Plus, of course, the subsequent attainment of spirit to the heavenly Beyond in the guise of Spiritual Globes, and the gradual convergence and expansion of such globes of pure spirit towards an Omega Absolute - the sum-total of all convergence and expansion. A relative understanding of Absolute Mind would not be inappropriate in any serious attempt to extend religious education among the masses, over the coming decades. The highest truths will, of course, remain the preserve of the most intelligent. But something of the ultimate truth should become intelligible to the average man in the course of time. A knowledge of the importance of technology in minimizing the flesh should preclude a repetition of the kind of spiritual fanaticism which history has witnessed, down the centuries, in connection with the more naturalistic Orient. One won't attain to ultimate salvation through meditation alone, no matter how earnest one's endeavour! Mind can only be cultivated in proportion to the extent that one's commitment to the flesh is minimized, and to achieve a radical minimization of the latter and corresponding maximization of the former ... it will prove necessary, eventually, to have the natural body superseded by artificial supports and sustains for the brain. Thus the spiritual life will be expanded without the threat of bodily disease and/or starvation - there being no body to succumb to such a tragic fate.

STEPHEN: On the subject of disease, I wonder whether the prevalence of schizophrenia, particularly as signifying a disparity between thoughts and feelings, is not connected, in the present century, with the evolution of the psyche from an atomic to a post-atomic status, with the result that thoughts are drawing further away from feelings as the higher part of the conscious mind gradually acquires ascendancy over the lower part, and connections or interactions between the two sides of the 'divided house', to return to Koestler, become both more tenuous and less frequent. Perhaps, in that case, schizophrenia is more a reflection of evolutionary progress, as bearing on the changing constitution of the psyche, than an isolated, incidental disease? Perhaps we are all a little schizophrenic these days, because consciousness is evolving away from feelings and deeper into pure mind, in consequence of which we find it harder to relate the latter to the former, or to mediate between them with the aid of thought.

PAUL: You may well be 'on to something' there, as Jung would say, and what you have just said doubtless applies in some measure to yourself, since I was alluding to bodily disease, such as leprosy and cancer, and you jumped straight onto the psychic plane. However, we needn't doubt that consciousness is divided, and in the future the lacuna between the spirit and the id, or between that part of the mind influenced by superconscious spirituality and that part of it influenced by subconscious instinctuality, will become even greater, as the higher mind adopts an increasingly post-atomic orientation in defiance of subservience to proton determinism. Not before the radical post-atomism of the ensuing transcendental Millennium, however, will evolving life on earth be in a position to attain to salvation from the flesh in the Being of Absolute Mind. We needn't expect to survive death, as our ancestors did, but for that reason we have all the more incentive to prolong life and program ourselves for coming to terms with Absolute Mind. It will take a long time, and we have yet to get properly under way!

BECOMING AND BECOME

KEITH: Concerning the subject of transvaluations, one of the most revolutionary transvaluations you have made is surely with regard to transcendent spirit being, as you conceive it, essential rather than apparent. In other words, the idea that pure spirit would be the very opposite of the stars in appearance - indeed, not something that could be discerned as phenomenal because purely noumenal, and therefore beyond the realm of sensuous appreciation.

COLIN: Yes, transcendent spirit, whether in the penultimate context of Spiritual Globes converging towards one another, or as the Ultimate Spiritual Globe ... of the Omega Absolute, would be completely essential, as befitting an absolute at the very opposite extreme from the stars which, as we all know, can be highly apparent, particularly on a clear night! I don't envisage pure spirit shining in the dark, like a star.

KEITH: And consequently you tend not to look upon enlightenment in terms of light, whether metaphorically speaking or otherwise?

COLIN: Certainly not in any apparent sense! For all such traditional valuations seem to me but an extension of pagan criteria - like, for instance, the idea that the heavenly condition would be blissful.

KEITH: Yet you don't envisage it being so yourself?

COLIN: No, because I regard bliss as a feeling, a very strong and positive feeling, and feelings can only be connected with the will, which is to say, the subconscious part of the psyche. By contrast, I regard spirit - which should emerge from what is now the superconscious part of the psyche, but will eventually become the only part of it for a superior life form than man - as lying beyond feelings, emotions, and passions, in a realm of pure consciousness that transcends everything but itself through the most complete self-absorption of psychic fulfilment. As men, we can't know exactly what this supreme state-of-mind will be like. For, besides being relative, our spirit is regularly subjected to instinctual intrusions, as feelings, emotions, et cetera, of one kind or another condition our thoughts or, conversely, as our thoughts engender certain usually appropriate feelings, et cetera. Value judgements concerning the heavenly Beyond are therefore liable to reflect our own psychic limitations, and that is why one should be extremely sceptical as to their literal applicability, especially when conceived in terms of an instinctive feeling like bliss, which is undoubtedly the strongest positive one. If evolution were a journey, as it were, from one extreme feeling to another via the world of man, one could take the idea that it will culminate in bliss more seriously. Yet it seems to me that bliss can be attained to, over intermittent periods of time, on the human plane, whereas evolution must go well beyond that plane to a purely spiritual one, such as would transcend feelings altogether, and thus culminate in a context antithetical, in every respect, to how it began - namely, as the most absolute will of the stars.

KEITH: So from agony to bliss and then on again to some as yet unimaginably abstract psychic fulfilment?

COLIN: Yes, that is approximately how I see it anyway.

KEITH: Then, presumably, you would agree with the Buddha, who strove to get away from feelings, of whatever description, in an attempt to escape from pain.

COLIN: Yes, insofar as he realized that pleasure and pain were interconnected and that one couldn't escape, in any absolute sense, from pain simply by indulging in pleasure. Sooner or later one would have to pay one's dues, through fresh pain, for the pleasure in which one had earlier indulged, so that one would remain trapped in a vicious circle of pleasure/pain alternations. Consequently the Buddha sought no pleasure in order to avoid pain.

KEITH: A highly paradoxical procedure that doesn't necessarily lead to spirit being cultivated to any significant extent.

COLIN: Indeed not, because non-evolutionary and too naturalistic. Sitting under a tree all day, every day of the week, won't change the basic constitution of the psyche. For one will still be the victim of a subconscious mind, and this lower mind will prevent the superconscious mind from expanding in the direction, so to speak, of the Divine. Of all places to meditate, the jungle or forest is among the least suitable, because the air is heavily leaden with the sensuality of surrounding plant life and one's psyche is therefore likely to be conditioned in a manner favouring the subconscious. No, the radical cultivation of spirit, in the future, will require the assistance of technology, in order that the brain, or physiological base of the psyche, can be artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, and provided with such artificial stimuli as may prove necessary to the facilitation of psychic development.

KEITH: No doubt, you are alluding to LSD or to some such equivalent synthetic hallucinogen which artificially induces upward self-transcendence in the psyche?

COLIN: Yes, a stimulant that should develop the superconscious at the same time as it neutralizes the subconscious. The Supermen of the post-Human Millennium will be fed specific quantities of this vision-inducing drug and thereby partake of an aesthetico-religious experience superior, in essence, to what the men of the preceding age - that of the transcendental civilization - were fated to experience when they meditated in front of holograms in specially-designed meditation centres - the hologram approximating to a kind of external 'trip'.

KEITH: And thus preceding, in chronological time, the widespread recourse to an internal 'trip'?

COLIN: I believe so. External visionary experience of a static nature would signify an inferior phase of aesthetico-religious development to internal visionary experience of a similarly static nature, and should accordingly precede the latter in chronological time - it being accepted that evolution proceeds from apparent to essential levels.

KEITH: So art and religion would become inseparable again, as they were during the most religious centuries of the Christian era?

COLIN: Yes, because, at its height, art is designed to facilitate religious development, being the handmaiden, as it were, of religion. I cannot conceive of a meditation centre being without a specific quantity of the finest art, particularly holograms, though holograms, needless to say, of a religious character. There might also be room for certain kinds of laser and/or light art, whether with fluorescent tubes or plastic tubing; though, as you know, I tend to have a relatively poor opinion of light these days, even when artificial. Possibly, meditation will mostly be practised in the dark, with strategically-positioned holograms close-by in order to facilitate concentration and act as a kind of psychological focal-point.

KEITH: Some people might prefer to meditate without recourse to such a focal-point.

COLIN: Which they could continue to do, and simply by closing their eyes or looking straight through or above it, as the case may be. Yet meditation ought not to be encouraged to become too naturalistic, as in traditional oriental contexts, but should be accompanied by such artificial stimuli as I have just alluded to, if only to prevent some persons - perhaps less spiritually earnest - from dozing or falling into thought traps. The more profound persons will still prefer to interiorize their meditation as much as possible. But the existence of holograms shouldn't present a serious obstacle to that!

KEITH: One could argue that the deeper persons, being introverted, would prefer to take some hallucinogenic stimulant, and thus contemplate internal 'holograms' rather than their external equivalents?

COLIN: True. But that would only apply to a relatively small minority of people, who might well be catered for in that respect during or before the latter stages of the next civilization. I cannot see hallucinogens being used on a truly widespread or comprehensive basis, however, much before the advent of the post-Human Millennium, when human brains become artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts.

KEITH: Why ever not?

COLIN: Frankly, because most people wouldn't be psychically mature enough to properly appreciate them, with consequences not unknown to those of us who lived in the late-twentieth century. Not everyone is born to become a sophisticated 'acid head', the majority of people being more disposed to alcohol or tobacco. No doubt, this fact will still apply over the coming decades; though we may assume that alcohol and tobacco will cease to be available with the advent of the transcendental civilization, a civilization which could not encourage the use of natural drugs.

KEITH: Then surely it would be necessary to plug the gap, as it were, with the help of synthetics ... in order that people could have a superior alternative with which to carry on?

COLIN: In theory, this may seem so. But, in practice, I rather doubt that so potent a mind-expanding hallucinogen as, say, LSD could be brought into regular, sustained use much before the post-Human Millennium. Perhaps a diluted variant could be adopted in the meantime. Yet I still can't envisage the next civilization as being an out-and-out 'acid' one. For a comparatively small minority of people - possibly. But not for any Tom, Dick, or Harry whose chief inclination, under the influence of such a powerful stimulant, might well be to do either himself or someone else a grievous injury! The meditation centre should be a place of calm, quiet, concentrated consciousness, togetherness, and happiness, not a place where, at any moment, one's neighbour might throw-up, freak out, jump about, or cause bodily violence to those in the immediate vicinity, and all because LSD was proving too mind-boggling an experience for him or her to handle! I witnessed quite a number of such disturbances at music festivals and rock concerts in the past, and often enough it seemed to me that they took place less through any fault of the drug than because the persons concerned were insufficiently spiritually mature to cope with it.

KEITH: A situation analogous to the sight of the Cross to Count Dracula, or even the purity of the Clear Light of the Void to Eustace Barnack, that character from Aldous Huxley's Time Must Have a Stop, not to mention the complexity of a great tome to a simpleminded person.

COLIN: Precisely! Which is why I cannot envisage LSD being put into regular, widespread, and intensively-sustained service much before the post-Human Millennium, when there won't be any arms or legs to thrash around with, and no tongue to cry out with, and, in all probability, no cause for alarm - each brain being enclosed in its own psychic world and therefore not subject to the fear-provoking distraction of sight vis-à-vis other people, which of course applies to the human world. The superhuman one would be much more interiorized anyway, since deprived of or, rather, elevated beyond the usual senses ... as applying to the body. Probably there would be some kind of artificial means of communication, whereby each brain could tune-in, as it were, to the thoughts of another or to instructions coming from without at certain fixed times of day, either before or after the 'trip'. I am thinking along the lines, for example, of an artificial voice-box linking the Supermen, or a chosen representative of their number, to the external world of the scientific technicians. Possibly the most intelligent brain of each commune would be responsible for liaising, in such fashion, with the human technicians, and it would appertain to the superman who, for reasons of spiritual suitability, had been elected to function as a priest-equivalent for each gathering of Supermen. This priest-equivalent would actually be in the spiritual 'promised land' of the post-Human Millennium, not external to it like a technician. For it seems to me that spiritual leaders in whatever stage of evolution always enter the particular 'promised land' to which their leadership appertains - as, in another sense, do artists.

KEITH: Whereas politicians and scientists remain relatively aloof from the flock in the interests of their respective external roles as coercive or controlling agents?

COLIN: Precisely! And for that reason they do not identify with the flock after the manner of priests or artists, who create and maintain the successive spiritual 'promised lands' on route to the ultimate 'promised land' ... of the heavenly Beyond.

KEITH: But will there be artists at work in the post-Human Millennium?

COLIN: No, not in the professional sense! For every Superman, in experiencing the 'trip', will witness his own superconscious mind and thus effectively be his own inner 'artist'. What man would ordinarily witness but for the opaque veil of the subconscious mind, the Superman will daily witness because LSD, or some such synthetic hallucinogen, will have drawn the veil across by neutralizing the subconscious. He will be dreaming awake, and thus experiencing the antithesis of sleep dreams. So he won't require an external artist, in the sense that transcendental men of the ultimate human civilization would have required one to create the various holograms as incentives to meditation. All he will require is a priest-equivalent, a fellow Superman with a stronger mind who, besides liaising with the scientific technicians, will offer encouragement and advice, if needed, to the surrounding Supermen on any given artificial support. Thus the priest- or, if you prefer, guru-equivalent will supersede the artist - just as, in the external realm, the scientific technician will supersede the politician - with the advent of the post-Human Millennium.

KEITH: So a class distinction between priest-equivalents and lay Supermen, as also between technicians and post-human life forms in general, will persist into the Millennium in question.

COLIN: Yes, but only throughout the duration of its first phase. For, with the second phase of millennial life, such class distinctions will be totally eradicated, since the Supermen will be elevated, by the technicians, to the post-visionary consciousness of collectivized new brains, and the ensuing entity will have no need of priest-equivalents to liaise with anybody - each Superbeing, or collection of new brains, being beyond communication with the external world, as their consciousness is directly programmed, through hypermeditation, for transcendence, and thus the eventual attainment of the most free life form on earth to the ultimate freedom of the heavenly Beyond. There would be no class distinction between one Superbeing and another - no more than there is really any such distinction between, say, one Oak tree and another, or one Beech tree and another - and so the higher phase of the post-Human Millennium would indeed be classless.... As regards the human technicians, who would become completely external to the superbeingful society, following the operation designed to elevate Supermen to a post-visionary life form, my guess is that they would thereafter have very little to do and could accordingly entrust supervisory responsibility to artificial 'technicians', viz. robots and/or computers, while the spiritual life of the Superbeings continued to expand towards transcendence. Having placed such supervisory responsibility as was still required into the hands of artificial overseers, the technicians would increasingly remove themselves from millennial duties and die quietly in their own time. For it could well transpire that transcendence would take decades or even centuries to occur in each of the superbeingful communities, and that the only sensible thing for the human technicians to do, in the circumstances, would be to let matters take their preordained course under the watchful 'eyes' of overseers capable of surviving for centuries. Besides, it is doubtful whether, at that advanced post-atomic juncture in time, man would be capable of propagating himself anyway, so he would probably die-out sooner or later - there being no real justification for his remaining alive.

KEITH: Presumably because he had done what was necessary to set the Superbeings directly on course for transcendence?

COLIN: And also because his continued presence would constitute an infringement of the classless society, even if the Superbeings were oblivious of anything or anyone outside themselves on account of their being so wrapped-up in the hypermeditation of the most free earthly society.

KEITH: What you are saying suggests that evolution proceeds in a kind of zigzagging fashion, since lower-level meditation would be the spiritual norm for men of the ultimate human civilization - a norm which would be eclipsed with the LSD-experiencing Supermen of the ensuing post-Human Millennium?

COLIN: Evolution does indeed proceed in such a fashion, and you might alternatively choose to define it in terms of a romantic/classic alternation - the religious focus of the Superhuman Millennium betokening a kind of romantic interlude between the lower classicism of the transcendental civilization and the higher classicism of the Superbeingful Millennium. To trace this development right back to its beginnings, one could contend that what began, with the First Cause, as the lowest romanticism ... is destined to end, with the Last Effect, so to speak, as the highest classicism - the definitive classicism of the ultimate Become. Even on the human level there were alternations between the classic and the romantic in this respect, the lower classicism of pagan antiquity being superseded by the classic/romantic dichotomy of Christian modernity, its early, or Catholic, phase being romantic or, as we prefer to say, gothic, and its later, or Protestant, phase comparatively classic, emphasizing the Become rather than the Becoming. Well, above Christianity will come the lower classicism of transcendental futurity, as men congregate together in meditation centres in order to approximate to Heaven through a supreme human level of Being. Now you ought to see why LSD would be inappropriate in this context, which must stress togetherness.

KEITH: Yes, LSD, corresponding to a romantic orientation, would simply segregate one person from another in their individual preoccupations with such psychic contents of their superconscious minds as the drug was designed to free. Wrapped-up in his individual 'trip' - and therefore largely if not completely oblivious to other people when the lights were off - each person would exist as a law unto himself, and thus as a refutation of the group or communal context which this phase of human evolution was intended to signify. There would be no real justification for people being in a group at all, if all they intended to do was to experience the visionary contents of their individual superconscious minds.

COLIN: Absolutely! Which is why the widespread use of synthetic hallucinogens like LSD is unlikely to be endorsed until the advent of the Supermen ... with the first, or romantic, phase of the post-Human Millennium. The transcendental civilization, on the other hand, should signify the highest human classicism, placing due emphasis on the spiritual togetherness of each meditating community in whatever meditation centre, in order that a superior approximation to the Become may be achieved. By contrast, the first phase of the post-Human Millennium will signify a romantic Becoming, as each Superman experiences his own 'trip'. He will of course be part of a community of similarly artificially-supported and sustained brains, but this community will be more apparent from the outside, i.e. from the scientific technicians' standpoint, than from the actual internal experience of each Superman. If this phase of evolution seems a little zany in its post-human romanticism, so should the antithetically-equivalent phase to it ... of the pre-human romanticism of apes, our own direct ancestors, swinging collectively in trees ... be regarded as a little zany - indeed, as more than a little zany; though we tend not to be particularly conscious of that fact these days. Apes, too, would have formed a paradoxical community!

KEITH: And still do, wherever they exist in the world. However, as the Supermen will signify a romantic Becoming, the highest earthly Becoming, we may assume, I take it, that the ensuing Superbeing phase of evolution will represent the highest earthly Become, as the post-visionary life form indulges its penchant for hypermeditation in the most communal togetherness of which it is possible to conceive in earthly terms.

COLIN: Indeed we may! And that penultimate classicism will lead, via the romantic Becoming of numerous Spiritual Globes converging and expanding in the heavenly Beyond, to the ultimate classicism of the Omega Absolute in the most perfect Become - a Become in which essence is maximized, in the perfection of spiritual unity, and evolution accordingly attains to its culmination. At present, however, it is still some way from that culmination. For we have yet to attain to the spiritual classicism of the transcendental civilization!

KEITH: In which, presumably, people will meditate collectively in specially-designed meditation centres?

COLIN: Yes, and with the assistance, if needs be, of suitably religious holograms. The classical age which lies before us will be far superior to the classical age behind us ... in the Greco-Roman past. We need not rush headlong into the post-Human Millennium, as if this ensuing age were merely an obstacle to further development. That is something it most assuredly won't be - not if properly explored and evolved away from when the time is ripe!

EVOLUTIONARY STAGES

STUART: I like this idea of yours that evolution proceeds in a kind of zigzagging fashion with oscillations between the romantic and the classic, as emphasizing a distinction between the Becoming and the Become. It begins, you say, with a romantic Becoming in the First Cause?

KEVIN: Which can be equated with the central star of the Galaxy, as of any galaxy.

STUART: And then proceeds to a kind of classical Become in the planets?

KEVIN: No, more precisely in the smaller stars, such as the sun, from some of which there eventually emerged the planets as a kind of romantic Becoming.

STUART: Ah, the minor stars! Yes, of course! They precede the planets, which go through various changes until ...

KEVIN: Nature emerges on earth as the first planetary classical Become, with particular reference to the trees - the oldest and most noble specimens of nature.

STUART: There then follows, however, a romantic Becoming in the animals...?

KEVIN: Including insects, reptiles, fish, birds, mammals, et cetera, which are all life forms, irrespective of their size or habitat, capable of movement and conscious decision, and therefore stand between the plants and man in the evolution of life. Of all the animals, we must single out apes, or a certain species of ape, the way I singled out trees, as integral to a line of evolutionary ascent leading, in due course, to man.

STUART: So from the classical Become of a tree to the romantic Becoming of an ape swinging in its branches, we move on, at length, to the classical Become of a man descended from that ape?

KEVIN: Yes, in a manner of speaking! The man you are alluding to arose at a rather later phase of evolution than the caveman of prehistoric times, being of pagan civilization and, in particular, a certain phase of it ... such as we nowadays tend to equate with Greco-Roman classicism. This man signifies a classical Become on a predominantly sensual level.

STUART: Whereas the tree presumably signifies such a Become on an almost exclusively sensual or, at any rate, sensuous level.

KEVIN: Yes, since somewhat closer to an absolute than is man. With the next, or dualistic, phase of evolution, however, we enter the realm of a romantic Becoming, particularly with regard to Catholic Christianity, and from there, with the inception of Transcendentalism in a post-dualistic civilization, we shall progress to the highest human Become, a classical Become of predominantly spiritual constitution, and therefore quite the reverse of the pagan Become.

STUART: I have now counted from 1-8, beginning with the First Cause and ending with transcendental man.

KEVIN: Then let us continue on up the ladder of evolution to the ninth rung, so to speak, which will be the romantic Becoming of the Supermen in the first phase of the post-Human Millennium. The Supermen will require artificially-induced upward self-transcending visionary experience and signify a stage on the road, as it were, to the next classical Become - the highest earthly Become ... of the Superbeings who, as new-brain collectivizations, will stand at the opposite evolutionary remove from trees (rather than to apes on trees) and thus signify classicism on a near-absolute spiritual level.

STUART: Which level will in turn be superseded, I take it, by a fresh romantic Becoming in...?

KEVIN: The convergence and expansion of Spiritual Globes in the heavenly Beyond, which would constitute the ultimate romantic Becoming prior to the ultimate classical Become of ... attainment by such separate transcendences to unity in the Omega Absolute at the climax of spiritual evolution. And that, believe it or not, would be stage twelve - the complete antithesis to the lowest romantic Becoming ... of the First Cause, at stage one.

STUART: How amazing! One could argue that evolution comes full-circle with its return to an absolute.

KEVIN: Except for the fact that the Omega Absolute will be as different from the alpha absolutism of stars, both major and minor, as it is possible to conceive. What began under the negative principle of proton-proton reactions should culminate under the converse principle of electron-electron attractions - the ultimate positivity!

STUART: Thus evolution proceeds from the subatomic to the supra-atomic via the atomic.

KEVIN: Precisely! Atoms are at the base of matter, but before matter arises one has the alpha absolutism of the gaseous stars, and after electrons have escaped from matter one will have the omega absolutism of transcendent spirit. The most absolute soul, whether in its romantic or classic phase, is beneath electron emergence. Transcendent spirit, whether in its romantic or classic phase, will be above proton constraint. The former is absolutely evil, the latter absolutely good.

STUART: So when do atoms first emerge in evolution?

KEVIN: With the formation of matter in the romantic Becoming of the planets, particularly on planets, like the earth, which were rich in mineral formations. As matter ascends it becomes less dense; but the lower manifestation of matter in rock/crystal formations is especially dense, thereby testifying to a considerable preponderance of protons and/or neutrons over electrons in an atomic cohesion which defies the emergence of consciousness. However, consciousness as we understand it doesn't arise with the plants either, but only with the animals, and then on a comparatively rudimentary level.

STUART: This suggests that the ratio of protons and/or neutrons to electrons in the overall constitution of the animal brain is still heavily biased on the side of the former, and consequently impedes the development of consciousness.

KEVIN: Particularly with regard to spiritual consciousness, which requires for its expansion a preponderance of electrons over protons and/or neutrons such as one only finds in man, and then after millennia of evolutionary struggle. Animal consciousness is predominantly sensual because of the preponderance of protons and neutrons in the atomic constitution of its brain. But the atomic structure is such that a degree of spiritual consciousness becomes possible, because the electrons are more numerous than in the matter of, say, a tree, and not so densely smothered by protons and neutrons.

STUART: So even a tree, to the extent that it is atomic rather than subatomic, must possess mind in some degree?

KEVIN: It possesses a subconscious, or sensual, mind derived from a preponderating proton constitution. But although the rudiments of a conscious mind are present in the electron ingredient, so to speak, of the tree's atomic structure, there is no consciousness as such, because the electrons are too greatly outnumbered and tightly smothered by both the protons and neutrons to emerge as a distinct consciousness. A tree can feel, but it can't think!

STUART: Thus feeling is the quality of proton-dominated matter.

KEVIN: Yes, feeling corresponds to the wavicle aspect of matter, proton and/or neutron and electron cohesions to its particle aspect. The wavicle aspect is the soul of matter, the particle aspect its body, whether as regards protons and neutrons or electrons.

STUART: You mean, an electron, no less than a proton, is a tiny material entity?

KEVIN: Considered literally, yes! But, unlike a proton, an electron will have consciousness as its quality, so that the electron wavicle will be spiritual rather than sensual or intellectual, and therefore akin to the spirit of matter. Thus a distinction arises, with the wavicle aspect, between the soul and the spirit of matter, which is paralleled, in the particle aspect, by a distinction between protons and electrons. Obviously, the ratio of soul to spirit, or vice versa, will vary according to the kind of matter under consideration.

STUART: You mean, a piece of wood will possess a different wavicle integrity from the neo-cortex of a highly intelligent man.

KEVIN: Absolutely! The wood will be proton biased and therefore its wavicle quality will be soul, whereas the neo-cortex will be electron biased and possess, in its wavicle aspect, a spiritual quality.

STUART: Then surely there must be a similar distinction between the two main physiological components of the human cortex, viz. the old brain and the new brain, which would suggest a different atomic structuring at the base of each - the one being of a proton bias and the other, by contrast, of an electron bias?

KEVIN: Oh, indeed! And that is precisely why the wavicle aspect of each brain is so different, the subconscious being soul and the superconscious ... spirit, the former betokening feelings and the latter ... awareness, with intelligence coming in-between. Were each brain identically structured in the ratio of protons to electrons, then their wavicle aspects would be identical, as either soul or spirit. But the neo-cortex, or new brain, is in the process of evolving in the direction of greater electron freedom, its atomic integrity being rearranged, through spiritual striving, in such a way as to create an imbalance favouring the electron component, an imbalance which, taken to its logical extreme, should result in the disintegration of any remaining atomic structure and the attainment of electrons to transcendence, in complete freedom from proton and/or neutron constraint.

STUART: An eventuality which could only happen, presumably, in the latter phase of the post-Human Millennium, when life, in the guise of Superbeings, was directly programmed for the heavenly Beyond.

KEVIN: Yes, for by then the old brain would have been surgically removed by the millennial technicians and only the new brain would remain, its wavicle aspect being spirit, and the raison d'être of each Superbeing, or new-brain collectivization, being the expansion of that spirit towards transcendence in an endeavour to bring evolution to a supra-atomic plane of ... electron-electron attractions in the heavenly Beyond. Each Superbeing would be expanding spirit through a hypermeditation made possible by the interaction of the various new brains in any given collectivization and the complete absence of subconscious constraint, thereby changing the new brain's atomic structure in the direction of greater degrees of spiritual freedom ... until, with transcendence, the ultimate degree of spiritual freedom was attained to, a degree entailing, in all probability, the collapse of the physiological base - the new brains disintegrating into flame as the electrons broke free of the remaining proton and neutron constraints, and thus shattered what atomic integrity there had been.

STUART: Why do you suggest the possibility of flame?

KEVIN: Because once electrons had departed for the heavenly Beyond, the disintegration of what had formerly been an atomic integrity would result in protons reacting against one another in a subatomic context akin to that of the sun, and the sun, as we both know, is a great ball of raging flame. Thus would the world gradually destroy itself in the wake of departed spirit - flame spreading from each collapsed new-brain collectivization to whatever lay in its path until, eventually, everything was consumed.

STUART: You said electrons would break free, but would they actually soar heavenwards or would particle husks be left behind, as their wavicle aspect attained to transcendence?

KEVIN: Yes, I said electrons and I meant electrons! I can't imagine spirit existing without its particle base in the electron. Does the sun's flame exist without its particle base in the proton? No, of course not! And neither need we expect wavicles to exist without electrons on which to dance. They have to emerge from somewhere, after all.

STUART: But would that make for transcendence?

KEVIN: Oh yes, because these wavicles would not be attached to matter, as in an atomic integrity, but to pure electrons, which would be as far above matter as pure protons, in the subatomic absolutism of the stars, are beneath it. Maybe even more so, insofar as electrons are the pro-spiritual elements in an atomic structure, whereas protons remain aligned with the emotional realm, and neutrons with the intellectual one. But when pure spirit arises from the Superbeings, it will create a nuclear reaction releasing proton energy in every direction, and this in turn will give rise, I am quite convinced, to a holocaust, albeit one destined, in due course, to burn itself into nothingness as the proton fires subside. Thus will the protons destroy themselves as the electrons wing their way heavenwards, as it were, in various-sized spiritual globes.

STUART: The smallest size presumably arising from any given Superbeing, and the largest...?

KEVIN: Eventually being the Omega Absolute itself. Though while Spiritual Globes were converging towards one another and expanding into larger wholes in a kind of romantic Becoming, they would pass through evolutionary stages corresponding to the successive star changes ... from the galactic central star to the individual planets via the minor stars of each galaxy. However, these supra-atomic stages would be the converse of the subatomic ones, so that, beginning in Spiritual Globes as antitheses to the 'material' globes of the planets, supra-atomic evolution would progress from a 'planetary' to a 'galactic' level, and on, eventually, to a 'universal' level, as the individual Spiritual Globes became larger and fewer in number, following successive convergences and expansions.

STUART: Your genius overwhelms me and obliges me to request a clarification, on the basis of this more comprehensive perspective, of the respective evolutionary stages ... from the first to the last.

KEVIN: Very well! Let us begin with whatever number of governing stars there are in the Universe, one to each galaxy, which correspond to X number of first causes. Let us then proceed to an XX number of minor stars, millions to each galaxy, and consider them as stage two. Then let us proceed to an XXX number of planets, possibly billions to each galaxy, which in turn give rise, on certain planets, to an XXXX number of plants, including trees, at stage four. Next let us proceed to an XXXXX number of animals on these life-sustaining planets, and bring ourselves to stage six with the advent of XXXXXX numbers of pagan men. The ensuing Christian, or equivalent anthropomorphic, stage is really a combination of two stages, since dualistic in constitution, and leads, via XXXXXXX numbers of atomic men, to stage seven with XXXXXX numbers of transcendental men. Then follows stage eight, with XXXXX numbers of Supermen, which are human brains artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts. After this first and lower phase of the post-Human Millennium, however, we proceed to its second and higher phase in new-brain intensified collectivizations ... with XXXX numbers of Superbeings at stage nine. This in turn leads to transcendence with XXX numbers of Spiritual Globes, these small transcendences continuously merging into one another until, at stage eleven, they become more the size of stars than planets and may justifiably be regarded in terms of XX numbers of Galactic Globes. It now only remains for these larger transcendences to converge towards one another, from whatever part of the Universe, into one ultimate globe ... for evolution to be complete in the Omega Absolute at stage twelve, the final X.

STUART: Thus what began in the many First Causes will culminate in the one Last Effect?

KEVIN: Precisely! Evolution proceeding from the subatomic to the supra-atomic via intermediate degrees of atomic compromise.

STUART: And in a kind of zigzagging fashion of romantic/classic alternations?

KEVIN: Yes, though that particularly applies to the intermediate, or earthly, stages of evolution, where a Becoming/Become alternation derives from and appertains to the variously-constituted atomic integrities which prevail there. With the subatomic stages, however, evolution broadly reflects the proton absolutism of stars and planets in terms of a continuous romantic Becoming, whereas with the supra-atomic stages of evolution there will really be a continuous classical Become, in accordance with the electron absolutism of spiritual globes en route, as it were, to the Omega Absolute. Viewed from the human standpoint, this convergence and expansion of Spiritual Globes will suggest a romantic Becoming. But Absolute Mind, the essence of transcendent spirit, would be unaware of any such Becoming because entirely wrapped-up, so to speak, in self-absorption ... as sole witness to its divine Being. Conversely, although the stars may suggest to us, as we view them from millions of miles distance, a classical Become, they are continuously engulfed by the negative Becoming of their proton-proton reactions, and are thus consumed in apparent activity. Transcendent spirit, by contrast, would be completely immersed in essential passivity, the quality of electron-electron attractions. There could be no greater distinction than that!

STUART: So now I understand, for the first time, how evolution proceeds and where it is tending. Man has now reached the point where he can split the atom of crude matter, severing electrons from their proton and/or neutron constraints. But he has a long way to go before he can split the atomic structure of the new brain apart!

KEVIN: That's true. Though there is no reason for us to be pessimistic as to its eventual achievement. The Superbeings of the higher phase of the post-Human Millennium will most certainly progress towards transcendence, and when they attain to it ... the result will be salvation for the liberated electrons but damnation for the abandoned protons, which will then react against one another in diabolic fashion. Just as well that, by then, all human technicians would have departed the scene, to leave the prospect of witnessing the ultimate nuclear holocaust to their artificial colleagues - the robots and computers, whose material constitutions will be impervious to conscious pain!

LONDON 1982 (Revised 1983-2012)

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