The problem of false selves (William Arkle)

One of William Arkle's core insights is that - in normal, everyday life - people act from a multitude of false selves. The true self, which is of divine origin and potentially able to become a god, is what makes us what we are - but it may be completely buried beneath false selves; the true self may be utterly ineffectual.

These false selves are of many types. Some are the collections of traits - hereditary and socialised - that constitute our 'personality' as described and measured by psychology. Others are that mass of automatic, robotic skills and responses that we learn to deal with the problems of living; including skills like typing or driving, small-talk and routine social interaction.

You can see that false selves are the totality of what a person presents to the world; and usually also everything that a person is aware of in himself, insofar as he is aware of anything. So, our consciousness is not the same thing as our true self, because it may be unaware of the true self, may even deny the reality of any such thing as a true self.

False selves are therefore necessary but a problem, because whenever we make an effort to change ourselves in any way, the probability is that this will be a matter of one or more of the false selves trying to change us in a superficial and false direction.

This is why methods of meditation,. methods of self-improvement, will-power... all such endeavours are nearly always ineffective. It is just a matter of distorting ourselves by exaggerating one or more false selves.

And how can we consciously strive to discover and nurture our true self, when the striving is being done by a false self?

Or if we try to relax and let-go the true self; simply 'allowing' the true self to emerge from under the false ones; there is a likelihood that we will instead be releasing one or more of the false selves...

The problem is not insoluble, because it has been achieved by others (and perhaps even by our-selves, albeit infrequently and briefly); but Arkle makes clear that there is no method to it; and indeed part of solving the problem is to recognise why there is no method. We must 'quarry out' our real self from the false ones, by some kind of trial and error - discovering what works for us, here and now; but never able to make the process a standard one.

The answer can be summarised as 'intuition' - but that is just giving a name to the fact that there is no method. But the start of a solution is to define the problem - and after that to recognise when the true self is emerging and strengthening. And this can be done by learning to recognise the uniquely self-validating quality of the true self.

Once you know it is there, real and vital - we can feel the reality of the true self in an absolutely distinctive way - even though we cannot describe it.

 

Getting at your True Self

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One of the biggest problems nowadays is getting at your True Self; in a world which is characterised by innumerable schemes and devices for erecting and maintaining a False Self - underneath which the True one may be buried so deep as to be all-but cut-off from contact with the outside world; creating a situation when a person's responses and actions are (so far as can be seen) wholly dictated by superficial and artificial processes.

Yet we, each of us, absolutely need to get at our True Self, because it is that which is our indispensable guide in living.

How, then, to get at this True Self?

1. Know that it is there. Know that there is a True Self; and know also that there is a near 100 percent certainty that it will be almost inaccessible to you - and that you are currently operating on the basis of a False Self which has been elaborated through later childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

2. Know the general properties of this True Self. These are two-fold: it is your eternal and proto-divine essence; and it is God within you, which became joined with your personal essence when you were made as a Son or Daughter of God.

3. Be able to recognise your True Self - this is less quick, less easy; and involves experiencing the True Self as providing you with discernment of the heart - your deepest and realest judgement.  

4. Trial & Error, inspiration and intuition, reflection and the results; to discover your personal best methods of connecting with your True Self.

5. Practise the best methods so you can use them as and when required.

6. Use the True Self. It is the one essential - as well as the most powerful, flexible and reliable - 'tool for living' at your disposal. You certainly need it to get started in a spiritual life; at the minimum to identify for yourself the primary source of authority, wisdom, valid experience and example. And once you have located this primary source - matters become easier, faster, more secure.

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Why is a change of consciousness necessary for modern Christians?

Because too many people are operating from false selves - that are merely automatic processes built by our interactions. Only the true self is free.

The true self is free, and nothing else is free. It is unique, thus all free thought is unique - it is also a child of divinity so the true self is godlike and in relationship with deity and all other true selves among our siblings (men and women, also angels and demons).

If we are not thinking from our true selves, we are just responding robots - we are automatic and we are existentially isolated.

There is a chosen state of unfreedom that is the entombing of the true self within automatic responses, stimulations. Such a person is a true slave - such a person has enslaved himself to the environment. (True slavery is a mental choice - a physical slave may have complete freedom in thinking from his true self.)

Another state is to choose freedom but deny relation - to cut-off the divine relation with deity. This is a complete freedom without meaning - it is total isolation.

To accept unfreedom is either mental slavery or isolation.

(We are born free, but from our freedom choose unfreedom - this is usual, it happens sometime in childhood, adolescence, or as young adults. There is temptation, and mostly people choose to succumb. And they know it. They could escape - but pretend they cannot, that there is no escape -- or that there is nowhere to escape to...)

It is our task to live in freedom and in relation, live in thinking located in the true self. The enemies are confusion, hedonism, cowardice, dishonesty... pride. Freedom is a state of simplicity and clarity - unique and potentially universal. And there are no shortcuts to it, no standard methods, no single or safe path.

We must reach our unique freedom from our unique circumstances - this is a quest, an adventure, it is happening now.

Only from a condition of freedom can we be Christian.

There is nothing wrong with being an ego! (From William Arkle)

Edited from The Resolution of Grief, an essay published in The Great Gift (1977) by William Arkle:


Behind the ordinary ego, or within the ordinary ego, is the divine ego. So there's nothing wrong with being egotistic - in the proper sense of the word.

There is something wrong with being egotistic in a narrow sense of egotism, in which everything is built up around the importance of its own self centre. But as this egotism grows, as it should do in a healthy being, it naturally grows into its bigger self, and the bigger self naturally grows into the little self, and the two integrate.

This is what psychologists describe as integration. It is the integration of the true self with the personality self of the physical body situation, and the two learn to live together and integrate completely. Then the personality becomes a wonderful instrument through which the divine self can experience, and learn, and interpret its learning, and communicate with other beings through physical forms, and through physical means of expression.

In doing that, it learns a great deal, and helps others to learn a great deal, and it builds and builds and learns to express the divine potentialities that we've been talking about - the divine friendships and the endless possibilities which emanate from its true nature.


So there is nothing wrong with being an ego, which is another word for 'I' and 'Iness'. You never lose the sense of 'Iness'.

You might lose the sense of knowing who your 'I' is, who you are, because the narrow sense of the personality ego - the smaller ego - often gets a very complete but restricted image of who it is, and it spends the rest of its life conforming to that image of who it is.

But the divine ego, the spiritual ego, the true self, is able to be itself and, at the same time, know that it is in a state of becoming. It isn't very concerned to circumscribe itself, to give itself a definite image, because it knows that if it does, that it's going to limit its ability to respond in an ever new way to new possibilities.


So what happens in life, is that we gradually learn to integrate the smaller sense of ego with the deeper and greater sense of ego; and, without losing a sense of 'I', the 'I' begins to become equally concerned with the well-being of others as it is with its own well-being; equally concerned with the happiness and the beauty and the possibility of the others in creation, its brothers and sisters, as it is concerned with its own reality.

So what happens, in a successful life, is that the ego broadens-out and gets bigger in a proper loving, caring way; not bigger in a grasping way, which is centred on its own small and selfishly oriented appetites; more a growing, which is able to grasp the meaningfulness, and the value to itself, of the fulfilment of all other forms of life, and all other beings, and all its other brothers and sisters.

Then the ego just grows and grows to include the well-being of all other egos. But there's nothing wrong in the sense of ego awareness.


What we call 'egotism', on the whole, reflects an unhealthy attitude in which everything is drawn into the small-self for a small-self satisfaction, small-self fulfilment of the wrong order, not large-self fulfilment for the higher order. The small-self fulfilment is a lower order appetite such as appearing to be important in the eyes of other people, appearing to be clever, appearing to be valuable in some way which is superior to other people, trying to be 'one up' on other people and so forth.


Note added (by Charlton): Arkle here is an antidote to the prevalent error that Christianity is aimed-at the loss of self; rather than the true Christian aim of expansion of self. Another error is that the ego-less human may then achieve a union with God that is an assimilation; rather than the true aim of a loving relationship between God (the creator) and his divinised children - the Sons and Daughters of God.

We can't observe our think-ing - but should observe our thoughts

A mistake I have made is to try and (introspectively) observe my thinking. But this is not possible - at least not when the thinking is being done by the real or true self. 

The reason that it is impossible is that the real self has agency, free will: is a free agent. The thinking of the real self is the bottom-line. 

Being a free agent entails that the thinking happens creatively, generatively, originally - as an expression of the real self. Negatively put - the thinking of the real self is irreducible, un-analyzable, hence un-observable. 

 

If we consider a model of the real self, we could imagine something like an egg, from which thoughts are radiated in all directions. We can - and indeed should strive to - observe the thoughts as they emerge from the surface of the egg; but we cannot see inside the egg. 

Our consciousness is outside the egg, observing the outside of the egg, and the radiating thoughts arising at the egg's surface. 

It is as if the true-self egg was indestructible and its surface was impenetrable. What happens inside it can never be known - it is primarily creative. The egg creates by spontaneous generation, it creates thoughts from nothing. 

The egg is, indeed a mini-god! 

Yet the true self egg is sensitive. The egg can know directly what occurs in the medium of thinking, in the medium-between real selves (the medium in-which real selves exist), in the 'collective consciousness'. The egg senses - but its output of thoughts is not constrained by its input of thinking. 

 

A remarkable egg indeed! Each true-self-egg is, as I said, a god - capable of its own creating, albeit the creations will be ephemeral in this mortal world, which is ruled by entropy. But also capable (in principle) of becoming part of Heaven (where there is no entropy); and of participating with God in the work of eternal creation. 

Furthermore, any thinking of which we Are conscious is Not the thinking of the real self. It is merely superficial and secondary 'mental processing'. It is thinking that is not genuinely creative, but merely manipulative; taking inputs and deploying selection, combination, transformation of these inputs into outputs. 

Observable thinking is not divine but merely human. Observable thinking is materialistic; maybe thinking at an analogous level to computer processing.   

 

Anyway, this metaphor of the egg is meant to provide a way of thinking about thinking, and a way to graps how we should be conscious of our thoughts, but cannot be conscious of our thinking. 

Note: the real self is not actually solid, like an egg; but is a spiritual entity. However, I personally can't think about spiritual entities without things getting too abstract to be of any use; which is why I have fallen back on this indestructible, impenetrable egg.  

Self-improvements must now come from the True Self. Problems of attaining both goodness and higher consciousness

It used to be almost universal that becoming more-good, a better person, was a thing that was imposed from externally. 

Society imposed values in a mandatory and exclusive fashion; or maybe the individual's role was to choose (from available external options) what set-of-values he would impose on himself. 

And when (with the advent of "romanticism") the increasingly-alienated people of The West began to become concerned with attaining higher consciousness; the solution was presented in similar terms: as externally-defined methods or techniques that were practiced until habitual. 

But we cannot, anymore, impose goodness from outside; neither can we achieve a higher, more spiritual or romantic consciousness by learning techniques. 

Both goodness and higher consciousness need to be be discovered within - and their sources are different, albeit related. 

They are related because attaining higher consciousness requires that our selves simultaneously be aligned with divine creation: only from a basis of harmony with God's creative intent, can we "connect" with our True Selves within, and with The World all around us. 

All of which explains both the failure of all systematic attempts to raise human consciousness, and also the failures of Christian (and other) churches to attain their goals. 

There are, it turns out, serious problems with what used to be standard procedures for self-improvement. 

First that we are unwilling to leave-off from seeking external solutions. We want answers to come from public discourse, and be applicable generally. 

Another problem is that we are not spontaneously conscious of our True Selves; and are instead conscious of a variety of superficial and "false" selves that have been constructed by our net-evil society interacting with those of our values that are dissonant-with or opposed-to divine creation. 

In other words, our consciousness (that from-which we are aware) is not located inside the True Self, but needs to discover and become aware of it. 

Since we are creatures of mixed motivations, it is difficult for this state of awareness-of-True Self to be sustained - we are easily distracted by mundane considerations that seem to promise current gratifications, or seem more urgent. 

After all, during this mortal life almost-anything can seem in the here-and-now - and in a way it is! - more urgent than the meaning and direction of divine creation - including our death and resurrection.

Furthermore, the True Self cannot be discovered by the exercise of Will Power - if (as is usually the case) that Will is located in a an external-false self!

So, to escape the Normal Human Condition of alienated consciousness is alliance with the powers of this-worldly evil, turns out to be a completely new and different kind of problem than anything else we are ever likely to have heard-of or tried!

To genuinely improve ourselves is not just difficult (that has always been the case) but traditional-methods diligently pursued - indeed "methods" as such! - are at best useless, and may well make things even-worse. 

Which helps explain why genuine self-improvement (whether of goodness or higher consciousness) seems only rarely and temporarily to be achieved. 

How to make difficult, strategic life decisions

How should we make big life decisions? - Given that the usual two methods - logic or gut-feelings - are each inadequate, yet they cannot be combined.

The logical method is most commonly represented - at the extreme it involves something akin to stating a proposed course of action then making a list of pros and cons - and subtracting the disadvantages fro the advantages to see whether the outcome is net positive or negative. The inadequacy of this is apparent from considering how it might be employed to decide whether or not to marry someone.

Yet gut-feelings, in many ways the opposite of logic - and regarded as tending to compensate for the inadequacies of logic - are also inadequate. Their main inadequacy is that they are unstable - they vary from day to day, often from hour to hour - also, they are easily manipulated. And furthermore, gut-feelings tend to favour short-termist and selfish courses of action.

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Christians also have recourse to asking for divine revelation - and when this is clear and forthcoming it should be decisive. Yet it seems likely that there are many problems in life which we are meant (and I mean divinely meant - as part of the destiny of our particular lives) to struggle-with and work-out for ourselves. In such instances - for our own good - there will be no divine guidance forthcoming; and we will - for our own ultimate benefit - be thrown-back onto our own resources.

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My sense of it is that we need to sort-out several aspects of a situation, before we can make good decisions. In the first place we need to have an understanding that there is indeed such a things as a right decision to make - and that this rightness is defined in terms of spiritual aspects.

For instance; the right decision is not defined as the one that leads to optimal health or happiness, comfort or convenience, in the short term - but the one which is most likely to help in achievement of our eternal spiritual destiny (or necessary personal development); and this is difficult for us to evaluate given our limited and distorted perspective.

This implies that we need the right motivation - or at least to aspire to the right motivation - if we are to make the right decision.

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Having established this framework there are two main things to get right: The first is that it needs to be our true self which makes the decision; the second is that in asking for a decision, the true self must think in a way that is active - being both purposive and intuitive.

It must first be our true self that is doing the deciding - because only the true self is free, autonomous, an agent. Most people, most of the time, are working from false selves - habitual personalities that 'automatically' process information and make decisions on the basis of socialisation or training; and by being trammelled with external constraints, and learned or spontaneous compulsions.

Modern false selves are mostly materialistic - thereby ignoring or denying most of our experiences and thoughts - things known by instinct, inspiration, imagination, intuition etc. The non-materialistic 'subjective' modern selves tend to be distortions - sometimes inversions - of instincts; which we have been corrupted and propagandised into - or are the consequences of the artificiality of life.

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So we need to do the two things of thinking actively, consciously and universally (in a way which includes all aspects - not just the material) - and this thinking must be done freely by the true self (and not automatically by false selves).

Since not very many people can - at present - do this combination - then difficult, strategic life decisions will usually tend to be made badly.

And our important decisions will, therefore, usually have bad outcomes. Bad - because the decisions have been made by false selves using false reasoning...

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This analysis suggests that learning how to think properly is - or ought to be  - a major priority for modern people.

Yet, of course, real thinking is not just a means to an end - but an end in itself; and if we treat real thinking as merely a means to an end, then we will not be able to find the motivations needed to develop it.

We need to recognise, we need to be convinced that -  real thinking of the kind I describe above is something we ought to be doing for the highest, deepest, most necessary of reasons; that it is, in a phase, divinely-destined.

Which turns things around - because if real thinking is divinely destined and yet we do not do it nor do we strive to do it - then this failure is a defiance of our divine destiny: a very serious matter indeed...

This is why I feel strongly that real thinking - conscious, universal and purposive thinking by the true self - should be a major priority here and now, and for (almost) everybody.

Even sensation is imagined - there are no hard facts

In attempting to cure ourselves in ingrained habits of positivistic, nihilistic and despair-inducing modes of modern thinking; rather than trying to develop our imaginations and to acknowledge the reality of extra-sensory communications (as I suggested yesterday) - another different (but complementary) approach is to recognise that what we are accustomed to sense as as 'hard facts' of reality - that seem to force themselves upon us, such that we act as passive receivers, those thngs we feel ourselves to be 'sensing' rather than 'imagining' (the sky, this chair, my fingers)... these are as thoroughly 'imagined' as anything else. 

Which is not to say the the sky, my chair, this computer are unreal - but that they are imagined. Facts do not have a direct route into our brains thereby to make accurate representations of themselves - rather, everything we get 'directly' is in a primary sense of divine origin - given us or built-into us by revelation.

Vision, hearing, touch, taste, smeel and feeling are not the direct communication routes for reality; rather the direct route for communication runs between God the creator, and our inmost true self - by 'pathways' (or mechanisms) imperceptible, undetectable, un-measurable to physics and biology. 

It is not 'us and them', mind and facts - because us affects our sensory (as well as imaginative) grasp of them. Indeed (pushed to the limit) with no us, there would be no them - interpretation is more basic than facts, spirit is more basic than material.

Hard facts are neither hard nor facts - although there is a real reality.

The contrast between 'fundamental' sensations which force themselves upon us, and 'fabciful' imagination which we steer from our free agency, is a hierarchy which should be inverted - the most powerful evidence for which is that this has been inverted, by most humans, through most of history and even now in many places of the world.

Instead of perceiving 'reality' (like Western Man does) as a dead and meaningless world with a few temporary subjective and unreliable floating-islands of life and consciousness; the spontaneous and traditional human view is apparently the opposite - of an alive and purposive world, with 'objective' analysis merely an temporary, expedient, pragmatic tactic for attaining certain discrete goals - a means to an end.

In reality there are no facts - so that the contrast between the world of sensed objective facts and the world of imagined subjective ideas is a false dichotomy: these are one world.

This notion is a truth much emphasised in recent decades, partially and to create a falsehood. The project is sometimes termed de-literalisation: and the idea is that we should cease to regard things as true or false, but instead symbolically. This sustains the kind of self-refuting, yet universally destructive, relativism which is now mainstream.

But this relativism is a consequence of atheism, which takes a correct but partial analysis then removes the religious context - indeed, all ideas become nonsense when detached from any root in the divine.

(Most obviously in science - the whole endeavor of science becomes nothing but generic bureaucracy - careerism, as modern research mostly now is, when detached from a religious framework and the pursuit of transcendental truth.)

However, within the religious context of God the creator as our loving Father, then we can understand that imagination is primarily a way of understanding the workings of our deepest true self - which is divine (because we are children of God) albeit only embryonically, or nascently, divine.

In other words, much of our lives are 'automatic' - vegetative and animal processes, many of them simply functioning to perform routine tasks, or else arbitrarily implanted in us by culture and training. But that which makes us human is a deep, divine level of self-consciousness - and that is the core of our being, that is what looks out onto the world - and that is what apprehends reality by the faculty of imagination.

In sum, this is what we need to train in ourselves: this is what we need to make a habit -- that when we look-out-onto the world, we do not either lose-ourselves in a fluid undifferentiated reality (like that of childhood) that seems to 'drown' our self-awareness; or else a world in which our own  self-awareness is mocked and crushed by the rock-like objectivity of cumulative hard facts.

We should aim to retain self-awareness at all times - that is indeed the destined (divinely intended) future of human consciousness.

We should regard what used to be hard facts from our dominant and sustained centre of self-awareness - of consciousness.

So that we look-out-from our sense of self onto a world which contains many kinds of things - we will see, feel and know that all is secondary to that regarding consciousness; that there is nothing out there in the world which is not imagined.

BUT, that the self which does the regarding is not imagined. That conscious, regarding self is the 'given', the 'assumption' which makes possible all other knowledge. It is not infallible nor is it 100 percent correct - but its basic,potential validity is real and fundamental because the true self is partly divine, and it is in communication with the fully divine. 

Different objectives of Eastern and Western religions

In this excerpt from William Arkle's essay Reality (from The Great Gift, 1977) he discusses the difference between the Christian idea of an eternal life that retains our ultimate self-hood; and the 'Eastern' objective of annihilating the self (which is seen as an illusion).

This corresponds to the Christian idea of God as 'outside'/ separate from/ not-identical-with his creation; as contrasted with the Eastern idea of God and creation being an ultimate unity and including ourselves.

Arkle argues that our loving God probably allows people to attain to the Eastern state ('Nirvana') if that is what they genuinely yearn for. But, he regards God as wanting us to become gods - deified selves; and having created reality with that aim.


Within your universe of values you have to discover and find for yourself this more essential and more valuable level, and to learn to separate it out from the less essential and less valuable level, which is your outer personality self fulfilling its needs. The inner, spiritual, essential self is working to fulfil its higher needs, but often it is being prevented from doing that by the activity of the outer personality self, which is grabbing all the attention in order to fulfil its own level of needs. Maslow spoke very clearly about this situation, so if you’ve had the chance to read Maslow’s books you will know exactly what I am talking about.

Now that is your reality; you can’t get out of that, unless perhaps it’s possible to destroy your own ego. I think what some Eastern religions, some forms of Buddhism, do is to take away the separate stance of the ego, which is one of the gifts which the Creator has given to us, and it unifies its own reality with the greater reality, not in the form of becoming a friend of that reality, but in terms of neutralising its own ability to be separate.

This attitude combines its attention and energies with the attention and energies of the bigger system of creation, which we could call the system of the Supreme Being, and, in this way, it seems to destroy its own separate existence and become a part of the Creator’s existence, but I don’t believe this is what the Creator wishes of us, or wishes for us, and if you believe in a system rather than a Creator, I don’t believe it’s the best way of making use of the system.

In the deeply religious sense, I believe that the Creator stands outside the system, and we can have an understanding of his Being in that way. We can make friends with him in that way if our own reality remains a strong and separate reality while we are becoming aware of the nature of that Being we call Creator.

I think it’s also possible to become a part of the energies which are the most ethereal level of creation, and this would be a sensation of continuing bliss, if you like. One would then bask in the rays of the Creator’s creative intention, just like a physical person would enjoy standing under a warm shower, and one could lose one’s reality in that way, in the enjoyment of standing under that warm shower and enjoying its warmth and its activity, and letting go of every other form of reality, every other form of responsibility, every other form of identification.

In that way, one returns to the womb of one’s being, but I don’t think one has actualised or accomplished the purpose of the potentiality which has been given to our being. But on a smaller scale, we have to deal with the overcoming of the outpost of the substitute personality ego if we want to become established in our proper essential higher reality; which is to say, our own essential divine being.

In order to achieve the awareness and the ability to be with our true self, to be according to our true self, to respond with the nature of our true self, we have to learn to eliminate the activity of the outer self, which has taken over the activity of living from our bigger, whole self. But this is a difficult thing to do, and everyone who is trying to do it will tell you the same thing – that it is a difficult thing to do.

How long it will take is not in anybody’s ability to say, because everybody does it in a different way, and takes a different time to do it.


Excerpted from the essay 'Reality', from The Great Gift, 1977.

Freedom is good - but freedom can only be Christian (pretty much...)

Real freedom is something that happens - or more often doesn't happen - in thinking; and only in thinking. (What we do is constrained - but how we think may be free.)

Of course, much, most and in some people all thinking is automatic; merely trained or habitual - or a product not of thinking but instead of some causal factor, whether internal or external.

Free thinking is self-caused - and if your metaphysical understanding does not allow for self-causation, then you cannot be free (or, you cannot acknowledge and will deny your own freedom).

Freedom is that thinking which comes from the true self - and the true self is able to be free because it is divine - at least partly.

We are divine because we are children of God - and not fully divine because we are only very immature children of God. It follows that we are not always free - and some people are, apparently, not-at-all free - not least because they deny their freedom (as above).

(Self-caused thinking is a property of the divine; and for an individual person to be free entails that that individual person is individually divine.)

Self-acknowledged freedom is, therefore, pretty much restricted to Christians - and among Christians only to those who really believe that: 1. we are really Children of God; 2. with something of divinity in us (even in mortal earthly life); and 3. (sometimes, potentially) autonomous agents, capable of originating new, uncaused thoughts from an uncorrupted (albeit embryonic) true self.

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Note added in explanation: By 'restricted to Christians' I mean that Eastern philosophies tend to regard external reality and the self as illusions - as does scientism/ positivism/ materialism; and the pure monotheisms tend to regard the autonomous self as essentially operating in defiance of God - and indeed quite a few Christians have also seemed to adopt this assumption in practice, if not in theory. Only a (relatively) few Christians seem to give free will/ agency/ the autonomous and primarily creative self the full value (both in theory and in practice) which is in line with the fundamental requirements of Gospel teaching.

God is 'polarity': From inspiration to intuition

It may be helpful to consider God (the creator, the creat-ing) as, from our perspective, a polarity.

We know God directly and personally in two ways - from outside and from inside: that is, we know God from inspiration (e.g. of the Holy Ghost), and from intuition of the divine within each Man.

The idea of polarity is that both external and internal divine elements are always necessarily present, because we are dealing with an active 'process', ongoing through time; and the polarities are twin poles of that process, generated-by that process.

So God (the divine) is not a structural, separable thing (which would be static, dead, unmoving), but God is a person - and as a person God extends through time.

And we are involved-with God by our inheritance as children of God: we each are, in essence, divine - so we too are (abstractly) processes through time.


We have the divine within each of us (the True Self) and God is also outside of us (as persons, in God and in Men). So there is a kind-of Divine Web - of individuals divine selves in relation with all other divine selves.

In other words, fundamentally, reality is beings in relationships.

As Man has developed to become more conscious, he begins at one pole by being 'inspired' primarily by external sources of divinity; and as Man grows in consciousness he is supposed-to move, voluntarily and by choice, to the other pole of living primarily from personal intuition of his True Self.

This is also a movement from passivity to activity; from being-controlled to being free. 


So, the completeness of divinity is always when external divinity meets with inner divinity; but in a child or in early Man the external source of divinity was primary; and each man was unconsciously, passively driven-by the external. In such a situation, obedience to the authority of external divinity was the primary virtue; and the primary sin was to rebel against divinity.

As Man's consciousness grows (partly by development in his mortal life, partly at a species level and through human history) he becomes more aware of the distinction between himself and external deity. At a certain point (the culmination of spiritual adolescence), he experiences the reality of separation between external deity and the True Self.

At this point, experience of the polarity of deity is lost; because the experience is a static 'moment' of awareness, insight, 'enlightenment' - an epiphany - the truth of which is true in an abstract cross-sectional way (at a particular moment, 'outisde' of time); but the experience of separation from divinity is untrue in terms of life really being longitudinal, experienced through time.

The reality is that the dynamic process of polarity is always the case - and each man is always a meeting between external and internal divinity; but a snap-shot experience of a dynamic process is a 'frozen moment', in which the dynamic and reciprocal relationship is lost.


Man's divine destiny is to move from the child-like, un-free pole of external and passive immersion-in deity, to the free-agent, grown-up pole of working primarily from our own inner divine True Self. But because these are poles, both sides are always actually present.

So, the divine world begins as dominated by God, with Men as little-conscious (and other even less conscious beings), unconsciously and spontaneously (almost wholly, albeit never quite fully so - because this is a polarity) doing what God directs; and through time moving towards a situation in which some Men are much more powerfully conscious, and have chosen to live in mostly from their own inner divinity.

Instead of being unconsciously and passively directed-by God; such men have consciously and actively chosen to work from their independent agency and with God.

And this is the evolutionary movement from inspiration (primarily, not entirely, external divine guidance) to intuition (primarily, not entirely, inner divine guidance).


When we consciously choose to live primarily from the polarity of our True (and divine) self and with God, this is to become our-selves divine (albeit in a much less-continuous and less-able way than the creator). We become active participants in the process of creation.

And at a personal level, we become something more like God's grown-up 'adult' children; and friends (or 'junior colleagues') of God in his work of creation.


This is the plan of creation. God loves all his children - both the young one, the grown-up ones, and the (many) adolescents somewhere in between. But God certainly wants and hopes to have other 'adult' divinities with whom to relate in a loving and comnpanionable fashion; because grown-up divinities are working mainly from their unique selves.

When at least some of God's children choose to grow-up and join with God in the work of loving creation; divine creation becomes an harmonious interaction of increasing complexity and richness, as compared with the original and lesser situation of unitary, top-down control.


In sum, God wants us to participate, actively and consciously, in the process of creation.

And to do this we need to become more conscious, and by this consciousness to choose to live primarily from our inner divinity.

Yet, because of polarity, because inspiration and intuition are poles of the same single process; this inner motivation is necessarily harmonised with all other external sources of divinity.

Thus the universe of creation coheres.

 

How is our will related to our purpose? (William Arkle)

The consciousness of our real self is largely beyond the understanding of our more familiar 'personality self'. 

At its most fundamental level, the real will is divine; and at this level the purpose of the real will mixes perfectly with the purposes of other divine beings. 

The real will is the manifesting of this already-harmonised divine purpose throughout the lower levels of creation, and eventually right down to the physical level. 

Thus our real self witnesses itself as it becomes more fully mature and at the same time helps to perfect the purposes of others. The real self has this power in it as a part of our divine heritage. 

All nature responds to the proper command of the real will of the real self. But the will does not command 'willfully' - it achieves command by being more fully what it is. Thus the 'sound' of the quality of its individual being mingles more loudly with the creative sound of God. 

What we usually call 'will' is actually more like 'desire power' and 'idea power', through which our lower self focuses on things it feels it wants or needs. 

But what we feel as a need in the deepest sense is not something we can 'make a decision about', we just pretend that it is a decision. Our real will has already-decided, and is something we can only be either true-to, or untrue-to: the real will is not something we are in a position to use.

Edited - for clarity, punctuation, emphasis and language - from the Summary of chapter sixteen - The Will; from A Geography of Consciousness, by William Arkle, 1974.

Notes:

1. The true individual nature of each person is divine - that is, it belongs to the nature and function of the absolute - as a consequence of all men and women being God's children.

2. Therefore, we are, each of us, directly in touch with the power and purpose of the absolute, with the divine nature - at least potentially; simply because some of the divine nature is within us.

3. However, although the divine is active within us; we are initially (personally and culturally - in childhood and in early tribal societies) unconscious of the divine within ourselves. It affects us - but we are not aware of the fact.

4. As human consciousness evolves towards higher (ie. including more self-aware) levels - we get to a 'dead centre' of total self-consciousness cut off fro awareness of the divine. This state has been called the 'dead centre' of consciousness, or the consciousness soul - it is the adolescence of human personal and cultural evolution - a necessary transition phase. This position must be moved-through before we can become actively aware of the divine within us; that is the actual experience of the divine within us (not merely the abstract fact of their being a divine element in us). 

5. But, even before we are actively aware of the divine within-us; it may be at work in an unconscious way - expressing itself (or at least trying to express itself) as may be evident implicitly. For example, our behaviours may be shaped against our conscious will - our superficial and intellectually- or socially-moulded plans and schemes may be self-sabotaged; or synchronicities may channel us in certain directions.

6. The real self - that is, the divine self, is attuned-with the divine level of action. Each person is, in this way, an essential part of the divine plan of creation. However, to participate; he or she must freely opt-in to this plan, on the basis of love and awareness of the divine plan (made possible by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ).

7. At the highest and deepest level our Life is a destiny - and indeed an unique destiny - yet that destiny is a gift, and as-such it may be declined.

8. At the deepest and highest level the true 'will'  of our true self is not chosen by us - because only at this divine level - in which the wills of many beings are harmonised.

9. Thus, because of this high-level harmonisation; the will of any one individual cannot 'sabotage' the divine plan of creation by any act or will at a lower level of consciousness. Each individual can either join in the work of creation, bringing his or her unique nature to the open-ended task; or he or she may decline to participate - leaving a gap in the original divine plan, and causing a change in the unfolding of creation.

10. The divine plan cannot be sabotaged in its character and aim (the specific plan is optional, non-mandatory, freely chosen); but it can be changed in its specifics (the plan is not a blueprint but evolutionary, pluralist, endlessly creative).  

The polarity of self and persona - an ultimate reality

If we use the nomenclature of 'self' to express our true, innermost and embryonically-divine nature, and 'persona' to describe the public, interactive aspect - the 'personality' which is a consequence of experience; then we can see that while they need to be distinguished, the two are bound together as a polarity.

We start-out as the self, interacting with nature (the environment, everything that is not-the-self) and participating in it. At this stage life is real and involving because our selves are interacting with it and we know, therefore, moment to moment; that everything 'out-there' is known only by the interaction with the self 'in here'.

But at this stage, 'nature' overwhelms us and drives us, because pretty much all of the self is used in this interaction. We do not feel separate from the environment (or hardly so) but the cost is that we are unfree - because we cannot separate our self, the self is swept-along by the environment.

(The environment is experienced as real, alive, conscious - but the self is unnoticed and has no distinctive role: life is lived, the self does not live life.)

So, the self develops the persona - the public mask - which serves the useful purpose of interacting with the environment using automatic algorithms. The persona is like a protective robot which does the routine work of dealing with nature (including other people) - and the robot leans from experience how to do this.

(In each life, a human moves - to some extent - from the naked self dealing with the environment in the un-self-consciousness of early childhood, absorbed in the mother and family, home and community; to the later childhood and adolescent experience of becoming self-conscious - when the self is experienced as distinct from, potentially set-against, the environment (both social and physical).

The self benefits from the persona (at least initially, potentially) by having the persona do much of the routine work, and thus the self becomes increasingly aware of itself, and aware that it is separate from the environment - because now the persona is interposed. The self has autonomy, time and energies to devote to contemplating its self, its condition and situation, and to considering strategy beyond the moment to moment interactions with nature. Philosophy becomes possible.


As the environment becomes more complex and demanding (for example with increasing complexity of society) so the self diminishes in significance, and the persona increases in importance; until the persona is doing almost everything, using the 'automatic' (robotic) processes it has evolved. The self begins to lose contact with reality, because it no longer deals with nature; the self - that was master - becomes a helpless prisoner of its slave, the persona  - the robot takes-over and imprisons the divine self.

(Initially the self was like an ideal manager who deals with strategy; while the persona was like the front-like workforce who mostly implement standard protocols to deal with the outside world. The manager knows about the outside world via the workforce and has a strong sense of the identity of the whole organization. But later the front-line workers imprison the manager and there is then no strategy at all, nobody has any knowledge of the overall situation of the organization in term of its own goals or the organizations situation in the environment: there is just the workforce, who are unconscious of everything except the immediate business of implementing predetermined protocols.)

So the persona is now doing pretty-much all the work and the self is no longer aware of 'nature' nor is the self directing the persona strategically; but is living in enforced idleness and impotence, having no direct contact with outer reality. Since we as individuals live ultimately in the self as the default to which we revert when not actively engaged with the outer world; insofar as we are aware at all, we experience our state (i.e. the state of the self) as alienation, impotence, meaninglessness, frustration - and indeed begin to doubt first our significance and then our reality.

Thus nihilism; when our self begins to doubt first its own reality (materialism, positivism), then - by a natural inference - doubt the reality of everything else (solipsism).

However, the relationship between self and persona is one of polarity; they cannot really be divided. The self can be overwhelmingly dominant, or the persona can be - as in modern culture; but they are both part of the same phenomenon (there must be an inner core and there must also be a periphery where this inner core interacts with what surrounds it - although the relative size of core and periphery may vary widely) and the reality is that the persona is generated continually by the self, and vice versa.


There are three possible futures:

1. We might stay as we are (and have been for more than two centuries in The West): We have a self that is unaware not just of the outer world but of its own reality - and therefore utterly unaware of the work of the persona: a self that simply takes for granted the persona, and since it lacks contact with environment it is unconscious of that too. So there is just a demoralized and self-despizing isolated self, for whom 'reality' is the product of the persona - and the self is alternately overwhelmed by this reality and doubting of its own reality; or doubts outer-reality and supposes that everything is a product of the self: the state of solipsism.

2. We might go back to the earlier stage of the self interacting directly with the outer world (unprotected by the persona), and unconscious of itself - the persona shrinking back to its earlier minimal state. This could probably only happen if the environment was greatly reduced in complexity (including size). This move to extinguish self-consciousness also amounts to a kind of death wish by which consciousness wills its own extinction.


3. We might go forward to a state of greater consciousness. The Self becomes aware of the persona, aware of the reality of the persona (and therefore of the outer environment with which the persona deals), and aware of the work-methods of the persona - aware that is, of the standard protocols of the persona in dealing with nature.

 This is metaphysics as an active process; it is awareness of our fundamental assumptions. Stage 3 is, indeed, primarily about increased awareness - new awareness of that which we previous took for granted hence were constrained by. It is therefore awareness that makes us ultimately free.

(It is as if we are currently sleepwalking, and have indeed been sleepwalking through all history - either unconsciously dominated by or unknowingly cut-off-from the outer environment. The evolution of consciousness is about increasing that of which we are aware, of bringing it to consciousness: a matter of waking-up!)

The self again becomes real - remains free and autonomous, because it retains the benefits of being protected by the persona. But the persona is no longer taken for granted nor assumed to be giving a complete and unbiased picture of the outer environment - rather, the persona is brought to awareness in its reality and qualities.

We will know that the outer environment is real, and we will also know that we are inextricably and necessarily involved in that outer environment - because everything we know about it comes from interaction. The division between inner and outer is therefore erased, and replaced by awareness of the distinction (but not division) between the self and the persona.


So, with the polarity of self and persona we reach an ultimate reality - beyond which we cannot go, because it makes no sense to try and do so. The polarity of self and persona is the conscious recognition and awareness that the two are different but make up a single process operating through time - indeed, operating eternally.

It is meditation on, contemplation of, the polarity between self and persona that holds the key to moving onto Stage 3.

**
(Beyond an ultimate reality of the polarity of self and persona, lies the ultimate polarity of God and Man - but that is already dealt with by Christian faith; within which the above schema should be embedded.)

Can fundamental assumptions *really* be chosen?

There is a school of though that says our fundamental assumptions cannot consciously be chosen - or, more accurately, that if they are thus chosen then they will be feeble. The idea is that only those fundamental beliefs which we have without choice are genuinely motivating. 

Robert Frost indignantly denounced college teaching that 'frisks Freshmen of their principles'. At Bread Loaf in 1925 he declared that a boy with all his beliefs drawn out of him is in no condition to learn. Or even to live. Everybody needs some beliefs as unquestionable as the axioms of geometry*. No postulates deliberately adopted could ever have the force. We had to have unarguable, undemonstrable, unmistakeable axioms, just three or four. And if we didn't abuse our minds we should surely have them. One such is genuineness is better than pretense. Another is that meanness is intolerable in oneself. And another is that death is better than being untrustworthy. 

From A Swinger of Birches: a portrait of Robert Frost, by Sidney Cox (1957)  

There is something valid in this argument, that requires response, because our fundamental assumptions are not arbitrary. 

We surely cannot just stick a pin in a list and choose anything that comes-up as our baseline beliefs, and then expect to be motivated strongly enough to resist being derailed by the many temptations of life and infirmities of our own nature. 

On the other hand, it seems obvious that - on the one hand - peoples fundamental assumptions are being inculcated-into-them by deliberate and socio-political propaganda, in ways that harm the people. So, if we just accept our assumptions as something 'given', we are in fact merely blinding ourselves to our own exploitative psychological enslavement.  

Furthermore; modern motivations are actually very feeble, by comparison with the past; as can be seen by the collapse of personal courage and individuality of character - which has been very obvious and evident over recent decades. The docility, homogeneity, and automatic-obedience of Western Man is now astonishing to behold; when compared with the middle twentieth century. 

So, it seems that there is no valuable alternative but to become aware of our own deepest values, assumptions, metaphysical beliefs; and to evaluate them; and then to choose between possibilities. 

It is this choosing upon which all depends: because what we choose must not only be something we regard as right, true, correct; but it must also be something that provides us with a strong motivation - such that we can avoid being deflected off-course by the first problem, the first contrary expediency, we encounter... 

So that we may have the courage of our convictions... Because - without courage, convictions are worthless.  

People often talk as if 'will power', determination is the answer; but the strength of will-power itself derives from fundamental convictions. It is our assumptions that provide the power of will. So our will cannot overcome feeble and false assumptions. Again we are returned to the need to choose assumptions; but to choose the right assumptions. 

Choosing our assumptions is (and should be) more like a quest, or a path of discovery; than it is like an arbitrary coin-flip. 

It is a matter of finding our most fundamental values. We each need to find-out what things we most value, deep down, through time. 

These profound values may be very different from, may indeed oppose or contradict, the values we have expressed, or implemented in previous living. Our fundamental values may be a kind of secret knowing: and, at first, secret even from our conscious-selves.

It may also be the case that these fundamental values turn out to be inconsistent among themselves, that they clash - and therefore tend to cancel-out: this may be another cause of feeble motivation and cowardice of conviction.   

So the choosing of deep assumptions is also, potentially, a choosing-between. 

What is the it that does the exploring, questing, discovering, choosing? That's another matter - I am talking about the real self or true self - which is also the divine self. 

Only when it is the divine self who is doing the choosing can we expect a Good outcome. 

If, instead, the above process was merely done by our 'personality self', that 'self' constructed by societal inculcation, a mere selfish-self, and pleasure-seeking self, or any other kind of evil-motivated self... Then clearly the end result is going to be bad (i.e. bad in a Christian sense). 

It would then merely be a choice made by that which is propagandized, passive, controlled... Thus no real 'choice' at all... 

Therefore, as always, there are (at least) two changes that must be made, two processes that must simultaneously be implemented. 

...This is nearly always true. When only one obstacle is before us, when only one kind of change is needed for our betterment; it will usually be overcome sooner or later, spontaneously, without need for profound change.

What separates us from awakening, from betterment, from initiation of a positive transformative process; is the requirement for (at least) two simultaneous efforts: in this case 1. the need to find and work-with our real/ divine self, in 2. the project searching-for and choosing our fundamental assumptions.  

In conclusion: Yes! fundamental assumptions really can be known, evaluated, and chosen; but for this to be valuable and effective entails that we discover something about our deepest values, and also that this 'discovery' is accomplished by that which is divine within us. 

 

*Note. The fact that there is more-than-one axiomatic system of geometry, more than one set of postulates - and that the best choice between axioms depends on the function to which the geometry is being-put - undercuts Frosts analogy in an ultimate sense; although it still retains rhetorical validity. 

How to respond to the mass media, and the rest of modern life by reflective self-monitoring (discernment of the heart)

Following on from:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/avoiding-mass-media-is-not-enough-we.html

The problem as stated is that we live in a world dominated by an evil conspiracy aiming at the corruption (ultimately, self-damnation) of Mankind.

This is being implemented by multiple mechanisms in public discourse - in essence, on average - the net effect of public discourse is spiritually corrupting.

Given this minute-by-minute onslaught by so many routes and in so many ways - how can we react?

The first step is to develop the self - to establish a better metaphysical framework of assumptions, and develop the habit of working from the true self rather than from one of the multiple false selves we habitually identify-with.

Then we need to inculcate a habit of reflective self-monitoring - because this will tell us what we need to know about 'what is really going on' so that we can maintain our values and avoid-corruption and pursue virtue, truth and beauty.

In essence, the response of our true selves is the guide to what to do. We (simply) need to read-off from our own true-self responses, what we need to do.

The necessary process is therefore introspective and intuitive - it relies on the fact that we have a divine (hence valid) inner guidance system - the difficulty is therefore not one caused by the impossibly vast volume and complexity of corrupting stimuli - but the problem is the much simpler one of failing to read, feel and respond to this guidance system.

This divine inner guidance system is traditionally termed 'the heart' - and the matter of living in accordance with it is sometimes termed 'discernment of the heart'.

The discernment of the heart (if developed) is of immense power - and is always adequate to any situation over a reasonable timescale - however it may be overwhelmed and misled in the immediate short term, plus of course we often fail to live by it (being imperfect and partly-wicked people).

So behind the discernment of the heart we have a fail-safe back-up, which is called repentance. This means that when we err, we merely need to acknowledge what we ought to have done; and the spiritual system is re-set. Any corruption we have accumulated due to error, is instantaneously and permanently deleted by the act of repentance (and the consequent divine forgiveness - the work of Jesus Christ).

If these mechanisms can be located, developed, strengthened - then we are safe from corruption - no matter what is thrown at us by the global conspiracy of purposive evil.  

Synchronicity and providence: The Will versus Will Power - ideas of William Arkle

*
William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness (1974) is so densely written that it is extremely difficult to understand - so it was only yesterday that I grasped the meaning of Chapter Sixteen The Will - and recognised that (without mentioning the term) it provided an explanation for a phenomenon which so interests me: Synchronicity.

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

*

My previous understanding was very general and external - that synchronicity was an indirect form of evidence for the reality of a personal God since it implied that 'the universe' was being 'arranged' such that I experienced certain events of special significance.

*

Arkle's explanation is related to a contrast between The Will versus Will Power.

Will Power is taken in its usual secular and common sense definition, and interpreted as the use of normal psychological disciplines to attain a particular goal.

Will power is a matter of 'getting what we want or believe we need'; it is a matter of strategically using our mind, understanding, predictive ability, force and manipulations to attain an objective.

Will Power may or may not achieve what it sets out to achieve - but it is essentially an attempt to impose ourselves upon the world; and therefore extremely prone to be evil in motivation and effect.

*

The Will is something altogether different in its nature and operation. It is our true, higher, individual Self; that contains an element of, and is in communication with, God.

Therefore The Will is a source of the power strength, and purpose of God as this specifically applies to our (real) selves.

The Will is therefore necessarily good, and (being divine) this good is harmonised with the good of all other things.

We have no conscious power to influence The Will by a strategic decision - any more than we could change God's will; we can only recognise The Will, and choose either to accept or to reject it.

*

Mostly we choose to ignore or reject The Will, and instead attempt to impose our false selves upon the world by Will Power.

And mostly this is un-successful - and this failure is both necessary and fortunate as the results of success would be disastrous to ourselves and to others (including the whole environment).

When (as is usual) the Will Power goes against The Will; The Will 'sabotages' our plans, by all kinds of means including psychological sabotage, but not confined to that - since The Will is divine it has power to influence other things in the environment - leading to what may be termed 'bad luck' but is actually a necessary failure to get what we want, because what we want is opposed to what God wants, and therefore creation is 'weighted against us'.

*

But a person who knows, accepts and lives by The Will (in however brief and incomplete a fashion) finds the opposite - he finds that not only his own mind (mental powers) but also 'things in general' cooperate in ways that are good.

This includes genuine synchronicity - which is a consequence of harmony between ourselves and our environment working towards the good, caused by The Will spontaneously (over time) reproducing in our surroundings 'a drama which represents the significance of our being': i.e. synchronicity, or 'meaningful coincidence' (as we interpret it).

*

By this account synchronicity is mostly an operation of God-within-us, rather than a situation created by God's power external to us. It is evidence of a truly vast and intrinsically good power - a divine power of subtle harmonisation that we may recognise (or reject); but which it is impossible for us to control, exploit or 'use' to achieve our personal desires.

This also explains divine providence, that sense of God's Will working in the world (but only with our chosen cooperation) can make situations that seem like a near-incredible 'good fortune' by a sequence of apparent 'luck'.

*

This may be the explanation for Great Men (in religion, theology, politics, arts, sciences etc.) who are (who 'happen to be') in the right place at the right time, and whose (small) decisions and acts are amplified (by invisible processes) to have vast consequences.

Arkle's example is Winston Churchill; whose personal qualities in the role of Prime Minister during the Battle of Britain were a consequence of extraordinary sequences of 'luck' - with world historical consequences.

"If you are a Churchill, you make a few small noises into a microphone, and you set forces in motion in people's natures which make all the difference..."

The lesson is that if we want real power in life, like Churchill, or the Greats in other domains of life; then this can be had only by renouncing Will Power, and embracing The Will.

*

We tend to suppose that the 'main problem' of life is 'amplifying our voices' - using force, cunning, chance to make the world take notice of what we think is important; but this is the false self at work deploying Will Power.

When the true self, The Will, is at work comes a recognition that our proper main problem, something that only we can do, is to recognise and nurture our true self, our highest consciousness which contains and harmonises with the divine.

And insofar as this achieved (and whether we know this is happening or not, and whether we are personally credited with it or not) the goodness of a true self in higher consciousness will quite easily and quite naturally be 'amplified' and propagated by innumerable instances of 'luck', sequences of meaningful coincidences: synchronicities.
*

What should we Do, Now? Some considerations:

The Will versus Will-Power

*
William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness (1974) is so densely written that it is extremely difficult to understand - so it was only yesterday that I grasped the meaning of Chapter Sixteen The Will - and recognised that (without mentioning the term) it provided an explanation for a phenomenon which so interests me: Synchronicity.

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

*

My previous understanding was very general and external - that synchronicity was an indirect form of evidence for the reality of a personal God since it implied that 'the universe' was being 'arranged' such that I experienced certain events of special significance.

*

Arkle's explanation is related to a contrast between The Will versus Will Power.

Will Power is taken in its usual secular and common sense definition, and interpreted as the use of normal psychological disciplines to attain a particular goal.

Will power is a matter of 'getting what we want or believe we need'; it is a matter of strategically using our mind, understanding, predictive ability, force and manipulations to attain an objective.

Will Power may or may not achieve what it sets out to achieve - but it is essentially an attempt to impose ourselves upon the world; and therefore extremely prone to be evil in motivation and effect.

*

The Will is something altogether different in its nature and operation. It is our true, higher, individual Self; that contains an element of, and is in communication with, God.

Therefore The Will is a source of the power strength, and purpose of God as this specifically applies to our (real) selves.

The Will is therefore necessarily good, and (being divine) this good is harmonised with the good of all other things.

We have no conscious power to influence The Will by a strategic decision - any more than we could change God's will; we can only recognise The Will, and choose either to accept or to reject it.

*

Mostly we choose to ignore or reject The Will, and instead attempt to impose our false selves upon the world by Will Power.

And mostly this is un-successful - and this failure is both necessary and fortunate as the results of success would be disastrous to ourselves and to others (including the whole environment).

When (as is usual) the Will Power goes against The Will; The Will 'sabotages' our plans, by all kinds of means including psychological sabotage, but not confined to that - since The Will is divine it has power to influence other things in the environment - leading to what may be termed 'bad luck' but is actually a necessary failure to get what we want, because what we want is opposed to what God wants, and therefore creation is 'weighted against us'.

*

But a person who knows, accepts and lives by The Will (in however brief and incomplete a fashion) finds the opposite - he finds that not only his own mind (mental powers) but also 'things in general' cooperate in ways that are good.

This includes genuine synchronicity - which is a consequence of harmony between ourselves and our environment working towards the good, caused by The Will spontaneously (over time) reproducing in our surroundings 'a drama which represents the significance of our being': i.e. synchronicity, or 'meaningful coincidence' (as we interpret it).

*

By this account synchronicity is mostly an operation of God-within-us, rather than a situation created by God's power external to us. It is evidence of a truly vast and intrinsically good power - a divine power of subtle harmonisation that we may recognise (or reject); but which it is impossible for us to control, exploit or 'use' to achieve our personal desires.

This also explains divine providence, that sense of God's Will working in the world (but only with our chosen cooperation) can make situations that seem like a near-incredible 'good fortune' by a sequence of apparent 'luck'.

*

This may be the explanation for Great Men (in religion, theology, politics, arts, sciences etc.) who are (who 'happen to be') in the right place at the right time, and whose (small) decisions and acts are amplified (by invisible processes) to have vast consequences.

Arkle's example is Winston Churchill; whose personal qualities in the role of Prime Minister during the Battle of Britain were a consequence of extraordinary sequences of 'luck' - with world historical consequences.

"If you are a Churchill, you make a few small noises into a microphone, and you set forces in motion in people's natures which make all the difference..."

The lesson is that if we want real power in life, like Churchill, or the Greats in other domains of life; then this can be had only by renouncing Will Power, and embracing The Will.

*

We tend to suppose that the 'main problem' of life is 'amplifying our voices' - using force, cunning, chance to make the world take notice of what we think is important; but this is the false self at work deploying Will Power.

When the true self, The Will, is at work comes a recognition that our proper main problem, something that only we can do, is to recognise and nurture our true self, our highest consciousness which contains and harmonises with the divine.

And insofar as this achieved (and whether we know this is happening or not, and whether we are personally credited with it or not) the goodness of a true self in higher consciousness will quite easily and quite naturally be 'amplified' and propagated by innumerable instances of 'luck', sequences of meaningful coincidences: synchronicities.

Repost from 2014: http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/william-arkle.html

In what way does God value Love? What kind of Love does he want from us? From William Arkle

It is essential to stop teaching morality in terms which can be mistaken for the philosophy of external and obvious valuation; of valuation which concedes that behaviour must be good if it is not ‘found-out’ to be bad. Rather must it be said that unless the inner aspect of one's attitude is healthy, the result of any behaviour will be psychological unrest and discontent.

One may succeed in the world and gain the adoration of many people, but if this is to fail to remain true to innermost nature it will mean failure in our own judgement of ourself and in the relating of our many parts to our whole nature. Since this is the root cause of unhappiness it is also where real success and failure lies and where one reaps and enjoys the real treasures of existence.

The essence of real religious and moral aspiration is not between ourselves and God but between ourselves and our Self. At the same time the monitoring activity of God and his many divine assistants is necessary, but not as a substitute for Self-confrontation, but rather to ensure that this condition comes about.

Aspirations towards God are therefore of the utmost value, not as a means of becoming a slave or servant of God, but in order that they can be directed towards the true goal which is the valuation of our True Self.

As we direct the love our children have for us in such a way that it enlarges their own nature and not in order to make them more devoted and servile, so our divine parents divert our love in such a way that it reflects back into our own essential nature again.

Love is therefore valued by God, not as something he wishes to possess, but as a positive expression of our highest attitude which he can receive in the spirit in which it is offered and then use for his creative work. This is the bringing of our individual nature to a condition of divine Self-consciousness.
Extracted from the close of the Chapter 'Education' in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (1974)

**

This is a passage which is easy to misunderstand but which I have found to be important. Arkle is clarifying the kind of God wants for us by examining the kind of love we want (or ought to want) from our growing-up children.

In other words, God wants us to give our love from our deep and true self, by an act of agency - and not from the kind of servile devotion that is implicitly based more upon terror than adoration. Arkle is saying that we ought not to fear God (any more than an adult Man ought to fear his father) - but to trust in God's love. 

Of course, a lot of our lives are spent growing-up - but it is important to know what is being aimed-at in full adulthood - not least so that we don't get into bad habits or have false structuring beliefs and expectations. 

Arkle here, as elsewhere, is suspicious of the traditional Christian emphasis on 'worship' as the defining quality of Man's relationship to God. While it is right and proper for a young boy to worship his father - this is not a suitable basis for a grown-up child's relationship with his father.

Arkle is suggesting that the same applies to religion - and he bases this on his intuitive understanding of the fundamental reason why God (who is in fact a dyad of Heavenly Parents) created Men (their sons and daughters) and everything else.

Arkle believes that the rationale for creation was ultimately in order that some (as many as possible) Men might 'evolve' and grow from our current partial and embryonic divinity to a full divinity on the same level as our Heavenly Parents. Therefore, our mother and father in heaven do not want us to get stuck in a stance that regards them as infinitely remote - but rather as finitely (albeit vastly) remote, and incrementally approachable over time. 

We probably tend to feel a superstitious anxiety about thinking or doing this; as if God was some kind of hyper-irritable and easily-offended tyrant; but Arkle is trying to reassure us that friendly affection and trusting confidence is exactly the attitude that God most wants us to have; as illustrated here:

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-final-words-of-geography-of.html.   

See also a fuller excerpt of the above at:
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-deep-nature-of-morality.html
        

Things coming to a point - Reverse engineering modern Western society to discern the spiritual function of this kind of experience

What do the social conditions in the modern West tell us of the nature of souls being incarnated in this era? These are, after all, novel conditions - unique in the history of Man.

We may potentially be able to reverse engineer our features and trends; that is, we may be able to discover the spiritual functionality, on the assumption that God has designed this world for the salvation of souls.

The features include a pervasive arrested adolescence due to a refusal to grow-up spiritually. This includes an extreme of adolescent detachment from The World, self-consciousness, solipsism, sensitivity, mood instability. Alternations between hedonistic excitement and existential despair. And the usual tradition/ parent detaching adolescent rebellion perpetuated to the point of subversion and then a satanic, systematic value-inversion.


So far, so bad - and the evidence of increasing demonic domination is undeniable; but the fact that this is allowed to continue should lead us to suspect that God is 'using' the evil with the intent of turning it to some good.

Specifically, it may be that the people (that relatively small and shrinking minority of the human race) who are born into The West include many souls for whom this is a suitable environment for them to attain salvation (paradoxical though that may, at first, seem).

Here is a guess. The Modern West takes us to an historically unprecedented extreme point of driving home harsh lessons; to the point that there is No Escape. The soul is finally stripped down to a level at which Life has nothing to offer, and then the soul looks at God... Eventually, there is nowhere else to look.

This is things coming to a point - this is the point toward which things are tending.


We live in a world of increasing incoherence, and this incoherence is increasingly coerced. What might be learned from an environment of mandatory incoherence, official insanity, moral/ aesthetic and truth inversion?

The answer: to experience these, each for himself, in the fullest possible degree; to have them strike deeper and deeper; past the many and superficial facets of personality and fakery; and in towards our true and divine selves.  This is the confrontation that God (perhaps) is engineering; the starkest possible contrast between our naked self and the literally-hellish environment of The World...

A stark contrast leading to a stark choice: affirmation of that which we know (from experience) to be incoherent and nihilistic; or affirmation of God. That is, affirmation of love.

A hammered-home knowledge of meaninglessness, purposelessness and utter isolation in a dead world of materialism; and then, a direct knowing of creation, Being, and the friendship of Jesus Christ.


Things are brought to a point where the experiential knowledge confronts our divine self, by virtue of being children of God; our true self with its innate and hereditary knowledge of the divine. And this need not be taught - it is a fact, spontaneously knowable.  

If we further assume that many or most people born into the modern West are souls who were, before incarnation and from our pre-mortal spiritual existence, exceptionally beset with sins... then this extreme harshness of experience may be necessary for there to be the best chance of salvation. These are souls so short-termist and selfish that these sins must be stripped-away by despair to leave-behind what may be a small residual core of divine goodness.

In other words, the consequences of the sins are allowed the fullest operation to provide the harshest spiritual outcomes in order that their true nature may become as obvious as may be contrived; such that at the moment of choice the starkest possible contrast with salvation will become apparent to the densest and most recalcitrant of selfish hedonic natures (such as seem to prevail here and now).


Of course, Men are free agents and there is always the possibility of denial - every Man can deny God the creator of the universe (it was his prideful intoxication by this astonishing fact that seemed to corrupt the Lucifer, and many others). Yet we can imagine that at the 'moment' of death, that 'moment' can be concertinaed-out - much as we experience in a dream - so that the full consequences of Life may be surveyed fully and the choice made.

And not just our own life is relevant, not a person's residual love; but also the love of others will (at that expansile 'moment') be known as experienced reality.

Those whom we love, those who love us; this goes into the balance at the moment of choice, and tends to draw us to choose salvation and the Heaven where such love may be sustained and increased for eternity.


Thus evil is used against itself. The worse the evil, the deeper and more considered the evil, the more sustained and systematic the evil - the greater the incoherence and despair at the last - and the more complete the stripping away to reveal the residuum of the true self in its nakedness.

So long as there is indeed love, there is a chance. But those souls that lack love have nothing to set against the evil. They have nothing to weigh in the balance; and their choice is highly likely to be for damnation, where their sins are retained, and the 'promise' is that they may be indulged without restraint. What would such people want with a Heaven that is eternal loving creation?

But God cannot see-into our divine self to know whether there is, or is not, love. The conclusion of our time of choice cannot be foreseen. And this is exactly why the earthly experiences and trails are necessary; why - in our current extreme - the situation is engineered that things are brought to a point of maximum contrast and clarity.


Our time is one by which love will be revealed no matter how small and feeble: if love is there, somewhere, hidden, buried deep and covered-over by sins... by superficial materialism, short-termism, selfishness, hedonism; no matter how distorted by value inversion and lusts for sex, power, status...

The conditions of modernity are well-suited to bring those who most need it to a clear recognition of the nature of good and evil, the distinction and difference between them - and to the making of a final choice based upon the malign experience of sin that is intense, painful; and very hard (but not impossible) to deny.

The world of David Icke - a review of his book Phantom Self (2016) and a comparison with Rudolf Steiner

Since being impressed by David Icke's grasp of the significance of the Brexit vote four weeks ago  -

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-david-icke-phenomenon-and-brexit.html

I have been investigating the thought world of this man, who the media dub the world's major conspiracy theorist.

I have watched or listened to many speeches and interviews, and read his most recent book The Phantom Self - which covers a similar theme and contains many rather similar arguments to those I have come-across in Colin Wilson and William Arkle and blogged about here; concerning the true and free versus automatic and false Self; and the important problem of each person finding then living-from the true Self.

Icke adds to this the valuable perspective that in this modern era (and in addition to our natural tendency to develop a false Self) the false Self (what Icke terms the Phantom self) is substantially a product of a programmed manipulation by the Establishment (i.e. the Conspiracy). In other words, our Phantom Self is actively working-against the interests of our Real/ True Self.

My impression is that Icke is primarily a spiritual thinker and teacher, who personally is most concerned by the spiritual corruption of the world and what to do about it. There are two long chapters at the end of The Phantom Self concerned with how to wake-up to the fact that we are in reality 'Infinite Consciousness' and our mortal life ought to be seen in terms of educational experiences. We are not the product of those experiences, our true selves lie behind and beyond any possible experiences. With some changes in nomenclature, I think this is correct and vital.

Icke is strongly against any form of organised religion, and his spiritual advice is mainly to live life by the intuition of the heart, which will lead to the synchronicities that we personally most need as experiences. This, again, seems correct so far as it goes, and very much like 'the discernment of the heart' which some Christians regard as our best guidance in this world - especially since Icke does a good analysis which clarifies what he means by the heart - contrasted with the mind and gut-feelings which are the focus of manipulation by The Conspiracy.

Reading Icke, I was quite often reminded of Rudolf Steiner in a broad-brush fashion - for instance, both disseminate their views primarily via speaking: in Steiner's case by a multitude of smallish lectures, in Icke's case by videos, podcasts and interviews; and very large public lectures (currently on-going in Australia). Of course, Steiner was a world class accredited intellectual and a genius; whereas Icke is, although above average intelligent and articulate and much better than Steiner at structuring evidence and arguments, operating on a much more common sense and middlebrow level.

But the same basic problem affects anyone who tries to come to terms with Steiner as one who tries to give Icke a hearing - which is that they have a strong, clear view on every subject under the sun, and most of these views are bizarre, many are wrong, and all are over-precise. This, presumably, is because both are working from an intuitive method which always yields conclusions on every topic - even those on which the intuiter is scantily or erroneously informed - and which provides for the reader real and important (and, otherwise, hard to come-by) truths, closely mixed with falsehoods and illusions - but Steiner and Icke themselves are unable to discern which is which.

This does not much bother me - so long as I take them in large enough doses that I can allow the bizarre elements to 'blow through me' (maybe enjoying their ingenious arguments, meanwhile) while focusing on the basic perspectives and primary teachings. This is a matter of having made the basic decision that Icke is a decent and well-motivated person who is doing his best in the available situation, as was Steiner.

Both Steiner and Icke are much more spiritually-focused than the mass of their followers (to whom they need to cater) and this has a distorting effect on the balance of their output. In Icke's case this leads to one of the main problem with his conspiracy theory - which concerns the ultimate aim of The Conspiracy.

For Icke, this world is conceptualised as a kind of idealism; our reality is 'a hologram' (akin to the situation in the movie The Matrix, 1999) - because perceived reality is essentially a facade, and its reality comes from our interpretation. For Icke, there is no God or gods - and ultimate creative goodness is conceptualised abstractly and deistically in terms of higher consciousness, higher frequencies and vibrations.

The source of The Conspiracy for Icke is a group of immortal evil 'demons' (as I would interpret them), aliens, Archons, shape-shifting reptiloids - whose aim is drag humans down to a low-frequency level, and then to control humans in every respect, in order vampirically to live-upon human psychic energies (especially the emotion of fear, but also other negative emotions such as hatred). Ultimately, therefore, Icke correctly diagnoses the Big Problem as Spiritual Warfare.

However, perhaps due to the interests of his followers, in quantitative terms the bulk of Icke's output is focused on political, social and worldly concerns - and the idea that the Conspiracy callously delights in making miserable, tormenting, making sick and killing humans. This is a basic flaw in the sense that modern Western people are - overall and compared with any previous or alternative society - prosperous, comfortable, convenient, healthy and long-lived. Since The Conspiracy's plans are (currently) well advanced, this basic fact is broadly incompatible with The Conspiracy wanting to torture our mortal bodies.

Icke is not a Christian nor anything else, and seems strongly 'anti' all actual Christian churches, especially any focused worship, ritual and symbolic elements - since he regards focused worship situations as set up to provide a kind of energy-vampirism, and ritual and symbolism as almost-always characteristic of The Conspiracy beings. The 'Archons' are fundamentally-uncreative beings, therefore they rely on such crude, repetitive procedures to force or compel a kind of pseudo-creativity. Also, Icke apparently experienced a - possibly - hypomanic-type episode around 1990 during which he appeared on prime-time TV and asserted he was the Son of God, in a way that suggested he was a reincarnate Jesus, or something similar. I think he has since rather over-reacted-against the content of this transient and delusional state.

Having said all this, and taking it as the mixed whole it is; what is my overview of David Icke's work? The answer is that I am overall impressed - and I think he provides many valuable perspectives and examples that I have found helpful and clarifying. I think he is a genuine intuitive, who has access to a deeper level of understanding than is normal - and that this has been show by a number of insights which seemed very far-fetched until they were shown to be correct.

(Interestingly, and again on the same lines as Arkle, in seeking intuition Icke does not practise meditation by any formal or specific technique - rather he says that he sits in quietness and solitude and lets his mind follow its own logic by 'daydreaming'. This, combined with the way that synchronicity shapes his life and brings particular people, books and things to his attention, is how he gets his insights.)  

For example, Icke seems to have been among the first to describe (naming names, several of which have since been confirmed) the covert and covered-up network of paedophilia which permeates the British ultra-Establishment.

Icke saw the extent to which modern Establishment elites deliberately (e.g. by false flag operations and agents provocateurs) cause the atrocities and problems which they then 'react-to' by implementing pre-decided programs tending towards population pacification and control - and the way that the mass media, technology, the law and its enforcement, officialdom, education, and also modern medicine are all combining to make a docile, distracted, drugged, dysfunctional and despairing humanity.

And also that this depends upon divide-and-rule procedures which create conflicts, and provide the incentives by which the dupes do the work of the demons; in building their own prisons, herding people inside, and then policing each other to prevent anyone escaping. 

Icke also correctly predicted (when nobody else did) that 2016 would be the crux year, and potentially the beginning of the crunch-time potentially a turning-point - a window of about three years - when we either turn away from our current suicide course, or it becomes irreversible.

Icke's lack of the coherent metaphysical structure and the overall story of (Mormon) Christianity is a significant problem, although his criticisms of actually-existing Christian churches are mostly accurate and reasonable. But, depending upon your tolerance for excessively detailed wrongness and your capacity not to let it interfere, there is much in Icke's work that is valuable and which you will probably not find anywhere else.