More on Christian Zen (and John Butler) - how it differs from what I want from life, and after-life

I am posting another talk from the delightful John Butler, which he discusses his books, his life, and his spirituality - which I have previously called Christian Zen. 

I call it this because it uses Christian language to describe an 'Eastern' spiritual way that neither wants nor aims at the resurrected life eternal with God, Jesus, and other sons and daughters of God, dwelling in Heaven - that Jesus made possible for those who followed him. 

Instead, JB's desire is for self/ego-less, body-less, peace, stillness, oneness and unity with God and every-thing - which I will tern Nirvana. 

What is instructive about this video is that it seems to make clear why John Butler wants this. He mentions the core problem of life as 'How do you cope with the world' - and the impossibility of escaping from the world due to the constraints of the body. Clearly the hope permanently to be rid of the body is not the same as the hope of resurrection. 

JB also mentions his aim of 'less me, more God' (not my will but God's will) - which equates closeness to God with dissolution of 'me', the self, the distinct ego. 

The great hope is for total and perfect unity - in which whatever makes us distinct and unique is removed. This is holiness. He suggests the special virtues of losing the individual in the community (family, village, nation); absence of criticism between Men; and patient, forbearance and waiting - which he (from experience) regards as better lived in Russia. 

Butler describes his books on Russia (which I have read, and recommend) as describing How spirit may strengthen to bear an unbearable world. 

This phrase is, I think, a great clue to this Christian Zen perspective. It describes the basic stance that 'the world' is intrinsically unbearable, that this un-bearability comes from the detached and observing conscious self; and therefore implies that the best and only hope is to escape the un-bearability by dissolving consciousness (and the underlying self) - so that we will just-be. 

   

By his own account John Butler has had (until recently) an 'unbearable' life of misery, loneliness and depression - alleviated only by the discipline of (oneness-type, 'transcendental') meditation. Some fifty years of meditation practice have enabled him to cope with the world, while he awaits death.

But why did JB experience life as unbearable? Well, his biography shows that this came from within; it came from the way he was and from what he wanted. And the Christian will, naturally, focus on the matter of love - because love is the principle of God's creation. 

Now, for Christians, love ought to be between persons - on earth and in Heaven (because God and Jesus Christ are also persons). But John Butler's aspirational idea of love is not between persons, but a blissful the loss of personhood into oneness. 

In this video; JB describes the great 'love' event of his life. This was a time when he and a woman friend (not his wife) were meditating together, and he experienced a vivid and compelling vision of their two souls leaving their bodies and joining into a single spiritual unity. This led to nothing relational between the two; but triggered JB to leave his wife and led to several years of a life wandering alone and miserable. 

So, the experience of 'love' drove JB further away from the world; because (I would say) this was not relational-love between persons, but was the 'annihilational'-love a loss of self (a microcosm of the hoped-for dissolution into the divine). 

From what I have gathered of John Butler's life (from the several books of his I have read) his only experience of relational love (Christian love) was with his mother; and this was warm, constant and long-lasting. 

Yet, I think this love, because it was with his mother, probably pointed backwards into a lost childhood; rather than forwards into eternity - and (in other of his work) I judge that JB regard all inter-personal and conscious love in terms of a negative attachment to the unbearable world.

He seems to regard Christian love as a narrowly-specific, immature and anthropomorphic perspective on life; something which ought-to-be set-aside in favour of the universal, 'abstract' undifferentiated 'love' of complete unity with the impersonal-and-universal-divine. 

In sum, I believe that (so far as I can tell) John Butler is an example of someone who does not want what Jesus has to offer. He does not, indeed, want to be a Man - because he finds distinct consciousness so unbearable in its suffering, that he would 'hand back the entrance ticket' of becoming a Son of God and return to a situation of pre-creation blissful mere-being. 

I think he regrets being budded-off God, because of the existential loneliness and isolation it engenders (at least in adults); and wishes to lose all awareness of himself as a separate entity - lose all awareness altogether.

From this perspective, this mortal life is nothing but a Vale of Tears; without any essential function or purpose. It is a kind of punishment, or accident; something to be coped-with by learning Not to think. And something from-which death is a deliverance.

For me, none of this is true. I see this incarnated mortal life as having a purpose that is essential to what I most want: which is resurrected life eternal in Heaven with other persons - including at least some of those whom I love from this earthly time. 

I regard this mortal life as made good (albeit intermittently, and temporality) by inter-personal love, I see love of God and Jesus as between me and other persons and living beings; and I see the aim of both earth and Heaven (the thing I most want to 'do') as being creation/ creating from and for this 'web' of loving relationships. 

As I have often said before; it seems apparent that there are some people who are (apparently from young childhood, and perhaps related to the pre-mortal spiritual nature) wanting something very different from the gift that Jesus brought us - and John Butler seems to be one of them. 

Instead of opting-into Heaven, and different from choosing the Hell of opposition to God - these people want to stop being people. 

I regard this as a consequence of the fact that when God (our Heavenly parents) took our primordial and unconscious selves and procreated them into being sons and daughters of God with consciousness and free agency; some regretted the event. 

Among those who regret being sons and daughters of God are those who respond by blaming and hating God and divine creation - these are the demons who work to destroy.

And there is this other group - of whom John Butler (along with perhaps vast numbers of adherents of Eastern religions) is one; who want to return to the state of a primordial and unconscious self. I don't think this is literally possible, because I believe that the sons and daughters of God are eternal.

But God can certainly remove all self-consciousness and all awareness of difference from the sons and daughters of God ; so that after death fully, and to some extent, during mortal life (e.g. in oneness meditation) - Men can blissfully feel and experience themselves as-if they are an impersonal and abstract part of the divine. 

This is not what God most wants for us and from us; but I think it is something he will do for his children who choose to opt-out of Heaven but without being hostile to the Heavenly project. 

    **

Note added. While I believe that all the above applies in an abstract and ideal sense; I think that here-and-now (in these 'end times') it is very difficult for anyone to reject (real) Christianity without damning themselves. 

In other words; as of the conditions in The West in 2021, Christian Zen is mostly in practice anti-Christian. 

When the world is ruled by a demonic cabal - so that all which is mainstream, official, 'approved' is strategically on the side of evil in the spiritual war - then those who reject the gift of Jesus will find it very difficult not to find themselves accepting the assumptions and motivation of those who actively oppose Jesus. 

To put matters differently; because the Christian Zen adherent rejects discernment (i.e. rejects 'judgmentalism') - its becomes all-but impossible for anyone with any kind of engagement with The System (and surely we all depend on The System to keep us alive, and not to kill us) to avoid joining-with the system in pursuit of damnation. 

I would say that discernment of Good from evil has become an absolute necessity in 2021. The default is nowadays to take the side of Satan, and it requires almost an active choice to reject damnation. 

As an example, in another video John Butler demonstrates a belief in the CO2 Global Warming agenda which is deceptive and evil agenda based on several Big Lies; and speaks approvingly of the Extinction Rebellion organization - which is a tool created-by and working-for the goals of the totalitarian world government: the Global Establishment. 

This kind of gross failure of discernment seems almost inevitable when one combines a rejection of judgment with a climate of pervasive authoritarian evil. 

To put it very simply: For most people, most of the time, here-and-now; the choice is binary: Christ or Satan - and those who in other cultures and at other times might genuinely have wanted Nirvana, will sooner or later find themselves wanting Hell. 

One or many paths to "Enlightenment" (and what is it, anyway?)

I was watching the above video in which John Butler is asked whether Enlightenment is something achieved immediately and effortlessly (or not at all); or whether it is a matter of many years of regular and strenuous discipline? And whether there is one true path to 'the peak of the mountain', or many routes? 

(One true religion only; or instead that all religions are one ultimately?)

This made me think about how I might answer this question...

I would first have to say that this question presupposes that a solid, 'permanent' state of Enlightenment is (or should be) the aim of life; whereas I would emphasise that mortal life is not about achieving a state of Enlightenment. Instead the purpose is about learning from the experiences of mortal life, with learned-lessons redeemed after death in resurrected eternal life. 

What people term Enlightenment is truly therefore the (temporary) feeling we get when we have learned something important. It could be regarded as a sign of such learning. But it is not meant to be a continuous and permanent state. When we have had one Enlightenment, have learned one particular lesson - then we are meant to go on to learning more, and further, lessons; and maybe have further Enlightenment experiences. 

I would therefore suggest that neither of the suggested possibilities of immediate/ total or long-term/ incremental Enlightenment are correct; because this mortal life is not the end. For Christians, this mortal life between conception and death is vitally important - yet ultimately it looks towards the life to come. The proper, ideal perspective for regarding our mortal life is therefore eternity. 

In a sense it is obvious that all lives (no matter how Enlightened) will end in death; and that corruption, decay, disease and degeneration are all intrinsic to this 'entropic' world. 

Therefore, it is a plain error to think in terms of Enlightenment - at least it is for a Christian. For other religions, it may be different - for example, Enlightenment may be what is required to escape the endless wheel of reincarnation... It may be that Enlightenment allows someone to die finally. 

So - all religions are not one; nor do all religions lead to the same destination. We either follow Jesus through death to resurrection - or we don't. (There are probably several or many other possibilities; including Hell.)

But for a Christian; I think Enlightenment means something like an insight; properly speaking, a valid and significant insight of permanent relevance to life everlasting in Heaven. 

Emergency treatment for Project Fear

Since it seems that fear is the prime weapon that the Global Establishment are deploying for the damnation of Men's souls (more exactly, Project Fear leading to Project Despair); and since it is obvious that the recent totalitarian coup has all of societies institutions sewn-up (such that there is nobody with power that can be trusted - because they are all on the side of evil); therefore an emergency treatment for escalating acute, or grinding chronic, fear is useful.

The antidote to fear is a combination of love and trust in that which is good and powerful.

I find that what works best as a start is to concentrate on the here-and-now - in other words self-remembering; because fear is about the future. This can then be followed-up by reflection on the fact that God is the creator of this world, who is our loving Father, therefore can be trusted to do whatever is necessary and possible.

Another source of fear is about whether we ought to be doing something to prevent the feared from happening, but what? And how can we be sure what is for the best?

This is when self-remembering can be followed by seeking the guidance of the Holy Ghost, who will tell us here-and-now what, if anything - and often there is nothing - should be done. This obviates the guilt pressing us towards that obsessive but fruitless planning, which plagues modern Men.

John Butler is very good on the specific business of detaching from abstract and theoretical angst; and becoming aware of oneself in the here-and-now; and (at his quietest) has just about the most soothing voice I've ever heard! - This immediately takes the sting out of present fear, and can be used to lead-into the process described above:

Coping with this world's suffering - The Platonic Perspective

This latest video by John Butler is a clear phenomenological description of what could be termed the Platonic Perspective as it occurs in the Western spiritual traditions - including having a strong influence on the mystical types of Christianity; and perhaps especially Eastern Orthodoxy (which was once dominant in my part of The West - in the form of Celtic Christianity).

JB draws a contrast between, on the one hand: the deep peace attainable during meditation; when he inhabits what feels-like a timeless, spaceless and unchanging world - understood as the world of the divine. And which I also recognise as Plato's 'world of forms'.

And on the other hand: the noise and bustle; fear, decline and degradation; and the physical restrictions of this mortal earthly life: a life of always-temporary and -partial joys; but also of inevitable loss, decay and death.


Regarded from the abstractly-divine, infinite and static world of Platonic 'reality' - this mortal world and earthly life appear (as JB says here) like a tiny theatre; infinitestimal in the immeasurable vastness of space and time - a playhouse putting on bitter-sweet dramas with flesh-and-blood actors, that seem serious while they are being enacted; but from-which we shall awaken as bodiless spirits into the changeless bliss of Nirvana.

It seems to me that this Nirvana is very close to the idea of Heaven as it has been (and is) imagined or anticipated by many Christians - albeit that Christians must acknowledge that (eventually) they will (like Jesus) be resurrected with solid and human-shaped bodies...

However, the physicality of the resurrection body has often been defined and (I would say) dissipated into something more spiritual than material: something superficially looking like a mortal body but actually functionally pretty-much identical with spirit... 


Anyway; I can certainly appreciate the appeal of this Platonic (or Hindu, or Buddhist) Perspective - and indeed held some such view myself not so long ago (as can be seen in several blog entries dating up to about 2012).

But now I have rejected it in favour of an understanding of Christianity that is, I think, much more in-line with the actuality and neccessity of Jesus Christ; and in which Time is a universal reality - I mean linear, sequential and irreversible Time - albeit a Time which we know runs at very different speeds in different places...

Time is perspectival: analogous to the descriptions of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. We experience the relativity differences in Deep Sleep - in which we are hardly aware, and from where time runs so slowly compared to awakeness that no time seems to pass despite hours having passed 'by the clock'. Or in Dreaming Sleep in which we are aware, and where we can cram the events of many hours into a single minute (as measured in awake 'clock time').


Using this as a model; I can quite simply explain-away the experiences of John Butler's meditation; in that the apparent absence of time and space is an illusion produced by the cessation of awareness - much as happens in Deep Sleep. And, exactly like our experience of deep and dream-less sleep - JB's type of meditation creates a state of mind in which there is no suffering and no worries.

But that is not because unawareness is more-real than awareness: Deep Sleep (and its analogues) is necessary and valuable - but it is not realer-than being awake. Unawareness is simply a different state of consciousness.

And I infer that God wants us to spend most of our life in a state of awareness since that is how all men naturally spend most of their lives: i.e. awake.

Going further; I see in the development of each Man from child to adult, and the development of Mankind from animist, through religious, to romantic; our divine destiny is to become more aware - because awareness is more free, more creative; and capable of chosen love.

God is self-aware: increased awareness is part-of an increase in divinity.

Deep (oneness) meditation is like dying

This two minute audio is the clearest and most concise description I've come across of the difference between Nirvana and Heaven - and the difference between the aspirations of Christianity and 'Eastern' religion (as it is known in The West).

What John Butler expresses is the desire for oneness with minimally-conscious, immersive, abstract bliss; an impersonal absorption into the unity of divine love. He describes deep meditation - which he practices for about five hours a day - as being similar to death (as he understand death).

And he yearns for death to come; to be rid of his body and the thinking mind - and thus to become a discarnate and ego-less spirit.


John Butler calls this state the Kingdom of God and Heaven - but of course it is not: it is instead the stripping-away of all that makes us human. JB uses Christian language, but this is not a Christian desire.

There would be no reason for Jesus Christ to incarnate as a Man - to experience mortal life and to die and be resurrected; if our ultimate destiny was to become impersonal spirits fused with the abstract divine. In fact; if such was our intended destiny, there is no reason for mortal incarnate life at all - this embodied, thinking, personal life serves no positive function. 

Jesus Christ offered us a totally different kind of Heaven: a resurrected life eternal of immortal Men with indestructible, solid bodies. We die, but remain our-selves. We continue to think! Christ was resurrected, not reabsorbed; he continued to think and be a separate person; he did not lose his ego-identity and consciousness.


The Christian Heaven is one of persons, each different and distinct. And the loving relationships of Heaven are not any kind of fusion, but are inter-personal; they depend on us remaining individuals. As I understand Heaven, it is a place of creating; and we will participate with God, and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost in the eternal work of continued creation.

By contrast, in Nirvana there is no creation - only being: it is change-less; outside time and space. The God of Nirvana is not really a God of creation; because our created world is seen as an evanescent illusion (maya); and for us to believe creation is real or eternal is a delusion. The God of Nirvana Just-Is, unchanging, forever. 


There seems little doubt that John Butler genuinely wants a blissful and impersonal Nirvana; and does not want resurrection to the Christian Heaven. He wants to cease to be as an embodied thinking person; he wants to remain alive forever, but conscious only of the bliss of being absorbed-into divine love - with 'love' being understood as an impersonal disposition (perhaps something analogous to glowing light, a gas, field of force or magnetism, or a vibrational state).

How would God, our Heavenly Parents, be likely to regard John Butler's wishes? Would God be likely to grant them?

I think God would be sad that JB has rejected the great gift made possible by Jesus Christ; and sad that JB regards incarnation, thinking and the capacity for inter-personal love as worthless. Sad that JB regards this world, and the mortal lives of Men as worthless. From JB's perspective, implicitly - this life and our experiences are temporary errors that he wants to be undone forever.

God might be irritated, or even angry, at John Butler's preaching of Nirvana as if it was Heaven, and by his denigration of God's work of creation, and Jesus's work of salvation. But this may well be regarded as a product of humanly understandable confusion - since there are major inconsistencies in JB's ideas. For instance he praises and responds very powerfully to nature, animals, the stars, even human beings sometimes! Yet, ultimately he regards them all as worthless, indeed meaningless; implicitly he regards his powerful subjective responses as mistaken.

God would therefore be understanding of the misery that mortal life seems to hold for JB; and sympathetic about his desire to 'hand back the entrance ticket', and give-up on being a Man. Listen again to that recording above: there is a man who - at the bottom line - really wants to be dead, with his death conceptualized much like a permanent, deep sleep of unawareness.  


More importantly, resurrected Heavenly life is voluntary, a opt-in situation. God would not, therefore, punish those who chose otherwise, as such; else the choice would be coerced and the followers of Jesus merely conscripts!

Heaven is for those who love Jesus, and fellow Men and such love is free and cannot be enforced. Those who are incapable of such love, or who have other priorities, will have other fates. From various clues and insights; the 'system' seems to be that the eternal consequences of each person's own free choices are themselves their own justice - we judge our-selves: external 'punishment' is neither required not appropriate.

In sum, Men make their own Hells by their own choices; and, presumably, their own Nirvanas too. A Man who wishes to cease being a Man, and wishes to become fused with what he sees as the impersonal reality of the divine (since he is unable or unwilling to regard God as a person); will presumably be given pretty-much what he asks for - that is, an eternal state in which his consciousness experiences what he most desires.

So, I would expect that, when John Butler dies, he will reject the possibility of following Jesus to resurrection; and instead be enabled to experience what he so much wants: that is, a state of mere-being, aware of impersonal bliss with no perceptible change, and an absence of experienced time and space. As consciousness dwindles towards this minimum, John Butler will (I guess) probably be very pleased and grateful at the prospect!

Mindless mindfulness, and the meaning of (real Christian) meditation

I wrote a few years ago about 'mindfulness'* - and that kind of empty meditational practice; which is at best an analgesic, but is probably being pushed by The Establishment for much more malignant reasons.

This came to mind in watching one of John Butler's recent videos. I find him interesting because he exhibits the best and the worst aspects of the (Hindu/ Buddhist-derived) perennialist oneness spirituality as it affects the Western mind.

JB says much that is wise and valuable in the early part of the vid - and then towards the end demonstrates a stunning lack of discernment that comes through in supporting the vacuous 'mindfulness without God' fad, and references his dumb-evil belief in CO2-global-warming-totalitarianism that nowadays goes with New Agery. And the equally dumb-evil assumption that the rise in billionnaire-funded, mass media and state bureaucracy supported, mindfulness-training and climate-hysteria are steps in the right direction, that JB personally supports!

I mean, how unwise, how dense, does someone need to be to suppose that anything good for people, good for the planet, would really be emanating from such people and sources?


(The chap who interviews JB - Phil Shankland - is an Extinction Rebellion activist, who can be seen on his Facebook pages taking part in demonstrations. So much for the spiritual benefits of knowing and spending loads of time with a contemporary wise man, and meditating for hours every day - plus an active life associated with a liberal-'Christian' church!... JB himself - in other videos - apparently takes for granted the validity of Warmist claims to be able to predict and control the world climate by a - necessarily totalitarian - global government; empowered to monitor and control all human activity.)


Of course, if a oneness, Nirvana seeking, anti-ego meditator were trying to be consistent; he would have no political views at all; and no interest in other-people or the way that things apparently happen in this - by definition illusory - mortal life. He would have No Morality - because morality is regarded as just as much part of the illusion of This Life as is everything else we think is real. 

However, in practice, such folk mostly seem to be on the stupid and ranting extreme of Leftist moralistic posturing; and when followed-up through time (which, in theory, they also regard as illusory) exhibit a stunning inability to learn from life experiences.

That is what oneness spirituality seems to do to Westerners - it makes them indifferent to personal experience, and indifferent to the truth (i.e. indifferent to the maya / illusion of this changing mortal life) - but just to a sufficient extent to prevent them from taking life seriously enough to learn from the experience! Just to a sufficient extent to reject the reality of traditional sexual morality; but not quite enough to reject the moral imperatives that justify the ever expanding claims of the modern sexual revolution.

Somehow the effect of oneness and loss of ego is never quite enough to induce them to set-aside mainstream, approval-seeking, virtue-signalling, fashion-dominated Leftism...

*

I would say that meditation does indeed begin with self-remembering, being here-and-now; knowing the 'presence' of God. So far, JB is valuable, helpful. But meditation then should - instantly - move-on-to being aware not of God as a diffuse omni-presence (analogous to our immersion in the sea, or floating in air); but to knowing God as a person: indeed knowing God as our loving parent (here, now, with-us)...

(Knowing, that is, God as a Being - not an abstraction.)

And meditation should not be seeking to annihilate 'the ego' or 'the self', nor to dissolve it into the abstract one-ness of deity - but to bring forth our true and divine self.


(What would be the point of God creating mortal life if its purpose was to annihilate the body and the self? Better not have mortal life in the first place! No - the purpose of this our mortal life is to experience and learn from temporary incarnation and self-hood, so that we may be able to choose - or reject - Christ's offer of immortal incarnation and divine self-hood.) 


And meditation should be about our true-self meeting-with a Being: such as our Heavenly Father; or other divine, spiritual or other presence - perhaps the beloved dead.

And why should we meet such? Not for happiness, coping, to kill pain or reduce anxiety - But through love; that's the proper reason. It is indeed the proper reason for meeting anyone. Love of that person, or love of of God's creation.

And inter-personal love - between Beings; not love understood as a kind of gas, force-field, or high frequency vibration! 


Also, meditation should Not be about trying to sustain itself as a solid lasting state; but about (when needed, at will) touching-base with this underlying reality to reorientate ourselves in life.

We are not - clearly, from the design of this world - meant to spend our lives suspended in a static-state of meditation or prayer; but (mostly) in loving and creating. And meditation is in order to make this possible, set us on the proper direction etc.

What I (personally) aim-for: is to be able to meditate and pray often, on demand; but not continuously. As Arkle says; God does not want us to be thinking about Him most of the time; but God wants us to do what we are here to do; live in the way God wants us to live (roughly: loving and creating).

Broadly; we best serve God by doing what God wants us to do (and that is an unique destiny for each person), not in continuously contemplating God.


Meditation and prayer are therefore best 'used' as ways of reminding our-selves of this situation; and of clearing away that evil addiction to fear that JB so well describes early in this video.

To leave aside fear is necessary; but not an end in itself. Unless detachment from the temporary and irrelevant concerns of worldly angst is only a first step; then meditation becomes just a drugless Valium.

Context is everything; the meaning of meditation depends absolutely on the spiritual, religious, metaphysical assumptions that are used to understand it, and its purposes. 

We ought then to move straight-on to consider this mortal life in terms of our faith and hope of immortal resurrected life, through following Jesus. 


*Note: Mindfulness is meditation without religion, without God. Mindfulness is thus meditation embedded-in an the assumptions of mainstream, materialist, Leftism. It is meditation reduced to pure technique. Hence mindfulness is directed merely at human happiness in this mortal life, to the individual in the present moment. This amounts to, as I say, merely a non-drug form of painkiller, anxiolytic or antidepressant. It is a way of 'coping' with the incrementally-escalating psychological evils of totalitarian Leftism - which then, of course, is able to grow unopposed and unabated.

Eastern meditation: An asymptotic approach towards the insensibility of extinction

I have been listening more to John Butler (JB) who seems a sincere, eloquent and expert Western (Christianised, but not Christian) exponent of Eastern meditation.

He seeks stillness and presence; he experiences what strikes him as infinity, complete inclusion, not time, no space, pure spirit.

He describes this as Love - but of course his is an extreme abstraction of love since there are no persons, nor beings and no relationship - and no change.

He describes it as God - but again this is an utterly impersonal and abstract God, pantheistically distributed throughout reality.


Over the fifty-plus years JB has been meditating, he has experienced a greater satisfaction, a larger experience, greater inclusivity - and in general a progression and expansion of experience.

He is trying to get rid of thinking - he regards thinking as perhaps the main problem of Man in the world. He is trying to get rid of the ego, the self - and equates this with spiritual progress.

My interpretation of what is happening, is that JB has approached closer and closer, without ever reaching, towards the cessation of self/ ego and consciousness/ thinking.

These can never be extinguished, or else JB would altogether lose awareness, and would not experience anything (much like deep sleep) - and would remember nothing.


As the self and thinking dwindle through techniques of disciplined and skilled meditation; there is a diminishment of the experience of time, space and all other experiences. All worries disappear, all attachments to the world - life is just here and now.

Since JB is prone to mental suffering and seems not to have loving personal relationships - he often experiences 'life' as a great trial without hope. He craves a permanence which mortal life cannot give. So for JB to dissolve-into less and less ego and consciousness is an end to all suffering, to all angst and loneliness, to all fears and the sorrow of change and loss.

JB regards this state of 'peace' as the highest goal of life - but it seems to reduce to less life, tending towards no life.

Myself - I see the highest and greatest happiness in terms of love between persons, in a marriage, family and among good friends - and it is that for which I crave permanence. Secondarily I seek to create - this has also been a deep satisfaction. Love-ing between persons and the act of create-ing are both phenomena that happen in Time, with Time, through Time; they both entail change, and depend upn the sustaining (and indeed increase) of the self/ ego/ thinking/ consciousness.

Which is why I am a Christian and hope for Heaven; and JB isn't and hopes for assimilation into an abstract aspect of God's love.

John Butler - Christian 'Zen' (not Zen Christianity)

I have been watching the videos and reading books by a modern English mystic called John Butler - the above is a typical example. Most striking is that Butler seems a lovely old chap, with one of the most hypnotically soothing voices I have ever heard (at the Bob Ross level!). He is also a very serious spiritual seeker; having diligently practiced meditation for fifty plus years.

Butler has travelled all over the place, been an organic gardener, done a degree in Russian in middle age and lived in Russia for a total of more than five years; nowadays he meditates twice a day, for two or three hours per session, in the CofE church in Bakewell, Derbyshire.

He reveres the Russian Orthodox tradition of ascetic monasticism and hermit life, a life of prayer and meditation. Furthermore, Butler was steeped in the Bible as a young person; quotes frequently and fluently from scripture to support his explanations; and the YouTube videos are mostly recorded in an Anglican church. Superficially, it might be assumed that John Butler is a Christian...

But is John Butler a Christian? No he isn't; and this is just a plain fact, not intended as any kind of criticism, since Butler is quite clear about his beliefs.


By his own account Christianity is - for him - merely the spiritual language he was raised-in and knows best. Christian language is - in this sense - wholly arbitrary; and he has said that it could have been any other religion without affecting the essence of his religious practise.

In other words, John Butler is an advocate of the 'perennial philosophy' - which is the Western understanding of the universal one-ness of God and Man that is found primarily in Hinduism and Buddhism and their variants and descendants.

(I say the PP is a Western version, an abstraction of Eastern religion - because it is detached from the specific ethnic communities and ways of life that characterise these religions in their Eastern actuality. In the East, these religions have numerous practices and rituals, and are also linked with 'pessimistic' and indeed threatening beliefs about reincarnation that Westerners seldom or never adopt.)


Most importantly, John Butler's spirituality is distinct from Christianity in that he explicitly seeks the total loss of ego, a state of non-thinking, a complete and permanent union with the divine. His over-riding motivations are the desire for peace, and to be free of all possibility of suffering: he wants to live free of the body as a spirit (not to be resurrected) and to live outside of time, where nothing changes - and change would not be desired because existence is a state of bliss.

As far as I can tell, JB is absolutely sincere in this wish - and indeed he assumes that everybody else also wants what he wants.

From my perspective, John Butler represents a genuine and perhaps universal human motivation; but probably one which is much rarer than he supposes. Such views have mostly been expressed by those like JB who are from intelligent and sensitive members of the upper classes - they have never been the basis for mass religions; and mass-consumption Eastern religions are a very different matter altogether.

Even the mystical tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy (which is the closest that Christianity comes to Butler's perspective) is qualitatively different from John Butler's spirituality; in that Orthodoxy does not seek loss of ego, cessation of thinking or union with God - but rather a perfect communion - and as resurrected incarnates, not as bodiless spirit.


Readers will know that I do not have any hostility to those with John Butler's views, and can indeed feel their appeal. They are the response of those who regard mortal life as ultimately negative; who regard incarnation and bodies as a limitation and who prefer spirit; who regret the development of Man's agency with its 'self' distinct from God and its subjective life of conscious thinking.

Butler's spirituality has the nature of  wanting to 'hand back his entrance ticket' to mortal life; to return to our earliest state of Being, before we were incarnated, when we were simply immersed in the Goodness of God, dwelling as spirits in Heaven. And I am confident that the subjective state of Being sought by people such as JB will be allowed and made possible by God - they will, indeed, live in the kind of unconscious union with the impersonal aspects of the divine - just as they hope for.

I do, however, wish to emphasise that they are not Christian, and the motivation is incompatible with the Life Eternal that Jesus came to make possible for us. And Perennial Philosophy becomes actively harmful if and when it is put forward as being the 'true' Christianity, or the deepest form of Christianity.


Also, it makes no sense at all to link PP with any kind of this-world morality: this is just incoherent! John Butler does not seem to realise that his convictions relating to the importance of environmentalism are sense-less in terms of his own philosophy. For example, in one video he (albeit half-heartedly) gives 'advice' on the subject of 'climate change', and he often opines regarding the desirability of unspoilt nature or organic food production...

And this nonsensical incoherence seems very hard, almost impossible, for Westerners to avoid - so that all the Western advocates of Perennial Philosophy that I have encountered are intractable hypocrites about politics; some of them very much so!

My feeling is that someone who sincerely regards unconscious union with impersonal deity as their deepest post-mortal desire, and who wish to approximate this during mortal life, should just get on with it! Perhaps it is legitimate to help other people to attain it by advising on meditative techniques (as does John Butler).

But such folk really ought to shut-up on every other subject! - especially politics and social organisation - since their views must inevitably by their own account be wrong and irrelevant; merely part of the maya (illusion) of this mortal, incarnate life...

Being trained to act

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When I was in my early teens I was trained to act in the classic style that dominated English theatre from the time of WS Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) through the era of the 'well-made play' and up into the mid 1950s - when it was challenged by the supposedly more authentic style of Kitchen Sink drama pioneered by John Osborne with Look Back in Anger.

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The school teacher who trained me had been some kind of a professional actor at some level - and seemed to us extremely eccentric.

He looked a bit like Charles Gray, and had the same accent and mannerisms - essentially he never stopped acting, whatever he was doing.

In classes, his big thing (pretty much the only thing) was to teach all the pupils correct pronunciation - received pronunciation (aka BBC English) - and this was done by mocking and mimicking the local Bristol/ Somerset accent and various other regional accents. Anyone who spoke in a rustic dialect was called a Garge (the pronunciation of George) with the R very strongly emphasized.

In his era, teaching people to speak properly had been regarded as a major part of what happened at school - and this included the non-academic (secondary modern) schools where he had been teaching.

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When we were rehearsing, he would don his casual uniform of open necked shirt and cravat, blue jeans (rolled turn-ups), sandals with socks; talk about the famous stars by their first names (especially 'Larry' Olivier); swear at moments of pressure (saying 'bloody' in a rapid and clipped way) then apologize with 'Pardon my French' - and would chain-smoke cigarettes nervously throughout the day, and drink too much coffee.

In short, he would behave exactly as an actor was expected to behave in his youth.

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The way a play was put-on in this classic style was very labour intensive - the director worked hard, and the actors worked hard. There was one right way to do anything and everything - the directors job was to know that one right way, and be able to demonstrate it; the actors job was to be able to follow the director's instructions exactly but apparently effortlessly and gracefully.


The play was The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde - and I was playing the butler Lane - who doesn't have very much to say or do, but is the first person on stage, and has a few classic lines.

But, despite having such a minuscule role,  I was trained and rehearsed with the utmost seriousness, as part of an elite troop, I was present at every rehearsal - and in the end could quote the whole play from memory

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The stage was set-up exactly, with measured spaces and precise angles; and we we told not only where to stand, but how many paces (of what length) to take for each move; and of course we always set out on a move with the upstage foot (the foot furthest from the audience) - this was drilled and drilled, until it was second nature. "Never turn your back on the audience."

Another thing you must apparently never do in this style of acting is have two actors moving in towards each other and crossing over - as a rule, one actor at a time would be moving, or two would move in the same direction. Obviously, one actor should not move when another actor was speaking (that would be 'upstaging' them - i.e. taking the audience's attention away from them - for an actor, a heinous crime...).

Thus the play was constructed in a balletic fashion - with sequences of moves, rapidly picked-up cues, and each speech made lucid; ideally to be perceived by the audience as flowing, smooth and apparently effortless - but actually drilled and drilled until it was second nature.

(The idea was to prevent the audience being distracted from the proper focus of the drama - which was whoever was speaking.).

In general, the stage was treated like a balanced tableau - with the actors spread across in an open stance, facing the audience; continually rearranging themselves from one tableau to another, by carefully crafted sequences that usually involved moving just one actor at a time.

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As for speaking - the precise accent and inflection of every single word, and the rising and falling intonation of each line, was told us by the director; and we had to learn it.

We were told and shown how to project our voices so every syllable was audible at the back of the theatre - and the intonation of words and lines was adjusted accordingly.

If we erred in any respect during rehearsal, then we would be stopped there and then, and have to do it again.

In sum, we were told and shown (the director would demonstrate) everything we had to do - and being a good actor was being able to do exactly what you were told, and do it very well, in an elegant and controlled manner. 

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Facial expressions were also learned - the director being our 'mirror'.

And in the show week, we were individually taught how to apply our own stage make-up - in a standard way with standard greasepaint colours and powder. 

I particularly remember how strange was the eye make-up, with a surprisingly large red dot on the inner canthus, and a white one on the outer canthus. 

In the end our features were exaggerated, and our faces powder-caked, in a manner perhaps suitable for performing somewhere vast like the Bristol Hippodrome with remote 'gods' (upper circles of seating) rather than our miniature school theatre.

But that was the proper way to do make up - so that is what we did.

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In fact, our school theatre was superb - it was a real theatre - perfect, purpose built; a mini-proscenium arch theatre; with pretty much everything expected in such (dark velvet curtains, flies, trapdoors, an orchestra pit etc).

The main entrance to the school was indeed set up as a theatre foyer, with doors to the stalls in front of you and stairs to the balcony on either side!

I have never seen a better school theatre - but at the time I just took it for granted, and assumed all schools had something like it.

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After the last night of the show, when it was all over, I experienced the most extraordinary crash of mood - everything seemed dull, uninteresting, unimportant.

The only thing I wanted to do, was start rehearsing another play (preferably by Oscar Wilde) - or even better do it all over again!

I was actually carrying the script of Earnest around with me, and the programme signed by the other cast members.

I was in mourning.

Yet I was only a butler, and hadn't had much to do! But this experience (and others afterwards) gives an impression of the absorbing and addictive quality of the stage.

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About 15 years later and 300 miles North, I was Algernon in the same play, coming in late to replace somebody who had dropped out, and doing the whole thing - one of the five main parts - in six weeks, three nights of rehearsals a week (while writing up my doctorate!).

It went well, and was indeed by far the best performance I ever gave (at least, judging by the audience response).

However, it was so time consuming, I never did another play - although I did at other times take principal roles in several Gilbert and Sullivan or Edwardian musicals.

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All these later shows were an excellent experience, and I used a lot of my earlier training - but in reality no other play was anything like so carefully staged as the one at school.

There was always insufficient rehearsal time, inappropriate rehearsal facilities, and not the least of problems was that most adults could not 'take direction' as we had as youths.

Adults amateur actors miss rehearsals, fail to learn their parts early enough, and rigidly continued to say their lines pretty much as they first came out in the first rehearsal - they could not re-learn how to speak a line.

Anyway, I was always grateful to that old drama teacher from school. Although he was a kind of caricature and very pretentious; he worked hard (when doing a show, anyway) and was very thorough - and taught us well the craft of the theatre.

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