Meeting The Masters

 I was flipping through The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis recently, a book I last read quite a long time ago and the contents of which I had forgotten. It's a short work, based on lectures he gave in 1943 and is not overtly religious in theme even though it is in essence. What it does is defend universal spiritual values against the contemporary assault on them, specifically in the field of education, which denied that moral and aesthetic values were grounded in something objective. It was the beginning of the moral relativism, now so firmly established, which dismisses the idea that there are universal truths and these are rooted in an absolute reality. Lewis argues for something he calls in this book the Tao, the word deriving, of course, from ancient Chinese philosophy, which is something like Ma'at in ancient Egypt or just objective reality, the foundation truth of the universe and of being in general. The Tao is not provable by materialistic, rational, intellectual, logical, scientific means because it derives from a ground much deeper than can be accessed by these on their own. It is recognised, known, accepted, seen (or not by the spiritually blind) but it is not verifiable by empirical evidence as that phrase is normally understood. It should be self-evident but cannot be proved by any of the ways materialists demand proof.

At the end of these lectures Lewis provides a compendium of sayings illustrative of Natural Law drawn from many different sources and traditions ranging from Egyptian, Roman, Greek and Chinese to Christian, Hindu and Jewish to Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Babylonian, American Indian and Australian Aborigine. But there is nothing from the second main monotheistic religion. 

This might seem a strange oversight, if oversight it is, but it reminded me of the time I first became interested in spiritual matters and studied scriptures from all the main traditions. I already knew the Bible reasonably well but reread the New Testament in the light of my new-found interests and beliefs. I read Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, the classics of Taoism and Zen and also some collections of wise words similar to Lewis's compendium. All these spoke of mystical understanding, perhaps in different ways and on different levels and some more than others but they all had an insight into higher reality. Then I read the holy book of the second main monotheistic religion expecting to find more of the same. What a disappointment. There was nothing in this frankly hotch-potch collection of writings that approached the profundity of other scriptures. It barely reached the level of Old Testament spiritual understanding, never mind the New Testament. It was clear that the compiler of this text, which seemed like a New Age channelling, albeit in the context of its time and place, was nowhere near the spiritual level of the founders of other religions. 

Now, maybe these teachings were a step forward for the people of that time and place but they have little to say to us today unlike other scriptures which can transcend time and place and still speak to us across the centuries. It is often said that the three monotheistic religions worship the same God but they approach him in such different ways that that is hard to maintain in any seriousness. For the Christian, God is a loving Father but the God depicted in this holy book demands total allegiance as a despot does from a slave. He may be a benign despot if you obey him but he leaves no room for you as a free individual.

I'm not disputing there are many pious worshippers of God in this religion but there are also encouragements to violence and though these are often glossed over and excused by believers they are plainly there in the source texts which are the holy book and the recorded sayings of its founder who was a war leader as much as he was a prophet. The extremism in this religion is fundamental to it. The West used to know that, and from hard won experience.

Despite what you might be thinking I am not writing this in the context of the present conflict in the Middle East. It's not the Middle East I am concerned about but the West. The second main monotheistic religion is not willing to share power. It will accommodate itself to its perceived rivals in the short term only for long term advantage. That has been demonstrated historically repeatedly. If the modernist ethos of relativism, as described by C.S. Lewis, is one way of abolishing man so too is an absolutist religion which gives all power to the deity and leaves no freedom for the individual human soul. It must obey. It must submit. It's in the name. But God does not want obedience. He wants love. 

 We live today in a spiritually sick society with every tradition undermined and every institution infiltrated by forces bent on destruction. It's right to reassess tradition in the light of contemporary consciousness but very foolish to do a 180 degree turnaround from it without fulling understanding it, and we don't. We just denied the reality which tradition was trying to express. We could have changed the language somewhat but kept the meaning behind it or even gone more deeply into that meaning but our intellectual pride was such that we failed to look beneath the surface of past ways of thinking.

As for our national institutions, once the process of infiltration had reached a certain stage there was a tipping point. That took place around the turn of the millennium after which time the mission became to carry through the new ideology rather than serve the best interests of the nation. Those who rose to the top in such circumstances were the ones who were most comfortable with the agenda or least hesitant to submit ambition to moral scruples. Of course, they employed and promoted like-minded people.

The rejection of tradition and the destruction of institutions built up over, in some cases, centuries, did not happen by chance. It was not simply a matter of organic change but deliberate subversion. Every Western country was affected in the same way at the same time and although it may seem as if this was simply how things turned out because of some fashionable -ism or the impact of the 1960s when class barriers tumbled and freedom and self-expression became the watchwords of the culture, that is not the case because these were only external manifestations of a spiritual revolution that was planned. When I use the word spiritual I do not mean it was good. I mean it came from non-material realms. It was all part of a demonic attempt to corrupt humanity and separate it from God, to present evil as good and blacken spiritual good as evil. This could be done because elements of real good could be taken out of context, promoted, exaggerated  and used to deny others aspects of good. If you deny the primacy of the spiritual then you can present material good as all that is required and what tends to spiritual good is dismissed as either irrelevant or even wicked because it conflicts with your material good.

The aim is control, both physical and psychological. One of the reasons the powers that be are trying to bring the era of cheap energy to a close is that they will have more control. Cheap energy gives freedom but when energy becomes expensive your individual freedom, certainly the power to exercise it, becomes much more circumscribed. Yet more important than this is control of thought. A tamed population does as it's told. This is why, starting from the 1950s, there has been this ongoing attempt to undermine men, especially men of a certain hue, and masculinity. Emasculate to control. This is why such things as feminism and egalitarianism are pushed so relentlessly with the newly invented sins of sexism and racism the worst thought crimes you can commit. It is important to realise that ideologies such as these do have, to quote Bruce Charlton, a "core insight of validity", this being the value of the free individual, each and every one. But the good in them has been deformed and made into an evil by being exaggerated and used to suppress other aspects of truth. A truth taken out of context and the area to which it applies and then applied to other areas in which it does not apply or not in the same way becomes a lie. But, because there is a certain truth nestling within the two ideologies just mentioned it is hard to argue with them as they are presented now on an either/or basis which is what the argument usually gets reduced to. You have to go above and beyond the good/bad dichotomy to find the truth about many things these days which is why we have to go outside both conventional traditional and progressive thinking to get anywhere.

What is the aim of this undermining of freedom and attempted control of thought? For some in the outer circles it may be power but for the real instigators of the process it is the separation of Man from God. Spiritual not political. This is why there are so many contemporary movements that seek to rewrite the reality of creation. Dismantle creation and you do away with God to an even greater extent than simply not believing in him. As long as you accept the natural rules of creation you retain some link to its Maker but when you no longer observe even these you have completely lost touch with reality. Then you can be moulded in whatever shape the demons who are behind all this wish. Give them your mind and they will take your soul.

Note: This is the third part of a short series.

What is Evil?

The Destruction of the West

What is the foundational spiritual quality? I would say it must be freedom. Others might point to love but freedom must exist first for love to be. Esotericists speak of a state beyond being. This is the primordial state of freedom.

If freedom is fundamental to spirit then that which opposes freedom is anti-spiritual. We live at a time when freedom is being increasingly curtailed though this is not always as obvious as it might be. A more evolved consciousness, such as exists in modern human beings in the sense of their greater self-awareness, requires a subtler level of control. Even so, the events of 2020 should have been obvious to anyone but, amazingly, they weren't to the majority, and even now when more and more evidence is emerging that the response to the problem was way over the top most people still won't accept it. I suppose no one likes to think they have been had.

Then there is the matter of the weather. Its changeability is being used as an excuse to bring in ever greater controls. Cost of living increases, with many foodstuffs doubling in price in the UK over the last year, serve the same purpose as does the move to replace cash with digital currency. All these thing point in the same direction. Loss of freedom.

But there is more. Almost everyone nowadays uses computers in some form throughout the greater part of their waking existence. Computers are based on a technology in which measurement, control and quantification are fundamental. Control and regulation. Despite claims to the contrary there is no real freedom in a computer and this is affecting our consciousness and the way we think. I have often written that technology is not neutral. It frames the way we view life. Our minds adapt to the technology we use. The use of computers makes us think and even perceive more like computers. This is leading to a loss of spiritual freedom and that is over and above the fact that our dependence on computers reduces our own inner powers of perception which are being replaced by external substitutes that give us more breadth but less depth. Just like the 2020 events you will either see this or you won't and if you won't might it be that you don't want to?

The greatest achievement of the rapidly dying Western civilisation was the development of human freedom. Undoubtedly, this had its negative side especially when it tipped over into self-indulgence, decadence, chaos and all the rest that we know so well. Even freedom, the greatest good, must be balanced and directed into proper channels which truth is expressed so well in the saying from the Book of Common Prayer that 'in his service is perfect freedom'. The highest freedom is to be found in Christ because that is the flowering of spiritual freedom but even this springs from the seeds of individual freedom. Without that there could be no spiritual freedom.

This, then, is what we should be watching out for. The reduction of freedom in every area of life. But remember that freedom has a purpose and that is to enable us to know God. If freedom is not directed to that end it will turn bad so our task now is, first, to resist the loss of freedom and, second, to use our freedom wisely which means to aim it towards God. For only in God is true and lasting freedom to be found.