PART THREE: APHORISMS
*
ON SEXUALITY
1. Sexuality in the post-atomic world would be
- as to some extent it already is in the transitional world ... of
bourgeois/proletarian civilization - free from emotional ties and consequently
elevated above atomic constraints.
No-one would think of affirming 'What God has joined together let no man
pull asunder', for the simple reason that God, in that Creator-oriented
alpha-bound sense, would have been transcended - the city having supplanted
nature and considerably weakened, through its artificial constitution, man's
ability or inclination to form long-lasting emotional ties. Marriage would become a thing of the past -
as, to a limited extent, it already is, in practice if not always in theory!
2. Post-dualistic sexuality is both sublimated and positively unisexual, positively
unisexual even when women are involved ... to the extent that, if liberated,
they effectively function as Supermen, or quasi-electron equivalents, rather
than strictly as women, or proton equivalents. By contrast, pre-atomic sexuality was largely
concrete and negatively unisexual, to the extent that men effectively
functioned as pseudo-proton equivalents - unable to equal women in sensual
capacity or pleasure. With atomic
sexuality, however, men entered into a more equal social relationship with
women, functioning as bound-electron equivalents, the family becoming more
patriarchal than matriarchal. By 'equal'
I don't of course mean that they acquired a greater capacity for sensual
pleasure ... so much as a distinct character as men, not yet superior to
women but in no way inferior to them either.
3. The main sartorial distinction in atomic
sexual relationships is between skirt and trousers - the relationships in
question being dualistic and therefore properly heterosexual. No such sartorial distinction existed,
however, in pre-atomic sexual relationships.
For both men and women wore dresses or gowns, as befitting the
predominantly negative character of pre-atomic times, the length of this
feminine attire often varying according to one's status ... as either a genuine
woman or an effective woman, so that, as a rule, the former wore longer
dresses, tunics, or whatever than the latter.
For feminine attire symbolizes the vagina, a dress or skirt forming a
kind of tunnel, its length symbolizing the depth of the wearer's vagina. Men, lacking a vagina, were obviously at a
sexual disadvantage to women in pre-atomic times. However, with the advent of a post-atomic
age, the situation is reversed, so that trousers become the standard clothing
for both men and women alike, the latter now functioning as quasi-Supermen and
being at a sexual disadvantage to the former to the extent that their trousers,
jeans, etc., could not intimate of or symbolize the length of the wearer's
penis so convincingly or credibly as with a (genuine) man, or Superman. For trousers do, after all, refer back to the
penis through their emphasis, in clinging to the outlines of a man's legs, on
the phallic rather than, as with a skirt, the vaginal - a distinction, one might
argue, between the cylindrical (considered as a solid) and the tubular.
4. Because women are effectively regarded as
quasi-Supermen in a post-atomic age, it is fitting for them to adopt masculine
attire and thus conform to the positively unisexual nature of that age. Bourgeois women, on the other hand, tend, in
their open-society contexts, to wear skirts or dress rather than trousers, and
usually the more bourgeois or aristocratic the woman, the longer the skirt or
dress she wears. This is because such
women are not ashamed to emphasize their basic femininity in conformity with
heterosexual criteria. Neither, up to a
point, are petty-bourgeois women, who tend to reflect
a transitional development between skirts and trousers, and may as often be
seen in the latter as in the former.
With modern proletarian women, however, trousers, whether as cotton
slacks, jeans, tights, or whatever, tend to predominate over skirts, thereby
presaging an age when skirts will be entirely superseded by trousers or, at any
rate, trouser-like attire ... as post-atomic criteria become more
comprehensively established - a thing which is unlikely to happen much before
the advent of a transcendental civilization.
Even within the confines of contemporary bourgeois civilization, proletarian
women display a marked preference for jeans over skirts, though when skirts are
worn they are more likely to be short than long.
5. Unlike a long
skirt, a short skirt, or mini, symbolizes vaginal shallowness, the tunnel it
forms around the legs being relatively modest.
A mini thus reduces feminine sexuality, contracts it as a preparatory
step towards transcending it through the masculine attire of trousers, which,
by contrast, affirm a phallic bias. As a
rule, bourgeois women do not wear miniskirts, because they have no desire to contract
their sexuality in conformity with quasi-unisexual criteria. The mini is really more of a petty-bourgeois
than either a bourgeois or a proletarian mode of attire; for while it plays
down feminine sexuality - and this contrary to superficial appearances and
notions to the contrary! - it yet retains a
heterosexual dimension. The proletarian
quasi-Superman of tomorrow would, one imagines, consistently adopt masculine
attire, unlike her contemporary counterpart who, in the West, exists within the
confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, and is to some extent exposed
to the socio-sexual influences of the ruling, i.e. bourgeois, class.
6. As to the sublimated aspect of post-atomic
sexuality, there is plentiful evidence of that in contemporary Western
civilization where, whether in books, magazines, videos, or films, pornography
continues to flourish as an alternative to, and possible substitute for,
concrete sexuality. A bourgeois will
regard pornography as a mode of perversion because he tends to look upon it
from a naturalistic standpoint, which, erroneously, he considers to be the only
legitimate standpoint. Unbeknown to
himself, however, progress must be made, and in sexual matters no less than all
others! Considered from an evolutionary
standpoint, pornography - and I use the term in the broadest possible erotic
sense - may be seen as a means of 'spiritualizing' sex, of breaking down man's
dependence on the concrete and leading him further into abstract modes of
sexual indulgence. Sex 'in the head' is
a higher evolutionary development than bodily sex, and it will undoubtedly be
recognized as such in the post-atomic civilization, when life becomes
increasingly transcendental ... as man draws nearer to his self-overcoming in
the post-human life forms of the ensuing Millennium. No doubt, a certain amount of concrete sex,
both literally and symbolically unisexual, will continue to prevail in that
more evolved age. But it would be
illogical if pornography were to be looked upon as a mode of perversion.
7. Just as, in pre-atomic unisexual times, men
tended to dress in a feminine fashion and to wear their hair long, so, in the
post-atomic unisexual age of the future, women will dress in a masculine
fashion and wear their hair short - as, indeed, many of them do at
present. When humans are close to nature
at a lower stage of evolutionary development, they allow what grows naturally,
as hair, nails, beard, etc., to grow long.
When, however, they approximate more to the supernatural at a higher
stage of evolution, they cut back what grows naturally and thus wear their hair
short, keep their nails trimmed, and regularly shave. It would not become them to cultivate the
natural when they are struggling towards the supernatural in increasingly
artificial contexts. A bourgeois
society, arising between pagan and transcendental extremes, will of course
allow women to grow their hair long, and many women do in fact wear long hair
in the open societies of the contemporary West.
But no such concession to nature could be encouraged in a transcendental
society, where, by contrast, all women would be encouraged to wear their hair
short, clip their nails, etc., in conformity with post-atomic criteria. Likewise, men would be encouraged to shave
off all facial hair.
8. Many people in an open society, particularly
when bourgeois, would be inclined to regard what I have suggested above as an
encroachment upon human liberty - in short, as an attack upon freedom. They tend to equate freedom too closely with
individual interests and preferences rather than to see it in terms of
spiritual progress towards the ultimate freedom (from protons and neutrons) of
transcendent spirit in a supra-atomic Beyond.
Thus what is in fact a reflection of enslavement, in varying degrees, to
nature and the diabolic roots of life in the stars, particularly the sun, is
misinterpreted by them as freedom! And
some of them might even argue in favour of the 'freedom' to remain enslaved to
such alpha phenomena! But evolutionary
progress cannot tolerate mistaken notions of freedom or sensualist/naturalist
reaction for ever! Sooner or later, such
people will have to learn to respect a higher and more objective concept of
freedom, such as tallies with supernatural strivings.
9. And this higher concept of freedom will
indicate, quite plainly, that love, in the old emotional sense, is just one
more aspect of enslavement to nature, an aspect which must be guarded against
and avoided as much as possible. We see,
in the present century, that such love is losing ground among people,
particularly the proletariat, who are freer than earlier generations from
emotional enslavement and more able, in consequence, to regularly exchange
partners and experiment with various types of post-atomic sexuality. The days of the married couple are numbered,
like the distinction between skirts and trousers, which appertains to a
heterosexual phase of human evolution.
Supermen may well live with quasi-Supermen in the future, but as
free-electron equivalents vis-à-vis quasi-electron equivalents in a unisexual
context of post-atomic freedom. One
cannot marry a quasi-Superman, but only a woman, and, like men, women are
destined to become a thing of the past, relative to a bourgeois phase of
evolutionary development. This is
already more than half the case now in the contemporary West. It will become wholly the case in the
transcendental future!
ON THE SELF
1. Most people do not distinguish between
themselves and their selves. They live
predominantly in the phenomenal self of the individual, the body, and
consequently fail to perceive that there are in fact two selves, of
diametrically antithetical constitution.
Their 'I' is always personal, pertaining to the body and its psychic
master and ally, the soul. They do not
refer to the spirit when using the first person and, consequently, they are
unaware that the word 'I' can be used in different contexts, and that two minds can make use of the same term to define
different objectives. Take these two statements:
"I am going to eat" and "I am going to meditate". Are not two distinct minds being referred to
here - the first 'I' of the soul (subconscious) in relation to the body, and
the second 'I' of the spirit (superconscious) in
relation to itself? For how can the
spirit wish to eat or the soul to meditate?
Clearly, a distinction exists between sensual and spiritual commitments,
and no one 'I' could possibly wish to concern itself with both!
2. Being conscious of the distinction between
the 'I's' is a mark of psychic development, which
will not occur to a person who doesn't live predominantly in his superconscious, or spirit.
A man who regularly lives in his higher self will occasionally find
himself referring to the body or body's desires in the second person,
distinguishing between his self and 'the other', as when he thinks: "You
want to eat". It is as though the
thought expressed in this context came from the superconscious
rather than the subconscious, from an 'I' biased in favour of the self. In actual fact, thought comes from the
subconscious being activated, through the ego, by the superconscious. Thought is spirit informing soul, like
someone striking sparks from an anvil.
The more spirit (up to a point) a man has, the higher the quality and
the greater the quantity of thoughts he will extract from the subconscious.
3. But spirit can also turn away from soul, as
when a man chooses to meditate and avoid using his spirit to extract
troublesome thoughts from the psyche's verbal storehouse in the
subconscious. Spirit existing for its
own sake rather than as the slave of soul - such is the principle of meditation
... as spirit strives to become more fully conscious of itself
and to escape from atomic friction in pursuit of post-atomic (electron)
freedom. Also to
escape from emotions and dreams which, unlike thoughts, exist independently of
the spirit, since specifically appertaining to the subconscious. For emotions, particularly when strong and
negative, can trouble spirit, causing it to turn back towards the soul and
evoke verbal comment in response to the emotional stimulus. The thought follows the emotion, and spirit
is once again enslaved to soul!
4. The superconscious stands to the subconscious as the heart to
the sex organs, that is to say, as a superior tribunal obliged to pass
judgement on the stimuli from beneath.
Although not itself an organ of thought, the superconscious
will elicit thoughts from the subconscious appropriate (as a rule) to the
emotions it has succumbed to, these in turn being dependent, to a significant
extent, on the organs of sense. We feel
disgruntled or disgusted by a certain spectacle and that feeling obliges the superconscious to turn towards the subconscious and evoke
thoughts appropriate to the situation.
Feelings-proper are mental, unlike emotions, which pertain to the heart
and, being bodily, are much stronger and, as a corollary of this,
longer-lasting. Happiness and sadness
are respectively feelings which come and go with the occasion, but love and hate
are emotions (at times so powerful as to become passions) which are not
transient but lasting, if on a temporary rather than a permanent basis. And this is because they pertain to the body
(heart), which is more deeply sensual than the psyche (subconscious/superconscious) and disposed, in consequence, to stronger
feelings. Sensations, on the other hand,
are purely external, as affecting the skin, and, when positive, are the
shallowest of all feelings. Emotions,
being internal, are the deepest, and may be evoked in response to either
sensual or sexual stimuli, though especially the latter - as when the sensation
of pleasure leads to love.
5. But negative
sensations like pain far outweigh their positive counterparts and can cause
much deeper suffering than, say, the negative emotion of hate. Schopenhauer was certainly correct to
maintain that pain is a far stronger sensation than pleasure. This is because pain runs with the grain, as
it were, of the flesh, and thus activates its proton-dominated constitution,
from the relatively moderate degree of transient negative sensation to the
absolutely extreme degree of destructive negative sensation, as when the flesh
is assaulted by flame and burns in response to the proton-proton reactions
impinging upon it. Anything biased
towards protons will respond to flame in a subatomic way and so become flame
itself - the flesh being no exception.
Such terrible pain as people who suffer burns have experienced is the
maximum of negative sensation the flesh can experience - a diabolically
destructive sensation far outweighing the maximum of positive sensation
obtainable, as pleasure, through sex.
6. The reason wood burns so well is that it is
even more dominated by protons than the flesh, and is therefore more susceptible
to a subatomic response to proton-proton reactions impinging upon it from
without. Coal, as wood that has decayed
into mineral formation, is even more susceptible to a subatomic response to
proton-proton aggression than wood, since its physical constitution is still
more radically dominated by protons.
Thus the proton-biased atomic integrity of coal can easily be broken
down by proton-proton aggression and transformed into the subatomic absolute of
flame, or pure soul, which corresponds to the Diabolic Alpha. By comparison to this pure soul, the human
soul (of the subconscious) is impure, that is to say, dependent upon matter and
functioning within the physiological context of the old brain. The spirit (of the superconscious)
is likewise impure, because dependent upon the new brain for physiological
support and therefore subject to a degree of proton constraint. What flame is to proton-dominated matter, hypermeditation will be to the electron-biased matter of
the new brain, the principle, in other words, undermining atomic integrities
and aspiring, either manifestly or potentially, towards the absolute - in this
case, towards the supra-atomic absolute ... of electron-electron attractions in
the future heavenly Beyond.
7. Thus while the psychic aspect of the old
brain (a proton-dominated realm of the entire brain) is impure soul, as
manifested in feelings, the psychic aspect of the new brain (an electron-biased
realm of the entire brain) is impure spirit, as manifesting in awareness. Likewise, while the 'psychic' aspect of the
heart (a more deeply proton-dominated realm of the body) is impure soul, as
manifested in emotions, the 'psychic' aspect of the flesh, particularly the sex
organs, is impure soul, as manifesting in sensations, which are evoked directly
from the flesh. Soul extends, in varying
degrees, from the sex organs to the old brain, and so extends on both a
positive and a negative basis, though never more strongly than when negative. Spirit, by contrast, is mostly confined to
the new brain, from the lower psychic regions of which it may analytically
impinge upon the old brain and evoke thoughts from the subconscious. It may do this as the slave of feelings or,
as in philosophy, independently of them and primarily in the interests of
truth. This latter policy will be
transitional between spirit being used in the service of soul and spirit
becoming completely independent of soul in an orientation which favours the
Divine Omega, or the future attainment of impure
spirit to the absolute purity of electron-electron attractions.
8. Man, as we all know, is a talker, which is
to say, a creature who often conveys thoughts through the flesh (tongue) for
the benefit of communication with his fellow man. Spoken word is thought made audible, thought
manifested in the voice. Before the
evolution of language, however, man's prehistoric ancestors were dependent on
the flesh for communication. The caveman
relied, for the most part, on facial or bodily gestures to transmit information
of a largely practical nature from group to group. This sign language, or language of the body,
preceded the human compromise between signs and thoughts which we recognize as
speech and which, even these days, isn't entirely free, with many human beings,
from the accompaniment of what, in the guise of gestural
confirmation or explanation, might be termed sublimated sign language. The man who gestures as he speaks betrays, if unconsciously and rather tenuously, an ancestral connection
with the pure sign language of the caveman.
However, while speech marks an evolutionary progression over purely
apparent sign language, it is by no means the highest mode of communication
between sentient beings, but merely a mode coming in-between two extremes, viz.
the pre-human and the post-human, appertaining to man alone. With the probable future termination of the
human stage of evolution in the millennial Beyond, when human brains become
artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts, we can anticipate
that telepathic communication will prevail between the ensuing Supermen, and
thereby signify the climax of communication in maximum essence, completely
independent of the flesh (tongue) and thus elevated beyond the apparent. Probably a minority of human beings will be
capable of telepathy even before the post-Human Millennium - as, to a limited
extent, are an extremely small number already.
9. The long-standing controversy concerning the
mind/body dichotomy can at last be set aside, and on these terms: that there is
indeed a dichotomy between mind and body when the former pertains solely to the
superconscious (spirit), as the upper part of the
conscious mind situated in the new brain, but that such a dichotomy doesn't
exist, at least not in opposition, between the subconscious (soul), as the
lower part of the conscious mind situated in the old brain, and the body
generally, including lower manifestations of soul in emotions and sensations,
as pertaining to the 'psychic' aspects of the heart and the sex organs
respectively. There is therefore a
dichotomy in the one context but not in the other! The spirit is not of the body (though it has
been traditionally enslaved by and subordinated to the body), so confirms a
mind/body dichotomy. By contrast, the
soul is of the body and exists, in varying degrees, with the body in a mind-body reciprocity of interconnected feelings and
sensations, from the weak to the very strong and even, in unfortunate
instances, to the absolute level of maximum pain, as evoked by fire.
10. We have returned, it
would seem, to the distinction alluded to, several aphorisms ago, concerning
the two minds or selves, viz. the lesser or bodily self, and the greater or
spiritual self. In the
one case, we use the term 'myself', in the other ...
'my self'. The first can refer either to
the body or the soul, in whichever manifestations, and embraces the
subconscious as the repository of thought.
The spiritual self does not think, however, so that even this recorded
thought isn't of the higher self but of the subconscious being activated by a
part of it, according to the strictest analytical principles of philosophical
endeavour. Were I to become indisposed
to philosophical activity in the interests, amongst other things, of
evolutionary progress, my true self could be more profitably employed on its
own account and in relative freedom from the subconscious and, for that matter,
soulful life generally. I have known
such freedom but, quite frankly, I don't wish to indulge it at the expense of
everything else. Literal transcendence
is, in any case, too far into the future for me to have any radical ambitions
concerning my spiritual life! Of course,
the successful practice of meditation is its own reward; but I am not one to 'go
over' to the Eastern camp entirely at the expense of the West. Rather, I endorse a synthesis between East
and West (as between mysticism and technology) which, stemming wholly from
neither, transcends both and thus brings the world closer to ultimate unity. I will continue to respect 'myself' as well
as 'my self'. But
'myself' in the interests of 'my self'.
ON RACISM AND ANTI-TRIBALISM
1. It is easy to confound anti-tribalism with
racism and to treat them as synonymous - indeed, not to perceive a distinction
between the two because one has no idea of what anti-tribalism implies. But one can be anti-tribal, e.g.
anti-Semitic, without being racist, which is to
discriminate against others on the basis of racial origin irrespective of to
what evolutionary integrity the person discriminated against may profess. A transcendental ideologue in, say, Nazi
Germany may have been logically justified in discriminating against people who
clung to tribal identification, e.g. Jews and Gypsies, because such pre-atomic
identifications are arguably incompatible with a post-atomic integrity. But he wouldn't have been logically justified
in discriminating against, say, blacks who regarded themselves less in tribal
than in national terms - as citizens of a particular country. He might have been justified in expelling all
alien nationals from his ideologically radical state, but he couldn't have
sanctioned their imprisonment or liquidation on grounds that they were black,
since such a policy would be racist, and racism is strictly incompatible with
ideological transcendentalism!
2. Racism pertains to atomic states that have a
minority of colonists in positions of power over an indigenous majority whom
they are anxious to discriminate against in their own political, social, and
economic interests. Its most blatant
manifestation takes the form of apartheid.
But racism doesn't have to involve colour differences. People of, say, Irish nationality may be
discriminated against by British imperialists, as happened in Southern Ireland
during the greater part of British rule there, and thus suffer the humiliating
consequences of racism. A limited degree
of racism may also accrue to the converse situation of minority rule, as when
an imperialist country opens its doors to immigrants from the colonies, or
former colonies, and rules over them from a majority standpoint. Such immigrants may technically live in an
anti-racist or equalitarian society, but, in practice, some degree of racism is
almost certain to prevail, since an atomic society cannot treat everyone as
equals, having ruling-class interests to protect. When a predatory people can no longer profit
from racism in the colonies ... they will tighten their belts, so to speak, and
resign themselves to drawing what profits they can from it in their own
country, compliments of the immigrants.
3. My own position as an advocate of
Transcendentalism leads me to deny racism but to affirm, at least in theory,
anti-tribalism, whether applying to Jews, Gypsies, Celts, or anything else. Thus I would regard myself as a theoretical
anti-tribalist, since it would be illogical to uphold
ideological transcendentalism and remain complacent about tribalists
at the same time! Of course, this
theoretical anti-tribalism has no bearing, through anti-Semitism, on my
attitude to
4. The smartest Jews, it seems to me, were the
early Zionists, who must have sensed, with the approaching termination of the
Christian civilization, that the moral climate in Europe was no longer
congenial to Jews, and that a new age was dawning in which transcendental
values would prevail, an age in which the Jews would find salvation in
Palestine if they were smart or brave enough to return there, but possible
damnation in Europe if they were stupid or timid enough to remain in the
Diaspora. Those early Zionists were as
intelligent, in my opinion, as the early anti-Semites - people like Wagner and Leuger who were also reading the changing times, if from a
contrary point of view. Evolution was tending
away from tolerance of the mundane tribal root, inherent to atomic
civilization, towards a transcendentalism in which only ideological values
would apply. Needless to say, some
European countries were more qualified to divine this change than others, being
better suited, by historical circumstances, to further and act upon it. Germany was one such country, and it was from
there that a fully-fledged anti-Semitism eventually
arose, following the rise to power of the Nazis - upholders of an ideological
radicalism in opposition to traditional atomic values.
5. Approximately six million Jews perished in
the Nazi holocaust, some of them illogically, because long-standing convertees to Christianity, but most of them effectively as
tribalists who hadn't had the good fortune or sense
or courage or whatever to immigrate to Palestine and work for a national
identity. Undoubtedly their sacrifice
precipitated the transformation, in 1947, of Palestine into the State of Israel,
though the British, who held a mandate on the territory, must bear some
responsibility for obstructing the entry of Jews into Palestine (ostensibly in
consideration of Arab feelings) during the Nazi era, and thus for indirectly
contributing to the Final Solution as adopted by the Nazis as a last resort,
other solutions having failed or been proven inadequate for the vast numbers
involved. Nevertheless, had it not been
for the holocaust, Jews might even now be deprived of a literal homeland and be
dependent on Arab, i.e. Palestinian, hospitality for their future
salvation! Indeed, as Jews in
6. Clearly, the destruction of the State of
Israel for the sake of a return to the Arab status quo would be deeply
illogical, because contrary to the historical justification for such a state,
which is to enable Jews to escape their traditional tribal identification in
and through Israeli nationality. Having
earned the right to an Israeli State through the six million sacrifices the
Jews were obliged to make on the altar of Nazi persecution, it would be
monstrously unjust for such a state ever to be taken away from them in the
future, particularly in a world which may require that a sanctuary be found for
Jews in Israel, assuming that Israel was willing to take-in such late-comers
and had enough room, territorially speaking, to house them all - something
which is not guaranteed at present!
Certainly the State of
7. It isn't surprising that, of all European
nations, it is from Russia that most of the Jews emigrating to Israel come
these days [early 1980s], and not simply because there are more Jews there than
anywhere else but, more significantly, because, under Soviet Communism, Russia
has tended to make life harder for tribalists than
would a Western atomic state, in spite of the fact that the ideology it
professed to - and in some degree still upholds - is materialistic rather than
pseudo-spiritual, and therefore more disposed it to an indirect opposition to
Jews than to a directly anti-Semitic opposition - in other words, one availing
itself, contrary to Nazism, of some Marxist pretext for finding fault with
certain categories of Jew, Zionists and religious fundamentalists not
excepted! Yet this served to cloak a
basic antagonism towards Jews in general that bordered on anti-Semitism but
which, for ideological reasons, could never be proclaimed as such. Paradoxically, however, the
ON RELIGION
1. Strictly speaking, religion is concerned
with absolutes, whether diabolic or divine.
There is a relative phase of religious development, as in
Christianity, but the anthropomorphic god, viz. Christ, is endowed with divine
attributes, becomes transcendent in His alleged conquest of death. Christians don't simply worship a man but a
man who became divine through His Ascension into Heaven, that is to say,
through attainment of the supra-atomic plane in pure spirit. This is perhaps a Protestant bias on Christ,
whereas a Catholic bias will often lay greater emphasis, by contrast, on His
stemming from the Father and, hence, link with the Mother. Either way, whether the stress be on alpha or omega, the relative is endowed with absolute
significance. But, for all that, the
Christian stage of religious evolution essentially corresponds to the relative,
and we may take it that both aspects of Christ's theological integrity have
been equally stressed whenever an evolutionary balance has obtained between the
Father and the Holy Spirit, but that this has not precluded a simultaneous
worship of the Father.
2. In religious affairs, we may distinguish
between worship of the Father and/or Christ and self-realization, as to some
extent taught by Christ but necessitating, at some point in evolutionary time,
a denial of the Father and wholly transcendental orientation rooted in the
impersonal cultivation of spirit for beatific ends, whether or not such ends
are formally acknowledged. Thus in an
extreme stage of human evolution, worship and self-realization become mutually
exclusive. The breaking of the link with
the Father presupposes a simultaneous denial, in a manner of speaking, of the
Son, since He is rooted in the alpha and thereby entitled to worship. However, that is precisely what a
transcendental stage of religious evolution can have no truck with.... I
concede, though, that worship can imply more than service. Christ has been worshipped for his divine
attributes, as, from a Christian standpoint, the first 'man' to attain to
transcendence. Thus the positive
attitude to worship presupposes homage, or admiration for a quality or
achievement beyond one's own powers. And
yet even this style of worship would be irrelevant to a society which had made
self-realization the foundation of its religious integrity, since worship (as
implying prayer, adulation, or devotion to an image, a book, hymn, etc.) can
impede self-realization to the extent that awareness is directed at something -
namely, the object of worship - outside itself,
and so functions as will, which is precisely what must be overcome if
self-awareness is to be cultivated to any significant spiritual extent.
3. If religion is primarily concerned with
absolutes, either in terms of worship of the alpha or, in its highest
manifestation, an aspiration towards the omega, we cannot discount the fact
that it is possible to worship, in a quasi-religious context, manifestations of
life which stem from the subatomic absolute in varying degrees of
materialism. Thus it is possible to
worship - as at various times men have in fact done - nature, animals, women,
and (last but not least), men or, at any rate, certain categories of men, including
avatars. Now my fundamental contention
here is that the lower the stage of human evolution the more likely it is that
men will worship the subatomic in one form or another, whereas as human
evolution attains to higher stages of advancement, so the focal-points of
worship correspondingly change, in consequence of which first nature, then
animals, then women, etc., become the principal focal-points of human
worship. Of course, they don't have to
change in a strictly logical order or within the compass of any given
civilization. There are civilizations
that specialize in one or other of these focal-points of quasi-worship - the
ancient Egyptian in animals, the ancient Greek in nature, the Roman Catholic
civilization of medieval Europe in women (the Blessed Virgin), with the
possibility of a shift from one level to another or, indeed, the simultaneous
combination, in varying degrees, of more than one of these natural objects of
worship, as in the case of the ancient Roman, with its compromise between nature,
animals, and women.
4. I do not wish to over-simplify, but there
are many people alive today, within the confines of the bourgeois/proletarian
West, who are essentially worshippers of nature, animals, and women, though
their mode of worship may be less sacramental and correspondingly more
unconscious than were the parallel modes of the ancients, with their pagan
bias. Of the three focal-points listed
above, I would argue that the third is the most popular, because the least
natural, and I am prepared to see in coitus a sacrificial confirmation of a
quasi-religious attitude towards women.
After all, a man doesn't make love to a woman unless he finds something
to admire in her! More usually this
something is physical. Admittedly, it is possible
for a woman to worship a man, but more often than not a woman, as a creature
capable of self-consciousness, will worship herself - the attention she
lavishes on make-up, clothing, and hair being the visible embodiments of this
self-worship.
5. Of all modes of
natural worship, the highest is for man, who is the least natural of nature's
phenomena. The motivations for worship
may vary considerably with the individual concerned, but most worship of men
will have transcendent motivations, as when someone is admired because he is
clever or can box well or has just scaled a high mountain, etc. Institutionalized worship of a religious
figure, like Christ, signifies the apotheosis of male hero-worship, beyond
which it is impossible to go. Of all the
Christian faiths, it is Protestantism that best illustrates institutionalized
worship of man as God ... in the person of Christ. Roman Catholicism is more given, as already
noted, to upholding worship of the Virgin, a fact which accords with its
semi-pagan, grand-bourgeois, alpha-stemming integrity in sensation. Probably Eastern Orthodoxy is more biased, in
its relative fundamentalism, towards the Father.
6. Thus in this ultimate form of natural
worship it is homage rather than service that constitutes the basis, indeed the
essence, of worship. It is of course
possible to pay homage to beauty, and hence to women. Yet the actual worship of women usually takes
the form of service, as manifesting in propagation and the material support, by
a husband, for his wife and offspring.
Similarly, animals are more usually served than paid homage to. But man, except when service of a tyrant is
at stake, is more usually the focal-point of homage worship, and primarily on
account of what he signifies, what he has achieved or is capable of
achieving. Higher still than the homage
paid to a particular man for his achievements ... is the homage paid to the achievements
themselves, whatever their nature, and here worship becomes artificial.
7. The highest mode of artificial worship is the
homage paid to great art, and this whether the art in question be pictorial,
literary, musical, or sculptural, though a sort of hierarchical distinction
will obtain between each mode of fine art in a descending order, so I contend,
from painting to sculpture via music and literature. Also significant in our assessment of
artistic hierarchies will be the historical or epochal integrity of any given
mode of art, so that worship, say, of twentieth-century abstract painting will
rank higher than the corresponding worship of nineteenth-century romantic or
eighteenth-century classical or seventeenth-century baroque art. Nevertheless, when all's said and done, one
cannot go beyond the worship of fine art on worshipful terms; for homage paid
to the creative achievements of man is the ultimate homage, the raison
d'être of our commitment to and interest in art. Art doesn't fulfil itself for us until we
desire to pay it homage, having come to perceive its creative or symbolic
value. I don't regularly listen to music
I dislike, either because I cannot understand it or because I consider it of
inferior quality. I have to like
the music and, in regularly listening to it, I pay homage to its excellence,
since it represents an achievement worthy of admiration.
8. Thus regularly listening to certain kinds of
music or contemplating certain paintings or reading certain books or stroking
certain sculptures ... constitutes a quasi-religion, the essence of which is
worship of a remarkable artificial achievement.
Such worship, manifesting in homage, corresponds to the ultimate form of
worship and constitutes the final stage of worship-centred religious
development, a stage superior to each of the preceding naturalistic stages ...
from absolute service-worship of the Father (or some theocratic equivalent
thereof) to relative homage-worship of a particular man or group of men for
his/their sporting, creative, educational, or other achievements. I would say that, in the case of worship of a
particular football team, the homage paid in this relative context is divisible
between the individuals and their achievements, in consequence of which a
degree of service of the individuals, manifesting in the turnstile fee, enters
into one's worship. By contrast, the
ultimate stage of worship, as applying to fine art, implies the attainment to a
kind of homage absolutism which embraces only the
achievement, without simultaneous or accompanying reference to its
creator. We are at leisure, in an
admission-free public gallery, to contemplate many fine paintings without
having to pay anything to their creators (or trustees) or, indeed, even think
about them. So we can take it as a
general rule that the purer the worship of fine art, the less the artist, as an
individual, will enter into account.
Worship thereupon becomes predominantly absolute, albeit on grounds
diametrically antithetical to its earliest manifestation in service of the
Father.
9. Needless to say, not everyone is given to
this highest mode or worship, a mode which appeals, as a rule, only to a small
percentage of humanity, and to them in varying degrees. The majority of people are given to the
service/homage relativity of worship of a football team or pop stars or film
stars or sportsmen generally. The
worship of women cannot be excluded from a reckoning of majority habits, though
women are gradually losing ground to the above-listed focal-points of popular
worship. Beneath them, however, comes
the worship, mainly from a service angle, of animals and nature, which nowadays
appeals only to a minority of people, albeit a minority at the opposite remove
from the admirers of fine art - a grand-bourgeois as opposed to a
petty-bourgeois minority who, from the evolutionary standpoint, constitute a
backward and generally primitive class of people. Yet not so backward or
primitive, for all that, as the even smaller minority who could be described as
genuine Father-worshippers, like Christian fundamentalists.
10. Considered from a class-evolutionary
standpoint, the evolution of worship from absolute to extreme relative stages
may be said to extend from aristocratic absolutism in Father-worship through
various relativistic bourgeois stages, beginning with an earlier and a later
grand-bourgeois phase (the earlier implying nature-worship and the later
animal-worship), progressing to a bourgeois stage-proper (as implying the
worship of women), and culminating in a petty-bourgeois stage also divisible
into an earlier and a later phase (as implying some kind of hero-worship in the
earlier phase and, by contrast, an almost absolute worship of fine art in the
later phase). The present century being,
despite its bourgeois/proletarian status, a largely petty-bourgeois age, it is
hardly surprising that worship has entered into extreme relativities of human
achievement, the earlier relativity biased towards the achievements of various
people without, however, allowing the individuals concerned to be eclipsed by
them, the later relativity more radically biased towards the achievements of
various, in the main, artists, who are largely, though not exclusively,
eclipsed by their works. It is here,
with the later petty-bourgeois relativity, that civilized worship ends. However, with the future development of
proletarian civilization, only self-realization will be upheld, as a return is
made, though on completely antithetical terms, to a religious absolutism - the
absolutism, one might say, of a direct aspiration towards omega divinity.
ON LITERATURE
1. There are only two genres which are
absolute, and these are the aphorism and the lyric poem, as pertaining to
philosophy-proper and to poetry-proper respectively. The more absolute the philosopher, the more
he will adhere to aphorisms or maxims, as in the cases of La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère. This is par excellence an
idealistic, not to say an aristocratic, mode of philosophy, and thus its
employment in a materialist age will be the exception to the rule, increasingly
so as relative civilization becomes extremist, in deference to petty-bourgeois
criteria of literary progress. Anyone
who submits a volume of aphorisms or maxims (the two are approximately the
same, though I tend to treat aphorisms as being longer than maxims but shorter
than essays/essayettes) to a publisher these days is
either a fool or a saint, since even petty-bourgeois philosophers, not to
mention their bourgeois predecessors, steer clear of such flagrant concessions
to philosophical absolutism. How is it,
then, that one of the best-known and most widely discussed works of
twentieth-century philosophy happens to be aphoristic? (I am, of course, alluding to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-philosophicus.) I think any cogent answer to this question
would have to take account of the fact that the milieu from which it arose,
namely Habsburg Vienna, happened to be a very aristocratic one, and that
Wittgenstein amply reflected this in his choice of, from the modern standpoint,
an obsolescent or overly idealistic genre.
2. Between what might be called the aphoristic
and poetic absolutes ... there exists a series of literary relativities: some,
like essayettes and essays, stemming from the
aphoristic absolute; others, like short prose and novels, aspiring towards the
poetic absolute; one genre, the dialogue, approximately balanced between the
two tendencies in a quintessentially bourgeois relativity. For thinking in class-evolutionary terms, one
may define those genres which stem from the aphoristic absolute as grand
bourgeois, and those, by contrast, which aspire towards the poetic absolute as
petty bourgeois. And yet, the individual
treatment of any particular relative genre will depend on whether it is in the
hands of a philosopher or an artist; for it sometimes happens that the essayette and the essay are treated in a poetical way,
short prose and the novel, by contrast, in a philosophical way. But, by and large, each of these genres
either side of the dialogue is treated in a manner appropriate to its
station. In the case of petty-bourgeois
philosophy, however, it is usually short prose and the novelette
that serve as vehicles for philosophical expression, the essayette and essay being more relevant to a
grand-bourgeois epoch. As to the
dialogue, it, too, can be written, despite its balanced chronological status,
from either a philosophical or a poetical angle, depending on the type of
author in question. (Schopenhauer wrote from a philosophical angle, Wilde from
a poetical one.) But, like the essayette and essay, it has less applicability to a
petty-bourgeois age than short prose or a novel.
3. If a petty-bourgeois philosopher can write
philosophy, relative to the age, in short-prose and/or novelistic guise, could
one assume, in jumping ahead, that a proletarian philosopher should write
philosophy, relative to the proletariat, in poetic guise, since poetry
corresponds to an absolute, and proletarian writing, like proletarian society,
could not be other than absolutist in its definitive form? No, I shall assume no such thing, because the
treatment of an absolute poetic genre in a philosophical way would amount to a
contradiction in terms, unworthy of serious consideration. Poetry, especially when proletarian, could
only be written poetically, in deference to poetic absolutism, not be bastardized
through philosophical expression. That
poetry has been bastardized, in this manner in the past, isn't altogether
surprising, since whenever philosophical criteria have predominated, as in the
grand-bourgeois and even bourgeois epochs of creative evolution, philosophy has
overflowed its bounds, so to speak, and invaded the realm of poetry, or a
poetry susceptible to philosophical intrusion by dint of its own relative
backwardness, as intelligible within a grand-bourgeois or bourgeois epoch, and
consequent adhesion to appearance, manifesting in regular rhythmic and rhyming
devices.
4. True poetic writing only becomes possible in
a proletarian epoch, when poetry transcends appearance in a context of maximum
essence, achieved through abstract rhythm- and rhyme-defying arrangements
designed to free words from all forms of grammatical constraint and, by
implication, to elevate poetry from a relatively atomic to an absolutely
post-atomic (free-electron) level of impression. Where poetry, enslaved to appearance, had
formerly expressed some quasi-philosophical meaning or described some apparent
phenomenon, its absolutist manifestation would free it from such expression and
elevate it to a kind of 'thing-in-itself' abstraction only capable of
impressing upon the reader some notion of the transcendent. It will become, in its absolute commitment to
essence, fully poeticized.
5. Although I alluded to the possibility of a
proletarian philosopher a short while ago, in reality there can be no such
person; for philosophy, dedicated when most closely itself, to the
classification and elucidation of the apparent, i.e. the world, cannot outlive
a relative epoch or civilization, since it stems from the apparent absolute and
can fulfil no useful purpose in an epoch or civilization exclusively aspiring
towards the essential absolute. If,
however, the philosopher must be buried along with relative civilization, then
the philosophical theosophist, who may in some sense be regarded as his
successor, stands as the root universal influence for an absolute civilization,
which cannot come into being without his guidance, since he expresses the
theories and beliefs by which it will live.
In transcending all relative genres, including literary ones, he
transcends the category of philosopher, which is rooted in the aphorism and
inclined to the production of successive volumes of individualistic
philosophy. One could describe this
transcendence as signifying a convergence to omega on the level of philosophy,
but that would entail the notion that the Transcendentalist, far from being the
universalizing influence at the root of a future absolute civilization, was the
climax to philosophical endeavour, and thus the ultimate philosopher. However, such a notion would hardly do
justice to the fact that the Transcendentalist's theories are incapable of
being assimilated into relative civilization, but are very often diametrically
opposed to what philosophical tradition has upheld. Because the progression from
bourgeois/proletarian civilization to transcendental civilization presupposes
revolutionary upheaval, the philosophical theosophist cannot stand at the
climax of a relative tradition, as the ultimate philosopher, but appertains to
the spiritual inception of a new civilization, antithetical in constitution to
everything that preceded it.
6. By comparison with the philosophical tradition, the Transcendentalist's work marks a more radical
development of philosophical thought towards essence. In its earliest stages philosophy was predominantly
apparent, that is to say, concerned with a classification and description of
the phenomenal world. Metaphysics, as an
attempt to understand and elucidate a world beyond appearances, only entered
philosophy at a later date, and then very gradually, wherever civilization had
attained to a fairly extensive degree of urbanization and acquired, in
consequence, a metaphysical dimension.
There were, in the Christian West, different stages of metaphysical
development, corresponding to class-evolutionary progress from grand-bourgeois
Catholicism to petty-bourgeois mysticism via bourgeois Protestantism, and, not
surprisingly, philosophy mirrored and to some extent anticipated this
development, becoming, in due course, more essential, that is to say, less concerned
with the phenomenal world and correspondingly more concerned with a noumenal one.
However, in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, there issued a
materialist reaction against petty-bourgeois metaphysics, which took the double
form of a Marxist reaction against Hegel and of a Nietzschean
reaction against Schopenhauer - the one leading, with the twentieth century, to
Communism, the other ... to Fascism. A
similar reaction of Wittgenstein against Kierkegaard, though subordinate in
consequence to each of the other two, confirms the anti-metaphysical bias of
late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophy, a bias that went on to
develop, via Jaspers and Heidegger, into Sartrian
existentialism, which is still, to all appearances, the leading tone of
contemporary petty-bourgeois materialist philosophy.
7. The Philosophes of the
Enlightenment signify a bourgeois reaction against bourgeois Protestant and
grand-bourgeois Counter Reformation metaphysics, as do Voltaire and Rousseau,
the two outstanding materialist philosophers of the eighteenth century. Descartes, Pascal, Berkeley, Hobbes, Hume,
Leibniz, Spinoza, and other such metaphysicians all came under attack, much as
their grand-bourgeois predecessors had not escaped the scathing criticism of
Bacon, Montaigne, Machiavelli, and other such
sixteenth-century materialists. But the
Enlightenment led on, in due course, to the metaphysics of Kant and
Schopenhauer, Fichte and Hegel, Emerson and Carlyle,
as well it might, since evolutionary progress within relative civilization
passes from one class-stage to another, and petty-bourgeois metaphysics had no
less of a right to exist, for a given period of time, than its bourgeois and
grand-bourgeois precursors. The contemporary
materialist opposition to such metaphysics, however, will be superseded by the
acceptance of proletarian metaphysics, which is what, in transcendental terms,
the greater part of my work is essentially all about. Thus does philosophy progress, in a kind of
zigzagging fashion, towards its culmination in an anti-metaphysical
petty-bourgeois guise and subsequent (metaphysical) transformation into
philosophical theosophy - the most essential of all philosophical developments!
8. Oriental philosophy, unlike its Western
counterpart, is still metaphysical, and on approximately petty-bourgeois
terms. The essence of oriental
philosophy, now as before, is denial of the will in a Buddha-like quiescence
stressing awareness as the only good worth pursuing. This is not, of course, an erroneous assessment
of the good life, but it has the disadvantage of being shackled with
traditional adherence to naturalistic criteria, including a more or less
complacent acknowledgement of the 'divine Ground', the oriental equivalent of
the Christian Father, the Judaic Jehovah, and the Islamic Allah. Nor is Buddhism absolved from the
contradictions arising from a confounding of this 'divine Ground' with the
'Clear Light of the Void' or vice versa, so that alpha and omega, no less than
in certain other world religions, are all-too-predictably exposed, within the
relativity of human life, to the possibility of periodic interchange and/or
substitution. So, despite the appearance
of absolutism, Buddhism, like Hinduism and Shintoism,
retains a relative integrity rooted in nature, which precludes its evolving
towards a proletarian absolutism and thereby embracing extensively artificial
criteria, relevant to the technological aspect of long-term religious
evolution. Although yoga, meditation,
Buddhism, and other forms of oriental philosophy are in some ways preferable to
the anti-metaphysical bias of contemporary occidental philosophy, the fact that
no such anti-metaphysical philosophy has arisen in the East to challenge and
discredit the traditional metaphysical integrity of oriental philosophy
(Marxism being a Western import) precludes the possibility of a higher
metaphysics eventually arising to replace both traditional metaphysical and
anti-metaphysical philosophy alike.
Paradoxically, the Western attack on petty-bourgeois metaphysics to some
extent served me as an incentive to work out a proletarian metaphysics for the
future absolutist civilization.
9. The fact that, hitherto, poetry has been
written under the domination of literature in relative civilization means that
it has been confined to either philosophical or pseudo-poetical guise,
depending on the epoch in question and the temperament or proclivities of the
individual poet. As philosophy evolved
from its root aphoristic absolutism in a predominantly descriptive, analytical,
interpretative relationship to the phenomenal world ... through successive
bourgeois stages to its culmination in the novel, with a corresponding shift of
emphasis away from the phenomenal towards the noumenal
(though subject, as already noted, to periodic materialist reactions), so
poetry evolved from a predominantly descriptive stance in nature to an
increasingly instructive, expositional stance in the metaphysical, that is to
say, from the apparent to the quasi-essential, from hymns to beauty to
intimations of truth ... considered as the divine goal of evolutionary
striving. This latter development,
however, is still inadequate from a purely poetic standpoint, but may be
described, if somewhat colloquially, as 'the best of a bad job', since the use
of appearance, i.e. grammatical constructs of an expositional nature, to
intimate of essence marks, despite its inherent contradiction, a significant
evolutionary improvement on the use of a more radical appearance, employing
(besides the aforementioned ingredient) regular rhymes, metres, stanza
divisions, and other such traditional devices, to glorify the apparent, i.e.
nature and natural beauty in general. So
while, during the later stages of relative civilization, poetry has become more
essential, and therefore superior to what it formerly was, it is still short of
being genuinely poetical, by dint of the fact that such a status presupposes a
complete severance from the apparent in maximized essence, which is to say,
total abstraction. For not until poetry
becomes abstract, in an absolutist age, will it have come into its own, and on
terms diametrically antithetical to the absolutist inception of definitive
philosophy as maxim or aphorism concerned not with essence but with appearance,
as pertaining to the description and analysis of the phenomenal world. By contrast, genuine absolutist poetry will
provide, through impression, an intimation of the noumenal
world to come.
10. Although I referred, a short while ago, to
the materialist reaction against metaphysical philosophy, I do not wish to
leave the reader with the impression that petty-bourgeois philosophy ceased to
be written, in the twentieth century, along metaphysical lines; for that would
be very far from the truth! On the
contrary, from being essayistic such philosophy became largely novelistic, as
is only to be expected with the gradual evolution of philosophy away from
appearance and further into essence, this requiring, if consistency was to be
maintained between form and content, a corresponding advancement from
relatively philosophical to relatively literary genres, including works of
short prose (the philosophical equivalent of short stories) and the
novelette. Characteristic of
petty-bourgeois philosophers with a metaphysical bent are Aldous
Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, André Gide, and Jack Kerouac.
There were others, of course, with a non-metaphysical bent, including
Sartre, Koestler, Faulkner, D.H. Lawrence, and Camus. Generally
speaking, I would define those who, irrespective of their ideological bias,
also wrote essays as belonging to an earlier or lower stage of petty-bourgeois
philosophy - one stemming, as it were, from the bourgeoisie. By contrast, those who only specialized in
novels and/or short prose I would define as belonging to a later and higher
stage of petty-bourgeois philosophy - one aspiring, as it were, towards the
proletariat. Thus Hesse,
Huxley, and Miller would correspond to the earlier stage, Kerouac, Faulkner,
and
11. All these petty-bourgeois philosophers,
regardless of whichever side or stage to which they would seem to belong, have
taken theoretical speculation further into essence than their bourgeois
predecessors, and thus closer to poetry.
They may be defined, with reason, as pseudo-philosophers, since
philosophy-proper is concerned not with intimations of or theories about the
Divine Omega, conceived as transcendent spirit, but with a catalogue and
analysis of the phenomenal world ... as applying, in the main, to nature. The fact that philosophy gradually evolved
away from this root concern and abandoned its absolute form in the process ...
is an indisputable fact. And we may
contend that the further away from phenomena it evolved, the more pseudo it
became, especially from the bourgeois epoch to the current day. Yet philosophy-proper still survived on
something approximating to its own terms by progressing from a critique of
nature through a critique of morals to a critique of language; a progression,
in other words, from the natural to the artificial via an ethical compromise. There was thus a kind of class evolution of
philosophy, within the Western context, from grand-bourgeois (Bacon) to
petty-bourgeois (Wittgenstein) via bourgeois (Kant) stages. And it was possible to retain the aphorism
throughout this evolution or, at any rate, even with its climax, as
Wittgenstein demonstrated. And yet, even
though such a thematic evolution had been possible, indeed inevitable, the
critique of language becomes a pseudo-philosophy in relation to the critique of
nature, that root concern of philosophical exegesis. It is only 'genuine' philosophy in relation
to the novelistic writings of the pseudo-philosophers, both metaphysical and
anti-metaphysical, though particularly with regard to the former.
12. Unlike philosophy, the evolution of poetry began
in the pseudo, as a description of and hymn to the beauty of natural phenomena,
particularly nature and woman, and only gradually progressed away from a
'philosophical' bias, under the hegemony of philosophy, towards a poetic one,
in which spiritual instruction began to outweigh the descriptive element and,
in some cases, to entirely supplant it.
But even with this gradual progression towards essence, poetry remained
pseudo, because composed from a relative angle, in accordance with the dictates
of a bourgeois age and civilization, and thereby falling short of total
abstraction, the criterion of any genuine poetry. In retaining meaning, poetry was obliged to
remain expressive in consequence of its enslavement to
appearance, the instructive approach to essence no less than the descriptive
approach to appearance. Only when it
becomes impressive, with the development of an absolutist
civilization, will poetry be genuine - wholly genuine in total abstraction, not
merely the least pseudo of poetic stages. Mallarmé ten times
over, so to speak, with a word sequence that intimates, as no instruction ever
can, of the transcendent. A word
structure, in short, that breaks the connection with appearance by depriving
words of their meanings.
ON THE ARTS
1. If literature can be divided into three main
branches, viz. philosophical, fictional, and poetical, then the same must hold
true of art and music, so that we distinguish between sculptural, painterly,
and holographic branches of art on the one hand, but between choreographic,
symphonic, and improvisational branches or, roughly, rhythmic,
melodic/harmonic, and aleatoric branches of music on
the other hand, the latter equivalent to a bias for pitch over rhythm rather
than, like the symphony (particularly in its classical manifestation), a
compromise, in varying degrees, between the two extremes. Instead of branches, I would prefer to speak
of spectra in the arts, equating each spectrum with a specific class integrity
or orientation, subject to modification in the course of time. Thus, with regard to literature, I shall
speak of an aristocratic philosophical spectrum, a bourgeois fictional
spectrum, and a proletarian poetical spectrum, the same applying to each of the
other arts when evaluated from an evolutionary point-of-view. If philosophy and poetry are antithetical
and, when true to themselves, absolute in character (fictional literature being
a compromise or hybrid genre in between the two class-evolutionary extremes),
then so are sculpture and holography in art, or ballet and jazz in music,
(painterly art no less than symphonic music being a compromise, and, in some
degree, cross between the two extremes).
2. Let us take one art form at a time and
analyse the component parts of each of the three spectra (or branches) it
entails, beginning with literature. Here
we find philosophical, fictional, and poetical spectra horizontally existing
one above the other, as it were, in relation to class-evolutionary stages, the philosophical
being the oldest mode of literary writing, a mode centred on appearance as an
investigation and comprehension of external phenomena, and stretching from its
aristocratic roots in pagan civilization, with particular reference to the
ancient Greeks, towards its petty-bourgeois culmination at the tail-end, so to
speak, of the Christian civilization, where it takes the form of a critique of
language, i.e. an investigation of and attempt at comprehending the logic
inherent in an artificial form of appearance, the final subject for philosophy
in the strictly academic sense of that discipline. For after an early-stage petty-bourgeois era,
philosophy ceases to be possible or, if still pursued, acquires an
anachronistic status. A late-stage
petty-bourgeois era, on the other hand, will be increasingly given to
pseudo-philosophy, in which occult and/or metaphysical issues and
investigations predominate, the former during its lower phase, the latter as
the chief concern of its higher, or absolute, phase when, in effect,
philosophical writings are acquiring a quasi-poetic status.
3. By contrast, fiction begins on relative
grand-bourgeois terms in the form of the play - a kind of transitional genre in
between philosophy and literature-proper - and comes into its own with the
development of the novel, initially a late-stage grand-bourgeois art form of
philosophical bias, though one destined, having passed through a bourgeois
compromise status, to culminate on early-stage petty-bourgeois terms as it
evolves towards poetry, its final form that of the poetic novel and/or
novella. After this, novelistic
literature ceases to be possible (though anachronisms do of course continue to
appear) and fiction can only be upgraded or made appropriate, if in a rather
'pseudo' fashion, to a late-stage petty-bourgeois age in the guise of
short-story writing, a kind of continuation of the fictional tradition in other
(usually magazine) terms. In short, not
a new genre but an extension and modification of a traditional genre which will
necessarily co-exist with the specifically higher-phase
petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian art form of film, cinema being the
antithetical equivalent of theatre; films, or at any rate those of a narrative
import, the primary mode of pseudo-literature, germane to an extreme relativistic
age, and divisible, as with rock music, into film classical (adaptations of
famous novels), and film originals, the latter properly commensurate with
proletarian culture in its early, or filmic, stage. Pseudo-literature, no less than
pseudo-philosophy in relation to philosophy-proper, signifies an evolutionary
progression beyond the bounds of genuine literature, entailing a more
contemplative mode of literary appreciation, its integrity (certainly in regard
to film classical) more poetic in character.
4. Coming to poetry, we may note that its
origins were more or less grand bourgeois in character and thus given to a
relativity biased towards appearances, e.g. beauty, expressed in highly
rhythmic terms, such as suggest an indebtedness to dance music besides,
formally considered, an obvious affinity with
sculpture. Unlike the other branches of
the literary spectrum, however, poetry began on 'pseudo' terms and continued
along 'pseudo' lines until the advent of a late-stage petty-bourgeois age, when
it became genuine, i.e. concerned with essence and hence truth, albeit on
terms, necessarily relative to the phase in question, such as led to a
distinction between metaphysically expressive poetry and grammatically
impressive poetry, the one indirectly intimating of truth through description,
the other directly intimating of truth through abstraction; the former
materialistic, the latter spiritualistic.
From there the evolution of poetry towards a proletarian climax presupposes
the development of anthologies, beginning on fairly descriptive terms and proceeding, with the growth of civilized absolutism, towards
the abstraction of pure poetry on computer disc, the ultimate form of
literature. Thus from
a materialistic relativity to a spiritualistic absolutism, the overall
relativity of an absolutist civilization being successive in time rather than,
as with bourgeois/proletarian civilization, simultaneous.
5. If literature began with philosophy, then
art began with sculpture, an art form concerned with form and, hence, the
emulation of natural beauty, specifically animal and human, whether combined,
as in ancient Egypt, or separate, as in ancient Rome. Like philosophy, which is chained to
aristocratic pagan roots, sculpture cannot evolve beyond an early-stage petty-bourgeois
age; for the eclipse of form through abstract or non-representational
techniques, as in so much modern sculpture, is no less anti-sculptural than
occult philosophy is anti-philosophical and, so I maintain, a stepping-stone to
a quasi-poetic metaphysical bias - the higher phase, as it were, of a
late-stage petty-bourgeois epoch. Beyond
sculpture there is only pseudo-sculpture, the contemporary mode of abstract
work which, in its higher or non-tactile manifestations, intimates of light
art, and thus assumes a quasi-luminous status.
By contrast, that which can be touched acquires a status analogous to
the short story in literature, signifying a kind of upgrading and
transformation of sculpture rather than its complete negation, and this no
matter how abstract or synthetic the work(s) in question. The use of contemporary plastics and/or
metals certainly distinguishes this sculpture from its more naturalistic
forerunner, but tactility remains, and that is the essence of sculpture. Again I would say it is a kind of
pseudo-sculpture by dint of its abstract and synthetic construction, though not
a mainstream mode of pseudo-sculpture, such as could only apply to works
employing electric-light bulbs and/or neon tubes in a sculptural way, with
regard to volume and the affirmation of a mundane context - usually the ground
or floor of an exhibition space. Such
'light sculptures' hover between sculpture and holography, intimating of the
latter while stemming from the former.
6. Art, properly so-considered, begins on
approximately grand-bourgeois terms, as mural and/or cameo, and proceeds to a
painterly status on canvas with the development of late-stage grand-bourgeois
civilization, its culmination being on early-stage petty-bourgeois terms, as
implying frameless or frame-free abstract works of either an expressionistic
(materialist) or an impressionistic (spiritualist) constitution. After this culmination, there can be no more
art in the painterly sense, though anachronisms will of course continue to appear,
not least of all in the more aesthetically traditional countries, where respect
for bourgeois criteria inevitably runs deeper.
As elsewhere, a kind of pseudo-art will prevail in the form of posters,
an upgrading and modification of painterly art on terms suitable to a more
spiritual age, the poster being equivalent to the magazine short-story in
literature and taking second place beside the truly contemporary pseudo-art of
photography, that antithetical equivalent of the early-stage grand-bourgeois cameo,
with its materially realistic integrity.
Photography, then, is to art what film is to literature - in effect the
art of the age, mechanical as opposed to manual, objective as opposed to
subjective, impersonal rather than personal, and more proletarian than
(higher-phase) petty-bourgeois when concerned not with classical reproductions
but with original productions. After
this pseudo-art there can be no further evolution along the middle spectrum, as
it were, of art. For it signifies the
culmination of a tradition, as film does in relation to literature.
7. The third and highest spectrum of art,
namely the holographic, begins, like poetry, on approximately grand-bourgeois
terms, as stained-glass windows, and proceeds from this pseudo-holographic
status, relative to a predominantly sculptural age, to a no-less 'pseudo' but
nevertheless comparatively superior manifestation in drawing, as pertaining to
a painterly age, which necessarily conditions the form of the extreme arts, the
sculptural no less than the holographic.
Thus drawing, as pseudo-holography, remains the idealistic norm
throughout the duration of late-stage grand-bourgeois/bourgeois/early-stage
petty-bourgeois civilization, until such time as, with the emergence of a
late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian age, it is eclipsed and
superseded by light art, properly so-considered, as a closer approximation to
the truly holographic - indeed, as a kind of quasi-holographic art
antithetical, in construction, to early-stage grand-bourgeois 'holographic'
art, viz. stained glass in relation to the Christian West and, to a degree,
amphora painting in relation to ancient Greece in its more relative, even
arguably grand-bourgeois, stage.
However, if light art signifies,
with its translucent tubing, an antithetical equivalent to such art, then the
culmination of this third and highest spectrum of the visual arts can only be
in terms of holography, which will establish an antithesis (not an antithetical
equivalent) with formal sculpture, and proceed from a relatively
representational status to an absolutely abstract status in the course of
evolutionary time, doing for the visual arts what abstract poetry will do for
literature - namely, creating an impression of the
spiritual absolute towards which evolution would seem to be tending.
8. If art begins with sculpture, then music
begins with dance, the earliest dance music being the most rhythmic, in
accordance with absolute pagan criteria, dance only gradually proceeding, with
the development of Western civilization, towards less rigid rhythmical
patterns, appropriate to ballet and the waltz.
Modern dance music, particularly in the guise of funk, is more conducive
to absolute improvisational dancing than to relative formal dancing, and this
is what really distinguishes it from traditional dance music, endowing it with
a 'pseudo' status germane to a late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage
proletarian age. As with sculpture and
philosophy, there is also an aspiration towards its opposite, which takes the
form of a fusion between funk and jazz, making for a quasi-jazz status in which
pitch, and hence improvisation, assumes an importance hitherto unrelated to
dance music. Thus 'fusion music' is the
late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage proletarian equivalent of
pseudo-sculpture and pseudo-philosophy, the one in the guise of light (bulb
and/or tube) sculpture, the other as a commitment to occult and/or metaphysical
issues, though especially the latter.
Such funk-jazz, germane to an extreme relativistic civilization, is the
final and ultimate kind of dance music, the tail-end of a spectrum originating
in pagan antiquity.
9. The second spectrum in the evolution of
music, which lies in between the extremes of rhythm and pitch, is concerned
with melody, and we may hold that, as with literature and painting, its origins
were approximately grand bourgeois, taking the form of such vocal music -
oratorios, cantatas, madrigals, early operas - as would have appealed to people
in the European sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and only gradually coming
into its own with the development of the symphony, parallel to that of painting
and novelistic fiction, which signifies a compromise between rhythm and pitch
in terms of harmony (necessarily biased towards rhythm) and melody (necessarily
biased towards pitch), the ratio of the one to the other changing quite
dramatically in the course of evolutionary time ... as symphonic music
progressed from a late-stage grand-bourgeois to an early-stage petty-bourgeois
status, becoming, with its culmination, increasingly biased towards pitch, and
to a point where even melody is left behind, or very nearly so. Beyond an early-stage petty-bourgeois epoch
symphonic music cannot go without seeming anachronistic, though it can be
modified and upgraded, as with fictional literature, to a pseudo-classical
status in the guise of programmatic or incidental music in one movement,
usually as symphonic poems. The truly
contemporary pseudo-classical music, however, takes the form of rock (beginning
with rock classical) which as a late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage
proletarian art form signifies, in its largely vocal constitution, an
antithetical equivalent of pre-symphonic vocal music, including opera, and has
a status analogous to that of film vis-à-vis novelistic fiction and of
photography vis-à-vis painting, the ultimate development of the middle spectrum
in each case.
10. Finally we come to the third and highest
spectrum of music, in which pitch, or the development of pure music, takes precedence,
much as impression took precedence in the poetic spectrum and abstraction in
the holographic one. We can term this
spectrum the jazz spectrum, though its beginnings, in approximately
grand-bourgeois terms, would not have suggested much of a connection with
modern jazz, that quintessentially late-stage petty-bourgeois/early-stage
proletarian music. Beginning with
chamber ensembles, as a kind of pseudo-jazz, the instrumental music of an
essentially operatic age, its gradual evolution embraced the concerto during
the era of symphonic music, becoming more biased towards pitch in single-note
scales, though never to the point of improvisational freedom. Like rhyming poetry and representational
drawing, it had to toe-the-bourgeois-line of orchestrated melodic/harmonic
dualistic integrity, even if the soloist was tied to stipulated notation in
essence rather than, like the orchestra, in appearance, the notation memorized
instead of actually being read at the time of performance. A step towards that freedom which every
modern jazzman knows when he launches into an improvisational solo to the
accompaniment of a deferential rhythm!
So the emergence, following trad jazz, of jazz
classical in the higher phase of a late-stage petty-bourgeois era brings modern
jazz in its proletarian train, and the jazz soloist is freer to pursue pitch
than ever the concerto soloist was - indeed, so free that, at times, his
playing may intimate of the pure music of an absolute civilization, in which
not a hint of rhythm, whether diluted through melody or harmony or otherwise
independent of such a dilution, will apply, music by then becoming a matter for
synthesizer programming on a pure pitch basis.
But our jazzman is more a quasi-purist than a pseudo-classicist, and the
status of modern jazz, analogous to that of modern poetry and light art, is
decidedly quasi-purist. We must await
the pure jazz of the future with no less longing than ... the pure poetry and
pure holography it will also surely entail!
ON JAZZ
1. Just as light art succeeds avant-garde
painting in the evolution of art towards absolute holography, so jazz, and in
particular jazz classical, succeeds classical in the evolution of music towards
absolute jazz, a pure pitch climax. This
is especially true of the mainstream bourgeois/proletarian civilization of late
twentieth-century
2. Rock musicians can extend their musical
commitment either down towards the classical or up towards modern jazz. In the one case they are drawing on classical
precedent and transforming a chosen piece of acoustic music into a type of
pseudo-rock, electric and, as a rule, highly rhythmic. They are, in a sense, upgrading the
classical, and such a procedure is by no means untypical of European rock
musicians. Indeed, it is probably the
most representative trend in instrumental rock, since the extension of rock
towards modern jazz, as in the other case, presupposes identification, in one
degree of another, with an alien tradition, namely the American, and requires,
moreover, a degree of improvisational facility which most European and, in
particular, British rock musicians tend to lack. Nevertheless, hybridization of this nature
does in fact occur, and the result, though falling short of modern jazz, is
usually preferable to both rock and pseudo-rock. We can call this hybrid music 'jazz-rock' or,
alternatively, 'progressive music' - the European equivalent of modern jazz.
3. When American jazzmen extend their musical
commitment in any direction, it is usually down towards rock - the converse of
the European extension of rock up towards jazz - and the result, while being
musically inferior to modern jazz, is generally superior to rock, being, in
effect, a kind of vocal jazz. One could
claim that they have relapsed from the spiritualistic to the materialistic or, rather,
pseudo-spiritualistic, that is to say from a free-electron equivalent to a
pseudo-electron equivalent. The
resultant music we can call 'rock-jazz' or, alternatively, 'fusion'. Sometimes the extension of commitment is even
further down than rock, embracing classical music of one kind of another, but
the resultant music is still fusion, if on 'pseudo' terms, like rock-classical
in Britain. However, not all fusion
music is culturally hybrid; for it can just as easily transpire that the
renegade jazzman decides to adapt a piece of American classical music, which,
in any case, is usually jazzy and thus a national step down from modern
jazz. Such an adaptation can make for a
superior type of fusion music to that availing of rock techniques. Yet it is not as culturally national as the
kind of fusion music suggesting a compromise between modern jazz and trad jazz, seemingly alternating between the one and the
other. Likewise, the fusion musician may
decide to go even further down the path of American music, way past the trad to the painful birth of jazz in the blues, and thus
incorporate blues techniques or structures into his music - a procedure
appealing more, on the whole, to black jazzmen than to their white
counterparts, who, at the risk of oversimplification, will incline to the
adaptation or incorporation of classical precedent.
4. Fusion music, like progressive music, is
not, as a rule, a fusion of the serious with the popular, the instrumental with
the vocal, but a fusion of different types of serious music, whether
contemporary or traditional. American
jazzmen do not, as a rule, deign to fuse jazz with soul, that American
equivalent of pop, any more than their European counterparts deign to fuse rock
with pop. Generally, soul and pop are
left to their proletarian practitioners, since the fusion of civilized with
barbarous music is both illogical and incongruous, not
liable to make for an aesthetically satisfying result! Folk music is one thing, fine music quite
another, and rarely do the two fields cross-fertilize, even though attempts
have been made, in recent years, to cross-fertilize them, with, by and large,
unconvincing results. If the chief
criteria of the most civilized late-twentieth-century music are instrumental
sophistication and facility combined with an almost Buddhist religious
commitment which may or may not seek vocal expression, then it follows that
jazzmen will be careful, as a rule, to ensure that their excursions into fusion
music do not resemble excursions into popular music, with particular reference,
in the American context, to soul. They
will ensure that at least one track on their fusion album is instrumental or,
failing which, that certain of the songs will have fairly lengthy instrumental
solos and be of a religious rather than simply romantic significance. An album conceived solely as songs of a
romantic nature would be unlikely to pass muster as fusion music!
5. Hitherto I have not spoken of British and
European jazzmen, nor of American rock musicians, but the reader will have
gleaned that I regard them as exceptions to the rule and, therefore, as
generally unrepresentative of their respective traditions. In my estimation, European jazzmen are
exponents of an American music, even if they play it in a European, i.e.
classical, fashion. Similarly, American
rock musicians I regard as exponents of a European music, though their handling
of it is more likely to veer in the direction of jazz than classical, sounding
somewhat akin to progressive music; just as the European jazzmen tend,
willy-nilly, towards a kind of fusion music, with or without vocals. Probably there are many more American rock
musicians than European jazzmen, but this fact wouldn't render their music any
the less unrepresentative of primary American trends. Even if their music is serious,
it is of an inferior order of seriousness than the mainstream
bourgeois/proletarian achievements of modern jazz, a sort of quasi-European
seriousness co-existing, on a lower plane, with
6. At its best,
improvisation is all on the one level, concerned with pitch and therefore
disposed to fast-note 'runs', each note being of approximately equal duration
and, thus, equal value. Such
improvisation is highly democratic, if by democratic we mean equalitarian. The introduction of varied duration would
entail melody, and melody entails rhythm.
A music that is truly free, functioning as a free-electron equivalent,
cannot invoke melody or rhythm. It needs
to keep the pitch as pure as possible, undiluted by rhythm. Such a procedure is usually upheld with the
best improvisation and, as already noted,
improvisation is the essence of jazz, the 'modern' no less than the 'trad'. However,
behind and beneath this improvisation one finds the rhythmic accompaniment of
drums and/or bass, but this accompaniment is itself often improvisational in
nature, functioning on the level of a pseudo-electron equivalent given to the
creation of intricate patterns of volatile rhythm which assume a quasi-pitch
status deferential to, rather than dominant over, the lead soloist(s). Such is the norm with modern jazz, and it
conforms to the relatively post-atomic integrity of contemporary American
civilization. Since the essence of this
jazz is improvisation, it follows that the music is essentially a free-electron
equivalent. But, of course, it cannot be
absolutely so, since involving the relative use of a quasi-electron equivalent,
namely rhythmic pitch, and this relativity is consonant with the
socio-political integrity of mainstream bourgeois/ proletarian civilization.
7. A music that could be defined as equivalent
to an absolutely free-electron status, involving pure pitch and nothing else -
neither rhythm, melody, nor harmony - could only pertain to an absolutely
post-atomic civilization, a civilization rooted in Social
Transcendentalism. Such music would be conceived/performed on a synthesizer - in other words an
instrument which is both highly artificial and electronic, as well as being a
kind of composite of earlier instruments which yet transcends them all in its
own unique technological integrity. Thus
a kind of omega instrument, akin to the dovetailing of traditional visual
arts/entertainments into a medium, viz. television, which yet transcends them
or, alternatively, to the dovetailing of all so-called world religions into a
True World Religion which is yet distinct from them and uniquely itself. Just so, the synthesizer, although capable of
sounding like a guitar, an organ, a piano, flute, trumpet, sax, or whatever, is
also distinct from these traditional instruments and able, in consequence, to
produce a truly unique sound. Such an
instrument would be suitable for the production of pure jazz, the successor, we
may believe, to modern jazz. Notes would
be played or programmed to play equally, as so many free-electron equivalents
floating on air and floating, needless to say, without any rhythmical
accompaniment.
8. This absolutely free-electron music will be
the only music of the next and ultimate civilization, since both folk music and
traditional civilized music would be irrelevant to an absolutely post-atomic
age dedicated to the social wellbeing and moral progress of a truly civilized
proletariat. There could only be one
type of music in this transcendental civilization, which would be of a
quintessentially religious significance.
Earlier types of music, whether barbarous or civilized, would be
discouraged and thereafter consigned to the rubbish heap of history. The People would soon forget that such music
had ever existed, assuming they were in a position to remember! Their ears would be solely attuned to pure
jazz; though it is questionable whether they would spend as much time listening
to this music as people of earlier times spent listening to their kinds of
music, and for the simple reason that the emphasis in a transcendental
civilization would be on still higher things, including meditation. Pure jazz would serve as an appetizer, so to
speak, for the 'main course' ... of contemplation and meditation, rather than
as an art form to be listened to for its own sake. Once again music, together with each of the
other fine arts, would become inseparable from religion, functioning as an
ingredient in the religio-cultural integrity of the
True World Religion, as practised in meditation centres - those future
successors to churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, etc.
9. In the present century, however, music is as
often as not secular as well as religious, though the development of a
religious dimension to the best modern jazz indicates, plainly enough, that
music is on the way back to a religious allegiance - one neither pagan nor
Christian but transcendentalist. Of
course, modern jazz is not concerned with Transcendentalism in any absolute
sense - since nothing is known of such a True World Religion in contemporary
America - but with its petty-bourgeois precursor in what may be termed Buddhist
Transcendentalism, as taught by Eastern gurus, whose dedication to transcendental
meditation is unconnected with a knowledge of technological requirements
to-come (before the attainment of transcendence becomes possible), and who, in
any case, tend to a rather complacent acquiescence in certain traditional
oriental beliefs and practices more attuned to the occult than to the
supernatural. No, while the best modern
jazz has associations with relative transcendentalism, the pure jazz of the
future will be exclusively associated with an absolute transcendentalism which,
to the extent that it upholds the practice of meditation, will stem from the
former while surpassing it in terms of a freedom from occult theology and
simultaneous awareness of evolutionary transformations to-come. What rhythmic pitch is to modern jazz,
theological occultism was to its religious inspiration in neo-Buddhism. Neither
ingredient could be encouraged in an absolute civilization!
10. Having spoken of American jazzmen on the
foregoing pages, I should add that, after one or two countries have taken the
lead in developing pure jazz, such absolutely free-electron music should become
the prerogative of all peoples. Thus one won't be entitled to define pure
jazz as basically an American music, but will regard it as a universal music,
played and respected the world over, even if, for a time, it has the appearance
of being unique to one country. Such, in
reality, it cannot be; for this music, together with everything else pertaining
to an absolute civilization, is intended for global appreciation, being, in essence,
something that transcends race and nationality - like, to a certain extent,
modern jazz. If it begins in one country
it will end everywhere, the first truly universal music, transcending all
previous cultures and, as already remarked, instruments and instrumental
combinations. Not on an electric piano,
organ, or guitar, those quintessentially higher bourgeois/proletarian
instruments, still less on a sax, flute, or trumpet, the class precursors of
the above, but on a synthesizer or combination of synthesizers ... is the most
likely way in which the ultimate music will be performed or, more probably,
programmed in advance for autonomous performance, since manual manipulation of
the keyboard would doubtless prove incompatible with absolute proletarian criteria.
ON THE PSYCHE
1. Insight is to the superconscious
what intuition is to the subconscious - its 'inferior function', to coin a
Jungian term. Insight is aware feeling,
whereby the minority subatomic content of the new brain, viz. instinctual protons/visionary
neutrons, responds to its majority subatomic content, viz. aware electrons, in
a quasi-spiritual way. By contrast,
intuition is instinctual intelligence, whereby the minority subatomic content
of the old brain, viz. aware electrons, responds to its majority subatomic
content, viz. instinctual protons/visionary neutrons, in a quasi-instinctual
way. Hence the feeling
bias of intuition, as opposed to the spiritual bias of insight. Generally speaking, women have traditionally
had more intuition than men because more biased towards the subconscious or,
rather, unconscious, with a more densely proton/neutron-packed old brain. Men, on the other hand, have developed more
insight than women because more biased towards the superconscious,
with a more densely electron-packed new brain.
In the first case, such intelligence as existed in the old brain, by
dint of an electron content, was conditioned, as
intuition, toward feelings. In the
second case, such feeling as existed in the new brain, by dint of a proton/neutron content, was conditioned, as insight,
towards awareness. The 'superior
functions' of each part of the psyche are, of course, feeling and awareness
respectively.
2. Thinking, however, is not a function of the
subconscious but of the superconscious, the
application of electron awareness, as will, to the minority feeling
proton/visionary neutron content producing thought (consciousness), since a
capacity for conceptual memory resides in the minority subatomic content
(protons/neutrons) of the new brain by dint of its being conditioned by the
essential bias of the majority subatomic content (electrons) there. By contrast, dreaming is a function of the
subconscious or, more correctly, the unconscious which, unlike thinking,
happens naturally and, as it were, spontaneously, because perceptual images are
absorbed by and stored in the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain,
which therein functions according to its natural inclination (not with
concepts) and imposes itself, in dream sequences, upon the minority electron
content of the old brain during sleep, which then functions, in contrast to the
superconscious, as a subsidiary feeling-biased
awareness (subconscious), a spectator of the flow of perceptual images which
issue from the majority proton/neutron content of the unconscious-proper. Thus whereas thinking occurs artificially,
subject to conscious control of a minority proton/neutron content functioning,
in conceptual terms, against its own apparent grain, dreaming, by contrast,
occurs naturally, in an unconscious functioning, on perceptual terms, according
to its own apparent grain.
3. With daydreaming,
on the other hand, the superconscious consciously
activates perceptual images from the unconscious, and thus directly involves
itself with the unconscious in an evocation of artificial dreams, i.e.
fantasies. The psychic contrast to this,
however, is when the unconscious naturally imposes itself upon the superconscious mind in the production of visionary
experience - consciously perceived visions rather than subconsciously perceived
dreams. With the evolution of the psyche
away from unconscious dominion towards greater degrees of superconscious
freedom in awareness, visions are, of course, much less frequent occurrences,
these days, than in the early days of human evolution, including and up to
early Christian times. But though they
may not occur with anything like the same frequency or intensity as before,
their occasional occurrence is more likely, I dare say, to be in young women
and children than in men, because both of these categories of human life are
generally more under the influence of the unconscious than of the superconscious.
4. As to LSD visions, or artificially-induced
visionary experience such as results in static, translucent perceptual images,
we may infer that the application of a synthetic catalyst to the minority
proton/neutron content of the new brain causes that content, ordinarily
accustomed to functioning against its own natural grain in conceptual terms, to
function independently of the conditioning of the majority electron content and
thus, in appearance, as perceptual images which the electron content is obliged
to passively witness in a kind of waking-life dream state. These images which arise from a minority
proton/neutron content freed from the conditioning of the electron majority are
not only different from dreams in respect of their colour, rendered translucent
by the spiritual bias of the superconscious; they are
different in respect of their content which,
as a rule, is mythological, exotic, and literary, that is to say, what one
would expect from a proton/neutron content that had for so long served to store
the conceptual rather than the perceptual, and consequently become civilized,
since the use of concepts by man is usually steeped in literary, exotic, and
mythological connotations. Hence the
preponderance, in LSD-induced visionary experience, of such concept-weighted
images as jewels, sickle moons, fairy palaces, pagan statues, clusters of grapes, star shapes, and what appear to be
houses of glass. These and other such
images are rooted in conceptual usage, whereas dream images tend, as a rule, to
float free of conceptual reference in a perceptual naturalism.
5. What, then, can we deduce from all this -
that LSD is bad, immoral, dangerous...?
Certainly a minority proton/neutron content that has been set free of
electron conditioning behaves in an apparent and therefore regressive way. Yet we are none of us absolutes, and the
veneer of conceptual civilization which electron dominance has imposed upon
these minority protons/neutrons cannot be sustained for ever, since the strain
would take its toll one way or another, not least of all in terms of the
probable eruption of a mental breakdown.
Admittedly, the apparent treatment of the minority subatomic content of
the new brain is less good than the essential treatment of its majority
subatomic content (electrons) through transcendental meditation, so LSD
tripping could never become the ultimate psychic concern. Its widespread usage will, I believe, be
confined to the superhuman phase of the post-Human Millennium, a kind of
'romantic', or quasi-apparent, phase in between two 'classical', or essential,
phases of evolution, and should be regarded, if not as a good, then, at any
rate, as a tolerable and necessary evil.
For only in transcending appearances, and thus all proton/neutron
functioning, will advanced life eventually attain to the goal of evolution in
maximum essence, the purity of transcendent spirit, the electron-electron
attractions of pure awareness, above both the apparent (perceptual) and the
quasi-essential (conceptual) treatment of the minority proton/neutron content
of the new brain.
6. However, what frequent recourse to LSD would
do for the superconscious is condition the majority
electron content of the new brain to passive contemplation of
artificially-induced perceptions, contrary to its traditional role as activator
of conceptions from the minority proton/neutron content, and thus break the
habit of thinking, thereby preparing the ground, as it were, for the subsequent
leap forward when, with the surgical removal of the old brain and elevation of
advanced life to a superbeingful stage of millennial
evolution, the majority electron content of the new brain contemplates, in
maximum passivity, not proton/neutron appearances, but its own essence, in the
cultivation of pure awareness through hypermeditation. Thus by taking psychic development a step
backwards from proton/neutron conceptualism to proton/neutron perceptualism, LSD usage in the Superman Millennium may
well serve, better than anything else, to enable it to take a radical leap
forwards at a later date, when, instead of applying their minds to thought,
like men, the new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings will apply them to the cultivation of pure
spirit and ignore, in the process, the proton/neutron content of the new brain
altogether. Who knows, but the passive
contemplation of perceptual images may well signify not so much a step
backwards ... as a step beyond the activation of conceptual thought? Certainly, it would be a step forwards from
the electron point of view, because signifying a further negation of the will.
7. In daydreaming, we avenge our subconscious
mind upon the dream tyranny of the feeling/apparent unconscious by imposing our
superconscious mind on the latter in order to dredge
from it such perceptual images as we may desire to witness. Whereas sleep-dreaming happens naturally to
the subsidiary or subconscious mind of the old brain, the superconscious
mind of the new brain is applied, in daydreaming, to the feeling/apparent
unconscious with a degree of supernatural effort, i.e. through the conscious
use of awareness as will. The
converse situation to this, viz. natural intrusion of the feeling/apparent
unconscious into waking consciousness, would lead to our witnessing visions,
which may alternatively be described as waking dreams. Fortunately, not many of us are prone to
visionary experience these days, but with our more evolved psyche we often live
in a world of daydreams, or fantasies, which are both frivolous and innocuous
compared with nightmares.
8. Having referred to both visionary/fantasy
and dreaming/thinking antitheses, I may as well continue by pointing out that
the artificially-induced perceptual experience of the minority proton/neutron
content of the new brain in the 'trip' also has an antithesis in the
naturally-induced dulled awareness of the minority electron content of the old brain
through various degrees of drunkenness, so that we may speak of a
drinking/tripping antithesis. Nor is
this the only one of its kind; for there exists a converse situation, whereby
the minority electron content of the old brain can, through the use of certain
natural drugs like hashish and cannabis, be brought to a heightened awareness,
even though the majority proton/neutron content may be rendered more
instinctual and even, in extreme cases, apparent, so that visions arise. This heightening of the subconscious
consciousness through doping forms an antithesis to the heightening of the superconscious consciousness through transcendental
meditation, in consequence of which we may speak of a doping/meditating
antithesis, the latter being superior to the former, just as, on a lower scale,
tripping is superior to drinking.
9. Indeed, tripping corresponds to a higher
form of romanticism, meditating to a higher form of classicism, and we may well
define the former as the antithetical equivalent of drunkenness, the latter as
the antithetical equivalent of being 'stoned'.
Nor need it surprise us that LSD was a Western invention, since Western
civilization has long been partial to psychic romanticism in the consumption of
alcohol, and the one inevitably led to the other, just as, in the classical
Orient, the traditional consumption of hashish, marijuana, kif,
and other such natural drugs inexorably led to the practice of meditation, a
superior classicism because appealing not to the minority electron content of
the old brain, as does dope, but to the majority electron content of the new
brain. Conversely, whereas alcohol
primarily appeals to the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain, LSD
appeals, as a higher romanticism, to the minority proton/neutron content of the
new brain, which it activates in perceptual terms, neutralizing the traditional
active behaviour of the majority electron content in the process, so that
conceptual usage of protons/neutrons (as consciousness) is kept to a minimum. Thus whereas alcohol blunts the subconscious
by appealing directly to the feeling/apparent majority proton/neutron content
of the old brain (unconscious), LSD, its antithetical equivalent, blunts or
neutralizes the superconscious by appealing directly
to the feeling/apparent minority proton/neutron content of the new brain. It signifies the lesser of two evils.
10. Conversely, whereas hashish, cannabis, etc.,
heightens the subconscious mind by directly appealing to the aware/essential
minority electron content of the old brain, transcendental meditation, its
antithetical equivalent, heightens the superconscious
mind by directly appealing to the aware/essential majority electron content of
the new brain. It signifies the superior
of two goods, the ultimate classicism which, it seems to me, will constitute
the focus of spiritual development not only in the global transcendental
civilization of the final stage of human evolution but, even more importantly,
in the Superbeing Millennium - the final stage of
post-human evolution preceding transcendence.
That is to say, for both the Transcendentalists of the highest stage of
human development and what may be called the hyper-Transcendentalists, so to
speak, of the highest stage of millennial development. In between will come the LSD-utilizing
'romantic' interlude of the Supermen who, as brain collectivizations,
will regularly 'trip' and thus passively contemplate, with their superconscious minds, the perceptual images culled from the
minority proton/neutron content of the new brain. The post-Human Millennium will therefore be
Occidental in its first phase but Oriental in its second phase, this latter in
turn leading, via transcendence, to the heavenly Beyond ... of pure spirit.
11. The fact that occidental man has taken so
much longer than oriental man to attain to his antithetical
equivalent of old-brain somnolence in new-brain LSD tripping can be explained,
I believe, by his traditional bias towards alcohol which, in dulling the
subconscious, kept the focus of his psychological attention on the old brain,
in sensual self-indulgence. By contrast,
oriental man attained to the antithetical equivalent of doping, in
transcendental meditation, so much earlier than his Western counterparts did to
theirs because his traditional bias towards hashish, cannabis, etc., in
heightening the subconscious, pushed the focus of his psychological attention
towards the new brain, in the cultivation, through its majority electron
content, of spiritual awareness. Thus
whereas majority proton/neutron indulgence didn't automatically lead, via the
new brain, to minority proton/neutron indulgence, minority electron indulgence
in the old brain certainly did lead, as a
matter of course, to majority electron indulgence, to the cultivation, within
the new brain, of an enhanced awareness, an awareness purged of sensual dross
in fidelity to transcendental purism.
However, now that Western man has attained to an antithetical equivalent
of alcohol indulgence, he has progressed, within a romantic proton/neutron-biased
framework, from the sensual to the apparent, from drunken stupor to visionary
contemplation. This may, with due
respect, be described as 'the best of a bad job'. By contrast, meditation signifies (in
relation to dope-smoking) 'the best of a good job'. We may look forward to more of the latter in
the future, in both its regular and 'hyper' manifestations.
12. If alcohol tends, in appealing to the
majority proton/neutron content of the old brain, to increase its sensuality
and drag the subconscious down to a lesser degree of sensual awareness in the
process, dope tends, by making the subconscious more aware, to heighten the
capacity of the feeling/apparent unconscious for the production of visions,
i.e. to appeal primarily to its apparent rather than simply sensual side. Visionary experience has long been vouchsafed
users of hashish, including such Western ones as Baudelaire and de Nerval, though we may contend that the prospect of such
experience arising is proportionate to the amount of dope taken and its
inherent quality, so that unless a large quantity of, say, good-quality hashish
is orally ingested, the prospect of experiencing visions, especially for modern
urban man, must be pretty slim.
Formerly, we may be confident that, even with comparatively small
amounts of the drug, visions would have been pretty much the norm, and
especially must this have been so in the Orient, both near and far, before the
evolution of the psyche into new-brain liberation, with the attendant practice
of transcendental meditation for if not the majority then, at any rate, the
truly civilized minority. Probably the
masses continued to dope and experience visions long after the introduction of
meditation had established an antithetical equivalent to doping, and long after
the more evolved had lost interest in dope by dint of the fact that, on the one
hand, it no longer engendered visions in the old brain and, on the other hand,
they had discovered a much greater awareness satisfaction in transcendental
meditation.
13. Dope may be despised by the civilized
minority in the Orient, but its widespread use in the Occident, during the past
century, suggests an appeal to both civilized and barbarous alike. Why is this?
Certainly not because the West has discovered in hashish an antithetical
equivalent of alcohol, but rather because, in making the subconscious more
aware, it signifies a moral improvement on alcohol, with the possibility, in
some cases, of visionary experience in addition to increased subconscious
awareness. Yet there is also widespread
opposition to hashish, cannabis, marijuana, etc., and for good reason, given
that the Western bent is for the romantic, i.e. alcohol, and a switch to the
classic on the same evolutionary level, i.e. with regard to old-brain
stimulation, does not signify an evolutionary step forward so much as a
surrender to oriental classicism on its lowest level, a level long since
abandoned in the Orient by those given to transcendental meditation. From the Western point of view, the use of
LSD would signify an evolutionary step forward - indeed, the antithetical
equivalent to the use of alcohol, since it accords with the Western bent for
proton/neutron indulgence, in this case of the new brain rather than of the old
one, and must rank as the occidental counterpart to transcendental meditation.
14. Yet LSD, no less than the various kinds of
dope, is still illegal in the West, and no real distinction is maintained, by the
law, between the use of natural and artificial drugs - a fact which seems
somewhat strange, to say the least.
There is a moral improvement, from the Western standpoint, in the
experience of new-brain visions over the indulgence of old-brain sensuality. It corresponds to an extension of the
romantic bent from sensual feelings to spiritualized appearances. No such evolutionary improvement could be
detected, however, in the use of dope, since its subsidiary appeal is to
sensual appearances, as culled from the old brain, whilst its principal appeal
is to the subconscious, which (sensual awareness mind) it heightens. Admittedly, sensual appearances no less than
heightened sensual awareness signify an improvement of sorts on sensual
feelings, but only, as it were, laterally, not in an evolutionary way, in line
with Western proton/neutron predilections.
So the use of dope cannot be encouraged if the role of authority,
besides safeguarding law and order, is to encourage evolutionary progress. The fact that an element of East meeting West
enters into the availability and use of dope ... cannot be denied, and
doubtless the converse situation of West meeting East in the consumption,
illegally or otherwise, of alcohol in the Orient accords with a gradual convergence
of the world towards a synthesis in universal civilization, even if, at
present, on fundamentally bourgeois and, hence, relative terms. Nevertheless the dopers are more likely to be
barbarous than civilized, yobs than nobs, and must
needs suffer the consequences of doping in a civilization partial to romantic
values, where the use of LSD - at least among the foremost class of the day -
should meet with less disapproval, if not, for a variety of reasons, more
encouragement!
