PART
TWO: ESSAYS
*
FUTURE
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS
As life evolves, so it
becomes more interiorized, and people therefore spend a greater amount of time
indoors than outdoors. Just as the
Christians spent a greater amount of time indoors, as a rule, than the pagans
of pre-atomic times, so in the coming post-atomic age will Transcendentalists
spend even more time indoors than their Christian predecessors - perhaps the
greater part of their lives. Indeed,
Transcendentalists will spend so much time indoors ... as to be the complete
antithesis of pagans, who doubtless spent most of their time outdoors, living
in closer proximity to nature and thus enslavement to the
natural-world-order. This was because
they stemmed from the alpha roots of life in the stars and consequently
reflected a preference for appearance over essence, the exterior over the
interior. We can't properly understand
why the ancient Greeks, to name but one pagan people, built temples on a
columnar basis if we do not appreciate the need felt by such peoples to
exteriorize their buildings, and thus remain in contact with nature even when
they entered them. A classical temple
remained open to nature even when, as was not always the case, it possessed a
roof. The Greeks would never have dreamt
of completely shutting themselves off from the outside world in sealed
buildings, and so they built openly, with the use of columns. There is no deeper underlying reason behind
their architectural styles than that!
The Christians, however, being dualists, had more respect for
transcendentalism than their pagan forebears.
In fact, they were prepared to spend as much time indoors as outdoors,
and sometimes even more. Their religious
buildings, while partly imitating Greco-Roman styles, albeit superficially and
primarily for decorative purposes, shut people off from nature behind walls,
though never entirely so! For in every
church there were windows, and in some churches, particularly Gothic, there
were more windows than walls. Yet, even
then, these windows weren't plain and ultra-transparent, but either frosted or
stained, and stained, often enough, in a most colourful and religiously
educative manner - the tradition of stained glass lasting into the industrial
age, though on a largely revivalist basis.
With the ongoing development of Protestantism in certain
countries from the seventeenth century, however, walls tended to preponderate
over windows, the latter being frosted and mainly utilitarian. People became even more shut off from nature
in these buildings, though, thanks to their windows, not exclusively so! There was a plentiful supply of natural
light, duly supplemented, in the course of time, by different forms of
artificial light. Coming out of or going
into a church, one might have encountered columns either embedded in the walls
and/or forming a portico. This may have
been reassuring for some people, particularly those who admired the Greek
ideal. Nevertheless inside the building, walls and windows preponderated, with
perhaps a few decorative columns for aesthetic purposes. That was the essence of late-Christian
architecture.
But we haven't reached the end of human evolution, least of all
in religious terms. For an age is coming
when meditation centres will have to be built, and such centres will correspond
to a transcendental civilization, a global civilization whose citizens will be
even more shut off from nature in their buildings than the Christians were - so
shut off, in fact, as not even to have windows in them. Then what?
Not thick walls suggestive of materialism but, on the contrary,
relatively thin, synthetic walls all the way around, with artificial light to
illuminate the interiors when necessary ... Which shouldn't be when people are
meditating and thereby striving to transcend appearances! Electric or neon light should replace natural
light, where such transcendental buildings are concerned. There will doubtless be need of
air-conditioning, perhaps even of sophisticated filter systems, but not of
windows. People will enter a building in
which the lights have been dimmed and get dimmer as the meditation session
proceeds. They will understand that
essence is what counts in a meditation centre, not appearance! The Christian churches were, as a rule, less
bright inside than the Greek temples, open or partly open to the sky, would
have been - indeed, many of them might fittingly be described as dim or even
dingy. A bright meditation centre,
however, would be a contradiction in terms!
So Transcendentalists will be completely shut off from nature
in their religious buildings, and thus exist in a context essentially closer to
the post-human phases of evolution in the ensuing Superman/Superbeing
Millennium. Evolution will have
progressed from appearance to essence, from exterior architecture to interior
architecture. This will signify a
qualitative improvement - the inner manifestations of evolutionary progress.
But there will also be need of manifestations which, being
outer, may be defined as quantitative, in which the diversity and separateness
of things at the roots of evolution are gradually transcended - the direction
of evolution being from the innumerable stars to the ultimate globe of
transcendent spirit via planetary life.
The lower the stage of human evolution, the more prevalent is this
diversity and separateness. Why, one may
wonder, has the world given birth to so many distinct languages? Precisely because lingual diversity is a
cultural manifestation of diabolic influence, the great variety of things or
distinctions on the pre-atomic and even atomic levels of evolution. Before men evolved to national distinctions,
they were subject to the far more numerous tribal distinctions, and of course
each tribe evolved a distinct language of its own. Literally thousands of conflicting tongues
babbling away in pre-atomic times, a source of deep-rooted hostility and
distrust - interminable intertribal strife!
Such was the case even when certain tribes joined together to form
nations, or when the victory of one tribe over another paved the way for the
nation states of today, and the number of languages was reduced in proportion
to the number of vanquished or incorporated tribes - the tongue of the stronger
tribe becoming the national language of the new nation. And yet, even then, still too many languages,
circumstances still reflecting the diversity and separateness of things ... as
stemming from the alpha roots of evolution in the stars. Is not the contemporary world torn between
literally hundreds of tongues, even though the vast majority of people speak
one or another of the half-dozen foremost languages in the world, including
English, French, and Spanish? Some
people even speak two or more such languages, since capable of transcending
national barriers and culturally embracing wider sectors of humanity. But most people are still imprisoned in the
language of their particular nation, a language among languages - no more and
no less!
Clearly, there is more scope for quantitative improvement here,
for a further contraction of diversity and separateness. Such an improvement must surely come when the
world transcends national distinctions and becomes not simply an international
community, but a supra-national community in the ultimate human civilization of
the transcendental future. What will be
required is a convergence towards the Omega Absolute, or the goal of
evolutionary development, on the level of language, the adoption, in due
course, of a supra-national language to supersede the various national tongues
which currently exist and will doubtless continue to do so until the world is
brought under a central administration in the coming post-atomic age. For there can be no question of one national
tongue, like English or Russian, being adopted at the expense of all the
others. That would not signify a lingual
convergence to the Omega Absolute, but, rather, an imperialistic extension of
one national tongue into the future. Yet
all national tongues are equally irrelevant to a transcendental civilization,
which must be supra-national.
Likewise, all national or regional so-called world religions
would be equally irrelevant to the formation of the next civilization. There could be no question of Buddhism or
Hinduism being adopted by peoples who had traditionally upheld Christianity or
Islam or whatever. Transcendentalism
will mark a new beginning in religious evolution, and it will do so as a world
religion in the truest sense, not as one of seven or eight contending
religions, the co-existence of which simply reflects the divisive and
separative nature of things stemming from the alpha roots of evolution. All existing so-called world religions should
be superseded by the True World Religion of transcendental man, in which
quiescent meditation will enable its practitioners to approximate more closely
to the ultimate tranquillity, peace, and blessed being of the Divine Omega,
conceiving of the latter as the goal of evolution in transcendent spirit. But there will be no oriental fanaticism
about this type of meditation, no striving to attain to transcendence through
meditation techniques alone, and for literally hours at a stretch every day of
the week! Unlike a Buddhist,
transcendental man will know that his civilization is but a stage on the road
to the post-Human Millennium, when brains become artificially supported and
sustained in communal contexts, and a new life form, post-human and largely
supernatural, continues the evolutionary journey from approximately where man
left off. Knowing that technology will
have an important role to play in furthering spiritual progress, he won't be
subject to the delusions of the traditional oriental fanatic concerning his
prospects of salvation through natural meditating methods alone! He will be able to meditate rationally,
calmly, periodically, uncluttered by superstition. And when the technicians have perfected the means
of supporting and sustaining brains artificially, he will be superseded by the
Superman of the first phase of the post-Human Millennium, in which not
transcendental meditation but hallucinogenic contemplation will prevail, in
accordance with the need to open-up the superconscious and have the psyche pass
through an intermediate period of internal visionary experience en route, as it
were, to higher things.
One of these higher things will of course be the
hypermeditation of collectivized new-brains artificially supported and
sustained in the second phase of the post-Human Millennium, the truly classless
society of the Superbeings, which will exist, in evolutionary terms, as
antithetical equivalents to trees. In this
ultimate phase of millennial evolution, the interaction of new brains on any
given support/sustain system will lead, after a certain period of time, to
spirit being cultivated to a point where it becomes transcendent, when
electrons detach themselves from atomic constraint and soar heavenwards in
supra-atomic freedom. Now whilst
electrons climb free of new-brain matter and merge with and converge towards
other such transcendences in the void, the protons left behind will probably
react against one another in subatomic cursedness, thereby destroying whatever
remains to be destroyed. Spirit,
however, will have attained to its goal in supra-atomic blessedness, a goal
which first became apparent to Christians in the age of atomic balance, but
which was sought after more keenly as time went by and life became increasingly
post-atomic in constitution. With the
final overcoming of matter, ultimately reduced to its new-brain guise,
salvation will be definitively attained.
All that remains to be done then ... is that the individual
transcendences from whichever Superbeing in whichever part of the Universe
should merge into one ultimate transcendence for evolution to run its course
and achieve completion in a beingfulness that will last for ever.
Not so the remaining stars, however, which will gradually fade,
collapse, and disappear, leaving the Universe to the perfection of the divine
presence alone. This divine presence -
God in any ultimate sense - will be the most interiorized existence possible,
the ultimate experiential interiorization of a supreme level of being, towards
which all progress in earthly interiorization tends, including that still to be
made in the future transcendental civilization.
THE
EVOLUTION OF ART
I believe it was
Winklemann who once wrote that the moderns had failed to attain to the perfect
aesthetic beauty of the ancients; that the Christian civilization of the West
had not equalled, let alone surpassed, the ideal beauty achieved by the ancient
Greeks in their, for the most part, sculptural traditions. Now if I am not mistaken, it was with a
critical and not altogether sympathetic eye that the great German aesthetician
looked upon this fact. And looked upon
it even with regard to the Renaissance, when, as we all know, ancient values
were resurrected and geniuses of the stature of da Vinci and Michelangelo
endeavoured to equal, if not surpass, what was regarded as an art superior in
beauty to the Christian.
I shall not attempt to disagree with Winklemann's assertion
concerning the aesthetic pre-eminence of Greek sculpture. But I do see reason to question the
contention that because Christian sculpture, even in its neo-pagan guise, was
less beautiful than the finest works of ancient
No, contrary to Herr Winklemann's assumption, the Christians
did not fail to emulate or surpass the ancient Greeks. On the contrary, they concentrated, if not
exclusively then at any rate partly, on a creative dimension and objective,
namely truth, for which the Greeks not only had little respect ... but no real
understanding, and precisely because it would have been alien to their level of
civilization, a level that required unbroken fidelity to pagan criteria. Morally considered, the Christians were
somewhat superior to the ancient Greeks; for the sculpture half-beautiful and
half-truthful can only arise at a later juncture in evolutionary time than the
sculpture exclusively or predominantly concerned with beauty - evolution being
a struggle from appearance to essence, which is to say, from the absolute
beauty of the stars to the absolute truth of transcendent spirit. Even with the Renaissance - a half-hearted attempt
to rival the ancient Greeks - the leading sculptors, not excepting Michelangelo
and da Vinci, managed to avoid producing works as beautiful as their pagan
prototypes, and this largely in spite of themselves and because they, no less
than everyone else, were inheritors of a thousand or so years of Christian
civilization, in which truth had come to supplant beauty in the scale of moral
worth. Admittedly, they were Italians,
and thus arguably part-descendants of the ancient Romans. So one could to some extent speak of a
recrudescence of pagan civilization in defiance of Christian values and the
(compared with certain other European countries) relatively thin veneer of
Christianity that had been imposed on a traditionally pagan people from
without. Certainly, the fact that the
Renaissance broke out primarily in Italy and in rebellion against the Gothic
ideal (to truth) of Northern Europe, suggests that a vein of paganism remained
firmly embedded in the Italian psyche and only required the relaxation of
cultural pressure ... for it to bubble-up, like molten lava, and gush forth in
the neo-pagan effusions of the Renaissance - a movement mistakenly identified,
in my opinion, with one of the greatest periods in the history of Western
civilization!
Yet, much as they sought to rival the ancients, the leading
sculptors of the Renaissance were no ancient Greeks or Romans but modern
Italians, the inheritors of Christian values.
Their sculptures, detached from Christian iconography and free-standing,
were very often beautiful, but by no means as beautiful, fortunately, as the
works upon which they had been partly modelled.
The human soul had made some progress in the meantime, and neither da
Vinci nor Michelangelo were content to carve sculptures the faces of which
resembled soulless masks! After all, the
closer one approximates to Absolute Beauty with the use of the human form - a
form which, by definition, will preclude all but a relative approximation to it
- the greater the emphasis one must place on appearance alone, and the more
lifeless the facial features of the sculpture in question will become, since
expression is a concession to soul and thus to essence, albeit, in its
emotional manifestation, to the lower essence of the subconscious rather than,
as with spirit, to the higher essence of the superconscious. Such higher essence would, however, be beyond
appearance altogether, and so could never be defined in terms of the Greek
ideal of mask-like vacuity, which, by contrast, is necessarily beneath essence conceived
as soul. It could be defined, as I hope
to demonstrate presently, in terms of biomorphic or abstract sculpture, such as
one encounters in the twentieth century.
But the men of the Renaissance had no desire to completely forsake the
soul, which is why their works, though morally inferior to much Gothic and
subsequent Baroque sculpture, remained morally superior to the pagan
masterpieces they sought to emulate and, if possible, excel. Unadulterated appearance appertains to the
Diabolic Alpha!
In tracing the history of art's development, we find that the
ancients preferred sculpture to anything else - indeed, were predominantly and
for long periods almost solely concerned with sculpture. Why was this?
I think the answer must be: because sculpture, besides being the most
materialistic mode of artistic endeavour and therefore the one most suited to a
pagan age, is the art form that permits the closest possible approximation to
nature and, by implication, to Absolute Beauty, irrespective of the limitations
inherent in the (anthropomorphic) medium itself. A civilization the ideal of which is 'the
Beautiful' will find, in sculpture, its appropriate medium of expression, and
the ancients took this medium to unprecedented and, as we now know, unsurpassed
levels of aesthetic perfection - a truly diabolical perfection of pagan
classicism.
Painting, on the other hand, is less well-suited to the
emulation of nature because it is inherently two-dimensional and partly
transcendental, which is to say, detached from the material, utilitarian world
in a creative realm unique to itself. Of
course, painting in the sense that we generally understand the term, i.e. oils
on canvas, did not arise and could not have arisen in the pre-atomic age of the
ancient Greeks, for the simple reason that the degree of spiritual evolution
necessary to the adoption of such a partly transcendental medium didn't exist
in pagan times. Even the Romans, late
pagans though they were, never took painting beyond the wall, where it existed
in conjunction with utilitarian ends and reflected a largely materialistic
bias. The mural and the mosaic, which
the Romans took to a very high level indeed, are the precursors of painting as
we generally understand it and, to a significant extent, the successors to
sculpture and amphora painting, both of which particularly appealed to the
Greeks. For the evolution of art is from
the materialistic to the spiritualistic, from the mundane to the transcendent,
and although the co-existence of sculpture and painting over a given period of
time - never more consistently so than in a Christian, or atomic, age - may
lead one to infer equal though separate status to each medium of expression,
nevertheless the sculptural must eventually be transcended by an art form
stemming from painting and, to a greater extent, light art, which yet
transcends both painting and light art at the same time.
Such an art form will, I believe, be holography, and it should
become the principal and, ultimately, sole mode of artistic expression in the
future transcendental, or post-atomic, civilization. For what light art was to painting and
painting to murals, namely a step away from the mundane in the direction of
greater transcendentalism, holography must one day become to light art, as
connections with the mundane are entirely severed in a wholly transcendental
art form or, at any rate, in one which gives the impression of being wholly
transcendental, such as should bring the evolution of art to completion in
maximum spiritualization.
Thus what began in three-dimensional sculpture as the closest
possible approximation, using representational means, to Absolute Beauty, will
culminate in three-dimensional holography ... as the closest possible
intimation, using abstract means, of Absolute Truth. The development of vase painting at a later
stage than sculpture, of murals at a later stage than vase painting, of canvas
painting at a later stage than murals, of light art at a later stage than
canvas painting, signify but intermediate realms of creative evolution between
the two extremes - that of pagan sculpture on the one hand, and of
transcendental holography on the other.
What, then, of modern sculpture, considered in its biomorphic
or largely abstract guises? Surely there
exists an antithesis of sorts between, say, a Phidias and a Henry Moore,
between a Greek youth or warrior and a nondescript biomorphic shape? Yes, of course there does! And such an antithesis appertains solely to
sculpture, that is to say, to extremes of sculptural development rather than to
extremes of artistic development per se.
At its best, modern sculpture intimates of truth - a thing,
incidentally, which Moore doesn't always do; for, like Barbara Hepworth, he
also inclines to a form of extreme naturalism, and thus approximates to varying
degrees of natural beauty, not, of course, to anything like the same extent as
the ancient Greeks (which is just as well), but certainly to an extent which
makes one conscious of a particular work being partly beautiful rather than
simply profound or true (though some intimation of truth there will probably
be, if for no other reason than that the overall semi-abstract or
non-representational shape of the work will suggest transcendental
implications). For what transcends
nature, by going beyond it, necessarily intimates of truth. The disadvantage with sculpture doing so is
that it can never transcend its own materiality and is thus limited, to the
degree that it is material, as a medium for intimating of
spiritual truth. Admittedly, there have
been experiments with extremely lightweight sculpture, not least of all by Naum
Gabo, and such experiments undoubtedly mark a progression in the evolution of
sculpture from its crudely material beginnings.
But no matter how lightweight sculpture becomes, it cannot transcend its
basic materiality or cease to have a tactile appeal, the sort of appeal which
sculpture must retain if it is to do proper justice to itself as sculpture.
By contrast, light art, although often mistaken for or identified
with sculpture, has no tactile appeal but stems from painting in the overall
evolution of art, being a better intimation of truth to the extent that it is
even more detached from materiality, i.e. canvas, oils, walls, frames, etc.,
and consequently suggestive of spirit by dint of the impalpability of electric
or neon light. Of course, the use of
artificial light to intimate of truth is inherently unsatisfactory, because
transcendent spirit would not, when it eventually emerged from matter, i.e.
collectivized new brains, be glaringly bright and therefore aligned with
appearance. On the contrary, it would be
an entirely essential emanation.
Artificial light differs from natural light as an electric fire from an
open fire - in degree rather than kind. This is especially true of electric light,
though the electron bombardment of phosphor (which is the metaphysical
principle underlining fluorescent lighting) bespeaks a considerable
evolutionary progression in the development of artificial light and is, by
definition, better suited to intimate of pure spirit. Yet, even then, art must necessarily fall
short of that which it is intended to be an intimation; for the use of apparent
means, no matter how refined upon, can never be anything more than a loose guide
to essential ends. If, judged
objectively, art is inevitably a failure, it is nevertheless a necessary
failure, inextricably linked to man's destiny.
And this is no less so at the pagan end of the spectrum of human
evolution, where approximations to Absolute Beauty were never less than crude.
Returning to sculpture, it should be possible for us to clearly
distinguish between extreme petty-bourgeois sculpture, whether lightweight or
biomorphic, and light art, which stems not from sculpture (as a higher
manifestation of sculptural development) but from painting and, needless to
say, a particular kind of painting - namely, that which one would associate, in
its abstraction, with the most extreme form of petty-bourgeois
transcendentalism. Now whereas even the
most radically biomorphic or lightweight modern sculpture stems from the
fundamentally pagan tradition of sculptural development, and thus signifies the
tail-end, as it were, of this art form's evolution, light art marks a fresh
creative development in the overall evolution of art and may be defined as a
post-atomic medium of expression, a medium forming an antithetical equivalent
with the vase painting of the pre-atomic Greeks, and being but one evolutionary
stage from the ultimate transcendental art ... in the abstract holography of
the future post-atomic civilization.
Thus sculpture cannot actually extend beyond a
bourgeois/proletarian phase of evolutionary development, for its materiality
would be incompatible with an exclusively transcendental age, an age free of
the pagan root and of any art form, including painting, which stemmed from that
root in fidelity to natural beauty. Even
art that was purposely ugly, as much modern art in the West certainly appears
to be when judged by traditional standards, would be irrelevant to a
civilization solely concerned with truth.
For while such art may be relevant to and even, by a curious paradox,
meritorious in a bourgeois/proletarian (transitional) age or society, it would
be quite unnecessary in a society that had ceased to concern itself with
aesthetics or their anti-beauty negation, having gravitated to higher concerns
in loyalty to transcendental criteria.
Whether it would be acceptable, from the historical standpoint, in a
post-atomic age ... must remain open to debate.
But it certainly wouldn't be created in such an age. For, as I hope to have demonstrated, creative
endeavour would have progressed to a positive and altogether superior level -
one diametrically antithetical to that of the ancient Greeks.
As for the culmination of the sculptural tradition in the two
main types of petty-bourgeois sculpture we have witnessed this century, it is
doubtful that Winklemann, if he could return from the grave to witness certain
typical examples of it, would appreciably modify his opinion concerning the
failure of Western art to attain to the high level of beauty achieved by the
ancients. Confronted by a Giacometti,
which, to my mind, aptly signifies the negative or anti-beauty side of this
culmination, he would probably be appalled by the extreme slenderness and
knobbliness of the figure, the facial expression of which was far too redolent
of soul to satisfy even a crude approximation to human, let alone absolute,
beauty. Confronted, on the other hand,
by an Arp, which, as biomorphic sculpture, seems to aptly signify its positive
or pro-truth side, he would be at a loss to establish any formal connections
between such sculpture and nature, and would have to confess that Arp, no less
than Giacometti, was an abysmal failure by ancient Greek standards, as well as
a further example of the lamentable decline in aesthetic merit which Western
sculpture appeared to signify. Ah, poor
Winklemann! He could never have
understood the truth. He died facing
Hell. His spirit, fortunately, cannot be
resurrected!
HUMAN
EXTREMES
It is not so often,
these days, that one hears or reads of sadomasochism in sexual relations, which
is perhaps just as well! For the
infliction of pain on another, even when the other is a willing accomplice to
its infliction, isn't really the most honourable of pursuits and scarcely
tallies with a developing transcendental age or, at any rate, with an age
becoming increasingly transcendent in certain contexts, not the least of which
being sex. Sadism, one feels, is somehow
too cruel and barbaric for sensibilities worthy of the name civilized, even
when the civilization they may pertain to isn't the ultimate one but -
certainly so far as the greater part of the West is concerned - something
closer to being penultimate. Sadists and
masochists, we like to believe, are exceptions to the sexual rule, and probably
their behaviour, in the main, is not as brutal or submissive as it could be or,
indeed, once was for similarly-disposed people in the infancy, as it were, of
man's sexual evolution.
Ah, there we have the crux of the matter! I have fathered a contention which suggests
that, at one time, relations between the sexes were a lot rougher than at
present, and so much so as to imply that sadomasochism, or its historical
equivalent, was once the rule rather than the exception! Frankly, I believe such a contention to be
reasonable, and am prepared to argue in its defence. For men were more disposed to inflicting pain
on others, regardless of sex, in pagan and early-Christian times than they are
these days, at least in the more civilized parts of the world, and we needn't
doubt that, as a corollary of this, women were correspondingly more disposed to
the endurance of pain during such times than (would be) their latter-day
descendants. The closer human society
stands to the diabolic roots of life in the stars, the more likely it is that
pain will predominate, and not merely as something to be endured but ...
actively engaged in as a test of one's strength or courage or capacity of
endurance (stoicism). Before sex became
a pleasure it was predominantly a pain, and we may conjecture that its
practitioners acted more savagely and unsympathetically towards one another than
most latter-day couples would be prepared to countenance!
But not everyone behaves gently in love-making. There are those who prefer to look upon sex
from either a sadistic or a masochistic angle, depending, as a rule, on their
gender. The infliction and endurance of
pain is, for them, the governing principle of sexual behaviour, without which
sex would become far less exciting. What
can one say of such people - that they are barbarous or backward? An approach to sex that consciously endorses
pain as the governing principle is arguably less than civilized, in the modern
sense of that term. Certainly most men
do not behave brutally towards their partners during sex but, for the most
part, gently and sympathetically. Sex,
like so much else, has become civilized in the course of time. Its sadomasochistic origins have been refined
upon to the point where pain is eclipsed by pleasure, which has become the
principal incentive for sexual intercourse.
Admittedly, there are exceptions.
But even those who consciously pursue sadomasochistic relationships do
so on a comparatively restrained basis, never or rarely sinking to the level of
savagery of our distant ancestors.
Nevertheless, their activities and attitudes are such as to suggest
that, where sex is concerned, they are simply laggards - neo-pagan types who
display less subtlety and restraint than the majority of their contemporaries;
pain-wallowing anachronisms whose approach to sex, in an age of sexual
pleasure, is barbarous rather than civilized.
Most people do not admire sadomasochism in others!
This essay isn't specifically intended to be about sexual
behaviour but also about other things, including pain and pleasure
generally. We may note that, as human
evolution progresses, there develops a tendency among men to minimize pain and
maximize pleasure - at any rate, to the extent that it can be maximized. For while pleasure is preferable to pain, it
is by no means entirely separable from pain, but also pertains to the flesh as
a positive response to positive stimuli; though, unlike pain, it is strictly
limited as to its intensive potential.
By which I mean that, whereas pain can descend to the absolute level of
maximum suffering, pleasure is strictly finite, dependent on and limited by the
physical constitution of the flesh which, being proton-dominated, leaves
comparatively little scope for electron attraction in response to positive
stimuli from without. Because protons
predominate over electrons in the crude atomicity of the flesh, the strongest
sensation we can feel will always be the negative one, as evoked by a negative
external stimulus, like the application of force to the skin. Our capacity for pleasure can never become
the ultimate goal of human striving but only, at best, a temporal, intermediate
goal ... to be transcended for something higher when or as often as opportunity
permits. We may endeavour to curtail
pain or the causes of pain as much as possible, but we can't thereby expand
pleasure indefinitely, until, for instance, it attained to an intensity the
equal of anything humanity had ever experienced of pain in the past. There can never be a pleasurable sensation
the equal, in intensity, of a hand or body consumed by fire! The atomic constitution of the flesh will
always preclude such a possibility and thereby render the pursuit of increased
pleasure futile. The wiser, more
advanced members of the human race have long subordinated pleasure to the
pursuit of higher ends, such as happiness and awareness, which stem from
positive stimuli impinging upon areas of the body or brain with a greater ratio
of electrons to protons and/or neutrons than the flesh. Unfortunately even in the heart, that seat of
the emotions, the ratio of protons to electrons is too favourably disposed
towards the former to enable the positive emotion of love to outweigh, in
intensity, the negative emotion of hate, which has hitherto been the ruling
emotion of the heart, with love, or the actual condition of 'being in love', a
periodic exception to the general rule!
This isn't to say, however, that hate has existed at the expense of love
on a permanent basis; for, like the flesh, the heart requires a stimulus one
way or another in order to respond in an emotional way. But, certainly, a heart which is not 'in love',
as we say, will be more disposed, in its neutrality, to the negative emotion of
hate than would otherwise be the case.
Doubtless one of the great charms of 'being in love' for most people is
that, whilst it lasts, the ruling emotion of hatred is quelled, if not ousted,
and one becomes more disposed to look at life positively, in response to the
rebellious 'electron uprising', as it were, of the heart against its customary
proton master. We acquire, through love,
a reprieve from hate or, alternatively, a neutrality favouring hate or some weaker
negative emotion.
But even love is temporal and therefore inadequate as a goal of
evolutionary striving or ideal to be pursued for its own sake. We can never entirely escape from hate. For, alas, the heart, too, is atomic and
accordingly biased towards its proton master!
Love may be a pleasant reprieve from negative emotions, but it doesn't
last for ever - certainly no more than a few years. And as we get older our capacity for 'falling
in love' is reduced, partly because we become more intellectualized and less
disposed to appearances, partly because the heart contracts and beats less
vigorously than before. Falling in love
would for many adults constitute a kind of indignity in the face of their
intellectual and/or spiritual preoccupations and pretensions. Not surprisingly, certain higher men, like
surgeons, refuse to acknowledge that the heart could possibly be anything more
than a pump. We may be sure that youths,
particularly female, would be highly sceptical if not downright critical of such
an attitude! A young woman in love would
have little doubt that the heart was more than just a natural pump - namely the
seat of the emotions!
Yet relatively few people have no other desire than to live for
their emotions, particularly among the older generation. A person, who may have predominantly lived
for pleasure at one stage of his life, may subsequently live for positive
emotions. It is even possible that such
a person may come, in the fullness of time, to live for his feelings, placing
due importance on happiness, the most positive feeling. He may gravitate, as it were, from the heart
to the head or, more specifically, to that part of the head in which the old
brain is located and from the psychic aspect of which, in the subconscious,
feelings of a more elevated and, on the whole, generalized nature may emerge,
in response to a variety of external stimuli.
Not that all such feelings are positive; for the subconscious is no less
disposed to negative feelings in response to negative stimuli than the heart or
the flesh. But these feelings won't be
quite as strong as those connected with areas of the body in which protons
greatly predominate over electrons.
Sadness is a strong feeling, but it isn't as strong, or bad, as the
emotion of hate, and nowhere near as difficult to endure as the sensation of
physical pain in response to some brutal external stimulus aimed at the
flesh. Most people would rather be sad
than burning to death, and we may surmise that a majority of people would
likewise prefer transient sadness to lasting hatred.
The negative feelings of the subconscious are therefore less
disagreeable, as a rule, than the negative emotions and sensations of the lower
regions of soul, as evoked by and dependent on the body. One suffers less from the old brain than from
the heart or the flesh. But, conversely,
the positive feelings associated with the psychic aspect of the old brain are
likely to be more rewarding than those associated with the parallel aspect of
more deeply proton-dominated organs. We
cannot blame a man for preferring happiness to either love or pleasure, because
such a feeling is more refined, in that it connotes with a greater degree of
electron freedom than would be possible in lower regions of the body, and has,
in consequence, a more diffuse, impersonal, universal quality. Both love and pleasure are dependent on other
people, but happiness can transcend others in response to quite disparate
external stimuli. Intellectual activity
can bring a person happiness for the duration of his work, or whatever. Like pleasure, happiness can be switched on
and off, can come and go with changing circumstances. One can be happy for apparently no reason at
all; though, in point of fact, there will usually be some reason, if one bothers
to analyse the situation carefully enough.
Although superior to love and pleasure, happiness cannot,
however, be turned into the goal of evolutionary striving. For there is no absolute happiness! It cannot be cultivated to the exclusion of
other feelings, least of all sadness, which is always lurking in the
background, ready to pounce, in response to appropriately negative stimuli, and
devour one's peace of mind. The man who
strives to cultivate happiness is certainly on a superior level than the lover
or the hedonist, but he is still some way short of salvation, and can no more
expect to escape from sadness on a permanent basis than the lover ... from
intermittent hatred or the hedonist ... from intermittent pain. If pain is the lowest and most intense
feeling the soul can experience, then happiness is its highest and most
refined. Yet such an antithesis cannot
transcend the soul, for it exists within the soul's confinement and will relate
to the temporal world, of which the soul is but a psychic manifestation. One cannot be happy all the time, since each
part of the soul demands some expression, and not only on a positive
basis! The old brain, even with a
greater overall electron content than the heart or the flesh, is still a part
of the body and one, moreover, in which protons predominate over electrons, so
that sadness, when it arises, will remain the stronger feeling, irrespective of
whether it is less strong, or disagreeable, than the negative feelings of the
heart (hate) and the flesh (pain) respectively.
Precisely because the material
constitution of the body is largely composed of protons and electrons, as in
any natural matter, it is impossible to cultivate one feeling at the lasting
expense of another. Positive stimuli
impinging upon the flesh or senses will evoke positive feelings, but negative
stimuli will evoke the converse of these and, given the proton-dominated
constitution of flesh, heart, and old brain (roughly corresponding to the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost), these negative feelings will be stronger,
as a rule, than their positive counterparts.
We can minimize, by degrees, the negative stimuli impinging upon the
body, but we can't entirely escape from such stimuli or transcend negative
feelings altogether. Even the man who
consciously cultivates awareness for long periods at a time cannot avoid
sleeping or eating or hearing or seeing or walking.
But if happiness is temporal and therefore inadequate as the
goal of evolutionary striving, then the cultivation of awareness in the
superconscious, or psychic aspect of the new brain, is quite a different
proposition! The man who lives
predominantly for and in his spirit doesn't care too much for happiness or love
or pleasure or any other positive feeling associated with the soul, because his
attention will be focused on the eternal, on what is potentially absolute and
therefore cultivatable as an end-in-itself.
With the spirit there is no converse side, no negative feelings,
because, pertaining to the realm of awareness, it is above feelings. Admittedly, the new brain, like the old one,
is atomic in constitution and consequently composed of protons and
electrons. But electrons predominate
over protons here and thus set the new brain apart from the old one as a brain
predominantly given to awareness; though there will, of course, be overlappings
with feelings in view of the (partly) proton content of brain matter, so that
some soul may cling to the new brain and behave in an appropriately sensual
way, extending the governing principle of the old brain into the new one on a
largely tangential basis. Nevertheless,
awareness remains the leading characteristic of new-brain activity, and it will
preponderate to a greater or lesser extent depending on the psychic development
of the individual, that is to say, on the degree to which the superconscious
preponderates over the subconscious - if at all. Intelligence, which is broadly synonymous
with awareness, varies considerably from person to person, though all people
live in their superconscious at least some of the time, either directly,
through meditation, or indirectly, as when the will is applied to the
subconscious and thought is evoked in response to a variety of external
stimuli. All of us 'feed our minds',
even if only to the extent of reading a newspaper or watching some television
serial. To 'feed one's mind' is not only
to ingest, through one or other of the senses, information which is then
digested and either made immediate use of or consigned to memory for possible
future use; it is primarily a process whereby awareness is sharpened, whereby
we, as spirit, grow increasingly conscious about various aspects of whatever we
are ingesting, from a symphony to a television programme, from a novel to a
painting, and become, during this process of enriched assimilation, more alive
to ourselves than at other times!
Being dependent on external stimuli for the cultivation of
greater awareness does, however, have its drawbacks, not least of all because
awareness is an internal quality and can only be cultivated to a relatively
limited extent through the use or assistance of external stimuli, no matter how
intellectually stimulating such stimuli may happen to be! If we wish to cultivate awareness to a higher
extent - which we won't do, as a rule, before it has been cultivated to a quite
high pitch through external means - then we can do no better than to turn away
from appearances and focus our attention upon the self, awareness thereby
becoming aware of itself in a kind of spiritual narcissism, which is the
opposite of any sensual narcissism. We
turn inwards to develop our awareness of self to the highest degree humanly
possible, and become, in the process, quasi-divine, living only for and in the spirit,
above and beyond the ambiguous realms of feelings and thoughts and dreams. This is the meditative state and, although it
isn't unknown to people in the West, relatively few are those who regularly
experience it for any length of time in this day and age!
Unlike pleasure, love, and happiness, maximum awareness can
become the goal of human striving, indeed the goal of evolution itself, though
we can none of us expect to attain to that goal before certain intermediate
stages, transcending the human, have been introduced - a thing, alas, which
won't happen for some time to come! The
'being-for-self' awareness of the meditator is certainly a viable state, and
one which more people are bound to experience as time goes by. But it isn't the ultimate state, nor can we
expect it to take us directly to that state in spiritual transcendence. The best we can do, while still human beings,
is to live for awareness, particularly the direct, essential awareness of
meditation. We cannot experience the
post-human tripping state of Supermen, at any rate not on an official and
universal basis, nor can we experience the subsequent hypermeditative state of
Superbeings, the state immediately preceding transcendence. But we can cultivate awareness to a
greater extent than hitherto, and thus modify both the psychological and
physiological constitutions of our brains.
For, unlike bodily matter, brain matter, particularly when of the new
brain, can be significantly modified in the course of time ... as intellectual
activity rearranges and refines upon its basic atomic constitution,
transforming the predominant electron content of the new brain from a
marginally to a substantially predominating content in the course of our
psychic evolution. Unlike the body,
which grows naturally and independently of conscious volition, the
superconscious mind requires to be artificially cultivated as a result of
conscious effort on our part. We cannot
change our bodies, at least not beyond making them physically stronger or
weaker, but we can certainly change our minds, and thus alter the physiological
constitution of the new brain in the process!
This is, after all, merely the beginnings of a tendency which, at the
climax of millennial evolution, will result in mind becoming completely independent
of new-brain matter, as electrons break away from proton and/or neutron
constraint and soar heavenwards towards their spiritual destination in the
supra-atomic Beyond.
All this takes us a long way from sadomasochism, which is where
I began this essay, but not for nothing and not without a certain arcane
logic! For the sadist and the meditator
exist at opposite poles of human behaviour - the one stemming from the Diabolic
Alpha in an attitude to sex which emphasizes its reactive proton origins; the
other aspiring towards the Divine Omega in a context which stresses electron
attractions as applying both to his own and to other people's higher self. In this day and age, each extreme is rather
the exception to the rule. But whereas
the sadomasochistic exception is largely a consequence of man having, in the
main, outgrown such diabolical behaviour, the meditative exception reflects the
converse consequence ... of man not yet having become spiritual enough to
directly aspire towards the Divine Omega on both a regular and a widespread
basis. We needn't lament the
sadomasochistic exception, but we should, if spiritually progressive, look
towards a future in which meditation will become the rule!
POST-ATOMIC
PROGRESS
In this age, and as
time goes by, everything becomes more biased towards the electron, regardless
of its origins or basic constitution.
Sex is no longer the predominantly proton-biased sadomasochistic
reaction of one body to another it formerly was, in the early days - extending
up to comparatively recent times - of human evolution. People are generally more disposed, when
indulging in sex, to join together on an electron basis of mutual attraction,
which necessarily stresses gentleness and sympathy. Whereas the female was a proton equivalent in
the disreputable days of sadomasochistic sex, the modern female increasingly
behaves, in her liberated capacity, like a quasi-electron equivalent in the
attractive sexual relationships of free sex.
Like electrons, electron equivalents behave positively, that is to say,
passively, gently, tenderly, and so on.
The quasi-electron equivalent (of the liberated female) and the
free-electron equivalent (of the unmarried male) behave lovingly towards each
other and thus participate in a sexuality which could be defined as positively
unisexual. This contrasts with the
negative unisexual activity of proton equivalents and pseudo-proton and/or
bound-electron equivalents of earlier, more barbarous times. But before evolution reached the stage of
encouraging positive relationships, it did, of course, have to pass through an
intermediate stage of heterosexual relationships, as manifested in the
ambiguous coupling of proton and/or neutron equivalents, i.e. women, with
bound-electron equivalents, i.e. men, which was institutionalized in the atomic
tradition of marriage. This stage of
sexual evolution represented and reflected a compromise, we may surmise,
between negative and positive approaches to sex, proton-proton reactions and
electron-electron attractions - in other words, between the rough and the
smooth, the aggressive and the gentle.
An atomic dualism, as opposed to either a pre- or a post-dualistic
absolutism.
The age, as I said, is becoming increasingly
electron-orientated, and therefore more disposed towards the
post-dualistic. Unisexuality, both
figuratively and literally, is on the increase, and we may suppose that it
won't cease to be so for some time to come - certainly not until it has
attained to a maximum development either before or with the termination of
human evolution. To expect a return to
traditional sexual criteria in the future would be equivalent to expecting
evolution to reverse itself and uphold atomic dualism again. That is something it is most unlikely to do,
though there may be periodic, if temporary, reactions and backslidings,
according to fluctuations in fortune or circumstance, in the foreseeable
future. Sooner or later, however, all
traditional values will be officially discredited, so no-one would think, for
example, of getting married. We can, I
believe, be confident that marriage will die a painless death with the
termination of atomic values generally.
For it affirms a union between man and woman, between a bound-electron
equivalent and a proton and/or neutron equivalent. With the overcoming of protons and the
transformation of men into Supermen, there can be no question of its being
valid or justified. A quasi-electron
equivalent and a free-electron equivalent do not, if and when they come
together, form an atomic integrity. They
are entirely post-atomic.
But if, in post-atomic sexuality, one body attracts another on
the most positive physical terms, terms which lay emphasis on pleasure alone,
in post-atomic religion the attraction of minds to one another will be no less
- indeed, probably even more - positive and electron-centred. For such an attraction is based on the
superconscious, the upper part of what atomic dualists are especially fond of
calling the conscious mind, and it manifests in awareness - the psychic quality
of spirit. Awareness is the positive
attribute of electrons when they exist in a context considerably outnumbering
protons in any atomic constitution, and the more considerably they outnumber
protons, the greater is the degree of awareness to be found there. Where, however, protons outnumber or dominate
electrons, as in the body generally, the atomic integrity will be biased
towards feelings, and electrons accordingly be obliged to exert themselves
against their own deepest grain, as it were, by responding to positive stimuli
from without in an appropriately sensual context. The bound electron becomes a perpetrator of
positive feelings. By contrast, the free
electron becomes, in the electron-biased context, a perpetrator of awareness
which, as a spiritual quality, transcends feelings altogether.
Thus awareness isn't simply a refined or very positive feeling,
but a state-of-mind appertaining to an entirely different and superior realm of
consciousness - namely that of the superconscious. It is through and in this superconscious that
awareness is cultivated in the form of a greater awareness of self, which is
identical, in its spiritual essence, to all other selves. The person experiencing such awareness cares nothing
for the physical presence of human beings or material things in the external
environment. The attraction of selves is
wholly spiritual and takes place in utmost loyalty to one's own self, through
complete self-centredness, without regard for the physical presence of lesser,
or personal, selves. This is not God in
any ultimate sense, but it can certainly be a stage on the road to divinity, an
earthly manifestation of transcendent togetherness. It signifies a far superior development to
the egocentric togetherness of the praying congregation, whose wills are
directed, through the act of prayer, down towards the subconscious, from which
the requisite thoughts appropriate to the occasion are evoked and transmuted
into spoken words. The meditator, by contrast,
turns away from the subconscious in a superconscious that is free to exist for
itself on its own spiritual terms, that is to say, in the direct cultivation of
awareness as a means to a higher end - namely the attainment, one way or
another, of spiritual transcendence. It
is the difference between a bound-electron equivalent and a free-electron
equivalent, between the atomic (egocentric) and the post-atomic
(superconscious).
No-one would ever think of praying in the post-atomic age, for
prayer would be far too egocentric.
Besides, fictions derived from cosmic facts are of no importance to a
psyche biased towards truth, which is to say, awareness. Certain illusions derived from the truth and
pertaining to the Cosmos will, of course, remain acceptable, in the interests
of Transcendentalism. But no fictions
derived from cosmic facts would remain so, and for the simple reason that the
psyche will be too superconscious to have much respect for subconscious
contents, which, in any case, would have receded into the psychic distance of
discarded archetypes. Thus while the
illusion of, say, curved space will prevail in the interests, effectively, of
transcendental complacency, the fictions of the Creator and of Satan,
respectively if unconsciously derived from the central star of the Galaxy and
the sun, will cease to play any part whatsoever in our religious integrity,
having been consigned, along with the fictional/illusory Christ, to the remote
regions of our psychic past - much the way that certain outmoded political and
social institutions were formerly consigned, by socialist revolutionaries, to
the rubbish heap of history.
TWO
APPROACHES TO SALVATION
We are entering an age
and, to a limited extent as yet, already live in an age when, to put it
bluntly, politics is no longer a matter for politicians, but effectively for
priest-types functioning in a political role.
That is to say, when politics is being transferred from the State to the
Church ... with intent to the latter's furtherance, as evolution tends towards
an exclusively religious stage from a transcendental base. The priest who involves himself in politics
is less an anomaly these days - though Christian purists will maintain
otherwise - than an intimation of things to come, and this even when he
functions from a reactionary standpoint (as did a certain well-known cleric in
Northern Ireland). Previously,
throughout the greater part of the Christian era, politics was a matter for
politicians and religion a matter for priests.
There existed a sharp distinction between materialists and
spiritualists, in accordance with the dualistic nature of Christian
civilization, torn between state and church.
Prior to that, religion, to the extent that it existed, was
predominantly in the hands of politicians, as in ancient
Of course, in Marxist-Leninist states politics remained, until
quite recently, in the hands of Soviet materialists, who functioned as
quasi-electron equivalents in a post-atomic society, and even now, under Social
Democracy, politics is still, by and large, in the hands of materialists, as
before. Doubtless politics will remain
in such hands until states upholding Socialism are eventually transformed,
through the acceptance of transcendental truth, into genuinely free-electron
societies, with the correlative development of proletarian civilization. Then the State will truly 'wither', in
Engles' oft-quoted phrase, as spiritual types take over the reins of government
and work for the expansion of the Church, as implying the development of
transcendental meditation in suitably designed meditation centres. At that point in time, Socialism will be well
on the way to its total eclipse by Transcendentalism, as particularly applying
to the completely free, stateless, classless, moneyless, paradisiacal society
of the Superbeings, or new-brain collectivizations, in the second phase of the
post-Human Millennium - the transcendental phase-proper. For Socialism won't be entirely eclipsed with
the advent of the first post-human phase of evolution, when the State, in both
senses of the term, will be superseded by the Supermen, or brain
collectivizations, the millennial machinery of which will stem from the
expanding Church. Thus Socialism will
lead to Social Transcendentalism and that, in turn, to the post-Human
Millennium, which, after a relatively 'socialist' phase, will culminate in the
transcendental phase-proper ... of the hypermeditating Superbeings, who, as the
ultimate earthly life-form, will be pending transcendence, and thus the
attainment of pure spirit, i.e. free electrons, to the heavenly Beyond in
ultimate salvation from atomic constraint.
In speaking of the two senses of the word 'state', I was, of
course, referring, in post-atomic terms, to what is literally the State in a
socialist society, i.e. the proletariat, and to what can be superficially
mistaken for it but is in fact the machinery of state which, in its
bureaucratic and administrative capacity, is intended to serve the
proletariat. I have elsewhere used the
word 'state' in a more traditional sense, as applying to politics rather than
religion, and I am well aware that, from another traditional standpoint, it can
be used to signify landed or property interests, which are its earlier and
therefore more concrete manifestations - manifestations still accruing, in some
measure, to atomic societies. The
socialist use of the word 'state' normally emphasizes, by contrast, an abstract
manifestation, since the proletariat are an abstraction, not a concrete entity
like an individual or, more specifically in this context, an area of land
which, in national terms, signifies the root beginnings of the State from which
bourgeois landed/property and property/people compromises were successively
derived, these atomic manifestations of the State in turn being superseded, in
socialist societies, by the ideologically Absolute State ... of the proletariat
(initially in theory only).
Thus the overall evolution of the State, to speak in atomic
terms, is from the proton absolutism of the aristocratic concrete manifestation
to the electron absolutism of the proletarian abstract manifestation via the
atomic compromises of the bourgeois concrete/abstract manifestations. With the post-atomic stage of this evolution,
however, the approach to salvation, that is to say, to a post-Human Millennium,
requires that Socialism should accommodate itself, through Social Democracy, to
Transcendentalism, in order that materialism may eventually be superseded by
the development of an exclusively spiritual orientation of post-atomic society,
as quasi-electron politics gives way to free-electron politics and Socialism
begins its 'withering' in the name of transcendental progress. As intimated elsewhere in my work, the
supersession of materialist leaders, or Marxists, by spiritualist leaders, or
Transcendentalists, is the key to the evolution of the Church at the State's
expense. All states upholding
materialistic socialism will become spiritual in the course of time. Dialectical materialism will be superseded by
post-dialectical transcendentalism.
In the meantime, however, Transcendentalists and Marxists will
have to learn to work together and to trust one another. This should not be difficult, since both
approaches to salvation have evolutionary progress at heart and should exist,
in the future, on the same class level, not, as with Nazism and Fascism
vis-ŕ-vis Soviet Communism, in a bourgeois/proletarian antagonism, the fruit of
which was the bitterest fighting of World War Two. Transcendentalists would not be fascist but
genuinely socialistic, if from a spiritual standpoint. Strictly speaking, there are no
Transcendentalists in the modern world but only, in absolute politics,
Socialists. For Transcendentalism
(communism or communalism) does, after all, develop out of Socialism or, more
correctly, Social Transcendentalism ... as the goal of earthly striving in the
ultimate post-human society of the Superbeing Millennium.
AN
ABSOLUTE ASPIRATION
Christians have a fatal
tendency to confound the Diabolic Alpha with the Divine Omega, to interchange
the two as mood and circumstance dictate.
Not that we need particularly blame them for that, since Christianity
is, after all, a dualistic religion.
Christ was no transcendentalist but a dualist to the core, that is to
say, a man who taught that the 'Kingdom of Heaven' lay within, in one's
spiritual development, but who nonetheless remained loyal to the Father, to
what I call the alpha root of evolution, as when he pleaded with the Father to
'forgive them', meaning the Jews, 'for they know not what they do.' There could be no question of Christ turning
his back on the Father in the name of a more exclusive orientation towards the
Holy Spirit, or creation of the Divine Omega.
Christ had no knowledge of the Holy Spirit, only of the Father, which
Jews would have identified, more fundamentally, with Jehovah. But he differed from Judaists by teaching
that the '
However that may be, the '
I, however, am not a practising Christian, and neither do I
write for dualists. That is why I speak
freely about theological matters, including the distinction between Satan and
the Creator, which is commensurate with a difference in degree, though not
necessarily in kind, between the central star of the Galaxy and the small
peripheral star that we recognize as the sun - one of millions of 'fallen
angels' which an explosion of gas sent hurtling out in every direction, with
the inception of the Galaxy. Probably
there were millions of such explosions throughout the Universe, bearing in mind
that we now recognize millions of galaxies, and their offshoots may have
interwoven, so that differently-constituted balls of flame came into relative
proximity with one another and thereby established the rudiments of a galactic
integrity with its - dare I say it? - Newtonian tensions between force and
mass. Else we must ascribe the integrity
of galaxies to the quicker cooling of certain smaller stars, which went on to
become planets vis-ŕ-vis larger stars and eventually put a halt to the
everywhichway divergence of stars in general.
Gas was undoubtedly the creative force behind galaxies, but we cannot
speak of gas out of nothing, or creation out of a void, which is a meaningless,
not to say implausible, proposition.
Certainly gas came into existence in the void, but that does not mean to say
it was dependent on the void, that the
void encouraged or needed it. Creation
asserted itself against the indifferent backdrop of the void and did so,
initially, in the form of gas or gases that went on, through explosive
pressures, to become stars, doubtless very anarchic stars until brought into some
kind of galactic order through the emergence of planets which, in cooling,
hardened into some rudimentary manifestation of an atomic integrity, the
electron aspect of which created an atomic tension between stars and planets,
that is to say, between subatomic absolutism and atomic relativity.
All this speculation is, of course, at a far remove from
theology. But theology is dependent on
cosmic reality, it requires some concrete base from which to extrapolate gods
and devils and demons. Now the base from
which these theological symbols were extrapolated certainly existed, and
necessarily continues to exist, but man can outgrow theology in his quest for
the supra-atomic absolute. If the
Creator (especially in the guise of Jehovah) is a figurative extrapolation from
the central star of the Galaxy, and the Devil (as Satan) is a
like-extrapolation from the sun, then it stands to reason that the distinction
between the two is merely one of degree rather than kind, and that the Creator
is therefore a more powerful 'devil', or alpha absolute, than Satan. How is it, then, that Christians, deriving
the Father from Judaic precedent, have traditionally looked upon this diabolic
absolute as divine, as a being of an altogether higher order than the Devil,
whom they have regarded as the root of all evil in the world? The answer to this at first-sight insoluble
problem seems to me rather straightforward: they have taken a better view of
the Creator for the simple reason that He is not perceived as being directly responsible for all
the misery of life, since existing at a farther remove from the world than the
Devil. Translated from the figurative to
the literal plane, or from theology to science, this means that the central star
of the Galaxy, about which such smaller stars as the sun revolve, is at too
great a cosmic remove from the earth to do much mischief there, whereas the
sun, a mere ninety-three million miles away, directly influences and affects
this planet, thereby being the source of all or much of the evil that
Christians have traditionally seen fit to ascribe to the Devil's
influence. It is therefore the 'Fallen
Angel', and not the 'Almighty Creator', which is the root of all evil in the
world, if in a comparative sense.
Considered from an absolute point of view, however, it is the
Creator, and indeed the millions of Creators, or central stars of galaxies
throughout the Universe, which are the literal roots of all evil. For what culminates, as evolution, in the future
Divine Omega, or definitive globe of transcendent spirit, must begin in the
Diabolic Alpha, with numerous explosions of what we now call central, or
governing, stars. Scientists would not
speak of numerous Creators but, more literally, of numerous First Causes;
though for some obscure reason (probably not unconnected with monotheistic
tradition), the single Big Bang theory of the Universe's origins still holds
sway in conservative minds - as though the millions of galaxies now in
existence could be traced to a single root out of which they all exploded! Granted an ignorance of the pluralistic
nature of the Diabolic Alpha, it is still staggering that so many scientists
should trace this immense multi-galactic Universe to just one single source! Are we to suppose that galaxies tend away
from one another as from a central void in space, the origin-point of their
creation? To be sure, diverge they
do. But that is surely more from one
another, in a sort of kaleidoscopic interaction, than from a central void
which, so we are led to believe, was once an immense star before the Big Bang
got to it!
Returning from cosmic speculation to Christians, perhaps it
isn't altogether surprising that certain aspects of nature, such as the beauty
of flowers, were claimed to glorify the Creator by their presence here, their raison d'ętre, as it
were, being to glorify God and give men pleasure in the process. Now if the Devil is a convenient fiction for
taking the blame for whatever evil is afoot in the world, then it logically
follows that the Creator must be accredited with whatever natural good can be
found there, including the beauty of nature.
But, considered literally, it is not the central star of the Galaxy that
causes flowers to grow but ... the star closest to us, which we recognize as
the sun. And so, it is the Devil, to
revert to the theological equivalent, rather than God (the Creator) that is
glorified by the beauty of flowers, since such beauty is partly the handiwork,
as it were, of one who, as a 'fallen angel' ... from stellar to solar planes, is
by no means impartial to beauty himself!
Ah, himself! How
beguiling is theology! 'Itself' would be
a more accurate description of the subatomic absolute in question - namely, the
sun, with its proton-proton reactions.
Gender only applies to an atomic integrity, particularly to one in which
protons and electrons are approximately in balance, as during the dualistic
stage of human evolution. An 'it' is
certainly at the root of nature considered in mineral, vegetable, or animal
terms. The flowers would no more survive
without sunlight than other manifestations of the natural world, and the sun,
as already noted, is the source from which the Devil was originally
extrapolated, in due process of theological abstraction. Nature depends on evil, is itself fundamentally
evil, as the Church has traditionally taught, and would only be praised as
glorifying the Creator by essentially pagan types, whose allegiance to
Christianity was less than transcendental.
With its 'survival-of-the-strongest' ethos, nature is precisely what
must be overcome if evolution is to attain, via man, to a supernatural
culmination in spiritual truth. Flowers
can be an obstacle to that overcoming, as can vegetables, animals, and women. However, as a dualistic religious
development, Christianity could not be expected to overcome nature in absolute
terms, only relatively, with intent to curb the intensity and reduce the
frequency of naturalistic indulgences.
It could not turn against the Father; for Christ was Himself, to a
degree, 'three in One', being soul, flesh, spirit, and therefore Man. One would have to turn against Christ, with
his loyalty to the Father, in order to aspire towards transcendent spirit on an
absolute basis, to absolutely turn away from nature.
Evolution on earth is still a long way from directly pending
transcendence, but a day will surely come when life is set directly on course
for ultimate salvation, as the new-brain collectivizations of the ultimate life
form on earth, namely the Superbeings, hypermeditate towards free-electron
absolutism in the supra-atomic Beyond.
Of what consequence will all those who oppose utopian societies, from a
humanistic standpoint, be then?
Evolution would have overcome them long before, since men will arise who
know that while human nature can only be relatively changed on human terms, it
can be absolutely changed with the aid of the most advanced technology, a
technology which won't merely upgrade man ... but transform him into a
post-human life form, transcending his body in the process. As Nietzsche wrote: 'Man is something that
should be overcome', and, thanks partly to my teachings, we are now, or soon
shall be, in a position to know how to go about overcoming him ... in the
interests of salvation and in opposition to any bourgeois humanism, such as
would impede evolutionary progress by endeavouring to keep man chained to an
atomic, dualistic, Christian integrity.
Such an impediment cannot be endured for ever!
The men of the coming transcendental civilization cannot aim
for Heaven conceived in literally transcendent terms, as did the Christians
with their delusion concerning life after death, but will have to resign
themselves to developing spirit and aspiring towards the goal of human
evolution in the post-Human Millennium. The
goal of human evolution and the goal of evolution per se, however, are
two quite different things, and we should not confound the one with the other,
nor treat them as identical. The
post-Human Millennium is what lies beyond man in the life forms of, first, the
Supermen and, then, the Superbeings (as brain collectivizations and new-brain
collectivizations respectively), and is thus a goal for man to attain to - in
short, a relative goal. But the absolute
goal of evolution is Heaven, or the spatially transcendent Beyond, and that can
only be attained to by the Superbeings, who will be far superior to man in
spiritual striving!
This, needless to say, is not the teaching of Christ but of a
wholly transcendental teacher who, in his omega-biased integrity, corresponds
to a Second Coming. This man does not
pay tribute to the Father, and neither does he confound alpha with omega. He is not 'God', in the sense that Christ was
or became (on an anthropomorphic basis) God to Christians, but simply a teacher
who points towards the literal creation of ultimate Godhead as transcendent
spirit or, more specifically, the definitive globe of such spirit at the climax
to all evolution. Such a climax may
still be a long way off at present.
Nonetheless, we are entering an age when an aspiration towards omega
divinity will be the rule rather than, as at present, the exception!
CONCERNING
SWEARERS
The masses, or what may
be termed the militant lumpen core of the proletariat, are highly prone to
swearing, particularly within the confines of bourgeois/proletarian
civilization. The words one hears most
often from their lips are sexually explicit four-letter ones. Why, it may be wondered, do such words figure
so prominently on many proletarian tongues?
Arguably a good question and I intend to answer it from two points of
view - namely a negative and a positive.
First the negative answer.
These proletarians generally lead hard lives under the
capitalist/socialist yoke and, when various personal and/or environmental
circumstances are taken into account, haven't a great deal for which to be
grateful. Hence the abusive recourse to
four-letter words, the psychological smear or denigration which they cast over
the object of abuse patently testifying to an aggrieved mentality. Often the object in question is transcended in
a general reference that embraces everything and anything, turning life, for
the swearer, into an affair worthy of permanent denigration, and casting an
ugly psychological smear over whatever he thinks or says. The mentality of the habitual swearer is
probably too familiar to most non-swearers to warrant further exegesis here.
So let us turn to the positive answer. We know what the words are, but do we sense
any underlying implication in their use, any refutation or belittling, it may
be, of sex? I, for one, do; though that
doesn't make me any more partial to their use than before! To sense that either the female sex organ or
the actual sex act is being denigrated, if unconsciously, by certain of these
words ... doesn't necessarily make them any sweeter to the ear. But it does throw a new light on their use, a
light which suggests that perhaps the proletariat, for all their professed
addiction to sex, are privately disgusted by it and anxious, in consequence, to
verbally belittle it whenever opportunity or circumstances permit. Someone described as a 'fuck*** cunt' is
worse than just a 'cunt'; he is a sexually active 'cunt' - an active sex organ. This, clearly, is one of the lowest possible
things that anyone can be described as, and it indicates, I think, that the
user of these words has an instinctive class aversion both to the object in
question and to its active use, an aversion which, if not conscious, at least
indicates a potential for post-atomic sexuality, such as the proletariat can be
expected to uphold in the transcendental future. It also reflects the fact that the user in
question lives in a broadly homosexual/masturbatory culture which, though
relative, precludes any genuine respect for the female sex organ. Even petty-bourgeois liberated women tend,
more often than not, to negate their vagina in a fixation on phallic oral sex,
which conforms to the masculine bias of the times. Were we living in an age the converse of our
own, it would be the penis that served as a term of abuse on the lips of the
proletariat.
If most liberated women are averse to the employment of
four-letter words themselves, the same cannot be said of the majority of
proletarian women who, despite their sex, are as prone as their menfolk to
denigrate others, and by implication their own sex organ, through the liberal
use of such words. On superficial
accounting, this strikes one as singularly odd.
But when, applying a positive viewpoint to this tendency, one
investigates the subject in greater depth, it occurs to one that, unlike
liberated females, proletarian women are potentially Supermen, and will
therefore be more inclined to take a masculine view of their sex organ and to
employ it as a term of abuse, with an underlying implication of
self-denigration in attendance. The
average proletarian woman of today no longer regards herself as a creature
entitled to sexist respect but unconsciously, if not consciously, behaves as if
she were already generically a Superman.
Hence her willingness to demean her sex organ by employing it as a term
of abuse!
Having tackled these two answers, we may generalize that the
one implies the other, that without the negative the positive side would not
exist; that the denigration of the female sex organ is implicit in the primary
use of four-letter words as stringent criticism of some adversary which springs
from a deeply aggrieved, aggressive, and resentful psyche. On the surface, the object of abuse is being
reviled, but the reviler is acquiescing, instinctively or otherwise, in the
fittingness of the term employed in this abuse.
He is acting on the principle that there is nothing lower, from a human
angle, than the organ from which the term has been extrapolated and to which it
indirectly applies, compliments of the victim of such abuse who, willy-nilly,
becomes that lowness in the reviler's imagination, since, as the direct focus
of abuse, he symbolizes the lowness in question. To act on this principle is to turn against the feminine root, to
negate complacency in dualism and, by implication, to affirm the moral
superiority of a post-dualistic society.
Such a person, of whatever sex, can only be the crude clay, so to speak,
from which a post-sexist, truly saved humanity will be moulded.
It is my opinion that swearing of the four-letter variety one
hears, for example, in England is more prevalent among the proletariat of a
bourgeois/proletarian civilization than among proletariats in socialist states,
and largely because it reflects the oppression of the masses under a
capitalist/socialist system. The
exploited swear both as a reflection of their exploitation and to avenge
themselves, one way or another, on the objects of their oppression, either symbolically
or actually. Probably this isn't the
whole truth, but I am firmly convinced that it is a significant ingredient in
that truth. Unless they are mad or
incorrigibly bad-natured, ill-tempered, or youthfully exhibitionist, people
swear from an aggrieved mentality, which may well be connected with capitalist
and/or socialist oppression. Some,
admittedly, swear all the time. But they
are more to be despised than pitied!
Of course, socialist societies aren't entirely immune to
swearers, but will take measures, if genuine, to curb swearing and make it a
kind of offence against the People, since it could be construed as reflecting
poorly on the socialist system which, in theory if not always in practice, is
designed to ameliorate the living standards of the masses and thus reduce or
remove any excuse for swearing - a habit which, whilst it may be justified in a
capitalist/socialist society, should have little or no place in a genuinely
socialist one. Thus the negative aspect
of swearing becomes increasingly unacceptable, since there shouldn't be too
many causes for grievance in a society run on behalf of the People by their
elected servants. That leaves - does it
not? - the positive aspect, which has more to do with the belittling of the
female sex organ than with the slandering of an opponent.
A socialist state, if not an absolute civilization, is
potentially such a civilization. In
other words, it is a state in which proletarian women are almost, though not
quite, Supermen. It is a state, in
short, that denies relativity. For while
the implicit denigration of the female sex organ may be acceptable in an
extreme relative state, the same cannot be said of a state tending towards the
absolute, where denigratory references to the female sex organ would suggest a
sexist relativity incompatible with a bias for the absolute. Hence, even on positive grounds, swearing
would become unacceptable, because involving sexist discrimination. Doubtless as the socialist state matured
towards or was converted into a transcendental civilization, swearing would
become even more unacceptable, since by then those who, as proletarian women,
had been potentially Supermen would have actually become Supermen, and all
references to the female sex organ be taboo, not least of all because Supermen
were indisposed to using it in a relative context, their vibrator sexuality
being absolute - the vibrator becoming a kind of artificial penis rather than
simply a penis substitute.
So a day will come when, because all men are brothers and
sexist discrimination has been overcome, the use of four-letter, or equivalent,
swear words will be outlawed, their continual employment by some people
becoming a crime against the People which, like other such crimes, may well be
subject to corrective discipline.
THE
FUTURE ABSOLUTE
A transcendental
civilization won't punish offenders against it, but will endeavour to correct
them. The bourgeois/proletarian
civilization of the contemporary West is certainly interested in correcting
offenders, especially in its more progressive manifestations, that is to say,
in countries whose relativity is inherently more extreme, like
A transcendental civilization, to repeat myself, won't uphold
punishment, and consequently there will be no death penalty. Neither will there be life-imprisonment
sentences, nor long-term prison sentences which virtually amount to the same
thing. Indeed, there won't be any
imprisonment at all, because no prisons.
Instead there will be correction centres, whether psychiatric or otherwise,
and an offender's detention in such centres will last for as long as it takes
to correct him, and no longer! Should he
prove recalcitrant or well-nigh impossible to correct, then detention may have
to be indefinite - that being the exception to the general rule.
There are some crimes, however, that are less a product of
mental derangement or misguided belief than of cold-blooded calculation, and
murder and rape may be among them. It
occasionally happens that a murder is committed in consequence of tragic
circumstances, whether developing over a period of time or resulting from a
sudden flare-up of tension or, indeed, quite by accident, without the
assailant's intending to kill anyone. In
a transcendental civilization, assuming murder was occasionally still
committed, careful consideration would have to be given to the circumstances of
the murder, so that the exact nature of the act was accounted for and the
disposition or character of the murderer simultaneously taken into account, the
better to determine whether extenuating circumstances should be upheld. For, taken together, all these factors would
determine whether the accused required one type of correction or another or,
indeed, whether in fact he required any correction at all, it being necessary
merely to detain him until a reasonable verdict could be reached.
Of course, I don't wish to imply that certain kinds of murder
should go without censure. Detention
could mean anything from 1-5 years, depending on the criminal
circumstances. One thing I am certain
of, however, is that no-one, whatever the circumstances surrounding the act,
would be sentenced to life-imprisonment in a transcendental civilization. I would like to envisage five years as being
the maximum term of detention, with the possibility of a longer period should
such an act, or something similar, be committed by the same person again,
following release. Most people should
certainly be released from detention within a few months or, at worst, years of
their confinement. Possibly no-one would
think of committing murder in a society where all men were treated equally and
no-one had any reason to be envious of anyone else - everyone living on
approximately the same post-atomic plane.
We may suppose that, as society evolves towards a post-human epoch from
a transcendental base, all or most forms of contemporary crime will
disappear. Its causes, including alcohol
addiction, drug abuse, sexual rivalry, poverty, racial inequality, poor housing,
inadequate education, envy, greed, etc., will have been eradicated. When there are no longer barbarians in
existence because the society or, rather, civilization in question is absolute
rather than relative, there will be little or no barbarous behaviour. A civilized proletariat would have no cause
or excuse to indulge in crime. The
wonder of it is that, in a society where the majority are still effectively
barbarous, there isn't more crime than already exists. Certainly this may be said of most Western
societies!
If punishment would be incompatible with a transcendental
civilization, could the same be said of euthanasia - the painless putting to
death of the incurably ill, insane, or seriously injured? In a relativistic society there are various arguments
on this matter, a fact which accords with its relativity. In an absolutist society, however, there
could be no doubt whatsoever as to the validity of euthanasia for certain
specific cases. And the motivation, the
chief moral justification, for sanctioning it would be to put an end to pain
which, while tolerated and even admired by some people in a relativistic
society, would amount to a kind of sacrilege in one exclusively orientated
towards the post-Human Millennium ... in a post-atomic integrity. While the diabolic pagan root is intact,
while, in other words, deference is paid to the proton-proton reactions of
stellar/solar energy through some theological abstraction (the Father, the
Creator, etc.), stoicism of one degree or another will be upheld by the more
traditional or conservative elements in relativistic civilization. Once this root has been transcended, however,
no argument for the endurance of pain could be justified, and consequently
euthanasia would be officially endorsed for application to all extreme cases of
incurable pain. The very sight of pain
in a transcendental civilization would be an offence against the spirit, a
reminder of the centuries-old tyranny of the soul against which proletarian
humanity had rebelled before becoming civilized. Certainly there is no spiritual profit to be
gleaned from constant and deep suffering!
A Christian who revels in pain will be brought closer to the crucified
Christ, His transcendent salvation, however, receding into the psychological
distance. Such dualism will find no
sanction in the future! He who stems
from the Father will have been superseded by he who points man towards the Holy
Spirit - the man destined to fulfil the role of a Second Coming. Such a man can have no truck with pain!
There are, of course, other things with which a civilization
founded on the teachings of this man would have no truck, including the
maintenance of standing armies and the perpetration of war. It is doubtful that symphony orchestras or
other acoustic ensembles would be maintained, and we may surmise that all types
of acoustic music would cease to be appreciated - the same, I dare say,
applying to all types of naturalistic art, or art employing canvas and oils,
not to mention all types of narrative literature, from novels and plays to
poems and short stories, especially in relation to books, whether hardback or
softback. A transcendental civilization
wouldn't uphold any form of traditionalism or conservationism, like a
relativistic one, but would be exclusively concerned with what was relevant to
itself. And that could only mean what
was absolutely on the post-dualistic level.
Whatever pertained to tradition, no matter how important it was once
considered to be, would have been destroyed and/or consigned to the rubbish
heap of open-society history. To a
civilized proletarian the past would be something to ignore, so concerned would
he be with living in the present in the interests, needless to say, of
subsequent evolutionary progress. He
would not be concerned with a cultural heritage - no more, for that matter,
than were his barbarous predecessors who, when they weren't militantly
Marxist-Leninist in an overly state-socialist context, existed as cultural
outsiders within relativistic civilization - the bourgeois/proletarian
civilization of the contemporary capitalist/socialist West.
TWO
TYPES OF CRITICISM
One can be religious on
one of two levels, though neither level is mutually exclusive. The level, in the first place, of genuine
religion, and the level, in the second place, of quasi-religion - a
distinction, in large measure, between the absolute and the relative. Most people, at any given time, are more
likely to be religious on the second level, and certainly this may be said of
twentieth-century people. There are, in
the petty-bourgeois phases of evolution, adherents of a genuine religion, be it
neo-Catholicism and LSD tripping on the materialistic side, or neo-Puritanism
and neo-Orientalism on the spiritualistic side, as it were, of each phase, but
they are a minority, probably a tiny minority within the overall confines of
Western society - the truly civilized members of bourgeois/proletarian
civilization. Co-existent with this
minority is that overwhelming majority of people who, in the absence of a
genuine religious discipline, may loosely be described as barbarous, and whose
religiosity will accordingly take the form of adherence to one or more
manifestations of contemporary quasi-religion, such as football, cricket,
rugby, television, cinema, video, snooker, chess, quiz contests, art, music,
literature, etc., depending on their class/temperamental integrity, that is to
say, on whether their main 'religious' allegiance corresponds to the earlier or
to the later phases of petty-bourgeois evolution, the lower or higher levels of
quasi-religious indulgence, or whether, on the other hand, it is in fact
largely proletarian, as in regard to pop music.
Probably these phases or levels can be divided into materialistic and
spiritualistic sides, as in the case of genuine religion, and I shall venture
the opinion that materialist indulgence in the earlier phase of petty-bourgeois
evolution will take the form of a strong interest in football, cricket, rugby
or some such physically-biased active sport, whereas its spiritualist
counterpart will take the form of an equally strong interest in theatre,
cinema, and television, which are all appearance-biased active arts. Following on behind this, as it were, we may
find materialist indulgence in the later phase of petty-bourgeois evolution
taking the form of a strong interest in snooker, chess, darts, quiz contests,
or some such intellectually-biased passive sport, whereas its spiritualist
counterpart will take the form of a strong interest in abstract art, electronic
music, experimental literature, and biomorphic sculpture, which are all
essence-biased arts. The 'barbarous' no
less than the 'civilized' are entitled to class/temperamental distinctions.
Of course, civilized people are not exempt from an interest in
one or another form of quasi-religion, in whichever phase or on whichever side
of petty-bourgeois evolution. Quite the
contrary, most of them are keen followers of some sport or admirers of various
works of art, depending on their individual temperamental predilections for
either the materialistic or the spiritualistic sides of life. Doubtless, there must be some people whose
temperaments fall, so to speak, between two stools, making them if not equally
then at least unequally partial to both materialistic and spiritualistic
achievements. But, on the whole, it will
be found, I think, that the majority of people given to quasi-religious
devotion are not civilized, in the sense we have suggested, but
non-participators in contemporary or traditional genuine religion. Regarded in conjunction with the proletariat,
they are 'the Many', whereas the others are 'the Few', for whom petty-bourgeois
civilization is a spiritual reality - the class evolutionary stage centred on
them.
When we come to regard the age in this light, criticisms
levelled against the bourgeoisie, whether on political or religious grounds (as
applying to bourgeois art, science, literature, music, or anything else), which
are so widespread an aspect of modern life, become intelligible from a
class-evolutionary viewpoint as the rejection of the values of a preceding
governing class by their petty-bourgeois successors, who, in all vital regards,
rule the contemporary roost and are accordingly entitled to if not respect then
at least toleration from the bourgeoisie, including the grand bourgeoisie,
since there are worse things than criticism and we may be sure that the petty
bourgeoisie won't indulge in them, being a relative class themselves - if on
extreme rather than moderate terms.
Besides, the bourgeoisie would have a very difficult, not to say
impossible, task endeavouring to refute most of the criticisms levelled against
them by their petty-bourgeois successors, who are well aware that they have an
ideological superiority. Like it or not,
they are obliged to bow before the new civilized class and put-up with such
criticism, at times bordering on slander, as comes their way. This is particularly conspicuous in the realm
of so-called modern art, the abstract bias of which leaves many members of the
older class either cold or, more usually I suspect, completely bewildered,
unable as they must be, with their balanced relativity, to relate to works of
art which are near absolute in construction.
Their own representational preferences are of course mocked and, at
times, sardonically criticized by supporters of the avant-garde, who, as
members of the new class, consider themselves entitled to deal condescendingly
with what are perceived to be cultural inferiors. The bourgeoisie, as already remarked, learn
to live with this fact!
Yet if they are prepared to tolerate criticism from 'above',
the same most certainly can't be said of criticism from 'below', and by this I
don't so much mean from their grand-bourgeois and/or aristocratic predecessors
(though such criticism is at times strongly resented) as from the broad mass of
people who, lacking genuine religious allegiance, may be defined as barbarous -
in short, the proletariat. Here, if
anywhere, lies the distinction in bourgeois eyes between a reasonable criticism
based (no matter how much they may privately resent the fact) on class-cultural
superiority, and an unreasonable criticism directed against everything
bourgeois, in whichever stage of its relativity, and threatening, by its
radical vehemence, the social stability and cultural integrity of Western
civilization. The criticism of the
bourgeoisie by the proletariat is no mere extreme relativity directed against
an earlier and more moderate relativity, but something that appertains to an
absolutism the essence of which is the undermining and eventual elimination of
relativistic civilization in toto, regardless of whether the focal-points of
criticism be the grand bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie, or the petty
bourgeoisie. All criticism aimed against
the bourgeoisie strikes at the relativistic heart of petty-bourgeois
civilization when it comes from the barbarous majority, or from certain
activist quarters of it, and such criticism, it need hardly be said, is no less
objectionable to the new civilized class than to the old. Both will take measures to protect themselves
from this absolutist onslaught, even to the extent of proscribing what is
deemed to be particularly virulent and thus capable of undermining the relative
integrity of the bourgeois state.
Toleration of freedom of criticism does not extend to the absolutist
extreme in a relativistic civilization.
The so-called open society is really closed, in practice if not theory,
at the top, open, in theory if not practice, to virtually any depths below.
Were I to criticize the bourgeoisie from a petty-bourgeois
standpoint, my work would doubtless be tolerated by some and even admired by
others. Yet speaking as one who, at
least in theory, does not consider himself an integral part of petty-bourgeois
civilization but a barbarous outsider (if a comparatively well-read and
intelligent one), I cannot expect either toleration or admiration from
upholders of one or another degree of relativity. My spiritual temperament favours an
absolutist religion which, as Transcendentalism, will form the focal-point of
genuine religious allegiance in the civilization to-come. I could not, in all honesty, describe myself
as a yoga-practising petty-bourgeois extremist, still less as an extreme
puritan. I am less the upholder of a
contemporary religion than the founder of a future one, in which transcendental
meditation will play a part. Being in
favour of what pertains to tomorrow does not allow one to participate in that
which pertains to today. One can't live
wholly in two worlds at once. Paradoxically,
it is from the ranks of the quasi-religious that the blueprint for the genuine
religion of the future absolutist civilization has sprung. That, after all, conforms to evolutionary
logic!
BETWEEN
TWO GRAVITIES
In a relativistic
civilization too many people have an unfortunate tendency to regard soul and
spirit as synonymous, and primarily because, being relative themselves, they
fail to distinguish between the subatomic and the supra-atomic, as regards the
two most antithetical absolutes conceivable.
They speak of the Father and the Holy Spirit, but they don't regard the
latter as being radically different from - indeed, opposite to - the
former. They may agree that 'God is
spirit', but are only too ready to treat soul as identical with spirit, and
thus to see in fire or flame not pure soul but pure spirit! This is in effect to confound the Diabolic
with the Divine!
We are familiar with terms such as divine Providence, divine
Creator, God the Father, and so on, but not many of us bother to question
whether the terms in question really do apply to the Divine or whether, on the
contrary, there is a clear distinction between what is or would literally be
divine and what has traditionally been considered such. A monarch may justify his rule by reference
to 'Divine Right', but is it really God, considered literally as transcendent
spirit, or a metaphorically relative divinity which, if the truth were known,
is less truly divine than effectively diabolic or, rather, archdiabolic?
What is the difference, you may wonder, between the diabolic
and the archdiabolic? It is the
difference, I maintain, between the Devil and the Creator. In other words, between a 'fallen angel' and
the primary 'angel' from which, in a manner of speaking, it 'fell'. Transposed from the theological to the
scientific plane, this becomes the difference between the sun and the governing
star at the centre of the Galaxy - in short, between a petty peripheral star
and the great central one. Objectively
considered, the sun (Satan) is no more evil than the governing star (the
Creator); it is just that, from a subjective standpoint, the sun, being much
closer to the world, has more influence on us and can therefore be accorded, in
theological reckoning, a diabolic status.
The governing star, which is at a much greater distance from the earth,
becomes entitled, by contrast, to a 'divine' status; though I should like to
distinguish it from what, as transcendent spirit, would literally be
divine. By comparison to the divinity of
the supra-atomic, the 'divinity' of the subatomic can only be described in
terms of the archdiabolic when pertaining to the Creator-equivalent central
star of any particular galaxy.
If size and strength more than galactic position (though the
two are of course linked) determines the distinction between the archdiabolic
and the diabolic, viz. the Creator and Satan, then what they both have in
common as stars is a subatomic constitution, as implying proton-proton
reactions. This is the quality of pure
soul, the most negative sensation. By
contrast, the quality of pure spirit, as pertaining to the supra-atomic, is
electron-electron attractions, the most positive awareness. This is no mean distinction! It signifies the beginning and the end of
evolution - the one beneath, the other above the atomic compromise of temporal
matter. Such a compromise, manifesting
itself on all levels of earthly life, is only subject to radical change in man,
and then on a class-evolutionary basis.
Pagan/aristocratic man lived in an atomic compromise biased towards
protons. Christian/bourgeois man lives
in an atomic compromise balanced between protons and electrons. Transcendental/proletarian man will live in
an atomic compromise biased towards electrons.
The first class-stage signified a radical stemming from the Diabolic
Alpha. The second class-stage, in
whichever phase, signifies a moderate stemming from the Diabolic Alpha and a
no-less moderate aspiration towards the Divine Omega. The third and final class-stage will signify
a radical aspiration towards the Divine Omega.
All forms of diabolism, whether conscious or unconscious, direct or
indirect, will be completely alien to it.
Consequently, such a society can only be atheistic with regard to such a
concept as the Creator.
Man betrays himself at every stage of his evolution, not just
in terms of worship and/or self-realization, but also in terms of his art,
science, politics, sexuality, dress, even architecture. I use the verb 'betrays' in the sense of
revealing his evolutionary position at any given time, and one of the most
striking forms of betrayal is indeed to be found in his architecture, about
which I should like to theorize a little.
There is no clearer, more striking architectural indication of
a society radically stemming from the Diabolic Alpha than through the use of
conical or pyramidal forms. Such forms
indicate a high regard for the gravitational force of the sun as they taper to
a point high above the heads of men. A
particularly striking example is afforded by the pyramids of ancient Egypt,
which are triangular in design as they taper to a point from three sides. It cannot surprise us that the ancient
Egyptians, besides being animal-worshippers, were confirmed sun-worshippers,
and no greater concession to solar gravity could be imagined than that evinced
by each of the main pyramids, originally erected as tombs to the Pharaohs. Even the Aztec civilization of Central
America, despite its overtly diabolical integrity, bespeaks a degree of
evolutionary improvement on the architectural monuments of ancient Egypt, to
the extent that the pyramidal forms taper to a point in step-wise,
vertical/horizontal progression, suggestive of an indirect rather than a direct
concession to the sun's gravitational force.
Other instances of a society radically stemming from the Diabolic Alpha
are not difficult to find, and even certain Native American tribes, with their
pre-architectural quasi-nomadic lifestyles, could be cited as a people whose
conical dwellings, or wigwams, betrayed a shamelessly direct concession to
solar gravity. Given the fact that these
wigwams were more usually conical than triangular, we may ascribe to Native
Americans a spiritual approach to the Diabolic Alpha, an approach similar, in
effect, to the revolution in architectural style wrought by the dome in
late-pagan and early-Christian Europe - the tapering somehow less radical
because curvilinear.
With regard to the bourgeois stage of evolution, the
acknowledgement of a transcendental ethos having reduced man's commitment to
the Diabolic Alpha (in whichever manifestation) and imposed on him a moderate
aspiration, through Christ, towards the Divine Omega, the 'Kingdom Within', we
find that architectural styles came to mirror this dualistic integrity by the
new emphasis placed on the vertical, gravitation-defying character of walls in
their relation to stories, which accords with Christian respect for the
transcendent. And yet a concession to
gravitational force, whether from the sun or the central star of the Galaxy,
was still in order and appertained to the tapering design of roofs, with or
without turrets, so that a compromise was effected, in accordance with
Christian dualistic principles, between the diabolic-affirming and the
diabolic-defying, as regards the diagonal roof and the vertical walls,
variations on the former according with the epochal/class integrity of the
buildings in question.
This brings us, I think, to the exclusively gravity-defying
architecture of the late-twentieth century and beyond, many of the most
conspicuous examples of which can be found in the USA, which, though aligned
with Western civilization and effectively a bourgeois/proletarian nation,
upholds a considerable number of proletarian tendencies, some of which are
quite civilized. With this
transcendental architecture, as I shall call it, man has turned his back on the
diabolic and pursued a gravity-defying style of building that maintains
unbroken allegiance to the vertical, as the parallel sides of these skyscrapers
terminate in the horizontality of a flat roof.
So gravity-defying are some of these buildings that, not content to defy
the sun, they also seem to float clear of the ground, as in Van der Rohe's work
employing steel supports reminiscent of stilts.
Whether or not a central 'block' support is employed at the base of the
building, the general impression created by such works is of the transcendent,
as of a building engrossed in the gravity-defying achievement of levitation.
As to the formal shapes employed, I would maintain that angular
or rectilinear walls betray a materialist approach to modern architecture,
cylindrical or curvilinear walls a spiritualist approach. Probably the best approach of all, from a
religious standpoint, would be the use of a curvilinear design pressing
upwardly outwards, as implying a spiritual expansion, and I know of no better
example than the church designed by Le Corbusier, namely Notre Dame en Haut,
which, while not exactly harmonizing with the Catholic religion, suggests the
possibility of future development in the context of religious architecture, as
applying to the eventual erection of meditation centres - the appropriate type
of religious buildings for a transcendental civilization. Thus it may well transpire that a strict distinction
between the secular and the religious will be upheld, as between rectilinear
and curvilinear styles.
Having briefly theorized on the relations of architecture to
man's evolutionary position, I should like to conclude this essay by drawing
attention to another context, often overlooked, in which either a concession to
gravitational force or a denial of it is maintained, and with regard, in
contrast to the above, to the gravitational force of the earth's molten core -
namely, with regard to footwear and trousers.
For just as a concession to the sun's gravity induces a proliferation of
architectural styles tapering, in various degrees, upwards, so the parallel
concession to that of the earth's molten core induces a proliferation of
footwear and legwear tapering downwards, either literally or metaphorically to
a point. In the case of legwear, as I
have called it, a conspicuous example of this downwards-tapering is afforded by
the importance men once ascribed to leggings and tight, knee-length stockings,
which contrasted with their short, baggy trousers (breeches) in such a way as
to suggest what I have described as a concession to the earth's gravitational
force, and thus to betray a sartorial integrity, whether pagan or aristocratic,
stemming from the Diabolic Alpha. In the
case of footwear, we can have no hesitation in defining high-heeled and pointed
shoes as indicative of a similar trend, though one more conspicuously pervasive
among women than men, and not least of all in our own time!
This brings us to the point that, as with architecture,
footwear and legwear will undergo a corresponding change in favour of
gravity-defying or transcending styles ... with the progression from
aristocratic to bourgeois and, finally, proletarian stages of evolutionary
development. If straight trousers and
slightly downwards-tapering heels on shoes attest to a bourgeois stage of
compromise or neutral relationship to the earth's gravity, then it need not
surprise us to discover that flared trousers and slightly upwards-tapering
heels attest to a proletarian stage relevant to a gravity-defying
transcendental society. In an extreme
relativistic civilization, such as exists in the bourgeois/proletarian West,
one can encounter virtually any style of footwear or legwear; though the style
generally worn by any given person will correspond to his basic class, not to
mention sexual, allegiance. We may infer
from this that while such a heterogeneous situation accords with the everywhichway
integrity of relativistic civilization, no such heterogeneity could be
encouraged in an absolutist civilization, where only gravity-defying trousers
and shoes would be permissible, in accordance with its transcendental
essence. It is therefore highly unlikely
that high-heels and downwards-tapering trousers would continue to be worn in a
civilized proletarian society. On the
contrary, only such clothing as betokened man's freedom from diabolism, and
thereby attested to an absolute aspiration towards the Divine Omega.
UNDERSTANDING
JAZZ
There was a time when
jazz could be described as the music of the black American, but in an age of
multi-racial interest in and commitment to jazz, that is no longer necessarily
the case. If anything, jazz ceased to be
a black man's music with the dawn of 'modern jazz', and we may note an
acoustic/electric distinction between the traditional and the modern.
Since the twentieth century was a predominantly petty-bourgeois
age, I think it only fair to define jazz as a form of serious petty-bourgeois
music. I would even go so far as to say
that it was the American equivalent of European classical music, which, in the
twentieth century, also developed a specifically petty-bourgeois integrity,
though one more conservative and, contrary to superficial appearances, deeply
rooted in tradition than its American counterpart. Although, following Schoenberg's lead, much
of this European music is atonal or, at any rate, relatively atonal compared to
nineteenth-century Romanticism, it has remained largely acoustic, not rivalled
the best modern jazz in the use of electric instruments. Furthermore, it has retained, in the great
majority of cases, a dependence on scores and conductors, thereby betraying a
respect for conceptual appearances which, except in a small minority of cases,
is not to be found in modern jazz, or even, as a rule, in its traditional
precursor. Clearly, American jazz is
more transcendental than European orchestral music and thus entitled, in my
opinion, to be regarded as a mainstream, as opposed to subsidiary, form of
petty-bourgeois serious music. And this
in conjunction with a similar distinction which I have elsewhere applied to art
and which can, I believe, be applied to most other subjects as well, depending
on whether they pertain to the genuinely petty-bourgeois nations of the Western
world, like America and Germany, or to the pseudo-petty-bourgeois ones, like
Britain and France, which are still firmly rooted in bourgeois tradition.
Thus, in art, the distinction between Expressionism and Impressionism,
as pertaining to the genuinely petty-bourgeois civilization in the earlier
stage of its development, and Cubism and Symbolism, which pertain to their
materialist and spiritualist counterparts respectively within the confines of
the pseudo-petty-bourgeois nations, is paralleled, in music, by the distinction
between jazz on the one hand and classical on the other, a distinction itself
capable of being divided into a spiritualist and a materialist side in each
case, so that we may speak of acoustic tonal jazz as the materialistic
counterpart of late-Romanticism and, by contrast, of electric tonal jazz as the
spiritualistic counterpart of neo-Classicism.
We may also mark the evolution of jazz from an earlier to a later stage,
again paralleling the evolution of classical from late-Romanticism to
non-serial atonal composition on the materialist side, and from neo-Classicism
to serialized atonal composition on the spiritualist side, which I shall define
in terms of atonal electric on the one hand and atonal acoustic on the
other. Thus where the one side signifies
an expansion of spirituality with the assistance of electric instruments, the
other side signifies a contraction of materialism through the use of acoustic instruments
- something that has also happened in European serious music, though, in my
estimation, to a less radical extent.
If, then, jazz may be claimed to have progressed from a stage
stemming from bourgeois tonality to a stage aspiring towards proletarian
atonality, and to have done so from two points of view, viz. a materialist and
a spiritualist, is there any possibility, I wonder, of its evolving beyond this
latter stage to an absolutely proletarian one?
The answer to this has, I think, to be - no. For jazz, whether acoustic or electric, would
cease to be jazzy if it abandoned the one thing that keeps it tied to the
relative, albeit extreme, petty-bourgeois level - namely, percussion. Jazz, of whichever variety, is the wedding of
pagan rhythmic vitality and consistency to either tonality or atonality
produced on mostly artificial instruments, formerly saxophones and trumpets,
latterly electric keyboards and guitars; though the two kinds of instruments,
corresponding to an earlier and a later manifestation of the artificial, often
overlap in practice. Jazz is simply
incapable of evolving beyond petty-bourgeois criteria. It cannot be the ultimate music since, to all
appearances, it is a penultimate music, relevant to an extreme relativistic
civilization. Beyond and above modern
jazz must come the universal proletarian music of electric atonality.
Why should music progress to an atonal integrity? The straight answer to that is: in order to
escape from rhythm and thus be in the best possible position to intimate of the
Divine Omega, that is to say, to impress rather than to express. Melody reflects an atomic integrity to the
extent that it is composed of rhythm and pitch - the former horizontal, the
latter vertical. Melodic music is
therefore quintessentially relative, a compromise, as it were, between rhythm
and pitch, which is only possible and morally acceptable during an atomic stage
of civilized evolution. Before this
compromise arose, music was absolutist on the horizontal level of rhythm, a music
of the soul, feminine and sensuous.
After it has passed, music will become absolutist on the vertical level
of pitch, a music of the spirit, masculine and intellectual. Such music can only be atonal, or non-melodic,
the complete antithesis of pagan music, having transcended rhythm in its
absolutist dedication to pitch, whereby a musical impression of the
transcendent will be achieved. That is
the moral significance of atonality, and such atonality can only be truly
transcendent, and therefore in the best position to intimate of the Divine
Omega, when projected from an electric basis - the most artificial, or
synthetic, technical medium.
By contrast, jazz never abandons the percussive root and is
consequently always part expressive.
When atonal and electric it can be predominantly impressive but, as
already noted, it would cease to be jazzy (and thus to swing) if ever it became
exclusively so. There are, of course,
jazz albums which abandon the percussive root intermittently, and certainly
this can be said of the now-defunct American band Weather Report. But, overall, jazz predominates on such
albums within any particular composition, and must necessarily continue to do
so, in the context of relativistic civilization. Conversely, when the melodic or atonal apex
is abandoned, as it often is on albums that feature a drummer in the role of
band leader, the resultant music sinks beneath jazz to a purely rhythmic level,
approximating to the pagan, and may be defined as the most evil music
conceivable. Again, jazz usually
predominates on these albums, and sometimes the overall balance is such that
pure rhythm will be preceded or succeeded by pure pitch or, at the very least,
unaccompanied melody. For it often
happens that one extreme calls forth another, and certainly I can think of a
number of compositions in which frantic rhythm from the drums is countered by
electric atonality from either sax, guitar, or keyboards, so that the
impression created is of a music in which the parts are at loggerheads and
seemingly indulging in a musical tug-of-war between rhythm and pitch, alpha and
omega. This is not, to say the least, a
particularly laudable situation! But
neither, for that matter, is the analogous context of a 'melody' at war with
itself, now predominantly rhythmic, now predominantly atonal, and indisposed to
the preservation of a melodic compromise, or classical balance. And yet these situations mirror the
evolutionary struggle which is constantly taking place between rhythm and
pitch, as between evil and good, soul and spirit, in an extreme relativistic
age. Such struggles are also taking place in European classical music, though,
as a rule, on less radical terms.
When we ask ourselves what it is that makes jazz a serious or
civilized music, I think the basic answer has to be: its commitment to
instrumentality, and therefore relatively high degree of artificiality. Vocals do of course occur, but usually as a
minor rather than a major ingredient in the overall instrumental scope of an
album, as pertaining, on average, to one or two tracks, and then more usually
of a religious connotation - one compatible, needless to say, with
petty-bourgeois criteria. For it is
virtually axiomatic that to be civilized, particularly on the extreme
relativistic level we are discussing, music must be either exclusively
instrumental or accompanied, in part, by vocals of a religious
significance. An album of romantic
songs, on the other hand, falls somewhat short of the civilized by dint both of
its excessive commitment to the voice - a natural instrument - and the sexual
or emotional content of the songs. Being
civilized, at whatever stage of class evolution, is to a large extent
synonymous with being religious (spiritual), though being sophisticated is a
subsidiary requirement more likely to find favour among materialists, whose
music, while being exclusively or predominantly instrumental, isn't consciously
intended to convey a religious notion.
No doubt, much of the jazz I characterized, a short while ago, as
materialist, through its dependence on acoustic instruments, is only entitled
to consideration as a civilized music on account of its technical
sophistication. But by this fact alone
it stands in an inferior relation to its spiritual counterpart, whether of the
tonal or atonal varieties.
While we may therefore be justified in discriminating between
the civilized and the barbarous, as between jazz of one kind or another and
such popular romance-biased kinds of vocal music as blues, soul, funk, reggae,
rock 'n' roll, pop, rock, and punk, it often happens that respected jazz
musicians abandon the civilized level not for the barbarous as such - though
the incorporation of, say, rock elements into jazz creates a 'fusion' music
which may broadly be defined as bourgeois/proletarian - but a kind of popular
petty-bourgeois level, implying the production of albums with a preponderance
of vocals, and vocals, moreover, of a romantic and/or sexist nature. And yet, as a rule, these musicians cling by
a slender thread to their civilized roots, even if ambiguously, and retain at
least one track of either pure instrumentality or a vocal bias whose
connotations are distinctly religious.
With the greatest, most civilized jazz musicians, however, there is
little or no concession to the popular at all.
Musicians like Jean-Luc Ponty and John McLaughlin have been producing a
succession of instrumental albums year after year. They are fast becoming something of an
exception in the realm of modern jazz, a small minority of the consistently
civilized. Perhaps it is no mere coincidence
that both Ponty and McLaughlin are European?
And yet a European in jazz is almost as unusual as an American
in classical, not merely in terms of performance but, more significantly, of
composition. Why is it that, just as
there were so many great European classical composers in the twentieth century,
there were, comparatively speaking, so few great European jazz composers in
it? And, conversely, why should there be
so many great American jazz composers but, by comparison, so few great American
classical composers? Is not the answer
to both these questions that whereas classical is pre-eminently a European
phenomenon, jazz is an American one pre-eminently, and that, though
cross-fertilization does occur, the mainstream commitments to each type of
music will be regional, accruing to the continental divide. The American jazz composers who adopt
classical influences are as rare a breed as the European classical composers
who adopt the influence of jazz. Rarer
still are the American classical composers and the European jazz composers,
both of whom, though working in an alien tradition, sooner or later tend to
bend their respective types of music back towards their native influences, so
that American 'classical' becomes jazzy (Copland, Gershwin, Barber, Bernstein,
et al.), whilst European 'jazz' becomes classical or, at any rate, retains a
respect and proclivity for classical procedure (Ponty, McLaughlin, Catherine,
Weber, Hammer, Vitous, Ackermann, et al.).
And this no less so when the composer/performer concerned has spent many
years on the other continent, particularly in the case of European jazz
musicians who have emigrated to or chosen to work in America. No great surprise, therefore, when we
discover that the purest jazz is composed by Americans and the purest classical
by Europeans! And yet even this is not
exempt from a degree of cross-fertilization, whether conscious or
unconscious. Certainly there is some
classical in Chick Corea, just as there is some jazz in Michael Tippett. A relativistic civilization, divisible into
mainstream and subsidiary elements, could not be otherwise!
PHILOSOPHY
- GENUINE AND PSEUDO
There is a difference
between philosophy-proper and metaphysical philosophy, the pseudo-philosophy
which has developed with increasing tenacity along mainly petty-bourgeois lines
over the past 150 or so years - indeed, ever since Schopenhauer, that great
'anti-philosopher', took it upon himself to dig into oriental metaphysics and
preach a doctrine of self-denial in the interests of spiritual salvation. To the extent that Schopenhauer was
metaphysical, he was an anti-philosopher, that is to say, a
pseudo-philosopher. For philosophy-proper
in the West is not concerned with the essence of things but, on the
contrary, with their appearance, and this whether it is on a grand-bourgeois,
a bourgeois, or a petty-bourgeois level, as pertaining to a critique of nature,
a critique of ethics, or a critique of language. A distinction, in other words, between the
natural, the human, and the artificial, as applying, in various degrees, to the
works of, say, Bacon, Kant, and Wittgenstein respectively. Of course, the critique of nature or, more
precisely, the classification and study of natural phenomena, is the root
concern of Western philosophy, and this is more likely to be carried through
with consistency and thoroughness in a pagan age than in a Christian one. Thus Bacon could not hope, in this respect,
to emulate the work of Aristotle, who had the ideologically naturalistic
integrity of pagan civilization behind him.
But neither did Plato go quite so far, in his ethics, as Kant, and
doubtless because pagan ethical thinking reflected a lower scale-of-values,
relative to an earlier stage of evolution, than its Christian successor in the
West. Needless to say, there was no
attempt at a critique of language by the ancient Greeks, since such a critique
can only materialize in an extensively urban civilization, presupposing a
greater degree of evolution.
Each civilization tends, within limits, to evolve according to
its own capacities and technological capabilities. If the civilization of the ancient Greeks was
unable to evolve beyond a town stage of evolution, then it need not surprise us
that its thought was likewise unable to evolve beyond a level commensurate with
such an environment. The Christian
civilization of the West fared rather better in the long term, though not
without having had to pass through intermediate environmental stages
corresponding to those of the ancients, in which a philosophical concern with
nature (Bacon) and ethics (Kant) took precedence. The evolution of philosophy to the stage of a
critique of language had to wait until Western civilization was at a comparatively
advanced environmental stage, as it was in Habsburg Vienna at the turn of the
nineteenth century, where Wittgenstein set the trend for subsequent
philosophers, including Berlin, Barthes, and Merleau-Ponty, to follow. Wherever philosophy has been diverted from
this central twentieth-century concern with language, it has entered the realm
of metaphysics, as in the cases, to varying extents, of Heidegger, Jaspers,
Sartre, and Weil, and thereupon become a pseudo-philosophy, descended, at least
in part, from the metaphysical preoccupations of Schopenhauer.
More overtly than this largely essayistic writing, the
utilization of novels and short prose as vehicles for the exposition of
metaphysical speculation, as in Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, and Simone de
Beauvoir, developed in the twentieth century to a point where such writings may
be said to constitute the bulk of contemporary pseudo-philosophy in the
West. As Western civilization is nothing
if not relative, suspended between the pagan and the transcendental absolutes
of naturalistic philosophy on the one hand and of abstract theosophy on the
other, we cannot dismiss such pseudo-philosophy as an aberration or unwarranted
intrusion of the theosophical into the realm of speculation. On the contrary, pseudo-philosophy is an
integral part of this relativistic civilization, particularly in its later
stages of development, when an aspiration towards the theosophical, and thus
extension of thought into essence, is becoming more intensified. If formerly, under the influence of
aristocratic absolutism, academic philosophy had little or no competition from
a metaphysical rival (Christian theology being something else), then with the
advancement of Western civilization into an extreme, or petty-bourgeois, age
there can be no question that such competition will develop and be intensified
to a point where the 'pseudo' predominates over the 'genuine'.
In contrast to the West, the East has long maintained a
metaphysical tradition - indeed, so long ... that one has reason to doubt
whether there was ever a physical tradition behind it! Strictly speaking, the East cannot be
described as philosophical; for where there is no critique of nature or ethics
or language ... there can be no genuine philosophy. Rather, the Orient has long been
theosophical, concerned with essence, and thus antithetical to the Occident,
whether or not we include within that designation Greco-Roman
civilization. As the West, even in its
Christian guise, has been philosophical and scientific, so the East has been
theosophical and poetic, theosophy being to poetry what science is to
philosophy - the empirical or experiential confirmation of intuitively realized
speculation and occasionally, no doubt, its correction. And, being theosophical, the East has
produced much instructive and devotional poetry, just as the West has produced
- the famous exception of the so-called 'Metaphysical Poets' notwithstanding -
comparatively little, since poetry in the West has more often than not been
associated with nature and feminine beauty, partaking of a quasi-philosophical
integrity which, in contrast to the East's theosophical one, may be described
as physico-poetic. To Keats, 'Beauty is
truth, truth beauty', and we have no reason to be surprised, given his apparent bias (and this
regardless of Aldous Huxley's defence of Keatsian logic by reference, in The Perennial
Philosophy, to a factual interpretation of truth!).
By contrast to the East, however, the West has produced a
substantial body of academic philosophy, the most recent manifestations of which
will find few parallels in the East. And
yet there has been a slight shift of
emphasis, in recent decades, from philosophy to theosophy in the West, and, as
a corollary of this, a corresponding shift of emphasis from theosophy to
philosophy in the East, so that an attempt at attaining to a compromise is
under way in deference to evolutionary requirement. For a world civilization - which is what
evolution would seem to have in store for humanity - cannot come about if the
two main hemispheres of the world are at loggerheads. On the contrary, it presupposes a compromise
between science and theosophy, as between physics and metaphysics, the one in
the service of the other as man struggles towards the post-Human Millennium -
an epoch when science, as technology, and theosophy, as meditation, will be
brought to a pitch of harmonious compromise, transcending all hitherto-imagined
formulae on the subject. An epoch, I
mean, when human brains will be artificially supported and sustained in
communal contexts, first as Supermen experiencing upward self-transcendence
through LSD or equivalent synthetic hallucinogens, then, following the removal
of the old brain from each superhuman individual by qualified technicians, as
Superbeings, or collectivized new brains experiencing not merely upward
self-transcendence but the nearest thing, prior the heavenly Beyond, to pure
self, as the interconnected new brains of each Superbeing hypermeditate towards
total transcendence in salvation from the flesh (or its remnants thereof) and
consequent attainment to Heaven ... conceived as pure spirit expanding and
converging towards other such transcendences in order to establish, with the
eventual culmination of heavenly evolution, the Omega Point, i.e. the
definitive globe of transcendent spirit, the supreme being of the One, at the
opposite pole of evolution to the most infernal doing of ... the Many, i.e. the
stars (large and small), which constitute the Diabolic Alpha, but which
old-world religions paradoxically describe in terms of the Divine, i.e. the
'heavens'.
Be that as it may, men of the future absolutist civilization
won't follow suit, since they will have their minds turned to an exclusive
aspiration towards the Divine Omega through self-realization, with no time, in
consequence, to worship the alpha or its theological successor in some kind of
Christ-like anthropomorphic compromise.
For as the 'Three in One', Christ combines, to a relative degree, both
Father and Holy Spirit within Himself as man. Like all men, He is thus a combination, as it
were, of alpha and omega, neither wholly one (the Father) nor the other (the
Holy Ghost), and therefore a distinctly 'Second Person' entity worshipped by
Christians as God. The future
transcendental civilization, however, won’t have any time for the worship of
such a man-god, but will concentrate, through transcendental meditation, on
self-realization as a step towards ultimate divinity. That such a divinity won't be fully attained
to during the duration of this final human civilization ... can be no argument
against the practice of TM. Men will
simply have to make the best of their situation and do what they can to create
a society closer than any previous one has ever been to the heavenly goal of
evolution.
The fact that this society will eventually be bettered, come
the post-Human Millennium, is no argument against its short-term existence,
since evolution proceeds by degrees towards a long-term goal and cannot proceed
straight from the Christian or petty-bourgeois (yoga) civilizations to the
Millennium in question, jumping over the need for and justification of a
transcendental civilization. Neither can
it jump over the post-Human Millennium or, rather, act, through men, as though
the millennial Beyond were unnecessary because some people wrongly assume that
Heaven can be attained to, in the pure spirit of transcendence, from human
effort alone! Unfortunately that is far
from being the case, and the Christian West is not alone is assuming the
contrary! Given its traditional disregard
for technology, the non-Christian East is even more exposed to this fallacy,
with consequences all-too-painfully familiar to warrant further mention
here. For unless men are eventually
superseded by Supermen (brain collectivizations), and they in turn by
Superbeings (new-brain collectivizations), there will be no eventual attainment
of spirit to the heavenly Beyond, in the absolute purity of total
transcendence. Neither the West nor the
East has realized this fact, but the world will have to realize it in the
future, as it adopts my truth as a means to Heaven, that is to say, to the
ultimate truth ... of pure spirit.
Clearly this truth has nothing to do with academic philosophy,
with a critique of apparent phenomena, whether natural or artificial or
somewhere in-between, but corresponds to the furthest development of the
pseudo-philosophical, the most metaphysical of writings, suggestive of prose
poetry, to have yet arisen. Not the
climax to a petty-bourgeois tradition, but the inception of proletarian
absolutism on terms which transcend the relative. This absolutism I distinguish from the
relative as philosophical theosophy - the root universal guide for the pioneers
of the final human civilization, global and transcendent, to follow. May they learn from me well; for theirs is
the road of pure essence, the culmination of all spiritual striving!
THE
ULTIMATE MUSIC
Bourgeois music is a
music the melodic integrity of which is usually balanced between rhythm and
pitch. Either side of this music, in
class-evolutionary terms, is music that is of a melodic integrity either
predominantly given to rhythm, as in the case of the grand bourgeoisie, or
predominantly given to pitch, as in the case of the petty bourgeoisie, both of
which classes are themselves divisible into an earlier and a later stage, the
musical constitution of which will be either more or less extreme but never, or
rarely, totally extreme. By which I mean
absolutist, and therefore given to the production of either pure rhythm or pure
pitch. These extreme stages correspond,
by contrast, to aristocratic (pagan) and proletarian (transcendental) absolutes
- pre-atomic and post-atomic integrities either side of a bourgeois (Christian)
atomicity. Consequently they are not, as
a rule, to be encountered within the confines of relativistic
civilization! The rhythmic purism
preceded it and the atonal purism will succeed it. The earlier stage of grand-bourgeois music stems
from the former in its predominantly rhythmic content; the later stage of
petty-bourgeois music aspires towards the latter in a predominantly atonal
context; though such music, whether as modern jazz or avant-garde classical, is
rarely atonal in the strictly post-rhythmic sense. There accrues to it at least a vestige of
rhythm in either melody or percussion, the latter particularly prominent in
modern jazz which, owing to its negroid roots, is more susceptible to
percussively rhythmic indulgence than most forms of contemporary classical.
Taking the evolution of music as a whole, we can contend that
its progression is from evil to good via an evil/good compromise. There is nothing lower or morally worse, in
musical terms, than pure rhythm, while, conversely, there is nothing higher or
morally better than pure pitch. The one stems
from the diabolic absolutism ... of proton-proton reactions, the other aspires
towards the divine absolutism ... of electron-electron attractions. In between, one finds the atomic compromise
of melody, as pertaining to all stages of relativistic civilization. Melody is to music what Christ is to religion
- the humanistic, 'intellectual' compromise coming in-between the alpha/omega
extremes. Thus pure rhythm stands to
music as God the Father to religion, viz. the alpha soulful extreme, while pure
pitch stands to music as the Holy Ghost to religion, viz. the omega spiritual
extreme. Being relative, Christian
civilization is content with a melodic compromise equivalent to Christ, either
literally, as balanced between rhythm and pitch, or biased towards one or other
of the two extremes, depending, to a significant extent, on the epoch in
question. It has no desire to embrace a
post-atomic absolutism. That must be
left to a transcendental civilization, in which free-electron criteria will
prevail.
Thus notes are to music what electrons are to atoms - the
spiritual, positive, expansive ingredient, and we may define them as electron
equivalents. By contrast, rhythm may be
defined as the proton equivalent - the soulful, negative, contractive side of
the atom, and in the musical equivalent of an atomic integrity notes will be
bound to rhythm in melody, either with or without a percussive
accompaniment. Jazz and classical are
alike subject to percussive accompaniment, which stands to melody as God the
Father to Christ. Usually, as noted
above, there is more percussion in jazz than in classical, but quite often the
treatment of percussion in the latter, particularly in the orchestral guise of
symphonies, is more violent than in the former, if, as a mitigating factor, its
use is rather more intermittent than continuous.
Yet if classical is, on the whole, nobler than jazz in respect
of a less frequent recourse to percussion, it isn't, as a rule, quite so
transcendental as regards instrumentation and pitch, since not only tied to
acoustic means but, through scores and conductors, to tonal or quasi-atonal
notation as well. Indeed, the term
'quasi-atonal' aptly serves as a definition of higher petty-bourgeois music,
whether in jazz or classical, since complete atonality, though possible, would
transcend relativity and thus render all forms of rhythmic accompaniment,
whether percussive (overt) or notational (covert), taboo - a situation hardly
compatible with a petty-bourgeois civilization, in which criteria of musical
excellence and moral acceptability are ever relative! Besides, no less than contemporary classical,
jazz has its own safeguards or inhibitions against genuine atonality built-in
to the instrumental integrity of the music, whereby the persistence of a
percussive root makes the pursuit of atonality all but impossible. A violin or a guitar that seems to be free on
an atonal flight one moment ... will be brought back into line, as it were,
with a concession to rhythm or melody the next.
This is a fair definition of the quasi-atonal. And yet, morally considered, it signifies a
distinct improvement on persistent melody, such as can be found in trad jazz
and in most types of bourgeois and early petty-bourgeois classical. The electron equivalent is therein straining
at the leash, so to speak, of proton constraint, which can only auger well for
the future freeing of pitch from all forms of rhythm. Only when pitch is completely free to exist
on its own spiritual terms ... will music attain to a climax, becoming, in
consequence, purely transcendent. Such a
climax, it need scarcely be emphasized, cannot be achieved or furthered by the
adherents of relativistic civilization.
It will fall to those nations/musicians specifically concerned with the
development of an absolutist civilization.
Which instrument or instruments, you may well wonder, would be
most appropriate for a truly atonal music?
Certainly none of the traditional acoustic ones, whether predominantly
made of wood or of brass. Not, either,
such typically petty-bourgeois or, rather, bourgeois/proletarian instruments as
electric guitars, bases, pianos, organs, and the like. Although signifying an evolutionary
improvement upon their acoustic counterparts, these instruments require a
degree of manual manipulation incompatible, it seems to me, with the
transcendental criteria of an absolutist civilization. The playing of an electric guitar, for
example, presupposes a compromise between rhythm and pitch, the fingers of one
hand being concerned with notes, either separately or collectively, and those,
or one or more, of the other hand having to sustain the notes through a variety
of rhythmical procedures either independent of or, if more civilized, dependent
on a plectrum.
Clearly, such musical relativity would be incompatible with an
absolutist civilization! The electric
guitar is nothing if not a quintessentially bourgeois/proletarian
instrument. For though, as an electric instrument,
it signifies an expansion of the spiritual, its technical manipulation
presupposes a degree of respect for the rhythmical. This, however, isn't the case or, at any
rate, needn't be so where synthesizers are concerned, which can be programmed
to realize a variety of atonal sequences independently of manual control, being
susceptible, in any case, to the minimum of manual effort. I would be extremely surprised if such highly
synthetic instruments didn't play a leading role in realizing the music of
tomorrow, a music programmed in advance and conveyed by remote control, thereby
relieving composers of the obligation to perform their own music in public, an
obligation which, though concerned with the cultivation of being, entails a
degree of doing. A civilization with an
emphasis on transcendent being couldn't countenance very much mundane doing!
And yet, the performance of a particular work by the composer
himself, either alone or in conjunction with other musicians, is preferable,
from an evolutionary standpoint, to the performance by a number of musicians of
someone else's work, and we may note here an important distinction between
modern jazz and its classical counterpart, the latter of which entails, more
often than not, a division between composer and performers, thereby indicating
a greater concession to relativity and making, in the process, for a dependence
on scores and conductors - two factors which presuppose a degree of respect for
appearances and, by implication, the proton root. Were classical music determined to become completely
essential, entirely rhythm-free, this situation could not be countenanced. But the plain fact of the matter is that
classical music has no such ambitions, being resigned to reflecting, in various
degrees, an atomic relativity, the structure of which bespeaks a compromise
between essence and appearance, inner and outer, in deference to relativistic
criteria. Here, as in certain other
contexts, it is inferior to jazz, a music which scorns appearance in a partly
memorized, partly improvised musical self-sufficiency approximating to essence
and therefore closer, in consequence, to a musical absolutism, whereby no
composer/performer, conductor/score lacunae exist between performer(s) and
music. It is on account of such facts
that modern jazz is entitled to be considered a mainstream petty-bourgeois
music, one more transcendental than its orchestral counterpart, as applying, in
the main, to Europe. And to the extent
that, since the late-twentieth century, America is the leading petty-bourgeois
or, at any rate, bourgeois/proletarian nation, and jazz is essentially an
American phenomenon, then we can't be surprised if this should be the case.
Speaking as an Irish-born writer, it is scant humiliation for
me to discover and acknowledge such a fact, since I am led, with my spiritual
bias, to identify more closely with American than with European culture, though
not to the point of forgetting that the bourgeois/proletarian civilization of
the contemporary West and the future transcendental civilization, which I hope
Ireland will be instrumental in furthering, are two entirely different things,
in consequence of which very little common ground can be established between
them. If modern jazz, as pertaining to
bourgeois/proletarian civilization in its predominantly petty-bourgeois phase,
is the 'best of a bad job' in musical class-evolutionary terms, it is still
somewhat short of being a completely 'good job', which could only develop, it
seems to me, in a society dedicated to absolute values and, hence, to the
establishment of a free-electron music - electronic and, in its pure pitch,
highly appropriate to a people who pay no respects to the alpha, nor to its
part-alpha 'Son', but are dedicated, instead, to an exclusive, absolutist
aspiration towards the omega. Such
transcendental music, significant of the post-atomic, will be vastly superior
to melodic music and almost infinitely superior to its pagan precursor in the
overly percussive past. It will be the
ultimate music, of universal import.
