Faith is needed for objective understanding

Faith is usually understood to mean something like wishful thinking - "It is so because I want it so"... Faith is contrasted with objective understanding.

But the opposite is true - faith is Necessary for objective understanding. Since this world was created by God, we can understand it only by seeing it from God's perspective, rather than from any of the hypothetical perspectives that did Not lead to creation.

For example, many people see the world from their own perspective, as if the world was, or should be, designed to make them constantly happy.

Others, in the mass media for instance, depict the world from a demonic perspective; a world of predators and prey, exploiters and exploited...

But if this actually is a created world, made by a God who loves us - then these and other alternatives are objectively wrong.

Faith is a felt acknowledgement of God's love, and it leads to understanding because we can empathically identify with God's perspective, we can personally know what kind of things God would and wouldn't be aiming-at.

This is possible because there is something of God in each of us, something divine; because we are God's children - and we have divinity by inheritance.

This can be called an inner guidance system, or conceptualized as the way in which we each may share in the divine understanding, the True understanding of reality.

To decline/ reject Christianity is to render Life futile

If it is correct to say, as I do, that this mortal life was created for a reason; then if that reason is rejected, it must tend to render our life futile.

So, there is a choice. We are not compelled, but need actively to choose the post-mortal Heavenly and eternal life that Jesus made possible for us. And since that is a positive choice, it is not-irrational to reject Heaven.

Yet to live in a world, to live a life, that is Designed for our personal education aimed at Heaven; yet to decline the offer of Heaven, does mean that our mortal life has been pointless, in an ultimate sense.

It would be like spending one's entire life at medical school while determined never to become a doctor. To train as a marathon runner for decades, yet never run a marathon. To practise scales and arpeggios on the piano, yet never play a tune.

That is, indeed, the situation for the billions of people who now live and have-lived mortal lives; while declining to accept the gift of Jesus.

If such people are theists, they will (I think) move on to something much like their religions describe - Nirvana, paradise, unconsciousness...

(If they have mistaken the purpose of this world, their lives will be structured according to that mistake. As if they were actually at medical school, but believed they were being trained as a lawyer....)

But mortal incarnated life on earth - This Life - is not a necessary experience for the attainment of any of these not-Christian religious objectives.

Non-Christian religious might as well have gone straight to that state, without living-through this Life. Entering Nirvana, or paradise, does not require a prior mortal life - you might as well be born there.

If you do Not want to become a doctor, it is pointless to spend your life at medical school - training for a profession you have no intention ever of practising.

(This is what I mean about this Life being futile if Jesus's gift is rejected.)

As for those who are atheists, those who deny that this World was created and deny it has a purpose... they are objectively insane. Incoherently delusional; with disorganised thinking and a purely subjective understanding of reality; because without creation all meaning is personal and arbitrary: That is all that is possible, That has been chosen.

Atheists are at medical school, but deny the reality, even the possibility, of becoming a doctor. Their lives are not just futile but crazy, since they necessarily, by assumption, experience all educational experience as arbitrary torment or random pleasure.

Making sense of Jesus - what for and how?

The New Testament is trying to make sense of Jesus, and all would-be Christians need to do the same.

First, they need to understand why God the prime creator could not do what Jesus did -- why Jesus was necessary.

But immediately this raises the question of what Jesus did. What aspect of Jesus is central?

This took me a good while to settle to my satisfaction, indeed it is only in the past year or so that I have, from reading the Fourth Gospel 'in isolation '.

This clarified that the main thing Jesus did was to be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven. Jesus was necessary because God the creator could not do this.

And because Jesus was divine before he did this,we can, if we love and trust him, follow Jesus through our own deaths into resurrected eternal life.

There are many other different, and indeed contradicting, theories of what Jesus did and why he was necessary, in other parts of the Gospels and Epistles, and in different past and present denominations; but I regard the Fourth Gospel as the real and true explanation.

Yet it seems by far the least known, least considered of canonical Biblical explanations; which I can only regard as a major historical tragedy.


Note. This was brought to mind by CS Lewis discussing Jesus in terms of the myth of a dying god, a sacrificed god. But that is Not the myth. Jesus was not a sacrifice, nor did he stay dead. Jesus was not a propitiation, because the creator does not want to be propitiated, nor need it. Jesus's life was a positive gift to all the children of God - his brothers and sisters; an offer of Heavenly eternal life which we may accept or reject.

Loving God as person/s or abstractions

When God is known as a person who has made and is making creation, we can love him or not; and that is the same kind of love we may know from family experience.

But if God is abstractly understood in terms of 'properties' then loving is unnatural. Either we need to posit some different kind of love (agape...) or we tend towards worship rather than love.

Because of Jesus, Christians ought to know God as a person. But historically this was overwritten by abstract definitions of deity, that were enforced as primary.

Endorsing abstract descriptions was made more important than knowing and loving God as a person. Worship and obedience were made more important than familial commitment.

The malign influence of intellectuals seems evident in a disdainful rejection of the childishness of God as an actual person. The demands of political control seem dominant in the demand for a worship utterly alien to a good and loving family.

Reality really is very simple, childishly simple - Get Over It!

• Note: The above view, although true, does make difficulties for modern people in explaining creation, since most people think of creation using impersonal, scientific, abstract 'processes'. Thus being a Christian implies adopting a view of ultimate creation as being also childish, primitive, mythic - simplistic with more obvious simplicity than the obscurities of abstraction.

Why we need to be consciously and explicitly pro-God

We can only Join Heaven, because it is not a place or a state of mind but a creative endeavour. To be in Heaven is to be joined in this creative endeavour... Which means pointed in the right direction, together.

We each have our inner guidance system. Ultimately, these can only be aligned by love. Love is what binds us and creation is the project.

Creation is the direction of Heaven - so Heaven entails the reality of time (linear, sequential, irreversible).

In a world in which, increasingly, opposition to Heaven is both explicit and systematic; there needs to be an explicit (inner) embrace of the goal of eternal creation and family.

Explicit evil, directed against Good, requires an explicit (self conscious) rejection... and then what?

Rejection needs to be followed by consciously chosen affiliation to the project of Heaven - That is the direction. We need to turn in That direction, and to take steps aiming at it.

Albeit we cannot clearly see the destination and there will be stumbles, zig zags, blind ends. But when we know the reality of inner guidance, love, creation and have Chosen that direction, and Know we have chosen it; it will suffice as a basis for living.

And then we can get on with it.

William Arkle and the secret of living (Romantic Christianity)

Backwell Hill House, where William Arkle and family, friends and many animals lived in the 1970s - an ex-Claretian novitaite house, the former chapel can be seen as the tent-shaped structure on the left

I first encountered William Arkle in 1977, in the context of a thirty minute documentary on his life and work broadcast by our local BBC television company. I can remember very little about it; but it evoked in me a suspicion or hope that Arkle was someone who actually lived the kind of life I personally (you may, of course disagree!) regarded as near-ideal.

When I found a copy of A Geography of Consciousness later in the year, this was confirmed for me by Colin Wilson's introduction* - clearly CW (who knew Arkle as a friend) was fascinated by Arkle's 'success' in actually living his life in a 'higher state of consciousness'. Arkle (to a significant, albeit not fully or perfectly) succeeded in Doing what Wilson could only write about.

This I take as the fact on which I proceed, my starting-point. For Me, over a span of more than forty years, William Arkle has been a very rare example of living life in the kind of way (qualitatively distinct, but not as flawless or perfection) that I believe life ought to be lived, and which I aspire to live. My interest here is my failure honestly to understand the basis of Arkle's success.
  Because, in trying to learn from Arkle, however; it seems that both myself and Colin Wilson made the same mistake - which was, quite simply, leaving-out God.


For Arkle - at the centre of his 'system' was God, God the creator, and furthermore a creator who was our loving Father. Arkle's 'Romantic' system was built around this core; yet I wanted Arkle's success in living but without Arkle' God.

I (like Colin Wilson) implicitly regarded Arkle's God as just wishful thinking; as a God he had invented to aperfom a function he wanted performed in his belief system. Having disposed of Arkle's God, which - being unreal - could clearly have no necessary role in Arkle's life; I then proceeded to try and learn fro the rest of Arkle's system.

In effect, I was hoping to get the benefits of living in the successful way that I regarded Arkle as having achieved; while eliminating the source and core of Arkle's system - which was God (I ruled-out God in general, except for 'deity' conceptualised in the most abstract and impersonal way; as well as regarding as rather silly and pitiful God in the particular 'loving Father' understanding of Arkle).


In a nutshell, I wanted Romanticism without God; and it led me in the same direction as those many others who have sought Romanticism without God from the days of Byron and Shelley to contemporary examples of Romantics such as Woody Allen or Francois Truffaut. Or, in a much more positive way, Colin Wilson himself.

For 200 years our culture has been full of examples of people who (apparently sincerely) espouse the Romantic life, but are unable to live it; people who can research and talk about Romantic themes; but who live (in their consciousness, in their souls) much like everybody else and often-enough live worse.

So myself, Colin Wilson and many others wanted Romanticism, but did not believe that God was real - and we did not achieve Romanticism in actual living. Meanwhile there were examples such as Arkle or William Blake of people who did achieve Romanticism in actual living; 'yet' apparently insisted on basing it upon Romantic conceptions of God that struck me as obviously 'made-up'.


My understanding of this phenomenon is that those who seek Romanticism are those afflicted by alienation; by the modern sense of feeling cut off from life, and who are plagued by a sense of meaninglessness, lack of a purpose that fulfils our creativity and also unites ourselves with other and the world.

Like many/ most modern people from adolescence onwards; we begin with the assumption that there is no God, never was a God; and that all talk of personal Gods who care about us is either delusionally-pitiful wishful thinking; or else a dishonest means of manipulating others.

And we do not 'notice' that (by eliminating all possibility of the reality of God, and in particular the kind of God that Arkle speaks-of) we have already made assumptions that inevitably will ensure that our lives will fail. And fail by the very criteria we ourselves have chosen.


(Not everybody will share my feeling about Arkle's success in living - this makes no difference to my point. My point is that despite Arkle's being my own idea of a successful life; I nonetheless failed to 'notice' that God was necessarily central to it. I unthinkingly, arrogantly, supposed that I could have the superstructure without the foundations!)


It was not until I first allowed the possibility of God, then the possibility of Arkle's concept of God; that I could proceed to seek whether or not this was in reality true. Then I discovered that it was true.

Only now can I really understand Arkle 'from the inside', in a way which explains the primary cause of my long-term interest in him. Only now can I benefit from his example; in changing my own life for the better.

It turns-out that successfully-lived Romanticism requires God; furthermore it requires the kind of personal God that Arkle knew; and it turns-out that this God is real.

It turns-out that in practice Romantic Christianity is the only Romanticism. Arkle has been telling me this for decades - but only recently have I been willing to hear him.


*An excerpt from Colin Wilson's Introduction to A Geography of Consciousness:

I would place the author of this book among the half dozen most remarkable men I have ever met – and I suppose this would include some of the most eminent writers and thinkers of our time. This book which I am introducing is not an easy one; I suppose I may as well be frank and say that in parts it is extremely tough going. But I think it is an important book, and my aim in this introduction is to clear away some of the difficulties.

Let me speak first of the author, William Arkle. Like most writers, I receive a fair amount of correspondence from strangers. And since I write about questions of human evolution and the nature of human consciousness, many of these are from occultists and people with theories about how man can become a god overnight. Very often, the writers send me manuscripts and explain indignantly that publishers are too materialistic to understand the importance of their work.

But it is usually pretty easy to see why publishers are not interested. The manuscripts are often full of important ideas; but they are never properly thought-out, with consideration for the reader. And I always find myself reflecting that it is a pity that the intelligent people are so often egocentric and lacking in self-criticism, while the sane, decent, healthy people are so often mediocrities. There are very seldom exceptions to this rule.

In 1960, William Arkle sent me a reproduction of one of his paintings, and it was certainly a striking painting; it was an abstract, geometrical sort of landscape with abstract human figures, a little like Wyndham Lewis’s. The colours were all very light, yellows and greens and reds. But although it was striking, it was not, in the last analysis, a good picture.

It is hard to explain this except to say that in spite of its abstract nature, it lacked real complexity. The letter that accompanied it talked about spiritual values and so on, and it was clear that this is what the picture intended to express.

Arkle lived in Bristol, and he invited me to call and see him if I ever came through. I seem to remember that I assumed he was probably a man in his fifties. My guess was that he had probably started life in the Church of England, tried a few evangelical sects, and ended up by producing some occult religion of his own. In 1961, my wife and I were driving to Blackpool to the Long Playing Record Festival, and it seemed a good opportunity to call on the Arkles.

So we found our way – after some difficulty – to a large house in Royal York Crescent, with a fine view over the valley. And we were met by a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties, with a clean cut face of the Charlton Heston type and a lock of hair on his forehead that made him resemble that Sargeant drawing of Yeats that can be found in the Collected Plays. I was introduced to his wife Elizabeth, who did not look in the least dreamy or mystical; in fact, she looked one of those cheerful, healthy girls that Shaw put into early plays. I was not surprised to learn she loved horses.

Bill and Liz Arkle - probably early 1950s

The enormous house belonged to them, and I discovered that they made a living by buying houses, re-decorating them themselves, and then letting them as flats. It seemed fairly strenuous work for a visionary, but apparently it solved the basic problem of making a living. And neither was I surprised to learn that he had been an engineer and served in the navy towards the end of the war. There was something about him that suggested that he was not one of these subjective, egocentric people who find the practical work unbearable.

I asked him some years ago for a biographical sketch, and I may as well quote what he sent me: ‘Born 1924. After school, trained in engineering for the navy. After demobilisation, I had a strong urge to go to Art school which I did for two years. But I did not finish the course as I felt strongly that the attitudes to painting that I was being taught were not right for me. ‘My first marriage broke up as I left Art school. I was reading a lot of mysticism and esotericism generally and developing meditation and the ability to tune my nature, as it were …’

Later in the same letter, he says: ‘I married Elizabeth about 1952 (it is typical of him not to be sure of the date – he wrote 1953 and then changed it) and this helped me to integrate properly with ordinary life and widened my interests (and responsibilities).’

Certainly, the remarkable thing about him is that he is so integrated with ordinary life – considering the completely otherworldly nature of his basic vision

Manipulate the masses to demand their own enslavement

What would be best; is a gut-level emotional demand for an urgent bureaucratic response - which entails getting people to 'demand' an irreversible power-grab by an all-powerful centralised authority.

Exactly as is currently happening with 'Climate Emergency' - get some precocious school girl (with pigtails to make her seem younger); and have her make a passionate appeal to the 'grown-ups' to Save the planet NOW (no questions asked).

And Save the Planet by monitoring and regulating a universally-produced, necessary for life, natural metabolite.

And Save the Planet by means that you know for sure will not work; thus requiring ever more concentration of power, and ever more intrusive management of everything: omni-surveillance and micro-control.


Against this manipulation; what defence do the Western masses have?

None so far.

Because they have no stronger motivation than their own (short term) gratifications... And these are precisely what is being manipulated.


Only a religion - or some such cohesive and powerful positive motivation held with long-term and religious conviction (if such a thing exists) - can protect the masses against such manipulation.

If this inverted world were turned upside-down... A restored discourse of truthfulness

Perhaps the most obvious fruits of repentance and awakening would be public honesty - in small things as much as large. It would be startlingly obvious, and would have immense consequences.

In no other area have there been such changes in my adult life as the expansion of dishonesty; from a few enclaves such as advertising and government to embrace all major institutions and activities, all of the time - in private as much as in public.

For example, in the worlds I worked in - universities, science, the medical profession - honesty was normal and almost complete at the lower and middling levels. Dishonesty (including deliberate misleading) while considerably more frequent, was not common even at the leadership levels - rare enough that it stood-out, and attracted explicit adverse comment, often sanctions.

But lying and misleading rapidly got more common from the late 1980s until the present situation when almost all public discourse is essentially dishonest - only containing enough factual truth to sustain the basic and motivating lies.

I found this particularly shocking in science which - in Britain at any rate - was almost ridiculously honest about almost everything forty to fifty years ago. Honest to the point of pedantic dullness (but, in retrospect, what an admirable fault!)

Even more widely in academia (I knew English Literature and Philosophy pretty well), there was an aversion to exaggeration, to one-sided selectiveness, to anything smacking of self-promotion.

Yet now, scientists do not write or speak even a paragraph without 'massaging' the spirit of truth into something more expedient. And as for Western politicians...

Because of all this systematic dishonesty everywhere, we inhabit a virtual reality - our world is a tissue of lies; and honesty strikes most people as a brutal act of aggression. Indeed, they regard honest men as obvious liars, because they assume truth is the mass consensus. Plain honesty is insensitive: one of the worst of crimes. 

If ever Western Society turns-around and becomes qualitatively better; it must include a restoration of the transcendental Good of Honesty in all public discourse - and this would be so shocking as to seem cataclysmic.

If this unlikely event ever were to happen, you won't miss it: Imagine the sensation of this inverted world being upended, and restored to stand right-way-up, on a solid base of truth...

If That is Christianity - then I want nothing to do with it! The need to be an Outsider Christian

As grown-up people, we need to overcome groupishness and passive acceptance of external sources of authority - and this applies to Christianity as much as anything else.


At present, many/ most people regard it as a satisfactory evaluation analysis of Christianity to encounter somebody self-described as A Christian who does something abhorrent to the evaluator; and then to deploy some version of the phrase: If that is Christianity - then I want nothing to do with it!

Yet on that basis, there is nothing-at-all which could be regarded as Good.

By saying 'if that is Christianity...', all we are deciding is that we do not want to be that. But we are not correct in assuming that that is indeed real Christianity, merely because somebody-else says-so...


To know the reality of a situation, we cannot evaluate by group categories, neither as an average nor as the worst member of a group - we must go behind the group and into our-selves. And in going behind the group, the evaluation must come from our-selves.

And in evaluating from our-selves, the evaluation needs to be of the heart, of the intuition of the real self - because it is useless to deploy superficial and socialised evaluations because they are mutually-contradictory, labile and manipulable.

We must also go beneath the surface of our multiple false selves. Only when we can get down to the level of our the real-self evaluating the essence of the situation, can we attain the stability and validity that is pre-requisite to truth; attain to something we can build-upon.


Behind the group, beneath the surface... this clarifies why the general level of normal public discourse is absolutely worthless to us if we really want to evaluate the truth of anything - and this constraint naturally applies to evaluating Christianity.

Nobody-else and nothing-else can do this for us; so if we really want it done, we must do it our-selves. We can do it ourselves, but doing it absolutely entails stepping outwith the current and prevailing ways of thinking and being, the usual conventions of what counts as true.

And this means that we will not be able to justify our evaluations to other people, not be able convincingly to explain our reasoning - or at least not to people operating in the mainstream of social discourse; and especially not to those in leadership positions (i.e. those whose role is to monitor and implement the current, prevailing, usual ways of thinking and behaving).


In conclusion, we can know-for-our-selves the truth and validity of Christianity, or of other vital matters; but only by stepping outside the mainstream ways of discoursing.

To those remaining on the inside, who have assimilated and endorse the assumptions of the mainstream, we will seem to be stupid or irrational - or simply dishonest and manipulative.

Yet if we really want to know the real truth, Christians will need to expect and accept this Outsider status.

Albion's folk heroes - Arthur, Merlin and Robin Hood compared

These are the three best-known British folk heroes, and each has a different archetypal quality.

Arthur is the earliest - dating from the time after the Roman Legions had left the island, and associated with a decades-long period of successful British resistance to the Saxons. He is the archetypal Good King, Father of the nation (although, strangely, not an actual father of children - except Mordred...) who presided over a golden age; brought-down by human frailty and supernatural evil.

Interestingly, the documented historical figure that most resembles Arthur is Alfred the Great - warrior, scholar, lawyer and devout Christian; who was, of course, a descendant of the Saxon invaders whom Arthur resisted. This perhaps shows that Arthur is an archetype of land and spirit, not primarily a matter of genetic descent.

When modern people think about Arthur there is the yearning, and perhaps hope, for Arthur to return (revive, reincarnate or as a modern spiritual descendant) and vanquish the powers of evil and reinstate the golden age.


Merlin is from a generation or two later; and is perhaps a composite of a Welsh poet and wizard with a Scottish-English border seer and prophet. Despite his well-attested decline from high rank into exile, madness and poverty - and a well-known 'grave' near Peebles in Scotland; the most imaginatively vivid legends have Merlin's time being curtailed by spiritual imprisonment (in a crystal cave, or oak) - with the promise of eventual return.

Spiritually some regard Merlin as the last of the (good) druids; others as a transitional figure - with one foot in pagan Druidism and the other in the new Christianity (of the Celtic variety). 

Modern English people have assimilated Merlin in many archetypal versions, from Gandalf, through Doctor Who, to Dumbledore. We see him mainly as a potent combination of magician, prophet, seer and wise-man; but in an eccentric, unpredictable, 'irresponsible' personality. Someone who operates behind the scenes, indifferent to power, status, wealth - probably also indifferent to sex, marriage, children and the like.

This latter idea finds an allegorical equivalent in the stories of Merlin's conception as a devil and a nun with a monkish baptism; or a virgin and an incubus; Merlin therefore having some aspects attributed to Jesus and 'the light', but mixed with something darker and more instinctive.   


Robin Hood is 'the people's hero' from the Middle Ages, leading a successful resistance to the Norman aristocracy. Robin is not much of a spiritual figure, but exponent of a 'pastoral idyll', a paradisal life of leisure, music and poetry - hunting, competing and helping the needy; lived-out in beautiful English woodland.

Robin is the escape from authority, liberation from work, brotherhood of all Men - and Robin's men are a fellowship of oddballs, eccentrics and drop-outs. Again, he is not a Father. (We Britons seem uninterested in patriarchs when it comes to folk heroes!)

Interestingly, Robin seems never to die, but to be a permanent presence - always young, always the same; always in his role of the impulsive and pleasure-seeking but honest and kindly counter-cultural rebel. All this makes him seem kin to the fairies, or a nature spirit - although Robin Wood is not magic except for his supernatural skill with the bow.


Of these folk heroes of Albion, the one who most appeals to me, and who seems to be most what we need, is Merlin. This is because I think we cannot - and should not - look to being rescued by a King, nor saved by an outlaw. We need to help-ourselves; and what we therefore most need is the wisdom of a wizard.

Why is the sexual revolution so potent as an agent of self-damnation?

It is when evil is consented that it does spiritual damage.

If evil entities torment people without their consent, the person may be spiritually enhanced by the experience. This is why wars may (like WWII in the UK) apparently lead to a Christian revival - as people fight evil.

But evil consented-to is evil internalised - like with the sexual revolution.


The magnitude of an evil is, in the end, less important than whether it is resisted or embraced. An embraced trivial sin is generally far more harmful to the soul than a major sin repented. Even a trivial sin unrecognised as such, leads inexorably to more and worse sin; but a major sin repented is not harmful to the soul, and may be beneficial (St Paul, for example).


Sex is probably the second-most-powerful motivation in 'natural' men - religion being the first. Now moderns have dispensed-with (real) religion; for modern Men, sex reigns supreme as human motivator.

Most of the sexual sins are relatively trivial, in the great scheme of things. Therefore, modern people say: why not? Unasked, since they deny God in their hearts, is the proper question of whether some-sexual-thing is what God could plausibly want from them?

The danger is that with the sexual revolution what starts as why-not-it's-trivial? remains unrepented; then becomes no sin at all; then - since there are only two sides in the spiritual war - then becomes a virtue (to be defended, celebrated, funded, enforced...).

In such a situation, even a trivial sin rapidly becomes spiritually lethal; as we see all around us.


The Big Problem with the sexual revolution is, therefore, the combination of relatively-trivial sins combined with powerful motivation to embrace one or more such sins.

Obsessive desire synergizes with a perfect excuse to yield pride-full self-damnation and public advocacy of the same for other - which is an extremely evil result. 

How should one evaluate ambivalent/ ambiguous people in the public domain? (like Jordan Peterson)

When things are coming to a point - there is In Reality no neutral ground.

One is either For or Against God, the Good and Divine Creation.

And (because things have come to a point) if one is not obviously For, then one is, as a matter of fact, Against.


(Therefore all the people about whom one is 'not sure' - or who seem ambivalent/ ambiguous - are actually on the wrong side. Of course everybody has some Good in them - I am talking about which side a person serves in the spiritual war of this mortal world. Remember: There are only two sides, and they are getting further separated.)

Evil must be invited-in; protection asked-for

Evil is very powerful and pervasive; but must be invited-within if evil is to damage our souls. Otherwise, we can grow and develop by our interaction with evil - we may build our strength against its resistance.

Protection (spiritual protection) is universally available, but must be asked-for. The Good Shepherd, the Holy Ghost, are always there; but we must choose to follow them.

This is because we are all mini-gods, gods in embryo; spiritual beings of (in some ways) immense power.

Especially in a negative sense. We can defy any amount or intensity of evil, simply by knowing evil and repenting it in our-selves. We can also - alone, unaided - deny, defy, or reject God the creator! (Many do.)

Of course, such inviting and asking is not merely verbal; but is an act of thinking; what is more, a conscious act of thinking. And because it is an act of thinking; it cannot be compelled, nor can it be prevented.

(To invite evil or ask for protection is a free act - which it could not be if it were unconscious.)

The devil cannot take us against our explicit wishes; and also God cannot shape our lives without our request; not even 'for our own good'.

We must consent. This is how it is.

Bulverism and the mainstream dominant Left - incoherent all the way down.

In a famous essay, CS Lewis described a particularly insidious rhetorical trick which is called Bulverism. By Bulverism he meant the device of assuming what ought first to be proved; by jumping straight to explaining why something is the case, without ever establishing that it is the case.

Bulverism is all-but universal in the mass media - indeed, it is the distinguishing feature of almost all mainstream communications in the modern world.

In a 'soft sense' everybody does Bulverism, at least when they are among people of similar beliefs and views, because then we can take assumptions for granted and move on to other matters. Therefore, strictly, Bulverism ought to be reserved for the manipulative ('rhetorical') use of the device.

Its ubiquity is because power is nowadays almost-wholly in the hands of the Left, of those whose ideology is worldly, materialistic, scientistic. Weasel-words like justice, freedom, equality, democracy are themselves types of Bulverism; because they hide the false assumption that users share an understanding - when in fact the understanding is neither shared, not indeed is genuine understanding of such terms available at all.

The serious, insidious, dishonest and manipulative type of Bulverism can be detected by the response to a request for clarification and justification of assumptions. The mainstream modern participants in public discourse will never, because they cannot, clarify or justify their core assumptions. Therefore, they respond to all such questions either by ignoring them; or with anger, aggression, escalating accusation, suppression of the questioner.


Once a person or an organisation has been assumed to be - for example - racist; then any attempt to discover what is meant by racism in this context, or why this implied definition of racism is bad, will be disregarded or met by hostility; and probably collateral accusations of... racism. The very act of trying to understand terms and establish assumptions and facts is regarded as intrinsically denial, evasion, obfuscation - advocacy of evil. Which may then be 'explained' by further Bulverism.

(On the lines of: "By questioning my accusation of racism you reveal yourself as racist; and you are racist because you are a privileged white middle-class man.")

I have encountered Bulverism times beyond count. For example, organisations all over the West made major changes due to their pursuit of 'Quality'. Yet, in actual practice, in the places where Quality Assurance systems were being implemented, any attempt to understand what was actually, operationally being meant by Quality in this specific context, was regarded either as fine-spun abstract theorising ('we haven't got time to go into that stuff'), or as the questioner being opposed to Quality.

('So, you excuse and want to do nothing-about all the errors, incompetence, abuses and evils perpetrated by this type of organisation throughout history until this moment!').

The thing is, the people guilty of Bulverisms - the journalists, politicians, middle managers, academics, lawyers, health service bureaucrats etc - do not have any basis for their assumptions. 'Basis' is not there to be had. The primary assumptions that they deploy in their thinking have merely been absorbed passively and unconsciously.

Having never consciously been aware-of nor deliberately having-adopted, these assumptions; Bulverists deny that they are assumptions (I don't think anything of the kind!'). Having assimilated their assumptions from high status sources in their environment, Bulverists regard these implicit but pervasive assumptions as obvious and self-evident facts - to doubt-which can only be insane, incompetent or dishonest.


But, even if they did try to isolate and examine their assumptions; mainstream modern System-bureaucrats and apologists cannot find conceptual clarity, because there is nothing there. The mainstream modern world is incoherent all the way down.

Because The West has no over-arching purpose, it has no logical cohesion; there is no shared baseline of common-sense or intuitive assumptions.

Therefore, there can be no real meaning to the terms employed, there can be no deep-validity to the arguments.

Everything at the point of implementation is at the superficial level of unstated, vague, unshared assumptions being manipulated to achieve short-termist objectives.


To be more exact, there is indeed an overall plan - but its coherence is actually in-coherence. The plan is incoherence-generating.

All these phenomena are in reality the multiple distal manifestations of core opposition to God, the Good and Creation. Only God/ Good/ Creation is coherent; and the Global Establishment's systematic opposition to GGC is merely anti-coherent.

Wherever we observe Bulversism - which will be hundreds of times per day, if we are not substantially isolated from the modern world - we see the manifold acts of destruction or subversion of truth, beauty and virtue. In short, Bulverism is purposive demonic evil in action.

The fact that Bulverism is everywhere and (nearly) all of the time in public discourse, is a measure of the extremity of our actual situation.
 
 

Charlton's First Law and the Submissive Flaccidity of Secular Modernity

I was always puzzled by the submissive flaccidity of modern Western societies: the way that - although they live to maximise gratification and minimise suffering - they will in practice do nothing to protect their future happiness nor to defend against future suffering.

But the reason is encapsulated by Charlton's First Law: Things must always get worse before they can get better; because otherwise they already would be better.

When a beneficial policy is a win-win option, then it gets done automatically, and we don't need to think about it - probably we don't even notice it. But most beneficial policies have a down-side. Typically, long-term benefit can be attained only at the cost of short-term disadvantage or suffering of some kind, to some people.

So that the hedonic secular goal of making life overall as pleasant as possible in the long-term is continually being subverted by the short-term and specific gratification.


The hedonic ideal has reached such an extremity among the ruling elites that they pursue policies which will in the long term lead to lifestyles that they regard as miserable and abhorrent, because effectively to prevent these outcomes makes them feel bad now.

In other words, secular hedonism cannot take tough decisions.

A tough decision is precisely a decision in which the correct decision leads to short term harm.


I first recognised this dilemma in medicine, when it is often the case that in order to make a person probably feel better overall in the long term, they must suffer immediate and certain short term misery: for example, surgery. Surgeons live with this on a daily basis, and consequently to be a good surgeon requires a 'tough' attitude.

The point is that someone who was psychologically unable to make tough decisions, but always sought to maximise the immediate comfort and well-being of patients and to take minimum risk, would be a bad surgeon.

Modern society is soft in precisely this fashion - its rulers have lost the ability take tough decisions: to seek long term benefits when these come at the price the cost of short term costs to themselves.


The ultimate reason is, I believe, that humans can only make tough decisions when these are supported by transcendental aims, in the sense that humans do not want to forgo short term gratification in this world unless life is believed to be about something more than gratification.

This entails that non-worldly realities (God, heaven, truth, beauty etc.) are seen as more real and more enduring than immediate gratification - and therefore more important.

If human life is (as secular modernity asserts) ultimately about gratification (about maximising happiness and minimising suffering) then it will always seem tempting to take the short-term choice leading to immediate and certain happiness and avoid immediate and certain suffering; and to ignore the long-term consequences of these choices on the basis that the future cannot be known with certainty, and we might be dead anyway before the future arrives.


A society that regards the 'purpose of life' as being to while-away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, is a society which cannot make tough decisions. It is a society which will always take the easy-way-out, will pursue short-termist and certain benefits, and which will therefore always submit to its enemies - because to resist enemies makes life less pleasant than to appease them.

Even to recognize the reality of threats and enemies is unpleasant, distressing, generative of negative emotions such as fear and anger – better if we can pretend that threats and enemies are harmless or benign, really; and the only truly nasty people are those who make us feel bad about ourselves, here and now…

So a society that values nothing higher than a pleasant life, and which will seek the pleasant life wherever and whenever possible is a society that will be morally flaccid in face of opposition, will appease rather than resist, will submit rather than fight, and will therefore end-up being ruled by its most relentless and long-termist enemies - and by having an extremely un-pleasant life.

Note: Edited from a post of nine years ago.

The problem of false selves (William Arkle)

One of William Arkle's core insights is that - in normal, everyday life - people act from a multitude of false selves. The true self, which is of divine origin and potentially able to become a god, is what makes us what we are - but it may be completely buried beneath false selves; the true self may be utterly ineffectual.

These false selves are of many types. Some are the collections of traits - hereditary and socialised - that constitute our 'personality' as described and measured by psychology. Others are that mass of automatic, robotic skills and responses that we learn to deal with the problems of living; including skills like typing or driving, small-talk and routine social interaction.

You can see that false selves are the totality of what a person presents to the world; and usually also everything that a person is aware of in himself, insofar as he is aware of anything. So, our consciousness is not the same thing as our true self, because it may be unaware of the true self, may even deny the reality of any such thing as a true self.

False selves are therefore necessary but a problem, because whenever we make an effort to change ourselves in any way, the probability is that this will be a matter of one or more of the false selves trying to change us in a superficial and false direction.

This is why methods of meditation,. methods of self-improvement, will-power... all such endeavours are nearly always ineffective. It is just a matter of distorting ourselves by exaggerating one or more false selves.

And how can we consciously strive to discover and nurture our true self, when the striving is being done by a false self?

Or if we try to relax and let-go the true self; simply 'allowing' the true self to emerge from under the false ones; there is a likelihood that we will instead be releasing one or more of the false selves...

The problem is not insoluble, because it has been achieved by others (and perhaps even by our-selves, albeit infrequently and briefly); but Arkle makes clear that there is no method to it; and indeed part of solving the problem is to recognise why there is no method. We must 'quarry out' our real self from the false ones, by some kind of trial and error - discovering what works for us, here and now; but never able to make the process a standard one.

The answer can be summarised as 'intuition' - but that is just giving a name to the fact that there is no method. But the start of a solution is to define the problem - and after that to recognise when the true self is emerging and strengthening. And this can be done by learning to recognise the uniquely self-validating quality of the true self.

Once you know it is there, real and vital - we can feel the reality of the true self in an absolutely distinctive way - even though we cannot describe it.

 

Implications of the opposite of abstraction being experience (and experience being thinking)

I've been reading Rudolf Steiner and listening to his ideas being expounded; and realise that a fundamental problem is that Steiner tended to end with abstraction. Although he stated that reality consisted of living Beings; these were explained in their nature and effect using abstractions.

The opposite of abstraction - and the nature of reality - is experience (i.e. the experience of Beings) - thus reality is within-time, and happens through time; experience is process not category. 

Abstraction (as in my sentences above) is usually the fate of human discussion and exposition, since these are conducted in language, and language is abstract. We can use language to point-at experience, to describe the context of experience; but of course this will be secondary.

It is perhaps this that makes people sake that mystical experience is ineffable, un-expressible - but that is true of all experience, so the property of ineffability is not distinctive to the mystical. e.g. We cannot capture being-in-love - or any other emotion - in language.

Behind all abstraction, language and any other form of interpersonal communication there is direct, unmediated experience, a 'knowing' that is potentially a shared experience of Beings. And this is going-on all the time, in all of us - but nearly always unconsciously.

In other words, our true and divine self is always there; even when it is never attended-to. Because the real self is not inside us, so much as a perspective on reality. Reality is universally accessible, but each of us has a perspective on it; and we can only come to know reality in a linear and sequential fashion.

So, in a way, the real self is like a peephole opening onto the totality of reality (the underworld, the dwat, the collective conscious and unconscious...). Of course it is more than just a peephole; because the real self is also the source of real freedom; and a producer of (uncaused) thought; and potentially the mans of our participation in divine creation.

But in terms of our ability directly to know, we might imagine it as a peephole through which we can incrementally discover everything there is to know, eventually (but of course, that everything will keep growing, and we may contribute to it)- but always from our unique perspective.

There is an abstraction for you! A crude and simple abstract model of reality - looking through a peephole at the ocean of reality that is always everywhere and within... As such it is certainly false - both ridiculously partial, and seriously distorted. What, then is the point of it?

By my understanding, much of our learning - nowadays in this mortal life - is a matter of becoming conscious of something that is already happening, but beyond our awareness. Thus, the abstraction is helpful if or when it draws attention to some neglected reality that we may then - by experiencing it in our thinking - come to know for ourselves.

However, probably only when we come to know it for ourselves. Abstractions at the level of abstraction - and locked into that level by the need for language in public discourse - are a lethal tyranny for the soul.

And all public discourse, all institutions and organisations, operate solely at the level of abstract language or other symbolism; and so are always partial and distorted - always false. This is a big lesson that we need to learn - it is one of the big lessons of our time.

And our learning is assisted by the fact that our institutions and their leaders are so obviously corrupt and increasingly evil that we are quickly learning that they are wrong - and the abstract laws, rules and guidelines by which they attempt to control us are also wrong.

And if we want to know what is right we can derive it only from that which is validated by direct personal experience. and we are wrong.

 

What have the Normans ever done for us?

The Norman invasion was the greatest catastophe in the history of England (and of the British Isles); because the Normans (for all their higher intelligence and talents e.g. as warriors, administrators, architects) were basically evil. As a ruling class, and in stark contrast to the Anglo Saxons and Celts; the Normans and their legacy have been unspiritual in nature, hostile to real Christianity.

Even nowadays, it can be seen (in the eyes) and felt (by the heart) that the Norman descendents and those assimilated to them have 'something missing', are lacking in 'soul'. I would regard this as related to their service to evil. Face-to-face, they are not fully human; although often good at pretending.  

Yet, starting from this insight, we can ask why this was 'allowed to happen'. Terry Boardman argues throughought his work that - yes, the Normans were evil, and also they set-up an ultimately beneficial interaction.

This mortal world is not meant to be a paradise of ease and comfort and pleasure - but is designed as a place of learning from experience; aimed at attaining and benefitting our eternal resurrected life.

Thus evil is not just tolerated, but may be deployed for optimal benefit (within necessary constraints of human agency) - and something of the kind happened with the Normans. (Note: The 'process' actually occurs primarily at an individual level, not by groups; and every individual is a mix of good and evil - even though they will serve one side or the other, overeall. Clearly some individual Normans have repented, been on the side of Good, and spiritually beneficial.)

The Norman ruling class provided skills and perspective; a challenge which the English spirit could grow-against; and that led to England becoming a world power and achieving the world-transforming industrial revolution - and at the spiritual level bringing-forth the 'consciousness soul', with its separation of subjectivity from objectivity: this providing the ultimate basis of spiritual freedom (a necessary step towards greater divinity).

But for the English to go beyond the consciousness soul and on towards the destined Final Participation required that the English spirit overcome the Norman - and this has not (or not yet) happened. The Norman-derived English Establishment have instead (pretty much) ideologically taken-over the world (US, UN, EU), and are well-advanced in imposing their long term goal of totalitarian materialism in service of their evil masters.

So, the Normans have done a great deal for us in a spiritual sense, but that good now lies more than two centuries in the past; and it is by now long overdue that the English spirit resisted their long-term idological colonisation; and overcame their corrupt-and-corrupting rulers.

What we need to do is the same whether or not you agree-with or understand the above analysis; but it is helpful to know your real enemy, esepcially when they are so powerful and influential - and therefore avoid mistaking your enemies for your allies.

The Nebby Nurse type - a nightmare vision of the future

There is a Nebby Nurse type, to use some Geordie dialect. Most aren't nurses, most nurses aren't nebby (poking their nebs/ noses in everywhere, all of the time), but when they are...

The Nebby Nurse is all too common, because encouraged nowadays. It's when you're in a mixed group of men and women in a pub or on a committee, and there is one of those women who is neither attractive, nor charming, nor interesting; but so full of her opinions on everything that she takes-up nearly all the conversation, and sucks the life out of everybody.

In modern bureaucracies these girls can go all the way to the top, and they want to - because that gives them abundant victims to herd into 'meetings' and harangue endlessly.

They want women to run everything but most decent women dislike meetings, and don't want to boss people. So we get Nebby Nurses running everything.

It's a modern version of Orwell's nightmare. If you want a vision of the future; imagine A Nebby Nurse whining in your face, Forever...

The Climate Emergency Big Lie - what it tells us about Them

All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

From 'My Struggle' by Herr A. Hitler, painter and politician (1889-1945)

The evolving hoax of 'Climate Change', is incomparably the biggest Big Lie that has ever been perpetrated on the world. Indeed, starting with the falsehood that climate can be predicted; the Big Climate Lie is many-many lies-piled-upon-lies to reach the insane conviction that a world government can control the world climate to within a degree - if only it is given complete surveillance and micro-control over everything.

In other words - the totalitarian agenda.

Okay - that's been the last 25-plus years. A quarter century, trillions of dollars, trillions of man-hours, galactic volumes of verbal hot-air; an incomprehensibly massive drain of effort, time and resources; infliction of heavy economic damage; and immense environmental destruction - all because The Big Lie.


But now we have a state of Climate Emergency. In other words, the global Establishment is pushing very hard, everywhere, by all means at its disposal, to be given totalitarian powers as a matter of emergency. 

This is a Power Grab, the power grab: a coup d'etat intended to be complete and final - this is the urgent and rapid attempt at totalitarian takeover - and it is happening here and now. 


First of it, it is helpful to contemplate the sheer insanity of this situation. Truly it is hard to comprehend that so many could collaborate in fabricating such colossal untruth; and to believe the sheer impudence of such infamous distortion of reality. It beggars belief that this, of all imaginable issues, should have become the core rationale for the implementation of a totalitarian world dictatorship.

Yet here we are.

Why this? Why now?


Why this? Because this lie works - it has been tested and developed over a quarter century. Okay...

But why now? That's the interesting question. Why now, and why not sometime before or later?

My answer is that the answer is not that this time is optimal. It is not optimal. The Climate Emergency movement did not emerge from a rising groundswell of public opinion. To the contrary, the Climate Emergency came out of the blue, and after several years during which - in the mass public mind - climate change had faded in significance and was the subject of increasing doubts (as reality stubbornly failed to conform to delusion).

Yet, They (i.e. the global establishment) regard it as necessary to do this Now. Why?


My assumption is either that They regard it as either possible for the first time, or necessary because of some risk to the project.

On the one hand, the expansion of population demoralisation, surveillance and control; mass population migration and the ability to trigger deadly civil disorder etc... - these may all be in place now; such that - for the first time - centralised  dictatorship is a genuine possibility, easily graspable.

So let's get on with it... 

(They may be right or wrong about this. I am suggesting how it may look to Them in order that the Climate Emergency button was pushed.)

Or else, conversely; They are worried about something going wrong with their plans; such that They suddenly feel the need to press-ahead, despite the fact that the ground has Not been optimally prepared, and Not enough people are sufficiently ready for what is being proposed.

(They may be right or wrong about the rising risk to their plans. Again, I am simply suggesting how things may seem to Them.)


Two opposite possibilities.

The totalitarian power grab that is Climate Emergency is happening Now; either because of Their strength, or because of Their weakness.

Whatever the answer you decide does not change what you ought-to be doing; but it should be encouraging to speculate that the international attempted coup that is Climate Emergency may be product of panic, rather than the long anticipated final step of step of a decades long master plan.

The evil inversion of mainstream evaluations: Collateral Beauty (2016) - a movie review

We live in an inverted world when it comes to the arts and entertainment - as I mentioned recently - where a superbly-crafted, thought-provoking and inspiring movie like Collateral Beauty - starring (I would have thought) bulletproof stars like Will Smith (Mr Bankable), Dame Helen Mirren, and Keira Knightley) can be universally panned by critics such that it was commercially killed, made big losses at the box office, and was elected as The Worst movie of the year*. 

It is important that the viewer sees Collateral Beauty without prior knowledge, in order properly to appreciate its achievement - so there are no spoilers here; and I would advise you neither to read reviews nor to watch trailers.  Also, you must watch and pay-attention up to the very last minute; or you will miss something vital.

So, I am not going to tell you anything in advance about Collateral Beauty other than that anyone who knows anything about movies can see that it is extremely well-scripted, deftly-structured and directed, magnificently-acted, gorgeously-filmed and tightly-edited.

It is also very emotionally gruelling, due to its theme of the death of a young child and the devastating effect it has on the Will Smith character. Such emotions are neither easy nor pleasant to experience, even vicariously. If you don't want to cry and be wrung-out; don't watch.

More broadly, the movie is about the absolute need for transcendent meaning and purpose in life; and its big 'mistake', its 'fatal  flaw', its gaffe - i.e. the reason that it was universally, viciously, dishonestly and (grossly) incompetently slaughtered by the professional reviewers (their lock-step unanimity being coordinated by orders from above) - is that after raising every doubt and depicting total despair; Collateral Beauty eventually and subtly (but firmly) implies that there really is an objectively-real and transcendent meaning and purpose to Life.

You can easily see why, in our Ahrimanic world; such a movie, aimed at a mass audience, had to be mocked, slandered and crushed. It has become vital to the Global Establishment that any potential source of hope and courage is snuffed-out ASAP, whenever it (unfortunately, albeit seldom) emerges.

CB is not a Christian movie, not at all, although broadly-compatible with Christianity. But it is a good movie; an honest movie that has a very serious purpose of doing good (so far as I can infer).

How such a thing can emerge from mainstream mass Hollywood is in itself quite extraordinary, and very rare. But we must not miss noticing how such an event was dealt-with. Such is the fate of any good person, thing, phenomenon in the mainstream modern world.


*Collateral Beauty's Rotten Tomatoes consensus-approval rating was 14% (one star), in a venue where the (first) sequel to Sharknado got 59% (three stars) from the professional reviewers... Just think about that. I'm not dissing Sharknado - the original movie - which is so-extremely-bad that it's good, and deliberately so. But after watching it the once, I felt, quite strongly in fact, that humankind had by-then seen enough variations on the theme of great white sharks sucked-up by a storm and then falling from the sky onto people. A follow-up was not strictly necessary.