Sure knowledge is based upon direct apprehension of a situation of absolute simplicity and clarity

I have seen a convergence of several strands of my interest in 'intuition' and metaphysics.

The surest, indeed the only sure, knowledge we have comes from our direct apprehension of a situation of absolute simplicity and clarity: nothing can be surer than this; and it can retrospectively validate a system of metaphysics which is that such direct knowing is fundamental.

It seems that - for instance - Wittgenstein's method (all through his work, including both early and late) was to strive (by multiple attacks on a problem) to attain exactly this situation. In his early Tractatus he called it 'showing' as contrasted with saying - he meant that knowledge should be based on that which is so simple and clear that it can be comprehended and known wholly and instantly. His last work - On Certainty - is the most comprehensive and sustained example of the 'method' - trying again and again to attain exactly the right question, the right example - so that 'certainty' can be understood all-at-once.

Goethe's concept of observation and experiment was identical at root: he strove in his science to attain a clear and simple view of the phenomenon so that it could be grasped whole. An ideal experiment was aiming at exactly the same - purposively creating a situation of clarity and simplicity when observation did not yield it. 

(The usual idea of an experiment is to contrive a controlled observation to test an hypothesis. But this merely evades the idea of where true hypotheses come-from - Goethe's deeper insight in that true hypotheses come from this intuitive clear-simple apprehension.) 

Socrates questioning can be seen in the same light - not as 'dialectic' (whatever that might be supposed to mean, I have never been able to understand it) - the attempt to frame the problem so lucidly that the answer becomes obvious (or else to show that the usual way of framing it, the usual form of questions, do not yield such a situation, but only contradictions and complexities).

Rudolf Steiner (much influenced by Goethe) likewise regards 'pure' thinking as aiming at just this: his intuition refers to a simple view; his use of the term clairvoyance has the literal meaning of clear-seeing.

This 'method' is absolutely general. It can and should be applied to all forms of knowing - whether logic, science, ethics, metaphysics, religion or whatever.

The problem with magical 'contacts' (and, by contrast, how simple intuitions can be valid)

Two twentieth century Christian ritual magicians I like as people and whose work is valuable are Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight. Having said this; I regard them both as of-their-time, and their methods as no longer effective or valid.  

Both worked (partly) via what they termed 'contacts' - that is, spiritual beings with whom they made contact and who provided instruction, advice and conversation - using language. Such contacts were achieved by persons of suitable ability and motives, and also as the culmination of a long period of mental training that encompassed concentration and visualization. 

(I regard such magical contacts as a more active and conscious form of the varieties channeling and automatic  writing that have been a part of New Age spirituality, generally.) 

While I acknowledge that such contacts had some valuable effects and consequences up to the later parts of the twentieth century; I believe they are intrinsically prone to error - and these errors are amplified when the results are transmitted to a wider audience. 

Even assuming that the magician is well-motivated, that the spiritual contact is genuine, and that the spirit contacted is of a good and competent nature; then there are nonetheless two layers of problems about the use of language in these communications. 

Contacts work by a double-translation. In the first place; the spirit must translate from his thinking into words - in the second place the magician must understand the words, and translate into his own understanding. Thus thinking into words, then words back to thinking - before the recipient can know what is being communicated.

And the training of magicians is double-edged; because the capacity to concentrate and visualize entail a mental discipline that tends to perpetuate any distortions or errors in the magician. In particular; when the magician has not fully formulated his questions, or asks an unanswerable question (because the question contains false assumptions) - then there will nonetheless an answer will be generated - because that is how the training has made things. 

So the recurrent problem with magical contacts seems to be that of generating too-precise answers to too many and poorly formulated questions.   

 **

By contrast, what I mean by intuitions operate in a wordless sense, without language. As I have written before; almost everything hinges on the 'question' which needs to be fully, clearly and validly understood. 

It may take someone a long time to become clear about what exactly it is that he needs to know. The question needs to be clarified to the point of being wordlessly grasped as a whole and held in mind. And motivations need to be clarified - because only genuinely Christian motivations will lead to Christianly-valid intuitions. 

In practice such questions seek equally simple - binary-type - answers such as Yes-No, True-False, Good-Evil.  

And in practice - as soon as the question has been clearly and simply known - the 'intuitive' answer is immediately forthcoming. 

No media, language, technologies or symbols are involved; therefore no training in concentration, visualization, meditation etc is needed - indeed such training will do more harm than good insofar as it has become an unconscious habit. 

And any attempt to explain the reasons for the intuitive understanding will therefore necessarily misrepresent the situation - and tend to reduce the solid assurance of the intuition. Because as soon as the intuition has been reduced to words, it will be distorted and incompletely represented; and these wrong reasons may then become a target for rationalistic-public critique such that the knowledge is no longer intuitive. 

Therefore true intuitions are private, clear and simple; and cannot be captured in language, nor can their intuitive nature be communicated. In a sense, each is a personal miracle that sustains faith, and potentially guides thought and conduct.  

Modern Christians should Not, as a rule, answer direct and simple questions about their faith (Instead, request prior explanation and/ or disengage)

According to what I have heard (eg. in relation to our duty to evangelise for the faith) Christians are generally supposed-to be ready to answer any questions by anybody at any time...

I disagree.

For this to be a sensible thing, we Christians need to be reasonably confident that we understand the assumptions behind the question in the same way as does the questioner. But - in the modern Western nations, here and now - most questions about Christianity are not merely based on ignorance, but on falsehood and misrepresentation.

So if somebody asks Are you a Christian? we cannot, and should not, assume that the questioner understands, even at a basic level, what 'Christian' means, or what 'being a Christian' entails.

Therefore, if you simply answer: Yes!; then you have very little idea what that answer means to a typical modern person, except that it almost-certainly does not mean the same to the questioner as it does to the answerer.

You have, in fact, probably thrown-away the opportunity for genuine evangelisation.

Typically, the average modern person will be asking a 'heads I win, tails you lose' question; and will simply have their prejudices reinforced by a Christian returning a simple answer to a simple question. This is counter-productive. 


If not, then what?

When trapped by another's assumptions, we simply-must make clear that our own assumptions are different - that is far more important than a confident, snappy riposte.

Modern Christians have been locked-into a category by mainstream social and professional discourse - therefore we cannot participate in such discourse. We must disrupt that discourse by our response; we must Not simply tick the box or follow the flow-chart...

This Does Not Work.

(Nor is it truly honest.) 


What we should do is quite simple - and that is to ask back what that particular person means by their question; and only when we are satisfied that we understand what assumptions lie behind the question, will we answer it.

Something along the lines of "I am happy to answer your questions, but I need to understand more clearly what you are asking me by Are you a Christian, Do you believe in God, Do you believe in life after death, Do you believe in miracles...

Doing this need not take long, a few sentences will suffice assuming that the questioner is sincere. And if the questioner is not sincere, then that fact should come out pretty quickly too; then we can disengage.


Because the above is what Jesus himself often does in the gospels!

When he is asked the wrong question, or the question is a trap, or he gets asked the same question more than once, or people show that they will not believe him whatever he says - then Jesus disengages - he explains what is happening, or moves away, or says nothing...

In your face and unasked-for impersonal preaching, pat answers, prepared answers, standard answers... all these are now useless to evangelists; since modern culture has pre-immunised the population against them - and they are exactly what fulfils the negative stereotypes. 

What exactly to do depends on the specific person and the specific circumstances - and if these can be judged well and we answer honestly according to how we understand things here and now and as prompted by intuition and the Holy Ghost... well, then we might actually do some Good.

How to be personal but not individual. Groupish but not abstract: My current metaphysical problem

Blogging has been light because thinking has been heavy.

 I've realized I don't have a clear understanding of intuition, inspiration, influence - that i neither individual nor abstract (because I haven't understood it, I can only express it negatively).

When a young child experiences his world, there is an animistic sense of the presence of other consciousnesses, but only a few are of known individuals. How can the unindividual but personal (...of beings) consciousness be pictured?

Not from a combination of individual consciousnesses, because the primal state is not as fully individualized. The egregore idea has it backwards, or at least is a late development of the medieval type of consciousness. But abstract explanations in terms such as fields, auras etc aren't fundamental, aren't really real...

I need a clear, simple, graspable picture, and I do not have one.

However this is a gap, an incoherence in my world view that needs fixing - if possible. So, that's what I'm trying to do.

Direct knowing (intuition) is superior to sensory and logical 'evidence' - e.g. when evaluating the reality of God, the relevance of Jesus

Many people have said that there is not enough 'evidence' for them to believe in the reality of God; but people need to recognise that evidence is always ambiguous, and never decisive.

People say things like: 'Seeing is believing... If only God would speak to me in words, or send an angel to tell me, or show me a major public miracle... then I would believe.'

But they are being dishonest; seeing is not believing; and they would not believe.

And they are mistaken by the assumption that sensory data is the most solid and compelling source of knowledge.


People ought to be clear that evidence can never convince - and this is especially the case in the mainstream modern world.

We are a world in which evidence of all kinds - real science, logic, personal experience, the word of people we trust - is routinely ignored; and instead people believe vague, incoherent and continually changing nonsense, sprayed at them by the mass media and institutional propaganda.

This is possible because all evidence, without exception, is ambiguous; and because modern people feel no obligation to be consistent - nor even to aim-at consistency. This, because their bottom-line validation is how they feel, and feelings are neither consistent not coherent across time.


Consider. Any evidence which comes to us by the senses is ambiguous because it must be interpreted - it must be put into context.

And there is always the possibility of more evidence emerging...

And words must be understood, and picture must be recognised; the 'logical' implications of any-thing that happens must be reasoned-out. A new theory changes what counts as evidence; a new theory recognises new sources of evidence. And new theories, new interpretations, can be generated without end...

Small-scale, individual, private perceptions might be an error, or an hallucination, or we may be deluded and falsely interpreting, or we may be demented or drain damaged, or we may be mastered by wishful thinking...

So private knowledge may be mistaken to to our limiations. Yet big public events are differently registered, differently reported, differently explained; and some of this noticing, reporting and explanation is deliberately misleading, or manipulative - so that public evidence turns out to be even less compelling than private.

And if we try to communicate the evidence, or our conclusions about it, to other people; then all these uncertainties are multiplied. 

So anything based on sensory data, any evidence, has problems due to its not being self-explanatory.


What is more certain, what is the most certain knowledge; is knowledge we know directly, that is without sensory mediation, without any chains of perceptions and interpretations: knowledge that appears in our deepest and truest self, without perceptual cause, and bearing the provenance of truth. Knowledge that 'appears' in the mind whole and understood, graspable by a single and complete mental act of apprehension.

This is intuition - and we can't do better than intuition.

Of course, our later self may still decide that earlier intuitions were incorrect; in a world of change, corruption and mortality there is no way of avoiding that.

But we can recognise the principle that - contrary to what most people think and say - evidence of the senses, evidence of 'logic' are inferior to directly apprehended knowledge.


We can recognise that the best possible evidence for the reality of God, or the relevance to us personally of Jesus Christ, is not 'evidence - nor is it 'logic', but is exactly that sudden, complete, total grasping of simple reality.

The implication is that the most important investigation we could do, would be to look 'within'; rather than to seek external evidence. More exactly, the role of external evidence should be to clarify for our-selves, exactly what it is that we are looking-for within.

But evidence can never take us to where we want to go, and need to go; and never can compel us to belief in God or faith in Jesus. That is a matter of direct knowledge - of intuition.

Direct Knowing or Intuition... How I try-to Do It - in practice

In the past (and perhaps still, in other cultures) men spontaneously experienced "contact" with gods or God, the divine - more generally, spirits, the dead/ ghosts, and many other supernatural/ paranormal forms of interaction such as with remote persons or animals. 

These also include sensory/ perceptual experiences such as the seeing of spiritual visions, or hearing voices and having conversations 

But here-and-now it seems that adult and healthy (or healthy-ish) modern Men - and I count myself as pretty typical in this respect - do Not spontaneously have such experiences; nor can we have such experiences in alert, healthy, and clear consciousness; no matter how we strive. 

"Contact" of this sort only happens spontaneously to modern Men in states of lowered consciousness; such as dreaming sleep, trance, intoxication; or when there is brain dysfunction in psychosis (including with brain diseases, such as dementias). 

To my mind, the difficulty or impossibility of having these supernatural/ paranormal experiences of contact and interaction, points to the conclusion that the old sensory/ perceptual experiences (while they may lead to good) are ultimately retrograde, "atavistic", and often motivated by a nostalgia and desire to revert to an earlier (less conscious, more automatic, less free) phase of the development of consciousness (which we may recall from early childhood, or have imaginatively experienced).

But given the mundane and alienated nature of typical modern consciousness, and more importantly (indeed vitally) the necessity for each of us to receive personal guidance from the Holy Ghost in particular - given these needs, we must develop other ways of establishing some kind of experienced-interaction or "contact" with spirit Beings.

Indeed, I have often said that this kind of interaction is the basis for metaphysical reflection on the fundamental nature of reality. It is the basis of that "intuition" upon which everything depends - and which I have variously called "direct knowing", or sometimes "heart thinking" or "primary thinking". 

The point is How To Do It?  

In my experience, I think this contact works by an awareness of such contact while actually speaking, writing, or thinking. 

It is a "direct" form of knowing, because (unlike the past and other cultures) there is no sensory aspect.

What it is like is a deep and simple sense of affirmation or rejection, support or opposition, yes or no. 

Such a "feeling" is indeed the deepest awareness of which I am capable. 

This does not mean the experience is infallible, but that it is the best I can do - here and now. 

Because the experience is deep, it is not reached as a result of inference from other kinds of evidence, nor does the awareness come with "proof" of itself - although naturally evidences, proofs, excuses and the like can be derived or contrived secondarily - after the guidance. 

Since this mortal life is mostly about what we ought to try to do, here and now - in these particular circumstances - the experience-of-itself suffices.

    

As an example; this is how I have developed my fundamental theological convictions. For instance, I needed to decide whether "God" was single or a dyad: more exactly I wanted to know whether God meant a Heavenly Mother, as well as Father. 

I had come across the idea of God as originally eternally-married man and woman from Mormon theology, and then later the work of William Arkle. I had felt an immediate stirring and attraction to this knowledge, an experience that proved robust to re-acquaintance.  

To discover its truth, to discover whether I ought to assume such a reality; I wrote about it. Writing for myself, in a journal; candidly and without an audience. 

I also talked, a little, about the idea. But it is very rare to find anyone with whom such fundamental (metaphysical) subjects can be discussed in a way that is an be both unselfconsciously confident on my part, and with sufficiently engaged and sustained attention on the other person's side. 

So verbal discussion is, in practice, seldom of much value - which is why writing (or indeed speaking aloud to oneself, for those who cannot or do not write) can be so helpful. 

Furthermore; I thought about the subject in solitude and quiet (i.e. I prayed, in one sense of praying) - with attention to what followed in this deep level of awareness. 

To explain further: this is something done with a high level of conscious awareness; because it is necessary to have two "things" in mind simultaneously: both our question and the inner-awareness of a response from another Being.

To me, this puts a tight limit on the kind of question that can be asked - the question must be worked upon until I have it absolutely clear and simple in my mind; and as soon as I have done this, and made the decision to seek some kind of guidance or opinion, and have attained a quietly attentive and concentrated mind-set: the answer arrives immediately. 

The source of this inner endorsement (or rejection) is varied, and something we can decide - or, at least, we can decide "who we are asking" to the extent that we can validly conceptualize another Being. 

For instance, and most importantly, the Holy Ghost is (by my current best understanding) the ascended Jesus Christ and his spouse Mary Magdalene. If I address this understanding of the HG, then the response depends to some extent on the validity of my conception. 

If instead (like mainstream traditional Christians) I regarded the Holy Ghost as the spirit aspect of the Trinity; then this might well have an effect on the shape of my question, and therefore the answer. 

Indeed, if the question is "improperly addressed" then there may be no answer. 

That has been my understanding of what is going on when I am seeking an answer to a question rooted in false premises, false assumptions. Nothing happens. 

Then there is the problem of the source of the answer - in particular whether there might be a situation where a demon was to impersonate a spirit of Good (an angel), or the Holy Ghost? 

My only answer, and I think the only real and relevant answer, is that this depends on our motivations and intentions and general stance with respect to God and divine creation.  

If (for instance) we are really seeking answers for selfish purposes; or if we a really aligned with Satan and against God; then such motives and stances are bound to distort and subvert the answers we get.  

The only conclusion is to strive for thorough honesty; and a vital part of honesty is to try and be as conscious as possible of our real assumptions, motives etc; and then as clear and explicit as possible in describing these to our-selves. 

Can we be misled and wrong? Yes of course! There is no recipe for being right. 

Should be strive to be absolutely certain, with no possibility of wrongness, doubt or change of mind? No!

In this mortal world we operate from very distorting circumstances, such that being ultimately and universally absolutely correct in all significant respects surely cannot be the most important thing from God's perspective.

What typically matters is that we personally get things sufficiently right in the situation in which we now find ourselves. 

Other problems will arise, situations will change, we ourselves will change - but that is all uncertain, indeed it is (because of the agency of beings) profoundly contingent. 

What we must deal with in our mortal lives occurs as some primary issue, here-and-now... And Christians will have faith* that sufficient personal capability and external guidance is always available for everybody to accomplish this adequately - albeit never "perfectly."

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*Note: Will have faith, because we can be confident that God-the-creator is also our loving Father (or our parents, as I believe); who therefore has individual concern for the salvation and spiritual development of each-and-all of his children. So we-ourselves and our circumstances have-been and are-being created that way. Since this loving God is creating all the time, we know that our situation always has an attainable positive path forwards - for as long as our lives are sustained.

Occult and Esoteric - what do they mean? How to approach them?

Occult means hidden, and often refers to hidden knowledge. Typically, this is knowledge that has been kept secret (e.g. by being sustained in a closed society) - or perhaps knowledge encoded, so that only those who know the code can discover it. 

But hidden knowledge may instead be clear and simple, not secret but instead "hidden in plain sight" - not encoded but simply ignored by the majority. 

Ignored perhaps because it is no interest, in some way unwelcome (opening a "can of worms" they'd rather not deal with); or indeed so clear and so simple, that most people regard it as necessarily wrong, because the knowledge strikes them as embarrassingly childish and simplistic. 

Esoteric means "for the few" - and mostly refers to groups to human societies. The term often refers to exclusive groups characterized by rigorous selection and prolonged training; and typically includes groups that claim to posses secret occult knowledge or the keys to understand encoded occult knowledge. 

But, analogously with the possible meanings of occult; esoteric groups "for the few" as such are not confined to the holders of occult knowledge; but characterize almost many types of functional human institution - such as some universities or colleges, and legal and medical professions - and these also implicitly claim to possess occult knowledge which is not understandable except by those who are trained, and have the "keys".

More significantly; there is the question of why some groups are "for the few" - which might be because only few regard the matter as real and important, or who have an active interest. An esoteric grouping may happen (or be attempted) because "the many" are indifferent or hostile to the subject. 

When the majority believe that which is false, and are evil-affiliated; then the possibility of allying with good is necessarily restricted to "the few" - or even to a single person.   

When it comes to evaluating occult knowledge or esoteric groups, it seems evident that the terms are descriptive rather than intrinsically evaluative. 

As usual; the valuation depends primarily on matters such as purposes and motivations, and whether these are on the side of God and creation - or against them. 

Whether the real and underlying motivation is for this-worldly power, wealth, sex, success and the like - or to manipulate others and nature? Or instead to seek potentially good-aligned goals such as self-knowledge, experiential understanding of reality, encouragement in pursuit of salvation etc.  

It seems to me that (as of 2025, in The West) most of the people who are explicitly involved in esoteric groups and engaged with occult knowledge are badly-motivated: they are on the wrong side of the spiritual war of this-world. 

But the same applies to most Christians; and to most Christians in any particular church or denominations: they are badly-motivated. That is most self-identified Christians are (overall) on the side that opposes God in the spiritual war. 

In this mixed world, by its very nature; all Men are sinners, all groups are corrupted and all knowledge is impure. 

It is not our task to attempt the impossible of redeeming, or even reforming, The World; but to navigate our way though our life by discernment and in accordance with our intuition and divine guidance; as we desire and commit to following Jesus Christ.

This may (and it seems likely, given the nature of the world, en masse, here and now) lead us at some point to some degree of engagement with explicit or implicitly occult knowledge and the esoteric: 

So be it.  

**

Note: The above was stimulated by re-reading Gareth Knight's biography of his great friend the Reverend Canon Fr. Anthony Duncan: Christ and Qabalah: or, The Mind in the Heart (2013).

The difference between being an atheist; and being a theist but not a Christian

Being an atheist is incoherent and leads to nihilism; not being a Christian means being hope-less.

This difference used to be understood by almost everybody - Christians and non-Christians; but centuries of muddle and evasion have obscured it. A-theism, that is not-believing that there is any god - means that there is no creator, reality is not created, and therefore reality has no meaning or purpose. Stuff just is; and nothing more can be said about it.

That is atheism. And there have been very few genuine atheists up until recently - but there are quite a lot now; and atheism is mandatory in public discourse in the West - which is why things will necessarily collapse.


What about Christianity? We need to understand that - properly understood - Christianity is the only hopeful religion. All men should want Christianity to be true, and if they do not, then that is because they don't understand things. The afterlife of Christianity may not be your idea of perfect happiness, but no other religion is hopeful except by contrast with a miserable mortal existence.

This was obvious in the early years of Christianity - when the only questions were whether or not Jesus was who he claimed and whether he really could deliver on his promises. Everybody at that time, and for a long while afterwards, knew that if Jesus was who he claimed to be, and if he really could deliver his promises of eternal resurrected life in Heaven; then that was better than any known alternative.

The reason for Not being a Christian - for many centuries - was that you didn't believe that Jesus really was the son of God, and/or you didn't believe he really could lead us through death to life everlasting.

This is quite a different situation from what exists here and now, in the modern West. Modern Man is usually an atheist who thinks that Jesus's claims cannot possibly be true. Not that his claims happen to be factually-wrong; but that they are meaningless.

In other words Modern Man is thinking nonsense - because he is trying to argue from incoherent premises in an incoherent reality. In reality, he assumes the un-reality of God, and of creation, and absence of order, meaning, purpose - and from this assertion of ultimate chaos he assumes that Jesus could not be true, because the atheist already-assumes that nothing is true; not really true.


By contrast, for a theist, a religious person, a believer in creation/ order/ meaning/ purpose to deny the truth of Christianity, is a perfectly coherent thing. He is simply saying that Jesus did not really exist, or that he was a fraud/ liar/ madman; that his Heaven is not a real place - and that therefore a less happy, a sad, outcome in life is the best that can realistically be hoped-for: whether that be a Paradise, endless reincarnation, Nirvana, painless unconsciousness, or whatever.

But he would, if he has understanding, know that it would be better if Christianity were true and that he personally could avail himself of its promises.

Christians need to be clear that Jesus's claims were extreme. A Man was claiming to be the Son of God and to have created this world, and much else. These are astonishing claims - and it is not surprising that many or most people did not believe them; even when backed up by what appeared to be amazing miracles, the endorsement of the holiest prophet alive (John the Baptist), by fulfilment of prophecies, by the resurrection. All of these might have been false - there is no 100% sure way of knowing that they were true.

And modern Man has none of these. He has 'historical' reports, which he needs to believe is uniquely and in a special way true (because normally secular history is full of errors and constantly changing its story). And he has intuition - but he also needs to believe that is, or can be, true. He has personal miracles in his own life - but needs to believe that miracles are possible in general, and also that these specific events are miraculous.

Yet there are always alternative explanations for any 'fact', or any 'evidence'. This is the case for science and it is the case for Christianity. Evidence is never ever conclusive and compelling. We must, and always do, believe despite this immovable fact - but the modern ignorant and incompetent belief that evidence should, can (and does!) dictate belief; stands in the path of understanding reality.    


What, then, of evil? What of those who know that Christ's promises are true; but they refuse them? Well, one thing that can be said of such persons (whether they be demons or mortal Men) is that they cannot be happy about their situation and prospects! Not to be Christian need not be insane or incoherent; but it is necessarily miserable.

Someone who is mastered by pride, or resentment, or envy, or is consumed by a lust for sex or inflicting pain... and therefore rejects Heaven, hates God, loathes Jesus and Christians; such a person has rejected everlasting happiness... this may, indeed, be a source of the pride and disdain. Pride i having rejected the 'easy' or 'cowardly' or 'sentimental'... pride at embracing permanent pain. This is a real phenomenon, and I have certainly felt it myself; and seen it in others. 


But we ought to be clear about the options and possibilities; and it seems that many people are not clear; they are incoherent. They deny God but also assert morality and claim to know meaning and purpose; when religious they claim to be unsatisfied by the promises of Christ and to 'prefer' other religions on the false ground that they offer more or better outcomes.

Modern people are the stupidest, the most unrealistic people ever; presumably because they are so dishonest, and think so little, and are so distracted, and refuse to join-up assertions and refuse to acknowledge that this is what they are doing and failing to do. They live in a miasma of half-wishes, half-thoughts, transient feelings, vague hopes.

But the issues are actually clear and simple; and almost everybody used to be able to see the situation and possibilities. Now people see neither.   

Understanding Christianity - the role of the Fourth Gospel ("John")

The role of IV Gospel in my understanding of Christianity is of a means to the end of understanding. 

Once I had grasped that understanding, from then the validity and authority of the gospel became almost irrelevant. Much as if it were a work of explicit fiction that expressed truth, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

But! In order really to engage with IV Gospel, I needed to be convinced it was worth the sustained and intense effort that was required.

Of all the Bible, I was most sure of the authority and value of IV... That was my starting point. I felt sure that, if truth were to be found, that's where it would be.

So I was able and keen to put in the effort of grappling with IV, and then it yielded a clear and simple understanding... 

But the truth of that understanding was then discerned by "intuition" - by my deepest attainable sense of inner sureness.

This intuition was something tested across time and in whatever was emerged or struck me, as life continued, as challenges were encountered. As I used my new IV Gospel understanding in living.

The new understanding "worked".

And at a certain point I felt a strong sense of Yes - This is real and true.

That's how thing happened for me.

Abortion is a specifically-Christian issue in The West - not about 'natural law'

A problem I have seen among US 'pro-life'/ anti-abortion Christians is a false assumption about the universality, the 'natural law' validity of their intuitive sense of abortion - and indeed infanticide - as evil. 

Christians talk as if it could be assumed - for instance - that non-Christians regard abortion as morally equivalent to murder. 

And when Christians argue that especially late abortion is equivalent to infanticide (i.e. killing of a newborn by his or her mother) - the assumption is that non-Christians regard infanticide as morally equivalent to murder. 

Yet I think it is a simple fact that the equivalence of abortion and infanticide with murder are not spontaneous human intuitions, but are rather specifically Christian convictions. 

It seems that these convictions and intuitions have not been shared by many or most people in history, as they are not shared by many people in the modern world. 

The 'pro-life' intuition and stance is distinctively (if not exclusively) Christian - and this insight ought to be the assumed basis for interactions between Christian and non-Christian regarding these matters. 

In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark describes how the immortality of abortion and infanticide was part of a variety of pro-natalist doctrines that characterized the early Christians, and which operated within the burgeoning society of Christians - but distinctively in that sub-group of society.  

Thus, ancient Christianity grew rapidly by exponential natural increase (as well as by conversions), in a Roman society where women increasingly strove to avoid childbearing and families were kept small or absent. 

It is easy to find many other example of ancient civilizations that were also anti-natalist. But more pertinently, perhaps, records of pre-civilization, simple hunter gatherer societies also frequently practice infanticide - usually by 'exposure' (abandonment of the new born child by his or her mother); and therefore would presumably practice abortion if the technology was available.  

My factual point is that humans are not innately/ spontaneously/ naturally averse to abortion or infanticide - the wrongness of these activities is not a universal moral prohibition as with murder (although that prohibition of murder may not include strangers). Pro-life is not a human universal morality. 

What does seem to be a human universal is that abortion and infanticide are regarded as a 'bad thing' - although not as bad as murder: and therefore something that naturally makes the mother feel bad...

And therefore something to be avoided if possible, and done only when it is the lesser of evils. Abortion/ infanticide are certainly not something to celebrate or to advocate. 

My moral point is that Christians should not assume that non-Christians feel the same abhorrence at abortion or indeed infanticide. 

The strongly-motivated avoidance of such behaviour is part of being a Christian, but not part of being human. And the difference is one reason for the intransigent nature of these policy disputes.  

Another problem is that there is a difference between setting up and justifying laws - which must be clear and categorical, especially in alien, massive and bureaucratic societies such as ours - and the specific, distinctive moral realities of exact situations and circumstances. 

Real morality is about specific issues - each unique; not about absolute and generic prohibitions of broad categories of events. This is why all truly just systems of law have provision for the interpretation of categorical systems by the 'judgment' of a wise and good human judge. The ideal judge bridges between legal categories and the unique circumstance.

Failure to recognize this specificity of morality in religion leads to cold-hearted, anti-Christian 'legalism' or Pharisee-ism in Christianity. And this insight ought to apply to abortion and infanticide, just as it does to arson and murder. 

Our ultimate problem is that we almost-wholly lack wise and good judges, as we ourselves ("the masses") lack wisdom and goodness. 

And bad Men (wrongly-motivated, cowardly Men) cannot be made good by system, by imposing laws or regulations - nor by abolishing them. 

System can make us worse - which is why it is a major tool of Satan; but System cannot (here and now) make us better. 

Why are ultimate choices clearer and simpler than before - despite these End Times of totalitarian value inversion?

If it is accepted that these are the End Times (in the sense I discuss) - and if it is recognized that populations in The West are pervasively subjected to an ideology of atheist-leftist-materialism via the mass media and the totalitarian state...

Then, one might assume that the situation is hope-lessly complex and confusing; and that an individual has near-zero-chance of navigating through that ocean of untruthfulness and deception which constitutes mainstream discourse. 

Yet - I would say instead that the ultimate things of life have never been clearer and simpler to people.* 

So clear, and so simple, that all individuals are able to make the discernments they need to make, to live their lives as they need to live them - if that is they desire; and to choose salvation - if they wish for it. 

Nowadays, the deceptions, confusions, insanity etc. are all so very extreme, and their rationalizations so ridiculous, as to be self-refuting at a very deep and irresistible level. 

Whatever excuses people make to themselves; many have decided to believe that which they know, deep-down and un-ignorably, is evil nonsense. 

What we are really up-against in these End Times, is not social conditions hostile to real values... We are up-against a dawning realization that not-many people desire that which Jesus Christ offers. 

+++

*This, because these are times of mainstream, top-down, encouraged (and increasingly mandatory) value-inversion; and we all have knowledge of true values built-into us and available for guidance via the Holy Ghost. Inverted values are not just incoherent, which incoherence cannot be hidden; but also we know that these official values are false. 

Yes, excuses for embracing inverted values are not just available but positively socially approved and supported... But we know this too. 

In a nutshell; even though the external world propagates and "proves" value inversions near-universally; nonetheless, our inner and real selves cannot-help but understand that this is false. 

And when we choose to ignore our intuition and subordinate our souls to external influences - our intuition knows this too.

The unpalatable truth is that we Already know what we need to know, and we Just Are responsible for our choices. 

Yet, evil choices must be made and re-made, so long as we live; and can be changed. And that imposes its own kind of pressure.     

Is your understanding of Heaven minimalist or maximalist?

It is striking how often the expressed Christian understanding of Heaven is extremely "minimalist". In other words; the idea is that very little happens in Heaven. 

Furthermore, in such a Heaven we ourselves are simplified (by subtraction of all sin).

Heavenly life is thus described very simply; including discarding almost everything most people might most value in this mortal life; such as family and marriage; and our most cherished creative and other activities. 

Sometimes, indeed, Heavenly life is reduced to the single activity of communion with the divine. 

This sounds, on the face of it, pretty un-appealing - except as a relief and escape from suffering. 

The usual answer to such objections is that we shall ourselves by-then have-been transformed... 

Such that what seems now to be an aetiolated existence; will, when we are actually in that situation, be wholly satisfying; indeed joyful beyond our current possibility of understanding. 

It is probably clear from the above that I - by contrast - regard Heaven in a "maximalist" kind of way; as greatly enriched by more, and continuousness, of broadly the same kind of positive things that are best in this mortal life. 

Thus I regard Heaven as a place of more, and more loving, and everlasting relationships - including family, marriage, friendship; and ultimately loving relationships of other forms with other kinds of ("non-human") resurrected Beings such as animals, plants, and natural elemental Beings. 

And I regard Heaven as a place of "work" - the best kind of work; that work which derives from creative love. 

Which is to say creative work, fulfilling work; work that adds-to, enhances, enriches divine creation. 

But to return to the minimalist view of Heaven - assuming (as I do) that it is indeed mistaken, and apparently rather ineffective as a positive inducement; it is interesting to speculate why it arose? Why might people have decided that Heaven must be minimalist?

I think it is partly hinted above, by the idea that after sin has been stripped-away; not much would remain. 

Maybe also that it is easier to imagine perfection (which is how some people regard Heaven, although I think this is a mistaken emphasis - because implicitly static) if that perfection is simple?

I think there is also a residue of "historical Gnosticism"; by which I mean the pre-existing (among pagan Romans and Greeks) Neo-Platonism that captured mainstream and traditional Christianity (and not just the recognized Gnostic sects). 

This philosophical ideology (permanently) embedded within-itself what might be termed the religion of "Gospel Christianity" by its metaphysical insistence on philosophical concepts as a mandatory framework for Christianity. 

(Such as an infinite gulf between creator and created, strict monotheism (leading to the abstractions of Trinitarianism in order to encompass the divinity of Jesus); creation being from nothing (rather than an organizing of pre-existent chaotic "stuff"), and God and the divine world being "outside of Time". There are more.) 

Other aspects of this pre-Christian philosophy included a belief that the material was innately evil, and the the purely spiritual was therefore the proper aim; and this led to an ascetic ideal that strove to achieve the greatest possible independence from the material body during mortal life; essentially by subtractive disciplines. 

From this perspective, it is natural to regard Heaven minimalistically, and the denizens of Heaven likewise. 

And the assumption that the divine world - in order to be wholly good - must not change; probably led to the deletion of sequential Time from Heaven - such that there was neither need nor possibility of resurrected Men doing anything in Heaven. They would simple "be". 

(Even the doctrine of resurrection after death, which could hardly be ignored; was transformed into an abstracted, spiritualized, "resurrection body" - which body ended by being hardly regarded as material at all - but instead something more like light than everlasting flesh.) 

Of course the minimalist Heaven may include elements of reaction against pagan (and other) understandings of the post-mortal life as simply a continuation and enhancement of this mortal life - with more of our desires fulfilled, and less of the sufferings. 

These are seen as wish-fulfilment merely - and wish-fulfilment is not (by such an analysis) distinguished from selfish day-dreaming fantasies (e.g. imagining post-mortal luxuries of sex, feasting and/or fighting - according to taste). 

It was probably not until the advent of Mormonism from 1830 that an explicitly maximalist understanding of Heaven (more consistent with the Gospels, common-sensically understood - especially the Fourth gospel) was rediscovered and linked with a metaphysical theology. 

This included a focus on marriage and procreation, family life, and co-creative activities in loving cooperation with God the Father - and a "evolutionary" emphasis on divine creation as eternally "ongoing", continuous, eternally being added-to. 

Ultimately, as always, this question of minimalist versus maximalist understanding of Heaven, reduces to a question of personal discernment based on the deepest intuition that we can arrive-at. Having consciously clarified our awareness of the alternatives, we each need to decide which are true possibilities, and which we most desire for our-selves.

**

Note: This post was stimulated by a comment from NLR at the NCP Blog. 

Overcoming the vast scale of failure: recognizing your Achilles' heel

It seems clear that we are all of us raised to have at least one, but usually many, Achilles' heels - weak points in our world view, through-which evil can enter and colonize; and turn us to its side in the spiritual war.  

2020 showed us a comprehensive failure of All human institutions, of All ideologies - the failure even to to recognize the obvious fact of a global, totalitarian, leftist-materialist - hence evil - coup.  

Everybody failed - but in many different ways. 

The various causes of their various failures are what I term their Achilles' heels. 

The collection of these Achilles' heels, over several centuries, could be termed Leftism - or simply the demonic strategy. 

Some early ones were pacifism, abolition (of slavery), and socialism. Nationalism came later. Since the sixties there have been feminism, antiracism, 'environmentalism' (now reduced to 'climate change'), multi-culti-anti-nativism, and the stages of the sexual revolution culminating in the gross lies of the trans-agenda. 

These are all provide examples of the way in in which adherence to a single false - partial, distorted, simplistic - principle or idea, can serve to be the entry point of evil - from which it expands to take-over a person's perspective. 

But 2020 also showed the failure in the West of the Christian churches: the Roman Catholic church, the Anglican churches and the Protestant including Evangelical churches, the Mormon church etc. - none of which recognized the reality of the Satanic coup; all of which explicitly embraced one or more of the coup's ideologies via is weaponized Litmus Test issues. 

What we saw in 2020, on a vast scale, was the failure of every mainstream and powerful metaphysics; due to one or many Achilles' heels. For instance; we have all seen the way in which a 'lifelong' 'committed' socialist, feminist, 'civil rights' activist or whatever, is led-by-the-nose into supporting gross and obvious evil. 

It is obvious why the secular ideologies all failed; but why did the major Christian churches all fail? 

Each for different reasons, perhaps. Each had built itself on some principle which 2020 revealed to be inadequate. Roman Catholics and Mormons relied on their leadership to tell them what was right and what to do - and when these leaders became assimilated to the coup ideology, then members were drawn with them. 

Protestants began with an incoherent dependence on 'scripture' - and (mostly via the generations of corruption of Bible 'scholarship' to secular modes of reasoning) scripture translations and 'historical' interpretation have become incrementally assimilated to the coup ideology. 

It seems that now 'the Bible says' and 'the leaders say' we all ought to live in accordance with the coup agenda in part or in whole: believe the birdemic propaganda, crave the peck, take the knee/ confess our racism, welcome mass colonization/ cultural annihilation by 'refugees', clamour for a worldwide anti-carbon economy - and embrace the new world order of omni-surveillance and micro-control necessary to impose all these and more.  

There has been 'no hiding place' among the institutions, nor among the major churches. No hiding place among the ideologies, the theologies, the systems...

Faced with so many lies, so much dishonesty, such a vast and relentless propaganda, so little courage and principle from an expedient-faithless populace... almost-all social institutions simultaneously capitulated all over the world. 

And apparently none have repented. (Individuals - yes; but not repentant institutions.)

My understanding is that, by the evil choices of many Men, the world has become as it is; yet God can turn even these End Times to Good. We are now, each of us, confronted by a world of evil institutions - including not just the actual churches, but the principles and practices of those churches - which have been 'turned' onto the side of Satan.  

Each Man must either choose assimilation into this obviously-evil world - supported (overall) by each of the world institutions; or else he is thrown back upon him-self; upon his own personal discernment and judgment - and his capacity to take the side of God and follow Jesus Christ. 

There is no program, nor formula; no checklist nor principle - because all programs and formulae/ checklists and principles have been corrupted and re-directed towards the devil's side.  

What we each do have is the intuition, the heart-thinking, of our divine self (or soul) as internal guidance; we have the revelation of the Holy Ghost as external guidance; and we have the motivation based on hope which comes from faith. 

What this means is that Life has become very simple! 

It seems like a paradox - when the world has reached such an incredible level of complexity and interlocking deception and evil-intent. But as the world has become very-obviously too complex to explain in materialist terms - it has become spiritually simplified to mere evil-intent (in its multifarious and proliferating expressions) 

To take the side of God, solidly and against all these pressure; we absolutely must recognize and repent those Achilles' heels in ourselves - because they are always present. 

Recognize (and repent) those precious-but-vulnerable points of 'central' doctrine or principle which have rendered All of us as individuals (as well as All institutions) vulnerable to colonization by evil.

These are not the central points of Christianity - and never really have been (although in past ages, when Men implicitly assumed and knew more of the divine and spiritual than now, they could without fatal harm be regarded as core and essential). 

The central essence of being-a-Christian is not to be made dependent on any worldly thing - including not depending on the validity on any particular church institution - but come to each of us directly and unmediated from God. 

After all, God is creator and continually create-ing; God is wholly Good - and is our Heavenly Father. And just like any ideal mortal father; God will never leave any single one of his children bereft of sufficient guidance for his salvation and theosis when God can (by his ongoing work of creation) reach and shape the lives of all of us - no matter how bad 'the world' becomes. 

It is faith in this simple fact that gives indomitable hope - and an antidote to fear, despair and all other evil snares. These times can teach us this vital Christian lesson; and more powerfully than any ever before. 

 

Notes on mysticism of thinking

I would describe myself as 'a mystic'; despite that I probably strike other people as mundane in the sense that I don't do anything very noticeably mystical - like meditating in the lotus position, using magical technologies (tarot, astrology etc) - and I don't claim to have had anything that would strike other people as spectacular spiritual or religious experiences (like overwhelming visions, near death experiences or striking paranormal events). 

This is because I take mysticism is be synonymous with regarding intuitive experience as the bottom line, and a conviction that mystical experiences are intended for the person who experiences them - and not for general public consumption. 

I have, like everybody, experienced many everyday miracles, and synchronicities - inspirations and the like. But it is immensely liberating Not to feel I need to convince anybody else that they were spectacular or of general relevance. 

One big difference between the mysticism I practice versus that which has become enshrined in the mainstream - is that I strive-for and value conscious experiences in thinking. I neither seek nor much value the usual (so-called) 'mystical' state of non-thinking, death-of-the-ego; of being blissed-out/ unaware of time/ convinced of being literally transported elsewhere... 

I do not want to be overwhelmed-by something that seems objective and external; nor to have visions that I believe to be real; nor to hear voices speaking to me - telling me things or conversing...

Yet some (most?) definitions of mysticism insist that these are what mysticism is. 

For example, that a mystic is unaware of time - more exactly that the mystic perceives that in reality there is no time ('all time is present'). In total contrast, the mysticism I seek is more like a 'process', it is a situation of things happening, a flow of life. 

In a nutshell, it is a kind of thinking that I regard as a higher state - I have called it primary thinking, heart thinking, and direct knowing - the state of Final Participation; and it simply amounts to a conscious and chosen thinking in the divine way; with and from that which is divine in me; and aligned-with/ in-harmony-with God's divine motivations and purposes.

It is me, my-self, joining-with God in God's work. It is therefore a creative state, and not merely a contemplative state. In it I add-to divine creation (I do not merely become aware of it, nor do I immerse in it.) 

For me, creativity is what we are meant to do, we are meant to active participants in God's creation - that' for me, is what the mission of Jesus was all about.  

Now, it is often said (and by writers I respect) that we ought to be striving to engage in this kind of thinking all the time - and any lapse from it is a failure. The idea is that we are supposed to be primary thinking at every moment, whatever we are doing; and that when we aren't, it is a lapse and a failure. 

But this assumption makes every human life a failure, and a tragedy - since nobody ever has achieved this unbroken continuity of mystical thinking (except for Jesus, in the last three years of his life). 

I cannot believe (I mean this literally - I mean the idea is incoherent) that our loving-parents God (who I know, in this state of mystical thinking) created his mortal children on earth to fail. 

Indeed, for mortal life to make any sense, for it to have a necessary reason for happening, we cannot regard it as being set-up to attain any kind of perfect, continuous state --- since here in mortal earthly life we are ruled by entropy, subject to change/ disease/ degeneration and death. 

Jesus's ministry described by an eye-witness in (only) the Fourth Gospel, is a joyous, not tragic, message - 'Good News' indeed. So we ought to realize that Jesus brought a positive gift - and not merely the negation of a negative situation. (As with the doctrine that Jesus came to save us from original sin: i.e. Jesus came to negate a negative deficit.) 

And indeed Jesus did bring a positive gift - as repeatedly described in that Gospel: the positive gift of resurrected life eternal in Heaven.

That is the essence of Christianity. Clear and simple. 

Therefore I am not supposed to be a full-time and permanent Mystic in this life on earth - the evidence for which is that it is impossible. But I am supposed to value mystical thinking above all else, because that is what is on-offer in Heaven. 

More exactly (since each person has an individual destiny) anyone like me who knows and values mystical states, is meant to strive for them on the permanent and continuous basis offered only by resurrection into life everlasting. 

So - since mystical thinking cannot be done all the time on earth, then we are not meant to do all the time it on earth. But our valuing of mystical thinking is what provides the correct framework for that learning from personal experience that is the main point of continued-living in this mortal life. 

We can see immediately that there is a potential problem here; in that we are essentially intended to learn from personal experience - whereas the mainstream modern world supplies us with a merely secondhand and abstract experience. 

Indeed, as of 2021; The System does not provide genuine experience, but a form of non-experience. 

The System intends that we live abstractly, vicariously, and as guided by The System. This is the opposite and inversion of learning from personal experience.  

One thing I used to worry about (and many others worry about - to the point of paralysis) is the matter of self-deception concerning mysticism. 

The question of 'how can I tell?' when I really am 'doing' mystical thinking - or when instead I might be pretending to myself, or engaging in wishful thinking (merely relabeling ordinary mundane and manipulated thinking as 'mystical'). 

But most of this is dealt with when one regards the significance of mystical thinking as being personal rather than public. 

Self-deception becomes a problem among actual or would-be spiritual leaders, people trying to get power, make money, gain status, influence people, make-a-better-world, heal people, create or administer a movement/ cult/ institution/ religions (etc) from their own spirituality. 

All such objectification seems to create self-deception. Even great mystical thinkers such as Rudolf Steiner fell (deeply) into this trap of self-deception by striving for objectification, abstraction, generalization... 

But intrinsically, it is not difficult to know when one is, or is not, engaged in mystical thinking. 

The state is self-validating - as must be intuition in general. That is what intuition must be - if it is to serve as the bottom line. 

We need to assume that there is a divine self in us. 

And we must further assume that when our consciousness, our awareness, is motivated by Love; then conscious awareness can know the divine self. 

It is Love that distinguishes divine-thinking from any other kind of thinking. We can therefore consciously know when we are (here and now) thinking mystically, from our divine self; and when we are not. 

That's all there is to it. That is direct knowing.

The fact that it is based in the motivation of love is exactly why mysticism fails when made objective, when the attempt is to harness mystical thinking for 'use' in this mortal world.

We do not love The World; love is not abstract - indeed we love only some, specific beings - sometimes a person loves only one being. 

That defines the scope of mystical thinking. One can think mystically only about that which is loved. 

Love must come first. So we cannot 'use' mystical thinking by a forced application of love to that which we merely wish to know!   

(Lack of real love is where public mystics go badly wrong. The give-away is that they always claim to have a lot of love, for a lot of people. The engage in a lot of promiscuous love-talk... They try to operationalize love, by equating it with some kind of 'altruistic' or sacrificial action. Doing so, they are trying to control love; which manipulation is intrinsically putting second that which must be first. Abstract, generalized loving is a snare - and a lie.) 

"AI" is strategically about destruction, not control - Francis Berger's post, Laeth's comment

Following an insightful post on "AI" by Francis Berger; in the comments, Laeth produced a simple and convincing re-conceptualization of what lies behind this global strategy 

I have edited this excerpt. 

Ahrimanic refers to a type of totalitarian/ bureaucratic/ systemic evil, that is materialistic in assumptions and seeks omni-surveillance and thought control. Sorathic refers to a more advanced, negative, and purely-destructive evil; that is motivated a spiteful hatred of humans, life, and all manifestations of divine creation.

**

(Laeth's comment, edited)...

When all this started my intuition was that the diabolic element here was mostly Ahrimanic, that is, the objective was pure control. 

But more and more I think I was wrong about this (even if Ahrimanic forces were channelled to bring it to fruition). 

It seems more likely to me now that 'AI' is actually pure Sorathic envious evil. A big fraud at all levels that won't really even be useful for control, only to debase and destroy everything - from its enormous consumption of earthly energy for its functioning to the consumption of human energy from the engagement of people. An all consuming strategy, really. 

I try to avoid even seeing anything of AI or about it. I even try to avoid speaking too much against it, because I fear that too is me being sucked into its web. But it's now impossible to not find it: it's everywhere. Even normal, (and older) people, have started to talk about it (and in the exact terms the system wants them to). 

Yet even my tangential acquaintance with AI is enough to see that it's terrible at its purported higher objectives. It will just jumble up things with no direction, no purpose and no coherence - and any minimally intelligent person can understand that it's all nonsense. it cannot 'manage' anything. 

If given any power to manage a system, AI will just run it to the ground'; and I see now that that it its goal. To destroy any possibility of management, while consuming every possible resource that could be used to correct it. 

I think Ahriman was tricked too, in other words. Full Sorathic destruction is its only route and possibility of it.

**

My Comment: This immediately struck me as correct. 

The globalist totalitarian Establishment who sustain "The System" is being lied-to and tricked-into the Trillions-Dollar-Project of AI, by demonic beings whose purpose includes the destruction of The System. 

Once pointed-out (but it needed pointing out!), the strategy seems clear. 

Because (given the actuality of AI, of what it is, of how it works) this is the only possible outcome of widespread usage of, and therefore inevitable dependence upon, so-called AI. 

AI is a kind of mind virus that has been introduced into the consciousness of managers, at almost every level - from national and multi-national leaders down to the multitudes of middling-myrmidons. 

In the immediate short-term, all the institutional incentives are lined-up to focus upon introducing and developing and expanding AI - regardless of its effect on institutional functionality. 

But in the medium to long term; AI will destroy management itself, in a very direct fashion; along with institutional functionality. 

So the mind virus of AI functions like an addictive drug that rewards its user by short-term euphoria, at the cost of actively killing the user. 

My reading of Western social trends is that the Sorathic agenda has been gaining ground since the summer of 2020; when the Ahrimanic-totalitarian global triumph of the Birdemic coup (with its international lockdowns); began to yield to the intrinsically socially destructive policies of combining multivalent institutional antiracism with a renewal and acceleration of mass immigration. 

Since 2020; the Sorathic destructive agenda has been doubled-down-on by those who control the Western leadership class. Especially, it has caused/ sustained/ escalated war in Eastern Europe; then rolled-out to the Middle East; now (being attempted) in South Asia (also elsewhere). 

All this gratuitous and self-annihilating destruction (eg "sanctions" that damage the sanctioner more than the sanctioned!) is "sold" to the managerial classes of the world as assisting their globalist totalitarian goals (Great Reset, Agenda 2030 etc.). 

They are told that inducing societal chaos will create a desire for order, and thereby facilitate a further coup (on-top-of the successful early-2020 Birdemic coup) to enable a stable and lasting dictatorship of the Left.

Yet this was never possible; because the materialist Leftist ideology of the totalitarians is intrinsically negative, oppositional, hence destructive. 

Even in its earliest and partly-good manifestations; Leftism always had Sorathic evil as its Secret Master. This canker of the heart was evident in that, whenever totalitarian control was (briefly) established, it was inevitably followed by accelerating disorder and destruction.      

 

While there is an almost irresistible Schadenfreude induced by watching the managerial state enthusiastically implementing that self-destruct button which is AI; observers need to be mindful that evil does not cancel-out. 

As totalitarianism is destroyed by spiteful sadism, the process yields no increase in net-good in the world. 

Good comes from recognizing what is going on in the spiritual war of this world; rejecting it inwardly (i.e. repenting our complicity); and then spiritually affiliating to God and divine creation - by following Jesus Christ to that salvation which is resurrected eternal Heavenly Life. 

The twentieth century idea/insight/error that men need to "balance" their animus with anima ("feminine" with "masculine") - what is the way ahead?

Jung's terminology can be used to describe an idea that had great currency through the twentieth century; which was that men had a female "side" (anima), and women had a male "side" (animus), and that it was healthier/ more-balanced/ better-integrated/ more spiritually-advanced when the sexes became aware of their opposite archetypal qualities - and achieved some kind of "blend" of the two sides.

Looking back, 21st century Christians can readily see that this idea has been socially-deployed in many evil ways; to confuse and even invert the sexual self-understanding of the population. 

And indeed that, in practice, the idea was applied one-sidedly as asserting the need-for/ benefits-from men to become more feminine, and traditionally male social structures to become feminized. 

This has been a disaster. 

So it seems necessary to conclude that making men/ institutions/ society "more feminine" is a very bad idea, with consequences that are turning-out to be spiritually, psychologically, and physically lethal. 

But, the widespread nature of the basic idea or feeling behind the anima/ animus suggests to me that there was "something" in it; and that the false and demonically-hijacked implementation was nonetheless rooted in a genuine insight (albeit misunderstood and distorted) concerning the nature of individuals and society. 

This true insight was (I think) largely negative and critical; and it was that men and women's psychology and social roles, Christianity itself, and Western institutions generally; were all one-sided and incomplete in their basic nature - in ways that made them partial, incoherent, and spiritually-stultifying at an individual level. 

In other words; there was indeed by the twentieth century "something wrong" (at least most of the time, for many people and situations) with the pre-modern separation/ segregation/ division of the sexes in the context of the distinctive twentieth century consciousness.  

So, we may be able to agree that there were serious, indeed fatal flaws with the understanding and actuality of "sexuality" a century-plus ago; and that explains why counter-revolutionary/ reactionary attempts to reverse the changes of the past century, and restore the previously-existing system and psychology have been almost completely ineffectual. 

(Much talk, but near zero effect! Much posturing, but mostly (unintentionally) revelatory of its fakeness.)  

By my analysis, the twentieth century demonstrated that Christianity lacks the theological and metaphysical resources to deal with the challenge of the anima/ animus insights. Such mainstream ideas as the androgynous/ sexless angels, the loss of meaningful sexual identity after death, the dissolving of all marriages by death, the uncreative and non-procreative activities of resurrected men and women... 

When combined with modern consciousness; all of these assertions of traditional Christianity seem like positive inducements to the sexual confusions and distortions of the 21st century!  

With such a confused and feeble basis in theology; "Christians" divided into those Liberals who passively followed the secular trend of individual and social feminization; and Traditionalists who tried to maintain and restore pre-modern forms...

The liberals ceased to be Christian; while the traditionalists failed - and continue to fail - to address the underlying inadequacies and deficiencies of pre-modern Christianity.

(Which is why people don't really want traditionalism, and why it never goes anywhere.) 

I believe that some of the most valuable clues to valuable answers can be found in Mormon theology (and I mean Mormon theology - not the actual current practice of the CJCLDS - which is mostly very different, and increasingly liberalized). 

When God is recognized to be a man and a woman, and when the highest spiritual form of heavenly activity is recognized to be an eternal marriage of resurrected man and woman; then there is a (simple and clear) theoretical basis for a way of considering masculine and feminine that is both new, and also seems to fit with what we know of pre-civilizational tribal Men.  

As always, we need to by guided by what Mormons call Personal Revelation; and which I have characterized as the explicit and conscious recognition of the primacy of an intuition that is rooted in Primary Thinking leading to Direct Knowing. 

The answer to what each-of-us individually should do; cannot, therefore, be discovered from general rules about sexuality and sex. There are so many exceptions to general rules of this kind, that the exceptions typically outnumber the valid applications! 

While eternal marriage of a resurrected man and woman in Heaven is the spiritually-highest state; not all of us currently (or foreseeably) desire, or are suited to, such an outcome. And although all human lives ought to be rooted in love; mortal marriage is not, and never has been, the right thing for everybody. 

(For instance, for many people - past and present - family love, that is love within ones birth family - is and should be primary.)

It is learning the divinely-destined life-lessons of our experiences in this actual current mortal life which ought to be our primary concern: here-and-now. 

It is what we are here for. 

But - in this evil-dominated world of official lies and officially-sanctioned sins - those lessons can best be learned when we have a coherent and spiritually-valid understanding of the ultimate basis of masculine and feminine.

 

The knowledge, and sin, of the Holy Ghost

Reality is universal and accessible - ultimately, in the fullness of eternity - to every single person directly; but only to individual persons... So that if or when a person insists that they personally cannot do this, and that he must therefore get his knowledge secondhand and indirectly by means of communications... well, this is a species of self-damnation.

Such is all-too-often seen among 'traditionalist' Christians of this age; their primary intuition is that they cannot intuit the truth; and therefore must receive truth only by communication from external authority.

Of course, here and now we have at best only a sliver of direct truth; and in the meanwhile must get most of it secondhand - but we must subject all significant knowledge to the test of direct apprehension. And only when we can get the question boiled-down to that which can be held in mind and apprehended as a single and simple whole; then can clear knowledge be available... so long as the mind may (at least momentarily) be stilled and focused.

Thus direct knowing. Thus the knowledge of the Holy Ghost.

And the sin of the Holy Ghost is to deny it.

All too many Christians are in exactly this state of sin. How?

Having once known some-thing directly, clearly and with intuitive apprehension by the Holy Ghost; they then deny and over-rule this knowledge; by favouring some lesser, secondary, communicated, complex information - whether derived from church authority, secular scholarship or mores, tradition, logic, or scripture.

Heavenly Parents and the dyadic/ one-creator God - an update

As I have often written, but not recently, I believe that God is dyadic - consisting of a Heavenly Father and Mother, a man and woman who are (in some sense) incarnate and not spirits. 

This is the Mormon understanding, and reading about Mormon theology was where I first came across it. 

I am not trying to persuade other people that I am right; but I shall here consider why I personally believe this, and what it is that I believe. 

In the first place it is due to what might be termed intuition; in the sense that when I first encountered this idea, my heart seemed to jump and warm; as if I was discovering something true, good and with great possibilities of more-good. 

There was an immediate and positive sense... not so much that this was true, but that I wanted this to be true - this came before my conviction that it was true.  

Following this I read more about Mormon theology, and realized that the dyadic, man-woman nature of our Heavenly parents was just part of an entire metaphysical understanding of creation (including procreation - the creation of beings including people) as something dynamic, interactive, developing, evolutionary, open-ended, and expanding. 

In other words, that creation itself was creative (and therefore creation was not, as I had previously assumed, a done-thing, a closed accomplishment, a finished totality - once-and-for-always.) 

I then began to explore the implications of these ideas for myself; using concepts I got from William Arkle (and his reflections on God's motivations for creation); and Owen Barfield, including Barfield's accounts of the 'polar' philosophy of ST Coleridge. 

I was also building on a longer-term fascination with 'animism' - with the (apparently innate and spontaneous) tendency to regard the world (the universe) as consisting primarily of beings - all of whom were alive, purposive, conscious - albeit in different ways, at different scales and timescales etc.

The motivation for creation, and why God should have created this kind of creation, was something I had found difficult to grasp (none of the usual explanations made much sense to me). But when I conceptualized God as the loving dyad of a man and woman, then it seemed obvious why such a combination would have wanted to create - including others who might eventually become like themselves.   

Furthermore, it did not seem possible that creation had arisen from any state of oneness of self-sufficiency, since this would make creation arbitrary; nor could creation arise from a tendency towards differentiation, because that would lead to meaningless-purposeless chaos. 

There must (I felt) have been some kind of original 'polarity' - in abstract and physics-like terminology, there would need to be at-least two different kinds of 'force', the interaction of which would be creation. Coleridge (also Barfield and Arkle) saw this in terms of a 'masculine'-tendency for expansion and differentiation; and a 'feminine'-tendency for one-ness and integration.  

But in terms of my (non-abstract) preferred metaphysics of beings and animistic assumptions; 'masculine' and 'feminine' simplifies to just a primordial man and a primordial woman; this would mean two complementary, unlike-but-of-the-same-kind, beings; the love of whom would lead to a desire for creation.  

(In the same kind of way that - in this mortal life - love of man and woman usually leads to a desire for procreation.)

At some point I validated this understanding by means of meditative prayer; by refining and asking a simple question, feeling that this question had 'got-through', and receiving a clear inner response.  

In summary; the above account is something-like the sequence by which I desired, concluded, became-convinced-by, the metaphysical assumption of God as Heavenly parents; by some such mixture of feelings, reasoning, and 'feedback'. 

All this happened a good while ago (about a decade); since when I have been interpreting things on the basis of this framework, and it seems to 'work', so far.

What the real-life, this world, implications are; include a reinforcement of the idea that the family is (and ought to be) the primary social structure; on earth as it is in Heaven; and a clarification of the nature of creation - starting with the primary creation by Heavenly parents and also including the secondary creation of beings (such as men and women) within primary creation. 

This metaphysics has further helped me understand both why and how love is the primary value of Christianity; i.e. because love made possible creation in the first place, and is the proper basis of 'coordinating' the subcreative activities of all the beings of creation.  

And it helped me understand how creation can be open-ended and expansile, without degenerating into chaos; because it is love that makes the difference.

Also, it helped me to understand the nature of evil; and how evil is related either to the incapacity for love or its rejection. Without love, the innate creativity of individual beings is going to be selfish and hostile to that of other beings: non-loving attitudes, thinking, and actions by beings, will tend to destroy the harmony of creation.  

I don't talk much about this understanding, and I often use the generic term 'God'; because it is difficult to explain briefly and clearly that the dyadic God of our Heavenly parents serves as a single and 'coherently unified' source of creation

But God is two, not one, because only a dyad can create, and creation must-be dyadic. 

And the dyadic just-is the one-ness of God the primal creator.  

Note added: It may be said, correctly, that the above does not depend on the Bible; but then neither does the metaphysics of orthodox-classical theology depend on scripture. We can find resonances and consistencies within the Bible - but assumptions such as: strict monotheism - creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by a God outside of creation and Time, the Athanasian Creed descriptions of the Trinity, God's omnipotence and omniscience, original sin... These are ideas that would not be derived-from a reading of scripture - the most that can be said is that someone who already ideas can find Biblical references that can be interpreted as consistent-with these assumptions. They are (apparently) products of philosophically sophisticated theologians who brought these ideas to Christianity from earlier and mostly pagan (Greek and Roman) sources. Also, these kinds of metaphysical assumption are theistic - to do with a personal god - but not specifically Christian. The salvific work of Jesus Christ (principally: making possible resurrected life everlasting in Heaven) was done within already-existing creation, and Christianity is not therefore an explanation of creation-as-such.   

What's the use of Jesus here-and-now? Theories about the effect of Jesus on mortal life

What's the use of Jesus in my actual, daily life, here-and-now? 

This question needs an answer that is simple and clear enough to be comprehended and grasped whole - or else it will be ineffectual. 

But also, of course, the answer must be true - not some kind of incoherent answer; nor one that will soon be contradicted by experience because of its implications. 

Furthermore, the answer needs to be one that may - in principle - be endorsed by intuition. It should Not be an answer that depends on "evidence" relating to the validity and interpretation of external authority. 

(...Or else we will enter an "infinite regress" - and one that does not begin with Jesus, but has Jesus at its far, inaccessible, end - where he will never be reached.) 

In other words; we need to know that the answer is true; and we need to know its truth for-ourselves, and from our-selves  so that we personally can take the fullest responsibility for choosing and living-by the answer. 

If it is agreed that Jesus's work was to offer Men the chance of resurrected eternal life in Heaven; then some modern people will regard this as irrelevant to this mortal life...

Either because this finite and temporary mortal life doesn't matter by comparison with eternity...

Or else (more likely) that our post-mortal state and destination, has nothing to do with the practical needs and minutiae of everyday life. 

(i.e. The idea that everlasting life in Heaven would be very nice and all that; but is just pie-in-the-sky - maybe, sometime in the future - when what is needed/wanted is pie on the table, now and for-sure.)

In the past, in the era of church-led Christianity; the everyday implications were set-out in detailed commandments, rules, practices, and (especially) prohibitions - that dictated our lives in all important - and indeed apparently trivial - instances.

The Christian life was a complex and comprehensive instructional blueprint, and Christian living was obedience to its dictates.

I believe that this needs to be replaced - because it manifestly doesn't work, and never really was what Jesus said and did - and people instead require a personal and internally-endorsed understanding of what it means to "follow Jesus". 

That is the nature of the task. When one becomes a Christian - in theory; then instead of looking to one church or another for instructions concerning "what to do next" - this is a personal quest. 

And I feel sure that the quest is not going to be satisfied by any answer that we feel to be drab, materialist, mundane, utilitarian, monochrome, military rations... 

We absolutely require an answer that is as broad and deep as our fullest and most-valued experience of this mortal life, and our most heart-felt aspirations for what we most desire life might ideally become.

And that answer must be the basis for a powerful and robust, inner-generated, personal motivation. 

(Or else, if insufficiently motivated; we will surely succumb to the endemic evil of this world.) 

So that if, like me, you value (insist-upon) that sense of life as being lived at a higher level - a state of awareness of the enchantment of living - then we need to know how the future, post-mortal promises of Jesus shall eventuate in the potential for here-and-now joy, meaning, purpose, and loving-creation. 

 

As the demons infiltrate our minds, consider that Real-thinking is a slow business

To recap: I believe that Rudolf Steiner was correct a century ago when he said that the characteristic spiritual phenomenon of this age was that the power of thinking has been enhanced, to the point that Men tend to become after death what Men think-they-are during life. 

This is why the prime strategy of purposive-evil has since become totalitarian - in other words, demonic evil being are engaged in vast-scale attempts to control Men's thinking. 

At first (with the USSR, and other 20th century leftist dictatorships) this was mainly by physical coercion, restriction and censorship; more recently, it has been by flooding human minds with addictively-engineered mass and social media.

Thus, Modern Men have (for the first time in history) the power, consciously and by choice, to think-themselves towards the realm of spiritual beings, to communicate with 'the dead', to recognize life and purpose in the world, to appreciate divine providence at work in their own lives... and so forth. 

Yet, instead, Modern Man chooses to think the universe as purposeless, meaningless, dead and wholly material - of himself as (merely) an animal whose life as annihilated by death; and by-thinking, makes-this-so (partially so in mortal life, wholly so after mortal death).  

The nature of thinking in these times is superficial, shallow - and excluding of our real and divine self. 

Our 21st century thinking is put-into-us from external sources, and the 'data' is processed by concepts that are also inserted and sustained by inputs. 

Modern Man's thinking is like a mirror of the external world of mass media and bureaucracy - and his social interactions overwhelmingly consist of the same content and concepts. Who controls The System of media and bureaucracy, also controls Men's thinking... 

Our global totalitarian System therefore includes Modern Men; and by his thinking Modern contributes to the sustenance and growth of The System. 

Our escape from this situation can only lie outside of The System. 

Some advocate escape by Not-thinking - but this is attempting to go-against the irreversible direction of Man's divinely ordained evolutionary development which has given our thinking this enhanced power. It will not work, and trying Not to think will do us harm by failing to recognize or oppose The System and its purposive evil. 

The answer is not to 'stop thinking', nor to weaken thinking's power; but to redirect thinking towards God and the currently-excluded world of spirits.  

(Indeed, our destiny (that direction hoped-for by God) is towards even-greater strengthening of thinking; so long as that thinking is - to the best of our ability, repenting the inevitable failures - aligned with God's creative methods and purpose.) 

What is needed is a different kind of thinking; a thinking that comes from within - and comes from our real and divine self: a primary thinking. 

But what are its characteristics? 

Negatively, we can say that primary thinking is word-less - it is in this sense a 'pure' thinking. 

It is intuition - the bottom line of knowing; therefore is not explicable in terms of its causes: primary thinking arises-from the real-divine self, as an expression of that self - it is not caused by other factors (else it would not be primary). 

Free will comes after primary thinking. First comes the primary thought - then our consciousness recognizes, evaluates, decides... 

And it is important to be clear that primary thinking is - or seems - slow and simple. 

Therefore, if we are busy, plugging-into media whenever 'boredom' threatens, working all the time, socializing in every spare moment... if we fill our time/ minds with inputs... then our thinking will necessarily be externally-dictated, it will be System thinking, it will be net-evil. 

We will be thinking evil, and desiring evil for our-selves; and (sooner or later) our thinking will transform us into that which we think. 

Only if we make space and reduce external inputs and 'noise' may we become aware of our primary thinking. 

This cannot be hurried - and 'cannot' means it can't. Primary thinking is incompatible with an 'efficient' life. 

Further; if we seek answers - we need to realize that we are almost certainly asking the wrong questions. Discovering and framing the problem correctly is a slow, deliberate process that cannot be rushed. If we really want Good answers - we must do what is necessary to discover them.

Thus, primary thinking is something that only happens to modern Man by deliberate choice, by wanting and making it a priority. 

If a typical Modern Man does not make the effort, does not make the needful sacrifices - if he continues to be busy, compulsively interactive; if he fills his quiet and solitary time with stimulation (or sleep)... then he may never do any primary thinking - may live always in a passive and unconscious way, a mere circuit of The System. 

Primary thinking should be our priority. It is always going-on - but is nearly-always ignored, buried beneath the deluge of incoming stimuli, and indeed unfindable so long as that external stimulation continues. 

Therefore, if we want to escape The System which is filling out thoughts in order to manipulate, torment, and ultimately damn us; we absolutely need to make our life-situation conducive to primary thinking. 

Which means to accept the necessary conditions of relative slowness and simplicity; and to become conscious of that pure and wordless clarity of knowing that can (and should) bring us a sureness, a conviction of truth, a sense of solidity in reality - and that we may consciously choose to adopt as the basis of a good life.