DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Phanteur, whole no. 1, January 1946

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Phanteur, whole no. 1, January 1946

Page 5

this or that or the other so-called mind and examining and copying as many of the natural processes as he can, and testing their accuracy for himself, or a process, or a theory that no more than duplicates some already functioning pro-cess of nature, proceeds to celebrate forthwith not the wonder of the natural and creative forrces about him, but the wonder and originality and power of his own mind.

"For instance, an Anaxagoras (B. C. 400) decides that the atom alone must be the basic unit of the universe. And Leonardo, after puzzling over the flying of birds, succeeds in suspecting that some day man my fly. How astounding the mind of Leonardo! Again, a Newton seeing an apple fall to the ground discovers the law of gravitation+ How supremely great Newton! But before Anaxagoras, were atoms. And before Leonardo, birds flew. And before Newton, there was the law of gravitation." 

Dreiser then asks what has arranged all this natural order -- a non-thinking non-reasoning mechanism? He suggests that there exists a free-moving, mental energy with which every material thing is pervaded. Men, animals, and trees are but implementations of this universal energy, just as the molecules in a pail of pain being brushed on a house by man are implements of man who has energy connections with the free-moving energy permitting him partial movement.

The human body, for example, Dreiser says, illustrates this concept. Each call of the body is a minute energy container functioning quite well and bene-fittingthe body as a whole; and each cell may or may not be aware of the larger structure of which it is a part. Cannot the whole functioning body, with all the other bodies in the universe, be simply an energy container in the pattern of a larger structure, of whose existence and purpose we are not aware? (Note reached by Charles Fort, that we are "property.")

Dreiser then discusses the purpose, as he sees it, of this superbeing and its connections with man, which, while interesting, is not a part of this article. Perhaps at a later date we can discuss it through the pages of this magazine.

The universal mind has been advanced before. Gustaf Stromberg in his book THE SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE says: "The mental development of the human race is to a large extent due to the fact that a few individuals for some reason or other have been able to establish a more intimate contact with the World Soul than the majority have succeeded in doing." If such be true, it may explain why discoveries, theories, and inventions are made almost simultaneously by men at wide-spread, separated protions of the world -- a sort of transmitting by the universal mind to certain of its "cells" which are receptive and functioning for that purpose.

But what is mind? All through this article I have been using terms loosely and interchangeably. I shall continue to do so, for they are identical in meaning. Mind, creative energy, world soul, all of the same family -- lets call it life.

Aldous Huxley says in TIME MUST HAVE A STOP: "The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is ighly organized, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern; buth thestone, although it is made up of these patterns, is just a mere confusion. It's only when life appears that you begin to get organization on a larger scale. Life takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of them like the stone, it combines them into new and more elaborate patterns of its own. The primal pattern. And then the chaos made of patterns. And the living patterns built up out of chaos. And then what next? Living patterns of living patterns?"

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this or that or the other so-called mind and examining and copying as many of the natural processes as he can, and testing their accuracy for himself, or a process, or a theory that no more than duplicates some already functioning pro-cess of nature, proceeds to celebrate forthwith not the wonder of the natural and creative forrces about him, but the wonder and originality and power of his own mind. "For instance, an Anaxagoras (B. C. 400) decides that the atom alone must be the basic unit of the universe. And Leonardo, after puzzling over the flying of birds, succeeds in suspecting that some day man my fly. How astounding the mind of Leonardo! Again, a Newton seeing an apple fall to the ground discovers the law of gravitation+ How supremely great Newton! But before Anaxagoras, were atoms. And before Leonardo, birds flew. And before Newton, there was the law of gravitation." Dreiser then asks what has arranged all this natural order -- a non-thinking non-reasoning mechanism? He suggests that there exists a free-moving, mental energy with which every material thing is pervaded. Men, animals, and trees are but implementations of this universal energy, just as the molecules in a pail of pain being brushed on a house by man are implements of man who has energy connections with the free-moving energy permitting him partial movement. The human body, for example, Dreiser says, illustrates this concept. Each call of the body is a minute energy container functioning quite well and bene-fittingthe body as a whole; and each cell may or may not be aware of the larger structure of which it is a part. Cannot the whole functioning body, with all the other bodies in the universe, be simply an energy container in the pattern of a larger structure, of whose existence and purpose we are not aware? (Note reached by Charles Fort, that we are "property.") Dreiser then discusses the purpose, as he sees it, of this superbeing and its connections with man, which, while interesting, is not a part of this article. Perhaps at a later date we can discuss it through the pages of this magazine. The universal mind has been advanced before. Gustaf Stromberg in his book THE SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE says: "The mental development of the human race is to a large extent due to the fact that a few individuals for some reason or other have been able to establish a more intimate contact with the World Soul than the majority have succeeded in doing." If such be true, it may explain why discoveries, theories, and inventions are made almost simultaneously by men at wide-spread, separated protions of the world -- a sort of transmitting by the universal mind to certain of its "cells" which are receptive and functioning for that purpose. But what is mind? All through this article I have been using terms loosely and interchangeably. I shall continue to do so, for they are identical in meaning. Mind, creative energy, world soul, all of the same family -- lets call it life. Aldous Huxley says in TIME MUST HAVE A STOP: "The difference between a piece of stone and an atom is that an atom is ighly organized, whereas the stone is not. The atom is a pattern; buth thestone, although it is made up of these patterns, is just a mere confusion. It's only when life appears that you begin to get organization on a larger scale. Life takes the atoms and molecules and crystals; but, instead of making a mess of them like the stone, it combines them into new and more elaborate patterns of its own. The primal pattern. And then the chaos made of patterns. And the living patterns built up out of chaos. And then what next? Living patterns of living patterns?"