The overcoming of darkness and death is The Grand Theme

The reality or otherwise of of a greater life can be seriously discussed. 

If we consider the saints and martyrs and patriots, the artists and mystics and revolutionaries who have believed in it; if we study the movements embodying that belief - do we find that the humanist science which denies it can explain all the facts: psychological, historical and poetic? And should it fail to do so, what are the implications of the residual mysteries? 

If humanist science succeeds and there are no mysteries, then the sooner such illusions are shed, the better...

But their dismissal will leave the humanist facing his old problem: how the "mortal worms" of Men in their billions can be brought to accept mortality, and care about an infinite vista of Progress when their own lives are finite and unprogressive. 

In any case, the overcoming of darkness and death is The Grand Theme. 

Edited from the closing paragraphs of Camelot and the vision of Albion, by Geoffrey Ashe

 

For "darkness and death" I read "evil and entropy" - which are, indeed, the grand theme of this mortal life; a theme that can be ignored only at the cost of regarding our-selves as "mortal worms", as futile and temporary patterns of unalive "atoms".

But does this matter? 

Why can't Men continue to live (as they now do, mostly and increasingly) from hour to hour, day by day; responding (as compelled or inclined) to immediate incentives - to live just as mortal worms, and to be content with this?   

Well Men can and do continue to live thus - but there are consequences; and men are not, apparentyly, content. 

Because the consequences of such a world-view do and shall depend on what kind of world this actually is. (Not merely what we want or assume it to be, but what it actually is.) 

The view of "humanist science" - of mainstream materialist metaphysics - is that this just-is a universe without purpose. In such a universe the mortal worms will (ultimately) be left-alone to drift through their present moments of mechanical stimuli and responses - until they die, and this ceases. 

Such a view is not rooted in evidence or experience; it is rooted in assumptions concerning what is objectively real - i.e. only material things, detectable, measurable, modelled by "science"; all else being regarded as unreal, subjective, mental constructs merely.  

But if this material reality contains more than the assumptions of humanist science have pre-decided to include in its world-view; and if those unrecognized realities ("residual mysteries")  include beings of purposive evil - then the mortal worms will not be left alone - but their brief lives will be manipulated; and will be channelled towards the purposes of darkness. 

In other words; modern materialism has pre-decided to assume that there is no objective purpose in reality. Pre-decided that the only valid explanations are strictly meaning-less: of undirected randomness and mechanical cause and response...

But if there is an objective purpose; and if that purpose includes evil purpose; and when that actually-existing evil purpose is denied hence unacknowledged by the mass of mortal worms... Well, this fact will make a decisive difference to the experiences during the brief-lives of these mortal worms. 

If so, what then? 

The choice is between continuing to exclude and ignore the reality of "darkness"; and uncomplainingly (because complaint is futile, and increases misery) accept... whatever happens to us in the short period between birth and extinction. 

Or, on the other hand, we must accept that the Grand Theme is to overcome death and darkness - which points beyond the experiences of this mortal world of evil and entropy...

Or more exactly than this negative talk of overcoming bad-things; we would need positively to pursue a goodness and immortality. 

Sooner or later recognizing that - in our actual continuous experience - Goodness and Immortality (while we know them from direct inner conviction) only fully-exist in some realm other than the present dispensation of our-selves and our-environment.