An experience of Original Participation: Thoreau's interactions with the Penobscot Indian Joe Polis in The Maine Woods

Henry David Thoreau's The Maine Woods is a posthumously-collected set of three essays about travels in that region in the middle 1800s. All are worth reading; but for me the best is the last: The Allegash and East Branch. 

Thoreau describes a river trip with a friend, for which they hired a Penobscot Indian called Joe Polis as their guide. Polis was reputed to be, and Thoreau confirmed this, an exceptional man; highly-regarded both among the Indians and the Whites for his wisdom and personal integrity, as well as his skill as a woodsman and river man. 

Thoreau knew a great deal about Indians; both from reading widely, interviewing experts, and by attentive and respectful personal interactions. 

His particular interest was the ways in which Indians thought and experienced differently from himself, and how this was the basis for their unequalled abilities described throughout The Maine Woods.  

From my theoretical perspective (influenced by Owen Barfield, and some aspects of Rudolf Steiner); I interpret Thoreau's fascination as with the different consciousness of Indians; especially the distinct residue of Original Participation (OP) that these woodland guides had as the basis underlying their crafts. 

Original Participation is a different way of experiencing oneself and the rest of reality (other people, the nature), of understanding and interacting with the world - although we may remember something of this from early childhood, dreams, or states of altered consciousness. 

OP is mostly spontaneous and un-conscious, due to the individual being immersed-in the rest-of-the-world, living as part of the world ("participation"). 

And from this OP basis came the Indian's remarkable navigating, surviving, and hunting abilities; for which the White Men would typically hire him.  

But in the case of Thoreau; Joe Polis was hired more or less on the excuse of being a forest guide; Thoreau really wanted to get to know Polis, and get to know how he thought. 

Polis was very suitable because although he retained the OP stance as required, he was also unusually accomplished in his interactions with the modern world: was literate, a devout Protestant, an effective leader, well-travelled. 

This was a basis for the collegial friendship that developed between Thoreau and Polis; and in addition there was evidently a natural liking each for the other - a recognition of some basic similarity.  

There is much else to enjoy about The Maine Woods, especially for those (like me) who have a romantic feeling for such places, and for the Indians who originally inhabited them. 

In actuality, living in the Maine Woods, or even going on a trip like Thoreau's, would be a horrible experience for me - not least because of the swarms of mosquitos and biting-flies. 

Yet; as a place to think about, to imagine; those Hiawatha forests, lakes, rivers are potent and positive stimuli; especially to the extent I can appreciate the distinctive consciousness of an Indian like Joe Polis.   

Hiawatha fishing for the sturgeon - an ahistorical but spiritually-true illustration that captures the atmosphere I recall from reading Longfellow's wonderful poem when I was aged about nine.  

"Writing is thinking" and "Thinking is participation" - Writing as a potential magical act

I came across the notion that "Writing is thinking" from post-Jungian psychologist James Hillman - in the mid 1980s; and the potentially-linked idea that "Thinking is participation" from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield, in the past 15 years or so. 

Both are valuable insights, but partial truths: writing can be thinking, but usually is not; likewise thinking with respect to participation. 

The situation is that "writing is thinking" is true only when we are writing in a certain way - meditatively? Spiritually? 

At any rate, you know it when you are-doing it, if you are looking-out for it. 

Further, this is a real-time and dynamic experience between the writer and ultimate reality... 

This kind of writing must not be confused with possible later processes such as editing and publishing the inspired writing, or the potential effect of that published writing on various readers at various future times. For instance; published or professional writers certainly are Not thereby more profound or significant thinkers. 

The relevant "thinking" is that which happens during the writing.

And what about "thinking is participation"? 

This means that some kinds of thinking may be an active and mutual engagement in the ongoing divine creation: potentially, in thinking our-real selves are changed, the universe is changed... 

Another way of considering it is that (contrary to common ideas that thinking is sealed off inside the brain) thinking is an action, a behaviour.

Thinking therefore, like many other kinds of physical behaviour - Has An Effect. 

The double-insight is that active process of writing can - potentially, sometimes, while it is actually happening - make a difference to ultimate reality. 

It can change the world, and change our-selves: for better, but also for worse. 

So, even though nearly all of writing is insignificant, trivial, ineffectual; there is a writing-thinking which is a serious business; because it is a magical act for which we have an ultimate responsibility, and which has ultimate consequences.  

 

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. 

Distinguishing Final Participation from Original Participation

It was Owen Barfield who defined  Original Participation - characteristic of young childhood and the early states of Mankind's development of consciousness (roughly, the nomadic Hunter Gatherer stage); and Final Participation - which was the divinely-intended future development of consciousness that was posited to come after the modern alienated consciousness which is cut-off from participation. 

But Barfield perhaps never made it really clear how one might distinguish these types of participation - at any rate, confusion on this matter seems to be rife; and it seems usual, in my experience, for those who have encountered Barfield to list instances of what is actually Original Participation, with the claim that these are Final Participation.  

Here is my understanding of the distinction, as these states occur in modern Man:

Original Participation is experienced as a stillness, dreamlike, a trance-state - as if time is slowed or stopped or the individual has moved out of time into eternal simultaneity. 

As immersion in "the world" or divine consciousness - with loss of boundaries between individuals.

As a blending into "being-ness" - during which the individual "self" dissolves-into the larger or other consciousness. 

Ultimate reality is felt to be a state of oneness, unity; variation is only superficial because the deepest truth is singleness. 

For Original Participation we seem actually to inhabit an ocean of one-consciousness; from-which our individual consciousness sometimes emerges, briefly; rather like a crest among swirling waves that randomly gets shaped into a degree of illusory and temporary distinction and self-awareness - just long enough to realize this, before again dissolving-into the infinite sea. 

Final Participation is a dynamic state of consciousness, associated with directionality and movement of thought. 

The "self" is intensified, thinking is afoot; and consciousness absorbs into itself awareness of "the world", other people, other beings.

Awareness becomes wider and deeper - and this is awareness of other and different consciousnesses.

Ultimate reality is - at its best and highest - a state of friendship, harmony between different beings; between different but allied consciousnesses. 

Final Participation is likely to happen when we are enacting some strong and good inner motivation. When we are propelled by a creativity that is aligned and affiliated with divine creation. Perhaps while we are gathering insights that are being intuitively confirmed; or when actively-engaged in enchanted doing, or making. 

In summary - for us modern people: Original Participation happens in a state of rest or stasis, while Final Participation happens when mentally active; OP includes a loss of the sense of self, while FP includes an intensification of self; OP leads towards a sense of oneness and timelessness, while FP is a dynamic and connected form of "ongoing" consciousness.

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. 

 

Prophet versus Church-maker, versus Church administrator - Spirituality versus Psychology. Examples of Joseph Smith and Rudolf Steiner

I am very struck by the historically-recorded lives of people who were (to some genuine extent) Prophets, and who also went-on to found a church, or analogous spiritual organization. 

Two that I feel I know pretty well are Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the Mormon who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; and the spiritual philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) who founded the Anthroposophical Society. 

Although there are important differences between Smith and Steiner; in spiritual (and psychological) terms, both men made a transition from primarily functioning as inspired Prophets, to primarily functioning as institutional leaders. 

They both went from being Prophets expounding and teaching spiritual knowledge; to "CEOs" organizing and administering large new institutions - the CJCLDS church and the AS.  

Both organizations continued, and still exist; and in both cases their leadership became primarily bureaucratic in form and function; and primarily administrative in focus and methods - even within the lives of their founding Prophets...

("Primarily" - in both cases Smith and Steiner continued genuine and valuable Prophetic activity up to their deaths. But this was increasingly swamped and subordinated by an imperative  focus on sustaining and building-up the organizations they had founded.)

And (consequently, I would say) the CJCLDS and AS leadership soon became and have since remained; hardly (if at all) prophetic - and not-at-all creative. 

The organizational response, of both CJCLDS and AS, to the transformation from a Prophetically-inspired to administrative-in-nature; was to assert that organizational structures and standardized forms Just Do function spiritually. 

The assertion is that the bureaucracy, and the standardized teachings, and the officially approved rituals, activities, and texts - will (if properly done) link the properly-trained and duly-initiated institutional member, to that same spiritual reality as was Prophetically-contacted by the founder. 

I have italicized that verb "assert" above - because that is what such institutions; and indeed the older Christian churches, actually do. 

But whether or not this assertion of spiritual access via institutional membership, structures, and forms is actually true - is a very different matter. 

Indeed, to me, it does not seem to be true.

I do not see that the CJCLDS or AS or indeed any of the other or older Christian churches - are providing spiritual access via their institutional nature.  

What is partially true, what they do provide - to varying degrees and in various ways -  are desired psychological benefits. 

There is usually, therefore, some kind of psychological effect from CJCLDS and AS (and other) institutional memberships - and some of these psychological effects are desired and experienced as positive. 

People may feel (and this seems to be strongest) a sense of communal belonging. 

They may feel (at least briefly) calmed, reassured, encouraged.

Membership and participation may make people happier than otherwise. 

BUT - what I am suggesting here, is that such positive psychological effects of institutional membership are not (it seems to this observer) leading their members onto experience of contact with any solid and motivating spiritual reality. 

Neither the CJCLDS nor the AS are primarily spiritual in their nature, and they have not been primarily spiritual for a very long time; and they may well be (in most instances) completely non-spiritual in their experiential actuality...

If indeed they ever were spiritual organizations. 

At any rate, and in both instances; it is striking how very few prophetically-spiritual (and therefore creative-natured) people existed in the organizations after the founders died.

In the case of the Anthroposophical Society; perhaps the only strikingly original and Prophetic member post-Steiner - Valentin Tomberg - was swiftly expelled, and eventually became an un-orthodox Roman Catholic!   

The reason for all this is that - as of here and now and for (probably) some centuries at least - Institutions Cannot Be Primarily Spiritual.    

The necessities of surviving as institutions exclude the possibility of a primary spiritual focus. They can assert spirituality, but they only ever actually achieve psychological benefit. 

And indeed, in response to their primary and ruling imperatives as institutions; any occurrence of genuinely Prophetic spirituality among the membership is more likely to be excluded, like Tomberg and the AS...

Or if not personally expelled, then substantively excluded; as with Owen Barfield -- Who served as a senior officer in the British AS bureaucracy, but whose major and original philosophical spiritual contributions were not allowed to affect the teaching of a closed-canon of Steiner texts, and their institutionally-expedient interpretations. 

(As far as I can tell; the AS core teaching has always been only-texts-by-Steiner, and non-creative commentaries-on-Steiner. Analogous to the teaching of a Protestant church in relation to the Bible.) 

Conclusion: Institutions cannot be spiritual in their nature in this modern era. 

Of course a church may sometimes and for some people mediate or trigger genuine spiritual experiences; so that as a generalization, churches do continue to be potentially spiritually valuable - in some situations and with particular individuals. 

But at the bottom-line: we are all confronted by the choice between primary affiliation to an essentially not-spiritual and core-bureaucratic institution; or else pursuing experience of spiritual reality primarily from our own resources and motivations, and in accordance with out own discernments.

Therefore, a Christian who acknowledges the vital importance of The Spiritual; and who is not willing to subordinate his spiritual life to an institution that is firstly organizationally-driven and secondarily only psychological in its benefits...

Such a Christian; will need to regard any church or organization as at best only a possible spiritual resource...

But never as his spiritual master. 

 

Residual spontaneous enchantment that can be elicited by religion, and its dwindling

One conceptualization (derived from Barfield and Steiner) that I have found helpful; is that modern Man is emerging from a situation in which we had a significant (and powerful) residuum of spontaneous enchantment, by which our experience was of participation in the world around us - and when this spontaneous tendency lay dormant until triggered by symbols, rituals, and various "spiritual systems". 

This was the situation of Men in Classical and Medieval times - the times when institutional and formal religions emerged and dominated spiritual life.

But since around the advent of modernity - perhaps starting some 5000 years ago, but becoming dominant something like 2000 years ago in the Industrial Revolution era; we have been incrementally coming-into a situation when the spiritual systems with their symbols, rituals, texts etc are no longer able to evoke that latent enchantment (hence mass atheism) - or only weakly so (hence the feebleness of current religions - see 2020 for confirmation of this feebleness). 

Because formal religions and spiritual systems really did work in the past; then it is usually assumed that they are the only and proper way of evoking enchantment here-and-now...

And then it turns out that they actually don't release our latent capacity for enchantment because that latent capacity to become enchanted by symbol and ritual has dwindled, often to the point of disappearance... 

And Here We Are. 

The usual inferences are:

1. Give up on religion because it doesn't work. 

2. Hold fast to religion, even-though it doesn't work. 

But my inference is that religion - no matter how effective it really was at eliciting the experience of enchantment, in some places and times - was itself only ever a spiritual system, and religion never-was the spirit itself. 

Our task is to go behind religion and seek the spirit directly - with the expectation that strong, convincing, and motivating enchantment - shall reliably arise from such an encounter.

And this requires faith that personal seeking of direct spiritual experience is indeed what God wants from each of us, here-and-now. 

 

Owen Barfield's concept of participation provides the basis of what is needed for Christians, as of 2025

Owen Barfield's concept of participation provides the basis of what is needed for Christians, as of 2025 and going forward. 

Barfield assumes that participation in Divine Creation is both our nature as created beings; and also the proper aim of created beings. 

Creation is in the direction of developing participation in the direction of freely creating in greater consciousness. 

More exactly, that this is our proper aim as Christian beings who have chosen to live by love and therefore in harmony with God's creative will. 

The reason why participation is so centrally and vitally important to Christians, is that it is by participation that there is creation in the first place. 

Creation is itself (if properly understood) a matter of participation; because creation is (as all Christians acknowledge) primarily a matter of love. 

For there to be love in this "relational" and personal Christian sense; there must be distinct beings each with the capacity for loving - and then love needs to be mutually chosen.

The cohesion of divine creation should therefore be understood as an ongoing process of harmonizing the motivations of beings; harmonization through the love between beings. 

In different words; divine creation is (partly) a matter of once indifferent beings, coming to participate-in the creative direction of God's loving nature; through loving God and loving one-another. 

It is this love between Beings that is the basis of the harmony that is creation.

But divine creation is also living, dynamic, continuing, increasing... And by the Christian understanding it is God's intention that Men become fully (and divine) Sons of God; share in the work of creation, and who each contribute something unique (because from themselves), new, and additional-to creation. 

Therefore, the direction of creation is towards greater consciousness and choice among beings - towards an increasingly-active participation - which change must be freely-chosen by each being. 

That is to say; there is a change through time from a mostly passive, mostly unconscious, harmony of creation in which individuals largely serve the divine will and each does not bring much new and additional to the whole...

And towards what must necessarily be a more collegial participation in the work of creation; by which every single being that chooses to live by love, is consciously enabled to contribute that which is unique in himself and which he learns to the totality of creation.

Final Participation is a conscious consecration of this-moment to our eternal resurrected life

For the past decade or so, I have been trying (in multiple ways) to understand the implications of Owen Barfield's concept of Final Participation - as being the destiny and proper aim of our spiritual life. 

Some modern people seem wholly enmeshed in mundane materialist thinking and feel detached and alienated from the living world - trapped inside their own heads. Their only relief is temporarily to forget this in sleep, intoxication, psychosis - and in occasional moments when there is a resurgence of a child-like sense of belonging and involvement. 

These brief times are what Barfield calls Original Participation, because they were our original state of consciousness as young children, and also (it is believed) the normal state of the earliest ancestral Men.  

Original Participation is - pretty much - the same as Novalis's Sehnsucht and CS Lewis's Joy; Gurdjieff's self-remembering, Maslow's Peak Experience, or Csíkszentmihályi's Flow state are psychological reductions of the experience.  

Such moments may be pleasant, indeed there have been times and places (e.g. some of the Romantic movement around 1800, or the 1960s counter-culture... still ongoing) when many people aspired to abandon modern consciousness and return to Original Participation. 

Although this return to the spontaneous, natural, child-like, primitive, here-and-now consciousness is powerful and alluring to many people; it has always failed - and must be assumed impossible (except briefly).  

However it makes a difference how we regard these brief moments. 

If they are regarded as merely pleasant psychological states, then Original Participation can only be therapeutic - like taking a short holiday from the "real world" of mundane materialism.

Yet Barfield asserted that Final Participation was not just a pleasant interlude; but in some deep sense absolutely necessary - necessary if we personally, and our society as well, were to avoid being overwhelmed by evil.   

However, Barfield was vague about how this might be achieved (he usually advised consulting his mentor Rudolf Steiner's work - but Steiner's techniques seem obviously ineffective, and Barfield never claimed that decades of practicing Steiner medications had led to any very significant effect on Barfield's own thinking in terms of Final Participation. 

Indeed, it seems that FP is not really achievable in a lasting and dominant way. 

So we seem rather to be trapped between impossibilities! We cannot go back, cannot stay as we are - yet the destined path forward seems blocked...  

Yet anyone who conceptualizes life as bounded by conception and death will find himself bounded by exactly such impossibilities. We cannot escape the constraints of entropy (and death) and evil. 

But this is forgetting the reality that we are eternal Beings, and this mortal life can be (should be) seen as a finite transitional phase between eternities before and afterwards. 

Furthermore (and here I depart from Barfield, with his ideas of multiple future reincarnations) a Christian sees his eternal future as including resurrected Heavenly life, following after this mortal life.

My idea of Final Participation is that it is the conscious choice to consecrate those moments of Original Participation.     

So that when moments of OP happen; we choose to regard them as sacred. 

In such a "consecration"; the momentary experience of OP is consciously recognized as being of potentially eternal significance to divine creation - and is actively taken-up into ongoing thinking.

This contrasts with, say, the sixties counter-culture response - which is to stay inside those OP moments, and perpetuate them or as long as possible. 

I would regard this as akin to a religiously-contemplative response to Original Participation. Contemplative because it is deliberately passive and self-negating. The moment is primary and we intend to stay with it, dissolve-into it. 

This is analogous to the contemplative kind of meditation where people seek a "blissful" state of consciousness and try to maintain it for as long as possible. 

The ideal is of stasis in perfection.  

But Final Participation is active and creative - hence is is both dynamic - like divine creation; and aspires to join-in-with and influence ongoing divine creation.

And all this is a choice, not a surrender. It is an affirmation of the self, not an attempt to lose the self. 

It is the choice to be a Son of God, a sibling of Jesus; one who want to join with God in the work of creation, and add to to that creative work whatever is unique in himself. 

So, Final Participation is an active self-confidence; confidence that by the "process" of resurrection after this mortal life we can be transformed such as to be able, worthy, and trust-worthy of eternal participation in creation.

Thus, FP is a state of being only achievable permanently (as a normal state) after our death, and only among those who have then chosen to follow Jesus through resurrection to everlasting Heavenly life.  

But Final Participation does have a vital role in this mortal life; because it is when we can add to our resurrected life. 

FP represents our choice to learn from experience in such a way that our immortal soul is permanently transformed.

We are talking about our immortal souls, not the conditions of our mortal lives on earth - so the fact that our modern experiences of participation may be relatively few, infrequent, brief - does not invalidate these experiences... 

FP experiences are of permanent value not because they last a long time; but so long as we choose to consecrate them.

Consecration would go something like this:

1. Original Participation happens. 

2. We recognize that it is happening. 

3. We acknowledge that this happening is of potentially permanent importance to our resurrected Heavenly self. 

This needs to be done when Original participation happens - Now: here-and-now. 

Not put-off until later. 

If we do not do it at the time of Original Participation - it will (probably) not be done. 

However... An intense imagined re-living of the moment, could also be used to consecrate that moment retrospectively. Because then the moment is not merely "retrospective" but a re-experiencing here-and-now - which is perhaps one reason why we may recollect and meditate on such moments... Why they may last so tenaciously in our memories. The experiences may be re-presenting themselves for consecration. 

Maybe, if we do this on principle and habitually; then this will act as a positive feedback and establish a "spiritual reward system" - so that such opportunities will become more frequent? 

The thing is: we modern Men are terribly demotivated, prone to despair - and any spiritual advice that diminishes or delays our gratification seems doomed to fail*. 

Consecrating our moments of Original Participation generates an immediate spiritual reward as well as a hope-full anticipation. 

Instead of OP being a tragic joy; doomed to be short-lived, doomed to be forgotten and lost by age, disease, death... Instead of this; the act of consecration transforms it into a moment of permanent and positive significance.  

As far as I can understand; only a follower of Jesus Christ who lives in confident expectation of resurrection can do this; and it will not "just happen" but must be done by conscious choice. 

All then depends on making that choice. 

NOTE: It may be objected that because Original Participation is spontaneous and natural, it is not necessarily good. This is true; and if an OP experience is not good, then it cannot and shall not be consecrated to resurrected eternal life - so any such attempt will fail. Christian discernment - knowledge of good and evil, God and that which opposes God; is a necessary part of Christian life - and always applies. 

* The mass of people are (quite literally) spiritually-dying of despair, for lack of any genuinely positive purpose in life. It seems obvious that the double-negative (e.g. therapeutic) values that are exclusively propagated, including by nearly all religions (eg religions rooted in avoidance of default divine punishment), including most Christian churches - are simply ineffectual; leading to short-termist this-worldly hedonism now, and ultimate despair eventually. 

More on the "contact" aspect of Primary Thinking

Continuing from yesterday's post:

The idea that Primary Thinking will only happen if it entails contact with another mind, another being, another Real Self - fits with some other stuff. 

For example, if thinking is Not in contact - then it is purely personal and subjective - because thinking is something that is done by beings: thinking is an attribute of beings. 

Thinking isn't an energy or electricity, a physics-like thing or chemical changes - but even if physics/ chemistry/ biology were a good analogy for thinking, these also require beings. The notion that there can be an autonomous domain of "science" without regard to living and conscious beings is incoherent: see Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances. 

(When there is knowledge, there is no escaping consciousness.)

So, you can't have abstract thoughts floating-about in reality, without beings to think them.

A being that thinks without contact is in a pre-creation situation. 

Pre-creation there were beings (as it were...) floating around in chaos - either unaware or indifferent to one another. It was one of the events that went with divine creation that thinking began to be shared, began to happen as a direct contact between beings - and this, I presume, as a consequence of love. 

I envisage God (the prime creator) as primordial parents, whose mutual love initiated - and itself was - divine creation. 

This could also been seen as the beginning of primary thinking - which fits with m conviction that Primary Thinking is a direct form of participation with ongoing divine creation. 

Also; if primary thinking is, as I believe, a participation in the work of divine creation - then primary thinking cannot be private - cannot be confined to one mind. This also confirms that primary thinking must be something that is happening in more than one mind. 

Creation can be considered the loving harmony of many beings in such terms as the aims and methods of creation - just like an ideally loving family that remain in harmony through time: the mutual love makes the family cohere, and ensures that aims and methods are sustaining of love. 

It seems that, if we want to engage in primary thinking; then mind to mind, direct - and loving - contact, is a pre-requisite.  

The lesson of so-called AI: Most of Man's "thinking" is just "thinking-about", like the abstract symbolic token-juggling of Artificial Intelligence

If you have ever experienced real thinking on a subject, you will know that this rare and relatively brief activity is qualitatively different from thinking-about the same thing. 

Once you have actually thought on a matter, you can recognize when others have not - but are merely parroting on that subject. And you will also be aware that most of your own speaking and writing is also a species of parroting - even when it is a matter of parroting your own previous real-thinking... 

(This, by the way, is analogous to Wittgenstein's distinction between doing Philosophy, and the usual academic business of just "parroting" on the subject. It is what I mean when I say that I was only doing science from 1994 to 2015, although I was officially "a scientist" for some years on either side of that.)   

The current mass imposition of so-called "AI" (Artificial Intelligence) provides one potentially valuable learning experience, if it makes us realize (with shame) how much of our own mental activity is hardly superior to the kind of automatic and unconscious processing of these computer programmes.

The shame is that Man is free, hence capable of doing more than parroting. 

But computers are not Beings and cannot be free; hence they are always, only, and necessarily; forever stuck in the activity of "thinking-about" - by which I mean the whole business is symbolic and abstract, and the relationship of this token-juggling to real-reality is purely asserted; and the validity of the assertion purely conjectural*. 

(*This applies even when computers are used by spiritual Beings, such - especially- as demons; the computer cannot ever itself become a Being, because all Beings are eternally pre-existent, and cannot be made or destroyed. But a computer and its activities may be included within the scope of the spirit of a Being; rather as (but in a material way) the water in our blood may be included in our own Being.) 

We can describe the business of thinking-about in terms of tokens; tokens that "represent" things, concepts etc, and the "thinking-about" is the process of (for instance) selecting, extracting, extrapolating, combining, and arranging these tokens. 

The tokens are supposed to represent reality, in some way; but there is no "participation" in this reality - the token is not that which it represents, and the processes of token manipulation are utterly separate from the reality that is supposed to be represented by it. 

No matter how much it may be claimed otherwise, the tokens and what happens to them, are not that which they purport to represent.  

But there is another kind of thinking which is involved in the actuality of that which is being-thought, a thinking that participates in reality. This is a matter I have tried to discuss in terms such as primary thinking, and direct knowing (and which is discussed in Rudolf Steiner's books Truth and Knowledge, and The Philosophy of Freedom). 

This participating-thinking can be envisaged (although this description here is linguistic, hence itself, of course, a model) in terms of our thinking becoming the same as the thinking of other Beings; a sharing of thinking in real time. 

This is reality, because participated thinking is real - so to believe the above we must also recognize that our thinking is potentially part of ultimate reality... Our thinking (when it is primary) changes the world. 

But many/most people nowadays assert that our human thinking is itself always-and-only a symbolic activity, that our thinking is just another instance of token-juggling - and this elucidates why so many people are so completely confused by and about AI. 

They are confused because they have pre-decided that human thinking is exactly the same kind of abstract symbolic merely-representative activity as computation, then they can find no difference between thinking and the stuff that AI programs are doing.

Yet much/most of what we modern Westerners call thinking is indeed guilty as charged: merely symbolic, merely representative, merely pattern-making with tokens...  

And perhaps more so now than ever before, because of our ideology that this Must Be what thinking is, that thinking cannot-be otherwise - and to believe anything else is wishful thinking or delusional. 

Thereby, that non-participating, alienated, symbolic-representative understanding of the world which led-to, is-encapsulated-by, and is imposed upon Men by the current so-called AI - becomes habitual, and indeed mandatory, in public discourse. 

To think otherwise is partly a matter of assumptions, and partly of experience. If you have never experienced primary thinking, direct knowing, then it is easy to believe that it does not exist - or that it is just a self-deluded variant of that token-juggling which constitutes almost all of our personal, social, and professional living. 

And people probably never will experience the participating possible in thinking, if they are not motivated to do it; unless they invest a level of time, attention and effort that is extraordinarily rare - even, or especially, among the intellectual classes involved in science, academic, law, philosophy - and Christian theology. 

Note: A clearer understanding of the distinction between abstract-symbolic, token-shuffling thinking-about, and the participative possibility of real thinking, may be had from a careful reading of Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances (1957). 

What is the meaning of "Romantic" in Romantic Christianity - and how does it differ from "pleasure-seeking" or psychotherapy"?

We need clearly to distinguish between, on the one hand, the "psychotherapeutic" aspects of spirituality and religion; and, on the other hand, participation. 

Romantic Christianity is primarily and essentially about participation, not pleasure or therapy. 

(Although Romanticism without Christianity usually devolves into pleasure-seeking and/or therapy.) 

Therapy focuses on emotions and feelings; while participation is a fact about reality. 

Participation is the fact that we are involved-with reality; including that our "inner life" is involved with reality. 

In other words; we are not separate from reality, we are not cut-off from reality, even in our innermost thinking and feeling - even though most modern people feel that they are cut-off; even though we wrongly believe that we are observers rather than participants in "the universe". 

So, participation means that we Just-Are (like it or not, know it or not, want it or not) participants in divine creation. 

The felt-need of Romanticism is to be aware that we are participants in reality. 

Thus, Romanticism is a good impulse for Christians - it is spiritually positive - because it is the aspiration to become more spiritually-developed, more God-like in our consciousness of reality. 

**

Psychotherapy is not only distinguishable from Romanticism, but also the two can be separated and dissociated; so that we can have one without the other: we can have therapy without participation, and participation without therapy. 

Obviously, there can be therapy without participation - and this is the normal, mainstream and dominant form of therapy in modern Western civilization. 

(It is also what historically happened to Romanticism when it rejected Christianity - we got the pleasure-seeking of Byron instead of the participation-seeking of Coleridge; and a century later, we got the therapeutic intent of Jung instead of the participation-seeking of Steiner and Barfield.)

For instance, people can be made to feel happier or less-miserable, by distraction from reality (as by the mass and social media), or by suppression of awareness (by inner-materialism and bureaucracy). 

Distraction-from and suppression-of awareness of the fact of participation both diminish participation and are anti-Romantic. 

And there can be participation without therapy. 

This happens when recognition of our involvement with reality makes us feel more miserable here-and-now. 

This might be through a recognition of evil in our situation; or by recognizing the tragic quality of a life that ends with death (tragic even when death has "lost its sting" from resurrection); and of a mortal earthly world of endemic degeneration, disease, and loss.

In sum; Romanticism is not some form of pleasure-seeking; but is instead a recognition of the benefits, indeed I would say necessity, of consciously recognizing the fact of our continuing-participation in God's created reality.  

 

The male and female principle in Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene

For an idea of what I intend by the "male and female principles", see this book review and the quotations from Owen Barfield and DE (Doris Eveline) Faulkner Jones. A terse summary of their argument is provided by Faulkner Jones:

One might call the special gift of women 'creative receptivity', and it should be used in close co-operation with the 'creative activity' of men... An example of the harmonious working-together of the male and female principles in social life is medicine in the nineteenth century. New discoveries were revolutionising medical work when there emerged in Florence Nightingale a woman powerful enough to feel deeply, and comprehend fully, the importance of these discoveries and of medical work in general. It was through her work in founding and organising nursing as a profession for women that the new medical ideas, generated through the male creative intellect, could be applied beneficently and systematically, on a wide basis, to all the classes of the community. Without the steady, loving, systematised, daily and hourly attention of trained nurses, the most brilliant surgical or medical treatment would fail.

Of course I am here comparing the cosmically great reality of Jesus and Mary, with the micro-cosmically specific instance of the male founders of modern medicine and Florence Nightingale and her nurses. 

But I would like to suggest that Jesus was - inevitably - specifically a man, hence male - and therefore essentially engaged in "creative activity"; therefore in need of a woman and the female principle of "creative receptivity" in order fully to fulfil the potential of his work. 

In the Fourth Gospel (for my understanding and explanation of this scripture, see here) we have a vivid and human portrait of Jesus provided by an eye-witness; and it can be seen that Jesus's character is distinctively that of a man. Jesus is neither androgynous, nor a fusion of man and woman: he is archetypically male. 

By contrast, of the five episodes that feature Mary Magdalene; the first is the marriage feast at Cana, which I believe to be a (later redacted) version of the marriage of Jesus and Mary; but it provides no information as the bride's behaviour or character. 

However, the next four descriptions of Mary Magdalene all mention archetypically female, indeed wifely, behaviour: these are:

1. Mary weeping at Jesus's feet at the resurrection of Lazarus, her brother - expressing direct sadness and empathy for the here-and-now situation;

2. Mary anointing Jesus's feet in Bethany and wiping them with her hair - demonstrating her knowledge of Jesus's divine status, and a focus on the present moment - and "indifferent" to larger and abstract masculine issues such as "the poor". 

3. Mary's presence at the foot of the cross during the crucifixion: being-present, while Jesus dies, i sympathetic participation.

4. Mary's discovery of the empty tomb, and her later first-witnessing of the resurrected Jesus; Mary apparently visited the tomb alone, and with no functional purpose other than - again - to be there, to participate in Jesus's condition. When she meets, and then recognizes, the resurrected Jesus; she desires primarily to touch him - again, an archetypically female response to the situation.   

None of Mary's behaviours are surprising, but in their here-and-now immediacy and care, they do emphasise the contrast with Jesus's own "Big Picture" words and behaviours. 

Mary's behaviours emphasize too that "creative receptivity" which is missing from, and complementary to, and necessary to the completion of, the masculine creative activity of Jesus.

This is one reason why I consider that Mary Magdalene later became one of the dyad that is the Holy Ghost; our guide (masculine active creativity) and comforter (feminine receptive creativity). 

If I were to draw any tentative lessons from this analysis for this, our mortal lives; and for the ideal relationship between a man and a woman towards which we might strive; such lessons would be along the lines of understanding the ultimate and spiritual nature of these male and female characteristics. 

"Contacts" seem to be the potential basis of experiential understanding; as well as participation in the world of spirit

For the past couple of years I have been reading considerably about what Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight (and other ritual magicians of their kind) call "contacts" - or sometimes "Masters". The experience is of individual communication, or sharing of consciousness, with a spiritual being. 

The phenomenon seems various in its details, and may occur in a full trance (i.e. when the human becomes unconscious, and speaks or writes without awareness of what is being communicated). Or it may happen in more alert trance states, with awareness of what is going-on. This is apparently broadly the same as "channelling" (i.e. what is channelled, is "a contact"). 

And contacts seem to underlie, and blend-with by degrees, much commoner and more normal phenomena such as an intense fascination, empathy, communion with some not-present personage; who might be alive or dead, real-life or fictional. 

Contact may be sensory (in the form of spoken words or conversation (clairaudience), of visual (clairvoyance - perhaps of visions, symbols, written words); or non-sensory - as what I call "direct knowing". 

What seems to be the essential common factor is experienced person-to-person (or person-to-being) contact. 

Having read quite widely on this subject, it has become clear that (contrary to common claims, and despite that contacts are often sought purposively as a path to knowledge and guidance) such contacts are not necessarily, indeed only seldom, the basis for accurate or valid information. 

This is obvious from the apparent wrongness of much specific (and indeed abstract and generalized) information of this kind; but it must be true from the wide range of contradictory information cited between different (but apparently honest and competent) people; and the same person at different times. 

So I have concluded that contacts ought Not to be regarded as a pathway to factual or conceptual knowledge or true guidance. 

On the other hand; I have concluded that experience of contacts are not only of potentially primary personal significance; but are probably necessary to the development of true knowledge. 

In other words, unless we experience a phenomenon that could be characterized as a contact, we shall never really understand anything. 

I concluded this from examining my own work in science and literature, as well as theology, philosophy, and mystical religious experience. Even from when I was an atheist - from more than a decade before I was a theist, or a Christian; I never really understood the meanings of things until I had had this kind of contact experience. 

For instance, if I was working on theoretical science; it was all just a matter of "comparing models" - an activity that had no end, and brought no sense of validity - until I had reached an empathic contact with those scientists (living or dead) whose work I was critiquing or using; and the same applied when I had developed a theory that I regarded as valid. 

Truth needed to be "checked" by a very inner process, much as I later called heart-thinking; and until a proposition had passed this "test" I was never confident of it. 

True knowing needs to be known in the heart, and no amount of head-knowing (logic and "facts") can replace this requirement.  

Something closely analogous seems to be at work when I am trying to understand a writer. Unless and until I can attain an inward sense of contact and communion with that person; then I never really feel I know what they are saying. 

For instance; it took me about a decade before I "got" Owen Barfield, and felt that I really understood what he was thinking and asserting - and this understanding came as a consequence of getting onto his wavelength by a kind of sympathetic resonance, by thinking "with" him as I read his words or contemplated his writings. 

Much the same applied with William Arkle; I had to immerse into his writings for some years before, quite suddenly, I "contacted" his spirit and had the basis for understanding. 

But with other authors - such as ST Coleridge - I have never attained this sense of contact, therefore I have never (so far) been confident of understanding him: it is all second-hand, hearsay, "models" of what he was doing. 

It is certainly Not the case that contact leads to correct understanding. Contact with Barfield and Arkle was just the basis for understanding them. I needed to study, read, re-read, and think hard. 

So having experienced "contact" should Not be used as a "proof" that one's understanding is correct. 

But without that contact, there never would have been genuine understanding.

Furthermore, once one has attained contact, and followed it with serious study; one can recognize when others have not attained contact; and are merely parroting and playing-with second-hand summaries and models.  

Contact therefore seems to be necessary but not sufficient to knowing. 

Contact is also perhaps one of the commonest and most readily available modes of direct spiritual experience: a kind-of evidence of the reality of the spirit world.  

And this is just how things would be expected, in an animated, living reality - in this created universe ultimately composed of Beings in relationships. 

In sum; I conclude that he ways that contacts are usually regarded, seem to be mistaken. It is usually an error to seek contacts as a source of factual information. 

However, contacts - properly regarded - can be an experience of the living world of spirits, an active participation a world of conscious Beings: recognition of a relational world, in which we are never alone. 

And a way of inhabiting a world where we can truly understand purposes and meanings - at least to the extent of our individual cognitive capacities, biases, defects and particular perspectives.

All this depends on our regarding it as metaphysically possible - that is, our fundamental assumptions need to allow for such potential: we need to realize that this fits how reality is structured and operates. 

Final Participation needs to aim at participation in Divine Creation, not "The World"

It has often been recognized that modern Man is alienated from life, feels cut-off by his consciousness from both the divine and from the "Spirit World". 

A desire to alleviate this alienation is behind a lot of spiritual activity, and many of the spiritual "movements" of the past couple of centuries. 

The problem was incisively analysed by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield: both were clear that we should not, and indeed could not effectively, "go back" to earlier modes of unalienated consciousness.

Instead we need (and must, unless we are not to suffer spiritual death and self-chosen damnation) to move forward to a new kind of integration with the divine and the spirit world: this desired state Barfield termed Final Participation. 

(Named on the basis that participation-in the world is the opposite of alienation-from it.) 

Steiner believed (or, at least, asserted) that Final Participation could be attained by spiritual exercises in a new kind of meditative practice, and made schemes of such training - but after a century of near-total failure, it is reasonable to conclude that such techniques/ methods/ training don't work - or don't work well enough to make a significant difference.

I think the reason that Final Participation cannot be achieved by such procedures is partly that FP must be part of a Christian life and operate in that context. Christianity is necessary, and must come first.

(A fact sometimes apparently denied, and often backgrounded or down-played by Steiner and Barfield - certainly it was not clearly explained in terms of God's motivations.) 

And also that this kind of participating consciousness requires to be motivated by Love. And Love cannot be attained by techniques, nor can it be had simply by deciding. 

It is false to try and make ourselves love this or that (or everything). 

Therefore, Final Participation needs to begin from actual Love; and build from that.

I now strikes me that this also makes sense from the perspective of what exactly is is that Final Participation should desire to participate-in.   

We should not - as Christians - desire to participate in The World, not the entirety of reality - because this includes evil. The attempt to participate in "everything" is not Christian, but part of oneness spirituality - which has a very different aim than salvation*. 

Instead; we should aim to participate in Divine Creation. That is, we should aim to participate in that of this world (and only that) which is a "product" of Love. 

Not try to participate in the whole world, but to align myself with Divine Creation... I find this insight to be clarifying! 

(Whether the insight will lead to greater success in my seeking of Final Participation remains to be seen.)

*Note added. To clarify - those who wish to participate in the world, the whole world; do so on the basis that all is one - and the distinction between good and evil is illusory because this mortal world is illusory. I would have thought it fairly obvious that this is not what Christians believe; despite that many who call themselves Christian espouse it. Christians should (surely?) believe that evil is real, not illusory. Although - in this mortal life - we cannot help but be involved in evil, this ought to be discerned, and repented. So it does not make sense to have an an ideal participating in everything that goes on in this world. Our hope is to be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven, where everything may be participated, because all derives from love.   

Halldor Laxness and Taoist Christianity

Having been tipped-off that the 2007 Halldor Laxness biography by Halldor Gudmundsson had been issued in paperback and Kindle; I bought myself a copy to re-read. 

Although I did not much enjoy the biography, because Laxness was such a "high psychoticism" kind of genius as to make uncomfortable company with prolonged contact, it has set me to re-read (for the fourth or fifth times) my two favourite among his novels: The Fish Can Sing, and Christianity At Glacier (re-issued as Under the Glacier).

(Both superbly translated by Magnus Magnusson - a name very well known to all Brits aged above fifty; for his role as quizmaster of TV "Mastermind".)  

The Fish Can Sing of 1957 is better literature, indeed a near-perfect novel; while Christianity at Glacier rather falls-apart structurally, as Laxness's mental powers began to wane; but both are well worth reading as imbued with "spirituality". 

In TFCS the spirituality is Taoism - in a Western manifestation, yet sincere and pervasive; and made tragic by awareness of its unsustainability beyond childhood. 

In CAG, it is "Christian" - or rather an examination of the Christian, an exploration or striving-towards a new/different kind of Christian spirituality. 

(Laxness was born into the tepid Lutheranism of Iceland in 1902, for a few years became a very keen  Roman Catholic (considering ordination); before discarding all this for USSR-focused Marxist materialism in the middle 20th century - then returning to a stronger and stronger spiritual focus from the later 1950s - re-assuming Roman Catholic practice in his last years.)

By the time of CAG, Laxness clearly rejected the symbolism and ritual of institutional Christianity; and seemed to desire a kind of Taoistic Christianity in which the religion was absorbed-into everyday life, without being made explicit in public discourse. 

I think this is what he wanted; although he didn't achieve it - perhaps due to confusion over what Christianity ultimately is (i.e. not-of-this-world and about post-mortal resurrected life).    

More exactly; what Laxness wanted from Taoism does correspond pretty-closely to Barfield's Original Participation, the primal spirituality of young children and the earliest cultures of nomadic tribal people - which is, in a sense, naturally Christian - in that such people will (when available) choose salvation quite spontaneously and unconsciously.

But Taoism is the attempt to make a symbolism or "model" out of Original Participation - which must fail because anyone self-conscious enough "be a Taoist" is too self-conscious actually to be a Taoist! The spiritual adolescent cannot choose to think as a young child, or hunter-gatherer.  

What might a Taoist Christianity be like? Well - it is a type of Romantic Christianity. One in which Christianity is not spoken of; and in which there is not participation in Christian-themed public discourse. 

(When compelled to converse on spiritual matters, the "Taoist" becomes poetic, enigmatic, obtuse, surreal, deliberately misleading...) 

Starting point: Modern Man is in a situation of existential freedom, because we need consciously to choose that which was once spontaneous. 

Furthermore, this conscious freedom is primarily in the realm of thinking, so that the hardly-thinking spontaneity of the young child or tribesman is replaced by a freely-chosen and explicitly-thought mode of being. 

So an actual Taoist Christian (rather than the Christianised Taoism that Laxness often reverts-into) would be lived in awareness of the living, created world of many Beings; a world of Good and evil and entropy; and a world in which we are called-upon consciously to discern and affiliate with the side of Good/ God/ Divine Creation. 

We would not be striving for Taoist immersion in the present moment, or for Taoist indifference to values and choices; because a Christian recognizes that this life is transitional and temporary; and properly aimed-at Resurrected eternal Heavenly life. 

But there is a possibly Taoist flavour to the idea of recognizing and appreciating our actual, living experiences - here-and-now - as opportunities for spiritual learning - rather than this-worldly betterment.   

Maybe something-like this was where Laxness was pointing in Christianity At Glacier? Maybe that accounts for the special flavour, quality, and appeal I get from the book? 

Devonshire and Original Participation

Owen Barfield's conceptualization of Original Participation (OP) is the putative consciousness, way of "being in the world" of both ancient Men (nomadic hunter gatherers) and of all Men during early childhood. 

So, in principle, we should all be able to remember, to some extent, what it is like to live in Original Participation with the world: that is, to be an "animistic" consciousness that includes dreaming as well as waking; immersed-in and aware-of the family circle; and much else: house, garden, trees, animals, pictures, television and radio... All experienced as essentially alive and aware and in-communication.  

My own memories of this state seem to be particularly clear (compared with what other people tell me of their own memories), and this may be a consequence of the fact that my family relocated from Devonshire to Somerset just about the time I began school aged five.

Just at the time when my consciousness began to develop out from OP, and began the gradual transition of late childhood towards the "Consciousness Soul" at adolescence (and, in our society, continuing until death in most people). 

Therefore, my memories of Devon are through the lens of Original Participation, and as such rather clearly differentiated and cut-off from the later and more self-conscious and active - but alienated, detached - way of relating to The World that began sharply; with leaving the home environment, attending a school for many hours a day, and moving to Somerset.

Cons and pros of a happy childhood

A happy childhood is a form of what Owen Barfield called Original Participation; that is to say, it is a mostly unconscious and spontaneous immersion-in the society of the family and more generally. The child feels a belonging that it not separated from 'the world'. 

When a childhood is happy, adolescence is likely to be a threat to that happiness; because of its psychological and spiritual separation from parental values, and the need to choose whether to accept or reject parental values; the loss of spontaneous engagement with the world; and an increasing self-consciousness. With adolescence there will be (whether threatening, or actual) some significant degree of isolation and loneliness. 

The happy childhood may lead to the attempt to reject adolescence in at least some of its aspects; a holding-onto childhood happiness - and this can work - to some degree, and for some time. 

However, sooner or later, adolescence will drive-away the spontaneity of childhood modes of being, and it will be discovered that they cannot be simulated convincingly. 

Therefore, adolescence will eventually separate us from the Original Participation of childhood, and precipitate us into the alienated state of the Consciousness Soul, as it is termed - which is the adolescent state-of-being of an individual, and also of our society. 

The pathological spiritual state of this modern (especially Western world) will then tend permanently to trap the maturing individual in this alienated state of a permanent adolescence; and modern people will be socially-encouraged to seek adolescent gratifications. 

(Hence the nature of modernity; and its images and goals.)

Indeed, in a world of materialism and spirit-rejection; a world where the divine is excluded from all public discourse and plays very little primary role in religious discourse; it requires a personal, individual, inwardly-motivated "quest" even to seek beyond the short-termist gratification - but purposelessness and meaninglessness - of modern pseudo-adulthood. 

The deficiencies of this state become more and more apparent with advancing age and the onset of old-age (when we recognize that feeling, looking and behaving younger is the only publicly-approved ideal); although the harshness of alienation may well be ameliorated considerably, albeit vicariously and temporarily, by creating a happy family life, and participating in the situation of a happy childhood for one's own children.   

But the temptation of an idealistic yearning for a return to a happier early life (or even an imagined happier earlier life - i.e. childhood as we know innately it should have been, and sometimes is), is a yearning temptation that will seldom diminish - unless some kind of a spiritual revolution and the goal of a state beyond perpetual adolescence is accomplished. 

Hence, a happy childhood presents a problem in the world as it now is - a problem that does not go-away unless it is overcome; unless that early happiness can be understood as a foretaste of some higher state of being that is yet to come, and which is indeed attainable. 

Some people tend towards a hoped-for return to that childhood state, or indeed a complete and permanent version of the partial and temporary childhood state, in the world after death... 

Such are the desires for a paradise of unselfconscious, merely-being after death - entailing the dissolving of our plaguing sense of self, and the cessation of that adult thinking which separates us from life, the world, other people. 

At extreme; the desire is a total rejection of consciousness and its curses; yearning for an afterlife without body, a life as a pure spirit that is not separated from the divine or is continuous-with the rest of the world... A bliss state, a comfortable sleep.

As it were, a return back through childhood to the womb, and beyond into non-being - non-separation. This entailing a recognition of the futility of this earthly life - handing-back the entrance ticket of incarnation into mortality, and acknowledging that this world is wrong, bad, a torment - something best left as soon as possible.  

However, the happy childhood can be taken otherwise. It can be learned-from, instead of being either rejected (in favour of permanent arrested development in adolescence), or else something to be recapitulated (as some version of a future eternal and completed childhood). 

Childhood happiness can taken as evidence of the possibility of happiness as a separate and incarnated being; an experience from which we can learn in order to move beyond and to something higher, more satisfying across an eternal timescale. 

By my understanding, it is the possibility of an eternal higher happiness that is precisely what is on-offer with resurrection into eternal Heavenly life. 

But that is only fully and finally accessible via the portals of death. So how can that be helpful to our life here-and-now? 

The first thing to say is that the possibility of future post-mortal higher-happiness does not in any way guarantee present happiness in this mortal life. Indeed, the specifics of this mortal life - its degrees of happiness and misery, are as variable as the number of people alive and who have died. 

To look forward in faith to salvation does not "make us happy" here-and-now.   

But - such a prospect before us does make the miseries of this mortal life potentially worthwhile; and it is up-to each of us to realize this potential by learning from our suffering - as well as by striving-for and valuing our present happiness. 

Recognizing Final Participation - inspiration plus personal creativity

If we assume that because Final Participation (FP) is our destiny, what God wants from us at this stage of things; then perhaps it ought not to be impossibly difficult or rare. Perhaps we should expect to see Final Participation in our own lives; and in those of at least some people whose work is recoded in the public domain. 

Maybe the difficulty in locating Final Participation is in recognizing it as something genuinely different and new, and therefore misclassifying it under old categories - because the old categories are all we know.  

To clarify; Final Participation is an engagement with reality, in which we bring to bear our own creativity - to participate in creating. 

This could be participation with divine creation (this is what I understand to happen in Heaven); or participation with another person's created work - perhaps someone from the past. 

This can serve as an illustration - taking the example of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (LotR). 

Two widely known categories of engagement with life, with works; could be termed 'projection' and 'channeling' - and I will contrast these with Final Participation.

Projection

Projection is not intentionally a participation, because it describes what happens when a reader of Tolkien projects his own concerns onto the book. 

This seems to be the usual practice of Tolkien mass-fandom. Except minimally; the projecting fan-reader does not experience what Tolkien himself felt or intended; but instead uses the book (selectively and distortingly) as fuel for his own interests. 

For example such a fan might read LotR as-if it were a "sword and sorcery" novel, being interested only by the fights, magic, monsters, spectacle etc; and either not-noticing, skipping-over or forgetting the other material. Or, to judge by the content of one genre of fan-fictions; quite a few readers even seem to read Tolkien in a subversive fashion, as fuel for their personal sexual fantasies.   

Therefor projection is not a form of 'participation' except very minimally, unconsciously, unintentionally; because the intent is to impose oneself upon the-other. 

Channeling

The ideal behind the form of participation I am calling channeling, is that the reader become so totally immersed in the work that he identifies completely with the author. 

This is a contemplative, not creative, ideally-non-participating form of engagement - because the ideal is that the reader be passive, absorptive, and reflective. The reader seeks to lose-himself-in the work 

This is, indeed, the form that has been called 'inspiration' and which used-to be (in the pre-modern era) the form that so-called 'creativity' took. The 'creator' was supposed to be a clear-channel for God/ The Gods/ The Muses - and himself to play no personal role in what emerged.

In other words; with channeling, with inspired work, the ideal is non-participation. 

This channeling is therefore a particular example of what Owen Barfield termed Original Participation - which is the primal relationship with the world of the child or the early tribal Man. It does have elements of participating; but only in the secondary sense that we are then (and almost fully) engaged with the world, with life, with other beings. But (when channeling works) we are so immersed in the flow of external things, that while our own participation in them is inevitable, it is intentionally minimal.  

Perhaps the ideal of the medieval sculptor working on one of the great cathedrals might serve as an illustration. He is contented to be anonymous, and forgotten, and to work in exactly the same style as every other mason - because his personal nature should 'stand-aside' and should not have anything to do with the product. I have heard of musicians (conductors and soloists) who regard their interpretations likewise: they try to identify so closely with the composer that they lose-themselves in the perormance altogether. 

In terms of Tolkien, this is perhaps the ideal of the best kind of literary critic of the old school: he attempts to expound Tolkien, and not to 'interfere' by interjecting personal views or evaluations. In particular, he is very wary of 'projection', which he regards as itself a gross and unscholarly error, leading to distortions such as anachronism.  

Final Participation

For an example of FP we need to go to Tolkien himself, in his writing of Lord of the Rings; and to that activity which he termed "subcreation". 

This - I suggest - is the relationship between JRRT and his 'source material' - which came from the author's engagement with his academic subject of philology (the language-focused study of old texts), and his other concerns such as mythology, and the matter of England. 

I believe that Tolkien not only had a deep immersion in his sources; but that he also went beyond immersion in his 'sources'. That is; JRRT went beyond the contemplative-passive processes of channeling, and brought his own creativity to bear on the material that he was experiencing from-within. 

There are innumerable examples. Tolkien's elves are rooted in Icelandic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic material from his philosophical studies - the words for elves, their histories, their implications (as discussed by Tom Shippey in Roots and Branches); but Tolkien also brought a deep and intense personal interest and concern with elves - which he envisaged as an ideal type of certain aspects of Men; blessed with innate health and extreme longevity, greater love of the earth, greater skills and intelligence, and magical powers. 

And yet Tolkien felt a need to explain (to himself, primarily) how and why it was that elves were (more or less) estranged from, then replaced by, Men - who became rulers of this earth; despite that Men seemed inferior, overall. 

To generate acceptable answers to these (and other) questions about elves, problems about myth, England and so forth; Tolkien needed to go beyond existing material and theories: he needed to enlist his own creativity. 

I consider Tolkien's writing of LotR as a publicly-available example of Final Participation. 

In the first place JRRT was inspired by many, already existing, source materials; and had immersed himself in these materials so that he could, when needed or desired, 'channel'/ expound/ explain these materials in their own terms, in the context of the times and places of their composition. 

But in the second place Tolkien wanted to do more than just passively be-inspired-by; he wanted actively to generate something new by bringing to bear from-himself to participate with that which others had created.  

This was (pretty much) what he termed subcreation. 

To generalize, I think it would therefore be reasonably accurate to state that:

Final Participation = Inspiration plus Personal Creativity 

As such, examples can be generated from other areas of the arts, sciences etc. The pianist Glenn Gould did not just 'channel' Bach (as some have wrongly claimed), because, although he was steeped in Bach's creative mind and intent - Gould also added his own creativity, to make something participated. A synthesis, rather than recreation. 

A creative scientist of genius must, of course, build upon the valid science of his precursors; but as well as selecting from among the already-existing scientific literature that he deeply understands in its own terms (which might be said to 'inspire' him); and as well as extrapolating this work; the great scientist will bring something new, something original: from himself - in order to make a qualitative breakthrough.  

In sum; I hope the above might help make clearer what is meant by Final Participation; and to help recognize when it occurs in our own lives. 

Why are we, here, now; so much more vulnerable to wrong ideas than Men of the past?

It seem clear to me that Men of the past could believe all kinds of wrong things (and even have massively contrasting religions), without coming to serious harm. 

There was a very broad area of what seemed like common sense that meant almost all people, everywhere, shared broadly the same ideas of The Good.  

But that now wrong ideas, and almost any wrong idea seems to suffice, leads to the grossest evil of value-inversions; such that people nowadays consciously, actively and strategically pursue lies, ugliness and sin (and persecute truth, beauty and virtue) in ways that simply did not happen in the past.  

The best explanation for this difference of which I know, is Owen Barfield's account of Original Participation. 

What this suggests is that originally Men were spontaneously, and mostly un-consciously, immersed-in and controlled-by the divine and spirit world - from birth and through their lives. 

This influence came-through in all kinds of natural instincts; and these instincts shaped all traditional social practices - without awareness or planning. 

These ancient Men were less free, less consciously aware - and they just accepted and followed all kinds of behaviours which - ultimately - derived from the nature of divine creation. Men were mentally part-of divine creation, and therefore what they thought and did was broadly concordant with divine creation.    

However; across the ages and through the centuries this has dwindled. 

Men have become more conscious and autonomous of the natural and created; and in recent generations the immersive and unconscious, instinctive, controlling link between the divine and spiritual, and each Man's thinking, has been all-but severed (except during early childhood). We are cut-off from God and divine creation. 

This phase we currently inhabit is what Barfield calls the Consciousness Soul; and it explains why bad/ wrong/ evil ideas now have such a devastatingly inversional and weird effect on individuals and societies. 

There is still a sense in which we all still already-know (naturally, spontaneously, instinctively) what is Good (i.e. true, beautiful, virtuous, in harmony with God and creation) -- Yet that knowledge lacks the automatic regulatory power it used to possess. Instead, we are often deeply suspicious of this innate kind of knowing. 

At any rate, such knowing is far more easily confused or over-written than ever before in history - often as a prelude to its inversion.   

 

If all this is so - what does it mean and imply? 

It means that, in some sense, we can and should return to living in harmony with God and creation and in connection with the world of spirit. 

But it does not imply that we should recreate the behaviours and societies of the past. Indeed that is strictly impossible; since we are now so utterly, radically, different from the Human Beings that used to inhabit such societies. 

A society based-upon the natural and spontaneous connectedness of people to God, cannot happen when people are - as a matter of fact - Not spontaneously connected to God!

If not, then what? If not the impossible reversion - how instead might we move towards the harmony with God that Christians desire? Well, one helpful step is to identify and correct wrong ideas of our own. 

The fact that these wrong ideas were (pretty much) harmless to Men of the past does not mean that these same ideas will not harm us now. 

Bad ideas now are widely and deeply toxic to our whole alignment with the world of divine creation - therefore we absolutely need to become aware of them, and correct them.  

It's a big job - for a Christian to identify that which used-to-be regarded as harmless, or even as necessary, to his faith - and then reject it as incompatible with the basic aim of Christian life! 

Yet something like that, seems to be the special and vital spiritual task of this time and place.