Creativity as a primary Christian path

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I have recently come to regard creativity as second only to love in God's scale of values; perhaps the second-most-important attribute of God; after love. This implies that creativity is perhaps also the second-most-important human value, after love.

The relationship can be clarified by thinking of love as primarily directed towards persons (which is the normal kind of love) or towards values (which is creativity).

This creativity is a consequence of love of non-personal positive values: truth, beauty, virtue, Goodness, harmony - and their subdivisions. So a primarily creative person can be regarded as one whose love is directed at values, rather than persons - in that sense they are devoted primarily to abstractions.

(Creative people are seldom 'good with people', indeed being on average much less interested or influenced by 'other people' than is usual. The opposite also applies as a generality. So, as creative scientists are seldom good with people, scientists who are adept a networking, management and who are interested by groups and committees are seldom creative. The psychological relationship of creativity and sociality is antagonistic.)

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Creativity can then be seen as a consequence of loving abstract Goods. Just as love of persons points towards fecundity of persons (family, marriage, friendship) - love of Goods points-towards fecundity of Goods.

(The good creativity of a genius is positive behaviour as a consequence of a love of God's values; the creativity of an evil genius is destructive of The Good: it is a consequence of rejection, often hatred, of God's values.)

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Someone who loves literature will want to add to the possibilities of literature; the scientist will want to add to science, the painter to painting; a concert pianist who loves music or  an actor who loves acting will want each and every performance to be a re-creation of music; a teacher who loves teaching will want each lecture to be an unique event growing from that love.

The positive creative impulse or impetus (which may be very variously expressed, and only partially recognized as such) is therefore a natural overflowing of the creative person's love of God's values as expressed in an abstract subject matter.

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Most people are relatively uncreative; only a few people are highly creative, and even fewer are primarily creative. This may suggest that God makes most people in hope they will choose to live by love of persons (including Himself) above all (to be "people-persons"); but that God also makes a few people who love God's own values above all (therefore, they are destined not to be people-persons): this creative minority would include most of the real geniuses, whose main life efforts and energies are directed non-socially.

Creativity seems to be (perhaps) the only valid positive spiritual path or 'way' to be solitary, or to 'neglect' fellow Men.

In effect, the dedicated creative person loves God before Man (as is commanded) but this creative love is expressed primarily via love of God's values rather than God's person.

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How important is creativity?

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

Energy derives from purpose: The polarity of love and creation

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

Why are the two great commandments *exactly* what we must do to gain eternal life in Heaven?

Luke 10:25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? 27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. 28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.

(See also Matthew 22:35–40; Mark 12:28–34.)

 

I am struck by how exactly the 'two great commandments' - first to love God and then your neighbour - fit with my metaphysical understanding of reality; and how they are said to suffice to enable us to enter Heaven. 

(Because, in the above passage, when Jesus is quoted as saying "This do, and thou shalt live"; the 'live' refers to resurrected eternal life in Heaven.)

My understanding of God's overall intention is that he wishes to enable Men to develop spiritually, to rise-up to become fully Sons and Daughters of God. This means to become fully divine; which means to dwell together in Heaven as a family (or rather many families, interlinked). 

And what do Men do in Heaven forever? My answer is To Create. Specifically we shall be participating in God's divine work of creation - including the pro-creation of new Men to begin the process of development. 

 

(This derives from my understanding that God is essentially 'the creator' - and that to become 'more divine' is to become more fully a participant in the ongoing creative development of God's already-existing divine creation. And my experience and intuition tell me that creation is the only activity which never palls, is always motivating and gratifying. Creation is also open-ended. Anything other than a Heaven of creation would both be dull, and would run-out and cease - on a timescale of eternity.) 

 

And God's purpose is understood in the context of my belief (metaphysical assumption) that Men are and always have been unique and different individuals. 

So, God's purpose entails getting this diversity of Men and enabling a situation in which these many and different Men can work together with the same purpose and harmoniously - forever. 

Because the many and diverse do not spontaneously have the same purpose, nor do they spontaneously get-along. 

The necessary purpose and harmony come from Love - which is why Love is the primary requirement of a Christian (and that those who reject Love, or are genuinely incapable of Love, neither want the life of Heaven - nor would be allowed to enter it.) 

 

The first great commandment - to love God - is about purpose. For Heaven to be possible, its participants all need to share the same purpose, be pointing in the same direction, have the same ultimate goals. 

To 'love' God means to love God's purpose; to accept God's purpose as my purpose. This enables us to have 'faith' in God, to trust him.  

Therefore, the first qualification to enter heaven, and dwell in Heaven for eternity, is that we share God's purpose. That is why is commandment comes first. 

The second great commandment is what enables the inhabitants of Heaven to work together, to create harmoniously - to coordinate a multitude of individual creativity into a great symphony. To do this requires, as well as shared purpose - as well as everybody pointing in the same direction; attention and loving care towards other people engaged in the same work. 

Love of neighbour means that we harmonise our creative endeavour with the others in our Heavenly Family, primarily; and secondarily with all in heaven. I see this harmony as a developmental thing: individuals love the same ultimate purpose, and also a love of neighbour - therefore individuals will create, and monitor the consequences of their creativity, informed and shaped by these two loves. 

In the first place, an individual would not create any-thing he knew to be hostile to purpose, or neighbours. In the second place, when an individual dis, inadvertently, create something that turned-out to be working against purpose, or interfering with the harmony between individual creations, then he would work to compensate for this disharmony, to mend the problem, to restore purpose and loving harmony. 

God's creation is therefore a work-in-progress; and as God recruits more and more resurrected Men to join this work of creation, it is essential that this work-in-progress be maintained. 

 

I see the first commandment as being a vertical arrow, pointing up to all Heavenly residents sustaining a commonly-agreed future, keeping creation moving in the correct direction; and the second commandment as several or many sideways arrows that tend always to maintain harmony in this upward pursuit; by mutual observation and adjustments.  

And this is why someone who is prepared permanently and irreversibly to endorse the two great commandments has everything that is both necessary and sufficient to enter Heaven and receive the gift of eternal life that Jesus brought. 

 

(Note: Jesus's role in this, is that he made it possible. After we die, and if we endorse the two great commandments; then we 'merely' have to follow Jesus to Heaven.)

Perfect love (of God) casteth out fear

It is hard to grasp, or at least hard really to believe, the deep truth that fear is the opposite of love; because it is only true of Christian love of God, specifically, and of 'fear' that is the fear of the future ('angst') specifically.

But, as such, fear accounts for a great deal of the worst kind of misery in life; and love accounts for a special quality that is seen in the most faithful Christians - such as saints.


In my experience, fear can sabotage life when it is going well; and when there is some adversity, fear can make that (perhaps minor) adevrsity into something overwhelmingly significant, debilitating - fear can make adversity into depression.

In worldly terms there is no honest and satisfying answer to worry about the future; and no way in which that worry can be limited.

It is the nature of this mortal life that everything is uncertain, and all kinds of things might happen: and they really might happen. After all, terrible things have happening, and are happening to people all the time; plus, in a theoretical sense terrible things could happen to me (or those I love) at any time. Nobody can definitely reassure us that they will not.

External events may (by human motivations, or from natural disasters) overwhelm us. Our health is potentially fragile, this debility, pain or lesion may never get better, may get worse, may cripple or kill us...


Once fear gets hold; any apparently small life event (and there are always plenty) may become amplified to a grinding, persistent, increasing obsession; and life here and now be ruined by fear of what may happen; because nobody can say for sure that it cannot happen. 

The only solution to this is love of God, and specifically love of the Christian God; who is the creator, who is our Father, and loves each person. The implication is that a God who is creator can order life and a God who is a loving Father can order life such that it will be for the ultimate benefit of each and every person. 

My faith and trust in, love of, such a God is the only solution to free-floating fear; because it is rational. It is rational to assume that whatever happens to us in life will be for some good reason, and that our primary job is to to respond properly to whatever happens, to learn from whatever happens.


Yet this is not fatalism, because for Christians each of us is an 'agent', is a 'Son of God' with 'free will' - that is we all are a temporary-mini-god; so despite that our job is to respond and learn, we are not passive victims of life, we are not merely acted-upon by life.

Instead, our situation is one in which the situations of our own personal lives are a consequence, a product, of God's evolving creation interacting with our own genuine creativity; our capacity to have a personal motivation and to initiate new thoughts and actions.

God is the one source of creation that makes the arena, and each of us are point-sources of creativity within that arena.   


What will happen is not predictable - but whatever does happen, God will be working (behind the scenes) to enable each of us to make the best of it; whether that best is sooner or later, during our mortal life or afterwards.

The confidence that this is true is faith-in, and love-of, God; and when faith and love are perfect - then trust in the future is perfect; and there is no fear.

The greatest saints therefore do not fear, and when we are (temporarily) in that saintly state of faith and love: neither do we.


But with most of us, we have not yet learned what the saints know; therefore our lives include serial, sometimes cumulative, challenges to our faith and love of God.

Something bad happens, or else we begin to be concerned that something bad might happen; and we respond with fear...

And it is by overcoming this fear with faith-in and love-of God - again and again, with different challenges - that we are learning how we need to be if we are to to make our personal choice in favour of the gift that Jesus Christ offers us: resurrected life in Heaven.

Understanding the nature of "creation" by comparing human creative genius with divine creation

I think it would be fair to say that most people haven't thought very much about what "creation" is, or might be; beyond either assuming that there is really nothing special about it, or assuming that it is a wholly mysterious "black box". 

And I believe that there is truth in both of these perspectives - in the sense that (while some particular Beings are much more often and more intensely creative than others) potentially all Beings are creative in some degree and way because it is an attribute of being-ness; while there is an irreducible mystery in being-ness, including the creativity of any particular Being. 

My long term interest in human creativity and the phenomenon of genius was behind the process of thinking that is recorded in my blog Intelligence, Personality and Genius; and which culminated in The Genius Famine book (co-written with Edward Dutton). 

In these books I both assumed that creativity was, on the one hand, on a quantitative continuum among humans; but also that some humans had a lot more of it (i.e. the qualitative category of "geniuses"); and this was related to a characterological (or 'personality') trait of the Endogenous personality. 

This I envisaged as a type of person whose attention and motivations were highly-innerly-generated (rather than being in response to external stimuli) - endo-genous can mean "generated from-within". 

(The Endogenous personality also explains many of the characteristic unusual personality traits of geniuses. On the one hand; there is not one standard genius personality type, on the other hand, the various unusual traits, as well as the averages for geniuses as a group, can be understood as various expressions of an unusually strong domination by innerly-generated motivations.)

However, these writings of mine were within the field of science, and did not, therefore, address the ultimate questions that lie out-with science. In particular, the origins of creativity were not mentioned. 

Science cannot, of course, discuss where creativity comes-from, except to assume it comes from the other entities and phenomena that are a part of science. 

Therefore, the best theories of creativity in science can only assume that creativity is a process of selections and recombination, interpolation and extrapolation, of what is 'already known' to science - and that the genius is therefore someone with exceptional ability to generate 'random' hypotheses from pre-existing materials, and then rapidly to sort-through and evaluate them. 

The assumed process of creativity therefore (and not by accident) resembles natural selection: undirected generation of variants, followed by a selection among these variants, based upon some functional criterion.  

But it can be seen that such a notion of 'creativity' means that there is ultimately nothing really new about what is created. From the perspective of science; all creation is (by assumption, hence by definition) just selection, recombination etc. 

Such an idea of creation fits-with the understanding of classical Christian theology which draws a qualitative line between God-The-Creator (the one-and-only creator of everything from nothing, in a once-for all act); and Man the "creature" whose creating can only be a matter of selecting and re-shuffling what already exists in God's creation. 

Thus God is the only really-real creator, and Man can only mimic divine creation in a kind of 'paint-by-numbers' process; as a creature wholly made by God and using materials and instructions provided entirely by God. 

From this point-of-view; divine creation is a done deal: it already contains everything, and therefore cannot be added to. 

But if we consider the creative act itself, and assume that there must be the possibility of genuinely original creation - a creation which does indeed make something new; then we come down to the idea of creation as a property of any Being - much like life, consciousness and purpose are other attributes of a being. 

In other words, we can (it is possible, if we wish) assume that creativity is one of the attributes of all Beings - including God and including all other Beings.  

And that is, indeed, what I assume!

But what is creativity? 

In the first place, it can be defined double-negatively (using terms form medieval Christian theology), as an example of uncaused cause or a first mover. 

Another, more positive, way of thinking about it; is that genius is "generative" (as the etymology implies) -- that is, genius is a kind of "spontaneous generation", originating in a Being, whereby what emerges could be regarded as an expression of the Being from-which it emerges. 

It is also helpful to remember that Beings were unembodied spirits before there was incarnation. And, if we assume that spirits (as Beings) are potentially creative; then the primary kind of creativity is thinking rather than doing something to the material world. Genius relates primarily to thought, not artifact. 

(But, by the same account; this concept of thinking is real, thinking is a part of the world; such thinking has an effect on the world.) 

This clarifies that the essence of a human creative genius is not a book, painting or a piece of music; but the thinking from-which an artefact may, or may not, later be derived.   

At the end of this line of reasoning; I arrived at an understanding of creating which includes divine creation and also the potential creativity of Man and all other Beings - God, Man and Beings within a single reality to which all these Beings may (in principle) contribute their creativity. 

Such creativity is potentially originative, generative, genuinely novel - such that whenever God 'enlists' another unique Being into his creative project, that will expand the possibilities of creation-as-a-whole. 

And - because creation is originative in each Being; this understanding makes of creation something potentially open-ended and everlasting. There is no reason why creativity would ever 'run-out'; since it is (potentially) an attribute of any Being.

This also fits with my other understanding of the nature of divine creation as being a process of exactly such 'enlistment'; a process of God creating the universe by securing the harmonious cooperation of other Beings. 

I imagine the primordial situation ()before divine creation) as one in which each Being pursued its own unique and selfish creating; so that the whole did not add-up to anything - the individual purposes just 'cancelled-out' each other. 

God's first act of creation was (by various means, differing through history) to 'recruit' more and more Beings to his creative project; so that these Beings began to share purposes and to cooperate in these purposes. 

The principle of this cooperation was what we call Love. 

Loving Beings align their creativity towards the fulfilment of Love - and this is why Love is the very heart of the Christian understanding of God. 

So, an interest in human creativity and the phenomenon of genius - which preceded my conversion to Christianity; ended by feeding back into my core understanding of the metaphysics of Christianity and the human condition!

Creativity in Christianity, and the problem of suffering

Creativity means bringing original (i.e. originating is us) thinking from one's own self to problems -- not, therefore, merely mix-and-matching among what (we suppose) others to have said on the problem. 

And the big problem for Christians, in the past couple of centuries, has been the problem of suffering. 

It is a real eye-opener to realize just how Big a problem suffering has been. I've been re-reading Robert Frost's poems and biographies lately, and he was yet-another Christian of recent engagement (Philip K Dick was another) who expended decades of serious effort (trying-out this and that scheme or suggestion) in trying to understand the problem of suffering in this mortal life on earth; and without ever attaining a satisfactory or satisfying solution. Or even one an answer that was clear and comprehensible, and avoided confusion and contradiction. 

This strikes me as a pretty damning failure - at least for Christianity as it has been conceptualized whether traditionally, or in more 'modern' way -- and it applies too, to 'Old Testament'-dominated Christians (like Frost) - who end-up with a God who barely resembles that described and exemplified by Jesus Christ; but instead an incomprehensible tyrant who (in practice) inverts the truth that God is Love, to the opposite of "Love is God" (that is, the un-Christian assertion that whatever 'God' does is Love by definition - and without regard to Man's understanding and experiences of Love). 

When intelligent and creative people grapple for many years with a problem they fail to solve and yet - by its nature - is one that needs to be solved by every Christian*; this, for me, is prima facie evidence that they are clinging to at least one false fundamental-assumption that is blocking what would otherwise be a straightforward solution.  

(*I'd have thought it was obvious that every Christian needs to be able to understand why a wholly-Good God who is the creator; permits suffering, including (apparent) extreme suffering and early deaths innocents such as young children, in this world. This is not trivial, and it needs a solution that is clear and satisfying - or else, loss of faith in such a God is logical, perhaps entailed.) 

My answer is that these creative and intelligent people have applied their intelligence but not their creativity to the problem! 

In other words, they have accepted the problem as defined by their predecessors, instead of evaluating the formulation of the problem. 

A wrongly-formulated problem is insoluble, no matter what intelligence and resources are applied to it; while a well-formulated problem is always soluble when that solution is necessary to salvation (because that's the way that a Good creator God will naturally set-up his universe).

I have been through this trajectory myself. When I became a Christian I was determined that the truth was already known (revealed) and stated, by some or other church - or at least some individual within a church; and my job was to find it, understand it, believe it, and obey it. 

I therefore made a pretty determined effort to switch-off my creativity when it came to Christianity: my effort was to discern for sure, maybe to select (albeit as little as possible); but not to change anything, and certainly not to add anything! 

It was only after I found that crucial problems were not soluble, never had been solved satisfactorily and clearly, and that no amount of selection and recombination - at least, not when ruled by established principles) would work; that I was compelled to get creative about Christianity. 

(Either that or knowingly to accept swirlingly-abstract fudges, or known pseudo-answers). 

As I have often described, I discovered a couple or more false assumptions that trapped Christianity, and prevented a solution to the problem of suffering. 

One of the first and worst was the very common assumption that God was omnipotent and omniscient so that creation was entirely a product of God's positive will; and another assumption was that Jesus Christ's teaching and efforts were directed at "making a better world" - at improving this mortal life - perhaps even perfecting this mortal life at some point. 

Once I realized that God instead was (no matter how vastly powerful in creation) engaged in a creative war of Good against evil in reality; and that Jesus's primary achievement was to make-possible eternal resurrected life; did I realize that the problem of  suffering was a wrongly-formulated question.

Jesus did not promise a better mortal world - nor a world of less suffering: certainly not a mortal world of perfection! 

Nor did he wish to set up a church as an essential intermediary between individual Men and the divine; and make his followers obey a church primarily - instead, he sent the Holy Ghost for our essential and always-wise guidance. 

Jesus did not promise even an improvement of this mortal life. Instead; Jesus's promises of happiness were directed at post-mortal life, and not at flaw-less-perfection, but at our becoming Sons and Daughters of God - divine creative-Beings like Jesus himself. 

God did not create suffering, which has always-been wherever there was free-agency (until Jesus enabled Heaven). God's creation is directed against primordial suffering and conflict between Beings; but God did not promise to remove suffering, which is impossible in this mortal world. Suffering is only overcome (via Jesus's teaching and work) in the post-mortal, resurrected life-everlasting, world of Heaven. 

Suffering in this mortal world is therefore inevitable, because of the nature of this world and the Beings who inhabit it; and therefore God uses this world to prepare us for the resurrected world of Heaven which those who desire it may choose - and where there is positive love, joy, creativity, energy, satisfaction (instead of the mere negation of suffering). 

Thus we arrive at some simple and comprehensible understandings of these vital matters - but only by applying our creativity, as well as our intelligence. 

What is Love? (For Christians)

Love is the most important thing for Christians, the primary reality (as it relates to all that is Good) - yet Christians have mostly been terribly confused about the metaphysics, that is the deepest level of understanding about, Love.

This is because of the Greek and Roman classical philosophy into which Christianity was squeezed and twisted in the early years of the church - which make something that ought to be, needs to be, clear - into something abstract, paradoxical and sometimes just incoherent.

(For example, the first commandment is to love God - yet the God of classical theology is all-but un-loveable - being mostly a collection of incomprehensible abstractions such as omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, one-ness and indivisibility; unchanging, wanting nothing, without passions or desires, living outside of time etc. One might rationally submit to such a God, but how to love him?)

What follows are notes on how I currently make (ultimate) sense of Love - for what it's worth.

Conjugal love has primacy: that is, love between husband and wife; and from this all other love derives.

So, the first love was between God, our Heavenly Parents - and from this came the love between God the Father and the Mother and their children, of their children towards the divine parents , between their children (i.e. love of 'neighbour'); and the love of creation... all of which eventuated from this first loving union.

Or, the first creative act was the voluntary mutual love of our Heavenly Father and Mother.

That was the model of all other loves - and the source of all cohesion and cooperation and creativity.

Love is therefore active, dynamic, purposive - hence creative. Therefore Life and Reality is an unfolding, a development, a growth and an increase...

So love has a past, present and future; it is a living quality that gives rise to all positive qualities, it is the source of harmony - potentially in everything (and that which is outside the love by choice, is outside the harmony - alone); and the nature of everything comes from the nature of love.

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From this can be seen that the Classical Christian errors relate to love being conceptualised as static or unchanging, being unitary and unsexed. These errors are partly addressed by the mystical doctrine of the Trinity (making deity multiple and dynamic, while somehow still unitary and unchanging), and also by the Catholic theology of Mary the Mother of God (to reintroduce the feminine, and the reality of two sexes) - but not fully addressed; and only at the cost of complexity, confusion and difficulty/ impossibility of understanding. This has sufficed to satisfy many in the past - but the problems are nonetheless intractable. 

I believe that love - for Christians - ought to be (if properly understood) simple, lucid, universally comprehensible - love at the divine level ought to be known as of the same nature and quality (if not scope and power) as human love. 

The main post is dependent upon the validity of the revelations of the Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith; as validated by the following general Authorities of the Mormon Church - although not necessarily what many or most Mormons currently believe. William Arkle has also been a big influence.  http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk
 

What could we possibly *do* for Everlasting Life?

Jesus promised us Everlasting Life, if we wanted it - but it is usually hard for us to imagine what we could possible find to do forever that would not become utterly intolerable sooner or later - and probably sooner...


I regard the idea of 'Nirvanah' or suchlike to be a response to this intolerability - the goal of losing self-awareness in a permanent bliss state... But this is not what Jesus offered - and Nirvana is not a solution to giving each of us everlasting life, because it entails us no longer being us... Eternity is made tolerable by obliterating awareness of it and of ourselves.

I am not arguing against Nirvana for those who want it - but to want it is to want Not To Be to want to escape from being.

Nirvana is not a solution to the problem, it is a deleting of the problem.


So, let's get back to what Jesus was offering, or meaning by offering everlasting light on the understanding that it would be A Good Thing and would be experienced by each of us, as selves and personally. What kind of a thing might this be?

Well, I'm not happy with saying that we will be changed, perfected, and that will make the difference. That - because of our sins and other imperfections, we cannot yet imagine what everlasting life would be like - but when we have been resurrected and saved, we then will understand...

That is another evasion. Yes, we do need to be changed, perfected to enjoy everlasting life - but that does not make it clearer what kind of a thing that our perfecting will make enjoyable. Jesus clearly expected people to know what he meant, the kind of thing he meant, when he gave the Good News of everlasting Life.


The only kind of a thing that I personally can imagine being Good to experience Forever, is something that endlessly grew and changed in such a way that there was continuity; it remains the same kind of thing, while getting greater...

Jesus told us the key - which is Love. For myself, this is loving marriage and family - plus close friendship... Families grow by procreation and are linked by lineage - and these families become linked by marriages and by friendships.

I can quite easily imagine that a situation of love can change, expand, develop - while remaining itself; and I can imagine this going-on forever and remaining not just tolerable but getting better and better forever.


I am fortunate enough to have experienced reasonably close approximations to this exact situation in my life to recognise that - with love as the basis - the complex of romantic love, love between parents and children, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and between siblings... the whole 'network' of relations... that this is the kind of thing which would be an eternal delight as the core of a larger life of creativity.


There seems to me a reciprocal relation between this extended concept of family-based human relations and creativity: our personal creativity is for the extending family. They are the necessary 'audience' for any act of personal creativity.  

I can see that individuality needs to grow from the embeddedness in family - such that we develop our own distinctness by growing-into the niche we envisage. By our own personal growth and development, we make new and unenvisaged actualities...

What is creativity, in this ultimate sense? Creativity is personal participation in reality - in everlasting life (and sometimes in mortal life, partly and briefly) we live realty; and because we are individual 'agents', by participating in reality, we change reality.


The archetypal creativity which makes possible all other is God's creation. God's is primary creation and we are sub-creators in and from God's creation - but to be a subcreator is to be a real creator - a creator working in the medium of reality...

And when God's creation is understood as something with which we can personally participate; I find it easy to imagine waking up every morning forever with unflagging delight at the prospect of the day ahead - because each day will be new, and yet there will be the continuity of love; we will retain what we most value, yet the scope of everything will expand; and the expansion of everything will be in a loving harmony with what already-is.


In sum, I have experienced sufficient in the way of partial and temporary approximations to it, to recognise that an everlasting life embedded in a loving and growing family, 'cross-linking' with other such families by marriages and friendships, is the kind of medium or basis of a wholly gratifying Everlasting Life; and that within that medium or on that basis the completion of life would be creativity - of an unique and personal kind; with loved people who that creativity is for.

When, and equally, there is the creativity of others for us ourselves. There is our own unique creativity, and there are the unique (and developing) creativities of everybody else... 


How might such a vision be related to Jesus? In what sense did he enable us to have this, and give it to us?

Without getting too detailed, I see Jesus as having been the first actually to do this; and by that act beginning the whole process, making it possible for all other men and women. Both in its general sweep and its specific details; both in its literal surface and in the intuited depths; in its full pre-mortal, mortal and post-mortal context and scope... the life of Jesus was a beginning of the eternal and divine and human family; linking mortal Men with the already fully-divine.

The creativity of Jesus can be overlooked, but it is there. Every day was different, every day was a development of his nature. Each conversation, each personal interaction, each parable or lecture, each surprise and twist that is immediately seen as 'right'... there is a continual and personal creative growth in action in the Life of Christ.


Of course, Jesus being in mortality and among flawed men and evil powers - there is a great deal of the horrible too: Jesus experienced many sins of others, pain, sorrow and other flaws. Such experiences were a necessary learning.

But - having learned, having experienced mortality and death; I do not find it difficult to imagine a world, an everlasting life, in which these aspects were absent; yet life was open-endedly and forever a learning and creating in that context of loving family and friendship.

It is what I already know, raised and refined to a 'perfection' that is a dynamic and evolving perfection - and its dynamic and evolving nature is its perfection completed for eternity.

Considering God's nature, and the motivation behind creation

Once a Modern Man has overthrown the culturally-inculcated 'materialist' picture of a mechanical-random universe without meaning or purpose; and has instead made the assumption that he lives in 'a creation' - then he will probably need to consider the nature of The Creator - i.e. God; and God's motivation in creating this reality. 

This whole question was opened-out for me by the work of William Arkle; for whom it was the beginning point of enquiry in many of his books and essays. Arkle helped me to realize that this is, in a sense, the most profound of questions; and one which may provide something like a Master Key for understanding.  

Because, as so often - it is asking the right question that is crucially-important. Most questions are unanswerable; but the Right Questions typically bring their own answers (if we let them) - without need for further investigation. 

Thus, understanding is mostly about questions and the assumptions behind them; such that wisdom is right-questioning.

What this means here is that there is a choice of how to proceed in understanding God the Creator. Do we, for example, follow most Christian 'theologians' through recorded history, and at this point switch to the mode of philosophy - the mode of (for instance) logical reasoning, as The Way to understand God?  

Or do we, like Arkle (and some other Romantic Christians) aim to understand God as a Person? 

Do we, for instance, try to imagine and intuit what it was like to be God the Creator before creation - and to understand empathically what God may have aimed-at in embarking-upon creation, and continuing the work of creating? 

This is a critical point in any Christian's development; the point at which he must choose how God is to be understood: should he regard God as a person primarily, a person fundamentally like-ourselves, and therefore understandable by us -- or something else, fundamentally unlike ourselves.

Judaism and (especially) Islam have decisively chosen to regard God as fundamentally unlike ourselves; but Christianity has been divided on this matter; as we can see even among the Gospels and Epistles - where there are passages in which God the Father of Jesus is spoken of very personally - and others in which the discussion is abstract and unlike human persons.

Each Christian - it seems - makes this choice between God as a person (like us) or God-impersonal (unlike us); although in the past this choice was usually implicit and often unconscious. 

One gets a strong impression that through history most laity (and some saints) had a very personal understanding of God while theologians and priests tended towards abstraction; with an ultimate understanding of God as impersonal, unlike-Man - and these warned against the perils and pitfalls of 'anthropomorphism'. 

Perhaps the matter can be summarized as a distinction between (on the one hand) Christians who saw the gulf between Man and God as between creator and created - and therefore with God the Creator as ultimately unlike Man; and therefore Man as unable empathically to know God, as one person knows another. 

This attitude means that God's motivations for creation cannot be empathically-understood, nor is intuition much help - because God is infinitely un-like us; so God's reason/s for anything (including creation) are necessarily incomprehensible. 

 

On the other hand; there are those Christians who regard Christianity as a religion in which we are God's children - and so ultimately like-unto God; and where Jesus Christ was a Man who was (and is) a fully-divine creator; who we can choose to follow to an eternal resurrected life as divine Men. 

From this choice of a personally-rooted Christianity; Men can (by an empathic intuition) legitimately infer something of God's probable personal motivations for embarking on creation. 

We may also find these inferences confirmed by statements in the Gospels (especially the Fourth Gospel called 'John') and other teachings - but we will also find contradictory statements. 

We can thus assume that God's motivations were rooted in love; and the desire for God's family of Men to be able to rise to the same level of divinity as God the Creator.

Ultimately to form an eternal and expanding Heavenly Family, who will (each in his or her unique fashion) participate in the 'ongoing' work of creation. 

In a nutshell, such a Christian may come to feel that creation was primarily 'about' Men, and aimed-at the raising up of Men from a starting state of divine-childhood, to the fullest and highest possible 'grown-up' divine-status - on a level with God the prime creator...

Raised to the same status - but not The God, not a prime creator; since there is only one such. 

And exactly this can be seen described in parts of The Gospels: the assumption is that God's intent is that what happened with Jesus will happen to as many as possible of other Men. 

Positively, we can understand God's motivations as expanding the scope and differentiation of an eternal loving family, and of raising-up at least some 'divine friends' to the level of full-co-creators - as has already happened with Jesus Christ. 

It is a motive much like that we ourselves experience in our joy at wanting to have a large and loving family, and for each of those family members to develop in his or her own uniqueness; and in chosen and joyous harmony with each other (love of Man for neighbour) and with God's creation (love of God).  

Negatively, we can say that before creation God was lonely, bored, under-stimulated and with an eternity of this stretching-ahead... 

Thus, divine creation may negatively be understood as a 'cure' for God's pre-creation state as relatively solitary, and experiencing a dull, static, uneventful existence. 

We may also realize that the only permanent (eternal) 'cure' for boredom is to dwell among other Men, who are each genuinely free agents, each with free will and individual creativity. 

It would Not be an answer to boredom for God to live among automata, un-free puppets, or any kind of reality (or virtual reality) that had been wholly-created by Himself. To avoid boredom forever requires genuine free agency among Beings. 

This may help understand why free will is an absolute requirement of creation - from the perspective of God's personal motivations. 

The above brief discussion is intended to illustrate how a serious effort to understand God, and God's motivations, can be of real help in understanding this mortal life. And I also take it as a kind of confirmation of the validity (backed by Scripture) of regarding God the Creator as a person; a person sufficiently like-unto-our-selves that God's nature and motivations are accessible to our empathy and intuition. 

A metaphysics of creation is not a middle way between Christian monism and chaos - it is the only way that makes sense of what most needs to be explained

The history of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks until now has mostly been an oscillation between - or attempt to find a middle-way, a compromise, between - two extremes; which have various labels but any choice of these two extremes always runs into the same problems. 

One is that this is (or was) a single and unified reality (monism); which has either apparently split into a multiplicity - or else people have the illusion that it has split. Unity is ultimate, variety is merely temporary, or an illusion. One God created everything from nothing, The principle of the universe is order - chaos is contained within order, order will prevail. We Men are pieces of God, seeds, droplets from a divine ocean - but everything we are is Of God. Everything In Total is Good - and evil is temporary, a transitory kind of imbalance. God is omniscient and omnipotent. This mortal life is - by comparison with divine unity - utterly insignificant, and cannot affect anything that is eternal. 

The other extreme is that which supposedly derives from Heraclitus: everything flows, everything changes, order and stasis are temporary and illusory; ultimately chaos rules. All 'understanding' is temporary, contingent, or merely delusional. There is no purpose or meaning to reality - it Just Is. There is no God. This apparent mortal life is everything - but it is nothing, really... a succession of subjective impressions merely. The are no real values: no truth, beauty or virtue - neither good nor evil.  

By my understanding, neither of the above traditional extremes offer any meaning or purpose for this mortal life; nor do they provide a solid basis for our individual freedom or creativity, nor for the reality of both good and evil.

I regard Christianity as having become trapped by the metaphysical assumptions of monism, in opposition to the chaos which it regards as the only alternative. As a result, Christianity - as taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ, and described especially in the Fourth Gospel - has been distorted into a pre-existing monist framework which really does not make sense. Although by complexification and mystification - and by the false dichotomy with chaos (regarded as the only alternative) - an illusion of sense can be made and sustained by diktat, threats and authority.  

Yet there is at least one metaphysical alternative to the above two, and that is the metaphysics to which I have adhered for about the last decade. This begins with the existence of beings in the midst of chaos, and has God as the creator, and creation as the making of a world of harmony between beings, aiming at greater freedom, hence greater consciousness; and always increasing creativity.  

This harmony of beings is love - analogous to the love within an ideal family; and it can be understood as shared creative purposes and the mutual accommodation and help which is the consequence of love. 

Therefore is the two classic and traditional views are monism and chaos; then this third view is rooted in creation. We began with chaos as a background, but with innumerable beings already existing. Creation began with God, and it was God who made possible the cooperation (harmony) between beings that began to change the universe. 

Reality is neither and ultimate order, nor is it disorganized randomness; but reality changes, evolves, develops through time - and towards increasing love, harmony, purpose, meaning. This changes happens by the development of beings, under the influence of God. Initially being can passively be raised towards greater consciousness, by adding to their equipment  

The advantages I find, up-front, are that it explains the origins of evil in chaos, the nature of evil in opposition to the Good; the nature of Good in God's creation - and the movement through time from evil towards Good: as God began with a chaotic universe and then made Heaven, and (since the work of Jesus Christ) began to people heaven with those beings who chose to subscribe to the project of Good. Thus it also explains the work of Jesus Christ, and accounts for his essential role in the divine project.

It accounts for the reality of freedom in our independent eternal origin as beings; the spiritual war whereby beings (such as ourselves) choose either the side of God and divine creation; or else to oppose that. It makes sense of the possibility of beings such as ourselves becoming genuine co-creators (ie, bringing something new, additional to God) in the creation that God began. 

It provides a model for the meaning and purpose of this mortal life - its meaning in love which is working with the divine harmony, and acts of co-creation (even in this mortal life, but more so in resurrected eternal life); and as a time for learning and preparation for immortality to come.  

So far, this metaphysics of creation has proved itself absolutely solid in response to the tests and critiques of my interrogations and life-experiences. 

But this third metaphysics seems not to be understood by the adherents of Christian monism, or chaos; and the reasons is that they do not follow the implications of their metaphysics to their conclusions; but instead introduce 'unprincipled exceptions' or 'auxiliary hypotheses' so as to provide a pseudo-rationalization for (in particular) the meaning of mortal life and the reality of freedom. 

These incoherent elements serve to take away the demand for something different; yet they fail to solve the incoherences that have been evidence for thousands of years, and are so obvious to adherents of the opposite views. I mean, the incoherence of traditional Christian metaphysics is obvious to evil-atheist-'materialists', and vice-versa. 

The metaphysics of creation is only seldom held explicitly and consciously; yet I regard it as essentially the simple, instinctive, innate metaphysics of childhood (and, probably, ancestral hunter gatherers) that has been raised to a higher level of conscious awareness.  

It is the metaphysics of the Fourth Gospel ('John') - and implicitly what Jesus lived and taught - and completed by his opening of Heaven to Men. 

God in us, and/or outside us

Is God outside of us and/ or is God within us? This is often framed in terms of transcendent or immanent - but these are freighted terms, and create an either/or dichotomy that cannot be resolved except by 'mystery' formulations.

God is outside us because God is the creator of this world. And God is also within us because we are his children, and inherited divinity from him.

This is not generally accepted in any simple or literal sense by mainstream Christians, because they regard God as transcendent, utterly other, beyond, and qualitatively different from us... outside time, space and creation. Such a God cannot really be within us and also a part of us because so utterly alien from us.

Those who regard God as wholly immanent do not see God as a personal creator. They cannot coherently regard life as meaningful or purposive - things just are.

But if we instead regard time as part of primary reality, then we can understand this in a sequential fashion.


God (Heavenly parents, man and woman - that is persons) is in the universe, which always existed in uncreated form. And this primal reality also contained the primordial Men - some eternal essence distinct from God: these are the Beings.

Thus God is outside of us. God is separate persons from us, God created this world - and we did not.

God created creation (as it were ) around-themselves (and this is continuous); and also took the Beings that are potential God (i.e. primordial men and women) and procreated us into the children of God. Therefore God is now within us; by inheritance.

This is how Jesus could become fully divine, on a par with our Heavenly parents (although still their children, and still living in their creation) and how we too can potentially become fully divine; because God is literally within us.


As Jesus tells us in the Fourth Gospel - we can become full children of God, and have that Life Everlasting. As fully divine; we can then participate in continuing creation - expanding the pre-existent creation by our own unique creativity (that we have by virtue of having been primordially distinct from our Heavenly parents - so we are not merely copies nor combinations of them).

And this is what God wants, more than anything, and is the reason behind creation. So that our Heavenly parents are no longer alone, but surrounded by a divine family of divine children; engaged in the divine work of creation.


And what makes this all fit together, so that creation is a harmony despite being the open-ended work of many and diverse minds, is Love. Love is the primary value and basis of creation.

It is Love that means there is no conflict but instead glorious harmony, between God without and God within.

What is Heaven like?... A place of uniqueness of nature and creativity, harmonized by love

One of the difficulties of describing Heaven in detail is that people are so different. 

Heaven is the resurrection of actual individual people - and since these people remain their original selves (but elevated to the divine) then Heaven cannot be summarized any more easily than people. 

Consider the question: What are people like? Any accurate answer you gave to that question would fail to capture the specifics of actual people, and would necessarily be very generalized indeed - and probably very abstract. 

Because all people are different - so much so, that (except with respect to specific traits - like differences between men and women, younger and older) no two people are alike. 

Consider the people you know best - probably your family. All my grandparents were different characters, each an individual, each distinct from each other - and add-in my mother, father, brother, sister, son and daughter and there is a collection of unique individuals. There are some family and social resemblances of course; but fundamentally and very clearly, each is absolutely unique. 

Add-in those who have been intense or close friends across my life, and consider them as well. Each friend was a distinct person - had an unique 'flavour'; and for none of them could I think of anybody else in the world who he or she was really 'like'. 

Heaven is populated by people - and people who are more themselves in Heaven than on earth - because divinity raises up the real self while discarding the passively absorbed or expediently inculcated social 'personality' aspects. 

And it is only in these 'personality' aspects - the product of socialization, environment, propaganda, fashion etc - that Men appear to be superficially similar. When we get to know somebody, we see past these temporary common traits - and that is the case in Heaven.   

So your Heaven will be different from my Heaven according to our different fundamental nature - just as your life is fundamentally different from mine, here on earth. 

Indeed, I know of nobody, have heard of nobody, who lives as I do (or thinks as I do) - even in this mortal life! How much more this will be the case in Heaven, when the necessities of mortality are gone. 

Heaven differs according to those with whom we are most associated - and/ including those whom we most love; because although Heaven is the place of love - that does not mean 'equality' of love, since love is of its nature unique between persons. 

We do not love any two people in The Same way, nor to the same degree - because love is two unique divine souls in relationship. Each love is unique in quality, as well as varying in strength. 

Your life and work in Heaven will be even-more-different from others people's lives and works than it is here on earth; because all that generic stuff about jobs, sustaining the body, dealing with bureaucracy, the effects of mass media etc will be gone. 

Presumably; in Heaven my life will be shaped, but even more so than now, by the nature of my creativity - and this is extremely different from the creativity of nearly everybody I have met or heard of (and identical with none). 

By 'my creativity' I mean what I actively want to participate in, and which is a never failing source of satisfaction: the only never failing source of satisfaction in this mortal life. 

Creativity by this meaning is a word for the distinctive engagement of our real selves with God's creation. In this sense: creativity is the only activity that never palls. 

Hence: creativity is the only activity fit for eternity. 

I know enough to see that what absolutely fascinates me in this respect is of near indifference to nearly everybody else (nearly- but not every- body else - which sharing is what makes creativity valuable). Also, what other people find endlessly (eternally) absorbing often leaves me pretty indifferent. 

In other words; in Heaven our lives will be more different from each other than they are on earth - because we will be more different, because our lives will be shaped by those who (most) love; and because we will be expressing our individual creative nature. 

In Heaven there will be no homogeneity at all! 

It is only on earth that cohesion is imposed by making people 'the same'; whereas in Heaven all coheres by love.

So in Heaven we can and shall be as different from each other, and do such different things from each other, as might be imagined to happen in the largest and most (wholly) loving extended family, village, college or workplace. 

The highest form of prayer I can imagine

All sincere prayer is good; but some forms are higher than others - and it is reasonable to expect the form to develop as our consciousness develops through stages of life. 

As a child, our prayer tends to be petitionary (asking for things to happen) and also propitiatory - begging for things not to happen; including making deals with God ("if you do X for me, then I will do Y for you"). 

This form of praying could be characterized as excessively egotistical; in the sense that it is often the surface, personality and this-worldly 'me' that is talking to God. As if we knew better than God what God ought to be doing...

Later in life, we may become aware of this egotism and self-assertion as a major barrier, standing between us and God. 

Then we may aim for an ideal of 'sitting before God', and of prayer as silent, contemplative; an opening to allow God to 'take over'. The idea of removing the self, and our own will - so that only God's will is done. 

Yet this ideal of self-effacing prayer is so passive as to be aiming implicitly to delete our-selves from divine creation. We are implicitly assuming that it would be better if we personally did not exist, better if we never had been born - which means as if we were never created by God... 

Yet God did create us - and presumably He knew his business! He would hardly have created us if the ideal was then for us to disappear-into His creation! 

I may not actually be able to do it reliably; but I can see that what God would most want from us is not to sit in a passive, obedient merely to absorb and transmit divine creation (as if we were Not There); because this would add nothing to God's creation. 

Admittedly, self-effacing prayer removes the problem of sin, and stops us from actually fighting against God's creation and will. And this is desirable. 

But surely God created us for positive reasons, to do something good - not merely to refrain-from-doing bad things? 

God created us, I believe, so that we may choose to develop such as to join our personal creativity and love to that of God. 

We live so as to add-to creation, by our continuing existence. 

Yes, to do this efficiently (to avoid fighting our-selves) we would indeed need to eliminate sin and evil from our will - we need to cease to oppose divine creation - but we would also need to add-our-bit to creation. 

Therefore, I believe that prayer should ideally be personally active and creative; and therefore not ego-less, self-effacing and contemplative. 

Exactly this has been made possible to us through the work of Jesus Christ; by resurrection to eternal life in Heaven. In Heaven, and after resurrection, the ideal can become eternal reality. 

But how do we actually do this; here-and-now; during mortal life and on this side of resurrection? 

For a start, in this mortal life, it cannot be done in any complete and permanent way from our own will-power, effort and practice; because we are all indeed tainted by sin and egotism and selfishness that cannot be eradicated (or at least not without also eradicating the possibility of active, personal and creative prayer).

The highest form of prayer is, however, possible here-and-now - so long as we accept it will be brief and usually partial in degree; as are all attainments in this mortal life - yet still of permanent value. 

(Whatever actually is achieved in this temporary life on earth, will be retained, will be added to the totality of eternal divine creation; and then potentially experienced forever by those who are resurrected to Heaven.) 

In thought much is possible - and to any person - that is not possible in the constrained material realm. By knowing what we most want, what we are aiming-at; then we are able to attain it in our thinking. 

Thinking what? Well, for instance thinking about our own death and resurrection, and about Heaven. Thinking about our deepest Good desires - thinking on that we value most deeply and permanently; thinking on those we love, on what we value in those we love. 

Thinking on the truth, beauty and virtue of God's creation; and on our own thoughts and deeds that add to this creation (maybe in practice, but certainly adding to creation in thought - in potential). 

Thinking in a spirit of gratitude to God and affirmation of divine creation; with intent to contribute to it. 

In essence, perhaps; by thinking on joy and love in our own lives and ideal thoughts; and 'consecrating' these joys and loves to God's creation. 

In our imagination; adding our joys to the permanence, development, and eternal growth of creation. 

Such seems to me the highest form of prayer. 

Salvation and theosis compared - why there is, ultimately, no System

God aims at our salvation and also at our theosis. For God's ultimate goals to be achieved, that is the reason behind Creation, both salvation and theosis need to happen in as many individuals as possible.

(The plan works no matter how few individuals, but each individual who does Not choose salvation and theosis is a loss compared with what might have been possible.)


Salvation is when someone chooses Heaven: that is, chooses to follow Jesus Christ through death to immortal resurrection. 

Theosis is the process of raising the level of consciousness - from the immersive and passive to the free and agent.

There can be salvation without theosis, as when someone chooses Heaven but chooses to remain spiritually 'a child'.

Theosis can occur without salvation, as when a mortal Man rises in freedom and agency, becomes truly creative as an individual, 'grows-up' to some extent; but rejects Heaven.


Theosis is to develop consciousness of a divine nature, towards the goal of reaching a level of participation in the work of divine creation.

But without salvation, the attainable level of theosis cannot be high - because the individual's creation must be harmonious with divine creation in order to be taken-up into it and to exist eternally. Otherwise, individual creativity is a temporary and labile thing of men's minds only.

Harmony-with divine Creation comes from Love of God, Good and God's Creation - which for mortal Men can be simplified to love of, faith in, trust in, the (always potentially present, as the Holy Ghost) person of Jesus Christ.

The fullness of creation from a Man is when creation comes actively, personally, originally, as a product of our divine selves, in harmony with God's creation, that harmony coming-from our love of God and creation.


There is no System, ultimately. And we are coming to realise that.

System and Symbol were important to our ancestors; but for us they are losing their power and generality - a spiritually-effective system nowadays is likely to be personal, idiosyncratic - and that in itself limits the effectiveness of the system.

In practice, now; system increasingly equates with bureaucracy; so that dependence on any system will usually (and eventually certainly will) be captured and turned; bureaucracy will subvert then dictate symbol; insistence on specifci symbolism will lead to monitoring and control systems... And any specific system will converge onto/into 'the single linked bureaucracy' of Global totalitarianism.


So, for us, we must cease to depend on system - on pain of being drawn into the instrument of purposive (demonic) evil...

As bottom line, all system and symbol must be disposable; there should eventually be no system; because there is no system of creation (nor of love).

Individual creativity (like love) is a 'product' of A Being, not a system.

True, everlasting and universal creativity is an overflow of the self, motivated by love; harmoniously enhancing God's original and continuing Creation.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is Love? Not cohesion but Polarity

I have had considerable difficulty in conceptualising Love - but I keep trying because it is at the heart of Christianity, and because false conceptions cause trouble; especially in a society like ours, where The Good is under continual attack; and all Good things are subject to subversion, corruption, inversion.

Obviously (to a serious Christian) Love isn't a feeling-just; and obviously also it isn't a justification for sex - it must be a metaphysical (structural) reality of creation. But if one makes a serious formulation of Love along the lines of its being 'cohesion' (as I have previously done) then Love comes-out as being something like the imposition and preservation of 'order'...

And if order is achieved then love will stop, because everything will be frozen, static. Most Christian metaphysical understandings of Love do exactly this, and therefore end up trying to assert that something which is unchanging and eternal - all knowing, omniscient - is also-somehow dynamic, generative, and the primary motivation.

Yet, to conceptualise Love as expanding, always changing - open-endedly and forever - is to fall into something akin to the sexual revolution (as approximated by a free love commune or 'bath house' culture); a continuously-expanding appetite for variety, intensity and transgression.

*

In fact, Love turns-out to be the best example of polarity (or polar logic) as described and proposed by Coleridge as the fundamental metaphysical reality. Once this is grasped, we can see that the usual way of dividing up the world into alternatives - as, for example, the division used above that Love is either static or dynamic - when what we actually get is alternatives neither of which is true.

The idea of polarity asserts that at the very heart of things is a principle (or are principle) that have the character of being indivisible; so Love must be envisaged as containing stasis in terms of its poles of cohesion and expansion - but the things itself is living, dynamic and continually re-creating itself; re-creating its differentiations (into cohesion and expansion) and recreating the tendencies (of cohesion and expansion).

(I picture this polarity, metaphorically, as a swirling, dyadic, bipolar 'star'; in which each different star that constitutes the system orbits the other, and the orbit oscillates in diameter - now larger, now smaller - but growing over time, in which energies are continually generated and continually thrown-off. The stars are complementary - each differs from the other and needs the other. The two-fold and orbiting nature of the system is perpetuated forever, but/ and the other features of the system may change open-endedly by expansion, contraction, combination etc. It's only a metaphor and breaks down it pushed, but it helps me.)

If we can suppose that the heart of reality is a polarity of love-as-cohesion ad love-as-expansion, then we can understand how Love may be perpetual - because creative. Love as a polarity is the kind-of-thing which might make the universe, the kind of thing which might keep it alive even while holding it together.

And creativity itself has to be understood as polar - because it includes preservation as well as novelty. And Life, likewise.

*

This is a profoundly different way of understanding reality than we are used to - it requires a fundamental change in assumptions. And one reason that polarity has never become normal (although the idea has been knocking-around since Heraclitus) is that - taken seriously - it destroys the established way of understanding things, including mainstream-established Christian theology.

And like any metaphysical change, polarity doesn't make sense when considered in the light of a different and habitual metaphysical system, such as we deploy in public discourse.

Plus there are distorted and misleading versions of failed-polarity knocking around; such as the idea that the ideal is some kind of balanced-mixture of opposing forces - for example the common modern trope that Order and Chaos ought to be in balance. Yet the Order versus Chaos idea is typically one in which the opposition is between static-states, not between forces or tendencies; and is often poisoned by the dishonest attempt to destroy order and allow something otherwise forbidden (sex, drugs, unconstrained pleasure-seeking etc). Order-Chaos might be conceptualised as a true polarity, but in fact it very seldom is.

(It is always possible to reject metaphysical discussion as too theoretical, but it seems to me that in an age such as this one (an age of questioning) wrong metaphysics will sabotage the Good, even when the attacks on it are incoherent.)

A further problem with polarity and Christianity is that most Christians attempt to be monotheists, and are very concerned to assert the one-ness of God. Whether they are successful (given the full deity of Christ) is moot. Non-Christian monotheists such as Jews and Muslims (and common sense analysts) would say that Christianity is polytheistic - but Christian philosophers have regarded it as metaphysically crucial that God should ultimately be one, However, if God is ultimately one then polarity is not profound - only superficial.

Therefore a metaphysics of polarity implies that deity be polar - and Coleridge argued this using the Holy Trinity as polar components - although I find that I cannot follow his argument. Nonetheless, for a mainstream Christian to believe in polarity as primary, it seems necessary the Holy Trinity somehow be understood as a polarity. 

For those, like myself, who believe that Mormon theology is correct, the answer is obvious - that God is a polarity of masculine and feminine, that the ultimate basis of polarity is God conceptualised as a complementary dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother; and this primary polarity creates all others.

This idea of polarity at the root of everything fits with the Mormon understanding of reality as evolving, because evolution is also a polarity of continuity and newness. Evolution is a transformation, a changing of form in a retained entity, not the substitution of one entity for another different one. Evolution is about eternal lineage as well as here-and-now difference. 

*

It is not easy to grasp; but I have found that the idea of polarity as the fundamental metaphysical reality is one of great clarity, strength and power; and I recommend it.


(Further reading on polarity is What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield, 1971.)

The all encompassing smile of our divine creator - analysing the last words of William Arkle

 A late painting by William Arkle including his favourite subject matter of the divine smiling face

Throughout his life (1925-2000) the spiritual philosopher and artist William Arkle developed and lived by a type of esoteric Christianity which has become one of the great influences on my life. His last published words are therefore of particular interest.

But not only the words. What was special about Arkle is that he lived by his beliefs. Colin Wilson described him as one of the half dozen most remarkable men he had met; precisely because of the harmony between his ideals and his lived consciousness. I have confirmed this by discussions with several people who knew him, including his son Nick.

In some ways Arkle's beliefs were stable from the 1950s through to his death in 2000; and this stability can be seen both in the writings from his first pamphlet (The Hand of God, in 1960) via his two books (A Geography of Consciousness, 1974 and The Great Gift, 1977) to the last writings published on the internet; and by the themes, and recurrent symbolism, of his mature paintings (despite many varieties of style).

In the paintings; as well as sea shores, mountains, skies, rivers and the like; there are specific distinctive subjects - such as teapots and cups, or small boats. But most characteristic is the large smiling divine face - hovering above the picture, implicitly unseen by most people - sometimes with nurturing arms and hands, but most often variations on the theme of of that enigmatically-smiling face.

I regard William Arkle as a genuinely advanced spiritual soul; and therefore it was a fact that he was trying to communicate his vision across a great gulf to reach the rest of us - aspiring perhaps, but ourselves not very far along that path. 

This, I think, is the core reason why his paintings and words both tend to strike people (at least initially) as simplistic and naive: too much 'sweetness and light' and too little of that corruption and darkness which modern materialist Man seems to want in his art and literature.

Arkle was perfectly aware of this, but would not compromise on what he saw as the truth about reality. And through his life into old age, his 'vision' became more and more positive, optimistic and serene.

Anyway, in Arkle's 'last words' - published as the Foreword to a large web site made for him by Michael Perry (no longer available); he wrote a characteristic short essay that - as so often - implies a great deal more than seems.

I analyse the whole thing below. My comments are in italics:


I very nearly called this web site 'The Play of William Arkle', and then I felt that it would sound rather too casual for most people and even an insult to the endeavour that is brought to the resolving of the mysteries of life.

The reason that the word 'play' suggested itself is that the journey of understanding seems to lead from the level of human survival as a personality in this world, through to a spiritual view that takes survival of our spiritual self for granted; and then on again into the appreciation of the all-encompassing smile of our Divine Creator.

Arkle describes a three-step progression: 

1. Human survival as a personality in this incarnate, material world.
2.  A 'spiritual' view that takes for granted that the 'soul' survives death, and makes this a solid basis, a metaphysical framework, for living. 
3. An interwoven understanding of the 'all encompassing smile' of the divine creator; 'our' creator because we are true children of the divine creator. 

In other words; after we cease to push-away knowledge of our own soul, and the pervasive presence of our creator, we can begin to understand the implications and begin to live by them.

This Divine Smile says a very simple thing, which is that the everlasting nature of its Spirit can have only two options: either it remains in its Absolute condition of Blissful non-action; or it can engage in action through the creation of play-grounds. This means creating theatres of time, space and lots of things - from a condition of no action or time or space or things.

The divine smile - in its divinity, and its love for us as men and as individuals - gives us two positive options; plus a negative alternative which Arkle only obliquely implies. What is important is that these two options were the same as confronted the creator. The first in a path of pure 'static' contemplation in a state of bliss. (That is, the state of Nirvana.) The second is the one which God actually took; which is to engage in loving, creative action: creation of The World, of reality - with its time, space, matter and differentiation into many entities including persons. 

Our Creator felt that the first choice of 'no action' could becoming boring because there was no adventure, surprise or growth involved. The livingness of The Spirit felt itself to be in need of such adventure as an expression of joyful love and fun. So the second choice came about purely for the exercise of joy and love and fun.

This explains why God made the choice of action and creation. Arkle intuits that it was the preference for change, including unpredictability. This is a statement regarding the deep and intrinsic nature of God as a person. The fact is stated in a typically down-to-earth way ('boring', adventure', 'fun' etc. and 'play' coming up next) that is shocking, or banal, according to taste; and which I regard as expressive of the difficulty of communicating across a spiritual gulf - because there really is no way we can fully understand what is being said unless and until we our-selves attain such an intuitive and direct knowledge of the nature of God, as a real and living person.  

The only word I could find to cover the activity of joy and love and fun was the word play, but unless it is approached in the right way the word does not carry the correct significance. And thus the whole of this web site is a journey into the understanding of The Creator's view of the word play.

You will find that my own earlier understandings moved gradually into this way of talking about our reality. It seemed to become more and more light-hearted while being able to sympathise with all the conditions of growth which can feel to be the conditions of fear and anxiety. Thus the big game of life at play has conditions within it which can descend to the very opposites of its initial intention.

God has taken the second option of action and creation; but we - as agent persons - are free to disagree with God's choice. There are two possible ways of disagreeing - the first is to reject personhood and prefer the bliss of Nirvana - to return to the immersive static-state of absorption in which everything began. 

But it is the second freedom to which Arkle refers when he mentions 'the opposites of the initial intention'. We are also free to disagree wit the whole scheme of creation and of love between persons. We are thus free to be anti-creation, anti-love: instead of creating in harmony with divine creation we can destroy-creation, and instead of living by love for the divine plan and other persons we can live from-and-for our-selves in fear and resentment of other persons - the state called 'pride'...

When we understand that God's disliked loneliness and boredom and sought 'fun' and 'friends' with whom to share creativity; we may regard this either as generous sharing; or we may regard it as selfish and exploitative of God. The latter inference is what leads to the many of the aspects of the world in opposition to the intention of God.       

These opposite conditions are the result of our Creator deciding to give us the Gift of being able to become real players in our own right at this adventure which is being undertaken. This is why the picture book was called The Great Gift and why the writings in it referred to God as being our friend in this one life endeavour. Later on this was changed to the expression God, The Player Friend.

We are 'real players' in the 'adventure' of mortal incarnate living. Within creation, there are those who are free to regard loving creation as wrong, and to work against it. It is part of the plan that those who decide to favour option one (Nirvana) or to oppose option two (to act against love and creation) are allowed to do this, and to 'put their case' to others. For God's hoped-for friends to be real they must positively understand and agree to the divine plan; including that they need to understand and reject the alternatives. 

Such a situation is allowed-to work-itself-out in the world for the simple reason that it is the only way that the ultimate aim can be achieved. Nobody is compelled. Indeed, the nature of love and creation is such that nobody can be compelled.  

Arkle's concept of 'play' is the experience from-which we may learn; but what we learn is up-to each individual. All options are 'on the table'. The possibilities are known, and competing - even fighting. 

We must and will, all of us, take sides - because there is no neutral ground. We may change our minds during mortal incarnate life, and perhaps after - but at any given moment we are on one side, and not on the other two sides. This is the nature and purpose of the play of our lives.

As for me, I have kept the name William Arkle. I like the name because it implies that my Will is doing its best to be a small expression of the Ark of Life, The Heart of the Creator Friend.

However my close associates now find me calling myself Billy The Kid.

Thus Arkle closes his valedictory with a modest and whimsical set of puns...