This mortal life on earth: On the one hand... On the other...

On the one hand... On the other...

On the one hand: There are truly wonderful experiences in life - for those open to them and who regard reality as meaningful...

(How can it have become normal and unremarkable for so many people so blandly to assume that ultimate reality is without purpose or meaning? How have we arrived at a point when this is officially true, officially taught, and a background assumption to all mainstream public discourse? 

This is an utterly nihilistic and inevitably despair-inducing basis for life - but it is unremarkable normality for almost everyone!

How can this be just unremarkable 'common sense' for so many Men and organizations?

And, having made this life-destroying assumption of a purposeless and meaningless reality; why is this position so vehemently defended?)

On the other hand; we have the essential un-satisfactoriness of life as a whole; of this mortal life bounded by birth and death. 

It's not that good-things don't happen, but when they do happen - they are never enough!

(One might have the happiest or most transformative spiritual experience... but what then? Life goes on, and on...)

Mortal life just is not good-enough and never has been - and all honest and competent Men have always known this. 

The mortal life of men is unsatisfactory at worst, overall, on average, and (even) among the saints and geniuses. No Man's life has ever been good-enough - on the whole; no matter how wonderful are moments and parts.  

Those who say otherwise - that this mortal Life is sufficient and Good of-itself - are ignorant, dishonest, or engaging in a desperate form of wishful-thinking,

(Understandably... in light of the mainstream nihilism; and such falsehoods are the only way that they can motivate themselves to keep-going.)

  

No matter what true, profound and inspiring experience; life is experienced as not-solidly-meaningful, ragged, incoherent - and often or usually at a much lower level than it ought to be. And if, at this moment, one thinks otherwise; then that is wrong. 

If a cult develops to pretend the perfection of any person (some leader, some figurehead) - it will be deluded and wrong. 

Infrequent patchiness of goodness, rightness, elevation; is the best attainable state.  

The reason why is that this mortal life on earth is a transitional phase. 

Of its nature it is not intended to be a thing-in-itself.

Because life is mortal, and this world is entropic - all is transient; Man's life and the earth are-not-designed/ are-designed-not to be independently sufficient.

When viewed from-within this mortal life; we discover its infinite promise, yet inevitable unsatisfactoriness. 

Only when viewed from a perspective beyond this mortal life may we realize what it's all about; and why it is this way it is... 

But such a view cannot make the unsatisfactory sufficient! We are still inside the same situation as before. 

Only, now we know why.  

 

This mortal life in context of eternity

Modern Man believes that this earthly, mortal life is the only life - and when we die we are extinguished utterly; only to live-on in memory (which is also extinguished).

Therefore absolutely everything is destined for oblivion, as if it never had been. Hence modern nihilism and despair.

Some religious people believe that earthly mortal life is an illusion - and that reality is eternal, spiritual, infinite. Nothing that happens, or ever could possible happen, during earthly mortal life really matters at all - because it is a drop in an infinite ocean - hence of infinitely-minor significance.

From our mortal perspective, this amounts to much the same, in the end, as mainstream modern secularism which says that mortal life is everything but finite - because either way this actual mortal life is rendered utterly trivial, meaningless, pointless.

These two are the usual world-views of modern non--religious people: the first is materialism the second is modern New Age spirituality - derived from a sampling of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Christianity tries to make important both this mortal earthly life, and eternal life beyond the grave - so that mortal life is significant eternally. (This makes Christianity the religion we should most want to be true!)

But most Christian explanations are unsatisfactory - giving either too much significance to the contingencies of mortal life (eg. that the specific state of mind at the instant of death determines eternal salvation or damnation); or not enough importance to mortality (eg. that most mortal life is so depraved and corrupt - due to original sin - that life is 'a bad thing', and such Christians yearn for death, try to approximate Heavenly death-in-life, and at root feel it would be better never to have been born into mortality).

Such metaphysical problems are built-into mainstream Christianity from the early centuries of the church, and I personally feel they have been overcome by the Mormon revelations concerning theology - but either way, what Christianity wants to be, and strives to explain to itself, is as follows:

• Our mortal incarnate life is important, because it has permanent effects on our eternal life.
• But this effect of mortality on eternity is qualitatively transformed by the work of Christ - so that our eternal lives have, as it were, all the good memories of mortal life perfectly preserved and made real forever; but none of the bad. 
• So Heaven is not just 'me living in a Paradise'; it is a transformed me, yet still me living in a Paradise... and that is the difference. 

"What am I doing here?" - and why Salvation is Not an answer

Colin Wilson said that Existentialism was an attempt to answer the question: "What am I doing here?"

Clearly, there is no answer to this is the mainstream ideology of The West (whatever we want to call it) because it assumes there is neither purpose nor meaning to anything; but neither is there any answer from traditional forms of Western Christianity - which focus, almost exclusively, on salvation as The Problem of life.

And for mainstream Christianity, salvation really is the problem, being terribly difficult and insecure; such that it (ideally) requires constant attention and unremitting effort. 

For a traditional Christian; we can never be sure of our salvation - and therefore a serious Christian can never get much beyond working on salvation. 

Yet when "What am I doing here?" is the question; salvation is not an answer. 

This, especially when salvation is uncertain and insecure, But even at best, salvation merely kicks the can, moves the problem along. 

Why is salvation not an answer? Because - as usually taught - salvation says that the job of this mortal life is... to be saved-from mortal life. 

In other words, we live in order to be rescued from living! What kind of 'answer' is that? 

The obvious problem is that this answer evokes the question of why we live this mortal life, if this mortal life is so fundamentally unsatisfactory that we need to be saved from it? 

Why does God bother placing us into this earthly mortal life At All; when the only point of life is to be rescued? 

Why not create us straight into the after-life?... 

Yet, even then, we will sooner-or-later want to know what is the point of the after-life. 

One who was created directly into Heaven might still (assuming he was a free agent) ask the same question of "What am I doing here?"

Answering the existentialist question therefore requires a very deep answer, if that answer is to be satisfactory. 

There is the immediate aspect of "What am I doing here?" - which demands an explanation for this mixed and mortal life on earth; and there is the deeper aspect of "What am I doing here?" - which concerns the fundamental reason for being as it applies to me, personally. 

I think I have said enough here to demonstrate why secular existentialism could never answer its foundational question; because the question arose from the unsatisfactoriness of this mortal life; yet secular existentialism excluded - by assumption - the after- and eternal-life which might, in principle, make sense of this finite and entropic mortal life. 

Secular existentialism excludes a priori any possible answer to "why?" questions.

The answer is that our personal life exists within God's creation (which has a purpose) and that we matter as individuals because God is a loving parent to us - whose primary concern is with individual persons.

Our mortal lives on this finite earth are therefore both part of the whole scheme of things and also individually significant - and the human condition has been set-up on that basis. 

So; to understanding 'why?' questions about our own mortal life, we must eventually discern an answer to "why?" God created creation. 

What is "reality", and "real life"?

We all agree that this isn't reality - but what is? 

There is a deep confusion as to the nature of reality. 

People are, much of the time, engaged in distinguishing "real life" from something else - whether that be virtual (online) life, the memo-interactions of bureaucracy; or contrasted with media such as novels, movies or TV. 

But the "reality" that is supposed to be contrasted with these un-realities, is unclear. 

For some people reality means politics; whether international, national or local.

Yet politics is very much second-hand; with its facts, concepts and meanings all learned from secondary sources. 

"Political reality" is thus a highly theoretical thing. What's more politics is a miserable, dishonest, manipulative and destructive business. 

So if politics is real life... Well, for most people: "You can keep it!" It has near zero appeal. 

For other people, reality is the social life involving the people around them; with all the expectations and duties, the complications of sex and love for themselves and friends, the activities of their workplace, the functional business of living... These are what they mean by "real life". 

Yet this is - in a different way - a mundane business. It has pleasures and pains in various mixtures, but of-itself, our social life has neither purpose nor meaning. Social living is just something that happens, won't go away, cannot be avoided. 

Social life is also experienced (by most people, most of the time) as earthbound and ephemeral, without depth or resonance - "Just one damned thing after another" - and always ending badly. 

Other examples could be given of the basic, bottom-line unsatisfactoriness of what modern people regard as Real Life. 

My point here is that - as most people actually envisage it - reality is much less appealing, much less enjoyable, than the various forms of unreality on-offer. 

However, it is unsatisfactory to know that one is avoiding reality, and pretending that unreality is real. 

Indeed, this just does not work as a life strategy. We cannot voluntarily become pleasantly-deluded and live by those lies we calculatingly tell-ourselves. 

We cannot just believe what we want, just because it makes us feel better. It doesn't work. So those who try to make the choice of unreality, are caught up by the failure of trying to convince themselves of untruth. 

To live "as if" simply isn't strong enough to make a basis for existence.    

Consequently, when Real Life is hopelessly miserable and unappealing; and when both options of reality and virtuality/ unreality are equally hope-less - then despair seems unavoidable. 

The question of what is real, what is real life - what is really-real... Such matters are vitally important here-and-now - because this is something we really Need To Know. 

It seems paradoxical; but the most "realistic" thing that the archetypical modern Man can do, is to focus his best attention onto "metaphysics". 

That is, we need to make the basic nature of reality into the main subject of our primary effort. 

Like it or not; for us modern Westerners; right living depends on our right thinking. We don't do it; but we need to do it. 

Ultimate justifications for eternal living

One of the great contributions made by William Arkle to my own philosophy of living is to bring to the centre of concern, the question of what we would want to do forever, for eternity - The question of what could possibly satisfy us everlastingly? 

In his writing (and art) Arkle conjures a friendly and accessible God who is a real Father (and Mother) to us, and creates with our best long-term - indeed eternal - interests in his heart. 

Arkle therefore invites us to make the thought experiment of such a divine parent who wants his children to be motivated and fulfilled in an eternal life; and to consider what kind of life that might be - what kind of life is divine creation aiming-at? 

When I make this thought experiment, my conclusion is that there are significant differences in what people want in their mortal life; and that there are also differences in what people seem to want for eternity.  

Some people have what seems like a very deep sense of fatigue about living; and seem to want an eternity of 'rest' - much like being dreamlessly-asleep - an eternity when nothing happens. 

Others seem to want an eternity of joyous contemplation; a continuous state of gratitude, worship; a perpetuation of that aesthetic arrest when we fall in love, experience great good fortune, or encounter something of overwhelming beauty... We just want to stay in exactly this state, forever. 

So both of these want an eternal state to be unchanging - although the first wants to be unconscious, unaware (or barely aware) of his own existence; while the second want to be consciously aware of his own existence - but continuously and without-fading immersed in happiness, appreciation, gratitude. 

But among those who want an active eternity; the answer probably depends on their time horizon, and their capacity for anticipating what things would actually be like. Some desire a 'paradise'-life in which they repeatedly-and-forever do the kind of thing they most enjoy on earth - e.g. eating, sex, or something sinful - but without ever getting used to it, without experiencing the 'habituation' or 'tolerance' that makes repetition so unsatisfactory in mortal life. 

This, then, paradise is an eternal present - and eternity without memory; where each 'day' (or cycle) is started afresh and unfading. 

In paradise there could be no sense of 'self', and no developmental progression; because that depends on linear continuity hence memory; so what is desired is an 'arrested development' - to be fixed as a certain type of person at a certain stage in life (child, adolescent, young adult etc), doing a certain type of pleasurable activity, again and again - forever.. but not to know that this is what is happening. It is rather like being reborn every day - but reborn as the kind of person one wants to be. 

Paradise is a life of continual play; in which the situation is one in which we and the situation are set-up such that we never get fed-up of playing - but it remains maximally satisfying.  

 

But none of the above constitute the idea of Heaven as I understand it. In Heaven, eternity is for creating; and creating is distinguished from 'playing' because creation comes from love. So the set-up of Heaven is one in which there are many people, and they are bound together by love; and this love overflows into creating. 

This vision of eternity comes from people (such as myself) who feel that the most profound experiences of life, which would never ever fail to satisfy, are those experiences of creating - in which that which is created is appreciated by those we love and those who love what we love.

'Creation' (in this sense) ranges very widely indeed, from more obvious things like creating new appreciations, understandings and insights; to making things and performing arts; to the creating involved in a continuing marriage, or in playing games with one's children... 

There is no limit to the kinds of things this involves - but in mortal life such creating is contaminated with mad motives (seeking status, power, to manipulate etc), and by the fatigue and entropy of our condition. For creating to become eternal we would need purity of loving motivation and endlessly-renewed energies from love (not from other, lower, sources) - so, it is these which must distinguish a creative-Heaven from this mortal life. 

Such thought experiments may be of great value, if one can persist with them to keep asking 'and what then?' after each answer you give yourself. 

Eventually you may work down through superficial half-answers to reach the solid ground of what would be eternally satisfying to you, personally. 

And then explore the consequences of that.     

The role of the individual in Life

As so often - the two most-available mainstream options are both wrong, ineffective, and unsatisfying when it comes to 'my' role in 'life'.  

On the one hand there is a conceptualization of 'religion' that regards The Church - its tradition, rituals and practices - as an objective and overwhelming reality; to which the individual must conform. the church does not need me; but I need the church... The church objectively is, while I am just subjectivity...

I can recall this as a child - the dull, deadening weight of Christianity as I experienced it. It was something that pressed on me in a crushing way, always trying to shape and mould me - yet offering none of the future excitement, hope, engagement that I found in (for example) science, literature, music when I contemplated a life 'in' them...

I felt I personally could contribute to the arts, philosophy etc; in a way that was impossible for religion - therefore the future was one of being actively-entwined with life-unfolding; rather than incrementally being squeezed into standard shapes in a set-pattern. 

Yet the other option of these times was also hope-less. The idea of self-development; the idea that each Man would 'make' his own world - the ideas of the relativity of truth and values... These were experienced as toxic; because such a 'freedom' and creativity is at the price of its irrelevance. 

We can believe whatever we want - but none of it matters. We can explore human relationships in unconstrained fashion - but in the end it is just a game of mutual manipulation and attempted exploitation. We can do whatever we feel we desire, but in the end we die and all is washed-away. 

Nothing really matters, nothing lasts... When life is no more than 'whatever I want' then it is meaningless, purposeless, wearisome; and demotivating because there is no point in doing what will not lastingly satisfy. It is just a matter of doing whatever is easiest, short-term pleasantest - and of Not thinking about the future - because the future is irrelevant to the present, unpredictable, and never adds-up.

Both these options are wrong and utterly unsatisfying. And that dissatisfaction means that life Must Be futile - if church and subjectivism are the Only options. 

What is needed is something else quite simple to state; which is that we need to live in a way that recognizes both the objective reality of a life beyond our-selves; and also that we personally - our subjectivity, our efforts and aspirations, will be able (in principle) to make-a-difference to objective reality.  

The trouble is that our usual mainstream (and going back to ancient times) assumptions about objectivity and subjectivity, about reality and the human mind, are such that we keep on channeling the possibilities down to just the two above: either subjectivity conforms to objective reality - and subjectivity is some kind of an irrelevant illusion; or, if subjectivity is all-there-is, then we fall into some kind of nightmarish solipsism of life as a random dream-nightmare. 

 

This is why I return over and again to the need to understand and expose our underlying metaphysical assumptions (i.e. our basic conceptual model of reality); and to revise them. 

We need a picture of objective reality in which we - each and personally - can change objective reality - which must therefore be one in which objective reality is known to be dynamic, developmental, 'evolutionary'.

However we formulate it (and any specific and communicable formulation, or state-able 'model', is bound to be incomplete and distorted, compared with the boundless and openly-interconnected nature of reality) - we need to have this kind of picture in-mind; if we are to envisage life in a way that is both motivating and true. 

At the level of communication, it sounds unsatisfactory. But we are part of creation, as well as participants. We are children of God (the primary creator) as well as immortal beings with agency. 

At the ultimate level, beyond the capacity of symbolic representations (such as language) we have this experiential-knowledge of our-selves and of reality.

We have lived-through a vast (cosmic) background of events; all of which form that ground of understanding which makes possible a sufficient grasp of our role in Life.  

Why is this mortal life inevitably and intrinsically unsatisfactory?

Although it was obvious to Men of the past; it is not always (or usually) at all clear to modern Man just exactly why this mortal life is necessarily unsatisfactory. 

Because this is not understood; there have been a couple of hundred years of social and political theorizing and activity based on false (and unconscious) premises - with socio-politics being conceived as the single most important issue in the world - more important than religion, functionality, life and death. 

As of 2022; this view is propagandized and enforced by global government and mass media; and shared by All major/ large/ powerful/ wealthy social institutions, churches, corporations, and organizations - all systematically regard leftist politics as primary and mandatory - and all other aims, morality and functions as secondary, subordinate; ultimately optional.   

Even after the unprecedented and unmatched catastrophes of the utopian atheist left-ideologies of the twentieth century (communism and fascism in Russia, Germany, China, Cambodia etc); even after the collapse of Western leftism into dys-topian, incoherent yet insatiable opposition to all that is Good... 

Nonetheless all of modern Man's hopes are wholly focused on this life. 

Yet, the universal consensus of pre-modern Man, and all Men who have experienced, learned-from, and thought-through life to its foundations, is that biological death is Not 'the end' - but some existence of some sort continues beyond. 

1. The proper understanding is that mortal life is a prelude to... something else, which lasts much longer

2. And therefore the proper question is what happens after death? What is that 'something else?' - What are the possibilities? 

3. But it is not proper to ask 'whether' anything-at-all happens after death. It is illegitimate to assume that a mortal life ending with annihilation can ever, under any imaginable circumstances, be satisfactory.  

Perhaps a womanly and procreative aspect of God is necessary for a solid belief in eternal life?

I am re-reading Geoffrey Ashe's fascinating study The Virgin (1976), which is focused on Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ (Ashe was a Roman Catholic) - but takes in the broader perspective of goddesses throughout history, in a non-hostile - indeed sympathetic - fashion. 

He makes the stimulating suggestion that a Goddess was primal in ancient spirituality, because she was the assumed basis of the procreative hence creative; and that some form of female deity is needed for Men really to believe in a life beyond life. 

The idea is that a supreme male deity cannot sustain belief in a full life beyond life. So that when the ruling Goddess goes; the afterlife becomes very partial, ghostly, and all-but irrelevant. 

Male deities could never bestow life of their own nature as the Mother had done. Zeus and his colleagues were immortal, but they did not transmit that quality to their human subjects... 

Through most civilized and semi-civilized lands... death ceased to be a passage to a future life... the dead were no longer pictured as significantly existing. They were reduced to feeble, bloodless shades in a gloomy underworld. For the Greeks this was Hades...

With the fading of the Eternal-Womanly, with her cutting-down or anathematisation, [for the vast majority, with extremely few exceptions] death had become the end with no prospect of rebirth. 

Israel's shift was similar... The Old Testament has no doctrine of survival or return... the dead become shades. They do down to an underworld called Sheol, The Grave.

The sole Israelite immortality is collective... God's chosen community...  

I think it likely that Ashe is "on to something" here. 

In the book; Ashe is preparing the ground for an attempted explanation of the rise of Mary the mother of Jesus as a more and more important focus of Christian faith - recognizing that this phenomenon cannot be accounted for by Scripture, or by the practices of the earlier generations of Christians. 

With Mariolatry (Ashe says) we seem to be dealing with some kind of deep and direct apprehension of spiritual reality, probably coming from grassroots, bottom-up, the "masses". Christian leaders and theologians seem merely to have been trying to explain and validate theoretically something that already was beginning to become important in practice. 

From my own experience; I find it striking that Mormonism included a very strong element of the "Eternal-Womanly" with its dyadic deity composed of Father and Mother in Heaven. 

And - perhaps in consequence? - the "Mormon culture of salvation" was (at least until fairly recently) probably the most vividly lived and believed-in form of Christian afterlife among the major Christian churches. 

The spiritually unsatisfactory and unconvincing nature of one-sidedly masculine, Christianity is something I find very striking. I mean the monochrome hardness, negativity, heartlessness, legalism and this-worldliness of Mary-rejecting forms of Protestantism is something I feel is very evident. It is one reason why England ceased to be "Merrie" with the reformation.

But there is something of this in all of Christianity. 

(And this defect has not-at-all been ameliorated, let alone cured, by the dominant trend towards secular materialism in all the Christian churches, which comes-in on the back of leftist ideology. Spiritual problems can only be made worse by "liberalization" - which is actually and always covert apostasy.) 

Insisting upon the non-sexual nature of God does not work either - this is just an attempt to escape contradictions absences and by raising abstractions; which has the effect of confusing people - and thereby impairing motivations.

Furthermore, the idea and ideals of ultimate transcendence of sexuality point away from Christianity (rooted in Jesus, the divine incarnate mortal Man) and towards Oneness spirituality, where (eventually) every-thing merges with everything else - in a timeless stasis.   

The problem is that it does not really make deep theoretical and theological sense to insert Mary alongside the (masculine) Trinity; and she is therefore always accorded an ultimately secondary and intercessionary" role in creation - no matter how central is her position in everyday worship (eg. devotion to the Rosary, or Marian icons). 

But even worthwhile degrees of habitual lifestyle and provision of psychological comfort are insufficient motivations in a world so dominated by evil-affiliated institutions. 

In our unavoidably self-conscious era; these inner contradictions about Mary have become nigh-lethal to strong Christian faith - as is evident all around us.

 

This is why I regard Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Mariolatry as "on the right lines" but ultimately insufficient and unsatisfactory. 

And, as Ashe described , this requisite kind of development can only come from directly apprehended knowledge - it is not already existent. 

To emphasize: what is required is not something that can honestly be derived from existing Scripture, theology or history.

Furthermore it needs to arise bottom-up; which means from individuals, not institutions.  

If modern Men are to grasp and retain the needful structuring-focus on resurrected eternal life; if we are to live-by knowledge of Heaven; then we will need explicitly to discover and embrace what will be new truths of eternal verities concerning women in relation to creation and salvation. 

The limited scope of meditation - bad habits of thinking

There is a striking gulf between what is possible in meditation and in the rest of life of social living and work.

In meditation we may achieve a pure, clear thinking - independent of our sensations and perceptions; and experience an intuitive knowledge of truth and universal reality - but it is astonishing how little impact this has on social/ work life - indeed, it seems often to have no impact at all.

And if our social/ work life is operating at an unsatisfactory level of shallowness, alienation, purposelessness... then it is clear that progress made during meditation may have essentially zero benefit on the rest of life.

Higher states of consciousness are contextual - bad habits are stronger than spiritual insights.

The social milieu (with its materialism, nihilism, despair...) is stronger than our individuality. When immersed in the stream of life we are overwhelmed - the rush and strength of phenomena and events quite overwhelm the practices we have attained during solitary and detached meditation.

We then live unspiritually, we live merely in automatic responses to stimuli - our behaviours merely effects of external causes; our very thoughts seem caught up by stuff we experience through the senses.

On the one hand static detached meditative thought and some sense of spiritual progress - on the other hand simply automatic functioning as a puppet of social and media life and the constraints of work and survival...

So we find many people who have put considerable sincere effort into meditative spirituality (or prayer, or study of scriptures or the practise of religion...) who strike us, in normal life and social or work-interactions, as spiritually just like other people - indistinguishable...

We perceive no special depths in them, no spirituality, no holiness. All their meditation (prayer, study, practices) seem like a complete waste of time: ineffectual, self deceieving...

And - much worse - the same applies to ourselves - in our mainstream normal discourse and behaviour we perceive no depths, spirituality or holiness in ourselves! Our meditative self is aware that our everyday 'personality' is shallow and materialistic, just like everybody else!

We imagine we are acheiving a better, higher, more spiritual state - but 'real life' suggests we are deluding ourselves.

Can anything be done? Yes - but clearly it is difficult: clearly it is very difficult indeed - much, much harder than most people make-out; and only few people have ever gone any way towards overcoming it.

Our ai is to become one of those who are deep, spiritual, holy in the mainstream, everyday, social and working life - transformed right down to the small mundane details, the instant 'automatic' responses, the fine grain of functionality.

Two books that were massive disappointments: Tolkien's 1977 Silmarillion and Robert M Pirsig's Lila (1991)

When The Silmarillion was published in 1977, I had been utterly immersed in Tolkien's work for five years with an intensity that only teenaged fans can muster. To say I was 'looking forward to' its publication is a gross understatement - I had even exchanged letters with Tolkien just before he died asking when the book was coming.

Then it arrived in the bookshops, and I bought it (in hardback - expensive when relying on pocket money) immediately... and yet I found (to my own astonishment, and indeed embarrassment) that despite expectations - I enjoyed it so little that I could not even finish it.

I have since read it through, and also listened twice to the whole thing on audiobook; but I still find The Silmarillion Tolkien's worst book - and the only one I don't spontaneously love; deeply flawed in many ways - although with some excellent sections (such as the account of Numenor - which is wonderful in its way).

But then the 1977 Silmarillion is not really JRR Tolkien's work, but a compilation and edited mosaic of his unpublished texts made by Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay; who were primarily trying to remove inconsistencies (internal and between the Silmarillion text and the Lord of the Rings) - and literary quality was the main casualty. Christopher has since expressed regret at having published the 1977 Silmarillion in the way he did - and has since produced the wonderful 12 volume History of Middle Earth (with all of the Silmarillion texts and more - but in better versions) preceded by the marvellous Unfinished Tales.

*

My other great disappointment was Robert M Pirsig's Lila: an enquiry into morals - which was also a long-awaited follow-up; to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an enquiry into values (1974). I had really loved ZAMM, re-read it multiple times, and had also exchanged letters with its author - in relation to my publishing one of the earlier scholarly essays on the subject.

ZAMM did not change my life as much or as deeply as Lord of the Rings, because no book ever has - but it did change my life, and was certainly one of the main books of my early adult life (perhaps a dubious distinction?) - and it is a book I still find very enjoyable and valuable; although now I find its 'message' (being ultimately atheistic, un-Christian) to be actually rather dangerous in the sense of getting what feels like quite close to a satisfactory philosophy of life but not getting to the necessary destination. This means it is easy to 'get stuck' on the book; holding an incomplete, unsatisfying and ultimately nihilistic world view. At any rate, this happened to me.  

But no other philosophical text had made anything like the sustained impact of ZAMM; and in 1991 my life was extremely unsatisfactory and I was really seeking some guidance - so as soon as I saw Lila and bought it; and as soon as I bought it I cleared space in my life to read it straight through.

It is not a good book. While ZAMM is close to novelistic perfection in terms of its writing, structure, pacing, and the intrinsic interest of its parts; Lila is not - it is clunky, preachy, contrived - and has a general atmosphere of seediness and malaise which I find very unappealing (especially in comparison to the freshness and 'innocence' of ZAMM).

The book gives every indication of being squeezed-out of an unwilling and uninspired Pirsig with the 'help' of an editor - it is asif written by a different author than ZAMM.

I don't like the philosophical aspects of Lila any better. While accepting that the implicit premise that the William James-esque Pragmatism of ZAMM is incomplete and unsatisfactory, the proposed Metaphysics of Quality is equally ungrounded and untheistic; but dull and pedantic.

I picked Lila up a couple of days ago to check my reaction - and it has not changed: I have no inclination to re-read. What I loved about ZAMM is almost entirely absent from Lila.

*

With both The Silmarillion of 1977 and Lila of 1991; it was not merely a case of the books failing to live up to the supreme standards of their illustrious predecessors (a matter of 'regression to the mean', if you like); but of being books of a different kind altogether, and books lacking (almost entirely) exactly what it was that I most valued in the earlier work by the same author.

From my perspective, I would prefer that these two books had never been published.

Romantic Metaphysics and Christianity

In Romantic Christianity and in Life - the most important thing to be romantic about is metaphysics. What we need, above all, is a Romantic Metaphysics.

What I mean by this is that our fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of Reality, ought to be such that we feel Romantic about them; they should appeal to our imagination, we should love our metaphysics, know it from experience to be beautiful and wonderful. And this is, of course, something that we can only discover for ourselves, from living (intensely) with these beliefs, from using these beliefs in practice in a way that is whole-hearted.

From my experience, since becoming a Christian, finding Romantic Metaphysics is a path which may not lead to the destination immediately. For me it was (broadly speaking) a case of 'third time lucky'.

Firstly I embraced the Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics of the traditional Roman Catholic church. I found the process of understanding this to be very exciting and romantic; but once I had understood it (hylomorphism, etc.) then I began to find it dry and abstract - and I could not be whole-hearted about the fundamental assumptions that underlay the system of thinking. The fact is that I regarded these assumptions as arbitrary, and did not love them.

Next I became a Platonist - in association with Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This, I found much more Romantic (I already knew quite a bit about Platonism, and had felt drawn to it). The whole idea of the liturgy, the idea of the Orthodox society (Byzantium, Holy Russia) had much to appeal. So this swept me along for several months.

But as I took on board the fundamental assumptions, as I came to understand - I began to feel the infinite gulf between the ideal world of forms which was God's Heaven - and this actual mortal life. The Orthodox ideal of ascetic monasticism, was - even if perfectly realised - merely a pale copy of what was wanted. Indeed, there was no real necessity to mortal life; it would surely have been better to have been born into Heaven - or, as second best, to die and get there ASAP.

Platonism is anti this-mortal-life - its Romanticism is not actual, but displaced to another ideal world, time, place, situation...

Furthermore, the actuality of being Eastern Orthodox in the context of a modern atheistic materialistic Leftist society; with Orthodox churches that were designed for expatriates from other nations, meant that in practice is was just a different kind of church to attend. The daily private practice was not Romantic - but felt bogus and pretentious, and did not yield imaginative fruit. Modern Orthodox life was a very pale imitation of the Byzantine ideal; but even that life had seemed a tragic and unsatisfactory imitation of the abstract timeless perfection of the Heavenly reality.

Romanticism led me into Orthodoxy, and then it led me out again.

My third, and with modifications (eg. from Barfield and Arkle) so-far-final Romantic embrace was Mormon metaphysics.

The difference here was that my Romantic feeling of attraction grew as I discovered more, and as I lived with my earlier imaginations. I took a while before I distinguished between the Mormon metaphysics - for which I felt a spontaneous Romantic love; and the actualities of Mormon religious life in modern Britain - which overall did not attract me.

(There is, I discovered, no actually existing church or denomination or formal religious practice that attracts me Romantically and imaginatively. Therefore, by my Romantic principles, there is none to which I can (or should) commit myself. But the metaphysics of Mormon Christianity has not just proved durable in my life, but has led to a renewing stream of further Romantic intuitions and insights.)

So eventually - the process took about five years - I found a solid ground of Romantic metaphysics to underpin and clarify my Christianity. To recap, the process involved a thoroughgoing and persistent Romanticism; making the Romantic choice then persisting with Romantic evaluations in a serious and exploratory way; until I found solid ground upon-which imagination could stand, and from-which imagination could draw further nourishment on an (apparently) permanent basis.

Neglect of Heaven and Resurrection: The worst effects of modern materialism?

The materialism (aka. positivism, scientism, reductionism) that swept the world over the past centuries - but especially from around 1800 with the industrial revolution - had several devastating effects on Man's assumptions. 

Men lost sight of some key pieces of knowledge that were of vital importance.  

Unbelief in God, and that this is a created reality, are two well known losses; but others are also spiritually lethal. 

One is the insight - dating at least from the Ancient Greeks - that our mortal life in this world cannot ever be satisfactory.  

The insight that a world characterized by change, decay, and disease could never, under any circumstances, be wholly satisfactory; used-to-be so obvious, that to argue for it would have been regarded as silly. 

This understanding included that a life which ended in our death (and the death of everybody and every Being we knew) was by that unavoidable fact inevitably and fatally flawed.

Yet, by the middle 19th century and for another century, the intellectual world was filled by ideas that aimed (whether explicitly or covertly) at creating a utopia on earth and this mortal life! 

The insight had been lost, therefore the impossibility was simply denied. 

People were busily engaged in adapting or inventing 'new religions' (or replacements for religion) which tried to implement all their wishes in this mortal world, 'forgetting' what the ancients had always known - that the nature of this world (and our-selves) is such that utopia, perfection, our ideal life - is intrinsically impossible (in this world). 

The best that could be devised was that Men might evolve or develop a kind of consciousness for which the unsatisfactory nature of this world was obscured and deleted from awareness; that Men should therefore aim (by one means or another) become completely happy with an evanescent world of disease, degeneration - and death. 

In effect; this required a reduction in consciousness and a loss of humanity; although it was often advocated as a higher consciousness and a step toward divinity! (Often by deploying a distorted misapplication of ideas selectively-drawn-from Hinduism, Buddhism or Sufism.) 

In other words; intellectual culture, and indeed the spontaneous awareness of the masses, lost sight of the fact that this world can only become satisfactory in the context of Heaven to follow. 

The intrinsic problems of this world, which are fatal to human gratification if this world was indeed everything; can be understood as positive and beneficial 'learning experiences'; but only if an eternal Heaven comes after. 

This reached such a pitch that even Christians downplayed the importance of the central promise of Christianity - of resurrected eternal life - and began to focus more and more exclusively on the moral benefits of Christianity - as they may be revealed in this world.

Christianity began to be seen as essentially a morally-enhancing religion: as a means to the end of improving individual and social morality. 

Even so great a Christian as CS Lewis said it was better if Christians did not think too much about immortality, but became Christian for other reasons primarily (mostly moral reasons). 

Lewis himself converted to Christianity before believing in the reality eternal Heavenly life; and he regarded this as A Good Thing because he felt that the alternative was to convert from mere terror of death.

The need for an eternal perspective came to seem childish, immature, selfish - rather than a plain metaphysical necessity for understanding this mortal life. Somehow, Christians were supposed to reconstruct their faith such that resurrection was 'an optional extra' rather than at the very core of the faith! 

In time this world became, therefore, firstly more-important-than the next - and finally all-important; so that now many/ most Christians base their religion in this-worldly and political projects. 

(This led to the convergence of Christianity with Leftism, then - as of 2022 - the absorption of mainstream Christianity by Leftism.) 

And the loss and dissolution of 'the self', of our distinctive personal nature; even the post-mortal loss of body (instead of resurrection) - instead of being regarded as an intrinsic flaw to be superseded by Resurrection into Heaven - became regarded as actually definitive of the highest spirituality and mysticism: even among Christians!

Such deep errors have by-now so thoroughly pervaded modern mainstream culture; that the real Christianity rooted in Resurrection and eternal Heaven has come to seem almost bizarre, eccentric, foolish. 

We have now all-but lost the convinced utopianism of the late 19th and early-mid twentieth centuries, so that a mood of nihilism and despair has settled onto the mass of Men - and has driven them literally insane.

Consequently, we are living through a purposive and advanced strategy of global self-destruction masked by the thinnest veneer of oppositional socio-politics - sustained by a relentless shallowness, triviality and refusal to think about the fundamental and false metaphysical assumptions upon which our entire public discourse is constructed.

Few can perceive the once obvious truth that these mortal bodies and this mortal life are - even at best and most ideal - a transitional phase; necessary but not final.

Therefore, it has become extremely difficult for people to recognize what was once obvious - that the only full and coherent answer to the fundamental inadequacy of mortality in this world; is Christian Resurrection into Heaven. 

This is why Blaise Pascal in his Pensees correctly stated that all Men would - if only they understood it - want Christianity to be true. 

And that is the proper basis for Christian conversion: to want Christ's promises of Resurrection into eternal life in Heaven to be true; and then to discover for oneself that it is true. 

A world of micro-motivations

I have often repeated my belief that demotivation is perhaps the biggest negative reality in the world today. Its causes are obvious enough - in that 'religion' has been Man's primary motivation throughout human history; and a world without God defaults to much lower-level motivations of a selfish nature, which mutually conflict - and invariably weaken due to repetition, habituation and boredom. 

Finally the nihilism of Godlessness leads to the ultimate demotivated state (and self-damning sin) of incurable despair. 

For a few generations after religion was discarded but before it lost its cultural and psychological effect; there was a partially successful attempt to replace religion with nationalism and/or socialism - which initially had positive goals that could provide some social coherence and meaning. But these motivators always weakened as the implications of no God, no spirit, no afterlife began to become fully accepted and assimilated. 

We now find ourselves in a world with no positive purposes and instead only a range of futile, incoherent, negative oppositional projects - e.g. trying to 'eliminate' the birdemic, sexism, racism, climate change, and the various *'phobias'.

Or, for a minority; opposing these oppositional projects - by protesting in favour of 'double-negative' goals eg. against censorship, cancel-culture or other recent negative restrictions. Others are against mass immigration; against the destructive and mutilating 'trans- agenda, against the closure of churches... All valid values; yet multiple double-negative motivations cannot replace an over-arching positive one. 

As for positive motivations; there are now only a sequence of micro-motivations, to be taken-up and set-aside in a open-ended series and going nowhere in particular. 

Little things like hoping to go abroad, visit some particular person; and in lots of little ways return to (semi-) 'normal' life by eating-out, sitting in cafes, going to a bar, driving a car, attending the cinema or a lecture, resuming a sexual life... whatever. 

Even the known-to-be-unsatisfactory delusional life goals of the past few decades - like a 'rewarding career' - are now destroyed as genuine possibilities; although people still pretend to be interested by them. Perhaps the only currently-valid long-term job option is to join the growing hierarchy of the secret police, or rise to seniority among the burgeoning concentration camp guard bureaucracy. 

But this is a downward spiral leading to civilizational collapse, and the better that people 'cope with' the new totalitarian world by pursuing ever-more-micro gratifications - the faster it will spiral down towards destruction. 

Because without strong motivation there is no courage - as can be seen in the world leadership in all the different institutions: government, politics, the media, the churches, law, medicine, science, education, the police and military etc. They are all unprincipled cowards because none have a strong and primary religious motivation. 

Without motivation, no courage; without courage only expediency - and in the totalitarian world expediency leads (by various but converging routes) to the Satanic agenda against God, divine creation and all that is Good.  

The only escape is to find motivation in the divine - and the only realistic motivations must be rooted out-with the Global System - which means rooted in the life beyond life. 

Courage needs hope, and hope needs faith - which must become our first priority. 

If faith is not first, it is nothing. The first commandment for a Christian is to love God - and God is our Father, the creator. 

The only escape from the self-destroying System is to follow Jesus Christ, and he leads us through death to resurrected life eternal. 

If we are to have the hope that provides motivation and courage to do anything Good; resurrected heavenly-life eternal must be the destination. It should be the source of all strong motivation.  

What is the spiritualization of matter? (And why do we *resurrect* into Heaven, with bodies?)

Several authors I respect, and from-whom I have derived valuable lessons regarding the evolutionary-development of consciousness (e.g. Rudof Steiner, Owen Barfield, William Arkle), assert that the future and desired state will be one in which (in some way) Matter will become spiritualized. 

Something similar is often asserted by Christians about Men after resurrection - that the resurrected body is spiritualized. 

I entirely agree it is God's intention that in some sense matter will become spiritualized - if Man makes the destined choices in his spiritual development. 

But some people mean by this "that matter will become 'less material'", 'less solid', more 'ethereal' - as if our solid matter was to sublimate into a gas; albeit that such 'spiritual gas' would hold-together into something shaped like the human body. 

So (to caricature, for the sake of clarity) some people regard resurrected Man as if a spiritual-gas; and this is how they try to imagine that immortality is maintained. 

However, I find this unsatisfactory because (by my understanding) it goes-against the spirit of Christianity; such as what we know of the resurrection: of Lazarus, Jesus and what Jesus taught. 

Also, it goes-against a consideration of what advantages it would be in Heaven to have resurrected Men rather than wholly-spiritual beings (i.e. 'angels' as most people think of them). 

There must instead be (I think) reasons why resurrected Men can do positive and God-desired things that are impossible for spirit-angels; or else, why would God bother with creating the whole rigmarole of mortal life?

I think we all should (as a matter of theosis, and because this is the destiny of the development of human consciousness) consciously be willing ourselves towards the spiritualization of matter. 

We in fact increasingly need to do this - if we are to avoid taking the fork towards damnation; because the demonic spirits are working their plans via the modernist 'spell' that all matter is material, and there is no reality to the spiritual realm. 

(Whereas the truth is that the spiritual is primary - and all matter is spiritual: all 'things' are actually spiritual.) 

To believe (as so many do) that there is a separate and superior spiritual reality does not suffice - as we can see in the world around us; where such people are following the demonic lead, and affiliating to The System by deed and word (while, intermittently, affecting detachment from The World). 

Separation of a superior spirit realm (implicitly, or explicitly, regarding matter as evil) does not suffice because it provides no positive reason for this mortal life; this mortal incarnate (embodied) life is merely a test, or a thing to be endured - perhaps a punishment of some kind (whether karmic, or for original sin)... 

Such people merely yearn to die, to lose The Self, and to become wholly spirits absorbed-into the divine. For them, mortal life has no function - it is merely illusion (maya) - an evil to be tolerated. 

What instead we need is not the abolition of matter; but the spiritualization of matter... but what does this 'spiritualization' mean if not 'conversion to spirit'? 

First, that all matter is known as alive, conscious and purposive. 

We first need to recognize all matter, all 'things' as Beings (or as parts-of larger Beings). This could be termed the 'animation' of matter - matter is recognized as animate. 

Secondly, we need to enter into relationships with these (newly recognized) Beings. 

Recognition and relationship.

The point of wanting resurrection into Heaven (of choosing to accept this gift of Jesus Christ) is that we recognize eternally separate-Beings, and strive for a wholly positive and harmonious relationship with these many Beings. 

This is the nature of Heaven. There are many Beings in Heaven; and all present have-made an eternal commitment to live by Love; and therefore their relationships are wholly harmonious - all the Beings share the same aims, which are given by God's primary creation.  

In Heaven we remain our-selves, and live eternally as separate selves with separate wills - but (unlike mortal life) we eternally choose to align these separate wills in loving harmony. 

(What would this be like? Well, we get important glimpses of the loving harmony of separate selves from our experience of (or imaginations of) an ideal human family: and that is the best model for Heaven.)

 

To understand the spiritualization of matter (including bodies) I think we need to reconceptualize what bodies are, and what they are 'for'. 

I assume that our pre-mortal selves in Heaven were spirits without bodies (i.e. our pre-mortal selves are the same as 'angels' as conceived by orthodox Christian theology). We then lived immersively 'in' Love, in a state of one-ness with God; and that we were broadly incapable of free agentic will. 

Before the work of Jesus Christ; all spirit-Beings in Heaven worked-together for a single 'end', and there was no possibility of an individual spirit-Being making a personal contribution to God's ongoing creating. 

From this baseline, we can see that mortal life is about getting 'bodies' to add-to our pre-existent spirit-selves. And death-resurrection is about enabling our bodies to become eternal, and enabling our real selves (our souls) to make an eternal commitment to live by love. 

Bodies open-up a whole new world of possibilities! The 'spirit possibilities' (i.e. of immersive oneness towards a single, God-defined goal) remain possible - but these need consciously to be chosen; because our true-selves have (through the course of evolutionary development) become separated from the primal state of oneness. 

This separation of our personal consciousness from immersion in divine consciousness is a major purpose of mortal life; which is why 'oneness' aspirations are anti-life. And, in these modern times when our consciousness Just Has separated from God's; the aspiration for oneness is both impossible, and harmful in the attempt - leading to alignment with The World (which is extremely and increasingly evil).  

We should understand bodies as an extra way of interacting with other Beings (including God). 

Bodies bring the possibility of a qualitative enhancement of our interactions in heaven. Without bodies there is just the singe creative will of God; with resurrected bodies (in loving harmony of will) are added first each individual person adding his personal-creativity to that of God's; and then the many creative interactions-between resurrected Men. 

The more Men who are resurrected, the greater the possibilities of creative interaction in Heaven - which is always being-harmonized by the eternal commitment to live in-love and to fulfil the implicit goals of divine creation. 

In conclusion, yes we need to spiritualize matter - including bodies. 

But this is Not a process of 'dissolving' or 'sublimating' the-material; it is working towards the permanent creative enhancement of Heaven. 

Because 'bodies' are a positive gift - made permanent and Good by resurrection; and bodies are not about any particular type of substance; bodies are instead about enabling and increasing the creative interaction of Heavenly Beings. 

We (including Christians) need to fix our (implicit) metaphysics

A big problem, perhaps The problem, is that we have an incoherent metaphysics - that is, our basic assumptions are incoherent; or, at least, if all metaphysics is incoherent to some extent, ours is incoherent where metaphysics are most needed, where incoherence does the most damage.

Of course nobody wants to talk about, let alone think about, metaphysics - and especially their own metaphysical assumptions. I know that for a fact, and I don't know what can be done about it - but I need to sort out these matters for myself, and writing helps...


Fundamentally, we think of Things in terms of static categories (like A Being, Love and Creation) - but we ought to think of Things in terms of dynamic 'processes' (like Be-ing, Love-ing and Create-ing). We need a metaphysics that some have called 'polarity' - but this has proved almost impossible to explain, at least I have thus far failed to make it clear - probably due to the tendency to begin the explanation by stating categories...

I agree with Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner (as I interpret them) that a vital aspect of the work of Jesus Christ was, in some poorly understood and ill-defined sense, to divide History between a passive, unconscious mode of being BC, and the advent of (what was intended to be) an active and conscious mode of being AD.

For example, BC the idea of a Good life was strict obedience to external laws, rules, rituals (static categories) - whereas Christ brought the ideal of conscious agency, personal discernment, and and loving - all of which are active, dynamic (or polarities, if you prefer).


But mainstream Christianity made an unfortunate error in trying to assimilate the Christian message - which was one of radical metaphysical change - to the pre-existing systems of Greek and Roman Philosophy; leading to intractable contradictions and confusions, lack of understanding and clarity.

For example, if you understand agency/ free will as a category or Thing done by A Being - they you can't make any sense of it. But if you understanding it as a process done by an entity whose essence is Be-ing... then its importance and nature become clearer (or, would do, if this whole way of thinking was more less alien, familiar).

The problem is that no matter what mainstream 'static' Christianity asserts - in matters such as the reality of agency, or the primacy of Love - its deep structure contradicts. Mainstream Christian metaphysics cannot help but see Love as a static thing, maybe like a force or like a feeling; but working by a sort of attraction between categorical persons - because it envisages a reality that is, in essence and reality, eternal, unchanging, perfectly perfect.

It can be expressed in terms of Time. Mainstream Christianity and the near universal metaphysics of modernity regards Time in a static way as identical with a moment. In the Hindu/ Buddhist version, this means that any moment is exactly like any other moment and a microcosm of eternity.


Ralph Waldo Emerson was one who brought this into the Western mainstream explicitly, with this idea of a moment as an epiphany of all; Life being (ideally) known to be a series of such epiphanic moments - each moment equivalent. Strictly, such a moment takes zero time, it 'out-of Time' - so there is an equivalence between eternity and the instant. The ultimate goal is a Nirvana in which all change ceases, bliss reigns, and the only awareness is of this fixed state of bliss.

Well, that is one way of looking at it - but the other, is that we continue living and the epiphanic total-moment gets swept into our past, and the best we can hope for is another such moment, and another... Life then has no direction or goal, it is merely a sequence of instants...

This has been combined with an atheistic utilitarianism (Life conceptualised as being hedonic; about maximising pleasure and minimising suffering) - and descended into the modern West as an implicit (unconscious, unexamined, unacknowledged) metaphysics of Life as a series of atomistic, disconnected moments.

Each Life moment 'ought to be' as gratifying as possible - and each moment is on the one hand infinitely important (like the international firestorm that follows the use of a politically-incorrect taboo word or hate-fact) - yet also each moment is utterly insignificant because it is superseded by other moments, and there is zero continuity between the moments.


This is the modern metaphysic: on the one hand; our life is going nowhere and has no meaning because it is merely a sequence of isolated moments; therefore nothing matters, things don't add up, death is merely a cessation to this arbitrary sequence. On the other hand; nothing can be or is more important than each moment, than This moment - and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of alleviating momentary suffering or enabling and maximising momentary pleasure.

Most 'mainstream' Christians (in the main denominations) would acknowledge that the modern metaphysics is bad; but would not acknowledge that their own metaphysics shares exactly the same problems and is at-war-with Jesus's teaching and indeed cosmic effect on Man and Reality.

But I see this all the time, in contradictions, complexities and 'mysteries' that Christianity is obliged to introduce to distract from this deep problem. Of course the deep problem - the fundamental contradiction - is not solved; but people are typically sufficiently confused and distracted to assume that it has been solved.

When the problem is simple, yet the supposed answer is complex - people generally assume that the answer is true but they haven't really understood it. Or they may assume that their understanding of the problem was 'simplistic. However such a situation is basically-unsatisfactory and - over time - has been a weak point probed and exploited by those hostile to Christianity.

In sum, the Christian responses to the problems such Free Will the Problem of Pain/ existence of evil, the 'virtuous Pagan' problem - caused by the universality of Christ's message contrasted with the extreme geographical and temporal restriction of the scripture, the church and its personnel, or any specific denomination; the need for developmental-evolutionary change of Men (theosis) - the weakness of the answers strikes the outsider as evasive failures.


Mainstream Christianity has failed metaphysically to reconcile many key aspects of the implicit nature of Jesus's life and teaching with the explicit explanations of it. The resulting dissatisfaction has - overall - led to an incremental 'liberalism' that merely masks apostasy and has gradually subordinated Christianity to prevalent secular norms - which are themselves metaphysically even-less coherent than the flawed understanding of Christianity they presume to replace!

I see all this in terms of the working-out of error through time, in which early errors become every larger and more obvious in their incoherent and false consequences. Looking around the modern Western world at the mainstream secular hedonism and its religious including Christian alternative, I see nothing that gets-right what really needs to be got right at an explicit metaphysical level.

But knowing that there is something seriously wrong does not tell us what is wrong nor how to set it right...


My contention is that the surface wrongness lies very deep in the metaphysical assumptions, and that there is an alternative tradition of Christian metaphysics based in a developmental-evolutionary and dynamic state of assumptions - still lacking a lucid account - which, once habitual, either solves or dissolves these hitherto intractable problems.

This sounds awfully complex itself - but in fact the real Christian metaphysics can be expressed so simply that a child can comprehend it; because is the metaphysics of God's created Reality as composed entirely of living Beings.

(Including parts or components of beings - which is how many mineral entities can be understood; not whole Beings of themselves, but all parts of some living Being. e.g. A mountain may be a Being, a grain of soil probably is not.)

In brief, metaphysically we need to return to something very like the simple transforming animism of early childhood and early Man. Everything that is, is 'alive' and 'conscious' in the sense of being intrinsically dynamic, purposive, growing-destined - and related (by love-ing) to everything else created and to the creator.

On such a basis a Christian life may be led, and understood consciously, and pursued with agency.

Of course, even when metaphysics is coherent where it needs to be, the great challenges of mortal life remain - right metaphysics only gives us the correct starting-point and the understanding necessary to know that we have a purpose and it s nature. It is up to each of us to pursue that purpose, as it affects us each specifically and uniquely.

Is death an unjustifiable violation?

JRR Tolkien quoting - with agreement - Simone de Beauvoir:

[De Beauvoir]: "There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." 

[JRR Tolkien]: Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord of the Rings.

On the one hand, death is universal and thus, apparently, natural; on the other hand, death is also experienced as profoundly un-natural, accidental, a violation. 

Traditional Christian theology has attempted to deal with this using the concept of Original Sin; but I find this unsatisfactory - both for having been (I would have thought obviously) inserted post-Jesus and therefore not genuinely Christian; and also because Original Sin theory fails to do what it claims, which is to explain the prevalence of evil among Men without implicating God. 

Instead; my understanding of death is that it is experienced as both natural and unnatural because of our situation in mortal incarnation - which I regard as (for Christians) situated between a potentially deathless pre-mortal spirit existence; and the post-mortal incarnated state of resurrection. 

This mortal life of ours is temporary, a phase not an end-state - but our basic expectations deriving from pre-mortal spirit life are that we 'ought to be' eternal and deathless. Furthermore, since the life and work of Jesus Christ, Christians have hope of an eternal and deathless state to follow this mortal life. 

Yet, the actuality of this mortal life and its inevitable termination - is unnatural. It is also not under our control; since other factors (primarily God, but also Men and other Beings and happening) influence how and when we die. 

We cannot, therefore, take death for granted. Death comes, and will be a time of transformation. It is a severing of soul from body, as the body dies - and (because we are incarnate Beings) the body's death changes us, removing part of our-selves - and what remains after death is naturally-speaking incomplete. 

In other words; the spirit after death - which has been variously conceptualized throughout history - is significantly like a different person, and (it has been believed) is often severely diminished in its coherence, identity, agency etc. 

I think we sense exactly this (mostly implicitly), when we consider death. It probably lies behind the yearnings for 'peace' after mortal-death, which are so often the wish of non-Christians (including many self-identified Christians who do not want the resurrection that Christ actually offered). 

...Anyone who felt sure that death will certainly annihilation would not be concerned to ask for peace; anyone who was confident that death was naturally a peaceful state would not feel compelled to pray for peace.  

There is a fear (clearly expressed by Hamlet in his famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy) that after our death we will experience a state of inescapable nightmare; and that this may be the 'default' condition - unless... something else happens, or we take some particular actions or make choices.  

Thus, from our perspective here-and-now in mortal life; death is indeed the threat of a violation that seems unjustifiable; unless made-sense-of by resurrection - or some other desired outcome. And that death seems to be non-optional makes matters worse. 

Original sin was and is an attempt to make sense of this, but since it does not work then we need something else - and the explanation ought to be a clear and graspable kind of truth (as indeed it surely would be, given the nature of our God).  

  

How could humans cope with immortality?

*

Life would be bearable only if cyclical, like Tolkien's primordial unfallen Wood Elves.

Each day the same, no planning, no history, not going anywhere - waking to a day of hunting, eating, singing, love of nature - then sleep.

No ageing nor sickness, no necessity of death - everything governed by instinct and custom.

No sense of the years passing, no accumulation of sorrows and regrets; no big projects, no purpose - just more and more of the same until the (unanticipated) end.

*

A life ultimately non-attached.

No meaning, no purpose - instead absorption.

A non-reflective life, an unaware life.

A life strikingly similar to non-Christian Heaven.  

*

Something missing?

Something big missing?

The human bit?

Yes, that's how it seems to me too.

*

To imagine a kind of timeless human perfection is therefore to reveal that to be merely human is fundamentally unsatisfactory, it is intrinsically wretched.

To be human is to be wretchedly incomplete, to be an animal is not to be human; to be truly human entails becoming a god - which (if to be a god is not to be merely an immortal human) requires God.

To be an immortal god is wretched unless in communion with God.

*

Thus human destiny - like it or not, choose it or not.

*

Reading mainstream Christian theology nowadays, I am amazed I converted!

I have just been reading an exposition of mainstream Christian theology - the theology common to Western and Eastern Catholics and the major Protestant denominations; and I am struck by how it nowadays strikes me as utterly unsatisfactory - being over-inclusive; and consequently incoherent, and evasive. 

It would really have repelled me from becoming a Christian, had I realized that I was signing-up to commit-to believe in such stuff.

From my current understanding, the deep problem seems to be at least twofold:

One is recurrently trying to fit Christianity into oneness philosophy - which leads to a recurrent compulsion to talk of unity as our aspiration and ultimate goal; and thereby to dissolve away individuality, freedom, evil, and indeed Time.  

The other is trying to make Christianity into a this-worldly religion, suitable for incorporation in a church, a method for improving human behaviour, and to serve as the basis for a nation. 

Part of this was making Christianity into an historical religion, provided with an arc either of spiritual decline or spiritual progress. And a this-worldly end-point - including a "second coming" of Jesus. 

   

By trying to provide for too much, Christian theology ends-up making itself into a species of abstract nonsense. 

Whereas Jesus's teaching (as seen in the IV Gospel) is actually very simple and clear; but it is next-worldly. 

The reality of Jesus's "religion" was neither about making better-people nor a better-world - either immediately or in the long term - so the fact that this evidently did not happen, and shows no sign of happening, is not a refutation.  

Jesus offered individual people the chance to follow him to resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

It is by resurrection (by being born again) that better people are made, and it is post-mortal Heaven that is the better world - the world which Jesus actually promised. 

So really, the Christianity of Jesus Christ was next-worldly, and its societal effects on this world, are derivative from the individual consequences of personal confidence in Jesus's promises about the next world.

 

But, unsurprisingly, most people want palliation and happiness now, they demand that their religion promises a better mortal life, an improved society and civilization, they want justice on earth far more than the promise of Heaven. 

And (apparently) from soon after Jesus ascended; the theologians and philosophers have made valiant attempts to construct a "Christianity" that provides what various people, at various times, have demanded of a this-worldly religion. 

By passing itself off as this-worldly when it actually is not; and by trying to satisfy people's demands for a better mortal life and a more congenial social situation - official Christianity became bloated, distorted, and non-sensical. 

Which is a terrible shame indeed, because all this is a significant obstacle to the intellectually honest. 

I was only able to become a Christian by persuading myself that I was not thereby committed to believing everything that people officially told me - any more than in my life as a scientist and academic I was bound to believe everything written in textbooks, or indeed everything said or written by even the best in the field.

Eventually, I did find the truth in Christianity, and only in Christianity; but the real truth is of a different kind - than the this-worldly promises which I - like most people - were seeking and hoping for...

Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to live a better life in a better world; but we need to be clear that at best this can only be a temporary and local palliation of the fundamental human condition. 

The lesson of Jesus Christ is that we really can have what our hearts most desire; but only on the other side of death, and only in Heaven but not on Earth.  

  

"Training the mind" - double-edged effect at best, and preventive of Final Participation

The Romantic will always come-up against the fact that for most of the time he is mundane. Of course, life and (especially) surrounding people are often a real drag upon any aspirations to Higher Consciousness. 

After all, our world is built upon assumptions of anti-God, anti-spirit materialism - and when we are engaged with the world, our minds are entrained to this pervasive mundanity. 

Yet, even with as near a perfect 'environment' as this mortal world offers; the Higher Consciousness of intuition/ heart-thinking- mysticism that is desired sought by Romanticism; is always an intermittent state - and often disappointingly infrequent.

Indeed, some Romantics have ended-up being more distressed by the evanescence of Higher Consciousness, than encouraged by the occurrence of such states. 

Especially; if one is aiming at Final Participation as the goal of consciousness - the destined and necessary stage in human evolutionary development - then there are neither methods nor training to achieve it. 

It is tempting, indeed usual, for serious Romantics to try and escape this - apparently - unsatisfactory situation of endemic failure, by some or another method of 'training the mind'. 

This is what lies behind the grades of initiation beloved by some esoteric societies, the prolonged and daily practice of meditation; and external aids such as ritual, script, music, architecture.  

There seems little doubt that these are at least somewhat effective in training the mind; the question is: what is the effect of such training? 

My distinct impression is that all methods of training the mind that are aimed at Higher Consciousness will fail. 

Either they will just 'not work', will fail to achieve anything sufficiently powerful and lasting to make a significant different to the problem of mortal life; or else (more insidiously) they will succeed in imposing a System upon thinking. 

And this System will either become unconscious and habitual, thereby subjecting thinking to uncontrolled lower consciousness (while terming this state 'higher'). This would apply to Jungian-derived methods; based on lucid dreamlike trances; and also to meditation practices that aims to eradicate 'the self' or 'ego' or discard 'thinking' itself. 

Or else, it will subject thinking to the conscious will, yet this conscious will is merely ordinary mundane consciousness - and subject to the external influences of mundane consciousness. This would apply to the types of meditation that focus on training concentration, imagination and 'visualization' - such as those of ritual magic societies and Steiner's Anthroposophical 'exercises'. 

The apparent 'success' of training may generate increased gratification in life (make people 'feel better' in some way) - but do not achieve the objective of Final Participation.

Both the System and the training in 'concentration' may be effective in producing change - but they are not effective in encouraging Final Participation. And, in failing, they lead to that contamination of genuine insight and achievement with confident error and vast delusion which has been so characteristic of those who aim at Higher Consciousness. 

The limitation is a consequence of Final Participation being a participation in divine creation; which can (for obvious reasons) only happen when a Man is fully aligned with divine purposes of creation. 

This alignment with God happens seldom and briefly, is easily blocked or reversed; which limits the frequency of this state of consciousness. 

But when a Man is fully aligned with God's creation - what a man is following his destiny and that of providence; then Final Participation will happen - spontaneously, without effort or intent. 

Our main job is to recognize when this is-happening and recall when it has-happened. 

And for the Romantic Christian these are the key moments of our mortal life - vital life lessons from which we ought to learn. 

So; these Final Participation experiences will not happen often, and we cannot 'make' them happen by training.

Attempts at training and beliefs that training is efficacious are, indeed, counter-productive. 

But we can notice Final Participation states, value them, learn from them.

The modern, progressive creed - Weston from Out of the Silent Planet

*

From Out of the Silent Planet, a science fiction novel by C.S. Lewis, 1938.

Scene:

Oyarsa is the ruling 'planetary intelligence' (or 'angel') of Malacandra (i.e. Mars).

Ransom was brought to Mars by Weston to be a sacrifice to the inhabitants.

Ransom escapes from Weston and befriends the inhabitants of Malacandra; but Weston (and his side-kick Devine) have shot and killed several of the Martians.

In this scene Weston has been brought in front of the Oyarsa to explain his motivations and conduct.

Ransom mostly translates Weston for the Oyarsa; but later in the passage Weston speaks directly to the Oyarsa using a basic 'pidgin' form of the Malacandran language.

'Hnau' means a sentient being, a 'person'. Hrossa and Pfifltriggi are types of sentient Martian (i.e. types of hnau).

Maleldil is God; the lord of the silent world is Lucifer/ the devil (said here to be the fallen planetary intelligence ruling the Earth - Earth being the Silent Planet of the novel's title).

***

'Speak to Ransom and he shall turn it into our speech,' said Oyarsa.

Weston accepted the arrangement at once. He believed that the hour of his death was come and he was determined to utter the thing - almost the only thing outside his own science which he had to say. He cleared his throat, almost he struck a gesture, and began:

'To you I may seem a vulgar robber, but I bear on my shoulders the destiny of the human race. Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and beehive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization - with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is rapidly annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower. Life -'

'Half a moment,' said Ransom in English. 'That's about as much as I can manage at one go.'

*

Then, turning to Oyarsa, he began translating as well as he could. The process was difficult and the result - which he felt to be rather unsatisfactory - was something like this:

'Among us, Oyarsa, there is a kind of hnau who will take other hnaus' food and - and things, when they are not looking. He says he is not an ordinary one of that kind. He says what he does now will make very different things happen to those of our people who are not yet born. He says that, among you, hnau of one kindred all live together and the hrossa have spears like those we used a very long time ago and your huts are small and round and your boats small and light and like our old ones, and you have one ruler. He says it is different with us. He says we know much. There is a thing happens in our world when the body of a living creature feels pains and becomes weak, and he says we sometimes know how to stop it. He says we have many bent people and we kill them or shut them in huts and that we have people for settling quarrels between the bent hnau about their huts and mates and things. He says we have many ways for the hnau of one land to kill those of another and some are trained to do it. He says we build very big and strong huts of stones and other things - like the pfifltriggi. And he says we exchange many things among ourselves and can carry heavy weights very quickly a long way. Because of all this, he says it would not be the act of a bent hnau if our people killed all your people.'

*

As soon as Ransom had finished, Weston continued.

'Life is greater than any system of morality; her claims are absolute. It is not by tribal taboos and copy-book maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from the amoeba to man and from man to civilization.'

'He says,' began Ransom, 'that living creatures are stronger than the question whether an act is bent or good - no, that cannot be right - he says it is better to be alive and bent than to be dead - no - he says, he says - I cannot say what he says, Oyarsa, in your language. But he goes on to say that the only good thing is that there should be very many creatures alive. He says there were many other animals before the first men and the later ones were better than the earlier ones; but he says the animals were not born because of what is said to the young about bent and good action by their elders. And he says these animals did not feel any pity.'

*

'She,' began Weston.

'I'm sorry,' interrupted Ransom, 'but I've forgotten who She is.'

'Life, of course,' snapped Weston. 'She has ruthlessly broken down all obstacles and liquidated all failures and today in her highest form civilized man - and in me as his representative, she presses forward to that interplanetary leap which will, perhaps, place her for ever beyond the reach of death.'

'He says,' resumed Ransom, 'that these animals learned to do many difficult things, except those who could not; and those ones died and the other animals did not pity them. And he says the best animal now is the kind of man who makes the big huts and carries the heavy weights and does all the other things I told you about; and he is one of these and he says that if the others all knew what he was doing they would be pleased. He says that if he could kill you all and bring our people to live in Malacandra, then they might be able to go on living here after something had gone wrong with our world. And then if something went wrong with Malacandra they might go and kill all the hnau in another world. And then another - and so they would never die out.

*

'It is in her right,' said Weston, 'the right, or, if you will, the might of Life herself, that I am prepared without flinching to plant the flag of man on the soil of Malacandra: to march on, step by step, superseding, where necessary, the lower forms of life that we find, claiming planet after planet, system after system, till our posterity - whatever strange form and yet unguessed mentality they have assumed - dwell in the universe wherever the universe is habitable.'

'He says,' translated Ransom, 'that because of this it would not be a bent action - or else, he says, it would be a possible action - for him to kill you all and bring us here. He says he would feel no pity. He is saying again that perhaps they would be able to keep moving from one world to another and wherever they came they would kill everyone. I think he is now talking about worlds that go round other suns. He wants the creatures born from us to be in as many places as they can. He says he does not know what kind of creatures they will be.'

*

'I may fall,' said Weston. 'But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond.'

'He is saying,' Ransom translated, 'that he will not stop trying to do all this unless you kill him. And he says that though he doesn't know what will happen to the creatures sprung from us, he wants it to happen very much.'

*

Weston, who had now finished his statement, looked round instinctively for a chair to sink into. On Earth he usually sank into a chair as the applause began. Finding none he was not the kind of man to sit on the ground like Devine - he folded his arms and stared with a certain dignity about him.

'It is well that I have heard you,' said Oyarsa. 'For though your mind is feebler, your will is less bent than l thought. It is not for yourself that you would do all this.'

'No,' said Weston proudly in Malacandrian. 'Me die. Man live.'

'Yet you know that these creatures would have to be made quite unlike you before they lived on other worlds.'

'Yes, yes. All new. No one know yet. Strange Big!'

'Then it is not the shape of body that you love?'

'No. Me no care how they shaped.'

'One would think, then, that it is for the mind you care. But that cannot be, or you would love hnau wherever you met it.'

'No care for hnau. Care for man.'

'But if it is neither man's mind, which is as the mind of all other hnau - is not Maleldil maker of them all? - nor his body, which will change - if you care for neither of these, what do you mean by man?'

*

This had to be translated to Weston. When he understood, he replied: 'Me care for man - care for our race - what man begets-' He had to ask Ransom the words for race and beget.

'Strange!' said Oyarsa. 'You do not love any one of your race - you would have let me kill Ransom. You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, that what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left.'

'Tell him,' said Weston when he had been made to understand this, 'that I don't pretend to be a metaphysician. I have not come here to chop logic. If he cannot understand - as apparently you can't either - anything so fundamental as a man's loyalty to humanity, I can't make him understand it.'

*

But Ransom was unable to translate this and the voice of Oyarsa continued:

'I see now how the lord of the silent world has bent you. There are laws that all hnau know, of pity and straight dealing and shame and the like, and one of these is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one, which is not one of the greatest laws; this one he has bent till it becomes folly and has set it up, thus bent, to be a little blind Oyarsa in your brain. And now you can do nothing but obey it, though if we ask you why it is a law you can give no other reason for it than for all the other and greater laws which it drives you to disobey. Do you know why he has done this?'

'Me think no such person - me wise, new man - no believe all that old talk.'

'I will tell you. He has left you this one because a bent hnau can do more evil than a broken one.

***


COMMENT

Weston's views are pretty much identical with my own from the late 1990s into the mid 2000s.

The humour and wisdom of the passage comes from the contrast between Weston's idealistic abstractions and Ransom's translations into plain, honest language (the language of Malacandra is intrinsically plain and honest, since it is an unfallen world).

*

The Oyarsa's message:

There are natural moral laws that all people are born with - and one of these is the love of humankind. Lucifer (who rules the earth) has taught you to break all the moral laws except this one.

But love of humankind is not one of the greatest moral laws - rather it ought to be subordinate to other laws which you break.

Furthermore, Lucifer has exaggerated the application of this law to the point where it becomes folly and has set up this folly as your ruling principle. And now you can do nothing but obey it, without constraint and regardless of the consequences.

But you cannot give any reason why you should obey this moral law, and disobey all the other (and greater) moral laws.

Lucifer left you this single natural moral law, the love of humankind, for this reason: a warped man who is actively and zealously pursuing a single moral law is capable of far more evil than a man with no morality at all.


*

Would I have seen through mine/ Weston's views if I had read OTP at that time, and seen what they translated into 'in plain language'?

Sadly, I doubt it...

*