I noticed the headline recently that erstwhile child actor Elijah Wood had confirmed that the Hollywood upper echelons are rife with sexual depravity directed at children - drawing parallels with the revelations concerning Jimmy Savile as the focus of the same kind elite network/ conspiracy among the British Establishment at the BBC and other mass media, Government, the Royal Family, and apparently the legal system and senior police. There are also sporadic revelations of the same kind of thing scattered around the world elites more generally - enough to make a pattern - and a much more pervasive tendency among the dominant powers to excuse, de-prioritize, minimize, cover-up and forget this type of thing.
We have to join the dots here; and notice that the focus of activity seems to be on the means of mass communication - those jobs where people have influence on public opinion both directly (the hard sell via laws, regulations and advocacy) and (more insidiously) implicitly and covertly via subtle messages and denigration of the opposition and resistance (especially among serious Christians).
It looks very much as if 'the world' is being run by a small and powerful and extremely-strange group of people who are distinguished from 'normal' people by their positive and active attitude to what is regarded among the mass of ordinary and even wicked people as beyond-the-pale and the most depraved activity of all. For example, even among the most hardened and horrendous British criminal prisoners, such people are regarded as the lowest of the low. (Leading to the apparent-paradox that the highest-of-the high are morally the lowest-of-the-low; as was the situation with the Roman Emperor's court under Tiberius when Jesus was born - and even more so with his successors Caligula, Claudius-Messalina and Nero.) Indeed, so rare and peculiar is this type of depravity that it appears to be substantially a calculated act of ultimate self-degradation and celebration of absolute evil: the kind of thing which seems to be a deliberate strategy of corruption of one's own soul.
If so, we would be very wrong to regard the international elites as well-meaning but misguided/ incompetent - or indeed as being motivated by any of the 'normal' types of sinful human appetite such as greed and lust; we seem to be up against a group that are altogether more purely evil than this.
The obvious rejoinder is that if the world is ruled by such grossly wicked people, then why aren't things much worse, and more obviously worse, than they are - given their power, why don't they just implement evil by diktat?
My understanding is that it is the nature of the human condition that Men must invite evil into their hearts for evil to gain dominion. For evil to triumph, making people do evil things by coercion or incentives is not enough - people must be made to want evil. They need to be induced to embrace 'moral inversion'; embrace evil as good. And this is altogether a trickier and more long-termist project than mere destruction of The Good- which will often induce a powerful opposite reaction.
And if it is desired to create a situation in which people choose to regard evil as Good - then clearly the means of mass communication are precisely where you most want to work - to make it such that the very imagination is subverted then inverted. It all makes a horrible kind of sense that the BBC and Hollywood have emerged as foci of this depraved sexual cultus - albeit the tip of an iceberg extending to embrace so many of the Western and Westernized ruling elite.
Monday, 23 May 2016
Correcting Robert Frost's nature notes
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
This is one of Frost's loveliest, most perfect and most memorable poems - once of those that spring into the mind unbidden, especially in spring.
And late spring has been especially lovely around here - the bluebells in particular are better than I can remember, and the unfolding of leaves on the trees since the beginning of May has been greatly enhanced by the backdrop of blue skies.
This is when we can see for ourselves what Frost brought to general attention: that nature's first green is indeed gold - first in the neighbour's beeches, then later the lime and oak which we have in our garden.
But we can also see that they are gold for considerably more than 'an hour' - the leaves are distinctly golden against the blue sky for at least a week after they emerge (and counting, I've just been outside to check...) which is about 100 times longer than stated by the poet!
But of course 'hour' was needed for the rhyme, and symbolically-speaking the point is truthfully made: in mortal life 'nothing gold can stay' - nor, indeed, anything green.
If I lived to a Biblical span, I would have about a dozen more springs to experience - which is, on the one hand, an extraordinary abundance of beauty; and, on the other hand, also means that each season from now is special, one of a small set, to be treasured (but, I hope, not clung-onto).
Note: An allegorical un-packing of this poem is at:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/four-levels-of-allegory-applied-to.html
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
This is one of Frost's loveliest, most perfect and most memorable poems - once of those that spring into the mind unbidden, especially in spring.
And late spring has been especially lovely around here - the bluebells in particular are better than I can remember, and the unfolding of leaves on the trees since the beginning of May has been greatly enhanced by the backdrop of blue skies.
This is when we can see for ourselves what Frost brought to general attention: that nature's first green is indeed gold - first in the neighbour's beeches, then later the lime and oak which we have in our garden.
But we can also see that they are gold for considerably more than 'an hour' - the leaves are distinctly golden against the blue sky for at least a week after they emerge (and counting, I've just been outside to check...) which is about 100 times longer than stated by the poet!
But of course 'hour' was needed for the rhyme, and symbolically-speaking the point is truthfully made: in mortal life 'nothing gold can stay' - nor, indeed, anything green.
If I lived to a Biblical span, I would have about a dozen more springs to experience - which is, on the one hand, an extraordinary abundance of beauty; and, on the other hand, also means that each season from now is special, one of a small set, to be treasured (but, I hope, not clung-onto).
Note: An allegorical un-packing of this poem is at:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/four-levels-of-allegory-applied-to.html
Sunday, 22 May 2016
Some highlights from William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness
[Because there is no online text; I have decided to make available some of my favourite excerpts from the whole of William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (1974) - which is a book of great spiritual value. I will start at the beginning, and go through chapter by chapter...]
A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle
- some selected highlights
Preface
We like to be loved and admired but we also like to love and admire other people. When we love and admire other people, we are able to believe in the joy and merit of their nature. When we are loved and admired we are able to believe in the joy and the merit of our Self.
When we receive and give love and adoration we are in either case gaining something wholly delightful and desirable. But we do not take the trouble to look more closely at this situation, for the situation seems to be an end in itself.
If it is examined, however, the sensation in question reveals that it is not so much the giving and receiving of love which matters, but that the love and admiration helps to liberate an aspect of our nature which is joy and is happiness and is a sort of virtuous affectionate delight.
The trouble with life as we ordinarily experience it is that this part of our nature is always being suppressed and not liberated. But not only do other people continually restrict it, but we find that we are restricting it ourselves.
The problem however is not as simple as it looks. The difficulty is not simply liberating our Selves but the fact that in trying to do this we liberate our not-Selves.
When we liberate a not-Self we are not freeing ourselves for an experience of great affection want to light, but rather for an experience of misery, frustration and disappointment.The pain of this makes us think twice about any further attempts at liberation. We are inclined to leave liberation alone for we are not sure if we are going to liberate a God or a Devil.
The purpose of this book is therefore to help towards our understanding of these processes which are essential to life, if that life is not to remain static. The theories involved are both old and new. Those that are not new have been found in the general literature of mysticism, religion and philosophy, and no attempt has been made to identify the sources.
The attempt has been rather to integrate them into some unified structure and to re-express them in another form. Not only will there be an attempt to map out the geography of the psyche and consciousness in general, but also to describe the principles which are necessary for a journey and the best way to understand the ‘gods’ and ‘devils’ that we might meet on the way.
Chapter 1 - The Fields of Consciousness
We will consider the physical personality and body as a factory and compare our consciousness to the manager of that factory.
We know that normally the manager goes into the office of his factory to collect the latest facts about sales and production in order to control the activity of the factory. But we also know that if he is ill and cannot visit his office, he can telephone his assistant and by asking him for certain facts control the activities of the factory as though the weather himself.
And if the manager had to go on a trip to America or Australia, you could still get in touch with his office and control the factory. In other words, if he were able to possess all the information he required, the manager would never have to visit his factory at all.
He does visit the factory, however, because it enables him to communicate more easily to more people on his stuff. His connection with the factory therefore can be described in terms of communication, whether he is at the factory or at the other side of the world.
His success as a manager depends to a very large extent on the effectiveness of the communication system he has built up between all the parts of his concern and himself. If one aspect of his business is in bad communication with him, this is the part that he would expect to cause him trouble.
This is true of his production programs and also of his human relationships among management and workers. The manager of a factory goes to the factory himself, not to improve production, but to make sure that his channels of communication have been feeding him efficiently with accurate information. If he could rely on the effectiveness of his communication systems and the efficiency of the people involved in them, their honesty and so on, he would never have to visit the factory at all.
The effectiveness of his management therefore would not depend upon any special relationship with the factory. It would depend upon his ability to observe all the information given him in comparison to all the information he already possessed.
If the manager identified himself with the factory it is very likely that some aspects of production will appear out of proportion to him. This will cause him to form a distorted picture of the situation in his mind and we can then say that he has become aberrated and less efficient.
His best position as manager, as far as we can understand, is to be in a detached position to the production activity in order to see it all objectively and see it in relation to what the rest of the commercial world is doing.
Now we ourselves are like the manager in relation to our physical body and personality. We are in fact not connected to this personality function unless we choose to be. We can best observe and direct the function of the personality by being detached from it and by observing the situation it is in, objectively. So long as we are identified with the personality we must expect to experience its values in a distorted way.
We will also get a distorted picture of our nature if our communication channels are inefficient or inaccurate. We will, in other words, only understand what we are and what we are trying to do, if we experience ourselves as managers and other physical personality as a factory.
However even the manager is in a subtle sense conditioned by an inner consciousness which dictates to him how he will behave in ethical and other ways. And so with ourselves; we are detached from our physical body whether we like it or not, and we also possess an inner essential awareness within this detached consciousness which we may describe as a first order attitude or filter. The detached consciousness is thus a second order filter and the physical personality is a third order filter. The majority of people are identified with the third order filter, with occasional sensations of the second order.
But the time has come when we can only solve the outstanding problems of our civilisation by many of us achieving a permanent second order attitude with occasional sensations of the first order.
A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle
- some selected highlights
Preface
We like to be loved and admired but we also like to love and admire other people. When we love and admire other people, we are able to believe in the joy and merit of their nature. When we are loved and admired we are able to believe in the joy and the merit of our Self.
When we receive and give love and adoration we are in either case gaining something wholly delightful and desirable. But we do not take the trouble to look more closely at this situation, for the situation seems to be an end in itself.
If it is examined, however, the sensation in question reveals that it is not so much the giving and receiving of love which matters, but that the love and admiration helps to liberate an aspect of our nature which is joy and is happiness and is a sort of virtuous affectionate delight.
The trouble with life as we ordinarily experience it is that this part of our nature is always being suppressed and not liberated. But not only do other people continually restrict it, but we find that we are restricting it ourselves.
The problem however is not as simple as it looks. The difficulty is not simply liberating our Selves but the fact that in trying to do this we liberate our not-Selves.
When we liberate a not-Self we are not freeing ourselves for an experience of great affection want to light, but rather for an experience of misery, frustration and disappointment.The pain of this makes us think twice about any further attempts at liberation. We are inclined to leave liberation alone for we are not sure if we are going to liberate a God or a Devil.
The purpose of this book is therefore to help towards our understanding of these processes which are essential to life, if that life is not to remain static. The theories involved are both old and new. Those that are not new have been found in the general literature of mysticism, religion and philosophy, and no attempt has been made to identify the sources.
The attempt has been rather to integrate them into some unified structure and to re-express them in another form. Not only will there be an attempt to map out the geography of the psyche and consciousness in general, but also to describe the principles which are necessary for a journey and the best way to understand the ‘gods’ and ‘devils’ that we might meet on the way.
Chapter 1 - The Fields of Consciousness
We will consider the physical personality and body as a factory and compare our consciousness to the manager of that factory.
We know that normally the manager goes into the office of his factory to collect the latest facts about sales and production in order to control the activity of the factory. But we also know that if he is ill and cannot visit his office, he can telephone his assistant and by asking him for certain facts control the activities of the factory as though the weather himself.
And if the manager had to go on a trip to America or Australia, you could still get in touch with his office and control the factory. In other words, if he were able to possess all the information he required, the manager would never have to visit his factory at all.
He does visit the factory, however, because it enables him to communicate more easily to more people on his stuff. His connection with the factory therefore can be described in terms of communication, whether he is at the factory or at the other side of the world.
His success as a manager depends to a very large extent on the effectiveness of the communication system he has built up between all the parts of his concern and himself. If one aspect of his business is in bad communication with him, this is the part that he would expect to cause him trouble.
This is true of his production programs and also of his human relationships among management and workers. The manager of a factory goes to the factory himself, not to improve production, but to make sure that his channels of communication have been feeding him efficiently with accurate information. If he could rely on the effectiveness of his communication systems and the efficiency of the people involved in them, their honesty and so on, he would never have to visit the factory at all.
The effectiveness of his management therefore would not depend upon any special relationship with the factory. It would depend upon his ability to observe all the information given him in comparison to all the information he already possessed.
If the manager identified himself with the factory it is very likely that some aspects of production will appear out of proportion to him. This will cause him to form a distorted picture of the situation in his mind and we can then say that he has become aberrated and less efficient.
His best position as manager, as far as we can understand, is to be in a detached position to the production activity in order to see it all objectively and see it in relation to what the rest of the commercial world is doing.
Now we ourselves are like the manager in relation to our physical body and personality. We are in fact not connected to this personality function unless we choose to be. We can best observe and direct the function of the personality by being detached from it and by observing the situation it is in, objectively. So long as we are identified with the personality we must expect to experience its values in a distorted way.
We will also get a distorted picture of our nature if our communication channels are inefficient or inaccurate. We will, in other words, only understand what we are and what we are trying to do, if we experience ourselves as managers and other physical personality as a factory.
However even the manager is in a subtle sense conditioned by an inner consciousness which dictates to him how he will behave in ethical and other ways. And so with ourselves; we are detached from our physical body whether we like it or not, and we also possess an inner essential awareness within this detached consciousness which we may describe as a first order attitude or filter. The detached consciousness is thus a second order filter and the physical personality is a third order filter. The majority of people are identified with the third order filter, with occasional sensations of the second order.
But the time has come when we can only solve the outstanding problems of our civilisation by many of us achieving a permanent second order attitude with occasional sensations of the first order.
Locked-in adolescence syndrome: individually and collectively
One reason that there is no possibility of significant socio-political improvement until after a mass religious-spiritual regeneration; is that nearly all modern individuals are stuck in adolescence (varied by regressions to childhood, or intoxicated insensibility) and almost nobody gets through this state to reach psychological (and spiritual) maturity.
Adolescence is, or ought to be, a phase - and ideally a phase lasting a very short period of time, perhaps a moment, or a day or two. Spiritually, adolescence should be seen as a state merely touched-upon, or bounced-off, in the business of growing from dependently-immersed childhood to autonomous loving adult marriage and parenthood: necessary but bad-in-itself.
By contrast, our mass culture has for fifty years (and elite culture for more than 200 years) perpetually celebrated adolescence as a state, not a phase; and encouraged people to remain stuck in this state; and done its best to mock, hide or destroy the means by which people can go through and beyond adolescence.
The psychological problem goes far beyond the decline of marriage and parenthood; and involves 'getting stuck' - that is, a phase becoming a state - poised between the two legitimate situations of child- and adult-hood.
A way of thinking about this regards life as properly (or destined to be) a growth from the demands of the physical world towards the ideal word; and adolescence as the point where these two sets of demands are balanced.
The intention is that an individual passes-through this point of balance, as swiftly as possible; but if this does not happen (e.g. because there is a whole positive culture of adolescence-as-ideal, so people try to stay in the phase to enjoy this state), if momentum is lost, then the individual becomes stuck between two equally balanced pulls: one pull towards the physical and the other towards the spiritual.
The perpetual adolescent is cynical, because he is trying to get the best of these two worlds of the physical and the spiritual ('the world' and the ideal), without making a commitment to either; indeed, if he is an intellectual then he may spend his life comparing and contrasting the two poles of physical and spiritual. And because the emotional pull of each is balanced by the other, his emotions may atrophy and his mind become cut-off (alienated) - focused on analysis and abstracted from action: paralysed by indecision and unable to move forward (or back) for fear of losing something of what he wants.
Once established, this phase-become-state is indeed difficult to move through, difficult to get-out-of - and this is reinforced by a society which trivializes and disbelieves realistic religion-spirituality; and therefore (for lack of anything conceivably-better) idealizes 'youth' on the one hand (with a nod towards childhood, from time to time), and depicts maturity as dull, boring, a decline into failure and a defeat - and indeed an evil, repressive, reactionary, state.
(The only 'good' adult or elderly person is, for modern culture, a progressive whose 'vitality' is demonstrated by their deference to the hegemony of youth; and their embrace of the sexual revolution, diversity, the mass media culture of narcissism, distraction and intoxication - and all the other nihilistic and ephemeral current fashions.)
The only constructive way-out from 'locked-in adolescence' is upward into an ever-more spiritual life, which can only happen within a frame of religion-as-reality. But of course, the forces of evil are dominant in the Western cultural leadership; and they certainly do not want this escape; but are absolutely delighted by a society of hope-less, continually ageing and corrupting, would-be youths.
So it is up-to each individual to plan and execute his own escape from what needs to be recognized as the prison of idealized perpetual adolescence.
(Note: the above is based-on the chapter 'Levels of Consciousness' in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness, 1974.)
Adolescence is, or ought to be, a phase - and ideally a phase lasting a very short period of time, perhaps a moment, or a day or two. Spiritually, adolescence should be seen as a state merely touched-upon, or bounced-off, in the business of growing from dependently-immersed childhood to autonomous loving adult marriage and parenthood: necessary but bad-in-itself.
By contrast, our mass culture has for fifty years (and elite culture for more than 200 years) perpetually celebrated adolescence as a state, not a phase; and encouraged people to remain stuck in this state; and done its best to mock, hide or destroy the means by which people can go through and beyond adolescence.
The psychological problem goes far beyond the decline of marriage and parenthood; and involves 'getting stuck' - that is, a phase becoming a state - poised between the two legitimate situations of child- and adult-hood.
A way of thinking about this regards life as properly (or destined to be) a growth from the demands of the physical world towards the ideal word; and adolescence as the point where these two sets of demands are balanced.
The intention is that an individual passes-through this point of balance, as swiftly as possible; but if this does not happen (e.g. because there is a whole positive culture of adolescence-as-ideal, so people try to stay in the phase to enjoy this state), if momentum is lost, then the individual becomes stuck between two equally balanced pulls: one pull towards the physical and the other towards the spiritual.
The perpetual adolescent is cynical, because he is trying to get the best of these two worlds of the physical and the spiritual ('the world' and the ideal), without making a commitment to either; indeed, if he is an intellectual then he may spend his life comparing and contrasting the two poles of physical and spiritual. And because the emotional pull of each is balanced by the other, his emotions may atrophy and his mind become cut-off (alienated) - focused on analysis and abstracted from action: paralysed by indecision and unable to move forward (or back) for fear of losing something of what he wants.
Once established, this phase-become-state is indeed difficult to move through, difficult to get-out-of - and this is reinforced by a society which trivializes and disbelieves realistic religion-spirituality; and therefore (for lack of anything conceivably-better) idealizes 'youth' on the one hand (with a nod towards childhood, from time to time), and depicts maturity as dull, boring, a decline into failure and a defeat - and indeed an evil, repressive, reactionary, state.
(The only 'good' adult or elderly person is, for modern culture, a progressive whose 'vitality' is demonstrated by their deference to the hegemony of youth; and their embrace of the sexual revolution, diversity, the mass media culture of narcissism, distraction and intoxication - and all the other nihilistic and ephemeral current fashions.)
The only constructive way-out from 'locked-in adolescence' is upward into an ever-more spiritual life, which can only happen within a frame of religion-as-reality. But of course, the forces of evil are dominant in the Western cultural leadership; and they certainly do not want this escape; but are absolutely delighted by a society of hope-less, continually ageing and corrupting, would-be youths.
So it is up-to each individual to plan and execute his own escape from what needs to be recognized as the prison of idealized perpetual adolescence.
(Note: the above is based-on the chapter 'Levels of Consciousness' in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness, 1974.)
Friday, 20 May 2016
Two books that were massive disappointments: Tolkien's 1977 Silmarillion and Robert M Pirsig's Lila (1991)
When The Silmarillion was published in 1977, I had been utterly immersed in Tolkien's work for five years with an intensity that only teenaged fans can muster. To say I was 'looking forward to' its publication is a gross understatement - I had even exchanged letters with Tolkien just before he died asking when the book was coming.
Then it arrived in the bookshops, and I bought it (in hardback - expensive when relying on pocket money) immediately... and yet I found (to my own astonishment, and indeed embarrassment) that despite expectations - I enjoyed it so little that I could not even finish it.
I have since read it through, and also listened twice to the whole thing on audiobook; but I still find The Silmarillion Tolkien's worst book - and the only one I don't spontaneously love; deeply flawed in many ways - although with some excellent sections (such as the account of Numenor - which is wonderful in its way).
But then the 1977 Silmarillion is not really JRR Tolkien's work, but a compilation and edited mosaic of his unpublished texts made by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay; who were primarily trying to remove inconsistencies (internal and between the Silmarillion text and the Lord of the Rings) - and literary quality was the main casualty. Christopher has since expressed regret at having published the 1977 Silmarillion in the way he did - and has since produced the wonderful 12 volume History of Middle Earth (with all of the Silmarillion texts and more - but in better versions) preceded by the marvellous Unfinished Tales.
*
My other great disappointment was Robert M Pirsig's Lila: an enquiry into morals - which was also a long-awaited follow-up; to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an enquiry into values (1974). I had really loved ZAMM, re-read it multiple times, and had also exchanged letters with its author - in relation to my publishing one of the earlier scholarly essays on the subject.
ZAMM did not change my life as much or as deeply as Lord of the Rings, because no book ever has - but it did change my life, and was certainly one of the main books of my early adult life (perhaps a dubious distinction?) - and it is a book I still find very enjoyable and valuable; although now I find its 'message' (being ultimately atheistic, un-Christian) to be actually rather dangerous in the sense of getting what feels like quite close to a satisfactory philosophy of life but not getting to the necessary destination. This means it is easy to 'get stuck' on the book; holding an incomplete, unsatisfying and ultimately nihilistic world view. At any rate, this happened to me.
But no other philosophical text had made anything like the sustained impact of ZAMM; and in 1991 my life was extremely unsatisfactory and I was really seeking some guidance - so as soon as I saw Lila and bought it; and as soon as I bought it I cleared space in my life to read it straight through.
It is not a good book. While ZAMM is close to novelistic perfection in terms of its writing, structure, pacing, and the intrinsic interest of its parts; Lila is not - it is clunky, preachy, contrived - and has a general atmosphere of seediness and malaise which I find very unappealing (especially in comparison to the freshness and 'innocence' of ZAMM).
The book gives every indication of being squeezed-out of an unwilling and uninspired Pirsig with the 'help' of an editor - it is asif written by a different author than ZAMM.
I don't like the philosophical aspects of Lila any better. While accepting that the implicit premise that the William James-esque Pragmatism of ZAMM is incomplete and unsatisfactory, the proposed Metaphysics of Quality is equally ungrounded and untheistic; but dull and pedantic.
I picked Lila up a couple of days ago to check my reaction - and it has not changed: I have no inclination to re-read. What I loved about ZAMM is almost entirely absent from Lila.
*
With both The Silmarillion of 1977 and Lila of 1991; it was not merely a case of the books failing to live up to the supreme standards of their illustrious predecessors (a matter of 'regression to the mean', if you like); but of being books of a different kind altogether, and books lacking (almost entirely) exactly what it was that I most valued in the earlier work by the same author.
From my perspective, I would prefer that these two books had never been published.
Then it arrived in the bookshops, and I bought it (in hardback - expensive when relying on pocket money) immediately... and yet I found (to my own astonishment, and indeed embarrassment) that despite expectations - I enjoyed it so little that I could not even finish it.
I have since read it through, and also listened twice to the whole thing on audiobook; but I still find The Silmarillion Tolkien's worst book - and the only one I don't spontaneously love; deeply flawed in many ways - although with some excellent sections (such as the account of Numenor - which is wonderful in its way).
But then the 1977 Silmarillion is not really JRR Tolkien's work, but a compilation and edited mosaic of his unpublished texts made by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay; who were primarily trying to remove inconsistencies (internal and between the Silmarillion text and the Lord of the Rings) - and literary quality was the main casualty. Christopher has since expressed regret at having published the 1977 Silmarillion in the way he did - and has since produced the wonderful 12 volume History of Middle Earth (with all of the Silmarillion texts and more - but in better versions) preceded by the marvellous Unfinished Tales.
*
My other great disappointment was Robert M Pirsig's Lila: an enquiry into morals - which was also a long-awaited follow-up; to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an enquiry into values (1974). I had really loved ZAMM, re-read it multiple times, and had also exchanged letters with its author - in relation to my publishing one of the earlier scholarly essays on the subject.
ZAMM did not change my life as much or as deeply as Lord of the Rings, because no book ever has - but it did change my life, and was certainly one of the main books of my early adult life (perhaps a dubious distinction?) - and it is a book I still find very enjoyable and valuable; although now I find its 'message' (being ultimately atheistic, un-Christian) to be actually rather dangerous in the sense of getting what feels like quite close to a satisfactory philosophy of life but not getting to the necessary destination. This means it is easy to 'get stuck' on the book; holding an incomplete, unsatisfying and ultimately nihilistic world view. At any rate, this happened to me.
But no other philosophical text had made anything like the sustained impact of ZAMM; and in 1991 my life was extremely unsatisfactory and I was really seeking some guidance - so as soon as I saw Lila and bought it; and as soon as I bought it I cleared space in my life to read it straight through.
It is not a good book. While ZAMM is close to novelistic perfection in terms of its writing, structure, pacing, and the intrinsic interest of its parts; Lila is not - it is clunky, preachy, contrived - and has a general atmosphere of seediness and malaise which I find very unappealing (especially in comparison to the freshness and 'innocence' of ZAMM).
The book gives every indication of being squeezed-out of an unwilling and uninspired Pirsig with the 'help' of an editor - it is asif written by a different author than ZAMM.
I don't like the philosophical aspects of Lila any better. While accepting that the implicit premise that the William James-esque Pragmatism of ZAMM is incomplete and unsatisfactory, the proposed Metaphysics of Quality is equally ungrounded and untheistic; but dull and pedantic.
I picked Lila up a couple of days ago to check my reaction - and it has not changed: I have no inclination to re-read. What I loved about ZAMM is almost entirely absent from Lila.
*
With both The Silmarillion of 1977 and Lila of 1991; it was not merely a case of the books failing to live up to the supreme standards of their illustrious predecessors (a matter of 'regression to the mean', if you like); but of being books of a different kind altogether, and books lacking (almost entirely) exactly what it was that I most valued in the earlier work by the same author.
From my perspective, I would prefer that these two books had never been published.
Thursday, 19 May 2016
Why did 'Hell' replace 'Sheol' in the New Testament - as a possible situation of the spirit after death of the body?
It was several years ago that commenter WmJas pointed-out that the Old Testament underworld after death - Sheol (much the same in its characteristics as the Hades of Greek religion) which was the destination for all spirits/ souls after death (the good as well as the bad) - was replaced in the New Testament with a much more polarized distinction of Heaven or Hell: Heaven being vastly better than Sheol, but Hell depicted as vastly worse.
Sheol is apparently a shadowy world inhabited be witless, demented spirits/ souls who have forgotten (or cannot hold onto their own identity (presumably, spirits maimed by having been torn apart from their bodies); whereas Hell is some kind of a place of torment.
This - on the face of it - is a rather ambiguous benefit for Jesus to have brought; and seems initially hard to square with the way that a loving father would organize things for his beloved children.
But this interpretation is, I believe, a consequence of our stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Men have agency, or 'free will', and God either will not or (I would say) cannot compel any Man to choose his ultimate destiny.
My understanding is that Sheol was merely a temporary holding-place awaiting the advent of Christ (and not experienced as having any duration by the souls who dwelt there); and we can interpret the Atonement of Jesus Christ as having led to a situation where all souls were brought out of Sheol and each Man was able to choose his own destiny.
*
To understand Christianity (or indeed anything) in this mortal life, we need to know what it is for; and my assumption is that the whole of creation was made by God (in a nutshell) so that some Men (as many as possible) could advance to deity and join The Father and The Son (and Heavenly Mother) in a loving society.
Men are made a spirit children, and incarnated as mortal children - but the point is that we are immature, extremely immature - but our destiny (if we choose it) is to mature towards greater and greater divinity.
Mortal life is designed so that 1. Men can be incarnated and have a body. And 2. Men can have experiences, make choices - including errors, and being to mature such as to make spiritual progress.
So, Jesus Christ made it such that the discarnate spirits from Sheol, and every other Man from then onwards, would be resurrected; and then, by his 'taking away the sins of the world', made it possible for Men to choose their eternal destination.
In sum, I am saying that since Christ (but not before then) Men have been able to choose Hell.
Now, it seems strange that anybody would choose Hell; and most Christians through history have regarded Hell as either the default (from which some, maybe only a few, are rescued by Christ) - but this equates Hell with Sheol which seems false.
Or, they have regarded Hell as a punishment place where those Men are sent who are wicked - whether they like it or not - and are tormented forever. Or at least for those Men who fail to keep to acceptable behaviour. But this set-up seems impossible for a loving God - no loving parent would want this for his children; and when God is envisaged this way He seems worse than some Men.
My assumption, therefore, is that Men get what they really want - and therefore Hell should be regarded as one of the things that Men want and choose for themselves - among various other imaginable alternatives, which are often seen as eternal destinations in other world religions.
*
Hell is to do with Sin - therefore we need to consider how can Sin be conceptualized?
One way is to consider Sin is that all Men are at least somewhat (and some men are very) prone to choose and do what is short-term, pleasurable, pain-avoiding and in a word expedient - rather than what leads to joyousness in an eternal time-frame. This applies to choices during mortal life, and it would presumably also apply to choices concerning destination after death in those who have followed a life of accumulating sin.
The point is that short-term expedient sin sabotages what is best for long-term joyous spiritual progression.
Well, part of the work of Christ was to expunge this accumulation of sin, and allow a fresh choice of destination.
(I will leave aside whether this choice of destination is permanent - but I cannot see why permanence would be enforced: I think the tendency to permanence in long-term destination is due to the self-reinforcing nature of choices, rather than being due to God preventing any resurrected soul from changing his mind.)
From what we know of men and women in the world today, we can see that not everybody want to dwell in Heaven. And, by and large, people will be given what they want - and those who don't want Heaven but instead want something else will have it.
Heaven (a variety of Heavens, in fact) is the destination of choice for those who want to live in loving relationships with their (perhaps several, overlapping) families and loved ones. The highest heaven is for those who wish to become mature, deified 'adults' - and dwell in contact with deity; and lower heavens for those who want to stay as children, or do not want to grow-up towards divinity - or, at least, not yet.
*
For example, some people do not want to grow-up - but prefer to remain as (immature) children of God. They are allowed to remain as children (maybe they can change their minds again later?).
If you want to lose consciousness, to lose the sense of self, to cease to be aware - to be-absorbed back into divinity, living in a perpetual present of bliss (i.e. the state of Nirvana) then that is allowed.
Perhaps the commonest desire (or belief) among modern Western people is that when they die they will be utterly unconscious - not in Nirvana but simply the extinction of all awareness, as if deeply anaesthetized. If they really want this, that is what they will get.
(Although maybe a merciful God will awaken then form time to time, to see if they want to change their minds? But if they have been utterly unconscious, it is hard to imagine what could happen to make them change their minds...)
Many modern people seem to dislike their birth families, and do not wish to have their own families; they seem not to want to live in a web of loving and responsible relationships - well such people would not want to live in Heaven. What such people seem to want is some kind of shallow, serial, mutually-exploitative (or 'reciprocal') relationships based upon immediate pleasure. I can imagine an after-death world where such people might be allowed to live this kind of life.
This would correspond to the Paradise which is the aimed-at state for some religions; in which the after-life is envisaged as a perfected form of sensuous (indeed sensual) earthly life - a life of pleasure rather than joy; a human-level life, minus the physical suffering. Life as a cycle, without progression, each day much like the one before - pleasant, but going-nowhere.
The problem is that exploitation is seldom equal - one gets more than the other, some people tend to give more than they get - would they be happy with this in the long-run? Is such a system sustainable? This contrasts with love, which enhances both parties; and is sustainable for that reason. But there are some social circles on earth - for example among hyper-promiscuous people - which seem to be based on mutual exploitation, novelty and rotation of personnel. If that is what people want - presumably some provision is made for them.
The problem is those who want to impose their will upon others, to exploit them unilaterally and selfishly - habitual murderers, rapists, torturers, con-men, gold-diggers, psychopaths and the like. Now, clearly such people cannot be supplied with the unwilling victims that they crave - however, they utterly reject loving and responsible relationships of any kind. The question is whether such individuals are prepared to acknowledge their objective wrongness, and repent their wicked desire to exploit and impose?
If such individuals will give-up all claim to have what has been their primary desire through life; then they will not go to Hell because Christ has made repentance wholly effectual; but if they will not give-up their core sin, then they will prefer solitude and the torment of perpetual frustration to being cleansed of that sin.
And if that scenario of chosen Hell seems implausible to you - it does not seem implausible to me; since I have seen individuals in an analogous situation in human life - living utterly miserable lives due to their choices, yet refusing always to repent these choices and repelling all chances at loving society; indeed loathing and despising and wanting to make-suffer those who live in loving society.
*
In sum, all after-death states including Hell can be seen as a loving Father giving his children what they want - so long as this does not infringe the consent of his other children. And this explains why Christ brought Hell, as well as Heaven.
Sheol is apparently a shadowy world inhabited be witless, demented spirits/ souls who have forgotten (or cannot hold onto their own identity (presumably, spirits maimed by having been torn apart from their bodies); whereas Hell is some kind of a place of torment.
This - on the face of it - is a rather ambiguous benefit for Jesus to have brought; and seems initially hard to square with the way that a loving father would organize things for his beloved children.
But this interpretation is, I believe, a consequence of our stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Men have agency, or 'free will', and God either will not or (I would say) cannot compel any Man to choose his ultimate destiny.
My understanding is that Sheol was merely a temporary holding-place awaiting the advent of Christ (and not experienced as having any duration by the souls who dwelt there); and we can interpret the Atonement of Jesus Christ as having led to a situation where all souls were brought out of Sheol and each Man was able to choose his own destiny.
*
To understand Christianity (or indeed anything) in this mortal life, we need to know what it is for; and my assumption is that the whole of creation was made by God (in a nutshell) so that some Men (as many as possible) could advance to deity and join The Father and The Son (and Heavenly Mother) in a loving society.
Men are made a spirit children, and incarnated as mortal children - but the point is that we are immature, extremely immature - but our destiny (if we choose it) is to mature towards greater and greater divinity.
Mortal life is designed so that 1. Men can be incarnated and have a body. And 2. Men can have experiences, make choices - including errors, and being to mature such as to make spiritual progress.
So, Jesus Christ made it such that the discarnate spirits from Sheol, and every other Man from then onwards, would be resurrected; and then, by his 'taking away the sins of the world', made it possible for Men to choose their eternal destination.
In sum, I am saying that since Christ (but not before then) Men have been able to choose Hell.
Now, it seems strange that anybody would choose Hell; and most Christians through history have regarded Hell as either the default (from which some, maybe only a few, are rescued by Christ) - but this equates Hell with Sheol which seems false.
Or, they have regarded Hell as a punishment place where those Men are sent who are wicked - whether they like it or not - and are tormented forever. Or at least for those Men who fail to keep to acceptable behaviour. But this set-up seems impossible for a loving God - no loving parent would want this for his children; and when God is envisaged this way He seems worse than some Men.
My assumption, therefore, is that Men get what they really want - and therefore Hell should be regarded as one of the things that Men want and choose for themselves - among various other imaginable alternatives, which are often seen as eternal destinations in other world religions.
*
Hell is to do with Sin - therefore we need to consider how can Sin be conceptualized?
One way is to consider Sin is that all Men are at least somewhat (and some men are very) prone to choose and do what is short-term, pleasurable, pain-avoiding and in a word expedient - rather than what leads to joyousness in an eternal time-frame. This applies to choices during mortal life, and it would presumably also apply to choices concerning destination after death in those who have followed a life of accumulating sin.
The point is that short-term expedient sin sabotages what is best for long-term joyous spiritual progression.
Well, part of the work of Christ was to expunge this accumulation of sin, and allow a fresh choice of destination.
(I will leave aside whether this choice of destination is permanent - but I cannot see why permanence would be enforced: I think the tendency to permanence in long-term destination is due to the self-reinforcing nature of choices, rather than being due to God preventing any resurrected soul from changing his mind.)
From what we know of men and women in the world today, we can see that not everybody want to dwell in Heaven. And, by and large, people will be given what they want - and those who don't want Heaven but instead want something else will have it.
Heaven (a variety of Heavens, in fact) is the destination of choice for those who want to live in loving relationships with their (perhaps several, overlapping) families and loved ones. The highest heaven is for those who wish to become mature, deified 'adults' - and dwell in contact with deity; and lower heavens for those who want to stay as children, or do not want to grow-up towards divinity - or, at least, not yet.
*
For example, some people do not want to grow-up - but prefer to remain as (immature) children of God. They are allowed to remain as children (maybe they can change their minds again later?).
If you want to lose consciousness, to lose the sense of self, to cease to be aware - to be-absorbed back into divinity, living in a perpetual present of bliss (i.e. the state of Nirvana) then that is allowed.
Perhaps the commonest desire (or belief) among modern Western people is that when they die they will be utterly unconscious - not in Nirvana but simply the extinction of all awareness, as if deeply anaesthetized. If they really want this, that is what they will get.
(Although maybe a merciful God will awaken then form time to time, to see if they want to change their minds? But if they have been utterly unconscious, it is hard to imagine what could happen to make them change their minds...)
Many modern people seem to dislike their birth families, and do not wish to have their own families; they seem not to want to live in a web of loving and responsible relationships - well such people would not want to live in Heaven. What such people seem to want is some kind of shallow, serial, mutually-exploitative (or 'reciprocal') relationships based upon immediate pleasure. I can imagine an after-death world where such people might be allowed to live this kind of life.
This would correspond to the Paradise which is the aimed-at state for some religions; in which the after-life is envisaged as a perfected form of sensuous (indeed sensual) earthly life - a life of pleasure rather than joy; a human-level life, minus the physical suffering. Life as a cycle, without progression, each day much like the one before - pleasant, but going-nowhere.
The problem is that exploitation is seldom equal - one gets more than the other, some people tend to give more than they get - would they be happy with this in the long-run? Is such a system sustainable? This contrasts with love, which enhances both parties; and is sustainable for that reason. But there are some social circles on earth - for example among hyper-promiscuous people - which seem to be based on mutual exploitation, novelty and rotation of personnel. If that is what people want - presumably some provision is made for them.
The problem is those who want to impose their will upon others, to exploit them unilaterally and selfishly - habitual murderers, rapists, torturers, con-men, gold-diggers, psychopaths and the like. Now, clearly such people cannot be supplied with the unwilling victims that they crave - however, they utterly reject loving and responsible relationships of any kind. The question is whether such individuals are prepared to acknowledge their objective wrongness, and repent their wicked desire to exploit and impose?
If such individuals will give-up all claim to have what has been their primary desire through life; then they will not go to Hell because Christ has made repentance wholly effectual; but if they will not give-up their core sin, then they will prefer solitude and the torment of perpetual frustration to being cleansed of that sin.
And if that scenario of chosen Hell seems implausible to you - it does not seem implausible to me; since I have seen individuals in an analogous situation in human life - living utterly miserable lives due to their choices, yet refusing always to repent these choices and repelling all chances at loving society; indeed loathing and despising and wanting to make-suffer those who live in loving society.
*
In sum, all after-death states including Hell can be seen as a loving Father giving his children what they want - so long as this does not infringe the consent of his other children. And this explains why Christ brought Hell, as well as Heaven.
What I do in the day - my Stage 2 course in Abnormal Psychology and Psychiatry
These are the skeleton lecture notes for my lecture-course in the second year of the degree, which are available to students for revision/ checking (they take lecture notes in the class in real time as their primary resource).
These are more-or-less what I lectured-from this year, but what I actually said and wrote on the board was somewhat more and other than this.
Still, they may be of some interest to somebody...
http://baronofjesmond.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/psy-2016-abnormal-psychology-and.html
These are more-or-less what I lectured-from this year, but what I actually said and wrote on the board was somewhat more and other than this.
Still, they may be of some interest to somebody...
http://baronofjesmond.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/psy-2016-abnormal-psychology-and.html
Wednesday, 18 May 2016
Alastair Roberts on 'winking through the window of the fourth wall' in Doctor Who
From:
https://mereorthodoxy.com/why-we-should-jettison-the-strong-female-character
In some cases, pop culture producers play very directly to the ‘second screen’ and the social and political concerns and values of a connected audience. Doctor Who—a science fiction series aimed predominantly at children, but with an extensive and obsessive adult audience—is an example of a TV show whose writers are frequently winking through the window of the fourth wall. Episodes of Doctor Who over the last few years have contained numerous pointed and typically gratuitous references to contemporary socially progressive concerns such as same-sex marriage, queer sexuality, transsexualism, and various feminist themes. These references usually serve no ostensive plot purpose: They are incongruous and odd, violating Chekov’s gun principle. They draw attention to themselves in a way that often seems intentional and preachy, seemingly calling for us to attend, while simultaneously chiding us for paying attention to that which should be treated as entirely natural and unexceptional. However inauthentic they may appear on the ‘first screen’, though, they play very well on the second. The intensification of the messages of such media has much to do with the development of the spectacle they offer into a means of self-signalling in the age of the internet, as audiences become more visible to themselves within a spectacle of their own.
The question is – are the writers of (generally) high quality TV and other mass media such as Doctor Who and Sherlock motivated primarily by the artistic demands (which are conservative) – or do they fulfil the artistic demands as a means to the end of inserting these ‘subversive’ moments of winking through the fourth wall?
Is that what primarily and strategically motivates them as writers, and everything else is just tactics to get people to watch and be influenced by these moments?
(Like TV executives for whom ‘good’ programming is merely a way of getting lots of people to watch the adverts.)
In some cases, pop culture producers play very directly to the ‘second screen’ and the social and political concerns and values of a connected audience. Doctor Who—a science fiction series aimed predominantly at children, but with an extensive and obsessive adult audience—is an example of a TV show whose writers are frequently winking through the window of the fourth wall. Episodes of Doctor Who over the last few years have contained numerous pointed and typically gratuitous references to contemporary socially progressive concerns such as same-sex marriage, queer sexuality, transsexualism, and various feminist themes. These references usually serve no ostensive plot purpose: They are incongruous and odd, violating Chekov’s gun principle. They draw attention to themselves in a way that often seems intentional and preachy, seemingly calling for us to attend, while simultaneously chiding us for paying attention to that which should be treated as entirely natural and unexceptional. However inauthentic they may appear on the ‘first screen’, though, they play very well on the second. The intensification of the messages of such media has much to do with the development of the spectacle they offer into a means of self-signalling in the age of the internet, as audiences become more visible to themselves within a spectacle of their own.
The question is – are the writers of (generally) high quality TV and other mass media such as Doctor Who and Sherlock motivated primarily by the artistic demands (which are conservative) – or do they fulfil the artistic demands as a means to the end of inserting these ‘subversive’ moments of winking through the fourth wall?
Is that what primarily and strategically motivates them as writers, and everything else is just tactics to get people to watch and be influenced by these moments?
(Like TV executives for whom ‘good’ programming is merely a way of getting lots of people to watch the adverts.)
We are all concentration camp guards now. Jobs that do more harm than good to Christian goals - i.e. nearly all of them
A difficulty with living in a society run by an evil leadership class is that (from a Christian perspective) fewer jobs are good jobs; ever-more jobs do more harm than good.
Many jobs are explicitly and directly harmful (eg 'diversity' type jobs); but nearly all jobs - and essentially all well paid and high status jobs - do net-harm subversively and indirectly (which, in the long run, may be worse).
So the employee is rather in the position of a concentration camp guard: the harder he works, the more overtime he does, the more he studies to be effective: the more harm he does. The better he does his job, the worse it is for everybody.
*
I went into medicine with a notion of being in a job that did good; but as a newly qualified doctor I could not shake the feeling that overall I was doing more harm than good by routine over-investigation, over-treatment, medicalizing people's problems and lives... Well, if that was so for a doctor thirty-something years ago, how much more for most people now, and in most jobs.
It is not a matter of simply getting-out of the few bad jobs (e.g. avoiding the state bureaucracy and NGOs), but that - as secular Leftism has infiltrated and subverted more and more of life - finding anywhere better than you are now. For most people in The West, a change of job is simply to escape out of one frying pan and into another. Non-government frontline productive jobs may be more harmful than government/ diversity jobs; when it comes to PC witch-hunting and wicked mission statements the private sector is usually as bad as the public, and for the same reasons.
There is nowhere to escape to; and this is no accident - but all 'part of the plan'.
*
So, as Christians, we find ourselves in a situation where we our net efforts are directed to destroying that which we most value; and putting by-far the preponderance of our life efforts into the subversion, destruction and inversion of Christianity. And this is no accident but precisely the primary goal of 'teh system', and it becomes more so every year.
What is to be done? Firstly, and most importantly, we must be honest that this is our own exact personal situation - we ourselves are working against Christian goals - and must repent.
At present far too many Christians are defensive about the fact that they are paid to destroy Christianity and to oppose Christian goals (whether directly or indirectly). They solve their cognitive dissonance by lying to themselves and to others. They are eager to point-out that the work they do is 'at least' not as bad as X; or claim (perhaps truly) that they are always on the look-out for little ways in which to evangelize their co-workers, and 'do good' in a quiet way...
Fine and necessary, but it does not alter the basic fact of the case: A concentration camp guard may lay off the torture a bit, say a kind word here and there, may give prisoners a little extra treat from time to time - but he is still part of a system dedicated to torment and extermination.
*
If we can't do anything to change the system for the better (and probably we, personally, cannot) - then we must at minimum stop trying to deny that the system is overall and ever-more opposed to Christian good; and stop trying to convince ourselves and others that the system is not really all that bad.
Many jobs are explicitly and directly harmful (eg 'diversity' type jobs); but nearly all jobs - and essentially all well paid and high status jobs - do net-harm subversively and indirectly (which, in the long run, may be worse).
So the employee is rather in the position of a concentration camp guard: the harder he works, the more overtime he does, the more he studies to be effective: the more harm he does. The better he does his job, the worse it is for everybody.
*
I went into medicine with a notion of being in a job that did good; but as a newly qualified doctor I could not shake the feeling that overall I was doing more harm than good by routine over-investigation, over-treatment, medicalizing people's problems and lives... Well, if that was so for a doctor thirty-something years ago, how much more for most people now, and in most jobs.
It is not a matter of simply getting-out of the few bad jobs (e.g. avoiding the state bureaucracy and NGOs), but that - as secular Leftism has infiltrated and subverted more and more of life - finding anywhere better than you are now. For most people in The West, a change of job is simply to escape out of one frying pan and into another. Non-government frontline productive jobs may be more harmful than government/ diversity jobs; when it comes to PC witch-hunting and wicked mission statements the private sector is usually as bad as the public, and for the same reasons.
There is nowhere to escape to; and this is no accident - but all 'part of the plan'.
*
So, as Christians, we find ourselves in a situation where we our net efforts are directed to destroying that which we most value; and putting by-far the preponderance of our life efforts into the subversion, destruction and inversion of Christianity. And this is no accident but precisely the primary goal of 'teh system', and it becomes more so every year.
What is to be done? Firstly, and most importantly, we must be honest that this is our own exact personal situation - we ourselves are working against Christian goals - and must repent.
At present far too many Christians are defensive about the fact that they are paid to destroy Christianity and to oppose Christian goals (whether directly or indirectly). They solve their cognitive dissonance by lying to themselves and to others. They are eager to point-out that the work they do is 'at least' not as bad as X; or claim (perhaps truly) that they are always on the look-out for little ways in which to evangelize their co-workers, and 'do good' in a quiet way...
Fine and necessary, but it does not alter the basic fact of the case: A concentration camp guard may lay off the torture a bit, say a kind word here and there, may give prisoners a little extra treat from time to time - but he is still part of a system dedicated to torment and extermination.
*
If we can't do anything to change the system for the better (and probably we, personally, cannot) - then we must at minimum stop trying to deny that the system is overall and ever-more opposed to Christian good; and stop trying to convince ourselves and others that the system is not really all that bad.
Tuesday, 17 May 2016
What is anthroposophy? Owen Barfield's definition (1944)
From Romanticism Comes of Age by Owen Barfield (1944 First edition) pp 60-61
[Note: I have lightly edited this passage for the sake of clarity of meaning - it is a condensed, not literal, transcription.]
**
What is anthroposophy? Believing without a shred of evidence everything that Rudolf Steiner chose to say?
This is exactly what it is not.
Anthroposophy is knowledge, as it is expressed and grasped by the Consciousness Soul; and the Consciousness Soul knows first and foremost that anybody's thought - once it is conceived in ideas and expressed in words - must be alloyed with error.
It is easy to understand Steiner's extreme reluctance to have his lectures recorded; and it is easier still to realize why he kept on repeating, almost to exasperation, such phrases as 'what is contained in', 'what is reflected by'...
'Think these thoughts without believing them', he once said; and in nearly all of his utterances he employed the mode of pure assertion - and not of discursive argument; although he could syllogize as well as anyone if he chose to (as he showed in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).
It is therefore really a kind of betrayal of the founder of anthroposophy to believe what he said. He poured-out his assertions because he trusted his hearers not to believe.
Belief is something which can only be applied to systems of abstract ideas. To become an anthroposophist is not to 'believe', but to decide to use the word of Rudolf Steiner for the purpose of raising oneself to a kind of thinking which is beyond words, which precedes words.
This is 'concrete' thinking, neither objective nor subjective, which is the source of all ideas and propositions, the source of all meaning whatsoever. And it can only take the form of logical ideas, propositions and grammatical sentences at the expense of much of its original truth.
To be an anthroposophist is to seek to unite oneself with this concrete thinking, whose existence can only finally be proved by experience.
[Note: I have lightly edited this passage for the sake of clarity of meaning - it is a condensed, not literal, transcription.]
**
What is anthroposophy? Believing without a shred of evidence everything that Rudolf Steiner chose to say?
This is exactly what it is not.
Anthroposophy is knowledge, as it is expressed and grasped by the Consciousness Soul; and the Consciousness Soul knows first and foremost that anybody's thought - once it is conceived in ideas and expressed in words - must be alloyed with error.
It is easy to understand Steiner's extreme reluctance to have his lectures recorded; and it is easier still to realize why he kept on repeating, almost to exasperation, such phrases as 'what is contained in', 'what is reflected by'...
'Think these thoughts without believing them', he once said; and in nearly all of his utterances he employed the mode of pure assertion - and not of discursive argument; although he could syllogize as well as anyone if he chose to (as he showed in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity).
It is therefore really a kind of betrayal of the founder of anthroposophy to believe what he said. He poured-out his assertions because he trusted his hearers not to believe.
Belief is something which can only be applied to systems of abstract ideas. To become an anthroposophist is not to 'believe', but to decide to use the word of Rudolf Steiner for the purpose of raising oneself to a kind of thinking which is beyond words, which precedes words.
This is 'concrete' thinking, neither objective nor subjective, which is the source of all ideas and propositions, the source of all meaning whatsoever. And it can only take the form of logical ideas, propositions and grammatical sentences at the expense of much of its original truth.
To be an anthroposophist is to seek to unite oneself with this concrete thinking, whose existence can only finally be proved by experience.
Reality is constituted by polarity and dyads-in-relation (going beyond Coleridge and Barfield)
When I recently read - line-by-line and with great concentration - Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought; I found myself completely convinced, in complete agreement, until the final two chapters concerning God and Society, when I blocked. I was no longer convinced, I lost the thread, I lost my interest...
It did not take long before I understood what had happened: Coleridge/ Barfield were mystical/ paradoxical Trinitarians in the sense of Classical Metaphysics and mainstream Christian theology - whereas I adhere to pluralistic Mormon metaphysics. For them, ultimately all is one and identified by God - for me, ultimately all is more-than-one; and indeed God is irreducibly multiple - God the Father and Mother in Heaven forming an irreducible dyad; The Father and the Son distinct personages, and the Holy Ghost another.
For Coleridge/ Barfield, everything fundamental is polar: everything irreducible is has distinguishable polarities that cannot be divided; and the ultimate polarity of God and Man. But for me God and each Man are divided - they are another dyad. Dyads are divided, and cannot be united: dyads are divided but related - and the ultimate relation is love.
For Coleridge/ Barfield the Trinity is polar, and love is the dynamism within that indivisible polarity; for me, the Godhead is divided but indissolubly related, and love is that dynamism which relates it: Love is, in fact, ultimately that which holds the universe together.
For me, the creation includes things that are dynamism within unity (i.e. polarity) - which are (I think...) Goethe's Archetypal Phenomena; but above that there are things that are dynamism-between unity (i.e. divinities). Ultimately, reality is multiple: a multiplicity consisting of dyads.
It did not take long before I understood what had happened: Coleridge/ Barfield were mystical/ paradoxical Trinitarians in the sense of Classical Metaphysics and mainstream Christian theology - whereas I adhere to pluralistic Mormon metaphysics. For them, ultimately all is one and identified by God - for me, ultimately all is more-than-one; and indeed God is irreducibly multiple - God the Father and Mother in Heaven forming an irreducible dyad; The Father and the Son distinct personages, and the Holy Ghost another.
For Coleridge/ Barfield, everything fundamental is polar: everything irreducible is has distinguishable polarities that cannot be divided; and the ultimate polarity of God and Man. But for me God and each Man are divided - they are another dyad. Dyads are divided, and cannot be united: dyads are divided but related - and the ultimate relation is love.
For Coleridge/ Barfield the Trinity is polar, and love is the dynamism within that indivisible polarity; for me, the Godhead is divided but indissolubly related, and love is that dynamism which relates it: Love is, in fact, ultimately that which holds the universe together.
For me, the creation includes things that are dynamism within unity (i.e. polarity) - which are (I think...) Goethe's Archetypal Phenomena; but above that there are things that are dynamism-between unity (i.e. divinities). Ultimately, reality is multiple: a multiplicity consisting of dyads.
Valid philosophy needs a loving, personal, creator God motivated to raise Man towards divinity
1. Philosophy alone is inconclusive (as may be seen from the history of philosophy sans theology).
2. Philosophy can and should be based upon fundamental (preferably intuitive) assumptions.
3. But the validity of these assumptions - and the relative ranking among them - relies upon divine revelation. (Nothing else will suffice.)
4. The validity of divine revelation depends upon the divinity being creator; it is because divinity is the creator that the divinity has knowledge.
5. Divine revelation to a Man implies a personal God; who has a personal relationship with that Man (why else would divinity communicate with Man?).
6. That divine revelation is true depends on the love of God towards Man. (A hostile divinity would not reliably communicate truth.)
7. That divine revelation happens, implies that God wants Man to ascend from his current situation, and to attain divine knowledge.
2. Philosophy can and should be based upon fundamental (preferably intuitive) assumptions.
3. But the validity of these assumptions - and the relative ranking among them - relies upon divine revelation. (Nothing else will suffice.)
4. The validity of divine revelation depends upon the divinity being creator; it is because divinity is the creator that the divinity has knowledge.
5. Divine revelation to a Man implies a personal God; who has a personal relationship with that Man (why else would divinity communicate with Man?).
6. That divine revelation is true depends on the love of God towards Man. (A hostile divinity would not reliably communicate truth.)
7. That divine revelation happens, implies that God wants Man to ascend from his current situation, and to attain divine knowledge.
How do you know when you are living in false consciousness?
You probably are living in false consciousness NOW - at least for nearly all the time; because almost everybody in the West lives in false consciousness.
This has a definite meaning - it means that you consciousness, your sense of self-awareness is located in the persona and not the self. Your persona is the public you; the set of learned, automatic, expedient responses built-up through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. For many - most - people this is where they dwell consciously almost the whole time - with only brief flickers and glimmers of cosciousness from the self.
How do you know where you consciousness is currently located? One way is that when you are living from the self you are aware that everything is alive, communicating, and you respond to this.
If, on the other hand, the 'outer' world is experienced as material, inert, dead, unresponsive, non-communicative; then you are living from your persona: you are in a state of false consciousness.
This is bad, because it is the self which is partly-divine; and living with-out it, your life will have neither meaning nor purpose.
Note: The self and the persona can be distinguished but not divided or separated - neither can exist without the other and both are always present in a person; and the persona has a vital role. However, we are meant to use the persona only to do jobs that are best done as automatic routine and without constant attention - including skills such as such as driving a car or playing a musical instrument. We are not supposed to have the persona living our lives for us - according to unthinking routine; but that is the sitiation for most modern people most of the time - and apparently for some people all of the time - where the self never gets activated in communication with other people and the environment.
This has a definite meaning - it means that you consciousness, your sense of self-awareness is located in the persona and not the self. Your persona is the public you; the set of learned, automatic, expedient responses built-up through childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. For many - most - people this is where they dwell consciously almost the whole time - with only brief flickers and glimmers of cosciousness from the self.
How do you know where you consciousness is currently located? One way is that when you are living from the self you are aware that everything is alive, communicating, and you respond to this.
If, on the other hand, the 'outer' world is experienced as material, inert, dead, unresponsive, non-communicative; then you are living from your persona: you are in a state of false consciousness.
This is bad, because it is the self which is partly-divine; and living with-out it, your life will have neither meaning nor purpose.
Note: The self and the persona can be distinguished but not divided or separated - neither can exist without the other and both are always present in a person; and the persona has a vital role. However, we are meant to use the persona only to do jobs that are best done as automatic routine and without constant attention - including skills such as such as driving a car or playing a musical instrument. We are not supposed to have the persona living our lives for us - according to unthinking routine; but that is the sitiation for most modern people most of the time - and apparently for some people all of the time - where the self never gets activated in communication with other people and the environment.
Teddy Robinson - neglected classic children's stories
These stories are perfect of their kind; very cleanly written and neatly structured, with amusing pictures that depict Teddy's character, an atmosphere that is cosy and warm-hearted, stories full of incident and (moderate!) excitement, and the whole pervaded by characteristically English humour (for the children) and wit (for the adult storyteller).
The set-up is that we mostly hear Teddy Robinson's internal monologue (including poems) and conversations with other toys, wild animals and the like; but Teddy Robinson is a real Teddy Bear and can't speak to humans - and we (as adults) notice that nothing happens to him which could not happen in real life; including that he seems to need to be moved, rather than able to move himself, while also remaining unaware of this limitation.
Teddy Robinson has a very appealing character, being basically kind, droll and forgiving; but prone to irritability and misunderstandings with other toys and animals. One particularly funny story describes how he sees another Teddy in the window of a house across the road, whom he initially likes-the-look-of and is keen to meet; but somehow they get embroiled in an 'arms race' of dressing-up and adornment; until he starts to find the other Teddy conceited and nasty. Eventually the two Teddys (and the girls who look after them) meet and are mutually hostile until the misunderstanding is revealed.
In sum; perfect bedtime stories to read to the very young child, or be read to the somewhat older child - and the kind of book which stimulates childrens' imaginations, does them good, and encourages creative play.
Monday, 16 May 2016
GI Gurdjieff - The war against sleep by Colin Wilson (1986)
I came across the work of Gurdjieff through the books of Colin Wilson - and I was particularly captivated by the idea of self-remembering which is the term for theose moments when we are aware of Me! Here! Now!
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/self-remembering.html
But beyond my secondhand acquaintance via Wilson, I made no further progress with Gurdjieff; indeed quite the reverse. I found his books (and those of Ouspensky, his most famous disciple) completely unreadable, to the point that I could not progress more than a few sentences before being paralyzed with demotivation.
When a movie was produced of Meetings with Remarkable Men in 1979, I was very eager to see it (easier to watch a movie than read a book, I thought) - but did not get the opportunity until the next summer when I was in Toronto, Canada. To say the film was a disappointment is an understatement - it was perhaps the most forgettable and under-whelming couple of hours I have ever spent at the movies; I remember literally nothing about it except a picture of a desert mountainside, and the sense of disappointment afterwards.
(Of course, the movie was directed by Peter Brook, who was one of the most-over-rated, pretentious, boring and hollow theatre/ film directors of all time - so realistically I should not have expected otherwise.)
When Colin Wilson wrote a biography of Gurdjieff in 1986 I was keen - finally - to get to grips with Gurdjieff; perhaps find the key to understanding him? The books is good, as a book - this was a period when everything Wilson wrote was worth reading. But the man himself...
Gurdjieff comes across as a psychopath - much on the lines of another author of that ilk, Carlos Castaneda. In other words; manipulative, impulsive, selfish, abusive, sadistic and quite staggeringly dishonest. Like Castaneda he was wildly evasive and self-contradictory about his place of birth and even his date of birth/ age, so nobody could check even the basic facts about his tall tales.
Of course, Gurdjieff was not just a psychopath - in the sense that he also had talent, intelligence, insights and a massive charismatic charm - so he did have some interesting things to say. But his literary abilities and powers of explanation seemed negative rather than positive - so almost everything written about him and his views come from disciples, acolytes and other admirers.
Furthermore, at the end of the day everything Gurdjieff proposed was merely 'therapy' - it was about feeling better, feeling more alive, having more energy and being more effective. This is fine, so far as it goes - but it does not go far enough. And in the end usually does more harm than good and subverts itself as being merely a transient and subjective psychotherapy.
Gurdjieff had no religious vision, and provided no transcending sense of purpose. He was, therefore, a prescursor of the more dangerous, exploitative and self-serving type of 'sixties cultist or New Age guru.
But well worth reading about - especially when Wilson is on hand to extract the nuggets of wisdom from the sensational and scandalous life story (if you can believe it all - which I don't).
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/self-remembering.html
But beyond my secondhand acquaintance via Wilson, I made no further progress with Gurdjieff; indeed quite the reverse. I found his books (and those of Ouspensky, his most famous disciple) completely unreadable, to the point that I could not progress more than a few sentences before being paralyzed with demotivation.
When a movie was produced of Meetings with Remarkable Men in 1979, I was very eager to see it (easier to watch a movie than read a book, I thought) - but did not get the opportunity until the next summer when I was in Toronto, Canada. To say the film was a disappointment is an understatement - it was perhaps the most forgettable and under-whelming couple of hours I have ever spent at the movies; I remember literally nothing about it except a picture of a desert mountainside, and the sense of disappointment afterwards.
(Of course, the movie was directed by Peter Brook, who was one of the most-over-rated, pretentious, boring and hollow theatre/ film directors of all time - so realistically I should not have expected otherwise.)
When Colin Wilson wrote a biography of Gurdjieff in 1986 I was keen - finally - to get to grips with Gurdjieff; perhaps find the key to understanding him? The books is good, as a book - this was a period when everything Wilson wrote was worth reading. But the man himself...
Gurdjieff comes across as a psychopath - much on the lines of another author of that ilk, Carlos Castaneda. In other words; manipulative, impulsive, selfish, abusive, sadistic and quite staggeringly dishonest. Like Castaneda he was wildly evasive and self-contradictory about his place of birth and even his date of birth/ age, so nobody could check even the basic facts about his tall tales.
Of course, Gurdjieff was not just a psychopath - in the sense that he also had talent, intelligence, insights and a massive charismatic charm - so he did have some interesting things to say. But his literary abilities and powers of explanation seemed negative rather than positive - so almost everything written about him and his views come from disciples, acolytes and other admirers.
Furthermore, at the end of the day everything Gurdjieff proposed was merely 'therapy' - it was about feeling better, feeling more alive, having more energy and being more effective. This is fine, so far as it goes - but it does not go far enough. And in the end usually does more harm than good and subverts itself as being merely a transient and subjective psychotherapy.
Gurdjieff had no religious vision, and provided no transcending sense of purpose. He was, therefore, a prescursor of the more dangerous, exploitative and self-serving type of 'sixties cultist or New Age guru.
But well worth reading about - especially when Wilson is on hand to extract the nuggets of wisdom from the sensational and scandalous life story (if you can believe it all - which I don't).
Making theology personal
I am not sure why; but it has become a fixed habit for intellectual Christians to think theologically using concepts drawn from physics - physics as the 'master metaphor' with divinity understood as light or a kind of abstract force like magnetism - love understood as a kind of attraction or force-field etc. Then people become 'captivated' by the metaphor - and the metaphor ends-up being in-charge; with Christianity being fitted-into-it. (I have been in this situation myself, several times!) This has been going since at least as long ago as the third century AD, and probably the second.
I try to break this habit of conceptualizing Christianity in a physics-y way, and to stick to the idea of ultimate reality as working along the lines of family relationships. God as our Father, Jesus as elder brother; men and women as God's children who inherit divinity from him and so forth.
And what holds it together is love. Given the extreme and central importance of love in Christianity, there are problems with abstract physics-type thinking making love into something like a gravitational force, or a pervasive gas, or whatever. Love is really an interpersonal kind of cohesion, the cohesion of living, sentient beings.
But for most modern people, this would restrict the operations of love to the world of Men and God (and Angels, perhaps) and leave-out most of the universe - which would still be explained, ultimately, in terms of physics. However, I personally try to regard everything that is, as in some way alive and conscious; and therefore regard everything in creation as part of this same network of loving relationships that binds Men, Angels, and God. So, love takes the place of physics - ultimately.
What is fascinating to contemplate is how modern man got the idea that the universe is not-alive - and that there is a division between the living (biological) and non-living (chemical and physical) universe; and a further division between the conscious (human) and non-conscious (everything else) world. To believe this requires an extreme, and in a sense suicidal, psychological move; whereby reality is made into grossly simplified models (e.g. scientific theories, philosophical descriptions) that exclude the role of humans, including the role of human thinking.
Then having creating this grossly simplified model - which we know for certain to be radically incomplete, hence untrue - we moderns come to believe (in public discourse, anyway) the model as necessarily true - despite that we know for certain it is not!
The sum total of 'evidence' for the truth of our simple and false model is that it is apparently useful, as a rule of thumb, in some situations, when dealing with the world - predicting and manipulating things (but only approximately)!
Most bizarre...
Anyway, if we can cure ourselves of this foolish and unjustifiable habit of making known-false models then believing them as true; and return to the the spontaneous human way of thinking of everything as more-or-less alive and conscious - then we can understand the whole of reality in a truly Christian way --- Instead of the mainstream Christian practice of regarding Christianity as no more than a tiny bubble of human and divine and loving relationships, utterly swamped by a vast, unbounded universe of deadness and meaninglessness; a purposeless mechanistic realm of clockwork causality mixed with chaos...
I try to break this habit of conceptualizing Christianity in a physics-y way, and to stick to the idea of ultimate reality as working along the lines of family relationships. God as our Father, Jesus as elder brother; men and women as God's children who inherit divinity from him and so forth.
And what holds it together is love. Given the extreme and central importance of love in Christianity, there are problems with abstract physics-type thinking making love into something like a gravitational force, or a pervasive gas, or whatever. Love is really an interpersonal kind of cohesion, the cohesion of living, sentient beings.
But for most modern people, this would restrict the operations of love to the world of Men and God (and Angels, perhaps) and leave-out most of the universe - which would still be explained, ultimately, in terms of physics. However, I personally try to regard everything that is, as in some way alive and conscious; and therefore regard everything in creation as part of this same network of loving relationships that binds Men, Angels, and God. So, love takes the place of physics - ultimately.
What is fascinating to contemplate is how modern man got the idea that the universe is not-alive - and that there is a division between the living (biological) and non-living (chemical and physical) universe; and a further division between the conscious (human) and non-conscious (everything else) world. To believe this requires an extreme, and in a sense suicidal, psychological move; whereby reality is made into grossly simplified models (e.g. scientific theories, philosophical descriptions) that exclude the role of humans, including the role of human thinking.
Then having creating this grossly simplified model - which we know for certain to be radically incomplete, hence untrue - we moderns come to believe (in public discourse, anyway) the model as necessarily true - despite that we know for certain it is not!
The sum total of 'evidence' for the truth of our simple and false model is that it is apparently useful, as a rule of thumb, in some situations, when dealing with the world - predicting and manipulating things (but only approximately)!
Most bizarre...
Anyway, if we can cure ourselves of this foolish and unjustifiable habit of making known-false models then believing them as true; and return to the the spontaneous human way of thinking of everything as more-or-less alive and conscious - then we can understand the whole of reality in a truly Christian way --- Instead of the mainstream Christian practice of regarding Christianity as no more than a tiny bubble of human and divine and loving relationships, utterly swamped by a vast, unbounded universe of deadness and meaninglessness; a purposeless mechanistic realm of clockwork causality mixed with chaos...
Sunday, 15 May 2016
The meaning of life, your life, is about becoming more divine: in fact *that* is the meaning of everything...
The reason we are alive - why we are here, now as incarnated mortal Men - is so that we can become more divine, more God-like: the process of divinization, theosis, sanctification, spiritual progression.
This is why there exists the earth and all the people and things on it - as the place where we work on spiritual progression towards divinity. Indeed, that is why there is anything at all - it is the reason for creation - everything exists towards the primary purpose that some individual Men may (by their choice, and long, long endeavour and learning extending after mortal-death) become more and more like God, aiming for a distant time when some people can 'relate to' God on the same level.
The purpose of this life is not really 'salvation' - we are not born as mortal men in order 'to be saved'. The meaning of salvation is merely that a person has recognized that the true purpose of life is divinization. In other words, when you recognize that your purpose in life is spiritual progression towards a God-like nature, then you are saved - you have been saved.
When you, personally, recognize that the actual life you are living is for the purpose of you becoming more like God, then this is extraordinarily motivating and encouraging. Life becomes both mysterious (trying to understand what this goal means here and now, in the minutiae of daily life) while being sure that there is a real answer to the mystery.
With theosis as primary, my life and your life becomes an adventure, a trial (trial and error) like wandering through uncharted terrain towards an invisible but definite goal - with the process of learning being the main point here-and-now, but the direction of travel giving point to it all and ensuring that the overall experience is Good.
Only we, we ourselves as individuals, can do this - and we can do it. Everything necessary is within us or provided.
We are sure to make many mistakes - things seem set-up to guarantee that, presumably so that we can learn from recognizing them; therefore the key thing is not to try and avoid all possibility of mistakes, so much as to do the best you can manage and acknowledge and learn from your mistakes (this is called repentance).
Being a Christian is not about being Good, but about aiming for Good; it is not about avoiding error, but about acknowledging error. It is not about being saved, but of making proper use of the fact that we are saved (assuming we don't reject that salvation).
But Christian divinization is not about becoming the same as God, nor becoming the same as Jesus; it is about being the way God wants us to be - which obviously is to be (as we already are) unique individuals with unique experiences - such that each person will become (if he chooses and works long enough) an unique god: our-selves as a god (not some kind of replica of Jesus).
The vital importance of Jesus Christ is that he is our elder brother went before and achieved divinity - he made it possible and we know it is possible, because of Jesus.
To a large extent, therefore, our job in theosis is to do what God wants us to do, behave in the kind of way God wants us to behave (which is clearly enough known) - rather than to try and be like God, or Jesus, or any other personage.
Divinization is not a standard protocol and Men are not supposed to be 'clones; but each person has an unique path starting from where he or she actually is; all aiming at the same ultimate destination and according to the same basic rules - but each having very different experiences along the way.
This is why there exists the earth and all the people and things on it - as the place where we work on spiritual progression towards divinity. Indeed, that is why there is anything at all - it is the reason for creation - everything exists towards the primary purpose that some individual Men may (by their choice, and long, long endeavour and learning extending after mortal-death) become more and more like God, aiming for a distant time when some people can 'relate to' God on the same level.
The purpose of this life is not really 'salvation' - we are not born as mortal men in order 'to be saved'. The meaning of salvation is merely that a person has recognized that the true purpose of life is divinization. In other words, when you recognize that your purpose in life is spiritual progression towards a God-like nature, then you are saved - you have been saved.
When you, personally, recognize that the actual life you are living is for the purpose of you becoming more like God, then this is extraordinarily motivating and encouraging. Life becomes both mysterious (trying to understand what this goal means here and now, in the minutiae of daily life) while being sure that there is a real answer to the mystery.
With theosis as primary, my life and your life becomes an adventure, a trial (trial and error) like wandering through uncharted terrain towards an invisible but definite goal - with the process of learning being the main point here-and-now, but the direction of travel giving point to it all and ensuring that the overall experience is Good.
Only we, we ourselves as individuals, can do this - and we can do it. Everything necessary is within us or provided.
We are sure to make many mistakes - things seem set-up to guarantee that, presumably so that we can learn from recognizing them; therefore the key thing is not to try and avoid all possibility of mistakes, so much as to do the best you can manage and acknowledge and learn from your mistakes (this is called repentance).
Being a Christian is not about being Good, but about aiming for Good; it is not about avoiding error, but about acknowledging error. It is not about being saved, but of making proper use of the fact that we are saved (assuming we don't reject that salvation).
But Christian divinization is not about becoming the same as God, nor becoming the same as Jesus; it is about being the way God wants us to be - which obviously is to be (as we already are) unique individuals with unique experiences - such that each person will become (if he chooses and works long enough) an unique god: our-selves as a god (not some kind of replica of Jesus).
The vital importance of Jesus Christ is that he is our elder brother went before and achieved divinity - he made it possible and we know it is possible, because of Jesus.
To a large extent, therefore, our job in theosis is to do what God wants us to do, behave in the kind of way God wants us to behave (which is clearly enough known) - rather than to try and be like God, or Jesus, or any other personage.
Divinization is not a standard protocol and Men are not supposed to be 'clones; but each person has an unique path starting from where he or she actually is; all aiming at the same ultimate destination and according to the same basic rules - but each having very different experiences along the way.
Saturday, 14 May 2016
One of the greatest speeches in the history of civilization? Peter Kreeft on Solzhenitsyn at Harvard, 1978 - Reflections on its implications for the future of Christianity in Russia versus the West
Peter Kreeft was present when Solzhenitsyn gave his speech at Harvard in 1978, which he calls one of the greatest speeches in the history of civilization. Here he analyzes the impact it made upon him by going through the text and interjecting the impact it made at the time.
The full text is here: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/SolzhenitsynHarvard.php
**
I also find this a great speech, an extremely deep analysis and diagnosis; and I also regard Solzhenitsyn as a genuine prophet.
But when it comes to the matter of moving from diagnosis to treatment - Solzhenitsyn's focus is naturally and rightly on Russia, where seventy years of vicious repression (falling not far short of attempted extermination) failed to suppress devout Orthodox Christianity among the masses - such that Russian governments still need the cooperation and assistance of the church in order to govern. On top of this, there has been a powerful revival of Christianity among the intellectual ruling elites - whose abandonment of the church from the latter 19th century was what had enabled the Russian Revolution to happen. These elites have since 1989 to a significant (although partial) extent embraced Christianity to the point that it has been fashionable and prestigious enough for people to profess faith insincerely.
The contrast with the West is striking. Here we also experienced the intellectual elites turning against Christianity - although that happened much earlier, from the 18th century - but there is no sign of a Christian revival in this group. Furthermore the Western masses are now also very thoroughly de-Christianized - (except in the middle regions of the USA, to some diminishing extent) the West utterly lacks the groundswell of mass piety which has proved ineradicable in Russia, even in the absence of priests or (worse) the presence of anti-Christian/ atheist/ informer/ KGB 'priests'.
Such serious Christianity as survives in the West is mostly among the lower middling kind of people, and is not focused on a single denomination or church but spread across many independent and often mutually-hostile groups - including Pentecostalists and ultra-Protestant home churches and the recently-founded US Christian churches from the 1800s such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists.
Spiritually speaking, therefore, the West is in far worse shape than Russia - just as Solzhenitsyn categorically stated even forty years ago and while the USSR was still in place. And while a revival of Orthodoxy as the unified state religion is clearly the right and best thing for Russia - and is actually happening with the distinct possibility (not likelihood, so far; but a definite possibility) that the Tsardom may be restored in the medium term.
But there is no equivalent single answer for the West. If the West puts all its eggs into one basket (one Christian church, one denomination) then that basket would necessarily be pitifully small and weak because it lacks both elite and mass support.
So what could be done in the West - what might be a basis for Christian hope, which we feel but cannot realistically articulate?
1. We need to recognize that it has never been easier to be a Christian than now, here, in the West! Matters are clearer than ever before: it’s a no brainer! Suddenly, this fact may become very obvious to very many people. Let’s be ready if it does.
2. At present, in the West, we need to think of Christianity at the individual level - not in terms of organizations.
3. Serious Christians must stop quibbling over definitions and differences. This should be easy - if they really are Christian and not legalistic Philistines. Those who really love Jesus and are themselves loving will not have trouble setting aside their differences and getting along with each other.
4. Christians therefore should minimally be 'defined' as people who are religious and Christ-centred in their aspirations; serious Christians as those believe that Christianity should be the primary factor in the conduct of life - including the organization of society.
In other words, I suggest that serious Christians are those who regard Christianity as more important than politics, economics, personal or sexual freedom, national prestige - or anything else. This is not to say that 'nothing else matters' - everything needs to be balanced - but when two aspects need to be fitted-together it is the politics/ economics/ sexuality which is fitted-to Christianity, and not vice versa.
This has nothing to do with forcing people to be Christian - which is impossible by definition. But serious Christians are those who recognize that nothing is more important than Christianity - and therefore laws, attitudes and social practices should ultimately be consistent with Christianity.
5. So if, by great good luck and some abrupt and widespread recognition of the truth of Christianity, there is a mass and massive Christian revival in the West; then our attention will be on individual souls, and not on the organizations.
**
I also find this a great speech, an extremely deep analysis and diagnosis; and I also regard Solzhenitsyn as a genuine prophet.
But when it comes to the matter of moving from diagnosis to treatment - Solzhenitsyn's focus is naturally and rightly on Russia, where seventy years of vicious repression (falling not far short of attempted extermination) failed to suppress devout Orthodox Christianity among the masses - such that Russian governments still need the cooperation and assistance of the church in order to govern. On top of this, there has been a powerful revival of Christianity among the intellectual ruling elites - whose abandonment of the church from the latter 19th century was what had enabled the Russian Revolution to happen. These elites have since 1989 to a significant (although partial) extent embraced Christianity to the point that it has been fashionable and prestigious enough for people to profess faith insincerely.
The contrast with the West is striking. Here we also experienced the intellectual elites turning against Christianity - although that happened much earlier, from the 18th century - but there is no sign of a Christian revival in this group. Furthermore the Western masses are now also very thoroughly de-Christianized - (except in the middle regions of the USA, to some diminishing extent) the West utterly lacks the groundswell of mass piety which has proved ineradicable in Russia, even in the absence of priests or (worse) the presence of anti-Christian/ atheist/ informer/ KGB 'priests'.
Such serious Christianity as survives in the West is mostly among the lower middling kind of people, and is not focused on a single denomination or church but spread across many independent and often mutually-hostile groups - including Pentecostalists and ultra-Protestant home churches and the recently-founded US Christian churches from the 1800s such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists.
Spiritually speaking, therefore, the West is in far worse shape than Russia - just as Solzhenitsyn categorically stated even forty years ago and while the USSR was still in place. And while a revival of Orthodoxy as the unified state religion is clearly the right and best thing for Russia - and is actually happening with the distinct possibility (not likelihood, so far; but a definite possibility) that the Tsardom may be restored in the medium term.
But there is no equivalent single answer for the West. If the West puts all its eggs into one basket (one Christian church, one denomination) then that basket would necessarily be pitifully small and weak because it lacks both elite and mass support.
So what could be done in the West - what might be a basis for Christian hope, which we feel but cannot realistically articulate?
1. We need to recognize that it has never been easier to be a Christian than now, here, in the West! Matters are clearer than ever before: it’s a no brainer! Suddenly, this fact may become very obvious to very many people. Let’s be ready if it does.
2. At present, in the West, we need to think of Christianity at the individual level - not in terms of organizations.
3. Serious Christians must stop quibbling over definitions and differences. This should be easy - if they really are Christian and not legalistic Philistines. Those who really love Jesus and are themselves loving will not have trouble setting aside their differences and getting along with each other.
4. Christians therefore should minimally be 'defined' as people who are religious and Christ-centred in their aspirations; serious Christians as those believe that Christianity should be the primary factor in the conduct of life - including the organization of society.
In other words, I suggest that serious Christians are those who regard Christianity as more important than politics, economics, personal or sexual freedom, national prestige - or anything else. This is not to say that 'nothing else matters' - everything needs to be balanced - but when two aspects need to be fitted-together it is the politics/ economics/ sexuality which is fitted-to Christianity, and not vice versa.
This has nothing to do with forcing people to be Christian - which is impossible by definition. But serious Christians are those who recognize that nothing is more important than Christianity - and therefore laws, attitudes and social practices should ultimately be consistent with Christianity.
5. So if, by great good luck and some abrupt and widespread recognition of the truth of Christianity, there is a mass and massive Christian revival in the West; then our attention will be on individual souls, and not on the organizations.
Pitmatic Northumbrian dialect - Newbiggin by the Sea
All through my childhood, I spent three weeks a year in Newbiggin by the Sea - my Father's birthplace and where his parents still lived. Therefore I can understand this man, Ronnie, being interviewed with his friend Jackie about the inshore fishing boats called cobles - because this is how my family mostly spoke (on both sides), and the people who lived around them.
Whether other people can understand these characters is somewhat doubtful...
He is speaking the English dialect distinctive to the mid-Northumbria coalfield region (a coalmine is called a 'pit' - hence the nickname); it is a variant of the Northumbian dialect which is unique for the way that the letter R is pronounced in the throat with the uvula, rather than at the front of the mouth with the tongue.
Marvellous!
Whether other people can understand these characters is somewhat doubtful...
He is speaking the English dialect distinctive to the mid-Northumbria coalfield region (a coalmine is called a 'pit' - hence the nickname); it is a variant of the Northumbian dialect which is unique for the way that the letter R is pronounced in the throat with the uvula, rather than at the front of the mouth with the tongue.
Marvellous!
Should we yearn for a strong state Christian church?
Christians in The West sometimes yearn for a cohesive Christian church - a strong Christian church, with strong leaders, and strong support from many adherents - with power to resist, roll-back and take-over the nihilistic secular regimes of our day to restore (some denomination of) Christianity as the national religion.
But I suspect this is a deception, a delusion, and impossible...
At any rate we are further from such a situation than any society ever has been in the past 2000 years. The main role such an idea plays is to set Catholics against Protestants, and Eastern and Western Catholics against each other - and to divert Christianity into abstract political speculations about imaginary SciFi scenarios where they have somehow been handed power and need to decide what to do with it...
The growing points of devout, life-changing Christianity in the West are mostly at a much smaller scale of organization - even when they occur within the framework of large church organizations, the 'good things' are happening at a small scale and among tiny minorities.
This seems understandable, given that the problem with modern Western Christianity is weakness of faith, not difficulties of organization - indeed, the nature of corruption in the West being top-down emanating from the ruling elites, and given the extreme corruption of those elites (especially by the sexual revolution), means that it is the organizational structures which are most destructive of Christianity, even when those structures are 'A Church'.
(i.e. With a corrupt ruling class, insofar as church leaders are drawn from that upper class, any church of whatever denomination is intrinsically more of a mainstream generic - hence secular Leftist - organization than it is specifically a church.)
From where we stand, we simply can't return to the previous situation of being Christian secondary to unconscious adherence to a church. Probably that would not be a good thing even if we could - but we cannot. Now, even the most strict and 'ultramontaine' Roman Catholics are Protestants in their minds - in the sense that they choose to whom to give their allegiance; they are aware that the leadership is working for secular Leftism; they are forced to choose and they know that they personally have-chosen (and could have chosen otherwise).
Because of the nature of our society - the simple, taken-for granted state/ church faith of much of history is impossible.
In sum, worldly political strength and effectiveness points in one direction - towards the lost world of a state Christian church - and encourages us to yearn for that world. Spiritual strength points in the opposite direction; but such inner-driven Christian churches seem intrinsically fissile - seem to divide Christians into ever small units, until we inhabit single-building denominations, home churches or operate as unaffiliated Christian individuals. From this there is no possibility of effective political action.
However, maybe that is how things are supposed to be in these End Times? Perhaps Christians are supposed to acknowledge that we have lost The World, and to put aside yearnings to establish another international Christian Empire (which were deeply defective, tyrannical and corrupt and secularized, when such Empires did exist).
We may be compelled to put our faith into a life 'Not of this World' - and to get life satisfaction from non-material and unperceived sources. And such compulsion may be our destiny: part of the divine plan as it unfolds toward the second coming.
Successes, likewise, would not be attained by force - because Christians are so politically weak and dispersed; but by miracles. And those miracles granted to sustain trusting faith of specific persons, to en-courage, to enable hope - but not any more miracles of societal strength and political conquest.
This, at any rate, seems to be the general nature of Christianity in those places where it is currently most vigorous, growing in adherents, and apparently most devout - for example in parts of Africa and China. These Christians are politically weak and persecuted (sometimes savagely so) - but as individuals their faith in Jesus is apparently very strong, and ultimately that is what matters: that is what it is all about.
The specific features of African and Chinese Christianity will not transfer to The West, I don't think; but there is no compelling reason why the general nature and type of these churches may not be replicated in The West, especially as persecution continues to increase.
But I suspect this is a deception, a delusion, and impossible...
At any rate we are further from such a situation than any society ever has been in the past 2000 years. The main role such an idea plays is to set Catholics against Protestants, and Eastern and Western Catholics against each other - and to divert Christianity into abstract political speculations about imaginary SciFi scenarios where they have somehow been handed power and need to decide what to do with it...
The growing points of devout, life-changing Christianity in the West are mostly at a much smaller scale of organization - even when they occur within the framework of large church organizations, the 'good things' are happening at a small scale and among tiny minorities.
This seems understandable, given that the problem with modern Western Christianity is weakness of faith, not difficulties of organization - indeed, the nature of corruption in the West being top-down emanating from the ruling elites, and given the extreme corruption of those elites (especially by the sexual revolution), means that it is the organizational structures which are most destructive of Christianity, even when those structures are 'A Church'.
(i.e. With a corrupt ruling class, insofar as church leaders are drawn from that upper class, any church of whatever denomination is intrinsically more of a mainstream generic - hence secular Leftist - organization than it is specifically a church.)
From where we stand, we simply can't return to the previous situation of being Christian secondary to unconscious adherence to a church. Probably that would not be a good thing even if we could - but we cannot. Now, even the most strict and 'ultramontaine' Roman Catholics are Protestants in their minds - in the sense that they choose to whom to give their allegiance; they are aware that the leadership is working for secular Leftism; they are forced to choose and they know that they personally have-chosen (and could have chosen otherwise).
Because of the nature of our society - the simple, taken-for granted state/ church faith of much of history is impossible.
In sum, worldly political strength and effectiveness points in one direction - towards the lost world of a state Christian church - and encourages us to yearn for that world. Spiritual strength points in the opposite direction; but such inner-driven Christian churches seem intrinsically fissile - seem to divide Christians into ever small units, until we inhabit single-building denominations, home churches or operate as unaffiliated Christian individuals. From this there is no possibility of effective political action.
However, maybe that is how things are supposed to be in these End Times? Perhaps Christians are supposed to acknowledge that we have lost The World, and to put aside yearnings to establish another international Christian Empire (which were deeply defective, tyrannical and corrupt and secularized, when such Empires did exist).
We may be compelled to put our faith into a life 'Not of this World' - and to get life satisfaction from non-material and unperceived sources. And such compulsion may be our destiny: part of the divine plan as it unfolds toward the second coming.
Successes, likewise, would not be attained by force - because Christians are so politically weak and dispersed; but by miracles. And those miracles granted to sustain trusting faith of specific persons, to en-courage, to enable hope - but not any more miracles of societal strength and political conquest.
This, at any rate, seems to be the general nature of Christianity in those places where it is currently most vigorous, growing in adherents, and apparently most devout - for example in parts of Africa and China. These Christians are politically weak and persecuted (sometimes savagely so) - but as individuals their faith in Jesus is apparently very strong, and ultimately that is what matters: that is what it is all about.
The specific features of African and Chinese Christianity will not transfer to The West, I don't think; but there is no compelling reason why the general nature and type of these churches may not be replicated in The West, especially as persecution continues to increase.
Friday, 13 May 2016
Was Jesus married?
NOTE ADDED: some months after writing this post, after further reflection and study of the Fourth Gospel, I decided that the description of the marriage of Jesus and Mary was actually the wedding at Cana, therefore not the episode described below.
**
The main apparent obstacle is that the Bible seems not to mention Jesus getting married - but maybe it does, and quite explicitly. It depends on our understanding of the key section of the key gospel of the whole Bible; namely the events surrounding the raising of Lazarus in John's Gospel - that point of inflexion of the narrative in which events move towards Jesus's crucifixion, implying that Christ's ministry was now complete. What went before (including the delay of thirty years before the start of Jesus's ministry) may be seen as awaiting this moment.
I am going to state why there is good reason to assume that Jesus married Mary Magdalene. I do not think this is any kind of stretch of logic assuming three things: 1. It is plausible Jesus was married. 2. Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene are the same person - Bethany having changed her name after the anointing of Christ. 3. The anointing of Jesus by Mary with spikenard, the wiping of it with her hair, would have been clearly understood by John and his contemporary readers as describing the known ritual of a divine, royal marriage.
The second and third assumptions seem quite reasonable - even though they are not entailed by what we happen to know (from secular histories) of the evidence.
If John's gospel is read in the light of these three assumptions, then the idea of a marriage fits without strain, and explains the subsequent events at the cross (the presence of Mary Magdalene) and the events at the tomb of Jesus after the resurrection.
I append the relevant text. Whether this is found compelling by the skeptic is doubtful; but if we choose to assume that Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment is describing a wedding ceremony, the interpretation enables a naturalness, clarity and simplicity to the narrative - which is otherwise extremely puzzling; given its prominence, detail and placement.
**
John 11: 11 Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) 3 Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. 4 When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. 5 Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.
John 12: 18 Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off: 19 and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother... 28 And when [Martha]had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. 29 As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him. 30 Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him. 31 The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. 32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. 33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled...
John 12: 12 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. 2 There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. 3 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. 4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, 5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? 6 This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. 7 Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this.
John 19: 25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! 27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
John 20: 20 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. 2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. 10 Then the disciples went away again unto their own home. 11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, 12 and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. 13 And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. 14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. 16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. 17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. 18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.
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