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Star Maker
Chapter XV. The Maker and His Works
(fragment)
Many of these early universes were non-spatial, though none the less physical. And of these non-spatial universes
not a few were of the "musical" type, in which space was strangely represented by a dimension corresponding to
musical pitch, and capacious with myriads of tonal differences. The creatures appeared to one another as complex
patterns " and rhythms of tonal characters. They could move their ' tonal bodies in the dimension of pitch, and sometimes
in other dimensions, humanly inconceivable. A creature's body was a more or less constant tonal pattern, with
much the same degree of flexibility and minor changefulness as a human
body. Also, it could traverse other living bodies in the pitch
dimension much as wave-trains on a pond may cross one another. But though these beings could glide through
one another, they could also grapple, and damage one another's tonal tissues. Some, indeed, lived by devouring
others; for the more complex needed to integrate into their own vital;
patterns the simpler patterns that exfoliated throughout the cosmos directly from the creative power of the Star
Maker.
The intelligent creatures could manipulate for their own ends elements wrenched from the fixed tonal environment,
thus constructing artifacts of tonal pattern. Some of these served as tools for the more efficient pursuit of
"agricultural" activities, by which they enhanced the abundance of their natural food.
Universes of this
non-spatial kind, though incomparably simpler and more meager than our own cosmos, were rich enough to produce
societies capable not only of "agriculture" but of "handicrafts", and even a kind of pure art that combined the characteristics
of song and dance and
verse. Philosophy, generally rather Pythagorean, appeared for the first time in a cosmos of this "musical" kind.
In nearly all the Star Maker's works, as revealed in my
dream, time was a more fundamental attribute than space. Though in some of his earliest creations he excluded
time, embodying merely a static design, this plan was soon abandoned. It gave little scope to his skill. Moreover,
since it excluded the possibility of life and mind, it was incompatible with all but the earliest phase of his interest.
Space, my dream declared, appeared first as a development of a non-spatial dimension in a "musical" cosmos.
The tonal creatures in this cosmos could move not merely "up" and "down" the scale but "sideways." In human music
particular themes may seem to approach or retreat, owing to variations of loudness and timbre. In a rather similar
manner the creatures in this "musical" cosmos could approach one another or retreat and finally vanish out of earshot.
In passing "sideways" they traveled through continuously changing tonal environments. In a subsequent cosmos
this "sideways" motion of the creatures was enriched with true spatial experience.
There followed creations with spatial characters of several dimensions, creations Euclidean and non-Euclidean,
creations exemplifying a great diversity of geometrical and physical principles. Sometimes time, or space-time, was
the fundamental reality of the cosmos, and the entities were but fleeting modifications of it; but more often, qualitative
events were fundamental, and these were related in spatio-temporal manners. In some cases the system of spatial
relations was infinite, in others finite though boundless. In some the finite extent of space was of constant magnitude
in relation to the atomic material constituents of the cosmos; in some, as in our own cosmos, it was manifested
as in many respects "expanding." In others again space "contracted"; so that the end of such a cosmos, rich
perhaps in intelligent communities, was the collision and congestion of all its parts, and their final coincidence and
vanishing into a dimensionless point.
In some creations expansion and ultimate quiescence were followed by contraction and entirely new kinds of
physical activity. Sometimes, for example, gravity was replaced by anti-gravity. All large lumps of matter tended to
burst asunder, and all small ones to fly apart from each other.
In one such cosmos the law of
entropy also was reversed.
Energy, instead of gradually spreading itself evenly throughout the cosmos, gradually piled itself upon the
ultimate material units. I came in time to suspect that my own cosmos was followed by a reversed cosmos of this
kind, in which, of course, the nature of living things was profoundly different from anything conceivable to man.
But this is a digression, for
I am at present describing much earlier and simpler universes.
Many a universe was physically a continuous fluid in which the solid creatures swam. Others were constructed as
series of concentric spheres, peopled by diverse orders of creatures. Some quite early universes were quasi-
astronomical, consisting of a void sprinkled with rare and minute centers of power.
Sometimes the Star Maker fashioned a cosmos which was without any single, objective, physical nature. Its creatures
were wholly without influence on one another; but under the direct stimulation of the Star Maker each creature
conceived an illusory but reliable and useful physical world of its own, and peopled it with figments of its imagination.
These subjective worlds the mathematical genius of the Star Maker correlated in a manner that was perfectly
systematic.
I must not say more of the immense diversity of physical form which, according to my dream, the early creations
assumed. It is enough to mention that, in general, each cosmos was more complex, and in a sense more voluminous
than the last; for in each the ultimate physical units were smaller in relation to the whole, and more multitudinous.
Also, in each the individual conscious creatures were generally more in number, and more diverse in type; and the
most awakened in each cosmos reached a more lucid mentality than any creatures in the previous cosmos.
Biologically and psychologically the early creations were very diverse. In some cases there was a biological evolution
such as we know. A small minority of species would precariously ascend toward greater individuation and
mental clarity. In other creations the species were biologically fixed, and progress, if it occurred, was wholly cultural.
In a few most perplexing creations the most awakened state of the cosmos was at the beginning, and the Star
Maker calmly watched this lucid consciousness decay.
Sometimes a cosmos started as a single lowly organism with an internal, non-organic environment. It then propagated
by fission into an increasing host of increasingly small and increasingly individuated and awakened creatures.
In some of these universes evolution would continue till the creatures became too minute to accommodate the
complexity of organic structure necessary for intelligent minds. The Star Maker would then watch the cosmical societies
desperately striving to circumvent the fated degeneration of their race.
In some creations the crowning achievement of the cosmos was a
chaos of mutually unintelligible societies, each
devoted
to the service of some one mode of the spirit, and hostile to all others. In some the climax was a single Utopian
society of distinct minds; in others a single composite cosmical mind.
Sometimes it pleased the Star Maker to ordain that each creature in a cosmos should be an inevitable, determinate
expression of the environment's impact on its ancestors and itself. In other creations each creature had some power
of arbitrary choice, and some modicum of the Star Maker's own creativity. So it seemed to me in my dream; but
even in my dream I suspected that to a more subtle observer both kinds would have appeared as in fact determinate,
and yet both of them also spontaneous and creative.
In general the Star Maker, once he had ordained the basic principles of a cosmos and created its initial state, was
content to watch the issue; but sometimes he chose to interfere, either by infringing the natural laws that he himself
had ordained, or by introducing new emergent formative principles, or by influencing the minds of the creatures by
direct revelation. This according to my dream, was sometimes done to improve a cosmical design; but, more often,
interference was included in his original plan.
Sometimes the Star Maker flung off creations which were in effect groups of many linked universes, wholly
distinct physical systems of very different kinds, yet related by the fact
that the creatures lived their lives successively in universe after universe, assuming in each habitat an indigenous
physical form, but bearing with them in their transmigration faint and easily misinterpreted memories of earlier
existences. In another way also, this principle of transmigration was sometimes used. Even creations that were not
thus systematically linked might contain creatures that mentally echoed in some vague but haunting manner the experience
or the temperament of their counterparts in some other cosmos.
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