CHAPTER EIGHT
The Aquarius-Leo Age - 7

The necessary requirement for the management of power which, by their nature and their potential for total destruction, can safely belong only to Man-as-a-whole is a highly centralized organization of controls, such as for instance we find in the nervous systems of a human being. As Oliver Reiser has repeatedly pointed out in his books dealing with the global organization of mankind (The World Sensorium, The Integration of Knowledge, Cosmic Humanism, etc.) — and as Teilhard de Chardin suggested when speaking of the development of the noosphere of the earth — mankind represents in a sense a planetary type of brain within which consciousness operates. As I have stated, it is Man's function within the earth-sphere to extract consciousness from all the activities being performed within the biosphere and above it. So far a divided mankind has been able to do this only partially through local and specialized, often sharply conflicting, societies and cultures. Now Man's performance is reaching the global stage. A global society must be organized structurally in such a way that production, distribution and consumption are harmoniously and almost automatically balanced and flow rhythmically through the entire earth-field. How can this be achieved? This is the great problem.
      We can imagine conceptually a society in which this balancing and a complete adequacy of fulfillment to need has become an automatic operation — one that is regulated as efficiently as autonomous functions and instinctive response to everyday challenges are effectively interrelated in a human organism. Various sections of our industrial output are already becoming organized at a national level in such a manner — for instance, the release of electric power to meet a strongly varying demand for use according to the time of the day and of the year. But this type of organization still lacks a fool-proof stability and efficiency. Moreover it is at the mercy of conflicts between classes, ideological-political groups and nations — conflicts which, in this sense at least, parallel neurotic psychosomatic symptoms or even psychosis in individual human beings.
      To translate such already enormously complex systems of control, balance and feed-backs into a totally global system would assuredly require a most centralized type of authority and the absolute power to enforce its decisions. Could this operate while the inalienable freedom of the individual person and the diversity of racial, cultural, religious, political systems are considered to be absolute requirements? I personally cannot envision any way in which this could be achieved, unless the concepts of individual freedom and cultural or group diversity are transferred from the realm of power (which really means, in the broadest sense, "politics") to that of consciousness. As long as the concept of politics remains a driving force among men, the only global society I can imagine is one based on some form of totalitarianism — which means, as long as our present type of civilization exists, a technocratic type of control, i. e. the rule of managers and technicians operating through ever more complex types of machines and by means of psychological, biological and medical techniques.
      Today the ordinary citizen is not normally concerned by the way an electric network of power-stations, or the international telephone or mail service, are run. It is conceivable that all social services, and perhaps even the production, distribution and consumption of food or other so-called "necessities," might eventually be run also in such a nearly automatic way — i.e. without the intrusion of politics; which, in turn, means without the display in human beings of the will to power and of the craving for individualized profits that are measurable by wealth. It is conceivable; but is it likely to happen within the next two thousand years? When one looks at the mentality of the mass of human beings everywhere, one wonders.
      What seems to me more likely is that the very basis of our science, our technology, our way of programming social existence will be altered. It may not be altered rapidly by man-made wars and revolution or by telluric upheavals. It may not be altered everywhere at the same time. There may be "germinal groups" co-existing with an increasingly deteriorating technocratic Establishment, whether at the global, or only at the national level. It is not even inconceivable that the parallel to a Roman Empire after the beginning of the Aquarian Age will be a network of deeply spiritually intent groups and communities whose members will not only intellectually, but occultly or "telepathically," realize their unity as components of the global organism of MAN — while the "Barbarians" will be represented by the power-greedy politicians, the intellectuals, the worshippers of university knowledge and of machine-technology. The roles may thus be reversed, but eventually the followers of the old order would become spiritually fecundated by those groups which they probably would have tried to destroy, as Germanic tribes became Christianized and transformed by the symbols, the language, the social concepts and to some extent the manners of those they conquered.
      We can see such processes operating on a small scale even now. If mankind were to be shocked by some vast holocaust and continental upheavals, anything of course could happen; and it probably would not happen everywhere in the same way. But, whatever happens, the dream of an ideal, utterly spiritual and peaceful Aquarian Age seems to me an extreme illusion. A very gradual use of new powers by men whose consciousness will be deeply transformed by the very use of these powers seems inevitable. The great problem is likely to be the dissemination of these new powers through men whose consciousness and emotional drives would have to be so deeply re-oriented that the use of these powers by the average man and woman would be harmonious and constructive in terms of the unity of mankind.
      Might not this take many centuries, perhaps millennia? It should be clear that any new technological advance which can be, and most inevitably would be used by the representatives of the old dying Order can only lead eventually to monstrous results. The Nazi system was (or should we not say "is"?) a reappearance of the old tribal Order based on the exclusivistic glorification of a particular race, land and folk-culture and religion. What this archaic philosophy of race and human evolution was able to do with an up-to-date technology is well-known. It is always the same when a primitive, animistic, frustrated and irrational mentality is given tools and powers produced by analytical and un-moral techniques based on a principle of destruction. The end-result is inevitably, sooner or later, self-destruction.
      The new Age cannot begin until at least the most obvious and frightening aspects of our present-day technology — in psychology as well as in physics, chemistry and biology - are eradicated. Whether they can be eradicated by peaceful methods — except here and there under special conditions — is most doubtful. I firmly believe that it is to be hoped that the "eradication" will be done by agencies greater and more powerful than mankind — and particularly by the earth itself whose energy-releases can far transcend our atom bombs. Telluric upheavals should certainly be much preferable to a world-wide nuclear holocaust. The re-orientation of our polar axis could indeed be a powerful means to bring about, at least indirectly, the re-orientation of Man's mind and consciousness — and the resulting change in the concept of and the feelings related to social organization. But, of course, geographical and climactic changes would be only one aspect of the transformation. Man himself must accept and effectuate the transmutation of his mind and his vital-emotional energies. Our entire civilization and its institutions, our most basic attitudes to human relationship, our science and our education must be radically revaluated and oriented toward new goals. It must be transfigured by a "new" (as far as the average human being is concerned) realization of the place Man occupies in the universe and of Man's relationship to the creative force of this universe.