More on the reality of being in a minority of one as the modern condition

There was a time, as a youth and young man, when I supposed that my interests would be, or would become, general interests - but the opposite has been the case. That which I now regard as best and most significant for myself, and for the world, is that which is known by a minuscule number of people (and - in proportion to the population) immeasurably small as a percentage.

My most significant intellectual influences over the past several years have been William Arkle, who is about as obscure as it is possible to be; Owen Barfield, who has reasonable name-recognition and some good secondary literature - but about-whom I have been able to obtain zero substantive personal discourse; and Rudolf Steiner...

My fascination with Steiner is extremely selective, to the point that (as far as I can judge) the entirety of the global Anthroposophical movement is fundamentally-wrong about him - so wrong as to have missed the main point completely and instead be doing much more harm than good!

(In a nutshell, Steiner's ouvre needed a massive degree of critical discrimination that it never got; and more obviously his official legacy has become wholly-absorbed-within the priorities and principles of mainstream Secular Leftism.)

There are about 15 million Mormons, but perhaps nobody else than myself who lives by an understanding of Mormon theology without being a church member - which is my path. And there appear to be just two people who are as deeply-engaged as myself by the deep-implications of Mormon theology - but for very different reasons than me; and I do not have any interaction with either of these two.

Then there is Tolkien. He is the main thing I have in common with large numbers of people - although I have to discount 'fandom' - which is merely a branch of mass media addiction; and I also have to discount nearly the entirety of academic interest in Tolkien - which is either mainstream Left-assimilated, or else interprets Tolkien within the frame of traditional Roman Catholicism...

But even with respect to Tolkien, my person fascination with the Notion Club Papers as a work of great implications has been met with solid indifference - almost nobody has read it, and even fewer more than once. And I have had no substantive discourse on the aspects of the NCPs that I regard as core and vital.

In sum, nobody-else in interested in Tolkien for the same reasons as I am! Or, if they are, then (for whatever reason) there has been no interaction on the subject.

My point here is that the fact of the situation is-that that which I regard as most important in Life, in The World, is de facto unshared.

And this, I believe, is not just typical, but intrinsic to the modern condition: My situation, in microcosm, is the situation of the world.

This situation is that with a part of us we crave to be deeply a part of a like-minded group; but in practice the choice is between being part-of-a-group at the price of corruption - of giving-up that which our hearts hold most significant; or else maintaining personal integrity at the cost of total isolation - of being in a minority-of-one about those things that really matter to our souls.

This just-is The Situation; and the spiritual-Christian philosophers best exemplified by Steiner, Barfield and Arkle, are those who have best explained this situation to me; and explained why it is in fact a necessary transition, and a necessary place-to-be, here-and-now.

...Including why being in a world-minority of one is neither a lonely, nor an ineffectual, place-to-be; since it is only via exactly this situation and its conscious recognition, that we can get true metaphysical-clarity of life, and about everything.

Charles Williams the moral chameleon...

Charles Williams and CS Lewis share a smoke during an Inklings meeting

Charles Williams was clearly many things to many people, and the recent biography by Grevel Lindop has made clearer and more explicit the nasty and exploitative side of his charecter.

Yet the same man was regarded as an extraordinary, inspiring, sustaining spiritual leader and teacher, an almost saintly figure for his spiritual knowledge and wisdom, by CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, TS Eliot, Dorothy L Sayers and others of similar depth and substance - who knew Williams well over a long period.

How can we make sense of this?

I think there are two assumptions necessary. The first is that Charles Williams was essentially a conversationalist; that he was at his best and gave his best in person and in conversation.

The second is that - precisely because he lived so deeply in human interaction - Williams had chameleon attributes, taking on the 'colour' of his social context to an extreme degree...

Read the rest at The Notion Club Papers blog

The importance of sleep in life

The importance of sleep (which occupies about 1/3 of life) can only be understood once it is established (at least in outline) what is the importance of life itself - I mean mortal life as-a-whole.

My understanding is that this life is sandwiched between a pre-mortal spirit life (which goes back to the beginning of everything), and a post-mortal incarnated life (which is eternal); among the purposes of this life are to be incarnated, to die - and be resurrected, and to have experiences from which we may learn towards our ultimate - and remote - destiny (if we choose it, and keep choosing it) of divinity as sons and daughters of God.

In this context, sleep is one of the experiences from-which we may learn and develop.

Therefore sleep should be considered an activity - indeed it is (at least) two kinds of activity: deep sleep and dreaming sleep.

If we take things at face value - we are absent from our living-bodies during sleep; the body is alive, but pretty much cut-off from its surroundings, neither perceiving nor capable of purposive activity. So our conscious-self is absent, elsewhere during sleep - and this is indeed our subjective experience (insofar as we remember it).

Deep and dreaming sleeps are, in many ways, opposite experiences.

In deep sleep we seem to experience very simple states in a slowed-up time; such that when we awaken from this slow time-bubble, more time has passed in the rest of the world.

In dreams we are in a sped-up time bubble - our subjective experience in dreams is 'compressed' into a much shorter period of awake time. In contrast to the strong, basic emotional states of deep sleep; dreams provide social and narrative-type experiences.

Where do we go when asleep? Well, when we sleep we return to the spirit state of our pre-mortal existence; so our conscious-self is no longer localised in a body. We go into the universal and universally-accessible spirit world - inner space (as it used to be conceptualised); an unbounded space within everyone; but not contained by them; so it is a single space into which each person is a 'portal'. (e.g. The ancient Egyptian dwat, Jung's collective unconscious - same thing.)

By these sleep experiences everyone has a rich and various life; and sleep life is both complementary to and deepening of awake life. In sleep we can access our own experience, and universal experiences - this mortal life and the Heavenly world of pre-mortal life - also the persons of God, angels, the dead... (Some of whom are misguided and some of whom are evil.)

Thus sleep enables deepening and contextualising of our experiences: sleep makes us wiser persons (if we allow it).

Yet sleep itself is not profound, or not always - and thus we reach a point when the work is done, the sleep experience sufficient; and we awaken (or should awaken) to engage with the different experiences of awake life.

We typically remember little of dreaming sleep, and even less of deep sleep (where there is not much to remember) - we do not remember but we do learn (if we allow ourselves). Sleep affects our behaviour, and it affects us as persons - whether we can recall anything or not.

But the direction of human destiny is towards greater consciousness, so we should expect to become more aware of sleep and have more memories of it; as we progress spiritually through our mortal, and post-mortal, lives...

Which sex is more vulnerable to being harmed by abstractions? Women - obviously!

Men and women are different - as a strong true generalisation - so it should not be a surprise when they are seen to be different.

One difference relates to abstractions: men are more at home in the perilous world of abstractions, and when women live-by abstractions they may become seriously disorientated. Women are the preferred bureaucrats in modern, totalitarian institutions - because women are easier to corrupt into servility to the rules.

When it comes to abstractions; women are more prone than men to a kind of institutional Stockholm Syndrome - when captives identify-with their captors; when the miserable slaves of regulations become emotionally committed to the regulations that enslave them.

Women intrinsically hate regulations and prefer personal relations - but once persuaded that regulations are their defence and guarantor; they lose all sense of perspective. The only response to the problem of regulation is seen to be more regulation - and thus they are trapped. 

At worst (and that worst is not uncommon) women become helpless/ help-resistant pawns when manipulated by abstraction-wielders - which is why women are the prime, self-made, self-trapped victims of modernity and Leftism.

This is a simple fact - in the sense that so many women choose not to marry, to delay marriage until too late, choose not to have children, choose not to care for the children they have - and become blinded by anger and vengefulness when this insanity is pointed-out, or when any effective action is proposed to remedy it.

(For most women, not all but a very large majority...) In comparison with such self-inflicted - and remedy-resisting - life-destroying life-choices - nothing that modern culture can provide will come close to compensating. 

And given that modern women (like modern men) have become materialist religion-deniers; this life is everything, and when they self-wreck this life there is no compensation and no repentance. And narcissism, plastic surgery, drugs or becoming an attention/sex-junkie are no more than momentary compensations - massively worsening the underlying problem.

Yet (unless women are coercively-enslaved - in which case these domains are destroyed and life emptied), women innately rule the love-and-sexual arena, women determine the existence of families, women provide the peer networks that bridge between families... If women will not or cannot do these things, then they will not be done - and life is impoverished. 

The modern world depends on a spiritual-Christian awakening - both men and women are necessary; but it cannot happen without women. At present women are solidly driving the Left-Liberal-bureaucratic-totalitarian agenda (including within the fake-Christian churches); and if they do not stop, then the agenda will not stop (although it may be replaced by something different but equally bad).

The first step is for individual women to escape the toils of abstraction that enmesh them from early life; and take control of their own lives with reference to their true selves, their hearts - rather than being (as at present) dupes and tools for the implementation of the evil global Establishment strategy.  

My sleeve notes to a newly-issued CD: The Music of William Arkle, performed by The Enid

Sleeve notes to The Music of William Arkle - written by Bruce Charlton 

(Slightly corrected by using information I have since obtained from discussions with his son Nick Arkle.)

William Arkle – who was called Bill by his friends - was born in 1924, and died in 2000. As well as composing music; Arkle was a spiritual philosopher, painter, poet, teacher and visionary.

Bill Arkle was a friend of the writer Colin Wilson and attracted a small group of dedicated students. During the nineteen seventies he published two books, was the subject of a local television documentary and collaborated with the progressive rock band The Enid. However, despite this modest celebrity; Arkle was never famous and he remains an obscure figure. (The figure whom Arkle most brings to my mind is that other visionary English ‘William’ – Blake; who died in almost equal obscurity but is now recognised as one of the greatest lyric poets and also an influential illustrator).

I know about Bill Arkle mainly because I lived nearby as a child: my sister knew his wife and daughter via ‘ponies’; and his next-door neighbours were my good friends. I also met him once, briefly, when visiting his son. I had dipped into the work from nearly forty years ago; however, it was only after a series of ‘synchronicities’ and having become a Christian in late life that I eventually made the effort to engage with Arkle’s work in a serious fashion – and discovered that he was one of the most inspiring spiritual philosophers of the twentieth century.

Arkle’s life was spent mostly in-and-around the city of Bristol. He served in the Royal Navy during the 1939-45 war, and trained as an Engineer – an unusually scientific and practical background for a visionary, but one which had a lasting effect on the way he expressed his spiritual ideas, often using metaphors drawn from optics, atomic physics, computers, holograms etc.. After the war Arkle became an art student in Bristol and married Julia Rae Hubbard in 1947. This marriage was short lived, and Bill married Elizabeth (Liz) in 1954. They later had two children called Nick and Rose.

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Bill participated in spiritual and Christian discussion groups in Bristol and produced a lot of paintings on mystical themes. He typically used ordinary household acrylic paints on hardboard, deployed luminous pastel colours, and his characteristic theme was of ordinary and everyday scenes transfigured by light to show-forth their inner reality.

At first the family lived in Clifton, then Alveston, in Bristol, making money by renovating and re-selling houses - apparently Liz was the business brain and Bill put his craft skills to good use. They later moved to Backwell Hill House, about 7 miles south west of Bristol – a dilapidated ‘mansion’ that had previously been a monastery (with a large chapel) and stood in large grounds. They had horses and various other animals.

Through the 1970s and into the 1980s the household was large and included people visiting to work on spiritual matters with Bill, and also people who helped with the horses and running the household. Bill made money from selling his paintings from a shop in the Whiteladies Road in Bristol, and from picture restoration – including pictures of horses.

In 1974 Arkle published A Geography of Consciousness, which had an introduction by Colin Wilson. The Great Gift, a book of his pictures with commentary and some essays, was published in 1977. In the same year BBC West broadcast a location-filmed TV program called William Arkle in the series Life Story.

In the mid-1980s the Arkle’s moved to the Cotswolds, then after some years moved back to Somerset in a house called Pigotts in Chelvey Batch (very near to Backwell Hill House). In 2000, Liz Arkle died, and Bill followed a few months later.

Right up until his death at the age of 76, Arkle remained active, creative, optimistic and spiritually aware. His final writings are, indeed, his happiest and most positive statements concerning the human condition. If a man’s abstract philosophy is to be judged by its practical effect on his own life, then William Arkle’s ideas must be counted a success.

I will attempt briefly to summarise Bill Arkle’s ideas. He regards the universe as created by Heavenly Parents (i.e. ‘God’) and inhabited by their children (men, women and angels). The divine children are free individuals each of whom is offered the gift of developing to full divinity in their own unique fashion. Thus, our mortal lives on earth are a mixture of joy and horror, encouragement and hazard, love and fear and so on – each person’s life with its own pattern. Life is set-up to provide each of us with those experiences that we most need to achieve the fullest, all-round, knowledge – and such that eventually we can work towards fully-divine status; to become friends of God on a level footing and participate in the work of creation in a spirit of family love. (Jesus has a vital role in this work – which is why Arkle must count as a Christina; albeit of an unorthodox type.)

Arkle’s understanding can be encapsulated as based-on the fact that we each have a spark of divinity; by means of which we can all potentially (if we are able to attain the necessary, undistracted and real form of consciousness) directly-know something of God’s true nature, mind and benign intentions. For Arkle; life is Good at its root and when correctly understood, because the world was made, and continues, for our ultimate benefit. What makes Arkle a mystic in that he personally had a vivid and immediate perception of God’s reality and activity in the world.

As many of his paintings depict; Arkle perceived life (ordinary, everyday; working, married and family life) as a communication from the divine and permeated by spiritual influences. Various paintings show a teapot and cups on a table by a window, a mountain landscape or a seascape, a bowler-hatted businessman, people doing holiday things – sitting, dancing, playing a flute… these typically illuminated by inner light; or with a mysterious glow or sparkle; or with large spiritual (and smiling) faces or enfolding hands invisibly present and waiting but unacknowledged.

(If this type of painting sounds simplistic, sentimental even saccharine; then this is indeed how they strike many modern people. But they arise from a base of tough resilience and immersion in practical life – and ought to be regarded as a higher, but true and realistic, vision of actual Heaven.)

In essence; Bill Arkle’s world is one of meaning and purpose, a world of experiences and learning (he often terms Life a ‘university’); and ultimately one underpinned by that unselfish loving affection we may know from our glimpses of ideal family living in which parents nurture and sustain the individuality, growth and freedom of each of their children. Each child is encouraged to grow-up, if and when ready to do so; and despite that the process necessarily entails suffering and loneliness; because the objective is an adult, autonomous child who voluntarily chooses to becomes a friend, colleague and collaborator in the endlessly creative work of reality. This is a partial-microcosm of Arkle’s Heaven – a dynamic world of evolution of absolutely-unique individuals, cohering by pure love.

Arkle’s friends have told me that the most characteristic and complete expression of his vision was to be found in semi-improvised multi-media presentations of visual, verbal and musical material. I have been studying Arkle’s writings and pictures intensely for the past five years; and find them an inexhaustible source of insight and encouragement. But until now, I have not heard any of his music.

This reissue of The Music of William Arkle, from the era of his collaboration with The Enid, is therefore very welcome to me; as rounding-out a more complete picture of this multi-faceted and inspiring man.

The "magical system" of Jesus's miracles

I was thinking about the magical systems in fantasy fictions that I am currently reading by 'Mr Magical System' himself (ie. Brandon Sanderson) - when it struck me that the magic we know most about, that of Jesus's miracles, was very different indeed.

While magic in books is usually an 'impressive' matter of light, electricity, noises, super strength/ speed/ endurance/ healing etc - the common feature is that you can See It Being Done.

Whereas nobody reports seeing the miracles of Jesus being-done, actually happening - instead people seemed to notice that they had-already-happened.

People noticed that the water had turned to wine, that a few loaves and fishes had (somehow...) already fed a vast crowd; that soldiers or a mob were surrounding Jesus intending to arrest or kill him - but that Jesus was gone, that after having mud on their lids - the eyes of a blind man could see...

Jesus walked on the waters, which was spectacular - but it just happened, they realised that he was already doing it.

Jesus's miracles re-arranged reality to produce the desired result - and this process of rearrangement was invisible, imperceptible - apparently took place 'behind the sces' or as if in another dimension: to human perception all that was noticed was that things-had-changed.

How to understand this? One way is by the idea of levels of being, or consciousness - in which higher levels are imperceptible - by more real - than the lower levels. So in normal life we are like a simple visible-light-detecting machine - and when what is happening is not light (but is instead accomplished by ultraviolet frequencies, or sound, or smell...) then the dial does not register any change.

Another is to recognise that a higher being might be able to re-arrange things to produce the desired changes, but without those who are changed knowing about it.

This is like a dream - in at least two ways. In a dream the situation is that things change - landscapes change, things appear or disappear, personalities shift.. and usually we see that they have-changed, we don't see it happening.

And when we are dreaming a vast amount can happen in dream time - a hundred times faster than things can happen in waking time. An epic and detailed dream narrative takes only ten minutes by the clock.

In the dream there is a dream-er, of which we who are dream-ing are typically unaware, or only partially and intermittently aware - and of whose exact nature we are uncertain (and it may vary). But the time-scale and level of operations of the dream-er is such that he can accomplish a great deal which is imperceptible to the mind that is dream-ing. 

I presume something of this general-kind may partly explain how Jesus's miracles occurred - and how magical results were observed without any sign of magic being-done.


Note: Among fictional magical systems that I know - the nearest to what I mean is the metal Atium in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. 'Burning' of this metal by a mistborn in a fight, does not interfere with foes free agency, but predicts events slightly ahead of their reality by revealing consequences of actions already-initiated - at the same time the mind and body of the Atium-burner is as-if relatively accelerated so that he can calculate trajectories and take rapid compensatory or evasive actions with astonishing rapidity. So the mistborn can pass through a crowd of soldiers by knowing in advance where each sword blow will fall, and having time to dodge them all. 
     In the later Mistborn books, the Wayne character uses a 'bubble' to slow his own time, relative to the time outside the bubble. From within the bubble, the real world is seen as ultra-slo-mo - so the bubble can be erected to allow planning and evasion, even while (for example) a bullet is approaching. To those outside the bubble, Wayne repeatedly 'disappears' from imminent danger (only a brief blur is perceptible), to reappear somewhere safe.  
     If this sort of thing can be imagined greatly accelerated; and capable of reaching into the very innermost levels of matter - to adjust molecules, for example; then we may have a crude picture of the ways that divine powers could make magic seem already-to-have-happened without perceptible evidence - as with Jesus's miracles, perhaps.  

The nation of Albion is a woman...

LARPing Matilda

By my intuitive assumption... but some 'arguments' are presented at Albion Awakening

Totalitarianism is spiritual warfare - example of the sexual revolution

People usually have the wrong idea about totalitarianism, because they assume it is politically-motivated - whereas it is in essence a form of spiritual warfare.

The wrong assumption is that totalitarianism is ultimately trying to control human behaviour, and that thought-control is merely an effective method of inducing the desired behaviours (by getting people to want to do, exactly what The System wants them to do...).

But in fact the opposite is the case: 'total' behavioural-control is just a mechanism for controlling thinking.

Therefore, for totalitarianism thought-control is the aim and its 'end' - and the various social mechanisms - such as omni-surveillance, micro-management, propaganda, terror and pervasive bureaucracy - are merely means to that end.

The sexual revolution provides an illustration. The significance of the perpetual revolution in sexuality and sexual identity is that it is an effective means of spiritual corruption. By monitoring and controlling sexual behaviour, the totalitarian system is able to control thought.

When people are encouraged and compelled to engage in sexual behaviours (spoken, written, social, and physical) that conflict-with and contradict biological functionality and Christian morality, the effect is to control thought in the desired direction - to corrupt by subversion and eventually explicit inversion of The Good.

And that is the purpose. If The System can get people to do wrong, by a system of near-total behaviour control, then evil thinking strongly tends to follow. When actual sexual behaviour is implicitly underpinned by a denial of the objectivity of morality, by materialist assumptions, and by an hedonic ethic - there will usually follow erosion of the ideals of God and eternal life, marriage and family.

By using totalitarian influence and power to effect a revolution in mass human sexual behaviour, the net effect will be self-chosen damnation, a deliberate and explicit embrace of evil and rejection of The Good.

And that is the ultimate objective. Which is why totalitarianism is intrinsically anti-Christian. 

Old Left - Predator; New Left - Parasite

I have often argued - from my position as an ex-insider - that there is an important distinction between the Old Left and the New Left.

The inflexion point between Old and New Left was in the middle 1960s, indeed it was probably - exactly - the summer of 1967 when the New Left became dominant! And since then the Old Left has been all but displaced in ideology.

The Old Left was Utopian - it has a very explicit blueprint of the society it was aiming at; and in its aggression the Old Left was mostly predatory - by revolution and conquest the Old Left attacked and tried to kill those societies which opposed it. The weapons of the Old Left were organised mobs, guns and tanks. The Old Left ideology was based on economics and class.

The New Left is the Left of identity politics, feminism, antiracism and (especially) the sexual revolution. And the New Left is a parasite, not a predator.

The New Left preys upon its host, sucks its host's vitality. The weapons of the New Left are infiltration, subversion and inversion. Its ideology is based upon emotions, not economics; a  multiplicity of minorities not class: it is passive-aggressive rather coercive. The New Left saps the strength of its victims; rather than overpowering them.

Both types of Leftism are destructive, are indeed self-destroying. The Old Left because its utopia was unsustainable; the New Left because its success as a parasite will kill the host.

But the New Left parasite continues parasitising, corrupting one after another of its host's functions - because that is its nature: short-termist, selfish, hedonic: without conception of greater purpose or meaning.

Hate crimes? No. But Free Speech? No, also - Good speech = speech by persons of Good nature

What is wrong with New Left censorship and persecution of their enemies is not that it is an assault on an abstract construct called Free Speech - but that it is the suppression of Good in order that evil may thrive.

The Left, political correctness, the sexual revolution, antiracism, feminism... these are evil ideas; and people who speak in favour of Good are the ones who are being suppressed.

Another linked phenomenon: Hate Speech and Hate Crime laws are obvious nonsense (by obvious I mean that even to try and explain precisely why they are evil nonsense, to argue exactly why they are evil nonsense, is to descend to the level of demonic evil; and if you personally cannot know directly that they are evil, then I'm afraid you are deeply corrupted). 

But against the Hate legislation - should we promote Free Speech - should it be defended? Has it, indeed, ever been defended?

No and No. There are many things (perhaps most things) that should not be said, in many contexts - and there should be no onus to prove conclusive harm from them before deterrence or prevention or punishment: once said, it is often too late. 

But we are making further assumptions here - false ones. Because another illusion is that it is the specific definable content of 'speech' that needs to be promoted or suppressed: that is not true, that is Pharisee-ism/ legalism/ bureaucracy - which is another evil.

To be clearer - that is what the High Priests did when they took Jesus's saying and actions and chopped them up into decontexualised units, and judged them by abstract generalities from The Law. In fact, Jesus was wholly Good and did nothing but Good - because he was Good everything he said or did was Good, and what these behaviours could be made to seem like when studied in isolation was utterly irrelevant.

So free speech is Not A Good Thing, indeed laws to promote or prevent certain speech content are A Bad Thing - so, if we are not to be guided by laws, rule, content - then what?

I have written about this before. Think again of Jesus - Jesus did (only) Good Things because he was a (wholly) Good Person. And the best-attainable-approximation to that concrete fact is the natural basis of 'law' - or should be.

Good Things are the things done by Good People. Now, nobody is wholly-Good in the way that Jesus was - but some people are much better than others (they have greater Virtue) - some people have or serve evil motivations, are of evil intent (perhaps they seek the suffering or exploitation of others, perhaps they seek the corruption and damnation of others).

The proper guide to regulation of public speech and action is that 'the platform' should be reserved for Good people and Bad people should be excluded. Leave out the specifics, it is the nature, motivation, intention, disposition that matters.

The politically correct/ social justice warriors/ antiracists/ antifa/ feminst/ sexual revolutionaries are quite correct that the proper procedure is to give No Platform - but, as advocates and servants of moral inversion, they use this procedure to promote evil and crush Good.

Those who are Good should Not be promoting Free Speech - they should be censoring, suppressing, deplatforming speech of evil intent - including speech that is intentionally subversive, corrupting - has an agenda of inverting truth, beauty and virtue.

(Would you want an advocate of pederasty to discuss this with your children? If not them, why anybody?) 

If you can help it, if you have the power; then Do Not Allow those whom you judge to be the demons or their many/ majority servants and minions to have space or time or resources to address people; to pursue their agenda of evil - whether short-term-tactical evil; or insidious, soft-sell, strategically, deviously evil (which will be done by Bad People deploying - mostly - Good content).

This applies - as a valid and proper goal - as well in small as in great - in blog comments as well as in mass media; among family and friends as in great public halls.

The persecution of David Icke

The trajectory of the public perception of David Icke over the past 25 years or so has been a barometer of social changes.

From beginning as a sports anchor, through spokesman for the Green Party; to occupying the position of a universal butt of comedians and national 'joke figure' (cyclically ignored and ridiculed) when he re-emerged as a spiritual leader and leading 'conspiracy theorist'; Icke is nowadays regarded as a serious threat to mainstream political strategy - and he is currently being subject to continual harassment, repeated sabotage, and multiple persecutions by a variety of Leftist pressure groups and stooges (see video above for some details).

I have considerable admiration for Icke - who is an inspirational figure for his courage, perseverance and basic decency. Most readers of this blog would find a great deal of insight and wisdom in his 1996 book Phantom Self.

On the other hand; I don't suppose anybody in the world will believe everything David Icke says; and many will (like me) tend to regard most of it to be erroneous, absurd, or exaggerated...

But this does not trouble me; because it is the necessary price we pay for a certain type of exploratory and creative individual.

Icke is intuitive, absolutely independent-minded, and highly speculative; indeed, he has changed many of his ideas and emphases a great deal over the years - so that he does not agree today with what he used to write and say 20 years ago. But then, neither do I agree with my own older ideas (I actively oppose them!) - nor is anybody self-consistent who starts from the near-universal state of delusion and only gradually, by trial and error, approaches reality. We are all of us in much the same position. What matters is our direction of travel...

Anyway, my point here is that Icke has gone from being seen as a 'harmless eccentric' - somebody who made media headlines only for his 'crazy' statements (some of which, however, turned to out be chillingly true; for example the endemic abuse of children by high-level Establishment leaders) - to being regarded as a sinister political demagogue, a man whose ideas are regarded as so dangerously plausible as to require active and aggressive suppression by a swarm of Social Justice Warriors, Antifa, billionaire-funded NGOs, a mayor and a Labour Member of Parliament - backed-up by lies and misrepresentation in the major newspapers and TV News.

The message is clear - for The West, Now.

Dissent from the New Left/ Sexual revolutionary agenda has already been excluded from the mass media; and Icke has therefore put across his message by a combination of self-published books, large hall lecture presentations, a multitude of interviews with 'alternative media' and by his personal web pages. But, over the past year - especially since the US election, and rationalised under the projected-problem of 'false news' - there has been escalating pressure to deny even these minority media outlets to anybody who in any way publicly opposes the Establishment agenda.

Despite being broadly Old Left in orientation, Icke persists in opposing the Left-consensus on many key litmus test issues (such as the recent 'trans' sexual agenda); and consequently he has experienced multiple last-moment cancellations of lectures, has been a victim of multiple covert and dishonest social media censorships, and subjected to continual demonization in mainstream media - plus all the rest of the now familiar methods.

What does this mean? To Icke personally and to his tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of readers and listeners it is a vindication of Icke's analysis - and points to a 'moment of truth'. The time is coming (indeed is past for many people) in which scales fall from eyes, and the essential falsity and wicked-intent of the official world picture is revealed. Then there will be a clear choice presented to each individual - then some may chose to reject The Matrix...

And The Establishment know that their agenda depends on mass delusion and consent - so this could mean the end of decades of progress towards their totalitarian goal of omni-surveillance and micro-management of human behaviour (and thought).

David Icke is surely correct about the existence of a large and evil global conspiracy, and he is also correct that this is guided (across many generations) by demonic forces (which he currently calls the Archons). This spiritual insight is what raises Icke above the mass of conspiracy theorists - that he recognises the reality of a spiritual warfare - and that the conspiracy is not primarily aimed at causing suffering and death but at causing damnation. Icke's reflections on the necessity of love, and his insight that fear (not hate) is the opposite of love, are among the clearest and deepest I have read.

Icke and I part company at this point - since he has become largely anti-Christian (although he admires some aspects of the Gnostics) - and does not talk about God, Heaven or Man's eternal destiny to become divine sons and daughters of God. His metaphysics are wrong, and indeed despair-inducing; and his scheme has no coherent place for genuine free agency...

On the other hand, I would not be surprised if a personally-intuited and reformulated but real Christianity was where Icke eventually ended-up (in this life or beyond); since a spiritual Christianity would be the completion and clarification of his many, various and conflicting ideas.

Still, taken all-round, I regard David Icke as definitely 'a good thing'; well-motivated and a valuable resource, energiser and stimulator - and I solidly support him against his detractors.

And I suspect that if his health holds, and he maintains his past motivation, Icke will outlast and disprove those who currently seek to destroy him.

The academic inversion of Tolkien

At my Notion Club Papers blog; notice of a new book of anti-Tolkien/ Tolkien-Studies; yet-further confirmation (for those who still need it) of the systematic corruption (and New Left convergence) of academic interpretations of reality...

Communications are experiences - not knowledge...

What we term communications, of all sensory sorts - the spoken or written word, images, sounds - including music, smells, tastes, touch - are not knowledge, but they are experiences.

Our mortal life is about experiences, and how we respond to them; so communications are very important. But we should not mistake communications for knowledge.

Why not? Well, that is obvious - in the sense that we have many generations of philosophical reflection that emphasise how unreliable are communications, that they cannot be relied upon for knowledge (or 'certainty').

This for multiple reasons - to do with limitations of cognition, of biased and incomplete sampling, of the multi-step nature of communications and so on. Some have concluded that therefore there is no possibility of knowledge - e.g. that knowledge is entirely subjective, based on arbitrary information, a matter of opinion, contingent, labile, uncommunicable etc.

But the inference that there because communication is non-valid therefore there can be no knowledge includes a false assumption - which is that only the material world exists...

We assume that this non-material world does not exist - but that is merely an assumption; furthermore a very modern and entirely Western assumption...

One implication is that when we personally are communicating, we are providing experiences for others - but we are not transmitting knowledge.

By contrast, when we are engaged in primary thinking we are engaged in direct knowing - and, because knowledge must potentially be universally accessible to be knowledge, others may also know directly what we know.

Thus knowledge is not communicated, and communications are not knowledge...

A fuller version of this is at Albion Awakening

What is the 'cosmic' Christ?

I find it useful to think of a 'cosmic' aspect to Jesus - which ought to supplement the more usual aspect of 'revelation'.

By 'revelation' I mean that Jesus was an historical personage, who emerged from a lineage and a prophetic tradition of the 'Old Testament' who left record of his life teachings in The Gospels, and this is expanded and interpreted in the later parts of the New Testament...

But the incarnation, death and resurrection changed the structure of reality. The divine creator of earth became a man, died and was resurrected; and that changed reality. The universe before and after Jesus was a different universe.

That is the 'cosmic' Christ; and it does not depend on revelation. It happened: everywhere and to everybody and everything.

What happened? Well, should not look for a complete answer in a brief-statement form (when the universe is changed, a lot happens!) - but a part of it was that the cosmic Christ enabled Men to become fully divine eventually - and in this mortal life to experience - if we choose - the divine mode of consciousness.

The divine mode of consciousness is what I have termed Primary Thinking, what Rudolf Steiner sometimes calls the Imaginative Soul (coming after the Consciousness Soul), what Owen Barfield calls Final Participation and the highest level of consciousness described in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness.

This means thinking-from our real (which is divine) self; an activity that has direct knowledge of reality, and participates in God's work of creation (it is what Tolkien called 'subcreation).

That is (an aspect of) the Cosmic work of Christ.

Colin Wilson's deepest book (?) - Religion and the Rebel (1957) - republished at last...

At long last, Colin Wilson's completion of The Outsider, his second and probably the deepest of his books - Religion and the Rebel (1957) has been republished; with the Kindle edition at the affordable price of ten pounds.

I have written about RatR; and John Fitzgerald has been reading it recently, for the first time - both of us rate it highly and place it as one of Wilson's very best.

Esoteric and/ versus Spiritual...

William Wildblood has been reading Gary Lachman's informed and comprehensive overview The Secret Teachers of the Western World (2015) - which has prompted some reflections on the relationship between esoteric/ occult mysteries and God-centred spirituality.

True freedom and real Christianity

I reject (because it is untrue) that double-negative understanding of the work of Christ which is expressed in terms of his saving us from a punishment that God imposed.

The work of Christ should be understood in terms of what he positively did for us: what he enabled, and taught, and demonstrated.

Jesus made it possible for us to be free, as well as Good - recognising that values based upon passive, unconscious obedience to external authority (of any kind, even when that authority is truly divine) are insufficient.

To be ours, to count to our credit, to be worthy of full sons and daughters of God; values must come from-within - that is from our selves - and from our real, true, divine, eternal selves; and be freely chosen.

Christ both made this possible by a cosmic effect - by which his incarnation, death and resurrection changed the universe - and also by his life-as-teaching he showed us how this works in practice.

Jesus was the first and only complete 'primary thinker' - whose thinking was of reality, was fully participating in creation and was intrinsically creative.

Jesus did not passively follow external rules or laws (which can never be more than approximately or averagely right, which match only imperfectly with experience) - but acted directly from his divine nature; knowing the specifics of each situation and doing the one-thing-needful.

This is why the responses and actions of Jesus could never be predicted; yet always were perfect, unique and correct (but we recognise this only after they have happened).

Thus we can understand the work of Jesus in terms of allowing and implementing (gradually, incrementally, at first very imperfectly - and far from completed) the development of real Freedom - which is the agency of the real self.

Which is eventually to know and freely-choose Good in the way of divinity - which is to say to be Good consciously (in full self-awareness), actively and from-our-selves.

Favourite Bach organ fugue, favourite organist

If you want to see and hear what's going-on; then this score-scrolling version by the amazing scat-vocalese Swingle Singers is helpful:

What is this man thinking?

There are only two basic possibilities...

Hope-less defiance of the dead cosmos; or knowledge of the reality of his relationship with universal personal consciousness, life and purpose.

At Albion Awakening...

Universal institutional bloating, the British Disease (caused by micro-managing bureaucracy = totalitarianism)

The corruption of all major British Institutions, their subversion and inversion into a focus on anti-Christian, materialist Leftist goals (perfectly explicit nowadays, as the only truthful element in generally-dishonest in mission statements) has gone along with a gross institutional bloating - seldom mentioned. Everything is much bigger than in the past - by several-fold.

Three things:

!. The creation of a single, linked bureaucracy, encompassing all institutions. In other words, totalitarianism: the pervasion of all of life, all of the time, by officialdom.

2. Alignment of this bureaucracy to New Leftism: Institutions in pursuit of a (designedly) incoherent oppositional state of permanent revolution (e.g. the ever-expanding, ever-mutating sexual revolution); based on a metaphysics of spiritual denial and materialism, and an ethic of this worldly hedonism/ elimination of suffering.

3. Enlargement of all human units in this linked, evil-motivated bureaucracy and isolation of the individual. Individual judgement replaced by committee - eliminating judgement; morality replaced by voting - eliminating morality; the pursuit of beauty replaced by legalism; truthfulness replaced by obedience...

Because virtue and values are individual, or they are nothing.

(This bureaucratic micro-management just-is totalitarianism - that is, the only end-point is total control of human motivation, behaviour and thinking.)

In sum, destruction of the human in the entirety of public discourse - the only current alleviation being in an instinct-driven world of private, mostly sexual, hedonism.

The family is, of course, prime target; but so are all professions, guilds, unions, workplaces, voluntary organisations, informal groupings. Anything small is crushed by regulations and anything inner-motivated is coshed by enforcements of 'social justice' (every club, activity, family must comply with the latest New Left revolutionary project - must become an agent of positive propaganda for that project).

And the whole thing, the whole process is invisible - because for modern Man there is no underlying reality; hence no meaning (everything is 'random' - despite that in the real world nothing is random), no intention, no authority or validity (only raw power) - most of all no purpose around which it might be possible to understand and aim.

Institutional bloating is the consequence - for all units it is a case of conform and grow - or die.

Grow and conform - or die. Leveraged and leveraged - not for the sake of efficiency, but to enable inefficiency. Not for the sake of effectiveness - but to ensure ineffectiveness. Not so that the institutions become more powerful but to ensure that they have no power except that which is allocated from above.

As a sop and a distraction, we have a mass media dedicated to promoting the value of 'friends' - as a replacement for the destruction of families, and institutions, and a sense of place... on the understanding that modern friendship is merely mutual-exploitation; so that when when reality bites, when the chips are down, when we are weak and isolated... friends melt-away and we recognise we are on-our-own against the international bureaucracy.

One against everybody and everything...

Of course, in context of a proper, real, deep, eternal understanding of the nature of reality - this is a fair fight; indeed a fight of one against The System is a fight that the individual will certainly win.

Which is why it is vital to the System that individuals do not know reality - that reality is ruled-out by assumption; thus immune to all possible experience.

A Child's Christmas in Devon

I was born in Devon and left before I was five, so my memories of Christmas are a superimposition of those of a very young child of several ages - hence wholly magical.

The impression is of coziness and warmth, colour, richness, food; happiness and a sense of total fulfilment - complete happiness. Of being given everything I could imagine.

The last Christmas is slightly clearer. I can recall being forbidden to go into the garage for a couple of weeks before the date - and on Christmas morning I discovered why. My Daddy had made me a trainset, the track and transformer fixed onto a large piece of hardboard - with a circuit and siding; the beautiful train illustrated above, with coaches and trucks.

This was certainly the most lavish present of my childhood; and it survived for many years - I still have the battered remains of the train itself. It was also perfectly timed, in that I was in the midst of a craze on steam engines - a few of which were still running at that time: I had the special treat of a ride on one of them shortly beforehand, and recall initially being terrified by the size, noise and smoke of its approach to the platform.

A particular favourite were the books (and recordings of books) by the Rev W Awdrey, such as the following, which I remember well (and I still posses the original and very scratchy EP):

Christmas in Devon is merely the epitome of a whole set of magical memories - memories of the primal state of Men - of Original Participation; that is, a world in which I was immersed and to which I wholly belonged.

A world which lacked the existential fear that soon after arrived, when I arrived in a new and strange house and school, then soon after began to realise there was a thing called death.