1740 - The dawn of Romanticism; the year that human consciousness changed

Colin Wilson was the first to recognise that human consciousness changed in 1740; and what marked this historic moment was the publication in London of Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson - which was the first novel.

The novel produced an instant sensation and within months had spawned numerous imitations. And the novel was the first evidence of the power of Imagination. Romanticism was born.

From that moment, human imagination exploded in the Western nations: the British Isles, Germany, France - spreading to all the developed countries and increasing until it was the dominant social theme by around 1800 - and the world was never the same again.


But if 1740 really was The Moment - then the direction of causality remains to be established.

Colin Wilson argued that The Novel caused the change in consciousness; but I would argue that the change in consciousness caused The Novel - and that Pamela was merely the first evidence that Man (specifically Western Man) had already begun to undergo a change in consciousness.

Here we come to the ambiguity in the term 'evolution'. Wilson saw the evolution of human consciousness; but he saw this as consciousness adapting to changed circumstances - he saw consciousness as 'passively' following changes in the environment...

But I see a process of developmental unfolding, in accordance with divine destiny. Thus I see human consciousness as developing a greatly-enhanced power of Imagination as a process of a long term plan for humanity. The novel was an early product of this change.

Consciousness is itself the driving force; and it was the change in consciousness which drove the changes in the environment - such as the Romantic Movement and the Industrial Revolution.


Most historians of ideas, on the contrary, regard Romanticism as a reaction-to modernity - especially a reaction-to the Industrial Revolution. (e.g. That Romanticism was a daydream of escape into magic and nature from the grimy and alienating 'realities' of industrialisation.) But this can't be right if we consider Pamela as the beginning of it all, since in 1740 the Industrial Revolution was as yet so small in scale as to be almost imperceptible. The greatest commentator of the age, Samuel Johnson, saw continuity, not revolution.

Instead, I would say that both The Novel and the Industrial Revolution were different products of the same driving, qualitative change in human consciousness; a change that affected England before it affected anywhere else - but which before long had affected everywhere else in Western and Central Europe and the diaspora of these peoples.

This general insight - of changing consciousness driving culture - was articulated by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield; although neither emphasised much the point that this was a developmental divine destiny; and that its ultimate aim was the aim of God in creation: to enable Man to rise to full divinity.


Enhanced Imagination was something that was imposed-upon Western Man - it was not his choice, he was passively-swept-along by this change in consciousness.

But 250 years later I think we can perceive that Imagination was only meant to be the first step - and the divine plan was that Imagination would lead on to Man's explicit choice to embrace an Intuitive consciousness that was also conscious and free. That is, Man needed voluntarily to embrace what I have termed Primary Thinking.

So, the intention was that Imagination would show us the way - but Imagination is not-necessarily-real. Imagination was meant to lead-onto Intuitive Primary Thinking. While Imagination is creative in the realm of public communications, Intuition is creative in terms of universal reality - Intuition is, in fact, human creativity in the context of on-going divine creation. Intuition is Man's participation in God's creativity.


Yet since 1740 this evolution, this developmental unfolding of consciousness, has stalled; and we now live in a world where Imagination is encapsulated, hermetically sealed-off from Real Life which is The System, The Bureaucracy, an invasive totalitarian web of surveillance and control... Intuition (or claims of Intuition) is regarded as merely wishful thinking, evidence of childishness, or an evil attempt to manipulate others for personal advantage...

This happened because, unlike previous unfoldings of human conscious development, this last one (into the divine type of consciousness - divine in quality albeit not - initially - in quantity or scope) must be consciously chosen.

(We must consciously and explicitly choose to become gods - we cannot be made gods unconsciously and without our consent and cooperation.)

We must become explicitly aware of the next-step, then need to choose it. And this entails becoming explicitly aware of God's Plan - of our divine destiny - and choosing to join this; to be, live and work in harmony with God's Plan.

So far - very few people seem to have done this - of those we know, perhaps Goethe, William Blake, ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield are among the well-known examples of people who have made this choice; who have made this choice and qualitative step...

But culturally - the divine destiny of consciousness has been roundly and comprehensively rejected by modern Western cultures; as foolish, childish, meaningless nonsense - itself evil or tending-to evil.


Modern Culture is therefore divided between two wrong answers: between those who reject the assumption of God, and those who reject the assumption of a developmental unfolding of human consciousness.

Yet my belief is that both need to be accepted - which entails recognising them explicitly, and choosing them freely. Only then can Man take-up and resume his development towards divine consciousness.

What are the causes of the developmental change ("evolution") in human consciousness throughout history?

A clear statement description of the way that human consciousness has changed throughout recorded history (and inferred from pre-history) is something I associate with Rudolf Steiner and his later follower Owen Barfield; who both explained it in terms of each human being having undergone multiple reincarnations. The changing nature of consciousness was therefore assumed to be caused by the accumulated experience and learning - hence maturity - of the reincarnating spirit. 

Ultimately, the underlying cause of these assumed multi-reincarnational changes was tacitly assumed to be the divine will; which sought to provide multiple and additive experiences to spirits. 

This was supposed to operate by a process that starts with pure (immaterial) spirit beings, leads down into denser and denser incarnations (such as ourselves), and ultimately (as its highest goal) leads back up to purely spiritual existence. 

But I do not share these assumptions about reincarnation. 

More importantly I regard Jesus Christ as having provided Man with the opportunity of resurrected human life in Heaven - which is a permanent state of embodied incarnation. 

In short: as of 2025 (and for nearly 2000 years) God does not want us to reincarnate after death - but instead to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal life in heaven. 

Thus, for me, the objective of spiritual development is not a "spiritual being"; but instead a resurrected and embodied Man, of which the model was the resurrected Jesus.    

However, since I regard the evolutionary development of Mankind as a reality, but reject the Steiner/ Barfield explanation; I feel a need to explain this in terms of causality. I believe that there are several interacting causes, working at different levels. What follows is my current understanding. 

1. God's plan

At the deepest level of causation; I believe that God (our Heavenly Parents) desires that divine creation should lead first to divine children, and then towards the idea of "divine adults" - God seeks to encourage childlike children to develop into grown-up friends. 

(Much as it is usual (but with significant exceptions) to expect and hope that our own mortal children will not remain immature and childlike; but will grow-up to make the choice to become "best friends" with their parents.) 

In other words; divine creation is structured towards the generation of God's children - such as we now are; and that we children should be enabled and encouraged to "grow up" further, in order to mature towards becoming beings of the same kind and level as our Heavenly Parents. 

In yet other words; God desires that we would (through time) choose to develop towards becoming fully divine, fully loving, creators - and then to participate in the eternal work of divine creation. It was Jesus Christ who first achieved this, and who made it possible for others to follow Him in this. 

The goal is that our Heavenly Parents should cease to be the only beings at their level of divinity, but should build a continually growing family of grown-up children of God (together with the extended family of those beloved children who - whether by spiritual nature or current-choice - remain spiritually "immature": i.e. not full-creators.  

2. Incarnation of progressively more mature spirits

One of the ways that God influences the direction of creation, is through the nature of pre-mortal spirits that are incarnated into mortal life on earth. 

My impression is that when the earliest-known Men were first incarnated, their consciousness was more like that of young children. And incrementally throughout history, progressively more-grown-up spirits were incarnated; who tended to mature towards what we would now recognize as more adult modes of consciousness. 

So, at present and overall, spirits are incarnated that spontaneously mature to a kind of spiritual adolescence - beyond which further maturation depends on various individual factors, including personal will and choices. 

(I suspect that while spiritual maturation from childhood to adolescence is mostly spontaneous and involuntary; maturation beyond spiritual adolescence can only ever be attained by active alignment with God's nature and creative will, and by personal choice - the choice to live only by love.)

Maturity is most obviously revealed in terms of thinking and self-awareness... Modern Men are aware of our-selves and the distinction from the world and others; and we live subjectively in our stream of conscious thoughts - in ways that did not happen (or only in rare individuals) in the past. 

3. Metaphysical assumptions and ideology

Due to the nature of the human society into-which modern humans are born (which is partly a consequence of past and present choices by other people; under the influence of demonic beings) - modern Men assume that ultimate reality is dead (unalive), material (not spiritual); and operates solely by physical-mechanical causes or non-causally/ chaotically (ie. "randomly").  

I believe that these bottom-line assumptions concerning reality have a profound and malign effect on modern Man's consciousness.

What this typical modern metaphysics does to our consciousness; is to transform self-awareness into a false conviction of inescapable existential alienation - the implicit yet wrong belief that we are alone in our thinking, which is merely subjective: detached from reality. 

And this leads onto the typically modern mind-set of existential despair; variously countered by the attempt to overwhelm it with hedonism, and/or to obliterate thinking by such means as constant distraction by powerful stimuli, strong emotions, intoxication, and the like. 

In sum: an element in the changing of consciousness is the prevalent ideology of our times. And in more general terms, it would be expected that metaphysics, theology, and ideology would often (although not necessarily) tend to shape human consciousness in particular directions - which is, of course, exploited as much as possible by the purposive powers of supernatural evil. 

4. Direct spiritual contact between people, and other beings

I believe that there is potentially a direct (mind-to-mind, as it were) contact between living people, between the living and some of those who have died, and other beings. 

Insofar as this happens (for instance, among those people in mutually-loving relationships) among people whose consciousness's are changing for the reasons described above; this is the basis for shaping, perhaps amplifying or instead reversing, changes in consciousness that may be directional through time.

Put differently; we each inhabit a very selective thought-world - one that changes throughout our lives, and includes new, different, other-minds (alive, dead, or potentially not human). 

This, then, is another reason for changes in consciousness.  

5. The comfort and guidance of the Holy Ghost

The Holy Ghost is a potential source of comfort and guidance for those who follow Jesus, and this contact naturally affects a human consciousness and its development through time. 

Such interaction with the Holy Ghost has the nature of a chosen, mutual, and specific relationship between one spiritual Being and another. 

Which means that I disagree with those who conceptualize the Holy Ghost as providing some kind of blanket effect on Mankind, or any particular group of people. 

(I also disagree with those who regard the evolution of consciousness as driven by any kind of quasi-physics-like influence on the planet and its inhabitants... I mean those who see the maturation of consciousness as driven by an externally-applied influence - such as increasing frequency or vibrational level; or some kind of transformation of spiritual force, or an increase in spiritual energy; or indeed by astrological change.)

  

 

As a general comment - I think it is probably necessary to emphasize (to myself, if not other others!) that the causal mechanisms that contribute to the developmental evolution of human consciousness, are all aimed at the individual human spirit. 

I am increasingly sure that God does not, and never has, operated primarily at the level of human groups. 

We ought therefore to try and stop thinking habitually about Men In The Mass; when it comes to understanding fundamental spiritual matters.

 

The false-impression that God is concerned primarily with the salvation of particular tribes or particular churches; was I think an (inevitable) artefact of an earlier stage of human consciousness; among Men who (inevitably - but with some few exceptions) experienced reality in this groupish way.

That is to say: The earlier we go in history, the more groupish was human consciousness - and individuals were not, and did not feel nor aspire to be, detached from the "group mind". 

But as of Now - things are very different. From adolescence onward, modern people are spontaneously detached from the group mind, and must therefore be influence and controlled ("micro-managed") by multiple and constantly-applied external and perceptual inputs - laws, rules, propaganda etc.)  

Nowadays, such groupishness in considering Christian theology is simply an error - but no longer an inevitable error; being instead the consequence of (for example) false metaphysics, wishful thinking, despair, dreadful fear - or a simple paucity of alternative ideas.  

Therefore; we should understand the evolution of consciousness as the averaged outcome of our innate (inborn) spiritual-nature; with a multitude of individual human choices; concerning the outcomes of individually-tailored ("bespoke") interactions between each individual person with God and the Holy Ghost. 

 

The relationship between evolution of human consciousness and reincarnation - a consideration of Steiner and Barfield

The idea of an evolution of human consciousness throughout history has been a part of spiritual thinking for more than a century - I know it mainly through considering the work of Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield and William Arkle over the past couple of years.

(I encountered the idea over thirty years ago summarized in the work of Colin Wilson, but did not then pay much attention.)

The idea of an historical evolution of consciousness seems to go-with a belief in reincarnation, because reincarnation allows each person to participate in the different stages of evolution that are aiming-at a fully divine form of consciousness.

Steiner and Barfield describe this aimed-at state in some detail - in essence it combines on the one hand a direct involvement with, and participation in, reality such as was characteristic of early man and remains characteristic of early childhood; with, on the other hand, a fully alert, self-aware, purposive and analytic consciousness which is characteristic of the adult consciousness and the modern phase of Western history. 

So, the idea is that I am personally experiencing the distinctive modern, alienated consciousness now - including the knowledge and aspiration towards a future state; however, in earlier lives I have also personally experienced, and benefited from, earlier phases of human consciousness. At some point later this life, and perhaps further lives, I may incrementally, a step at a time, learn how to combine the positive qualities of all phases. This aimed-at fully divine conscious state is what Barfield calls Final Participation.

According to Steiner and Barfield, these earlier life phases include non-incarnated lives - lives when we were conscious but had no body. So the theory is really one of multiple lives, rather than re incarnation.

Therefore the human spirit or soul (i.e. that entity which is reincarnated) is here conceptualized as undergoing an educational process toward which each life is contributing.

Repeated lives, many lives, seem to be necessary in order to allow for the very large amount of experience and learning required to bridge the gap between being a man and becoming a god. Certainly, one mortal life seems grossly inadequate for this, especially given that most human lives in history were terminated either in the womb or in early infancy - a small minority of humans have reached adulthood, and even fewer of these have had a full experience of marriage, family, maturity and growing old etc.

So, evolution of consciousness and reincarnation seem to make a neat package. However, this package is, if not incompatible with Christianity, at least somewhat alien to the structure of Christianity; which places a great deal of emphasis on the individual life which we are experiencing now, and sees 'this life' as having potentially decisive consequences for eternity.

And certainly, while reincarnation seems to described in the Bible - most notably in the case of John the Baptist apparently being a reincarnated Prophet Elijah - there isn't any scriptural description of a scheme of reincarnation as the norm. And especially not of multiple lives.

My interpretation is that ancient Christianity saw reincarnation as true, but as an exceptional possibility, done in exceptional cases and for specific purposes - rather than as the standard procedure for the majority of people.

Does an exclusion of reincarnation then rule-out the evolution of consciousness throughout human history? No, but denial of reincarnation with multiple lives does limit the role of evolution of consciousness in the lives of individual spirits or souls - it breaks the link between the evolution of consciousness in history and the evolution of my consciousness and the specific consciousnesses of every other individual.

Put differently, the arguments which (in particular) Owen Barfield makes for different types of consciousness in human history, such as his insights into the changing scope and meaning of words, may well be true; but they lose their relevance to the evolution of my consciousness and your consciousness if we were not present (in earlier lives) actually to experience the several stages of this historical evolution.

In sum, the historical evolution of consciousness is a matter of historical but not personal interest, if we ourselves were not present during that history.

My own belief is therefore that I accept Barfield's description of human consciousness having changed throughout history and in broadly the way he describes; and I also accept that we are meant (or destined) to achieve that mode of consciousness Barfield terms 'Final Participation'. But I do not accept that the two are causally linked - for instance I do not believe that I have, myself, personally participated in the historical phases of the evolution of consciousness during previous lives.   

Rather, I see the evolution of consciousness as a sequence which is recapitulated in different scales in different situations: e.g. through human history, in each person's individual development from childhood to maturity, and also in the largest cosmic scale of our salvation and divination across eternity.

(To clarify this last point: the Barfieldian sequence of Original Participation, the Consciousness Soul and Final Participation can be mapped onto the Mormon theological sequence of pre-mortal spirit life, mortal incarnate life, and post-mortal eternal incarnate life.)

I therefore would modify the Steiner/ Barfield model, since I regard this evolutionary sequence of consciousness as a basic and necessary process in terms of Man as a whole and also individual men working towards fuller divinity. And I think it is because the process is basic and necessary that we see it appearing and re-appearing here and there throughout reality; operating at many scales and across many time-frames.

Note: Previous posts on reincarnation
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=reincarnation

Laeth on the evolution of consciousness and the Final Participation of Jesus

Edited from this post and its comments: 

...‘wrt. the evolution of consciousness’ and "final participation"...  

The first bit that seems important to me is that [modern consciousness] is not a general state, by which I mean, it’s not defined by the age but it depends on the people. Not every human alive during the European middle ages had a medieval mindset, not every human alive during the axial age had an axial age mindset - but rather, specific places and specific peoples influenced by specific individuals varied greatly. 

And similarly, and more importantly, this is still the case, and is yet another challenge and part of the satanic plan to prevent modern consciousness from emerging from its womb: the majority of the world’s current population does not, in fact, have a modern mindset. 

As moderns we have to deal with this, in several different ways; though of course without the recognition of different types of consciousness, past or present, it is impossible to. 

Equally important, from my perspective, is this: I am very much convinced that the greats of the past and present, be they saints or prophets or artists, operated in a more evolved state of consciousness than their surroundings, and thus their work can help to bring our own consciousness forward. 

On the flip side, in every age there are those who, even though they have a more advanced consciousness, try to pull it back: in our case, the traditionalists are precisely that, and whether they are aware of it or not, and most are not, they are doing the bidding of hell. 

As a paramount and primary example of the positive side, I am convinced Jesus was, not only very well advanced in consciousness compared to his milieu, but really the only man to achieve Final Participation while in this life, and the raising of Lazarus is directly related to this. 

Final Participation will be a sort of synthesis of Original Participation, which was very much an embodied experience, and the disembodied experience of Mind that modernity achieved. so basically, we will have a body of flesh, but also the powers of 'the air', so to speak. 

The raising of Lazarus seems to me to be that: Full Mind raised in Full Flesh. that Jesus was able to do it before he himself resurrected tells me that he had already achieved Final Participation in life, but then went through death to open the door for the rest of us, otherwise he would have to do it personally for each one, like he did with Lazarus, which is definitely not the way. 

Why did he do it for Lazarus then? First because he was his friend and he loved him, and second because, speculating here, he had a specific mission for Lazarus.

**

I would only add, by way of explanation, that the evolution of consciousness can be understood as a development, analogous to the development of a human being from childhood through adolescence to maturity (with this scheme mapping onto human history, and the current "modern" consciousness as the adolescent phase". 

As with the development of a human being, such evolution is not a matter of improvement in goodness. Clearly, many (most?) people are "better" as children, especially as young children, than they are as adolescents. 

Yet we can, nonetheless, see that adolescence is a further ("higher" development than childhood, in terms of becoming more self-aware, which is a step towards higher agency and (however abused in practice) the possibility of greater freedom. 

We could say that a young child is immersed in his environment; and if this is a loving and "good" environment, then the child will spontaneously, passively (ie. by outer-influences) be substantially (but not completely) aligned with divine creation.

In other words, a young child originally "participates" in creation - hence this developmental stage of consciousness is called Original Participation. 

The adolescent, by his greater self-awareness, has the potential for greater independence from his environment; and this archetypally goes to the point of ceasing automatically to accept much of that which he absorbed as a child (good, as well as anti-good: that is, evil).

To become an adult in Final Participation of consciousness, the adolescent should voluntarily and consciously affirm the love, goodness, and truths which as a child he knew only unconsciously. He should, in ultimate terms, voluntarily and consciously choose to align himself - commit himself - to love of God, divine creation, following Jesus Christ to resurrection.

Clearly, this desirable state of affairs is not achieved by everybody, and those who achieve it do so only intermittently and partially - except for Jesus Christ, who achieved it completely and permanently (in the three years of ministry, after his baptism, at any rate).  

Unlike the earlier stages of the evolution of consciousness (i.e Original Participation, and "modern consciousness" - also called the Consciousness Soul); to be-achieving Final Participation is therefore understood as an intrinsically good state. 

Final Participation can be achieved in this mortal life only-when - and always-when - we are consciously and voluntarily motivated by Christian love. This happens permanently after death, by resurrection, for those who choose that path.   

Another way of thinking of Final Participation is therefore that it is the divine mode of consciousness; divine in its many and unique forms of each particular Being (unique because shaped and constrained by the attributes of that Being, at any particular point in time, and its development). 

What is the reason for the correlation of ontogeny and phylogeny in the evolutionary-development of human consciousness?

It has been noticed for more than a century that there is a broad correlation between ontogeny and phylogeny. Ontogeny is the development of an organism through its lifespan, while phylogeny refers to the sequence of forms leading from earlier to later members of the same presumed evolutionary lineage. 

In terms of the evolutionary-development of conscience something analogous (and perhaps homologous - i.e. from the same causes) is seen in the change of consciousness during a human lifespan, and throughout human history. 

In other words, the sequential development of consciousness from early through late childhood, into adolescence and adulthood; is similar to the sequence of human cultural conscience from the hunter-gatherer nomadic (analogous to early childhood); agrarian/ classical-medieval (older childhood); modern (adolescence) -- and the human society of 'adulthood' lies in the future (if enough people choose that path) and corresponds to whatever emerges from the first glimpses of what I have termed Primary Thinking, heart-thinking, or the state of Final Participation.   

Why should this be? Why should our lifespan development correspond to the characteristic evolution of consciousness throughout history? 

The explanation given by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield is a version of reincarnation: that each modern individual has been incarnated multiple times in historical societies through history; so that the eternal 'self' (which persist between incarnations) undergoes cumulative linear transformation as a result of experience and learning. 

In other words, modern people are more mature and developed than in the past, as a consequence of having incarnated many times before, in many types of society.  

But I regard reincarnation as having been (whether wholly or mostly) ended by the work of Jesus Christ; such that since the time of Christ's death, Men have (pretty much) ceased to reincarnate; but instead make a choice between accepting or rejecting resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

(I think that there may be exceptions when some of those who reject Heaven may be allowed further reincarnation; when the souls desire and may benefit from this in terms of coming later to embrace resurrection due to further experience.) 

Therefore I find myself advocating much the same scheme of evolutionary-development of consciousness - but without reincarnation as the explanation. What then is my explanation for (on average) 'more mature' souls being reincarnated in modern than in hunter-gatherer times? 

(Note: 'More mature' does not correspond to 'better' in terms of more-Good or more likely to attain salvation. It just means more-mature. Plenty of adults are worse people than most children; many people get worse as they grow-up; and probably more modern children would choose salvation than modern adults. Nonetheless adults are indeed, on-average, more mature in consciousness than children.) 

My answer to this relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny is to focus on the experiences we accumulate in pre-mortal life. 

Following Mormon theology, I believe that we all had an (eternal) pre-mortal existence as immaterial spirits. In other words; before we incarnated into mortal bodies we were immortal spirits; and resurrected-incarnated immortality must be preceded by phases of spirit immortality and incarnated mortality. 

The immortal pre-mortal spirits are each unique in terms of their original disposition and the differences due to different experience as spirits. 

I don't think all pre-mortal spirits do the same thing (i.e. they have different 'jobs' or functions); but some at least are 'angels' - messengers and workers for the will of God. 

(Other 'angels' are resurrected Men - so there are two types of angel: pre-mortal spirit, and post-mortal incarnate.) 

Some of these spirit angels are apparently closely concerned with life on earth: some are what is termed 'guardian angels', that work very closely with incarnated mortal humans. 

As the name implies, pre-mortal spirit angels do not have as much agency (or free will) as us mortal incarnates - they function more as intermediaries between God and mortal Men, conduits of God's will - they are, nonetheless, individuals, each an early step in Man's potential development. 

(Potential development, because some pre-mortal spirits may choose to remain at that stage indefinitely. Mortal incarnation is optional, chosen.)

For instance, pre-mortal angels may be a link Men to God's presence, God's will, and a spiritual between Men. They may also perform miracles, under direction of God. They are agents in making early Man more naturally and spontaneously spiritual than modern Man. 

In other words, an abundance of pre-mortal angels working closely with incarnate mortal Men may help account for the characteristics of Original Participation. Furthermore, these angels are building-up experience through living (spiritually) in close association with many of the various earlier forms of human society. 

Later in history, after the time of Jesus Christ; at various points some of these angels are incarnated as mortal Men; and bring into mortal life the same maturity they have developed as pre-mortal angels. 

Therefore, the evolution of consciousness through history is due to the greater maturity of more experienced incarnated souls; due to their having themselves lived-through much of previous human history - not incarnated, but in the form of spirits. 

Part of this maturity is the 'spiritual adolescence' that rejects the spiritual influence of pre-mortal angels; rather as teenagers reject influence-by and association-with children. 

One consequence of this scheme is that many of the pre-mortal spirit-angels live more like learners than helpers. 

Thus 'guardian angels' may actually be more concerned with their own learning than with providing irreplaceable 'services'. 

(Interestingly, this corresponds with the view of 'learner angels in some popular depictions - for what that is worth).

The above implies that some of us who are currently incarnated have probably been around and closely involved with human society and individuals at several or many times and places in human history - perhaps as pre-Christ reincarnates, and/or as post-Christ spirit-angels. 

Why, then, do most people not remember something of this? 

Well, some people do! And others have an implicit memory - like the memory of a dream (because spirit life has dream like qualities); but a dream than affects waking life.   

Or even more like the implicit memories of very early childhood - mostly unrecalled, but affecting us in many ways. 

If that is something like the way that these things work; then maybe many of us do have some kind of memories of this sort - perhaps evident in some of our innate aptitudes and preferences - as well as our varying degrees of innate, accumulated spiritual maturity 

 

The development (evolution) of consciousness is an attribute of creation

Since reading Owen Barfield, in context of my preceding academic studies of human evolution; I have accepted that there has been (and is, ongoing) a development of human consciousness that is evident through recorded history, and consistent with what we infer about prehistory - and evident also in the lifespan of individual humans. 

But I have never been confident about how this development of consciousness happens - its "cause" or reason. 

Barfield (following Rudolf Steiner) regards the evolution of consciousness as a consequence of serial reincarnation; and that it represents a long term process of "learning" from a range of life experiences in very different situations (extending back into pre-incarnate existences) - and that this is, indeed, the underlying purpose of reincarnation.

But I don't think this is right, for various reasons. In particular; since Jesus I think that serial reincarnation has been replaced by resurrection (at least for those who affirm God's creative purpose) yet the development of human consciousness has apparently accelerated. 

On the other hand, I have remained uncertain about the matter; which is uncomfortable considering that I regard the DofC as a vital explanatory concept. 

It now strikes me that the reason it is difficult to assign causes to the development of consciousness is probably that it is intrinsic, not caused. 

In other words; my conclusion is that the development of consciousness is what happens to all Beings, serially, as they continue to exist-in, and interact-with, divine creation.

**

Note: It always seems to be be necessary to emphasize that the development of consciousness is not, not, NOT a matter of "progress" or betterment of a Being. DofC should be regarded as analogous to the biological development of an organism - for example from a fetus to childhood, childhood through puberty etc. An adolescent is not "better" than he was as a child, indeed he is usually worse; but the adolescent is more developed. Likewise modern Man is overall worse than pre-modern Man (not necessarily worse, but mainly by wrong choices and their consequences) but modern man is more developed. Also, as with biological development, spiritual development is linear, cumulative, not-reversible - it cannot be undone, nor made as if it had never happened.

How does human consciousness 'evolve' (develop) through history, if there is not reincarnation?

Almost everybody who believes-in the evolution of human consciousness, also believes-in reincarnation - but not me.

While I think it probable that reincarnation was usual before the advent of Jesus Christ; I don't believe that reincarnation has been normal since then, at least among Christians - and has indeed been very exceptional (or absent). This for the simple reason that Jesus came to bring resurrected and eternal life in Heaven to his followers, and my assumption is that resurrection happens soon after biological death - which combination (as I understand it) rules-out reincarnation. (although perhaps not something like projected avatars...).

However I also believe that through history (and pre-history) the consciousness of men has developed according to a divine plan or destiny (consciousness has 'evolved' in an old sense of the word). In other words, Men at different points in history have thought and experienced differently - and this is evolutionary-development of mind is (of course) reflected in language (as documented by the work of Owen Barfield), religion, society, science, art and everything else.

But the key point is that socio-cultural change is driven by the inner change in human consciouness - and that inner change has inner causes - and not (or not primarily) the other way around (as most people suppose).

However, if for the past c. 2000 years at least, human souls have one mortal life, and if therefore we can experience only one mode of consciousness and one era of evolutionary history - then what is the value of an evolution in consciousness? Why have consciousness changing through human generations - if, for each individual person - consciousness is Not changing?

My answer is that each of us is unique, therefore each of us needs different experiences in our (one) mortal life; and the evolution of consciousness is a way that God uses to give individual human spirits the many types of experience that each needs.

Other ways of providing different experiences come from different families, different social circumstances, nations, levels and types of civilisation etc. But one of the important ways in which mortal life is tailored to the needs of individual incarnating spirits is through the phases and stages of the development of consciousness.

So that the simple hunter gatherer societies had (in important respects) a very young-child-like consciousness even among adults. Medieval Europe was essentially rooted in the developmental stage of an older child (with its fixed symbolism, hierarchies and rituals). Modern society is essentially the adolescent stage.

And there has never yet been (except among individuals and small temporary groups, perhaps) any time and place where the adult form of consciousness has prevailed - although that is the task of our stage of evolution: i.e. to become properly adult in our consciousness.

Our task (here and now, in The West) is to grow-up spiritually; to attain (and this must be an active and conscious choice, which is a reason why it has not yet happened) what Owen Barfield called Final Participation.

The link between the evolution of consciousness and reincarnation in Owen Barfield's thought

Owen Barfield's central idea, and the one for which he is best known, is the evolution of consciousness - meaning that the nature of human consciousness has changed throughout history such that people in different eras and places had very different relationships with the world: these changes fall into three general categories of Original Participation, the Observing Consciousness and Final Participation.

He traces the evolution of consciousness mainly by observing the characteristic changes in the meaning and usage of words, which seem to display a cohesive development - and also looks at other cultural evidence. Barfield's idea of evolution in this regard is not natural selection, but a developmental process (akin to the growth and differentiation of a living entity): the emergence and unfolding of human destiny, interacting with the agency and free will of individual humans.

What is seldom appreciated or emphasized is that for Barfield the evolution of consciousness is divinely designed, and bound-up with reincarnation. To put it concisely, the reason for the evolution of consciousness through history is that this provides the necessary conditions by which successive reincarnations of  human spirits may learn what they require to develop towards divinity.

So, for Barfield (although this is hinted at much more often than made explicit) it is God who 'provides' the evolution of consciousness in order that reincarnating human spirits may have the necessary experiences they need to growth towards the ultimate goal of Final Participation - whereby firstly, and stepwise, the Ego or Self has become separated from its original 'unconscious' immersion in the environment and strong in its purpose and will - awake, alert and in-control; then secondly the now strong and purposive Self/ Ego comes back into a participatory relationship with The World.

To underlying rationale (the 'point') of the evolution of consciousness is, for Barfield, bound-up with the reality of reincarnation; and therefore those (such as myself) who disbelieve in reincarnation as the normal human destiny, yet who believe in the evolution of consciousness, need to be clear that we differ from Barfield; and are, indeed, denying the main reason for evolution of consciousness as Barfield understood it.

To put it bluntly: those individuals who are sympathetic towards Barfield's core idea of the evolution of consciousness yet who do not believe in reincarnation, need to explain what the evolution of consciousness is for - if not to provide the conditions necessary for educating the reincarnating human spirit.  

**

Note: My personal 'take' on reincarnation is that it is not the normal human destiny - but that reincarnation happens to some individuals for particular purposes - for instance, a sage, prophet or saint may be a reincarnate who has returned to assist in the divine work - indeed I suspect that many of the wise intuitive individuals such as Rudolf Steiner and perhaps Owen Barfield himself, who claim direct personal knowledge of the reality of incarnation, are themselves actually some of these rare and atypical persons. As a believer in Mormon theology, my explanation for the evolution of consciousness is that humans have a pre-mortal spiritual existence before being voluntarily incarnated into life on earth - and the evolution of consciousness allows pre-mortal spirits to be 'placed' - by God - into the historical era which best addresses their personal spiritual needs: i.e. their specific needs for mortal experience of a particular kind.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=reincarnation 

Why the development of consciousness, or its denial, makes a Big Difference

The conviction upon which much of my thinking has been based over the past decade, has included that human consciousness has developed, or evolved (to a plan), or transformed - and I mean actively developed, from inner (and ultimately divine) causes - through the modern era. 

This is a metaphysical assumption; and so is the usual and opposite mainstream idea that human consciousness now in the West is the same consciousness as human beings everywhere else in the world, and at all points through history. 

(Another fairly mainstream metaphysical assumption - of totalitarian modernity - is that there is no such thing as human consciousness, that it is some kind of misunderstanding, or maybe a temporary accident; or that the human can and should be "transcended" by something "better" - by adding or replacing-with computers, genetic manipulations, AI &c.)  

Both the development of human consciousness and the universality of human consciousness are assumptions: metaphysical in nature. 

Neither assumption is provable by any kind of evidence (because evidence depends on assumptions: the empirical depends on the metaphysical) - we can just point-out observations that are easily compatible, or not, with these assumptions.  

But if one believes that consciousness has changed, one important consequence is that modern Western Man cannot go back, he/we cannot revert to an earlier stage or phase of civilization; since earlier stages were manifestations of a different consciousness. 

For example to fit Modern Man (with his different consciousness) into a medieval European type of society, would be like hammering a square peg into a round hole. 

Modern Man would need to be "made to fit" medieval structures and systems - they would not ever come naturally to him. In other words the need for hammering, represents some extremely different kind of social control and enforcement - which would mean that the resulting society was Not the same as in medieval Europe. 

This would be because - at a fundamental level - Modern Man experiences the world differently, "processes" his perceptions differently, has a different and greater self-consciousness... And therefore responds differently to incentives and sanctions. 

So, it is important to consider the validity of the - often unconscious and unexamined - assumption that "Men are functionally and essentially the same always and forever"; because if that is Not true but you believe it; then you will find yourself assuming possibilities that are actually impossible; and perhaps in trying to attain the impossible, you will be doing significant harm. 

Furthermore; if God has indeed made things such that Men are different in different places and times, then it is reasonable to infer that God has a different destiny for different times and places. 

...What is valid for one time and place may then be evil for another. 

This is not proposing any kind of "relativism" - quite the opposite! 

What I am advocating is to believe that there really is a divine destiny for places and times, for nations and eras; as well as for individual persons - and that it is our job to discover and live-by the divine destiny that applies to us, personally. 

(And, insofar as it is relevant; to be aware that our divine destiny may not be identical with everybody else's!)

 

Why does human consciousness 'evolve'?

That human consciousness has changed throughout history, and before history, is an assumption I make; having been persuaded of this by Owen Barfield and his mentor Rudolf Steiner.

Most obviously, the world of a young child is different from the world of an adult; the world of a hunter gatherer different from the world of a modern urbanite - we need to understand these differences in terms of a process of developmental-unfolding towards divinity. 

I am therefore using the word 'evolution' in its older and more general sense of 'developmental unfolding' according to a plan. And in this instance, the developmental plan is a destiny; because it refers to a divine-plan.

So, one big question is: Why should God want human consciousness to unfold through various phases across the course of human existence?

The answer is: To provide a range of experiences to different men at different points in history; each experience tailored to the specific needs of each specific Man - so that by learning from these life-experiences, men may grow in divinity (the process called theosis).

Behind this lies the assumption that each human being has a pre-mortal spirit life, before he or she is incarnated on the earth - and in this life we have reached a point of development that would benefit from different kind of experience in mortal life.

(This is therefore an explanation for extended mortal life; that is extended beyond the simple fact of being incarnated and then very soon dying - which has been the experience of most humans through history: i.e. dying in the womb, during birth or as an infant. I am here trying to explain why some people, including you and I, live a more extended lifespan.)

So, our pre-mortal selves are 'placed' (by God) into a 'tailored' time, place and situation where it is most likely we will encounter and learn-from the experiences we most need. The evolution of consciousness through human history is part of the 'tailoring' of earthly, mortal situations to provide the most useful experiences for our individual theosis.

(Of course, there is no guarantee we will each and all choose to learn from the experiences, we may - as it turns-out - reject the 'lessons' experience teaches us, and draw false conclusions. Nonetheless, the lessons are provided.)

And this is the reason why there is an equivalence between the changes of human consciousness through human history; and the changes in human consciousness during biological development from child, through adolescence, to adult-parent-hood. The changes through human history provide (in individually-tailored fashion) the full range of experiences that are relevant to pre-mortal spirits that need to develop-through particular phases.

Thus, the modern Western experience provides a quality of human experience never before seen in human history; and our era and situation therefore has a special value for those of us who have been placed-into it.

I am neither pro-, nor anti-modern...

From a perspective that sees world history and human history as an unfolding, a developmental-evolution of human consciousness, then the advent of 'modernity' is seen as a necessary stage or phase in the maturation of the human spirit.

Modernity is, indeed, analogous to adolescence in the individual - it is the necessary transitional phase between childhood and adulthood. In this understanding, early human history is the childhood, and modernity is adolescence: we have not reached adult maturity.


The current phase of Western culture, noticeable in the 16th or 17th century (and beginning even earlier) but most obvious with the Industrial Revolution, is therefore a case of arrested adolescence. We were meant (meant by God, that is) to go-through modernity into maturity, but this has not happened.

In that sense, I am 'against' modernity; because it has become a pathologically-prolonged transition - instead of being a transition it is an incoherent and impossible attempt to maintain a half-maturity and to refuse (because ultimately this is a willed decision) adult maturity.

This is A Bad Thing because adolescence perpetuated is self-corrupting. It is incoherent because it is meant to be a temporary transition leading onwards, being incojherent it does not cohere, which means that it inevitably corrupts. To be a perpetual adolescent is necessarily to become incrementally corrupted.


In ultimate spiritual terms, we are talking about the maturation of human society towards the divine state of consciousness. The divine state of consciousness is one in which that which was unconscious, taken-for-granted, in childhood; becomes known consciously. Not just knowing, but knowing that we know, and knowing what we know.

The maturation of consciousness is therefore an increase in freedom. The child is unfree because he is not separate from his environment, he cannot regard himself and his environment separately. The adolescent can do this - but for the adolescent the separation tends to become a severance; because he cannot see the necessary and intrinsic relationship between the person and the environment.

Thus adult maturity is to know and experience that the self and the environment are distinguishable, but not separable - that they are different and also related. This adult insight is also divine, in that it is the way that God knows reality.


But how does culture and the individual relate? What is the relationship between my development, and the development of the culture I inhabit? For example, can I personally move forward through modernity into an adult state of consciousness while the society remains in arrested adolescence?

Yes, this is possible, indeed it is necessary; it is the way in which culture changes - by individuals changing. The development of human consciousness is one in which the step between childhood and adolescence is involuntary - it just happens and cannot be stopped; but the development between adolescence and adult maturity must be chosen consciously. That is, indeed, how arrested adolescence is possible.

The powers of purposive evil in this world, via modern culture, have induced many/ most people to refuse to choose adult maturity of consciousness - indeed, by creating a dichotomy of being either for or against modernity, they have ruled-out the correct attitude by-assumption; they have eliminated The Right Answer even from consideration!

Implications of the evolution-development of human consciousness

It was Owen Barfield's central theme, through most of his writings from Saving the Appearances (1957) onward, that humanity had undergone an 'evolution' of consciousness through recorded history (and presumably before recorded history). 

NOTE: It is vital to understand that when he deployed the term 'evolution', Barfield was using the pre-Darwinian concept; which meant something much more like 'developmental-unfolding'. In other words, the evolution of consciousness is being conceptualised as closely-analogous to the maturation of a human being from childhood, through adolescence into adulthood - but occurring over a timescale of centuries, rather than years. This means that the evolution of human consciousness was intended, and has been built-into the 'species'; and implicitly the evolution of consciousness was built-in by God.

Barfield's special contribution was to trace this evolution through the changing use of language, especially the nature of changes in word meanings, which form an unfolding pattern (most clearly set-out in the early book: History in English Words, 1926).

(I find it best to regard Barfield's mass of linguistic evidence as an illustration of the evolution of consciousness, and consistent-with the theory that consciousness has evoloved; rather than 'proving' that consciousness has evolved; an assertion that is, strictly, a metaphysical assumption - therefore something that cannot be either proven or disproven.)

The implications of accepting the reality of the evolution of consciousness is that the nature of Men changes through history; therefore the nature of human societies will change. This is absolutely inevitable, because societies are made of Men, and when Men change, the same socio-political organisation (the same incentives and punishments, motivations and deterrents) will produce different outcomes.

Men can either accept these changes of consciousness, learn about them, and take them into account; or they can ignore, deny and try to oppose them - which is what we are currently doing.

Radicals (the great majority in The West) deny the idea of God, therefore deny that there could be a divinely-destined - necessary and Good - evolution of consciousness - and insofar as this is acknowledged it would be opposed.

Reactionaries (a shrinking minority in The West) regard human consciousness as fixed, regard past societies as preferable to the current, and therefore hope to try to restore some earlier and better version of society.

But if human consciousness is really developing, and if this is divinely destined; if - for example The West has been in an unfolding 'adolescence of consciousness' since about 1750; then both the present and the past are impossible. The present is impossible because adolescence is a transitional phase; the past is impossible because we have left-behind our spiritual childhood.

If the evolution of consciousness is real, in the way that Barfield explained it; then Man can only move forward, can only accept or reject maturity; and such a move will be into-the-unknown - because, as adolescents, we cannot know what it will be like to become adult until we actually get there. 

When, in the past, would you like to have lived? (Being who you now are)... Understanding the evolutionary-development of Mankind

I expect that we have all day-dreamed about living in the past - and when the present is acutely miserable, or when we cannot seriously imagine a good future; then such dreams are more insistent.  

If you are like me; then these pleasant day-dreams are almost like 'snapshots' - holiday photos in reverse - whereby some particularly appealing scene is conjured and entered-into. 

For example, just before I went to sleep at night, I would sometimes imagine myself on a sultry summer's afternoon beside the Concord River or Walden Pond in the 'transcendentalist' era of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I could feel - physically - an idealized sense of repose against an implicit background of close-knit friends and associates, who shared an opening-out of ideas and possibilities.   

After becoming a Christian; I had a mental picture of Constantinople under a crystalline-blue sky; the city and its streets gleaming white, and with bright and rich colour; the music, painting, statuary, mosaics; and dignified ritual of divine liturgy under the vast dome of Hagia Sophia. 

Behind such pictures lay an imagined sense of what it was like to live, immersively, in a society where Christianity permeated the whole of life - a medium into which one was born, and through which one swam. 

This idea of 'immersion' in life; of life as unselfconscious - of living in the world as given and joyfully embraced - was at the back of most of these pleasant, yearning, day-dreams. 

This bears a more-than-coincidental relationship to similar day-dreams of early childhood; where I can remember some of what it was like to be a happy child in a happy family, in the years before I was five. For instance; Christmas day aged three or four was a total and immersive experience of being swept along in colour, warmth, joy and unfolding excitement. My life in early childhood - when it was good - was good without comparison; it was living in the best possible world. 

When, from the late 1990s, I began to read accounts of the life of 'simple', nomadic, foraging, hunter-gatherer societies; it was impossible to miss the similarity with childhood - which was indeed often pointed-out by anthropologists (before the cancer of leftism utterly destroyed their capacity to experience and think). 

Yet, although there was intense nostalgia for states of being; I could seldom whole-heartedly take the inward step of wanting actually to live in any previous state of society - in the sense that I could not imagine me-as-I-am-now, finding life better in any past society as-it-was-then. 

For the daydream to work properly, I would have to be a different person from the modern Man I had become. 

The problem was 'consciousness' - the problem was my modern self-awareness, my modern knowledge of possibilities and comparisons - and of what happened next. For any fantasy of the imagined past to "work" - I would need to leave-behind a lot of myself-in-the-present. 

This leads onto the next question concerning what I would need to leave-behind. Some of the 'modern' stuff about 'the way I think' that would need to be left-behind is evil - and I would be much better rid of it... not just in order to live in the past, but anyway. I have been corrupted by the evils of modernity - and, like any evil, this needs to be recognized and repented.

But... even when I could imagine being cleansed of characteristically modern corruptions of consciousness; there was a residue of 'me-here-now' compared with people of the past that was different in nature - but not evil; and this made it difficult to want to live in the past except by wanting to be a different person: a fundamentally different person. 

To live 'idyllically' as a simple hunter-gatherer in my fantasy past - or even in Byzantium, or in New England circa 1835 - I had to imagine myself as somebody-else; which really does not make sense, if you think about it...

Indeed; this wishing has the same incoherence as transhumanism - which aims to cure the ills consequent on being a human by abolishing humans!

Or, it resembles the Western oneness spiritualities - which offer a cure of the ills of Modern self-consciousness in the abolition of consciousness of the self.  

Or, it resembles the 'spiritual' strategy of intoxication - whereby consciousness is (pathologically) obliterated by (usually temporary) self-poisoning. A person escapes the miseries of self-consciousness by deliberately causing cerebral dysfunction; such that (e.g.) alertness, self-awareness and memory are rendered physically inoperative. When a drug has euphoriant properties, there may also be a state of pleasure or at least painlessness. 

In a sense; such intoxication - with its obliteration of that which causes and enables angst - implicitly aims at a simulation of earlier (or child-like) consciousness in terms of the experience of here-and-now immersion in the here-and-now. Insofar as it can be achieved, such simulation of unselfconscious immersion is necessarily achieved at the cost of significant dysfunction. 

It was such insights that prepared my mind for understanding the insights of Owen Barfield concerning what he terms 'the evolution of consciousness' - evolution being used in a pre-natural-selection sense of purposive change; much like the psychological aspects of development of a human from baby, through childhood and adolescence to sexual maturity (the purpose ultimately coming from God).  

To regard human history as including a change in the nature of Man's thinking, and relationship with the world - a change analogous to (and sharing similar purposes with)  that of the development of a single Man - is to find meaning in the mental differences between myself and the hunter-gatherer or resident of Constantinople in the middle hundreds AD. 

It is to recognize that for me to live in the past in the same spirit as people did then, would require fundamental changes in my consciousness; but to regard at least some of these changes as on the one hand impossible - in the same sense that an adult cannot really, in essence, become a child again; and also undesirable - in the sense that development is not meant to be reversed. 

This is to assume that when a person develops through adolescence to sexual maturity; this is what God wants - and the 'job' of the adult is to deal with the situation - not to try and reverse it. This is our divinely-appointed task - it is our destiny. 

Likewise; when God has enabled his creation of Mankind to develop from hunter gatherer, through agrarian societies into the industrial revolution - in some broad yet essential sense this is what God wants; and our job is to deal with it - starting from where we are; and not trying to reverse the fundamentals of the later situation in search of recreating the earlier situation. 

Of Course we Modern Men must recognize and repent sin; and insofar (and it is very far) that Modern Man is corrupt, and Modern society not only encourages but increasingly enforces such corruption, we are right to desire that this be changed. 

But the consciousness of Modern Man is unprecedented - and cannot lead-to, nor function-in, any previous type of society. 

Just as the adolescent's consciousness is unprecedented in his own experience - and the only way out is forward; no matter how corrupt an individual he has become, the same applies to Modern Society: that the only way out is forward. 

The only way out is forward; because we cannot find solutions to our unprecedented situation in our past. 

Part of this is due to an increase in sin; but part of it is also due to a change in the nature of Men through time - so that even if past social forms could be re-created, Modern men would not function in them, and they could not be sustained in the same way as they once were - they would be unsustainable, and they would not lead to Good. 

We cannot become unselfconsciously immersed in society again; and even if we could, it would be in defiance of God's expressed creative will - and would therefore lead to demonic outcomes. 

Thus, an understanding and acceptance of the development of human consciousness can make a fundamental difference in how we intend and hope to deal with the evils of modern society. 

These evils are seen, to a significant and crucial degree, as due to a failure to deal-with the development of Man's consciousness. 

An analogy might be when the (common) corruptions of adolescence are seen as a failure to deal with the unfolding inner changes in consciousness. That unfolding was itself a necessary, and a good (God-given) thing. 

But development leads to unavoidable challenges and choices - and if the challenges are avoided and the choices are wrong - then there is a turn towards evil that needs repentance.  

We, here, now are living at the end of innumerable failures to acknowledge challenges, and innumerable bad choices by vast numbers of people - an accumulated legacy of evil which is unrecognized and unrepented.   

But behind all this was a development of consciousness, a growing-up of Mankind, which was divinely-intended; and is irreversible. 

Therefore, although we are not supposed to leave history behind (just as we ought to remember, honour and cherish all which was good in our childhoods); nonetheless, but we ought not to seek to recreate our childhood, nor seek childrens' solutions to adolescent problems: they will not work, and they will do harm - even when well-intended. 

Instead; we must seek solutions appropriate to where we are and what we have become; and the right answers will be unprecedented in fundamental ways.

This quest will almost certainly entail trials and errors; so we need both faith and hope, together with a willingness to discern and repent when things do not work-out. 

But we each have divine guidance (of several kinds) to lead us through the maze of options and alternatives, successes and failures. 

That is the nature of our task.   

We are currently being driven towards a new form of consciousness, a new way of thinking

When Owen Barfield writes about 'the evolution of consciousness' - he is talking process that is driving human development.

Barfield is not, therefore, regarding consciousness is something which respond-to historical change; but the opposite. So, he is saying that it was a change in the consciousness of Western Man that drove the scientific revolution and 'materialism': first consciousness changed and then science arose...

And therefore Barfield is contradicting any idea that 'modern Man's different way of thinking is a product of the scientific revolution. He was also contradicting the idea that the change in consciousness was due to natural selection. Rather Barfield is stating that changes in consciousness have been driven-by the unfolding of a divine plan (or 'destiny') for Man.

(A plan/ destiny aiming, ultimately, at the divinisation or theosis of Man - Man becoming a god (or full Son of God, as the New Testament terms it), with a god-like way of thinking.)

The development of new forms of human thinking is something which has (again according to Barfield) happened several times in human history, and indeed prehistory. However, in the past the changes in consciousness were driven at an unconscious level and required only the passive acceptance of Men.

Currently (at least since the Romantic movement of the late 1700s), and for the first time, we are experiencing an unconscious drive towards a new kind of consciousness that will not happen unless and until it becomes conscious and chosen.

So, our current situation is that we are being driven 'instinctually' (unconsciously) towards a new consciousness / a new way of thinking. But for it actually to happen requires that we become 1. consciously, explicitly aware of what is going-on; 2. then accept this destined change, but; 3. not just accept it, because we need also to; 4. actively embrace and work-at creating this change in ourselves.

In sum; the modern situation is that we must each, personally, want-to ally our-selves with the destined change in thought and consciousness, and must make efforts to make these changes in our-selves.

Or... it will not happen; and because we cannot go-back to an earleir state of consciousness (any more than an adolescent can become an actual child again), we will remain 'stuck' in the current phase of alienated consciousness - the problems from which will continue to be cumulative.

So far, very few individuals have done this four stage process of theosis - and the great majority of people in the West remain entirely unconscious of what is going-on behind-the-scenes.

Nonetheless, at an unconscious level - the instinctive drive towards the next, and final (because divine) qualitative development of thinking continues; and leads to many undesirable outcomes.

Good Vibrations? High Frequencies?

It is common in spiritual writing over the past decades to discuss the raising of consciousness, the evolution of Man towards divinity, in terms of a higher Vibrational state, or high Frequency communications. This is done by many authors and thinkers - including some that I greatly respect (such as William Arkle).

It goes along with several other physics derived terms used in spiritual discussion - Energy is one popular one (especially in Alternative Healing) and of course Light - which is used often in the Bible...


There is a question of the extent to which these are intended to be literal or metaphorical. However, the work of Owen Barfield on the development of language tells us that this literal versus metaphorical distinction may be an artefact of modernity - and not an aspect of reality.

Reality may be, and probably usually-is, both literal and metaphorical; in the sense that literal factuality does not capture the 'symbolism' or meaning of facts, while the symbolism tends to discount or ignore the question of factuality.

So, I recall reading in the Russian Orthodox literature about light emanating from Saints being both literal and symbolic. My understanding is that such glowing could, in principle, be photographed or filmed - and was, in that sense, 'objective'. On the other hand, demons may, it was said, appear in the guise of brightly-glowing angels... so light is not 'evidence' of Goodness.


The question about Frequency/ Vibration is whether there is supposed to be a literal, factual aspect to the description; is high frequency consciousness something that might, in principle, be measurable by a device? Some New Age thinkers clearly suppose so.

But the perspective of Barfield and Rudolf Steiner was that objective phenomena are always and inevitably known via consciousness; and when consciousness is different, what is objective is different. This would include physical records such as photographs, videos, readouts... in reality they are interpretable, know-able, only by human consciousness, and when human consciousness changes, so does our knowledge of such records.

(Perception is thus bound-up-with knowledge.)

In other words, there is no-such-thing as objectivity separable from human consciousness.


This suggests that there may in reality be something describable as a frequency or vibrational state of consciousness, and this attribute may be perceptible or even measurable in some states of consciousness but not others.

On the other hand, I question whether this physics-based way of describing and discussing life and consciousness has in fact been effective - whether this way of speaking and writing is a good idea? My objection is that it is abstract, in the sense of being the opposite of personal.


There is a major divide among those interested in religion ad spirituality between those who seek to escape persons and regard reality as abstract; and the opposite. In general, the movement through human history is to regard higher, more true religion as being abstract. Probably because we all start out, as young children, seeing the world as animated and conscious (everything significant as alive and purposive, motivated - everything as quasi-persons) - then growing-up and becoming intelligent and wise is seen as an incremental process of abstraction.

We mostly regard the abstract as real, useful, generalisable; the personal as childish, unintelligent, crazy... and indeed children, mentally handicapped and psychotic people are often and characteristically 'animistic' in their thinking. (Paranoia, in the technical sense of self-referential delusions, is the natural state of the naive human.) 


To discuss spirituality in terms of Vibrations, Frequency, Energy and Light are all ways of abstraction. Abstraction has been the trend for hundreds, even thousands, of years... And how is this abstraction working out, thus far?...

Well, abstraction is alienation, disconnection; it is to understand God as a series of attributes or properties, God's goals as akin to setting-up a machine, a computer, a force-field... a complex system. It is to see persons in terms of how they serve abstractions; virtues in terms of how we interact with a system; sins and vices as disruptions to our efficient functioning.

In sum, such language feeds an understanding of the universe as unalive and unfolding with inevitability and impartially... when, surely, as Christians we ought to be understanding reality in terms of persons, not the universe; in terms of personal aims, wants, needs, hopes... and of course love?


The recourse to physics concepts as a key metaphor or and the bottom-line factual-symbolic primary description of life, is a thing fraught with hazard; at least for the modern mind.

It is, at any rate, something I am working on noticing and expunging from my own thinking. The intent being to replace it with a conscious animism, an aware knowledge of reality as ultimately - factually-symbolically - consisting in living conscious Beings.

Such an animism is regarded as objective, meaning (as objective always does, in reality) shared perceptually between those of the same quality of consciousness. Those of a different quality of consciousness (such as the mass of modern people, and indeed the naive and child-like, would not and could not perceive this reality of reality-as-Beings.

That is to be expected....


(Note: Reality consists of Beings; including parts or components of Beings... Not everything in reality is a conscious Being in its own right; just as our right thumb, a lymphocyte in the blood, or a calcium ion in our nervous system are not individual Beings, in their own right. Yet everything not itself A Being, is part-of A Being.)

Love and consciousness from the assumption of Being as primary

We are ultimately, and in reality, beings among beings - and human destiny entails becoming fully aware of this fact and freely embracing it in our thinking.

We began (as young children, and in the early days of Man) as un-consciously living as beings among beings - and with our personal being (our self) not-fully-differentiated from the beings around us.

You know what I mean, because you were once a young child. A young child (in an ideal or best possible situation, which can be imagined even if - especially if - not personally experienced) lives in a world of beings related by love - and his own being is not distinctly separable from those of his mother, father and close family... For a young child, his parents are always present, and their love is a constant fact which contains of of life and experience.

Expressed abstractly, like physics: our primordial experience is that love contains consciousness - love is the medium in which consciousness exists, and in which consciousness develops.

But in reality this situation is not abstract, but personal. Abstract is a simplified summary; being is actual.  

In terms of love, a young child's love is perfect - he inhabits a world of living and loving beings. If love was the only thing life was about, we would (and probably should) remain as-children. But because not-differentiated, the child is not free. The child cannot act from-himself, because that self is essentially passive. The child is so embedded-in, permeated-by, the loving relationships of his family - that he is almost-wholly-responsive rather than active or agent.

God wants Men to become gods, like God - and this involves passive and unconscious children becoming free and conscious agents. Therefore there must be a developmental growth from the state of childhood to adulthood. And this developmental growth need primarily to be in consciousness - because love doesn't grow.

So... Christianity is primarily underpinned by love: love is primary - that is a fact. However, in this sense Love is qualitative - Love is not the kind of thing that grows, develops, evolves. Mortal life is Not about growth in love - but about growth in consciousness.

Love is somewhat like a growth-medium, the essential medium in which the hoped-for growth of consciousness may happen. That which grows in the medium of love is consciousness - development from passive/ unconscious child to agent/ conscious adult consciousness...

In general terms we begin as unconscious of everything, just-being and taking everything 'for granted' - the aimed-at divine situation is to be conscious of everything: being-aware-of-being...

In sum, abstractly the child and the adult are potentially identical in love but different in consciousness - and the adult consciousness is higher because more-individualised, more-free, more-agent.

Adolescence is the transition between child and adult consciousness - a necessary, unavoidable transition - but a transition and not an intended end-point. In adolescence what is inevitable is the development of consciousness, what should not change is the medium of love. Adolescence ought-to happen in a medium of love.

The ideal development through mortal life is therefore a transition of consciousness into agency; always and continuously in love: agency changes, love doesn't.

In terms of being (which is the reality) we ought-to (are divinely destined/ intended to, hope/ aspire to) grow-up in loving families - and the growing-up-bit is a matter of consciousness.

Increased self-consciousness *should* imply a move from externally- to internally-motivated - but culture (and 'reaction') is doing the opposite

The development of human consciousness over the past several hundred years (the "modern" era, from c1500) has been towards great self-consciousness - often experienced negatively as cut-off-ness, alienation, isolation, solipsism, despair...

But, in a positive sense; this change has been towards greater freedom or "agency"; and it sustained (during its earlier generations) a great burst of individual geniuses who deployed this new agency in great works of literature, art, science, ideas etc. 

Yet the major developments of modern culture - especially over the past century or so) have been towards a more complete - "totalitarian" control of the human mind.

This, by means of ever-larger and more cross-linked bureaucracies; covering ever-more of life; integrated with a vast apparatus of propaganda and manipulation we term the Mass Media; and these systems have moved from national to multi-national ("global") control, over recent decades.  

In other words; the social trends have been in the opposite direction than the development of consciousness. 

This opposition of social and personal can be understood in terms of the perceived-need for rulers to monitor and control their - more potentially-autonomous - citizens more thoroughly. And this entailed getting them to respond to external motivations rather than to their (increasingly powerful) inner motivations. 

In other words; external society has fought-against the inner trend towards greater freedom, agency, creativity. 

And, so far; external and social control has been winning - hands-down! - against the individual and inward developments of consciousness; especially since the massive spread of Mass, then Social, media from the 1990s. 

But this expanding external control System (of bureaucracy and media) has been overwhelmingly and increasingly evil in its motivations; and this has triggered resistance to this evil among those who were less thoroughly and less-deeply mind-controlled. 

In other words; there have been reactionary movements, opposing the mainstream; and some of these "reactionaries" are Christian. 

Yet, (overwhelmingly) Christian reactionaries have not opposed the social trend towards increased external control - but instead have sought to replace evil-motivated external control with various forms of (putative, because they have not happened) Good-motivated external-control. 

Christian reactionaries are just as opposed to the modern-era developments of human consciousness as are the globalist leftists. 

The difference is that Christian reactionaries are, or aspire to be, totalitarians on-behalf-of-God. 

Thus we can observe all kinds of proposals for what is believed to be a "restoration" of Christianity as an external system of monitoring and control; but replacing the secualr-leftist global leadership with "The" Church... with the the specific identity of this church varying among the advocates. 

The scale of proposed change may be international - for those who adhere to an actual international church - by means of changing the leadership and enforcing the practices of that church. Or the proposed change may be local and piecemeal e.g. setting-up a small personal dictatorship, purporting to be "on behalf of" the real international church - whether institutional or spiritual. 

What Romantic Christianity does, in contrast, is to accept and embrace the inner development towards greater self-consciousness - for its enhancements in agency and creativity; and argue that inner-motivation should become the core of Christianity. 

This implies a move away from, in opposition to, all forms of external control; whatever ideal they serve, or purport to serve. 

It entails each individual accepting ultimate responsibility for his spiritual situation and choices; and moving towards an attitude that evaluates and discerns all forms of external control, and attempts at external motivation. 

Society cannot be eluded, nor opted-out-from; society is necessary and inevitable - and contains much good. 

But the Romantic Christian faces all societies with an attitude of inner-evaluation towards all external influences - including all actual churches, and all possible churches. 

He seeks ultimate motivations from within - and direct from the divine; to clarify and strengthen such motivations; and, insofar as his faith is rooted in the promises of Jesus Christ of resurrected life eternal - then external social influences cannot prevent him achieving what he most desires.  

God's ethical problem: consequences of God making our primordial spirits into Children of God, without our consent

My understanding (mostly derived from Mormon theology) is that human beings began as what could be called primordial spirits - which had existed from eternity; and the first step in our development was to become Sons and Daughters of God.

That was God's most important act of creation, because it was the first step towards Men potentially becoming divine, mini-gods of the same kind as the resurrected and ascended Jesus.


The ethical problem, as I see it, is that as primrdial spirits we could not, therefore did not, consent to being made children of God. We could not consent because, until we became children of God, we were not capable of consent.

As primordial spirits we were incapable of understanding what it meant to become children of God, therefore it was something done to us.

We had first to become children of God, before we were able to consent to or choose anything; therefore it was an essential first step - nonetheless, that first step was coercive.

To put this in a nutshell; God bestowed consciousness upon us. This consciousness then made it possible for us to be agents, to have free will. Until there was consciousness, we could not choose to be conscious - therefore we were compelled, by God, to become conscious.  


There is a close analogy with raising children - here in our mortal lives. Parents have to begin by doing things to children - without the child's consent. Good parenting entails considerable compulsion.

A young child is (at least quantitatively) unable to consent; and it is not until later in development that consent becomes possible (for some, not all, people).

The factor that transcends the compulsion and 'makes it good' is love. When the parent is behaving with love, the compulsion is taken-up by the greater reality of love and seen as a means to the ends of love.

But if love is denied, or was not present, then we are left with the perception of plain compulsion of the child by the parents; with the parent merely compelling the child to follow the parent's agenda. 

Only during adolescence, does a child becomes able to consent; and an adolescent will often become (implicitly or explicitly) aware that much of their childhood entailed compulsion. They may see this as having been necessary and done with love; or they may instead conclude that they have been oppressed or exploited by their parents.

The adolescent coming-into adulthood may choose consciously to return to a loving relationship with parents; or may choose to sever all ties and reject the parents.


The fact of compulsion during development therefore necessarily (and rightly) leads to a crux, a time of decision. The parent makes a decision on behalf of the child; but for the situation to become right the mature child needs to endorse the parental decision.

This happens in an ultimate and divine sense. We must, sooner or later, decide whether we endorse the decision of God coercively to make us his children - or reject it.

I think it is the result of this choice that leads people to Heaven or not. To choose Heaven means to endorse God's decision, to be grateful for consciousness, to regard God as having been motivated by love. It means to dwell with God in divine creation, and to participate - whether passively, actively and fully - or something in-between - in that continuous work of creation.

(It can be seen how such an understanding of Heaven depends on the situation of love.)


To choose hell means that we resent God's choice, we regard it as having been made un-lovingly, for God's own purposes with which we disagree. Hell is the denial that God acted with love, or the denial that love is a sufficient reason for God to act.

This hell is what happens when a person is angry at God, at God's primal act of 'making' us his child. It is to accept the consciousness that was bestowed by God, but to reject God's purpose for which consciousness was bestowed. 

To choose hell therefore means that we choose to retain our consciousness and agency - despite its having being forced-upon us; but (motivated by hatred and resentment against God) to use this consciousness in opposition to God's purposes.

Hell is to use our powers of agency against the agenda of God - and instead for our own agenda.


There is another possibility. Some people dislike being conscious, and therefore would prefer to reverse the act of bestowing Sons and Daughters of God. This is broadly the choice of people that may be Hindus or Buddhists. They disagree with God's agenda of raising Men to a divine level of Being; and instead prefer to revert to the primordial state of Being. Being without awareness - simply being.

In principle this choice may well be made with full acknowledgement of God's loving intentions; but simply based on the conviction that 'consciousness is not for me'. God has made us his children, made us conscious - and as spiritual adolescents we say 'Thanks, but no thanks; I would rather not become divine'.

To such persons, God (I believe) offers Nirvana - which is a reversion to the primordial state of minimal consciousness, but dwelling in a situation of divine love, of 'bliss'. Simply being, moment by moment, unchanging, in a pleasant and comfortable state.

(Hence the impersonality, the foundational abstraction of 'Eastern' religions. It somes from the preference not to be persons, not to relate to God as a person - because these depend on consciousness.)


In sum, there is a moral problem at the heart of divine creation; which is the moment in our personal history when we were made children of God.

This was unavoidable; but the problem is dealt with when we each must later choose how we regard this act of bestowing consciousness, how we interpret it, what to do about it...

Then there will be (it is unavoidable) a decision - which we can now make, being agents with free will: the decison whether to accept the agenda of spiritual development towards divinity for which God made us consciousness; or to reject it.

And if we reject it; the decision whether we then consciously fight against God's agenda (since we regard God as selfishly-motivated); or simply opt-out of being Sons or Daughters of God - handing-back to God his unwanted gift of consciousness.

Was the Omni-God concept a consequence of the development of human consciousness?

It is interesting to speculate how the incoherent and mass-apostasy-inducing Omni-God concept arose and came to dominate Christian (and some other) theologies and Priesthoods. 

One God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and created everything from nothing - i.e. the officially mandatory nature of God according to mainstream Christianity; is an idea literally inconceivable to simple people and children. 

And inconceivable to people of the past, and up to the life of Jesus; because I see nothing explicit to suggest that the authors of Old Testament, the Gospels, or Epistles conceptualized God in this way. 

The Omni idea seems to have emerged - off the record - in the generations after the ascension of Jesus and deaths of the Apostles; until we see it behind the Christology schisms and disputes, concerning the divine and/or human nature of Christ; that tore-apart the nascent church in its early centuries. 

Such disputes were (and are) inevitable when Jesus was assumed to have been incarnated into the creation of an Omni-God, since the Omni definition of God excludes the possibility of Jesus being a second creator-deity; and indeed removes any possible reason or purpose for a further manifestation of deity. 

(If God is supposed to be able to do everything, know everything, be everywhere etc - then there is no necessity for Jesus Christ to be incarnated, live, die, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven etc. The Omni-God can - by definition - do everything that is doable, so Jesus is superfluous.) 

Yet if Jesus Christ is not a truly divine creator God; then Jesus is "just" a teacher, prophet etc - and we either assume Jesus was a false teacher and revert to Judaism; or assume Jesus was a valid teacher as with Islam. 

But if Jesus is not divine, he is not unique; and there is no reason to build a religion around following him. 

So how and why did such a strange and destructive idea emerge? 

My best guess of how, is that the Omni-God was synthesized from the ancient Hebrew idea of a single dominating personal God to whom all other Gods were inferior and subservient; and to whom all worship and obedience was due. 

This "monotheism" was combined with Greek philosophical ideas - and religious ideas - probably from  elite and initiatory mystery religions; such as Neo-Platonists and Gnostics); of a universal but impersonal abstract-deity that was everything (pantheism), was the ultimate cause of everything, was perfect hence time-less etc.

(Much like some Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concepts of deity.) 

 

But why did the Omni idea happen at all? 

My understanding is that this was part of the development of human consciousness; and the increasing inner sense of separation of the individual from the group. 

Before the Omni-God concept; human consciousness was naturally, spontaneously, and largely un-consciously very much immersed in the group consciousness - and this group consciousness included the realms of spirits and the divine. 

Because people experienced relationships with so many other Beings (such as animals, trees, landscape, the dead, angels, demons, and gods); there was no subjective "problem" of creation as being incoherent.

There was no need to "explain" how it was that the universe held-together and had purpose - because this coherence was simply a matter of experience. Men knew that things cohered. 

This was, and still is, how young children experience reality even nowadays; and perhaps some tribal peoples as well. 

In other words, in ancient times there was no felt-problem of incoherence that the Omni concept was needed to solve. 

There was no need or reason to explain why all the different aspects of reality held-together and had an overall purpose. 

And no reason to explain why there were real values - a real and universal morality... Since such things were obvious.  

It was when Man's consciousness began (and continued) to become ever more self-aware and separated from the group consciousness; and from awareness of the dead, spirits of many kinds, and the divine - that Men sought an explicit explanation of the "unity" of all things...

That intellectuals came-up with the Omni-God explanation. 

This does not explain why the early Christian church seized upon the Omni-God concept and made it mandatory, despite all the problems it has caused ever since. 

But I think that ultimately such reasons are social rather than philosophical: to do with the church as an institution, rather than Christianity as a theoretical construct.  

The Omni-God concept is popular in all the major monotheisms, I think because it is interpreted to make the specific religion both universal and mandatory; it is used to insert the religion and its church into the ultimate creation and operation of absolutely every-thing. 

Omni-God removes choice from religion; and religion becomes a matter of acknowledging one truth for everything...

Or else the act of rejecting that church and religion gets conceptualized as rejecting... absolutely everything, and all possibility of anything.

So, with Omni-God; not be be a member of the church and religion is therefore conceptualized as a wholly irrational and incoherent act - an embrace of absolute nothingness.  

If it is broadly correct that the Omni-God emerged after Jesus and in the early centuries AD; driven from-within by changes in Mens' consciousness; then we can also see that a genuine, living, motivating belief in Omni-God has become impossible in the modern era.

Shoals of people have left the Christian church, and/or had their faith reduced to the feebleness of a lifestyle-choice, by the insistence of Christian theology on the Omni-God combined with the gross incoherence of the concept - which incoherence has now become spontaneously obvious even to those of low intelligence. 

(The two obvious problems about a Christianity rooted in the Omni-God concept and a Good God; are an inability to explain genuine evil and extreme and undeserved suffering and death; and also an inability to explain human agency or "freedom".)  

In replying to a basic question of "who was Jesus?": mystery-word-spells about Jesus being simultaneously wholly-Man and wholly-God seem like meaningless or devious abstractions; when materialism is built-into the modern perspective. 

In replying to what did Jesus do?": kick-the-can pseudo-explanations about Jesus being necessary to save Mankind from the blame attached to an "original sin" leading to a "fall" that occurred in prehistory; make no sense (and seem grossly unjust)...

When Man's consciousness has become so spontaneously separated from the group/ spirit/ divine that the choices and events of putative ancient ancestors is experienced as utterly irrelevant to me-here-now.

If the Omni-God was not original to Christianity but instead the contingent artefact of a particular stage in Man's historical consciousness and the rhetorical requirements of the ancient church...

And since the O-G concept currently stands in the path of any possibility of explaining (clearly and simply) the nature of Jesus and what he did...

Then Christians really need to go back and re-examine and reject this Omni-God dogma... 

And then we need to replace the obsolete and harmful Omni-God with a conceptualization of God that makes explanatory-sense to us each, here, and now; and which clearly and simply explains the necessity of Jesus Christ for those who desire salvation.