TO THE MILLENNIUM AND BEYOND

Mrs Reynolds returned from the kitchen bearing a small circular tray upon which stood three mugs of steaming coffee, and gently placed it on the coffee table between the two men, who were still deeply engrossed in conversation. She glanced from the one to the other and, catching their attention, suggested that they help themselves to the coffee whilst it was still hot. "I do hope you won't find it too strong," she added for the benefit of their guest - a thin, dark-haired forty-year-old, who was privileged to be visiting the Reynolds' house for the first time.

Robert Moore reached out a slender hand with more hairs on the back of it than Jacqui Reynolds had ever seen on any man before and, lifting the bright-blue mug to his lips, duly confessed to finding the coffee just to his taste. (In point of fact it was slightly sweeter than he would have liked, though he didn't say so for fear of giving offence. No doubt, the two spoons of sugar she had put into it at his request were bigger than he had anticipated!)

Mrs Reynolds smiled her relief and, helping herself to the remaining mug, betook her slender form to the space beside her husband on their dark-green settee. From his matching armchair opposite them, the young freelance writer on art sipped steadily at his drink and momentarily allowed his attention to be caught by Mrs Reynolds' shapely legs, which for a brief second or two, before she tactfully readjusted her skirt, were at least three-quarters exposed. He could very rarely resist the temptation to stare at or, at the very least, notice an attractive pair of legs when the opportunity arose, and this time was to prove no exception! A faint blush suffused his cheeks as Mrs Reynolds eased her skirt into a more modest position, and he was glad in a way to have the mug of coffee to hide behind. It was just like a woman, he mused, to distract one from more spiritual matters!

But Mr Reynolds hadn't been distracted to anything like the same extent, and was now informing his wife that Robert thought the interior arrangement of their house could be bettered by having the sitting-room, in which they were all currently seated, on the first floor rather than downstairs, as at present.

"Oh, really?" Mrs Reynolds exclaimed, her velvety lips briefly parting in a show of surprise. "And why's that?" she asked, turning her attention upon their guest.

"Well, as I was just saying to Philip while you were in the kitchen," Moore replied, "it's a firm belief of mine that the best possible arrangement for a two-storey house of this nature would be to have all the rooms dedicated to sensual or bodily needs on the ground floor and, by contrast, all those associated with spiritual or intellectual pursuits upstairs, on the piano nobile. Such an arrangement would sharply distinguish between sensual and spiritual, the lower needs of the body and the higher needs of the spirit, leaving one in no doubt as to the greater importance of the latter."

"The idea apparently being," Mr Reynolds said, clearing his throat and focusing a pair of intense brown eyes on his wife's intrigued face, "that the ground floor should be seen in a morally inferior relation to the one above, which would symbolize our nobler aspirations."

"Yes, the former might be defined as a feminine floor and the latter as a masculine one," Moore opined for the nominal benefit of his hostess. "And since evolution is essentially a journey from the senses to the spirit, it would seem sensible to reflect this fact in an arrangement which gave greater importance to the latter."

Mrs Reynolds smiled sceptically and a shade wearily over her coffee, her gaze turning from their guest to her husband and back to their guest again, as she pondered the arcane logic of his contention. "Presumably such a topsy-turvy arrangement would necessitate one's having the kitchen, dining-room, bedroom, toilet, and bathroom on the lower floor, with the sitting-room, library, and study upstairs?"

"Absolutely," Moore confirmed, briskly nodding his large round head, which seemed curiously out-of-place on such a thin body. "For cooking, eating, sleeping, copulating, urinating, defecating, washing, and bathing are all sensual or bodily matters which should be equated with the mundane side of life, whereas reading, watching television, listening to the radio, listening to discs and/or tapes, talking, thinking, and playing a musical instrument are all spiritual and intellectual matters which should be equated with the transcendental side of life. You might add to the rooms already listed on the first floor a music and/or meditation room, thereby ensuring alternative higher rooms." Here he broke off speaking to sip some more coffee and savour the agreeable taste and smell of that mildly sensuous drink, a drink which resulted in one of the mildest forms of downward self-transcendence, to coin a Huxleyite phrase, in contrast to, say, gin or whisky, which were far more potent and thus, to his way of thinking, correspondingly more detrimental to the spirit. Coffee and tea were comparatively harmless.

"Supposing one has more than one bedroom?" Mrs Reynolds queried, slightly amused by her previous oversight. "After all, if one's house contained two or more bedrooms, as most detached and semidetached two-storey houses in fact do, how could one be expected to find enough room for them all on the ground floor, what with everything else there?"

"An interesting point!" Mr Reynolds averred, putting his half-consumed coffee to one side and helping himself to a mild cigarette. "It's generally the case, you know, that people have a greater number of rooms dedicated to sensual needs than to those of the spirit."

"That may well be," Moore conceded, his facial expression betraying a mixture of embarrassment and dejection. "And it might therefore be necessary to have a basement floor, as it were, in which to house the additional bedrooms or, alternatively, to build an extension onto the ground floor which would stretch into the back garden. But I wasn't envisaging one's having more than one or, at most, two bedrooms when I suggested this hierarchical arrangement to you. I wasn't thinking in terms of big houses with large families."

"Yet in a three-storey house with two or more bedrooms, you'd presumably still like to see the spiritual floor, as it were, upstairs, at the very top," Mrs Reynolds suggested with a smile.

"Yes, that has to be admitted," said Moore, nodding. "One might have the bedrooms on the ground floor, the kitchen, dining-room, bathroom and toilet on the first floor, and, finally, the sitting-room, library, meditation room, or whatever, on the top floor. That would also be a sensible and logical evolutionary arrangement."

Mrs Reynolds had to admit it was a novel idea, though she didn't much care for the prospect of sleeping on the ground floor in a two- or three-storey house. She had always slept upstairs, right from childhood to her current age of thirty-eight, and couldn't imagine herself doing anything else, least of all sleeping down in a basement. For some obscure reason basements always connoted, in her vivid imagination, with rats, and she was rather relieved that the Finchley house in which she and Philip had lived ever since their wedding, some three years previously, didn't possess one. If it had, she would have slept well away from it. But what about Robert Moore? Did he live in a house in which this kind of hierarchical arrangement obtained?

"Unfortunately not," he confessed, blushing faintly without this time being able to mask his embarrassment. For the coffee had by now ceased steaming and, besides, he had drunk most of it. "I happen to live in a flat where the rooms are all on the third floor, so I'm unable to put my ideas into operation. However, as your husband is an architect, I was hoping that a few words from me on the subject would induce him to plan some of his future projects along similar lines - lines, that is, in which rooms are arranged in an ascending order of importance, according to their contextual use."

Mr Reynolds allowed a terse chuckle to follow in quick pursuit of some freshly-exhaled cigarette smoke. "I don't normally permit other people to influence my architectural ideas," he smilingly revealed. "But where you are concerned, Robert, I just might make an exception! However, during the next few weeks I shall be busy designing plans for a new church in Hampstead, so your suggestions may have to wait awhile."

"I see," responded Moore, and his heart metaphorically sank a bit, not because he had any serious hopes that the architect would eventually adopt his suggestions, but because he didn't like to hear it was a church the man would be working on over the coming weeks. He would much rather it was a meditation centre, or a place in which people could directly cultivate the spirit. But meditation centres were probably projects for the future. The architect had simply not been authorized to design one. Things would just have to take their logical course. And so, returning his by-now empty mug to the small coffee tray, he at length asked: "What kind of a church is it going to be?"

"Frankly, I'm not yet absolutely certain," Mr Reynolds replied, screwing-up his features in deference to the fact, "though I've one or two useful ideas in mind. I haven't yet decided on whether to adopt a modern or a traditional plan, if that's what you mean."

"No, I was thinking more specifically in terms of denomination," Moore confessed.

This time it was the architect's turn to feel embarrassed. "Oh, I beg your pardon!" he said. "I thought you were alluding to style." His wife laughed shrilly at his expense, while their guest chipped-in with an understanding chuckle. "Well, as a matter of fact, it's going to be a United Reformed Church actually. Why, do you have any specific interests at stake?"

"Not particularly," Moore replied. "Just curious, that's all."

"I'd have thought that, what with a name like yours, you'd have preferred to hear it was a Catholic church," Mrs Reynolds remarked. "You are Irish, aren't you?"

"Yes, to the extent that I was born in Ireland of predominantly Irish parents," the latter conceded, blushing slightly. "But, seeing as I was brought-up in England and speak with an English accent, I tend to regard myself as a sort of Hiberno-Englishman."

Mr Reynolds raised a pair of dense brows in mute puzzlement. "What's that supposed to mean?" he half-humorously asked.

"Essentially the reverse of an Anglo-Irishman," Moore declared in a self-evident tone-of-voice. "Whereas an Anglo-Irishman is a man of English descent born and raised in Ireland, an Hiberno-Englishman is someone of Irish descent born and raised in England."

"But I thought you said you were born in Ireland?" Mrs Reynolds objected.

"I did," Moore admitted, blushing anew. "But since I was still a mere toddler when I was brought to this country in the wake of my mother's marital break-up, I incline to give myself the benefit of the doubt and accordingly claim greater English allegiance on the strength of my provincial upbringing."

"And presumably that was Catholic?" Mrs Reynolds conjectured.

"Both Catholic and Protestant actually," Moore confessed, becoming still more embarrassed. "Roman Catholic until my tenth year, Protestant thereafter."

"How unusual!" Mr Reynolds exclaimed, suddenly looking at his guest as though he didn't quite believe him. "And how, exactly, did that come about?"

Robert Moore shrugged doubtful shoulders. Although he knew how and why it had happened, he didn't want to go into any of the sordid details now. Undoubtedly the death of his Catholic grandmother, to whom he had been strongly attached, had more than a little to do with it; though he didn't know exactly how much. Nevertheless it was evident to him that his mother, whose father had originally been Protestant, didn't feel under the same obligation to maintain his Catholic upbringing as formerly, nor even to hold on to him once her mother had died and - not having had the benefit of marital security or indeed any love from her estranged husband - she was accordingly free to dispatch him to a Children's Home, the denominational bias of which was Baptist, and effectively wash her hands of the past, the better to continue afresh in the present with someone else.

"And do you still consider yourself a Protestant?" Mrs Reynolds wanted to know.

"As it happens, I haven't been to church since I left school at seventeen, which should be ample indication that I've little enthusiasm for Protestantism," Moore answered her. "In fact, I tended to regard it as something that had been thrust upon me when I was sent away rather than voluntarily accepted. Yet too much water had flowed under the bridge of my life for me to be able to return to the Catholic fold from which I had been plucked several years before. And so I was obliged to turn my back on Christianity and seek my own spiritual path. These days I incline to regard myself as a transcendentalist, since I have certain transcendental sympathies which lead me to consider meditation of more spiritual significance than prayer. I believe, if you must know, that Christianity will eventually be superseded by transcendentalism."

"The widespread institutionalized practice of transcendental meditation signifying direct contact with the Godhead in a more evolved civilization, is that it?" Mr Reynolds ventured to speculate on a mildly ironic note.

"Not entirely," Moore corrected. "It would simply signify a more direct contact with one's own spiritual self than could be achieved through traditional Christian practices, including prayer. For, so far as I'm concerned, the Holy Spirit doesn't really exist. It's simply our destiny to create it in due course, to attain to it through the future transformation of our spiritual selves from impure flesh-clogged phenomena into transcendent spirit - detached and pure."

"How, exactly, do you suppose we'll do that?" Mrs Reynolds asked, her face expressing bewilderment.

"Presumably through meditation," her husband interposed, smiling wryly.

"Undoubtedly meditation would play a significant part in the process of our future transformation from human beings into the Holy Spirit," Moore asseverated, principally for the benefit of his hostess. "But I rather doubt that we would get very far simply by relying on meditation. After all, the flesh would continue to detract from one's transcendental aspirations and accordingly place a strict limit on one's spiritual potential."

Mr Reynolds repeated his earlier look of puzzlement whilst exhaling a final lungful of tobacco smoke. Then, when he had stubbed-out the pitiful remains of his tipped cigarette, he asked: "In what way?"

"Well, simply by being there," Moore replied, simultaneously waving his right hand horizontally backwards and forwards through the air in an attempt to disperse the haze of cigarette smoke which had gradually built-up between the Reynolds and himself. "For the flesh is ever in mortal opposition to the spirit and must inevitably limit the extent to which the latter can be cultivated with impunity. You always have to attend to its needs, which are necessarily sensual and worldly. You have to eat, drink, sleep, take exercise, urinate, defecate, copulate, etc., and consequently turn away from cultivating the spirit - certainly in any true sense - while doing so. And so your spiritual aspirations are held back, as it were, by fleshy requirements. You can never become ultra-spiritual and have a body at the same time."

Mrs Reynolds felt obliged to emit a faint giggle, in spite of the seriousness of Robert Moore's tone-of-voice. There was something quaintly self-evident about his last remark and she followed it up by suggesting that, in that case, one could never become ultra-spiritual at all, since one couldn't live without a body. "After all," she continued, "without a body we wouldn't be able to cultivate the spirit to even a tiny extent, because it depends on the body for its survival. You can't have the one without the other."

"Not under our current historical circumstances," Moore conceded. "But evolutionary progress should lead us to a stage where the natural body will be replaced by an artificial one which will both support and sustain the brain, thus making a much more exclusive cultivation of the spirit possible to us."

His host and hostess stared at each other in bewilderment, before turning their attention upon their guest again. "D'you mean to imply that we'll probably end-up looking like robots or something equally mechanical?" Mr Reynolds asked, his bewilderment changing to hostile scepticism.

"We could well do," Moore replied, endeavouring not to be intimidated by a response which, in any case, he had anticipated all along.

"But that's preposterous!" Mrs Reynolds averred.

"Not as preposterous as it might at first seem," Moore rejoined. "For if we don't eventually overcome nature in all of its manifestations, internal as well as external, we'll never get to the supernatural, to that which stands at the farthest possible remove from nature and its sensuous offspring. The attainment to transcendent spirit could only be effected through our overcoming everything which pertains to nature, including ourselves. 'Man is something that should be overcome,' said Nietzsche, and, by God, how true that statement is! So long as we remain victims of the mundane, we shall never attain to the transcendent, never create or establish the only possible and sensible climax to evolution in an eternity of bliss. For bliss is the highest condition of which we can conceive, and it's perfectly understandable that we should want such a supreme condition to last for ever. Admittedly, as human beings, we can only experience bliss in relatively small doses over short periods of time. But as post-human transcendent minds, we would undoubtedly be better equipped to experience it on a much more intensive, not to say extensive, basis. And it's only in terms of the post-human that one should conceive of the Beyond."

Yes, how true that statement was for Robert Moore! He wasn't one of those who conceived of the Beyond in terms of a posthumous survival of death, an afterlife in which the individual's spirit merged with the Clear Light or whatever in heavenly absorption. Indeed, whenever he thought of what people had traditionally believed about salvation and God, he was almost amused. For there was something pathetically naive about the optimistic presumption people had once had - and, in many cases, continued to have - with regard to their prospects of salvation in the next life, and, no less significantly, their methods of getting there! To be sure, most people had been incredibly optimistic as to the criteria of admittance to the transcendental Beyond, never for a moment imagining that it would require the highest possible technology in the most advanced civilization to effect a complete and literal victory over nature. Indeed, they hadn't even considered it necessary to get beyond nature. Yet that was the way it had to be, considering they knew no better and were themselves victims of a stage of evolution in which a more comprehensive and rational knowledge of the Beyond would have been impossible. Their delusions were necessary and, in a sense, quite admirable. At least they had some bearing on human destiny, no matter how tenuously!

Even today, in this so-called enlightened age, there was no shortage of like-delusions concerning salvation and the means of attaining to it. But that, too, was understandable and, to a certain extent, inevitable. However, such delusions had to be combated by those who knew, or imagined they knew, better and, if possible, replaced by truths or, at the very least, delusions which were less delusive and possibly closer to the Truth. That was the way evolution progressed, no matter how slowly in a world still largely under nature's influence. For human progress was ever a struggle waged by those who were less sensuous over their more sensuous opponents. It was a struggle of sorts that was taking place in the Reynolds' sitting-room at this very moment, as a more enlightened guest sought to convince his less-enlightened hosts as to the validity of what he believed. Not being particularly profound thinkers, they had never conceived of the Beyond like him, in a sort of transcendent way, and were accordingly somewhat sceptical about what he was saying. [When people who do not think profoundly, either through force of professional circumstances or basic intellectual inability, are confronted by the thoughts of someone who does, the chances are strongly in favour of their not seeing eye-to-eye with him, considering that 'the superficial' and 'the profound' are ever on very different wavelenths. This is a perfectly logical, not to say fairly inevitable, state of affairs, by which a deep thinker needn’t be unduly perturbed. For once he realizes that 'the superficial' aren't on his wavelength, he won't be surprised, still less offended, by their opposition to his views but, on the contrary, will take it more or less for granted - a position our leading character, Robert Moore, was indeed inclined to adopt.]

"Yet if, as you maintain, the Beyond is a phenomenon that's destined to materialize, as it were, at the climax of evolution, where does the Millennium come in?" Mr Reynolds now asked, displaying fresh signs of puzzlement. "I mean, isn't the Millennium supposed to be the logical outcome of history, a period of happiness on earth rather than in Heaven?"

Moore nodded his large head in tacit agreement. "Viewed from a strictly Marxist angle, the Millennium is the outcome of historical development or, at any rate, a period of maximum social progress towards which the world would seem to be advancing," he declared. "I want the Millennium to come about, that's to say I want to see life on earth better than ever before, so good as to be almost heavenly. But I don't conceive of the Millennium simply in terms of material well-being for the masses, equal opportunity, regular food and drink for all, sexual freedom, or what have you. No doubt, we'll have to pass through a phase of social evolution, as at present, when such material considerations are paramount. But, you know, 'Man does not live by bread alone', and this is no less true or relevant now than when Christ first said it. In fact, it's even more relevant, since evolutionary progress should entail greater degrees of spiritual commitment. After all, we aren't beasts but men and, as such, we're given to the spiritual to a degree which no beast ever can be. It's, above all, our spiritual capacities and aspirations which distinguish us from the beasts and elevate us above them. God forbid that the end of human evolution should be conceived merely in terms of material well-being, as though we were simply intelligent animals with a belly to feed and the need of a roof over our heads! No, for me, the Millennium would be a stage beyond that of material well-being, in which the utmost efforts were being made by society to attain to the climax of evolution in spiritual transcendence. It would be a time when everything possible was being done to facilitate our transformation into pure spirit. A means to a higher end, not an end-in-itself."

Mrs Reynolds swallowed a last mouthful of coffee and returned her by-now empty mug to the tray. She found this kind of talk a little above her head but didn't like to say so, especially since her husband always prided himself, somewhat perversely she thought, on having an intellectual wife. "So presumably it would entail the widespread practice of transcendental meditation?" she suggested, by way of a constructive response.

"That's right," Moore confirmed. "And quite possibly the widespread use of 'Moksha’ or some such synthetic upward self-transcending drug intended to expand the mind and facilitate otherworldly sentiments." He was of course alluding to a term coined by Aldous Huxley to define psychedelic drugs like LSD and mescaline, a term with which both Philip and Jacqui Reynolds were vaguely familiar. "But meditation and synthetic drugs wouldn't be enough," he went on. "For, as I said earlier, it would also be necessary to minimize fleshy influences, and for this purpose the introduction of artificial limbs and mechanical parts would, I contend, prove especially efficacious. We couldn't end-up approximating to cyborgs, however, without having gone through progressively more artificial stages of evolution in the meantime, so it's reasonable to believe that the introduction of mechanical parts would take place slowly and by degrees, in accordance with the social and technological position of civilization at the time. One has to earn the right to look like cyborgs and, by God, we still have a long way to go before we can manage to dispense with natural limbs!"

Mrs Reynolds just had to laugh at this juncture in their conversation. For the earnestness with which Robert Moore spoke seemed utterly absurd to her. She couldn't possibly imagine herself looking forward to a cyborg-like existence, as he appeared to be doing. "One would think you were an admirer of The Bionic Man," she remarked, referring to an American television serial in which a man partly constructed from mechanical parts assumes a superhuman role of dynamic strength and power against evil.

"In point of fact, I don't watch all that much television," Moore confessed. "But from what I can remember of the serial in question, it confirms my opinion of the tendency of evolution away from nature. They spoke, during the introduction, of the insertion of mechanical parts into the shattered astronaut's body resulting in his becoming quicker, stronger, better than ever before, or something to that effect, and, believe me, that's a truly remarkable sentiment, a sentiment whereby man assumes mastery over nature by producing, through his growing technological expertise, a cyborg-like being superior in essence to a natural man. When people get to this stage, a stage of believing they can produce superior works to nature, then there's certainly hope for the future development of humanity in self-transcendence. To worship the natural is to be a sensuous pagan. To turn away from it is to approach spiritual transcendence. Yes, The Bionic Man is indeed a foretaste of things to come! Though perhaps, being female, you'd prefer Wonder Woman, Jacqui?"

"Frankly I'm not particularly keen on either concept," she confessed, frowning. "If you must know, I prefer the human body as it is."

"What, even with all the colds and bouts of 'flu, fevers and aches, pains and stings, cuts and bruises, malfunctionings and diseases, breakdowns and lesions, etc., not to mention all its tediously diurnal wants and needs?" Moore objected, raising incredulous brows. "Really, I am surprised at you! One would think that you wanted us to suffer the harsh consequences of being enslaved to nature for ever, as though it were an ideal condition!"

"On the contrary, I just don't want us to end-up looking like machines," Mrs Reynolds retorted.

"Ah, but unless we do replace the natural body with artificial parts in due course, we'll always be subject to the numerous ills which befall it," Moore averred. "And not only that, we'll always be prevented from cultivating our spiritual self to the degree we need to, if transcendence is ultimately to be achieved. So it seems to me that the adoption of artificial parts is a must in ensuring that we get to the transcendental Beyond, which would, after all, be the most supernatural of all conditions."

"But how would the brain survive without a body, assuming, as you're doing, that we become increasingly artificial and wish to remove every last obstacle to our spiritual development?" Mrs Reynolds protested. "I am of course supposing that the spirit is a function of the brain."

"More correctly, a function, in Koestlerian parlance, of the new brain which, in psychological terms, can be equated with the superconscious," Moore declared deferentially, alluding to the writer, Arthur Koestler, whom he much admired. "The old brain would, I believe, prove an obstacle to spiritual development, since aligned with the sensuous subconscious, and might therefore be subject to curtailment and even to surgical removal in due course, depending on the circumstances. But you're rather jumping the evolutionary gun, as it were, by asking me that question, because there would doubtless be many intermediate stages of body-mechanization ... before we arrived at our goal of being able to dispense with everything but the brain. However, the most feasible conjecture leads one to the conclusion that the brain would be kept alive via a sort of mechanical heart, which would pump blood through it in much the same way as the natural heart, but without the disadvantages of being mortal. It could well transpire that such a mechanical heart would permit a longevity of the brain which would prove crucial in the spirit's quest to attain to the transcendental Beyond, by granting it the requisite time, so to speak, in which to cultivate a truly transcendent potential."

"What a terrible prospect!" Mrs Reynolds protested, making an ugly show of her face. "A mechanical heart? Whatever next!"

"A stage beyond the transplantation of natural hearts, I should imagine," Moore rejoined. "And, hopefully, a more reliable means of sustaining the brain! But, seriously, we're already committed to artificial limbs and mechanical parts, as a visit to virtually any large hospital would confirm. There are glass eyes, metal legs, plastic bones, etc., not to mention wheelchairs of various kinds for the severely disabled. Indeed, it might well be that our concern for the disabled, in this respect, is partly founded on an unconscious, barely-articulated drive towards the widespread adoption of mechanical limbs, and that they to some extent serve as guinea pigs for continuous experimentation. Paradoxically, the disabled themselves could be regarded as, in some sense, our evolutionary superiors, insofar as they're dependent on artificial limbs or parts and are thus ahead of us in their use. A man with an artificial leg has less of the natural about himself than someone like you or I."

Mr Reynolds, who had been respectfully quiet for some time, suddenly gave vent to a short, sharp burst of incredulous laughter. "You're not seriously implying that we able-bodied people should get ourselves incapacitated or crippled in order to join the morally superior ranks of the disabled, are you?" he cried.

"Of course not!" Moore retorted, becoming embarrassed. "I was merely suggesting that there is something about the use of artificial limbs which has a bearing on the future and could perhaps be viewed in a more optimistic light. After all, it does seem that a person dependent on a wheelchair is a bit closer to the supernatural culmination of life on earth than someone who walks about on natural limbs. He's entirely reliant on a mechanical mode of conveyance, which should correspond, I believe, to what will generally become the case for people in the future. Yet, even today, an ever-growing number of perfectly able-bodied people are more dependent on mechanical modes of conveyance than ever before, as can be verified by the increasing amount of traffic on our roads. Is there not a correspondence here between the brain-directed automatons of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and the modern motorist? Is not the Martian-like creature of the future already incipient in the motorcar?"

Both the Reynolds smiled what appeared to be simultaneous concessions to that assumption, with Mr Reynolds also vaguely nodding his sparsely-haired head. He was the proud owner of a Porsche and couldn't very well deny the element of truth in Moore's statement. "Yes, I suppose I shall have to concede you the benefit of the doubt there," he admitted, in due course. "We have largely abandoned the use of our legs for the comfort of the automobile, though I scarcely need remind you that the principal motive for doing so is to enable us to get about more quickly and travel farther afield, not simply to rest our legs."

"But what about you, Robert, you're not a motorist by any chance, are you?" Mrs Reynolds asked.

"Unfortunately not," he replied, frowning slightly. "I happen to be one of those inferior creatures who depend on the pavement more than the road, although I do avail myself of public transport from time to time. Like this evening, for instance." Yes, he did that all right! But he very often found it to be an unnerving and depressing experience, seated in the company of people who were suffering from foul germs of one kind or another and tended, in consequence, to snivel or cough or blow their snot-clogged noses all around one. Normally he tried to get a front seat in order to minimize contact with them. But that wasn't always possible, especially when the bus was crowded. Then one just had to sit where one could and take whatever germs came one's way for granted. Rather hazardous, but there it was! We weren't exactly living in the most advanced of times. Colds and 'flu were rife among the masses and would doubtless continue to be rife among them for some time to come. In fact, until such time as a preventative was found or, more likely, men grew beyond the reach of germs by adopting mechanical limbs and/or synthetic parts. Meantime, people would always be subject to victimization from this rather sordid aspect of the natural world - a world abounding in germs.

And not only in germs but also in various kinds and degrees of downward self-transcendence, as Mr Reynolds seemed only too keen to demonstrate by helping himself to another cigarette, which, having lit with the aid of a silver lighter, he vigorously proceeded to smoke, exhaling obnoxious fumes in Robert Moore's direction. Admittedly, a mild kind of downward self-transcendence by comparison with some kinds, but a downward self-transcendence nonetheless! Another obstacle in the way of spiritual progress. One could never hope to attain to the transcendental Beyond and smoke at the same time. For tobacco grew from the earth and was therefore naturalistic. It carried one away from the spirit, like beer or food or sleep or sex. So long as one indulged or needed to indulge in sensual pursuits, there wasn't a chance of one's attaining to any sort of heavenly bliss, not even the slightest! One would inevitably remain rooted in the mundane, the world. Now as a human being one had no option but to remain rooted in it to some extent, one had no option but to eat, drink (not necessarily alcohol), sleep, walk, etc. Indeed, if in one or other of these obligatory natural contexts one was failing to pay one's dues to the Devil, as it were, to the extent that one should, either through unfortunate circumstances or wilful choice, there was always the likelihood that, if one didn't wish to suffer the consequences of starving one's sensual self, one would have to compensate it by indulging in one or other of the less respectable, because least obligatory, kinds of sensual pursuit. Consequently a person who didn't get enough sleep or sex might well find himself obliged to indulge in the consumption of tobacco and/or alcohol of one kind or another as a form of sensual compensation. It wasn't necessarily the case that because one smoked or drank, one was more sensual than those who didn't.

Whether Mr Reynolds smoked because he needed to compensate himself for some more obligatory sensual lack or, alternatively, because he was a relatively shameless sensualist, it wasn't of course possible for Robert Moore to tell. So he hesitated to pass moral judgement on the man. Yet he knew for a fact that unless men eventually overcame both necessary and unnecessary sensual indulgences, they would never attain to salvation in the pure spirit of ultimate transcendence. Unless the natural body was eventually superseded by a mechanical one, men would always be subject to the demands - and limitations - of the flesh. There could be little doubt, therefore, that evolution was slowly working towards overcoming the natural in all its aspects, and would culminate in the complete and utter triumph of the spirit. Any other interpretation of human destiny was futile or inadequate, partial or incomplete. Willy-nilly, God had to be the outcome of our endeavour, not simply material comfort.

Yet it was precisely this belief that puzzled the Marxist-oriented Philip Reynolds, who had never looked beyond the concept of a socialist millennium and, in dismissing the hypothetical Christian Beyond ... of posthumous salvation, had satisfied himself that a heaven on earth, founded on socialist principles, was all that really mattered. In the silence following Moore's last comment, this discrepancy of belief between their two viewpoints prompted him to question his guest as to the justification for his assumption that God would be the outcome of evolution. After all, wasn't a 'heaven on earth' sufficient?

"No," Moore replied at once, firmly shaking his large round head in the process. "The earth would always prevent a true heaven from coming about, would always be subject to winds and rains, storms and quakes, floods and droughts, not to mention the 1001 other distasteful phenomena which occur on it. No matter how far man evolved, there would always be opposition to his civilization from the elements, including the sun, which would undergo continuous changes of temperature and eventually oblige him to seek alternative accommodation, if possible, elsewhere in the Universe. Yet since stars are all destined to collapse and disintegrate one day, so it's inevitable that a 'heaven on earth' wouldn't last for ever, being at the mercy of stellar devolution."

"Not a particularly satisfactory arrangement," Mrs Reynolds opined, wincing at the prospect of an advanced civilization suddenly crumbling to ruin with the onslaught of solar disintegration - a vision of some apocalyptic scene by John Martin briefly appearing before her mind's eye, like a thunderbolt from the blue.

"Indeed not!" Moore confirmed, grimacing. "Especially after all the effort we'd put into evolving to an advanced level of life over the millennia. We wouldn't want the most sublime civilization to be at the mercy of the stars, and therefore it should be fairly obvious that we'd want to get beyond their influence, to evolve to a level where we weren't affected by their inevitable cessation. And what could that level be if not some heavenly transcendence which would constitute, in its timeless eternity, the Omega Point, to use a term favoured by that great Frenchman, Teilhard de Chardin, for that which corresponds to the hypothetical culmination of evolution."

"But where exactly would this heavenly transcendence be?" Mr Reynolds asked in a slightly exasperated manner.

"God knows!" his guest somewhat ironically exclaimed. "I can only suppose that it would be somewhere in space, possibly at or close to the centre of the Universe - assuming the Universe has a centre, that is. But it would be immense, an immense globe, as it were, of transcendent spirit ultimately composed of all the superconscious mind of which the evolving universe was capable, which would have converged towards it over a long period of heavenly time, adding to its sum-total of bliss. Indeed, I reckon it would be so blissful that no human being or man-equivalent life form would be able to go within millions of miles of it with impunity."

Mr Reynolds raised strongly incredulous brows. "You mean, any prospective long-term contributors who wished to get a glimpse of Heaven from their spaceships, or whatever, would be obliged to keep their distance?" he at length conjectured.

"They certainly would, and possibly to the extent of not being able to see more than a tiny globe of pure light shining inwardly in the distance," Moore averred, sticking to his mystical guns, which even he sometimes considered to be over-ranged. "For I'm confident that this ultimate bliss would prove too much for non-transcendent minds who went too close to it, and would probably result in their derangement. So, in all likelihood, no-one would dare go too close to it, no more than anyone dares - or could dare - go too close to the sun, albeit for the opposite reason - namely that they'd get roasted alive. But as extremes are equally fatal to anyone or anything in-between, so it should be pretty obvious that premature bliss of the magnitude of Heaven wouldn't be greatly conducive to one's personal well-being. On the contrary, it might even prove as detrimental to it as Hell."

"Hell presumably being the sun," Mrs Reynolds responded, a serious if slightly sceptical expression on her attractive face.

"I prefer to think of it in terms of the totality of stars," Moore declared flatly, "the star directly responsible to our planet therefore being but a component of Hell. For as Christian theology has long maintained, Hell is a context of flame, of excruciating heat, and very definitely exists. To study it, albeit from a relatively safe distance, one need only acquire access to a powerful telescope and direct one's attention on various of the nearest stars, like an astronomer. But you aren't ever likely to end-up in it or in one of its innumerable components. The nearest you could go to it, short of taking a spaceship in the general direction of Venus, would be to stand out in the middle of some desert, like the Sahara, and feel the sun burning into your skin. Of course, you could alternatively elect to get burnt alive. But that would be a slightly different matter - more a case of 'hell on earth' than Hell itself, if you see what I mean."

"Oh, Robert, do you have to be so damn negative!" Mrs Reynolds objected, frowning.

"Sorry, Jacqui, but where the subject of Hell is concerned, you can't expect to hear anything positive," Moore remarked. "For Hell is the ultimate negativity, creating, in its raging fury, not bliss but agony, the most excruciating agony conceivable."

"And it was apparently from this negative power that the planets were derived, was it?" Mr Reynolds commented, warming to his guest's thesis.

"So it would appear," Moore opined. "And not simply the planets, but also whatever life forms they subsequently possessed. As far as we know, there are no intelligent life forms on the other planets in the Solar System. But it's quite possible that the Universe as a whole contains earth-equivalent planets on which such intelligent life forms exist, and they would likewise have sprung from the solar roots of cosmic Hell. Now because Hell is compounded of innumerable stars and is thus manifold and separate, it need not surprise us if its offspring take on the attributes of the diabolic inceptive force and are likewise manifold and separate. Even in this world the diversity of animals and peoples testifies to the diabolic influence of Hell, being a source of continuous friction and strife. One might say that the lower the stage of evolution, the more influence does Hell have on life and the greater is the degree of strife resulting from it, as the blood-drenched pages of human history sufficiently attest. The further evolution progresses, on the other hand, the more emphasis do we place on unity and the correlative reduction of strife, and the closer we therefore draw to the One which, as God the Holy Ghost, would be the outcome of organic evolution, the end-product, as it were, of the drive away from diversity."

"Then, judging by the amount of friction and strife still prevailing in the world, we must be a long way from the One at present," Mr Reynolds surmised, as he exhaled a final burst of tobacco smoke.

"Unfortunately, that would indeed seem to be the case," Moore conceded, nodding with sagacious regret. "For we haven't yet evolved to a particularly high level of civilization and are accordingly still subject to a great deal of diabolic influence, some of us, admittedly, more than others. But I believe that we're heading in the right direction and, providing we don't completely destroy ourselves in any future war, should continue to head in it, becoming all the while less diversified and more unified."

"And would the gradual introduction of mechanical parts into the human body and, eventually, its supersession by artificial supports, or whatever, for the brain ... be further conducive towards the development of this higher unity?" Mrs Reynolds asked, once again revealing a measure of her former scepticism and irony in the face of Robert Moore's radical argument.

"Most certainly!" he replied. "For it would remove the physical inequalities which currently exist and have existed, often in more marked forms, for centuries, thereby enabling people to treat one another as equals with more ease and conviction than would otherwise be possible. After all, if 'A' is better-looking than 'B' and 'A' knows it, the chances of 'A' taking 'B' for an equal will be pretty slim. Now 'B' won't exactly consider himself the equal of 'A' either, but will almost certainly be envious of 'A' for being better-looking, and privately annoyed, moreover, that such physical inequalities should exist. Yet if, thanks to social and technological progress, both 'A' and 'B' look exactly alike, then the chances of their treating each other as equals will be correspondingly greater, and so a truly classless society could develop. Needless to say, such a society isn't likely to materialize for some time to-come! But we can at least console ourselves in the hope that one day it will, thereafter ridding humanity of the frightful differences of appearance which have contributed so much to the sum-total of friction in the world. And when, thanks to further industrial and technological progress, mankind have been rid of the frightful differences of occupation which currently exist, compliments of bourgeois civilization, the prospects for a truly unified society will be infinitely greater than at present. For so long as we continue to do different things, we'll always be divided against one another. Thus not only uniform appearance on a variety of levels and, I should add, intelligence but, no less importantly, uniform occupation, preferably through meditation, would be indispensable prerequisites of the highest civilization - a civilization whose members were dedicated to attaining to transcendence, and so to the abandonment of this world once and for all."

"I'm not sure that I'd want to be part of such a civilization," Mrs Reynolds declared, frowning down at her beautifully slender hands, which at that moment were resting limply on her lap.

"I rather doubt that women would be a part of it anyway," Moore rejoined bluntly. "For the way I see it, women would have been transcended at some previous stage of evolution. The quest for the transcendental Beyond is, in my opinion, a radically male one, and thus it's more likely that the highest civilization would be entirely beyond women, making use of artificial reproductive methods to safeguard its survival. Women, who are fundamentally appearance, would have little place in a society so exclusively dedicated to essence, and so it's unlikely they would exist there. Short of transforming themselves into men or, rather, supermen, women will always remain more closely aligned with the natural or sensual world, even in the heart of a big city."

"Thank goodness for that!" Mrs Reynolds exclaimed. "You men wouldn't get very far along the road to your ultimate salvation, or whatever, if it were otherwise!"

"Indeed not," Moore conceded, offering his outraged hostess a mildly ingratiating smile. "For it's only through woman, through propagation, that we can keep humanity going, and thus progress a little closer to the Beyond in question with each succeeding generation. Woman serves our cause, and so too, believe it or not, does the Devil, which, as Hell, keeps everything and everyone going, though in a rather more fundamental sense. For without the Devil's help, so to speak, we would never get to God, seeing as there would be no cosmos at the back of us and therefore no stellar and/or solar support for the world. The Devil supports the world and we struggle against it, principally through civilized progress. But we shouldn't make the mistake of becoming Devil-worshippers, as though the natural world were the best of all possible worlds and our evolutionary strivings merely an idealistic aberration! We needn't be grateful to the Devil for plaguing us with materialistic life, as though such life were its own reward ... without reference to anything better! No, if there's something we should be grateful for, it's that we're not beasts but men, and that it's our destiny, in consequence, to create God ... the Holy Ghost ... in due course. And not just figuratively or materially this time, but literally, out of our own spiritual selves. For we have always been creators of God or, more accurately, gods, as the statues of our distant ancestors well-attest. We ourselves were created via the diabolic inceptive force but, being men, we aspire towards the divine culmination of evolution, no matter how humbly or crudely at first. We approach divinity through materialism. We imagine the statue is God. Terrible delusion! Yet inevitable at a primitive juncture in time."

"This is apparently the pagan stage of evolution," Mr Reynolds commented, showing signs of interest despite his congenital distaste, born of empirical objectivity, for metaphysical speculation.

"Precisely," Moore confirmed. "But it doesn't last. For along comes a dualistic, or Christian, stage to supplant it. Now although men still fashion statues, they distinguish between the statue and the god, never imagining that the spirit of the latter resides in the body of the former. The statue becomes for them merely an image, a reminder, as it were, of the spiritual essence of the deity which resides elsewhere - namely, in Heaven ... compliments of transcendent concepts like the Resurrection. But this dualistic stage is no more an eternal phenomenon than the pre-dualistic, or pagan, stage before it was. As men cease to live in a balanced relationship with nature, that's to say balanced between nature and civilization, along comes a post-dualistic, or transcendental, stage of evolution in which men cease to depend even partly on materialistic images, but dedicate themselves to actually creating God through direct cultivation of the spirit, thus paving the way for their future transformation from the world to the Beyond, from spirit to the Holy Spirit, which should signify the climax of evolution."

"Some task!" Mr Reynolds exclaimed, automatically drawing the back of his hand across his brow as though to underline the fact. To be sure, it was enough to make one sweat, listening to Robert Moore speak. Few men were as spiritually farsighted!

"Though, apparently, not a task that we women need bother our pretty heads about," Mrs Reynolds deduced, somewhat cynically. "No doubt, you'd disapprove of the Assumption of the Virgin, Robert."

"As a matter of fact I do," he admitted, blushing faintly. "Though theology would doubtless insist that Mary was no ordinary woman but the Mother of God, and thus a case apart. However, not being a practising Christian but a self-professed transcendentalist, I wouldn't allow myself to be impressed by it. Or, rather, I'd maintain that whilst theological symbolism has its justification, it's necessarily restricted to a given time-span, i.e. the period of Christianity, and should make way, thereafter, for the Truth. And, so far as I'm concerned, the fact of the matter is that God doesn't exist - at least not yet! The Christian god is one thing, the actual establishment of Ultimate Godhead quite another!"

"In other words, the difference between Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost," Mr Reynolds observed.

"Quite," Moore confirmed. "Between knowledge and truth. And this is something the finer Christian minds have long recognized, though without perhaps realizing that the Holy Ghost is more a projection towards the future culmination of evolution than an already-established fact. I mean if, as Teilhard de Chardin maintains, the Universe is converging towards the Omega Point, progressing from the Many towards the One, then what can the domes of the finest churches signify if not just such a convergence - that inward-turning curvature from diversity to unity which is symbolized by the apex of the dome, with its lantern of light. Take the case of San Ivo della Sapienza in Rome - undoubtedly one of the world's finest churches. Not only is the Holy Spirit symbolized by the lantern, but also by the convergence of the dome towards its apex, thus signifying the diabolic nature of the Cosmos in contrast to the divine essence of God. One couldn't ask for a more objective depiction of evolution than that, and Borromini can only be praised for having had the genius to execute it. I'm confident that de Chardin would have found ample confirmation of his convergence theories there!"

Mr Reynolds raised his brows in response to the mixture of scepticism and surprise he was feeling with these comments. "I must confess to never having viewed domes of that nature in such a pleasingly optimistic and radical light before," he confessed, smiling faintly in response to the clash between his own rather more alpha-stemming view of domes and Moore's seemingly omega-oriented one. "But, now you mention it, I can only marvel at my narrow-mindedness! Yes, what an apt device the dome can be for illustrating evolutionary progress, for anticipating, as it were, the outcome of evolution. Really, I'm quite ashamed of myself for not having realized as much, considering that I'm a professional architect who has spent years studying churches - romanesque, gothic, renaissance, baroque, neo-classical, neo-gothic, modern ... you name it."

"Well, perhaps you'll make use of your new-found knowledge by incorporating a dome into the church you're about to start work on," Mrs Reynolds ventured to suggest, but in a tone-of-voice intended to reveal that she didn't for one moment believe that domes, not even in the case of San Ivo della Sapienza (which, after all, was a Catholic church, and thus one germane, in her estimation, to the theocracy of the Father), were as omega-orientated as their guest, with his transcendental radicalism born of a post-Christian Prometheanism, liked to imagine!

"Yes, why not?" Moore seconded, unable or unwilling to grasp the implications of what Mrs Reynolds had just said. "Though you might go one better than Borromini by placing some kind of artificial light at its apex, thereby granting the symbol for the Holy Ghost a less-natural and correspondingly more-spiritual essence. For ordinary daylight is too naturalistic, being a product of the sun, whereas artificial light stems from man's evolving civilization and is therefore more suited to the transcendent. Any dome with an electric light at its culmination-point would certainly be spiritually superior to one dependent on natural light."

"Yes, you're probably right there!" Mr Reynolds conceded. "Seeing as I have ambitions to do better than previous architects, I'll take your word for it and incorporate a dome into the design. Better, I'll make the entire church a kind of dome, so that the converging universe to the Omega Point can be seen as the principal aspect of the building."

"Then I wish you every success," Moore rejoined, rising from his chair and extending a friendly hand to the architect. It was getting late and he had to take his leave of them now, if he was to catch the last bus home. "I'd rather it was a meditation centre you're about to design, but since the theological establishment requires a church - well then, good luck to you! I hope the vicar approves of the result."

"Yeah, so do I," Mr Reynolds responded, graciously accompanying his guest to the door, doubtless for the first and last time. For her part, however, Mrs Reynolds just smiled in sceptical derision and began to clear away the empty coffee mugs.