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.

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. 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be - Past Times 1986-2012 (or, The ebbing of the Intellectual Soul)

The UK retail company (shops, and later a mail order web site) called Past Times, was very much a phenomenon of the 1990s and early 2000s. 

It was a kind of gift shop that specialized in nostalgia; and it did a pretty good job of both fuelling and supplying it; with modestly priced reprints and facsilimlies of old books, pictures and prints, replicas of old toys, artefacts, jewellery and the like. 

Around the millennium it was a prime browsing place to get presents (including for oneself), and seemed like a permanent fixture in the high rent zones of the city high street. 

Yet in 2012 Past Times went bust and was wound up altogether the year later. What's more it was not replaced. Nostalgia stores became a thing of the past...

 

As always there are multiple potential explanations; but my spiritual interpretation is that Past Times was the last gasp of Original Participation - of the ancient and early childhood experience of spontaneous immersion in the world - of belonging; which has gradually dwindled down almost to nothing through the centuries, and especially in the modern era. 

In its commercial way, the shop was providing a secular equivalent of the robes, rituals, music and poetic words of the churches; providing a kind-of "system" of symbols; via which individuals could relate to reality - as had happened so effectively at the peak of the middle ages.  

This medieval consciousness is termed the Intellectual Soul; and it worked by the individual learning (or being socialized-into) and then assimilating; the correspondences of a symbol system to particular aspects of the spiritual life. After which, the symbol will reliably, and powerfully, "trigger" the appropriate spiritual response.

Well nostalgia-systems, such as that provided by Past Times, did something analogous with the childhood memories of an earlier (and childhood) world where life had automatic purpose and meaning, where there was an almost unconscious sense of security and stability.  

Nostalgia continued to be effective for a while after the effectiveness of religious symbol systems had become a tiny-minority phenomenon; on the basis of common childhood experience having changed less, and more slowly, than the adult world. 

But childhood changed, people changed, consciousness changed - and nostalgia lost its instant-magic. Also, the Establishment stepped-up its subversion and suppression of nostalgia; to the point that now the past is assumed to be evil. 

In the mass media and among the ubiquitous bureaucracies of this era; "the past" is at-best apologized-for (e.g. those disclaimers before broadcasting old films, about the attitudes they embody being "worng now, and wrong then!"). In the mainstream; the past is edited, invented, and rewritten for "modern sensibilities.

And increasingly the past is hidden and destroyed. 

Symbol systems are weaker, little wanted, and are disappearing, everywhere you look: in religion, and in the social institutions generally. 

The "medieval-type" Intellectual Soul consciousness is almost extinct in The West: we are all alienated now. 

The Past Times era was therefore a particular phase in the development of human consciousness, and of Western secular materialism - the final ebbing of the medieval mind-set. 

It could not last, and it did not last; and enjoyment of past times has now become a secret and guilty niche pleasure - or a defiant act of socio-political resistance. 

NOTE ADDED: Lest I be misunderstood; I am not saying that the Intellectual Soul is utterly obsolete, nor that symbol systems ought to be eschewed; but instead that we cannot (therefore should not) expect too much from them. Symbol systems are much weaker than in the past, and also modern Man is far more aware that the medieval consciousness was always a compromise, a half-way house and transitional, and entailing considerable residual alienation. It is unideal, after all, for Men to relate to ultimate realities only and always via intermediaries. And especially when the intermediate symbol system is regarded as the sole and mandatory way to relate to ultimate reality; as with medieval churches. This never was true, although it was a good approximation in some times and places. But now, it is clearly false, and assertions to the contrary are incoherent and (ultimately) made in bad faith. In sum; I see Intellectual Soul symbol systems of various kinds as retaining a potentially helpful role in the Christian life - few can dispense with them, and certainly I can't! But going back to medieval consciousness cannot be the way forward from here; any more than the (sixties counter-cultural) attempt to return to the the un-conscious spontaneous and immersive spirituality (Original Participation) of tribal hunter gatherers.  

Laeth on the evolution of consciousness and the Final Participation of Jesus

Edited from this post and its comments: 

...‘wrt. the evolution of consciousness’ and "final participation"...  

The first bit that seems important to me is that [modern consciousness] is not a general state, by which I mean, it’s not defined by the age but it depends on the people. Not every human alive during the European middle ages had a medieval mindset, not every human alive during the axial age had an axial age mindset - but rather, specific places and specific peoples influenced by specific individuals varied greatly. 

And similarly, and more importantly, this is still the case, and is yet another challenge and part of the satanic plan to prevent modern consciousness from emerging from its womb: the majority of the world’s current population does not, in fact, have a modern mindset. 

As moderns we have to deal with this, in several different ways; though of course without the recognition of different types of consciousness, past or present, it is impossible to. 

Equally important, from my perspective, is this: I am very much convinced that the greats of the past and present, be they saints or prophets or artists, operated in a more evolved state of consciousness than their surroundings, and thus their work can help to bring our own consciousness forward. 

On the flip side, in every age there are those who, even though they have a more advanced consciousness, try to pull it back: in our case, the traditionalists are precisely that, and whether they are aware of it or not, and most are not, they are doing the bidding of hell. 

As a paramount and primary example of the positive side, I am convinced Jesus was, not only very well advanced in consciousness compared to his milieu, but really the only man to achieve Final Participation while in this life, and the raising of Lazarus is directly related to this. 

Final Participation will be a sort of synthesis of Original Participation, which was very much an embodied experience, and the disembodied experience of Mind that modernity achieved. so basically, we will have a body of flesh, but also the powers of 'the air', so to speak. 

The raising of Lazarus seems to me to be that: Full Mind raised in Full Flesh. that Jesus was able to do it before he himself resurrected tells me that he had already achieved Final Participation in life, but then went through death to open the door for the rest of us, otherwise he would have to do it personally for each one, like he did with Lazarus, which is definitely not the way. 

Why did he do it for Lazarus then? First because he was his friend and he loved him, and second because, speculating here, he had a specific mission for Lazarus.

**

I would only add, by way of explanation, that the evolution of consciousness can be understood as a development, analogous to the development of a human being from childhood through adolescence to maturity (with this scheme mapping onto human history, and the current "modern" consciousness as the adolescent phase". 

As with the development of a human being, such evolution is not a matter of improvement in goodness. Clearly, many (most?) people are "better" as children, especially as young children, than they are as adolescents. 

Yet we can, nonetheless, see that adolescence is a further ("higher" development than childhood, in terms of becoming more self-aware, which is a step towards higher agency and (however abused in practice) the possibility of greater freedom. 

We could say that a young child is immersed in his environment; and if this is a loving and "good" environment, then the child will spontaneously, passively (ie. by outer-influences) be substantially (but not completely) aligned with divine creation.

In other words, a young child originally "participates" in creation - hence this developmental stage of consciousness is called Original Participation. 

The adolescent, by his greater self-awareness, has the potential for greater independence from his environment; and this archetypally goes to the point of ceasing automatically to accept much of that which he absorbed as a child (good, as well as anti-good: that is, evil).

To become an adult in Final Participation of consciousness, the adolescent should voluntarily and consciously affirm the love, goodness, and truths which as a child he knew only unconsciously. He should, in ultimate terms, voluntarily and consciously choose to align himself - commit himself - to love of God, divine creation, following Jesus Christ to resurrection.

Clearly, this desirable state of affairs is not achieved by everybody, and those who achieve it do so only intermittently and partially - except for Jesus Christ, who achieved it completely and permanently (in the three years of ministry, after his baptism, at any rate).  

Unlike the earlier stages of the evolution of consciousness (i.e Original Participation, and "modern consciousness" - also called the Consciousness Soul); to be-achieving Final Participation is therefore understood as an intrinsically good state. 

Final Participation can be achieved in this mortal life only-when - and always-when - we are consciously and voluntarily motivated by Christian love. This happens permanently after death, by resurrection, for those who choose that path.   

Another way of thinking of Final Participation is therefore that it is the divine mode of consciousness; divine in its many and unique forms of each particular Being (unique because shaped and constrained by the attributes of that Being, at any particular point in time, and its development). 

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.   

What kind of thinking we should be aiming for, and the essence of Anthroposophy, in 10 minutes (from Joel Wendt)

This is a very dense video describing that thinking for which I believe we ought to be aiming; here termed Pure Thinking. 

It is also described as the true meaning of "Anthroposophy" - which is not content; but a method or path or state-of-being, "leading from the spiritual in Man, to the spiritual in creation" (This being my translation of Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts Number 1) . 

I have also called Pure Thinking primary thinking and heart-thinking. It produces the experience that Owen Barfield called Final Participation - that is, a thinking that contains awareness of its own participation in the creation of reality. 

What it is, and what it does; the above 10 minute video from Joel Wendt will tell you.

"How to do it" is something that depends on motivation, and a proper motivation cannot be conjured to order... 

I would say that Pure Thinking can only happen in consequence of a motivation from love and to Good, which could be analyzed further as a motivation towards the transcendentals of truth, beauty and virtue. 

Thus I have experienced Pure Thinking when doing science or philosophy, when creating some artistic artefact or performance, and when genuinely trying to discern the right choice or path in life. 

But I cannot long sustain it, and the attempt ends it; nor can I have it for wanting or trying...

Probably because such motivation is usually a mask for the desire for a pleasurable experience, to achieve some-thing for egotistical or expedient reasons, or from wanting to escape the mundane boredom of everyday living.

Good motivation therefore comes before Pure Thinking - yet Pure Thinking is the best possible way to discern the evaluations of our divine self - potentially forming a virtuous circle (if only we can refrain from trying to use its understandings for unworthy goals!).  

Note: In fact I do not believe that even Rudolf Steiner himself could engage in Pure Thinking at will, sustainedly, frequently, or reliably. Instead I am pretty sure that from the time he joined the Theosophical Society (some years after publishing the philosophical books, mentioned in the video) Steiner usually deployed partial mediumistic trance states of 'altered consciousness' in order to generate much of the content of the vast volume of published Spiritual Science... 

Which is why most of the content is wrong. 

Stanley Messenger on distinguishing healthly from unhealthly "psychic experiences"

Daily inner life for the majority of westerners is nowadays little more than a lonely restless chat-show. 

Apart from those who simply talk to themselves all day there are many whose inner lives are numbly silent till someone addresses them. Then there is a minority who pray, and a still smaller number who meditate. Of those a tiny number reach a level of mystical contemplation, or, on a different path, give themselves over to some degree of trance-mediumship. 

In recent years there has been an increase in a kind of inner life which differs from these in a significant way... In these situations a person’s focus of identity, the groundedness at the centre of their own consciousness, is not only not weakened or disturbed, it is on the contrary considerably strengthened and enhanced. 

By natural endowment, or more frequently by a degree of more or less conscious self-training, often through meditation or kindred practices, normal consciousness has been expanded and enhanced. 

The experience is that the person feels there is more inner space. Within this space all kinds of imaginative exercises can take place. 

Different people have different talents in this regard. Some are more easily able to visualise inner events. Some have more facility in hearing them. Others again have the facility for constructing a framework for other conscious presences to occupy. 

People’s experiences are almost infinitely varied in this regard. Some people remember their awareness of other entities in their inner world since early childhood, often lost as they grow older. Others construct inner worlds which are in the first place almost wholly imaginary, and only gradually become occupied with thoughts and pictures in later life which are recognisably derived from other realities. 

The great difference between genuine, healthy psychic experience and the pathological situations described above is that the healthy experiences are always in control. Even when quite unfamiliar expansions take place they always do so from within. 

It is the self-awareness which grows, and the self­-awareness which contains the expansion. One never has the sense of losing touch. 

Moreover, everything is experienced as being under the protection of love. This inner love is the crucial yardstick. In pathological conditions there is always an underlying uneasiness and fear.

Excerpted and edited from Dancing with Tears - by Stanley Messenger, 1999

Stanley Messenger (1917-2013) was a scholar of Rudolf Steiner, whose explanations I often find to be clearer and more memorable than those of his Master. 

He also gave special attention to this question of what might be termed 'occult', 'psychic' or 'clairvoyant' experiences; and how these have been changed by the evolutionary-development of Western Man's consciousness - and especially in the period approaching and following the millennium.  

Unsurprisingly, and like Steiner himself in this regard; Stanley M was not able fully to live up to his own peak level of understanding; and often 'lapsed' back into seeking and overvaluing exactly the kind of spiritual experiences that - elsewhere - he so lucidly had explained were dubious and prone to mislead.

Nonetheless, explanations like that above are very helpful in understanding the kind of thing we ought to be aiming for - the kind of thing I have (in different words) variously tried to formulate as primary-thinking/ heart-thinking/ direct-knowing - or Owen Barfield's concept of Final Participation.  

Whereas spiritual experiences of the past tended to be approached by striving for an opening of the mind, a passive acceptance of - and being overwhelmed-by - perceptual information (seeing visions and hearing words, having conversations)...

What Stanley M is describing could, by contrast, be regarded as conscious and actively experienced throughout, and not-perceptual - but instead directly known in our thinking. 

Instead of being overwhelmed by the experience - such as happens in trance mediumship, or automatic writing - the participant retains a sense of full control of a process of thinking that is quantitatively (even qualitatively) strengthened and increased in scope and surety - compared with normal thinking. 

And while past experiences were often sought for practical and functional purposes; the newer experiences will only happen "under the protection of love" - which I take to mean that love (not curiosity, not usefulness, not power - for instance) must be the motivation.  

The main problem with the new kind of psychic experiences is that of wishful-thinking. This temptation is, to some extent, avoidable by being aware of false motivations such as ego or advantage; and by refraining from learning material for the purposes of teaching, or to-order: e.g. in groups convened at a particular time and place for the purpose. 

This is one of the areas in which I think Stanley M went wrong - as you may see from reading more of the Dances with Tears booklet - he describes working for many years with a group - dedicated to making contact with spiritual beings; aiming to collecting detailed information from such beings on specified topics; and engaging in lecturing, workshop, and writing projects in order to disseminate the resulting material. 

The result was mostly made-up wishful-thinking, in line with the group's pre-existing beliefs and prejudices; and in conformity with too much, too-credulously-accepted, mainstream New Age output of that era (1980s and 90s). 

The genuine, valid spiritual teaching was mostly swamped by the sheer volume of personality-level, socially-shaped, stuff. 

Indeed, in a lecture, Stanley M acknowledged that he had been told that only about 5% of the material he got was genuinely from the supposed communicating entity (viz. the Archangel Michael) - the other 95% from himself. 

While Stanley felt that even 5% of spiritual truth was valuable; my feeling is that the amount of conceptual distortion with so much personal invention is so great that it is, in practice, impossible to filter-out the truly factual 5%. 

At any rate, what he and his group got by such means seems (as with the similar case of Steiner) to be mostly wrong - in many, very misleading, ways. 

My strong feeling is that it would be much preferable to have only the 5% that is valid; and be content with a small volume of relatively simple 'information' -- than to build all sorts of castles in the air (on subjects like UFOs and Crop Circles, and an impending mass spiritual awakening) from great swathes of wishful-thinking; exacerbated (not corrected) by consensus-group-dynamics.

Nonetheless, with these caveats; I am confident that Stanley Messenger had much wisdom to impart concerning the principles of what is most needed here-and-now. 

And if he did not personally live-up-to the highest levels of his aspirations, and was tripped-up by his own need for spiritual excitement and a desire for feeling incremental spiritual progress; then so are we, all of us, unable to stay at our own best levels at all times. 

As always, the material needs to be explored in a discriminating fashion, and with properly 'loving' motivation; if the good and valid it genuinely includes, is to be sifted from the wishful-thinking, misleading, and irrelevant material. 

The existential experience of freedom

I sometimes wonder how many other people have experience of pure existential freedom; a recognition of oneself 'standing before' reality, and choosing how to regard it. 

I suppose that such an experience is not universal, and used to be much rarer than it is now. Now, I suspect that such an experience is almost forced-upon people at some point, or often - but the response to it is extremely varied. 

Existential freedom brings a recognition that - upon our choice - hinges much else; because knowing reality requires something from us, requires our 'participation' - otherwise outside-us is meaningless chaos. 

From our freedom, which comes from our conscious selfhood; is where we recognize divine creation as a reality - and as a possibility. 

It seems to me that it is at this moment of experiencing freedom, that we make the primary decision; which is either to join-with the nature and purposes of pre-existing divine creation - or not. 

Among those who choose to take the side of divine creation; it is (or should be, I would say) from the situation of existential freedom that they decide how to ally with the divine, how to set-about our lives, what attitudes and assumptions are required. 

Some decide they want to hand-back the ticket of freedom, and of consciousness that enables it: these experience freedom only to reject it. 

In other words; the prime and final act of freedom may be to live as-if there is no freedom; as if freedom does not exist, or is impossible. 

Others make a choice - and then forget that they have chosen! - and tell themselves there was no choice, that the choice was compelled, that there was only one 'rational' choice...

Yet, in freedom there is the experience of knowing that we - alone, as individuals - have the power to reject divine creation. We can each, successfully, defy God; in the sense of rejecting and working against God. 

We have the power to seek other goals, to make alliances out-with divine creation - or against God. 

We can even 'go it alone' - choose to make our own knowledge, meaning purpose - unshared: be God to our-self. 

It boils down to love: the capacity for love, the desire to make love fundamental. 

In knowing freedom, we know that divine creation derives-from love - creation is itself the manifestation of love. Thus to participate in divine creation entails living by love.

Without love, or in opposition to it, creation is experienced as alien, intrusive; is not wanted.

So Much is - or should be - decided from this experience of existential freedom!

Gareth Knight - Romantic Christian

In 2011, Gareth Knight (1939-2022) published an autobiography titled I call it Magic which is easy and enjoyable to read on the surface; yet contains several deeper layers of implied content that have only revealed themselves on re-reading.

Of particular interest was his account of the transformation in his own 'magical life' throughout his adult life; especially the changes in what he 'called' magic, the means by which he reached the state of enchantment or poetry, and the actual content of these magical-states. 

Knight began as a formal ritual magician, ascending through the prolonged training and initiatory steps of the Society of the Inner Light (founded a generation earlier, as a Christian organization, by Dion Fortune); he went on to found his own ritual magic group - on similar, though looser, lines; then to 'staging' much larger annual weekend events (almost 'happenings') at an anthroposophical centre called Hawkwood. 

By Knight's own account, in the 1970s to the early 1980s, these weekends attained a very powerful level of magical activity among the participants (who had been trained in the requisite methods of concentration and visualization). He then stopped doing this, and moved on to less formal and more improvisatory styles of magic either alone, with his wife and daughter, or in small and private groups. 

After the turn of the millennium his magic practice had changed further. In December of 2004 he was invited back to the Hawkwood weekend; which had changed considerably over the previous couple of decades (the following quotations are from Chapter 31 of I called it Magic) :

The occasion was a jolly romp, with the place filled to capacity, and a rich variety of activity. [But] Power was not ramped up to the degree that it had been in the early Hawkwood days...   

In other words, the experience was less-strongly magical, less enchanted than it had been. In other words; this corresponds to my observations on the declining power of symbolism and ritual through the late 20th century.  

Knight does not draw attention to the meaning of these changes for his inner life; but describes how in fact his practices changed - in the direction of becoming more individual, personally based, and exploratory (rather than relying-on an established and quasi-objective system of symbols, rituals, and group activity). 

Rooted in his study of French language and literature (in which subject he did a degree in later life); Knight embarked on an engagement with the medieval French Arthurian poet Chretien de Troyes:

I took upon myself the task of going through each of Chretien's romances as if both he and I were present, travelling through the whole scenario from start to finish as a kind of directed visualization, and writing it all down...

It then filtered into my head the realization that much that I had witnessed in this was was not chivalrous knights going to the aid of damsels in distress but accounts of their initiation into fairyland - for there was a strong case for seeing the principal female characters as faery rather than human. 

This led on to what Knight termed faery 'contacts' - which then led to writing several books deriving from these contacts. What this meant he explains further: 

It dealt in imagery but with a philosophical intent, yet a wisdom expressed more through the medium of a story than by intellectual definitions. To make the contact it was necessary to build a scenario [i.e. in imagination] something like a questing knight discovering a castle in a particular symbolic shape, and then entering into it... with a ... direct feeling of relationship with the fabric of the building itself. 

After further description of his imagined but real-seeming experiences; Knight elaborates the resulting new and deeper engagement with nature:

This kind of thing was at a different level from local countryside experiences where contact was virtually devoid of intellect but impacted more on the emotional and etheric levels... Along with contacts... came a greater sense of presence and communion with the world of nature, and particularly trees...

It may well be that experience and wisdom of this nature comes with age, which is [an] aspect of the Merlin and Nimue story... But there is no real need to await one's dotage for a realization of these things.

  

What Gareth Knight seems to me to be describing here, is a kind of recapitulation of Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield's scheme of the development of consciousness. The ritual magic was the Intellectual Soul era, characteristic of classical and medieval culture. 

Contact bears some relationship to 'channeling' of spiritual Beings - which he also did for example in a channeled series of direct communication (much like taking dictation) of 1993, published as The Abbey Papers. 

But 'contact' comes across to me as much more of a two-way interaction between himself and a spiritual Being - and not necessarily in words, nor in images - i.e. more direct than language- or symbol-mediated. 

Knight then moved towards what sound very much like Final Participation - which is something like a recapitulation in conscious thinking of what was a much more passive and unconscious in the spontaneous animistic Original Participation of early childhood and tribal Man. 

Animistic, because it recognizes the world as consisting of living, conscious Beings with which one may have relationships and communication. Knight also seems to be moving towards a communication less based on perceptions and visions, and more a matter of what I have called Direct Knowing: that is direct, wordless and imageless communication in thinking. 

In other words, a direct communion between Beings, such that the thinking of one is participated-in by the thinking of another. 

Once Gareth Knight had reached this kind of 'magic' I think he has largely left-behind the formal and institutional roots of his practice, and indeed its 'objective' aspects, where experiences were shared via a common language and symbolism that could be relied-upon to evoke the same inner states in its participants.

It seems he has - in practice, if not in terms of theorization - fully Romantic Christian; in that he takes an inner, intuitive and personal responsibility for whatever 'methods' he uses to attain magical states of mind (within the over-arching and primary Christian metaphysical framework).   

Knight puts this change down to his own personal development, experiences, expediency, and ageing - but such is the generality of such a development that I interpret it as driven by inner and divinely-destined changes in the human consciousness of Western Man. 

What all this seems to mean is that (here and now) we cannot rely upon external and institutional forms of spirituality to attain 'participation' in the world; and the language of 'objective' communication of spiritual experiences has weakening and withered. 

Yet, on the positive side, we can develop distinctive (perhaps unique) personal 'aids' and methods (i.e. 'contacts' occurring inside thinking, rather than as external 'events), that will achieve the participation which is natural, good, and divinely-intended. 

Also, that strong forms of achieved participation are likely to be more animistic and personal - engagement with particular Beings - than the abstract forms of earlier symbolism. 

     

Whether Gareth Knight would have agreed with my interpretation of his life and development is perhaps doubtful... 

It does rather involve a cutting-off of the branch upon which his life's work rested: that is, the general validity of some particular kinds of ritual, symbols, group-activity; and the communication of these in abstract and written forms, and by speech. 

But his desire to use more narrative story-like communications; his primary mode of magic in later life being a personal, inter-Being and two-way 'contact'; and the continually-evolving nature of the subject matter and formal techniques of his magic - all suggest that there was exactly such an evolution; and that Gareth Knight's life ended with him being implicitly a genuine and fully-realized Romantic Christian. 

Where are 'other worlds' located? The 'mental block' of modern consciousness.

I've changed my mind on this topic several times, over the course of this blog. It is an important issue, and one where I think we probably need a coherent answer to avoid spirituality being sabotaged by corrosive doubt.  

The general question has many specific versions. One is to ask where exactly Heaven is located - especially considering that Christians believe in resurrection, so that the vagaries of spirits being everywhere (and nowhere) are denied us. 

Is Heaven (inhabited by the resurrected dead, walking-around...) up in the sky, outer space, a remote planet? All answers seem either evasive or absurd.

Another version is the Underworld (the Dwat), or the world after death (Sheol, Hades), the 'Inner World', the Collective Unconscious - or Collective Consciousness... people talk as if these are locations, or domains - but where? Why can't we detect them?

Then there is Faerie, Elfland - is that under a mound, in or through a forest, across the seas - or maybe on a different plane of existence through-which we must travel? 

It is easy to reduce answers to absurdity; in a modern world where we assume we have explored the whole planet, and that 'scientific instruments' allow us to detect anything that is real. 

I suggest here that, as so often when a question seem unanswerable - this is because we are asking the wrong question. We are assuming that The World is reality, and our knowing of that world is secondary (and optional) thing; an essentially passive matter of recognizing reality. 

In other words, we are assuming that our minds have no significant role in the existence of reality, except to fail to notice it or to distort it - we assume that real reality (Kant's das Ding an sich: the thing-in-itself) is out there and 'solidly real', even when unthought, unperceived, unknown. 

Yet this almost universal habit of thinking about reality is incoherent - therefore wrong (as demonstrated by, amongst others, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfeld). Instead, a coherent understanding of reality must include the consciousness of the knower.

(Without the knowing-consciousness of a being, there is only meaningless disorder - literal primordial chaos.)

This is Not to say that consciousness simply makes-up any reality it wants, a reality without any reference to anything out-there, because there is nothing out-there (ie. philosophical 'idealism') - it is instead to say there is no knowing, no knowable, without consciousness; so that consciousness and reality cannot be separated.

We may notice that this question "where are other worlds?" was Not regarded as a problem in much of the past in human history. The answer seemed obvious, or else an answer was not requested or required.

And the question was not a problem because people knew other worlds, people once perceived these other worlds for themselves - either on an everyday basis, or (later) in special states of consciousness induced by religious ritual, dreams, trances - or whatever. 

That which is perceived is not regarded as unanswerable. 

Therefore I conclude that the question is a product of changes in human consciousness. 

We ask where other worlds are located because Modern Man no longer spontaneously perceives other-worlds, and has mostly lost the ability to perceive other-worlds. 

In other words; Modern man cannot know the location of 'other worlds' because he has developed a mental block. 

The other-worlds are still 'there', where they always were, but Modern Man is blocked from perceiving them by a change in his consciousness*. 

Indeed, the other-worlds can still be perceived, but only in altered states of consciousness that, to some extent, undo the recent changes of consciousness - and diminish our level of consciousness. 

Inner-worlds no longer impose on Men, that is why they are not perceived. To know inner-worlds for has become for Modern Men a matter of knowing, not perceiving. 

A matter, that is, of direct-knowing.  

We should not strive to 'see through' the blocks, nor to dissolve them away - because they are there for good reasons; instead we can think over and around the blocks.

In other words: Final Participation.  

Then we will know where are other-worlds...

And the answer is: in this same world... 

Where they have always been. 

(*The reason for this change in consciousness is another matter, dealt with extensively elsewhere in this blog. In a nutshell, the mental block has the positive function of increasing freedom, agency; by removing us from the former state of automatic/ habitual, unavoidable and unconscious subjection to God's created reality. The mental block gives us the freedom positively to choose to align-ourselves with divine creation. In other words the block both imposes and gifts Modern Man's with personal responsibility for his spiritual affiliation.) 

Mystical-Peak experiences of two kinds - Original- or Final-Participation in Colin Wilson's Super Consciousness (2009)

Colin Wilson, and his wife Joy, in 2009

I am re-reading Colin Wilson's last substantive book - Super Consciousness: the quest for the peak experience (2009) - which serves as a summation of this area of his interest that began with The Outsider (1956). Wilson cites and describes a 'variety of religious experiences' - or Peak Experiences, in Abraham Maslow's terminology - in which there was an alteration of consciousness and a feeling of well-being, elevation, understanding. 

Looking at Wilson's accounts of these experiences through the perspective on the evolutionary-development of consciousness that I have derived from Owen Barfield; I see the reports can be understood as beginning with our normal, everyday, mundane, socially-functional "Consciousness Soul" state of feeling cut-off from reality, alienated and trapped in superficiality. 

Consciousness Soul is the implicit baseline from-which Peak Experiences/ religious-mystical experience emerge. 

From this baseline, and despite that Wilson did not recognize this distinction; these mystical/peak experiences of positive 'Super Consciousness' can be understood as falling into Barfield's two categories of Original Participation and Final Participation.  

Most of the mystical experiences described can be regarded as a kind of functional impairment, and these seem like a reversion to the Original Participation of early childhood and tribal-Man, by a selective suppression of those (more recently developed) parts of the body (especially brain) needed for the manifestation of self-awareness in the Consciousness Soul stage. 

In other words, this kind of mystical experience deletes consciousness of 'the self' as a separate entity from 'reality'. 

Examples include those reported experiences of William James and Ouspensky which were triggered by nitrous oxide (laughing gas); and the same applies to other consciousness-altering drugs. 

Others were associated with dream-like passivity; stasis of the body, fainting, or sleep - and mentally there are descriptions of  becoming blissful in emotion yet unaware of any thinking (stopping the exhausting and futile treadmill of thoughts, worries, plans...); the apprehension of Time is suspended or deleted. 

The kitchen and garden were filled with golden light. I became conscious that at the centre of the Universe, and in my garden, was a great pulsing dynamo that ceaselessly poured-out love, This love poured over and through me, and I was part of it, and it wholly encompassed me. (Cited pages 54-5)

In this Original Participation mystical state; problems are not solved so much as dis-solved; it is not a matter of 'knowing everything' so much as recognizing that knowledge does not matter. 

Other, less common, reports of higher consciousness states sound more like Final Participation. In this state, the description is of thinking not stopping, but conversely having vastly greater power and comprehensiveness, such that the experience is one of 'knowing everything' - of direct-knowing without need for perception or for reasoning.

My train of thought accelerated and vastly improved in quality... New and convincing ideas came into my mind in a steady torrent, flaws in my existing ideas were illuminated, and as I made mental corrections to the the diminishing gaps in the logical sequence were filled by neat, brand-new linking concepts which made a beautiful logical pattern. (Cited page 56)

I interpret this difference as being due to the Original Participation being what Rudolf Steiner called an 'atavistic' state, that is a reversion to an earlier developmental-state (childhood, 'tribal' Man) which is being-induced by a lowering of consciousness,; resulting in a temporarily 'delirious' impairment of brain function (by drugs, drowsiness, hypnosis, illness etc). 

While Final Participation is an enhancement of consciousness, the next 'evolutionary step' towards a more-divine, and more free and independent, mode of thinking; in which thinking is clarified and strengthened; and increases in scope and validity. 

This relates to the 'flow state' Wilson describes earlier from the work of Csikczentmihalyi; which is associated with increased, indeed the highest, levels of functionality.

For instance; when people such as creative artists, artistic performers, athletes, and craftsmen sometimes attain their supreme performance. Sometimes called being 'in the zone' - they find themselves unerringly doing things they could not usually achieve, and with total confidence. 

Thus Original Participation reduces functionality, and constitutes 'time out'; whereas Final Participation is associated with the highest, most creative and adept, levels of functionality. 

Yet these two Super Conscious states - Final and Original: the one thinking, the other a cessation of thought; the one knowing without constraint, the other an indifference to knowledge; the one a flow, the other a suspension of time and movement; the one cognitive, the other contemplative... these states are not usually distinguished, are indeed generally conflated.  

I do, however, regard Original Participation as potentially-valuable - but mainly as a glimpse of alternatives, a 'holiday', a recharging process, a therapeutic rest. 

While Final Participation is - I hope - the ultimate state of God-like, Christ-like, divine consciousness in which - eventually - Christians will spend most of our post-mortal resurrected lives. 

As for the Consciousness Soul in which we Modern Men spend most of our mortal lives, trapped and cut-off form living and reality - I regard it as merely a transitional phase between Original and Final Participations - much as adolescence should be a swift transition between childhood and maturity; therefore I expect that 'mundane' consciousness will very seldom be experienced in Heaven - although it may be normal, or at least common, in Hell. 

"The head changes its function" - what happens with heart-thinking (Final Participation)

That's what Rudolf Steiner meant when he said "Hearts must begin to have thoughts". 

The head changes its function. It becomes the place where the thoughts the heart has, are reflected back to us, where we can perceive them...

Instead of the head being the place where thoughts originate at the behest of sense-perception. 

Slightly edited from a passage in an unpublished novel called The Intraterrestrials, by Stanley Messenger, 1995-6. 

This may be helpful in understanding the Steiner-derived concept of heart-thinking, and what it entails. 

The existing situation (in this era of the Consciousness Soul) is that the conscious thoughts in our head (our brain) derive from sense perceptions, including memories that derive from sense perceptions. That is, our head-thinking originates from the six senses of sights, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and proprioception (perception of inner viscera). 

Heart-thinking is not like this: it is non-perceptual - it is direct-knowing. Therefore, we 'Just Know' heart thinking - although it can be translated into words, pictures or other perceptions. 

The idea is that in Owen Barfield's idea of Final Participation; the function of head-thinking switches from a basis in awareness of our perceptions, to awareness of our heart-thinking. 

And, primarily, this head-thinking awareness is therefore direct - wordless, pictureless, touchless - a case of Just Knowing what is in our heart-thinking.  

In other words: In Primary Thinking we become aware of what we Just Know. 

Note: if any of the above terminology is unfamiliar or unclear, I suggest doing a word search on this blog, using the search box in the upper left corner of the page. 

The superficiality, triviality and short-term expediency of Western Elites

Yesterday I listened to a video in which political commenters Gonzalo Lira and Alexander Mercouris were discussing the Western Elites - i.e. the leadership class: and how they had declined, across about half a century, to the current very low level of superficiality and short-termism. 

GL and AM were not able to link this symptom to its spiritual roots - although they did sense that the phenomenon was due to the Western leaders (especially) actually being not true leaders but puppets of globalists, whose loyalty was to these globalists rather than to their nations. 

(i.e. Western 'leaders' are in truth merely middle managers; in a world-wide bureaucracy of which the masses are ignorant of the identities of the genuine leaders. Their middle manegrial role is, indeed, evident in the personalities and (ahem...) capabilities of Western national leaders.)

But GL and AM did a good job of describing those symptoms; and others, such a total incapacity even to understand other world views (instead projecting their own extremely cynical selfishness onto everyone else - such that genuine patriotism, religiousness, and long-termism are utterly invisible), their dishonesty, and their complete absence of any vision or purpose for their societies. 

The division of the world nations that has been triggered by the Fire Nation war has revealed that this collapse of leadership is a mostly Western phenomenon. 

AM described the stark difference in attitudes and priorities between the two sides of the recent international divide that is evident nowadays, whenever world leaders gather to meet and plan. 

He says that the disgust and disdain of the non-Western leaders for the trivial 'showbiz' antics of their Western equivalents is plain, and increasing. 

What GL and AM both miss, as I said, is that the problem goes much deeper than incompetence, lack of empathy and covertly misplaced loyalties; and deeper also than the corruption of the Western mass populations. 

The problem is that the Western elites serve powers that are, or are themselves, actively evil. 

They are not merely misguided, insensible and self-deceiving; leading unintentionally to bad outcomes -- instead the Western elites actually desire and seek bad outcomes. 

Many among the elite desire to make the whole world a totalitarian uni-state of omni-surveillance and micro-controlled behaviour and thinking. 

And increasing numbers of them are personally-motivated by sheerly destructive spite directed against their (ever expanding list of) enemies.  

Indeed, the elite 'morality' (such as it is) is an inversion of reality and truth - they want a world of lies, ugliness and sin; of mass suffering, fear, resentment and despair (i.e. they want this for others). 

Thus even astute and critical secular analysts such as GL and (especially) AM; are actually blind to the most important things in the world; in the sense that they sense the surface ripples, but are unable to identify the deep currents that cause them...

Because the currents that drive material change in the world - globally, nationally, locally, personally - are themselves spiritual in their origins and purposes.

Note added: I should make clear that, so far as I can tell, all of the nations of the world are on the same downward path towards the agenda of evil; but at different rates, and some nations are much further along that path than others. 

During this past calendar year, there has apparently been a small but significant and hopeful reversal of down-sliding in the Fire Nation. This is due to three decades, and continuing, of Orthodox Christian revival; bringing movement towards the earlier Byzantine polity of (aimed-at) harmony and integration between State and Church. 

If so; this process has a long way to go before a stable, top-down, Christianly-led social structure is achieved... If indeed such an atavistic restoration is possible - given the evolutionary development of Man's consciousness towards individuality of agency and personal responsibility for salvation and theosis. 

Such a reversal toward 'medieval' structures is not possible in The West, I am sure. We surely need to embrace Romantic Christianity and aim at Final Participation; if we are to avoid mass spiritual damnation. However, it may be that other peoples have a different destiny.  

Contemplation, Enjoyment, and Creation

It has become ever clearer to me that one of the convictions that underlies my metaphysical assumptions is that Man's creative ability is real; yet mainstream, classical, 'traditional' Christian theology has no place for Men to be able genuinely to create: that is, for a Man to be able to to add something new to to God's existing creation. 

This exclusion of the possibility of creation is a consequence of the mainstream Christian's understanding of the nature and attributes of God. 

God is assumed to have created everything from nothing (creation ex nihilo), and to live outside of time (such that God knows everything that including all possible futures), and to be omnipotent and omniscient.

Putting all of these together - for the mainstream-classical theology divine creation has-been done wholly by God, has already-happened; and is complete and unchangeable (since it is beyond time).   

From this perspective; there are two basic ways we can know - which CS Lewis terms contemplation and enjoyment (and which are described and explained in this essay, but without using the contemplation-enjoyment nomenclature - which distinction is explained in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and elsewhere). 

For a classical, mainstream Christian theologian like Lewis, contemplation and enjoyment are the only possible ways of conscious 'knowing' - with enjoyment a higher form of knowing. 

(There will also be ways of 'unconscious' knowing - in the sense of animals, or plants, that implicitly 'know' many things, because they behave adaptively; but without possessing what most people would recognize as explicit, conscious awareness of their knowing. However, I believe they do, because everything does, possess some consciousness, of some type)

Contemplation is when we retain the stance of a separate observer - it is, in effect, knowing-about something. 

For a Christian, a Man might contemplate God, or the works of God - and this means knowing-about such things; by paying attention, having experiences, studying, learning.

A higher form of knowing God would be enjoyment, or 'communion'. 

This would be when someone (perhaps a Saint, or a resurrected Man in Heaven) inhabited the divine mind, able to perceive and know God by means of a direct connection; becoming joined-with God's creative will - but retaining one's own identity as a distinct creature (created individual). 

Man in full communion with the divine remains conscious of himself; but knows God's work from the inside, and knows his own part in it. 

(It is this retaining of personal identity that differentiates the Christian understanding of divine communion, from the 'Eastern' (Hindu, Buddhist etc.) idea of Nirvana - in which the individual Man loses his distinction, his 'self'; and becomes dissolved-back-into the divine-whole, from which he originated.) 

But communion is not creative; since creation is done. 

What seems like creation to mortal Men is - by this analysis - a result of our limited perspective - and is actually just a selection and arrangement of already-created material. 

For the mainstream-classical Christian, Men cannot truly create, in a primary sense; because Men are creatures/ created-Beings; and only God is capable of true creation. 

But for me, as for CS Lewis's best friend Owen Barfield, there is a higher state than enjoyment - which is creation - or what Barfield terms Final Participation. 

This includes communion, but also involves knowing oneself to be adding-to and enhancing already-existing divine creation: that is, becoming a co-creator of God's creation. 

Therefore, Man can (potentially) become a creator with God, creating in harmony with what already exists. 

It can be seen that for co-creation to be true, several of the classical-mainstream assumptions about God must be discarded. Because it can be added-to; creation is no longer regarded as existing outside time, nor as being complete and finished. 

Man is no longer understood as wholly a 'creature' - but as an 'embryonic god': capable of developing to participate in primary creation of that which is new and unforeseen.

Thus, a recognition of Man as potential creator goes-with a rejection of the assumptions that God is omnipotent and omniscient, that God created everything from nothing, and that creation is complete and beyond time. 

Instead; creation is recognized as ongoing - within time - incomplete and capable of expansion. 

In other words; creation is God's original project; and a project in which Men may develop to participate.

To summarize; if we are to regard Man as capable of real creation; we must reject the classical, mainstream, tradition Christian theology; and adopt different metaphysical assumptions concerning God, creation and time. 

Conversely, if we choose instead to adhere to the classical, mainstream, tradition Christian theology; we must reject the possibility of Man being a true creator; and assume instead that the highest form of being that Man can aspire to is an ultimately passive state of 'enjoyment' in communion with God. 

How to decide between these incompatible metaphysical explanations of Christianity - apart from intuition? 

The Bible as a whole is apparently ambivalent and self-contradicting on this topic; but the Fourth Gospel (of "John" - especially Chapters 13-17 inclusive) strongly suggests that Men (in the new dispensation of Christ) can and should aspire to become co-creators: that is loving 'friends' of Jesus Christ and God, rather than (as in the previous era, before Christ) merely obedient servants of God.   

What is the reason for the correlation of ontogeny and phylogeny in the evolutionary-development of human consciousness?

It has been noticed for more than a century that there is a broad correlation between ontogeny and phylogeny. Ontogeny is the development of an organism through its lifespan, while phylogeny refers to the sequence of forms leading from earlier to later members of the same presumed evolutionary lineage. 

In terms of the evolutionary-development of conscience something analogous (and perhaps homologous - i.e. from the same causes) is seen in the change of consciousness during a human lifespan, and throughout human history. 

In other words, the sequential development of consciousness from early through late childhood, into adolescence and adulthood; is similar to the sequence of human cultural conscience from the hunter-gatherer nomadic (analogous to early childhood); agrarian/ classical-medieval (older childhood); modern (adolescence) -- and the human society of 'adulthood' lies in the future (if enough people choose that path) and corresponds to whatever emerges from the first glimpses of what I have termed Primary Thinking, heart-thinking, or the state of Final Participation.   

Why should this be? Why should our lifespan development correspond to the characteristic evolution of consciousness throughout history? 

The explanation given by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield is a version of reincarnation: that each modern individual has been incarnated multiple times in historical societies through history; so that the eternal 'self' (which persist between incarnations) undergoes cumulative linear transformation as a result of experience and learning. 

In other words, modern people are more mature and developed than in the past, as a consequence of having incarnated many times before, in many types of society.  

But I regard reincarnation as having been (whether wholly or mostly) ended by the work of Jesus Christ; such that since the time of Christ's death, Men have (pretty much) ceased to reincarnate; but instead make a choice between accepting or rejecting resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

(I think that there may be exceptions when some of those who reject Heaven may be allowed further reincarnation; when the souls desire and may benefit from this in terms of coming later to embrace resurrection due to further experience.) 

Therefore I find myself advocating much the same scheme of evolutionary-development of consciousness - but without reincarnation as the explanation. What then is my explanation for (on average) 'more mature' souls being reincarnated in modern than in hunter-gatherer times? 

(Note: 'More mature' does not correspond to 'better' in terms of more-Good or more likely to attain salvation. It just means more-mature. Plenty of adults are worse people than most children; many people get worse as they grow-up; and probably more modern children would choose salvation than modern adults. Nonetheless adults are indeed, on-average, more mature in consciousness than children.) 

My answer to this relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny is to focus on the experiences we accumulate in pre-mortal life. 

Following Mormon theology, I believe that we all had an (eternal) pre-mortal existence as immaterial spirits. In other words; before we incarnated into mortal bodies we were immortal spirits; and resurrected-incarnated immortality must be preceded by phases of spirit immortality and incarnated mortality. 

The immortal pre-mortal spirits are each unique in terms of their original disposition and the differences due to different experience as spirits. 

I don't think all pre-mortal spirits do the same thing (i.e. they have different 'jobs' or functions); but some at least are 'angels' - messengers and workers for the will of God. 

(Other 'angels' are resurrected Men - so there are two types of angel: pre-mortal spirit, and post-mortal incarnate.) 

Some of these spirit angels are apparently closely concerned with life on earth: some are what is termed 'guardian angels', that work very closely with incarnated mortal humans. 

As the name implies, pre-mortal spirit angels do not have as much agency (or free will) as us mortal incarnates - they function more as intermediaries between God and mortal Men, conduits of God's will - they are, nonetheless, individuals, each an early step in Man's potential development. 

(Potential development, because some pre-mortal spirits may choose to remain at that stage indefinitely. Mortal incarnation is optional, chosen.)

For instance, pre-mortal angels may be a link Men to God's presence, God's will, and a spiritual between Men. They may also perform miracles, under direction of God. They are agents in making early Man more naturally and spontaneously spiritual than modern Man. 

In other words, an abundance of pre-mortal angels working closely with incarnate mortal Men may help account for the characteristics of Original Participation. Furthermore, these angels are building-up experience through living (spiritually) in close association with many of the various earlier forms of human society. 

Later in history, after the time of Jesus Christ; at various points some of these angels are incarnated as mortal Men; and bring into mortal life the same maturity they have developed as pre-mortal angels. 

Therefore, the evolution of consciousness through history is due to the greater maturity of more experienced incarnated souls; due to their having themselves lived-through much of previous human history - not incarnated, but in the form of spirits. 

Part of this maturity is the 'spiritual adolescence' that rejects the spiritual influence of pre-mortal angels; rather as teenagers reject influence-by and association-with children. 

One consequence of this scheme is that many of the pre-mortal spirit-angels live more like learners than helpers. 

Thus 'guardian angels' may actually be more concerned with their own learning than with providing irreplaceable 'services'. 

(Interestingly, this corresponds with the view of 'learner angels in some popular depictions - for what that is worth).

The above implies that some of us who are currently incarnated have probably been around and closely involved with human society and individuals at several or many times and places in human history - perhaps as pre-Christ reincarnates, and/or as post-Christ spirit-angels. 

Why, then, do most people not remember something of this? 

Well, some people do! And others have an implicit memory - like the memory of a dream (because spirit life has dream like qualities); but a dream than affects waking life.   

Or even more like the implicit memories of very early childhood - mostly unrecalled, but affecting us in many ways. 

If that is something like the way that these things work; then maybe many of us do have some kind of memories of this sort - perhaps evident in some of our innate aptitudes and preferences - as well as our varying degrees of innate, accumulated spiritual maturity 

 

Jung versus Steiner

It is striking that two of the most influential spiritual writers (and movement-leaders) of the early twentieth century - CG Jung and Rudolf Steiner - both lived in Switzerland at the same time, and not far apart - and saying many of the same things...

Yet, apparently (from what little was written or recorded) the two men cordially disliked and rejected one another. 

This mutual dislike is not difficult to understand; but it is unfortunate - especially for Jung; because Steiner's work contained the answer to Jung's insoluble problem of how to 'integrate' Modern Man, and to overcome his alienation. 

Jung was far more prestigious a person - by birth and education, and concerned to maintain his upper class social status. To him, Steiner must have appeared as what he mostly was (from the bulk of his writings and lectures); just another Theosophist; an upstart cultist, locked-into what Jung frequently described the typical errors of the Theosophical Society; that is, a false emphasis that led to modern Westerners, superficially and selectively, trying to copy knowledge and practices from a promiscuous brew of 'Eastern' religion and philosophy. 

Such an attitude from Jung would, I don't doubt, strike Steiner as both ignorant and snobbish; Steiner being older and from a working class Austrian background.  

Also Steiner was, by nature, a 'right man' who would never acknowledge that his ideas had changed or that he ever made an error - and so he never repudiated his usage of the vast body of standard, mainstream Theosophical Society-derived 'information' (identical with, and presumably derived from, Madame Blavatsky, and her successors) about Man and Cosmology, that quantitatively dominate Steiner's public discourses. 

Steiner, indeed, reacted very badly to any criticism, including thoughtful, informed and sympathetic critiques; almost never refuting it directly but instead engaging in irrelevant and blistering ad hominem rants to his loyal followers! Whereas Jung, despite being far moodier, more selfish and bad-tempered than Steiner in his personal relationships, displayed a kind of sublime indifference to his critics.

Yet, buried within this mass of errors, and arbitrary (and implausible) assertions concerning medicine, education, agriculture, and anything else that anybody asked him about - Steiner contains the insight which could have made coherent sense from Jung's almost random, and contradictory, insights.  

Steiner's early books that led to The Philosophy of Freedom, and his later remarks derived from these works - including some of his cultural and prophetic insights concerning the 'destiny' of modern Man and what would happen if this destiny was rejected, were exactly what Jung most needed to know. 

Jung - who lived with a sound mind until 1961, might even have found these ideas more lucidly expounded by Steiner's posthumous disciple Owen Barfield; e.g. in Romanticism comes of age (1944), or Saving the appearances (1957).  

The core problem that Jung needed to solve, and never did solve; was that his idea of an integrated and un-alienated Man was that of an earlier stage of human history, a child, a dreamer or a psychotic. This arose because Jung regarded a life dominated by the mythic collective unconscious as the ideal and answer. 

To solve this, Jug needed a true and sufficiently-complete set of basic, metaphysical assumptions; on which could be built practical advice. But Jung's metaphysics was incomplete.  

Jung's solution to modern Man' search for soul was therefore to engage deliberately with the collective unconscious, and to become conscious of its content; to seek there the unity and engagement that was lacking. 

This was correct as far as it went; but Jung's methods all involved an atavistic, regressive, sinking-down into the unconscious, and aiming to bring-back the findings. 

He advised seeking a half-way state between the modern consciousness and ancient un-consciousness; striving either to maintain awareness and memory during a descent towards dreams or psychosis; or else assembling an intermediate and symbolic discourse (or images, ideas etc.) to bridge between them. 

In Steiner/ Barfield terms, Jung only acknowledged Original Participation and the modern Consciousness Soul - but disregarded Final Participation. 

From Steiner/ Barfield's perspective; Jung was trying and failing, because it is not possible to reverse the direction of human developmental-evolution. It is not possible to return to something like the Classical-Medieval mindset; during which Man lived-in, and was satisfied-by, Public Systems of symbol, ritual, sacred text and picture mythic or legendary narrative, allegory and the like. 

Jung, in essence, was advocating that modern Man re-create (by acts of personal - and private - creativity) some such symbolic intermediary for himself; make his own 'private religion'. This is what Jung did himself, in his private notebooks, his sculptures and pictures. 

But Jung also stated that any such private spirituality nonetheless had universal significance; so long as it drew from the collective unconscious. 

What emerged was unsatisfactory - it alleviated to some partial and temporary degree the alienation and dis-integration of modern Man (i.e. it has symptomatic therapeutic value) - but the method was inadequate, just didn't work well enough. 

It did not suffice. 

Why? Because we cannot return with full consciousness and memory and control of our thoughts to the collective unconscious/ Original Participation. What Jung offered was - at best - an alternation between modern consciousness and a simulacrum of the more ancient mind - but not the actuality of the ancient mind. 

The intermediate state of active imagination was - in effect - a kind of lucid dreaming or dissociated semi-sleep state; and this state is both unstable ('metastable' tending either toward waking or sleep) and also insufficient as a solution to the problems of modern Man. 

It is trying to be simultaneously passive, spontaneous and-unconscious; and at the same time active, creative and conscious. These are opposite states - and can only be alternated or else 'averaged'.  

Hence Jung and Jungians can be observed to lack the hallmarks of wisdom, insight, discernment etc. which would characterize an integrated and unalienated person; and they lack the resources (or honesty) to explain this failure.    

Steiner/ Barfield's solution was a third state that Barfield termed Final Participation; in which integration and participation (i.e. escape from alienation) was attained in a new and qualitatively different kind of thinking*. 

This was conceptualized primarily as a learning experience; and the fullness and permanency of this state could be attained only in Heaven (or else after many further incarnations) - thereby explaining its own 'failure': i.e. why Final Participation could only be partial and temporary in this mortal life.  

Jung believed in a life after death, but never integrated this with his other ideas; which his why his ideas have been merely therapeutic - i.e. directed at making this mortal life less miserable and more fulfilling. 

Jung's concepts therefore underlie much of New Age spirituality - which operates at the level of consumption and lifestyle: a quantitative amplification of whatever ideology is already present (nearly-always mainstream leftist); but without the strength to have a qualitative impact; without providing a profound or powerful alternative and satisfying motivation for modern living. 

Therefore, I regard Jung as one of those sources that are harmful if pursued primarily: Jung will not lead anyone to The Truth. 

But, for those who have already grasped The Truth and who have a Romantic Christian attitude (ie. with personal intuitive discernment acknowledged as the basis of metaphysics); then Jung's work can be an exciting and valuable resource. Read selectively; Jung can even be seen as himself a proto-Romantic Christian. 

Jung's ideas are overall a mass of contradictions: wisdom and foolishness; insight and triviality; truth-seeking and self-serving dishonesty... 

But if approached in the properly critical spirit, we may discover there many helpful and inspiring formulations.  

*Note: By contrast, Jung's reports of his own experiences of the collective unconscious are perceptual. That is; Jung describes visions, conversations and dramatic scenarios between himself and persons or events. These have a 'hallucinatory' quality - i.e. they are subjective, private perceptions; outwith normal discourse and imperceptible to others. 

Further comment: If the reader is unclear about any of the terminology used above, I would advise doing a word/s search on this blog (search box located to the upper left corner of the opening screen) to get background or further explanation.