The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, said Mr. Spok, the taciturn science officer on the starship Enterprise. I wager that today, the needs of the many are far more sated by the innumerable variations on the Star Trek saga, then by our cultural heritage. Whatever our tastes or hunger, the sci-fi gender with a sprinkling of murder, sex and general mayhem seems to gratify our inner needs. We, on average, sleep eight hours, work and travel about ten, and for two hours we eat, drink and sip coffee. The rest of the time we watch television. Sci-fi, murder, sex and general mayhem. A daily conditioning. Brainwashing. We volunteer for our daily doze. Most of us, anyway.

And what of the arts? What of the heritage we're so proud of?
Where are the muses who led man on his search for the exquisite? Can Mnemosyne no longer bear any more daughters? Are Calliope, Euterpe, Erato and their noble sisters no longer guiding man in his search for beauty? Has even Apollo lost interest in his inspiring charges?
The gods are dead! Says our Star Trek: we have outgrown them...
And as man entering the Age of Aquarius reaches out for his own immortality, he tramples on those who once were immortal. As man outgrows the gods of the past, the nine daughters of Zeus, he also seems to outgrow the divine traits that once made the muses immortal. We trample all that was once uplifting and sacred. We tramp on poetry in music, on harmony of light in the blend of colour, on balance and proportion in the works of sculpture, on firmness, commodity and delight in architectural structures. Man's literary efforts no longer attempt to inspire, to uplift, to share knowledge, but rather cater to the tastes of the many, to sate their need for fatuous satisfaction.
Irrevocably, wantonly, with gratuitous ease, the human race seems to regress to a neo-primitive state where escapism is no longer the domain of the drug-addict but the modus vivendi of the masses. It seems abundantly clear what are the needs of the many. The overriding need appears to be escape. Escape from the reality created by us since we abandoned the search for beauty. Escape from the noble precepts once etched deeply in our derelict subconscious. Escape from the abysmal void bellowing in our empty hearts. Or so it seems. We killed our gods, burned their portentous altars. Now­­we are alone.

The gods are dead. Long live the gods!
The needs of the gods always supersede the needs of the many.

As I'd mentioned in my previous essays, there are cycles in vastness of the universe known as the Zodiac. It travels the sky in an endless procession of Equinoxes. The cycles, by human standards, are long. Each lasts over 2000 years. Each defines a completely new attribute that will be developed in man. Not in man's body. Not in his genes. In that aspect of man which is immortal.
Our forefathers observed many other laws governing the universe, which appear immutable. One of them avers that one cannot affect a fundamental change in consciousness by partial adjustments. The universe is designed in an extremely efficient manner. Nothing goes to waste­­including effort. Apparently, when a new concept is presented to an individual consciousness (the soul) which is still harboring old notions, such a new concept is rejected. The soul is still conditioned, brainwashed, to impressions that served other, different lessons. Perhaps that is why humanity rejected Christianity. We didn't make a clean break from the old ways. We have been told to make all things new. There are no half-measures possible. If we try to serve two authorities, we are left behind. We have been told all that. And have we listened? We continued to kill, to steal, to rob and exploit one another; many of us give our neighbour's wife or husband a glad eye­­or we would, if we thought we could get away with it. We conduct wars, disparage each other's weakness; we certainly do not love one another. Not much, not often. And we do not keep the holy day holy, because most of us do not know what the word 'holy' means. Could it be that we don't care enough to find out?
Let's face it. We are not real Christians.
Perhaps this is why the present Age of Aquarius is ruled by the planet Uranus. For what it's worth, Uranus is said to be a god that destroys the status quo to make room for his own influences. Perhaps all the gods are like that. Jealous gods. Perhaps that is why man destroys his gods to make room for himself. Regardless of the needs of the many, man must search for the needs of the one. Aquarians must tend their own garden, develop their own potential. Their own inner Self.
Or perhaps we must reach a long, long way back and rediscover our true home.
The idea of our divine origin had been planted in our subconscious at the dawn of history. The Greeks gave us Hercules­­a human son of the gods who dared to confront his own creators. King David further defined our status almost 3000 years ago. From him we have learned that we all share divine origin. A millennium later, Jesus repeated the same truth for our benefit. Are we ready, at long last, to listen to the avatars?

So, finally, we have come of age. We reach boldly for the keys to our kingdom. We rejoice in accepting full responsibility for our lives. We know, from experience, that thoughts are 'things', that every thought quickened with emotional energy will, sooner or later, becomes manifest in the physical universe. We have learned to control our thoughts. We are no longer weak underlings of kings, governments, the rich or the clergy. We blame no one for our lot, knowing full well that we, and we alone, have created the universe we live in. We don't even blame the stars. "It is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings," said Cassius. Like so many true poets, Shakespeare was a man born centuries ahead of his time.
And as we enter the kingdom of our newfound freedom we discover an even stranger truth. We needn't have fought so hard for our rights, our privileges, our riches, or any of our needs. The Kingdom and its riches are quite inexhaustible. Mr. Spok needn't have worried. We can put aside his quandary: the problem of the many and the one. No matter how many we are, in Truth, we are all but One.