Chronicles From The Future: The amazing story of Paul Amadeus Dienach

The opposite paths lead elsewhere: for instance, the age of Romanticism in Western Europe gave a major voice to emotions during the first three or four decades of the 19th century. They were the principal motivation of creative inspiration, not only in literature, lyrical poetry, painting or sculpture, but also in musical composition, philosophical thinking and metaphysics. Moreover, they motivated the course of political life, the convictions based on merit, the trends of ideas, the start of social reforms, enthusiasm, high ideals, the morals and in social life, in general, in almost every sphere of cultural activity. Spontaneity and sentiment drove artistic creators and poets to produce works of unparalleled aesthetic inspiration, with the element of the marvellous and the mythical and they also made them disapprove and shake off the old “rules of technique”. Vis-à-vis the established logical forms, in every field of creation, affect prevailed throughout those times. The surrounding material reality was being put aside and ignored, yielding to emotion and imagination. The perception of life and the world beyond reason prevailed everywhere, on every sphere of the known and in every field of achievement.

Dienach also makes the case of other spiritual courses and directions. For instance, Western man has shown complete disdain for the profound mysticism of the East. Based on the latter, the Hindus, for example, had developed their own peculiar primeval spiritual civilisation up until the 19th century. Within a life which was materially frugal and a strictly agricultural economy, disapproving of every attempt for social climbing and ignoring all the achievements of science and technology, these deeply philosophical religious tribes had focused their attention on Brahma and his teachings. At the same time, they strove to embrace and realise the fusion of man’s individuality with the spirit of everything, the identification of the human soul with the One and everything.

He also says that the intensive and somehow one-sided cultivation of human psychodynamics, once done extensively and for a considerable amount of time, could form an entire civilisation of another form of its own individual mark. This cultivation can be done by means of telepathy, reading and transferring thoughts, foreknowledge and foretelling of future events, perception beyond senses, invocation of spirits, and so on, within a spiritual ambience that would be very different from ours, within a beatified ambience of social co-existence. One would there observe a noticeable fall in the positive sciences and rationality as well as in pragmatic judgement and materialistic life in general along with faith in data perceived by the five senses, in the experience of material and real life around us.

Either way, Dienach disapproves of any one-sidedness in the course of civilisation. He condemns, that is, any exaggeration in any exclusive and one-sided direction, which would result in the weakening of certain fields of human abilities. The truly high purposes of culture, the teleological opinions which hold most merit, are connected to a parallel, balanced, harmonious and almost equilateral cultivation and development of the best human abilities and the worthiest tendencies, according to this version. His perspective embraces, as much as possible, the prevalence of higher ideals, the experience of unparalleled spiritual and emotional treasures encompassed within the real and deeper spirit of Christianity and the realisation of humanism and freedom in social life, among the peoples of the world. In fact, Dienach considers these two last ideals, humanism and freedom, the highest one could find in the system of moral values formed within our Western civilisation by classical education, humanism and Christian tradition with their marvellous union, their incomparable marriage.

During the four years of the German Occupation in Greece—all Dienach’s manuscripts were still available up until the events of December 1944 and the days when I found shelter in a friend’s home, in Thisseos Street, on Christmas Eve 1944—four people had read the original two “Diaries” and the Diary with the Chronicles From The Future: they were the respectable Greek Macedonian friend and colleague, highly educated, whose favourite occupation was, as I can recall from then, his involvement in the Masonic and theosophical movement—he ranked high in Freemasonry; a theology professor from the Greek island of Tinos, who was quite renowned in his time; and two German friends of the latter, father and son. The father was a history professor of liberal ideas while the son was a young reserve officer of the Occupation army with great aversion towards the Hitlerites, which he did not hesitate to share with me.