Monday 25 August 2014

Inner Counter-Change?

Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977).

A small band of conspirators -

a Russian officer;
a Hindu mystic;
a French philosopher and religious writer;
an Irish politician;
a Chinese commissar;
an Australian engineer;
a Swedish financier

- plot to put an intelligence inhibitor field generator into orbit and restore the old days but the very secrecy of their scheme alerts the Observers and administrators of a society where:

all transactions are now in the open;
weather-turning force-screens will soon be in full production;
hundreds per day leave New York because it lacks economic or social purpose;
many move to the country now that transport and communication are no longer isolating factors;
much re-landscaping is necessary;
people in conversation practice the new logical Unitary language made public only a week before;
an adequate diet will be distributed free from food synthesis plants;
gold is an industrial metal, delivered from Fort Knox;
local payment in scrip exchangeable for goods and services might be superseded by world-wide acceptance of a man-hour credit standard;
robots are being made to replace manual workers;
meanwhile, manual workers who want more leisure time for intellectual stimulation might be persuaded to stay on the job if talks, symphonies etc are beamcast to their button hole receivers;
government is international;
Observers gather information necessary for the smooth operation of society by traveling around, talking to people and deducing the implications.

When the conspirators have been gently apprehended and prevented from harming themselves with their own weapons, the Hindu says that he has lost that feeble glimpse of the ultimate that he once had and is told that his mind is now too strong for its former fetalizing trance.

Non-rational experience can be either trans- or sub-rational. I think that Hindu mysticism has included both.

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