by Unknown
I asked him again about the major differences between the new and the old knowledge—if what we had in our time could be called knowledge.
“The first difference,” he replied, “is the spreading of knowledge. The Volkic perception of the major issues of life and of the world is not only localised in the intelligentsia or certain ethnicities. The people of today are impregnated with this knowledge and they believe in it so much that it has become part of their everyday life.”
The truth is that I have observed several times that, even in their daily occupations, these people often incorporated principles from Volkic knowledge in a way that showed deep understanding.
“Then,” he continued, “it has to do with the way knowledge is transmitted. Thanks to the Nibelvirch we have access to direct knowledge, which is free of any external teachings. And last but not least, compared to the reality that revealed itself to us through the Oversyn, all that had been said in the past by the formerly great mystics of religion about disappearing in our own spirit and becoming aligned with the divine seemed like children’s words to us. We still honour them, of course, because they are the spiritual heritage of our ancestors. They had been alleviating human suffering until the Nibelvirch. Direct knowledge had to come for the comparison to be made and for the tremendous difference to show. Only the comparison to what really exists out there could demonstrate their childish naivety, and it did. But now, all this is only of historical significance.
Stefan stopped speaking for a few minutes, as if he were trying to remember what he had seen or read, trying to put his thoughts in order.
“That’s how everything revealed itself. And that explains that horrific hit of the Roisvirch that, if you saw it all at once without being prepared, it scared you to pieces and which, at first, was fatal to thousands of unprepared human hearts. This sudden and impetuous torrent of such unprecedented spiritual happiness was more that the human soul could endure. They say that older generations could not imagine and believe how much objectivity there is in what we call ‘spiritual worlds’. Back then, we thought that if the human race did not exist on Earth, then beauty, art, religion, poetry, philosophy and other moral values wouldn’t exist either.
He stressed again how metaphysical the spiritual sciences ultimately proved to be. “Just as the man watching the dust and stones could not imagine the true composition and structure of matter, so too the spiritual world is merged with the material world in a transcendent way. It’s just that our mind is too finite to comprehend it and our sensors are faulty. But this does not mean that it doesn’t exist.
He stopped talking again and concentrated on his thoughts. “Nibelvirch’s arrival brought to mind something similar that had happened in the past, concerning the awareness of the natural world. Two thousand years ago, around your own twentieth century, there was a boom in the natural sciences and their technical applications, a huge, unprecedented leap forward, within a very short period of time. One after another came the inventions, human knowledge was significantly upgraded and somehow the borders of the natural world expanded to an incredible extent. In a few decades’ time they came to understand that the earth was, in fact, a nothing in the middle of nowhere, instead of the centre of the universe as they had previously believed. Something similar happened with Volky—though not only regarding the natural world—and then we realised that the truth was completely different from the way theological tradition and the exact sciences presented it.”
I sat and watched him and thought about how much faith these people have in them, how much they believe, not in our time’s narrow-minded, absolute way but, instead, with an absolute certainty that what they’ve seen is right. I asked him whether he believed that people would have managed in some other way to obtain the knowledge they now have, without the Nibelvirch. He said that he seriously doubted it. He claimed that the gap between the knowledge of the past and that of the present was huge and the human mind couldn’t cover the distance by itself. But even if somebody managed to see it or learn about it and then tried to convince other people, they would find it impossible to believe. They would first have to break free from the selfish, anthropocentric mentality that clouded their judgment; and this mentality was very difficult to escape from.
“But how was it possible,” he wondered, “for men to believe that they and their planet, a dot in the universe, were the centre of everything? That they were ‘chosen’ by destiny among trillions of other stars, of other dots? Was it so hard to believe that, under any law of probability, there might be other major centres of intelligent life elsewhere, and that organic life and the famous ‘law of adaptation’ could exist in a million other worlds, older but more evolved both from a biological and an ethical perspective?”
“And how can this incredible greatness tolerate all this filth and injustice within it?” I asked.
“Precisely because it’s so big, it easily accepts such pettiness. The worst human evil doesn’t stand a chance before this blizzard of wonderfulness, trust me. Not to mention that this part, of sorrow and pain, directly related to our finite biological fate, gives us an element of reality, without which we would be incomplete.”
He then took some time to explain to me that, in the time of the first Nibelvirch and the Roisvirch that followed in the world, Volky himself stood up and raised his voice along with the other great men of the era, because they had faith in the desirability and necessity of this progressive form of existence, and their words, full of peace and hope, managed to calm down the crazed crowds and stop the stampedes and the onslaught of collective suicides.
But in no way could I comprehend and accept what he was telling me. It was inconceivable: how can something so extremely wonderful have a part of it steeped in pettiness, ugliness and evil, and still remain flawless?
He asked me if I had had a chance to read Tinersen’s book and I told him the truth: that I hadn’t. It was one of the books he had recently given me and I hadn’t managed to read it. The only thing I knew about this book was that it was approximately from the MCC century and that it was one of the hundreds of simplified and popularised books of Volkic Knowledge.
Once I replied negatively he started telling me an imaginary story, a kind of parable from the book. He told it simply so that I would understand it. And the story went like this:
Millions of small beings are born and die in a closed, dark, dirty place. This place, which for us humans is nothing other than the inside of a flute, is for these little creatures their whole world, their entire universe, their natural habitat and they don’t imagine that there might be something else outside of it. Suppose now that they are endowed with an element of intellect and are aware of the ugliness and darkness of their world. Their very brief lives—about seventeen human minutes—flow monotonously, generation after generation; it is a constricted life of endless boredom.
Every now and then, however, some extremely distant echoes of a harmony, which they never could have imagined existed, reach their weak sense organs. And in surprise, the small creatures wonder where such wonderful harmonies could be coming from.
With the passage of time, some of these creatures, their “spiritual leaders”, managed to see and feel that their dark prison was not everything and that their world was something minimal compared to the ‘whole’ that existed. Very few of these creatures saw and understood this at first and the rest of them considered the few crazy. But in the end, the existence of other worlds and realities became common knowledge and became a shared faith. These tiny little creatures finally realised that what really exists, objective reality, was far bigger than their dark world.
And according to Stefan, this is the most important point of the parable: “You explain to them that their natural environment is only a part of this Great Reality, this great harmony, and that it’s even essential for its completion,” writes Tinersen, “but it is impossible for them to believe it. They argue that there is nothing wonderful about this bit they live and this pla
ce they live it in and that it couldn’t possibly be part of such incredible beauty since it would spoil it.” These tiny creatures were unable to understand the meaning, purpose and mission of a life that is committed to the whole.
I’m thinking that these people have either reached a whole new level of knowledge and spirituality or they are in desperate need of a cure for their childlike gullibility. Nevertheless, I understand the joy and the incredible spiritual happiness that fills these people’s lives. As Stefan reminds me all the time: “We don’t just believe in it; we’ve seen it!”
Oh, how I envy them! How I wish that the Nibelvirch would come to me as well! Although I think that, no matter how strong my faith, I wouldn’t be able to keep that happiness pure and unadulterated in the face of this reality full of suffering.
This is only a small part of what Stefan told me that night. The fatigue and the late hour forced me to stop. Stefan was very patient with me and didn’t leave until a quarter to midnight. After he left I sank into my armchair. Once again, I had much to ponder; and once again, late at night, I got up and resumed writing…
THE WORK OF THE AIDERSEN INSTITUTE AND THE SUPERIOR INNER LIFE AS A PATHWAY TO HUMAN EVOLUTION
16-X
If I’m not mistaken, the theories and principles that spring from the Valley of the Roses, the wondrous Rosernes Dal, bear the stamp of a newfound spirituality, unprecedented in the entire modern civilisation, a stamp of superiority compared to those of their previous cultural peak. Especially the Aidersen Institute, also located in their spiritual capital, has global prestige and a unique influence throughout the world.
Remarkable progress in the human intellect had also been made in previous times by previous generations. However, none of them can compare to the major leap forward that the Aidersen Institute made regarding the spiritual and intellectual path of our species. Up until then, for thousands of years, all the historical achievements were in relation to the psycho-spiritual abilities of a certain type of man. That’s why, until the last years of the Eldere (their old era) the spiritual journey of man moved more or less along the same lines. From our intellectuals to their own, such as Runerborg from the Valley of the Roses, Lorffe Esterling of Aidersen and more importantly Chillerin, the greatest, by far, of the Aidersen institute, our species had not changed. Human intellect, despite the different “schools” and views, had always headed in the same direction, a direction which was defined by the bio-capacity of our species—our biological fate.
The great accomplishment of the Aidersen Institute was that it opened up new perspectives for intellectual human history and, after long preparation, endowed mankind with a new “antenna”, thus taking a decisive step towards the transformation of the old type of human being into a new, intellectually superior version.
It didn’t create a superhuman, of course, but it did give us a significantly “advanced human being”. Thanks to the Aidersen Institute, Homo sapiens gave way to Homo Occidentalis Novus, the current "enlightened man" of the Nojere, the New Era(the Nojere started in 3382, on the 6th of September according to our calendar, which is when Volky survived the Nibelvirch. When the ascendance of Volkic Knowledge was complete circa 3430 AD, this day was labelled the “start of a new era in history”).
The Great Men of the Valley had said it from the very beginning of the Valley’s establishment, the very first centuries of its operation in the middle of the Eldere: the superior human being is not going to be given to us by the computers or the brains of technology. We can’t expect anything from the lifeless devices. If such an evolution ever occurs, they said, it won’t be due to or by means of technological progress. If humankind ever succeeds in surpassing its very nature, that can only be done through our inner cultivation. Only this could ever make us capable of experiencing a superior inner life.
The noble and well-intentioned aspirations of these first great men were limited to this realisation. That’s as far as their ambitions went. They couldn’t see that there are vast realities, separate and unrelated to the human-inspired religions, worldviews, ideologies and discoveries; they had no idea about them. The new era, the Nojere, showed everyone that it wasn’t reasonable to consider man as a “small, earthly God”. True reality would exist regardless of the contribution of our own species.
I asked him if what we thought back in my day, that is, that in accordance to the anthropocentric version, humans, and more specifically their spirit, are the only species that regards both themselves and the entire universe as an object of observation. Everything else that exists in the natural world, whether animate or inanimate, is always the object of observation and never the subject.
“Do you not even acknowledge this?” I asked.
“Yes, we do. But the current philosophy considers this truth applicable only in the context of our planet, which, as you may have realised, is something minimal compared to the inhabited planets of cosmic space.”
So what do the Aidersians argue? They argue that true objective reality exists independently of the sensory capabilities of each species. Its existence became known to the people of Nojere thanks to the Nibelvirch when they felt direct knowledge coming not from the outside anymore, but from within, if we are to believe Jaeger, Stefan and the rest. Therefore, the Samith proved to have this indescribable greatness described in the Volkic preaching. Thus, the Oversyn, the “new antenna”, was acquired, and everything that seemed transcendental before, had now been proven to be within the grasp of human capabilities. The scope of the cognitive capabilities of humans expanded, something that allowed the Homo Occidentalis Novus to see the Samith and accept its existence.
As for the element of spirituality, it doesn’t only exist within humans. It is the wonderful fruit of long-term biological evolution, unrelated to natural forces. The acquisition of this element of spiritual entity is what unites millions of intelligent, rational and emotional beings in the universe. It’s what unites the gifted, by destiny, species that are separated by astronomical distances from one another and which, biologically speaking, differ enormously from one another due to the natural environments in which each developed over millions of years.
Thanks to this element of spirituality, these thinking species, including ours, escape the confines of the nature that surround them and, with the passage of time, gradually enter into other, higher stages of development.
They gave me an incredible description of our species in the depths of time; I felt as if the whole history of humankind flashed before my eyes like a film. At first, they said, we were a simple part of the fauna of this planet. Once we eradicated most of our animalistic instincts, inner life and external culture began to develop. This is when the self-consciousness that now separates us from “the rest of the fauna” made its appearance.
After several stages of biological and spiritual development, humankind began to be possessed by an intense feeling of living in a foreign environment, by an inner need to find answers to its origins, a need that proved to be the source of man’s greatest cultural and intellectual achievements. This thirst of the soul manifested itself through worshipping of invisible forces, capturing the secrets and laws of the physical world, depicting ideal beauty, imposing a moral order that regulates social life and through allowing justice, humanity, liberty and equality to prevail. They argue that the concepts of good defeating evil and morality defeating immorality are innate in humans. And the reason why people suffered was exactly because none of these “innate laws” was kept or respected. That’s why people so impulsively pursued the worldly forms of the Samith; in the finite environment people lived, they dreamed of the infinite...
And when the Nibelvirch came, everyone understood why. Everyone understood where all this nostalgia and faith in something much greater and brighter stemmed from. It explained all the struggle and sacrifices of thousands of people for purposes that had no practical usefulness for them whatsoever. In a nutshell, as I understood it, the source of all spiritual cultures in the histor
y of the earth is none other than the metaphysical, human suffering, the deepest bitterness of the human soul caused by the absence of the Samith in our world. That’s how all the human achievements are interpreted nowadays: as efforts to overcome the barriers of physical nature and redeem the “real people” from this suffocating environment.
17-X
I returned this morning. I took Stefan with me as well. He was trying to convince me not to go, but I made him come with me to my old Switzerland, the place where I grew up. I wish I had listened to him; I wish I hadn’t gone. There was nothing left to remind me of my hometown. In the place where my house should have been, there were now only piles of stones, ruins… There was no sign of smoke or light on the horizon, nor did you hear the sound of crying babies or voices of adults. They had given way to countless pasture lands with thousands of animals, all part of the collective of the partners. There was nothing more. Once I managed to find my bearings, I sat down on a rock together with Stefan, facing the opposite mountain slopes, the companions of my childhood heart; at least they hadn’t changed in the slightest.
I quickly went back to my room. Silvia had sent me a message. Now, not only could I hear it but I could also see her through a screen; her eyes, her lips. She was cross for not having seen me for two days, but the sweet kind of cross…