A man emerges, Jesus - who is instantly recognised, on sight, by John the Baptist as being the Messiah: the Lamb of God who will take away the sin's of the world. When John baptises him, John perceives that the Spirit of God does not only touch and depart, as usual; but uniquely stays with this man: Jesus has become divine.
What does it mean that Jesus would 'take away' sin? Sin seems to mean all the transitory nature of satisfaction in this world, the corruptions, the selfishness, that which contributes to the recurrent sense that life is travail and loss. Jesus will take away Mortality and all its badness, all that we know in our hearts to be intrinsically wrong about life.
This Jesus immediately recognised and accepted John's divine identification, immediately changed his life; took on the role or Messiah. What, then, did this man Jesus say about himself and what he brought?
That he brought, he made possible, an altogether higher, better, permanently-satisfying way of living. So, this good life Jesus gave would be not just greater than anything we had or could ever experience; it would be ever-lasting, it would be eternal.
Further; this good life would be experienced in our bodies, we would live forever and satisfyingly as embodied men; in bodies that would could not be destroyed. How extraordinary!
But - and Jesus was clear about this - we could reach this state of the Good Life (Jesus himself could only reach this state) only by first dying and then 'resurrecting'. The Good Life Jesus promised was on the other side of death!
And Jesus himself would 'show' that what he claimed was true, and how it worked; first by 'demonstrating' the process on his friend Lazarus; and then by himself going-through this same death and resurrection. How strange!
Why must Men die in order to be remade for the Good Life? Jesus did not explain. It seemed to be something to do with the fact that mortal bodies were intrinsically corruptible; and to 'make' eternal bodies required this process of 'resurrection'.
But why did Men need to live the Good Life in bodies? Why not as spirits? That was perhaps the strangest thing of all. Again; Jesus did not explain, but the fact seemed to be quite definite.
What Jesus did explain, was that if we wanted this Good Life for ourselves, we needed in some sense to follow him. And that this following was a matter of love; the Good Life was itself a thing of love, the GL was joined by loving.
The Good Life was made possible by Jesus's love for each and every Man; and the 'process' was completed by each Man who wanted this Good Life loving Jesus. It had to be our decision, each individual's decision.
This business was not something done by God, to Men - or for Men. This step was a thing that we needed to do for our-selves; there were two sides, and we each must participate in the process - God's side of the matter being accomplished by a Holy Spirit or Comforter, which Jesus would send after he himself left the mortal world. Jesus implied that this Holy Ghost was in some sense himself, returned, in a form who was accessible to any Man who wanted it.
And that was it, pretty much! That was the essence of the thing. Having made this clear, Jesus went ahead and did it; he completed the process.
Writing about it later, Lazarus noted that not many people were keen to accept the gift Jesus had brought; indeed they mostly reacted with anger and hostility, and indeed killed Jesus on the flimsiest of excuses (and also killed John the Baptist).
This reflected badly on Men; but it was hardly surprising - it was indeed exactly the kind of thing (sin) that Jesus had enabled us to escape from. However, it did not affect what Jesus had done for us.
The Good Life was from now a permanent possibility for any Man; albeit only attainable on the other side of death and by the choice of love.
(Note: The above is written in something of the style of Charles Williams in his books He Came Down From Heaven and The Descent of the Dove; although my interpretation of Jesus's work is extremely different from CW, and my expression is intended to be clear rather than esoteric.)
Sunday, 28 July 2019
Friday, 26 July 2019
Not even trying - Beauty edition
Some years ago I wrote a book about science having abandoned even the attempt to speak and discover the truth about reality; but the same story could be told about the entirety of Western civilisation with respect to beauty.
As usual, this has been a top down process. It began about a century ago after World War I with the advent of Modernism is art - in fine art with the likes of Picasso, in Literature with TS Eliot and James Joyce, in classical music with Schoenberg and Stravinsky, in architecture with Le Courbusier and Bauhaus...
These massively influential artists were unlike the geniuses of previous generations because they were not even trying to create beauty.
After World War II this became mainstream; ordinary local government officials, administrators and managers of all kinds became united in their indifference to beauty, even disdain for 'conventional' ideas of beauty, which was regarded as kitsch, outmoded, probably patriarchal and racist too.
The indifference to beauty was initially excused by claiming a focus on efficiency, cheapness, egalitarian social engineering; or that the pursuit was of a higher and more contemporary and forward-looking form of beauty... but it very soon became clear that the motivation was in fact a hostility to beauty.
This can best be seen from Architecture, that most public of arts.
What is significant is not so much the ugliness of modern buildings and the built environment - ugliness has always been common, especially where there is poverty; but the fact (and it is a solid, established fact) that people are not even striving for the beautiful.
In terms of the externals; universities like Oxford and Cambridge were international magnets for students, faculty and visitors because of the beauty - yet they consistently themselves built (and allowed) the erection of vile and brutal buildings among and nearby the loveliness. e.g. the Cambridge History building from 1963:
At my alma mata Durham - similarly an architectural jewel; in 1966 the expanding university built a brutalist, grey, grime-streaked concrete box as their students union.
This has, of course, continued and increased - everywhere. In situations where there was every reason - every commercial, monetary, expedient, materialist reason to aim for beauty; ugliness was insisted-upon.
The same applies to the insides of buildings. Instead of trying to make public work and life environments pleasing, cheerful, beautiful - the choice was to aim for bleakness, oppression, noise and lack-of-privacy.
In recent decades, even when building offices for themselves - the places where they will spend many hours per day; management have created nightmarish 1984 conditions. Below is the aptly named Portcullis House, the business annexe to the Houses of Parliament, where Member of Parliament have their meetings etc. They actually made this for themselves,
What can we conclude? As William Arkle said: "If the individual is degenerating then his idea of beauty will be degenerate also".
Beauty is an index of the soul; beauty(with truth and virtue) is one of the prime transcendental values, and an indifference to beauty is a sign of the canker of corruption already present and growing in a person or a group.
By the time active and sacrificial hostility to beauty has become manifest, we are deep into the inversion of values; a situation when beauty and ugliness have changed positions, and evil is being pursued purposively.
We see it all around us. This is a world where Satan rules.
As usual, this has been a top down process. It began about a century ago after World War I with the advent of Modernism is art - in fine art with the likes of Picasso, in Literature with TS Eliot and James Joyce, in classical music with Schoenberg and Stravinsky, in architecture with Le Courbusier and Bauhaus...
These massively influential artists were unlike the geniuses of previous generations because they were not even trying to create beauty.
After World War II this became mainstream; ordinary local government officials, administrators and managers of all kinds became united in their indifference to beauty, even disdain for 'conventional' ideas of beauty, which was regarded as kitsch, outmoded, probably patriarchal and racist too.
The indifference to beauty was initially excused by claiming a focus on efficiency, cheapness, egalitarian social engineering; or that the pursuit was of a higher and more contemporary and forward-looking form of beauty... but it very soon became clear that the motivation was in fact a hostility to beauty.
This can best be seen from Architecture, that most public of arts.
What is significant is not so much the ugliness of modern buildings and the built environment - ugliness has always been common, especially where there is poverty; but the fact (and it is a solid, established fact) that people are not even striving for the beautiful.
In terms of the externals; universities like Oxford and Cambridge were international magnets for students, faculty and visitors because of the beauty - yet they consistently themselves built (and allowed) the erection of vile and brutal buildings among and nearby the loveliness. e.g. the Cambridge History building from 1963:
At my alma mata Durham - similarly an architectural jewel; in 1966 the expanding university built a brutalist, grey, grime-streaked concrete box as their students union.
This has, of course, continued and increased - everywhere. In situations where there was every reason - every commercial, monetary, expedient, materialist reason to aim for beauty; ugliness was insisted-upon.
The same applies to the insides of buildings. Instead of trying to make public work and life environments pleasing, cheerful, beautiful - the choice was to aim for bleakness, oppression, noise and lack-of-privacy.
In recent decades, even when building offices for themselves - the places where they will spend many hours per day; management have created nightmarish 1984 conditions. Below is the aptly named Portcullis House, the business annexe to the Houses of Parliament, where Member of Parliament have their meetings etc. They actually made this for themselves,
This cost a quarter of a billion pounds 20 years ago: the physical manifestation of an aspiring global totalitarian regime
What can we conclude? As William Arkle said: "If the individual is degenerating then his idea of beauty will be degenerate also".
Beauty is an index of the soul; beauty(with truth and virtue) is one of the prime transcendental values, and an indifference to beauty is a sign of the canker of corruption already present and growing in a person or a group.
By the time active and sacrificial hostility to beauty has become manifest, we are deep into the inversion of values; a situation when beauty and ugliness have changed positions, and evil is being pursued purposively.
We see it all around us. This is a world where Satan rules.
Thursday, 25 July 2019
How to tell if somebody in public life is a liar; and the mental mutilation of compulsory dishonesty
This is not difficult nowadays, in the modern West - because all of Them, everybody, without any exceptions; are constant, habitual, practised liars. The interesting aspect is what this means; how it affects us.
I find it astonishing when somebody or another in public life is accused of being A Liar. Such are always somebody on the so-called Right - but actually the moderate-Left, because there are zero people in public life who aren't on the Left.
But they All lie, all the time; the people making the accusation, the people reporting it, the people trying to refute it; the people discussing the issue: it is a community of liars. If they were not liars, if they were honest, they would not be in public life.
Lying-to-order is nowadays an absolute pre-requisite of being given a position of high power, wealth or status.
Of course they don't lie equally - some tell bigger lies than others, some tell lies more frequently than others; and of course some are better at concealing their dishonesty than others (e.g. psychopaths, who lack empathy and deeply regard all other people as subjects for manipulation, are usually the most convincing liars; the best con artists).
The thing about honesty is that it is one of the virtues which is actually possible to do for considerable periods of time - and almost anybody can achieve it (if they want to, and if they are prepared to take the consequences). Most people can be honest; at least, to such a level that the occasional lie stands-out (and can therefore, in principle, be acknowledged and/ or repented).
The possibility of sustained 'perfection' does not (for the majority of people) apply to all of the virtues (e.g. love, courage, humility); but it does apply to honesty. We can genuinely aspire to be perfectly honest; and to know whenever we fail to attain that idea.
I know this because when I began as a scientist most of the scientists I met were completely honest about their science. (Those who were not were mostly famous and powerful US scientists, in medical research.) Nowadays, almost no (self-styled) scientists are completely honest - and most are habitually and increasingly dishonest; so I saw the transition, which happened within a generation.
I know the possibility of perfect honesty, and the consequences of abandoning the ideal.
Scientists were probably the last group in The West to adhere to an ethic of honesty; so since science was corrupted we now live in a world of pervasive and escalating dishonesty - in which liars incessantly (and dishonestly) accuse each other of lying.
Some of these liars are so deeply, habitually, professionally dishonest that they do not know the differencetruth and lie. There are all sorts of defence mechanisms and projection at work; some of them are engaged in strategically planned deceptions.
But we don't have the time or the information to distinguish between them, nor or to make quantitative evaluations of the relative degrees to which any specific individual is lying. However, in an ultimate sense, we don't need to know any more than that a person or institution is A Liar - at which point we ought to stop listening to them and ignore what they say; and certainly we should stop trusting them.
Yet the awareness of this situation is minuscule. People don't merely believe the liars, the systematic misleaders, the propagandists and hypers; they actually enforce an ethic that such people must be believed.
Anyone who refuses to believe the pronouncements of known liars in government, the media, the churches or elsewhere is accused of being evasive, of cherry picking - and of course, in a world of liars, they may indeed be engaged in simply reinforcing their own prejudices.
This especially applies to atrocity stories - of war, disaster, crimes, victimisation, fraud, good-works or spitefulness... the basic bread and butter of modern gossip. When some powerful group states that some atrocity has happened, we are expected to believe it or else be regarded as evil - indeed dangerous.
In sum, we know for sure that all official and influential sources are always liars; but belief in their lies has become the usual mechanism by which in-group identity is established.
Belief in lies is our modern initiation ceremony; and this initiation never stops, we repeat it every day, many times per day.
Instead of accepting (for example) some kind of trial of courage or infliction of pain as a coming of age - or else be outcast; we moderns must accept the mental mutilation of believing lies (like pervasive sexism/ racism, CO2 climate change, or the reality of sex change) - Or Else Be Outcast.
This is part of the highly-effective and evil system of totalitarian control.
To know that someone lies, to nonetheless believe those lies, and to know that one is believing lies - is one important reason why almost the entire populations of the UK and other Western nations are literally psychotic.
And this is what enables the evil totalitarian system of virtuality that we all, to a greater or lesser extant, inhabit.
I find it astonishing when somebody or another in public life is accused of being A Liar. Such are always somebody on the so-called Right - but actually the moderate-Left, because there are zero people in public life who aren't on the Left.
But they All lie, all the time; the people making the accusation, the people reporting it, the people trying to refute it; the people discussing the issue: it is a community of liars. If they were not liars, if they were honest, they would not be in public life.
Lying-to-order is nowadays an absolute pre-requisite of being given a position of high power, wealth or status.
Of course they don't lie equally - some tell bigger lies than others, some tell lies more frequently than others; and of course some are better at concealing their dishonesty than others (e.g. psychopaths, who lack empathy and deeply regard all other people as subjects for manipulation, are usually the most convincing liars; the best con artists).
The thing about honesty is that it is one of the virtues which is actually possible to do for considerable periods of time - and almost anybody can achieve it (if they want to, and if they are prepared to take the consequences). Most people can be honest; at least, to such a level that the occasional lie stands-out (and can therefore, in principle, be acknowledged and/ or repented).
The possibility of sustained 'perfection' does not (for the majority of people) apply to all of the virtues (e.g. love, courage, humility); but it does apply to honesty. We can genuinely aspire to be perfectly honest; and to know whenever we fail to attain that idea.
I know this because when I began as a scientist most of the scientists I met were completely honest about their science. (Those who were not were mostly famous and powerful US scientists, in medical research.) Nowadays, almost no (self-styled) scientists are completely honest - and most are habitually and increasingly dishonest; so I saw the transition, which happened within a generation.
I know the possibility of perfect honesty, and the consequences of abandoning the ideal.
Scientists were probably the last group in The West to adhere to an ethic of honesty; so since science was corrupted we now live in a world of pervasive and escalating dishonesty - in which liars incessantly (and dishonestly) accuse each other of lying.
Some of these liars are so deeply, habitually, professionally dishonest that they do not know the differencetruth and lie. There are all sorts of defence mechanisms and projection at work; some of them are engaged in strategically planned deceptions.
But we don't have the time or the information to distinguish between them, nor or to make quantitative evaluations of the relative degrees to which any specific individual is lying. However, in an ultimate sense, we don't need to know any more than that a person or institution is A Liar - at which point we ought to stop listening to them and ignore what they say; and certainly we should stop trusting them.
Yet the awareness of this situation is minuscule. People don't merely believe the liars, the systematic misleaders, the propagandists and hypers; they actually enforce an ethic that such people must be believed.
Anyone who refuses to believe the pronouncements of known liars in government, the media, the churches or elsewhere is accused of being evasive, of cherry picking - and of course, in a world of liars, they may indeed be engaged in simply reinforcing their own prejudices.
This especially applies to atrocity stories - of war, disaster, crimes, victimisation, fraud, good-works or spitefulness... the basic bread and butter of modern gossip. When some powerful group states that some atrocity has happened, we are expected to believe it or else be regarded as evil - indeed dangerous.
In sum, we know for sure that all official and influential sources are always liars; but belief in their lies has become the usual mechanism by which in-group identity is established.
Belief in lies is our modern initiation ceremony; and this initiation never stops, we repeat it every day, many times per day.
Instead of accepting (for example) some kind of trial of courage or infliction of pain as a coming of age - or else be outcast; we moderns must accept the mental mutilation of believing lies (like pervasive sexism/ racism, CO2 climate change, or the reality of sex change) - Or Else Be Outcast.
This is part of the highly-effective and evil system of totalitarian control.
To know that someone lies, to nonetheless believe those lies, and to know that one is believing lies - is one important reason why almost the entire populations of the UK and other Western nations are literally psychotic.
And this is what enables the evil totalitarian system of virtuality that we all, to a greater or lesser extant, inhabit.
Wednesday, 24 July 2019
Ashington Magic: Sixty percent of England's major team sports achievements featured players from Ashington, Northumberland
A flattering photo of Ashington colliery and terraces, 1924. In my memory Ashington is always black and white
Ashington, an (ahem) 'unglamorous' mining village in Northumberland, is well known for producing sporting superstars - originally footballers, nowadays cricket fast bowlers. Indeed, of the (only!) five biggest-impact England international team sports triumphs of my lifetime, Ashington players were involved in three.
1966 Football World Cup - the brothers Bobby and Jackie Charlton (no relation, unfortunately) were in the eleven. Bobby is often regarded as the best England footballer ever, and among a handful of the best in the world.
2003 Rugby World Cup - No Ashington-born. The nearest was fly-half Jonny Wilkinson who went to university in Durham and played professionally in Newcastle.
2005 Cricket Ashes (England versus Australia) contest. Regarded as probably the best cricket test match series ever. Featured fast bowler Steve Harmison throughout.
2010 Cricket T20 World Cup - No Ashingtonians. The nearest was captain Paul Collingwood, who came from nearby Shotley Bridge in County Durham.
2019 Cricket One Day International World Cup, from just over a week ago. Regarded as perhaps the most exciting cricket match ever. Featured Mark Wood.
Aside, Ashington was also the birthplace of Sheila Armstrong, perhaps the best English opera and oratorio soprano from the nineteen sixties through the eighties.
Why such a concentration of excellence from such a utilitarian place - established several generations ago and still continuing? It is a mystery - all the more mysterious to those who know Ashington.
Note: My connection is that my Dad comes from the adjacent seaside village, Newbiggin by the Sea (birthplace of James Shepherd, the greatest cornet player ever), where I spent my holidays twice a year through childhood. Newbiggin people rather looked-down on Ashington. To us, Ashington was merely the location of a toy shop (Crisp's?) where we went for our summer holiday present. That's it.
The task of a Romantic Christian: Our imperative destiny of becoming conscious of that which is currently unconscious
The idea of Romantic Christianity is that we must and should move forward to a new era of consciousness - because consciousness is necessary for free agency.
We can be free only when we are conscious; insofar as the unconscious affects us without our awareness then we are not free.
So secular modernity is impossible, because it is not Christian hence basically false - and evil because it is by nature and intent totalitarian (Ahrimanic); mainstream Romanticism is impossible because it is not Christian, and aims-at the unconscious, instinctive, unfree, not-grown-up (Luciferic); traditional Christianity is impossible because it relies upon the objective efficacy of words, rituals, symbols, institutions that have become subjective and ineffective. And, anyway, we cannot go back to traditional Christianity because human evolution is developmental (thus irreversible - like an adolescent cannot become a child).
The fact that secular modernity, Romanticism and Christianity are all impossible does not, of course, prove that Romantic Christianity is possible - nor does it prove that Rom Christ would be desirable. The possibility and desirability of Romantic Christianity are firmly conjectural.
We should therefore be clear that there can be no publicly compelling proof that Romantic Christianity is what we must and ought-to have. So, in principle, we can only be Romantic Christians on the basis of 'evidence' that is personal individual, and - in that sense - 'subjective'.
However, Romantic Christianity includes the assertion that genuine subjectivity (intuition from of the real and divine self) is also objective, universal and eternal (objective, that is, within constraints of our perspective, experience and capability). True subjectivity is real objectivity.
In sum; to be a Romantic Christian is a matter of primary personal conviction. Either you have this, or you do not. If you don't have it, no evidence can convince you; if do have it, no evidence can disprove your conviction.
And such conviction can only be attained by consciously seeking it, and can only be apprehended by consciously knowing it and freely embracing it.
And if such is achieved; there is no more to be done with respect to proofs and evidence. One then Just Is a Romantic Christian; and our task and destiny then becomes (as I began by saying) incrementally to become conscious of all that is unconscious; to freely choose that which is spontaneously, intrinsically, naturally true.
We can be free only when we are conscious; insofar as the unconscious affects us without our awareness then we are not free.
So secular modernity is impossible, because it is not Christian hence basically false - and evil because it is by nature and intent totalitarian (Ahrimanic); mainstream Romanticism is impossible because it is not Christian, and aims-at the unconscious, instinctive, unfree, not-grown-up (Luciferic); traditional Christianity is impossible because it relies upon the objective efficacy of words, rituals, symbols, institutions that have become subjective and ineffective. And, anyway, we cannot go back to traditional Christianity because human evolution is developmental (thus irreversible - like an adolescent cannot become a child).
The fact that secular modernity, Romanticism and Christianity are all impossible does not, of course, prove that Romantic Christianity is possible - nor does it prove that Rom Christ would be desirable. The possibility and desirability of Romantic Christianity are firmly conjectural.
We should therefore be clear that there can be no publicly compelling proof that Romantic Christianity is what we must and ought-to have. So, in principle, we can only be Romantic Christians on the basis of 'evidence' that is personal individual, and - in that sense - 'subjective'.
However, Romantic Christianity includes the assertion that genuine subjectivity (intuition from of the real and divine self) is also objective, universal and eternal (objective, that is, within constraints of our perspective, experience and capability). True subjectivity is real objectivity.
In sum; to be a Romantic Christian is a matter of primary personal conviction. Either you have this, or you do not. If you don't have it, no evidence can convince you; if do have it, no evidence can disprove your conviction.
And such conviction can only be attained by consciously seeking it, and can only be apprehended by consciously knowing it and freely embracing it.
And if such is achieved; there is no more to be done with respect to proofs and evidence. One then Just Is a Romantic Christian; and our task and destiny then becomes (as I began by saying) incrementally to become conscious of all that is unconscious; to freely choose that which is spontaneously, intrinsically, naturally true.
Jesus was nasty - and, nowadays, real Christians cannot be nice
Nearly all the nice people have long since abandoned Christianity; there are only more-or-less nasty people remaining (among whom I count myself).
Luckily, this doesn't matter - at least, nastiness doesn't matter in the ways that really matter.
Jesus was, of course - overall - a nasty person. He had his nice moments; but for the nice people he would certainly have seemed nasty. Jesus was, indeed, loathed and feared by the nice people of his era; because he upset and insulted people; he made others unhappy, miserable and afraid; he gratuitously stirred-up trouble of many kinds.
And Jesus had that defining nasty quality of not being bothered what other people thought of him.
The terrible, nowadays fatal, weakness of nice people is that they need to be regarded as nice by other people; their self-image is an internalisation of other people. Niceness is a deep conformity.
Yet here and now; our society has made it impossible for Christians to be nice; the great mass of culture has put us into a position in which to remain Christian is to be seen as nasty. Modernity has engineered multiple, sequential situations by which each Christian is 'put on the spot', where openly being Christian is regarded as nasty.
This only applies to Christians; because when those of other religions are isolated, put on the spot, and required to defend their religion - other people feel sorry for them. They are seen as victims. People from other religions are regarded as only superficially nasty, but deep-down they are always nice. Misguided, but still nice.
But people do Not feel sorry for Christians, because Christians are regarded as deep-down nasty. Therefore, Christians don't have to do anything much at all, in order to be seen as nasty.
For nice people this situation is intolerable. When put on the spot, they will capitulate - because when niceness is the core virtue, not to capitulate is nasty, in their own eyes.
Nice people therefore cannot accept that our society has become evil; that the masses are evil; that people running society, both churches and other institutions, are evil. And evil not in the usual mixed way, but strategically evil by intent. For nice people; it is just nasty to regard the Archbishop of Canterbury, the BBC, Oxford University, the European Union, the United Nations - as purposively evil.
Nice people cannot even entertain the hypothesis that these entities are evil, that our mainstream society is evil; for them, such ideas are necessarily paranoid, and ultimately therefore projected by nasty-folk: for them, to impute evil to the authorities and the masses is literally intolerable.
Such ideas are simply Not Thought. It is as-if basic-niceness is a Law of Nature, that must apply to all times and places and peoples.
It is a psychological necessity for nice people to believe that nearly everybodyand everything, everywhere is basically nice and well-motivated. Consequently, for nice people; the only true, deep, genuine nastiness is to assert that most people and institutions are corrupt and wicked, that our laws and regulations are intended to encourage evil and destroy Good.
We can say that for many earlier generations it was possible for nice people to be Christians; but that no longer applies.
Nice people cannot now be Christians. Here and now; all Christians are nasty; and any nice person that is currently Christian is destined to leave the faith, sooner or later, and probably very soon.
Which is not to say, far from it, that all nasty people are Christians! But to assert that real and solid Christians will henceforth be drawn from the population of nasties.
Thus will the Christian prophecies be fulfilled; and real Christians will be seen as an evil minority of nasty individuals; while the numerous nice Antichrists will assume the official mantle of the Christian churches, and all other species of moral leadership.
Luckily, this doesn't matter - at least, nastiness doesn't matter in the ways that really matter.
Jesus was, of course - overall - a nasty person. He had his nice moments; but for the nice people he would certainly have seemed nasty. Jesus was, indeed, loathed and feared by the nice people of his era; because he upset and insulted people; he made others unhappy, miserable and afraid; he gratuitously stirred-up trouble of many kinds.
And Jesus had that defining nasty quality of not being bothered what other people thought of him.
The terrible, nowadays fatal, weakness of nice people is that they need to be regarded as nice by other people; their self-image is an internalisation of other people. Niceness is a deep conformity.
Yet here and now; our society has made it impossible for Christians to be nice; the great mass of culture has put us into a position in which to remain Christian is to be seen as nasty. Modernity has engineered multiple, sequential situations by which each Christian is 'put on the spot', where openly being Christian is regarded as nasty.
This only applies to Christians; because when those of other religions are isolated, put on the spot, and required to defend their religion - other people feel sorry for them. They are seen as victims. People from other religions are regarded as only superficially nasty, but deep-down they are always nice. Misguided, but still nice.
But people do Not feel sorry for Christians, because Christians are regarded as deep-down nasty. Therefore, Christians don't have to do anything much at all, in order to be seen as nasty.
For nice people this situation is intolerable. When put on the spot, they will capitulate - because when niceness is the core virtue, not to capitulate is nasty, in their own eyes.
Nice people therefore cannot accept that our society has become evil; that the masses are evil; that people running society, both churches and other institutions, are evil. And evil not in the usual mixed way, but strategically evil by intent. For nice people; it is just nasty to regard the Archbishop of Canterbury, the BBC, Oxford University, the European Union, the United Nations - as purposively evil.
Nice people cannot even entertain the hypothesis that these entities are evil, that our mainstream society is evil; for them, such ideas are necessarily paranoid, and ultimately therefore projected by nasty-folk: for them, to impute evil to the authorities and the masses is literally intolerable.
Such ideas are simply Not Thought. It is as-if basic-niceness is a Law of Nature, that must apply to all times and places and peoples.
It is a psychological necessity for nice people to believe that nearly everybodyand everything, everywhere is basically nice and well-motivated. Consequently, for nice people; the only true, deep, genuine nastiness is to assert that most people and institutions are corrupt and wicked, that our laws and regulations are intended to encourage evil and destroy Good.
We can say that for many earlier generations it was possible for nice people to be Christians; but that no longer applies.
Nice people cannot now be Christians. Here and now; all Christians are nasty; and any nice person that is currently Christian is destined to leave the faith, sooner or later, and probably very soon.
Which is not to say, far from it, that all nasty people are Christians! But to assert that real and solid Christians will henceforth be drawn from the population of nasties.
Thus will the Christian prophecies be fulfilled; and real Christians will be seen as an evil minority of nasty individuals; while the numerous nice Antichrists will assume the official mantle of the Christian churches, and all other species of moral leadership.
Tuesday, 23 July 2019
Alternatives to Heaven - active and passive evil or love
'Regular Readers' will know that I have an understanding of Christianity that sees God's creation as emerging from Chaos; that God made creation from a disorder of pre-existing primordial beings, which were already and from eternity somewhat alive and conscious.
Creation therefore began with God, grew from God's work, and is a dynamic and expanding thing.
God's creation is made with love as its glue; creation 'uses' (to be materialistic) love as the attractive force that orders chaos into creation.
This is, ultimately, why Christians regard love as primary - because love is that which makes creation. Without love there is chaos.
So, creation (or Heaven) is ultimately an opt-in thing. because love is not compelled, we can only opt-into Heaven.
Creation has-been set-up, and is an ongoing project; and our primary decision is whether to join this project or not. To join the project we must share its aims. To share the aims entails joining the web of love which binds the participants, as creation continues to grow.
Love is what enables creation to be dynamic and open-ended, while not flying-apart or drifting off-course - love is what gives direction and coherence' and this love is the interpersonal love of beings.
For this to work, creation needs to be ruled by love; to be ruled by love means that the participants in creation must have chosen it - and that choice must be both freely made and irreversible.
(We must be able to assume that this is indeed possible: that part of free agency is the freedom to make irreversible commitments based on love.)
So creation is much like an ideal family - in that when a family loves one another; they can continue to hold together through time, while constantly and permanently growing and changing.
This view makes evil a very different thing from traditional Classical Christian metaphysics. For me, most evil is a form of parasitism; it is the choice to feed-off creation without making the commitment to love.
There is an alliance of evil (the devil, demons and other beings) - but ultimately this alliance is merely a temporary - because expedient - mutual exploitation. The purposes of evil are not aligned, there is no commitment to evil; there is merely a shared motivation to favour self over creation.
Different evil beings may be more selfish on the one hand, or more motivated by a negative, destructive hatred of creation.
Probably self-interest - that is 'using' creation for pleasure - is the commonest evil. But at higher levels of strategic evil there is a hatred of creation that goes beyond selfish, emotion-based hedonism in taking an abstract delight in the destruction of creation; turning creation against-itself.
I think there are two strands at work in evil (distinguishable; but not fully separable and tending to converge over time)*. There is the kind of Luciferic selfish hedonic evil that seeks not to destroy but to 'farm' creation for personal gratification. This is evil as a parasite; and insofar as it is strategic, the goal is to get as much personal pleasure as possible for as long as possible. All of creation is to be used.
But, like any parasitism, there is no real balance point between maximising the short and long term; and the innate tendency is, sooner or later, to take too much from the host (especially when competing with other parasites) over the immediate and short term; and thus 'accidentally' to destroy the host, like a cancer.
The cold hatred of Ahrimanic evil is more purely destructive. The motivation is resentment rather than pleasure; negativity rather than desires like pride, lust, greed, or sloth. For the satisfaction is in reduction.
The ultimate goal is destruction of all creation (including God); reducing it down to the level of unconscious chaos. Implicitly, the goal is to kill everybody and smash everything until one is the last conscious being; and then to kill oneself. The desire is to undo creation.
(In practice to destroy one's own consciousness; and return the universe to primordial disorder; but minus God. This may be impossible, but is the implicit ideal of the purest form of evil.)
There is, however, a third strand - another alternative to Heaven; which is Nirvana. The key to Nirvana is the obliteration of consciousness, the loss of awareness of the self. It is a total opt-out from both Heaven and selfishness in the only way possible - since being is eternal. Thus it aims at total unawareness of anything - mere simple being.
Total lack of consciousness may be impossible for eternal indestructible beings. But it seems that God can gift people a minimal, here-and-now, awareness of a blissful kind; if they are willing to commit them-selves to an impersonal, abstract and non-specific or general love of creation.
This, I take it, is what happens when Hindus or Buddhists achieve their religious goals.
I think these three - Heaven (active personal love), Evil (exploitation or destruction of creation) and Nirvana (passive abstract love) are probably the only possible alternative 'destinations' for our souls.
Love must actively be chosen - so, in this sense, evil is the 'default choice' - it is where we begin. But in another sense, we are all born-into God's creation - inside the web of love that sustains creation.
So the choice of love may be seen as simply the choice to remain where we already are, that is 'in' creation. Therefore, in another sense, evil is also chosen actively, since it involves rejecting our actually-existing situation.
In sum; for those who love, evil involves an active rejection of that love; for those who do not love, evil is the natural default choice. Since most love is personal, love is what draws us to Heaven.
*Note: Ahrimanic and Luciferic evil can also be understood in terms of Morgoth's versus Sauron's evil; according to a distinction Tolkien made in some unpublished later writings, which are quoted here.
Creation therefore began with God, grew from God's work, and is a dynamic and expanding thing.
God's creation is made with love as its glue; creation 'uses' (to be materialistic) love as the attractive force that orders chaos into creation.
This is, ultimately, why Christians regard love as primary - because love is that which makes creation. Without love there is chaos.
So, creation (or Heaven) is ultimately an opt-in thing. because love is not compelled, we can only opt-into Heaven.
Creation has-been set-up, and is an ongoing project; and our primary decision is whether to join this project or not. To join the project we must share its aims. To share the aims entails joining the web of love which binds the participants, as creation continues to grow.
Love is what enables creation to be dynamic and open-ended, while not flying-apart or drifting off-course - love is what gives direction and coherence' and this love is the interpersonal love of beings.
For this to work, creation needs to be ruled by love; to be ruled by love means that the participants in creation must have chosen it - and that choice must be both freely made and irreversible.
(We must be able to assume that this is indeed possible: that part of free agency is the freedom to make irreversible commitments based on love.)
So creation is much like an ideal family - in that when a family loves one another; they can continue to hold together through time, while constantly and permanently growing and changing.
This view makes evil a very different thing from traditional Classical Christian metaphysics. For me, most evil is a form of parasitism; it is the choice to feed-off creation without making the commitment to love.
There is an alliance of evil (the devil, demons and other beings) - but ultimately this alliance is merely a temporary - because expedient - mutual exploitation. The purposes of evil are not aligned, there is no commitment to evil; there is merely a shared motivation to favour self over creation.
Different evil beings may be more selfish on the one hand, or more motivated by a negative, destructive hatred of creation.
Probably self-interest - that is 'using' creation for pleasure - is the commonest evil. But at higher levels of strategic evil there is a hatred of creation that goes beyond selfish, emotion-based hedonism in taking an abstract delight in the destruction of creation; turning creation against-itself.
I think there are two strands at work in evil (distinguishable; but not fully separable and tending to converge over time)*. There is the kind of Luciferic selfish hedonic evil that seeks not to destroy but to 'farm' creation for personal gratification. This is evil as a parasite; and insofar as it is strategic, the goal is to get as much personal pleasure as possible for as long as possible. All of creation is to be used.
But, like any parasitism, there is no real balance point between maximising the short and long term; and the innate tendency is, sooner or later, to take too much from the host (especially when competing with other parasites) over the immediate and short term; and thus 'accidentally' to destroy the host, like a cancer.
The cold hatred of Ahrimanic evil is more purely destructive. The motivation is resentment rather than pleasure; negativity rather than desires like pride, lust, greed, or sloth. For the satisfaction is in reduction.
The ultimate goal is destruction of all creation (including God); reducing it down to the level of unconscious chaos. Implicitly, the goal is to kill everybody and smash everything until one is the last conscious being; and then to kill oneself. The desire is to undo creation.
(In practice to destroy one's own consciousness; and return the universe to primordial disorder; but minus God. This may be impossible, but is the implicit ideal of the purest form of evil.)
There is, however, a third strand - another alternative to Heaven; which is Nirvana. The key to Nirvana is the obliteration of consciousness, the loss of awareness of the self. It is a total opt-out from both Heaven and selfishness in the only way possible - since being is eternal. Thus it aims at total unawareness of anything - mere simple being.
Total lack of consciousness may be impossible for eternal indestructible beings. But it seems that God can gift people a minimal, here-and-now, awareness of a blissful kind; if they are willing to commit them-selves to an impersonal, abstract and non-specific or general love of creation.
This, I take it, is what happens when Hindus or Buddhists achieve their religious goals.
I think these three - Heaven (active personal love), Evil (exploitation or destruction of creation) and Nirvana (passive abstract love) are probably the only possible alternative 'destinations' for our souls.
Love must actively be chosen - so, in this sense, evil is the 'default choice' - it is where we begin. But in another sense, we are all born-into God's creation - inside the web of love that sustains creation.
So the choice of love may be seen as simply the choice to remain where we already are, that is 'in' creation. Therefore, in another sense, evil is also chosen actively, since it involves rejecting our actually-existing situation.
In sum; for those who love, evil involves an active rejection of that love; for those who do not love, evil is the natural default choice. Since most love is personal, love is what draws us to Heaven.
*Note: Ahrimanic and Luciferic evil can also be understood in terms of Morgoth's versus Sauron's evil; according to a distinction Tolkien made in some unpublished later writings, which are quoted here.
Monday, 22 July 2019
A (sort of) pilgrimage to Saint Julian of Norwich
I failed to visit the church and shrine of 'Lady Julian' or, St Julian (1342-1429) as she deserves to be called, in my last visit to Norwich; and regretted the fact - so this time it became a priority, and because of that element of pilgrimage, my wife and I were rewarded by a quietly sweet experience that we shall not forget.
St Julian is both a great writer, whose beautiful Middle English poetic-prose translates so much better than her contemporaries Chaucer, Langland and the Gawain poet that we feel no loss from the original; and an important ascetic mystic in the contemplative Orthodox and 'Platonic' tradition.
For me, her work communicates the same quality as Thomas Traherne - an immersion in the transcendental beauty, truth and virtue of God's love. She induces a kind of suspension of Time, a state of being; glimpses of perfection.
She lived for some decades as an 'anchorite' in a cell attached to the church which now bears her name and the site is now the place of a small, plain and tranquil chapel dedicated to her.
Outside in the churchyard, the tranquil contemplative quality still remains after 600 years.
And next door, there is a very charmingly unprofessional little room with books, cards, mementoes and a few modest refreshments that seems to have retained the spirit of the cell among its inhabitants - so little commercialism or vulgarity as to seem like a timeslip back sixty years to a more innocent age.
I find a direct and powerful appeal in the contemplative life and work of St Julian, and visiting the place reinforced this. I regard this type of spirituality as valid, but ultimately a thing from a past era of human consciousness, which we can glimpse and briefly attain and learn-from; but which we cannot sustain.
Indeed, I believe, we should not (as a generalisation) be trying to emulate the kind of life and and state-of-being that St Julian so inspiringly lived as a permanent thing; our task is different.
We can, however, experience this vicariously; and I recognise that her work has a quality of permanent value; perhaps because of the sweetness and loveliness of Julian's nature as a saintly person, which jumps across the centuries when we read her words, or think about her or her place of dwelling.
And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.
This little thing which is created seemed to me as if it could have fallen into nothing because of its littleness. We need to have knowledge of this, so that we may delight in despising as nothing everything created, so as to love and have uncreated God. For this is the reason why our hearts and souls are not in perfect ease, because here we seek rest in this thing which is so little, in which there is no rest, and we do not know our God who is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is true rest. God wishes to be known, and it pleases him that we should rest in him; for everything which is beneath him is not sufficient for us. And this is the reason why no soul is at rest until it has despised as nothing all things which are created. When it by its will has become nothing for love, to have him who is everything, then is it able to receive spiritual rest. (1st Revelation)
In middle English, in context...
In this same time our Lord shewed to me a ghostly sight of His homely loveing. I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us. He is oure clotheing, that for love wrappeth us, halsyth us, and all becloseth us for tender love, that He may never leeve us, being to us althing that is gode as to myne understondyng.
Also in this He shewed a littil thing the quantitye of an hesil nutt in the palme of my hand, and it was as round as a balle. I lokid there upon with eye of my understondyng and thowte, What may this be? And it was generally answered thus: It is all that is made. I mervellid how it might lesten, for methowte it might suddenly have fallen to nowte for littil. And I was answered in my understondyng, It lesteth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so all thing hath the being be the love of God.
In this littil thing I saw three properties: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third, that God kepith it. But what is to me sothly the maker, the keper, and the lover I canot tell, for till I am substantially onyd to Him I may never have full rest ne very blisse; that is to sey, that I be so festined to Him, that there is right nowte that is made betwix my God and me. It needyth us to have knoweing of the littlehede of creatures and to nowtyn allthing that is made for to love and howe God that is unmade.
For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of herete and soule, for we sekyn here rest in those things that is so littil, wherin is no rest, and know not our God that is al mighty, al wise, all gode; for He is the very rest. God will be knowen, and Him liketh that we rest in Him. For all that is beneth Him sufficeth not us. And this is the cause why that no soule is restid till it is nowted of all things that is made. Whan he is willfully nowtid for love, to have Him that is all, then is he abyl to receive ghostly rest.
Also our Lord God shewed that it is full gret plesance to Him that a sily soule come to Him nakidly and pleynly and homely. For this is the kinde yernings of the soule by the touching of the Holy Ghost, as be the understondyng that I have in this sheweing: "God of Thy goodnesse, give me Thyselfe, for Thou art enow to me, and I may nothing aske that is less that may be full worshippe to Thee. And if I aske anything that is lesse, ever me wantith; but only in Thee I have all."
And these words arn full lovesome to the soule, and full nere, touchen the will of God and His goodness. For His goodness comprehendith all His creatures and all His blissid works and overpassith without end. For He is the endleshede, and He hath made us only to Himselfe and restorid us be His blissid passion, and kepith us in His blissid love; and all this is of His goodness.
Virtuality versus Reality
We need a single world for the fake, virtual reality which The System of totalitarian media-bureaucracy is imposing and enforcing on us - and virtuality seems like a good word to hijack for the purpose, since it explains itself - being a condensation of virtual-reality: that manufactured and illusory world that is passively accepted by our senses as reality, familiar from the modern mass media.
The nature of our modern spiritual war is therefore one of Virtuality versus Reality. Our task in life is to distinguish the dominant, official, fashionable, and increasingly compulsory Virtuality which is lived-in by all institutions; from the eternal and universal reality that we can access as individuals who are each potentially in touch with the divine.
Reality is, in other words, nowadays only accessible by the individual prepared to stand apart, and prepared to acknowledge the reality of a divine and spiritual world. Whereas Virtuality is what modern Western people will passively absorb simply by being raised and working and functioning in society.
The great advantage of reality is that it only requires a minority of one, because each may know it directly and for himself; its great disadvantage that under current conditions it must be held despite being a minority of one, and in the teeth of universal worldly denial and condemnation - since so few are choosing it, so many and so powerful opposing it.
And the word 'choose' is accurate, because under current conditions and with Man's mind as it is; choice is mandatory - even when choice is denied. On the one hand passivity and unconsciousness lead to Virtuality, on the other hand reality is the spontaneous product of conscious and active living from one's true self - but both are chosen.
It is a feature of the modern condition that every possibility presents itself as a choice - matters that used to be regarded as brute facts - such as psychological and physical differences between men and women, or the impossibility of changing from one to the other - are now matters of choice. Matters of survival and sustained life were once regarded as fundamental, now a manufactured ephemeral virtuality of fake news, fake fashions and fake morality occupies the centre stage in the world and in most private lives.
Modern Man chooses; and has-chosen to reject facts and live by his choices: and this, multipled millionfold, is the basis of virtuality.
Anyone can choose reality at any time; but to do this he must recognise the basis and possibility of choice; and he must choose to stand alone in a very basic sense; alone in 'the world' of senses and publicly shared concepts; but in reality (which is spiritual) he is with God, and with all those who have also made the choice against virtuality and for reality.
The nature of our modern spiritual war is therefore one of Virtuality versus Reality. Our task in life is to distinguish the dominant, official, fashionable, and increasingly compulsory Virtuality which is lived-in by all institutions; from the eternal and universal reality that we can access as individuals who are each potentially in touch with the divine.
Reality is, in other words, nowadays only accessible by the individual prepared to stand apart, and prepared to acknowledge the reality of a divine and spiritual world. Whereas Virtuality is what modern Western people will passively absorb simply by being raised and working and functioning in society.
The great advantage of reality is that it only requires a minority of one, because each may know it directly and for himself; its great disadvantage that under current conditions it must be held despite being a minority of one, and in the teeth of universal worldly denial and condemnation - since so few are choosing it, so many and so powerful opposing it.
And the word 'choose' is accurate, because under current conditions and with Man's mind as it is; choice is mandatory - even when choice is denied. On the one hand passivity and unconsciousness lead to Virtuality, on the other hand reality is the spontaneous product of conscious and active living from one's true self - but both are chosen.
It is a feature of the modern condition that every possibility presents itself as a choice - matters that used to be regarded as brute facts - such as psychological and physical differences between men and women, or the impossibility of changing from one to the other - are now matters of choice. Matters of survival and sustained life were once regarded as fundamental, now a manufactured ephemeral virtuality of fake news, fake fashions and fake morality occupies the centre stage in the world and in most private lives.
Modern Man chooses; and has-chosen to reject facts and live by his choices: and this, multipled millionfold, is the basis of virtuality.
Anyone can choose reality at any time; but to do this he must recognise the basis and possibility of choice; and he must choose to stand alone in a very basic sense; alone in 'the world' of senses and publicly shared concepts; but in reality (which is spiritual) he is with God, and with all those who have also made the choice against virtuality and for reality.
Sunday, 21 July 2019
Heaven should be our primary concern: Jesus's Main message is his offer of everlasting/ eternal life
What is the main thing that Jesus taught? The answer from the Fourth Gospel (the most authoritative scripture) is that he brought the possibility of everlasting or eternal life; by which Jesus meant our immortal resurrection to life in Heaven.
In brief, the core of Christianity ought to be knowledge of Heaven, and the implications of this knowledge for this mortal life (including what we need to do if we want immortal Heavenly life for ourselves).
In support of this; I have collected the verses that specifically reference everlasting and eternal life in the Fourth Gospel.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.
And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
The essential teaching is summarised in the final verse of Chapter 20, ending the Gospel proper: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
In brief, the core of Christianity ought to be knowledge of Heaven, and the implications of this knowledge for this mortal life (including what we need to do if we want immortal Heavenly life for ourselves).
In support of this; I have collected the verses that specifically reference everlasting and eternal life in the Fourth Gospel.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.
And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.
And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
The essential teaching is summarised in the final verse of Chapter 20, ending the Gospel proper: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
The Anglican shrine at Walsingham - a visit
Inside the Holy House
Walsingham, with its shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary - grew from Anglo-Saxon origins to become the premier pilgrimage site in England during the later Middle Ages; before it was destroyed by Henry VIII in the Dissolution of the Monasteries (he had himself, with his wife, made the pilgrimage as a younger man).
Walsingham was revived by Anglo-Catholics as an Anglican shrine from the 1920s (and also has a Roman Catholic shrine from around the same time). As we were nearby, my family decided to visit the place and take a look. (We did not have time to visit the Roman Catholic shrine.)
This wasn't a pilgrimage; but simply driven by a curiosity derived from the period when I frequently attended the Little Mass in an Anglo Catholic church, and heard about their annual bus trips to Walsingham.
Well, somewhat to our surprise, we liked it very much! There is a small enclosed area with a museum and garden, with stations of the cross leading to an outdoor altar. And there is a chapel and the main church, which is built around a 'replica' representing the Holy House where Mary was met by Gabriel and Jesus was conceived.
These grounds have a powerful tranquillity about them - to step inside is like entering a 'bubble' of calm.
The surrounding small church is decorated with a wonderful and astonishing richness and colour; with a stunning density (for such a recent building) of stained glass, many statues, wood carving, murals, relics, stones from (destroyed) ancient monasteries, a holy well and font, plaques, tombs with carved representations, ornate lettering - and many tiny chapels.
I found it wholly delightful. I am very fond of the architecture of Gothic revival buildings, especially those with a Romantic vision of the Medieval era (such as the chapels at Worcester College, Oxford; or the castle at Lindisfarne; or Walter Scott's house at Abbotsford) - and this was perhaps the best of any I have encountered.
It was charming and eccentric; but also permeated by religious enthusiasm. I would term its building, elaboration, attention to detail and continued maintenance a literal 'labour of love'.
I don't have any very general conclusions as to the 'implications' of my experience; but would simply say that it is well worth a visit, and demonstrates that there was a powerful and active Catholic tradition within the Church of England over the past century and until fairly recently.
What should be the basis of sexual morality (for grown-up adults)
Continuing from yesterday's post on the psychological corruptions of the sexual revolution; I need to move on to the matter of the source of our sexual morality.
There is (as CS Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man, where he called it the Tao) a large agreement in traditional societies about the nature of morality. Nonetheless, there are some distinctively Christian aspects; and anyway traditionalist arguments have lost their power to persuade; and indeed become inverted into exemplars of oppression. Similarly, all external sources of morality have long-since been subverted by the utilitarian this-worldly evaluation system of modern societies.
Therefore, morality can now come only from within; that is, we need to know intuitively the nature of morality from our deepest intuitions, from that true self which is divine by virtue of each being a child of God*.
In other words, our morality can come only after our religion or theology, and on the basis of our knowing that there is God the creator, and that God is loving and we are familially linked with God; and may choose to accept Jesus's offer of eternal resurrected life and join with God in the 'work of creation'.
Creation is the key. Everything that is part of creation is 'joined' by loving relations; and can be understood as something like an ongoing state of flow and development. It can be imagined as something like a web of relationships, moving through time, developing and changing; but held together by the web of attracting love between the individuals who choose to be part of it.
This joining is meant to be a choice (not merely something unconsciously taken for granted from social conditioning), inded Just Is a choice - therefore Christian morality is ultimately justifiable 'only' for Christians.
But for Christians; we have consciously made a choice to join, after our deaths, with the existing family of God in the work of creation; our morality, or 'how to behave' will flow from this knowledge and choice.
A Christian will know, not just theoretically but as a matter of experience, how the universe has been set-up, what it is for, how it is supposed to 'go'.
Therefore; any Christian can know, from inner apprehension, everything he needs to know about morality - but this knowledge will Not be in the form of laws or principle or commands - but will be a knowledge based on how creation is meant to go and our specific and personal experiences.
Morality is a word for that which conduces to loving creation as a whole, and through eternity.
Of course, as finite and mortal individuals we can know only a (small, distorted) part of this, from a particular perspective - and we are prone to error. Nonetheless, we can know the fact of our limitation and we can also know when we have erred; because will will perceive our increasing divergence from loving creation.
Since creation is ongoing in time, any error or falsehood will tend to point us off to one side and away from creation. It is our love that lets us know when we are wrong about morality, when our understanding or choice is leading us away from creation.
This divergence can be set right by repentance; and indeed must be set right by repentance else we will be led increasingly away from the 'web of love'.
In sum; as Christians who have chosen to ally our-selves with God in the work of ongoing creation; we each, as individuals, can know sexual morality as we can know any other form of morality.
But there is a special relevance to sexual morality precisely because it is linked so closely to the matter of familial relations, which are the basis of creation.
Creation is held-together in a familial way - and sex is closely related to family relations - both biologically in earthly mortal life; but also spiritually and ultimately. Especially obviously this is so when we consider matters 'eternally' and begin to recognise the nature of the manyfold links of love in the web in ever-developing creation.
We may or may not be able to 'predict' what is a sin in advance of doing it; but we will know what is a sin from our inner experience if we have done it; and we will know this by its effect on that ongoing web of loving relations that constitutes creation... we will experience an increasing divergence from loving creation: we will experience a diminution of love in our own life.
* Note - In this post I am talking about the morality of spiritually grown-up adults, to which they should graduate if ever they emerge from adolescence (most do not). For children, traditional, external sources of authority are still required.
There is (as CS Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man, where he called it the Tao) a large agreement in traditional societies about the nature of morality. Nonetheless, there are some distinctively Christian aspects; and anyway traditionalist arguments have lost their power to persuade; and indeed become inverted into exemplars of oppression. Similarly, all external sources of morality have long-since been subverted by the utilitarian this-worldly evaluation system of modern societies.
Therefore, morality can now come only from within; that is, we need to know intuitively the nature of morality from our deepest intuitions, from that true self which is divine by virtue of each being a child of God*.
In other words, our morality can come only after our religion or theology, and on the basis of our knowing that there is God the creator, and that God is loving and we are familially linked with God; and may choose to accept Jesus's offer of eternal resurrected life and join with God in the 'work of creation'.
Creation is the key. Everything that is part of creation is 'joined' by loving relations; and can be understood as something like an ongoing state of flow and development. It can be imagined as something like a web of relationships, moving through time, developing and changing; but held together by the web of attracting love between the individuals who choose to be part of it.
This joining is meant to be a choice (not merely something unconsciously taken for granted from social conditioning), inded Just Is a choice - therefore Christian morality is ultimately justifiable 'only' for Christians.
But for Christians; we have consciously made a choice to join, after our deaths, with the existing family of God in the work of creation; our morality, or 'how to behave' will flow from this knowledge and choice.
A Christian will know, not just theoretically but as a matter of experience, how the universe has been set-up, what it is for, how it is supposed to 'go'.
Therefore; any Christian can know, from inner apprehension, everything he needs to know about morality - but this knowledge will Not be in the form of laws or principle or commands - but will be a knowledge based on how creation is meant to go and our specific and personal experiences.
Morality is a word for that which conduces to loving creation as a whole, and through eternity.
Of course, as finite and mortal individuals we can know only a (small, distorted) part of this, from a particular perspective - and we are prone to error. Nonetheless, we can know the fact of our limitation and we can also know when we have erred; because will will perceive our increasing divergence from loving creation.
Since creation is ongoing in time, any error or falsehood will tend to point us off to one side and away from creation. It is our love that lets us know when we are wrong about morality, when our understanding or choice is leading us away from creation.
This divergence can be set right by repentance; and indeed must be set right by repentance else we will be led increasingly away from the 'web of love'.
In sum; as Christians who have chosen to ally our-selves with God in the work of ongoing creation; we each, as individuals, can know sexual morality as we can know any other form of morality.
But there is a special relevance to sexual morality precisely because it is linked so closely to the matter of familial relations, which are the basis of creation.
Creation is held-together in a familial way - and sex is closely related to family relations - both biologically in earthly mortal life; but also spiritually and ultimately. Especially obviously this is so when we consider matters 'eternally' and begin to recognise the nature of the manyfold links of love in the web in ever-developing creation.
We may or may not be able to 'predict' what is a sin in advance of doing it; but we will know what is a sin from our inner experience if we have done it; and we will know this by its effect on that ongoing web of loving relations that constitutes creation... we will experience an increasing divergence from loving creation: we will experience a diminution of love in our own life.
* Note - In this post I am talking about the morality of spiritually grown-up adults, to which they should graduate if ever they emerge from adolescence (most do not). For children, traditional, external sources of authority are still required.
Saturday, 20 July 2019
The psychological mechanisms by which the sexual revolution corrupts people
The wonderfully articulate and interesting Roman Catholic, and Thomistic philosopher, Ed Feser has written a very valuable blog post about the psychological mechanisms by which sexual revolution has broadly corrupting effects- drawing substantially on the insights of Aquinas.
Many of these observations ring true, and indeed I have often witnessed the way in which unrepented sexual sin has a very generally destructive effect on morality. It is, indeed, so common as to be normal in recent decades.
This helps us to understand the synergy between the sexual revolution and Leftism: since the middle 1960s, Leftism has promoted the sexual revolution as perhaps its primary weapon, and those who have most avidly embraced the sexual revolution in their own lives, tend to become the craziest (most irrational and aggressive) Leftists.
Read the whole thing - but here is a sample:
Aquinas notes that “lust…is about the greatest of pleasures; and these absorb the mind more than any others.” Sexual pleasure is like the pleasure of alcohol use in being perfectly innocent in itself, but also very easy to abuse.
Hence, even in someone with otherwise normal sexual desires, a preoccupation with matters of sex has a tendency to cause him to act foolishly in various ways – to exaggerate the importance of sex, to pursue it in ways that are detrimental to his own well-being and that of people who depend on him, to construct rationalizations for such foolish pursuit, and so forth.
In someone with abnormal sexual desires, the effect is even worse. For what determines the good use of a human faculty is the end or purpose toward which it is directed by nature. Hence a healthy moral psychology requires a firm intuitive grasp of what is natural and what is contrary to nature’s purposes.
Repeatedly taking sexual pleasure in activity that is directly contrary to nature’s ends dulls the intellect’s perception of nature, to the point that the very idea that some things are contrary to the natural order loses its hold upon the mind. The intellect thereby loses its grip on moral reality.
Note: This links in my mind with the way that systematic perverse sexual initiation practices have, apparently, been used to create and sustain a politically leftist, upper class, secret combination within the evangelical wing of the Church of England; which - by its control of appointments and promotions; by blackmail and bribes - has engineered the corruption of Anglicanism from the top. If you wondered why such an incompetent, lying mediocrity as Justin Welby effortlessly became the Archbishop of Canterbury, you need wonder no more...
Many of these observations ring true, and indeed I have often witnessed the way in which unrepented sexual sin has a very generally destructive effect on morality. It is, indeed, so common as to be normal in recent decades.
This helps us to understand the synergy between the sexual revolution and Leftism: since the middle 1960s, Leftism has promoted the sexual revolution as perhaps its primary weapon, and those who have most avidly embraced the sexual revolution in their own lives, tend to become the craziest (most irrational and aggressive) Leftists.
Read the whole thing - but here is a sample:
Aquinas notes that “lust…is about the greatest of pleasures; and these absorb the mind more than any others.” Sexual pleasure is like the pleasure of alcohol use in being perfectly innocent in itself, but also very easy to abuse.
Hence, even in someone with otherwise normal sexual desires, a preoccupation with matters of sex has a tendency to cause him to act foolishly in various ways – to exaggerate the importance of sex, to pursue it in ways that are detrimental to his own well-being and that of people who depend on him, to construct rationalizations for such foolish pursuit, and so forth.
In someone with abnormal sexual desires, the effect is even worse. For what determines the good use of a human faculty is the end or purpose toward which it is directed by nature. Hence a healthy moral psychology requires a firm intuitive grasp of what is natural and what is contrary to nature’s purposes.
Repeatedly taking sexual pleasure in activity that is directly contrary to nature’s ends dulls the intellect’s perception of nature, to the point that the very idea that some things are contrary to the natural order loses its hold upon the mind. The intellect thereby loses its grip on moral reality.
Note: This links in my mind with the way that systematic perverse sexual initiation practices have, apparently, been used to create and sustain a politically leftist, upper class, secret combination within the evangelical wing of the Church of England; which - by its control of appointments and promotions; by blackmail and bribes - has engineered the corruption of Anglicanism from the top. If you wondered why such an incompetent, lying mediocrity as Justin Welby effortlessly became the Archbishop of Canterbury, you need wonder no more...
Friday, 19 July 2019
What is true about anarchism?
There was a period in my early adulthood when I tried to 'be' an anarchist. Somehow it seemed to me the only coherent way to formulate my radicalism. I had begun as a socialist, but could not make sense of any of its variants, and anarchism was the purest and most extreme version I could imagine, so I took it to that level and had nowhere further to move.
Yet on the other hand, the political formulations of anarchism were nonsensical and extremely dull! And attracted some of the worst of characters.
Yet again, something drew me to something about the idea. I discovered what this was when, as an evolutionary psychologist, I studied the information about human ancestors. That they were believed to be simple, immediate return, nonpolitical, animistic hunter gatherers - spontaneous anarchists.
Such societies lacked politics because they relied on the spontaneous organization of the extended family.
I recognized that much of our alienation and angst was due to us having been "designed" for this anarchistic life.
The picture was amplified by recognising, from Owen Barfield, that 'animism' was actually original participation; when we were immersed in the spiritual world of the Gods.
This provides the answer, I think. Anarchism is an Ahrimanic materialist distortion of the abstracted politics of the spiritual (romantic) hunter gatherer life we instinctively crave.
But what we actually Need, since consciousness has evolved and history is irreversible, is final participation by which we consciously choose that which was spontaneous and involuntary. We return to the spiritual world in thinking.
Such reasoning seems to entail that a return to simple familial forms is desirable and should be chosen - it may also tend (over time, incrementally) to be imposed by the collapse of civilization.
Yet on the other hand, the political formulations of anarchism were nonsensical and extremely dull! And attracted some of the worst of characters.
Yet again, something drew me to something about the idea. I discovered what this was when, as an evolutionary psychologist, I studied the information about human ancestors. That they were believed to be simple, immediate return, nonpolitical, animistic hunter gatherers - spontaneous anarchists.
Such societies lacked politics because they relied on the spontaneous organization of the extended family.
I recognized that much of our alienation and angst was due to us having been "designed" for this anarchistic life.
The picture was amplified by recognising, from Owen Barfield, that 'animism' was actually original participation; when we were immersed in the spiritual world of the Gods.
This provides the answer, I think. Anarchism is an Ahrimanic materialist distortion of the abstracted politics of the spiritual (romantic) hunter gatherer life we instinctively crave.
But what we actually Need, since consciousness has evolved and history is irreversible, is final participation by which we consciously choose that which was spontaneous and involuntary. We return to the spiritual world in thinking.
Such reasoning seems to entail that a return to simple familial forms is desirable and should be chosen - it may also tend (over time, incrementally) to be imposed by the collapse of civilization.
Thursday, 18 July 2019
Faith is needed for objective understanding
Faith is usually understood to mean something like wishful thinking - "It is so because I want it so"... Faith is contrasted with objective understanding.
But the opposite is true - faith is Necessary for objective understanding. Since this world was created by God, we can understand it only by seeing it from God's perspective, rather than from any of the hypothetical perspectives that did Not lead to creation.
For example, many people see the world from their own perspective, as if the world was, or should be, designed to make them constantly happy.
Others, in the mass media for instance, depict the world from a demonic perspective; a world of predators and prey, exploiters and exploited...
But if this actually is a created world, made by a God who loves us - then these and other alternatives are objectively wrong.
Faith is a felt acknowledgement of God's love, and it leads to understanding because we can empathically identify with God's perspective, we can personally know what kind of things God would and wouldn't be aiming-at.
This is possible because there is something of God in each of us, something divine; because we are God's children - and we have divinity by inheritance.
This can be called an inner guidance system, or conceptualized as the way in which we each may share in the divine understanding, the True understanding of reality.
But the opposite is true - faith is Necessary for objective understanding. Since this world was created by God, we can understand it only by seeing it from God's perspective, rather than from any of the hypothetical perspectives that did Not lead to creation.
For example, many people see the world from their own perspective, as if the world was, or should be, designed to make them constantly happy.
Others, in the mass media for instance, depict the world from a demonic perspective; a world of predators and prey, exploiters and exploited...
But if this actually is a created world, made by a God who loves us - then these and other alternatives are objectively wrong.
Faith is a felt acknowledgement of God's love, and it leads to understanding because we can empathically identify with God's perspective, we can personally know what kind of things God would and wouldn't be aiming-at.
This is possible because there is something of God in each of us, something divine; because we are God's children - and we have divinity by inheritance.
This can be called an inner guidance system, or conceptualized as the way in which we each may share in the divine understanding, the True understanding of reality.
Monday, 15 July 2019
To decline/ reject Christianity is to render Life futile
If it is correct to say, as I do, that this mortal life was created for a reason; then if that reason is rejected, it must tend to render our life futile.
So, there is a choice. We are not compelled, but need actively to choose the post-mortal Heavenly and eternal life that Jesus made possible for us. And since that is a positive choice, it is not-irrational to reject Heaven.
Yet to live in a world, to live a life, that is Designed for our personal education aimed at Heaven; yet to decline the offer of Heaven, does mean that our mortal life has been pointless, in an ultimate sense.
It would be like spending one's entire life at medical school while determined never to become a doctor. To train as a marathon runner for decades, yet never run a marathon. To practise scales and arpeggios on the piano, yet never play a tune.
That is, indeed, the situation for the billions of people who now live and have-lived mortal lives; while declining to accept the gift of Jesus.
If such people are theists, they will (I think) move on to something much like their religions describe - Nirvana, paradise, unconsciousness...
(If they have mistaken the purpose of this world, their lives will be structured according to that mistake. As if they were actually at medical school, but believed they were being trained as a lawyer....)
But mortal incarnated life on earth - This Life - is not a necessary experience for the attainment of any of these not-Christian religious objectives.
Non-Christian religious might as well have gone straight to that state, without living-through this Life. Entering Nirvana, or paradise, does not require a prior mortal life - you might as well be born there.
If you do Not want to become a doctor, it is pointless to spend your life at medical school - training for a profession you have no intention ever of practising.
(This is what I mean about this Life being futile if Jesus's gift is rejected.)
As for those who are atheists, those who deny that this World was created and deny it has a purpose... they are objectively insane. Incoherently delusional; with disorganised thinking and a purely subjective understanding of reality; because without creation all meaning is personal and arbitrary: That is all that is possible, That has been chosen.
Atheists are at medical school, but deny the reality, even the possibility, of becoming a doctor. Their lives are not just futile but crazy, since they necessarily, by assumption, experience all educational experience as arbitrary torment or random pleasure.
So, there is a choice. We are not compelled, but need actively to choose the post-mortal Heavenly and eternal life that Jesus made possible for us. And since that is a positive choice, it is not-irrational to reject Heaven.
Yet to live in a world, to live a life, that is Designed for our personal education aimed at Heaven; yet to decline the offer of Heaven, does mean that our mortal life has been pointless, in an ultimate sense.
It would be like spending one's entire life at medical school while determined never to become a doctor. To train as a marathon runner for decades, yet never run a marathon. To practise scales and arpeggios on the piano, yet never play a tune.
That is, indeed, the situation for the billions of people who now live and have-lived mortal lives; while declining to accept the gift of Jesus.
If such people are theists, they will (I think) move on to something much like their religions describe - Nirvana, paradise, unconsciousness...
(If they have mistaken the purpose of this world, their lives will be structured according to that mistake. As if they were actually at medical school, but believed they were being trained as a lawyer....)
But mortal incarnated life on earth - This Life - is not a necessary experience for the attainment of any of these not-Christian religious objectives.
Non-Christian religious might as well have gone straight to that state, without living-through this Life. Entering Nirvana, or paradise, does not require a prior mortal life - you might as well be born there.
If you do Not want to become a doctor, it is pointless to spend your life at medical school - training for a profession you have no intention ever of practising.
(This is what I mean about this Life being futile if Jesus's gift is rejected.)
As for those who are atheists, those who deny that this World was created and deny it has a purpose... they are objectively insane. Incoherently delusional; with disorganised thinking and a purely subjective understanding of reality; because without creation all meaning is personal and arbitrary: That is all that is possible, That has been chosen.
Atheists are at medical school, but deny the reality, even the possibility, of becoming a doctor. Their lives are not just futile but crazy, since they necessarily, by assumption, experience all educational experience as arbitrary torment or random pleasure.
Sunday, 14 July 2019
Making sense of Jesus - what for and how?
The New Testament is trying to make sense of Jesus, and all would-be Christians need to do the same.
First, they need to understand why God the prime creator could not do what Jesus did -- why Jesus was necessary.
But immediately this raises the question of what Jesus did. What aspect of Jesus is central?
This took me a good while to settle to my satisfaction, indeed it is only in the past year or so that I have, from reading the Fourth Gospel 'in isolation '.
This clarified that the main thing Jesus did was to be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven. Jesus was necessary because God the creator could not do this.
And because Jesus was divine before he did this,we can, if we love and trust him, follow Jesus through our own deaths into resurrected eternal life.
There are many other different, and indeed contradicting, theories of what Jesus did and why he was necessary, in other parts of the Gospels and Epistles, and in different past and present denominations; but I regard the Fourth Gospel as the real and true explanation.
Yet it seems by far the least known, least considered of canonical Biblical explanations; which I can only regard as a major historical tragedy.
Note. This was brought to mind by CS Lewis discussing Jesus in terms of the myth of a dying god, a sacrificed god. But that is Not the myth. Jesus was not a sacrifice, nor did he stay dead. Jesus was not a propitiation, because the creator does not want to be propitiated, nor need it. Jesus's life was a positive gift to all the children of God - his brothers and sisters; an offer of Heavenly eternal life which we may accept or reject.
First, they need to understand why God the prime creator could not do what Jesus did -- why Jesus was necessary.
But immediately this raises the question of what Jesus did. What aspect of Jesus is central?
This took me a good while to settle to my satisfaction, indeed it is only in the past year or so that I have, from reading the Fourth Gospel 'in isolation '.
This clarified that the main thing Jesus did was to be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven. Jesus was necessary because God the creator could not do this.
And because Jesus was divine before he did this,we can, if we love and trust him, follow Jesus through our own deaths into resurrected eternal life.
There are many other different, and indeed contradicting, theories of what Jesus did and why he was necessary, in other parts of the Gospels and Epistles, and in different past and present denominations; but I regard the Fourth Gospel as the real and true explanation.
Yet it seems by far the least known, least considered of canonical Biblical explanations; which I can only regard as a major historical tragedy.
Note. This was brought to mind by CS Lewis discussing Jesus in terms of the myth of a dying god, a sacrificed god. But that is Not the myth. Jesus was not a sacrifice, nor did he stay dead. Jesus was not a propitiation, because the creator does not want to be propitiated, nor need it. Jesus's life was a positive gift to all the children of God - his brothers and sisters; an offer of Heavenly eternal life which we may accept or reject.
Loving God as person/s or abstractions
When God is known as a person who has made and is making creation, we can love him or not; and that is the same kind of love we may know from family experience.
But if God is abstractly understood in terms of 'properties' then loving is unnatural. Either we need to posit some different kind of love (agape...) or we tend towards worship rather than love.
Because of Jesus, Christians ought to know God as a person. But historically this was overwritten by abstract definitions of deity, that were enforced as primary.
Endorsing abstract descriptions was made more important than knowing and loving God as a person. Worship and obedience were made more important than familial commitment.
The malign influence of intellectuals seems evident in a disdainful rejection of the childishness of God as an actual person. The demands of political control seem dominant in the demand for a worship utterly alien to a good and loving family.
Reality really is very simple, childishly simple - Get Over It!
But if God is abstractly understood in terms of 'properties' then loving is unnatural. Either we need to posit some different kind of love (agape...) or we tend towards worship rather than love.
Because of Jesus, Christians ought to know God as a person. But historically this was overwritten by abstract definitions of deity, that were enforced as primary.
Endorsing abstract descriptions was made more important than knowing and loving God as a person. Worship and obedience were made more important than familial commitment.
The malign influence of intellectuals seems evident in a disdainful rejection of the childishness of God as an actual person. The demands of political control seem dominant in the demand for a worship utterly alien to a good and loving family.
Reality really is very simple, childishly simple - Get Over It!
- Note: The above view, although true, does make difficulties for modern people in explaining creation, since most people think of creation using impersonal, scientific, abstract 'processes'. Thus being a Christian implies adopting a view of ultimate creation as being also childish, primitive, mythic - simplistic with more obvious simplicity than the obscurities of abstraction.
Why we need to be consciously and explicitly pro-God
We can only Join Heaven, because it is not a place or a state of mind but a creative endeavour. To be in Heaven is to be joined in this creative endeavour... Which means pointed in the right direction, together.
We each have our inner guidance system. Ultimately, these can only be aligned by love. Love is what binds us and creation is the project.
Creation is the direction of Heaven - so Heaven entails the reality of time (linear, sequential, irreversible).
In a world in which, increasingly, opposition to Heaven is both explicit and systematic; there needs to be an explicit (inner) embrace of the goal of eternal creation and family.
Explicit evil, directed against Good, requires an explicit (self conscious) rejection... and then what?
Rejection needs to be followed by consciously chosen affiliation to the project of Heaven - That is the direction. We need to turn in That direction, and to take steps aiming at it.
Albeit we cannot clearly see the destination and there will be stumbles, zig zags, blind ends. But when we know the reality of inner guidance, love, creation and have Chosen that direction, and Know we have chosen it; it will suffice as a basis for living.
And then we can get on with it.
We each have our inner guidance system. Ultimately, these can only be aligned by love. Love is what binds us and creation is the project.
Creation is the direction of Heaven - so Heaven entails the reality of time (linear, sequential, irreversible).
In a world in which, increasingly, opposition to Heaven is both explicit and systematic; there needs to be an explicit (inner) embrace of the goal of eternal creation and family.
Explicit evil, directed against Good, requires an explicit (self conscious) rejection... and then what?
Rejection needs to be followed by consciously chosen affiliation to the project of Heaven - That is the direction. We need to turn in That direction, and to take steps aiming at it.
Albeit we cannot clearly see the destination and there will be stumbles, zig zags, blind ends. But when we know the reality of inner guidance, love, creation and have Chosen that direction, and Know we have chosen it; it will suffice as a basis for living.
And then we can get on with it.
Friday, 12 July 2019
William Arkle and the secret of living (Romantic Christianity)
Backwell Hill House, where William Arkle and family, friends and many animals lived in the 1970s - an ex-Claretian novitaite house, the former chapel can be seen as the tent-shaped structure on the left
I first encountered William Arkle in 1977, in the context of a thirty minute documentary on his life and work broadcast by our local BBC television company. I can remember very little about it; but it evoked in me a suspicion or hope that Arkle was someone who actually lived the kind of life I personally (you may, of course disagree!) regarded as near-ideal.
When I found a copy of A Geography of Consciousness later in the year, this was confirmed for me by Colin Wilson's introduction* - clearly CW (who knew Arkle as a friend) was fascinated by Arkle's 'success' in actually living his life in a 'higher state of consciousness'. Arkle (to a significant, albeit not fully or perfectly) succeeded in Doing what Wilson could only write about.
This I take as the fact on which I proceed, my starting-point. For Me, over a span of more than forty years, William Arkle has been a very rare example of living life in the kind of way (qualitatively distinct, but not as flawless or perfection) that I believe life ought to be lived, and which I aspire to live. My interest here is my failure honestly to understand the basis of Arkle's success.
Because, in trying to learn from Arkle, however; it seems that both myself and Colin Wilson made the same mistake - which was, quite simply, leaving-out God.
For Arkle - at the centre of his 'system' was God, God the creator, and furthermore a creator who was our loving Father. Arkle's 'Romantic' system was built around this core; yet I wanted Arkle's success in living but without Arkle's God.
I (like Colin Wilson) implicitly regarded Arkle's God as just wishful thinking; as a God he had invented to aperfom a function he wanted performed in his belief system. Having disposed of Arkle's God, which - being unreal - could clearly have no necessary role in Arkle's life; I then proceeded to try and learn fro the rest of Arkle's system.
In effect, I was hoping to get the benefits of living in the successful way that I regarded Arkle as having achieved; while eliminating the source and core of Arkle's system - which was God (I ruled-out God in general, except for 'deity' conceptualised in the most abstract and impersonal way; as well as regarding as rather silly and pitiful God in the particular 'loving Father' understanding of Arkle).
In a nutshell, I wanted Romanticism without God; and it led me in the same direction as those many others who have sought Romanticism without God from the days of Byron and Shelley to contemporary examples of Romantics such as Woody Allen or Francois Truffaut. Or, in a much more positive way, Colin Wilson himself.
For 200 years our culture has been full of examples of people who (apparently sincerely) espouse the Romantic life, but are unable to live it; people who can research and talk about Romantic themes; but who live (in their consciousness, in their souls) much like everybody else and often-enough live worse.
So myself, Colin Wilson and many others wanted Romanticism, but did not believe that God was real - and we did not achieve Romanticism in actual living. Meanwhile there were examples such as Arkle or William Blake of people who did achieve Romanticism in actual living; 'yet' apparently insisted on basing it upon Romantic conceptions of God that struck me as obviously 'made-up'.
My understanding of this phenomenon is that those who seek Romanticism are those afflicted by alienation; by the modern sense of feeling cut off from life, and who are plagued by a sense of meaninglessness, lack of a purpose that fulfils our creativity and also unites ourselves with other and the world.
Like many/ most modern people from adolescence onwards; we begin with the assumption that there is no God, never was a God; and that all talk of personal Gods who care about us is either delusionally-pitiful wishful thinking; or else a dishonest means of manipulating others.
And we do not 'notice' that (by eliminating all possibility of the reality of God, and in particular the kind of God that Arkle speaks-of) we have already made assumptions that inevitably will ensure that our lives will fail. And fail by the very criteria we ourselves have chosen.
(Not everybody will share my feeling about Arkle's success in living - this makes no difference to my point. My point is that despite Arkle's being my own idea of a successful life; I nonetheless failed to 'notice' that God was necessarily central to it. I unthinkingly, arrogantly, supposed that I could have the superstructure without the foundations!)
It was not until I first allowed the possibility of God, then the possibility of Arkle's concept of God; that I could proceed to seek whether or not this was in reality true. Then I discovered that it was true.
Only now can I really understand Arkle 'from the inside', in a way which explains the primary cause of my long-term interest in him. Only now can I benefit from his example; in changing my own life for the better.
It turns-out that successfully-lived Romanticism requires God; furthermore it requires the kind of personal God that Arkle knew; and it turns-out that this God is real.
It turns-out that in practice Romantic Christianity is the only Romanticism. Arkle has been telling me this for decades - but only recently have I been willing to hear him.
*An excerpt from Colin Wilson's Introduction to A Geography of Consciousness:
I would place the author of this book among the half dozen most remarkable men I have ever met – and I suppose this would include some of the most eminent writers and thinkers of our time. This book which I am introducing is not an easy one; I suppose I may as well be frank and say that in parts it is extremely tough going. But I think it is an important book, and my aim in this introduction is to clear away some of the difficulties.
Let me speak first of the author, William Arkle. Like most writers, I receive a fair amount of correspondence from strangers. And since I write about questions of human evolution and the nature of human consciousness, many of these are from occultists and people with theories about how man can become a god overnight. Very often, the writers send me manuscripts and explain indignantly that publishers are too materialistic to understand the importance of their work.
But it is usually pretty easy to see why publishers are not interested. The manuscripts are often full of important ideas; but they are never properly thought-out, with consideration for the reader. And I always find myself reflecting that it is a pity that the intelligent people are so often egocentric and lacking in self-criticism, while the sane, decent, healthy people are so often mediocrities. There are very seldom exceptions to this rule.
In 1960, William Arkle sent me a reproduction of one of his paintings, and it was certainly a striking painting; it was an abstract, geometrical sort of landscape with abstract human figures, a little like Wyndham Lewis’s. The colours were all very light, yellows and greens and reds. But although it was striking, it was not, in the last analysis, a good picture.
It is hard to explain this except to say that in spite of its abstract nature, it lacked real complexity. The letter that accompanied it talked about spiritual values and so on, and it was clear that this is what the picture intended to express.
Arkle lived in Bristol, and he invited me to call and see him if I ever came through. I seem to remember that I assumed he was probably a man in his fifties. My guess was that he had probably started life in the Church of England, tried a few evangelical sects, and ended up by producing some occult religion of his own. In 1961, my wife and I were driving to Blackpool to the Long Playing Record Festival, and it seemed a good opportunity to call on the Arkles.
So we found our way – after some difficulty – to a large house in Royal York Crescent, with a fine view over the valley. And we were met by a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties, with a clean cut face of the Charlton Heston type and a lock of hair on his forehead that made him resemble that Sargeant drawing of Yeats that can be found in the Collected Plays. I was introduced to his wife Elizabeth, who did not look in the least dreamy or mystical; in fact, she looked one of those cheerful, healthy girls that Shaw put into early plays. I was not surprised to learn she loved horses.
The enormous house belonged to them, and I discovered that they made a living by buying houses, re-decorating them themselves, and then letting them as flats. It seemed fairly strenuous work for a visionary, but apparently it solved the basic problem of making a living. And neither was I surprised to learn that he had been an engineer and served in the navy towards the end of the war. There was something about him that suggested that he was not one of these subjective, egocentric people who find the practical work unbearable.
I asked him some years ago for a biographical sketch, and I may as well quote what he sent me: ‘Born 1924. After school, trained in engineering for the navy. After demobilisation, I had a strong urge to go to Art school which I did for two years. But I did not finish the course as I felt strongly that the attitudes to painting that I was being taught were not right for me. ‘My first marriage broke up as I left Art school. I was reading a lot of mysticism and esotericism generally and developing meditation and the ability to tune my nature, as it were …’
Later in the same letter, he says: ‘I married Elizabeth about 1952 (it is typical of him not to be sure of the date – he wrote 1953 and then changed it) and this helped me to integrate properly with ordinary life and widened my interests (and responsibilities).’
Certainly, the remarkable thing about him is that he is so integrated with ordinary life – considering the completely otherworldly nature of his basic vision
For Arkle - at the centre of his 'system' was God, God the creator, and furthermore a creator who was our loving Father. Arkle's 'Romantic' system was built around this core; yet I wanted Arkle's success in living but without Arkle's God.
I (like Colin Wilson) implicitly regarded Arkle's God as just wishful thinking; as a God he had invented to aperfom a function he wanted performed in his belief system. Having disposed of Arkle's God, which - being unreal - could clearly have no necessary role in Arkle's life; I then proceeded to try and learn fro the rest of Arkle's system.
In effect, I was hoping to get the benefits of living in the successful way that I regarded Arkle as having achieved; while eliminating the source and core of Arkle's system - which was God (I ruled-out God in general, except for 'deity' conceptualised in the most abstract and impersonal way; as well as regarding as rather silly and pitiful God in the particular 'loving Father' understanding of Arkle).
In a nutshell, I wanted Romanticism without God; and it led me in the same direction as those many others who have sought Romanticism without God from the days of Byron and Shelley to contemporary examples of Romantics such as Woody Allen or Francois Truffaut. Or, in a much more positive way, Colin Wilson himself.
For 200 years our culture has been full of examples of people who (apparently sincerely) espouse the Romantic life, but are unable to live it; people who can research and talk about Romantic themes; but who live (in their consciousness, in their souls) much like everybody else and often-enough live worse.
So myself, Colin Wilson and many others wanted Romanticism, but did not believe that God was real - and we did not achieve Romanticism in actual living. Meanwhile there were examples such as Arkle or William Blake of people who did achieve Romanticism in actual living; 'yet' apparently insisted on basing it upon Romantic conceptions of God that struck me as obviously 'made-up'.
My understanding of this phenomenon is that those who seek Romanticism are those afflicted by alienation; by the modern sense of feeling cut off from life, and who are plagued by a sense of meaninglessness, lack of a purpose that fulfils our creativity and also unites ourselves with other and the world.
Like many/ most modern people from adolescence onwards; we begin with the assumption that there is no God, never was a God; and that all talk of personal Gods who care about us is either delusionally-pitiful wishful thinking; or else a dishonest means of manipulating others.
And we do not 'notice' that (by eliminating all possibility of the reality of God, and in particular the kind of God that Arkle speaks-of) we have already made assumptions that inevitably will ensure that our lives will fail. And fail by the very criteria we ourselves have chosen.
(Not everybody will share my feeling about Arkle's success in living - this makes no difference to my point. My point is that despite Arkle's being my own idea of a successful life; I nonetheless failed to 'notice' that God was necessarily central to it. I unthinkingly, arrogantly, supposed that I could have the superstructure without the foundations!)
It was not until I first allowed the possibility of God, then the possibility of Arkle's concept of God; that I could proceed to seek whether or not this was in reality true. Then I discovered that it was true.
Only now can I really understand Arkle 'from the inside', in a way which explains the primary cause of my long-term interest in him. Only now can I benefit from his example; in changing my own life for the better.
It turns-out that successfully-lived Romanticism requires God; furthermore it requires the kind of personal God that Arkle knew; and it turns-out that this God is real.
It turns-out that in practice Romantic Christianity is the only Romanticism. Arkle has been telling me this for decades - but only recently have I been willing to hear him.
*An excerpt from Colin Wilson's Introduction to A Geography of Consciousness:
I would place the author of this book among the half dozen most remarkable men I have ever met – and I suppose this would include some of the most eminent writers and thinkers of our time. This book which I am introducing is not an easy one; I suppose I may as well be frank and say that in parts it is extremely tough going. But I think it is an important book, and my aim in this introduction is to clear away some of the difficulties.
Let me speak first of the author, William Arkle. Like most writers, I receive a fair amount of correspondence from strangers. And since I write about questions of human evolution and the nature of human consciousness, many of these are from occultists and people with theories about how man can become a god overnight. Very often, the writers send me manuscripts and explain indignantly that publishers are too materialistic to understand the importance of their work.
But it is usually pretty easy to see why publishers are not interested. The manuscripts are often full of important ideas; but they are never properly thought-out, with consideration for the reader. And I always find myself reflecting that it is a pity that the intelligent people are so often egocentric and lacking in self-criticism, while the sane, decent, healthy people are so often mediocrities. There are very seldom exceptions to this rule.
In 1960, William Arkle sent me a reproduction of one of his paintings, and it was certainly a striking painting; it was an abstract, geometrical sort of landscape with abstract human figures, a little like Wyndham Lewis’s. The colours were all very light, yellows and greens and reds. But although it was striking, it was not, in the last analysis, a good picture.
It is hard to explain this except to say that in spite of its abstract nature, it lacked real complexity. The letter that accompanied it talked about spiritual values and so on, and it was clear that this is what the picture intended to express.
Arkle lived in Bristol, and he invited me to call and see him if I ever came through. I seem to remember that I assumed he was probably a man in his fifties. My guess was that he had probably started life in the Church of England, tried a few evangelical sects, and ended up by producing some occult religion of his own. In 1961, my wife and I were driving to Blackpool to the Long Playing Record Festival, and it seemed a good opportunity to call on the Arkles.
So we found our way – after some difficulty – to a large house in Royal York Crescent, with a fine view over the valley. And we were met by a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties, with a clean cut face of the Charlton Heston type and a lock of hair on his forehead that made him resemble that Sargeant drawing of Yeats that can be found in the Collected Plays. I was introduced to his wife Elizabeth, who did not look in the least dreamy or mystical; in fact, she looked one of those cheerful, healthy girls that Shaw put into early plays. I was not surprised to learn she loved horses.
Bill and Liz Arkle - probably early 1950s
The enormous house belonged to them, and I discovered that they made a living by buying houses, re-decorating them themselves, and then letting them as flats. It seemed fairly strenuous work for a visionary, but apparently it solved the basic problem of making a living. And neither was I surprised to learn that he had been an engineer and served in the navy towards the end of the war. There was something about him that suggested that he was not one of these subjective, egocentric people who find the practical work unbearable.
I asked him some years ago for a biographical sketch, and I may as well quote what he sent me: ‘Born 1924. After school, trained in engineering for the navy. After demobilisation, I had a strong urge to go to Art school which I did for two years. But I did not finish the course as I felt strongly that the attitudes to painting that I was being taught were not right for me. ‘My first marriage broke up as I left Art school. I was reading a lot of mysticism and esotericism generally and developing meditation and the ability to tune my nature, as it were …’
Later in the same letter, he says: ‘I married Elizabeth about 1952 (it is typical of him not to be sure of the date – he wrote 1953 and then changed it) and this helped me to integrate properly with ordinary life and widened my interests (and responsibilities).’
Certainly, the remarkable thing about him is that he is so integrated with ordinary life – considering the completely otherworldly nature of his basic vision
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