Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon (bts book recommendations .txt) 📕

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