Why the Roman Catholic Church is very important

I came across this Message in a Bottle video at Adam Piggott's blog, under the title A Christianity Without God. It is forty minutes long and (mostly) in Italian (with English subtitles); so I realize that not many readers will want to watch it. 

I did not intend to watch a foreign documentary on the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) - but having seen the beginning, I was gripped enough to jump to the conclusion - and then realized that I did not want to miss anything, and so I ended-up watching the whole thing. 

The subject matter is vast in scope. It includes the 'resignation' of Benedict XVI that was not a resignation; the 'papacy' of Francis I and its relationship to the centuries old agenda of Freemasonry; the RCC's reaction to the birdemic. 

Also there are several extended interviews with men who strike me as impressive representatives of (what seems to me) Roman Catholicism at its best. These are discussing our crucial need, now, for metaphysical truth and spiritual nourishment; and the official RCC's catastrophic failure to provide them from 2020.  

On the one hand there is convincing evidence of serious and strategic corruption in the RCC; on the other hand there is evidence of continued powerful spirituality. The one is a bureaucracy working for demonic, globalist, leftist, materialist evil; the other side is composed of groupings of thoughtful, intensely faithful individuals - rigorously and courageously working for divine Good.

The Roman Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination, it contains both great evil and great Good - and these are why it remains very important to all types of Christians. 

Another value of this video is to emphasize that these are exciting, epic times; when the war of Good and evil has come to the surface and encompasses all of life. I felt quietly-inspired by watching it. 

We are called upon to recognize and acknowledge the nature of this era; to discern and to pick which side we fight upon. 

And this recognition, acknowledgment, discernment and enlistment is just as important within churches, as it is in the secular world.  

What does God Want us to Do? Saving our-selves or being-saved?

One vital insight I got from William Arkle is that God primarily wants us to do what God wants us to do - and not to be always 'thinking about' God. 

This related to another insight that God primarily wants us to work-out for ourselves what to do. And not, therefore, mainly be-guided or controlled in what we do...

Although there is a back-up possibility of being-saved by God, when we have got into a situation where our capacity for working-things-out has become hopelessly impaired. 

This contrasts with 'traditional' teaching that emphases God's active role, and Man's helplessness (or Man's necessarily malign choices, due to the supposed innate and core wickedness of original sin). Traditionally, a Christian ought primarily to be obedient; and conversion itself was visualized as a yielding to the external grace of the Holy Ghost.  

Yet the way the world is set-up (here and now, in 2021), and the way that we personally are set-up, is that we are obviously meant to do as much for ourselves as possible; make our own discernments and decisions. 

And this even applies to Christian conversion - because (in 2021) if someone does not make a positive choice, nor expend any effort towards becoming a Christian - then it is very unlikely that he will become a Christian.  

Likewise, as a Christian; if someone does not take an active and personal role in his Christian faith and life - it is likely that he will be led away from faith by the dominant influences and forces in his church and generally. 

Theologically speaking, it remains true (as always) that it is the existence of God the Creator which makes everything Good possible; and that we are God's children (thus partly divine - we have God within-us) which makes our own good choices and efforts possible. We must follow Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost will give us comfort and guidance. 

But this does not imply that an attitude of passivity and obedience towards the divine is appropriate or effective. 

It is just an empirical fact that modern Man must be active, discerning, and take the lead in the efforts of his life. The default condition is that we create an evil world of rebellion against God; but if we want instead to sustain God's creation, and if we desire heaven - then that impulse needs to come from within-us. 

Such is the nature and challenge of these End Times. 

Overcoming the division of sleep from consciousness (my speculation on ideas from Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner)

It is interesting to consider how the relationship between sleeping states - deep sleep and dreaming sleep - and the awake state may have changed through the evolutionary development of Men. 

If we start with the historical (and early childhood) conscious state termed Original Participation by Owen Barfield; then it was a striking idea of Rudolf Steiner that this is characterized by what we would consider a less complete difference between sleep and waking. The awake person was not so fully awake is the case now; and aspects of deep and dreaming sleep remained active throughout the daytime. 

This would be a more passive and unconscious form of waking; whereby we were involuntarily influenced by the sleeping states; immersed-in them. In Original Participation Man's consciousness was integrated, but dominated by sleep.  

A suggestion is that the sleep states are (in some fashion) in communication with the divine and spiritual world; and therefore in Original Participation awake Man has direct experiential knowledge of the gods and spiritual reality. This may be why all early Men and all young children assume the reality of gods and the spiritual realm - because the experience and know it; not just when asleep but all of the time.

The idea is that, as Man's consciousness evolved through history, the division between sleeping and waking states became more distinct; until with modern Man it was complete (the phase called the Consciousness Soul). We are not aware of our sleeping and dreaming consciousness while awake (although they continue); and indeed we almost never remember anything from deep sleep, and even dream memories tend to be absent, partial or uncertain.   

It struck me that presumably the same applies in the opposite direction: that waking consciousness has probably lost access to deep and dreaming sleep. Perhaps in earlier phases, waking consciousness could affect dreaming sleep, and even deep sleep; and therefore in original Participation these sleeping states were more conscious, more subject to waking motivations, and probably more memorable. 

Whereas nowadays (for many people) dreams are characterized by their own crazy illogic and irrelevance; perhaps for early Men they were coherent, useful, memorable - by the waking Man. And maybe something analogous applied even with the slower, simpler, 'tidal' consciousness-world of deep sleep. 

(Steiner suggests that in dreaming sleep, ancient Man - and children - are in communion with the lower angelic powers; and in deep sleep, the higher angels - or, I would guess, perhaps even the simple and basic aspects of the knowledge of God, Jesus Christ and/or the Holy Ghost.) 

So, modern Man's consciousness states are not integrated; but instead divided, alienated, encapsulated. 

And what of the goal of Final Participation? We might assume that the division between sleeping and waking would again become crossable, 'permeable' - but this time dominated by waking consciousness and by its capacity for free agency, for conscious choice. 

Thus we may be able to choose to bring our waking consciousness and cross into dreaming, and even deep sleep; there to both gain conscious control of these states, and to remember better what happens in them. 

So we may again become integrated in our consciousness; but this time with awakeness dominating. 

However, this state is voluntary - not automatic; conscious not unconscious; and is subject to the constraints of Final Participation - which is, after all, an attainment of divine consciousness (albeit usually partial and always temporary) even when we are mortal on earth. 

Therefore, we might be able to choose to bring awake consciousness into dreaming and deep sleep; but only insofar as we our-selves are aligned with God's purposes, meanings and mode of thinking. 

If a person has chosen the side of Satan against God, then Final Participation is not (at that time) possible. 

Furthermore sin interferes with Final Participation. Un-repented sin blocks FP in the long term (because we are not aligned with the divine); while currently-active sin in thinking will curtail FP for its duration; which is surely one reason, albeit not the only reason, why Final Participation is always temporary - indeed usually very brief.  

Nonetheless, even with all these provisos, this gives an idea of what to aim for in Final Participation how to go about it; and how to know when it has happened. That is, we can aim towards more frequent and fuller integration of the waking and sleep states; do so consciously; and within a Christian context.  

Glasgow closed: Active cultural destruction

I revisited Glasgow recently - where I had lived for several years, three decades ago; and Oh the difference!

I knew Glasgow best from the 1980s-90s; when it was in the throes of an era of cultural construction and celebration - you could hardly switch on the TV or radio, or open a highbrow magazine, without something about Glasgow's architecture, film, art, literature and whatever; a place of galleries, museums, plays and exhibitions. A great deal of money and effort was spent on funding (and publicizing!) all this.  

Certainly, one could reasonably claim that all this 'Glasgow's Miles Better'/ 'City of Culture' stuff was greatly exaggerated, but there was no doubt that the city was trying its best. 

The Art Nouveau design and architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a symbol of this - and the craze went international. Among the buildings were the Art School - (burned down), Hill House (closed), a recreated house at the Hunterian Gallery (closed), Scotland Street School (closed)... The once famous Burrell Collection (one of Scotland's major visitor attractions) has been closed for five years. 

You get the idea. 

I walked the streets in the West End, in and around the university where I worked for more than three years; famous as the hub of artistic and cultural life in the city, and they were all-but deserted. A place that crackled with creative energy has been smothered. 

Dead.   

I use Glasgow merely as typical - a microcosm of the way that (since the totalitarian takeover of early 2020) the cultural life of Britain (and, I presume, everywhere else) has undergone an almost complete destruction by asphyxiation. 

Operas, concerts, plays, museums, galleries, stately homes etc are either closed - or else undergone a massive collapse in quality. They have imposed punitive restrictions - e.g. requiring days of pre-booking, allowing tiny numbers, with miserably intrusive conditions (eg. plastered with aggressive notices, insistent masking, one way systems even outdoors).

And these going far beyond those implemented for large retail institutions like supermarkets. 

Even such dubiously cultured places as research facilities, laboratories and universities in general are often grossly-depleted or moribund (at least from those I have walked around).  

Much the same applies to sports - who have made themselves absent altogether, or (at best) much less enjoyable by their zealous embrace of (zero resistance to) a deadly combination of 'distancing' practices and antiracist evil-propaganda. 

(I can only tolerate cricket by turning the sound off - to avoid the woke pieties of commentators; and by missing the Nuremberg Rally celebrations of 'diversity' that start each game.)

There is an enhanced zeal in the 'cancel culture'; which is deployed differentially anti-culturally, against things that have a stronger tendency to any-thing notably Good (high in Truth, Beauty and/or Virtue). 

It is now a dead-certainty that all cultural work of high quality and value is targeted, with its authors and makers. 

Any person or opus that is exceptionally Good will sooner or later be attacked; and it is certain that those bureaucrats, managers and practitioners charged with the preservation, defense and promotion of culture; will take this, and every other possible, opportunity to destroy, replace or deface it.

It seems clear that 'culture' has suspended activity; but apparently with full complicity from the cultural professionals (artists, actors, and so forth) - who seem to be solidly behind the birdemic response (and asking for more); they are apparently content to live off doles and do nothing but symbolic internet interactions; and continue without any definite end point. 

Active cultural destruction on all sides - blatant and proud - is merely one among many symptoms of a civilization in the terminal phases of self-loathing and strategic suicide - led by the demonic elites and colluded-with by the Godless masses. 

Overcoming Spiritual Stuckness - pitfalls

When I wrote recently about Spiritual Stuckness (which, for me, is a daily experience, and often lasts for days on end) - my take-home message was that there was no 'generic' answer - such as are often suggested by the traditional Christian writings. 

First; the 'overcoming' is not meant to be achievement of a high spiritual state on a permanent basis; but is meant to be learning the lesson that the stuckness is here to teach us. 

And that lesson is likely to be personal and specific; designed (by God) to address our own particular problems and needs. 

Yet it may also be helpful to recognize that the overcoming should not be assumed to be something that happens by traditional means. In historical writings, spiritual stuckness may be overcome by rather spectacular perceptions such as visions of the divine, or hearing the voice of God - maybe in response to intense prayer, meditation or ascetic denial - or participation in communal religious ritual. 

These methods are often, I think, ineffectual for modern people: partly because they simply don't work for everybody; partly that the extremity in derangement of consciousness required to generate visions and voices (for example) renders memory and understanding defective; partly that such attempts are highly prone to mislead (being contaminated by wishful thinking). 

Therefore it may be helpful to consider that 'communications' from God (guidance of the Holy Ghost, perhaps) may be direct, rather than perceptual. That is, they may appear in consciousness simply as knowing some-thing.  

Even before I was a Christian; I would often know that some-thing was wrong; that I should stop doing some-thing (even when I had no clue what I ought to be doing instead. 

So, I might know 'I should Not do This job' - but I did not know what alternative job I ought to do; I might know I had done or thought evil, without understanding why it was evil - or indeed what evil meant. 

That is one kind of leading. But it is negative rather than positive. How about direct knowing by positive guidance? 

Positive direct knowing may go unrecognized because it is drowned-out (on the one side) - for instance by the inputs of mass media or socializing. Or (on the other side) no attention is being given to such inner knowing - because of the habit of directing attention, outwards, or towards past memories, or future plans. 

Not many people, it seems, give attention to the present moment of thinking; when knowing may occur in thinking.  

The idea that we are primarily supposed to learn-from our stuckness, rather than cure (or behaviourally-changed-by) our state of stuckness, is a difficult one to accept and retain - yet this is probably the key to everything else. 

Freedom for what?

In a sense it is pleasing to see pictures of vast 'freedom' 'demonstrations' in London, apparently against the birdemic and peck agenda and the totalitarian response - because they show some degree of immunity and resistance to the official/media propaganda and programming. 

In another sense I know it will go nowhere - except to be infiltrated and turned to the advantage of the Global Establishment.  

The resistance is correct; and perhaps it may delay the agenda of evil; but, because the resistance coheres only on the basis of 'freedom', this is merely 'hedonic' in motivation (ie. pleasure seeking, suffering-avoiding). 

The hedonic can easily be manipulated by totalitarian forces that control the international bureaucracies; so will ultimately feed the totalitarian demonic powers. 

Much as the 1960s hedonic rebellion led directly - including many of the same actual people!- to the 1980s bureaucratic takeover which has continued; thus the negative demand for 'freedom' (despite being justified) will only lead to more totalitarianism; by a well-trodden (albeit roundabout) path of subversion, cooption and deception. 

This is why I am not interested in movements against any-thing, or for 'freedom' or any other negative secular abstraction...

I am only excited by evidence of individual people finding their way to Christianity; and developing a personally discerning belief in the reality of the world of the spirit and resurrected life in Heaven. 

Anything else - everything else - just goes to hell by a less-direct, more-scenic, route. 

Leftist conformity

Another of the lessons of the birdemic year of 2020 was that leftism means conformity. The more leftist a nation, region, or person - the more conformity to the global agenda. 

While this is now, officially, One World under Satan - the variation in degree of Satanic conformity within this One World correlates very obviously with leftism - the more leftist, the more Satanic.

Indeed, leftist extreme/ hardline/ activism since the millennium (such as MLB-antifa/racism or Climate-Rebellion-Extinction-Emergency) has come to mean aggressively demanding that the global billionaire elites do exactly want they already want to do; only more and faster. 

Leftism just is actual cowardly and expedient conformity and careerism; while indulging a self-gratifying fantasy (sustained by the media and officialdom) of bold independence and revolutionary originality. 

(Thus the shoals of supposedly 'shocking' and rebellious popular UK public figures who end-up wealthy powerful, famous; and with medals from the Queen, knighthoods, peerages and 'prestigious' awards - while simultaneously being officially labelled as marginalized, excluded members of an oppressed minority.)  

One interesting side-effect is that the word 'radical' - which was until recently a cheer term for idealistic-leftism; has been redefined as anti-left. What used to be called left radicals are now 'activists'; as above. 

In retrospect we can see a vast con; gong back to the middle 1960s when leftism shifted from a focus on class resentment and the economy (equal opportunities, nationalization etc.) to personal resentment - with the sexual revolution, women and race as the basis of multiple 'victim groups'. 

Leftists were labelled as the bold, independent minded radicals - even as they were being groomed into the managerial and bureaucratic class - expressing their 'radicalism' in terms of obedience to fashions - in hair, clothes, sexuality, 'good causes' and so on and on, always changing - always being-changed from above. 

Activism is now the willing embrace of whatever is current and approved - whether that be anti-white antiracism or the birdemic-peck scam; mutilation and poisoning of children in the trans-agenda; or looting and micro-managing the world economy to reduce CO2 and kill viruses. 

Whatever the twists and turns, lies and tortures of the current, Globalist-approved agenda - leftists will embrace it, enforce it - will hate, demonize and try to destroy anybody who does not. And those who do not (i.e. those 'radicals' who have-been 'radicalized') are - increasingly - just a minority of individuals who have personal conviction of the reality of a personal God, and that this is God's created world.   

What to do about spiritual Stuckness

It happens every day, and sometimes for days on end, that I get spiritually Stuck. My head feel cloudy, full; my mind superficial or sluggish - my emotions flat or down, my energies hyper or lacking. 

Traditionally, the solution was to recommend some kind of spiritual technique, some method such as a form of prayer or meditation - some practice that is trained and which (it is intended) should become habitual, automatic.

But for Man 2021, this is really just psychotherapy. It is like prescribing a drug to make people feel... Not better, but less-miserable, less bad.

So, if not - then what? 

Simply (but difficulty) to learn from it. To learn from one's state and problems - learn spiritually. 

Look within and learn.

The always-failure of plans for spiritual progression

It is a broad observation over decades that plans and schemes for 'making life more meaningful', or happy - or more spiritual - will never work. The plans and schemes will never work for long, and never fully.  

All plans and schemes come up against the basic nature of the this world - which is mortality and entropy; which entails that all shall tend toward destruction. So all plans and schemes will - for one reason or another; indeed for many reasons - fail of thier original impulse and intent. 

This may be disguised by the pretense that 'what we offer is what you want' - when The System controls a situation, and attempts to draw individuals into that System such that their desires are inculcated and gratified. 

But this never works either; because The System represents a massive simplification and distortion of human nature. Human nature can be (to an extent) simplified and distorted to match The System (or a sub-system - maybe a church; or the plans and schemes of a spiritual method)... 

But the real Self, the eternal divine Self, will never be satisfied with this.... Our real Self will indeed cry out in existential pain (i.e. despair) against the attempted spiritual fraud. 

This is why it seems of vital importance to understand that This World is ultimately about spiritual learning - with reference to a future resurrected and eternal life. This life is Not about self-improvement; because in an ultimate and overall sense we as Mortal Men cannot be improved; things-in-general cannot be improved - certainly not in any comprehensive and coherent, stable fashion. 

Improvement is not what this World is For. 

This strikes me as a vital thing to remind ourselves about; because so much of the world, so much of culture and religion; assumes, supposes and asserts that (in an ultimate sense) we are supposed to make ourselves better and make the world a better place; and that this betterment is both incremental and overall.

The assumption is that we each ought to be getting better and better - and better as-a-whole not just in specifics). 

And The World too: the world is overall and as-a-whole supposed to be improving, and we are each supposed to assist in this project to 'make the world a better place'.

   

Yet the experience of any Man and of Mankind alike has shown that none of this is possible. In the end, whatever positives (and there are Many); sooner or later; there will be corruption, disease, decay and death. 

Therefore; either we recognize that we and this world are designed and intended to be a domain for experiences from-which we personally ought to learn - and the meaning of this learning being expressed fully, only after death and in Heaven -- or else we will always and forever be disappointed, always on a knife-edge and tending to fall into despair. 

How was Rivendell defended in a siege?

Fortress Rivendell? - not much...

Rivendell was located in a hidden valley; and, while it is obvious that being hidden was a helpful defence - I find it very difficult to imagine how a valley was defended when the enemy had succeeded in locating and attacking Rivendell.

Rivendell was twice besieged by Sauron - once in the second and again (by the Witch King of Angmar) in the third age (there is a description in the History of Middle Earth of the near starvation during one of these sieges). 

But I cannot understand how - at least in a material military sense - a valley could be defended; since castles are always placed upon raised ground. To be located in a valley allows the enemy to approach unmolested, and gives height advantage in hand to hand fighting - while allowing the enemy to rain down projectiles from the valley sides. Furthermore, it seems that the house of Elrond itself was not fortified - at least, this is never mentioned nor depicted by Tolkien in his drawings. 

However, since Rivendell did indeed withstand two sieges, despite being in a very disadvantageous location; I think we must look elsewhere for an explanation.  

My best guess is that it was defended by High Elf magic, in some way analogous to the Girdle of Melian - which was an encircling, magical barrier cast by Melian, wife of Thingol Greycloak - around the Sindarin elf kingdom of Doriath. This (usually) caused the unauthorized to become bewildered and lost - to die of starvation.  

It may be that this was how Rivendell was 'hidden' from hostile eyes - because otherwise Saurons winged servants (such as crows) could surely spot any large valley - no matter how flat the surrounding landscape. 

Perhaps during the sieges of Rivendell, the forces of Sauron could not find the valley; or (at least, not without the physical presence of Sauron himself) could not get through it and into Rivendell. Perhaps their plan involved starving the elves towards a point where the barrier would weaken or break? 

How do modern people choose evil? (Why can't/ won't people believe in the reality of the spiritual war?)

It is becoming more and more evident that (as of now) one must believe-in the spiritual war of God versus the demons, Good versus evil, if one is to  avoid being tempted into damnation. 

Yet this belief is an impossibility for most modern people, for the plain reason that they are already in thrall to the demonic agenda; a major plank of which is (in the early stages) to deny the reality of evil and the reality of the spiritual war.

People have mostly already picked sides in the spiritual war, even though they deny it; because in the lives they are working for the evil telos (i.e. aim, purpose). In a nutshell: many/ most people have already chosen evil. 

This happens by participation in modern society; which is evil both structurally and by intent. 

1. Evil structure: bureaucracy and the mass media

The two characteristic forms of the world in recent decades are bureaucracy and the mass media. These share the exclusion of God and the spirit; and the reduction of all entities to an instrumental level. The bureaucracy works by rules that exclude God and the spirit; and also the human. the human is broken down into sub-functions; and made subject to algorithms and other abstract processes - and there is an innate tendency to make these abstractions quantifiable, numerical. 

The mass media is directed at manipulation of mass-scale emotions and motivation by attracting and holding attention, and shaping (entraining) attitudes, thoughts, actions by means of mechanisms both explicit (hard sell, Big Lies) and implicit (soft sell, tendentious reasoning on the basis of hidden and denied assumptions). 

For the past 50 years this has mainly taken the form of Leftist Convergence. All the mass media, by now (insofar as they are 'mass') operate within many or all the current and prevalent Leftist assumptions. 

By engaging with the mass (and social) media for many hours per day; by taking attitudes, information, morality and the focus of conversations from the mass media - by such participation human thinking is necessarily trained into habits that conform to those of the media. 

And by participating in employment, and in any institutions that are large or powerful enough to require engagement with the One Global Bureaucracy (i.e. The System, The Matrix) - for example by compliance with law, employment/ workplace/ union/ environmental regulations, health & safety, taxes and subsidies... 

By such participation the mind is trained in habits of excluding (ignoring, denying, down-rating) everything except The Material. 

Success and status in work: getting employed and promoted; having 'a good name; money, fame - indeed simple job-retention; now all all depend upon mastery of this materialist, anti-divine, anti-human, intrinsically-Left assuming discourse. 

 

2. Evil intent: evil telos/ aims/ overall purpose. 

This happens because The System as a whole is converged into the One Bureaucracy, with all its many sub-systems - national and by purported function - components of the overall aim: which is evil. 

We do not know the exact names of the humans (and perhaps demonic entities) that ultimately control the world; but it is obvious that the higher one goes up the hierarchy; the greater the conformity to the evil agenda...

Until at the highest known levels of personnel and their organization (e.g. the multi-billionaire financiers, wealth-owners, and the richest and most powerful multi-national corporations and global institutions) the explicit agenda is objectively net-evil: totalitarian and Leftist; anti-God, anti-spiritual, anti-Christian, anti-human - and indeed anti-planet. 

This agenda is now (2021) projected downwards into all sub-systems by mandatory aims that are monitored and regulated; for example relating to inclusivity/ the sexual revolution and anti-racism; 'environmentalism' - in particular the CO2 climate emergency; 'social justice', and - since 2020 - the birdemic. 

All this means that - here and now - All participation in All sub-systems (including churches) is orientated towards the evil telos. 

And All participation in all sub-systems entrains the mind in assumptions, attitudes and habits that are themselves evil. 

So, this is why modern people choose evil - by default; by simply following the modes of The World. 

By default - yes; but not without choice; because every Man has within him something of God; and every Man has the capacity to learn from the Holy Ghost; thus every Man will to some significant extent and at some point, discern and recognize evil - and know it as evil. 

However, that initial discernment and choice may very soon be lost - when he makes a choice to join the side of Satan against God. 

When Men have chosen evil, they may soon lose the capacity to discern evil; they lose much of what would be regarded as free will or personal agency. 

Indeed, modern Man characteristically strenuously-denies (e.g. regards as 'unscientific', or 'judgmental', or 'victim-blaming') his own innate and ineradicable capacity for free choice. By choosing not to be free; modern man renders himself a mental slave of The Evil System - all the more thoroughly in thrall because of his inability to recognize the face. 

Such is exactly the situation as it appears here and now; probably everywhere but certainly in the Western World. 

And it is probably a major reason why people cannot and will not believe the reality of the spiritual war of this world. 

Note: The above was triggered and stimulated by a short video from Chris Langan. He has a very different metaphysical basis than me - but it clearly serves him very well; and his moral discernments are strong and valid. 

William Arkle in the 1970s

 

These are from William Arkle's son Nick, who recently discovered and posted them onto his Facebook page. Nick has also built a gallery for the display and sale of William Arkle's paintings at his home in Banwell, Somerset; which will open in a couple of months. Details on Nick's Facebook pages. 

Roman Catholics should not confuse evidence of their church taking the side of evil in the spiritual war, with the "Donatist" controversy of the 4th century

When I write about the world-historical disaster of the Roman Catholic Church's response to the birdemic - which (as the largest Christian denomination) by itself represents the biggest and most significant set-back to Christianity since its beginnings. 

Plus, of course, the other Christian denominations have also been just as bad.

Catholics should not imagine that this is some kind of a re-run of the Donatist controversy of the 4th century; which ancient dispute was (apparently) about the validity of sacraments when administered by properly-ordained but corrupt priests. 

The problem here and now, in 2021, is much more fundamental - about as fundamental as anything could be. 

The problem is that the Roman Catholic Church (and nearly all other Christian denominations and churches of any size and power) have joined the side of evil. 

The problem is that, as an institutions, the RCC has enlisted in the army of Satan in the spiritual war of this world. 

That is the measure of our situation as real Christians, of whatever stripe - including Catholics.

That is what requires a response. 

Does the fake birdemic prove the truth of Spiritual War; or does the reality of Spiritual War enable us to perceive the fakeness of the birdemic?

In commenting at Francis Berger's blog, I became aware of how often I had done exactly what I perceived that a chap called Edward Curtin had done - which was to infer from the fakeness of the birdemic - which is proved by exposing its multiple, top-to-bottom lies - that we are, indeed, engaged in a spiritual war (a war between God and Satan, good and evil) in which the birdemic is a major tool of the demons. 

But the proper way to proceed is starting-from the metaphysical knowledge that this world is the forum of a spiritual war; one side seeking the salvation of Men, and the other side their damnation. 

Someone who regards the world in this way is sensitized to discerning the presence in this world of people and institutions who have (usually unwittingly) chosen to serve the side of evil. 

Having make such a discernment, it is not at all difficult to see demonic fingerprints all over the birdemic. 

How to find and identify a genius: IQ, Psychoticism, Endogenous Personality

(Note. In order to keep the following concise and focused - I need to assume familiarity with the meanings/ definitions of my basic terminology; and also to draw inferences from a great deal of evidence that I have surveyed. This may require the reader to look at my book The Genius Famine - or at least to browse relevant sections of the Intelligence, Personality and Genius blog.)

Major geniuses are rare, and may even be almost extinct - but some degree of creative genius is much commoner. Creative genius is susceptible of degrees - from a world historical genius to geniuses across smaller domains and with more localized scope. How could such individuals be found?  

1. IQ - General Intelligence

Genius requires a very high intelligence. However, a large majority of those with very high intelligence are not geniuses - they are un-creative. 

So although a measure of intelligence is a useful first step in finding a genius - it is only the first step.  

To be a creative genius requires a high intelligence, and this can be measured relatively and comparatively by IQ tests. The objective level of intelligence thus depends on a proper sample from the comparison population being studied - which varies among races, classes, sexes; and through history.  

In the Anglosphere in the middle 20th century it seems that an IQ in the top 5% (125) or so was about where noticeable genius began - since intelligence has declined since then, it may be that a higher IQ is needed nowadays? However, the validity of IQ testing has also declined (i.e. the test does not measure 'g' so precisely as if did) so perhaps the 'threshold' is not necessary different now - but the proportion of geniuses within all categories of IQ will surely have declined considerably. 

What about those with 'ultra high' intelligence? At this level, it is not possible to use comparative measures such as IQ - except among young children and using the 'ratio' method of calculating IQ. Thus an 8 year old child scoring in an IQ test at the average level of 16 year old children, can be regarded as having an IQ of 200 (16/8 X 100). 

However, childhood IQ is highly but imperfectly correlated with adult IQ, due to differences in development rate (especially between races, classes and sexes). So, a sample of children with high IQ defined in early childhood, will always have lower average IQ as adults. 

Adult IQ tests rank test performance and project it onto a normal distribution curve derived from a (supposedly) random sample of the index population - but sufficiently-large and random samples are in practice impossible; so there are never enough ultra high IQ people in a random sample to provide precise IQ measures. 

The ultra high IQ societies have developed tests that can differentially rank those who are within the top one or two percent of the population for 'g'; however these values cannot with both precision and validity be expressed in terms of more average IQs (because people with around-average IQs cannot do ultra high IQ tests at all!). 

Furthermore, it is found that the concept of 'g' breaks-down among the most highly intelligent - and intelligence becomes much more specific and less general. For instance; the most mathematically/ geometrically intelligent are not also the most verbally intelligent - and the correlation between sub-types of intelligence gets less as intelligence increases. Therefore the precise IQ score at high scores becomes very dependent on the balance of (for example) quantitative and verbal questions in the specific test being used. 

In sum: 'high intelligence' is necessary but not sufficient for genius; but it is not possible to provide any precise threshold where 'sufficiently high intelligence' starts. 

2. High Psychoticism

Most very highly intelligent people are not creative. 

But those who are may be indicated by the Eysenck personality trait of Psychoticism; which is correlated with a wide range of measures of creativity - although trait Psychoticism is mostly negatively defined in terms of psychotic (insane), psychopathic, impulsive and selfish behaviours. 

Self-rating measures of Psychoticism depend on honesty, and can be faked. Therefore behavioural correlates of high Psychoticism are more reliable measures - esepcailly as high Psychoticism tends to be 'punished' by social mechanisms. 

Most of the most-genius individuals have demonstrated clear evidence of moderate-high Psychoticism in their biography. These can be seen as the opposite to conscientiousness - because high psychoticism tends to sabotage attempts to be conscientious - to follow instructions, to conform to social norms, to work hard and long as externally-imposed tasks etc. 

Therefore among the most intelligent people; the most creative are very likely to be less 'successful' then the uncreative conscientious conformists. For example, a person of known high IQ who performed relatively badly in exams - an under-achiever; with results below the level predicted by his IQ; is much more likely to be creative than an over-achiever who performed above the level predicted by IQ.

(Because exam results are predicted by a combination of IQ and conscientiousness.) 

(An example is Christopher Michael Langan, who has been claimed to be the highest IQ person alive, and is certainly among the small minority with ultra-high IQ. Langan's biography demonstrates a high Psychoticism personality type (non-conformist, unwilling to accepts instruction or authority, unsuccessful in social terms) - and in a negative sense this is compatible with creativity. So far, with very high IQ and high Psychoticism; Langan would be potentially a creative genius...) 

3. Endogenous personality

If high Psychoticism negatively defines a high -IQ group whose non-conformism makes them potentially geniuses; Endogeneity is the positive trait within Psychoticism that leads to actual genius. 

Endogenous means internally-generated, and it refers to a personality type that is dominated by inner qualities (and is relatively immune to outer qualities.  

At this point it is necessary to go beyond science into metaphysics; because the positive inner qualities that lead to genius need to be dominated by the Real Self, which is also the divine within Man. 

It is this being driven by the Real and Divine Self, that is what enables the genius to be genuinely creative. Because to be creative is to be generative of new truth, novelty that is true - and not merely to combine and extrapolate from memorized known truths.

Also; because the genius is in-touch with his Real and Divine Self; it is unlikely that the genius will be an atheist - he may be a deist (acknowledging an abstract deity or spiritual tendency), a theist (believing in a personal God), or may be an adherent of a religion (albeit likely to be unorthodox or heretical, due to the nature of his personality). 

The total package

But to be a genius means that this internal drive is also focused and sustained. So an Endogenous personality with show biographical evidence of having been intensely interested for sustained periods (some years, typically), by some internally-driven (not socially normal) subject. 

The not-normal, not-socially-imposed nature of the subject is evidence of internal drive; that the drive is intense and sustained is what is required for genius level achievement. 

(To return to Chris Langan; his intellectual interests are unfashionable, have been pursued over extended periods, and he is explicitly a theist. I would conclude that by this schema, Langan is therefore likely to be a creative genius.)   

There may, or may not, be accessible evidence of achievement by the genius. If the genius has expressed his contribution in writing, making, depicting - these are more likely to have survived; but may have been ignored or rejected - and they may be difficult to evaluate by those of sufficient ability who are not in the same field, or who will not devote sufficient effort and attention. 

After all, the expression of genius concepts is a secondary matter from the ability to originate them. And it is possible that the output of genius may be ephemeral - such as conversation. 

  

Conclusion

So, it is apparently possible to find and identify a probable-genius by going-through these stages of evaluating IQ, Psychoticism and Endogenous personality. 

What to 'do with' a genius when you find him is another matter! 

Perhaps the most valuable thing would be to support them in what they are trying to do - assuming they are not an evil genius! But you could only know someone was evil in motivation if you yourself were already on the side of God, creation and The Good.  

Imagining our present world - actualities, possibilities and limitations

If you are with me so far; Man now has not just the capacity to imagine his reality - but he simply does, necessarily, imagine actual, current reality. 

It is our fate and destiny that our reality Just Is imagined. 

This was/ is the millennial change which was prophesied by some and felt by many more - albeit it has not worked out at all as the optimists supposed (those who felt a New Age approaching; which they supposed would be imposed-upon Mankind from the spiritual realm). 

The optimists supposed that when Man imagined reality, Man would (they thought obviously) imagine a better reality... The problem was with what 'better' was supposed to be. 

At first (late 19th, early 20th century) Man tried to imagine a 'utopia' in this mortal earthly life (a utopia perhaps including - what is not possible - immortality): a world without misery or suffering; a world of pleasure and stimulation. 

But this was never possible - no plausible utopia was ever imagined, none were believed-in; and all attempts to do think or make utopia ended in dys-topia - which was a dominant popular art form from the later 20th century

(By contrast with utopia; believable imagined dystopias were ten-a-penny - and most of them have already come true - to some significant extent.)  

By the millennium; Man had developed and decided-upon such an idea of 'better'; that it led to this trivial, bureaucratic, totalitarian world of incoherent and value-inverted ideology - a world of imaginatively-encouraged and officially-implemented resentment, fear and despair. 

In particular Man made the primary decision to imagine No God - specifically that there was no God who was the creator, and our loving parent - with us God's children. For millennial Man; a better world meant first imagining a world without God; and that meant always dystopia (or one kind of another). 

And having imaginatively ruled-out the reality of creation and the relevance of this world to each and every person - Man imagined a world of meaninglessness, purposelessness and isolation. 

So far, so bad; but can we do better - starting from here? 

The answer is Yes; so long as 'we' means our-personal-selves; and not collective humanity. 

And so long as we do not repeat the mistake of trying to imagine a utopia in this mortal world - which is not made to be perfected; but was made as a (temporary) place of experience and learning to prepare us for eternal Heavenly life beyond biological death. 

...Which does not-at-all mean that this mortal life is trivial -- on the contrary we are here, we remain alive (reading this, thinking about its implications) exactly because this temporary life is so important - forever. 

What we imagine from here on, and with what motivation, is crucial - and by 'we' I mean you, and me. Since our life Just Is imagined; and since imagination (intuitive, from the heart's thinking) acts directly on creation. 

Therefore I can think of nothing more important, immediately, than that we encourage and allow ourselves to imagine The Good. 

The Good is that which is in harmony with divine purpose and 'methods'. Such is what we are here to learn and practice - albeit partially and  intermittently - in face of many challenges and experiences. 

Start Now!

Are the best writers two-fingered typists?

The question arises because I saw a video of Enid Blyton - at her peak, probably the most prolific fiction writer (up to 10,000 published words per day at her peak, apparently) - typing with two fingers (and with the typewriter in her lap).  

This seems to be normal - I mean that most of the best writers who type, are not 'touch typists' - but instead type with two (or a few*) fingers while looking at the keyboard. 

The only outstanding writer I know of who was a proper typist was Philip K Dick - who learned touch typing at school, and could work as a professional copy typist/ secretary. He was also a very fast fiction writer at his peak - and most of his best novels were done in his most rapid-publishing era of the early and middle 1960s. 

Readers may be able to provide other counter-examples from among the very best writers since the invention of typewriters. 

But what is surprising is how many writers, including most of the most productive, do not touch type. 

I think the reason is that not many people can think faster than two-fingered typing speed - most are indeed much slower; and when one is composing then it does not matter if one looks at the fingers from time to time. 

So typing speed is seldom a constraint on speed of writing. 

*I am mostly a three-fingered typist - index and middle fingers of the right hand and index of the left. All of my family are, however, touch typists who do not need to look at the keyboard - and my daughter is very rapid indeed. They have often 'gone on' at me, saying I ought to learn to type properly because it would help with my writing. Yet I am the published writer and they are not; so I have carried on ignoring their advice... It is probably because I use that third finger, instead of sticking to two, that I am not a better writer.

What has changed about discernment since the birdemic?

Francis Berger has taken the idea of Litmus Tests (used to determine sides in the spiritual war) further in a recent post; in particular clarifying the effect that the birdemic has had on his own discernment. I recommend that you read the whole thing - including comments, where FB brings out this point explicitly.

I have noticed that one way of Not learning from the birdemic is to say that nothing has really changed as a result...  

Of course, this has an element of truth; in that there had been decades (or generations) of apostasy and corruption leading up to the global totalitarian coup of early 2020 - rationalized and disguised (as it was) as a necessary response to a novel plague of unprecedented scale and deadliness. In other words, the claim is that 2020 was merely a quantitative continuation of long-term trends. 

But rapid, global and un-reversed quantitative change - such as happened over a space of weeks with the international birdemic fake-response - counts as qualitative when the nature and basis of life is transformed. 

As so often, intellectual over-think operates as a failure of discernment, and an excuse for cowardice and expediency. Mostly - in our hyper-complex virtual world of Matrix lies - what is obvious to common sense and personal experience is also what is true: In 2020 - the world changed. 

Francis B describes how, since the birdemic, and reflecting on the Litmus Test idea he has realized that there are only two sides in the spiritual war of the world (God or Satan, good or evil) - and that people and institutions who had before seemed to be 'intermediate', or forces of partial good, were actually on the side of evil. 

In other words; that to be 'partially' leftist was actually to be fully leftist. To embrace even one of the Big Lies of the left-agenda, to fail even one Litmus Test - was de facto (in the world as is) to have chosen the side of Satan.

This was demonstrated clearly (and, I would have thought, unambiguously) by the way that the birdemic Big Lie was accepted and embraced by all nations, all powerful social institutions, all large churches. None rejected it as an evil-motivated falsehood. 

And this is another aspect of the birdemic revelations; that one must either reject the birdemic Big Lie completely*; recognizing it as dishonest and deliberately misleading top-to-bottom, by intent, from conception to execution -- or else one will have accepted it. 

A partial/ nuanced response to the birdemic is de facto accepting/ embracing the lie: choosing the demonic side.

In sum; what has changed since the birdemic is precisely this simplification - whereby the fact that there are only two sides, and the clear division between these sides, has become apparent. 

From the spiritual perspective - this simplification and clarification is, indeed, the main benefit of the birdemic. 

So; when we fail to recognize the qualitative transformation of the birdemic; we have failed as Christians to learn from the biggest disaster to befall the churches since the time of Jesus; and failed, furthermore, to equip ourselves with the most powerful weapon against evil rampant: which is our own power of spiritual discernment (backed by the infinite power of repentance). 

*To endorse a complete rejection of the Big Lie of the birdemic and its response is not Of Course to believe that every single fact and aspect of it is untrue; any more than completely to reject Soviet Communism, German National Socialism or Chinese Maoism entails that every single thing about them was evil. Effective evil is always and necessarily seeded with some true facts and some good impulses, or else it can have no traction and no rationale. It is the overall intent and motivation (to oppose God, to reject divine creation) that is completely evil and a Big Lie; and the embedded truths and virtues merely serve to make the Big Evil Lie more persuasive and effective. 

How Peter Jackson and his actors showed the strangeness and difference of the elves in The Lord of the Rings movies

Over at the Notion Club Papers Blog is a discussion of three key moments in which the strange difference of the elves was subtly-illustrated in the Lord of the Rings movies. 

The genius of Enid Blyton (and her Goodness)

Enid Blyton was on the side of Good, a writer of genius, and (genuinely, not faked) a Great Woman: so of course she has-been and is a prime target for the totalitarian Establishment

Over the years I have written a couple of posts about my admiration for Enid Blyton. 

In 2013 I discussed why it was that the British intellectual classes always failed to perceive Blyton's unmatched quality as a writer for the youngest children. 

Then - a couple of years ago - I amplified and confirmed the aspect that what 'They' really hate, hate, hate about Blyton is that she was effectively and explicitly on the side of Good in her writings: she aimed to be, and was, a Good Influence on children (Good, by Christian standards). 

This, combined with her unmatched popularity, makes Blyton very dangerous to those who have taken the side against God in the spiritual war of this world. 

I am also very interested in Enid Blyton the woman, since she was a true genius (as defined in my Genius Famine book). 

Most real women geniuses are literary, and usually worked in prose - and in literature Women have had a highly significant effect; although no woman has matched the supreme heights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe. 

Thus Jane Austen and George Eliot are among the most important of novelists; and modern children's literature (a very significant genre) was mostly a product of women like Frances Hodgson Burnett and Edith Nesbit. This continues with JK Rowling. 

However, it is a fact that women geniuses are often, even more often than men geniuses, subject to 'mental pathology' - neuroticism, instability, self-destructiveness (including sexually). 

And Enid Blyton was - despite her almost superhuman efficiency as a writer, or perhaps related to it - was no exception. Her two marriages and divorce were apparently driven by a calculated selfishness; while a short period of (apparent) mid-life sexual promiscuity had a reckless and self-destructive quality.  

This makes Blyton what modern leftists mean by 'a hypocrite'; in other words, her moral values were higher than her own behaviour. Also she kept this information out of public knowledge - where, if known, it would surely have been harmful to her reputation and sales. 

And there was of course a further 'hypocrisy' to the extent that Blyton presented herself as dedicated mother; when being the most prolific published author ever, and running a business empire, and sustaining contact with a huge fan base - naturally meant that the time spent on mothering was inevitably considerably sub-optimal. 

But - thanks to Jesus Christ - we are not judged by our sinful behavior but by our choices: by 'what side we take' in the spiritual war between God and Satan. And Blyton was solidly On God's Side - which is exactly why she is so hated by the left.  

If Enid Blyton had been a subversive writer, whose public persona and work encouraged immorality; then she would have been a poster girl for the left. If she had flaunted her bad behaviour and justified it by saying it was Good - she would have been admired and praised. 

If, instead of promoting truth-telling, beauty and honesty - Blyton's writings had subtly advocated sly-selfishness, under-age promiscuity, divorce and destruction - she would have been the darling of the intellectuals - and would have been taught in colleges, featured on bank-notes and stamps, and held-up as an exemplary Strong and Successful Woman (which she certainly was). 

So Enid Blyton has always been attacked, denigrated, bowdlerized and suppressed by the mainstream Left and this continues; while her enduring fame and influence (despite this) is almost wholly a bottom-up phenomenon: driven by generations and multitudes of young children who love reading her; and of ordinary parents who are glad that they do!  

Global evil is of two kinds, demonic minority and atheist masses: the God-rejecters and the God-deniers

What follows is a quick sketch of how it is that a small minority of actively, consciously, demonically God-rejecting beings; are able to lead a mass majority of passive, unconscious, atheist God-deniers. 

In this world there is a spiritual war between the pro- and anti-God sides; Good is the side of God, and evil is the side against God. 

(Thus evil is defined negatively - in terms of what it is against.) 

Belief in God (or gods) is spontaneous to humans; and through most of history this belief nearly always remained through life. 

People did not choose to believe in God - it was the default; and to be an atheist (if that was even cognitively possible) was a choice. 

This meant that evil was mainly the preserve of those who knew that God was real but were against God. 

Evil was thus demonic in nature - since the demons are assumed to be angelic spirits who know (from personal experience) the reality of God and have chosen to oppose God. 

When the modern era arrived (which happened incrementally in The West, over several generations - evident from around the middle 1700s), this situation was reversed. Man's consciousness developed (or 'evolved' in the old meaning of the word) - in response to divine plans. 

All children were still born as theists (and still are) - but the default position of adults became disbelief in God; so that for an adult to believe in God became a choice. 

A modern Man who believes in God must choose to do so. And yet Not to make this choice is a spiritual illness. 

It seems that God wanted modern Men to become the first truly active and conscious Christians. If we do not choose to be Christians, we will not be Christians. 

Naturally, God wants all men to make the choice to believe in Him; but the freedom to choose brings the possibility of choosing-not. And that is what has, mostly, happened. 

So we have a world of majority atheists who are spiritually ill from their failure to choose God; and this spiritual illness cripples their ability to think consecutively and coherently so that they cannot understand and cannot learn. 

The atheist masses have made a belief-choice which renders them the most easily, and permanently, manipulate-able people the world has ever known! 

This heralded the modern era of atheism: which is a new kind of evil. The evil of having Not chosen to believe in God and thereby rendering oneself into a dupe of demons. 

Instead of opposing God, the modern 'default atheist' did not believe in God - indeed the modern atheist spontaneously disbelieves in many things that people are born believing and were taken for granted through much of human history (the soul, spirits, life after death etc.).

For a while, there was a situation in which many or most people did Not believe in God but - by inertia, and the overlapping of generations - the properties of a God-believing society were retained. 

But now the modern Western (i.e. developed) world contains mostly default-atheists, mostly God-deniers; the mass majority of those who have Not chosen to believe in God. 

So evil in 2021 consists of a minority of Beings of demonic evil; who know that God is real and oppose Him; and a large majority of those who have Not chosen to believe in God; and who therefore by default find themselves atheists on the side of evil and against God. 

This applies to most self-identified Christians - because the System of (bureaucratically-linked) human social institutions is God-denying; including most of the major Christian denominations and churches whose 'belief in God' is embedded in a God-denying ideology of functionality. 

For instance whether one is a politician, economist, financier, professor, lawyer, soldier, journalist, businessman, charity worker, or church leader - one's professional, functional life will be entirely materialistic and bureaucratic: intrinsically God-denying. 

Only at a low level within The System - simple manual labour, perhaps; and outside The System in good family life - is this implicitly-atheistic thinking absent.

The 2021 evil alliance is thus led by a minority of consciously-evil demonic Beings (human and angelic); and staffed by masses of passive atheists. 

The God-rejecters leading the God-deniers.

To be against God means to be against divine creation (i.e. all that is natural) and against The Good (i.e. that which is true, beautiful, virtuous - and coherent). This is exactly what we see in the world - more and more obviously and aggressively with every passing month. 

The 2021 evil alliance is negative and oppositional. It works by the demonic elements selecting Good targets, and labelling them as 'evil' by means of value-inverting* concepts such as equality, social justice, feminism, antiracism, environmentalism, the sexual revolution agenda and the birdemic. 

(*Value-inverting; because if these concepts are considered 'Good', then real Good becomes re-conceptualized as evil.) 

Value-inverting concepts are incoherently posited as the highest Good - incoherently because each such Good is posited in an absolute and uncompromising fashion so that there can be no concept of coherent Good - only vague and always-shifting slogans; which disguise ant-Good negativity as a fake-positive 'ideology'. 

The atheist masses are passive and unconscious of real values, incapable of thinking and of learning; and incapable of courage. The God-deniers will therefore behave expediently (as they understand it) go-along-with any-thing sufficiently powerful and pervasive; and in 2021 power and persuasion are on the side of value inversion. 

The atheist masses like to think or hope that their unconsciousness and passivity absolve them of all responsibility for the evil which they do. However, their primary choice Not to believe in God has been conscious and active (even though they chose from unbelief - choice is still choice), and the consequences of responsibility follow. 

By denying-God, the masses have become followers of the devil. Albeit atheists regard the devil as a ridiculous childish superstition; they nonetheless serve Satan in all required respects, blindly following wherever he leads - incapable of value-discernment because they reject that capability. 

This is ultimately why modern Man cherishes his ignorance and asserts his irresponsibility with such vehemence - by doctrines that life is 'really' nothing by determinism and random chance. By pretending to believe in a world where nothing really matters, he hopes to avoid blame for his compliance with evil.

Every-thing Good is racist

It is a solid fact - by the in-practice definition of racism deployed by those in power and with influence as of 2021 - that every thing which is Good is racist.*

So don't bother defending it by saying it is not racist - by your own personal and/or coherent definition of racist: your idea of 'racism' does not matter. 

Those who have the capacity to impose Their usage of 'racism' upon society - e.g. those in politics, government, the mass media, law, NGOs and education... by Their definition of racism any-thing which is on the side of God and divine creation; any-body who follows Jesus Christ; any entity that is beautiful, virtuous, or truth-full - is indeed racist. 

In this world of global totalitarian evil; Any Thing At All which a Christian values as Good, will - and probably sooner rather than later - be identified as racist; and will be suppressed by The Establishment. 

We had better get used to the fact; and each of us decide what is ultimately most important: Good-ness or antiracism.

*This does Not imply that every-thing racist is Good. 

Monism/ oneness, dualism - and pluralism

The metaphysical idea of monism, or oneness has apparently always held a powerful attraction for intellectuals - at least since the times of ancient India and ancient Greece; and this continues to be the case - including that many self-identified Christians espouse oneness ideas or push Trinitarian concepts a long way in that direction. 

Pluralism, on the other hand, has not been taken seriously as a metaphysical assumption except by William James; despite that (or, more likely, because) it seems to be the spontaneous way of thinking of all children and all hunter gatherers - where it gets called 'animism'. 

The main group of literate explicit pluralists on earth are the millions of Mormons - but they do not seem to be at all interested in the staggeringly radical implications of this foundational assumptions of their faith - and have instead (historically) focused on creating a distinctive church and lifestyle (which is, like other Christian churches under global totalitarianism, rapidly collapsing and being corrupted into The System).

Consequently, monist/ oneness criticisms of dualism, and dualist counter-arguments to monism, take up the whole of the discussion of possibilities that I have come across. 

One main intuitive appeal of monism of the kind that (in the West) is associated with Vedanta Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism and the various syncretic advocates of a Perennial Philosophy - is that it includes everything; and therefore creates a deep and spiritual connection between man and 'nature'. 

Whereas, by contrast, dualistic Christianity focuses almost wholly on God and Man - and modern Christians tend to regard ideas about nature (animals, plants, landscape) as being in fact alive and conscious and in spiritual contact and communication with Men - as being a demonic delusion, a return towards the evils of paganism, magic, etc. 

This attitude of dualist Christians is deep and recurrent, because it stems from metaphysical assumptions - therefore even when Christians personally feel the kind of 'contact' with nature; they have difficulty explaining it it any way which does not subordinate it almost out of existence, which gives it sufficient weight and reality. 

In other words, the dualism of most Christians has been a strong factor working against the kid of Romantic Christianity that I advocate. It can be overcome, and is overcome - nevertheless dualism presents a structural obstacle, a centrifugal tendency. 

If, on the other hand, one adopts a pluralist attitude to reality; which regards ultimate reality as consisting of many, many Beings - with God (the creator) and Men being two of these types of Being; then there is immediately a metaphysical basis for that community with nature which the oneness-advocates put forward as pantheism. 

The difference is that monism/ oneness-advocates regard Man and nature as one with each other only in terms of being aspects of deity - and with the ultimate aim of removing all separation towards an undifferentiated unity.  

Whereas a pluralist hopes for increasing communication and harmony between Beings that shall remain forever and irreducibly separate. The emphasis is on the harmony of aim and methods between Beings, each of whom is alive conscious and with purposes. 

Indeed, the role of God the Creator can be seen as providing the basis for this harmony; so that the pluralist view is 'developmental'. It begins with a chaotic clash of each Being against all; and works towards that harmony of multiple separate Beings which is called Heaven. 

Thus pluralism offers a third possibility - very seldom considered; but which - I believe - combines the best of both monism and dualism. 

Notice of The Little House on the Prairie book series

Laura with her faithful, and vital, 'bulldog' Jack - one of my favourite minor characters

I have now read aloud, or listened-to (as an audiobook superbly performed by Cherry Jones) all of the eight lifetime-published "Little House on the Prairie" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder - except Farmer Boy (which is about Almanzo Wilder, the future husband of Laura - the protagonist; and not about the Ingalls family. Perhaps later.)  

It has taken me decades to get around to these books; because all that I 'knew' about them was that there was a schmalzy TV children's series of the same name - and this was not the kind of thing I appreciate. 

But having read a few other classics of US children's literature recently, and been hugely impressed by the quality, my wife and I decided to to give it a try - by jumping straight in at the 'On the Prairie' volume - when the series really got going (later back-tracking to the Big Woods, which is more of a 'memoir'). 

I would now place these books in the very first rank of children's literature - up with works like The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, Narnia and The Hobbit. 

They are simply superb; and full of the kind of incidents and scenes that I instantly recognize will be remembered forever (and which, I presume, all American kids of a certain age will have lodged in their minds): the circle of wolves, the Indians, the prairie fire, the grasshoppers, the buggy and sled rides...

Everything about these books is excellent - even their values and morality; and especially good (as literary fictions) are those five volumes over which (apparently) Laura Ingall's Wilder's daughter Rose had the greatest editorial influence (i.e. House on the Prairie, Plum Creek, Long Winter, Town on the Prairie, and Happy Golden Years).   

Like all true classics; these books are not 'like' any other books - what they do its unique. They have the clear ring of truth, and are also beautifully crafted fiction. In a child's and teenager's way: 'all human life is here' - adventure, endurance, happiness, tragedy, humour, embarrassment, hard work, joyous leisure, fights, romance; and all kinds and flavours of vivid characters... The Little House books are a complete world unto themselves. 

Implications of the question: "Is Hobbes really alive?" (in Calvin and Hobbes)

Is Hobbes alive, or is the whole thing in Calvin's imagination - and therefore a delusion? Does it matter? Or, is there another alternative - another way of framing the problem? 

In the whole of Calvin and Hobbes strips (except for the episode when Calvin is tied-up and can't escape - above; that Calvin was tied-up is later confirmed by his mystified father) everything is explicable on the basis that Hobbes is just a stuffed tiger; and that Calvin is believing a falsehood when he assumes Hobbes is alive and sentient - that is to say Calvin is deluded. 

The pseudo-sophisticated modern says that it doesn't matter - that 'the important thing' is that Calvin believes. The claim is that if Calvin treats Hobbes 'as if' he is alive, then this amounts to the same thing as Hobbes 'really' being alive. 

But that is dishonest, because to the modern spirit, 'as if' belief is in practice regarded as a falsehood - more specifically a delusion. So, for decades, Liberal Christian theologians (and Jungians, for that matter - such as Joseph Campbell) asserted that the Feeding of the Five Thousand, Jesus having been resurrected, that he was the Son of God... all that stuff didn't really matter - we could keep the Christianity (believe the symbolism) on the basis that we simply treated this 'as if' it was true. 

Indeed, 'as if' was put forward as more intelligent, more spiritual, morally better than the 'literalism' of 'fundamentalists'. 

But that isn't what happened! 'As if' turned-out to be just a step onto a slippery slope leading to atheism and anti-Christianity. 

Thus, if we try to say that it does not matter whether Hobbes is really alive; and all that matters is whether Calvin treats him 'as if' he is alive - then this is psychologically a lie. It does matter! 

On this basis I think we either have to say that Hobbes is alive, and Calvin is therefore right to love (and hate) him; or else that all this is a just a 'projection' of Calvin's wishes - excusable in an immature child (whose brain is not fully developed), but not in itself admirable, and indeed a kind of psychopathology. Or we accept that Hobbes is alive: I mean really alive. 

This would mean that Hobbes is really alive, but alive in some way and form that is not generally recognized by the simple categories of modern thought. 

 And I think this is true - indeed I think it must be true; and to deny it involves denying very deep emotional intuitions - to violate which tends to make us inhuman and evil. 

I will give an example. Supposing that Calvin and Hobbes ended by Calvin 'realizing' that Hobbes was 'just' a stuffed toy - and decapitating and mutilating Hobbes! This is a really horrible idea - but if Calvin really was previously operating on the basis of a delusion and has now come to his senses, they why does it sicken us so much? 

We can then ask whether we are right to be sickened by this scenario - and I think the answer is clearly - yes. 

Therefore, in practice, and at a powerful gut-level, we regard it as more-Good for Calvin to regard Hobbes as really alive, and to treat him as really alive, than the alternative. 

Why then do we abandon this conviction for adults? Ah! - now that is the real question! 

The modern adult world has, for some reason, decided that it is best for us to violate our natural and healthy and wholesome knowledge about the genuine aliveness of our loved stuffed tigers. 

Is that reason a good one? Not that I can see - on the contrary, the modern adult world's insistence that Hobbes is 'nothing but' a stuffed tiger' does truly catastrophic damage to our souls - wounds us, makes us less human, alientates us and induces that unassuageable despair which shows itself in so many aspects of contemporary life (including much religious life). 

Unless we have a world view which recognizes that Hobbes really is alive, and alive in a way and with a meaning which it is vital that we recognize, then we are lost - I mean literally lost*. 

This post - and the Note, below - is reposted and edited from 2015

Note:  So, I have argued - as a test case - that we must regard Hobbes as really alive, and that there is a profound violation by asserting the alternative. Christians who deny the aliveness of other gods, or - say - an African Fetich (who assert that these are necessarily and certainly delusional) - are therefore stepping onto that slippery slope of alienation and despair which The West has descended over the past several generations. Anthropologists who explain-away the spiritual events and entities of their subjects are likewise wounding themselves. To regard other-people's spirits and gods as (necessarily and certainly) psychological (delusions, manipulations, wishful thinking and the like) is a self-inflicted wound. 

For example, those who state that 'there is no Father Christmas' are doing perceptible violence to themselves. When I look at any such person, I see someone who is at least to that extent in a bad way, spiritually. And I mean a bad way spiritually. And this applies even if the person is a devout Christian - to the extent that they can bring themselves to assert that Santa is just made-up, they are embracing an evil falsehood. They have revealed their souls as significantly-darkened - and they further darken their souls by their skeptical pronouncements; and by any attempts to argue or defend their denials. This means that Father Christmas/ Santa Claus is really-real - and therefore that the problem is to understand the sense in which FC/ Santa is objectively, actually, independently real. 

This sense in which Hobbes and Santa are really-real can be conceptualized in various ways - none completely satisfactory, but some of them going back to Socrates and Plato. Usually, the general idea is that earthly and mortal knowledge is necessarily partial, distorted and labile - and/but is more-or-less-closely linked to a complete, clear and permanent knowledge in some other place, realm, dimension or state of existence - or residing in gods or God. (Without which there would be no possibility of knowledge at all - it is this underpinning which saves us from the nonsensical paradoxes and despair of nihilism.) And that 'eternal' reality is real, but we cannot (cannot) fully understand it. 

 We know that this must be so, that reality must be real - but we cannot describe reality with precision or completeness. Thus, we must not - for our own sakes - reject any specific piece of knowledge merely because it is partial, distorted, labile or because we cannot explain its causality or how it fits in with other stuff that (we think) we know. Because that rejection leads to the nonsensical nihilism of rejecting all earthly and imperfect knowledge by an irresistible and unstoppable slide down into to alienation.

*Reference: A metaphysical argument for the fact that everything is alive (and in some sense conscious) can be found here. 

The Birdemic, spiritual discernment and the Christian Churches

Francis Berger has followed-up last-week's powerful post about the Roman Catholic Church (which I discussed here), with another concerning the vital importance of spiritual discernment in a time when things have come to a point. 

Here are some excepts:

My overarching point was that the bishop and the [Roman Catholic] Church remain officially aligned with the birdemic narrative. As such, they continue to believe their decision to close churches and deny Mass to hundreds of millions was totally justified. 

Put another way, the Catholic Church - and practically all other Christian denominations - remain firmly convinced that they did the right thing for the right reasons. They feel no need to reflect upon or perhaps reassess their decision, and they certainly do not think they have anything to repent. 

I happen to think the opposite. I hold the opposite view because I am convinced that the birdemic is an Evil Lie. Moreover, I believe in the primacy of the spiritual - in putting God and spiritual considerations first. 

By denying Mass and other sacraments such as last rites at the behest of the secular global diktat of none are safe until all are safe, the Catholic Church (and other Christian denominations) essentially demonstrated that they believe in the primacy of the material - in putting the world and material considerations first. 

 ...At its core, the birdemic is not about science or medicine or church doctrine. At its core, the birdemic marks the epicenter of things coming to a point. More specifically, the birdemic is about being able to spiritually discern good and evil and making the right choices in light of this discernment. 

 ...As far as I'm concerned, churches the world over failed miserably when they closed their doors due to the birdemic. I will go even as far as to say most churches actively and willingly made the wrong choice. And churchgoers who passively and obediently follow their churches in this regard are also making the wrong choice. 

People can reject this as my "opinion", but I do not regard my standpoint on this issue to be mere opinion. For me, it's discernment - discernment based on my understanding of God and Creation - that is, on my understanding of the fundamental nature of reality and of our current spiritual war. 

 ...The line separating good from evil has rarely, if ever, been clearer. That doesn't mean that discernment is always easy or that our judgments are always correct, but it does mean that spiritual discernment can no longer be considered a passive, optional activity. 

Like it or not, we have all been put in the position where we must choose - and those choices are based on our ability to effectively discern. In this regard, we are all our own spiritual authorities. 

The possibility of outsourcing discernment to an external church authority is closing before us. When it comes to matters of religion and spirit, we no longer have the luxury to simply believe what we are told to believe and do what we are told to do. 

We must make our own judgments about these matters, and these judgments must emanate from our innermost selves and our active and willing alignment with God and Creation. In this sense, spiritual discernment is the most important special competence we can possess in this time and place.

Read the whole thing

Comments: Frank goes far towards clarifying matters, for those too caught-up in the daily virtual-reality to stand back and do it for themselves. 

There are at least three separable issues. 

1. Birdemic Big Lie

The birdemic is evidently a Big Lie - top to bottom, many-fold, from its beginning to now. 

Almost everything substantive we have been told about the birdemic has later been shown (by the same official/ media sources from which the first Lies came) to be not just mistaken, but calculated untruth. 

To know this, one only needs to be capable of common sense and memory. However, an aspect of the very general and extreme spiritual corruption of these times is that people are capable of neither. Even when (as in the UK) the Prime Minister (speaking on behalf of 'science' and 'the evidence') contradicts himself completely in the space of four days about whether Christmas 2020 'needs to be cancelled'; the obvious implications are missed, and the event is soon forgotten. 

Big Lies are intrinsically evil - because lying is a sin. 

 

2. Birdemic Evil Lie

The birdemic is an Evil Lie because of its provenance (evil refers to its motivation; the source tells us the motivation). 

The birdemic lie comes-from the Global Establishment - whose major strategies are evil; and who is explicitly anti-Christian, anti (any) God, anti-spiritual, denying of divine creation; and favouring the Big Lies of open-borders, climate emergency, antiracism and the sexual revolution including the trans agenda. They have explicitly stated their plans for transitioning the birdemic into the Great Reset - which is a atheist totalitarian dystopia. 

The purposive evil of the Big Lie is evident. 

3. Even if the birdemic was not a Big Evil Lie...

Let us assume, as a thought experiment, that the birdemic was not a Big Evil Lie - let us assume that the world Establishment was (overall) honest and Christian, therefore working for God, The Good, and divine creation (instead of against)...

Let us also assume that the birdemic really was a very lethal pandemic (the current, recent, definition of 'pandemic' only means a new and wide-spreading disease - it does Not mean a dangerous disease). Let's say its mortality rate was fifty times what it really has been, and that it significantly affected the young and healthy. 

Let's also pretend (because it is false) that lockdowns, masks and social distancing really were known to be effective in reducing the mortality rates of this disease (rather than, as IRL, at first doing nothing then making things much worse). 

Would this imaginary scenario be a reason for the Roman Catholic Church to close and deny the sacraments of baptism, Mass and last rites to its flock for months or a year? 

Well, certainly not - if these sacraments really had the significance that Catholics assert for them. 

Would it be a reason to deny spiritual healing (by laying on of hands), or exorcism, or to close shrines and pilgrimage sites such as Lourdes? 

Certainly not, if these had the efficacy that the Roman Catholic faith asserted for them. 

The list could be continued. 

This is a stark discernment here, things have already come to a point. The Roman Catholic Church has behaved in a way that - with extreme comprehensiveness and clarity - denies its own most sacred and fundamental assumptions regarding its own authority and spiritual power. 

Note: I think this situation is clearest with the RCC, not least because the RCC has for centuries striven to be clear and explicit about its own beliefs and assertion. But the same basic situation prevails with all other large Christian denominations and churches. Churches have beliefs and assertions that both explain and justify their own existence - and these have been starkly contradicted by their response to the birdemic - by their willing alignment wit the Big Evil Lie. This crisis includes all of Christendom - and indeed (I would guess) all other religions - but I shall leave that to them.

Against spiritual methods

It seems that God wants us to strive, while mortals on earth; for higher spiritual states - for greater awareness of God, Jesus Christ, spiritual beings such as angels - and indeed for a greater sense of the aliveness and purpose of God's creation.

This; despite that we cannot (and should not) expect that our efforts will be more than partially and intermittently successful - nonetheless, by them we can know from experience the realities of Heaven. 

Strive - yes - but how? At this point, people come forward with Spiritual Methods - such as rituals, symbols, meditation, channeling, drugs - or whatever. 

The thing about such methods is that they are usually initially somewhat successful. As a person practices the method, he at first gets better results. But then all methods always fail - they lose their power to evoke spiritual states; or else the end-up by being spiritually misleading. 

Three examples. 

Rudolf Steiner prescribed detailed spiritual exercises for his followers, and vast programmes of reading and study; which were methods for learning to discipline and direct thinking into more spiritual channels, within Steiner's revealed metaphysical system. 

A century of experience has clearly demonstrated that these practices/ methods clearly don't work at 'making people more spiritual'. Anthroposophists aren't spiritual in-themselves - they just talk/write about Steiner's spiritual ideas (and meanwhile get passionate about advocating mainstream leftist causes!). 

But the Steiner methods do (unfortunately) seem to have the effect of locking-people into a permanent fixation upon Steiner the man, and every-thing he said and wrote - with a strikingly-obvious conviction of the man's literal infallibility: both as a man, and in all that he said and wrote.

One of Steiner's recent followers was Stanley Messenger; and he described a method by which one would form intense closed-groups who would communally engage in conversations with spiritual beings (e.g. Archangel Michael, the prophet Melchizedek, and Rudolf Steiner himself): not in a trance-medium way, but with a group member imagining the words of the being, and other members engaging in conversation with that member. 

This was devised as a conscious, active and creative type of channeling - as an intended development from the unconscious channeling of traditional 'mediums'. 

But the results were (to my mind) very mundane and un-spiritual - mostly the kind of psychodrama/ group dynamics/ inter-personal stuff, such as usually happens in New Age circles; from what I can tell, the participants did not show any external evidence of being more spiritual. 

Much like the earlier ideas of mediumistic channeling; the 'material' obtained was quasi-objective instruction about the world and predictions about its future, most of which was soon proved to be wrong. 

In a nutshell, much as with Steiner's practices, there were some psychological effects which created what looked like dependence on the group, as well as pleasurable interactions; but nothing to suggests that this was a method for becoming more spiritual. 

A third example is the book Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. In the first of what became a series of such books, the author describes his 'method' for writing to God then listening for a reply which came to him by written dictation. 

Reading through the first volume is an example of what happens with methods in general. At first, the I was surprised to be somewhat impressed; the answers from seem striking and valid; and seemed plausibly divine communications. (You can read this on the free sample from Kindle books.) And for a short while this impression solidified. But only for a short while!

As soon as I got the sense of the author 'trusting the method'; there was a sense of 'God' telling the author just what the author wanted to hear! 

From trusting the method, the author transitioned to 'using' the method. All the later part of this book struck me as boilerplate New Age, progressive, lifestyle, self-realization, self-serving stuff - of exactly the kind one would expect from an aspiring professional 'guru' (rather than from our Heavenly Father, the creator of reality). 

(I note that the first book led to a series of best sellers, with all the usual business of supplementary material, interviews, lectures etc; and that the author seemingly received divine endorsement for 'open' marriage; and has himself had four - some say five - marriages.) 

My point is that there are many methods advocated for spiritual enhancement - and new variations are continually being devised. These usually work at first, but never work for long; and usually end by doing more harm than good as the practitioner learns to trust the method and believe whatever it produces. 

This may suggest that the solution is continually to be changing methods - rather like the 'spiritual seekers' who taste and try every religion, spirituality and technique in an endless series; but decades of experience has shown that this does not work either - and indeed carries exactly the same kind of hazards as trusting in method. 

So what are the implications? That we should be guided by aims, not methods. 

We should pursue our spiritual aims, from our best motivations (of love); and we should never trust the methods by which these aims are pursued; but always retain discernment concerning the effects that 'what we are doing' is actually having upon us. 

We should never let the method itself dictate what counts as true, virtuous or beautiful - but need to retain a direct apprehension of these values. 

There is an almost inevitable transition between learning to trust the method; to unconsciously using the method to generate what we desire. And these unconscious desires are nearly always self-gratifying and hedonic - which is why manipulative power-games and exploitative sexuality are so often a feature of New Age groups and techniques. 

Because methods are false Gods; what may begin well, will end badly.