The intensity of Glenn Gould

I just today came across a 2005 movie about Glenn Gould, which I hadn't seen before:

And it made me reflect yet again on the part that this musician has played in my own life - arriving, as he did, when I was aged 19; and just as I began to become more-and-more alienated (more cut-off in my-self, and from perception and memory) - from getting older, being away from family, living a more superficial life, spending time alone, in a city, and moving towards a round-hole that I did not fit...

For me Gould represented intensity. The ideal of living with such intensity - of living in intensity - that all problems were solved. Intensity of living (whether in listening to Gould play Bach, or some other musician or music of similar intensity) - or in personal relationships (but not very often)... did indeed solve the problem of alienation, while on-going.

But I never, over several years of trying, integrated this with my 'working' life - I was too feeble of will, got lonely too easily - or bored; plus of course it was impossible...

Gould himself experienced intensity more often and more powerfully than most people - but still very intermittently: much of his life was dissipation, time-filling (just like mine).

In the end, being a musicia of genius and having near-complete control over his life was grossly-insufficient, because he was up-against the limits of the human being, and of the human condition.

This did not mean that Gould was as adrift as my young adult self; because, I was unaware that Gould was a religious man with a profound conviction of life everlasting. For me, mortal life was everything, and when (not if) we failed to live well then that was It; but for Gould this life was a prelude leading on to wondrous and eternal fugues!...

Review of Psychiatric Drugs Explained (6th edition 2016) by David Healy

This is a good candidate for the book that 'everybody should read'. Firstly, because nearly everybody will experience psychiatric illness in themselves, a friend or relative; and secondly because the over-prescription and wrong-prescription of psychiatric drugs is one of the major problems of this era.

Reading Healy's Psychiatric Drugs Explained is therefore a basic necessity of psychological self-defence.

It is, of course, an exaggeration to say 'everybody' should read this (or any) book, because - although it is comprehensible by a non-professional audience - it does require at least average intelligence and motivation to understand.

However, if not quite 'everybody' could read it; I have found it highly suitable for both general undergraduate and Masters post-graduate classes of both high and low ability - and indeed the typical chapter in Psychiatric Drugs Explained takes the reader from basic instruction up to what is (or should be) the cutting-edge of the subject.

And what a subject! One of the pleasures of teaching psychiatry and psychopharmacology (as I have been doing for the past 21 years) is that almost-everyone finds the subject fascinating!

Psychiatric Drugs Explained begins with sections on management of the major categories of psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia, depression, bipolar/ mania, anxiety and dementia; with the relevant drugs considered under each section.

There are also drug-orientated sections on stimulants, hypnotics (sleeping pills and draughts), drugs that affect sexual function (for better or worse) - and the vital subject of drug withdrawal with its sub-types of addiction, rebound, tolerance, and long-term dependence.

The book rounds-off with some discussions of the socio-political aspects of psychiatric diagnosis and drugs.

The main reason to read Psychiatric Drugs Explained is that it is written by David Healy - director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine in Bangor; whom I regard as the most important of living psychiatrists: a great scholar, a discoverer and re-discoverer, the subject's deepest philosopher, and the field's most incisive and constructive critic.

The Compleat Lecturer – or, the quintessence of traditional lecturing by Bruce G Charlton

The Compleat Lecturer – or, the quintessence of traditional lecturing

Bruce G Charlton

Professor Bruce G Charlton 

School of Psychology

Newcastle University

NE1 7RU

England

e-mail: bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk

Abstract

The primacy of lectures in providing a framework of knowledge and understanding for most students in most types of undergraduate-level study has been recognized in universities and colleges for many hundreds of years; and nothing substantive has happened to challenge this primacy. I set-out a plausible rationale for the effectiveness of lecturing, based upon assumptions regarding human nature and evolved psychology.  Then, based upon this framework, I discuss some principles of good lecturing; with reference to the lecturer’s art and craft, implications for design of courses and lecture theatres, and the responsibilities of teaching administrators and the lecture audience. My conclusion is that – properly done – lecturing is potentially a first-rate method of teaching; rewarding both for lecturer and lectured-to. And, if there is a single word that encapsulates the essence of that in which lectures excel; the word is ‘explaining’.

The full 5,500 word essay can be found at: 

http://compleatlecturer.blogspot.co.uk

The remarkable thing that is thinking

We need, urgently need, to be aware of the remarkable thing that we are doing when really thinking!

When thinking from our true-selves; we are knowing, participating and creating.

Only in thinking is freedom - Only in thinking is agency.

Consciousness severs us from the world - but thinking restores the world to us.

Thinking is the cure of alienation (properly understood, properly done) - It is in real thinking that we belong to the world, and the world to us; in thinking we know that the world is real and autonomous; and we know that we ourselves are co-creators of the world - which, until we thought it, was partial and incomplete.

*

Such are the joyous, inspiring and motivating insights which may be attained from reading, pondering and knowing Rudolf Steiner's early metaphysical/ epistemological works:

Philosophy of Freedom (aka. Philosophy of Spiritual Activity - of 1894) 
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.html

and his Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception (of 1886). 
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA002/English/AP1985/GA002_index.html

I have found a couple of essays by the highly-insightful (and highly-irritating!) maverick Anthroposophist Joel Wendt to be helpful and clarifying of what these books mean and how they should be understood:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Prokofieffbookreview.html
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Saving.html

I am interviewed by Brett Stevens for Amerika.org

For some people this could serve as an introduction and overview of my ideas.

My thanks to Brett for providing stimulus and opportunity. 

http://www.amerika.org/politics/interview-with-bruce-charlton

Without deity, all devolves to therapy; all therapy devolves to universal death

If deity is denied - or, nowadays, not so much 'denied' as ruled-out a priori on the basis of unexamined and unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature of reality...

Without deity then Life devolves to how we feel about life, currently; and therefore all possible problems devolve to therapy - because the solution to all possible problems is to change how we feel about them. Full stop - nothing more to be said.

And, changing how we feel about things is not innocuous; because it includes the possibility of Not-feeling. IN other worlds any and all problems can be solved temporarily by obliterating feelings; perhaps by obliterating awareness, obliterating The Self; maybe with drugs, surgery or some other technology...

Or we abolish feelings by death. Because without deity - death is the end of consciousness.

So all possible problems can permanently be solved by death...

Further, all problems can be prevented - by never being alive in the first place. Prevention of life.

So the therapeutic society is continually sliding down a slippery slope towards the idea of universal and permanent extinction of Life, as the one sure way of preventing suffering.

Death is the ultimate therapy for everything!

OR - if that sounds... wrong to you; then you might discover and reconsider your metaphysical assumptions which lead to that conclusion; then re-examine the possibility of deity?...

Why don't atheists want eternal life? An illustration of metaphysical demoralisation

(From my personal experience...) Atheists think it is absurd and irrational when religious people talk about eternal life beyond death as necessary for a meaning in life; because if this mortal life lacks meaning, then why would a mathematical extension of it provide meaning?

(For atheists...) It is like multiplying zero - no matter how many times it is multiplied then it is still nothing. If mortal life has zero meaning then in can't be increased by duration; but if mortal life does have a meaning then there is no absolute necessity for eternal life. ('One life is enough!...')

From an atheist metaphysical perspective, that is - with atheist assumptions that a human life is, objectively, simply an incident in biological history, this argument appears irrefutable.

But if we take a religious perspective which assumes that reality was created, for a reason, by a deity who is our father - then we begin with a picture of a vast and unfolding story, stretching across 'eternity', in which we are participants. For Christians we are - by a family metaphor - both individuals and members of this story: personally concerned for our-selves and also for others.

From this perspective, mortal life has two aspects - the first is that one human lifespan - whether 7 minutes or seventy years - it is of microscopic duration compared with the timescales involved in the great story of creation (indeed, if eternity stretches without end - a lifespan is, relatively, of near-zero duration).

So mortal life requires consideration in the perspective of eternity in order properly to understand it. In other words, the atheist has misframed the question - because he is viewing eternity from the perspective of mortality - assuming the validity of the finite span of mortality and challenging the validity of an eternal perspective; when the correct procedure is the opposite way around.

But on the other side, Christians ought to remember that mortality was also experienced by Jesus Christ - and this indicates that the experience of mortality (however brief in comparison with eternity) is very important, presumably necessary, for the fulfilment of the divine story.

Non-Christian religions are often good at explaining the eternal perspective, and arguing in favour of an eternal perspective which shrinks (sometimes to microscopic levels) the importance of mortal life. But they tend to have trouble explaining why mortal life is of any value at all: why bother with it?

Mainstream Orthodox Christians also often have the same trouble - but this is not intrinsic to Christianity, but is a consequence of building-in inappropriate Greco-Roman derived philosophy, and then seeing Christianity through its lens.

The clarity of the Gospels should remind us that mortal life needs to be understood in a divine and eternal context - that life-on-earth is a relatively brief and temporary phase; but also that even the briefest of mortal lives is also vitally important both to our personal selves and also to the great plan of things. 

Pre-mortal life seems natural to modern, 'evolutionary' thinking (from Owen Barfield)

Modern man must believe of anything that exists, that it has come gradually into being, that it has 'evolved'. 

By and large, modern Man can no longer accept an hypothesis of instantaneous creation; and there is little doubt that, consciously or subconsciously, he applies that as much to his own individuality as to anything else.

If belief in his own existence is to involve believing that he was created at, or immediately before, his physical birth, he will abandon that belief - and he will have good reasons for doing so.

Edited from Self and Reality, in The Rediscovery of Meaning and other essays, by Owen Barfield (1977).

Barfield is surely correct in his observation of modern metaphysics - there is an inbuilt assumption that things 'gradually come into being'. Among mainstream Christians who have noticed this, such an assumption is typically regarded as necessarily a secular corruption, and there is an attempt to restore a pre-modern (medieval) metaphysics of instantaneous creation from nothing.

But for both Barfield (an Anthroposophist) and myself (a believer in Mormon theology), the 'modern' evolutionary thinking is correct, and in its essence an aspect of the spiritual progression of Man.

For both Anthroposophists and Mormons; the pre-modern belief is instantaneous creation is seen as an error, inherited from pre-Christian classical philosophy.

By 'evolution' is Not, of course, meant the purposeless evolution of Darwinian natural selection; but evolution in its original (and primary) meaning of a purposive and developmental unfolding towards a goal.

The implication is that each us us has an existence stretching back into pre-mortal life. For Barfield, this pre-existence was one of several incarnations with periods of spirit life in between - in which incarnations began as diffuse and spiritual, and became more solid and embodied. (The future envisaged was one of further progressive incarnations, eventually leading to full deity.)

For Mormons; pre-existence began with some kind of primordial consciousnesses, a stage of being spirit children of God, then a chosen incarnation into this mortal life. (The future envisaged is of a post-mortal resurrected eternal life, with ultimate potential for full and embodied deity.) 

A belief in pre-existence - that we each, each of us, lived as spirit children of God, before being incarnated in mortal bodies to experience death, and thereby enable resurrection - is a metaphysical assumption that has potential to make a very large and positive difference to Christian life: it is an assumption that overcomes some of the stumbling-blocks and solves many of the deepest problems and paradoxes experienced by modern Christians.

*

Much more on this vital theme can be read in When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought by Terryl Givens, 2009. 

The Mormon understanding is articulated by a recent Apostle (and great orator!) Neal A Maxwell: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1985/11/premortality-a-glorious-reality?lang=eng&_r=1

Review and summary of The Genius Famine

There is a pleasing review and summary of my co-authored most recent book The Genius Famine, published on the VDARE website, written by Lance Welton

http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-genius-famine-the-death-of-religion-will-lead-to-the-death-of-genius-and-the-death-of-civilization

If you haven't yet had a look at The Genius Famine, it is very cheaply available, properly formatted, on Kindle; or can be seen in a text version (suitable for copying, pasting, editing and printing) at:

http://geniusfamine.blogspot.co.uk

How deliberately evil are the international mass media? Very much so

A couple of days ago my home city was the number one headline news item in the world because of mass media lying with strategically evil intent.

Of course, this kind of thing is part of the daily diet of corruption and inversion which we are fed by globally-coordinated, demonically-inspired dishonesty; but the instance is instructive because the evil intent is so obvious and the consequences so widespread.

What actually happened is that a (still un-named, apparently) black African Muslim woman attended Eid celebrations at a mosque with family; then afterwards badly lost control of the car she was driving and ran into several of the other worshippers, badly injuring them.

A horrible accident.

And all this was instantly known by everybody at the event and by the police who later arrived and arrested the woman.

But instead, what was headlined - internationally, immediately, stereotypically - words presumably deriving from some combination of the police and mass media - was the likes of: "Car 'ploughs into families' near Newcastle Mosque", "6 injured as car hits crowd celebrating Eid in the UK", "Two children fighting for their lives after car hits crowd during Eid celebrations".

And at some point in the articles, the phase was used - 'not terror related' or not 'believed' to be terror related - which was, of course, always known for sure from the very beginning.

So - if this was an accident, happening in a field among Sunday worshippers, since it was known for sure not to be terror related, and to have been perpetrated by a co-worshipper - then why was it featured the number one international headline news?

To do harm, by calculated misrepresentation - clearly. 

What actually happened was not international news; but what was deliberately implied by the headlines was. This headlining, and prominence accorded the story, is not just 'irresponsible' - by contrast such contrivance is fully-responsible, and carefully calculated harm-doing.

The reason is in what the headlines don't say - and what the fact of them being headlines implies, in a context of several recent deliberate so-called terrorist attacks on pedestrians by religiously or politically motivated drivers.

The mass media are using the fact that shocking headlines create a lasting psychological impact which is not undone by later revisions or additions; even when these revisions or additions occur later in the article - but especially not undone when modifications or corrections occur some hours or days later.

In my book on the mass media, Addicted to Distraction, I call this 'First-strike framing' of news:

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk

Of course, most people - around the world - will see or read only the headline - and draw the apparently obvious, but known to be false, conclusions. Because the false conclusions have been engineered, this is the very worst kind of lie: the deliberately-misleading but deniable dishonesty. 

The mass media are thereby - quite deliberately, and in a planned and coordinated fashion, and in harmonious cooperation with other institutions and bureaucracies - stoking-up an agenda of fear, resentment and conflict, in the UK and internationally.

How evil is that? Very evil indeed - and let's not all get so blase and cynical that we fail to notice the fact.

The media take a known accident, perpetrated by someone who is obviously not a terrorist; but treat the story in every way as if it was a terror incident. Consequently, people understand and remember this event as if it had been a terror incident. 

But for the Global Establishment, this is all in a day's work; quite normal; quite usual - it is the mass media's mainstream modus operandi...

Bear This Fact In Mind.

The drama of your life is trying to tell you something

The basic and original situation in created reality was (and is) one of harmony and power - it is our destiny (the gift of God - if we choose to accept it) to become participants in this harmony and power.

Against this; false, superficial 'personality' and its 'will power' strive to attain worldly, selfish, short-termist and materialistic goals...

These cherished worldly goals that we consciously strive-for (status, fame, wealth, influence, sex, indolence, pleasures, distractions...) are continually being-sabotaged-by the divine tendency in multiple ways that we perceive as 'bad luck', illness, failure, misery, boredom, demotivation...

Our worldly-goals - even if we do get them - always turn-out to be infrequent, transient, unsatisfying.

Nobody pursuing worldly goals ever gets his hands on real power - primary power - the power of creation: including never getting the power to attain genuine, lasting, pervasive gratification, fulfilment, meaning and purpose - of being at home in reality.

(Satan, an unincarnated spirit, has no such power; but is a tormented soul who can only work by corruption of existent creation - to destroy that which is, and is good.)

This is a safety feature - since we (as we are) would certainly abuse real, primary power if we could grasp it - we would destroy the  divine harmony between free agent beings; so creation was set-up so that is impossible - power comes only with Love: the two are attained together or not at all.

In sum: we cannot access primary power except by working from our true (divine) selves with motivation of Love; but if,or when, or insofar as this pre-requisite is attained then we may indeed work with the primary power of ultimate creation.

Real power exists for us in proportion to how aligned we are with divine purpose and its harmony. The true nature of our Will is not in 'forcing' reality to conform to our worldly appetites but in knowing and (voluntarily, with Love) aligning ourselves with the divine harmony and hopes.

This is what lies behind such phenomena as synchronicity (the alignment of multiple complex strands of reality, over time, to create positive situations for our potential personal benefit); also by what seems like luck, patterns, cycles, and stories as they apply to our lives.

This mortal life is for our education - we are to be educated by experiences; and the main thing we are intended to be educated in is the qualities of Life - which we know imperfectly as both positive and negative phenomena such as love, fear, hope, despair, affection, hatred and so forth - all these must, eventually, be understood; and to understand them requires experience. 

But how do we understand?

There is an inner and outer communication. The main inner communication is by imagination. We can consider imagination to be a full, inner grasping of reality: to know something we must imaginatively-inhabit it. Imagination (properly understaood) is indeed the primary and ultimate experience of knowing.

But sometimes a purely inner stimulus does not suffice, and we need to have the lesson impressed upon us by the physical outer world; sometimes we need to know something as an objective experience (perceptible to others as well as to ourselves). These lessons from the physical world are slow to emerge, and simple in their nature - but these 'harsh lessons' (as they feel to us) may be compelling in a way that, in practice, is necessary to improve the possibility of our learning from them.

(Of course we can always resist learning! No matter how many lessons, or how harsh the lessons may be - people can, and do, choose not to learn them. Nonetheless, God does not give-up on us; but gives us chance after chance to learn what is vital to our eternal progression - so long as we allow him.)

Thus, primary divine power works to reproduce in our surroundings a real life picture of our situation - of the situation of our mortal life on earth. The drama of each of our lives is a way we can perceive and learn what we most need. 

Our real-true-divine Will is therefore always spontaneously working-away - often against our superficial, selfish, worldly will - to enact in our environment the drama of our own being, and its requirements; typically in a slow, simple, heavy-handed and linear fashion. 

On the other hand, we can in principle learn these necessary lessons much more rapidly, simultaneously, and less painfully if we can learn-to-learn-from imagination - in the spiritual realm.

(The above is a paraphrase of an argument in the chapter The Will in William Arkle's book A Geography of Consciousness, 1974 - esepcially page 212.)

 

Knowing what to-do/ not-to-do, during a prolonged peak experience

Yesterday I enjoyed a family walk through the early summer woods in the North Tyne Valley - and managed to maintain myself in a Peak Experience state for an unusually long period (about half an hour) during which I was able to consider some important matters. I made some notes shortly afterwards.

One thing that was crystal clear was that there is a way-out, a way to overcome the current situation [of evil triumphant in the world]. This for sure - and it was something simple which could really happen.  

I don't know what it is - but knew that [specific details] would/ will be clear in the relevant context [i.e. when needed] - so long as I (we) think in the real-true-divine way. 

It is also clear that this way was not by perceptible politics, or organisation, or rhetoric - but something operating at a higher level, invisible to senses. Asif, an act of thinking could put it to rights. A single act. 

When I get insights during a peak experience, I assume that these are in some sense true and certain; and PE-insights trump the kind of insights I might get when in a lower state of consciousness.

(Peak Experiences are glimpses of reality - and 'everyday consciousness is a liar' - as Colin Wilson used to say.)

So I am going to regard the above as a certainty - or, at least, that is my aim.

It is not very precise, at present; but it describes what I should do, and what I should not do - and that is enough.

 

Native American Church bleg

I am interested by the Native American church (aka Peyote Religion) which seems to be a Christian church that includes aspects of traditional Amerindian religions with a more recent use of the (midly) hallucinogenic peyote cactus. 

I like the sound of this church, and I am delighted by the fact that Christianity can arise and thrive in so many different forms; but the internet sources all seem tainted by political correctness. Significantly, the Native American Church itself does not seem to have an official internet presence; which perhaps suggests it is a mystery religion restricted to initiates.

Anyway; my 'bleg' is for any reliable and sympathetic 'insider' sources on the Native American church, preferably from before 1965 and without a 'progressive' axe to grind.

*

One interesting aspect of this church is the use of peyote to attain a psychological state in which the participants can directly apprehend the spirit world.

My interpretation of this is that modern Indians (since the 19th century, at least) seem to need a consciousness-altering drug to do what earlier generations did spontaneously. And peyote, by itself is insufficient - the ceremony seems to last many hours, with arduous dancing, perhaps fasting and using other psychoactive substances such as tobacco.

This would fit with the general pattern of mainstream societies who have experienced a withdrawal of the spirit realm - although Westerners are even further down that line, and most of us would not have a convincing (life transforming) religious experience even if we used peyote; probably because the other, tribally-bonded aspects of the ceremony would be ineffective.

A neglected aspect of so-called virtue-signalling in modern Leftism: it signals moral inversion and the desire to corrupt others

I think people may have become so excited by the name-calling convenience of the term 'virtue-signalling' that they have missed the Main Thing about what is going-on; which is that it is not 'virtue' being signalled; that this is in truth anti-virtue signalling.

Modern virtue-signalling is in reality signalling the inversion of virtue.

Up to fifty-ish years ago (but you'd need to go back more than a century in the case of upper class intellectuals); virtue-signalling was advertising traditional virtues such as Christian faith, altruism, kindness, charitableness, prudence, courage and so forth.

What was wrong with old virtue-signalling - for a Christian - was that it was 'hypocritical' in a Biblical sense (the sense by which the Pharisees were hypocritical; of falsely-claiming actually to live by the highest standards professed. It was the false claim that was wrong - not the standards).

But with traditional virtue-signalling, the actual virtues being-signalled were indeed virtuous...

However, in contrast, the 'virtues' that are being signalled now, in our modern world of political correctness, are almost-wholly straightforward vices and sins; or abstract evil-in-practice principles - such as equality, diversity, or social justice.

So the real point about modern so-called virtue-signalling is that is an advertisement of, and propaganda-for, moral corruption.

Modern virtue-signalling is of achieved self-corruption in the sense of endorsing up-ended transcendental values of truth, beauty, and virtue in unity; and a recommendation that others become similarly corrupted.

Modern virtue-signalling is therefore celebrating and promoting tendentious dishonesty, ugliness and short-termist materialist selfishness (mashed-together in a metaphysically-incoherent mess). 

That's why modern virtue-signalling is not merely hypocrisy: it is actively evil.

We live in a world of passive delusions, when we ought to be in a world of knowing

Originally, Men simply perceived and believed the suprasensory reality - they saw and heard the voices of spirits, gods and demons...

Then the world became more confined to perception by the five senses. The spirit reality could only be perceived as a result of special rituals.  First there were shamans who specialised in contacting the spirit realm, then there were priests...

Now the spirit reality is so remote to us that we cannot perceive it at all, except in altered states of consciousness such that our consciousness, our self of self awareness, is suppressed - by drug intoxication, disease, in sleep... When we are awake, alert and in clear consciousness we live in a world of five senses merely, from which spirits, gods and demons are absent.

*

But we are supposed to be aware of spirit reality by a different means - not by passive sensory perception but by active direct knowing.

Instead we live in an age of passive delusion: people do, in fact, believe without sensory evidence, they believe in what is Not actually perceived or/ or is contradicted by experience. That is the delusional 'virtual world' of modern mainstream reality - enforced by officialdom, mass media and large institutions...

But what modern mainstream people believe is not merely false because self-contradicting, but also frequently changing; this being sustained by an incoherent brew of metaphysical assumptions of 'relativism', individualism, biological reductionism, abstract imprecise principles and imperatives (Justice, Equality, Diversity...) and the inaccessibility of real-reality and true-truth...

The one thing moderns know they know, deep down - is that they do not really know...

Modern man is therefore, and rightly, alienated from the world, from other people, and even from himself and his own thoughts: he doubts everything, including his doubts - and he fears.

(Alienation is our friend - it is the divine inner guidance system telling us we are on the wrong track utterly - not merely unhappy but living under false assumptions and in false delusions.) 

Modern Man's only release is in seeking un-consciousness: oblivion in distraction or pleasure. His great 'hope' is therefore to cease to be a Man, to revert to animal un-self-consciousness...

*

In principle, modern Men are right to live in 'delusions' - in the sense that we are meant to know without external evidence; to know by direct apprehension. That is the evolutionary destiny.

But we must live by 'true delusions' - that is, by the intuitive insights of our own real selves - not those fake delusions of multiple, contradictory, labile and socially/ media created selves...

Man's destiny is to be free and agent, like God: as a god. To know everything, incrementally and asymptotically, from our selves thinking. Because true thinking is reality, because it is divine. 

We must know by active and true thinking; not by passive absorption.

*

A hunter gatherer walked through life seeing and hearing spirits, they took this for granted; and were passive in relation to the spirit world; they assumed it was 'out there' and its meanings were 'out there' - not knowing that spirits are not just out-there but also in-here, and we participate in them.

(Man is necessary for reality.)

Modern Man cannot see spirits, and assumes that because they are not merely out-there, then they are nowhere! - yet he also assumes that what is believes is not really real. Modern Man is trapped by his metaphysical assumptions in a loop of nihilism and despair.

We are meant to walk through life not perceiving but directly knowing the reality of spirits (and many other things out-with sensory phenomena); knowing more-and-more of the reality of things without any ultimate bounds to that knowledge - while aware of our real selves; alert and in clear consciousness.

SO - do not expect to see spirits and other 'supernatural' phenomena out-there and 'objective' - instead expect to know spirits, angels, demons, God: know directly; that is simply by thinking properly, from our (true) selves.

And in such thinking we will (quite naturally and spontaneously) know for ourselves and by direct experience what is real and relevant.

Christianity's USP - this mortal world is basically for-our-good

In sum - the Christian position is that it is basically good to be incarnated and born in a human body, and to live, and to die, and to be resurrected - in the same way as Jesus Christ was.

More at:
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/eastern-versus-western-religion-this.html

There are no shortcuts! ... to higher consciousness in life. From William Arkle

If you wish to attain a higher 'consciousness' in life - by which I mean to experience, perceive and understand more than the five senses 'reality' of mainstream modern materialism; then you will already know that while higher consciousness is attainable in moments (aka 'peak experiences'), these moments tend spontaneously to be infrequent and last only seconds; and trying to make such moments longer and more frequent, and ideally continuous, is very difficult indeed.

(This goal of enhanced being was the major focus of Colin Wilson's thought; throughout dozens of books from The Outsider of 1956 to Super Consciousness in 2009, at the beginning and end of his publishing career.)

Another thing you might realise is that what works for one person seems seldom to work for another person. The history of those who have (apparently) attained higher consciousness is a history of different individuals with different experiences.

The lesson is that There Are No Shortcuts - the path is usually long, and each person seems to need a different path (presumably because each is, in fact, starting somewhere different).

To illustrate this, you may wish to give an hour and a half of intense attention to this recording of one of the most 'enlightened' men of whom I am aware - William Arkle.

http://www.wessexresearchgroup.org/digital_08.html

Near the end, he responds to some questions from the audience (from the well known investigator Nigel Blair, who was the host of these proceedings) concerning whether meditation was necessary for everyone and beneficial for everyone. Arkle is very definite, even somewhat harsh, in refusing to make universal recommendations or even 'hints' or 'tips'; or to imply that there are quicker and easier ways to get where you need to go.

Each of us has to struggle, because these things are difficult to learn, because they are meant to be difficult to learn.

Because without the struggle we will not really learn them.


Note: To clarify, for new readers: Arkle is a spiritual Christian - not a New Age writer. His understanding is based upon God as Creator and Loving Father, we being his children; creation being for the purpose of raising us - like Jesus Christ - to ultimate full divinity of the same kind as God. Unorthodox Christian elements in Arkle include that - as with Mormonism - Arkle envisages a Heavenly Mother consort with the Father, and human divinity as potentially rising to the same nature and level as that of the divine parents, But unlike Mormonism; Arkle also includes a scheme of incremental reincarnation (whereas Mormonism achieves much the same explanatory function by positing a significant and evolutionary pre-mortal spirit existence for all men and women).
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk

The billion-fold global die-off - when will it come?

The population of the planet has grown from (approximately) one billion maximum, through most of world history; up to (apparently) more than seven billion at present - and this has happened since the industrial revolution and mostly in the past century.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-modern-world-is-selecting-for-pure.html

Six billion of the population are therefore sustained by the global system of technology, organisation and trade that we call Western Civilisation - and thus includes all of the 'third world/ developing' nations where population growth is so rapid.

For example, without Western civilisation (including medicine and public health) Africa would have less than a tenth of current population.

And of course Western Civilisation is going to end, and probably quite soon - for many, many reasons not least of which is that the majority of the world, including the global establishment, are extremely hostile to it - and to that which created and sustained it.

This means that billions of people will almost-certainly die, quite soon - although exactly how many billions and how rapidly is merely a question of how long the shrinking remnant can live-off accumulated, but also shrinking, capital stores.

However; 'civilisation' is (quite rightly) nobody's priority to sustain - not least because it is a by-product rather than a strategy; and is anyway a very long-term and remote problem - so it will always be made a low priority in competition with so many others.

The big question is not If there will be a collapse of technology and trade and a colossal extinction event; but why it has not already happened - given the malign intentions of the most powerful people in the world.

The answer is simple, albeit ominous.

The Global Establishment is - grudgingly - maintaining the international system of trade and technology because they are engaged in spiritual warfare, and they are currently winning.

In a nutshell, the Global Establishment are ultimately tools of the supernatural powers of evil - and because evil is winning more and more souls to self-damnation, they want the system to continue... at least for a while longer.

Think of it this way: Billions are going to die for sure - but what is in doubt is the fate of these souls: will they accept the salvation offered by Christ, or will they choose to reject this gift and instead opt for damnation?

Everything currently indicates that more and more people (most obviously in the West - where moral inversion is official and dominant; but seemingly almost everywhere else too - by their behaviour) are motivated by fear, resentment, pride and despair.

In such a state of conviction, the mass of post-mortem souls will not want Heaven, will purposively reject salvation... Certainly they won't want it at the necessary and inevitable price of personal repentance and faith (including admitting they had been fundamentally wrong in mortal life, and then actively joining with God's eternal plan for our deification).  

What this suggests is that it is only the wickedness of the world which is keeping it going, and postponing the billion-fold die-off; and if there are strong signs of a Christian awakening in the hearts of Men, then that will be the time that the demons pull-the-plug on the vast, multiply-interdependent and therefore exquisitely fragile system that we call the global economy.

The mass death will come sooner or later, whatever happens - because its causes are probably unstoppable but in any case not being stopped - yet it may perhaps come sooner if many people do the right thing, than if they don't.

In which case there may be a stark choice between either extending this-world survival coupled with the expectation of an increased rate of eternal damnation; or alternatively accepting rapid collapse and death as the cost of saving more souls for eternal happiness...

Why is modern politics so unpredictable? Dishonesty and stupidity (plus some notes on today's attempted coup)

The US and UK elections were wildly wrongly predicted, and so have been many other recent elections. Why?

Firstly there is so much systematic dishonesty that nobody knows anything anymore. Most obviously, the process of opinion polling is now very obviously corrupt - designed to influence voting, rather than measure it. It has become actively-misleading.

But also people, including political leaders, are more stupid than they used to be. The recent UK General Election was the easiest to win of any I can recall in the past 45 years - all that the Conservatives needed to do was make it a single issue election about Brexit; stating that they were the only party that would deliver it.

This was so very obvious that it didn't really cross my mind that it would not happen - but it didn't; and the election degenerated into a confusing mess; with the building impression that the Conservatives were unsure about Brexit and everything else.

The election ended-up so close that today the Revolutionary Left are planing a coup (they have announced it in the press) to take-over the government in the next days or weeks; by organising disruption, violent riots, a crisis atmosphere and fear of civil breakdown.

With such an incompetent and cowardly mainstream leadership class in Britain - the Bolshevik Left may well succeed (even if the leadership class didn't covertly want them to win - which is another aspect) - and we may soon have our first de facto communist government.

The unknown factor is the British people - and whether they will wake-up now; or perhaps later, after the reality of totalitarianism begins to hit; or perhaps not at all. After all, Leftism is our national Achilles heel - driven by class, sex, race and anti-Christian ressentiment; and we have so far shown zero ability to learn from experience on that subject.

If people really do not want to become agent and free - then they will get their wish.

That is: a life of mental passivity, of total surveillance and micro-managed behaviour and thought; justified purely in terms of the balance of attributed pleasures or sufferings; hoping desperately that the masters of our mortal destiny will be kind, while dreading that they are, in fact, cruel.

Why are there no modern Utopias?

Because they cannot be imagined.

Modern people cannot even imagine a society of beauty, truth and virtue - because they do not believe, acknowledge or posses these values.

Instead, moderns can only imagine dystopias - and the dystopias are merely exceptionally-cruel societies where there is more-than-current levels of deliberately imposed suffering - the implication is that a 'utopia' is a society without suffering, of constant pleasure merely.

A Utopia of Emotions.

I say emotions, not feelings, because feelings imply consciousness, self-awareness - and in any modern utopia that must be destroyed - because consciousness implies worries about the past and (especially) future - whereas the modern utopia is the obliteration of everything by current pleasure.

The modern utopia is thus indistinguishable from the modern dystopia of a transhumanist, cyborg/ cyberpunk society in which human-machine, technologically-enhanced entities dwell in a paradise of genetic engineering, plastic surgery and drugs... 

It will be noticed that the modern utopia is not a genuine utopia because it is not a human society - at most, it is the society of ex-humans, who have destroyed their own consciousness in order to obliterate suffering and thereby experience the totality of current pleasure.

Christ within us - cosmic implications

To understand the meaning of Jesus Christ is a lifetime's work, and more than a mortal life!

One aspect that has been occupying me recently is what I term the 'cosmic' aspect - in other words the difference that the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ made for objective Reality.

I mean the sense in which 'things' everywhere and for everyone are intrinsically different AD from BC.

In other words, what differences did Jesus make aside from what we know of his life and teachings from inspired scriptures, tradition and the church (amplified by reason)?

One helpful concept is that since the death of Jesus and/ or the coming of the Holy Ghost (Pentecost) we have had Christ within-us; as a universal inner guidance system.

This means that, in principle - and perhaps necessarily also in practice - Anno Domini Christ is universally available and knowable by some kind of process of introspection and intuition; and available even to those who have not learned anything via there five senses (or who have been taught false things about him).

So, Christ is outside and inside, without and within, knowable by prayer and by meditation.

Furthermore, this kind of direct knowledge of Christ is probably both necessary and indeed sufficient for our understanding of The Gospels. What I mean is that the Gospels cannot be understood without the correct attitude and perspective for reading the Gospels - and also when the correct A & P have been established by direct knowing; then that is enough for us to understand the Gospels (not immediately in total - but to begin to build a correct understanding).

So the reality and nature of Christ is established in such a way that everybody, everywhere, can (in principle) can confirm their prayers via intuitions and vice versa. Can know the guidance both from without and from within.

And this is exactly what we need in a life of growth, development and transformation. We change, and are meant to change; and the agent of change can work from inside us as well as from outside us.