Customer Reviews

Pain, Sex and Time: A New Outlook on Evolution and the Future of Man (Provenance Editions)

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I would actually give this book 3.5 stars. The only reason I'm not giving it more stars is that the concepts regarding the evolution of the spiritual man, though still retaining some validity, seem somehow outmoded. In addition, the writing style is a bit anachronistic. However the author was remarkable for his time (which was not all that long ago) and he is still very much worth reading. He was an underrated, somewhat eclectic philosopher who was courageous enough to question the scientism of his day.

"History may be interpreted as the symptoms of a mental evolution," writes Gerald Heard in PAIN, SEX AND TIME. "Man's civilization is the shadow cast by his evolving consciousness." The evolution of his psyche is the sequel to the evolution of his physique. This mutation in his psyche, in consciousness, is a spiral of ascent, of continuing evolution. He must leap forward or sink.

"In man is a store of evolutionary energy and that energy can give rise to his further, purely psychical evolution. Pain and pleasure, agony and lust, are the two fundamental polar sensations which lie at an equally rudimentary level. Only when this dazing sensationalism is transcended, can consciousness experience sustained intensity of being. This process indicates a possible ending of pain, a possible solving of the problem of sex, and also the possibility of a completely new step in evolution."

By means of "a specific training" this evolutionary change can occur. Then humankind's purpose will be revealed: "The only possible meaning of life is that here, under Time, human consciousness discovers itself. The Universe exists for the emergence and development of free creative consciousness." By this advance in consciousness we, "are able to reinterpret correctly the experience which we call Time and, doing so, we see Reality no longer distorted, but as it is. Then we shall have fulfilled the purpose of our Being, the meaning of evolution," concludes Gerald Heard in PAIN, SEX AND TIME.

This is a book by Gerald Heard. Catchy title, no?

The book starts off rather well. It proposes that man must make the next step in evolution - mental/expanded consciousness - or degenerate or destroy himself. Note that Heard wrote this around the start of WWII.

The pain and sex in the title has to do with excess energy present for doing this next step that we are failing at doing, hence problems with these. The time part is that it is an illusion - not much done with this that I noticed. He seems to say that when we are intellectually occupied, we are less worried about sex, have less sensitivity to pain and are not as aware of time - he may be on to something here.

Heard then reviews history (including evolutionary history of life) to shown that his points have merit. There are some interesting items here.

Things get a little sketchy and hard to follow near the end - even his sentence structure gets hard to follow - when he starts talking about how to achieve the next step. His method is hard to explain, but it based on explicit effort in special communities. Apparently, he even attempted to found one in California in the 1940's which did not catch on - this is not to say that his ideas were wrong.

Heard was a rather interesting character - see the biographical information in the book. He was friends with Huxley and involved in the Vedanta Society. Meditation was very important to him in later life.

Worth a read, but be prepared to trudge through some rough spots, especially towards the end. The summary at the very end is fairly informative about the book as a whole.

I had very high hopes when I started it, but kind of lost them in many respects as I finished it.

Humankind is doomed or will destroy itself unless some radical countermeasure is found. Unlike other biological creatures whose evolution has stopped we have still reserves of unspent biological energy. The proof for this can be seen in how we experience pain, and in the peculiarities of our sexual behavior. So, we are capable of evolution. The pace of evolution has quickened enormously, further human evolution will be not biological but psychological. To characterize this the term "enlargement of consciousness" is used; in a great part this means attaining mystical experiences and supernormal psychic powers. Attaining this state of consciousness should be the new goal of mankind.
These are very shortly the basic ideas of Mr Heard's book. He continues to design, in broad terms, the practical way of achieving such a goal. Shortly, he proposes the creation of voluntary communes totally dedicated to it. There is also a short review of the history of human mystical experience (maybe the most interesting part of the book). One remark here: Mr Heard seems to be overenthusiastic with what concerns the spiritual development of the Jewish Essene community and early Christian gnostics. Was their religion really non-anthropomorphic as he seems to think?
Mr Heard tried to realize his ideals. He failed, like so many idealists before. Which does not mean that these were not worthy ideas. Perhaps the practical steps should have been different.
Long, winding sentences make the book somewhat difficult to read, until you get used to them. (Was this kind of style fashionable before WWII?) Not all the ideas presented are convincing, particularly those concerning evolution. Nevertheless, Mr Heard's mission is that of a pioneer. One of his troubles is that his goal is very difficult to describe. "The enlargement of consciousness" is good but very general. The same vagueness applies to the possible methods of moving towards it. He is feeling his way towards an unclear goal in an unknown land, therefore his language is, out of necessity, also quite general, perhaps not always very clear.
All in all, it was not a very interesting reading, except for some parts on history. But it certainly raises the right questions like the following: why do we have such an enormous discrepancy between the ever more powerful means in our possession (science, technology) and the negligibility of our ends (material well-being - yes, but... is this all, gentlemen?).