"What do I think about X? Excuse me, I'll just ask..."

The idea that what we think, believe, do; ought-to-be derived from some external authority - which is, in practice, always some institution/ organization/ corporation... some formal group of people - is something that we recognize in others, but seldom acknowledge in ourselves. 

I had a friend who had recently become a member, or some kind of associate, of the UK Trotskyite "Socialist Workers Party"; and he described to me how things worked there, ideologically. 

Whenever there was some big new news story - an invasion, an economic crisis, a strike, civil disorder - a meeting would be called at which the event was ideologically framed and explained, and members were told how The Party could make use of it: therefore what to think and do about it. 

This is how communists work, and this has been well known and obvious to others, whenever any argument with them is attempted.

It is why communists can and do, in lockstep, make 180 degree turns of policy as required by Part expediency; as when Hitler made a pact with Stalin, then again when Germany invaded the USSR.

In 2020 there were several such 180 degree No-then-Yes instant turns: whether Testing was needed; whether Masking was needed; was Christmas to be cancelled?

Analysis, debate, argument was futile: what was false, wicked, unnecessary yesterday; becomes true, good and compulsory today - and this is all rational, consistent and absolutely necessary. 

When authority lies with an institution, so does truth and legitimacy; so there are no valid grounds for dissent.

There is only either obedience, or just-punishment. 

This is also, by somewhat different procedures, how churches work when they are powerful in the lives of people. 

(This fundamental identity of control procedures is one reason why people - mistakenly* - assume that "ideology" and "religion" are the-same-thing - and that totalitarianism and theocracy are fundamentally identical.)

When some new "thing" emerges for which the church view is not immediately obvious; there is a some mechanism by which the churches framing, explanation and instructions are handed-down.

Because the church is the essential and only mediator of the divine; it is the ultimate repository of truth, beauty and virtue - so that all anyone absolutely needs to know is what the church thinks, and then to obey it.

Outwith which there is nothing but selfish, sin-rooted, individual will.  

This model of institutional authority represents a world-view - a mode-of-consciousness - for which the ultimate responsibility for important attitudes, beliefs and behaviours lies in some external and formal social grouping. 

It was (apparently) not always and everywhere thus, but it has been thus for recorded history: with ultimate authority variously - but always externally and institutionally - located.  

The "job" of each individual in such a System is to internalize as much as possible of the approved views and ways of reasoning that characterize "that social institution" there-and-then given custody of his conscience; and when the answer is not obvious - to seek and follow appropriate guidance. 

Such an external-authority-based set-up dictates the role of intellectuals in terms of the social institution. 

The job of an intellectual in this scheme is that of a commissar: to learn, defend, and transmit the institutional view. 

When there is dissent or opposition to the institutional view, the job of the intellectual is overcome it - by whatever means he can, by whatever means are effective - while staying within the institutionally-ratified assumptions, evidences and methods. 

The point is that the intellectual's own thinking is in service of this task. He will not think in any way that might lead to another conclusion than that of the institution he serves.

This is why institution-serving individuals will never, under any circumstances, acknowledge or even discuss their fundamental - including metaphysical - assumptions. 

They will only-and-always operate-from those assumptions; they will only assume the rightness of the institution they serve. 

This is the cause of a feeling we must all have experienced, must all have come-up-against - even if our own thinking is in service to a church or other societal institution. 

Perhaps the most usual encounter to evoke this feeling is with a bureaucrat who is trying to enforce the institutional will upon us; trying to get us into-line with the current strategies and priorities and behaviours. 

We may be lured into defending our case for dissent or disobedience (or inadequate enthusiasm!), or arguing against the institutional POV; but we Will realize (later if not sooner) that we are just talking into sand. 

Our interlocutor is not interested in what we think, not interested in the validity of our arguments - he already knows what we are supposed to think and do.  

His only interest in our arguments is to refute them using institution-approved arguments, to bring our views into-line with institutional views...

Or else to discredit our perspective (usually by discrediting us).  

Most of the people, most of the time, behave in this way - in all walks of life. 

It might be most obvious in political ideologies, churches, and bureaucracies - but it is the same everywhere nowadays; including the areas I worked in: medicine, academia, teaching, and science. 

This is proximately because in modern life all social institutions have become primarily bureaucratic; and all bureaucracies are linked to (and indeed form) the global totalitarian System. 

But it is also because many people, and nearly-all intellectuals in particular, regard ultimate authority as residing in some social institution such as their ideology, or employer, or their church (or The System) - and see their ultimate job to be defending and propagating that institutional authority. 

This reality is what underpins and causes the futility of argument; here and now. 

Most argument that we encounter in the media and professionally, is between individuals "representing" institutions. 

The main exception to this commissar-like situation, is when individuals are more or less "psychopathic"; when they are selfish, self-seeking, short-termist - and are using institutional camouflage - faked attitudes and assumptions, subverted/ inverted procedures etc), to pursue to their own personal agenda - seeking wealth, sex, power, fame, admiration; or whatever "turns them on". 

Anyone who is seeking spiritual truth, trying to understand his own situation in this world and larger reality; anyone who seeks a religion and a way of living - will come up against this commissar or bureaucratic externalization of authority. 

In effect; the seeker is supposed to strive for a situation in which he accepts the external authority of one church or another. 

In practice; this means that the seeker is supposed to accept some external authority (e.g. the truth and validity of Church X) as the first step - from which all-else follows. 

Because once a particular external institution is accepted as the fount of authority, validity, goodness and correct procedure - then the seeker can (and is expected to) hand-over his conscience and honesty to that institution.     

From then on - his ultimate role in life, or at least the role that dictates what counts as ultimate - is to himself learn, defend, and transmit the institutional view. 

It is difficult, it may be impossible, for any individual to find anyone who will engage on any other basis than that of first accepting (or being rhetorically-duped into accepting) the primacy of some external authority - some denomination, church or other institution. 

Life becomes a choice between actually-existing social institutions. 

Duty becomes a matter of serving the chosen institution. 

And if you are not happy about this situation - you will probably have no alternative but to accept responsibility for yourself.  

You can then expect to be attacked by everyone who serves any institution (i.e. almost everybody!)

But in a totalitarian-bureaucratic world where all social institutions are orientated towards evil; this path of personal responsibility is the only alternative to serving one or another (or several) organizations assimilated to the demonic agenda. 

You real choice is between serving overall-evil body, heart, and soul; or seeking a direct and personal knowledge-of and relationship-with something better.  

*"mistakenly"; because when religion is sincere, it is regarded by adherents as being ultimately spiritual and underpinned by the divine. This makes a difference. The question is how much difference - and in what ways different? The difference may be so feeble as to be ineffectual; the ways of difference may be for worse, as well as for better.  

Why "AI" is qualitatively worse than the internet/ social media/ smartphones

People apparently have difficulty understanding (or explaining to themselves) just why post-November 2022 "AI" is qualitatively worse than the previously-existing computer-media phenomena - such as the internet, social media and smartphones. 

The answer is quite simple: upfront and no secret. 

As usual; probably because evil must be invited into the heart in order to damage the soul; the agents of strategic evil always tell us what they intend for us, before they try to do it. 

In this case, "They" have told us explicitly that the purpose of "AI" is to replace human thinking, judgment, creativity - and loving-relationships. 

Again: "AI" is intended to replace humans in the realms of:

1. Thinking

2. Judgment

3. Creativity

4. Loving-relationships

In other words, the explicit intent of "AI" is to replace human beings in their most distinctive and spiritually-highest aspects. 

And that is what people are agreeing-to, when they defend and promote the "AI" project. 

The fact (and I regard it as a simple and sure fact) that "AI" cannot replace human beings in these aspects is almost irrelevant to the purpose of "AI"; because the purpose does not depend upon "AI" actually being able to do these things; but only on convincing human beings that "AI" can do these thing. 

In sum; the reason for the tera-dollar investment and subsidy of "AI"; the mandatory top-down societal transformations, the colossal pro-"AI" career and status incentivization of the intellectual, technical, and managerial class...

Is simply that people will believe that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships.  

The endemic condition of AI-dolatry can therefore be defined the belief that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships. 

Because if you believe that "AI" can replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships; then you will almost-inevitably (sooner or later) conclude that "AI" should replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships.

The "should" follows the "can", because "AI" is (and has been grossly subsidized, at our expense, so as to be) quicker, easier, and more reliable than human beings. 

In other words; if we believe "AI" can do X as well as (or better) than humans, then it follows that "AI" should do X.  

To conclude: It is the belief about "AI" that does the spiritual harm to human beings. 

We have been told explicitly what "AI" is intended to do, and there is a trillions-dollars international program tasked with implementing this...

Thus, those who justify and advocate "AI" just-are agreeing-with, justifying and advocating; the actual and on-going totalitarian strategy of replacing human beings in their most distinctive and highest aspects. 

This is the side the AI-dolators have chosen, in the spiritual war of this-world. 

And who could deny that the global totalitarian "AI" project and strategy has (so far) been overwhelmingly successful in convincing great swathes of people (especially in the managerial, technical, and intellectual classes) that "AI" can (and therefore, implicitly, should) replace human thinking/ judgment/ creativity/ loving-relationships? 

In three short years; AI-dolatry has become not just statistically normal; not just a functional requisite for tens of millions; not just ubiquitous and unavoidable on and around the internet and social media; not just socially-rewarded...

But AI-dolatry has become positively-valued. 

Given the provenance, intent, and effects of "AI"; we have here an explanation for the observation of a unique and qualitatively-enhanced nature of personal spiritual corruption; directly resulting from the high and increasing prevalence of AI-dolatry. 

Evil? Don't let it into the heart. If evil is already inside, then label it as evil

The problem with the most prevalent forms of mainstream, normal evil - such as the Litmus Test issues - is that they are invited into the heart; and once inside the heart they are regarded as good. 

There are many incentives - immediate and long-term, psychological and social-material - for supporting the net-evil totalitarian strategies that I call Litmus Test issues; there are many rewards for support, and many sanctions against failure to support. 

And when we inhabit a decades-old and pervasive-intrusive totalitarian ideology; almost all of public discourse is inhabited by one or another (or several - of all!) of the strategies of evil; such that it becomes all but impossible to survive and thrive without going-along-with one or many of the strategies of evil. 

Such is the nature of the human condition in a world where evil is dominant; and where that dominance of evil reaches down into the detailed workings of (almost-) every significant nation, institutions, organization, corporation - and nowadays penetrates even into friendship groups, clubs, hobbies, and the family itself. 

How can we inhabit such an evil world, without ourselves taking the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world? 

The (Christian) answer is very simple, I believe; because it "simply" involves that we recognize evil, and inwardly reject that evil. 

This recognition-rejection sounds easy, and it can be easy (a child can do it) - but in practice is apparently so difficult as to be not just impossible but incomprehensible. 

One difficulty is that "we are all sinners", as the phrase puts it; that is to say, we all practice evil. This is unavoidable not just because this is an evil-dominated world, but because we ourselves can only sometimes and partially desire and live-in-harmony-with divine creation. 

For much of our lives we cannot resist thinking, wanting, and doing evil.  

Therefore, to recognize and reject evil entails that we recognize and reject many aspects of our-selves, and those whom we most love...

And also that we recognize and accept that this situation will not (because it cannot) change: for all of mortal life on earth, we are and shall-be stuck-with our own and other people's deficiencies and wickedness. 

If the above is a broadly correct account of human life on earth; and if evil ought to be dealt-with by recognition and inner rejection; then we can see that it is a Big Problem - perhaps the biggest of all current spiritual problems - when people invite evil into their hearts and call it good. 

Instead, we should strive not to invite evil into our hearts. 

But when, inevitably, we do invite evil into our hearts - when we (inevitably) find ourselves supporting some evil strategy... then we must resist doubling-down on our sin, and calling that evil good. 

We must, especially, resist defending intentional strategic evil; or promoting it on the grounds that is a lesser evil than something else; or on the grounds that - like all evil, everywhere, ever - the strategic-evil contains some good, or potentially good, aspects. 

No - instead we must do that which is simple: recognize and reject. 

And when - and it is a case of "when" not "if" because everybody is a sinner, all will fail and fall; and fail frequently... daily, hourly - we are compelled, or cannot resist, going-along-with or even publicly-supporting some evil strategy...

Then inwardly, in the privacy of our souls, we need to make a clear act of recognition and rejection. 

Don't invite evil; and when we have already invited it into our hears; ensure that the evil does not become a familiar, habitual, acceptable, friend and companion. 

Ensure instead that the evil we have already invited, accepted, and already supported in our hearts; then gets acknowledged and labelled in accordance with its true nature: as an evil we inwardly reject. 

Spontaneous "clairvoyance" and symbolic transcendence are unreliable, unconvincing and/or impossible for many - so it is in Thinking that we attain contact with the divine and the spiritual

Modern people are no longer (since their young childhoods) able to live spontaneously and naturally (and mostly unconsciously) in the realms of the divine and spiritual - as seems to have been (mostly) the case for our tribal ancestors. 

Neither does the intermediate symbolism and ritual of religion "work" as a pathway to the divine and spiritual in the way it did throughout most of history - the effectiveness of such intermediaries is either much weaker, much less consistent between people, or doesn't work at all. 

Therefore Modern Man has a problem!

I owe to Rudolf Steiner the insight that the proper mode in which "Modern Men" (such as you and me) can and should achieve contact with the divine, and the realms of spirit, is Thinking. 

But most of our thinking, most of the time, is utterly mundane in content and carries no necessary meaning. 

So, it is apparent that only some kinds of thinking can do what is needful - and these I have variously-characterized as Primary Thinking, Heart Thinking and Direct Knowing. (All these are intended to refer to the same phenomenon; variously approached and conceptualized.) 

Experience at trying to become aware of such Thinking (and observing the experiences of others) leads me to infer that this kind of Thinking can only happen when motivations are of the right kind - and that generic or abstract aspirations to be or do "good" do not suffice to produce the right motivations. 

So this kind of Thinking cannot be done by just wanting and trying; our motivations must really-be such as to align in harmony with divine creation. 

And when this happens; then Primary Thinking is what we are doing - if we can but recognize it. 

I also infer that exercises and techniques do not work when it comes to achieving the right motivations to contact the divine and the spiritual realm. 

Steiner himself produces great swathes of tedious and tendentious nonsense when he was wrongly motivated - despite his high mastery of meditational methods; and despite that he was genuinely motivated to "be loving to everyone" and to "help other people" - albeit in a necessarily generic and abstract way. 

Steiner seems to have supposed that his benign feelings towards the Anthroposophical Society; or his desire to help those such as teachers, doctors, agriculturalists who approached him for guidance; would be a sufficient motivation. 

But the results demonstrate that this was in practice insufficient to prevent his outpourings on these (and many, many other) subjects including a lot of memory regurgitation and sheer invention; and failing to rise to the level of reality (or even objective validity).

 

What can be done? 

Lacking a valid blueprint of what it is to Be Good, or even to Want Good - how can we proceed?

As usual, when there is no positive formula; we can only try to avoid that which is negative and preventive; seek and embrace our personal inspiration and aspiration in concrete situations, wherever it may be found; and then recognize and "go with" Primary Thinking when we are aware that it is happening. 

Discussing free will: A problem with arguing about Christianity, is that most people most of the time don't understand what they are arguing-for

I'm a bit obsessed with this business of "understanding" as a pre-requisite!

As a spontaneous "philosopher"; I am naturally an argumentative person, who has striven for the past couple of decades to suppress this trait because it was (mostly) a pointless waste of my life... More exactly, it was pointless in terms of trying to change other-people and the-world (which is what I was trying to do)... 

Actually, the arguing was sometimes useful to me, in clarifying my own understanding; especially when I became aware that I did not really understand what I was arguing-for. 

This was also something that sometimes happened when I was teaching... I'd be standing writing something on the board and expounding it; when I realized that it didn't make sense or I was just putting-out a black box assertion. 

These were significant moments of learning. 

It has happened on this blog too. Early on in its history; I was trying to explain to William James Tychonievich what was "free will" and how it worked - because he did not seem to be able to grasp what I was saying and kept on questioning me...

When I realized I myself did not understand what I was saying about free will. 

Ultimately, I was parroting forms of words that I had heard or read elsewhere, and they really didn't make sense. I was repeating the classical theological arguments about free will, that I had come across in Boethius, CS Lewis, and scholarly accounts of Aquinas - and I recognized that I could not understand them, not really.

Further thought led to a recognition that my personal inability to understand was not (in this case) from inadequate intelligence or insufficient thought; but that the arguments were intrinsically un-understandable because they contained abstractions that served the role of a black box; a logical package the role of whose content was asserted but could never be grasped. 

The classic theological argument I was defending was that God was assumed to be omniscient, omnipotent (an "Omni-God" and created everything from nothing including me; and that free will was then gifted to me by God. 

The particular incomprehensible abstraction was that God could and did give free will - which is the agency of an individual to act from-himself and independently of God. 

This is incomprehensible because if literally everything - including everything about me and my environment is made by God; then it makes no sense that God could "give" something that was independent-of and autonomous-from God. 

In other words: The assumptions excluded the answer; the assumption was that absolutely every-thing came from God, was contradicted by the assertion that God could make something independent-of-God, and then give it to me.   

 

 

How is it that such a stark contradiction became Christian dogma - how is it that so many very intelligent and thoughtful people have ignored (or not seen) it? 

One answer is that such people were not really interested either in understanding or in explaining free will, but were instead absolutely committed to the assumption that the Christian God was an Omni-God. 

So the fact that they personally did not really grasp what is is free will or how free will worked; did not really matter to them.

Another reason that the contradiction is ignored; is that the contradiction was re-named a "mystery"; and thereby safeguarded from critique.  

What they were (evidently) most focused-on was winning any possible argument directed against the idea of the Christian God being an Omni-God - and the statement that an Omni-God could and did create autonomous beings by an act of gift did not really need to be understood. 

How such a gift actually made sense was of secondary importance to them. 

Also, having made this assertion of gifting free will; the incomprehension was sustained by the fact that their definition, their understanding, of free will was negative - free will was being defined in terms of independence-from God. 

Significantly, the scientific assertions about free will have a closely analogous negativity - being defined in terms of something that is not caused. 

Something I have learned is that when something is negatively-defined, it becomes ungraspable in itself, of itself. 

So, the mainstream orthodox statements about free will have the effect of making it mysterious at best and ineradicably incomprehensible at worst... 

...As anyone knows who has tried to discuss free will in the public forum. Argument devolves to assertions that some-thing was done by free will, versus assertions that it was instead the inevitable outcome of preceding causes - whether scientific causes, or caused by God. 

Free will is a particularly stark example of the problems of un-comprehended "abstraction", and definition by negation. It results in making mysterious, and indeed unreal, something that is one of the primary spontaneous experiences of every human being! 

Something, moreover, that is essential to being a Christian (at least by my IV Gospel rooted understanding.) If people cannot freely decide to follow Jesus Christ or not, then this excludes values from Christianity. 

Arguments against those whose assumptions make free will incomprehensible (whether orthodox traditional Christians, or mainstream secular people) is futile - since these people do not really themselves understand what they are asserting - and do not see any need why they should understand it!

To repeat: such people often have a fixed and committed belief that personally genuinely-understanding what they affirm is not necessary. 

(As indeed, it would not be necessary if free will had indeed the negative, abstract, subordinate role they assert for it.) 

The general lesson I draw from this is related to the importance of really understanding for oneself - and of not being satisfied by black box abstractions, or parroting stuff taken from other people... 

This is true, no matter how prestigious is the source of the black box argument. 

And further; if we are to avoid intractable error, our personal understanding needs to be in positive terms. 

It might be objected that this cannot possibly happen in practice; given the sheer number of things that must be taken on trust in any complex civilization. 

This is true in a quantitative sense, about most matters of assertion; but is false when it comes to those matters which are of core significance to our-selves. 

And there we come to the crux, for a Christian at any rate. What really is most important for us to understand - what, indeed is it vital for us personally to grasp? 

In the past, Christians regarded belief in the Omni-God as vital and necessary; but understanding free will was merely optional; to the point that it was not understood - and indeed not understandable within the assumptions. 

Yet; here and now, for myself and probably for most people; it is vital to understand - that is really to grasp in positive terms - free will, agency, the basis of individuality. To say it is "real but a mystery" is an evasion, when something looms so large at the heart of our existence. 

The needful understanding is something made impossible both to those who accept mainstream orthodox Christian theology (and indeed theologies of most other religions); as well as the much larger numbers of people who regard "science" as the basic assumption behind all explanations. 

As so often; the individual cannot look to any of the most powerful influential, prestigious, ancient or modern external sources for an understanding of some-thing that he may regard as a matter of prime importance. 

As so often; the individual must either do it for himself - i.e. discover by his own efforts a genuine understanding of the reality of free will...

Or else must take the consequences of assimilating, living-by, and thinking in-accordance-with, the socio-cultural insignificance of his own agency.  

 

*

Note added: It is pretty obvious why it has suited, and still suits, the powers that be; to create and maintain a situation in which free will is kept mysterious, contradictory, un-understandable -- while top-down and collective imperatives are by contrast clear, simple, easily comprehensible. This endemic doubt and uncertainty keeps people obedient to external authority. When people cannot satisfactorily conceptualize them-selves; then they are controllable at the deepest spiritual level. 

What to do about "the re-entry problem" in relation to Christianity

Names and describes the re-entry problem - but doesn't suggest a valid Christian solution

Back at the beginnings of this blog I wrote a rather heart-felt post derived from what author Walker Percy termed "the re-entry problem":

What is not generally recognized is that the successful launch of self into the orbit of transcendence is necessarily attended by the problems of reentry. What goes up must come down. The best film of the year ends at nine o’clock. What do you do at ten? What did Faulkner do after writing the last sentence of Light in August? Get drunk for a week. What did Dostoevsky do after finishing The Idiot? Spend three days and nights at the roulette table.

A brief escape, to rise above our normal level - but then comes re-entry...

This re-entry problem applies to Christianity. 

For instance, a new convert will typically experience a great sense of exaltation and possibility on considering the profundities of his new faith. 

But what then? A crash-down into the mundane realities of joining and attending a church, and being expected to conform to a lifestyle so very dull and niggling - when compared with the great cosmic ultimates by which the Christian may have come to faith. 

This is not just emotionally disappointing, but the everyday experiences of (what he is told) means "being a Christian" is typically experientially utterly un-related to the original conversion. 

This problem is not unique to conversion, of course; we get a deflationary come-down after any exceptionally positive experience. 

But it hits hardest in relation to religion - because of our expectation of a qualitatively "more spiritual" life post-conversion. 

Most churches will argue that this expectation is false, and that real-life is what it is, and our job as Christians is to understand and value it accordingly...

But I do not fully agree; because I think this is usually just an excuse for the fact that church religion is almost-wholly assimilated to the mundane world, its values and priorities - and indeed even explicitly aspires to this "relevance".

The worldly aspects of church are propagandized and strongly insisted upon; while in contrast the spiritual aspects are vague aspirations, "just words" - and there is no pressure or encouragement towards pursuing them, nor do they affect church conduct - especially not if spiritual considerations interfere in any significant way with everyday church functioning. 

Well... it's facile to be critical about this world, and the many ways it falls short of our aspirations - and as of 2025 it is misguided to look for higher spirituality from any social institution (except in its unofficial and minor counter-currents to the Zeitgeist). 

Furthermore; it has proved impossible for most people, most of the time, to become spiritually better overall - which was probably why Jesus in the IV Gospel emphasized aspirations and repentance - rather than reform of behaviour - as necessary and sufficient for salvation. 

Yet the re-entry problem will not go away, and is a major difficulty for many people - such that recommending negative stoicism is probably counter-productive: the fact is we must each be motivated in Life, and that means the pursuit of some positive enhancement in our everyday spiritual aspirations and sense of spiritual achievement. 

Instead of giving-up on a spiritual life (and assimilating to the mundane), or aiming for the spiritually impossible (and despairing at the lack of progress); I think we should address the re-entry re-examining what the spiritual quest ought to be in accordance with our Christian goals. 

This may lead to re-framing our personal spiritual quest into something where genuinely valuable progress is realistically attainable, on a frequent, everyday basis. 

For me this implies that, because spiritual progress is not evident in this world; spiritual progress therefore instead "must be" logged and accumulated with reference to our future resurrected eternal life in Heaven.  

So that - whatever brief specific things we achieve in the here and now - in terms of love, understanding reality including evil, thinking from our real selves, participation in divine creation, repentance, aspirations and commitments, good-motivated actions, the attainment of an eternal and "cosmic" perspective to frame this mortal life etc... 

I strive to recognize that every and all such brief, partial and specific spiritual attainments shall be retained and stored; and will be added to the resources of our post-mortal resurrected selves. 

The conclusion: There are always such things we might be doing at any time or place; and they are always worth doing. 

Rather than such palliatives as getting drunk (Faulkner) or immersing ourselves in trivia (Dostoevsky); that is how we might positively respond to the re-entry problem - whenever it rears its ugly head. 

Direct Knowing or Intuition... How I try-to Do It - in practice

In the past (and perhaps still, in other cultures) men spontaneously experienced "contact" with gods or God, the divine - more generally, spirits, the dead/ ghosts, and many other supernatural/ paranormal forms of interaction such as with remote persons or animals. 

These also include sensory/ perceptual experiences such as the seeing of spiritual visions, or hearing voices and having conversations 

But here-and-now it seems that adult and healthy (or healthy-ish) modern Men - and I count myself as pretty typical in this respect - do Not spontaneously have such experiences; nor can we have such experiences in alert, healthy, and clear consciousness; no matter how we strive. 

"Contact" of this sort only happens spontaneously to modern Men in states of lowered consciousness; such as dreaming sleep, trance, intoxication; or when there is brain dysfunction in psychosis (including with brain diseases, such as dementias). 

To my mind, the difficulty or impossibility of having these supernatural/ paranormal experiences of contact and interaction, points to the conclusion that the old sensory/ perceptual experiences (while they may lead to good) are ultimately retrograde, "atavistic", and often motivated by a nostalgia and desire to revert to an earlier (less conscious, more automatic, less free) phase of the development of consciousness (which we may recall from early childhood, or have imaginatively experienced).

But given the mundane and alienated nature of typical modern consciousness, and more importantly (indeed vitally) the necessity for each of us to receive personal guidance from the Holy Ghost in particular - given these needs, we must develop other ways of establishing some kind of experienced-interaction or "contact" with spirit Beings.

Indeed, I have often said that this kind of interaction is the basis for metaphysical reflection on the fundamental nature of reality. It is the basis of that "intuition" upon which everything depends - and which I have variously called "direct knowing", or sometimes "heart thinking" or "primary thinking". 

The point is How To Do It?  

In my experience, I think this contact works by an awareness of such contact while actually speaking, writing, or thinking. 

It is a "direct" form of knowing, because (unlike the past and other cultures) there is no sensory aspect.

What it is like is a deep and simple sense of affirmation or rejection, support or opposition, yes or no. 

Such a "feeling" is indeed the deepest awareness of which I am capable. 

This does not mean the experience is infallible, but that it is the best I can do - here and now. 

Because the experience is deep, it is not reached as a result of inference from other kinds of evidence, nor does the awareness come with "proof" of itself - although naturally evidences, proofs, excuses and the like can be derived or contrived secondarily - after the guidance. 

Since this mortal life is mostly about what we ought to try to do, here and now - in these particular circumstances - the experience-of-itself suffices.

    

As an example; this is how I have developed my fundamental theological convictions. For instance, I needed to decide whether "God" was single or a dyad: more exactly I wanted to know whether God meant a Heavenly Mother, as well as Father. 

I had come across the idea of God as originally eternally-married man and woman from Mormon theology, and then later the work of William Arkle. I had felt an immediate stirring and attraction to this knowledge, an experience that proved robust to re-acquaintance.  

To discover its truth, to discover whether I ought to assume such a reality; I wrote about it. Writing for myself, in a journal; candidly and without an audience. 

I also talked, a little, about the idea. But it is very rare to find anyone with whom such fundamental (metaphysical) subjects can be discussed in a way that is an be both unselfconsciously confident on my part, and with sufficiently engaged and sustained attention on the other person's side. 

So verbal discussion is, in practice, seldom of much value - which is why writing (or indeed speaking aloud to oneself, for those who cannot or do not write) can be so helpful. 

Furthermore; I thought about the subject in solitude and quiet (i.e. I prayed, in one sense of praying) - with attention to what followed in this deep level of awareness. 

To explain further: this is something done with a high level of conscious awareness; because it is necessary to have two "things" in mind simultaneously: both our question and the inner-awareness of a response from another Being.

To me, this puts a tight limit on the kind of question that can be asked - the question must be worked upon until I have it absolutely clear and simple in my mind; and as soon as I have done this, and made the decision to seek some kind of guidance or opinion, and have attained a quietly attentive and concentrated mind-set: the answer arrives immediately. 

The source of this inner endorsement (or rejection) is varied, and something we can decide - or, at least, we can decide "who we are asking" to the extent that we can validly conceptualize another Being. 

For instance, and most importantly, the Holy Ghost is (by my current best understanding) the ascended Jesus Christ and his spouse Mary Magdalene. If I address this understanding of the HG, then the response depends to some extent on the validity of my conception. 

If instead (like mainstream traditional Christians) I regarded the Holy Ghost as the spirit aspect of the Trinity; then this might well have an effect on the shape of my question, and therefore the answer. 

Indeed, if the question is "improperly addressed" then there may be no answer. 

That has been my understanding of what is going on when I am seeking an answer to a question rooted in false premises, false assumptions. Nothing happens. 

Then there is the problem of the source of the answer - in particular whether there might be a situation where a demon was to impersonate a spirit of Good (an angel), or the Holy Ghost? 

My only answer, and I think the only real and relevant answer, is that this depends on our motivations and intentions and general stance with respect to God and divine creation.  

If (for instance) we are really seeking answers for selfish purposes; or if we a really aligned with Satan and against God; then such motives and stances are bound to distort and subvert the answers we get.  

The only conclusion is to strive for thorough honesty; and a vital part of honesty is to try and be as conscious as possible of our real assumptions, motives etc; and then as clear and explicit as possible in describing these to our-selves. 

Can we be misled and wrong? Yes of course! There is no recipe for being right. 

Should be strive to be absolutely certain, with no possibility of wrongness, doubt or change of mind? No!

In this mortal world we operate from very distorting circumstances, such that being ultimately and universally absolutely correct in all significant respects surely cannot be the most important thing from God's perspective.

What typically matters is that we personally get things sufficiently right in the situation in which we now find ourselves. 

Other problems will arise, situations will change, we ourselves will change - but that is all uncertain, indeed it is (because of the agency of beings) profoundly contingent. 

What we must deal with in our mortal lives occurs as some primary issue, here-and-now... And Christians will have faith* that sufficient personal capability and external guidance is always available for everybody to accomplish this adequately - albeit never "perfectly."

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*Note: Will have faith, because we can be confident that God-the-creator is also our loving Father (or our parents, as I believe); who therefore has individual concern for the salvation and spiritual development of each-and-all of his children. So we-ourselves and our circumstances have-been and are-being created that way. Since this loving God is creating all the time, we know that our situation always has an attainable positive path forwards - for as long as our lives are sustained.

"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. 

Conscious will versus intuition?

It seems generally accepted that we change by conscious will; and indeed I would regard this as the distinctive destiny of Men of this "modern" age.

Yet it is from our intuition, from primary- or heart-thinking, that we experience divine guidance - from our inner nature as children of God and from the Holy Ghost.

This means that even our best intentioned schemes and plans (eg for moral reform, or to forward some intellectual or creative project); can be wrong for us personally, here and now. Wrong because not the thing needful.

Therefore will is essential and the agent of positive change, yet will must (to be truly good) be subordinate to intuition - both today and tomorrow.

We cannot live by formula (if we want to live by divine destiny) - and we cannot (also should not) live passively by unconscious and spontaneous instinct.

What we are supposed to do is live by Conscious Instinct - but its not easy, because disrupted by error, ignorance and sin.

Hence life as trial and experiment, repentance and renewal.

Morning café "meditation" uncut

Partly from idleness, and partly because it might interest regular readers*, I am putting down the notes I made during this early-morning's café meditation of some three quarters of an hour, which followed a half hour amble to reach the café. 

The "procedure" involves slowly drinking the largest available extra-hot cappuccino (no chocolate topping) while reading something, thinking, and making notes. This morning's book was On Quality by Robert M Pirsig - a posthumous collection of essays and aphorisms. 

It is from such musings and notes that I often generate blog posts - although usually these are done at home (by a similar procedure, early in the morning) rather than in a café. 

Editing is restricted to a omissions of personal data (...), additional spacing between thematic paragraphs, clarification [indicated thus], and some expansion of ungrammatical notes into sentences. 

Notes from Friday 13th September 2024

  ...What is ultimate right and wrong? It is objective - but still, always, "a matter of opinion". Because anyone might feel that love was evil, virtue was evil - that selfish hedonistic now was the highest value - even in a world that is objectively the creation of a God motivated primarily by love. [Such a person] might claim that he intends to build another creation, based on other principles that are not love. Or he might not value creation but hate it, and enjoy destroying it - and to be indifferent to the future, or else may not care if the outcome was to destroy his own world. 

The point is that the first creation was/is threatened by evil - even as by the continual erosion of entropy. A second creation was needed, in order that those who did value love above all, can love free from entropy and evil. 

Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality (explicit in Lila, implicit in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) is true enough - but just floats unsupported as an assertion - it can't explain 1. how we could know it truly 2. why we ought to value it. 

Why should we value values? - and one value over others? 

"Religious mystic" - falsely associated with Eastern, deistic, oneness. Whereas Christian mystics should know that deity is God who is ultimately A Man. 

- The problem with Pirsig is that Quality points at creation - a creator - and we could only know this is God loves us. 

The problem of [Christianity's greatest monotheistic rival] is - How do you know? If God is as they say, then nobody would know anything about God. 

For Christians it is - Why should I believe you, and do what you say? God is my "Father" as much as yours, and loves me.  

If all is one, then everything is one, there are no values, no truth, no anything. Death is life, pain = pleasure, action = inaction. 

But people use bits of religion 1. as palliative 2. to justify control - both by dishonesty and sleight of hand. 

Purpose is a problem for many religions. Why do this not that, anything rather than nothing?

To attain salvation? Yes, but why does it need to be attained? Choices? Yes, but why are there choices? And all this is passive.

Love, Yes, but then what? A further factor is needed - consciousness, creation, development - And our unique individual primordial self.  

That has a purpose, a teleology - inbuilt, as well as chosen. 

Unless "values", purpose etc are inbuilt innate, then life is passive.  

If life is passive, it is futile - it is not really-real. 

If self is unique, it includes purpose, as well as consciousness. 

The Material, boundedness, are "appearances" for what is real and physically unbounded. 

Yet the spirit seems to be affected by proximity. 

 If The Physical is concentrated spirit, this is explicable. 

When we incarnate, our spirit becomes concentrated. This increases consciousness. 

Maybe that's a rule?

Consciousness is enhanced by concentration of A Being. 

 

But perhaps also with concentrated/material Beings? 

Which is why/ how we are alienated. Why we are split, why self-consciousness reduces automatic awareness of other Beings as conscious etc. 

A physical Being's consciousness may seem absent - e.g. between liver and lungs, white and red blood cells, or molecules and atoms. This is because consciousness is more concentrated in modern Men. 

Until [eventually] consciousness is aware only of itself! Consciousness Soul [Steiner's term] - Good name for it. 

Metaphysics of Quality is true, and good - but unmoored and unjustified - dismissable as one man's intellectual construct. Needs God, creation, a loving God to provide purpose and value for MoQ etc. 

Pirsig was inexorably prejudiced against Christianity, against God - could not distinguish church from reality. 

Atoms are peripheral to physical/material Being, away from the concentrated consciousness. 

Dynamic Quality^ = Direct Knowing, or heart-thinking/ intuition.

^[A term of Pirsig's] 

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*And, no doubt, the experiment derived partly from a make-believe conceitedness on my part that - like Pascal, Thoreau, or Wittgenstein - a few people might actually be interested by my unstructured stream of consciousness. Cringe - but some truth to it... However, having done this experiment, and found that the business of transcription has taken much more time and effort than I hoped and expected, and that "the good stuff" (as it seems to me) is buried among the relative dross - today's practice may not be repeated.  

What's going on at the planetary level? And how can we know?

A brief reflection. 

Something has been going on at the planetary level, and also with Men, since about the millennium - and this was foreseen by quite a few people in the decades (going back many decades) leading up to this stage or phase. 

I assume that there is some kind of God-aligned planetary Being (an angel, the angel of this world; some would call it) who is involved; as well as Satan and his gang. 

How might this work? Given that the planetary Being, and each of us, are free agents? 

I think it must work by love, by-analogy-with (and also in "the same way" as) the ideal human family. 

Satan's rulership, by contrast, either manipulates people as if they were cause-effect machines; or else strives to dominate their wills utterly, to "make" them do what Satan wants. 

Love is not (ultimately) an emotion or feeling; but is a creative relationship between any two Beings - it is, indeed, the ultimate basis of divine creation.   

So this contest - this war - of spiritual good, and the opposition to spiritual good - has reached a point of potential awareness in recent decades - as humans have changed to become more spiritually aware. 

(Sadly, this awareness has been, so far, overwhelmingly negative in effect - awareness has destroyed the power of traditional religion, but few have embraced the power the new awareness brings. People use their new ability to intuit and believe - to dis-believe truths because imperfectly expressed or corrupted; and believe incoherent nonsense that is part of the agenda of evil.) 

It seems that many more people are aware of the evil attempts to dominate and control this world - earth and Men; than are aware of the positively good "angel of this earth". 

This is (I think) because we are aware of love and of the angel only by the spiritual (immaterial) way of "direct-knowing"... 

And this way of direct-knowing is denied, ignored (and over-ridden) or else regarded as trivial by comparison with the material communications of institutions, words, symbols, models etc. 

Another way of conceptualizing this distinction is to regard that which is directly-known as a consequence of heart-thinking. Whereas all the mass of other communications are kind of head-thinking, rationality; modelling that maps components of reality onto a wholly-known scheme; all based ultimately upon perceptual "data" (including the perceptions and measurements of machines).  

 

So - if the above is true; it suggests that we ought to allow ourselves to aware of the angel of the earth - and also many other spiritual realities - but in such a way that we don't simply fall back into giving authority to the materialism of of head-thinking. 

This is exactly where so many spiritual writings and teachings fall down. Direct insights are re-expressed (approximated, modelled) in communicable systems; but then (and this is the fatal error) this head-thinking is allowed to take-over. 

So that we get spiritual systems that are easily assimilated into the demonic system. 

This is the problem, not only of all traditional religions (with their philosophies, specified rituals, formal symbolism etc.) - which purport to define and thereby capture spiritual realities...

And thereby become the basis for schemes of monitoring and control; very similar in nature to that of the current global totalitarianism: doing things "to" people "planning" to "make" people do what is wanted.

Not only religions; but also many spiritual systems that purport to replace religions - from the many New Age ideas to older systems such as Steiner's Anthroposophy. 

The danger is that so many of these begin with genuine insights, often achieved by direct knowing, which impress us rightly; and only then do they shift into the mode of system and communication.  

As when Rudolf Steiner or his disciples begin with true and rare insights derived from direct and personal intuitions (and thereby gain our admiration) - but then construct and fit these with numerology, categories of many types (mineral, plant, animal, human - material, etheric, astral, ego), astrology, and detailed schemes of the purported evolutionary history and future of the solar system, earth, and Men (and thereby attempt to re-impose a tyranny of external spiritual authority). 

It seems natural, and almost inevitable, for us to express direct-knowing and heart-thinking in such categorical and systemic ways, in order first to communicate-with, then maybe influence - and potentially control - other people. 

The systems begin by explaining and teaching, then get used for monitoring and evaluating; but end by attempted domination and over-riding the ultimate agency of other Beings. 

Much of our deep and strong drive to do this; arises (I think) from a strong, prioritized, sometimes exclusive, focus upon the conditions of this mortal life and our gratification during it. 

If we could, instead, view this life and world as a vital but intermediary phase leading to resurrected life in Heaven - maybe it would be easier to resist such temptations?

Meanwhile, we can but strive to recognize and repent our tendency to make ourselves (and others) captive to "that which can be communicated and systematized" - and instead strive to use our heart-thinking to listen for direct-knowing.  

A world of tactics without strategy: Spiritual negation of the nation

Progress? Britain 2020..

And... Britain 2024...

This is no more than a small hunch or "observation" derived from my intuitive-feelings about The West now, especially the UK, especially England. 

There is an extraordinary and surprising vacuity of thought and attention. 

I would have expected that, by now, some-thing or another - something Big - would have been imposed upon us by the government-media-corporate Establishment...

I expected some kind of Big Thing like the Birdemic, MLB-type antiracism, the peck-frenzy or some other healthism, some ginned-up Climate Emergency; or a war-fever. Maybe even something new? 

(Well, no I didn't really expect anything new, because there hasn't been anything culturally new since the 1970s. But some novel spin on the old-things, perhaps?)

But, so-far - as of writing - none. 

Just the usual bunch of little, stale and distinctly half-hearted, pseudo-issues - perhaps mainly a drip-drip manipulation towards "electing" a government in which the puppets are Labour Party Tweedledums, instead of the usual Conservative Tweedledees. Yawn...

But British people have, at root, never been less interested in politics, never less enthusiastic about the positive possibilities of any allowable regime change. 

(The last residue of optimism was crushed by the vacuity - the pseudo-victory that was utter defeat - that is BRINO... Last year saw the highest {admitted} levels of UK mass immigration in history - something like 700K extra people {presumably plus those many deliberately not counted}; an extra 1% in 1 year with similar levels for more or less for 20 years; more people than a city the size of Sheffield - fifth biggest in England.)

Nothing has been learned from 2020, there is zero interest or insight concerning UK's adoption of a front-line and firing-line role in the Fire Nation war - indeed there is neither interest-in nor knowledge-of anything at all important. 

Life now is a vast and settled state of spiritual negation. 

The past has less and less influence, but the direction and destination future is ignored as far as possible; yet the present is (compared with 50 years ago) hedged-about with pervasive guilt, chronic resentments - potentially-overwhelming fear and despair are only a heart-beat away. 

What applies to England and the UK, applies to Western civilization - and indeed to most of the world. 

Our civilization is bored with itself, and aspires no higher than temporary distraction from a futility that is baked-into its core and deepest assumptions. 

The highest virtues in everyday life are means without ends; such as cheerfulness, niceness, sociability, and a keenness to express "concern" on matters that are encouraged - or at least allowed. Energy is admired - so long it is directed into short-termist goals like sports, pop music, charitable work, travel...  

This is a world of tactics without strategy, survival without meaning; as we see in Western attitudes to the Arrakis war, in which opinions (for what they are worth!) run high on both sides, and "peace" is the mantra; but where there is no remotely realistic long-term "goal" that does not entail annihilation of at least one side, and potentially both.  

The bottom line (when there is one, e.g. in wars) goes no further than mere survival*. Survival for what? - has become the unanswerable, hence unaskable, question. 

*Or since survival is impossible in this mortal, entropic world - what is on-offer is not so much survival as... somewhat prolonged, continued-existence...   

Our culture has defined this life as without ultimate purpose or meaning, and taking place in an accidental universe; and the mass of people now operate on that basis. 

In such a world that cannot be any real strategy; and life devolves to tactics for getting-by... 

Until getting-by is recognized as more trouble than it is worth. 

The only solution is in our own individual minds; but hidden so deep in our assumptions, that most people regard it as irrelevant to "real life"; or non-existent - mere wishful thinking.

Thus we make our own thought-prisons, lock ourselves inside, hide the key - then forget that it ever existed. 

What does Jesus teach in the Fourth Gospel? - my renewed understanding and conviction

I have been re-reading the Fourth Gospel (in the Authorized or King James version) with intensity of engagement, and the large sweep of narrative - the miracles and the teaching - that runs from the third through the sixteenth Chapters: from meeting Nicodemus at night to just before Jesus's arrest. 

 

I am struck afresh and with great force what Jesus does and does-not speak of. Again and again Jesus explains who and what he is; and that he is asking to be believed, loved and "followed". 

(What "following" means is explained in the Good Shepherd section.)

Once his hearers know who Jesus is; they are asked repeatedly to love and follow him - and that is very much the focus and the core of the Gospel.  

Jesus apparently has great difficulty in communicating the simplicity of his message to the disciples; and only just before his arrest (at the end of Chpater 16) does Jesus seem satisfied that the disciples have at last grasped what Jesus has told them so many times.

 

Jesus does not talk about rules for living, does not talk of morality. Does not tell people how to behave in the details (or indeed the sweep) of everyday life. 

Indeed, this trait is very marked indeed. Jesus is hardly-at-all a moral teacher. When he refers to sin, he nearly always means death, and suchlike realities of this mortal life.  

And when Jesus speaks of "commandments" he essentially means to "love one another" (as he goes on to explain) and Himself - clearly a qualitatively different matter from the commandments of Moses. 

All this is very different from how Jesus is usually described. 

 

The shaping emphasis is on the life and world to come; not this mortal life and world - it is the post-resurrection reality that ought to shape our current goals and behaviours.

In other words; Jesus is usually talking about having brought a change in ultimate, "cosmic" reality; a change in the set-up of divine creation: new realities and new possibilities. 

 

Throughout, Jesus talks of his Father as a distinct person from himself: clearly with complete harmony between the two of them, but his Father absolutely as a real and separate person from Jesus himself; a person with whom Jesus has a relationship of the same kind as with the disciples, but vastly greater and perfected. 

Thus Jesus's message is cosmic; but the cosmic is personal - indeed a matter of many persons; because Jesus links God to himself, and to the disciples (broadly considered - not meaning some particular number of men); all those with whom Jesus shares mutual love.

Love is mentioned many, many times; and seems like the core term - a new and all-transcending principle of life - the new reality that Jesus made-happen. Reading this, one is immediately compelled to ponder this astonishing reality that Jesus has placed at the heart of creation  

The Holy Ghost, the Comforter, is described Jesus himself (not a separate person) after he will have ascended to Heaven - and who will be present to all who love and follow Jesus. The Holy Ghost is stated to provide - in a personal way - all that is required of guidance and knowledge.  

This is emphasized: everything the disciples need to know after Jesus has ascended to Heaven, will be provided by the Holy Ghost. 

 

Something that is very evident is that Jesus asserts the exclusivity of his message. That only by Jesus, via Jesus, can we attain resurrected everlasting life. There is no other way. 

This is asserted as a fact; although what that fact means is apparently very different from the usual way it has been taught in the centuries since - because the Fourth Gospel is utterly indifferent to any form of church. 

The gospel is all about relationships, and these relationships are personal - indeed Jesus declares (at some length, in detail) that they need to be the relationships of friends, rather than hierarchical or formal.  

 

But Jesus's insistence on the exclusivity of his role in salvation is absolutely hard-line. If resurrection is what people want, there is simply no alternative (when the time comes) to knowing and following Jesus.

The reason why is also explained; which is that those who reject Jesus do not want what Jesus offers. The monotheists (such as the Pharisees) want something altogether different from what Jesus offers: they are rejecting the new cosmic possibilities that Jesus brings. 

What this partial summary fails to do is to describe the power of this reading when I am able to give the engagement full and intense attention; the authority and conviction with which the words and actions of Jesus reach across the centuries; in which these words over-leap the vast complexity of "Christianity" that grew in the generations in-between Jesus and myself. 

Of course, yesterday and today is not the first time I have felt this (as I wrote previously) - but this was a fresh amazement - and evoked a fear that it might not be so!

...Leading-on to a new affirmation of faith and another experience of conviction; of direct validation. 

 

What Jesus is saying and offering in the Fourth Gospel is astonishing to me, breathtaking in its originality and radicalism.

For me it is something that I want deeply, something I therefore really want to be true! And the whole thing therefore hinges on whether I personally believe what Jesus is saying - whether I believe He was who he said, and whether I regard as true what he claimed. 

After which, according to the Fourth Gospel; I am told to turn to the Holy Ghost (that is; to Jesus himself, in person, as available to us here-and-now) to provide exactly that knowledge, and the comfort that derives from conviction of its truth.  

 

Note added: I see that I failed to complete the circuit of the above description; because no matter how overwhelming a spiritual experience may be at the time of experiencing it - such conviction does not last. Almost immediately, the experience is subjected to doubts, and indeed is readily explained-away by all kinds of familiar materialistic/ scientistic arguments (just a dream, a delusion, wishful thinking etc.). That is the situation of modern man - and not by accident. As men who have become conscious of much that was once spontaneous and implicit; modern Men must consciously choose. We must decide whether or not to believe our spiritual experiences; whether or not to regard them as an intuition of ultimate reality. This is a free choice, and one for which we ought to take personal responsibility. Specifcially; we ought not to desire to be permanently overwhelmed by a conviction so powerful and lasting that we never get out from under it. Nor should we regard such inescapable experiences as the most valid. Because that would be to desire to be un-free and to evade personal responsibility. Therefore - to complete the circuit - I freely choose to believe as real that religious experience of conviction: I choose to make its validity a bottom line assumption for me. 

Why are innately-evil people incarnated?

Our thoughts may be transparent, but our fundamental selves are not.

Thus God knows what we are thinking, but does not know our "hearts". 

This is important to recognize, because it explains why so many people are incarnated into this mortal life, who seem to be evil; and evil in an apparently unredeemable way. Who appear to be utterly incapable of love, or to hate love - and who behave accordingly. 

If the human heart/ soul/ ultimate-self were transparent to God - i.e. if God knew for sure that such people were structurally incapable of love - then there would be no reason for innately-evil people to be incarnated into mortal life...

Because mortal life could do such persons no good, because they are incapable of learning the lessons of this world; and because there are many reasons for hope-lessly evil people not to be incarnated - since they cause so much suffering, and may induce other people to engage in and desire evil.   

This world and life therefore make best sense if we realize that God does not know our fundamental nature, cannot see into our "hearts;  and cannot be sure of any individual that he will not at some point in his life; learn-spiritually, repent, and eventually accept the gift of Salvation. 

Such is one reason why this world contains individuals who truly are greatly evil, some who were (apparently) born evil, some who seem incapable of good - even some who, in their hearts (if anyone but knew that) may be totally evil. 

NOTE: It is likely that very few of the famously historically evil leaders were innately and totally evil, since this would usually be a bar to social success and power. Past societies were also alert and keen to exclude or eliminate (one way or another) such persons. Total evil is most likely to be seen among children, youths, and among obscure adults; and is probably much commoner in modern societies - where value-inversion is positively-regarded, official and enforced. 

The primary and essential role of personal understanding in these times of seismic change

How is it that we can live in a world where people's ideas are so very wrong, where their aspirations are so distorted and trivial (when not actually evil - which is common enough); where there is not even the most basic awareness of these times as ones of seismic spiritual and geopolitical change - and insofar as there is awareness is is a kind-of value inversion, leading to the opposite of virtue, truth and beauty...

How come all this can be true; and yet there be so much virtue in the world, beauty in our surroundings, decent truthfulness between people - even strangers; enough people doing a good job that things continue? 

How can this be, when the entirety of public discourse, officialdom, the mass media, gossip and chit-chat... is so utterly wrong?

What is the origin of the undoubted but invisible good that is implied by so much of our world; when there is no much - so much more obvious - evil?    

These times of Western civilizational collapse are Not, in any deep or significant way, a recapitulation of any earlier civilizational collapse - and, indeed, I think it is probable that each earlier collapse was at heart unique, with only superficial similarities. 

Here and now; I feel that the role of individual understanding is primary: it is what we ought to be doing. And, insofar as there are good things in life now, it is because of understanding (rather than, for instance, because of 'actions'). 

What I mean is that human consciousness is currently operating in uncharted territory. By adulthood we each have, all-but, lost that spontaneous and immersive groupishness that our ancestors experienced (the further back in time, the more groupish, and the less individually autonomous).

There are many consequences. One is that the traditional forms of groupishness (e.g. extended familie/ clans, guilds and unions, professions, villages, occupations) are either absent (destroyed or neglected to death), or weak, and/or assimilated to totalitarian bureaucracy. 

(In other words, spontaneous groupisness has been displaced and replaced by top-down bureaucracy - and there is no other form of effective groupishness.) 

Ultimately; this is because people do not now spontaneously and inevitable fall-into groupishness as they once did; and people have chosen instead to grasp-at whatever groupishness is most easily on offer. And what is on offer her-and-now is... the groups created and sustained by the totalitarian Establishment.     

So, we find-ourselves as natural/ inevitable individualists; we don't fall into groups naturally; and the overwhelming response in the West has been a choice to ally with... whatever non-spontaneous groups are in our environment. 

And all of these groups are already, and increasingly, part of the global System. 

However; if we regard the waxing individualism and autonomy of Men through known-history as part of divine destiny; then in the first place we see that individual freedom and choice - and therefore personal responsibility - has become unavoidable; and secondly that it is of essential significance how we choose. 

Since we now just-are individuals, and because God makes this world; then individuals have (thrust upon them!) a much greater significance than in the past. 

The actual nature of the 2023 world can be seen as directing-us (herding-us, channeling-us...) each towards what we ought to be doing; while of course, the decision of what specifically to do (which way to jump!) necessarily remains our own. 

(The world brings us to the point of choice; and then we each choose. God has a definite preference how we should choose, but God cannot compel us to make that choice - and would not wish to compel us.) 

So we find-ourselves in a world where any group we might decide to join is either too weak to make a physical difference, or else a part of the problem. Any effective action we might take, has been pre-emptively neutralized, or indeed weaponized against us. 

This sounds bad; but if we simply accept this reality, and start from where we actually-are; then we can see that other possibilities have opened-up, even as the old groupish ones have closed. 

If only we become aware of, then reject, the assumption (so widely held) that our thoughts do not matter, and do not affect the world; then we may realize that individual autonomy enables each person to affect the world by his own thinking, in ways that were never possible before - because thinking was never previously so individual, was always previously (to a significant extent, increasing as we move further back into the past) a part of groupishness. 

In the past; people could not, and did not want to (could not even conceptualize), thinking as individuals. But now we can hardly avoid doing so. 

We now (for the first time, in a widespread fashion) have the ability to understand as individuals, evaluate as individuals, and personally decide upon what we want and where our allegiance is allocated. 

And, so long as we recognize that thinking just-is effectual in changing the world: that thinking changes that world: that every choice has real-life outcomes; this automatically and inevitably means that when we understand some-thing and, after evaluating it, make a choice as to whether we personally endorse or oppose it -- we are making a difference. 

That process of thinking, that sequence of thinking, makes a difference to reality; and in the direction we choose.

Each individual has immense power located in his thinking... But, that power is only individual - only our power - when thinking is individual, when we take responsibility for our thinking and our choices!

The vast changes of society towards individualism can therefore be understood as putting each of us into a position where we are confronted by choices which we can either embrace and learn-from; or else deny and hide-from. 

It hinges on understanding. Do we recognize that understanding is the most important (and necessary) think we can do, when confronted by Life? The pre-requisite of any possibility of Good? 

Or do we accept the Establishment line that thoughts are just in-the-head and it is only by effective physical action (and therefore by action in groups) that we may live well?

Understanding the nature of "creation" by comparing human creative genius with divine creation

I think it would be fair to say that most people haven't thought very much about what "creation" is, or might be; beyond either assuming that there is really nothing special about it, or assuming that it is a wholly mysterious "black box". 

And I believe that there is truth in both of these perspectives - in the sense that (while some particular Beings are much more often and more intensely creative than others) potentially all Beings are creative in some degree and way because it is an attribute of being-ness; while there is an irreducible mystery in being-ness, including the creativity of any particular Being. 

My long term interest in human creativity and the phenomenon of genius was behind the process of thinking that is recorded in my blog Intelligence, Personality and Genius; and which culminated in The Genius Famine book (co-written with Edward Dutton). 

In these books I both assumed that creativity was, on the one hand, on a quantitative continuum among humans; but also that some humans had a lot more of it (i.e. the qualitative category of "geniuses"); and this was related to a characterological (or 'personality') trait of the Endogenous personality. 

This I envisaged as a type of person whose attention and motivations were highly-innerly-generated (rather than being in response to external stimuli) - endo-genous can mean "generated from-within". 

(The Endogenous personality also explains many of the characteristic unusual personality traits of geniuses. On the one hand; there is not one standard genius personality type, on the other hand, the various unusual traits, as well as the averages for geniuses as a group, can be understood as various expressions of an unusually strong domination by innerly-generated motivations.)

However, these writings of mine were within the field of science, and did not, therefore, address the ultimate questions that lie out-with science. In particular, the origins of creativity were not mentioned. 

Science cannot, of course, discuss where creativity comes-from, except to assume it comes from the other entities and phenomena that are a part of science. 

Therefore, the best theories of creativity in science can only assume that creativity is a process of selections and recombination, interpolation and extrapolation, of what is 'already known' to science - and that the genius is therefore someone with exceptional ability to generate 'random' hypotheses from pre-existing materials, and then rapidly to sort-through and evaluate them. 

The assumed process of creativity therefore (and not by accident) resembles natural selection: undirected generation of variants, followed by a selection among these variants, based upon some functional criterion.  

But it can be seen that such a notion of 'creativity' means that there is ultimately nothing really new about what is created. From the perspective of science; all creation is (by assumption, hence by definition) just selection, recombination etc. 

Such an idea of creation fits-with the understanding of classical Christian theology which draws a qualitative line between God-The-Creator (the one-and-only creator of everything from nothing, in a once-for all act); and Man the "creature" whose creating can only be a matter of selecting and re-shuffling what already exists in God's creation. 

Thus God is the only really-real creator, and Man can only mimic divine creation in a kind of 'paint-by-numbers' process; as a creature wholly made by God and using materials and instructions provided entirely by God. 

From this point-of-view; divine creation is a done deal: it already contains everything, and therefore cannot be added to. 

But if we consider the creative act itself, and assume that there must be the possibility of genuinely original creation - a creation which does indeed make something new; then we come down to the idea of creation as a property of any Being - much like life, consciousness and purpose are other attributes of a being. 

In other words, we can (it is possible, if we wish) assume that creativity is one of the attributes of all Beings - including God and including all other Beings.  

And that is, indeed, what I assume!

But what is creativity? 

In the first place, it can be defined double-negatively (using terms form medieval Christian theology), as an example of uncaused cause or a first mover. 

Another, more positive, way of thinking about it; is that genius is "generative" (as the etymology implies) -- that is, genius is a kind of "spontaneous generation", originating in a Being, whereby what emerges could be regarded as an expression of the Being from-which it emerges. 

It is also helpful to remember that Beings were unembodied spirits before there was incarnation. And, if we assume that spirits (as Beings) are potentially creative; then the primary kind of creativity is thinking rather than doing something to the material world. Genius relates primarily to thought, not artifact. 

(But, by the same account; this concept of thinking is real, thinking is a part of the world; such thinking has an effect on the world.) 

This clarifies that the essence of a human creative genius is not a book, painting or a piece of music; but the thinking from-which an artefact may, or may not, later be derived.   

At the end of this line of reasoning; I arrived at an understanding of creating which includes divine creation and also the potential creativity of Man and all other Beings - God, Man and Beings within a single reality to which all these Beings may (in principle) contribute their creativity. 

Such creativity is potentially originative, generative, genuinely novel - such that whenever God 'enlists' another unique Being into his creative project, that will expand the possibilities of creation-as-a-whole. 

And - because creation is originative in each Being; this understanding makes of creation something potentially open-ended and everlasting. There is no reason why creativity would ever 'run-out'; since it is (potentially) an attribute of any Being.

This also fits with my other understanding of the nature of divine creation as being a process of exactly such 'enlistment'; a process of God creating the universe by securing the harmonious cooperation of other Beings. 

I imagine the primordial situation ()before divine creation) as one in which each Being pursued its own unique and selfish creating; so that the whole did not add-up to anything - the individual purposes just 'cancelled-out' each other. 

God's first act of creation was (by various means, differing through history) to 'recruit' more and more Beings to his creative project; so that these Beings began to share purposes and to cooperate in these purposes. 

The principle of this cooperation was what we call Love. 

Loving Beings align their creativity towards the fulfilment of Love - and this is why Love is the very heart of the Christian understanding of God. 

So, an interest in human creativity and the phenomenon of genius - which preceded my conversion to Christianity; ended by feeding back into my core understanding of the metaphysics of Christianity and the human condition!