What is the relationship between culture and spirituality? More on the nature of the culture/ spiritual war

There is a fair degree of consensus among thinking spiritual and (Mere) Christian people that the forces of evil have by-now won the culture war, and now control human perceptions of reality in the realm of 'the five senses' (mainly vision and hearing).

In other words, that the great bulk of audio-visual inputs for most Western people, day by day, is more or less as wished by the forces of purposive evil.

But what relationship does this have to the spiritual realm? In principle, Men remain free to accept salvation - so why go to all the bother of incrementally (over decades) taking-over culture and creating a delusional world of lies and inversion?

The answer is that the strategy is two-pronged - and involves two simultaneous brainwashings.

One is to take over culture and, by the mass media, to immerse people in it, and addict them to it, so they are continually subjected to cultural brainwashing (remembering that this is only partly a matter of content because the form of the mas media - the medium itself - is even more important than its specific content).

The other, equally important, brainwashing is to indoctrinate people into thinking that the realm of public perception is the only valid source of knowledge.

Because if people still retained their self-directed and intuitive forms of thought - if they were able to intuit knowledge directly for themselves, and regarded the real world as extending beyond the realm  of the five senses (including the abstract but public realm of the measurements of scientific instruments, machines, statistics etc) - then clearly Men could not be led into self-damnation merely by controlling the world of culture.

Intuitive Man is able to see-through culture, and to know reality directly - and this would represent an insuperable barrier for creating and sustaining a world of inverted delusion.

So, the ideology of materialism, 'Enlightenment' rationalism, scientism, positivism (it has had various names) had to become mainstream, normal, and assumed before cultural indoctrination could have a direct effect on human spirituality. 

And this has happened! The two prongs have had the desired effect - modern Western Man lives inside the artificial world of materialist culture, and also believes that only this materialist culture is real and true.

The loop has been closed.

But the way out from the loop is clear - because while it is hard to overturn a vast system of mass media and official lies and inversions - it is nothing like so difficult for any individual person to reject the modern metaphysics of materialism, and to assume instead the validity of their own intuition as a source of knowledge.

And it many people do this, and share the perspective and amplify it - then that would be IT for the vast system of lies and inversions.

The Nature of Wisdom - by William Arkle (1976)

Wisdom - Bill Arkle, August 1976

Wisdom has to start with our ordinary understanding of the term 'wisdom' which we know is a relative term, in the same way as we know the term 'beauty' is a relative term - relative to the attitude and the perception, as it were, within the eye of the beholder. And so wisdom also is relative to the perception and the eye of the beholder of actions and responses which are measured in terms of being more wise or less wise. But, behind the ordinary terminology of wisdom, we may suppose that there is a deep absolute form of wisdom which is in line with, and in tune with, the absolute level of our being and the absolute creative intention behind the manifestation of the universes at all their levels, from the most ethereal level, which we call the heavenly levels, down through the more and more dense levels to the most dense and concrete, which we call the earthly levels.

My understanding of this absolute form of wisdom depends on an ability I believe we have to resonate with the deep heart of our being into the deep heart of the Creator's being and feel, with that very deep sense of in-feeling, how the Creator felt towards creation before it began. In other words one can learn to feel what it was that the Creator was longing for, aspiring to, or simply desiring, from the great work and the great effort that he has engaged in in what is known to us as creation. Now, if we can feel with all our deepest understanding, our deepest intelligence and our deepest perception, what it was that the Creator looked for, above all else, in creation, then, and only then, shall we be close to the absolute point of wisdom which I believe is in the absolute point of deepest desire in the heart of the Creator's being.

As I myself attempt to do this, I come away with the understanding that the greatest longing that was in the Creator's heart before creation, and which brought about creation and brought into existence the individual beings, who each of us is in the Creator's eyes and to one another, was the desire to have real individual friends, in the deepest possible meaning of that word. Friends to share his understanding, his joy and his wisdom within the context of real friendship, which creates a vital relationship between each friend and the other friend, from which ever-renewing possibilities and responses can grow. My feeling is that the Creator first of all wished to bring into existence real and individual children, whose nature was based on a part of his own divine nature, but the characteristics of which were to be developed by each of those individual children as they grew up in the universes, or the universities, of his creation. They would develop in the nature of their own individual spirits, so that each of those children would become a unique individual child and then, hopefully, would become more than a child - would wish to grow into a mature condition which was not as a child to the Creator, but was as an individual being to the Creator. Thus all these beings could each have creative relationships of friendship and gladness with one another and with the Creator. Not with the Creator as a special 'God' individual, who was not approachable as other friends are approachable, but He himself wanted to be able to befriend us and have a creative friendship with us as we befriend one another and have a creative friendship with one another.

In the heart of the Creator's being we find all manner of wonderful things; but we find, above all, great love, great affection, great beauty, great sweetness, great gentleness and great strength. We find all the great qualities, such as courage and devotion, which to us become deeply valuable properties of our most valuable relationship. Now, the nature of wisdom as we will try to define it, is something other than the nature of love.


We can understand that the Creator's nature is, as it were, all love, but wisdom is the application of that love to the purposeful aspiration or desire which emanates from that love which, in the case we are talking about, was to bring into existence real individual children who have unique characteristics of their own and who were truly separate and autonomous beings. These would learn to live and grow amongst one another according to the specieshood of the divine nature, but within that specieshood, would develop the ability to express their own unique characteristics and express the initiative and spiritedness which emanates from any healthy spiritual being. Thus they would be able, as they gained more strength, to stand apart and upon their own feet, in a metaphorical sense, in order that each of these individuals could be a unique polarity to which other individuals could relate, and between which living polarities, new, ever growing, vortices of creative potentiality would develop.

Now wisdom, as I would understand it, is the appreciation of the value that comes out of the effort, and the means to bring about this great desire, as the means become available in terms of this created universe at all its levels. We understand that, after the universe was created and prepared, the spirits, the particles of the Creator's being, which were individual units of his own being nature, were sown into this universe as pupils are placed in a university. In it they work from the lowest level of the university up to the highest level of the university and, eventually, learn to appreciate the nature and value of the university as a whole, from the highest level to the lowest level. Wisdom begins by understanding that these potential children cannot become real, in any sense of that word, if they are prestructured or pre-programmed in such a way that their individuality and their sense of selfhood cannot be properly developed and appreciated by them.

If the Creator in any way subverts the processes which maintain the individual autonomy of each of these children as they grow and mature, then the Creator is allowing the desire and longing to slip away from the possibility that the universe contains for the bringing about of that great longing. So, from the beginning, the Creator had to work with wisdom to create processes which would allow for the potentiality of each of these Divine particles, who were individual children in a potential condition, gradually to become aware of the structure of values and relationships that it was living in with regard to nature and to other individual beings. And this had to be brought about in such a way that at no time was the individual overawed or over-dominated by the too great nearness or presence of the Creator's own personality. For, if that occurred, then the dominance of the Creator's personality would stamp itself completely upon the individuality of the individual child and prevent that individuality flourishing in its fullness; which it must do if it is to carry any real value as a real child in its own right.

So we can understand that, from the beginning, a great wisdom was needed which understood that, although the Creator was longing that each of his children should understand the value of, and the nature of, each of the Divine qualities, these children could not have an objective understanding of divine qualities if they were not able to experience them in a condition which would allow for the opposites of those qualities to be experienced at the same time. Thus to enter into the judgement of the value of the qualities which each of them must learn to apply for themselves. It would have been very beautiful and very happy for us all to have been born into a perfect and heavenly environment, perhaps close to the person and, shall we call it, the home of our Divine Creator, but this would not have produced in us the qualities which the Creator's heart most longed for; which was a longing for the quality of unique individuality which each of us longs for in a friend.

A friend is one who can stand apart from us in strength and values us in freedom as we would value them in strength and freedom. We value our friends not so much in terms of their cleverness or their special abilities, but for their profound uniqueness of characteristics which they exhibit towards us as completely separate autonomous individuals.

Now wisdom has to learn to discriminate between the lower forms of love and affection and the higher forms of love and affection. The lower forms of love are not true forms of love at all, but are the desire and the need for one another to supply the gratifications which are necessary to the outer forms of our being nature and the appetites which go along with the outer forms of our being nature. The deeper and real forms of love and affection are not based on the desire to use individuals as a source of gratification of needs, but rather we are very deeply glad about the existence of the other individual in an entirely undemanding way. The basis of the friendship is nothing other than the deep and instinctive recognition of the divine individuality in that other being, and all that divine individuality implies in terms of potentiality.

So real friendship and real love is a very creative, purposeful, ongoing situation, which desires that new things, new possibilities, new responses, should forever arise from that friendship. Wisdom is that knowledge which recognises the nature of true loving relationships and true friendships, and recognises the way that the individual children of God have to be brought in a very slow and gradual state to a condition of self awareness, through which their individuality will receive the greatest encouragement to grow and develop without being overshadowed and overruled by the potency of the Creator's own being and characteristics.

So we can see that wisdom is that understanding which realises the value of the means, and every moment that those means are striving to achieve the end, which was the initial desire for divine children and divine friends to share divine life with. We are saying that wisdom is that understanding which realises that you can only have a deep friendship with an individual who has a deep set of experiences and characteristics; who has deep awareness, which is supported by strength and integrity, of the objective significance of each of the divine qualities which are exhibited in the university, the universe, and which come to us through the activities that each of us play out for the other in the processes or life.

Wisdom will therefore be at great pains to draw out the potentialities and the benefits from the rich mixture of spontaneous responses that all of the individual children of God produce for one another. So far as those responses are unique and individual, then so far do they carry the possibility of producing some spontaneous mixture which did not exist before, and, upon which, other spontaneous mixtures and responses may be built, to produce new possibilities for new understandings and new growth, not only in creation but in terms of eternal purpose and eternal value.

So we can see then that wisdom is that ability in us that can stand back and, through its knowledge that you can only have a thin relationship with a thin personality, can appreciate the thickening of the characteristics of individuality which occur in a very rich and spontaneous and uninhibited form of existence, which is full of initiative and spontaneity. This is the spontaneity which makes mistakes and realises, through its own sense of responsibility, the fact that it has made mistakes, and, through its own sense of responsibility, wishes to put those mistakes right again and correct them. Now this sort of richness can only come to those individual children in a level of the university in which mistakes can occur. My own feeling is that these mistakes can only occur at the lower end of the university, and, as our nature gravitates to a more and more ethereal level of experience in the university, so does the possibility of creative spontaneity and endeavour become less and less.

Whereas, at the higher levels, the enjoyment and adoration of the beautiful divine qualities, that are not only in the Creator's being but present as potentialities in our own being, absorb our whole attention, the desire to use our initiative and the desire to enter into creative and exploratory forms of life, disappear. We can understand that if our educational processes at the lower end of the university were perfect as they are in the higher and more heavenly level of the university, then the initiative to make mistakes and correct them again may be lacking. We would be unable to experience the opposite of all the values of the divine nature, such as love being experienced against the quality of hatred, and kindness being experienced against the quality of cruelty, and weakness being experienced against the quality of strength, and beauty being experienced against the quality of ugliness.

Now this ability for us not only to see and feel and experience the qualities which we come to value most deeply in terms of their opposites, but our ability to get into situations, through the use of our own initiative, which have to be corrected and thoroughly understood before we become clear of those situations again, does not occur at any other level than that of the most concrete and separate forms of creation, which the physical level of creation represents. It represents the most crystallised form of the Creator's spirit in action and therefore, at this level as in no other, are we able to define the specific significance of all the divine potential qualities which exist in our nature and in the Creator's nature; through perceiving them and understanding them, being involved with them, having to use them, having to use them correctly, and correct them when we use them incorrectly.

This sort of experience produces true wisdom and true understanding, and produces in us a deep awareness of the significance of the Creator's great work on our behalf. This attitude towards the significance of wisdom helps us to understand why it was, in the allegorical sense, that the Creator allowed us to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and yet, at the same time, warned us that it would be a thing which would cause us pain. The Creator knew that in order to fulfil the great longing in his heart to produce craggy, leathery, strong individuals, who had deep characteristics of individuality in them, we would have to enter into a level of experimental living in which mistakes occurred and which pain would be felt as a result of those mistakes occurring. As the source of love and affection, the Creator himself could not force us into that situation; he could not place us in that place in which pain must come to us. But on the other hand, he could Go straight to large imagetake us close to the door which led into this field of experiment and pain, and hopefully wait for our initiative to become strong enough to take us through that door. So that we, from our initiative, entered into the realm of pain and suffering through the spiritedness of our spirit and the desire to know all things; to register the true value of ourselves in a deep sense and to register a sense, which is very strong in us, of being the arbiter of our own actions and the carrier of responsibility for those actions.

In other words, it was the deep, instinctive sense of the godlike creative experimental and responsible individuality which led us through that door into the world of the knowledge of good and evil, and caused us to be engaged with good and evil in a way which we were not engaged with them before. Because, before we entered that door and experimented unwisely with the forces of our own being, we were not engaged with the processes and the qualities of evil, we were only engaged with the processes and the qualities of good.

Although we may have chosen to remain on the good side of that door and not pass through it, if we had done so we would have lost the potentiality of growth and development which can only come to us through the deep, tragic, heroic and painful experience which comes to us through the misuse of our godlike abilities, but which also registers in us the godlike remorse and the godlike desire to correct the mistakes we make as we make them.

So that great wisdom, whereas it will not force people into situations which it knows are incorrect and painful, at the same time will learn to wait for the individual to work out the results of such wrong engagement in life. Because wisdom knows that it is only through the wrong engagement in life that some greater value than obedient perfection can arise, which is not an ability to be in perfect harmony with all the beautiful qualities of the divine nature, but is, in fact, the ability to know on its own account, to know for itself, to know objectively within its own experience, why the divine values are divinely valuable, and what the values are which detract from and destroy those divine values.

From that type of knowledge arises a great strength and a great wisdom and a great love, which cannot arise if that spirit has not passed through the gate into the world of knowledge of good and evil. It is only on the other side of that gate that great strength will be required to recover from mistakes, and it's only on the other side of that gate that great mistakes will be made and great understanding developed in order to recover from those mistakes.

So we can see that great wisdom is not engaged in interfering with the processes of life in order to tidy them up, in order to do away with disharmony, in order to do away with the crosscurrents of life which stir the pot of experience and produce a rich soup of opposing currents and values and desires and attitudes. Yet, at the same time, wisdom is certainly not indifferent to suffering, and it is not indifferent to the fact that continually the experiences produce a stumbling and a faltering, and mankind has to be rescued and brought back to a reasonable level of buoyancy again from which further movements and further experiments can be made.

In a sense, although wisdom does not interfere, wisdom is always on the lookout for a situation which has gone too far, and become so negative that nothing of value can arise from the situation anymore. Then wisdom will try and suggest to an individual who is stuck in such a situation that there is a way out which that individual hasn't yet seen.

Thus, the way out will produce a form of recovery which will lead to the individual realising why he has fallen, why he has got stuck in a situation which has stopped life happening to that individual, stopped experience growing and developing, stopped understanding and awareness growing in the individual.

Wisdom, while it will stand back and allow people and individuals to make mistakes, will equally engage in rescuing people from mistakes and from over-stressed situations, from which those individuals cannot rescue themselves. We can see that wisdom is a very deep awareness which is continually balancing out all the processes engaged in building deeper and deeper characteristics into the individuality which exists in each of the divine children of the Creator.

Wisdom is encouraging each of those divine children to grow into a level beyond childhood, which is more mature than childhood is, which is a level of growth in which divine friendship can occur between the individuals and their Creator.

Wisdom will forever be observing the balance occurring in experience, particularly at a physical level, in order that this absolute value can be extracted and made use of in every situation. So that wisdom is not so much engaged in easing the burden of life, as it is engaged in the harvesting of the fruits of the burdens of life. Wisdom develops an ability to see that the harvest in life is not at the level of ease, happiness, bliss and joy, but exists in a level of beingness in our nature which is at a very deep level of strength and integrity and selfhood which, while it is being autonomous and highly individual, is also becoming aware of its unity and loving relationship with all other forms of selfhood.

So we are saying that the deep wisdom which exists in the Creator's nature, and which we can learn to understand, is a deep wisdom which values not only the individual who is a friend to each other individual, but values the depth of character and strength and integrity, the leathery, craggy, strong, warrior-like toughness and individual responsiveness that each individual can develop in their own right. And wisdom recognises that individuality which doesn't have strength and doesn't have deep experience, is less valuable.

Although all the divine qualities of heaven are something we must have an experience of, and a taste of, wisdom recognises that, if these qualities are not understood arid lived at this outermost physical level of the universe, they are not fully appreciated in terms of their opposites, and therefore do not produce the deep understanding, the objective valuation, and the deep strength which can support them and which is needed in any true individual.

Wisdom recognises that there are three things that we need to achieve. First of all our unique separate beingness, then the objective understanding of values, which produces the ability to understand the real quality and value of all things, and then the strength and integrity which is necessary to support the being and the understanding; and it is on earth that these experiences have been made available for us, to a degree which they may not be available for us in any other form of experience. That is why there is a wisdom that is able to grow from the earth which is so valuable.


The essay Wisdom, published in The Great Gift, by William Arkle - 1977

Why is incarnation (being embodied) a higher state than life as a pure spirit?

It is one of the most profound, yet simple, insights of Mormon theology that to be incarnate - embodied - is a higher state than being a pure spirit.

The idea is that God is incarnate, and that this mortal life is primarily about 'getting a body' - the work of Jesus Christ was (in part) to enable all men to be resurrected, and live eternally incarnate (and cleansed of corruption).

This was a breakthrough in theology because the religious tradition has tended strongly towards seeing pure spiritual life as a higher form of life than embodiment - perhaps because the spirit was unconfined, incorruptible, and apparently lacked the multiple constraints of boundedness that a body seems to imply.

However, the Christian fact of the divine Jesus becoming incarnate, dying and then being resurrected in a perfected but human body - strongly implies that incarnation is a higher state than immaterial spirit life.

Yet the fact of incarnation and resurrection has been, for most of Christian history, confused by the dogmatic assertion that God the Father was disembodied, an immaterial spirit - despite multiple scriptural references which seem to imply the  opposite. An anti-body bias, an equation of the body with sin and limitation, was not merely confined to the Gnostics, but has been a constant temptation and lapse among mainstream Christians.

Christianity has been confused and inconsistent on this subject of incarnation through most of its history; and often lapsed into talking about the body as corruption and the spirit as higher and purer and more divine. Consequently, mortal incarnate life was often perceived as intrinsically second rate or actually pointless, compared with spiritual life in Heaven. Many Christians craved the release from suffering and potential for absorption into the divine offered by the discarnate, spiritual state (and 'Eastern religions' throughout continued to regard pure spirit as a higher spiritual state than incarnation). 

By clearly stating that God the Father has a body, of the same nature as the resurrected Christ, of the same nature as Men, then this historic confusion was transcended.

Having a body is potentially better, a higher state, than not having a body - with greater potential for power in general and for creation in particular. The history of a human soul begins with pure spirit, and ascends to incarnation. The history of life into consciousness can be seen as a process of 'condensation'.

So, why is incarnation a higher state than pure spirit? Why is it a spiritual progression to 'get a body'?

In the first place it needs to be recognised that when we are incarnate, it is not a matter of the body 'clothing' the spirit - rather, the two become one: an irrevocably (when the body and spirit are spilt apart at death this is not a restoration of the spirit life, but a maiming of the spirit. Resurrection reunite the severed body and spirit, enabling the purification of both).

Indeed, it is not incarnation if we imagine that the spirit merely inhabits and controls a body - as if it was inside a diving suit, or a 'mech' suit - this is a spirit being creating the illusion of a body, a projection of a body - this would be a spirit merely manipulating the material world but not inhabiting it.

What happens with incarnation is that the immaterial spirit comes to inhabit the material world. The soul thereby attains the fullest possible integration with the whole of reality.

(Note - I am using a omenclature here where the soul is our eternal personal self; the spirit is the first and immaterial form which the soul attains. The immaterial is contrasted with the material - in terms not so much of nature as of properties such as detectability, measurablility, confinability. The incarnate soul includes both spirit and body in fusion.)

Consider: assuming the spirit is immaterial, then as a pure spirit the human soul is excluded from the material form of reality.

By incarnating, the soul attains the fullness of integration with reality: material as well as immaterial.

The discarnate soul of pure spirit lacks a full sense of itself from-which to work - it lack boundaries, and therefore cannot be fully free. Freedom is the basis of creativity, and freedom must have a discrete origin. Hence incarnation.

Incarnation is more a matter of concentration than of constraint - and enhanced creative power is a product of that greater concentration and of fuller self-awareness, which is characteristic of the incarnate soul.

Why is re-reading better than the first time? A matter of trust

The world can be divided into serious and recreational readers - serious readers are re-readers: they read mostly in order to find those books that they can re-read. The rest are the recreational readers.

It is interesting to speculate on what it is that can make re-reading - especially the second time around - even more enjoyable and satisfying than the first reading.

The first time I read a book there is a part of me holding-back, waiting to see if the author can be trusted. Because if I open my heart to a book, and then it betrays me... well, that can be a wounding experience.

(Like confessing your innermost thoughts - then having them used to mock you.)

There are, after all, many books that at first seem to be one thing, and yet are another - books that start off apparently going one place, but end up somewhere much worse; books that fill you with hope until they turn, strike and eviscerate you with disgust or despair...

Most commonly there are books which build towards something, but in the end cannot deliver whatever it was, and fizzle out into... well, nothing much at all.

Therefore, during the first run-through I tend to hold-back, and wait to see whether this is a book that will deliver on its promises; whether this is a book which is of good motivation and honesty.

After I have read a book - I know the answer; and if it is a good book, then I always want to re-read it - this time giving myself fully to the experience, opening my heart to the book.

It is rather like meeting someone for the first time compared with subsequent meetings, On the first meeting both sides hold back something; and it is only as trust builds that we open ourselves to each other. Friendship with a real friend therefore gets better - whereas for the mass of others, an impressive or entertaining first impression inevitably yields to cumulative disillusion, boredom, irritation, repulsion...

Most of modern life is all about making striking 'first impressions' - including a serious concern with even the assumed-impressions we make on strangers who glimpse us in the crowd. Much modern literature: the same - engineered instantly to impress.

And as with encountering people, we ought sometimes to read for long-term growing friendship; and not always consume interactions with books in pursuit of instantaneous distraction - not always reading for one-off entertainment, thrills or consolation - or else we will never know any books, and find ourselves without friends among the library. 

Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump: The Demonic candidate versus an Antichrist

People keep asking me what I think about the US Presidential election - it is not a topic I want to spend much time on; but to answer the question the title is a summary of my views.

Both sides of the 'race' are actively managed by the same establishment ultra-elite controlled by puposive supernatural evil; but the parties are different in the sense that Hillary Clinton is the preferred candidate because she is (overall) a candidate for explicit and direct evil, appealing to those who are most fully corrupted; while Donald Trump is an Antichrist candidate in the sense that his evil agenda is implicit, and his support substantially comes from less-corrupt people wanting to have the 'good' aspects of his platform.

(Note - Antichrist is not one person nor the oppsoite of Christ - but there have been and are many Antichrist figures - the idea is that they are welcomed and supported because they deceptively simulate Christ in some ways - but covertly pursue an Anti-Christian - nowadays a secular Leftist - agenda behind this facade.)

A Christian perspective sees Trump as an Antichrist figure in the sense that the forces of explicitly demonic evil (e.g. the mainstream mass media) differentially attack his 'good' policies - i.e. they attack him mostly on the basis of those true or virtuous aspects of his campaign. By contrast, they praise Clinton on her evil nature and policies.

The Global Conspiracy prefers Clinton, becuase their ultimate aim is to have humanity actively-want evil; they wish for humanity to become so deeply corrupted as to will our own damnation, by inversion of The Good - so that we ask-for and vote-for lies, ugliness and wickedness - by claiming these are 'higher forms' of real truth, beauty and virtue.

But the Global Conspiracy always tries to control both sides; so that whatever the result of any election, they get what they want eventually.

In this election, perhaps for the first time, they are running an overtly-evil candidate who would pursue the demonic agenda directly and rapidly - but as a back-up they have put-forward a candidate who will pursue the same agenda, but indirectly and therefore more slowly.

Why are so many modern spiritual people left/ liberal in outlook?

This is the question addressed by William Wildblood in a recent blog post to which I have contributed a comment:

http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/question-on-justice-and-mercy.html

It is an important observation that modern spiritual people are indeed notably left/ liberal in outlook; because it leads to the recognition that they are left/ liberal with greater intensity and conviction than they are spiritual. Their spirituality is eclectic, flexible, changeable - their leftist politics is dogmatic, solid and often fanatical. It is easy to see which they are most serious about. 

I became interested in New Age type spirituality from the late 1990s (i.e. before I was a Christian), in the sense of reading some of the recent and still active US writers. Up until then I had read a great deal of CG Jung, upon which much of New Age is based; and a lot of Colin Wilson - who never quite fitted into this category but overlapped with it. But from 1998 I read John Hanson Mitchell, James Hillman and some of his 'disciples' such as Daniel C Noel and Thomas Moore; and a smattering of others across the field, including most of the best known writers. 

At that time I was a libertarian centrist in politics - and would have been a Republican if I was American; and I noticed in interviews and personal reminiscences that these and other writers came across as fanatical Democrats of the most partisan type for whom even the mildest libertarian or conservative ideas were demonised - and on the other hand openly advocating seedy, corrupt, dishonest careerist Democrats as if they were spiritual exemplars leading the world to a higher future (e.g. the likes of Al Gore!).

And New Age writers were typically, almost universally, utterly in thrall to New Left concerns - and structured their theories inside such a world view. For example Ecopsychology (look it up) was supposed to be a fundamental biological-spiritual perspective on the earth - but in practise made all kinds of recent and ephemeral leftist socio-political assumptions - and seemed to operate as a Left Wing pressure group. 

A book that I read with great attention - the Soul of Shamanism, by Daniel C Noel - structured its entire analysis and argument within a context of politically correct 'sensitivity' to the imagined perceptions of 'indigenous peoples' - with an intensely moralistic inflection to this demand that stood in complete contrast to the 'amoralism' of the spirituality being advocated. I mean, those individuals who were deemed to have behaved disrespectfully to the supposed sensitivities of American Indians (by 'appropriating' their spiritualities and adapting them for modern Western usage) were 'damned' pretty strongly!

This happened so often that I eventually realised that it was structural to New Age spirituality; and undercut the depth and validity of that spirituality. The New Age was, in fact, being led by people whose own spirituality was at best shallow and insincere; and at worst merely a front for their primary aims which were Left-political. 

Nowadays, I see one of my main tasks as resynthesising spirituality with Christianity, in a Christian frame - i.e. with Christianity as primary but spirituality given full value as a necessary modern priority. 

And in this task I realise that very little of modern spirituality is relevant, because very little is worthwhile. Those authors who are worthwhile are those for whom politics is a very secondary concern - the likes of William Blake, ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield; and more recently William Arkle, Colin Wilson, Jeremy Naydler, and William Wildblood himself. 

By no coincidence these are also those whose spirituality is honest, sincere, often deep: and primary.
                                             

We live in a world of unseen spiritual warfare - therefore it is seriously weird *not* to believe in demons

Modern Westerners are pretty-much unique in the history of the world in failing to perceive that this world is one of unseen spiritual warfare, between 'supernatural' forces of good and evil. At any rate, the fact should be obvious to Christians, since it is a major theme of the New Testament.

In one sense spiritual warfare is a metaphysical assumption - which means that it can neither be proven nor disproven by factual evidence.

But on the the hand the reality of spiritual warfare is apparently the spontaneous human inference about the facts of life - which suggests that most modern Western people are artificially suppressing their natural way of thinking, and thereby doing violence to inbuilt common sense.

(Deliberate self-distortion of common sense is always a hazardous move - because where does it end? Well, look around you - that is exactly where it ends-up.)

This means that it is normal, natural, spontaneous common sense for humans to believe in the reality of 'demons' - i.e. real life, supernatural, personal and purposively-evil entities.

(Note: 'evil' can concisely be defined as willed destruction of the Good - and the Good can be summarised as Truth, Beauty and Virtue in unity.)

Therefore it is seriously weird not to believe in demons - further evidence (if it was needed) that we live in an insane world.

**

Need more convincing? Read this excerpt from Greg Boyd's God at War: 

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/reality-of-unseen-warfare-excerpted.html

The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows, is buried in Holywell cemetery, at the back of what was St. Cross church (now deconsecrated) near-by the Inklings Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson. I saw his modest and all-but neglected grave when visiting, and was moved to tears by the (almost illegible) phrase in the inscription ' who passed the river...'.

The Wind in the Willows is perhaps the oddest truly great book in children's literature. If you try to read it straight through, it comes across as a sequence of heterogeneous and disconnected episodes - some low comedy, some prose poems. There is no real consistency about it, even the animals seem to change size for one part to another (most of the time Toad is toad-sized - but also drives a car and passes himself off as a washerwoman).

But it is a great book, so none of this really matters - our job is to locate in it what is great, not to quibble over its inconsistencies, which clearly don't matter.

This book is one which has touched the heart of many - including AA Milne, Tolkien, and Jack and Warnie Lewis. For a certain type of English person, it is impossible to row a boat on a river, or walk through a snowy wood, or sit by a real fire in a kitchen - without recalling Wind in the Willows. The characters of Mole, Rat, Badger and Toad are archetypes.

The sense of yearning for, but  never quite touching, never quite getting-inside, a rural paradise of beauty and bliss is stronger in this than in any other work - what CS Lewis called Sehnsucht or Joy.

Kenneth Grahame was a very successful banker in the city of London, and the book is a product of that almost desperate wish to escape such a life and place, which most of us have felt at some time, or most of the time, since the industrial revolution. In Grahame's case it led him to write some early examples of neo-paganism (for example in the Pagan Papers essay collection).

If you have not read it, you will need to chose among the many editions - the one I read had no illustrations but was covered in large, black ink blots (it had been my father's as a school boy) - but my two favourite illustrators are EH Shepherd and Robert Ingpen (see below).

The book follows a loose sequence - everybody has their own favourite section (mine are probably the initial river boating, the Wild Wood, and meeting Badger); and I am averse to some of the Toad sections especially his long farcical prison escape adventure - I usually skip these bits.

The various dramatic and animated versions - such as Toad of Toad Hall by AA Milne - are at a much lower level than the book, and I would not bother with them; although it makes an excellent audio-book when read aloud (by a male voice - Alan Bennet seems to be the favourite).

So, if you haven't already - give it a try. It may stay with you forever.

Robert Ingpen's illustration of Badger's kitchen from the lovely 2007 edition

Why hasn't The West already collapsed?

Six years ago, and not long after I began writing this blog on a daily basis, I collected a set of posts into a mini book called The Decline of the West Explained:

http://declineofwestexplained.blogspot.co.uk

At that time I was much preoccupied by the imminence of the collapse of Western Civilisation - and so were some other bloggers I used to read at the time. I realised that the Western civilisation must collapse, because it was based-up a false and mostly inverted understanding of reality; and because its leaders hated The West and did not do the things necessary for The West to survive.

All this I still regard as very obviously correct - however, looking back I can see that I made a serious error in my understanding of the motivation of the leadership class. I assumed back in 2010 that the evil Establishment wanted to make The West collapse as soon as possible - but that collapse was being delayed by the residual goodness and common sense of ordinary people.

The problem with this view is that there is not much to stop the evil Establishment from causing collapse quickly - they lead all the major social systems; and it is much easier and quicker to destroy a complex system, than it is to create and sustain it. Therefore, if the evil Establishment wanted as a priority to cause the collapse of The Western Civilisation, it would certainly have happened a long time ago. 

I now perceive that the evil Establishment want to delay collapse for as long as possible - compatible with the corruption of as many people as possible. 

Six years ago, I did not properly understand that the evil Establishment is essentially a demonic conspiracy - a mixture of a small minority of actual immortal and not-human demons, a larger number of their obedient (sometimes posessed) human servants who self-consciously agree with the demonic agenda and are working to destroy the Good; plus a considerably larger proportion of proud, foolish, envious, psychotic, shallow dupes (e.g. most national leaders) - who are doing the work of evil for selfish expedience's sake, but under a (thin) self-deceptive pretence of do-gooding (e.g. pursuing one particular good at the expense of destroying the general good).

In other words, I did not properly appreciate that we live in a state of spiritual warfare, and that the war is not about civilisations, but is ultimately about about immortal souls.

*

The fact is that modern Western civilisation is extremely bad for souls - Indeed, it is the most effective mechanism for corrupting Men that has ever been achieved in the whole of human history!

This is because The West (as it is now, overall and on average) serves demonic interests, so obviously the demons don't want to destroy it!

On the other hand, the demons know that The West cannot be sustained on its current basis (where so many of the humans in elite positions are filled with self-hatred and the desire for their own annihilation)  - but, while it lasts, the evil Establishment wish to maximise the corrupting effect of the West on the whole of Mankind. 

This is what lies behind the current demographic tides and torrents. The West is dying by self-chosen sterility, but the world population increasing massively; so the demonic strategy is to spread the Western corruption to the rest of the world as much as possible, by population mixing and ideological trade - and the current main mechanism is mass migration.

From the demonic perspective (which is currently dominant and almost unopposed in The West) the primary purpose of mass population migration is to corrupt the migrants with Western values; the secondary pupose is to create - among both migrants and natives - a society supercharged with sins (that is, with unrepented, revelled-in sins): a world of fear, hatred, envy, pride, aggression, greed, sadism, dishonesty, resentment, despair... and so forth.

And the strategy of mass migration has been a wild, runaway success story, in achieveing these soul-corrupting objectives - so far. 

Soul corruption - not economic collapse - is the strategic purpose of mass migration. It will of course also cause economic collapse, social collapse, destruction of all that is good in The West and so on - but that is not the point of mass migration from the demonic perspective. The point is to harm and corrupt the people on both sides (natives and immigrants alike); and to create a society characterised by fear, hatred and despair, a society which embraces sin and does not repent it.

That is why The West has not yet collapsed - not for any good reason, but for the bad (demonic) reason that the longer The West (as it is now) continues, the greater the potential for corruption of Mankind.

*

Of course, eventually, the collapse will come, it will become impossible to stave-off - and no doubt the demons will greatly enjoy the spectacle of mass starvation, disease, killing and suicide - especially among their most loyal human servants. But that will be delayed until as many people as possible have been induced to reject the salvation of Christ and to will their own damnation.

The demons' task is a difficult one! - because Jesus made it so easy for us to attain eternal, resurrected life - we merely need to accept his gift and 'repent' (which means to acknowledge the reality of God's created order). But to look around the modern West is to perceive how many, many people assert that they do not want salvation because they regard it as evil - and that they instead endorse a world in which divine order is inverted.

(The modern Establishment imagine that they personally live (in Nietzsche's phrase) 'beyond' good and evil - creating their own morality, aesthetic and value-system - but actually they have merely inverted good and evil in some aspects of life: aesthetics and sexuality in particular.)

The lesson is that we need to focus on the fact that - from the perspective of purposive evil - modern spiritual warfare is not about civilisations but about souls.

And for as long as a civilisation serves the end of corrupting souls - then it will be sustained, and collapse will be delayed.

Britain - a holy land under enchantment... by John Michell

Mrs Maltwood looked with a geomancer's eye at the Somerset plains and understood in a flash the secret of the zodiacal giants hidden in the landscape. 

Alfred Watkins, envisioned on the Bredwardine hills, perceived the veins and arteries standing out clear against the Hertfordshire fields. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson and many others sought the vital spots to penetrate the layers of time that cover the face of the country. The feeling they shared was of some forgotten secret. 

They glimpsed a remote golden age of science, poetry and religion in which the vast works they saw in the landscape were accomplished. 

Each of these English visionaries knew that what he saw was but a fraction of the great mystery, the key to which had been lost. 

Britain, they felt, was the holy land under enchantment. 

At the castle of the Grail King certain things must be asked before the spell is broken, so must the right question be found to lift the veil that hides the form and spirit in the landscape. 

From The View Over Atlantis - by John Michell, 1969.

**

John Michell was probably the most influential 'New Age' thinker in Britain over the past 50 years - it is his (evolving) synthesis which forms the basis of most work since. The basis for his ideas, the 'evidence', was numerology and geometry - and I personally find this dull and unconvincing; but when he simply wrote from his intuition and love of England he could be genuinely inspired and inspiring.

My Genius Famine book reviewed by Brett Stevens

Brett (who sometimes comments here) has generously reviewed my recent book The Genius Famine over at Amerika.org - this the second review they have published!

http://www.amerika.org/lifestyle/reflections-on-the-genius-famine-by-edward-dutton-and-bruce-g-charlton

How to respond to the mass media, and the rest of modern life by reflective self-monitoring (discernment of the heart)

Following on from:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/avoiding-mass-media-is-not-enough-we.html

The problem as stated is that we live in a world dominated by an evil conspiracy aiming at the corruption (ultimately, self-damnation) of Mankind.

This is being implemented by multiple mechanisms in public discourse - in essence, on average - the net effect of public discourse is spiritually corrupting.

Given this minute-by-minute onslaught by so many routes and in so many ways - how can we react?

The first step is to develop the self - to establish a better metaphysical framework of assumptions, and develop the habit of working from the true self rather than from one of the multiple false selves we habitually identify-with.

Then we need to inculcate a habit of reflective self-monitoring - because this will tell us what we need to know about 'what is really going on' so that we can maintain our values and avoid-corruption and pursue virtue, truth and beauty.

In essence, the response of our true selves is the guide to what to do. We (simply) need to read-off from our own true-self responses, what we need to do.

The necessary process is therefore introspective and intuitive - it relies on the fact that we have a divine (hence valid) inner guidance system - the difficulty is therefore not one caused by the impossibly vast volume and complexity of corrupting stimuli - but the problem is the much simpler one of failing to read, feel and respond to this guidance system.

This divine inner guidance system is traditionally termed 'the heart' - and the matter of living in accordance with it is sometimes termed 'discernment of the heart'.

The discernment of the heart (if developed) is of immense power - and is always adequate to any situation over a reasonable timescale - however it may be overwhelmed and misled in the immediate short term, plus of course we often fail to live by it (being imperfect and partly-wicked people).

So behind the discernment of the heart we have a fail-safe back-up, which is called repentance. This means that when we err, we merely need to acknowledge what we ought to have done; and the spiritual system is re-set. Any corruption we have accumulated due to error, is instantaneously and permanently deleted by the act of repentance (and the consequent divine forgiveness - the work of Jesus Christ).

If these mechanisms can be located, developed, strengthened - then we are safe from corruption - no matter what is thrown at us by the global conspiracy of purposive evil.  

Avoiding the mass media is not enough - we must have a global alternative explanation for motivation

At the end of my 2014 book on the modern mass media Addicted to Distraction

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk

I concluded that it was necessary to withdraw from media exposure as much as possible - this remains true, but I now perceive this is not a sufficient objective, nor should it be the primary aim - because the mass media is not the primary problem.

It is insufficient to withdraw from the mass media because the exact same evil agenda is also being pursued by several other major social systems including politics, civil administration (public bureaucracies), NGOs, the legal system, the police and military command, education and health services, major religious denominations...

In sum, at this point in the history of The West, all major social systems have been taken over at their highest and most strategic levels by purposively-evil and evil-serving personages; so the high level powers behind all major social systems are engaged in the same objective which is the spiritual corruption of Man.

There is, in other words, an evil global conspiracy; but it is vital to recognise that their aim is spiritual, not material - because the spiritual corruption of Man may at times be achieved by creating a situation of peace, prosperity, comfort, convenience and so on.

By contrast, secular conspiracy theorists make the error of supposing that the evil conspiracy is aiming at poverty, starvation, sickness, violence, enslavement... mass human suffering. This is an error, because the aim is spiritual corruption, and the evil conspiracy will use whatever is possible and effective to achieve this - in The West, in recent decades, the most effective way of achieving spiritual corruption has usually been by pampering and pandering-to, rather than tormenting, the population.

I have said that we must withdraw from the mass media and cure ourselves of addiction to its drip-drip of stimulus - this remains true, but it will be ineffectual if the genera perspective of the individual remains mainstream.

Mainstream human social and public life is predicated on the false assumption that the 'people in charge' are well-meaning. The main thing we need to do it ingrain the opposite assumption: that the overall and dominating world-structuring strategies are malign in purpose.

I have noticed that most conspiracy theorists in the 'alternative media' are as media-addicted - especially as news addicted - as everybody else. They broadly accept the media agenda, and usually work on the basis of the same data-set; but they repeatedly try to re-frame and re-explain the same basic facts. So there may be a violent atrocity, a political vote or policy, an item of science or medical news, the launch of a new movie or novel or some other event... and the alternative media take the same basic facts and try to plausibly re-explain them on the basis of an evil global conspiracy.

But if this is to be effective, the same thing needs to be done all through life - especially in the workplace and in interactions with any of the major institutions. And this is simply an impossible, overwhelming task! Plus, even if it was possible; then it would mean that you whole life was being dictated by the evil conspiracy - by continuing to produce a constant stream of false stimuli (in need of re-framing) they could and would keep you busy doing whatever they chose - furthermore you would be making re-interpretations using only data supplied by the exact same source that you are aiming to re-explain.

The result is that the alternative media and conspiracy theorists are like caged mice frantically running in a wheel - working 24/ 7 responding-to and re-explaining an unending stream of nonsense thrown at them by 'life' - from the media, but also at work, and in all interactions with the major social systems.

In other words, in a spiritual sense the evil conspiracy have won - because the people fighting it are fully absorbed in attending to and absorbing a constant deluge of corrupt material 'thrown at them' by normal everyday life in The West.

The problem is not just wrong ideas (propaganda) - which tends to be the focus of global conspiracy theorists; but also wrong perceptions, wrong emotions, wrong forms and assumptions... the wrongness is multi-valent and at multiple levels. In trying to re-explain one kind of wrongness, the others are neglected retain their effect.

In sum: there is just too much wrongness, of too many types, for the strategy of re-explaining to be effective - and in such a context the strategy becomes counter-productive such that global conspiracy theorists too often become even worse media addicts, focus on knowing and understanding the exact identities, characteristics and motivations of the conspiracy of evil leaders; and consumed with anger, fear, hatred and despair - which is precisely what the evil conspiracy wants - it is exactly the primary objective of spiritual warfare.

Therefore, there cannot be a specific, point-by-point engagement and expose with evil.

Therefore, the focus of the fight must be on one's own personal attitudes and attributes, and the fight must be positive and creative rather than negative-reactive.

We need to reject the temptation to explain what is 'really' going-on in situation X - and especially the temptation to persuade others about what is really going-on.

Instead, our strategy should be to locate and cultivate and strengthen the good from within us and from divinity, and our work should be to live-from this - and to tell others that this is what we are doing, and to persuade others to do the same.

We need the perspective of a global evil conspiracy aimed-at spiritual corruption - but must not be drawn-into explaining (or rather, theorising-about) its detailed workings. 

What is needed is something along the lines of: 'I assume that Life is set-up like this (i.e. as spiritual warfare); I am trying to achieve this in life, and I understand things this way; so I believe that this is what is required, and I personally need to behave like this'.

The specifics are not argued nor explained, but instead emerge creatively from our positive personal stance.

Such a way of thinking, speaking and writing is very alien to modern Westerners - but I think it is what we absolutely need to learn and practise.

Sunday morning sublime - Liam O'Flynn plays the air, Dark Slender Boy on Uilleann pipes

https://www.facebook.com/TheIrishPost/videos/dark-slender-boy-by-liam-oflynn/832698967607862/

When I got to know his work, Liam O'Flynn played the pipes in an Irish folk group called Planxty. He is one of those musicians that bring something extra and indefinable to their performances, something to do with the lyricism of the phrasing. This particular piece always brings tears to my eyes.

For those who don't know - the Irish 'Uilleann' bagpipes are blown with a bellows under the left arm, the chanter (the bit you play) can be left open and sounding all the time (like Scottish bagpipes) or closed by being pressed against the thigh to that the notes are separated (like the Northumbrian pipes) - and there are some chordal 'regulators' that can be sounded by pressure from the right wrist or fingers (some pipers never use these - eg Paddy Moloney of the Chieftains - O'Flynn uses them sparingly to great effect).

To my ear, the Uilleann pipes (played well) open-up a direct path to something wild, deep, joyous and tragic in the human soul.

Here is O'Flynn is playing some faster stuff: hornpipes:

I'm feeling smug today...

The NZ psychiatrist 'Pukeko', blogger at Dark Brightness, and a statistician friend of his, have awarded me the accolade of saying that I was correct about the worthlessness of functional brain imaging some twenty years ago:

http://pukeko.net.nz/blog/2016/07/bruce-you-could-have-schadenfreude

I am grateful to be vindicated in the end!

But I don't feel 'Schadenfreude' because those who published the thousands of worthless FI studies have mostly had spectacularly successful academic careers; fame, travel, power; and are by-now safely retired on lavish pensions. Whereas I have existed in professional obscurity/ notoriety and with relatively modest material rewards.

(Albeit I woudn't swap my life with any one of them! - and have been mostly-cheerful, scientifically fulfilled, free to think, work and write what I wanted, and - at the moment - am feeling rather smug!...)

This is the (unpublished) paper I wrote back in 1995:

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/a-critique-of-functional-brain-imaging.html

Why are the Royal Shakespeare Company actors so mediocre?

I have seen the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) act on stage several times over the years, and have usualy been surprised that the average standard of acting is mediocre - why should this be?

On the face of it, due to the prestige, it should be easy for the RSC to get the best actors - and actors are always grossly over-supplied. And there are plenty of really inspired actors born - since most amateur shows I have seen have two or three outstanding, naturally-gifted actors.

(My brother Fraser, for example, is one - he can be seen on YouTube performing in Gilbert and Sullivan.)

But then the RSC acting is no worse than the general run of professional stage acting, which is poor - so the problem is systemic.

The phenomenon can be explained if you consider the levels of selection which operate on RSC actors before they get to the position of being seen by me. Here are some of them.

1. Whatever their talent, Shakespearian actors are made to act speak their lines badly by the directors.

At one level, a director is necessary nowadays to explain to actors what their lines mean. At another level 19 out of 20 directors make the actors speak blank verse as if it was prose, and thereby most of its effect is lost. There were reasons why Shakespeare wrote most of his drama in verse - and these reasons are ignored by speaking the lines as if they were not verse.

(But then, most actors can't read poetry even when performing it as poetry - so perhaps they must share the blame with directors; unless this wilful incompetence is a lasting consequence of their professional training.)

2. Acting is such a terrible job and lifestyle that most naturally gifted actors wuld find it intolerable to be a professional. This means that most of the potentially best actors are selected-out before drama school.

(My brother is an example - he became a medical graduate; then a histopathologist.)

3. The audiences are not good at specifically detecting when acting is good - because they are focused on the quality of the actor's voice.

Most professional actors cannot act - but nearly all do have pleasant, powerful, clear voices - because without that, then they are unsuitable for stage work. This requirement puts-up a significant barrier since the best actors are not likely also to have the best voices.

(I learned this from a friend who was a musical director for the RSC. I went to see his production on tour. The cast was headed by two really outstanding actors - Nigel Terry and Fiona Shaw - but almost all of the others fitted into the category of Great Voice/ Can't Act.)

4. The audiences focus not on acting - but on concepts, stage design, costumes and 'business' (the acting slang term for the non-spoken aspects of plays, esepcially comedy). In the RSC production I recently saw, by far the most memorable aspects were some very funny and surprising bits of business. One RSC trick is to include pretend mistakes, and pretend 'ad libs' - seemingly spontaneous but done every performance - the audiences appreciate the idea of actors having to use their wits get out of trouble.

5. The craft. Professional actors need a phenomenal memory to learn their parts and moves and to avoid mistakes - this is a major constaint because being a gifted actor does not necessarily go along with these vital craft aspects. They often need to be able to dance and sing - in order to make a living over many years - which some of the best actors cannot do.

Also, actors need to be able to turn-up and perform reliably, at an acceptable standard, night after night for months on end. Much of the uninspired natrure of professional stage acting comes from this aspect of routine - it really is impossible for actors to turn-it-on under such conditions.

Also, actors need to have certain looks - either being reasonably good-looking, or else interesting/ ugly in the right kind of way.


So there are plenty of reasons why the average of actors we see on stage at the RSC are merely adequate. But, when you do get a cast containing many really good actors (and assuming the production is not actively ruined by one of the numerous breed of narcissistic director) then the results can be simply wonderful!


I went to see the RSC Loves Labours Lost in 1978. This is not one of Shakespeare's best plays, by common consensus; but - as well as being beautifully designed and directed, the cast assembled was simply stunning; with a remarkable concentration of the very best actors of recent years, some already famous, others yet to make their mark*.

The result was a completely wonderful play, sheer magic and delight from start to finish. Despite that I have never again seen its like; this production was - of course - the real play. Because Shakespeare's own production company comprised one of the most gifted set of individuals that have ever been assembled on stage; and they performed to the most discriminating and experienced theatre audiences of all time.

(See Shakespeare on Toast, by Ben Crystal).

In conclusion, Shakespeare is nearly-always performed severely sub-optimally; and he is even better than we think he is!


*Including Michael Pennington, Alan Rickman, Michael Hordern, Richard Griffiths, Ian Charleson, Ruby Wax, Carmen Du Sautoy, Jane Lapotaire, David Suchet... has there ever been a better cast?

One month post-Brexit: Unseen forces at work in Britain are moving events towards a time of ultimate clarity and free choice

Since the Brexit vote a month ago, nothing substantive has happened towards Britain leaving the EU, and it is clear that the Establishment are 'dealing with' the problem by distraction, delay, and demonising the substantial majority of people who want to Leave the EU.

But it won't work - at least not in the medium term - the fact of the Leave vote shows that Establishment pressure and propaganda doesn't work on this issue, and what it symbolises. The strength of desire for British, actually English, autonomy and a distinct national destiny has been strengthened by the Leave vote.

On the surface nothing has changed except that the small minority of the Establishment who embraced the national project of accelerating self-loathing and slow-suicide, are revealing a state of despair at the prospect of purposive submission to evil being slowed-down a bit; their anxiety at being forced to think a bit about the purpose of their lives when they don't have any purpose. There seems to be a frenzy of displacement activity in the large politically correct bureaucracies, simultaneously preparing for, and trying not to prepare for, Brexit.

The Establishment' contempt for those they rule has never been clearer - they thrust it at us by the assumptions being their every statement: the biggest selling weekly magazine - The Radio Times - has a cover stating as uncontented, obvious fact: 'If ever Britain needed a laugh, it's now!' - oblivious and in-denial-of the palpable lightening and lifting and turn towards optimism in the national mood among the masses.

Meanwhile, 'destiny' unfolds beneath the surface and barely noticed - as the dominoes are being assembled towards a moment of choice: two lines of dominoes - which one to push-over?

This cannot be hurried, and it takes account of human choice. But the Establishment have chosen to continue their march towards death, and are systematically putting everything into place towards creating a fork-point at which the future path will be decided by people who will be aware of the significance of their choice.

What is coming is that many millions of people will (all-but) simultaneously be brought to that point, brought to a moment, in which the Issues are made clear.

At that point they will be compelled to make a personal choice, from the ultimate freedom of their true Self.

Individuals may, in the event, refuse to acknowledge that which they - at that point - know, and may pretend that this is not-really the crux which they are confronted with. Individuals may step-back from the freedom of their Tue Self and hand-over control to the one or another of the 'automatic', constructed and manipulated false selves... That would then be their individual choice - the choice to shirk ultimate responsibility - which is itself a positive choice against personal autonomy and freedom, implicitly expressive of a desire for annihilation.

When the dominoes are assembled, and a mass of people have been brought to this moment of clarity; they will make a choice - and across the population, upon that personal choice will depend the path but not mathematically nor by majority. In the end, it will probably come down to the specific choice of a single person upon which everything hinges - but it will not be known who that specific person is until after they have made the choice.

Probably, as is usual, the path towards evil will be more expedient in the short term - probably the right path will be one in which things must get worse before they can get better.

Some people seem likely to choose evil - choose, that is, to refuse to give-up their fuelling energies of fear, resentment, hatred; and push-away the dawning prospect of love, courage and knowledge. This is not an uncommon choice - what will be different in the coming time is that the choice will be made in knowledge that the choice has been made.

But the aim of those paths will be known, and the decision will be made - like it or not - there will be a moment of clarity, and after that moment we will know whether (as a people) we wish to live or die. When that time is passed, the first domino will have fallen on one line, or the other, and events will then accelerate and change will be very rapid and undeniable - and very soon everyone will know what has been decided.

So what can we, as individuals, do to prepare for this moment?

Firstly, welcome the moment as a great opportunity to step-off the down escalator - the first opportunity for two generations. The evil Establishment are terrified of this moment of choice, and are trying to prevent it by distraction, delay, and demonisation. (They bewail the 'polarisation' of national life - but they mean by this that the masses ought-to be submitting to the Establishment in a unity of strategic self-annihilation. So long as the Establishment is evil, polarisation is necessary and good.)

Secondly, to prepare ourselves for making the right decision by sustaining our good motivations, and putting aside fear, resentment, and hatred - and especially fear; instead nurturing our love and courage. A realistic sense of optimism and possibility are helpful at this point.

And thirdly to ensure that the decision will come from our real, eternal, divine selves - by identifying, locating and exercising those real selves at our inner core - and living-from them as much as possible. This entails taking time - alone, in quiet and undistracted - to think, to be, to feel.

Everything depends on clarity - and fortunately clarity is spontaneous - so we all need to take a break from muddying and stirring-up the waters of our minds, and then we will know.

In a nutshell - we need to believe and recognise the possibility that the future may come down to depending upon our specific, personal and individual choice: that is the proper attitude in which to choose. 

More advice to a young scientist - the need to develop individual integrity

https://thewinnower.com/papers/4999-science-is-fundamentally-self-regulated-by-the-integrity-of-individual-scientists-therefore-young-scientists-must-develop-their-personal-qualities-as-well-as-learning-their-subject

The world of David Icke - a review of his book Phantom Self (2016) and a comparison with Rudolf Steiner

Since being impressed by David Icke's grasp of the significance of the Brexit vote four weeks ago  -

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-david-icke-phenomenon-and-brexit.html

I have been investigating the thought world of this man, who the media dub the world's major conspiracy theorist.

I have watched or listened to many speeches and interviews, and read his most recent book The Phantom Self - which covers a similar theme and contains many rather similar arguments to those I have come-across in Colin Wilson and William Arkle and blogged about here; concerning the true and free versus automatic and false Self; and the important problem of each person finding then living-from the true Self.

Icke adds to this the valuable perspective that in this modern era (and in addition to our natural tendency to develop a false Self) the false Self (what Icke terms the Phantom self) is substantially a product of a programmed manipulation by the Establishment (i.e. the Conspiracy). In other words, our Phantom Self is actively working-against the interests of our Real/ True Self.

My impression is that Icke is primarily a spiritual thinker and teacher, who personally is most concerned by the spiritual corruption of the world and what to do about it. There are two long chapters at the end of The Phantom Self concerned with how to wake-up to the fact that we are in reality 'Infinite Consciousness' and our mortal life ought to be seen in terms of educational experiences. We are not the product of those experiences, our true selves lie behind and beyond any possible experiences. With some changes in nomenclature, I think this is correct and vital.

Icke is strongly against any form of organised religion, and his spiritual advice is mainly to live life by the intuition of the heart, which will lead to the synchronicities that we personally most need as experiences. This, again, seems correct so far as it goes, and very much like 'the discernment of the heart' which some Christians regard as our best guidance in this world - especially since Icke does a good analysis which clarifies what he means by the heart - contrasted with the mind and gut-feelings which are the focus of manipulation by The Conspiracy.

Reading Icke, I was quite often reminded of Rudolf Steiner in a broad-brush fashion - for instance, both disseminate their views primarily via speaking: in Steiner's case by a multitude of smallish lectures, in Icke's case by videos, podcasts and interviews; and very large public lectures (currently on-going in Australia). Of course, Steiner was a world class accredited intellectual and a genius; whereas Icke is, although above average intelligent and articulate and much better than Steiner at structuring evidence and arguments, operating on a much more common sense and middlebrow level.

But the same basic problem affects anyone who tries to come to terms with Steiner as one who tries to give Icke a hearing - which is that they have a strong, clear view on every subject under the sun, and most of these views are bizarre, many are wrong, and all are over-precise. This, presumably, is because both are working from an intuitive method which always yields conclusions on every topic - even those on which the intuiter is scantily or erroneously informed - and which provides for the reader real and important (and, otherwise, hard to come-by) truths, closely mixed with falsehoods and illusions - but Steiner and Icke themselves are unable to discern which is which.

This does not much bother me - so long as I take them in large enough doses that I can allow the bizarre elements to 'blow through me' (maybe enjoying their ingenious arguments, meanwhile) while focusing on the basic perspectives and primary teachings. This is a matter of having made the basic decision that Icke is a decent and well-motivated person who is doing his best in the available situation, as was Steiner.

Both Steiner and Icke are much more spiritually-focused than the mass of their followers (to whom they need to cater) and this has a distorting effect on the balance of their output. In Icke's case this leads to one of the main problem with his conspiracy theory - which concerns the ultimate aim of The Conspiracy.

For Icke, this world is conceptualised as a kind of idealism; our reality is 'a hologram' (akin to the situation in the movie The Matrix, 1999) - because perceived reality is essentially a facade, and its reality comes from our interpretation. For Icke, there is no God or gods - and ultimate creative goodness is conceptualised abstractly and deistically in terms of higher consciousness, higher frequencies and vibrations.

The source of The Conspiracy for Icke is a group of immortal evil 'demons' (as I would interpret them), aliens, Archons, shape-shifting reptiloids - whose aim is drag humans down to a low-frequency level, and then to control humans in every respect, in order vampirically to live-upon human psychic energies (especially the emotion of fear, but also other negative emotions such as hatred). Ultimately, therefore, Icke correctly diagnoses the Big Problem as Spiritual Warfare.

However, perhaps due to the interests of his followers, in quantitative terms the bulk of Icke's output is focused on political, social and worldly concerns - and the idea that the Conspiracy callously delights in making miserable, tormenting, making sick and killing humans. This is a basic flaw in the sense that modern Western people are - overall and compared with any previous or alternative society - prosperous, comfortable, convenient, healthy and long-lived. Since The Conspiracy's plans are (currently) well advanced, this basic fact is broadly incompatible with The Conspiracy wanting to torture our mortal bodies.

Icke is not a Christian nor anything else, and seems strongly 'anti' all actual Christian churches, especially any focused worship, ritual and symbolic elements - since he regards focused worship situations as set up to provide a kind of energy-vampirism, and ritual and symbolism as almost-always characteristic of The Conspiracy beings. The 'Archons' are fundamentally-uncreative beings, therefore they rely on such crude, repetitive procedures to force or compel a kind of pseudo-creativity. Also, Icke apparently experienced a - possibly - hypomanic-type episode around 1990 during which he appeared on prime-time TV and asserted he was the Son of God, in a way that suggested he was a reincarnate Jesus, or something similar. I think he has since rather over-reacted-against the content of this transient and delusional state.

Having said all this, and taking it as the mixed whole it is; what is my overview of David Icke's work? The answer is that I am overall impressed - and I think he provides many valuable perspectives and examples that I have found helpful and clarifying. I think he is a genuine intuitive, who has access to a deeper level of understanding than is normal - and that this has been show by a number of insights which seemed very far-fetched until they were shown to be correct.

(Interestingly, and again on the same lines as Arkle, in seeking intuition Icke does not practise meditation by any formal or specific technique - rather he says that he sits in quietness and solitude and lets his mind follow its own logic by 'daydreaming'. This, combined with the way that synchronicity shapes his life and brings particular people, books and things to his attention, is how he gets his insights.)  

For example, Icke seems to have been among the first to describe (naming names, several of which have since been confirmed) the covert and covered-up network of paedophilia which permeates the British ultra-Establishment.

Icke saw the extent to which modern Establishment elites deliberately (e.g. by false flag operations and agents provocateurs) cause the atrocities and problems which they then 'react-to' by implementing pre-decided programs tending towards population pacification and control - and the way that the mass media, technology, the law and its enforcement, officialdom, education, and also modern medicine are all combining to make a docile, distracted, drugged, dysfunctional and despairing humanity.

And also that this depends upon divide-and-rule procedures which create conflicts, and provide the incentives by which the dupes do the work of the demons; in building their own prisons, herding people inside, and then policing each other to prevent anyone escaping. 

Icke also correctly predicted (when nobody else did) that 2016 would be the crux year, and potentially the beginning of the crunch-time potentially a turning-point - a window of about three years - when we either turn away from our current suicide course, or it becomes irreversible.

Icke's lack of the coherent metaphysical structure and the overall story of (Mormon) Christianity is a significant problem, although his criticisms of actually-existing Christian churches are mostly accurate and reasonable. But, depending upon your tolerance for excessively detailed wrongness and your capacity not to let it interfere, there is much in Icke's work that is valuable and which you will probably not find anywhere else.

There is no such thing as communication, only participation/ identification (or not) - More from Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner

For several years in the early 2000s I was working on Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory, publishing dozens of papers, articles and a book from that perspective - its central tenet was that communications are primary. I now understand that communications don't actually exist - and indeed, that is the conclusion of Systems Theory - although self-awareness of the fact is obscured by paradox.

Systems Theory is a formalisation of the usual view of science - for example that we know about the world via senses which detect signals. The things 'out there' are detected by light, sound (etc.) communications; and in response to these communications our minds make 'representations' of the things.

Systems theory clarifies that communications cannot actually communicate - and our 'knowledge' of things is actually a representation which arises in the mind - and which indirectly interacts with the environment. By this account, we never actually know things, but only our models of things; and these 'internal' models are never more than un-disproven in our interactions with (what we cannot help but regard as) the outside world.

This Systems Theory may sound excessively abstract, but it is merely a formalisation of normal modern Western consciousness - in which modern Man has become paralysed and demotivated by the 'fact' that his communications are unreliable. So, the Bible cannot guide us anymore, nor can the instructions of The Church; because we believe that all communications are partial, biased and prone to misinterpretation without any possible way of achieving objectivity.

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For instance, we may believe we have understood a communication, but how do we know for sure? - The answer is only by further communications. But each further communication - intended to clarify the first one - is itself equally ambiguous, uncertain...

So we conclude (correctly) that later communications cannot ever (in principle) clarify the meaning of previous communications. All that happens is we get more and more communications!

In other words, once we have accepted the metaphysical scheme that communications are the way we attain knowledge, we realise that communications cannot - in fact - lead to knowledge; but only back to ourselves.

Apparently, we are trapped in our own minds and can never know what lies outside them. In fact it is worse than that because we cannot consciously know even our own minds! - since conscious knowledge is itself a communication about the mind - and therefore prone to all the uncertainties and ambiguities of any other communication.

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The way 'out' from this is to return to the original understanding that when we know something we do so by participating in it, or by identifying with it - in a literal sense. So when we know another person's mind, or understand the behaviour of an animal, or the properties of a rock, or the lay of a landscape... this is because we share the being of that thing.

So we do not make an inference about the thoughts of another person, but we actually think the same thoughts as that other person - we share in the exact same (and to us both available) thoughts.

Or we understand the animal we are hunting by becoming that animal - not by thinking a copy of that animal's thinking, nor by stopping being ourselves and becoming the animal - but by both the animal and our-self sharing the exact same thinking.

This is (seemingly) the spontaneous and untheorised way that young children think (you may remember thinking this way yourself), and also hunter-gatherers and Men in less complex, more aboriginal societies. They just think this way - to the extent that they do not have the same intuition of separateness - they live 'in' their environment - identified with it. They do not observe their environment, they participate in it, un-self-consciously.

Indeed, their selves are substantially a product of that environment - they do not set their conscious selves against the environment, do not separate their personal purposes from the purposes of the environment.

(This state is what Owen Barfield calls Original Participation.)

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Now this metaphysical scheme has become very difficult to modern Man because we have a powerful intuition that we ourselves are separate from everything else - that we are cut-off from everything else, that we are observers of the rest of the world and lack direct access to it.

Trapped in the alienated state of our own consciousness, many modern people yearn to return to that state of Original Participation of childhood, or of tribal Man - yet this yearning has been evident form more than 200 years (since the Romantic Movement, especially) and we are further from the goal than ever - clearly we cannot do this, even if it was the right thing to do.

Two centuries of failure to return to Original Participation, and the same period of profound alienation and nihilism as reinforced by the focus on the primacy 'communication' and its implication of the impossibility of communication; is evidence that we can only go forward not back.

It seems that alienation can only be alleviated by a different kind of participation - by a metaphsyic and experience which allows for genuine participation/ identification in a context of the self-aware consciousness. That is, we remain self-aware, we remain located inside our minds - but acknowledge  the possibility and actuality of identification with the environment.

In modern man, identification is no longer the un-self-conscious and spontaneous and uncontrolled thing it was in childhood or tribal Man; but instead identification happens in conscious, self-aware thinking. In other words, when we are thinking - purposively, consciously, in the normal way - we may achieve (and we aim to achieve) an identification with the reality of our environment, and the things in that environment. So that our own thinking is a sharing in the thinking of the environment - the identification is at the level of thinking, not of being.

This is (even if regarded as false) understandable in the case of people - we understand how we might conceivably share the thoughts of another person. But if there is to be a possibility of real knowledge (and not merely of our own 'models' of reality) this must also apply to everything else - not just to people, but to animals and plants, rocks and hills, water and chemicals...

To be crystal clear, we must be able to share the thoughts of animals, plants, rocks, hills, water, chemicals and everything else; which means that (in the first place) these things must have thoughts in order that we may be able to share them.

This explains the necessity for our basic assumptions, our metaphysical framework of reality, to be animistic - if we want to really know about reality, we need not only to regard the whole world as alive, but also as thinking.

If this principle is accepted, then we can move forward to Final Participation; we can cure alienation, can really know about reality, can have human relationships based on truth not illusion, and can feel and be 'at home in the universe'.

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Of course the secondary question is concerned with how we know when we have achieved Final Participation, and identification of thinking - and are not merely fooling ourselves, or making an error?

Well, that is a secondary question - it does have answers, but such answers themselves depend on the acknowledgement of the possibility of direct participation.

For as long as we persist in regarding everything as communication, we shall always be uncertain about everything, and will only have more and more communications - each as fundamentally uncertain as every other.

So there can be no answers unless and until we move forwards to a metaphysical system, and personal experience, of direct participation, actual identification of thinking - sharing in the thinking of other entities.

At which point we can understand the answers to questions about error, self-deception and accuracy. But from the perspective of Modern Man's current detachment from, alienation from, the world and from his own mind - there are no answers to anything.

We first need to live-by a new metaphysics.