Romanticism Come of Age; a second edition of the biography of Owen Barfield by Simon Blaxland-de Lange

Simon Blaxland-de Lange. Owen Barfield: Romanticism come of age. Temple Lodge Publishing: Forest Row, UK, 2006/ Second Edition 2021. pp. xvii, 367. 

Blaxland-de Lange's is the only biography of Owen Barfield, and it is very good. 

Indeed, because its greatest strength is that BdL has such a deep understanding of Barfield's ideas, this biography is a way by which someone could approach reading Barfield from scratch. By reading the biography first, the potential explorer can discover which of Barfield's very various books he would be most likely to enjoy and appreciate - and therefore where he might best start reading. 

The biography's great strength, might also be regarded as a stumbling block; which is that BdL is - like Barfield - a serious, indeed professional, Anthroposophist - a follower of Rudolf Steiner. 

This has the great advantage of providing valid and thorough explanations of this aspect of Barfield, which aspect is usually so badly covered by most other writers about Barfield - few of whom have made the (considerable!) effort necessary to get to grips with Steiner's vast oeuvre. 

On the other hand; the book is written on the basis of Anthroposophical assumptions, and includes reference to Steiner concepts; that will strike the naïve reader as bizarre, as well as startling. Yet, there is also a good deal of Steiner, and indeed the core of his work; that is potentially of primary importance to everyone; so to attain understanding is well worth a bit of effort.   

The organization of the book is somewhat eccentric. It begins conventionally enough, with a "biographical sketch" which gives an overview of Barfield's life, and some of the major incidents - ending with some snapshots of his attitudes and concerns at the end of his ninety-nine year life. 

After this, the book is presented in a thematic way, with different chapters covering different aspects of Barfield's life and ideas - and these chapters are not in any overall chronological arrangement, but instead each chapter includes whatever is relevant to its particular concern. 

This means that - after the first overview - the book chapters can be read, without loss, in almost any order; and this has been my practice over the decade-plus since I bought the first edition. 

Second edition differences are minimal. Indeed, I could only myself detect the addition of an Appendix making available for the first time Psychography; which was an aborted draft attempt, from the late 1940s, at a spiritual autobiography by Barfield - which runs at 12 pages, and stops in Barfield's late teens. 

This is well worth reading, as a further insight into some fundamental aspects of Barfield - including his extreme shyness and reserve in talking on the topic of himself. 

For instance, he writes about the psychological effects of his problem with stammering; but never actually says what that problem was! If the reader did not already know about this problem from elsewhere, then the passage would be highly mystifying - and the problem sounds more sinister, and shameful, than it actually was.  

In sum: Romanticism Come of Age is probably the only indispensable book about Owen Barfield - anyone who is interested by Barfield will want a copy, and will consult it frequently. 

The lineage of Romantic Christianity in England (a sort-of manifesto: a testimony)

To define Romanticism with precision has proved impossible - because it is a movement, a phase in human consciousness; but those who feel it will recognise it when we see it.  

To be included in this list, one must be both Romantic and Christian (and be someone whose work I personally respond-to):

William Blake
William Wordsworth
ST Coleridge

Then came several generations during which the Romantics were not Christian, and the Christians were not Romantic. Exceptions include George Macdonald and GK Chesterton, who link between the early Romantic Christians and the Inklings. Both of these I somewhat like, especially GKC - but I am unable to engage whole-heartedly.

Charles Williams
JRR Tolkien
CS Lewis
Owen Barfield

William Arkle

Current representatives of whom I am aware include Jeremy Naydler, Terry Boardman, and the Albion Awakening bloggers: William Wildblood, John Fitzgerald and myself.

Comments:

The influence of Rudolf Steiner is evident; since although Anthroposophists are extremely rare in England - Barfield, Naydler and Boardman are all of that ilk. This is evidence that Romanticism fits most comfortably with heterodox Christianity - despite that Tolkien (Roman Catholic) and Lewis (Church of England) were orthodox in their practice. Indeed; Blake, Barfield (for much of his life), Arkle and most of the currently alive people - are (I believe) essentially unaffiliated Christians; whose religious and spiritual practice is mostly and in-principle individual rather than communal.

The Steiner link is also important because Germany (in the sense of the Central European German-speaking culture - including Austria and Switzerland, and some culturally-Germanic cities not nowadays in Germany) was the other great origin of Romanticism - with Herder, Goethe, Schiller etc. However until Steiner's 'conversion' in about 1898; the German Romantic literary tradition was not really Christian. An exception is Novalis - the father of Romantic Christianity in Germany.

It might also be argued that CG Jung (1875-1961) is also part of the German tradition of Romantic Christianity - although (as so often with Jung) his status as a Christian is ambiguous - overall, I would say that by the end of his life, Jung should indeed be regarded as a Christian.  

There are not many on this list; because I don't know of many Romantic Christians. It is a job still to be done, by each individual - since Romantic Christianity must be experiential (knowing 'about' it does not suffice).

However, I regard both Barfield and Arkle as having essentially done the necessary work and, uniquely, achieved Romantic Christianity: both in their theory and in their living.


Mainstream Christianity still tends to regard Traditionalism as a 'safe' path to salvation; and theosis as too 'risky' - and Romanticism is about theosis.

But for the Romantic Christian there is no 'safe' path in the modern world; and traditionalism has in fact become impossible (judged at the deepest level of motivation); as well as sub-optimally desirable. We feel that, in modern conditions, salvation requires theosis; so a purely salvation orientation can only be a kind of 'rescue' procedure.

Because ultimately Romanticism is not a 'reaction' against the Industrial Revolution, modernity and bureaucracy; rather, Romanticism is a positive path of divine destiny, concerned with human evolutionary-development of consciousness.


The aim of Romantic Christianity is (implicitly) to attain the divine form of cosnciousness (what Barfield termed Final Participation) as the primary goal of mortal life at this era of history. In different words: the aim is to restore the unity of Life - including the healing of the split between mind and matter, subjective and objective... to cure the malaise of alienation.

Romantic Christianity is both theoretical (metaphysical) and practical (experiential) - ideas and living both need to change; because otherwise the two aspects will be at contradictory, at war - and therefore unattainable in life.

The Romantic Christian demands that life be Christian - as its root and frame; and also demands that life (including Christianity) be Romantic - therefore it cannot accept the ultimate of primary necessity of System, organisation, institution, bureaucracy... these are all to be regarded as evils; even if, sometimes (in mortal life); expedient or even temoprarily-necessary evils - evils that challenge us to love, faith and hope; and to grow.

Love and creativity are the goal; with creativity as located in thinking, and thinking regarded as universal and primary. 

Romanticism comes of age... Owen Barfield's insight

Romanticism Comes of Age was the title of a collection of essays published by Owen Barfield in 1944, and also of the biography of Barfield by Simon Blaxland-De Lange in 2006.

This matter of Romanticism is one of Barfield's major statements with relevance to our times - he is saying that Rudolf Steiner's core insights are the completion of what began with the Romantic movement, and they are a necessary next step for human spiritual evolution (ie. the divine destiny for Man).

I will summarize my understanding of this matter, including adding my own framework.

1. In ancient times, especially during the hunter gatherer era, Man lived undivided from, immersed in, his perceptual environment - and mostly lacked self-awareness or a sense of separate consciousness. This was termed Original Participation by Barfield.

2. From the 1700s there was a new era of alienation for Western Man - in which consciousness becomes isolated from perception; heralded by the work of Descartes and Newton, and implemented by the Industrial Revolution. Barfield subdivided this according to the stages of its gradual increase - but sometimes termed it the era of Observing Consciousness - because Man seemed to himself to be cut-off-from and observing 'the world' - and eventually even his own thoughts.

3. At the same time, the means for healing this dichotomy by moving forward to a new era of consciousness - what Barfield terms Final Participation. This impulse, mostly unconscious, began to emerge in the Romantic movement  - associated with such English poets and thinkers as Blake, Wordsworth and (especially) Coleridge - this rapidly spread to Germany via the likes of Herder and Goethe - and then to the USA with Emerson and the circle of New England Transcendentalists.

4. The unconscious impulse towards Final Participation strengthened the longer it was resisted or, often, perverted into a regression to the previous phase of Original Participation - with notable Romantic Revivals in the late 1800s-early 1900s, then again from the 1950s culminating in the middle-late 1960s.

5. The current phase is one of un-integrated oscillations (within individuals, and within culture) between the deal bureaucratic official world of alienated Observing Consciousness and regressive, instinctive, attempts at Original Participation (often by inculcating altered states of semi-awake consciousness with dreamy trances, intoxications, sexuality as a focus for life, and other types of regression).

6. This has led to the characteristic pathologies of our time; including in Christianity which is mostly divided between Observing and Original Participations.

7. What is needed, ever more desperately, is to move forwards into Final Participation - but this must (according to both Steiner and Barfield) be within the context of a truly Christ-centred Christianity (no matter how 'heretical' or unorthodox - Christianity must be Christ centred as its primary reality).

So this is the challenge, the necessary dual destiny, both for non-Christians and Christians - to adopt Christianity as the primary framework and within that to move towards Final Participation.  

True Romanticism in Tolkien's Notion Club Papers

There is a truly Romantic spirit which I value supremely when I find it; which is seldom, including very rare instances in myself. 

We are, apparently, trapped by deep habits, fears and a kind of sheer incompetence; and therefore find it extremely (sometimes impossibly) difficult to be what we most desire to be; to express what we most desire to express. 

The true Romanticism can be found only seldom - for example in some of William Blake's aphorisms and short lyrics, but not in his long poems or most of the rest of his oeuvre. 

By the strictest standards; I cannot find Romanticism realized anywhere in Coleridge, although Coleridge knew it, understood it, and sought it; and much the same applies to Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield and CS Lewis. All wrote about it, with great insight and value; but did not themselves embody it in their writings. 

But writing about Romanticism - including that 'writing about' which is the use of allegory (as with Blake's prophetic works, or some of Barfield's and CSL's stories) - is not the thing itself. 

What is meant is being referred-to, but the actuality is not embodied in the writing.

What I am saying is that nearly all writers, in their writing, keep a distance from actual Romanticism: the distance of scholarship, allegory, facetiousness or irony. 

Yet True Romanticism can be found in writings; sometimes in obscure authors like William Arkle; but supremely in JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings - which is, I think, why this work holds its unique and elevated position. 

Tolkien, here and there - but more often than anybody I know - gives expression to the fullest and truest Romanticism; and in a way that is highly accessible, and easier to appreciate than any other. 

This was only possible because Tolkien was himself a Romantic, but then again so were CS Lewis, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams - yet none of these managed to get past the barriers to its expression in the way that Tolkien did. 

What I mean by Romanticism, and how it is nearly always blocked, can be seen in The Notion Club Papers (NCPs). In broad terms, this incomplete and posthumously published novel represents an Inklings-based group that is able to break through the crust of convention and constraint to achieve a fully expressed Romanticism.

The NCPs begins with superficial and facetious interaction between its members; a jokey and cynical conversational style of a kind familiar to any English person of the professional classes. This is one type of defensiveness, and it absolutely blocks Romanticism. 

Another defensiveness is of conventional values - such as 'scholarship' or 'science' when these are regarded in a consensus fashion. Such conversation serves to suppress individual discernment and creation by a kind of implicit threat related to pointing out its transgression from the group norms; norms that provide coherence and power. 

The idea is that group members should fear going beyond the group-approved forms and content, and the fear is of being singled out, stripped of status, and scapegoated, ridiculed, demonized. Such external control may be done with a light touch, ambiguously and deniably; but the message is transmitted nonetheless - and there are few who resist it and none who are unaware of the implications. 

So fear is one reason; but also people just don't know how. 

Some people are drawn to Romanticism, and are aware that indirect references to the Romantic are not enough - but instead only succeed in emoting. Instead of Romanticism there are just strong and merely-subjective feelings.

The truly Romantic must be transcendent, must embody the divinely creative - directly apprehended; whereas emotions and feelings as-such are merely animal responses to the environment or to inner body states. To rant and rave - to free associate or let-rip - is not of any transcendental value. 

Thus the literature of the Beats, Hippies, Sixties Counterculture and New Age is almost wholly worthless from a truly Romantic perspective of written-expression. It may be based upon an accurate diagnosis of the problem, but is profoundly wrong in assuming that liberating the id or collective unconscious is a solution. 

To try and suppress human consciousness, delete the self or ego; and assimilate to the un-conscious or 'liberate' the 'instinctive' is not to solve the problem of alienation of Men. It is merely to crave oblivion - to aspire to cease being a Man - to regress Man towards the animal.   

It is easy to say what Not to do, to describe the pitfalls in various direction; but there is no formula for what to do instead - which is why it is so rarely achieved. 

Nonetheless, the matter can be illustrated, and it has been illustrated in the Notion Club Papers. What happens at times through the accounts of the Notion Club; is that the conversation is able to escape from facetious joking, or mere description, and attain a truly Romantic level that transcends all the pitfalls. We are actually shown what this would be like. 

The NCPs begin with the club responding to a story by Ramer - and for some pages the response is merely superficial - full of 'joshing' - mostly good natured, sometimes rather pointed. Some characters (such as Lowdham) adopt a cynical attitude, repeatedly trying to bring the conversation 'down to earth' in an irritating fashion.

It later emerges that this is a defensive posture by Lowdham who is (fearfully) attempting to hold-back an almost-overwhelmingly powerful Romanticism in himself; but at first he is the worst representative among an unserious tendency in the group. 

At the other extreme is Jeremy, who is always earnest and never even tries to be witty; indeed he seems to be regarded as something of the butt of group (to be 'shot at' with barbed quips; as being younger, and seemingly more naively enthusiastic). Yet he is in reality the conscience of the Notion Club. 

Jeremy goes on to say some of the most profound and important things in the NCPs; and (surprisingly) joins-up with the rambunctious Lowdham to make a complementary team; who whole-heartedly seek to experience the fullest possible Romantic contact with providence and the divine.  

It takes several pages of merely scholarly and jocular talk; but the NCP discussion becomes more serious rather suddenly when Guildford says the word 'Incarnation' as his suggested 'method' for space (and indeed time) travel. 

Although the intended meaning of the word incarnation is never given a satisfactory explanation in the NCPs, it can be inferred from usage and context that what it partly means is a kind of reincarnation involving mind-to-mind connection - whereby a modern person has (or develops) the ability to experience events in the past that were experienced by his hereditary ancestors. 

Hereditary - but not by a genetic mechanism, but really more a matter of spiritual ancestry: the sharing of a spiritual orientation across (perhaps) very-many generations. 

Specific heredity emerges later in the NCPs when Lowdham and Jeremy become - for a while - 'possessed' by former identities of men in Numenor during the lead-up-to and events of that lands cataclysmic (literally world changing) drowning. 

They become able to speak the Numenorean languages, and re-enact some of the ancient events - and in doing so they apparently create a 'cannel' by which the actual Numenorean storm breaks-through into modern England to wreak considerable havoc. 

This carefully-prepared direct mind-to-mind human connection - which has an implicitly general and providential aspect, never explained in the surviving fragments of the NCPs - is an actual expression of Romanticism in the text.  

But in this early stage of the NCPs the main Romantic protagonist is Ramer; who has - it gradually emerges - succeeded in travelling both in space and time; but without any reference to either incarnation or reincarnation. Instead Ramer seems to have developed a way of attuning his mind to non-organic 'things' - such as a meteorite. 

Ramer was eventually able to re-experience the 'life' of this meteorite from its remote origins buried in some remote celestial object, through its journey through space and the eventual burning entry through earth's atmosphere. 

It seems that by Incarnation, Tolkien may intend also to include this implicit 'animism'; a living universe whereby there are no 'things' but only 'beings' - and whereby 'inorganic'/ mineral entities are possessed of memory and consciousness of a type.

This is an aspect of Romanticism that recalls the consciousness of ancient tribal Man and the early childhood of every Man; and it recurs whenever the perspective reaches its strongest expression. 

Thus Ramer can commune-with (and participate-in the consciousness of) a rock; much as Lowdham is able to do with his remote Numenorean ancestor -- and also his more recent Anglo-Saxon ancestors of Mercia; which 'inheritance' is the posited mechanism by which he spontaneously knew this language. 

(It seems, from multiple comments in his letters and private conversation, that this spontaneously knowledge of Mercian Old English also applied to Tolkien himself.) 

(Note: There are many other examples of such 'animism' - communing with living, conscious realities in non-human animals, plants and minerals - all-through The Lord of the Rings.) 

It is by this means of fiction - but fiction-presented-as-real - that JRR Tolkien was able to express True Romanticism. How he did this is ultimately a matter of genius - coming from the divine creativity innate in all Men to some degree; and Tolkien in this particular fashion. 

If Tolkien had not himself regarded his fictions as really-real, and been writing from the heart; then there would have been nothing real for him to communicate. 

But Tolkien also achieved this rare literary feat by his careful and rigorous techniques of framing the fictions in a quasi historical fashion (for the NCPs by means of the Foreword; in LotR by the Prologue and Appendices), of creating a fictive-sense of depth by reference to untold stories and hinted back-histories; and in the Notion Club Papers by a gradual ascent from the mundane chit-chat at the beginning to the fullness of sincere, unguarded, heart-felt Romantic interaction among club members in later passages. 

What should we do when beauty, truth and virtue become separated? The example of Owen Barfield

When beauty, truth and virtue become separated, they pretty soon die.

Indeed (as I have implied before, in my books on the corruption of science, and the decline of genius) - when there is a move from the unity of the traditional Christian religiousness (with residues of Original Participation) to a concentration of life-energies upon just-beauty (artistic romanticism), just-truth (science and the Wissenschaftlich factual-systematic academic subjects) or just-virtue (some types of Protestant) - then there is at first an enhanced achievement in that specialised field.

The exceptional productivity of first generation atheists (i.e. childhood traditional Christians, who become atheist and then channel their religious energies into 'their subject') provides a misleading, ultimately false, impression of a wonderful future of enhanced attainment from rejecting religion and specialising in some narrower aspect of Culture. 

Thus, first-generation atheists who become commited artists, scientists and ethicists (such as 'fundamentalist' Protestants, or the existentialists) may achieve genius-level work, when they have been brought-up as traditionalists, and assimilated and retained a unified thought structure from that.

But with the next generation, brought-up as atheists, and without any coherent unity of world-view, the specialised art, science and religion withers and begins to die - because separate organs cannot live independently of the whole organism.

Art for arts sake, science-as-religion, purely ethical philosophy (or Christianity indifferent to beauty and truth) are all non-viable; and will sustain in-name-only, only by assimilating to mainstream secularity - bureaucracy and the mass media...


OK, but what then? Above all others, Owen Barfield pointed the way forward; perhaps because he was born in 1897; yet (ahead of his time, in this respect) he was brought-up in a thoroughly secular fashion - as an atheist, in an atheistic leftist radical household. Therefore Barfield could not revert to a childhood Original Participation religiousness; but in seeking to overcome the fragmentation and death of Life, he could only move forward.

Barfield was able to move forward, because he had extreme appreciation and ability in all three of the main specialised capacities (art, science, ethics). He had an intense appreciation of poetry and music and great ability as a writer; a brilliantly philosophical rigour; and an two-sided sensitivity to contemporary ethical collapse (he saw both the profound faults of the past, and the utter inadequacy of contemporary 'solutions').

Then, Barfield had the intellectual honesty to recognise that the prevalent situation was unacceptable and non-viable - it was, in a word, evil. The only possible answer to this gathering, unavoidable crisis and denied-decline into damnation, was that the separation of life into 'watertight compartments' must be overcome. A new synthesis was required.

Barfield had also the rare insight that going-back was simply not an option. Barfield argued that a reversion to earlier forms was undesirable, because it was precisely analogous to an adult trying to become a child; and for the same reason it was anyway impossible.

Since an atavistic reversion to past unity was not going to happen, and the present disunity was evil and unsustainable; we simply must move forward to a new kind of unity. 


Barfield saw that the broken threads of Culture must be rewoven, if we personally and socially were to avoid an incremental descent into hell-on-earth; but rewoven in a new and unprecedented way. Specifically, re-woven in full consciousness and with full choice.

Past unity was essentially traditional, hence unconscious and unexamined; the future unity could only be freely chosen, and as such conscious.

Future unity - which he called Final Participation - was not something that would happen-to us, but something we must each make-happen. So, if we did not make that choice and effort, it will not happen. We must know what we are doing, and then do it.

Moving on to a new unity and synthesis of Good is - unavoidably - up to each of us, personally: starting now.   


References: Owen Barfield's main books on this theme are are probably Romanticism Comes of Age, Saving the Appearances, World's Apart, and Unancestral Voice. All are equally good, although all take sustained effort to understand - each has a different character. 

Romantic Religion: A Study of Owen Barfield, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien by RJ Reilly (1971/ 2006)

Over the past couple of years I have come to regard Romantic Religion by RJ Reilly as one of the very best books I have read - I am now on my third slow, detailed read-through.

The book is probably the earliest (1971) serious study of the ideas of The Inklings - and its central chapters focus on Owen Barfield, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams and J. R. R. Tolkien. As such, and despite its narrowish selectivity; RR remains far-and-away the deepest and best explanation/ analysis/ advocacy of the underlying (implicit) significance of this literary, philosophical and theological group of friends.

The title Romantic Religion encapsulates the thesis; although in fact it would be more accurate if the title were Romantic Christianity, since that is The religion at issue here; and one that could not be substituted by any other.

The method is to define Romanticism, mainly by means of its historical lineage; and then (in the first main section) to use Barfield as the philosopher who best understood Romanticism and its unique significance and necessity. Lewis, Williams and Tolkien are then considered separately in terms of how they exemplify, and how diverge from, the framework of Barfield.

This time reading; I have become convinced that Romantic Christianity is the best term for what I personally believe, and regard as the essential future of Western Man - and especially English Man! I shall probably be referring to myself, in shorthand, as a Romantic Christian from now onward.

Of course Romantic (and Romanticism) are mostly, in the cultural mainstream of the past century and more, rather widely differently understood from the Inklings (and especially Barfield) mode. Indeed, 'romantic' is usually a pejorative or pitying term, signifying escapist, wish-fulfilling unrealism.

Nonetheless, Romantic remains the best term, for both its historical and etymological accuracy - and because many of the common ideas of 'Romantic' are entirely appropriate and correct from a Barfieldian-Inklings perspective: for example, a focus on love, creativity, fantasy and imagination, nature, ecstatic emotion, inspiration and intuition.

All of these seem to me desirable, as well as necessary; so long as they are rooted in Christianity. Indeed, it was-and-is the subtraction of Christianity from Romanticism, as early as Byron and Shelley, that led to the degeneration of the historical Romantic movement: degeneration into hedonism, Leftist politics and the sexual revolution.

No doubt I shall quote from Romantic Religion in the future; but anyone who shares my conviction on these matters, and who is prepared to make the effort to engage with such a book, would need to read RR if note entirely, then at least extensively.


Note: I find it significant that such an outstanding piece of intellectual and critical work, by such an deeply intelligent and rigorous scholar, should originally have been done as a PhD thesis at Michigan State University (a long way from the Ivy League); by an academic who was teaching rather than research orientated (he spent his career at the University of Detroit); and it was issued by an obscure publisher: The University of Georgia Press. This confirms a pattern I have often observed with genuinely high quality and original work in the late 20th century - it comes from the cultural periphery, not the centre. Or rather - what is officially the centre is actually trivial, derivative or corrupting - almost wholly, and vice versa. The reasons will be obvious to regular readers of this blog.  

My special gratitude to Owen Barfield

When I encounter a special author, I will initially hurl myself into trying to understand him - read many books, think a lot, take notes (in a meditative fashion); and often talk and write about these experiences. 

After a while, when I have become surer of what they mean and have a fairly sold grasp on it; I find that what I have learned amounts to some particular things; but I then need to detach these specifics from the whole of the writer's assertions - because I have never found any writer whose views I can endorse or believe fully.

Eventually, I get to a point where I have (more or less) obtained 'what I needed' from a writer; and may (more or less) cease to re-read or explore actively that author's works. 

I have, at this point, built-into my own philosophy of life, some elements from the special author; and from then onwards, these ideas may undergo further development and refinement - and may indeed end-up by being very different from how they are in that author's own work. 

So, the end result is that I retain a special gratitude to the author for insights that I needed; but I have ceased actively to engage with that author, and am then often more aware of my points of disagreement with him, rather than agreement. 

Yet the core debt remains - I have been changed, and for the better, by the encounter. 

I have almost reached this stage with Owen Barfield. I do continue to engage with his writings; in a cyclical fashion - but his importance to me has by-now been fed-into my own philosophy-of-life, and they have interacted with other ideas from elsewhere; have been modified; and have developed in (sometimes) different directions. 

Looking back; what I got from Owen Barfield - in a general sense - was a positive and hopeful attitude to life, deriving from his articulation of Final Participation. 

Until I encountered Final Participation, I could not see any positive direction for human life - here and now. I saw life as a binary choice between the present and the past; a present which was alienated and increasingly evil - and a past which seemed both irrecoverable and harmful to try and recover. 

It was as if an adolescent hated being an adolescent, and yearned for childhood - but knew that childhood could not be recovered - so that this mortal life had no real hope within itself: no real positive purpose. 

But through his concept of Final Participation; Barfield made me realize that there was a third possibility. Barfield terms the 'childhood' state Original Participation and the adolescent state Consciousness Soul; and he analyses how the one derived from the other through a process of unfolding development of consciousness, that stretched across different generations and historical eras. 

The 'original' participation was an immersive, passive, unconscious sense of being part of the world and knowing the spiritual; while the consciousness soul was that active, self-conscious way of thinking that finds itself cut-off - alienated - from the spiritual, and indeed from the world. 

I personally have found (since adolescence) this cut-offness, this being an 'observer' of life, trapped inside one's head - locked into one's thinking; to be appalling. It removed depth and meaning from experience, it dissolved all sense of purpose. 

This was a demotivating and depressing situation - which recurred daily, almost hourly, and needed always to be fought; but where the fighting seemed to provide no more then a subjective and ephemeral amelioration. 

For me alienation was The Problem of my adult life - and I was always seeking solutions; but never found any that were convincing, effective, strategic. 

Barfield convinced me that this development pointed forward to Final Participation which was an active, chosen, conscious state of being part-of the world; and of contributing creatively to the world. 

I realized that many of my best and most hopeful experiences in life could be seen as glimpses of this Final Participation state, but without Barfield's insights I could not make sense of them - could not learn the lessons they had to teach...

Instead I merely treasured these 'moments' (epiphanies', 'peak experiences'. moments of 'joy'); held onto them, and tried to seek them out - but with small and dwindling success... And the treasuring of these moments was itself alienating - given their temporary and very partial nature.     

But now, with Barfield's analysis to help; these moments could be seen in terms of a developmental process, a growing towards a future and better state - and this future and better state could be recognized as resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Having been given certain analytic tools and deep insights by Barfield; I was then starting to use them in a Christian context that I had already in-place, but which was deficient in exactly the areas that Barfield supplied. I began to see - more and more clearly - my path to the Romantic Christianity that I had always implicitly wanted but had not been able to articulate. 

That is; a Christianity that supplied the Romanticism which could cure my alienation, cut-offness, trapped-in-the-headness which had been left almost untouched (or even exacerbated) by mainstream Christianity.  

I found (I find, now) that I was was going beyond Barfield, and into areas where he would very probably not have followed; but I could not have done so without Barfield's help. 

So, now I find myself having integrated Barfield into my own thinking; having changed some of his core ideas in the process - yet I know the Barfieldian provenance of my situation; and that he ranks as one of a handful of vital sources in my own deepest convictions. 

How could Christianity be Romanticised? What went wrong?

Romantic Christianity made a brilliant start with Novalis, William Blake and ST Coleridge - and then nothing-much for many decades until Rudolf Steiner became (strange sort of) Christian in about 1898; to be followed by Owen Barfield and William Arkle in later generations - and there is William Wildblood and myself among current writers. But there have never been many Romantic Christians...

Why so rare, and what went wrong with the intermediate generations? Of course there were plenty of Romantics - but among them hardly any Christians; indeed most of them were either atheists or spiritual anything-but Christians.

A pre-eminent example was Ralph Waldo Emerson; who was an arch-Romantic and who began as a Unitarian minister - Unitarians being, at that time, like Emerson, Christians on-the-way-out. He ended-up as a kind of deist, flavoured with what he had gathered of Hinduism and Sufism.

Emerson was known for his elevation of the intuitive, epiphanic, 'moment' of insight to the highest possible valuation; like most Romantics, he required that all knowledge be derived from direct personal experience. SO why did Emerson not do the same for Christianity as he did for everything else? Why did he not develop a Romantic Christianity built from the kind of direct intuitive insights that fuelled the rest of his wide-ranging creativity? This will be answered below.

My guess is that Emerson accepted the evaluation of most Churches that Christianity must be derived from external authority - or else it is not Christianity. Catholics demand that the individual conform to the teaching of the Church authorities, or the traditions of the lineally descended ancient Church. Protestants demand conformity to the canonical scriptures of the Bible.

But what unites all churches is the assumption that whatever Christianity is, it is located outside the individual. The insistence is that Christianity does not come from within - not from individual experience, not from personal intuition.

Ultimately the task for the individual is to conform to external authority. The church judges the individual. 

If this is true; then Romanticism and Christianity are incompatible. So, how did Novalis, Blake and Coleridge come to believe that they had developed a Christianity based on their inner knowledge? It is mostly a matter of their basic and ultimate assumptions, of metaphysical assumptions. These authors believed that the individual could have direct knowledge of Christianity without it being derived from any intermediary at all; not rooted in church authority, without canonical scripture, traditional, philosophical theology or anything else.

Or, at least, and in conformity to Romanticism; that this direct form of personal knowing should serve to evaluate all other knowledge claims. So the individual judges the church; and may (like Blake, Steiner and Arkle) dispense with all churches - although Coleridge and Barfield were both, in later life,' communicating' (communion-taking) members of the Church of England.

We can see, then, why Emerson did not remain a Christian - because he apparently accepted the assertion that a real Christian must be under the authority of a church. (The only dispute was about which church/es it was correct to regard as really Christian.) It seems that, for Emerson, anyone who claimed to be a Christian outside of a church, was not really a Christian.

But there may be more to it than this - because Emerson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus; therefore real Christians were in error. Emerson's idea of deity was abstract - 'The Over Soul' - and therefore infinitely different-from a Man. The only union of Man with deity, therefore, was for Man to surrender his self and 'melt-into' the infinitude of deity.

So Emerson was a hopeless case! Ultimately, he did not want what Jesus offered; and preferred what Eastern religions offered. And what applies to Emerson, also applies to many other Romantics since. Some Romantics are materialist; but among those who are spiritual - it has mostly been an Eastern spirituality; which ultimately regards the individual self and our mortal world as temporary illusions.

This is the source of the paradox by which Emerson valued the moment of insight above all; yet ultimately he regarded each epiphany as evanescent, soon to be lost in time - and therefore worthless.

Other Christians have had strong Romantic impulses, but retained the conviction that the individual judgement must be subordinated to church authority - GK Chesterton is an example. Chesterton regarded the 'catholic' church (at first the Anglo Catholic wing of the Church of England; then in his late middle age, the Roman Catholic church) as the source of knowledge, of truth. For Chesterton Romanticism was the proper attitude each individual ought to adopt towards this truth.

For Chesterton, therefore, the individual did not have direct and personal intuitive access to knowledge; except for the knowledge that the church was true. The only primary knowledge was that the church was the only source of knowledge. 

Something similar could be said for CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They were Romantics and also Christians - but their Romanticism was secondary to their Christianity - and was at most understood to be a good and proper (perhaps even necessary) attitude towards their Christianity. The Romantic intuition was not, for them, a primary source of knowledge: that was revelation as communicated by  their churches.

This is why Romantic Christians - by a strict definition - have been so rare. Most Romantics were not Christians, but among those that were; Romanticism is regarded as an attitude but not as a source of knowledge.

It was the great contribution of Owen Barfield - posthumous disciple of Steiner, best friend of CS Lewis, and fellow Inkling with Tolkien - to clarify and emphasise this vital distinction.

The early Romantics were evolutionary "throws-forward" - Colin Wilson

And suddenly, like a thunderbolt, the realisation fell into my mind, so that I felt the roots of my hair stir with it. Of course! That was the whole meaning of the nineteenth century, Wordsworth and Keats and Hoffmann and Wagner and Bruckner. 

Certain people are born evolutionary throw-backs, victims of an atavism, less than fully human. And certain people he opposite . What could one call them? Evolutionary ‘throws-forward’? Typically, our language contains no word to describe it. But the fact is as clear as daylight. 

The romantics represented the next stage in man’s evolution , or at least, possessed one of its central characteristics - the ability to launch into these strange states of detachment. Could anything be more obvious, once one had seen it? 

The previous century had been an age of solid, earth-bound men - Dryden, Swift, Pope, Johnson, Bach, Haydn - even Mozart. And suddenly, for no apparent reason, you have an age of visionaries, beginning with Blake. But why? Why did Goethe and Coleridge and Wordsworth and Novalis and Berlioz and Schubert and Beethoven have these moments of pure exaltation, when man feels god-like? A ‘development of sensibility’? 

How could it be called a development, as if the change had been gradual? No, it was a leap of sensibility, as if there had been a high wall between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries... 

So what caused it? Could there be some simple cause – perhaps even chemical? A comet composed of psychedelic drugs, breaking up in the earth’s atmosphere and affecting the water supplies? Hardly likely. 

In any case, whatever the cause, there could surely be no doubt that the romantics and visionaries were presages of the future, heralds blowing trumpets to announce a new stage in human evolution - a new power in human beings - this power of detachment, of the ‘god’s eye view’ instead of the ‘worm’s eye view’.

 From The Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson (1969)

The 'leap of sensibility' that was first seen among the early romantics such as Goethe, Novalis, Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth; was indeed a presage of what was to come much more widely. 

But when Wilson speculated about what may have caused this change in consciousness, he did not consider God. Yet, my understanding is that Romanticism was part of the divine plan for Man - that Men began changing because they began to be 'made differently'.

Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield assumed that this divinely-driven change was linked with reincarnation; that spirits which had been reborn over many centuries (indeed millennia) had been incrementally developing the 'romantic' capacities that became evidence around 1800. 

My own somewhat tentative view is that the cause was the nature of the human souls which were being incarnated (for the first and only time); and that from the late 1700 Men began  being born (initially in Western Europe) who had the romantic disposition and capability - and that this had been carried-through from our pre-mortal existence as spirits. 

Whatever the reason; the emergence of more and more Men with the Romantic disposition was a spiritual challenge and a fork in the road. There were various possibilities - but the divine intention was that this new Romanticism should be carried through into Christianity. 

But aside from a few individuals, this did not happen - and romanticism became either opposed to, or remained separate from, Christianity. 

This meant that the new romantic consciousness lacked direction and context - it lacked the direction that comes from divine purpose, and it lacked the meaning that comes from the context of eternal resurrected life. 

Therefore, Romanticism became focused on form not content. Romantics tried to have 'romantic experiences' by whatever means - including science, magic and drugs. They pursued a state of mind: and when they got it, they did not know what to do with it - except enjoy it. 

Romanticism without (and against) Christianity became merely a refined form of hedonism - with strong tendencies to selfishness and manipulation of others. 

And the fact that the Romantic could not enjoy this experience at will or continuously, and that it faded with repetition - tended to lead to pessimism, despair, even suicide. 

Meanwhile Christians came to associate Romanticism with anti-Christian motivations, and became hostile to Romanticism. 

Or Christians else subordinated the romantic within the faith, and rendered it at most an optional extra; at the level of psychology and lifestyle - rather than theological truth. 

But Romanticism was meant to be a means not the end - a Romantic Christianity. The content should be Christian, the form Romantic. 

What is the meaning of "Romantic" in Romantic Christianity - and how does it differ from "pleasure-seeking" or psychotherapy"?

We need clearly to distinguish between, on the one hand, the "psychotherapeutic" aspects of spirituality and religion; and, on the other hand, participation. 

Romantic Christianity is primarily and essentially about participation, not pleasure or therapy. 

(Although Romanticism without Christianity usually devolves into pleasure-seeking and/or therapy.) 

Therapy focuses on emotions and feelings; while participation is a fact about reality. 

Participation is the fact that we are involved-with reality; including that our "inner life" is involved with reality. 

In other words; we are not separate from reality, we are not cut-off from reality, even in our innermost thinking and feeling - even though most modern people feel that they are cut-off; even though we wrongly believe that we are observers rather than participants in "the universe". 

So, participation means that we Just-Are (like it or not, know it or not, want it or not) participants in divine creation. 

The felt-need of Romanticism is to be aware that we are participants in reality. 

Thus, Romanticism is a good impulse for Christians - it is spiritually positive - because it is the aspiration to become more spiritually-developed, more God-like in our consciousness of reality. 

**

Psychotherapy is not only distinguishable from Romanticism, but also the two can be separated and dissociated; so that we can have one without the other: we can have therapy without participation, and participation without therapy. 

Obviously, there can be therapy without participation - and this is the normal, mainstream and dominant form of therapy in modern Western civilization. 

(It is also what historically happened to Romanticism when it rejected Christianity - we got the pleasure-seeking of Byron instead of the participation-seeking of Coleridge; and a century later, we got the therapeutic intent of Jung instead of the participation-seeking of Steiner and Barfield.)

For instance, people can be made to feel happier or less-miserable, by distraction from reality (as by the mass and social media), or by suppression of awareness (by inner-materialism and bureaucracy). 

Distraction-from and suppression-of awareness of the fact of participation both diminish participation and are anti-Romantic. 

And there can be participation without therapy. 

This happens when recognition of our involvement with reality makes us feel more miserable here-and-now. 

This might be through a recognition of evil in our situation; or by recognizing the tragic quality of a life that ends with death (tragic even when death has "lost its sting" from resurrection); and of a mortal earthly world of endemic degeneration, disease, and loss.

In sum; Romanticism is not some form of pleasure-seeking; but is instead a recognition of the benefits, indeed I would say necessity, of consciously recognizing the fact of our continuing-participation in God's created reality.  

 

Walter Scott and the failure of Romantic Christianity

Sir Walter Scott's dates were 1771-1832 - much the same as the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). But if Coleridge stands as an example of how our spiritual life in the West could (and should) have gone towards a fully-integrated Romanic Christianity; Scott is representative of what actually happened to the British culture at large. 

Scott was a very devout Christian - a Presbyterian as a child and Episcopalian as an adult. And he was also a great Romantic - whose influence (both via long narrative poems and dozens of novels; also his widely-read collection of Border Ballads) was international and lasting. 

But the Christianity and Romanticism were kept rigorously separate. It is startling to read in the account of the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, how Scotts assumptions were entirely and unconsciously dedicated to 'explaining away' all the supernatural and prophetic elements of the poem and the author's life. The hypothesis that True Thomas really was a prophet, or really had some kind of an encounter with elves, is not even entertained. 

Scott was, in this respect, entirely an 'Enlightenment' rationalist. And he embodied the duality, the schism, between Christianity and the romantic, which has persisted since - until Christianity has dwindled to very little public significance. 

I mean that magic, mysticism, enchantment, animism and all such - are rationalized and explained away; being both excluded-from, and regarded as hostile-to, Christianity. 

By such maneuvers, Christian life began to be regarded rationally, objectively, sealed off from the whole range of human experience - and became ever more wholly external. The romantic, which was about intense personal experience and gave life meaning at a micro level, was regarded as merely fictional - and psychological. 

A serious Christian like Scott might also be a romantic, but on the assumption that the romantic element was merely a kind of entertainment, a commercial exercise, or an historical document; without reality or relevance for the serious things of life.  

Later - the two split even further apart; so that the archetypal romantic became anti-Christian (as with Byron, or the New Age) and the serious Christians anti-romantic (as with those modern evangelicals who regard Tolkien and CS Lewis as literally demonic). 

The split between Christianity and romanticism is a version of the split between objective and subjective: for serious Christians the faith became 'objective' - i.e. external, public, logical, something to be 'followed' - while Romanticism was merely subjective, and to be explained-away. 

And for those who believed in Romanticism, there was an attempt at thoroughgoing subjectivism/ relativism and living by instinct - which explained-away Christianity along with science and all other attempts at objectivity.  

Consequently, Romanticism and Christianity both became partial and ineffectual. Church Christianity is now almost wholly secular and bureaucratic; Romanticism is quasi-therapeutic, commercial and recreational.

There might be some unconscious integration of the two; for instance, one suspects that Scott had a 'real' interest in the supernatural - that at some level his interest in Thomas the Rhymer was based on the possibility that the supernatural elements might somehow be true... 

But lacking any conscious and explicit acknowledgment and theorization of such an integration; 'modern Man' (since Scott's time) cannot achieve any effective reuniting of inner life. 

It was the project of Rudolf Steiner and then Owen Barfield to provide a conscious and explicit theoretical basis for healing the the subjective-objective, Romantic-Christian split. This, they largely achieved - and our task now is to put the theories into action in our own everyday lives. 

The destiny of the English and the failure of Romanticism

The English people have a destiny - that much seems clear; and the English diaspora in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa presumably inherit it.

England has been recognized as a favoured nation since at least the Roman era - this fact is extensively recorded. But why? Presumably because of that destiny - which became manifest with the Industrial Revolution, beginning to wind-up from around the middle of the 1700s and leading to the biggest change in the human condition since the invention of agriculture which is lost in pre-history.

So there was the industrial revolution and at the same time there was Romanticism - which is usually seen as a reaction against the associated materialism, scientism, rationalism, urbanization and the rest of it. But Romanticism was not a reaction - it was part of the same movement of thought - the same evolution of consciousness.

What was meant to happen was that Romanticism was supposed to be the future, not a reaction; was supposed to be made possible by the Industrial Revolution - not fight against it. The English were favoured not for their own good but because they had a job to do - a job not for themselves, or for their own benefit, but for Mankind.

Because Romanticism was - or should have been - the healing of the alienation of Man from nature, of mind from matter, the reunification of the inner life with the outer world, of subjective and objective - which had reached completeness with the Age of Reason and the agonies of the French revolution.

The way that this could be done was perceived, - albeit dimly and in fragments, by the genius of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in collaboration with his great friend Wordsworth - and was enacted in the life of Goethe. But the English failed in their destiny.

Romanticism broke up into fragments in opposition to Enlightenment, Reason, Industry and the like - so from the late 18th through the 19th century England hosted the pacifism of the Quakers, the abolitionism of the Clapham Sect, the sexual liberation/ license epitomized by the glamorous figure of Byron, the atheism of Shelley, the revolutionary communism of Marx and Engels, the scientistic metaphysics of Darwin, the reactionary revolution of the Anglican Tractarians, and nationally the glories of invention, technology, conquest and Empire and so forth...

In sum, a hotbed of innovation and exploration and achievement - of revolution - in multiple fields but not the one thing needful. That was steadfastly, repeatedly refused.

After a century came payback - with the decline of Christian faith. the horrors of World War One, then Two - loss of Empire, loss of vitality and confidence, loss of fertility, a mood of self-hatred and now the national suicide of reverse colonization.

What to do? The answer is - what should have been done 200 years ago - to restore Christianity as the focus and frame of life and immediately move ahead with the project of transforming consciousness that was set out by Coleridge and most recently revived and reiterated by Owen Barfield: to move beyond the split between purposeless rationality and pointless instinct into making conscious of everything, sensory and supersensible, the synthesis of all aspects of life and the world in a human thinking which uses all the resources of Man: including imagination, inspiration and intuition.

The task is for everyone, but perhaps most of all for the English - whose historical destiny it was to pioneer this metamorphosis of mind. We have been refusing repeatedly and vehemently this destiny for two centuries and doing anything-but what must be done - but anyone may choose to embrace the task today. 

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

The completion of Romanticism and the Inklings

Owen Barfield's understanding of Romanticism as an uncompleted destiny is of primary importance to an integrated view of The Inklings. Barfield articulated this very clearly in Romanticism Comes of Age (1944) as well as subsequent books; but none of the other Inklings seems to have understood or been-persuaded-by the argument.

Read the whole thing at The Notion Club Papers: an Inklings blog...

The decline from Wordsworth to Byron; from Coleridge to Shelley

Coleridge writing Kubla Khan under the influence? Mad Poet by Michael Whelan

In a post at Albion Awakening, I tackle a subject close to my heart and causal of the deep malaise of the modern condition - namely the rapid corruption of Romanticism from its Christian beginnings to a combination of radical politics, sexual revolution and make-believe.

Since Romanticism was the divinely destined direction for Western Man; this has been catastrophic over the past two centuries - with (on one side) serious mainstream Christianity rejecting imagination, inspiration and intuition - hardening into materialism; and (on the other side) mainstream culture diverging into the instinct-driven sexual revolution and the iron cage of pseudo-rational totalitarian bureaucracy.

As Owen Barfield first understood; one answer is for us to return to the source of true Romanticism - such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, and pick up the threads - and carry forward the Romantic project. And this is no hardship - but a delightsome task!

And it will succeed; because Rudolf Steiner - in his early works, culminating in the Philosophy of Freedom - has done all the heavy lifting for us (with Barfield's later assistance).

The answer is there, waiting; the answer is coherent, beautiful and fruitful; and a world of wonders beckons! - if we want it; and assuming we each make the effort to know it intuitively: for our-selves...

Entertaining the idea of Christ's second coming in the 'etheric' realm

I have blogged before on the strange revelation or prophecy from the early 1900s onward and standing at the heart of Rudolf Steiner's entire (vast) corpus - and therefore - presumably, although I'm not sure - that also of Owen Barfield.

You will need to read that post first...

Now; I find that I cannot just put this prophecy aside and move-on, but I keep returning to think about and consider the matter. Because if it was true - this would, of course, be the most important fact in the world - and, although Steiner (in his later works) was often/ usually wrong in detail, he was nearly-always right in essence.

Thus I shall entertain the thought that Rudolf Steiner was factually correct that the Second Coming of Christ has by-now already happened, and not as an incarnation of the bodily Christ but in 'the etheric'; and I shall further assume that while the core revelation is true, the details are mistaken - so that there needs to be a clarification.

Then, I shall see where this experimental-assumption gets-me; and whether it makes any kind of sense...


1. If Steiner genuinely knew that Christ was to return in the Etheric; my understanding is that this was not a chronologically exact foreseeing of the future - because I believe such predictions to be an impossibility.

So that in reality Steiner's prophecy was actually an announcement of a current state of affairs; and it meant that the Second Coming had already happened, which is (I infer) how Steiner knew about it.

So instead of something going-to-happen circa 1933, let's assume instead that there was a return of Christ from circa 1750 - in other words from the beginnings of the movement called Romanticism.

This is how Steiner could sense the event; sense it both directly - as an ongoing reality; a fact of daily life; and he could also sense it from his profound studies of Goethe and the other German Romantics, and the change that had come over their thinking.


2. What about the Etheric? What does that mean?

Translating Steiner's categories of The Self (as I understand them) the Etheric comes in-between the Physical Body and Consciousness (the Astral Body) - so Christ's return is not in his body (i.e. he is not incarnated), and it is also not in a way of which people are conscious.

The Etheric implies that Christ is felt; a transformation of Life, an unconscious feeling, at the level of instinct.

The presence of Christ in the Etheric is known as an instinctive feeling.  


3. Does this make general sense? Yes, it does.

The impulse of Romanticism came upon Western culture beginning from 1750 - affecting poetry, literature - including the invention of the novel almost exactly in 1750, music, visual arts, philosophy...

Romanticism also affected Western culture, through several later waves - eg the 1890s, the 1920s, the 1960s-70s) in terms of a new and strong (often destructive) impulse of individualism, political radicalism and revolution, the sexual revolution, an assertion of the instinctive (and 'primitive', or 'tribal').

In religion and spirituality we could point to Quakerism, the US New Religions of the middle 1900s, New England Transcendentalism, Walt Whitman, DH Lawrence, the Beats, the New Age... Every movement (good, and - mostly - bad) that contains a theme of instinct, personal revelation, intuition, utopia, altered consciousness, hopes of transcendence or higher evolution; all such could be interpreted as having some degree of unconscious awareness of the new possibilities deriving from the actual felt presence of Christ. 

We could posit that there was indeed a second coming of Christ perceptible at an unconsicous level; but distorted, and indeed twisted to evil by such factors as adherence to materialism; the pro-instinctive, short-termist and hedonic theories of the sexual revolution; consumerism; and by the cultivated spite and resentments of the various Leftisms and, in general, politics conceived as primary.

Probably the main evil-tending distortion is that Modern Man will not allow himself to become conscious of Christ. 

In other words, we could ascribe the malign phenomena of Steiner's own amazing 1918 true-prophecy to Western Man's failure to respond properly to the Second Coming; indeed, by our wicked choice to have perverted and inverted our instinctively-felt urgings of Christ.


4. What would be the implications? (Continuing to entertain the notion that this understanding is correct.)

Well, one implication would be that we need to become conscious of Christ's presence... This needs stating more strongly: we must become conscious of Christ's presence in this world, and of his direct influences on each of us, individually.

To become conscious of an instinctive-feeling means that we each need to do 'scientific' work - because that is the core nature of science: to do science is to become explicitly conscious of phenomena.

Therefore we each need to become scientists of our-selves.

And that is exactly what Steiner and Owen Barfield (and, of course - following them, myself) have argued is the primary task of Modern Man; which is to embark on a 'scientific' introspection, to develop a clear knowledge of our own thinking, to make intuitions both primary and explicit; and to do all this is the Christian context of its being done in light of the first and second commandments to love God, and neighbour.


5. Does this kind of 'Second Coming' even make sense to a Christian?

Well, maybe. I am more inclined to think so than before I embarked on this exercise.

It may make sense if our understanding is that this mortal life is about experiences from-which we need to learn in order to become more divine. If, in other words, our main task (as mature adults) is theosis rather than salvation - because salvation, while not universal, is by-default; and Hell must positively be chosen.

On such a basis, it is imaginable that a return of Christ at the level of unconscious instinctive awareness may be a means to this end.


In sum; I am surprised what good sense can be made from making the contingent assumption that Steiner was correct-but-with-errors when he announced the Return of Christ in the Etheric...

Jung versus Steiner

It is striking that two of the most influential spiritual writers (and movement-leaders) of the early twentieth century - CG Jung and Rudolf Steiner - both lived in Switzerland at the same time, and not far apart - and saying many of the same things...

Yet, apparently (from what little was written or recorded) the two men cordially disliked and rejected one another. 

This mutual dislike is not difficult to understand; but it is unfortunate - especially for Jung; because Steiner's work contained the answer to Jung's insoluble problem of how to 'integrate' Modern Man, and to overcome his alienation. 

Jung was far more prestigious a person - by birth and education, and concerned to maintain his upper class social status. To him, Steiner must have appeared as what he mostly was (from the bulk of his writings and lectures); just another Theosophist; an upstart cultist, locked-into what Jung frequently described the typical errors of the Theosophical Society; that is, a false emphasis that led to modern Westerners, superficially and selectively, trying to copy knowledge and practices from a promiscuous brew of 'Eastern' religion and philosophy. 

Such an attitude from Jung would, I don't doubt, strike Steiner as both ignorant and snobbish; Steiner being older and from a working class Austrian background.  

Also Steiner was, by nature, a 'right man' who would never acknowledge that his ideas had changed or that he ever made an error - and so he never repudiated his usage of the vast body of standard, mainstream Theosophical Society-derived 'information' (identical with, and presumably derived from, Madame Blavatsky, and her successors) about Man and Cosmology, that quantitatively dominate Steiner's public discourses. 

Steiner, indeed, reacted very badly to any criticism, including thoughtful, informed and sympathetic critiques; almost never refuting it directly but instead engaging in irrelevant and blistering ad hominem rants to his loyal followers! Whereas Jung, despite being far moodier, more selfish and bad-tempered than Steiner in his personal relationships, displayed a kind of sublime indifference to his critics.

Yet, buried within this mass of errors, and arbitrary (and implausible) assertions concerning medicine, education, agriculture, and anything else that anybody asked him about - Steiner contains the insight which could have made coherent sense from Jung's almost random, and contradictory, insights.  

Steiner's early books that led to The Philosophy of Freedom, and his later remarks derived from these works - including some of his cultural and prophetic insights concerning the 'destiny' of modern Man and what would happen if this destiny was rejected, were exactly what Jung most needed to know. 

Jung - who lived with a sound mind until 1961, might even have found these ideas more lucidly expounded by Steiner's posthumous disciple Owen Barfield; e.g. in Romanticism comes of age (1944), or Saving the appearances (1957).  

The core problem that Jung needed to solve, and never did solve; was that his idea of an integrated and un-alienated Man was that of an earlier stage of human history, a child, a dreamer or a psychotic. This arose because Jung regarded a life dominated by the mythic collective unconscious as the ideal and answer. 

To solve this, Jug needed a true and sufficiently-complete set of basic, metaphysical assumptions; on which could be built practical advice. But Jung's metaphysics was incomplete.  

Jung's solution to modern Man' search for soul was therefore to engage deliberately with the collective unconscious, and to become conscious of its content; to seek there the unity and engagement that was lacking. 

This was correct as far as it went; but Jung's methods all involved an atavistic, regressive, sinking-down into the unconscious, and aiming to bring-back the findings. 

He advised seeking a half-way state between the modern consciousness and ancient un-consciousness; striving either to maintain awareness and memory during a descent towards dreams or psychosis; or else assembling an intermediate and symbolic discourse (or images, ideas etc.) to bridge between them. 

In Steiner/ Barfield terms, Jung only acknowledged Original Participation and the modern Consciousness Soul - but disregarded Final Participation. 

From Steiner/ Barfield's perspective; Jung was trying and failing, because it is not possible to reverse the direction of human developmental-evolution. It is not possible to return to something like the Classical-Medieval mindset; during which Man lived-in, and was satisfied-by, Public Systems of symbol, ritual, sacred text and picture mythic or legendary narrative, allegory and the like. 

Jung, in essence, was advocating that modern Man re-create (by acts of personal - and private - creativity) some such symbolic intermediary for himself; make his own 'private religion'. This is what Jung did himself, in his private notebooks, his sculptures and pictures. 

But Jung also stated that any such private spirituality nonetheless had universal significance; so long as it drew from the collective unconscious. 

What emerged was unsatisfactory - it alleviated to some partial and temporary degree the alienation and dis-integration of modern Man (i.e. it has symptomatic therapeutic value) - but the method was inadequate, just didn't work well enough. 

It did not suffice. 

Why? Because we cannot return with full consciousness and memory and control of our thoughts to the collective unconscious/ Original Participation. What Jung offered was - at best - an alternation between modern consciousness and a simulacrum of the more ancient mind - but not the actuality of the ancient mind. 

The intermediate state of active imagination was - in effect - a kind of lucid dreaming or dissociated semi-sleep state; and this state is both unstable ('metastable' tending either toward waking or sleep) and also insufficient as a solution to the problems of modern Man. 

It is trying to be simultaneously passive, spontaneous and-unconscious; and at the same time active, creative and conscious. These are opposite states - and can only be alternated or else 'averaged'.  

Hence Jung and Jungians can be observed to lack the hallmarks of wisdom, insight, discernment etc. which would characterize an integrated and unalienated person; and they lack the resources (or honesty) to explain this failure.    

Steiner/ Barfield's solution was a third state that Barfield termed Final Participation; in which integration and participation (i.e. escape from alienation) was attained in a new and qualitatively different kind of thinking*. 

This was conceptualized primarily as a learning experience; and the fullness and permanency of this state could be attained only in Heaven (or else after many further incarnations) - thereby explaining its own 'failure': i.e. why Final Participation could only be partial and temporary in this mortal life.  

Jung believed in a life after death, but never integrated this with his other ideas; which his why his ideas have been merely therapeutic - i.e. directed at making this mortal life less miserable and more fulfilling. 

Jung's concepts therefore underlie much of New Age spirituality - which operates at the level of consumption and lifestyle: a quantitative amplification of whatever ideology is already present (nearly-always mainstream leftist); but without the strength to have a qualitative impact; without providing a profound or powerful alternative and satisfying motivation for modern living. 

Therefore, I regard Jung as one of those sources that are harmful if pursued primarily: Jung will not lead anyone to The Truth. 

But, for those who have already grasped The Truth and who have a Romantic Christian attitude (ie. with personal intuitive discernment acknowledged as the basis of metaphysics); then Jung's work can be an exciting and valuable resource. Read selectively; Jung can even be seen as himself a proto-Romantic Christian. 

Jung's ideas are overall a mass of contradictions: wisdom and foolishness; insight and triviality; truth-seeking and self-serving dishonesty... 

But if approached in the properly critical spirit, we may discover there many helpful and inspiring formulations.  

*Note: By contrast, Jung's reports of his own experiences of the collective unconscious are perceptual. That is; Jung describes visions, conversations and dramatic scenarios between himself and persons or events. These have a 'hallucinatory' quality - i.e. they are subjective, private perceptions; outwith normal discourse and imperceptible to others. 

Further comment: If the reader is unclear about any of the terminology used above, I would advise doing a word/s search on this blog (search box located to the upper left corner of the opening screen) to get background or further explanation.  

Suppose that both Leftist materialist modernity and traditional religion are impossible futures?

This is, indeed, the impossibility I confront: that modernity (secular Leftism) is the tool of evil, and orientated ultimately to destruction of The Good; yet traditional religion has become an impossibility at the mass social level, partly for reason of wrong choices (such as the sexual revolution); but not entirely so.

It is consistent with observation (but of course not evidentially-proven; that being impossible) that the grounds for mass religiousness in The West have simply, inexorably, dissolved-away over the past couple of centuries and the Christian churches are now either fundamentally-corrupt or else intrinsically-elite --- that is my interpretation.

That around 1800, in the industrialising nations, a new impulse came upon Men that we usually term Romanticism; which was (at its heart, and at its best) against both the unspirituality of traditional Christianity and also against the arising materialism and Leftism. Romanticism was supposed to be the spiritualisation of all life in context of Christianity; but unfortunately it split into (approximately) anti-spiritual Christianity as a form of social organisation on the one hand; versus an unChristian spirituality that ran in-parallel-to (unintegrated with) materialism in the political sphere and the gratification of non-spiritual emotions (the desire for prosperity, novelty, sex etc).

Romanticism is unfinished business. It was supposed (and by supposed I mean divinely-destined) to be the future of humanity; but that path of spiritual, 'magical' Christianity was refused.

Since then, Life has become compartmentalised; the great mass of people (rulers and ruled alike) have become ever more alienated, unrealistic, incoherent; distracting emotional escapism and pragmatic matter-of-fact despair have become the twin mainstream cultural expressions.

The only possible future is to finish the business of Romanticism. And, at this point n history, there is no group or institution doing this in The West; so if we want to do it - if we regard this as our divine destiny, then we must each do it solo.

And we cannot follow a path, because no path is laid down; we need to find our own path. We know where we want to be: that is living the Christian life in clear, coherent and continuous awareness of both the spiritual context of creation and creator; and within this the living, conscious nature of ourselves and the world around us: in a phrase animistic Christianity...

But we don't know how to get there - or even how to take the next step towards that goal. This situation is the cumulative consequence of two centuries of evasion and corruption; the consequence of living in a society of lies where any advice we take is almost certain to be wrong; any knowledge we acquire is almost certain to be wrong; and directions we are given almost certain to be pointing back down the same path on the down-conveyor belt, or into the abyss.

We may take clues from the insightful early romantics: Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge; Goethe and his interpreter Rudolf Steiner - and Coleridge and Steiner's interpreter Owen Barfield... but they do not yield a blueprint or program.

It seems that part of the divine plan is that we each develop spiritual autonomy and Christianity both; that we do this for ourselves and from ourselves - and do so without any clear knowledge or assurances or examples of where we are going or how we might get there.

Instead of clear knowledge we have hints and lustres, and an awareness of our inner freedom or agency yielding direct conviction - which is not solid and insistent in the same way that social institutions are, due to their material power and simplistic inertia. To withstand these pressures, and do do so without fear and with faith, requires a very solid and strong trust in God and his love; and our capacity to know God's nature and motivations - and that can originate only from personal experience.

Cross posted at: https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/suppose-that-both-leftist-materialist.html

Romantic Christianity is not Only negative and reactive...

The cultural era (commencing in Western Europe in the late 1700s) known as Romanticism, is usually described in terms of being a negative reaction; partly against the newly dominant "rationalism" and scientism - reducing divine creation to a contrivance of clockwork wheels; and then fuelled by the beginnings of urbanization, noise, regimentation and pollution from the Industrial Revolution. 

And much the same applies to those of us "dissident" Christians whom I have termed Romantic Christians - they/we are usually understood as reacting-against. 

As I say - this is correct, so far as it goes - but it is not the whole story. 

But Owen Barfield (following Rudolf Steiner) clarified that Romanticism also had a positive agenda; it tended to regard "nature" as much more significant, alive and purposive than did Medieval or Reformation Christianity. This included an interest and seriousness about "the supernatural", and the "magical".   

There was a strong focus on the value of more intense personal states of awareness, intuition, revelation and the like - a "poetic" perspective on life. 

There was a new high-valuation of individual creativity including genius. 

In terms of Christianity; these might briefly be translated as striving for a faith rooted in direct personal experience and responsibility. 

Altogether; Romanticism - and this includes Romantic Christianity - has now been around long enough that surely it ought to be accorded more than the usual dismissive condescension - or quasi-puritantical abhorrence - that is its fate among orthodox and traditionalist Christians?

As I understand it; Romanticism among Christians is partly a negative and reactive rejection of the corruption, dullness, triviality, and superficiality of the churches; but when it is serious is has a more motivating and positive agenda: which relates to an inner conviction that a better Christianity is possible than that resulting from the primacy of church obedience - a Christianity that is more honest, more coherent, more inspiring, and more responsible. 

This refusal to subordinate ones primary religious convictions to the external authority of a church does not - Of Course Not - mean that a Romantic Christian is obliged to live a solitary and isolated life of abstention from all ritual, music, scripture, tradition...

It merely means that these come second, and not first; and the Romantic Christian's engagement with the forms and symbols of Christianity are subordinated to his direct and personal relationship with the divine - which is given primacy, as his motivating ideal. 

Christianity in time, in history

I was reading a chapter by RJ Reilly called "A note on Barfield, romanticism and time"; in the 1976 Owen Barfield Festschrift "The Evolution of Consciousness" - in which Reilly begins by making some striking and insightful points about the fact that Christianity is located in history, posits a sequence of events that are changes, and a goal (i.e. resurrection, everlasting Heavenly life). 

It would seem obvious that the metaphysical roots, its most most fundamental assumptions, would include 'time' - not Time as some kind of separable abstract entity; but time inextricably woven into the basic assumed realities of Christianity.

Yet (as Reilly's chapter goes on to describe) many Christians - especially among philosophers and theologians - have felt it necessary to root Christianity in the Time-less and the unchanging. This decision - sooner or later, somewhere or another - leads to a contradiction; whereby the historical, sequential nature of Christianity meets-up with its supposed eternal but unchanging ground. 

The contradiction may linguistically be reframed - as a paradox, mystery, polarity, or whatever; but I regard these tactics as ultimately hypnotic word-spells, intended to stop-thinking. 

It is extremely rare to come-across a Christian who accepts what I regard as the necessity to base Christianity in ultimate metaphysical explanations that sustain the need for history, sequence, change, a goal...  

Barfield himself was Not one of these Christians. He continued to try and ground time-located/ directed Christianity in "the unchanging" - he merely attempted this in a different place and with a different terminology; but with the same contradiction (as indeed there must always be since a situation of change and no-change cannot be combined). 

This feeling that changelessness, no-time, is The ultimate reality - permeates Eastern Religion in general, and much of Western - such as Platonism and its developments - but it is in practice an "elite" concern. It seems that intellectuals - because of their propensity to speak and write in abstractions; are perhaps disposed to assume that such timeless and general entities are ultimate; and/or to regard the final goal of life as one of unchanging spiritual bliss - including an end to the thinking which is both the distinction and the curse of being an intellectual. 

The contradiction between the eternal and unchanging, and life, is necessarily found in all religions that include no-time as a fundamental assumption; although it varies where and how this contradiction is manifest. In Christianity, the contradiction undercuts the simplicity and clarity of understanding what Jesus did and taught. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the contradiction is instead between theory and practice - because the theory states that life is irredeemably worthless in its entirety.

Yet these are religions - making many discernments of values and practice, and having elaborate rituals, requirements, symbolism etc. There are all kinds of hypnotic word-spells that purport to join-together the time-less and time-bound; but they are psychological manipulations, not genuine understanding. 

Children, tribal peoples, and simple folk often have a very different way of talking about such things - yet typically implicit and unconscious; which is rooted in the assumption that the world is made of Beings - living, conscious, purposive Beings; that change and may transform, but can neither be created nor destroyed: they Just Are, and Always Have Been.

There never has been any good reason why Christianity shouldn't share exactly this 'primitive, Beings-based metaphysics - but explicitly rather than unconsciously and by implication; yet the first known person to understand Christianity in this apparently obvious and common-sensical fashion seems to have been Joseph Smith (the Mormon prophet) from about 1830!  

Neither Barfield, nor Steiner his Master, knew anything about Mormon theology, and did not make this inference on their own - so both remain captive to the contradiction. 

I regard it as a serious weakness of Christianity that the class of intellectuals and theologians have (like those of other religions) violated and over-written the innate and spontaneous assumptions about reality, with which we all came into the world; and replaced them with something that does not make sense.

Presumably, we are all intrinsically capable of recovering our original unconscious child's understanding, of making it conscious to our adult minds, and choosing to accept it as true.  

That sounds simple and easy, but the rarity with which it is achieved suggests that - although it may indeed be simple - it is not easy. 

Metaphysics never is easy to do; which is why our Western world is so deeply and widely corrupted, and still getting worse.