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The opening of the eyes
Man and the Cosmos
(fragment)
One thing we can say with confidence. If, by one means or another, man does succeed in communicating
with intelligent races in remote worlds, then the right aim will be to enter into mutual understanding and
appreciation with them, for mutual enrichment and the further expression of the spirit. One can imagine
some sort of cosmical community of worlds.
Further, we may, I think, be certain that, wherever, in any age or any galaxy, beings exist who are
developed up to or beyond the level of awareness precariously attained by man at his best, there the
imperious claim of the spirit, and therefore the ideal of personality-in-community, will surely be
recognized. For this ideal and this claim are implied in the very nature of the awakened consciousness. It
is nonsense to suppose that any humanly or superhumanly developed beings might permanently seek
quite different values. The ideal of the spiritual life is involved in the very nature of personality. Apart
from special cases of perversion or obsession by minor ends, the supreme end, which is the fulfilling of
the spirit, cannot but be acceptable to the awakened consciousness. The ultimate goal of all awakened
beings must inevitably be (how can one least misleadingly put it?) the expression of the objective
cosmos in subjective experience and creative action, the fulfilment of the cosmos in cosmical awareness.
The more obvious way in which this goal is to be approached is through a cosmical community of
worlds. But such a community may be nothing but the most fantastic of human dreams. Far more
probably, the intelligent races within the cosmos may be for ever isolated from each other by the spatial
immensities. In this case we are faced with two alternatives. We may suppose that God himself (or the
supratemporal mind of the cosmos) embraces in a single cosmical experience, all the worlds and all their
age-long lives; or we may declare simply that the goal of cosmical awareness is not attained, and is only
a crazy human fantasy. In this case we may suppose either that there is no general purpose at all behind
the cosmos (which may very well be the case), or else that the purpose is something wholly
unintelligible to human minds, and indifferent to the expression of the spirit in any world. Or we may
suppose that it is equally false to say either that there is or that there is not a cosmical purpose, since the
truth is utterly beyond our comprehension. The cabbages in a garden are grown not that they may fulfill
themselves in flower and fruit but simply that, before reaching maturity, they may be eaten. Similarly, it
may be that the intelligent worlds of the cosmos are required merely to reach a certain low stage of
spiritual growth before being destroyed.
Let us remember, too, that if modern physics is correct, there
awaits all worlds the cosmical night promised by the increase of entropy.
Thus there is a race between
cosmical fulfilment and cosmical death, between the complete awakening of consciousness in the
cosmos, and eternal sleep.
But probably these wild speculations are all entirely beside the mark, because conceived in terms of
ideas wholly inadequate to the actual conditions of the cosmos. For instance, our conception of the time
itself is now turning out to be very incoherent and superficial. Perhaps (who can say) from the point of
view of eternity the end of the cosmos is also its source and its temporal beginning. Perhaps the ultimate
flower is also the primal seed from which all sprang. Perhaps the final result of the cosmical process is
the attainment of full cosmical consciousness, and yet (in some very queer way) what is attained in the
end is also, from another point of view, the origin of all things. So to speak, God, who created all things
in the beginning, is himself created by all things in the end.
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