by Unknown
In a word, the Eldere was the era of the apotheosis of the technical and economic culture and the downturn of the inner culture, as Cornelius was telling the children of the Lain Institute some time ago.
The Eldere, he said, was an extension of prehistory—after the 20th century and until 2396 AD—an era of technical and economic prosperity. These latter forms of organisation and life spanned from my time until the 7th century of the new chronology. They say that the past generations were aware that no spirituality continues indefinitely with new achievements. After it reaches its peak, it begins to decline, the spiritual and moral foundations bend and in the end, the only thing that remains is the carcass of techno-culture. I think that what Cornelius was doing here was nothing more than telling the old version of our own Oswald Spengler, who spoke about the fall of the Western world.
So, this was the image of life in the Eldere, at least from what I had seen on the Reigen-Swage and from what I heard from Lain, Cornelius and Stefan; and all this after the definitive establishment of the Retsstat on March 5th of our 2396 AD.
The great intellectual work and legacy of the past were not destroyed. They still existed but only few engaged with them. They were forgotten in libraries and warehouses without attracting the crowds with their old charm anymore…
For this to happen, their own Renaissance had to come, which did between the 7th and 9th centuries, and was followed in the next hundred years by the famous, exquisite zenith of civilisation. That’s when the old treasures of the intellect and spirit resurfaced...
THE “FEAR FACTOR” AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL FOR THE YOUNG CITIZENS
2-VI
It is a habit here in the Lain Institute—and perhaps not just a habit, but an educational method throughout the world—to exaggerate the weaknesses of our historical eras and to go as far as to scare children, creating a kind of anxiety in them with all the horrible images they make them watch. They want to plant and promote in the children’s psyche the faith and devotion to current institutions, universal homeland and the new era from a very early age. I think their goal is to rule out any possible future threat to the universal organisation of all political, social and economic aspects of life, which has been solid for centuries now.
I don’t know how effective this process is and to what extent their goal is achieved in the long run, but the means they use to accomplish it are characterised, in my eyes, by an incredible ferocity, an intolerable cruelty; I must admit that it’s something quite frightening.
“Will they come back?? Will they come back??” cried the frightened children of the lower classes yesterday at the sight of the “barrage of fire attacks” and the destruction of an unknown-to-me state from explosive and incendiary bombs of our own 20th century, as I was later informed.
The horror painted on the faces of the youth while asking Cornelius, me and Stefan questions, was indescribable. They were under the impression that the green lava that flooded the streets, horrific collapses of buildings and the fire torrents that covered in flames the city blocks—images I saw with my own eyes on the Reigen-Swage together with the youngsters—were weapons of aliens that had invaded our planet, weapons that all our defences had failed to neutralise!
When they explained to them the next day that this was not a foreign invasion but actually self-destruction, when they told them that their ancestors literally destroyed their own cities and people themselves, the youths were left speechless. They couldn’t believe it! When they finally realised it, they tightened their fists and swore that, growing up, they would never let this horror and tragedy happen again!
“Don’t be surprised!” said Cornelius. “Considering the conditions of life back then, there was no other way… The reigning mentality was: ‘Kill or be killed’. Atrocity was the rule and the annihilation of others the slogan.”
“What others?” a boy asked.
“The supporters of the opposite party or opinion, depending on the occasion. Friendship was not something natural; instead it changed every so often and depended on the circumstances and interests. A mere order was enough to turn yesterday's allies into enemies and vice versa. And don’t blame the ordinary people. Even back then they were inherently meek and good. They were tame and cheerful, similar to us. They didn’t hate each other. They loved strangers and foreigners, they were hospitable and they liked animals. But sometimes, economic and political power fell into the hands of miserable beings and that’s how the wars broke out. Wars didn’t come naturally. They were artificially created by their bad and unworthy leaders along with the weapon manufacturers, mainly Asian,” he claimed. “They pushed peoples towards hatred and mutual extermination. It is fortunate that our species managed to prevail. The risk was fatal.”
Many a time I wondered if what Lain said to the children was objective and fair. Listening to him you’d think that the yellow and black races, which never found vindication in history and which are almost absent nowadays, were solely to blame for everything.
“Isn’t it true that war had been a biological need?” asked one of the older children. How would all that immense population of the time fit on this tiny earth without war?”
“Yes, it was indeed a biological necessity,” replied Cornelius. “But so was the law of the jungle among the primitives, in the times of savagery. The law of selection and survival of the fittest...”
He continued by saying that the laws of physics have a typical disregard for the moral connotation of any action. That’s why all these atrocities had to permanently disappear from human civilisation. The continuation of such events and such manifestations of brutality were indicative of man’s failure to establish a regulatory procedure with the purpose of finding a “humane way to resolve any conflicts.”
He then said that a few decades before the era of John Terring, war was already being viewed by all people as “a state of anarchy, nihilistic rebellion against institutions, criminal violence, general collapse of values and self-destruction.”
This modern, popular teacher said more things on the subject, which, sadly, I don’t remember. And I think that no teacher of the past, not even the most skilled and educated teacher of the 20th century, could have been able to even slightly approach the level of spirituality and mentality of a teacher of the Nojere.
Although their profession and specialties might unite them, they are divided by a lot more: different cultural circles, different historical eras and a completely different social reality. Cornelius is not just a teacher; he is “a teacher of the Nojere”. There’s a huge gap between him and us.
Another interesting conclusion that I had drawn, concerning the leaders of our time—especially the older ones—was that, from a psychoanalytic perspective, they were often under the regime of unpleasant mood that’s quite common in the elderly, and a profound, subconscious bitterness felt due to the organic law of decay. I also think they had an aversion to the youth, which often took the form of spite and that’s why it was extremely rare to find the youth in positions of power back then, even though those positions would have enabled them to exploit the qualities of enthusiasm and love for life and people. Very interesting point of view!
THE NIGHT OF THE “GRETLYS” (the Grand Light)
The events of the September that changed humanity and history
3-VI
That same evening Stefan told me, “From now on, don’t go to Lain’s for history classes any more. In order to be able to deeply experience and appreciate the dawn of the Nojere you need isolation, concentration and meditation. Make sure you revise all that you’ve learnt when you’re alone.”
I talked to him about the wild scenes that they show to the children, scenes of war and of all the other incidents that had taken place before the Eldere, making them cringe in horror, and I told him that it was both unfair and unnecessary to traumatise children with such images.
“War is not coming back,” I said. “Fifteen centuries have passed since the beginning of your historic era and
this is the best guarantee that it will not come back! Times have definitively changed; war is something prehistoric!”
5-VI
Today I have dedicated myself and my day to meditating devoutly and attentively upon all the great things that my eyes were worthy of seeing last night. I’ve told everybody that I want to be alone all day. Never in my life have I felt such an excitement, or rather, such awe and holy thrill. Now I’m by myself, locked in my room, remembering it all and I praise God for giving me the opportunity to witness them in this life.
There are moments when I feel the need to fall on my knees and pray. Last night, around midnight, I found myself watching on the Reigen-Swage the great days of 986 (3382 AD) and couldn’t believe my fate that gave me, an insignificant worm of the 20th century, the unbelievable chance to see the dawn of the Nojere come alive before my eyes! I saw the holy deaths of that September in the Valley, Alexis Volky before me in the midst of the Great Moment, the torrent of the Roisvirch that followed and all the major incidents that shortly thereafter opened new pages in the history and spiritual life of those times.
I sit in my armchair, thinking about all that with tear-filled eyes, full of gratitude.
I wonder what power could ever be so powerful as to shed such an unearthly light on those white faces! What was that exquisite thing that those people saw in their last moment on this earth that was so inaccessible to our eyes? They say that all those men and women who suffered the “sacred blows from the unbearable light” those first six days in the Valley of the Roses were beings of significant inner beauty and nobility. Who could have imagined that even their outward appearance would have been beautified, as if all the magnificence of their souls had suddenly spilled over to their faces? And almost all faces there were young. I looked at them one by one. Something like ecstasy and triumph was drawn on each of them. Why do today’s people say that they succumbed? I witnessed quite the opposite: every single person there looked as if they had been transformed into the personification of victory, as if they had suddenly been called upon by God!
After all the sudden deaths in the beginning, nothing foreshadowed the glorious things that the future held. Life in the pre-Roisvirch Valley flowed peacefully and institutions were increasing and flourishing but, no matter how satisfactory the fruits of long-term reflection and meditation and the findings of thousands of institutes and research centres were, it had never crossed anyone’s mind that such an incredible intellectual achievement would ever be a possibility. Even though almost five centuries of self-cultivation and inner development of the intellect and the personality—through many generations of fine anchorites—were about to be completed, it still seemed like a miracle!
For the outside world, the two major events of early September were firstly the huge preparations for the World Exhibition in Blomsterfor, which in terms of global participation and wealth turned out to be by far the most successful one ever, and secondly the election of a new Lorffe of the time, whose name escapes me. These were mainly the issues that preoccupied the crowds then.
And the era did not seem to conceal any particular Messianic needs, nor were there any preconditions in the world for the emergence of this kind of group psychology. On the contrary: people lived happily in every corner of the world around that time, with security, law and order, political organisation and stability, sufficiency of goods and comforts, and with moral and psychological balance.
The incredible boom in literature, arts and intellect, which were engraved in people’s minds as “the golden age of intellectual and spiritual culture”, had only just happened a century ago, in their great 9th century. People still breathed that fresh air of the great and newfound period of prosperity and had incorporated all its creations into their own lives. Anything but a crisis of morals and collective distress prevailed in the world.
And yet, in the midst of such a completely balanced and genial atmosphere, one of the first days of September, the outside world suddenly discovered that peculiar incidents were taking place in the Valley, incidents whose importance could not be explained, but which would, however, go down in history as earth-shattering—if it was, in fact, proven that their content and meaning was actually what many big names of the Valley believed them to be.
Thirty-six hours before the Gretlys and the survival of Alexis Volky, four similar incidents occurred outside the Valley of the Roses, in locations far away from each other: one in Lesley Gate, one in the Balearic and two in the North Sea. People turned to God then and began to pray in groups, leaving all of their other jobs and responsibilities!
That reminded me of the times when, every now and then, the approaching of a comet threatened to destroy life as we knew it and everyone sought solace in religion. But this time it was not the fear of death that caused this anxiety in people around the globe. A secret hope had arisen, a hope for some sort of an imminent enlightenment, the discovery of a great secret, completely distinct from the natural world, which was the object of study for the exact sciences.
Nobody could tell what really happened then. Did it have anything to do with what some wise men later claimed, namely, that some unknown, but at the same time friendly superhuman beings from far, far away, had shed their beneficial light over our land? Nobody could say with certainty. Most people didn’t want to accept in any way the existence of such external and alien spiritual forces, limiting themselves to commemorating the “200” and repeating the names of Miliotkin, Joel Letonen and Gunnar Nelbarn, the leaders of the first anchorites, the pioneers and settlers who, 486 years ago, were the initiators and founders of the Valley of Roses. They say that the Aidersen Institute “took over” from the descendants of the “200”.
During the nights that followed, most of the people throughout the world stayed awake. The bells constantly tolled, calling people to prepare for what was coming.
Inside the Valley now, multitudes of people spent days and nights in the parks and squares of the immense campuses of the Aidersen Institute. In fact, not only were they not giving up, as fatigue must have worn them down, but the crowds were only growing in size after the Gretlys from September 7 and onwards. For more than 250 years now, this famous institute with the global reputation has been the only one to provide moral and emotional support to the people of a time when the masses were resting in the bliss of ignorance and considered the thirst for metaphysical quest a tyranny, a thirst that in earlier times was considered an honour and a privilege of only a few, handpicked spiritual figures.
Billions of people around the world had put their spiritual hopes in the great wise men who were housed in that glorious city – the Institute. There, in the Aidersen Institute, among the high ceilings of the large central palace, in the auditoriums, next to the semi-circular cluster of statues and accompanied by the venerable figures of the old tradition, those of Pythagoras, Plotinus and Kant, that of Blaise Pascal, Socrates, Plato and Maeterlinck, of Riset, Gustavsen, Rasmathy, Plioskin and so many others, the great Chillerin had spent most of his life, entering the Aidersen as an apprentice from a very young age in the early 9th century, there, in those auditoriums, where he later taught…
Chillerin himself believed that regardless of the finite nature of human knowledge, humans had neither tried hard enough, nor had they selected the right methodology for knowledge acquisition in the past. He didn’t have anything specific to say yet, but he did have faith in people’s ability to resolve the great mysteries of the world, despite the imperfection of the mind and senses, and he believed that the day when they would finally arrive wasn’t far away.
Whilst thinking about all this, I’m now watching on the Reigen-Swage the Aidersen Institute, staying alert during those long nights, with thousands of people surrounding it on their knees, keeping a vigil all over the campus, waiting for their spiritual leaders—Chillerin’s great grandchildren—to emerge with an answer, an explanation of what was going on, but in vain, for they were not yet in a position to give any.
Insid
e the vast hall: a crowd of sleepless, overworked and upset wise men, dressed in the official Aidersian garment with the blue stripe on it, the stoat and the insignia. The whole Aidersen was in a state of confusion and distress and plenty of other people from smaller yet related institutes kept arriving, even from the other side of the Valley! The meetings were continuous and successive but without any positive result so far. Even the wise men of the Aidersen themselves were waiting to be informed about what had just happened from those coming from outside.
Yes! Things have finally started to become clearer now and many of them speak of some sort of an incredible reward. The emergence of a new, unprecedented Virch had now vaguely become the centre of discussion and the name of the elder Alexis Volky, their old peer who had definitively left the Aidersen Institute several years ago and had gone to become a monk, was whispered in the circles of the wise men with much respect over the next few days. No one had made contact with him yet. The only thing they had done is to make the selection of the ambassadors that would be sent to him. They did not even know where exactly in the vast Valley lay the secret retreat where the venerable Elder had withdrawn after “what he saw”, spending his days and nights fasting, meditating and praying.
