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. 

Energy derives from purpose: The polarity of love and creation

Purpose and desire emerged with love. As God's love grew between our Heavenly Parents, so, at the same moment, creation began. Love and creation: the two were simultaneous, because aspects of the same awakening of purpose and desire.

Creation began because there was a living purpose. Love itself is intrinsically creative, because love is alive, hence dynamic; love works for development in the self and the other, in relationship. Such development is creation.

The lack of such relation and creation would mean acollapse of purose; and love is replaced by despair, there is loss of cohesion, collapse.

Love coheres by creation, by participating directly in God's creation. And Not by each individual seeking pleasure.

Because pleasure is static, not developmental, not creative. Thus pleasure kills itself. As such, pleasure tries to hold-onto itself - and this also kills pleasure.


Energy is actually a false conceptualisation of purpose and desire in action. If energy is taken to be the primary reality (as many do); then we will suppose that energy can be manipulated and directed. Yet because energy is purpose, and purpose derives from Beings, this fails.

We may suppose that Beings can be directed, but actually Beings can only be used when they are moving towards their purposes. Therefore Beings can only be manipulated by inducing them to accept our purposes, instead of their own. (Or pretending that their purposes are ours, as happens when human

Purpose is only creative when the many purposes of many Beings are harmonised by love; otherwise we get chaos. Love is only purposive when also creative, otherwise we get merely evanescent pleasure. Purposes at war and cancelling-out (see below)...


Love and creation are a polarity - which means that they are aspects of a single and indivisible dynamic process: which is the development of living Being. If the polarity is denied and rejected - what then?

If we take love unilaterally (leaving aside creativity) we get Nirvana, we get Eastern religion. Creation is illusion, the self is illusion - all is illusion except the static, unchanging, one of deity.The self aims to dissolve into deity - since deity is the only real reality.

In actuality what is attained in Nirvana is an almost-static, almost-unchanging, almost-loss of self... hardly (but somewhat) differentiated from deity, hardly conscious yet slightly conscious, not free except to embrace this state of unfreedom.

This is granted to those who want it by our loving God; with a near approximation of the impossible (because paradoxical) state that is desired - impossible because the self is indestructible in a world eternally composed of Beings.


If instead we take creatively, unilaterally, and reject love as a principle of reality... this is modernity, scientism, materialism. We get novelty without cohesion, mere variation and recombination; lability and change but incoherent and without purpose or direction.

Thus, when creativity excludes love, creativity goes - because creativity relies on cohesion, and the cohesion must be real, not arbitrary. Since the reality of cohesion is divine love, and this is denied; there can be no genuine creativity.

Human creativity only makes sense when it happens with a created-reality. If reality is explained as random or wholly-determined (or some combination), then human creation is just a free-spinning cog, a subjective delusion that dies with the self. Indeed, when reality is random/ determined not-created, this awareness will sooner-or-later invade and destroy any conception of individual creativity.

In sum individual creativity makes no sense except in the context of a creation; creation makes no sense except with love.


With modernity, then, from its denial of the objectivity of love (and of God the creator) we get an increase of chaos, warring purposes and purposeless despair; and a reduction in the purposive development of loving creation.

Because there is no purpose, there is no meaning; because there is no love-creation there is not purpose - the modern condition.


The modern denial of love as a metaphysical reality is, implicitly, an attempt to undo creation; to return to the primordial chaos that surrounded Beings. This modern project can only be partly successful, because the attempt is made from within God's coherent and loving creation; indeed having this as a purpose its itself a fragment of creation that has purpose and meaning; and derives its energy in-action from this desire for chaos.

But as chaos approaches, energy will dwindle; the desire necessary to attain the goal will dissipate into the desired chaos - before its goal could be attained.

This is one way of understanding why evil cannot win in the long-run. Creation has happened, and cannot be undone wholly, but only diminished quantitatively.  Creation depends on free agency, but creation can wait until love is freely chosen.

Two irreconcilable concepts of Heaven - Platonic and Pluralistic

The traditional, orthodox concept of Heaven derives from ancient Greek philosophy - I shall call it Platonic - this can be summarised:

God - Creation - Beings

The first thing is God, alone - who does Creation - and late in Creation God makes Beings, including Man.  

For Christians; God is a God of Love, whose creation is a kind of gratuitous overflow of love: so we get

God-Love - Creation - Beings


By contrast, what I will call the Pluralist concept of Heaven - which is the one I believe to be true - can be summarised:

Beings - Love - Creation

The primordial situation is of many Beings, of whom two are are Heavenly Parents - Father and Mother.

Thus God is Dyadic, irreducibly Two and not a unity (or, the unity is of two always-distinct aspects, permanently-made a unity by Love); and it is from the Love between our Heavenly Parents that Creation comes into existence (Love, being the coherence and purpose of Creation; Love harmonising the diverse elements of Creation). So we get:

Beings-God - Love - Creation


The Platonic Heaven seems to be associated with a wish for absolute, abstract, infinite perfection - and God is defined in such terms - including that God is undivided unity, of infinite power and presence (omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent).

And this primal God creates everything else (everything other than God) from nothing (ex nihilo) instantaneously, in zero-Time (first Nothing, then Something... there can be no graduation or graduality) - including Beings, including Men.

In a Platonic Heaven, therefore, Creation remains entirely God's business, and nothing/ nobody else can contribute to primary Creation (only to secondary details within Creation). Also Heaven is perfect, so there is nothing for Men to contribute to it. Also primary Creation happens in zero-Time.

The Platonic Heaven is essentially contemplative: Man has nothing necessary or useful to Do. Man enjoys heaven, but does not add to it (because it is perfect). In Platonic Heaven; we may express gratitude, worship, may do many things - but none of them are necessary, none make any qualitative difference to Heaven.

In sum, the Platonic Heaven, is a state not a 'process'. It is a state of being, a state of communion with God, of bliss... but essentially it is static - there is no dynamic to Platonic Heaven - because movement comes from difference, from desire, from deficit... and this cannot be because the Platonic Heaven is perfection.   


In distinction, the Pluralistic Heaven in a world of Love, but not of perfection. Love is understood as itself dynamic ('in' Time: Time is a part of primary reality), between Beings; and therefore Heaven is a continuation of Creation - and for Christians it is a Heaven of active, personal participation in Creation.

This happens because Christians will be resurrected into Heaven, and resurrection is understood as becoming divine - immortal, indestructible, grown-up children of God. The actuality of God's primary Creation is opened-to the contributions of resurrected Men.

Part of pluralism is the uniqueness of each being, including of each man. Each resurrected Man brings to Heaven something unique, that did not previously exist in heaven. Every single individual Man who enters heaven therefore brings something irreplaceable to the ongoing Creation.

In sum everybody who is capable of Love and who chooses to follow Jesus, may be resurrected into heaven; and each such person has something unique and irreplaceable to contribute to God's ongoing work of Creation.

The Pluralistic Heaven is not only-contemplative (although contemplation is surely possible, and part of things) - but is active dynamic and open-endedly creative: a growing Heaven. And this Creation of Men is included in the primary and divine Creation.

Man's unique and individual contribution is woven-into Creation permanently, forever. And this is made possible by Love.

It is Love that harmonises God's creation with the contributions of many individual and unique Men - resurrected Men joining in increasing numbers with time.


The Pluralistic Heaven is not perfect, it is not closed, it is not complete, it is not outside Time... on the contrary Time (sequential, continuous, linear) is an assumed part of reality. The Pluralistic Heaven is, therefore, developing, open-ended, growing... Heaven is in-movement, is changing, has a past and a future; and changing, expanding personnel - each with an unique contribution to make to the whole. 


So, we can see that the Platonic Heaven and the Pluralistic Heaven are very different places. While one may be contained within the other - only one or the other (or neither) could ultimately be true - since they each have extremely different ultimate metaphysical assumptions. 

The 'problem' of love and Christianity (gnosticism is an unavoidable consequence of organisation)

Love* is the basis of real Christianity; but in practice Christianity is seldom real.

As I said yesterday, if we regard gnosticism as the replacement of love by knowledge, as the focus of Christianity; then this form of pseudo-Christianity has been and is usually dominant.

It is much easier to have a religion of knowledge than of love; and the less spiritual a society becomes - the more that this is the case. With knowledge at the centre; Christianity can become the subject of organisation - hierarchy and specialisation; of education and training, of initiation and ordination.

Churches often exclude, discipline and expelled people for inadequate or incorrect knowledge - but seldom or never for insufficient love; or for the opposite of love such as excessive fear, resentment or pride. Converts and aspirants are tested on their knowledge, not their love.

Christians, especially Christian leaders (and aspiring leaders), may falsely claim to be motivated by love. When asked for proof of love, people either suggest that it is wholly subjective, private and inaccessible - and therefore cannot or should not be judged and evaluated.

Or else (in trying to avoid such 'relativism') they invent 'proxy-measures of love', and thereby ignore the reality of love. Thus, people 'prove' their motivation-by-love, by (for example) doing impressive works of public charity, or performing extreme ascetic feats. In other words, but in a different way; they replace love with... knowledge... again.

What we can see is that any kind of institutional structure requires 'objective measures' and that real love is unsuitable to be such a measure. Therefore, any and every form of organisation is intrinsically gnostic.

(Of course, love and knowledge of love are two different things; a young child may love, but not know that he loves. Love may exist without knowledge. Nonetheless, Christianity can only be discussed if love can be known.)

It is a strange business and very different from the rest of life! For a Christian, love is not just real - but the reallest things of all; not just the proper focus of mortal life, but the actual basis of the creation of everything.

(Note: One who cannot love, cannot be a Christian - the implications of the two great commandments (to love God and neighbour) and the whole of the Fourth Gospel make that fact crystal clear. This formulation is seldom stated, perhaps because many people - unlike Jesus - have tried to make Christianity universal. Whether people actually exist who cannot love is a separate matter - but if they do exist, then they cannot be Christian, and could not have life everlasting - 'could not' simply because they would not follow Jesus through death to resurrection.)   

And yet love is apparently not amenable to detection and measurement... and yet it actually is. Love is knowable, indeed for a Christian love must be knowable; because the alternative is that love is subject to unlimited self-deception and unbounded false assertion.

As so often, all this mystery and problem is a consequence of inappropriate abstraction. Because love is a matter of common sense and common experience - within the family situation.

We may know of another's love, when that is a spouse, parent, sibling, son or daughter... We know of another's love when we are in a loving situation. Indeed, such known-love is as certain as anything can be, it is (when present) the most powerful motivator in the world - leading to extreme, even ultimate, forms of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation.

But love is not open-endedly scaleable. We can know of love in a loving family situation, and some analogous family-like situation; but can know of love only in such situations.

Love is straightforwardly knowable, and indeed 'measurable', within the family situation; but becomes an insoluble problem - is made an insoluble problem - when we try to make love the focus of an institution, a legal system, a polity...

In this sense gnosticism is an unavoidable consequence of organisation. 


*Love needs to be understood in a 'metaphysical' sense that includes 'creation'. It was Love that both motivated and enabled divine creation; love that enables creation both to have novelty and to cohere; to develop and evolve and remain aligned in purpose; love that enables many beings (each with free will, with 'agency') to participate in the unity of creation - and so on.

Love is a world realm (for Christians)

Since Christianity puts so much emphasis on Love; putting it, indeed, as the very core value - it is essential to understand what is meant by Love.

Currently, most mainstream Christians have adopted mainstream society's post-1960s idea that Love is (merely) a feeling or emotion - as such, a subjective phenomenon, usually ephemeral, and ending at death or before. Such a definition defines Christians as idiotic dupes; and renders any sin into a virtue simply by claiming that it is based-on Love.

But Christians have not been very effective at explaining - even to themselves - what Love actually is if it is not merely a temporary emotion.


This is probably because Love is not taken seriously enough by Christians. If Love is primary, it must be located at a primary level, as one of the fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions of creation - Love needs to be what makes-possible this creation, this world.

First, this world, this creation, is alive and conscious, made of Beings (not things). But Beings tend to be fissile, to pursue each their own self-centred gratifications - Love is the choice, the ultimate commitment, by which Beings align their methods and goals. 

Indeed, I would say that Love is God's realm - the world of creation.


Inside the realm of Love, there is possibility of creation; because Love is what makes for coherence, cohesion, the attractive 'force' that does not just hold-together the disparate Beings of creation; but intrinsically-harmonises their aspirations and motivations.

For example; a group of people without Love will relate to each other 'instrumentally' by means of various compromises between selfishness and altruism, between short-termist gratification and long-term survival etc. This situation is familiar in the workplace, and in public life generally.

By contrast; a group of people inside the realm of Love (for example, an ideally Good Family; which we can all imagine, even when we have not experienced it) will find that their aspirations, goals, methods are all developed within the context of Love; so that they will 'automatically' be aligned; and will continually be adjusted (as things develop) in light of that Love.

These alignments and adjustments are not compromises, nor are they experienced as compromises; they are instead just exactly what the Family members most want to do.


And that is the difference made by Love - the difference between (on the one hand) life being, at best, a compromise of long-termist mutual exploitation; and (on the other hand) a life in which Love is a medium within-which individuals may live positively, creatively.

Without Love there can only be indirect communications; each requiring cycles of many unreliable steps such as encoding information, transmission, perception, analysis, understanding etc. But Love is a communion of Beings, and Love makes communion possible by enabling a direct and unmediated, immediately apprehended, knowledge - each of the other.


So Love does not merely 'bind', it transforms the very nature of the situation; in exactly the way that a loving Family is different from a random collection of people trying to function-together according to various and labile sets of objectives, rules and practices.

Christians identify this realm of Love with the fact that we live in a creation, made by a creator whose children we are and who loves us.

By means of our brother, Jesus Christ; we are invited to join the eternal realm of Love after biological death; where we will participate as resurrected Beings.

Christians are those who believe in the reality of this eternal realm of Love, and who wish to inhabit it; who joyously accept that invitation.

Note added: The difference between Love in this mortal life and in Heaven, is that of permanence. By accepting the offer of resurrection into Heaven we (as immortal, indestructible Beings) make a irreversible commitment to Love. This solidity of Love is what then makes eternal positive creating a reality. By some contrast; here on earth our condition is one of learning primarily, one characterised by innumerable sources of change: sin, corruption, disease, degeneration... Yet we all experience Love, and can learn from that experience, if we so choose. 

Heart thinking or entropic thinking: How and why we are (literally) destroying reality

The great lesson I got from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield, is that reality is co-created by consciousness - that is, by thinking. We make the world by our thinking - and the kind of world we make - or unmake, depends on the kind of thinking. 

The only thing out-there and independent of us is formless chaos - all that can be known has been created; and creation formed by consciousness, and all consciousness has this property of creative formation. 

The primary creation that we inhabit was formed by God's consciousness (God is the prime creator); but our own consciousness affects divine creation - either positively or negatively. 

As our consciousness has become detached from God - we must now choose whether again to affiliate with the living reality of primary creation through love and heart thinking; or to remain alienated, to regard reality as consisting of dead things affected by material processes - and thereby to affiliate with the entropic, parasitic, destructive cognitive processing of mainstream modern life. 

It has become very obvious that humanity is splitting into Christians and anti-Christians; into those who affiliate with God, The Good and Divine Creation - and those who oppose these. 

This split can also be seen as between heart thinking and entropic thinking. We are being compelled to choose between these. 

It is the choice between loving creation; or the subversion, deconstruction and destruction of creation. 

Entropic thinking is normal, abstract, mainstream, 'materialist' thinking - it is 'brain thinking', which is increasingly conformed to machine or computer thinking. 

Entropic describes how you are (almost certainly) thinking now; and how nearly everybody (or everybody) around you is thinking - it is how everybody in societal authority and institutional leadership are thinking. It is the processing embodied in public discourse, bureaucracy, computers, management, media, laws, regulations, procedures...  

This entropic thinking assumes the world is made of dead things, and these dead things are subject to life-less processes, energies and forces. Built-into this is the assumption that entropy rules the world - rules reality - entropy in one place can only be reversed or delayed by increasing entropy elsewhere - thus 'creation' is actually the predatory consumption of one source of order by another - and (because entropy is relentless) this predation (or parasitism) must continue until all order is consumed and formless chaos remains.

Thus, entropic thinking is the world view of the self-damned, the demonic; those who believe in Satan's conceptualization of reality: the sin-motivated war of each against all (only expediently delayed by transient mutually-exploitative demonic alliances directed against God and creation).

Heart thinking is in complete contrast and opposition to the entropic in its nature, origin and motivation. 

Heart thinking is based in love and life; it assumes a living universe of beings - and God's creation gets its origin, form, order and coherence from love. 

Thus, love and creation are polarities of the same essence - loving-creation and creative-love.  

This love - which made creation, and holds-together creation - and which is self-sustaining - is between beings. Beings are living and conscious entities - all beings are alive and conscious, but there are different degrees of aliveness and forms of consciousness.  

Heart thinking is of those beings who have first become modern and alienated; who have first assimilated into entropic thinking - where the reality of God is not entailed. Those who from that position of detached freedom have consciously chosen to recognize, embrace and align-with the reality of God and of a 'universe' consisting of beings living in a divine creation. 

Those who choose heart thinking will find that they need to recognize the greater authority, depth and truth of a thinking based in love, and operating with love - in order to reject the otherwise overwhelming powers and persuasion of entropic thinking. 

It is the terrible choice of modern Man to choose - and his choice lies between the divine work of co-creating the world, or else the demonic project of destroying creation. 

Those who think entropically will do entropy. 

By the way they conceptualize the world, they project deadness onto the living world, they project abstract forces and energies onto a creation that is actually sustained by love; and by these projections these remake their world in the image they have chosen. 

Despite the opposition (implicit and explicit) of The World; heart thinking will need to be accorded primacy again and again, as it conflicts in method and motivation with the dominant, prevalent this-worldly entropic thinking - which asserts its monopoly of objectivity and that heart thinking is childish, foolish or insane.

Entropic thinking labels heart thinking as wishful thinking; yet the truth is both heart and entropic are wishful - and the wishes become reality.  

The entropic thinker wishes entropy onto divine creation - converting that which is alive and conscious through love into a meaningless, purposeless dead universe. 

It is entropic thinking that is destroying our civilization, our humanity - and beyond that it destroys the possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven. Because the entropic thinker (and he is apparently most people in the world, including most self-identified Christians) is co-engaged in the progressive killing of beings, the elimination of love, the reduction of life and consciousness into 'people' who self-identify as Dead Things. 

The heart thinker instead works from the love in his heart, from actual interpersonal and inter-being love (not abstract love); he recognizes and affirms that love, and makes it the motivation for knowing reality. He regards reality as that which known by this loving thinking. 

The heart thinker regards the world from his heart - it is his love of particular beings which connects him with reality; it is his love that motivates the connection-with and knowledge-of reality. 

That which is outwith his love is not truly known - but merely hypothesized, modelled from simplified and incomplete variables, and therefore certainly false. 

Thus the primacy of the two great commandments: love of God and neighbour. In heart thinking; modern Man chooses to participate in co-creating his own reality (and potentially the reality of other heart thinkers) by rooting his knowledge in love of God. And the scope of this knowledge is defined by the scope of those other beings ('neighbours') whom he also loves. And if he wishes this active joining-with loving creation to be an eternal state - this is attained by loving and following Jesus Christ to resurrected life in Heaven. 

Note: The above analysis is indebted to a section of a lecture on Crop Circles from Stanley Messenger to the Wessex Research Group, delivered in the middle 1990s. Stanley Messenger was an expert on Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, having been a Waldorf teacher. He was also involved in, and approving of (in what I regard as an uncritical and credulous way) pretty much all of the New Age crazes of his era; and was also a proponent of the sexual revolution. He was highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and a gifted improvisatory lecturer (having been a professional actor). My eveluation is that Stanley Messenger was (much like his Master, Steiner) someone who sporadically generated some superb and vitally-important insights, which are scattered among a great deal else that I must set aside as mistaken and wrongly-motivated. Anyway; my above post was inspired by re-listening to a genuinely-intuitive, superbly truth-full section of the linked lecture which runs from about 23 minutes to 42 minutes. This section strikes me as more vivid, comprehensible, exciting and motivating than anything Steiner ever expressed (that I have come across) - while being deeply and explicitly indebted to Steiner. 

Explaining the origin of irredeemable, never-incarnated, demonic spirits

Following from yesterday's discussion; I shall put forward here an explanation for those beings who are traditionally regarded as demons in orthodox Christian theology:

The definition of which is that they are spirit-beings, that have never incarnated, and which are eternally committed to evil such that they cannot be redeemed or saved. 

There are several other kinds of being that might be termed "demons"* - and these might include currently-incarnated beings, or beings that have previously been incarnated and died (analogous to evil ghosts)...

But here I am focusing on beings that have always been spirits - and I am trying to understand and explain how any being might be outwith the scope of the salvation of Jesus Christ.   

I will first outline my metaphysical assumptions: those who want to cut straight to the explanation of demons will find this after the break: indicated +++

My metaphysical understanding of reality is that it comprises beings in relationships; and that beings have attributes such that they are alive, conscious (to some degree), purposive, self-sustaining and so forth. 

Beings are eternal, always have existed - including before creation.

All beings are unique: that is important. Some Christians (perhaps influenced by oneness spiritualty) assume that all Men are originally equal, and diverge - and then spiritually develop and converge towards becoming very similar, or even identical. 

But in contrast I assume that all beings began as unique (and un-cooperative) and God's plan of salvation is a matter of progressively achieving harmony. At first a partly-imposed and temporary harmony, but a process that is completed by the Second Creation, of Heaven; where each resurrected being has chosen to be remade such as to live wholly from-love, and harmony between unalike beings is then innate and spontaneous**.

That is: living-beings are the primary unit of reality; and "beings" include humans, animals, plants, as well as what are usually considered to be "mineral" entities and materials. 

Everything primary in reality is thus either itself a being, or part of a being. 

A further assumption is that all beings were originally spirits. 

Only later, and only for some beings, there may be incarnation into some material form. 

Many spirits have never been incarnated.  

Originally (before creation) beings may have been aware of each other, to varying degrees, and with varying attitudes - but each being is assumed to have been autonomous, separate, pursuing its own goals. 

Before creation, reality was a "chaos" of beings. 

Divine creation happened when God's love became the means of "coordinating" or harmonizing these already-existing beings. 

However, to become a part of divine creation, a being must first be capable of love; then secondly a being-capable-of-love must choose to live by, or from, this love.

(Because it is love that harmonizes the disparate beings, and this harmonization is creation.)

Hence the formulation "God is love", and the great commandments to love God and fellow Men - which can be interpreted to make the choice to embrace the loving purpose of God as ideal, and to aspire to live wholly from love of other beings. 

+++

Now I will explain the origin of demons:

All beings are unique. To participate in creation, a being must be capable of love; but not all beings are capable of love. 

A love-incapable being happens to be constituted that way. Such a being will not be part of creation, and cannot ever become a part of creation. 

Demons are here regarded as spirits that are incapable of love. 

For a being to be saved or redeemed includes death and resurrection such as to live entirely from love. 

It follows that any being constitutionally incapable of love, cannot undergo salvation, indeed, such a being cannot even want salvation.

Some love-incapable beings might remain passive, detached from creation. But demons are assumed to be those love-incapable beings who have chosen to oppose creation - for various motives. 

For instance; demons may aim to exploit creation, or may seek to destroy it. They may be motivated by their own pleasure, by negative resentment, or sheer spiteful desire to inflict suffering. Or mixture of motivation; and demonic motivations may change over time. 

But although capable of changing their behaviours; a love-incapable demon can never become part of creation, and can never seek or attain salvation through following Jesus Christ. 

The above scheme may explain the occurrence of those demons - traditionally-defined: demons that are spirits, have never incarnated, and are eternally outwith even the possibility of salvation. 

*(And some of these are capable of choosing salvation.)

**(An analogy is that the first creation is like a State ruled by a loving creator God with a mixture of coercion and consent; while the Second Creation is a perfectly loving family.) 

Primary creation (of God the Father) is opt-out; the second creation (of Jesus Christ) is opt-in

The primary creation was imposed-upon the pre-existing and eternal Beings by God. 

This imposition was by necessity. Before creation, Beings existed in isolation and without relationships - thus direction, purpose and meaning in a creation based-upon Love emerged only after primary creation. 

In this sense, also, freedom and the capacity for an agency based on distinguishing the self from the not-self was only possible post-creation. 

(i.e. We cannot know we are a self until after we know of other selves.)  

Therefore it was impossible for any Being to opt-out of creation, until after creation, because there could be no consent to creation, nor of 'opting', until after creation had-happened -- hence the necessity for its imposition. 

But Love is by mutual consent only; and this meant that Beings were 'incorporated' into primary creation without consent; and (it seems) some of them withdrew consent almost immediately. 

To be clear: all the Beings of creation (even Satan, the first rebel against God) have been, even if briefly, subordinated to God's creation. 

Probably some who withdrew consent - who rapidly opted-out of creation - were incapable of Love; probably others were capable of Love, but did Not wish to make Love the basis of 'organization'... 

Those who opted-out include what we regard as Satan and the demons - in other words these were never-incarnated spirit Beings. 

Because primary creation cannot be undone or reversed (because now Beings Know about each other) the 'rebels' ultimate or distal 'goal' (insofar as they are explicitly aware of it) is a power-based reality; in which Beings are in a situation of antagonism and attempted domination or exploitation - which themselves (and, maybe, some recruits?) as the dominant exploiters. 

In a nutshell; the demons, and all others who have rejected Love/ God/ creation at some later point - aspire to a reality based-on relationships of power and selfishness. 

Thus they have chosen to opt-out of primary creation.

In primary creation (which was all of creation before the advent of Jesus Christ) God operates as a power acting-upon us, i.e. upon Beings. 

In a sense; God does creation to us. 

Living in creation is therefore the default situation; from-which we would need to opt-out if we did not want it.  

This imposed-creation situation was recognized by all the old religions, and still is recognized (at least implicitly) by those religions that have a supreme God but do not recognize the truth and desirability of Jesus Christ. 

Therefore the Old Gods, and the understanding of the ancient monotheistic God of the Hebrews or the later God of Islam - regard God as primarily power. 

And such a God of non-optional imposed-creation demands of us obedient service above all else - which goes-with a relationship as essentially one of awe, fear, submission, propitiation etc. That is; a relationship analogous to that of an ignorant peasant towards the absolute Emperor of vast domains. 

As I said; this attitude is a natural consequence of the primary creation in which creation was done to us. Our understanding-of and relationship-to God is of one who is done-to - who is insignificant; not one who participates-in, or who himself contributes something of substantive value. 

The secondary creation was made-to-happen by Jesus Christ; and this fundamentally changed our relation with God. 

The second creation was (for the first time) an opt-in situation, and made God (potentially) the supreme beloved Father of a vast family -- rather than King of 'a people'. 

Since the second creation; God no longer requires or desires us to regard him as primarily a power, but a loving parent; God no longer requires our obedient submission to His imposed authority, but invites our loving participation in his continuing work of creation. 

The secondary creation involves Beings that are already free agents, and who know about other Beings; it involves making the choice of an eternal commitment to live harmoniously with other beings guided by, and in a condition of, mutual love. 

This secondary creation mode-of-Being is achieved by the willing transformation that is resurrection - and the second creation is called Heaven, a situation where we go by our own active desire.  

In the second creation; we are Not supposed-to regard God as remote, incomprehensible, as like a Monarch or a Judge before which we ought-to abase ourselves in submission and obedience... 

And we are Not supposed to regard our-selves as insignificant, superfluous, functionless... but as irreplaceable and able to add some-thing worthwhile to what-is - across eternity.  

We are instead supposed to have an attitude to God of love, gratitude, joy, positivity, energy, excitement; a desire to bring the best of ourselves to the work of God's divine family; to join-in with the plans of divine creating.  

Because the second creation is opt-in; some who reject God include those who opted-out after becoming incarnated into this mortal life. They lived in primary creation as pre-mortal spirits without opting-out; but after they were born as Men, they made the decision (whether before or after death) "not to opt-into" the second creation.

To clarify: Because the second creation is opt-in; there are those who positively reject the second or the first creation (presumably Satan and the demons, but probably others too), but also those who negatively do not want the second creation. These may still be prepared not to opt-out from the first creation - these would include many religious but-not-Christian people, including some self-identified Christians who actually don't want what Jesus offers!.   

The difference between dwelling in the first and second creation is therefore a vital difference for Christians to grasp; if they are not to fall-into an attitude to God that fits the opt-out primary, but not the opt-in secondary creation.

"Christians" who get their idea of God from the pre-Jesus era of the Jews of the Old Testament, tend to have the 'negative' attitudes of the first creation (e.g. the primacy of obedience to power), but fail to understand or embrace the essential qualitative difference that Jesus made. 

Such people are sometimes therefore de facto non-Christians, in terms of their attitudes and expectations, and their desires. 

But the reality is that Jesus Christ changed the fundamental possibilities of reality; things are possible since Jesus that were not possible before Jesus.

The Big Question is whether we personally want what Jesus made possible - or not? 

If we want it, we each must choose it. 

We must then opt-in...

H/T - Loic Simond for a comment that triggered the thinking that led to this post. 

How important is creativity?

Across eternity, ultimately - creativity is the most important thing of all.

This may sound to be rather an elitist and intellectual perspective; but that is the conclusion I draw from my life. First is love; and from love springs creativity. Love is the necessary context of goodness, a good life; creativity is what we 'do with it'.

Of course, it requires a considerable amount of definition and background clarification to explain what I mean...


Heaven is a place of creation, development, eternal growth. My understanding is that Heaven is the way God devised to enable Men to create with God, in the context of, and extending, God's original and continuing creation. Heaven is what enables Men to create with God, and with each other, in harmony and with the same goals.

The implied reference to the first and second commandments (to love God and Neighbour) is deliberate; because I regard creativity as linked to love, in polarity with love: an overflow of Love; just as God's work of creation is the overflow of our Heavenly Parents' love for each other; and the yearning for more people like themselves, more love.

Thus creation is linked with procreation - with the having and raising of children.


So creation is for everybody, one way or another. In this earthly mortal life, the creativity of a genius is most obviously like that of God; because the genius creates somewhat new from-himself. But procreation is also potentially a divine kind of creation - for the same reasons.

What of children, the simple minded, 'uncreative' people? Well, if the genius and the parent are types of active creation; then children and others may participate passively in the work of creation that is 'led' by others. If the genius creates from-himself in freedom, the creative participant chooses or consents to join-with this creation - not to originate, but to assist.


Different people are differently constituted - for some (for me), their nature aims to be a primary creator, as much like a genius as possible - at whatever scale and with whatever scope.

Others prefer to be part of some scheme that originates elsewhere, with someone else - like actors in a drama, or the builders of a great cathedral, or young children in a family.

The link to love is absolute - because primary creativity emerges from love. It is love that is the difference between mere novelty, or destructive innovation that tends to destroy primary creation - and contributes to the permanent and eternally-growing work of God's original creation.


Thus Heaven is entered only by those who love: who love primarily Jesus; and via him the work of God and other Men.

The transformation that is resurrection is enabled by this love (it is this love that makes a person and and commit forever and irreversibly to resurrection and its conditions) ; and resurrection into Heaven is what enables the permanence of love and the harmony of creation.

And - since evil and un-love cannot resurrect, cannot enter Heaven - it is love that ensures the indestructibility of creation. 

God is love - But what about creation?

 For Christians, love is the primary value, but only when that love comes with understanding. Love, isolated, is useless to us, destructive to society.

Mainstream Christians blab a lot about love, but you can tell they understand love to be just an emotion. Their love takes place against a background of materialism, a lifeless universe of randomness and physics...

But a real understanding of love is that love is bound up with creation, love is God's motivation for creation, is the 'organizing principle' of creation: love is the cohesion and purpose of all that has meaning.

Christians, of all people, must not mutilate love into a physical emotion restricted to functional animals during mortal life; or some deadly reduction of love to instinct, sex, or dependency. These are demonic strategies of damnation; their ubiquity among Christian leaders is evidence of the depth and breadth of our corruption.

Love is not encapsulated. Love connects us as individuals to the reason for creation, to consciousness, to our free agency.

Love is also the route to all good futures. It must underpin all free and creative thinking, all right choices, all positive ideas, actions and policies.

We are bound to creation by love, but love is only good when truly understood and when chosen as our fundamental basis.

Therefore, we should not parrot love-discourse, without also understanding love in the largest, most metaphysical sense. 

Or else love will become an instrument of destruction.

The impulse and motive for divine creation

Kristor at the Orthosphere has written a post in response to mine of yesterday and others by Francis Berger - that asks several questions. These seem to require and deserve a more extensive elucidation than can be done in comments, including an expansion of underlying metaphysical assumptions; so here it is. 

This procedure distorts my metaphysical views, because they are being expressed in response to Kristor's framework of ultimate assumptions - so that, even when I try to elucidate - means that my account is fragmentary and seen from an alien angle. But maybe this is the best that can be managed in the circumstances. 

(Obviously, I usually and by preference express my metaphysical ideas in their own terms, trying to make a model or paint a picture of how reality is structured and proceeds.)

 

From Kristor is in italics - edited by me; my responses follow BC: 

The situation prior to creation that Bruce describes is already a world: a disharmonious congeries of eternal conscious selves, purposive beings who suffer affects, who feel, want, act, and so on, 

BC: That is a correct description of my views

who relate to and influence each other (so that they can love, or not), all more or less ordered to a good, which apparently they can all more or less recognize, and to which they are more or less attracted. 

BC: No. Before creation there is no such interaction or harmonization. 

They are from eternity past together in a temporal – and so, presumably also spatial – milieu, in which they have and prosecute lives, but only messily. 

BC: Sort of... but before creation there is no comparison by which their autonomous lives can be called messy. 

Thus they can apprehend each other, and God, and his creative plan; they can find it attractive, can want to participate in it, and can then actually do so. 

BC: No. I regard the above description as happening after creation has been initiated. 

The question then arises, what is the reason of this world that was running along from eternity past, all on its own, before one of its constituents got started on his creative project – or after, for that matter? If we answer that there is no prior reason it is what it is, that its eternal existence is a brute fact, we have admitted that it is fundamentally unintelligible; for, what has no sufficient reason to be what it is cannot be reasonable, either in whole or in part: for, brute facts are utterly inscrutable, in principle, thus even to themselves. 

BC: Correct. Before creation there can be no reasons, except internally - "privately", within beings. Things Just Are.  

What is not reasonable cannot be a world, or for that matter any such thing as the items we find all around us, and in us. It can be rather only just stuff happening for no reason: the chaos of Democritean atomism, but with the atoms all sentient, solipsistically. 

BC: Yes, pretty much a correct summary- except that having sentient beings/ "atoms" makes all the difference. Divine creation is (pretty much) the transformation from solipsistic to ongoing-creation - insofar as creation has happened (which changes through time, because creation is linear and sequential).  

If we say that this world prior to creation has no cause because it is necessarily what it is, then every detail of it must be necessary; in which case there is in it no freedom, for it is a spatiotemporally extended block, in which nothing really moves or acts, or therefore is. 

BC: No, this is wrong. "Necessity" does not come into it when things Just Are. Things really "move" but only within beings, not between beings. 

What we end up with then is either the pure chaos of brute unintelligible fact, and no world, or else the wholly determined motionlessness of universal necessity. 

BC: No, neither of these alternatives; because they are regarding the primordial beings as if unalive. Starting with beings rather than "things" makes all the difference. 

There is of course a third option: the classical metaphysics of Nicene Christianity, in which God as uniquely eternal and necessary is the sufficient reason for all being, including his own: not a brute fact, but on the contrary the perfectly intelligent and thus intelligible fact, in whose light all other things are intelligible, at least in principle, so that knowledge is possible; and in which creatures are not eternal, but rather contingent upon God, so that as contingent they can change, act, suffer, move, love, learn, grow, understand and be understood, and so forth. 

BC from now onwards: 

This leads on to consider God's motivation for creation.

If God is a unity, there can be no motive for anything. Such a God Just Is. 

But my understanding is that God is a dyad of Heavenly Parents - Heavenly Father and Mother. My understanding is that it is the love between our Heavenly Parents that is the motivation for creation - in a way closely analogous to the spiritually-understood way that love between two (ideal) loving human beings may lead to the choice of initiating pro-creation - that is having children who are loved; and beginning what may be an extended family.

(Of course, mortal human parents are born as already part of an extended and (ideally) loving family. But I am here talking about how this all began.) 

Creation is therefore a concept that arises from love, and includes procreation as well as all the other many ways in which loving relationships between beings of all kinds may become.  

To put matters very simply: there is a Timeline for creation. The primordial situation of autonomous and not-relating beings becomes creation as a consequence of our Heavenly Parents meeting, becoming mutually aware, and committing themselves to eternal love. 

Our Heavenly Parents thus became God, and creation began by God's "interventions" on primordial reality; and to the extent that primordial beings opt-in to live by love. 

This was not the original situation of reality, there was a time when it happened, and it might not have happened. 

Furthermore, beings are usually only partly capable of love; and presumably some beings are incapable of love (and therefore do not participate in creation). 

Thus God's primary creation is a mixed state of love, and not-love. 

And it is this deficit in primary creation that led to the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation, "needed" because Jesus completes the work of creation by enabling Heaven which is the eternal situation of beings living by love; leaving-behind other and evil motivations at resurrection.

**

By Contrast: Orthodox-traditional "Nicene" Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation - a motive for God creating rather than not; and therefore (sometimes) posits an analogous impetus for creation in the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - each for the other. 

It is the differences-between the Trinity that enable the love that leads to creation...

However this explanation is made confusing/ incoherent by also insisting that the Trinity are not only different from each other, but also simultaneously the same as each other (because there is only one God). 

(This is required by the insistence on a monotheistic Omni-God creating ex nihilo - such a God cannot be internally subdivided.) 

And furthermore; ortho-trad theology has it that that the "process" of creation (and of love among the Trinity) happens outside of time - so creation always-was-and-is; so there is no "Timeline" of creation. All that is now, ever was and shall be. 

And this is the point at which orthodox Christianity reaches its particular It Just Is assumption - explanations stop at this point.

All metaphysics must reach this point, sooner or later - the point at which we must make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. 

The goal (as I see it) is to become aware of where this point is reached, to acknowledge this; and to know that here we are indeed making assumptions... 

Which activity is (I suggest) properly called "metaphysics" 

The progression of Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic evil; related to our loving-creator-personal-God, and to Jesus Christ

Christianity is not just about Jesus Christ; it is built upon several other realities:

1. We inhabit a creation - the world is created.

2. The creator is a God, i.e. a personal God (not an abstraction)

3. The creator God is loving towards all the Beings of creation (God might be otherwise, but is not)

In sum: Jesus operates in the context of reality being the creation of a loving (hence necessarily personal) God. 

Jesus is necessary because of the nature of creation: Creation takes place in the midst of primordial chaos. 

Primordial chaos is primal Beings existing without love - without coordination, without harmony; each Being a world unto Himself. 

This is why our mortal reality (termed Primary Creation) is subject to Entropy. Entropy is the spontaneous tendency of creation to revert to primordial chaos. (We experience Entropy in terms of disease, degenerative change, and the inevitability of death for all Beings)

Jesus offers the possibility of permanent and complete escape from entropy and the threat of chaos. 

Evil is the rejection of creation. 

Evil therefore came after creation. 

Evil entails the rejection of love, since love between Beings is what makes creation - creation is the harmony of Beings. 

The first evil is called Luciferic.

Luciferic evil is the assertion of a Being's selfishness ("my" self is all that matters) and the rejection of Love between oneself and other Beings. 

Luciferic evil therefore aspires to use (therefore not destroy) creation; to use creation in order to serve its own selfish will and personal gratification. 

Luciferic evil does not aspire to the damnation of other Beings (i.e. to make them reject resurrection into Heaven); it tends to be indifferent to the spiritual fate of other Beings. 

A Luciferically-evil Being, exploits ruthlessly and without love: desires that any and all other Beings will serve his personal satisfaction. 

In a sense; a Luciferic Being desires that creation will serve his will. This is why he is not against-creation as such. 

It could be said that Luciferic evil hates God (is anti-God; because God is loving), and is indifferent to Jesus.  

The second evil is Ahrimanic. 

Luciferic evil tends to develop into Ahrimanic evil; because Luciferically evil Beings band-together in mutually beneficial alliances, in order more effectively to exploit other-Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil is an alliance of the selfish. 

Ahrimanic evil is anti-God, which it inherits from Luciferic evil; and Ahrimanic evil is in addition anti-Jesus. 

Thus Luciferic = anti-God; whereas Ahrimanic = anti-God plus anti-Jesus. 

Therefore the alliance of the selfish will organize, manipulate and coerce other Beings, aiming that these other Beings will reject salvation: will reject the offer of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven.

In sum; while Luciferic evil desires the exploitation of Beings; Ahrimanic evil desires the damnation of Beings. 

Ahrimanic evil desires damnation because it is more spitefully evil than Luciferic evil. It's desires are not just for selfish gratification; but also for the immiseration of others. 

It could reasonably be said, therefore, that Ahrimanic evil is a greater evil that Luciferic; wanting not just its own satisfaction, but the stripping of satisfaction from others. 

This is why Ahrimanic evil has tended towards depersonalization via bureaucracy. 

The Ahrimanic aim of omni-surveillance and micro-control is not just a positive aspiration for domination; it is also actively directed-against the freedom and agency of other Beings. 

Yet Ahrimanic evil of-itself does not aim at the destruction of other Beings: it aims at domination, not destruction. 

It wants a universe of miserable slaves.

(Indeed; including the "enslavement" of animals, plants, earth and heavenly bodies, and indeed the "mineral" world; permanent utter domination of every-thing, rather than to kill every-thing.) 

And the Ahrimanic desire for damnation of other-Beings is a consequence of being against Freedom and Agency. Salvation is, after all, an eternal choice for resurrected Men to participate in divine creation; which absolutely entails their agency and freedom.   

The third evil is Sorathic. 

Sorathic evil is anti-creation; it aspires ultimately to reduce creation to chaos.

Sorathic evil is directed against all kinds of creation; it is against not only positive Good, but also against Luciferic and Ahrimanic evils - insofar as these seek to exploit or enslave creation. 

Sorathic evil can be considered a completion of the motivational shift from Luciferic to Ahrimanic evil, which is a shift from seeking personal gratification by using other Beings, to a type of personal gratification that enjoys the utter domination of other Beings. 

A qualitative shift from hedonism, to spitefulness. 

Sorathic evil moves on from the desire to dominate the whole of creation, to the desire to destroy all of creation - including oneself, insofar as we all are products of divine creation. 

The Sorathic can be seen as a purely negative form of evil, found in Beings that have lost all capacity for positive personal satisfaction, and can only enjoy destruction.

To summarize: Luciferic evil is pro-creation and anti-God because anti-Love. 

Ahrimanic evil is pro-creation and anti God (anti-Love) and also Jesus (anti-salvation). 

While Sorathic evil is "anti-" all manifestations of creation - including anti- all Beings (including anti-God and anti-Jesus Christ); also anti-Love, and anti-salvation. 

Sorathic evil tends to chaos; but it is not pro-chaos. 

Ultimately, Sorathic chaos is the negation of creation; the end-result of being anti-every-thing...

***

Note on Sin = Entropy and Evil; Salvation being from both Entropy and Evil 

Entropy (termed "Death") and Evil are, together, what is called Sin in the Fourth Gospel. 

Jesus came to save us from Sin - that is, to offer us the chance to reject Sin eternally; live without-sin eternally. 

Thus resurrection into eternal Heavenly Life saves us both from entropy including death (as well as disease and degenerative change); and simultaneously saves us from evil of all kinds. 

Resurrected Eternal Life in Heaven in therefore the Second Creation; which is derived from Primary Creation but operating entirely and eternally on the basis of Love, and without entropy or evil - because Sin is left-behind at resurrection. 

Taking sides: For, or against, divine creation? From love, or not?

Our creator is a loving God, and the divine creation is "built" with love; so to be on the side* of Good is to live from love. 

A person motivated by love, thinks and does things for other people (and other beings), because of love. 

This means that the Good person will often do something that sacrifices his own immediate pleasure, or causes himself to experience some degree of immediate suffering, or sub-optimality of feelings. 

This kind of thing is inevitable, when love motivates.  

Those who operate from other motivations that are not love, those on the side not-supporting or actively-against divine creation; see all this very differently. 

For them; love looks pathetic, pitiful, despicable. 

A life led, acts done, from love; look instead like foolishness, like being a dupe; love looks like weakness, subordination of my will to another's, service of somebody else's agenda, voluntary slavery... 

Those who are not taking the side of Good, i.e. not living by love - generally regard those who do thus live, as pathetic and despicable. 

But if love really is the real motivation for behaviour; then everything is different...

All that is done from love - no matter how small a thing that may seem - is an enhancement of divine creation. 

And that which is done from any-reason-not-love, will tend to diminish divine creation. 

Therefore, as examples: 

Things done to serve an agenda of "altruism" will diminish divine creation; same with things done for "my" power and/or wealth or that of others.

And things done for comfort, convenience or pleasure of myself or of others; shall likewise diminish creation.

(that is: Anything other-than love diminishes...)

And things done from resentment, fear or despair (and the like) are actually an attack on divine creation.   

+++

*"The side" references which of the two sides in the spiritual way of this world is chosen: either the side affiliated with God the creator; or else the side that is not thus affiliated. There are many ways of not being on the side of divine creation.

Note: almost all writing on the subject of relationships between the sexes, analysis and purported advice (all the "Manosphere" stuff, including that purportedly "Christian") is done from the perspective that love is not really real, not present, or is secondary in importance. Such speaking and writing is inevitably on the other side from God and divine creation. 

The Law of Direct Knowing: or, why book recommendations are (mostly) useless and best-friends non-transferable

Have you ever noticed, as I did even in my teens, that your best-friend's other best friends were usually people you found to be distinctly... underwhelming. Sometimes, I even disliked them. And my own best friends often did not get-along very well - lacking any genuine affinity. 

This might be supposed to be due to jealousy, or that that each friend represented a different aspect in me; but I think the reason runs deeper.

Something similar applies with authors that I regard as mentors; my absolute favourite writers: those with whom I had a strong relationship, and whose influence on me has been significant. 

It is natural to seek further such mentors by tackling those who my favorite author regarded as his favourite authors... 

Yet this was typically a blind alley. No matter how deeply I admired and empathized with writer X; I nearly always discovered writer X's favourite, most significant, influences were disappointing; and often completely unappealing.

Furthermore, books recommended me by friends who liked the same things as I did, were often duds; and my own recommendations of the "you will love this" type, typically fell upon stony ground. 

The same applies with classical music, and indeed folk music - an exploration of the "influences" behind my favourite artistes and composers was almost uniformly unsatisfying.     

Such instances can be put-together; and a lesson drawn from them to make a kind of law: The Law of Direct Knowing.  

This is: We can only truly-know a person or personage in a direct and dyadic fashion.

We can - in other words - only truly know in terms of a meeting of just-two minds; and this applies whether in everyday-life or in our intense imaginative thinking-life. 

Thus; friendship and influence must alike be directly inter-personal - without any degrees of separation. 

Indeed; it strikes me that with the Law of Direct Knowing we are perhaps confronted here by a fundamental principle of divine creation - because (as I understand it) creation is rooted in love: and, more exactly, in dyadic love - love between "twos".

Love is both what holds-creation-together; and what gives creation its dynamism: its motivation and direction. 

Creation originated (I believe) in the love of our Heavenly Parents to constitute that which we term God; and divine creation began with God's love of all the Beings of reality - each individually relating back to God, via love, in a dyadic fashion. 

Creation then proceeds by multiple (and overlapping, interlocking) instances of dyadic love between the Beings of divine creation - to make the whole of creation bound and motivated by many mutual links.

What this means is that our evanescent mundane love/ relationships are -- in their partial and often temporary ways; and while continually being un-done by the depredations of entropy and the motivations of evil -- instances of that "power of love" which make creation. 

This mortal world is therefore a dynamic equilibrium - which may be strengthening or else falling-apart, at various scales - between the binding and creative powers of love - and that-which opposes love.  

And (at least, for Christians) Heaven can be understood as the place where such dyadic relations are permanent and pure in their nature - such that creation becomes wholly positive and progressive...

So that more-and-more of Heaven, is always being bound more-and-more strongly, by the direct knowing of dyadic love. 

 

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.   

This creation we inhabit depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation

Lazarus was apparently the first Man freely to choose the Second Creation

One big problem with this divine creation, the "primary" creation, the one we inhabit here-and-now; is that it depends upon an inevitable degree of compulsion and unconsciousness.

This is a problem that God acknowledged implicitly; by sending Jesus Christ to make a Second Creation, and ensure that all who wanted-it and chose-to, would be able to move onto that Second Creation after their biological deaths. 

 

God began with a universe of Beings, living without mutual awareness, without cohesion. Creation proceeded by God endowing these Beings with the beginnings of conscious awareness, and by coordinating them with His own divine love - binding them together and providing a direction, and principles of interaction.  

In this, it resembles a Man's young childhood with loving parents. 

The child is born-into this world mostly unconscious, and his life is given shape and direction by the parents' love. (In an idealized childhood...) While still hardly conscious the child lives and develops immersed in the atmosphere of parental love - and the child is required to do little more than return that parental love, and therefore be obedient to the greater wisdom of his parents. 

(This corresponds to the situation of early Man, and the earliest phases of true religions - obedience to God was core.)  

In a negative sense, the child is compelled to go along with parental guidance; but this compulsion is concealed by the child's unconsciousness of it. 

In other words, a young loving child in a loving family just accepts the situation in which he finds himself.  

However, it is a common destiny of babies to develop and mature, to become more conscious; and often to become aware of their situation. 

In other words, as a child becomes more conscious, he becomes aware that he is living in a world he did not choose, and which he is compelled to fit-into - if he wishes to survive and thrive. 

This is a microcosm of the situation in this divine creation that we currently inhabit. Insofar as Beings are unconscious and immersed in divine loving-guidance, they simply go-along-with divine creation. 

But as a Being becomes more conscious, he becomes aware of the essential element of compulsion in this world, this creation. 

This happens in the development of a human, and it has happened to Mankind (overall, on average) throughout history. Primordial Men were more like young children, with little self awareness or freedom of will; and knew God (and the spirit world); and when capable of love - they went along with it, hardly aware there was any alternative.

However, through recorded history, there has been an increase in Man's conscious awareness analogous to the development towards adolescence - Man became more conscious that this universe was based on a compulsion, that he need not obey. 

More conscious Man could, and sometimes and increasingly did, opt-out of creation.

Thus; Men ceased automatically to ally with God's creation - it became a choice whether to join-with God's creation - or else to oppose it, exploit it. 

Or sometimes the reaction was a desire to opt-out of Primary Creation altogether - and return to that primordial unconscious separateness which prevailed before creation began. 

This is, by my understanding, the ultimate but implicit teleological basis of Buddhism, and some kinds of Hinduism -- as well as of some who would call themselves Jews, Christians, or Muslims (I mean the traditions respectively of Qabalah, Via Negativa, and Sufism - for instance).     

I presume that this development was foreseen by God as an inevitable consequence of Man (and other Beings) increasing in consciousness. 

Sooner or later; the First Creation would be know for what it was, which is a top-down and imposed scheme - and as consciousness increased in created-Beings, sooner or later some Beings, some Men, would desire to opt-out of it. 

Therefore; the divine plan was for there to be a Second Creation, which would be individually chosen, an opt-in scheme.

This happened with the work of Jesus Christ; and the way-into Second Creation was to follow Jesus through death into resurrected eternal life. The Second Creation is, therefore, Heaven. 

The Second Creation both required, and was necessitated by, the increase of consciousness of Beings that was a consequence of ongoing divine creation. 

In sum: This "first" creation we inhabit here-and-now depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness; but Man (and other beings) are destined to increase in consciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation. 

We now can choose the Second Creation - but the Second Creation can only be chosen - it is not, and cannot be, imposed. 

And choice must be free, which entails conscious. 

The dilution/ abstraction of love by Christians (and by non-Christians)

I regard love as the primary fact of God's creation - it is love that makes creation possible. Love is the opposite of chaos; and it is the love between Beings that is what 'organizes' chaos into creation.

Furthermore, it was another aspect of love that enabled the new dispensation brought-on by Jesus Christ - because Jesus enabled Men - by resurrection - to make a permanent commitment to love; such that each resurrected Man would embrace the goals and methods of God's creation and could then take his place as a Son of God - henceforth living in harmony with all other Men and with God and Jesus Christ. 

So, real (Christian) love is always personal, always directed at a 'person': a Being. There is no such thing as abstract love, and real love cannot be diluted or extended beyond the actual love of actual known Beings. 

Love is inter-personal, and requires at least two Beings - therefore real love is not comparable to a force, a field, a spirit, or any 'thing'. 

Real love is not, cannot be, and should not be universal or equal - it is individual and specific.  

Love is a choice, and cannot be imposed... Love is a choice and not a default state; which is why Heaven is an opt-in situation; and why that opt-in is dependent on love. 

Consequently Heaven cannot be entered by those who cannot, or will not, commit to love of God (this 'cannot' including both those incapable of love, and those who reject love as their over-riding priority). 

And Heaven will not be entered by those who regard love as impersonal, abstract or generalized; because such people will not want Heaven. They will instead want something else... 

Perhaps they want some kind of diffuse, impersonal state ('Nirvana'?) in which there are no persons, no selves, no inter-personality; only a generalized awareness and perhaps the experience of bliss? 

I think these realities need emphasizing because there is a tendency for Christians to abstract and dilute love towards a 'universalism' that makes no distinction between the followers of Jesus and everyone else. 

And this abstraction/ dilution is met by a tendency among non-Christians to misinterpret Christianity in the same impersonal and abstract fashion so that it becomes just one among many possible paths to the same destination. 

But the truth of Christianity - as it may be known from the Fourth Gospel and by intuition - is that Christian love is the basis of the Christian religion; and Christian love is personal/ interpersonal - and it must consciously be chosen. 

Christian salvation is to love and follow Jesus to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven - this happens after biological death. To be a Christian - here and now in this earthly mortal life - is to make a decision to accept Jesus's gift of resurrected life; to make that our highest priority which happens by loving Jesus. 

And, as with all real love; love of Jesus Christ is both a choice and a desire from deep within; it begins with our deepest yearnings and motivations, and is completed by our conscious decision. 

 

There are many other things a Man might want or decide, and many other possible priorities - but these are not Christianity  

The commandment to love God (above all else) - what does it mean?

If it seems like nonsense to command love - clearly we are misunderstanding the instruction; since the modern idea of love as intense emotion cannot be 'commanded' (although it can sometimes be manipulated).

I think the meaning of the commandment to love God is quite simple: it is that we must acknowledge the objective reality of love. And that this acknowledgment should be the foundation of all else.

Pick that apart... Love is a reality, therefore not an illusion; it is something that is of universal validity and knowability - therefore not just a 'psychological' emotion that happens 'inside' an individual person's head and body. Since it is a foundation; love is potentially eternal - therefore not a temporary, fragile, corruptible thing.


The commandment means that love is The most important thing that Beings can do.

Furthermore, as well as being real - love is Good.

We are being told that love is the primary value; that love is more important than anything else.


And told that there is No Conflict among loves.

When we think there is a conflict, it is because of our failure to understand.

There is no conflict among loves for the same kind of reason that there is only One right course of action in any circumstances. So-called 'moral dilemmas' are merely a consequence of trying to reduce the unique specificity of true morality to a System of (inevitably, intrinsically) generalised, simplified and partial Laws.

True Morality is the One Right Path. True Love is which sustains creation and enables us to participate in creation.  

In being asked to love God first and foremost - we are actually being told that love of different Beings and (and love of so-called Things) can never be in conflict - that all specific loves (eg of specific people) are instances of the general objective reality of that love which holds-together the universe of reality.


We are Not being commanded to love God 'more than' our wife, children, parents... we are instead being told that the objective value and goodness of these specific loves is only possible because we inhabit a creation that is itself founded-upon love.

Because, if we did Not inhabit a loving creation; then love really-would-be just a private emotion in a mortal world - love would be certain to decline with age and disease, sure to be destroyed by death.

So, the commandment to love God first and foremost is actually that which enables, sustains and makes serious all other loves. It is simply a recognition that love is the cohesion of creation.