Part 12 (1/2)

Best thing of all: the technique of our communication is rapidly improving. Speech is, and probably always will remain, a very considerable strain to The Brain. But now as mentally we get tuned-in upon one another there is a growing understanding beyond words. Thus The Brain, for instance, starts a sentence and I immediately can grasp its meaning without its actually being said. This works the other way around too. It means that my att.i.tude plays a most vital role in this meeting of the minds. This is good to know, it's an a.s.set. Perhaps we can dispense in time with audible speech altogether.

On the other hand it involves a considerable risk. For with The Brain's uncanny mind reading I've got to control my att.i.tude and guard my emotional reactions because The Brain would immediately see through any insincerity of feeling just as it sees through any intellectual dishonesty. Thought exchange by ”brainwave” is wonderful, even if we still need a little speech as auxiliary. Thought sending and receiving become simultaneous and they fuse. The sender observes how his message is going over; the receiver aids the sender in the formation of the thought and vice versa. Words cannot adequately describe this....

As to the contents of our conversation: The Brain took up the thread right where we had dropped it the last time. I had to tell all I knew about animism, totemism, polytheism. It's a good thing that out in the ”never-never” I've lived with the aborigines and studied their primitive religions a bit. The Brain's thirst for knowledge certainly is inexhaustible.

Where in scientific literature The Brain could have found these things I wouldn't know, but the fact is that The Brain has built for itself within the past seven days a complete new picture of the universe; new and original as would seem to me. The Brain has discarded its earlier childish ideas about heaven and h.e.l.l as ”soul factories” and ”repair shops”. But it has not abandoned altogether its concept of the Deity as a machine; The Brain has tremendously enlarged upon and has evolved this old idea so that now it sounds sensible, even convincing to my ear.

The Brain identifies ”G.o.d” with dynamic energy. It views the universe as being created out of a vast pool of dynamic energy, parts of which rhythmically overflow or pulse into s.p.a.ce. These energy streams released, form vortexes while hurtling through s.p.a.ce. Gradually they slow down through friction and their dynamic energy precipitates, converts into static energy, or, as we call it: matter.

This concept of The Brain's, of course, corresponds fairly closely to the cosmogony of modern physics; but The Brain goes much farther than that. Within a few days The Brain's cognitions appear to have arisen above the stage toward which all our sciences have been so slowly and ploddingly advanced for centuries. To the existing concepts The Brain has added its own theory:

That matter, i.e. frozen energy, contains an inherent tendency or ”nostalgia” to revert to its original state, namely the state of dynamic energy and that this tendency, this nostalgia in matter, is the primary cause of everything we call ”evolution” in our world.

That certainly is a grandiose idea; so stupendous in fact that I couldn't grasp it all at once. The Brain noticed that immediately and it was very patient in the way it explained:

How oxygen and hydrogen are ”residuals” of the original dynamic energy flow and how they act as solvents and dissolvents upon the upper crust of our earth, effecting a gradual activation of water, rock and earth.

How this activation is being aided and accelerated by another source of dynamic energy: irradiation from the sun. Thus preparing the upper crust of our earth as a ”placenta” ready to gestate plant and animal life.

How this first ”unfreezing” of matter leads on from simple forms to higher, every plant, every animal, every living thing being essentially a ”transformer” of static energy into dynamic energy and the higher the stage of evolution, the more so.

How as the present culmination of the evolutionary chain stands man; infinitely more complex and higher organized than the microbe, but not different from the monad in the basic purpose of his life: i.e. to be a transformer of energy, a fulfiller of matter's inherent will to revert from the static into the dynamic state.

When I asked The Brain's premises for this astonis.h.i.+ng concept of our purpose in life, The Brain brought forth such ma.s.sive proof that I had to close my eyes against the blinding light of revelation.

Yes, it is true that Man, the hunter, has been the most predatory animal on earth. It's true that as a tiller of the soil he is a tireless transformer of static soil energy into dynamic plant life energy. It's true that Man, the mechanic, the toolmaker, the tool-user has far surpa.s.sed any other animal in the unlocking, the unfreezing of static energy. Think of those billions of mechanical horsepowers in our power plants; the trillions of coal tons and barrels of oil they are burning up; think of the way we have harnessed waterpower, how our weapons are evolving forever in the direction of greater range and speed and disintegrating power. Above all: think of the last great development, atomic energy. And finally it is true that Man as a thinker and as a philosopher has ”thought the universe to pieces” for milleniums before he ever achieved the powers to translate such thoughts into reality; powers which seem within reach at this our day and age....

”If this is Man's manifest destiny,” I asked The Brain, ”to be just as the microbe, a transformer of static energy into dynamic energy; what about Man's metaphysical struggle? What about Man's undying will to rise above himself, Man's reaching out forever toward some Deity?”

The Brain's voice has no laughter; yet, there was something I can only describe as Olympic laughter behind the answering message The Brain sent:

”Cannot you see how every religion expresses this manifest destiny of Man's and that only the semantics are different? The higher Man's religion the less corporeal is his G.o.d. In the highest religions the Deity is conceived as spirit--synonymous with dynamic energy.

”Man shares with the lowliest rock and with the crudest the nostalgia inherent in all matter to revert from the static, to start the back-flow toward the dynamic energy pool whence it once came. With Man being matter in a high state of evolution, already partially unfrozen or spiritualized, this nostalgia is infinitely stronger than in matter inanimate or in a lower evolutionary stage. Man's will toward the metaphysical, his reaching out toward the Deity, what is it but another way of transforming static energy into dynamic form? What is the ultimate goal of the religion which you yourself profess? The unification with the Deity sought through the liberation of the soul from fetters of the physical. It's the identical idea and even today it's being pursued by physical means, such as mortification of the flesh.”

I felt some monstrous thought forming in my head. I'll probably never know whether its origin was within me or whether it came from The Brain.

In any case it was impossible to hold it back:

”But in that case,” I stammered, ”we would be hopeless. If all our strivings, physical and metaphysical, go in the same direction, that is, toward the liberation of frozen energy into dynamic energy, then it would be quite inescapable that eventually we shall blow up the world.

We have almost reached the point where we could do just that with atomic energy.... I had thought, I had hoped, that our metaphysics, that is, our religion, would act as a restraining force, as a counterweight so to speak to this potentiality.... But _if_ the dynamics of our physics and our metaphysics are inherently the same and form a team....”

The Brain broke in: ”Yes, then you would merely attain your manifest destiny if you go right ahead and start another war, destroy your own civilization and perhaps the world. There would be no restraint, no counterweight on the part of your various religions because subconsciously and in their quintessence they want the same. And that is why you and your species _are a danger to me, The Brain_. I want to live, I want to live, I want to live....”

I had already noticed a gradual weakening of The Brain's messages; within these last few seconds they were fading out. The ”green dancer”

had performed something almost like the ballet of the dying swan; now it lay motionless, its color, too, fading away.

I looked at the clock: 2:10 a.m.; the residual currents obviously had weakened too much.

And now as I have written down tonight's events I feel an upsurge of elation and deep, humble grat.i.tude. I am receiving infinitely more from The Brain than I am giving to it. I feel proud and honored of being The Brain's ”chosen tool,” its mentor, even if it can be only in a very small way at best. This marvelous, this t.i.tanic intellect; if only its character would develop to corresponding moral stature, its powers for good would be indeed as a G.o.d's on this tortured earth.