SPACE JOURNAL

Living up here in space, one gets an intimation of what it would be like as absolute mind in the transcendental Beyond. Only an intimation, mind you. For, of course, we're only human beings, and our minds are relative, not absolute. We have carnal lusts to satisfy and, on top of that, the captain occasionally issues a stern order or reprimand to certain members of his crew, including myself, which creates feelings quite the reverse of heavenly! No, we can never get a particularly clear idea of what absolute mind would be like. But, even so, we're privileged when compared with some people. I prefer life on this space station, at any rate, to life on Earth, regardless of what other people may think.

I was glad to get a letter from mother, whom I hadn't heard from for a number of months. She posted it early this morning, and it reached me by space mail in the afternoon. The service is getting better these days, though there is still some delay from time to time. Someone told me, the other week, that they might reintroduce distinctions between stamps, making some more expensive than others in the interests of a quicker service. But I rather doubt it. Class distinctions are, by and large, a thing of the past - certainly so far as stamps are concerned!

Mrs. Sewell seems to be keeping well, though still a little overweight. She worries about my social life, wondering whether I get enough company up here. By which she primarily means female company. She needn't worry, though; there's never any shortage of bags to fill, if you like that kind of thing. Young ones are especially plentiful - about twenty in all. The captain keeps his beady eyes on them for a variety of reasons, not least of all personal. But I'm not particularly sensual. Prefer my sexuality sublimated, as a rule, which is why I keep a few pin-ups in my cabin. Not just to look at them, either. I take a pleasure in stroking them, or whichever parts of them happen to be most conspicuous, on the odd occasion. Odd in more senses than one, according to my colleague Second-Lieutenant Wilkins. But he doesn't appreciate such subtleties. He is a flesh-monger to the core, even up here, and for that reason a rotten spiritualist! Thinks I am mad when, in point of fact, old Shane Sewell is simply saner than him. My favourite pin-up, by the way, is a blonde Continental of Germanic origin called Eva. I stroke her cheeks more often than I stroke the more blatantly seductive parts of anyone else. She is a high-grade temptress and, frankly, I find it difficult not to be seduced into admiring her. I won't share her with anyone else, not even the captain. Though I do occasionally lend my blonde inflatable to Second-Lieutenant Wilkins, who sometimes grows dissatisfied with his own, and thereby cater to his ingrained predilection for bigamy. Sublimated bigamy, you could call it. I have named her Eva, after my pin-up heroine.

A more serious note now! I have been reading about theories concerning the so-called Worm Holes which criss-cross space in every direction and are considered to bring distant parts of it together in a multi-dimensional framework of interconnected universes. I used to believe such theories, but now I incline to reject them on the grounds that they are improbable. Living up here, thousands of miles from the Earth, one gets a better view of these Worm Holes and, in my opinion, what one sees has nothing to do with separate universes being interconnected through kaleidoscopic tunnels in superspace, but ... the gradual convergence and expansion of millions of separate globes of transcendent spirit en route, so to speak, to an ultimate unity in ... the Omega Point, or spiritual culmination of evolution as defined by Teilhard de Chardin. I am now quite convinced that these so-called Worm Holes, of which there are countless millions, are fragments of absolute mind existing, in space, in a context of Heaven. I think one is looking at individual manifestations of the transcendental Beyond when one gets these things into psychic perspective.... Not that you can see them very clearly. For they are pretty dark, darker even than space. But, then, transcendent spirit wouldn't be conspicuously apparent, since spirit pertains to essence and is consequently invisible to the senses - noumenon rather than phenomenon, so to speak. Nevertheless, still constituting a presence in space, still there, and not simply a void inseparable from space itself. A deeper deep within the depths of space. Or, as seems to be the case at present, millions of deeper deeps there.

Of course, I'm aware that Black Holes are also deeper deeps, only they're not in continuous motion, like the Worm Holes, so could hardly be assumed to be converging towards and expanding into one another, creating, in the process, this kaleidoscopic illusion. To tell the truth, I used to think that Black Holes could be Spiritual Globes en route to the Omega Point. But now I incline to agree with scientific opinion ... that they represent the antimass of a star which has suffered gravitational collapse and perished as a light. I therefore reserve the supposition of Spiritual Globes for the so-called Worm Holes which, to my mind, would serve a more useful purpose as transcendent spirit than simply as tunnels linking one part of space to another! Is it necessary, I wonder, for distant regions of space to be brought into periodic contact? And are there, in fact, Multiple Universes in this so-called superspace?

No, I respond negatively to both questions, my artistic conscience reminded of its insightful prerogatives. For, to my mind, they pertain to the realm of scientific subjectivity, in which space, meaning the Universe as a whole, has come to appear possessed of certain quasi-mystical qualities that would formerly have been confined, albeit on different terms, to the subconscious mind; evolutionary progress having required that the transformation from external, or cosmic, objectivity to internal, or superconscious, subjectivity be paralleled by a transformation from internal, or subconscious, objectivity to external, or cosmic, subjectivity, which has resulted in the growth of scientific subjectivity as applying, amongst other things, to the Universe in response to 'theological' expedience - 'theology' having been transferred from the inner to the outer world, in accordance with psychic evolution from a predominantly subconscious to a predominantly superconscious affiliation. Without their realizing it, the champions of the more unorthodox theories of cosmic reality are the modern equivalents of medieval theologians - purveyors of a contemporary idealism, the reverse side of the contemporary realism which pertains to superconscious subjectivity. Space was once simple and religion complex. Now religion is becoming simple and space, by contrast, highly complex. This is an inevitable pattern, not to be derided! The philosopher, however, is entitled to view things in a different and more objective light. For philosophy upholds a chink of sanity in a largely insane world, is the essential truth behind theological illusions. As a philosopher, even one writing in space, I continue to represent philosophical objectivity in the face of theological expedience. I remain the 'evil' conscience of the age, a closed book for most, an enlightening one for those who, in their capacity as leaders, require to know what, intellectually speaking, is really going on in the world and why, if they're to keep in touch with the truth, they mustn't succumb to illusions, necessary or otherwise, in the manner of priests.

Enough for today! I must shortly give myself up to the world of dreams and let the subconscious take over. One cannot live as an absolute when one is still only a man, even if transcendental!