The Celestine Prophecy and synchronicity revisited

"I've found a synchronicity!"

The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield, was a self published book of the early 1990s, that went on to become a major best seller; and contributed to the sense of millennial anticipation among "New Age" spiritual seekers. 

On the one hand, the book was much read and discussed - on the other it had a reputation of being day dreamy, wishful, vague, and ineptly-written in the cynical and materialist mainstream.  

I encountered the CP about a decade after publication, and found it a rather charming and naive book, with a pleasant kind of atmosphere about it; and which helped make a significant step towards me becoming a Christian - although that is not the book's intent. 

A few days ago, I downloaded an audiobook copy from Archive.org, and found that I still responded to its earnest and positive tone, while at the same time seeing more clearly the self-imposed limitations that derive from its being a continuation of the idealistic sixties counter-culture. 

The main positive effect of the Celestine Prophecy (and I sampled some of Redfield's follow-up books as well) was to focus my attention on the importance of synchronicity - the idea that the remarkable and positive "coincidences" of life may have meaning, and point to a purpose. 

I reasoned that if synchronicity was a real phenomenon, then events must be arranged in accordance wit some plan or intention. To my mind, this must mean not just an ordered universe, or a transcendent deity, but a personal and loving God. 

Because otherwise reality would not arrange itself around individual people, around me and my destiny. An abstractly structured universe would have no reason to care about individuals or their fate in the world.  

For synchronicity to happen, and to have significance for the future; the events of an individual life must (I thought) be somehow "arranged" and therefore have a spiritual significance. 

In a nutshell; there must be a personal creator God, who loves me (and others) as individuals, and who is continuing to create for our ultimate spiritual benefit. 

Such was my eventual benefit from reading the CP back in the middle 2000s.

But re-listening to the CP, I see that the author's intentions are different. It is not Christian, not focused on resurrected eternal life; but instead hopes for a transformation of this life on earth so as to become a kind of blissful spiritualized paradise of peace, love, harmony - without pain or suffering. 

Indeed, CP asserts that this is happening, and will happen - it will happen to us; because of the direction of history and reality. People fail to see it, because immersed in survival and the seeking of possessions, status, thrills etc. But it will happen anyway, because it must.

Related to this is the vision of synchronicities as something that also happen to us, guideposts pointing at our better future, and which it is best if we follow.  

The prophecies are presented as "insights" - which are items of knowledge that need to be grasped, internalized, lived. 

The picture is of some higher reality that communicates to our senses pieces of information that are qualitatively and positively transformative for the people, and societies, that acknowledge them. 

These are precious insights which need to be preserved, disseminated, read, pondered and internalized. That is how things are meant to happen - and that is what is resisted by the regressive forces, the materialists, the power structures, the exploiters...

The Good Life of the CP is therefore one in which we are guided through the world and our lives by synchronicities, to attain sequential insights, towards a state of enlightenment that is also contageous - in a good way. 

The insights spread from person to person, and each is permanently transformed by each insight - so there is a ratcheting positive movement (albeit this may happen quickly, or else be delayed considerably by our faults and my malign meddling).  

 

In sum - I find the Celestine Prophecy to envisage a very passive form of spiritual life. The millennial New Age will happen to us, will be imposed from externally; and synchronicities likewise. Our job is to follow - and our reward is that these are for our own good - and to make a world where people can be qualitatively more spiritual and happier. 

From here-and-now, I regard these as fallacies, because I do not believe that goodness or spirituality can be imposed from externally. People cannot be made good, the world cannot be made good - good just isn't a top-down imposable thing; it must come from individual choices, from personal freedom, fro the good in individual beings.  

I do not believe, either, that there can be a paradise on earth - because entropy and evil are part of this world. Evil cannot be cured from externally, and entropy is the primal state "within" which creation is always being made. 

I think that evil and entropy can therefore only be escaped and left-behind by a new, Second Creation, which is Heaven, which is post-mortal. 

In sum; the New Age aspect of Celestine Prophecy, and its counter-culture origins and continuation, is seen in a this-worldly (and indeed leftist) vision of the desirable future - a coming Golden Age on earth as culmination of social changes that were the basis of 1960s radicalism. 

It was written more than thirty years ago when tens of millions of people in The West believed that this not only can happen, but would happen - irresistibly. That all people were changing, were being made more spiritual.

Due to some external and universal influence - sometimes called a higher frequency of consciousness, higher vibrational level, new energy or the like (invariably, some term derived from physics - it seemed). 

And that this did not come from the personal loving creator God of Christianity; but from a purposive movement within the whole of reality - a wholly immanent, discarnate, spiritualized idea of everything as ultimately one. 

The millennium was seen as a restoration of a harmony which was actually a unity. There was to be no pain or suffering, because there was no conflict or competition, because everything was one. 

And that is what humankind, and everything on earth and everywhere else, was irresistibly and necessarily moving-towards.  

Yet it did not happen. 

That was not how the millennium went for us. That does not describe the world, now. 

But, somehow, this not-happening hasn't dented the assumptions behind the New Age. Tens of millions of people still seem to live in optimism for the paradisal Golden Age, here on earth - and in line with sixties idealism - they still see this as actually happening. 

A further thing about synchronicity. It now strikes me as ultimately false to suppose that our lives are segmented such that particular bits of them count as synchronicities. 

In truth: our life is continuous, a living process - and while our consciousness may be detached and alienated - created reality is (and always has been) a kind of loving family of relationships. 

The reason why we cannot usually understand The Meaning of a synchronicity, is because in defining it, we thereby chop it out from this process and web of meaning.

We pull out a synchronicity from life, like Little Jack Horner extracting a plum from a pie; and examine it minutely - but cannot see from that one plum the pie itself, nor who made it, nor why it was baked... 

The synchronicity thereby becomes mysterious in its meaninglessness! 

Such are my thoughts from a brief re-engagement with the Celestine Prophecy

Belief in the supernatural/ paranormal/ occult phenomena

I don't know how unusual it is; but I find that I combine a firm belief in the reality of many supernatural/ paranormal/ occult phenomena; with an almost 100% reflex dis-belief in the objective reality of nearly-all specific examples of these phenomena, by nearly everybody.  

So, although in principle I am convinced of the reality of - in no particular order - telepathy, ghosts, miracles, synchronicity, personal destiny, magic, purposive personal evil (demons), angels, fairies... Nonetheless, I am very sceptical of the objective truth of almost every single report of such things I have encountered. 

Even among people whom I respect and trust; I find I often do not believe the specific truth of what they say or write... 

And indeed; to my mind, across such people, they have said and written a vast range of incompatible and often incoherent things. If I tried to base my life upon believing the specific information (facts and understandings) of even those relatively few sincere persons who I respect and trust - I would nonetheless be building my faith on a seething mass of sand, rubble, and water - not on solid rock!   

Something seems to happen in the process of communicating such phenomena; in the transfer of knowledge between the personal realm and public discourse, such phenomena become (to me) un-convincing: not something I feel that has the kind of validity upon which I could depend.

Thus, in almost every instance of reading or hearing about such things, I feel a rising sense of mistrust and rejection. 

This is confirmed by the apparent fact that such communications seem to take place in the context of sub-cultures of cultivated credulity: I mean groups of people who (it seems to me) have a kind of pact of mutual-belief. I have studied several of these in some depth; and this is how such groups seem to work - I mean on the basis of a tacit agreement to believe (almost...) any and all such such claims.  

This is why I try to refrain from ever communicating my own such experiences; because I know that they will be unconvincing to others, that there are many alternative mundane explanations, they can be explained-away or else my own honesty and competence will be rejected - and therefore in making such communications I feel an almost irresistible temptation to persuade, exaggerate, distort - and I assume others do also.

This is an interesting and significant metaphysical situation - I mean, one in which a whole world of vitally-important phenomena cannot (apparently) accurately and honestly be discussed in objective public discourse. 

Yet that does seem to be the actual situation! 

We can publicly discuss and analyse these matters in-general and in-principle; but, seemingly, not specifically. 

Note added: As I've said a few times before; I think the reason for this mismatch between personal and public knowledge is an important aspect of our times and place, and the nature of human consciousness as it has become. It is one aspect of the change from a pooled and mutually-aware group consciousness, to the greater freedom and agency - but also "alienation", cut-off-ness, isolation - of spontaneous human awareness and thinking. The point is not to resist or attempt to reverse this change; but to accept and take responsibility for the fact and necessity of our free agency. Explicitly to take personal responsibility for choosing our own fundamental assumptions about the true nature of reality - rather than (as in earlier eras) aspiring passively to obey "authoritative" external sources of validation.   

William James Tychonievich - a clerihew*

William James Tychonievich

Once blogged on matters Mormonish

But since his dreams achieved lucidity

It's 24/7 "synchronicity". 

*Clerihew

The question of "evidence" of life after death - from Philip K Dick

I feel as if I am channeling WmJas Tychonievich, in reporting this following (sort-of) "synchronicity" -- which is that immediately after writing my post on the question of evidence of God; I continued my re-reading of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick (1982), in which I came across the following (edited, and with my additional emphases):

**

"Is there any proof of God's existence?" Bill said. 

After a pause, Tim said, "A number of arguments are given. Perhaps the best is the argument from biology, advanced for instance by Teilhard de Chardin. Evolution - the existence of evolution - seems to point to a designer. Also there is Morrison's argument that our planet shows a remarkable hospitality toward complex forms of life. The chance of this happening on a random basis is very small... 

"There are proofs," Tim said. "But God doesn't talk to anybody," Bill said. "No," Tim said. He rallied, then; I saw him draw himself up. 

"However, the Old Testament gives us many instances of Yahweh addressing his people through the prophets. This fountain of revelation dried up, finally. God no longer speaks to man. It is called 'the long silence.' It has lasted two thousand years." 

"I realize God talked to people in the Bible," Bill said, "in the olden days, but why doesn't he talk to them now? Why did he stop?" 

"I don't know," Tim said. He said no more; there he ceased.... "I really wish you would explain it to me," Bill said to Tim. "Because it's impossible. It's not just unlikely; it's impossible." ... 

"Jeff [i.e. Tim's deceased son] has communicated with the two of us," Tim said. "Through intermediary phenomena. Many times, in many ways." ..."It is God Himself working on us and through us to bring forth a brighter day. My son is with us now; he is with us in this room. He never left us. What died was a material body. Every material thing perishes. Whole planets perish. The physical universe itself will perish. 

"Are you going to argue, then, that nothing exists? Because that is where your logic will carry you. It isn't possible right now to prove that external reality exists. Descartes discovered that; it's the basis of modem philosophy. All you can know for sure is that your own mind, your own consciousness, exists. You can say, 'I am' and that's all... 

"What you see is not world but a representation formed in and by your own mind. Everything that you experience you know by faith. Also, you may be dreaming. Had you thought of that? Plato relates that a wise old man, probably an Orphic, said to him, 'Now we are dead and in a kind of prison.' Plato did not consider that an absurd statement; he tells us that it is weighty and something to think about. 'Now we are dead.' 

"We may have no world at all. I have enough evidence - your mother and I - for Jeff returning to us as I have that the world itself exists. We do not suppose he has come back; we experience him as coming back. We have lived and are living through it. So it is not our opinion. It is real.

"Real for you," Bill said. "What more can reality give?" "Well, I mean," Bill said, "I don't believe it." 

"The problem does not lie with our experience in this matter," Tim said. "It lies with your belief-system. Within the confines of your belief-system, such a thing is impossible. "Who can say, truly say, what is possible? We have no knowledge of what is and isn't possible; we do not set the limits - God sets the limits." ...

"What do you believe, then? In objects you get into and drive around the block. There may be no objects and no block; someone pointed out to Descartes that a malicious demon may cause our assent to a world that is not there, may impress a forgery onto us as an ostensible representation of the world. 

"If that happened, we would not know. We must trust; we must trust God. 

"I trust in God that he would not deceive me; I deem the Lord faithful and true and incapable of deceit. For you that question does not even exist, for you will not grant that He exists in the first place. 

"You ask for proof. If I told you this minute that I have heard God's voice speaking to me-would you believe that? Of course not. We call people who speak to God pious and we call people to whom God speaks lunatics. 

"This is an age where there is little faith. It is not God who is dead; it is our faith that has died." 

"But -" Bill gestured. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would he come back [from the dead]?" 

"Tell me why Jeff lived in the first place," Tim said. "Then perhaps I can tell you why he came back. Why do you live? For what purpose were you created? You do not know who created you - assuming anyone did - and you do not know why, assuming there is a why. 

"Perhaps no one created you and perhaps there is no purpose to your life. No world, no purpose, no Creator, and Jeff has not come back to us. Is that your logic? Is that how you live out your life? Is that what Being, in Heidegger's sense, is to you? 

"That is an impoverished kind of inauthentic Being. It strikes me as weak and barren and, in the end, futile."...

**

It strikes me that these are strong, valid arguments; despite that "Tim" - Timothy Archer - is depicted as the worst kind of trendy-leftist, self-justifying hedonic Episcopalian Bishop from the 1960s! And despite that Tim's belief in the return of his deceased son is depicted by the agnostic narrator (his daughter in law, widow of the deceased son) as merely a wish-fulfilling yet dangerous delusion. 

The modern mainstream idea of "evidence" has always (as seen above) been ultimately incoherent in its own rationalistic terms - even when its professional practice was honestly-applied and coherent in terms on a basis in circular assumptions and reasoning. 

Yet nowadays (and since the 1990s) the public and in-practice conceptualization of evidence, of facts, of reality has been thoroughly corrupted into (literally) nothing more than the current, official, Establishment consensus; as currently propagated by the official mass media. 

"Evidence" in practice therefore means nothing more than a very vague, diffuse, and open-endedly changeable impression of what seems acceptable to those with power, wealth and high status... 

The more that people (or institutions, or algorithms) talk-about and assert evidence/ facts/ realism and their importance - the more manipulative, dishonest and intentionally-evil is the actuality. 

Earlier standards of evidence (which existed - at least in England! - within several discourses such as science, academia and law) have by-now been annihilated, as coherence of reasoning and statement have themselves been annihilated. 

Therefore arguments such as those of Bishop Timothy Archer in the above passage, have altogether lost traction. 

There can be no basis for argument (or evidence!) when there is no commitment to truth, and no interest in knowing reality.

 

Understanding telepathy - a 'clew' to reality?

Most people believe - from personal experience - that telepathy is a real thing, that it can sometimes happen. But not many people think much further about what this might mean. 

Telepathy is therefore an example of the way that our personal experiences interact - or rather, do not interact - with our metaphysical assumptions. 

Belief in telepathy (for modern people) is therefore encapsulated: it is a free-spinning cog, a belief unintegrated-with and separated-from our basic understanding of the world.  

A belief in telepathy therefore does not affect the basic materialism - and disbelief in 'the spiritual' - that is characteristic (indeed mandatory) in public discourse in our Western civilization. 

Unless there is a transformation of our basic (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality; telepathy cannot be understood and integrated with life-in-general - even when it is believed. 

Yet, if people started-with their already-existing belief in telepathy; and took it seriously; then honestly, and rigorously followed-through its implications - then the thread might well lead to metaphysical transformation. 

...And the same applies to other 'paranormal' (or 'supernatural') phenomena such as synchronicity, near-death-experiences, seeing ghosts - and the like; all of which seem to be highly prevalent experiences among ordinary people in the modern West. 

Each of these is, potentially, a clew - the loose-end of a thread which, if grasped and followed, could potentially lead to a revolutionary reappraisal of how life is understood. 

With telepathy, following the clew might initially lead to a recognition that one's experience of telepathy was not one of language, not a hearing of words nor a seeing of images; but instead just knowing some-thing. 

While hearing words or seeing visions might at first seem to imply that telepathy worked by some means akin to radio or television transmission; on further consideration - if telepathy works without the senses, this seems to imply something more like a sharing of knowledge - which implies that different people have access to other minds, or to some other common source. 

This seems to suggests that two people may be thinking the same thoughts, simultaneously; and perhaps by some means that does not involve back and forth communication - but through simultaneously accessing an underlying shared-world. 

Since the underlying shared world does not seem to be material - and is not, apparently, detectable or measurable - then it might be recognized as a spiritual world. 

Therefore, such a line of rigorously following-up the experience of telepathy - or some other analogous experience; might lead to telepathy being regarded as a possible manifestation of some common (maybe universal) spiritual reality, that can simultaneously be tuned-into by many people - but which continually exists whether or not it is being tuned-into. 

This 'common spiritual reality' might then form an hypothesis, which could be tested against other past and future personal experiences; to see whether such an understanding cohered with our own life.  

Yet this kind of reasoning very seldom happens; and instead most people believe this, that, and the-other - each as encapsulated assertions - without any attempt to relate them to each-other or to a coherent overview of reality. 

In fact, such encapsulation of beliefs (of all kinds) turns-out to be vital to the continued (albeit short-term) existence of our current - deeply dishonest and corrupted, value-inverted - society. 

Our lives, our actual experiences, are full of clews to a larger, meaningful, coherent and much-better world - if only we weren't so adept at ignoring them!

 

Are a handful of Romantic Christians of any possible real-world use?

I find myself fascinated, these days, by tales and legends of a small group working against apparently insuperable odds, ridiculously overmatched... yet succeeding (overall, mostly) with the help of divine providence. 

This may explain my interest in such stories as The Journey to the West/ Monkey, the Lord of the Rings, That Hideous Strength, or the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. There have also been real life examples such as the 'Lake Poets', Tolkien's youthful TCBS club of school friends and later the Inklings. 

It is a familiar trope; and is usually associated with action and adventure. But I feel that the deep fascination of this scenario is at the level of thinking, not doing - and it about a spiritual rather than material quest. 

At any rate; the current situation is a quest for something uncertain, in an unknown place, and without any clear idea of how to achieve it...

Consider the blogs linked on the sidebar - the 'Romantic Christian' grouping. There is no way that a handful of people writing on obscure blogs could causally make a positive difference to a world of billions, or even just The West - many of whom are addicted to the mass media and overwhelmingly hostile to anything which might interfere with their pleasures, or which might threaten their comfort, convenience and self-esteem.

But a blog is merely the surface, communicating, aspect of a motivation that exists primarily in hearts and minds, in our thinking; and which can work by a direct and unmediated process of knowing - a mind-to-mind mutuality of knowledge; rather than being reliant upon the process of sending out signals and having them received and understood in line with our hoped for meanings...

Furthermore, the 'odds' of Romantic Christianity being utterly ignored and ineffectual, are balanced by divine assistance insofar as we are indeed pursuing a quest that is in-line-with God's hopes and plans... 

And if we are not doing what would please God, then such assistance will be withheld; so the harm is limited.

Divine assistance seemingly works by means of 'providence', or synchronicity - that is to say a 'behind the scenes' arrangement of events to produce the most hopeful juxtapositions of persons and incidents. 

But God can only do so-much when it comes to human affairs, since our 'free will' can and does often oppose God's will... Nonetheless; providence is known for recurrently leading to as-many-as-possible opportunities for us to 'make the right decision', and thereby to nudge things in the right direction.

So providence can ensure that something is noticed, but not that it is reacted-to; nor that it is reacted-to in a positive and constructive fashion. 

Providence can use communications to point-at a truth - but cannot ensure that a person grasps that truth intuitively (ie directly); nor that he acts-upon it.

Anyway; I personally feel vastly encouraged by the idea of a hopeless quest against the odds, of a type that could only succeed by 'luck'/ wildly improbable 'coincidences'!

Encouraged by the idea that we should simply get-on-with trying to do what we ought to do, as best we can determine and and best we can pursue that quest; and accept that that is all that we can do - but that is enough. 

(Despite that we almost certainly will never know the full outcome of our endeavor even if we did - improbably, overall - succeed.)

I also feel encouraged by the conviction that such a quest cannot fail, because it has intrinsic value in the doing; and that any genuine achievement in the realm of real-thinking (thinking by and of our divine selves) is permanent and eternally available. 

It contributes to the sum of divine creation. 

It makes a difference forever.

Note: This was adapted from a piece featured in Albion Awakening some four and a half years ago. 

God the creator and the Holy Ghost work from opposite directions

(Where shall we seek guidance in navigating a Christian path through this mortal life? One potentially helpful way of thinking about it might be this...)

 

If we regard Goodness as living in harmony with God's creation and creative purposes: then we are able to do this because there is divinity within each of us. In other words: we are God's sons and daughters; which I understand to mean that there is a literal (procreative, not symbolic) sense in which we have been made divine, in our souls. 

We are not fully divine (as was Jesus Christ) but we each have that potential - and to have that potential we must be (and are) partly divine. 

It is this aspect of "God-within" that enables us to want Good, and also enables us each to discern and know The Good. 

OK. So we are each a God-containing, partly-divine being - living our mortal lives in this world. 

As such; and we need to learn from our experiences in mortal life, lessons that which will be of value in resurrected eternal life (i.e. theosis); and we also need to desire and make choices such as to reach that resurrected eternal life after our biological deaths (i.e. salvation). 

How are we enabled to discover guidance in navigating through this complex world? Especially considering that we are each unique and changing, and live in unique and changing circumstances. 

Because our guidance needs to cope with unique and changing personal and life problems - then it seems clear that generic and fixed answers will be insufficient.  

Salvation and theosis must therefore be 'bespoke' - that is, 'made to measure' for each particular human soul; because 'off-the-peg' guidance (such as that provided by generic church teaching, practices, supervision etc.) cannot take into account our unique circumstances and nature. This generic guidance is always inadequate (even though it may be helpful). 

Our personal guidance is available from both directions: from outside us, and from inside. 

From outside; God is the primary creator; and continues His work of creation - and (because we are God's children) this creating extends right down to the level of each of our lives. 

Therefore, we are guided by God by means of his creative work in arranging of the circumstances of our each of lives. 

This guidance may take many and various forms, starting with our nature, abilities, circumstances of birth and parents; and including what might be termed 'luck' and 'coincidence' or 'synchronicity'. 

This guidance from God ensures that we are given the necessary opportunities and choices by which we can (from our our agency and by 'free will') attain salvation, and learn valuable lessons from mortal life. 

External guidance from God is therefore from the direction of outside - by creation acting upon our lives. This is met by the guidance of the Holy Ghost which is experienced from 'inside' us. 

Led by the Fourth Gospel (called John); I regard the Holy Ghost as our (potential) relationship with the ascended Jesus Christ. Such guidance is accessible by those who (whether explicitly, or implicitly) desire Heaven and have chosen to follow Jesus Christ - i.e. be guided by Jesus Christ. 

The guidance of the Holy Ghost is therefore an inner personal relationship (which is why the Fourth Gospel uses the synonym of 'comforter') that will inform us of... whatever we need to know for salvation and theosis. 

Again, it is a matter of our chosen free agency whether we follow this guidance. 

In sum: we can envisage the scheme of guidance as coming from from outside us - as God creatively-shapes the circumstances of our specific mortal life; and also from the opposite direction: from inside us - as Jesus personally-guides-us through the unique circumstances of our unique lives. 

       

The waning of Original Participation in my life - the later development of Final Participation

Are we doomed to dwell always on the surface of life? 

Looking back, I can now perceive that Original Participation provided an unconscious and spontaneous direct-link with The World, and other people and Beings, until late in my twenty-second year. 

Through childhood, adolescence, and up to that point, there was a baseline (albeit dwindling) sense of 'belonging in the world' that sustained me, and enabled me to connect with nature and life; despite that I had developed extreme atheist and materialistic (scientistic, positivist) philosophical assumptions. 

But from that point I began to feel alienated, cut-off from things, trapped inside my head, unable to 'lose myself', forget myself, or stop thinking; except when intoxicated in one way or another, or passively-immersed in music or literature - which was presumably a temporary illusion... 

At any rate it could not be sustained and was incompatible with the business of mundane living 

My reaction was partly to accept the situation, and adopt an 'hedonic' approach to my life; in hope that continuous pleasurable activities (and maximum freedom from suffering) would suffice. The aim was to live well until, at some point, I died - preferably instantly, without realizing it.   

Life was something to be got-through - as pleasantly as possible. Nothing more.  

But as the years rolled-by, nostalgia for the lost Original Participation became stronger, and I developed a very powerful (including scholarly) interest in the disenchantment of life, alienation - and yearned for the immersive animism I regarded as normal for our ancestral hunter gatherers - as well as young children.

Yet such a state was seldom, and mostly weakly attainable by even my best efforts.  

In the middle of this I became a Christian; however, at first this conversion did not significantly provide an answer to the problem of alienation - because mainstream Christianity barely recognizes, and does not address, the problem. However, it does uniquely provide the potential to do so - if one is prepared to venture beyond the orthodox. 

It was not until about 2014 that I began to be aware that there was another way of organizing my efforts in life. The choice was not only between an immersive and unconscious absorption into living versus the typically modern and alienated detachment... There was also what Barfield Termed Final Participation. 

It took me a while to grasp what this meant; and to do this I needed to tackle the daunting business of reading Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical works focused on a kind of thinking in which Final Participation was (implicitly) achieved. 

I also, by providential synchronicity, rediscovered William Arkle - who approached this same matter from the different angle of levels of consciousness; and the possibility of attaining (for periods) a level of consciousness in which thinking was real and creative. 

And finally came the understanding that this mortal life was a time for learning (learning needed for our for resurrected eternal life); so that what mattered was learning-from experiences - rather than trying to attain and stay-in any particular state. 

The fact that it was impossible to live always (or even mostly) in a state of Final Participation did not detract from the value of those times when FP was possible, and did happen - so long as we learn from them. It is the learning that can be permanent! 

This is where Christianity comes in; because this mortal life is (among other things) a learning phase before eternal resurrected life - and Final Participation is the divine way of thinking and being. 

(That is why it is correctly termed 'Final' - because divine living is what is aimed-at.)  

So to participate 'finally' - in thinking - was both a foretaste and a preparation for Heaven; therefore an extremely important life-experience to learn-from. 

That is - broadly - how matters stand. Romantic Christianity has emerged as a term to describe that Christianity in which participation is regarded as crucial, and taken with primary seriousness. 

In other words, Christians need to acknowledge and overcome alienation; and work to experience the world, other people and Beings directly; in thought. And know that that thinking is reality.  

What I have observed in myself in recent years, is that the surface of thinking - with thoughts rapidly changing and lasting from fractions of seconds to a few seconds - is not much different from what it always was. There is a constant and superficial play of images and ideas - which are heavily influenced by immediate concerns, the environment, and System manipulations. 

The Real Self experiences this level of consciousness as if a pond skater moving across the surface of water that is constantly changing its colours and patterns - but which can never be penetrated; can only be known indirectly and by observation and reasoning...

But as well as this there is a participative thinking, which moves more slowly (minutes, hours, days...). This is like the flow of a stream, and the thinking of Final Participation is not on the surface of, but instead a part of this flowing stream yet capable creating and of adding to the flow - something from itself.  

Final Participation is unimpeded by the surface of the stream; because it operates at the level of consciousness that includes air, surface and water - yet we, as incarnate Beings, remain many and distinct - loving and creative - selves. 

So, although surface alienation remains, moment by moment; there is an underlying direct participation which lies on the edge of my consciousness, and of which I can become aware at (almost) any time; but which, even when not actively attended-to - constitutes a healing of the rift between my-self and the world which opened up some months before my twenty-second birthday.  

Discerning synchronicity

Synchronicity may be an experience of divine providence. It may be a sign of God's personal intervention in our personal life; and therefore an indication that our live has purpose, hence meaning. 

On the other hand; some synchronicities seem to be meaningless and coincidental, in they seem to make no sense or seem merely trivial - so as to make a mockery of providence: on the lines of: "If God has nothing better to do that that, then what kind of a God is it?"

And apparent synchronicity can be faked (using information gathered through surveillance or 'stalking', for example) and our feelings thereby manipulated; and this can be done by human intervention - or indeed by demonic. 

Indeed; I think it likely that a considerable amount of evil is accomplished by strategic demonic manipulations of a synchronistic type - that are intended to lead to sin committed under the delusion of 'destiny', therefore un-repented sin, thus value-inversion. 

(This seems to have happened frequently among New Age spiritual seekers, - especially with regard to sex.)

So someone who was to regard all synchronicity as evidence of destiny, could be led into evil. 

In other words; synchronicity is not always A Good Thing. 

We need to discern synchronicity in our own lives - since, like most things, it may be motivated by evil; as well as being a potential manifestation of Good. 

Synchronicity and Serendipity are Signs

By a Sign I mean when some happening is intended - by God - to teach us something. 

Since this is the function of a Sign, typically the fact of it - its 'form' - is the key to its importance; while the specific 'content' of the Sign is much less important. 

Synchronicity describes a person's experience of coincidences that seem so unlikely as to seem meaningful. Calling it Synchronicity means that we do not believe it is a coincidence. And if not a coincidence, then it is planned. 

Synchronicity could be regarded as a sign that there is a creator, and this creator is God. 

Why? Because the organization of many events to create such coincidences implies that there is a purposive creator, with a unified will; and the fact that the coincidences are personally directed - that we notice them - suggests that  the creator is himself a person (i.e. God); and concerned with individual persons. 

(Because why would an impersonal 'deity' arrange Synchronicities?) 

In other words, the fact that I experience synchronicities (if I accept it as a fact), implies a planner - and what is more a planner who takes a me-focused view of the world. 

But a Synchronicity may be - often/ usually is - something apparently meaningless; or at least trivial. Therefore the significance is in the fact of Synchronicity - not the content of it. Thus Synchronicity is a Sign - designed to teach us some particular thing - but not to teach us everything! 

  

Serendipity could be regarded as a sub-type of Synchronicity when the coincidences make a 'happy accident'. 

Examples of Serendipity include when a scientist makes a fortunate discovery based on some unplanned event - such as Alexander Fleming's happy accident in the discovery of penicillin. 

But fortunate coincidences happen in everyday life - when someone arrives 'just in time' without knowing in advance that time was critical; when someone was in the right place at the right time; or happens to be carrying just exactly what would be needed... etc. 

Serendipity can be considered a sub-type of Synchronicity - a Synchronicity that has fortunate consequences. 

Serendipity could therefore be regarded as a Sign that, not only is there a creator God; but that this God loves us personally.  

Serendipity may therefore be understood as a Sign of the working of the Christian God - or a God much like Him. Not only does He personally arrange events around us to make remarkable coincidences; but these are fortunate coincidences. 

In other words; 'happy accidents' are signs of the truth of the Christian God.

But Synchronicity and Serendipity only work as Signs for those who regard Signs from God as a possibility. 

An atheist/ materialist who assumes that there is only impersonal causation and random chance, can never be convinced of a Serendipity - he has ruled-out the possibility, by his assumptions. 

Signs therefore do not prove anything -  because what counts as proof requires metaphysical assumptions concerning what is real. 

So, if we have already decided (perhaps implicitly, without being aware of this prior decision) against God - that there is no God, or cannot-be God, or that a deity cannot be personal. or if we had re-decided that it is silly wishful thinking to suppose that God might arrange a happy 'accident', a fortunate 'coincidence'... 

Then when the possibilities of a loving, personal, creator God have already-been ruled-out; then clearly any Sign will be ignored, reinterpreted, explained-away. 

And the intended teaching behind that Sign will not be regarded as purposive; so the chance to learn will be missed. Indeed - that there was a chance to learn will be missed. 

Such is normal, mainstream and officially-approved behaviour - here-and-now. 

Therefore, Synchronicity and Serendipity are Signs of the reality and nature of God; intended for those who are open to such possibilities. 

Each instance is tailored for the needs and situation of each particular person. A Sign is 'for' a specific individual and circumstance - not intended as a general proof for everybody. 

The lesson of Signs is to recognize them for what they are; to learn from what is intended by their form - and therefore not to get bogged-down on trying to interpret the specific details of the content. 

Synchronicity is telling us, personally - here and now, that God is active in the world; it does not mean that what happens by remote coincidence is also a form of covert but specific life guidance. Even a serendipitous discovery in science may turn out later to be inaccurate, false - or some better theory may emerge later. The value of a happy accident is intended specifically for the time it happened and that person - not 'happiness forever', nor happiness for everybody.  

If we begin to think in terms of Signs; if we focus on the forms rather than specific contents; we may find great encouragement from the daily events of our lives. 

After all, personal re-affirmations of the reality of God, creator of this world, of His Goodness and Love, are of inestimable value. 

One cannot get too-much of such things!

Note: I got this concept of a Sign from By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens (2003); which is an historical examination of the way that the Book of Mormon functioned as a Sign for most of the history of the CJCLDS. Only recently (the past several decades) did the specific content of the Book - its scriptural teachings - become a focus. Up to the 1970s; the BoM functioned mostly as an instrument of conversion, as evidence of a new 'dispensation'; as evidence of God's active intervention in the modern world by personal revelations. It was more the circumstances and fact of the BoM that was important, and little attention was paid to the teachings that could be gleaned from its text. (Currently, however, Mormons tend to regard the BoM as a scripture on the same level, and to be studied in the same way, as The Bible.) This history clarified for me the nature of a Sign, and the kinds of things it could accomplish. 

Animating the landscape - thirty years experience

The Devil's Beef Tub - a powerfully-evocative hidden valley near Moffat

I was very 'sensitive' to country landscape in my middle and late teens, but this capacity was one of the casualties of my young adulthood - when I became city-orientated. It was in the summer of 1991, thirty years ago, that I began to recover - or re-forge - my capacity to know the mindscape as alive and implicitly conscious and purposive.  

This happened through a series of explorations of the English-Scottish borders - which at that time I was approaching from the Scottish side (I was living in Glasgow). And the medium was a mixture of history and folklore. 

In retrospect, what I seemed to be doing was to view the here-and-now landscape through a lens of a past in which I was personally involved, mainly due to the many ancestors who inhabited this part of the world. I was reading every book on the region I could lay hold of - gleaning whatever ideas and impression fed the magic.

At the same time as this retrospective angle, I felt that there was something occult (hidden but discernable) about this place which pointed to a better future. 

This future was vague, but had to do with a re-integration of life and spontaneous-warm community - a kind of 'neo-pagan' aspiration for a life of more immersive engagement, although I was not initially aware of that term or movement.

At the time, and for long afterwards, I conceptualized this landscape sensitivity in terms of an immersion, an attunement; a lowering of barriers between my-self and that which the landscape contained. 

There was therefore a sense of self-hypnotically reducing my conscious awareness of what was happening - but not too much; enough to 'liberate' the associative powers of the mind, but with enough consciousness retained so that I would be aware of, and then remember, what was happening. 

This was a difficult balancing-act - and could never be retained for long. But such is mortal life...

This may all sound very theoretical, but it was effective - to a significant extent, sometimes. I was sometimes able to be in a kind of magical mood for considerable periods of time (a few minutes usually, up to an hour or two).

That it was objectively effective was evidenced by the synchronicity of these moods - I would move from one such experience to another; would move through the landscape from one discovery to another; discoveries not known, not seen, but with the inevitability of a dream and recurrent deja vu even for places I had certainly never been.   

It was all very encouraging, but of course habituation soon sets-in and repetition of action loses its effectiveness; the experiences became less reliable, less intense, less frequent - and in general I needed to know what (if anything) they meant for me and my life. Or was it just a kind of pleasant delusion, a self-deception...

In retrospect I can see that I was recapitulating the search for Original Participation that was evident in neo-paganism as it developed from the late 19th century, and in the likes of CG Jung and Robert Graves; and indeed that was the direction in which my reading was drawn - for example I recognized the state of mind I sought as being Jung's Active Imagination. 

It was evident that this quest could never be more than partially and dwindlingly effective and very intermittent. An activity for holidays, essentially. And an expensive one - meaning that I had to work at alienating jobs in order to achieve these moments of brief engagement and fulfilment. 

Plus, they were solitary; and yet I was prone to loneliness and boredom.  

And - most decisively - I recognized how much of this was me, was brought by me to the situation; and this undercut the experience, reduced and invalidated it significantly. 

It was a paradox: one part of myself sought to engage in self-examination to try and exploit my own disposition and sensitivities of another part of myself! This splitting was sustaining the alienating divisions that I was (supposedly) trying to overcome. 

It was a psychological equivalent of the split between work - needed to get the money (and car) needed to pursue these Border explorations; and the bought-leisure in which such explorations could proceed.    

This struck me as not just a practical limitation, but a fault in the whole project; the whole idea. It was ultimately incoherent - and therefore not a valid basis for life.

I have now conceptualized this experience as Final Participation. It is not a 'recovery' of ancient ways of being or thinking; it is a moving forward to a new way of being and thinking, that exists in a new kind of thinking. 

I recognize that I bring my-self not only this these magical moments; but to all moments - all meaning, and lack of meaning, comes from me; yet is not merely-subjective, because of God and because this is a creation.

All meanings, purposes, and relationships in God's creation always-have-been the consequence of 'minds', of consciousness - thus the integration of all things is a fact, not an aspiration. 

What is an aspiration is the awareness; from which comes the magic, the enchantment. 

 

Half-explanations: Seeking to explain the meaningfulness and purpose of life - and the answers led to theism

It seems to be a human trait that - at least in the short term (of a few years) we can get stuck accepting an incoherent and partial explanation that does not really explain. If we are honest, however; sooner or later we should realize our error and modify our convictions. 

The mainstream and official metaphysical assumptions of the modern world have it that life has no purpose or meaning; because the universe happened due to physical processes that are some mixture of rigidly determined and utterly 'random', and are indifferent to human life. Human life is due to an historical process of natural selection that was not aiming anywhere, and merely represents the operation of differential rates of reproductive success...

Yet plenty of people would assert that they Do have some sense of meaning and purpose in life - or, to put it negatively, that their lives are Not utterly random Nor arbitrarily determined by prior causes... That is not their experience.

How can this be, given the imbibed 'truths' (i.e. unexamined assumptions) that there cannot be purpose or meaning to human life? In particular - how can people assert meaning or purpose despite continuing to hold to the same assumptions that rule-out any such possibility?   

Here we come-up against a multitude of half-explanations; that in one sense seem at least to take-the-edge of the craving for meaning, if not to satisfy it - yet in removing the urgency tend to block progress towards a full and coherent explanation. 

One example of this is synchronicity - which at one point I 'got stuck on', while yet an atheist. I had the partial belief that the external events of my life were not just meaningless coincidences, but that they were a guide to what I 'ought' to do - at least in the sense of telling me what would make me happiest and most fulfilled. 

I held to another half-explanation that there was a 'path through life' which I again 'ought' to follow - and that when I was off this path, I would become more and more miserable and demotivated; which was meant to be a signal that I should seek my 'proper' path. 

So, I remained an atheist, and continued to hold the mainstream-official assumptions that life was - really and ultimately - meaningless and purposeless (a product of physics and biology, and nothing more) - yet I also asserted that my life did, in fact, have purpose (a 'destined path') and meaning (with synchronicities, not arbitrary coincidences). 

I needed to ask how this was possible. I needed to Get real. I needed to take my own assertions serious, and follow through to their conclusions. 

I needed to explain how a destined path and meaningful guiding events could possibly occur - to ask what kind of universe was implied if these were real and true?   

Eventually, I did ask these questions, and was rather disturbed to discover that the only coherent explanation was that there was a creator-god, who had-made and was-shaping the world. This was the only way that the tiny events of my life in a vastly complex reality be lined-up such as to communicate meaning. 

And further, that this creator-god must love me, personally; in order to accomplish this careful alignment of millions of events to my own life (among billions of Men and far more other organisms) for my benefit. 

...Because, there was no doubt that I regarded synchronicity and destiny as 'for my own benefit' - they were operating to tell me what it was 'best' to do, what would (in some sense) make me happier and more fulfilled, and would lead to better outcomes for people I loved and the world more generally. I regarded it as Important that I follow My destiny. 

These are what I assumed in my actual life; and I eventually acknowledged that my assumptions pointed at a personal God, who was creator and create-ing; and who loved me personally. 

Thus I became a theist - this was around the middle of 2008 - and after that it was merely a matter of 'choosing my religion' from among those who acknowledged that God was of this nature. 

2020 Synchronicity Magic, following after the leaching of enchantment from life

One of the most painful - although, it turns-out necessary - trends through my life, has been the leaching of magic, of enchantment, from all institutions, and almost all places. 

This is the familiar 'public world' of materialist assumptions: that the world is made of 'things'; that subjective mind (consciousness) is separate and thoughts are epiphenomenal; that Beings are ultimately mere artefacts of the 'laws' of physics and statistical chance...

Although the theme of modern life becoming disenchanted goes back a long way, to the first Romantics around 1800; and the sociologist Max Weber defined it as characteristic of modernity more than a century ago. And it was also Weber who also named the Iron Cage of bureaucracy, which has been the primary mechanism by which enchantment has been destroyed. 

For me, the disenchantment of universities was probably the most painful of these trends; since I had grown-up the son of a 'professor' (consultant/ senior lecturer in dentistry) and known from an early age that this was a known world I felt organically a part-of. I was an insider. 

Right into the 1990s, there was a residuum of magic about academia - albeit a thin and dwindling stream compared with the height of the middle ages. 

But it was evident - here and there, again and again; and I valued that magic despite that hardly any of my colleagues noticed it, and even fewer liked it. Indeed, as an atheist, I depended on that enchantment at a deep level; for a sense of meaning and purpose in life, larger than myself.

The process of diminishing enchantment was partly driven by the evil destructiveness of bureaucracy (whose 'reforms' were always based upon lies and denied, unexamined false assumptions) - but also, underlying, by the long-term trend that Men were progressively less and less susceptible to enchantment. 

Magic, gradually, ceased to work. 

 

This can be seen everywhere - indeed, even in the world of magic itself: I mean the 'esoteric' societies of ritual magic that grew up from the late 19th century. 

In the late 19th century people were claiming all kind of magical manifestations; the rituals seemed objectively effective, indeed potentially dangerous - hence they were kept secret. But by the 1980s or 90s nobody was even claiming this, thus there seemed no need for secrecy; and the activities of magical societies were hard to distinguish from group psychotherapy, artsy 'happenings', or ritual pageantry. 

For most people, nearly all the time; Magic just doesn't work anymore. 

 

The old systems and symbolisms (alchemy, astrology, numerology, ritual objects and actions...) - are left looking more like bureaucratic flow-charts. People can still learn about the history of magical stuff, and intended correlations; but it is clear that objects and actions no longer animate people. 

The objectivity that linked magical things and doings with predictable real world effects has gone. Such correlations have become merely theoretical - or else reduced to (transient) feelings.  

The human mind seems to have become more and more resistant to magic. 

And not only among Westerners. The 19th century Amerindians 'needed' to introduce peyote in order to attain the mystical states that had previously arisen spontaneously. However, peyote is a mild, slow-acting psychedelic; requiring additional supportive group immersion and ritual actions. 

But among Westerners the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s were relatively a 'necessary' chemical sledgehammer of ultra-potent, or mega-dose, brain impairment agents; such extreme measure needed in order to create some warped simulacrum of the 'larger consciousness' that most people could experience naturally earlier in human history. 

Psychedelics are a last gasp of the idea that spiritual experience should come from outside, be objective and irresistible, should overwhelm the mind... and, of course, psychedelics have overall proved to be not merely a failure as 'entheogens', but actively counter-productive.

Cause and effect have worked together - and by now I find that the disenchantment of public life and my compelled withdrawal of reliance upon it has been an advantage - a necessity; as the whole organisational world moves ever deeper into more explicit evil. 

Anyone now mentally-dependent on any kind of institution is drawn into supporting the agenda of Satanic evil which has swept the world in 2020. 

Enchantment of our social world is now an illusion rather than an insight - albeit a flimsy and ineffectual illusion in a world where all institutions are permanently convulsed by externally-bureaucratic-media-imposed transformations, driven by global Establishment priorities (birdemic, climate change, antiracism, sexual revolution...). 

 

Here and now any magic must come from within - and modern institutions have no 'within'; they are permeable and hollow; the imperatives of The System sweep through them unopposed and uncontradicted - they are mere subsections of The One System.

This is related to an increased awareness of synchronicity as a 'mechanism' of enchantment. Synchronicity as the basis of a way of life was the core message of the 1993 bestselling New Age 'novel' The Celestine Prophecy; and this is indirect evidence that there are no longer effective magical 'systems'.

Magic is now something that unpredictably happens-to us - our job being to recognise and understand it when it happens. 

 

But mainly; our 'job' is to create the frame of mind (frame of Being) in which synchronicities happen more often, more powerfully and meaningfully; become 'normal', and link-together towards Good ends. 

Because - although this is seldom recognised - synchronicity entails a loving creator God. Acknowledgment and understanding of synchronicity takes us most of the way to Christianity!

Thus a modern Christian - at his most Christian - would experience life as a continuous-web of synchronicity. Quite naturally so - because a life of meaning and purpose would be full of positive and striking 'coincidental' happenings; one leading onto another. 

Our mortal life is sustained because of our need to learn - to learn for the resurrected life to come; and sychronicity is a kind of learning-opportunity. 

Thus synchronicity is not a code - not a system of objective correlatives, like the old magical system; but a natural aspect of a Christian life in this 2020 world where all meaning must come from God and from the divine within; because pretty much all of external life has become evil, meaningless and purposeless. 

2020 Magic just is Christian; not institutional. 

Note: moderated commenting has returned...

How to live 'spiritually'?

Clearly it is not enough to Be A Christian nowadays - we must also live spiritually, from the spirit - that is, we need to have direct and personal experience of that vast area of life which lies beyond the materialist stuff to which modern public discourse is ever-more-tightly restircted. 

As the world becomes more-and-more a single, global Leftist-bureaucracy-media complex; we can handily define the spiritual realm as everything ignored, deliberately left-out, or excluded from serious consideration by that uni-world of public, official discourse.  

But most people are addicted to this world, and have developed deep habits and unexamined primary assumptions that rule-out the spiritual - treating it variously as childish, insane or evil - nipping in the bud any nascent emergence of the spirit into consciousness. 

How then to begin to live by the spirit? Clearly (here-and-now) it must be a deliberate and conscious choice - it is not going to Just Happen - not any more. So first make that choice. 

And remember that it is not enough to think About the spiritual, it must be Experienced to be valuable. 

Start by noticing. Feelings are a good place to start noticing. All kinds of things - knowledge, discernments, impulses - are being (at present) un-consciously signalled to us. 

When we feel a mood, a premonition, a dream, a synchronicity (a strange 'coincidence'), feel an impulse which does not apparently derive from externally... When we seem to discern some speial good or sinister evil in a person, institution, communication...

Take it seriously. Consider it further. 

But let that consideration not be on the one hand based on 'evidence, nor on the other hand based on gut-feelings; but instead try to consider that thing with your real self, your heart, your truest being. This again requires conscious intent.

To know what that direct-heart-intuitive knowing feels-like; it may be worth considering the most significant events of your past - significant in your own private soul - what I have termed The Golden Thread. 

All this is not easy - because it is going against external constraints and internal habits - but it is possible, and it will succeed - although neither permanently nor with overwhelming effect. 

In this mortal life we are here to learn; and that learning is only cashed-out in-full beyond biological death. But every-thing learned will be of value in Heaven - if Heaven is what you choose*. 

 

*(If, instead of accepting Jesus's gift of resurrected life eternal, you instead choose some destination other-than Heaven; then indeed this mortal life is not of value, and the above advice does not apply. I that case you really are On Your Own - but you have nobody to blame for the fact but your-self.)    

The Quest Fellowship

I find myself fascinated, these days, by tales and legends of a small group working against apparently insuperable odds, ridiculously overmatched... yet succeeding (overall, mostly) with the help of divine providence.

This may explain my recent engagement with the Journey to the West/ Monkey story; as well as more familiar examples from Lord of the Rings, That Hideous Strength, or the excellent Mistborn fantasy trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

There were real life examples such as the 'Lake Poets' and the Inklings - or Tolkien's youthful TCBS club of schoolfriends.

It is a familiar trope; and is usually associated with action and adventure. But I feel that the deep fascination of this scenario is at the level of thinking, not doing - and it about a spiritual rather than material quest.

At any rate; the current situation is a quest for something uncertain, in an unknown place, and without any clear idea of how to achieve it.


Consider the blog, Albion Awakening - we three authors were on on a spiritual quest for the awakening of Albion - Albion being the deep spiritual aspect of Britain (or perhaps the British Isles including Ireland).

There is no way that three people writing on an obscure blog could causally make a positive difference to a nations of some sixty million who are addicted to the mass media and overwhelmingly hostile to anything which might interfere with their pleasures, or which might threaten their comfort, convenience and self-esteem.

But the blog is merely the surface; communicating aspect of a motivation that exists in our minds, in our thoughts; and which can work by a direct process of knowing - a mind-to-mind mutual knowledge, rather than being reliant upon the process of sending-out signals and having them received and understood in line with our hoped for meanings...

Furthermore, the 'odds' against us are balanced by divine assistance insofar as we are indeed (really and truly) pursuing a quest that is in-line-with God's hopes and plans...

(And if we are not doing what would please God, then such assistance will be withheld; so the harm is limited.)


Divine assistance generally works by means of 'providence', or synchronicity - that is a 'behind the scenes' arrangement of events to produce the most hopeful juxtapositions of persons and incidents.  But God can only do so-much when it comes to human affairs, since our 'free will' can and does often oppose God's will... nonetheless, providence is known for recurrently leading to as-many-as-possible opportunities for us to 'make the right decision', and to nudge thereby things in the right direction.

So providence can ensure that something is noticed, but not that it is reacted-to; nor that it is reacted-to in a positive and constructive fashion. Providence can use communications to point-at a truth - but cannot ensure that a person grasps that truth intuitively (ie directly).

Anyway; I personally feel vastly encouraged by the idea of a hopeless quest against the odds, of a type that could only succeed by 'luck'/ wildly improbable 'coincidneces'!


The idea is that we should simply get-on-with trying to do what we ought to do, as best we can determine and and best we can pursue that quest; and accept that that is all that we can do - but that is enough; despite that we almost certainly will never know the full outcome of our endeavor even if we did (improbably, overall) succeed.

I also feel encouraged by the conviction that such a quest cannot fail, because it has intrinsic value in the doing; and that any genuine achievement in the realm of real-thinking (thinking by and of our divine selves) is permanent and eternally available: makes a difference forever.


Can a tiny Quest group make a significant difference? Yes, of course it could! It could - if that is what God wills, if divine providence assists, and if that is what the people of Albion choose...

This understanding and perspective - the Quest Fellowship as a tiny band of cheerful but inept adventurers who hardly know what they are looking-for, and only hope to recognise it if they happen to stumble upon it...

Ridiculously out-matched; being pitted-against a vast and powerful system of purposive evil led by immortal demons and sustained by a legion of variously depraved, drugged and dozy minion masses...


Such a perspective makes life both exciting and unpredictable; and also possesses a refreshing clarity, simplicity, and honesty! 


Reprinted with some editing from Albion Awakening - a couple of years ago; more relevant now than ever.

17th century harmony - Thomas Ravenscroft's Three Country dances in One

First of all listen to the piece sung by a favourite group - The City Waites (I've posted this before)

 

This is a kind of 'round' (like Three Blind Mice, a version of which was also published by Ravenscroft ). This one is much longer and more sophisticated than our usual children's ones - having four separate 32 bar melodies that can be sung separately or together.

What I like very much about this piece is the harmony of the second half of the verses - bars 17-32 - perhaps especially 22-24, which is gorgeous and very 17th century; the kind of harmony that you don't get before or after this time, which which is just delightful.

(BTW I don't understand why this is three, rather than four, country dances in one...) 

If anyone can explain - musically - how this kind of effect is obtained, I'd be pleased to hear; because I can't work it out. (There is loads of it here by Thomas Tomkins; one of the greatest pieces ever written IMO.)

I've always assumed it was an harmonic 'movement', produced by contrapuntal voices, that was later ruled-out as insufficiently smooth and homogeneous (it jumps-out of the texture) - rather like the ban on parallel-moving, open-fifths, despite that these were the first foundation of Western harmony. 

If you want to see what is going on, here is a version that shows a musical score of the separate vocal lines.

Note: The synchronicity fairies have been at work, since Frank Berger has also today published some 17th century music - although his example is pretty Scheidt.

"Reading between the lines" of Life: Detecting the spiritual in personal life

Rudolf Steiner has some deeply suggestive things to say about this matter; in which he subtly asserts that the spiritual in life is to be found in exactly those aspects that are taken for granted - the backdrop of 'normal', everyday assumptions and experiences of things going well, not collapsing or exploding.

In a different way, he is making the same recognition that I came to in respect to the science of biology; when I realised that there 'must be' a vast positive, creative, purposive background in order that biology be possible.

This seems extremely difficult to describe with any precision; perhaps because it is the ocean in which we dwell; but it goes far beyond any specific instances (such as synchronicity) to notice that there are innumerable things that must 'go right' at every moment of every day; if The Whole Thing is not simply to collapse into chaos.

We should not really take for granted all the ways in which we don't die, and continue to perform innumerable functions and fulfil innumerable tasks (like walking down the street from one end to the other!).

As I say, it is to big and all encompassing really to 'explain' in the same way that we can explain smaller and more specific instances. But here are some excerpts from a lecture by Steiner (GA 181 - Berlin,5th March, 1918 - excerpted as Lecture 9 here) which may be helpful.

...A man was accustomed to take a certain walk daily. One day, when he reached a certain spot, he had a feeling to go to the side and stand still, and the thought came to him whether it was right to waste time over this walk. At that moment a boulder which had split from the rock fell on the road and would certainly have struck him if he had not turned aside from the road on account of his thought.

This is one of the crude experiences we may encounter in life, but those of a more subtle kind daily press into our ordinary life, though as a rule we do not observe them; we only reckon with what actually does happen, not with what might have happened had it not been averted. We reckon with what happens when we are kept at home a quarter of an hour longer than we intended. Often and often, if we did but reflect, we should find that something worthy of remark happened, which would have been quite different if we had not been detained.

Try to observe systematically in your own life what might have happened had you not been delayed a few minutes by somebody coming in, though, perhaps, at the time, you were very angry at being detained. Things are constantly pressed into one's life which might have been very different according to their original intention. We seek a ‘causal connection,’ between events in life. We do not reflect upon life with that subtle refinement which would he in the consideration of the breaking of a probable chain of events, so that, I might say, an atmosphere of possibilities continually surrounds us.

If we give our attention to this, and have been delayed in doing something which we have been accustomed to do at mid-day, we shall have a feeling that what we do at that time is often — it may not always be so — not under the influence of foregoing occurrences only, but also under the influence of the countless things which have not happened, from which we have been held back. By thinking of what is possible in life — not only in the outer reality of sense — we are driven to the surmise that we are so placed in life that to look for the connection of what follows with what has gone before is a very one-sided way of looking at life. 

If we truly ask ourselves such questions, we rouse something which in our mind would otherwise lie dormant. We come, as it were, to ‘read between the lines’ of life; we come to know it in its many-sidedness. We come to see ourselves, so to speak, in our environment, and we see how it forms us and brings us forward little by little. This we usually observe far too little. At most, we only consider the inner driving forces that lead us from stage to stage. Let us take some simple ordinary instance from which we may gather how we only bring the outer into connection with our inner being, in a very fragmentary way.

Let us turn our attention to the way we usually realise our waking in the morning. At most, we acquire a very meagre idea of how we make ourselves get up; perhaps, even the concept of this is very nebulous. Let us, however, reflect for a while upon the thought which at times drives us out of bed; let us try to make this individual, quite clear and concrete. Thus: yesterday I got up because I heard the coffee being made ready in the next room; this aroused an impulse to get up; to-day something else occurred. That is, let us be quite clear, what was the outer impelling force. Man usually forgets to seek himself in the outer world, hence he finds himself so little there. Anyone who gives even a little attention to such a thought as this will easily develop that mood of which man has a holy — nay, an unholy — terror, — the realisation that there is an undercurrent of thought which does not enter the ordinary life.

A man enters a room, for instance or goes to some place, but he seldom asks himself how the place changes when he enters it. Other people have an idea of this at times, but even this notion of it from outside is not very widespread to-day. I do not know how many people have any perception of the fact that when a company is in a room, often one man is twice as strongly there as another; the one is strongly present, the other is weak. That depends on the imponderabilities. 

We may easily have the following experience: A man is at a meeting, he comes softly in, and glides out again; and one has the feeling that an angel has flitted in and out. Another's presence is so powerful that he is not only present with his two physical feet but, as it were, with all sorts of invisible feet. Others do not, as a rule, notice it, although it is quite perceptible; and the man himself does not notice it at all.

A man does not, as a rule, hear that ‘undertone’ which arises from the change called forth by his presence; he keeps to himself, he does not enquire of his surroundings what change his presence produces. He can, however, acquire an inkling, a perception of the echo of his presence in his surroundings. Just think how our outer lives would gain in intimacy if a man not only peopled the place with his presence but had the feeling of what was brought about by his being there, making his influence felt by the change he brings...

How to understand dreams and synchronicities

It is easy, and common (in a world historical context), to believe that the world is non-random, and that therefore there is some meaning to unusual phenomena such as dreams and synchronicities. But there is a big step from knowing that there is a meaning, to working out the specific meaning of a specific dream, or a specific 'coincidence'.

Typically, in seeking a meaning, people turn to the content of a dream or event; and try to understand its symbolism. The symbolism is often interpreted using some kind of standard 'key' along the lines of Freud's 'censor' whereby towers might mean phalluses and domes mean breasts; or Jung's mythic, archetypal personifications.

Such 'symbolic content' interpretative approaches are unconvincing and have, over many decades, proved disappointing. In practice, they seem to find only what they bring; they seem to force an abstract and generic template onto very specific and personal situations.

But in 1914, in a lecture about how we might set up contact with the so-called dead; Rudolf Steiner suggested a very different idea; which strikes me as being on the right lines*. We should understand dreams by the feelings they evoke; we should understand a specific dream by trying to understand the very specific effect that dream - as a whole - has had upon our feelings.

In other words, the meaning of a dream lies behind the dream as a whole, not its detailed content; as known by the distinctive and complex nature of the exact feeling experienced.

For example, if we meet a known person in a dream, and he does some thing; then the real meaning is not in that person or what he does; but in the person and events that are suggested by our feelings about that dream. So a dream person may appear to be one person but really be another - feel like another. That person might do something in the dream - but we find that our responsive feelings don't match with the events; and then we should infer that the significance of what the person did was actually given by how the events made us feel.

Similarly when it comes to a meaningful 'coincidence'; the synchronicity of thinking about a person (for the first time in years) and then receiving a letter from him, or reading about a strange and improbable event that soon after is mirrored in our experience; such meanings should be sought in the feelings that these events have upon us. It is the consequent feeling that yields the meaning, not the surface content, nor the apparent personnel, nor its symbolism.

Since I absorbed this teaching; I have brooded it on it sufficiently that it came-into a particular dream a few nights ago - in which it seemed to unlock a very convincing meaning relating to communication with a deceased loved one - a communication understood in terms of my feelings, and an interpretation relating to general type of influence. It felt like a first-step.

In other words, recalling Steiner's ideas 'made' the ongoing dream semi-lucid, such that I became conscious that I was dreaming, and then able to apply various tests to what was happening - although I had no 'control' over the unfolding events of the dream.

Others may be interested in testing this idea from their own experience.

*Here follows the relevant section of the lecture - as so often with Steiner, this lecture as-a-whole is a mosaic of genius, irritating self-justification, and systematised nonsense. We must be selective:

We develop the right feelings toward the dead if we become aware that their spiritual gaze — if I may use that expression — and their powers focus on us; they look at us, act in us, and add to our strength. To experience such a spiritual fact in the right way, we need to develop a very specific type of selflessness and a capacity for love. That is why I stressed that one could love that person objectively, as it were, because of her qualities; one had to love her because she was as she was. A subjective love, a love arising out of personal needs, can easily be egotistical and can potentially keep us from finding the right relationship to such a dead individual. The difference between the right love, the selfless love we have for such a person, and selfish love becomes perfectly obvious in clairvoyant experience. Let us assume such a person would want to help us after her death, but we cannot develop true selfless love for her. Her spiritual gaze, her spiritual will streaming toward us would then be like a burning sensation, causing a piercing, burning feeling in our soul. If we can feel and maintain a selfless love, this stream, her spiritual gaze as it were, flows into our soul like a feeling of warm mildness and pours itself into our thoughts, imagination, feeling, and willing. It is out of this feeling that we recognize who the dead person is and not on the basis of his or her appearance, because the dead may manifest in the guise of a person we feel close to at the moment. The form in which the beings of the higher world appear to us — and after death we are all beings of a higher, spiritual world — depends on our subjective nature, on what we habitually see, think, and feel. The reality is what we feel for the being manifest before us, how we receive what comes to us from this being. Regardless of what Joan of Arc said about the appearance of the higher beings in her visions, the occultist who is able to investigate these things knows that it was always the genius of the French nation who stood behind them. I described how we can feel the gaze of spiritual beings resting upon us and their will flowing into our souls. To learn this is analogous to learning to read on the physical plane. Those who merely want to describe their visions would be like people describing the shape of the letters on a page rather than their meaning. This shows you how easy it is to have preconceived notions about the experiences in the spiritual realm. Naturally, it seems most obvious to attach great importance to the description of what the vision looked like. However, what really matters is what lies behind the veil of perception and is expressed in the images of the vision. Thus, in the course of occult development, the soul immerses itself in specific moods and inner states different from those of our everyday life. We have entered the world of the hierarchy of angels and the hierarchy, or we could also say hierarchies, of the dead as soon as our occult exercises have brought us to the stage where the sense of touch characteristic of the physical world no longer exists, and where a person's appearance is no longer characteristic of the I concerned. Then our thinking changes and we no longer have thoughts in the sense we have them here in the physical world. In that world, every thought takes on the form of an elemental being. In the physical world, our thoughts can agree or contradict each other. In this other world we enter, thoughts encounter other thoughts as real beings, either loving or hating each other. We begin to feel our way into a world of many thought beings. And in those living thought beings, we really feel what we usually call “life.” Here life and thinking are united, whereas they are completely separate in the physical world. When we speak on the physical plane and tell our thoughts to someone, we have the feeling that our thoughts come from our soul, that we have to remember them at this particular moment. Speaking as a true occultist and not someone who just tells his experiences from memory, we will feel that our thoughts arise as living beings. We must be glad if we are blessed at the right moment with the approach of a thought as a real being. When you express your thoughts in the physical world, for example, as a lecturer, you will find it easier to give a talk for the thirtieth time than you did the first time. If, however, you speak as an occultist, thoughts always have to approach you and then depart again. Just as someone paying you the thirtieth visit had to make his way to you thirty times, the living thought we express for the thirtieth time has to come to us thirty times as it did the first time; our memory is of absolutely no use here. If you express an idea on the physical level and someone is sitting in a corner thinking, “I don't like that nonsense, I hate it,” you will not be particularly bothered by it. You have prepared your ideas and present them regardless of the positive or negative thoughts of someone in the audience. But if as an esotericist you let thoughts approach you, they could be delayed and kept away by someone who hates them or who hates the speaker. And the forces blocking that thought must be overcome because we are dealing with living beings and not merely with abstract ideas. These two examples show that as soon as we enter the sphere of clairvoyance, we are immersed in living and weaving thoughts. It is as if these thoughts are no longer subjective and as if you yourself are no longer within yourself, as if you are living outside in the wide world. When you are in this world of living and weaving thoughts, you are in the hierarchy of angels. And just as our physical world is everywhere filled with air, the world of the hierarchy of angels is filled with the mild warmth I spoke about earlier that the beings of this hierarchy pour out. When our inner development has brought us to the stage where we can live in this spiritual atmosphere of streaming mildness, we feel the spiritual eyes of the hierarchy of angels resting on our souls. Now, in our earthly life, we have certain ideals and think about them abstractly. As we think of them, we feel obligated to pursue these ideals. In the clairvoyant sphere, however, there are no abstract ideals. There ideals are living beings of the hierarchy of angels and flow through spiritual space, looking at us with warmth. In the physical world, we may have ideals, know them well, and yet we may not do anything to apply them. Our emotions, and perhaps passions, can tempt us to shirk them. However, if we knowingly ignore an ideal in the clairvoyant sphere, we feel the spiritual gaze of a being of the hierarchy of angels directed at us with reproach, and this reproach burns. In the spiritual world, ignoring an ideal is thus a reality, and a being of the hierarchy of angels reproaches us. Their gaze makes us feel the reproach; it is the reproach we feel. You see, learning to develop a real feeling for ideals is one way of entering the world of the hierarchy of angels. Limiting our consciousness to the physical plane may lead us to think that nothing will happen if we are too lazy to act on our ideals. However, we can learn to feel that if we do not act on an ideal, then, regardless of other consequences, the world becomes different from what it would have been had we followed our ideal. We are on the way to the hierarchy of angels when we begin to see that not acting on our ideals is something real, and when we can transform this insight into a genuine feeling. Transforming and vitalizing our feelings allows our souls to grow into the higher worlds.