by Unknown
With this logic and mentality, and because of this belief, they don’t mind carrying the weight of another year on their shoulders.
Their metaphysical faith is also completely different from ours. We believe that you’re only born once, while they believe that even if the human body didn’t exist, the spirit would find its way to manifest itself in some other world.
In any case, Stefan had told me to be upstairs on time, just before midnight. And so I was. I was looking outside my window when suddenly all lights went out in the entire city and the bells started ringing! Simultaneously, the artificial light—this time light blue instead of white—began to gradually envelop each and every district of the city. The magical part was that the light emanated from the earth! It was as if the city was being born out of nowhere! The Heptagon with its statues and its arcades, the eight parallel avenues Lambarene, the domes of Grazie Dei, the endless gardens of Serinaio, Chilisprin, Gretatria, the lawns of the Alexiad, the cloisters of the Novum, the Roads of Jasmine, the Central Gallery, Santa Virgo, the temple of Gretlys, the hanging Tuplin Park, the Artificial Hill of Noghera, the artificial lake of Viborg with its famous Japanese cherry trees—wherever you turned your gaze you saw semi-circular arches in vertical position emitting light in such a way as if they were pulling it from insides. Veiled in that transparent, blue, glimmering light, the city welcomed the start of the New Year for half an hour. I was enchanted!
3-I
(Late at night)
It’s my 59th day today and my heart is overflowing with happiness and excitement. Today there was a beautiful morning sun after ten hours of light drizzle that had forced me to keep my windows shut. This sun reminds me of my city and my mother. Mother, let me lean my head tenderly on your shoulder like I used to… Remember? Let me tell you my story about the great happiness I’ve found, a happiness so big that I still don’t know what I have ever done in my life to deserve it…
4-I
Back to first joys of our childhood! Back to the time when even the slightest little thing was a source of joy! It’s a nice, clear morning and we’re off to Jaeger’s small seaside mansion!
GOING TO SCHOOL
Lessons by professors Lain and Astrucci
4-1 Again
(Midday)
Stefan and I just got back a little while ago from Professor Lain’s, where we spent about two hours this morning. For the first time Jaeger came along. I enjoyed seeing this affable, white-haired teacher with the bright eyes again after about three months, and all these little children who, surprisingly enough, all called him Father. He is simple and easy to understand, I like the way he talks and I might be coming to hear him teach, whenever I have nothing else to do. Plus, Silvia has finally made peace with Andreas Northam’s condition. And Jaeger has talked to both Lain and Astrucci about me. I think we’re slowly becoming great friends, the venerable Ilector and I.
6-I
I think that when the people of our time reach maturity, they get trapped in a routine and slowly become enslaved by it. They become seemingly “knowledgeable” and “down to earth” and start walking with their heads bowed down from the pressure and the stress of everyday life, losing any interest in the colour of an autumn sky, like the one I’m looking at right now. No, Mother, it’s not a lie! Believe my words: “The great state with the trees with golden leaves” did not only exist in the dreams of a simple, naive and gullible child’s heart...
9-I
It’s the third morning that I go to hear Lain. This man has his way not only to convey knowledge, but also to speak directly to your heart. And how nicely he explains and simplifies everything! There is not a thing I didn’t understand any of these three days.
This afternoon I went to the big boulevard that runs along the central park. I didn’t look for its name but it’s parallel to the middle road of the Roads of Jasmine and, in my opinion, it’s the most beautiful part of this entire state. On my right-hand side, I had that enormous park with the artificial lake I’ve mentioned before, and on my left-hand side, on the other side of the boulevard, I had the 130-meter long row of palaces, which looked as if inhabited by Titans.
The light drizzle was falling on me and bouncing off my shoes and I remember that I thought that in my previous life I would have already fallen into melancholy with such weather. But now I’m happy! I know I repeat it all the time, but this psychological contrast of mine surprises me and I can’t help pointing it out over and over again.
THEIR MONTHS AND FESTIVE DAYS
Teachings by Lain
9–II
It’s the ninth again, but the ninth of the next month. I didn’t write a single word for thirty whole days this time. I’m so absorbed in Lain’s lessons in the mornings, in my endless walks around the city in the evenings and on the Reigen-Swage at night that I haven’t had time to write.
Nowadays, each month has exactly thirty days. They now mark them in Roman numerals instead of the old names we used to distinguish them. The start of each New Year is marked by the autumn equinox. It has been that way since the top scientists took the political authority in their hands and obtained the power to legislate and handle all political matters of everyday life.
Each year consists of five intercalary holidays: New Year, Christmas, one dedicated to human altruism and two of anniversaries. The first is to mark March 5th 2396 (according to our calendar), the Aarsdag of the Retsstat, which is the anniversary of the day that the whole world was united into a Universal Commonwealth governed by law and order. The second is commemorate of September 6th 3382, the Aarsdag of the Gretvirch, the day of gaining access to direct knowledge from Alexis Volky, who led the human species to the next stage of evolution.
They have a sixth holiday every four years, which had occurred the year before last, the MDVIII (3904 of our chronology). The ancient division of the week is not used anymore, perhaps because the two-year service, without any exceptions or days off, putting an end to the distinction between working days and Sundays. As for the citizens, the Cives, such as Stefan and the rest of the people, they adjust their individual timetable depending on their mood and the work to which they have dedicated themselves, if they have any...
Now on the subject of Lain and his lessons. In the classroom you hear things that aren’t just for children. Even adults could complete their education there. He teaches almost everything, from philosophy and history to social sciences and their own, mainly spiritual, sciences: a breadth of fields though not in so much depth, but still, something like that would never happen in our time during our years of basic education. And so these mature sixteen- and seventeen-year-old adolescents have perfect knowledge of at least the basics of each field of study when they graduate and therefore can, after completing their two-year service in the glothners, choose to specialise or just receive training in any field they feel they are inclined towards.
Nowadays they truly appreciate and honour the spiritual sciences, not the ones designed to describe and interpret the external world and life, but the ones that pay special attention to inner depth, the ones that penetrate into the deeper meaning of existing things. And they argue that these sciences are not so much connected with the abilities of the human intellect, but mainly with feelings and emotions. And what they use as “means to capture and interpret” that part of the human existence is nothing else than the experiences and delights that shake the human soul to its core.
This man speaks in a very strange way and it becomes even more interesting when he, himself, teaches about the great men and women of the Aidersen Institute and the Valley.
“Nobody ever expected,” he says, “such an incredible justification, such a catharsis of the human tragedy.” The “smart” and “knowledgeable” people of earlier eras, the “experts” of the Eldere, let people be perpetually bombarded with moral values just to facilitate their own lives. The more people were bound by ethical principles and feelings, the more difficult it was for them to compromise their conscience and t
he more the “specialists” benefited from all this. They used the honest hesitations of ordinary, good people to their own profit.
And the powerful leaders of the planet said the same things; political, social and ecclesiastical leaders advocated maintaining that “code of conduct and ethics”, because it helped their plan. And so these ideals were being recycled over the years and kept manifesting themselves over and over again in identical or similar forms, pushing the evolutionary course of life of mankind to maturity, and yet serving individual and collective interests at the same time. Especially the promise of an afterlife as a reward for virtue was one of their major tenets!
“The people of prehistory,” said Lain, “and even of our Eldere were fascinated by the unstoppable advent of high ideals in the form of love of freedom, social justice and humanism. However, nobody before the Nibelvirch knew the true Reason for them. They called them ideals, dreams, protests of downtrodden crowds for the degradation of human dignity and life. But then they saw what great truth was hidden behind them...
13-II
Up until the generation of Mary-Lea, said Lain today, one of Volky’s students, everything transcendental or metaphysical was considered and dealt with as a form of faith, not knowledge. It took a while until they realised why this simple distinction between good and evil existed and understood that they weren’t just some man-made rules of expediency, useful only for the smooth functioning of society.
THE ESSENCE OF THE AIDERSIAN KNOWLEDGE: THE UNITY OF THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL WORLD AND THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGIONS
14-II
Lain said again today that the greatest realities are the ones we’re unaware of. Our eyes cannot see them and our intellect cannot conceive them. There are no words familiar to human reason to describe their divine substance. The awareness of our existence might have been given to us as a gift, but, for as long as we stay simply human beings, its substance and structure will remain transcendent and beyond comprehension to us. Then he said something that I didn’t completely understand: that the path towards knowledge is a “relative idea” we approach it, at times more so and at others less, but we can never possess it.
Only after the Aidersen Institute pointed it out did people realise that the distinction between the physical universe and the spiritual world is completely subjective and human-generated. There are no material and spiritual worlds; there are only genera of living beings, organic, rational, biological species, others with stronger antennas and others with weaker cognitive abilities. The Great Reality is single and uniform and this was proved and demonstrated by the great visionary minds of the Aidersen Institute. And so the “cognition” of our race became enlightened and its limits expanded enormously, something that in the era of the Eldere, nobody could have ever suspected or expected; not even the ancestors of Homo Occidentalis Novus, the next evolutionary stage of humans after Homo sapiens.
Lain continued that there are no miracles and supernatural things; there are no things that break the laws of nature. All these things that we call supernatural are nothing but laws that are inaccessible to human cognition, logic and way of thinking.
Their history and chronology only consists of two eras: the Eldere and the Nojere; the old and the new era. The first one is the genuine heir of our 19th and 20th centuries, infused by the spirit of technical culture and the achievements of science, dazzled by the technological achievements of man, science, reason and the mind. The second one, the Nojere, revealed the true depth and meanings of existence and gave the correct interpretation to the mental tendencies of man. It revealed that the world and life have a divine meaning and purpose, completely different and unrelated to the narrow and finite human destiny. The natural sciences were not and did not offer true knowledge. Science was practical and very useful to our lives, but did not contain the absolute truth. Only the new experience of Oversyn or Oversynssans, as they also call it, in conjunction with the Nibelvirch give man pure knowledge and deliverance from pain and doubt and terminate his metaphysical anguish. This “new experience” is the miraculous achievement of the Aidersen Institute.
Just writing about all this gives me goose bumps. Every single time I hear them or think about them, they seem unbelievable to me. All the knowledge that stemmed from science and the metaphysical beliefs of the ancient—to them—times has been concentrated, adapted and reshaped to create something single and united: Volkic preaching. Dogmatic faith— or rather the dogmatic part of all religions— has been replaced but without tampering with its substance. Quite the opposite, since religions were exempt from the age-old burden of simplistic details that had obviously been inspired by the human mind. As a result, the moral and emotional elements and treasures of every religion then came to the surface and were finally highlighted. So here, religion no longer becomes subject to criticism or questioning after each scientific progress and breakthrough. It doesn’t get “refuted” every now and again and it’s no longer forced to constantly and desperately defend itself.
He continued, citing as an example the fact that cremation was now more widespread and that those alive no longer expected “to be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” He quoted the Bible word for word! I couldn’t hold back my laughter when the words came out of his mouth... This man has his ways…
He says that maintaining the self-consciousness of the ego is now enough to save them from the threat of the old narrow and finite biological destiny of humans. So the death and decay of the body doesn’t matter to them anymore.
“Did man of the ancient, unenlightened years,” he asked, “mind the findings of biological research, which showed that every seven years there remains nothing of a human’s material self since all our body cells are renewed?” At this point, even the youngsters laughed.
He mentioned familiar names, like Nietzsche who, in Lain’s words, tried to "destroy every spiritual value and affect the validity all previous spiritual victories ", and Darwin whose mistake was “his excessive belief in the cognitive abilities of man.”
“The Darwinian Theory is indeed compatible with the divine gift of life,” he said, “but only if you see it as a separate, individual point of view instead of the absolute truth. Because, in that case, you ignore the millions of different species of rational living creatures that inhabit millions of other planets. But I guess that’s how it goes… Just like the Homo sapiens spent thousands of years until he finally gained consciousness, the same thing happened in the next stage of human evolution: Man’s world was rocked by hundreds of manifestations of this incredible thirst of the soul and spirit, but he didn’t know that all that came from the Samith. He had no consciousness or knowledge. We needed the arrival of the Nibelvirch in order to gain consciousness of ourselves and the world and interpret, belatedly, all the emotions we felt as a species.”
He also said that thanks to this divine element of undiagnosed texture, all the species of the universe tend to rise higher and higher, both spiritually and intellectually speaking, having managed from a bestial state of organic matter to end up creating a whole history of culture. Coming to the end of the lesson, he spoke again about the “self-cultivation of the spirit" that goes together with overall biological evolution.
HOW TO LIVE ACCORDING TO PROFESSOR LAIN
Comments about Prehistory and the unity of time
16-II
I remember Lain saying yesterday that in every era young men and women are thirsty for ideals because the young soul is made that way. While speaking to the youngsters, he made a distinction between the “ideals of a people” and their personal ideals. For the former he said that their objective is the maintenance and improvement of the historical course of humanity and spiritual civilisation. He added that culture, as an ideal, doesn’t have a beginning or an end and is not limited to our planet.
Now, as far as their personal ideals are concerned, I recall him saying that the highest personal ideal one can have is the ideal of freedom, namely the a
ttempt for everyone to become a free, moral and spiritual personality, to the maximum possible degree. And also that true education is not necessarily defined by knowledge as much as it is by the inner cultivation of the person and the mental urge to act based on and led by high moral standards.
“Get rid of your passions, the vices, all things vulgar and base. Free yourselves from the shackles of the material human nature. Be free, moral personalities and try to enlighten your lives with all that is beautiful and meaningful.”
These last words of his reminded me of several of our religious sermons. But then he spoke about how, after the youth is over, people drift away from the reflections of the Samith and how this ends in moral pain and anguish, causing a type of depression that often touches post-teenage souls.
“But you,” he said, “won’t let your youthful enthusiasm fade away. You won’t be brought abruptly back down to earth like older generations. You won’t become “knowledgeable” no matter how many years go by. Because for us, the people of Nojere, the Aidersen has fortunately preceded us…”
Indeed, he stressed that thanks to the Aidersen, it has been proven that the mood and state of mind of people during puberty has always been far wiser than the state of mind of those of a more mature age! The young antennas proved more powerful in capturing the world of today.
“Look at me,” he said, getting their undivided attention. “You young people have always been more capable receivers of the beauty and importance of the spring, a full moon, love or true freedom!”