Give Heaven a chance! (Heaven versus progressive reincarnation)

From the overwhelmingly-dominant atheist-materialism of our time and place; it is perhaps natural that people who feel the alienation of living in an (officially) purposeless, accidental, dead universe; will find themselves seeking relief from alienation and a snese of despairing futility. And will therefore find themselves trying to recreate the spontaneous paganism of the remote past, and (if remembered) of their early childhood. 

Such is the basis of that Neo-Paganism that has been a significant sub-theme of The West ever since the 1950s, and currently under the vast umbrella of New Age. 

I was in this phase myself around the early and middle 2000s; so I know that it has partial value of a psychologically therapeutic type - it does help somewhat with the aspects of alienation and meaninglessness. 

However, Neo-Paganism falls down when it comes to purpose in life; and without purpose, meaning tends to become just an emotion, and therefore ephemeral.

To summarize; the spiritual quest has two main aspects: participation and hope. 

Participation is the sense of being part of reality, of having a relationship with The World here-and-now. 

Hope is about purpose, it is to do with an ultimate "happy ending".   

The Neo-Pagan perspective finds hope in reincarnation; because people correctly realize that there Must be a continuation of our lives after death if there is to be objective meaning and purpose to our mortal life. 

And for reincarnation to be hopeful it must be progressive and positive: I mean that successive reincarnations must be believed to build cumulatively towards a qualitatively better life and world. 

If reincarnation is just an endless cycles of more-of-the-same, this is not hopeful; therefore to be hopeful the scheme of reincarnation must assume that reincarnation is a type of learning that stretches across many lifespans, and is aiming-at a kind of paradisal state of being. 

However, although progressive reincarnation is indeed hopeful; that hope is deferred a long way (in some case, such as that of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, a very long way) into the future. 

So our hope must be located beyond many, many reincarnations; since a large number of reincarnations are required before paradise can plausibly be established...

It being pretty obvious that spiritual-progress is not rapid; because spiritual progression can be observed - if at all - only by generalization of many persons across considerable sweeps of human history.

By contrast; (properly understood!) Christian hope is located much closer to now; much nearer than multi-resurrections. 

Because resurrection into Heaven happens after our mortal death - which may be soon, but is never further than some decades hence.  

Therefore, I am perhaps surprised that Neo-Pagans very seldom give Heaven a chance! Since, if heaven is true, it is a much more hopeful prospect than progressive reincarnation.

To my way of thinking; the only serious questions are related to what Heaven is really like, and whether it really is a possibility. Because if Heaven is like I believe it to be, and is indeed possible for anyone what really desires it - then:

Heaven beats reincarnation hands-down! 

The question of how your mind is connected to a group mind

Is this the fundamental nature of inter-personal communication?

It seems evident that people in the past knew, or at least all assumed, that an individual person's mind was, or could be, connected with some larger group mind. 

The exact group mind to which an individual was connected seems to have varied between families, tribes, and clans; to larger groupings such as co-religionists, nations, or all of humanity. 

This assumption seems to lie behind, and justify, many Christian practices of the past and present; such as the phenomena of monasticism and hermits. These few were meant to be working on behalf of many others, in a way that seems to entail interconnectedness. 

Nowadays, there are group prayer meetings (to pray for some persons, outcomes, or general purpose). All of these assume a link between the individual and a larger human group. 

Furthermore, such a connection is a spontaneous assumption built-into young children; related to the belief that their thoughts are known to others, and may influence others - albeit this may mostly be related to fear of the discovery or harm, from guilty and "naughty" ideas or imaginations. 

Of course, nowadays and among adults; this kind of thing may be more of a social than spiritual activity; or it may be more like a "superstitious" observance than a genuinely spiritual activity. 

This practice is merely an enfeebled residue of earlier historical and childhood assumptions. Also, there is more conviction of the power of negative thoughts than of positive ones (which may be rooted in the intrinsic entropy of this mortal life where destruction is so much easier than creation). 

Nonetheless, I think there must also be positive potential in the connection between individual and group minds - in the right circumstances. 

One problem, as usual, is we tend to want other people to serve our interests, and not their own. Such that people are often praying (in effect) to control other people's attitudes, desires, decisions, actions... Such is the nature of many political intercessionary praying. 

Also we tend to become falsely focused in the supposed situation (as reported in mass media and by the leadership class) of people we know essentially nothing about, except what we are told by known liars and malign manipulators. 

So much so; that perhaps the most usual cause for group prayer nowadays is political: e.g. foreign wars, famines, natural disasters etc. - where the whole exercise is wholly framed by the information and moral-imperative of global media. 

In such situations; the group mind is highly politicized, with all the problems of insincerity and superficiality. 

And, in sum, such an exercise serves mainly to discredit the idea of an real and valuable connection between our mind and other minds; and to increase the already strong (and naturally despair-inducing) feelings of alienation and atomization that plague us.

Because if there really is no direct connection between our thinking minds and the minds of others, but instead it was true that we can only know people via perceptions and their interpretations; then we really would be isolated - ultimately "each on our own".

This is why I think we need to consider how, and in what situations, we are, and directly connected with a group mind. 

Because the alternatives are either the reality of your mind connected to a group mind; or else inescapable existential alienation. 

DH Lawrence's Women in Love, revisited

When I was aged 20-21, I was very strongly attracted by DH Lawrence's novel, Women in Love; and I have been re-listening to it in the excellent audio-book version read by Ruth Golding, and available free at Librivox. 

I am only around half-way through, and there have been some excellent chapters so far, and there are some more to come, that I recall - although I also remember the the novel ends badly. 

What WiL has that appealed to me is obvious: it is written from a full recognition of the horroribleness and despair-inducing experience of alienation and materialism. It yearningly aspires to - although does not achieve, such a possibility being excluded by the nature of reality, as well as Lawrence's assumptions - the romantic ideal of a life lived with full participation, and engagement. 

The protagonists spend a good deal of the time having deep conversations and intense experiences; which is exactly what I most liked and sought in late adolescence! Indeed, there is perhaps more of this in WiL than in any other fiction I have encountered. 

The thing moves slowly, there is a good deal of incantatory deliberate repetition - and sometimes it is dull, almost grinding to a halt. I suspect that I might nowadays find it harder to get-through reading with my eyes, than to hear it well-read. 

But where Women in Love succeeds - which is quite often! - Lawrence makes a tremendous impact; with very vivid, absorbing, and memorable scenes.  

Note: My recommendation is a case of: people who like this sort of thing may find this the sort of thing they like. 

Seeking philosophical meaning in a universe without purpose - my mid-twenties ruminations re-analysed

In my mid-twenties I graduated from medical school and started work; at first as a doctor, then in research for a doctorate. These were years in which I experienced the power of that "alienation" so characteristic of modernity. 

And, as always in "this life", fundamental problems to do with ultimate purpose and how my own life ought to be orientated; was mixed-up with the daily fatigue and of long working hours doing externally-dictated tasks - and the apparent gloomy prospect of "more of the same" for some decades to come. 

I sought answers in philosophy; and engaged a lot of brooding on philosophical matters - a lot more brooding than reading. 

What I mean is that I thought a lot about relatively very few concepts, sayings and phrases. These few stimuli came from philosophers with an "existential" orientation - perhaps especially the Germanic thinkers Wittgenstein and Heidegger. 

Thus I never read these authors widely, nor studied them in a scholarly or rigorous way; but was struck by a few sayings and aspects of (what I regarded as) biographical aspects; and this was mixed up with similarly selective bits of some German fictional work such as some of Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann. 

In sum, I was working in the tradition of German Romanticism which I already knew (more thoroughly) from classical composers - especially Weber and Wagner. 

I was (and long remained) a mainstream scientistic atheist; however both Wittgenstein and Heidegger seemed to reach their deepest bedrock in the yearning or hope for "a God" as the necessary pre-requisite for a life of meaning: a life of engagement with the world and other people, rather than this miserable situation of being stuck in the "nutshell" of my own thinking, and looking-out (Hamlet was another big factor in this!).

And this began a long period of thinking "about" God - and essentially this was God, not Jesus Christ. At any rate, I developed a half-fascination for monasticism - which was, again, something I thought-about a good deal more than I researched.   

What is interesting and significant in retrospect was that I never thought seriously about God as creator because I never stopped regarding the universe as (obviously! - so it seemed) having arisen due to "phsyics". 

Instead I was thinking of "God" as a potential provider of meaning in a universe that was going nowhere in particular. 

I was seeking meaning in life, in a reality without purpose or direction: seeking a meaningful life and human society in a universe that was utterly "indifferent" to meaning. 

Unsurprisingly; this led to a kind of rooted pessimism: an ultimate bleakness to my outlook; and an suspicion that the best hope for life was not to be aware of the bottom line. 

I think this may have been the basis of my interest in "monasticism" which was combined with a similar fascination with Zen Buddhism - in both instances the idea I had was (something like) that the environment and discipline of a meditative and ascetic life might have been effective in providing a convincing-illusion (in effect a delusion) of meaning and engagement in a situation in which that meaning was encapsulated by the circumstance of meditation and monasticism.  

It seemed (and I may have been right) that this fitted with the extreme gloom and near-despair that permeated Wittgenstein and Heidegger. The idea that a rigorous philosophy would ultimately reach bottom in a kind of palliative psychotherapy - perhaps on a societal scale. 

Heidegger, in particular, seemed to be hoping that society would re-instate "a God" who would cure our modern malaise and alienation by reinstating a divine underpinning for life...

And having done so; would then "forget" that this had been manufactured; so that everybody would then live "as if" there was a God, and thereby become able to have a kind of purpose and contentment - even though the deepest philosophers or historians might know that the whole edifice of meaning had actually been constructed by Men and had no basis in ultimate-reality.  

In sum: the best hope for me, for other people, for society in general; was a convincing and universal delusion of God as the "underwriter" of the best-possible human and societal life: one that might energize, direct and coordinate its members*. 

I was more-or-less stuck in this picture of reality; and what kept me stuck was (I now believe, in retrospect) the elimination of metaphysics from philosophy - the elimination of awareness atht our ultimate and bottom line convictions are (and must be) assumptions; and were not (and cannot be) derived from experience or evidence. 

Once I had realized that my picture of a physics-rooted universe was an assumption and not a "fact" - this was the key that eventually led to a rational and rigorous way out from this trap of desiring a life based on benign delusion. 

Of course the miseries of life don't go away, and can still overwhelm; no matter what the metaphysical assumptions. But it is of immense value to know that the meaninglessness and ultimate (bottom line) sense of alienation and meaninglessness that pervade adult life in modernity, is a self-inflicted problem. 

Since we are, ourselves and personally (albeit by passive, mostly unconscious, absorption of prevalent social mores) the cause of the problem; we ourselves can be the solution. 

*This could be summarized as the belief that in a purposeless-meaningless physics-made universe, all purpose and meaning must be delusional. However our private and personal "subjective" delusions are too weak to convince and motivate us, since they are continually being contradicted by the people and circumstances around us. Therefore, the only sufficiently-effective delusion is a group-originated and group-reinforced delusion that can be experienced as external and "objective". Therefore our best "hope" is that such a dominating societal group-delusion may arise and persist, somehow. 

The existential perspective on life: Living in an exalted (enchanted) state is paid for by increased alienation and servitude

One of the most misleading aspects of hearing tell of high the experience of spiritual exaltation, is that such high states have been paid-for by servitude: to experience the kind of powerful enchantment that gets written about, extracts a cost in exacerbated mundane living. 

Consider a successful pilgrimage - long and arduous, expensive and tedious travel, and all the organization beforehand. The spiritual high point must be been paid for in advance and upfront. 

Or meditation. Months and years of routine, work, training, tedium; seeking a breakthrough into an "enlightenment" of understanding and bliss - which (unless death follows quickly) is, itself, inevitably a state, dissolving into the mundane again. 

Such is the nature of this mortal life on this world: a trade-off, on unfavourable terms. 

The heights entail extra depths; just as that "holiday of a lifetime" entails a preceding lifetime of daily drudgery. 

At the most fundamental level - the business of staying alive (food, shelter, clothes, defence etc) exacts long hours and heavy responsibilities.  

And there is no way out, no escape - so long as we live this is the equation, the scales are tipped against us. 

We can try not to think about this, can try to pretend it is not so; can distract ourselves, even obliterate our awareness with extreme intoxication - but this is the reality, and it is much, much harder even to ignore this reality than people pretend. 

It is one thing to say that we don't need to think about it, that sensible people just "get on with" the business of life-as-is; or that we change change our perspective to concentrate on the good and re-interpret the bad stiff so as to enjoy it.  

Easy to say, easy to claim! And yet to me the evidence is overwhelming that the existential nature of peoples' actual lives, and the deep and persisting pathologies of actual human society, distinctly undermine such optimistic but facile attempts at re-framing. 

Reality, yes; but not the only reality! 

There is far more to life than this harsh equation, thanks be! 

But it is the start of wisdom to acknowledge this situation as an inescapable, daily - hourly, fact of the human condition. 

Such is the "existential" perspective - the overview of human existence; but such recognition ought to be a starting-point to consider what are its implications for each of us, personally.

Contrary to the atheistic-existentialists of the mid-twentieth century; grasping the existential perspective is not supposed to be the terminus of thinking, nor an excuse for not-thinking. 

From the EP as a baseline; we need to grasp the situation as is; and as fully as possible, as honestly as possible - from our own a inward point of view. 

The aim being to establish what, given the solid-reality of the situation, we would most want; and what possibilities we believe are available. 

Hell - Where did it come from, where did it go?

I was reading a biography of Stevie Smith by Frances Spalding, and a chapter concerning her relationship to Christianity - by which was largely meant the Church of England. 

At one point it quoted a passage to the effect that the one thing SS found most repellent was the idea of Hell. In particular, to summarize, Stevie rejected:

Hell regarded as a place of eternal torment, to which people were sent by default, on the basis of divine judgment. 

In rejecting this idea of Hell, as well in her response to this rejection - i.e. ceasing to be what she regarded as a Christian - I suppose Stevie Smith was representative of her era.

Certainly I have often seen or heard the same kind of thing said by others. 

It seems that (in some broad sense) Hell came-in with "Christianity" around or after the time of Jesus - and disappeared with Christianity through the 19th and 20th centuries. 

And, at about the same time as Hell was disappearing - people began finding the idea repellent; because those who rejected Hell also assumed that Hell was not true: assumed that the Hell concept is ,and always had been, false. 

And therefore the Hell-rejecters infer that the primary nature of the Hell concept was as a psychological manipulation used to terrorize people into joining and obeying the Christian church. 

In other words, the Stevie-Smith-esque moral critique of Hell, already rejects the reality of Hell: it already assumed that Hell is not and never was real. 

The question I address about Hell is: Where did it come from, where did it go*? 

What has apparently happened; is that the modern human mind has become unreceptive to the reality of Hell. What once seemed real, possible, almost inevitable - has come to seem an obvious deception. A cruel, because manufactured, mass manipulation. 

To summarize: Hell used-to "work" very effectively as a mechanism of population control; but it does not work anymore. 

This historical change towards Hell-incredulity is usually interpreted sociologically; meaning in essence that the change in Men's minds was caused by changes in society. 

If the sociological explanation is true this would imply that if modern society was changed then Hell could again become an effective motivator; and this change would happen whether Hell is regarded as a reality that is now being denied, or if Hell is regarded as a not-real tool of social control.  

But I believe that sociological change to restore Hell could not and therefore would not happen. 

I suggest instead that Hell first came, and then went, because of changes in human consciousness. 

In other words; I am saying that Hell arose because Men's minds became receptive to the idea; and this change led to sociological change; and then Hell dwindled because Men's minds changed further - and then society changed to reflect this. 

The idea is that Hell is a product of a particular phase of Mankind's consciousness - and that phase has now passed. 

On this view; because Hell is primarily a product of Man's consciousness; then it would not be possible to restore the ancient idea of Hell. 

And if Hell is a product of consciousness at a particular phase of development; then a modern-day religious society could not motivate people with such an idea of Hell, even if it is true; and for the same reason; a tyranny could no longer effectively control society with the false-but-believed threat of Hell. 

What was this phase of consciousness that was so receptive to Hell? I would term it a semi-alienated state of partial group-mind. 

My idea is that in ancient (pre-Christian) times; Men were not alienated but were (mostly) immersed in their society, and actually lived as a part of the group-mind. The after-death experience was then regarded in a groupish way - whatever happened beyond death, happened to the members of the group. 

Men were not then afraid of becoming an "existential outcast" in the manner of Hell. 

Hell emerged when Men each began to separate their personal consciousness from the group-mind; and Hell was (I suggest) a consequence of this state of being semi-alienated. 

Man's hope was to retain the state of being in this group-mind after death; but Hell came from the terror that - after death - the group may choose to cast-out the individual because of that individual's transgression of the group-norms, and consign him to the eternal torment of being existentially-alone. 

The sociological phenomenon of Hell was therefore a consequence of Men's innate angst concerning emergent alienation from the group mind; which is why Men became receptive to the idea of Hell. 

But in the development of human consciousness, Men continued to detach from the group-mind; until for recent generations Men have ceased to experience the primacy of the group-mind - to the point of being unaware of it, and even denying its reality. 

Modern Men regard themselves as almost-wholly alienated; and therefore tend spontaneously to regard death as an inevitable and universal annihilation. 

In the officially (and inwardly-perceived) modern secular-mainstream understanding of each Man dwelling in a purposeless and meaningless universe - there can be no divine judgment. 

And the idea that mortal life death might lead to a default-inevitable state of being tormented cannot for a modern Man) be true - because for modern Men, after death there is nothing.    

For modern Christians (with the alienated consciousness we share with other modern Men); Salvation and Hell are alike consequences of personal choice in relation to the divine; not a judgment. 

And as this alienated consciousness continues to develop; these personal choices of post-mortal situation become more individual, bespoke, unique - and reciprocally less and less group-defined, less and less categorical in nature. 

Modern Christians now understand Hell (insofar as they have thought about it seriously) more as a positive choice - Hell is a choice made by those who have decisively-rejected (for whatever reason) the desirability and chance of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Hence, for the consciousness of modern Christians; "Hell" is real but differently-understood than 1-2000 years ago. 

The modern concept of Hell is nowadays negatively-defined as "everything but" Heaven. 

For modern consciousness; Hell is therefore an open-ended variety of possibilities - and insofar as Hell is for some individuals experienced as a situation of eternal torment - then this is what has been asked-for, and from-which they do not repent.  

*NOTE: The title of this post references an amusing and enjoyable novelty song that my kids used to dance-to; mainly from a Wii Just Dance compilation. 

Communications and relationships versus "touching minds" - more autobiography

At the end of my teens, in the late summer and autumn (after my family moved from Somerset to Scotland), I seemed to go through a stage of development towards becoming more self-aware. 

This manifested in many ways, including a greater interest in philosophy of an existential flavour, and in books that explored similar territory. But in terms of personal relationships, I became aware that there was a qualitative difference between the level of everyday interactions on the one hand, and what I then termed as "touching minds" - which phrase is pretty self explanatory. 

I would nowadays probably equate touching minds with "direct knowing" - an un-mediated relationship between persons or other Beings, without the interposition of senses and communications - something akin to a simultaneous (albeit momentary) sharing of thoughts. 

Anyway; I had the idea that touching minds was what it was all about; and would often brood on the rarer occasions in which this had happened, and what these might mean - and, reciprocally, I also became much more conscious of the lower, and unsatisfying, level of most of life. 

In sum; I became aware of the problem of "alienation" and that it was my usual state - and apparently that of nearly everybody around me; the difference being that (unlike most people around me) I was aware of and interested by the situation, and wanted to escape from it, as much as possible - whereas "they" were neither aware nor interested.

This self-recognition coincided-with, followed, and was amplified-by; reading Colin Wilson's The Outsider, and parts of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (especially Wilson's introduction to this). I was ready and primed for this reading; and/but the reading also interacted with my dawning self-awareness to accelerate it.  

Ever since that time, some half a century ago, I have believed that such moments as "touching minds" are among the most significant in life - and this significance somehow transcends the moment, and has almost nothing to do with what happens afterwards; and also that the great bulk of our life (including most of our relationships with other people) are, by comparison, trivial.

At first, I imagined that this new knowledge would enable me to transform my own life positively - for example by having more of these enriching mind-touching experiences, more often and with more people. 

At first I supposed that this lack of mind-touching was due to the undoubted presence of those defensive shells or manipulative pretences with which most people chose to surround themselves. Maybe if these shells could perhaps be dissolved mutually, or the self-image unilaterally cracked... Maybe we could live in realities rather than images? 

But I soon discovered that - once the mind's capacity for self-delusion had washed-out (and the touching of minds had become distinguished from sexual attraction!) - this was, beyond a rather limited point, not something to be got by wanting, nor even by striving.      

This early conclusion was, I now think, a correct generalization about life; and one that tends to lead to the condition of "romantic despair" so commonly found among the most reflective and responsive people. 

I mean the conclusion that the primary and most-valued of our experiences are relatively infrequent and temporary - and the bulk baseline of mundane living is second-level, and a majority of human relationships (even some that have frequent interactions, and are relatively long-term and intense), are apparently stuck at a level of indirect, distanced, symbolic "communication" - with a complete (or nearly complete) absence of mind-touching.  

The idea that the higher we have risen, the further we shall be compelled to fall - so that one who successfully sometimes "escapes" into a more intense, better, more creative and participatory - more real world; is "doomed" to a sharply-divided, and thereby tragic life...

In that the mundane and false troughs will always be our baseline; but can never be merged with the best of which Men are capable. 

This would be, and was, where matters rested - until after I began to understand more about the possibility (and choice) of Resurrection and Heaven; and how these post-mortal states are rooted in our mortal experiences and character.

Without that which Jesus did for us - life is a Tragedy, albeit it rises to the level of a comic-tragedy: fun and joys en route to a bad finale, the stage strewn with corpses: an unhappy ending. 

Whereas with Jesus; life is a Comedy, symbolized in Shakespeare by the open-ended possibilities of loving "marriage"...

Albeit that life is more like a tragi-comedy than a pure comedy - life usually being strewn with serious travails (including deaths) en route to that happiest of possible endings...

Which will include "touching minds" featuring as the normal, maybe universal, form of relationship; instead of being a rare and fleeting experience.  

**

Note: The above derived from reflections provoked by yet-another engagement with JRR Tolkien's great essay On Fairy Stories.  

Religions and churches are analogous to Tolkien's Rings of Power

The Rings of Power - but especially the One Ring and the three Elven Rings, seem to describe something profound about reality. 

Sauron infuses much of his native power onto the One Ring; which gives him the ability to dominate the other Rings of Power - and, more generally, dominate the will to power of other beings. 

But, the transfer of power means that, when the One Ring is destroyed, Sauron cannot hold-himself-together anymore; he cannot sustain himself coherently as a functioning "self", but diffuses into a dark spirit of largely-passive malignancy. 

What is often missed by readers of The Lord of the Rings (but which was insightfully described by Paul Kocher more than fifty years ago); is that the Elves did something analogous with their three Rings, with analogous but inverted positive benefits; and similar negative consequences after their power was broken.  

The Elven Rings were made by a transfer of vitality from Elves-generally, into the Three Rings specifically. 

The Rings were apparently intended to focus and strengthen Elvish (or rather, specifically High Elven, Noldorian) characteristics - purity and the preservation of unstained beauty, in the case of Galadriel and Lothlorien; wisdom, learning, and healing, in the case of Elrond and Rivendell. 

(Gandalf's Elf Ring was given him by Cirdan, and thereby seemingly repurposed from its original intent.)

I infer that the Three Rings were made exactly because elvish vitality and power was already declining, as a consequence of prolonged residence in the mortal lands of Middle Earth (which was by will of Eru; who always intended that Elves gradually be replaced by Men). 

The Elven Rings were made, therefore, with the ambivalently-virtuous motivation of stopping the ongoing decline in Elvish vitality. 

And for so long as the One Ring was not being wielded; the Elf Rings worked well; and in Rivendell and Lothlorien, High Elven culture continued for thousands of years longer than anywhere else in Middle Earth - but at the price of being increasingly cut-off, encapsulated.  

But, when the Master Ring was destroyed, all the racial vitality of the Elves that had gone into the making of the Three Rings was dissipated and diffused, much like Sauron's beingness.  

Immediately; the special qualities of Elrond and Rivendell, Galadriel and Lothlorien, began to decline, dwindle, fade...

The High Elves could not longer remain High; but must revert towards the much lesser cultural and intellectual level of the "Silvan" or Wood Elves - or else migrate to the Undying Lands before this declining process could advance too far.  

*

I believe that Tolkien was here expressing a profound and general truth about the benefits and disadvantages of concentrating our innate vitality - our human qualities. 

I think that - across the large timescale of human history - there was a decline in the natural and spontaneous spirituality of humans; a decline in the immersive and passive awareness-of, and participation-in the divine.

In effect: there was an intent to stop this process of spiritual alienation; by concentrating and focusing our "spiritual vitality" into what is called religion: into religions and churches, into abstract systems of rituals and symbols. 

Religion is therefore a "Ring of Power". 

But, it turned-out that the Elven Rings, and church religion, did not stop the decline, but only delayed it. 

Outside of the increasingly encapsulated worlds of serious religion; the decline in human spirituality and Man's alienation from the divine continued... indeed it accelerated; given that the spirituality has been drained from it and poured into the churches. 

By this analogy; the various Christian revivals can be seen as the re-forging of further Rings of Power - further attempts to stop this decline by increasing the focusing and concentration.

These later Rings included (in general terms) greater demands for personal commitment, efforts at training of mental powers by new rituals or more frequent practice, increased exclusion of the secular from the sacred... etc. 

At the same time religions functioned like Rings of Power - achieving a sustained awareness and participation of the divine, in the cut-off context of "churches" and their activities - but at the cost of sucking spiritual vitality and divine awareness from the rest of life, and from humanity in general... 

An unintended cost of religion, was therefore the creation of "the secular" - what was not within the concentrated scope of religion, necessarily became secular. 

And as the underlying trend of human alienation continued; the secular realm expanded, while the divine and spiritual realm of religion shrank.

My main point is that when Man has created religion, and infused his churches with much of Man's native spiritual vitality - this means that when churches are destroyed, this focused and concentrated spiritual power is dissipated. 

Much as Sauron minus the One Ring was weaker than if the Ring had never been made; and as the Elves declined more suddenly and rapidly after the power of the Three Rings was lost than if the Elven Rings had never been...

So, Mankind's alienation from the spiritual and divine is more severe and intractable after the decline of church religion, than it would have been if we had not invested so much of our religious vitality into institutional, symbolic, and ritual forms. 

Thus; many modern people living after the (de facto) death of the churches and religions; experience this institutional loss as fatal to the divine and the spiritual - and without church, they feel that there is and can be no God, no creation. 

Post-religion; experienced-reality has been drained - abruptly and very fully - of purpose and meaning; and therefore of lasting personal significance. 

Although some churches/ religions sometimes did an effective job for many centuries in some places in sustaining contact with the divine and spiritual realms; because the spiritual and divine was thereby concentrated, focused, protected by the structures of church and formal religion - it now seems that when mankind's innate consciousness changed, and these social structures lost their power and integrity - then we are left worse-off than we would have been if churches had never existed. 

The churches functioned, therefore, analogously to the Elf Rings in their intent and effect; and in the consequences after the power of religion first declined and then was destroyed. 

The future of spiritual effort - means and ends

First religions, then later spiritual systems, always demand effort of some kind - but the nature of effort could be very different - maybe these could be termed relaxation versus concentration; which corresponds approximately to contemplation versus imagination.  

At various times in my life I tried to follow both of these distinct paths - of "opening" versus "closing" the mind. 

However, the distinction between these is blurred by the potential difference between means and ends; because there is often an implicit assumptions that we can or should pursue one kind of end by a training of another kind - whereby the means is distinct from the end. 

My assumptions is that originally the means and ends were identical - that an immersive and contemplative spirituality (such as that of our nomadic tribal ancestors, and still of young children) is something that people Just Do - means and ends are identical. 

But when religion became established; it became usual to pursue contemplative spiritual ends by means of rigorous, prolonged, and intensive training that was not - of itself - contemplative and spiritual. 

In summary, a personal would learn a symbolic and ritual system, would learn its proper meanings and responses - and by effort, concentration, and repetition would learn to experience the desired subjective and imaginative responses. 

The goal is that an individual learns develops a new kind of spontaneity - so there is an element of paradox, or even contradiction in the fact that the means are often dry and mundane, while the end-point aimed-at is transcendent. 

This is the nature of traditional religion even at its best and highest; there is a necessary alienation and functionality and mechanical experience; that is "sacrificed" in order that for each individual at some times and places - or, a minority of people for most of the time - there can be a spiritual participation with the divine.  

Thus we "pay" for the spiritual, with the secular - as individuals, and socially (e.g. several peasants mundane labour pays for each monk's spiritual experience). 

I have a strong intuition that the future of spiritual effort is one in which we return to the primal situation in which means and ends are again identical; in which what we need to do here-and-now, is exactly the same as what we are aiming to do in future.  

Subfertility is willed biological extinction - an intractable fact. What then?

People are apparently unable to grasp the very simple fact that the "subfertility*" of all the populations of all the developed nations is a strategic choice of biological extinction. 

The peoples of the modern world are willing their own annihilation. 

Of course, the averaged population choice in favour of death is composed of multi-millions of individual choices - which have, presumably, thousands of specific reasons and motivations. 

Nonetheless, if we are talking at a population level, in terms of group averages of reproduction - then the deep psychological (indeed spiritual) problem; is that the population has chosen its own destruction. 

At every level from the family, through the tribe, clan, nation - religion, or ideology. 

This seems to me a far more significant fact than real-but-temporary issues such as an ageing population. It is very solid, biological, evidence of the short-termism and self-focus characteristic of all modern populations. 

This is, in itself, a product of the changes in human consciousness that have happened everywhere - which could be described as alienation, or as the autonomous consciousness. 

In the past, people felt themselves part of a group-consciousness. Much of behaviour was unconscious, automatic, and flowed-into each person from the group-mind. 

The group-mind could be resisted, but such resistance need to be active. 

Individuals did not therefore consciously "decide" to have "at least three children" (e.g. weighing the options, calculating the risks and benefits) - instead it was not experienced as a choice, certainly not an individual choice. 

Wanting children was just "what people did"; and "I" am "people"... so I want it too.  

Modern consciousness doesn't work like that. 

We modern live "inside our heads" - looking-out. 

We often pretend to be concerned about other-people-in-general and in-the-long-term; but endemic subfertility shows that we don't genuinely and powerfully experience such oft-expressed care and concern. 

Ultimately, we don't care about the extinction of our kind; and we don't care so deeply that we cannot even notice or acknowledge that it is happening!

If we don't care about the extinction of our people - And We Don't! - then all the other altruistic and planetary concerns are revealed as puffs of wind! 

This relates to the currently so-evident "wars and rumours of war" - which are also symptomatic of the same underlying spirit**. These wars, and their gratuitous and gleefully spiteful nature, are a consequence of profound facts of human spirituality - here-and-now. 

To be clear - I am not suggesting that we "ought" to be less selfish, more long-termist, more group-minded: the reality of our situation is that these are impossibilities. 

We can in theory ask for them, recommend them, incentivize them - but because people do not want them, they will not happen - just as all attempts, everywhere, to reverse subfertility have utterly failed (but mostly, they are not even attempted). 

These are facts of the human condition in this earthly mortal existence. 

Sins are fact - they cannot be evaded; but that does not free us from the responsibility to acknowledge and repent them.

Why do we find it so difficult - impossible, even - to acknowledge and repent facts which will not be changed? Usually because we do not fundamentally desire to change the facts; or if part of us does want to change - we cannot make ourselves do it.

Why are we so eager to pretend these are soluble problems, why expend such energy in evasions?

Surely this intractability of mortal Life is at the very heart of Jesus's message, and the reason for his great gift (or offer) of salvation? 

What we need to do is something that we think is "too easy" or "not worth" doing...

Therefore we do not do what actually-is needful, and possible for everybody - and thereby reject salvation.   

*Anything less than two-point-something children per woman, on average. The point-something is (approximately) to account for children that do not survive to adulthood, or are otherwise infertile. Biologically speaking, it is very probably necessary to have considerably more than an average of two children per woman to replace the human population - if significant and cumulative genetic damage is to be avoided.  

**The world is breaking down. When that happens the structures of civilisation develop cracks and start to fail after which the normal forces of entropy and decay take over and do the rest. 

Recent wars are the result of a loss of centre. The centre is the spiritual focus of a society, what it is grounded in and what sustains it. When that no longer holds then things do fly apart, as the poet says. 

We have had no centre for a long time in the West which is why we have pitiful replacements such as human rights and democracy but these have no real substance to them. They are feeble ideological substitutes for what we have lost or rejected and they don't really inspire anybody for long. 

Wars come about because of ambition, and that is certainly a factor with the present one. But there is something else going on which is a simple desire for destruction. 

When the world has no meaning, and it has none without a sense of something beyond itself, we can find a crude purpose of sorts through destruction. Destruction is easy and it's exciting. It can stimulate the jaded palate and thrill the mind that has become bored and without a deeper goal.

From William Wildblood

An auspicious Candlemass?

Yesterday could be considered Candlemass (nowadays equated with the Celtic cross-quarter day of Imbolc - coming about halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox); which is a festival of burgeoning light (here, about an extra hour and a half per day, since the depths). 

Symbolised by harbingers of spring, if not spring itself - such as Hazel catkins and the Snowdrop flower - who first put-in an appearance a couple of weeks ago, but is now making its presence felt (at least in the city; it will not begin to peak in the countryside for a couple more weeks). 

It happened to be a rare day of mostly-clear skies; very welcome after a few weeks of cloud-cover and sharp showers. 

It was also the second full moon since the Solstice - and in the late evening she was almost dazzling, and cast a tremendous silver light. 

Nearby was Jupiter which is currently exceptionally vivid: as bright as I have ever seen him, blazing almost as brightly as Venus usually does. 

Candlemass is also associated with Ireland (and Glastonbury's) premier woman Saint: Brigid; who is regarded by many as having absorbed the character of a Celtic goddess of the same name. 

My "chore" for the day was a bit of a clear-out; which included sorting through a mass of photographs taken in my twenties and before I got married - which was a mostly pleasant and nostalgic activity; being reminded of my former self, family, old friends, girlfriends (linking, perhaps - implicitly, with the Brigid theme), places, events...

And a phase of my young adult development during which I was taking (and printing for myself) pretentious soi disant artsy monochrome pix; accurately reflecting my own self-aggrandizing self-consciousness and underlying alienation.

But I was in a broadly forgiving mood; and my present nature therefore (graciously) forgave the rather obvious conceit and self-dramatizing qualities of my earlier personhood.   

Altogether the day generated a diffuse sense of positive expectation: as if it were an auspicious day in a quasi-astrological sense... 

Although, if so; I am unclear and sceptical about how such things might operate in this world and in real life.    

The perspective of psychotherapy is something new and assumed. A gross and harmful distortion of modern biographical writing

I have read and continue to read a lot of biographies; both formal biographies, and more journalistic accounts of people's character, actions, and lives. 

And since the mid-20th century most biographies I have encountered - especially the worst ones, and the worst aspects of even the better biographies - adopt the assumptions of psychotherapy even when writing about older and the pre-modern people. 

Yet; I am confident that people of the past were not motivated therapeutically in the way that modern people are motivated. 

That is, I don't believe that past people lived with the implicit (often explicit) intention of reducing their (more or less severe, more or less long-term) psychological state of dysphoria (i.e. feeling bad/ adverse/ un-pleasant in some way). 

Nor did past people have the over-arching life-purpose of "making themselves feel better"; by their life-choices and behaviours. 

We moderns usually do have such a perspective on life - but it was not always thus. 

Furthermore; the psychotherapy perspective in biography (i.e. in the intent of understanding people) usually traces dysphoria to either past experiences (e.g. childhood or early-life relationships, traumatic events, disappointments etc.); or to disease. 

Whereas it would be more accurate to recognize that much of our character is inherited. 

Yet, heredity was the first-line explanation for human behaviour for (probably) thousands of years - i.e. through most of recorded history. 

I mean: to explain a person's behaviour, the usual thing in earlier times was to discuss what had been inherited from parents and other ancestors - including typical racial characteristics.  

The consequences of these anachronistic distortions is profound; a gross failure to understand what it is to be human. We moderns populate history with versions of our own unusual modern consciousness. 

This has many adverse effects; including eliminating from consideration a whole world of group consciousness, of people who lived embedded-in a psychological world derived from their ancestors. 

Eliminating many centuries in which religion was such a powerful motivator that it was often primary - and overcame considerations of personal happiness or suffering. 

And - because psychology and psychotherapy are products of the atheism and materialism of modernity. 

Past experiences and diseases are typically explained in wholly materialistic terms; and when heredity is considered, it is materialist - only from the modern and narrow perspective of genetics. 

Thereby eliminating a world in which "the spiritual" was pervasive; and relationships naturally and spontaneously extended to include the dead; spiritual beings such as angels, demons, fairies and ghosts; and eliminating, also, what used to be profoundly life-shaping experiences of direct relationships with the divine.    

Thus modern biographical writing is yet another of the many ways in which - by our assumptions - we paint ourselves into a corner of alienation and soullessness; whereby we conceptualize ourselves as nothing more or other than material entities produced-by and acted-upon by material influences... In a world that has always been like this, with the implication that our condition is inescapable. 

The late poet Tony Harrison and the beliefs of characteristic 1980s liberalism

The poet Tony Harrison, who lived near me in Newcastle upon Tyne, has recently died (1937-2025); and then we also met some of his relations by marriage.

 

So he has been somewhat in mind lately, since there was a time in the late 1980s when I was on the left and also had a high regard for his writing. For a few years I probably regarded him as the best of living British poets. 

(Although - to provide context - I did not, and do not, rate any living poets very highly; so it was more a case of being the best of a relatively mediocre bunch!)

Consequently, I stumbled across this rather interesting discussion of Harrison as a representative of a type of Leftist writer with working class origins who - via education - became middle class and Establishment-approved - and who spent the rest of their lives brooding (without ever reaching a coherent conclusion!) on their own subsequent class alienation. 

There are many such writers, indeed just about all writers with such a social trajectory - another who I have discussed here is Alan Garner. 

This "problem" (if it is one) seems to be restricted to writers and certain other analogous types; because the many, many more people who not writers (such as my parents, many of my relatives and their circle of friends) who also experienced this class change - do not seem to have been much troubled by it! 

We lived a middle class professional family life for most of the year, and then spent visits and holidays staying with our working class grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins; without any of the angst or social friction so obsessively described in the post-war literature of Britain.

But my focus here is on the description of Harrison as a typical Leftist intellectual of the 1980s - a grouping to which I also belonged at that time (broadly, with a few reservations - as is usually the case). 

The author lists a set of beliefs that such people as Harrison and myself espoused: 

• strongly anti monarchy 
• strongly anti censorship 
• strongly anti religion 

• anti capitalist 
• anti racist 
• anti British Empire 

• anti America passively 
• pro feminist passively 
• pro gay passively 

• pro multiculturalism 
• pro democracy 
• pro welfare 
• pro miners / trade unions 
• pro learning, education, civilisation, civility 
• pro European Union

It can readily be seen that the 1980s was therefore a time of inflexion, between the (British originated) Old Left - focused on economics and class; and the (US originated) New Left (political correctness or "woke") that we have today - focused on antiracism, feminism and sexuality...

And "environment" - not mentioned in this list, but actually already very significant - albeit not near-exclusively focused on CO2/Climate manipulated delusion - which only became important from the 1990s. 

The Old to New shift also went from (supposedly) aiming at equality of opportunity; to (supposedly) aiming to enforce equality of outcome - and then to inverting outcomes to favour individuals who claim to be members of groups that were (supposedly) "historically under-represented". 

The fact that the 1980s Leftists beliefs were mutually incoherent and incompatible seems more obvious now than it did then - yet hostile incoherence somehow never did, or does, seem obvious to those of the Left. 

Extremely few people who were "socialists" in 1980, subsequently abandoned the Left over the next decades; despite that Leftism all-but inverted from idealizing native male working class men (e.g. in the 1984 national Miners' strike)...

To demonizing and attempting socially to annihilate (by multiple means) exactly the same group of people, accelerating from about a decade later (especially the Blair "New Labour" government of 1997 onward).  

This accomodationism of Leftists ought to be a matter of shame; because it was motivated by little more than unprincipled expedience and sheer mental laziness.  

A typical post-millennial Leftist is nowadays much more likely to idealize and aggrandize members of the hyper-wealthy "Davos" multi-billionaire class - than a coal miner or other manual worker!  

The history of Tony Harrison shows some detail of how this inversion happened; how these writers of working-class origin were co-opted into the globalist totalitarian strategy; a process marked by Harrison's lavish 1969 UNESCO "travelling scholarship" (six months fully-paid international travel for the whole family) - for a poet who who hadn't even published a book! 

In other words; Harrison had already been identified as a promising subversive New Leftist "asset", in his twenties - whether he realized it or not; or else (very probably) he would never have been awarded this luxury freebie in the first place. 

It is a sad reflection of the value-bankruptcy of Leftism that vanishingly few of the ex-working class writers who were used as totalitarian assets were in the slightest degree aware of their role, of their "raison d'etre" among those who published, praised, paid and awarded status to poets and other authors. 

Typically, such writers instead mistook their own chronic, obsessive, class-based resentments and spite - for anti-Establishment radicalism and righteous anger! 

And were encouraged in this by social incentives. 

And the same situation nowadays applies to writers who are - instead of being socialist ex-working class men - are women, racial or ethnic "minorities", or sexually non-biological.

 

I suppose one of the main jobs of such writers - from the perspective of those who "manage" their careers and sustain their livelihoods; is to spread through books, plays, TV, movies etc the typical and pervasive Left-intellectual milieu of negation, resentment, atheist-materialism, and a moralistic focus on this-worldly gratification. 

A skilful and cultured author like Tony Harrison performed this role very effectively. 

As do many of his less-skilled and uncultured successors. 

Well; we at least can observe such people across time; analyse and learn from their experiences - including when they themselves did not learn. 

Thoreau in Walden - emergence of modern consciousness

Thoreau by Wyeth - depicting one of the earliest spiritual adolescents

I have been re-reading HD Thoreau's Walden (1854) - starting at the very beginning with the chapter "Economy". (I've been reading this book, on-and-off, for fifty years!)

First, I was struck afresh by the muscular brilliance of the writing - this is prose of the highest level! 

But secondly, it struck me how modern is the expressed perspective of Thoreau. He writes from the position of mainstream modern alienation, one which looks-out upon the world and deliberates how to get the best deal from our interactions. 

And Thoreau's idea of a life-well-lived is rooted almost wholly in feelings; in his own responses to ideas and situations. And, much like New Age spirituality; Thoreau seeks to engineer his environment, and himself, such as to achieve the highest possible level of personal gratification - and minimize the inevitable degree of personal suffering. 

The chapter is called "Economy" because it focuses on how to get the most gratification from life - which for Thoreau entails as much unstructured time as possible, to be spent in and around Concord and often alone; while paying for this with the least investment of of time and unpleasant-effort in "work". 

This attitude was something new in mid-nineteenth century USA when the book was written and published, because so individualist; even Thoreau's direct-mentor RW Emerson (just c. 14 years older) was much more communal and social in his perspective.  

Yet nowadays the argument of "Economy" is (more or less) what almost every adolescent considers at some point; although the conclusions most modern Westerners reach are typically very different from Thoreau's idea of reducing his material needs to the lowest minimum, so that he needed to perform the least amount of paid labour.

I would call Thoreau's attitude to the world "instrumental" - he was trying to use the world to attain his ends - to get as much as possible back from the least possible investment; even though Thoreau used his freedom to pursue a Romantic agenda - and it is as "a poet of nature" that he is most remembered. 

And Thoreau is a pioneer and exemplar of the "hedonic" morality of mainstream modernity, in which goodness is calibrated against the current feelings of the observer. 

Only in terms of a kind of pantheism does Thoreau depart (somewhat) from mainstream modernity - I mean that he seemed to assume a deistic, ordered, and therefore meaningful (although not purposive) backdrop of ultimate reality. 

Consequently, because reality is not a creation, nor is it going anywhere; Thoreau was a "contemplative" - which we might term a "consumer" rather than a creator. 

His aspiration was to enjoy nature; not to participate in creation. 

He saw no role for himself or other individual persons in shaping reality - because that reality was going nowhere. 

Therefore his highest spiritual experience was to forget himself and time and the world in extended-moments of ecstatic bliss: each of which was understood as an epiphanic-revelation of the ultimate stasis of oneness - the realization that he was part of this oneness, and had re-joined it, for a while. 

Of course, I am exaggerating the simplicity and clarity of Thoreau's perspective and aspirations; because he was of course a mortal Man - and one who had been brought-up and educated in a Christian nation, town and city that retained considerable Theistic Calvinistic elements, as well as a more recent deistic Unitarianism. 

Nonetheless, Thoreau is a strikingly modern figure; although his early death somewhat prevented the full implications of his world view from working themselves out in his life... 

Post-Civil War USA - which Thoreau did not live to experience, starkly revealed many of the unpleasant consequences of Thoreau's perspective and assumptions - although he may of course have denied and ignored most of these ill-effects, as did most of his circle. 

But I feel that Thoreau's mind-set was an inevitable phase in human history; one analogous to the arrival of adolescence. 

Thoreau was, then, an expression of the adolescence of Mankind - emerging, in his era and culture, for the first time in a recognizable form. 

And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with spiritual adolescence! - so long as it is indeed a phase, leading towards spiritual maturity; and does not become (as it has in the modern West) a lifelong state.

The middle nineteen-sixties was the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization

The style and persons included in this image are significant - 

particularly the gratuitous presence of black magician and British intelligence operative Alisteir Crowley - back row second from left. 

The cultural changes in the West that happened in the middle 1960s - especially in the UK and USA - were stark; and shocking at the time. 

Although still at a rural English Primary School; I was very aware of these changes, they impinged upon me. 

I now regard the middle 'sixties as the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization, mounted (mainly) by means of the mass media. 

Up to the middle 60s the mass culture was very positive in tone; all about people opening their minds; about embracing everything with discrimination, welcoming the new, looking forward to the future...

Change happened suddenly; beginning in summer 1967. 

For me it was marked by the surprising change in our cultural leaders The Beatles with their Sgt. Pepper album - the change in their fashion, behaviour, style of music, beginning to espouse of "radical" politics and alien spiritual stuff.

Things very quickly began to go sour, to lose innocence and optimism...

From the cheerful primary colours and plastic miniskirts and bobbed haircuts and Union Jacks of "I'm Backing Britain; then suddenly it was all about dirt, long-hair, drugs, violent "protest", Indian gurus, the Vietnam War etc. 

From light to darkness; from us to them, from hedonic materialism to satanic spirituality. 

In retrospect; I think the whole thing was a strategic psychic attack. That is, an evil-motivated attack on a person's soul. 

People were first encouraged to open themselves and welcome the future; then when this was achieved - all kinds of sickly stuff was poured-in. 

From shallow relentless cheerfulness; suddenly it was about fear and resentment, the pseudo-seriousness of ignorant philosophizing about remote matters; and the hedonism took on a self-destructive quality as it styled itself as a revolutionary activity.   

This is a pattern: first encourage open and uncritical acceptance and positivity; then when this achieved take rapid and powerful advantage of it to attack with demoralizing despair. 

And the pattern has recurred in culture, or at least this has been attempted, several times since. 

For instance the UK Blair government in 1997 explicitly tried to replicate the sixties optimism and openness and fun ("Cool Britannia" - pass the sick-bag please....); before suddenly transitioning to massive bureaucracy, pervasive corruption, globalism and wars. 

...Which had always been the whole point and purpose of the exercise. 

Again: this can be understood as a psychic attack. 

And, as well as at the mass and cultural level; the same sequence happens in individual persons:

First get them to open-up, and drop their guard, and welcome everything because all-is-one, all-is-good...

Then pour-in the nasty stuff - which they will at first welcome (i.e. they will invite evil into their hearts...); and try to overwhelm and dominate - before they can understand what is going-on.  

This can be understood using Owen Barfield's categories of the child's and tribal Man's enchanted state of Original Participation - which is what gets aimed-at by the phase of open acceptance...

Contrasted with the modern condition; which is the alienated Consciousness Soul - cut-off from its earlier immersion in the spiritual and communal. 

The effect of the civilization and personal psychic attacks is either that the person remains open and gets overwhelmed by the torrent of dark influences - like the casualties of the 1960s. 

Or else, when the individual experiences the torrential inrush of dark side: the barriers of alienation are re-erected and strengthened.

This large increase of psychological-and social alienation is what actually happened overall in Britain post 1960s and after the Blair-era attempted replication. 

In a crude form of emergency psychic self-defence; people became more less spiritual, more materialist - and bureaucracy grew and continued to grow. 

The naïve and brief utopian optimism about a wonderful future was replaced by dystopian fantasies ad the negative-fleeing escapisms of intoxication, the distractions of virtuality, fantasies of death as peaceful annihilation...

And as optimism became impossible (and spiritual hope was ruled out by atheistic materialism) the prevalent aspirations became and remained oppositional, negative: anti-men, anti-racism, anti-CO2 etc - a psychic world dominated by fear, resentment and despair. 

Part of the PSYOPS is to restrict options to these two - going back into a spiritual state of open-immersive passivity and oneness, like the early 60s; or going forward into a cut-off, impersonal, anti-spiritual, anti-human, anti-life-itself world - as with the current global totalitarian "AI" project. 

These psychic attacks continue...

Unless you personally are happy to pick and live-by one of these available and "approved" options - then you might to well to reflect on your underlying metaphysical assumptions that appear to make these two possibilities inevitable and exclusive.

You might do well to explore the only coherent alternative of which I am aware: which is something on the lines of Owen Barfield's Final Participation. 

AI-dolatry among Christians is the flip-side of fundamentally anti-personal metaphysical assumptions

I have commented before about my dismay at AI-dolatry among so many self-identified Christians - specifically their failure to recognise and grasp that the current iteration of "Artificial Intelligence" (which was top-down launched nearly three years ago, at the end of November 2022) is primarily a totalitarian - hence evil - strategy; designed for the accelerating corruption and damnation of Men. 

But vulnerability to AI-dolatry is the other side of a coin which in practice asserts and assumes the abstract impersonality of God and created reality - despite that Christians are supposed to recognize God as a person, as our Father, and we his children. 

That this is "in practice" and almost indifferent to theological theory, is evident from the official Mormon church's positive response to AI, describing it as: "a rapidly developing technology that has significant potential to assist the Church in accomplishing God’s work of salvation and exaltation." 

This despite that the CJCLDS officially regards God as an exalted and embodied Man; indeed as two Men - a Heavenly Father and Mother; which is an explicitly non-abstract primary understanding of the creator and creation that, one might have supposed, should have protected Mormons from AI-dolatry. 

But no. 

The fact is that modern Christians get their fundamental metaphysical assumptions from mainstream society, not from their religion; and our society is bureaucratic hence fundamentally anti-personal, anti-human. 

We have, for many decades, denigrated individuals and their personal judgments and evaluations; and instead given primary moral authority to the impersonal: to system; laws and regulations; process and procedures; voting and committees. 

(And all churches operate internally by these same assumptions; all churches are bureaucratic, procedural, deploy committees and voting at their fundamental levels of decision-making etc. - which of course affects their evaluations.)

It has been a "natural" extension of this abstract-impersonal way of thinking; that the human element ought ideally to be minimized or eliminated - such that computers, robots, "AI" are by their nature potentially superior to humans... 

Supposedly superior because less prone to corruption, error, variation; and (by our false but common mainstream understanding of these terms) more informed, more knowledgeable, more intelligent - hence wiser and authoritative; than any possible human or combination of humans.  

In short: the assertion is that "AI" is potentially superior because (and insofar as) it is not human.      

In theory, Christians ought to be immune to such self-destructive and deluded foolishness - but in practice they are qualitatively as bad as everyone else! (ie. Any measured differences between modern Christians and the mainstream - e.g. in surveys - are merely quantitative, and insufficient to make a qualitative difference.) 

My understanding of this, is that Christians are now reaping the consequences of ancient errors in their metaphysics - in particular of rejecting our spontaneous knowledge that reality is plural and animated: in other words that the ultimate reality includes many living, conscious, purposive and eternal beings - and these are the basis with which divine creation has worked. 

(That is; God created from and by-means-of many pre-existent Beings.)

There was, very early, a capture of the Christianity of Jesus Christ; by a metaphysics of oneness (hence monotheism) - and the adoption of multiple abstract assumptions (which became dogmas) such as: creation from nothing; omnipotence/ omniscience, omnipresence; and the conceptualization of God's creation as including unalive/ non-living aspects such as minerals...

This metaphysics imposed itself upon the simple teachings of Jesus (essentially, the promise of resurrected eternal life in Heaven to those who followed Him) to make a complex systemic religion of this-world and its institutions - in which the essential teaching became obscured, distorted... 

(And indeed all-but denied at times and in some places, such that salvation became so complex and contingent-upon-this-world, as to be regarded as actually impossible for some/ many people.).  

Many centuries downstream; and in the unique and unprecedented actual conditions of our modern society; these have led to underpinning assumptions that dominate (often unconsciously) most Christians - and almost everybody else. 

We see physics or mathematics as the primary reality, and the unalive as existing prior to (what we regard as) living beings - and as life and consciousness as having been made-from and/or added-to dead materials.   

In a nutshell; even those who believe in creation imagine God as starting with non-living materials; then making plants, animal, then Men by adding life, movement, consciousness etc. 

Whereas we ought instead to imagine everything created as alive (and outside it, only incomprehensible chaos); spirit as coming before matter; with matter "condensing" from spirit - so that spiritual life and consciousness are basic, have always-been - and always shall be. 

I think this is how we spontaneously (but mostly unconsciously) come into this world understanding things; and that young children still think this way. And I think the reason for this is that God implanted such knowledge in us, as innate knowledge which we (nearly always) need in order to live well and attain salvation. 

The discarding of our innate animism and pluralism did not matter much when Men spontaneously retained "participation" through into adulthood. 

Because in effect these Men (e.g. in the Classical and Medieval times) continued - but unconsciously and unavoidably - to perceive the world in the same way as young children, or could return to this way of thinking via the methods of religion (ritual, symbol, scripture etc). 

But now we all become alienated through adolescence; becoming cut-off from this innate knowledge and the spontaneous sense of being part of a living world - and from this state of alienation; modern Men therefore consciously need to choose to return to our innate knowledge and understanding. 

And we need to do this conscious act of return for-ourselves, because there are no institutions - not even churches - that will teach or encourage us to do so. 

Not just for-ourselves; but from-ourselves; because it is actually contradicted by many of the actual, here-and-now dominant and mandatory, Christian church teachings. 

And therefore church-orientated Christians (those who regard a church, or any external source, as having primary authority over Christian understanding) are stuck in delusional materialism; including AI-dolatry... 

Which, unless identified and repented at some point, has the potential to lead to their self-chosen damnation.   

My take-home message here, is that anyone who hopes to escape their own self-chosen damnation - which will eventuate for those who follow external "authority" in this actual world, including church authority; would be wise to bring to consciousness, and reflect deeply upon, their most fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

 

Participation in Romantic Christianity

I have found Owen Barfield's concept of "participation" - as expounded in Saving the Appearances - to be a deep and fertile insight - a gift that keeps giving, and demanding! 

This affected me so strongly because I had already recognized "alienation" as the distinctive problem of modern Man (and, especially, of me personally); and the driven-need to "cure" (or, in practice, temporarily alleviate or forget) felt-alienation, to be a core and increasing motivator of human life in our current civilization.   

In particular; I have found it necessary repeatedly to explore the relationship between participation and Christianity - having become aware that a great deal of mainstream Christianity is strongly alienating - not just in practice, but also in theory (which makes the defect incurable, without theological change).

It is important to realize that participation is the truth and reality of creation. It is not an optional extra, not merely a psychological feeling; but participation is intrinsic and unavoidable. 

Yet we modern Men are mostly unaware of the actuality of our own participation - and have erected an incoherent pretence of an external objectivity, something that supposedly exists without our consciousness, and to which we must conform - like it or not. 

So our task, as alienated modern Men, is not really to "seek participation" as such (although that is a shorthand for the process) - because participation Just Is - but to seek consciousness of the reality of our own ongoing participation. 

Mainstream Christianity often encourages participation of certain types, in specified circumstances...

For example, during prayer the person praying is encouraged to participate in a two-way and mutual communication. Something similar applies to participation in Holy Communion; or any other of the sacred rituals. 

On the other hand; the context of prayer is presented as happening in a context of objective and external fact - and something in which participation has no role. Thus; if a prayer is directed at God, then according to mainstream theology this is not a participating relationship, because God is infinitely "other", without any necessary role for human (or other) consciousness. 

The Christian is told the nature of God, creation, reality - how things work; what is appropriate ritual and symbol; what is real scripture and what it means etc... and the Christian's job is first and foremost and mandatorily to accept these "factual" (unparticipated) descriptions. 

Only after A Lot of objective, external and not-participated descriptions have been accepted, is the mainstream Christian supposed to work on participating in them. 

And, of course, such participation carries with it a more-or-less detailed expectation of what is allowed to come-out from the attempt...

In other words; the "mystical" Christian who desires participation, has already been told The Answer! 

The mainstream Christian who seeks conscious participation has been told what he will find in his mystical participation, and what it means - as a matter of objective truth; so that the seeking for participation is regarded as secondary, subjective-essentially; and an "optional extra" to the "realities" of Christianity that are objective, external - and matters about which our personal experience is irrelevant. 

Because I regard participation as necessary and intrinsic to the human condition; I regard this to be a fatal flaw in mainstream Christianity... Because participation is an unavoidable reality, thus our un-consciousness of it (an unconsciousness that is encouraged and enforced by mainstream Christianity) must be an error or an untruth. 

In sum: Seeking conscious participation in reality, including divine realities, is not some kind of optional or esoteric activity for Christians; on the contrary, it is a matter of working towards what Christianity needs to be and must become - if it is to be motivating and truthful. 

 

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren - by Iona and Peter Opie (1959, 1977)

When I first encountered The lore and language of schoolchildren, I was in my early twenties and beginning feel a solidification and increase in that characteristic and unavoidable alienation that is a core feature of the modern human condition. 

The book is a work of anthropological fieldwork by a husband-wife team; and it records the songs, rhymes and games of children of the 5-10 years age, mainly; from primary school playgrounds mostly - across several regions of Britain.

This book made me realize, probably for the first time consciously, that in my young childhood I had participated in an archetypal world - a world that was essentially universal; and in some respects went back across centuries - and perhaps millennia. 

And this world emerged whenever children gathered to play - even in that most tightly-regulated, formal and artificial world of school - where during playtimes we reverted to a mode of consciousness that was primal and spontaneous. 

What I got from this book was that the songs, rhymes and games that I had learned "orally" and by joining-in from other children, constituted a kind of national "underground", a "secret world". Shared by other children we had never met and knew nothing about. 

And not written down, not taught by adults nor approved by teachers (because they were unaware or indifferent); handed on by direct child-to-child contact - it was just there. 

It seemed, too, that this world derived from a common stock - so that children everywhere had their own versions of the same basic themes; although where that stock originally derived from was a mystery, and we weren't interested by that kind of question.

We participated in rituals that had an effect on us, so we wanted to join in and repeat them - and play them well; but whose meaning was unclear and that we did not understand - even at the time, I found this strange and compelling. 

Examples would include such rhyme/ song/ dances as "Oranges and lemons", "The Farmer's in his den", "In and out the dusty windows". 

We played such games - yet we did not know why we did it; and the effect was a kind of nagging almost-awareness of some sort of significance. 

Nowadays, I would term this Original Participation - that spontaneous, unconscious, immersive sense of participation in reality. 

But more exactly, the lore and language were a product of the phase when OP began to emerge into awareness and become systematized. 

This stage of childhood corresponds to the "totemic" era of human developmental history when symbol, ritual, story and song began to crystallize, become relatively fixed, and was preserved and disseminated by interpersonal and oral means.

And stored in memory- such that group rehearsal and repetition became a mechanism for perpetuation; and with such "devices" serving to work as as a transitional means for the incipiently isolated individual to re-enter the paradisal bliss of Original Participation.

 

I would now infer that this was what we were up to, in those playtimes - and following the enforced alienation generated by classroom schoolwork. 

In exchanging and chanting rhymes and songs, in playing ritualistic games; I think we unconsciously-sought to return - for a while - to that phase of being from-which we had so recently emerged; and where we knew ourselves to be part-of our family, a group of kids... the world and universe. 

Hence the mystery, hence the fascination.

The change of human consciousness throughout my life-span

We all begin our lives in the state of immersive, spontaneous, initially un-conscious Original Participation - which was, pretty much, the consciousness of mature adults in the earliest (e.g. hunter gatherer) phase of human history - a state of mind when we are in direct contact with an animistic (living, purposive, aware) universe of beings/ spirits, gods. 

The Medieval Consciousness (aka Intellectual Soul) is that of the great span of recorded human history, of agricultural society, of civilization - the "axial age" when religions were developed; changing through the Ancient Egyptian (for example), Ancient Greek, Roman and into the Medieval era. 

During this era, spirituality was largely communal, and contact with the world of spirit (experience of the spirit within us) was via intermediaries such as church structures, priests, symbolism and ritual. 

For Christians this type of consciousness reached a peak in the Byzantine and Holy Russian societies of Orthodox Catholicism; and for Westerners it peaked in the Medieval times with Roman Catholicism in Western Europe. 

Modern Consciousness - in which man is alienated from God, the gods, the world of spirits, and other beings; began to emerge with the Renaissance and Reformation (as traditional forms and symbols began to lose their objectivity and power) - and accelerated through the Industrial Revolution up to now. 

So that now it seems obvious common sense that this is a purposeless, meaningless, dead universe - going nowhere, and in which we humans and individual persons are irrelevant; such that our "morality" is merely maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering until we die and are annihilated. 

Looking back; it now seems that I experienced the dying residuum of the Medieval Consciousness; which, although relatively feeble and only among a minority, was behind the radicalism of the counter-cultural desire for a simple, "natural", agrarian - and essentially modified-Medieval - life and society. 

My point is that until the late 1970s a restoration of Medieval Cosnciousness actually seemed a realistic possibility; such that alternative living and self-sufficiency were topics of mainstream social discussion and aspiration. The revival of folk music and arts, and even "hippie" styles of dress and fashion - all seemed to presage this. 

It really seemed possible then that we might "go back" to a village-based and agricultural society - on lines described earlier by William Cobbett, and depicted fictionally by William Morris. 

Much of the mass youth interest in Tolkien was related to the hope aroused by his work that a Middle Earth kind of life might yet be genuinely possible. 

And for some (but not me, at that time), this included an expectation that Christianity would again have a central and pervasive influence on society: a Chesterton/ Belloc type Distributism.  

But through my life span the Medieval Consciousness has faded in objectivity and power; until now it is not regarded as a realistic possibility - or only except in a remote, abstract, wishful and as-if kind of fashion. 

This can be seen in the disintegration, decline and corruption of all the major Christian churches; and their extreme alienation and giving up of shaping spiritual experience.

But the most significant decline of Medieval Consciousness (and the cause of church changes) is in the minds of Men - an inexorable dwindling which I have both experienced and observed. 

This is where we find ourselves. I regard these changes in consciousness as objective, as causal, and as irreversible. 

So it is from here that we ought to regard the future.

Since we cannot go back, and (further) my experience and observations suggest that trying to revert ourselves and society to Medievalism of consciousness is not just ineffective; but actually spiritually harmful... That, any rate, is how I read the various "utopian" experiments in back-to-the-land, communal and Alternative living. 

Since what we have now is so dominated by the powers of evil, and so devoid of both purpose and meaning and hope - it seems to me that it is imperative we actively and consciously attempt to move our consciousness, and consequently our lives, forward into nigh unprecedented territory. 

**

NOTE: It may sound, from the above, as if I regarded Original Participation and Medieval Consciousness as taboo, necessarily harmful and to-be-shunned; but this is not the case. For many people, in many situations, both still have much to offer in the way of "therapy", encouragement, and even guidance. However the point I wish to emphasize is that they are not enough. They are both too feeble for what is necessary in our world, and both are harmful if made a strategy. They cannot suffice. There is no future in them.