Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon [top rated books of all time .TXT] 📗
- Author: Olaf Stapledon
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temporal dimensions, and the lives of the creatures were temporal
sequences in one or other dimension of the temporal “area” or “volume.”
These beings experienced their cosmos in a very odd manner. Living for a
brief period along one dimension, each perceived at every moment of its
life a simultaneous vista which, though of course fragmentary and
obscure, was actually a view of a whole unique “transverse” cosmical
evolution in the other dimension. In some cases a creature had an active
life in every temporal dimension of the cosmos. The divine skill which
arranged the whole temporal “volume” in such a manner that all the
infinite spontaneous acts of all the creatures should fit together to
produce a coherent system of transverse evolutions far surpassed even
the ingenuity of the earlier experiment in “pre-established harmony.”
In other creations a creature was given only one life, but this was a
“zig-zag line,” alternating from one temporal dimension to another
according to the quality of the choices that the creature made. Strong
or moral choices led in one temporal direction, weak or immoral choices
in another.
In one inconceivably complex cosmos, whenever a creature was faced with
several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating
many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos.
Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many
creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and
the combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of
distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal
sequence in this cosmos.
In some creations each being had sensory perception of the whole
physical cosmos from many spatial points of view, or even from every
possible point of view. In the latter case, of course, the perception of
every mind was identical in spatial range, but it varied from mind to
mind in respect of penetration or insight. This depended on the mental
caliber and disposition of particular minds. Sometimes these beings had
not only omnipresent perception but omnipresent volition. They could
take action in every region of space, though with varying precision and
vigor according to their mental caliber. In a manner they were
disembodied spirits, striving over the physical cosmos like
chess-players, or like Greek gods over the Trojan Plain.
In other creations, though there was indeed a physical aspect, there was
nothing corresponding to the familiar systematic physical universe. The
physical experience of the beings was wholly determined by their mutual
impact on one another. Each flooded its fellows with sensory “images,”
the quality and sequence of which were determined according to
psychological laws of the impact of mind on mind.
In other creations the processes of perception, memory, intellection,
and even desire and feeling were so different from ours as to constitute
in fact a mentality of an entirely different order. Of these minds,
though I seemed to catch remote echoes of them, I cannot say anything.
Or rather, though I cannot speak of the alien psychical modes of these
beings, one very striking fact about them I can record. However
incomprehensible their basic mental fibers and the patterns into which
these were woven, in one respect all these beings came fleetingly within
my comprehension. However foreign to me their lives, in one respect they
were my kin. For all these cosmical creatures, senior to me, and more
richly endowed, constantly faced existence in the manner that I myself
still haltingly strove to learn. Even in pain and grief, even in the
very act of moral striving and of white-hot pity, they met fate’s issue
with joy. Perhaps the most surprising and heartening fact that emerged
from all my cosmical and hypercosmical experience was this kinship and
mutual intelligibility of the most alien beings in respect of the pure
spiritual experience. But I was soon to discover that in this connection
I had still much to learn.
3. THE ULTIMATE COSMOS AND THE ETERNAL SPIRIT
In vain my fatigued, my tortured attention strained to follow the
increasingly subtle creations which, according to my dream, the Star
Maker conceived. Cosmos after cosmos issued from his fervent
imagination, each one with a distinctive spirit infinitely diversified,
each in its fullest attainment more awakened than the last; but each one
less comprehensible to me.
At length, so my dream, my myth, declared, the Star Maker created his
ultimate and most subtle cosmos, for which all others were but tentative
preparations. Of this final creature I can say only that it embraced
within its own organic texture the essences of all its predecessors; and
far more besides. It was like the last movement of a symphony, which may
embrace, by the significance of its themes, the essence of the earlier
movements; and far more besides. This metaphor extravagantly understates
the subtlety and complexity of the ultimate cosmos. I was gradually
forced to believe that its relation to each earlier cosmos was
approximately that of our own cosmos to a human being, nay to a single
physical atom. Every cosmos that I had hitherto observed now turned out
to be a single example of a myriad-fold class, like a biological
species, or the class of all the atoms of a single element. The internal
life of each “atomic” cosmos had seemingly the same kind of relevance
(and the same kind of irrelevance) to the life of the ultimate cosmos as
the events within a brain cell, or in one of its atoms, to the life of a
human mind. Yet in spite of this huge discrepancy I seemed to sense
throughout the whole dizzying hierarchy of creations a striking identity
of spirit. In all, the goal was conceived, in the end, to include
community and the lucid and creative mind.
I strained my fainting intelligence to capture something of the form of
the ultimate cosmos. With mingled admiration and protest I haltingly
glimpsed the final subtleties of world and flesh and spirit, and of the
community of those most diverse and individual beings, awakened to full
self-knowledge and mutual insight. But as I strove to hear more inwardly
into that music of concrete spirits in countless worlds, I caught echoes
not merely of joys unspeakable, but of griefs inconsolable. For some of
these ultimate beings not only suffered, but suffered in darkness.
Though gifted with full power of insight, their power was barren. The
vision was withheld from them. They suffered as lesser spirits would
never suffer. Such intensity of harsh experience was intolerable to me,
the frail spirit of a lowly cosmos. In an agony of horror and pity I
despairingly stopped the ears of my mind. In my littleness I cried out
against my maker that no glory of the eternal and absolute could redeem
such agony in the creatures. Even if the misery that I had glimpsed was
in fact but a few dark strands woven into the golden tapestry to enrich
it, and all the rest was bliss, yet such desolation of awakened spirits,
I cried, ought not, ought never to be. By what diabolical malice, I
demanded, were these glorious beings not merely tortured but deprived of
the supreme consolation, the ecstasy of contemplation and praise which
is the birthright of all fully awakened spirits? There had been a time
when I myself, as the communal mind of a lowly cosmos, had looked upon
the frustration and sorrow of my little members with equanimity,
conscious that the suffering of these drowsy beings was no great price
to pay for the lucidity that I myself contributed to reality. But the
suffering individuals within the ultimate cosmos, though in comparison
with the hosts of happy creatures they were few, were beings, it seemed
to me, of my own, cosmical, mental stature, not the frail, shadowy
existences that had contributed their dull griefs to my making. And this
I could not endure.
Yet obscurely I saw that the ultimate cosmos was nevertheless lovely,
and perfectly formed; and that every frustration and agony within it,
however cruel to the sufferer, issued finally, without any miscarriage
in the enhanced lucidity of the cosmical spirit itself. In this sense at
least no individual tragedy was vain.
But this was nothing. And now, as through tears of compassion and hot
protest, I seemed to see the spirit of the ultimate and perfected cosmos
face her maker. In her, it seemed, compassion and indignation were
subdued by praise. And the Star Maker, that dark power and lucid
intelligence, found in the concrete loveliness of his creature the
fulfilment of desire. And in the mutual joy of the Star Maker and the
ultimate cosmos was conceived, most strangely, the absolute spirit
itself, in which all times are present and all being is comprised; for
the spirit which was the issue of this union confronted my reeling
intelligence as being at once the ground and the issue of all temporal
and finite things.
But to me this mystical and remote perfection was nothing. In pity of
the ultimate tortured beings, in human shame and rage, I scorned my
birthright of ecstasy in that inhuman perfection, and yearned back to my
lowly cosmos, to my own human and floundering world, there to stand
shoulder to shoulder with my own half animal kind against the powers of
darkness; yes, and against the indifferent, the ruthless, the invincible
tyrant whose mere thoughts are sentient and tortured worlds.
Then, in the very act of this defiant gesture, as I slammed and bolted
the door of the little dark cell of my separate self, my walls were all
shattered and crushed inwards by the pressure of irresistible light, and
my naked vision was once more seared by lucidity beyond its endurance.
Once more? No. I had but reverted in my interpretative dream to the
identical moment of illumination, closed by blindness, when I had seemed
to spread wing to meet the Star Maker, and was struck down by terrible
light. But now I conceived more clearly what it was that had overwhelmed
me. I was indeed confronted by the Star Maker, but the Star Maker was
now revealed as more than the creative and therefore finite spirit. He
now appeared as the eternal and perfect spirit which comprises all
things and all times, and contemplates timelessly the infinitely diverse
host which it comprises. The illumination which flooded in on me and
struck me down to blind worship was a glimmer, so it seemed to me, of
the eternal spirit’s own all-penetrating experience.
It was with anguish and horror, and yet with acquiescence, even with
praise, that I felt or seemed to feel something of the eternal spirit’s
temper as it apprehended in one intuitive and timeless vision all our
lives. Here was no pity, no proffer of salvation, no kindly aid. Or here
were all pity and all love, but mastered by a frosty ecstasy. Our broken
lives, our loves, our follies, our betrayals, our forlorn and gallant
defenses, were one and all calmly anatomized, assessed, and placed.
True, they were one and all lived through with complete understanding,
with insight and full sympathy, even with passion. But sympathy was not
ultimate in the temper of the eternal spirit; contemplation was. Love
was not absolute; contemplation was. And though there was love, there
was also hate comprised within the spirit’s temper, for there was cruel
delight in the contemplation of every horror, and glee in the downfall
of the virtuous. All passions, it seemed, were comprised within the
spirit’s temper; but mastered, icily gripped within the cold, clear,
crystal ecstasy of contemplation.
That this should be the upshot of all our lives, this scientist’s, no,
artist’s, keen appraisal! And yet I worshipped!
But this was not the worst. For in saying that the spirit’s temper was
contemplation, I imputed to it a finite human experience, and an
emotion; thereby
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