Cosmotheism – Wave of the Future
Cosmotheism – Wave of tbe Future is a Cosmotheist lecture given by Dr. William Pierce on July 24, 1977 at tbe office of tbe National Alliance in Arlington, Virginia.
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We have ready tonight tbe first of a series of pamphlets intended to serve not only as guides for us, but also as aids in enlightening new people and in bringing them into our community. This particular pamphlet, “The Path,” is tbe first in tbe series because it's tbe most fundamental. It states in a very concise form...also, I hope, in a relatively easy to understand form...the essence of our truth, tbe essence of tbe idea on which our community is founded. What it doesn't state is a great many very important things, namely everything which is implied by tbe Cosmotheist truth, everything which can be derived from it. It says essentially nothing, for example, about ethics, about race, and about many other things, some of which we have talked about in our earlier meetings here. And tbe reason that it says nothing about these things is simply that it would have taken a book ten times tbe length of this pamphlet to say them, and we couldn't have had that book ready tonight...perhaps not even by this time next year. We eventually will have a book, but first we'll have a series of pamphlets dealing with ethics, with race, and with everything else of importance to us, and this is tbe beginning.
Now, in choosing to commit our Cosmotheist doctrine to writing in this step-by-step way, which is tbe only practical way for us at this time, we make some difficulties for ourselves and we leave ourselves open to some dangers, and I'll talk about those in just a minute. But there's at least one advantage to this way in addition to tbe strictly practical one of not having to wait forever to have at least something down on paper. That advantage lies in stressing to ourselves, and to those that we come in contact with, what's fundamental and what's derived. This is first because it's fundamental. It's tbe source. It's tbe essence from which everything else will grow. And, so, having this first will, I hope, help us all to avoid tbe error of putting tbe cart before tbe horse, of attaching more importance, more significance to derived things than to fundamentals. It should remind us, and it should remind others, that Cosmotheists are not people primarily...and I stress tbe word “primarily”...they're not people primarily interested in promoting certain racial goals, or certain social or political or economic goals, but that they are people primarily concerned with fulfilling their mission as tbe bearers of tbe Creator's purpose, as agents of tbe universal will. That comes first. Everything else...race, politics, culture, economics...is a means to that single end. And tbe reason I emphasize that tonight, and tbe reason I've emphasized it many times before, is that it is easy to slip into tbe error in this regard, and we want, always, to make sure that one of tbe distinguishing features between us and others who pursue similar racial or political or social policies is that we don't put tbe cart before tbe horse. Everyone else almost certainly will, but we, alone, are working for ultimate things, for eternal things, for infinite things, and we must never forget that.
Now, having noted that, we should also understand that we will have difficulty in using this pamphlet by itself in carrying out our work. The truth in it is in too concentrated a form for most people to get their minds around it very easily. They need their evasions. They need tbe secondary things, tbe specific examples and illustrations which follow from this truth in order to begin to comprehend it meaningfully. I know that that'll be tbe case with most ordinary people even though I took pains to state things clearly and carefully in this pamphlet, so we'll have to put up with some difficulties and do tbe best we can until we have actually produced some of those other pamphlets dealing with ethics and race and so on.
Now, beyond this difficulty there are some real dangers inherent in tbe generality of our truth as expressed here. Those are tbe dangers of misinterpretation, of drawing false implications, either accidentally or deliberately. Let me give you a couple of trivial examples.
:Nothing in tbe universe exists entirely independently and of itself. Everything is a part of tbe whole. Therefore, Whites and Blacks are brothers and we should ignore tbe superficial difference of race.
Another example:
- We're all parts of tbe whole, which is tbe Creator. Our destiny is godhood. Therefore, all human life is sacred as a part of tbe Creator, and we mustn't hurt or kill anyone...that is, we must be pacifists and humanitarians.
Well, among ourselves, we hardly need to go to tbe trouble to refute these transparent errors. We hardly need to point out in tbe first example, that, indeed, in a certain sense, we are brothers to tbe Blacks, but in tbe same sense, we are brothers to rattlesnakes, to sea urchins and to crabgrass, and even to every stone and lump of dirt. We're all parts of tbe whole, but we don't ignore tbe differences between tbe parts. Those differences are as essential a part of tbe one reality as is tbe unity of all things because it's a dynamic reality, an evolving reality. In tbe second example, everything is, indeed, a part of tbe Creator and therefore partakes in tbe Creator's divine nature in tbe same way that every wart or pimple or blackhead on our bodies is a part of us and partakes in our nature. In that narrow sense, everything is sacred in itself, but tbe overriding importance lies in tbe particular role a thing plays. It lies in tbe particular way in which tbe thing serves tbe Creator's purpose, and tbe fact is that not all things which are parts of tbe Creator serve that purpose anymore than our warts serve ours.
Well, this is a big topic in itself. We could talk a lot more about these two errors and we could think of a lot more examples of tbe way in which our truth might be misinterpreted, but I just wanted to illustrate tbe general nature of tbe problem that we face which is inherent in tbe inadequacy of human language itself. We can certainly refine and improve tbe way in which our truth is stated, but we cannot ever entirely eliminate tbe danger of misinterpretation. If we were tbe only ones involved, that would be one thing, but we are not tbe only ones involved in interpreting our truth. There are many others involved. That has both its good and its bad aspects. Many others are involved because Cosmotheism is an idea whose time has come. I told you before in our earlier meetings that we can find partial expressions of Cosmotheism among tbe writings of tbe ancients twenty-five centuries ago. A great many of tbe Greek and Roman philosophers understood parts of our truth. The same was true of tbe pagan philosophers of northern Europe and also of certain outstanding Christian thinkers of tbe Middle Ages, despite tbe fundamental contradictions of Cosmotheism with tbe teachings of tbe Church. Then in tbe 18th and 19th centuries there was an enormous outpouring of Cosmotheist feeling. Cosmotheism, or at least one aspect of Cosmotheism, was tbe underlying idea of tbe entire Romantic movement in art and literature, from Alexander Pope to Joseph Turner and William Wordsworth. And Cosmotheism is tbe underlying idea of 20th century science. Today, more and more thinkers...scientific thinkers in particular...are coming to understand that fact and, also, to give explicit expression to that understanding.
I pointed out to you in earlier meetings some of tbe specifically Cosmotheist statements of some of tbe Medieval thinkers, and also of some of tbe more modern philosophers...Hegel, Fichte, others. The more one looks into tbe matter, tbe clearer becomes this Cosmotheist thread running through tbe spiritual and intellectual history of our race. Every week, I run across more and more examples. Just last Thursday, someone sent me this statement by tbe novelist D.H. Lawrence, and I quote just a part of a longer statement by Lawrence: “We and tbe cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast, living body of which we are all parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great, gleaming nerve center from which we quiver forever. Now all this is literally true, as men knew in tbe great past and as they will know again.”
Well, hundreds of other Cosmotheist expressions by prominent men during just tbe last few decades can be found. There can be no doubt that our people down through tbe ages have been groping for tbe Cosmotheist truth, and today, more than ever, they're finding it. Tomorrow, it will be tbe dominant idea in tbe world.
Now, it's possible to understand just why this is our moment in history, just why tbe Cosmotheist trickle over tbe last twenty-five hundred years should have become a flood today. I don't want to spend a lot of time on this tonight, but I'll just point out a confluence of things which has led to this flood. Perhaps we can talk about them in more detail at another time. One of tbe things in this confluence was tbe reorientation of Western thought during tbe 19th century from an essentially static to a dynamic view of tbe universe. Darwin, of course, is tbe man who played tbe key role in this reorientation, although it began before him and it was not complete at tbe time of his death. The Medieval view of tbe world was as a finished creation. Since Darwin, we've come to see tbe world as undergoing a continuous and unfinished process of creation, of evolution. This evolutionary view of tbe world is only about a hundred years old in terms of being generally accepted. Before that, tbe people who expressed Cosmotheist ideas expressed, primarily, their feeling of tbe unity of tbe universe, in particular, of tbe oneness of God and Man as opposed to tbe Church's view. These ideas fall under tbe general heading of pantheism, but pantheism is only one aspect of Cosmotheism. The pantheists...at least, most of them...lacked tbe understanding of tbe universe as an evolving entity, and so their understanding was incomplete. Their static view of tbe world made it much more difficult for them to arrive at tbe Cosmotheist truth.
Another thing in tbe historical confluence leading to tbe acceptance of Cosmotheism today has been tbe drastic decline in tbe role of tbe Christian church in tbe last hundred years. Until fairly recently, tbe Church dominated tbe intellectual life of tbe West. Church doctrine, which, as I just mentioned, is fundamentally opposed to our truth, strongly influenced tbe outlook of most...in fact, of nearly all...thinkers, most teachers, and most writers. Today, tbe Church directly influences only a relatively small minority of tbe leading thinkers, so this fundamental barrier of tbe acceptance of tbe Cosmotheist truth for more than a thousand years has crumbled. And I don't mean, of course, that Christianity is dead or that tbe Church has no more influence. Among tbe masses of tbe people, Church doctrine is still relatively powerful, but it is no longer so among tbe leading minds of tbe West.
Finally, there is tbe inescapable fact that Cosmotheism is tbe outlook toward which one is led by modern science whether one approaches tbe world microscopically or macroscopically, whether one is studying elementary particles or stellar evolution. And so I repeat, Cosmotheism is tbe wave of tbe future, but just as we rejoice that this is so, there are many more people...that there are many more people now than before who are able to understand and to accept our truth, so we must be gravely concerned because of tbe dangers that this brings with it...because of tbe dangers that there are so many people who can accept, for example, today, what's in this pamphlet. A minute ago I gave you a couple of examples of ways in which our Cosmotheist truth might be misinterpreted. We can be sure that it will be misinterpreted both accidentally and deliberately...in fact, it is now being misinterpreted. It's being misinterpreted accidentally, or, we might say, without malicious intent, by people who have found their way to tbe essence of our truth and accepted it, but who simply do not have tbe courage to follow that truth when it leads them into areas which have been made taboo by modern liberalism. They don't have tbe strength of character, tbe degree of independence from peer pressure, to allow themselves to draw tbe correct conclusions from tbe fundamental truth they've accepted when those conclusions are contrary to prevailing liberal dogma. And so they try to bend that truth, unconsciously, to yield conclusions which are socially acceptable to a degenerate and decaying society, to a society which is morally and intellectually corrupt...a spiritually empty society.
It's worthwhile noting here tbe difference in tbe type of opposition we face from tbe liberal establishment today and that which pantheist philosophers faced from tbe Church in past centuries. The Church was opposed to pantheism and to Cosmotheism on fundamental grounds. The Christian church had men who were genuine philosophers...true intellectuals who were deeply concerned with tbe nature of reality and with knowing tbe truth. They were wrong, but they were still sincere men concerned with fundamental ideas. When Johannes Eckhart...Meister Eckhart...was charged with heresy in tbe 13th century, it wasn't because he refused to say tbe Mass according to tbe prescribed manner, or because he rejected tbe dogma of tbe virgin birth, or any of tbe other things having to do with his duties as a priest of tbe Church. In all of those things he was strictly orthodox. His heresy lay in his deepest philosophical writings, as tbe Church immediately spotted this deviation and jumped on him for it. Liberalism, on tbe other hand, is not at all concerned with truly fundamental ideas. Liberalism is not a philosophy, but a disease of tbe soul. The true liberal is never a true intellectual because liberalism is fundamentally anti-intellectual. Liberalism consists of a collection of tendencies...related tendencies...which, at any particular time, may be given concrete expression in a body of dogma, but liberal dogma is not derived from any fundamental philosophy which can be held up for comparison with Cosmotheism and tbe contradictions noted.
And so, we have a situation relative to liberalism today, which is essentially different from tbe situation relative to tbe Church in tbe past. A person who follows tbe herd in observing liberal dogma...they nevertheless accept our truth with no danger that his liberal friends and co-workers will shun him or stone him. There's no contradiction, no heresy, no social penalty until one draws conclusions which don't jibe with liberal dogma. And so there is, and will be, a strong social incentive for tbe people who are finding their way to tbe Cosmotheist truth to draw tbe wrong conclusions from it or to refuse to draw any conclusions at all.
Now, let's remind ourselves for a moment of tbe nature of Cosmotheism. Its truth, its understanding which is arrived at in a particular way, and that way is through tbe synthesis of subjective and objective knowledge or, to use tbe same words that are used in our pamphlet here, it's tbe perfect union of tbe Creator's eminent consciousness and Man with Man's reason. Our truth comes to us through a blending of tbe universal consciousness and race soul and our genes with our reason. Thus, our way of arriving at truth is fundamentally different from tbe way of most major religions, which depend in a very basic way on revelation, whether through oracles or prophets or what have you. It's also different from tbe purely mystical, purely subjective religions of tbe East which are a fad among so many lost souls in tbe West today, just as it is different from tbe pure rationalism which used to be tbe undisputed philosophy of science until recently. We're not subject to tbe sort of problem that tbe revealed religions are...or that they have, rather, in which tbe prophets may contradict one another, or some fine morning someone may claim he had a vision, or that an angel showed him a book written on leaves of gold, or that Jehovah appeared as a burning bush and handed him a couple of stone tablets inscribed with a new set of laws. And no Cosmotheist can get away with babbling whatever nonsense comes into his head like tbe Maharaji and tbe other Yogas can, because our truth is absolute and it must agree with our observations of tbe universe. And because our truth also comes from tbe soul, it's something towards which everyone who shares tbe same race soul, tbe same genes, naturally gravitates. This, as I pointed out before, is why one can find a Cosmotheist thread running through tbe entire length of Western spiritual history, including those periods when fundamentally opposing ideas ruled.
But despite these advantages, we do have problems. We do face dangers. One danger is that of misinterpretation so as to draw socially acceptable conclusions, which I just mentioned. There's also tbe danger of deliberate perversion of our truth. The jew, after all, even with a different race soul, is heavily involved in tbe intellectual and spiritual life of tbe West. The jew, despite fundamental tendencies which have historically expressed themselves in an entirely different way, is playing a role in modern science in particular. It may be generally true that tbe Talmud is tbe typical expression of tbe jewish race soul and that tbe jew with intellectual pretensions is epitomized by tbe modern hair-splitting, haggling lawyer. Nevertheless, some of them have seen tbe Cosmotheist truth underlying modern science, and they are quite clever and quite energetic enough to try to establish for themselves a dominant position in giving expression to this truth and in interpreting it for everyone else so that they can blunt tbe danger it poses to them, so that they can turn it aside and guide it into safe channels. It would be quite naïve of us to say that Cosmotheism is our truth, not theirs, and that we have a natural advantage in interpreting it, that it would be as unnatural and awkward for a jew to try to set himself up as a Cosmotheist as it would be for a White man to set himself up as a Talmudist and to try to debate tbe rabbis on points of Talmudic doctrine. After all, a jew, Baruch Spinoza, was one of tbe foremost expounders of pantheism during tbe 17th century, at a time when that was hardly a safe or a popular position for anyone to take. He was, in fact, excommunicated by his fellow jews as a consequence, but because Spinoza was a jew, he couldn't help but give a jewish flavor, a jewish interpretation, to his pantheism. The ethical conclusions that he drew from his pantheism in particular were strictly jewish, and I think it's only fair to assume that Spinoza had no ulterior motive. We're in a rather different era today and ulterior motives abound.
Well, tbe danger exists, and it's a very great danger, but there is a way to overcome it, just one way. That way is to give concrete form to our truth...to spell it out, not only in its generality as in our first pamphlet here, but also in all its particulars, and then to embody those particulars...ethics, tbe racial policy, tbe social policy and all tbe rest...in a living, growing community of consciousness and blood. That's what we must do, and that's what we're beginning to do now.