Meeting The Masters

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (see here and here) which was largely based on essays from this blog arranged thematically. The crisis has obviously intensified since 2019 when the book was published but its nature has not changed. It concerns humanity's rejection of God which has the effect of leading people to search for meaning in false paths, some political, some supposedly spiritual through the attempted deification of the human self, and some just plain hedonistic. That's to name just a few of the wrong directions in which people may go when they turn away from the path of truth and reality.

The events of 2020 could not have happened, certainly not to the extent they did, in a world in which people acknowledged God. To acknowledge God does not just mean you accept a higher power in which all truth is centred and from which it derives. It means you perceive a meaning and a purpose and goal beyond this world which, let's face it and despite its many beauties, is a distinctly unsatisfying place if it represents the sum total of existence. But surely we should know we are not the body and if we are not the body then this world is not all there is and if that is the case then there must be more, something more real that lies behind it. 

We should know we are not the body for many reasons but one simple one is that we speak of 'my' body. That means we recognise that the 'I' lies elsewhere. It is not the product of the body or physically derived but uses the body as part of its experience and means to express itself. Think of your body. It really is just flesh and bone and blood, and surely it should be obvious we are more than that. Obvious as in known unless we are bamboozled by intellectual sophistries. This is not to denigrate the physical body which is currently part of the totality of our being but it is only part and by no means the central part. If people had understood this then they would not have allowed themselves to be panicked by officious bureaucrats and a cravenly compliant media into a quasi-totalitarian situation with an unnecessary and potentially dangerous medical intervention presented as the only escape route. But most people succumbed to the propaganda and they did so because of fear. It was a test which the majority failed. The medical crisis, assuming there ever really was one which is highly doubtful, has passed but the groundwork has been laid for human beings to have their freedom taken away again at some future date. When something has happened once it becomes much easier to do it again. If it's been done before there is precedent so we are less inclined to question it the next time.

Human beings are so constituted that we can accept or deny reality. We have the freedom to do that. But if we make the wrong choice, there are inevitable consequences as in cause and effect consequences. These may not be obvious straightaway but they will become increasingly apparent. Such is our situation. We have turned away from reality and at first there may even have seemed to be the illusion of greater freedom after doing that. There is also a certain freedom if you jump out of a window. However, the law of gravity cannot be ignored and we descend in this certain freedom until we hit the ground. So it is in a spiritual sense. We are falling and the only way to avoid a crash is to learn to fly which basically means return to the acknowledgment of God who alone can save us from a hard landing. I am speaking metaphorically, of course. Suffering in the material sense is not circumvented by faith and spiritual suffering often increases as that is part of the purificatory operation on the soul. But these are transitory and have an ultimately beneficial purpose. The suffering that comes from the rejection of God has no purpose. It is just the negative consequence of denying truth and it does not lead to joy.

Why does one deny truth? Some people might claim that it is an intellectual matter but that is either too simplistic or else an excuse for the failure to exercise proper spiritual responsibility. The true answer lies in the will. The will is sovereign. It is the one thing that is entirely our own and part of the reason for our life in this material world is to test it in an environment where there is no coercion. The current spiritual crisis may in part be seen as the inevitable consequence of a cycle reaching its conclusion when material clouds have thickened to such a degree that the spiritual sun is almost completely obscured. But even when you cannot see the sun its light is perceptible and so it is now. The light of God may be obscured but it is still present and we should know that without that light we could not see anything at all. The current crisis, which is now in the process of moving from simple crisis to actual madness, is to bring things to a head. Use the situation in the world today as a springboard to push against and return to God.

I suggest this is a real phenomenon. You may say space appears to contract because technology has reduced distance while time seems to rush by because life has become so fast and rapidly changing, and I would not dispute that but I would also maintain that this is more than an impression because of our circumstances. It is actually happening though it cannot be measured because any instruments we have would be subject to the same forces that are bringing it about. And the reason it is happening is that we are deep in the Kali Yuga or End Times when spirit withdraws from the world and matter becomes more dominant. This means the very stuff of our current world, now old and worn, is less resistant to the forces of decay and entropy. Consciousness, too, is affected becoming more constricted.

The idea of there being four ages in a cycle is well established in religious cosmology. Many traditions speak of this. Egyptian, Indian and Greek myths all refer to it, and these are only the best known. The ages can be characterised as Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, and in every case there is a descent from a high spiritual state of being to a low material one. At the beginning space is vast and time moves extremely slowly. This is why there are the stories of men living for several centuries back in prehistory. It is also why change only comes about after great spans of time. There is no sense of history since the patterns of life just repeat.

But as the ages proceed people's sense of time changes. Everything is cyclical for early man, each new year resembles the one before, but gradually there arises the notion of linear time. The material aspect of the world condenses and the spiritual moves further away from perception. The process gathers pace until, as the end of the whole cycle approaches, the cosmic framework in which we live has reached such a point of degeneration that it becomes unstable.

This world was originally structured on the pattern of the heavens. What that means is that the eternal realities of the higher worlds of being, somewhat like Platonic Forms, were the template on which human life was based. We can see this clearly in the case of ancient Egypt and India but it would apply everywhere to the degree that it could, based on the human consciousness of the period. A principal principle, as one might say, was the idea of a complementary duality which was the source of creation, heaven and earth, spirit and matter and, in biological terms, male and female. In the beginning there is a correct relationship between these two polarities and they function harmoniously and creatively, but towards the end of the cycle, due to the widening gulf between higher and lower states of being, this relationship is disrupted and becomes antagonistic. This leads to both an inversion of the hierarchy and also attempts to flatten any kind of hierarchy, indeed any kind of difference, at all. This is all in line with the rapidly developing predominance of matter over spirit. When the active and receptive poles of being are functioning correctly and according to their proper nature, all is well. But in a decaying environment everything starts to break down, matter seeks to usurp the rights of spirit and the relationship between the two ceases to operate creatively. The end approaches.

Back in the day advocates of New Age theory looked forward to the world entering the Age of Aquarius when people would experience a so-called quantum leap shift of consciousness. They acknowledged there would be earth changes as the old age crumbled but appeared to think they and many others would be around to enter into a glorious New Age once that had occurred without facing death. This was fundamentally to misunderstand the doctrine of the ages. It is not like winter turning to spring and a new year carries on in more or less the same way. The end of an age is an end. A new beginning is precisely that. It is a fresh start, perhaps on a higher turn of the evolutionary spiral but the past is completely cleared away. When a new heaven and a new earth arrive everything that belongs to the old order must die. Perhaps to be reborn if it has oriented itself correctly, but still it must first go through death. Transformation always requires death.

You might wonder where Jesus Christ comes into this scenario since, as depicted in tradition, it is a universal phenomenon, independent of him. What Christ adds to the teaching of cyclical ages is the idea of a linear progression to the End Times and a glorious new creation. The Kali Yuga and the End Times have much in common in how they play out. The Kali Yuga even concludes with the incarnation of Kalki, an avatar of Vishnu, who ushers in a new Golden Age or Satya Yuga. However, this is still part of an ongoing cycle which doesn't really have a conclusion except in Mahapralaya which is the complete dissolution of the cosmos and return to non-manifestation. What Christ offers is different. It is a new creation, a new heaven and earth. This is not just another Golden Age which will inevitably degenerate. It is a radical restructuring of reality in which evil and suffering, decay and death no longer have any part, and it is open to all those who wish to partake in it with the proviso that they must also restructure themselves in accord with it. This, of course, is impossible in the literal sense but we can at least allow ourselves to be restructured by opening ourselves up completely to Christ. This entails not just belief but love.

Christ is the lifeboat that rescues us from the spiritual wreckage of the Kali Yuga. Increasingly, all people who regard themselves as on the spiritual path or who are just looking for answers in these times of universal decline, value inversion and all-pervasive spread of evil will find they have to turn to him. As time rushes on towards its final destination there really is no other solution.

 Everyone recognises that we live at a time of crisis, whether that be spiritual or material. We might call it by different names and have different degrees of insight into the reality of our present predicament but any thinking person knows we are in trouble. Talk about the massive amount of government and private debt, about societal breakdown or climate change (if you believe in that) or about the complete loss of direction of Western societies. All these, real or imagined, are indicative of some sort of crisis but they are just the froth on the surface. Everyone reading this blog will know that the true crisis is spiritual but even those who don't recognise that realise that something is amiss and badly so.

So, what's the solution?

There is no solution and those who look for one or, worse, try to enforce one will only increase the chaos and confusion. There is no solution because we live at the end of an age or cycle which means we are in a phase of universal decline and increasing disorder. To say this is not to be pessimistic or negative. It's just a plain fact. The world goes through cycles which follow the natural pattern of spring, summer, autumn or fall and winter. To recognise we are deep in winter is simply to see the truth. To seek a solution to that is like an old person pretending to be young and, not coincidentally, that is something we do often see nowadays. In the case of modern man there is a mass falling away from spiritual belief which leads to materialism and atheism to begin with and then in many cases to various false spiritualities. This is the way the world goes when the initial burst of spiritual energy behind the forces that set it in motion starts to fade away and humans make their own reality.

We are in the Kali Yuga or End Times which were predicted and were predictable because the tendencies to decline, loss and value inversion are typical of matter replacing spirit as the predominating force, that being a basic definition of the Kali Yuga. The beginning of a cycle sees the injection of spirit into the world system. This determines the path to be followed but over time its force decreases though the framework it has built remains and can even be developed. But eventually material conditions overwhelm that and then they begin to dominate. There is no solution to this other than to build an inner ark and that is the test of these times. To maintain faith in a world which has either lost it or corrupted it. But this is how the wheat is sorted out from the chaff which you may find an objectionable metaphor given its implications but take that up with John the Baptist.

The world is primarily designed to develop consciousness but at certain times it also has the function of testing the soul. This is one of those times. The test now is for the soul to acknowledge and turn to God as its Creator but also to recognise evil as that which opposes God and his purpose for creation. It is no good simply believing in God if you are not on his side. That just means the God you choose to believe in is one of your own imagining which is the case for many. Humanity has reached a point at which it must make a conscious choice to align itself with God, and the nature of the world today is that this must take place on an individual level. In the past we operated collectively because the culture inclined us in a certain direction but now the culture is in the service of anti-God forces and we have to stand against that if we are to succeed spiritually.

Don't be deceived by people who say that a spiritual person has above all else to be a good person. Good by what criteria? First and foremost, we have to recognise what spiritual good is and consciously, completely, align ourselves with that. It is the full acknowledgement of God. No more and no less. Obviously, we should try to behave in the way that befits a disciple of Christ. Faith alone is not an excuse for bad behaviour or a justification for antinomianism. If you love me, keep my commandments. If you don't keep the commandments you surely do not love he who gave them.  Besides which, proper recognition of God will automatically incline a person to seek to be like him. But to be good as the world sees good is not the same thing. Moreover, we all fall short. That does not matter as long as we sincerely try at every moment of the day to "walk humbly with thy God" in the simple but profound words of the prophet Micah.

There is no outer solution but there is an inner solution. Know yourself to be a soul born in the world at this time to prove you are able to turn your spiritual compass to true north in a world in which all outer influences mitigate against that. Not south, materialism and atheism, not east or west, false forms of spirituality, and not even north east or north west. True north. You have to find the way to God within yourself and that is the case even if you follow an established form of religion which is no longer sufficient on its own and can often be a diversion from the true inner path. Now there has to be a real inner connection. And when you have attained that you simply follow where you are led, wherever that may be.

Anyone can see that Western civilisation is on the way out. Let me rephrase that. Anyone should be able to see that Western civilisation is on the way out, but most people don't because they are too wedded to their own paltry pleasures or selfish resentments or greedy desires or shallow ambitions. The list continues but it basically encompasses all those who do not place the good, the beautiful and the true above their own egos, and that is the majority. If ever a civilisation deserved to collapse, it is ours because we are not worthy of those who established that civilisation. We, who place the temporal above the eternal, put ourselves at the mercy of the temporal and our time has passed.

There is a solution but we will never take it. The solution is to return to tradition and the soul of Christianity. That would include a form of what is now dismissed as patriarchy since, by and large, it is only men who are willing to fight for truth and to preserve it in the face of the inevitable attacks on it, inevitable because Satan exists and wages an ongoing war against creation. This has become so apparent in our day, and especially over the last 25 years, that anyone who wishes to tread the spiritual path has to see that path in terms of the war of good and evil. If you refuse to recognise that and retreat to an 'everything is one' position you are simply being spiritually blind, not to mention irresponsible. The mask is almost completely off now and the face of evil beginning to be seen for what it is.

Satan has weakened the West with, among many other things, the debasement of culture, mass immigration and feminism. In a society that wished to preserve itself immigrants would not be given a say in how the country was run (in other words, a vote) for at least 2 generations, and their number would be restricted. The number of immigrants that flood (the word is fair) into Western countries now will inevitably change them utterly. This may have good or bad results in the long term (I'm being diplomatic), but clearly for the host nation to permit it is borderline insanity because it will destroy itself thereby. A basic instinct is self-preservation. To go against this instinct is to succumb to the unnatural and the anti-spiritual. The failure to reproduce and the desire to kill yourself are ungodly.

Feminism is the devil's secret weapon because, while ostensibly based on reason and justice, it actually seeks to reverse natural hierarchies and turn the two sexes, meant to be complementary, into rivals on the same ground. The promotion of women to previously male spheres damages society because establishing harmony and consensus becomes more important than the search for truth and excellence. This again is one of those things that its so obvious it shouldn't need saying but the ideologically committed will never acknowledge it. That having been said, feminism is not the cause of the collapse but a symptom of it though it does hurry it along as well.

I say the remedy would be a return to some sort of modified patriarchy, meaning one that takes into account the evolution of consciousness and agency of both men and women, but I am not recommending this even if it were possible which it isn't as things stand.  The West must die and that is right and proper. The energies that sustained it are now weak and feeble and it has come to the end of its life. It is becoming a corpse on which the parasites will feed as it dies. But in the greater scheme of things that is not a problem because everything in this world only exists to serve spiritual needs. As the West collapses there are great spiritual opportunities for those who know how to take advantage of them. We may lament the collapse because of past good but everything dies and the West has rejected God so become evil. There is no more to be said. It must go but since the primary function of this world is as a school for consciousness and sphere in which the soul may choose or reject God and be tested thereby that is no great loss. All that is good and true and right exists in the higher worlds eternally.

 I hope it's not sacrilegious to say that sometimes it feels as though the disciples of the world are going through a kind of Gethsemane experience at the moment. Most people will not feel this but those who are responsive to the spiritual level will be aware of the gathering darkness. The bad news is that Gethsemane precedes Good Friday. The good news is that Good Friday precedes Easter Sunday. There is undoubtedly more darkness to come but if we allow it this can be a cleansing, purifying darkness for our souls that prepares them for the light.

Many of the incidents in Jesus's life can be seen as experiences that come to the soul as it progresses on the spiritual path, and the most significant are those that come at the end of his life. Abandoned by friends and, seemingly, even God the soul is thrown back entirely on itself. Its spiritual gifts, if it had them, are withdrawn, its earthly renown, if it had it, is lost. It is no one and nothing with only faith and the intuitive sense of truth to support it. This is the final purification that strips the soul of any worldliness and self-regard that may still be clinging to it so that it becomes light enough to enter the spiritual world. For these are like heavy weights that hold the soul down and will prevent it rising until they are cast off.

This is on the individual level. But patterns repeat themselves at all stages of the path and in all spheres, both on the individual and the group level, and the whole world is experiencing something similar. There is a sorting out of that part of humanity that has the potential to rise and that part which may be held over for future development. We are being presented with a choice which in the simplest terms amounts to God or this world. But note that many people might think they are opting for God when in fact they are in the worldly camp. One of the tests of the present time is that it is no longer sufficient merely to give your allegiance to an earthly institution. All are corrupted and you have to see the reality behind the institution as far more important than the thing itself. Which, of course, means you have to be able to perceive something of this reality.

There is no getting around the fact that the spiritual life can only be known by those who undergo worldly death and this death must be undergone willingly. Before the soul can become united with God it must die to the world and be stripped of itself. Look at the times to come as part of that process for we all, however spiritual or religious we may consider ourselves to be, are sinners and what that means is our centre is our self. We may have relatively good selves or relatively bad selves but until we know, really know, that "we are as nothing and all we are comes from the Creator" the tendency to sin, which means act from the centre of self, remains. The whole of the spiritual life is about replacing self with God at the centre of our being. Good Friday is the start of that process and Easter Sunday the glorious conclusion.

 I have noticed that quite a few writers on the Internet whose main focus is spiritual are getting increasingly drawn into commenting on and analysing current affairs. I understand why people do this especially with each new development revealing an ever greater descent into insanity. But the danger is that too much of one's energy gets focused on irrelevancies. We know, or should do, that the state of a civilisation that denies God becomes more and more detached from reality. We have been in such a state for decades now and it was inevitable we would follow the trajectory we have done. Loss of God leads to lose of the sense of reality because once you reject God you soon start to reject nature as well as there is nothing to anchor you to objective truth. You feel you can make reality what you want and what you want becomes corrupt because it is based on the desires, aspirations and ambitions of your earthly self which is mired in ignorance and egotism. We are some way down that road.

I'm not saying we should ignore what is going on in the world but nor should we allow ourselves to get caught up in it or react to it. To do that will inevitably drag us down to worldly concerns. If you really believe in God you see that life in this world is all about the preparation for heaven. And when you understand how entropy works in terms of human consciousness you see there are going to be times when the world can be coordinated to the heavenly pattern, to a greater or lesser extent, never completely, and times when it goes against that pattern. You have to have the discernment to know what sort of time you are living in. Surely anyone can see that we are now living in a time of spiritual decay and nothing will improve that situation. That doesn't mean you let evil have its way unopposed. You should always resist evil in your heart and stand against it, but you need to know that the trend is irreversible so don't hope for a bright new dawn. Not before there's been a clean sweep anyway. 

This clean sweep may be what is starting to happen now. At the end of an age all the muck of that age has to rise to the surface so it can be brought out and dealt with. Imagine a pond. On the surface the water looks reasonably clear but stir everything up and all the filth that lies at the bottom will be brought to the top. Only then can you clear it away. This is what is taking place in the world today. It is a kind of purification in that our sins are all coming out. It's not pleasant but stand back from what is going on and observe the process from a spiritual vantage point, from above and with a much more extended temporal point of view. Our task is to focus on the spiritual. It doesn't mean we accept the worldly on its own terms but the insanity of the present times has its own logic. That doesn't make it in any way right but fighting it with the idea that you might overcome it externally is a fruitless task. Speak out against so as to support others who might be struggling to make sense of a crazy world but know that the only resolution is spiritual.  

I have written about this before but the madness will only grow which means that the reaction to it will become more extreme, more vehement. That reaction is based on healthy human instinct and common sense (see, for example, this article), but the trap is it can be lured into intemperate response. The proponents of the madness can truly be said to be possessed by the devil in the sense that they have succumbed to malevolently seeded mind viruses because of unacknowledged sins such as envy, resentment, pride and the like. We must be careful not to let their capitulation to sin bring out our own innate tendencies to it which is what Jesus meant when he said resist not evil, something I have also mentioned in previous posts.

The article I link to makes complete sense on the level of everyday normality but it shows no real insight into why the lamented changes are happening. Unless you understand the demonic impulse behind all this you will not grasp that the only resolution to it is to transfer your attention to the spiritual world. Then you will eventually find that everything you think you have lost, and you have lost in a worldly sense, actually exists in a purer and more real form in the higher worlds. That is the reality, this is only the shadow. It is right to lament the destruction even of the shadow of goodness but know that the true goodness can never be harmed by evil. It remains inviolate.

Added note:

Some people might think this is defeatist talk. It is not. We should all fight the madness in whatever way we may be called to do so but we should also know that victory will not be in this world, not at this time. At other historical periods that may have possible but not now. In fact, one of the reasons the madness is allowed is so that we may remove our focus from this world to the higher one. Christians are being called to the Kingdom of Heaven. When the earthly kingdom becomes very obviously the province of the adversary that shift in focus becomes easier to make.

The ways things are going it looks as though the countries of Western Europe might be conquered without putting up any resistance. Has that ever happened before? In fact, these countries often facilitate their conquest by their own weakness and foolishness. America may go the same way. Part of this comes from an ignorance of history, part from naïveté, part from the feminisation of religion, culture, politics and anything else you care to mention and part from sheer stupidity. You might say that maybe this doesn't matter since these countries are so corrupt and spiritually destitute anyway, and that is certainly true. Perhaps they deserve to die. But what will replace them is in no way better despite theoretically being driven by supposedly religious motives, and it is in many ways worse. At least, the West is nominally Christian and its culture has enabled the thriving of deeper enquiry into religion and spiritual understanding. That which seeks to replace it would not permit any such investigation. Its systems would suppress any search for higher truths. It would be from a bad state to a worse.

I have been struck by the crescent and star symbol of Islam. The crescent is the crescent moon which is also known as the horned moon because of its appearance. The star is pictured next to the moon which means it is a fallen star. The moon itself represents the past and what must be outgrown. Esoterically, it is regarded as decaying. Horns, a fallen star, spiritual decay. What does that call to mind?

Added note: I should probably say that my interpretation of this symbol is not meant to imply a literal association but a symbolic one in the contemporary context. Perhaps the symbol is meaningful, perhaps not, but it is certainly there.

It's very strange that the majority of people still have no idea that Western civilisation is being purposefully destroyed. It's an ongoing project which involves the gradual erosion of freedom but since 2020 you would think it so obvious no one could miss it. Recent alarm in the UK about mass immigration and the fact that not only does that erode a nation's sense of self but is actually a net fiscal drain, well known but kept quiet, has done nothing to awaken people to the reality of the situation. The all pervasive leftism used to emasculate native Western populations along with the equally all pervasive feminism means we are robbed of the ability to defend ourselves. The ageing body politic in Western nations has a ravaged immune system and can no longer fend off harmful attacks. Indeed, in many cases it seems to welcome them.

I could go on but this is not a political or nationalist blog. The lesson to take away from all this is that our true life is not here but elsewhere. It is important to recognise the assault on our traditions and our very integrity as a people, and one should know that this is not merely incompetence, though there is certainly plenty of that, but deliberate. The political aim is to remove resistance to globalist control. So, one must recognise the outer attack.  But there is also the intention, now well advanced, of creating a universal cultural nihilism which will leave human beings complicit in their own spiritual disenfranchisement. The real attack is on the human soul.

Even though this world is important not so much for itself as for preparing us for heaven, human societies and cultures should still be modelled on the divine pattern of creation. The soul thrives and can grow as it should in such a scenario. There is a lot of scope for variety but there is still a basic model. The paradox is that in a time such as ours when it emphatically is not the case that this world reflects the higher world there may be fewer people saved as a result of the culture but those who are will be saved at a qualitatively deeper level because they have to go against prevailing winds and currents. This is the advantage of living at the present time. When you turn to God it must be because of your own free will not because society obliges you to do so. This is more authentic. It's a choice of the soul.

Western values, so-called, are now not Christian values which they were for centuries, or even traditional pagan values which at least honoured the gods. They are the fake humanitarian values of the French Revolution and communism, fake because these are not really aimed at human fulfilment which they would be if they actually were humanitarian, but seek the demolishing of previous structures and hierarchies based on a measure of insight into the reality of God, and their replacement by a mechanism to advance the tyrannical aims of the globalist agenda where a small technocratic elite presides over a controlled and servile mass. This is why they seek the destruction of the nations, or those with real traditions of freedom and self-determination, the abolition of the family and ever greater dependence on the state, the promotion of abnormal sexuality which separates us from our true divine nature, the undermining of masculinity which would resist much of this and consequent emphasis on women who tend to go along with the consensus whatever that is. Everywhere you turn nowadays there is this soft totalitarianism which is so much more effective than the jackbooted variety of the past because most people don't even notice they are being herded like sheep.

But take comfort from the fact that all of this was prophesied in numerous traditions from the Christian (Last Times) to the Indian (Kali Yuga). The lesson to take away is that it is inevitable but it doesn't ultimately matter. That doesn't mean you lie down and accept it. You absolutely do not. You must fight it but fight it mostly on the spiritual level by keeping your soul free of the corrupting poison of modern ideologies that deny God or only accept him on their own terms. See what is going on but lay up your treasure elsewhere. Never give in to the lies but know that they are going to increase and will drag down many souls. Make sure you are not one of them by preserving the truth in your heart whatever is said out there. I believe that it is alright to hate evil, I imagine God does, as long as what inspires that hate is love of the good, the beautiful and the true and this is always uppermost in your mind. Don't let hatred overwhelm love and embitter you. It must always be love that guides you.

Actually, this is the difference between a healthy human soul and a leftist, by definition an unhealthy soul because God denying and motivated by resentment. The former hates what he hates because there is something real and good that he loves, and what he hates opposes that. The latter only loves if you can call it that, you might say he only supports something, because firstly there is some aspect of the good that he hates or fears, and what he supports opposes that. He has allowed his soul to be soured. If there is a lesson now for the lonely pilgrim struggling in today's world it is to keep your soul from being soured by focus on the true good which is imperishable. If the world burns, it was always going to do so, besides which that is a necessary stage in the process of alchemical purification. All the bad stuff has to come to the surface in order to be cleaned off.

 There is a very civilised and reasonable view current today that we should respect those whose opinions we do not share. We may disagree with such people but we should not demonise anyone just because they might think differently to us. There's room in the world for all sorts of ideas and to condemn another person because he sees things in a different light is to fall into a confusion between person and ideas. It might even lead to violence.

How appealing is such a thought. How sane and just. And yet I disagree with it. Just as faith is a matter of will rather than intellect so there is right and wrong thought and often, not always but often, those who embrace wrong thought do so because of some spiritual flaw in their character. Their beliefs are the result of their personal shortcomings. 

This is becoming more and more the case as things come to a point and the sheep are separated out from the goats which appears to be the over-arching theme of the present time. A time, be it noted, when the teaching of Jesus Christ really has been spread to every corner of the globe as was given as a necessary precursor to the End Times. Perhaps at one time it was viable to have the wrong ideas if you were genuinely engaged with the search for truth. After all, none of us is right all the time or even wholly right any of the time. But we have to see why people think what they think or argue what they argue. Increasingly, those who have put themselves on the wrong side, which is the side against God and the natural order of creation, do so because of the disordered state of their soul and we cannot grant them equal rights. It is quite reasonably said we should always attack the argument not the person but sometimes the argument is the person.  

When I first became interested in spiritual matters I adopted a universal approach, taking nectar from a variety of flowers, from both temperate and tropical climes, from gardens, forests and jungles. (Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.) But I learnt a lot thereby with different approaches filling in the gaps of others. Christianity, and specifically Jesus Christ, was always central to my spiritual understanding but it was supported by other approaches. However, as time has gone by and the dire spiritual state of the world becomes more exposed I see that only the person of Christ can really save us from the assault. Pretty much everything else, including official Christianity, can be incorporated into the anti-God agenda and often is. Only Christ can offer real refuge against spiritual evil. I don't say other spiritual approaches cannot be valid on their own terms but the centrality of Christ is becoming ever more evident.

Relativism is one of the curses of the modern age. You have your truth and I have mine and both are equally good. No, the unalterable fact is there is truth and there are lies and they are not to be given equal consideration.

Over the last several decades since I first became interested in mysticism and the esoteric I have noticed that spiritual seekers who like to think of themselves as in some way advanced and progressive will often define themselves as Aquarians, displaying characteristics associated with that astrological sign. Hence they will be humanitarian, egalitarian, tradition rejecting, happy to involve technology in their spiritual lives, tolerant of sexual abnormalities and so on. This is in line with the idea, now firmly established in even conventional thought, that we are leaving the Age of Pisces, associated with Christianity, and entering the Age of Aquarius in which the spiritual path takes a more universal and inclusive form. Those who can be identified as Piscean in their thinking and spiritual approach will be regarded as outmoded and behind the times. Aquarians are the vanguard of the brave new world.

I do not doubt that there are such things as astrological ages which depend on the movement of the vernal point, where the sun rises in spring in the Northern hemisphere, from one constellation to another. Since each astrological constellation spans roughly 30 degrees of the sky and the whole cycle takes around 26,000 years, the so called Platonic or Great Year which is the name for the period during which all the fixed stars return to the position in the sky they occupied at the beginning of the cycle, the sun will rise in each sign for roughly 2,000 years during which time human consciousness and civilisations will be marked by the characteristics of that particular sign. In traditional astrology each sign occupies an exact one twelfth of the whole with Aries always the first sign in spring. However, because of the slight wobble of the Earth's polar axis caused by gravitational pull on the equatorial bulge, there is the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes which means that over time the astrological signs and the physical constellations do not actually correspond any more. But that doesn't matter from the point of view of geocentric astrology because Aries in this sense is not the constellation in the sky so much as the first 30 degrees after the vernal equinox.

But the physical constellation also exists, though no one really knows where one constellation ends and another begins because the boundaries cannot be clearly identified. This is why we cannot know for sure when Pisces ends and Aquarius begins. It is clear, however, that Aquarian characteristics have been emerging since the 18th century, perhaps with the discovery of the planet Uranus which was soon seen as the new ruler of Aquarius, replacing Saturn. So, we may be in Aquarius now or we may still at the end of Pisces. Whatever it is, Aquarius represents the New Age in many people's minds and so to be Aquarian in consciousness is regarded as a good thing, a progressive thing.

However, here's a thought. Why should new be better? If you regard humanity as inevitably moving onwards into a better world then it might be, but traditional thought, whether Western or Eastern, has never seen the world in those terms. Christians have the End Times, Hindus have the Kali Yuga and, I believe there is a similar understanding in some forms of Buddhism and Native American lore. To think in an Aquarian way just means going with the flow, conforming to the zeitgeist, perhaps even limiting yourself to atmospheric conditions that prevail in the psychic world. Might the spiritual person be required to go beyond this or, at least, not allow himself to be bound by it? Is it not just like someone who slavishly obeys society's mores regardless of right or wrong, truth or higher truth? Should you not sometimes stand apart from those who simply go where the wind blows or the current takes them?

Aquarius as a sign has certain characteristics. These are not in themselves good or bad but can be expressed in good or bad ways. They would also need to be balanced by other signs to operate in a spiritually, or even materially, harmonious manner. Thus, Aquarius is innovative, egalitarian in outlook, sometimes radical, scientific, concerned with individuality and freedom. You could justifiably lay all the weirdities of wokeness at its door and some might take this as proof that these point to the future but others, like me, would simply say that this is a perversion of the Aquarian spirit, the reaction to it on a spiritually ignorant level by immature minds.

Let me come to the point. For good or ill we are entering the age of Aquarius. There is no reason though, certainly none that traditional spiritual thought would accept, that this means we are entering a bright new age of love and spiritual insight. Actually, there is little of real spiritual insight in the typical Aquarian mentality. The love is mostly on a theoretical or ideological plane and the mentality involved (Aquarius is an air sign) largely intellectual. Also, we should recall that the planetary rulers of Aquarius are Saturn and Uranus. These are both, to put it completely unscientifically, quite dodgy planets. Saturn is traditionally a malefic planet which means its influence is not regarded as benign. Nowadays, we would qualify that by saying it works for the overall good but through tough love, creating hardship in order to foster development, but still it is not sugar and butterflies. As for Uranus, he stands for independence, inspiration, originality, reform, unorthodoxy, eccentricity and so on which means he can be exciting but also unstable and disruptive. He is not safe or reliable. Consequently, both of these ruling planets have problems associated with them.

The spiritually conscious person must stand above all the influences of the day. He is not to be swept along by astrological mood swings or fall into conventional ways of thinking, whatever the conventions are. He must be centred in the eternal not the temporal. The fact that the world is entering into the age of Aquarius is irrelevant to him. Obviously, he will be affected by this as he is in the world, and to deliberately go against it is just reacting to it on a different level, but his consciousness should not be conditioned by it for it is a psychological phenomenon not a spiritual one.

 How do you communicate with people? It might seem obvious. You talk, you converse, you write, you debate and so on. But how do you really get through to people? Increasingly, I notice that everyone thinks what they think and hardly anyone ever changes their mind. As people think and believe radically different things, that's a problem. Has it always been like this? To a degree, no doubt, but it seems to be getting worse. Perhaps this is because of social media where people can find their little niche and then just stay there, but I don't see this as the whole cause. The more self-centred we become, and as a race we are becoming much more self-centred, partly because of the culture, partly because of the nature of human development, the more this problem arises.

I know two people so encrusted in self-delusion that nothing can get through to them. One seems to be animated by the spirit of destruction, anger, resentment and the like, the other by the spirit of nihilism, a kind of cold intellectualism. In their own eyes they have formed their opinions from reason but in fact that is generously supplemented, underpinned really, by prejudices, fears and insecurities, and they use these opinions as a kind of self-protection and justification of personal shortcomings. I wonder if this is common. When talking to these people I notice they never actually listen to what I say or respond to points I might have made. The former constantly interrupts anyway and the latter hides behind an intellectual wall which simply rebuffs anything that does not conform to his personal ideology. Neither are in any way open to truth. They are so identified with their world view that they cannot accept anything that does not square with it. It seems that if they did allow this their very sense of self would start to crumble.

Now, I know we all share this attitude to a certain extent. I'm not immune myself. It is a general human failing but in these people, as I think in many others now, it has become absolute. When I talk to them about anything outside their bubble of belief I hit a wall and they become defensive and antagonistic. As this bubble is, in the one case, far left ideology, and, in the other, atheistic materialism, that is very destructive. But in fact it would also be destructive if the bubble were formed from truth or relative truth. Even a believing Christian must be open to truth beyond his belief. If he is not it risks either crystallising or becomes like an ingrowing toenail by which I mean a limiting rather than a liberating factor in his life. If something is not open to growth and development then it is likely to turn bad. Growth and development doesn't mean radical change. In religious terms it simply means greater height and depth.

What causes this attitude of closed-offness? Two things, I would say. One is a very strong sense of ego. That's not a strong self or even sense of self but a strong attachment to self. Self is exclusive, all-important, but it is also fragile and needs to be supported by ideas that are relevant not because of their conformity to truth but by how much they reinforce the ego and can uphold and justify its prejudices and allay its fears. 

The other factor, of course, is loss of religion. Religion can be made to support ego but generally it is the one thing stronger than ego in that God is clearly greater than self. If there is nothing greater than self the way is clear for self to become a god in its own right. This, I believe, is what is happening to these people and many others.

What's the cure? It's the same cure as for all the ills of life in this mortal world. Love of God or love of truth. If you love truth more than yourself or, at least, more than your personal opinions, then your mind is open. If not then it is not or not properly. But love of truth needs to develop into love of God because God is Truth and so if you really do love truth, you must eventually see this.

More and more people back themselves into an intellectual corner because of their egos. The only way out of this is through humility and love which are the primary Christian virtues but they are also the virtues we sorely lack today though we do have the pretence of them. The two protagonists in my tale would acknowledge their importance but this is also a major problem, A proud, angry person who knows he is proud and angry is closer to salvation than someone who believes or has made himself believe he already has all the required virtues. I once asked the nihilist if he thought he was a good person. He is highly moral in his own way and was surprised by the question. "Of course, I am" he said, "I certainly always try to be." I'm sure he does according to his ideology but it largely involves playing a role he thinks is the right one. It is not natural and without thought. None of it is spontaneous or comes from the heart. I told him I didn't think I was a good person (and I'm sure he agreed!) and I wasn't trying to outperform him in the virtue stakes in saying this but the fact is that anyone who has any sense of God knows how far they are from where they should be. Only the self-satisfied think they are good.

My teachers once told me that you teach best by silence and the rays you give out. I see the wisdom of this. When you talk you can be perceived as challenging or being engaged in a game in which there must be a winner and a loser. That naturally arouses the sense of a fight and brings reaction. But example gets round that problem. There is no confrontation. A person open to being changed is more likely to change if they feel they are not being forced to change. A person not open might also be more susceptible as the influence will work on a subconscious level. I recognise this is a lesson I still have to learn properly. Sometimes the best and soundest communication is through silence.

 One of the advantages of being alive now is that we have easy access to all the religious traditions of the past. This can expand our spiritual horizons though I admit it can also lead to confusion and more breadth but less depth as we turn from one thing to another without ever fully engaging with anything. That is certainly a real possibility but then I believe all traditions are now running dry, and that the spiritual light is disappearing from every one of them, whether it be Buddhism, Islam or even formal Christianity*. That is not to say there is no point attending to the teachings of these traditions and no spiritual benefit to be had from fully committing to them but it is not what it was. I know many people will disagree but how much of that disagreement comes from real understanding and how much from hope, wishful thinking or attachment? We should all do what we feel we are called to do but we should make sure that we really are being called to do that, and that the calling comes from the soul and not some level of our personality. The present time is one in which we largely have to tread an inner path which will necessarily have a strong individual element though see below for how individual should be qualified in this respect.

One of the things a Western Christian might learn from another tradition is the Hindu idea of the Kali Yuga. There is an equivalence in Christianity with the concept of the End Times and also Greek thought has the various ages of Man known best from the writings of Hesiod in which we descend from Gold to Silver to Bronze to Heroic and then now which is the Iron Age. This is a descent because standards of behaviour deteriorate and so does the capacity for human happiness. So, the West does have this idea to counter the more modern concept of progress but it is developed more fully in Indian thought. I presume most readers are familiar with the Kali Yuga so I won't go into details but I would like to draw attention to its inevitability. It is, in fact, an example of the universal principle (in the material world) of entropy. Without an infusion of spiritual energy things will get worse. There have been many infusions of spiritual energy, chief of which, obviously, being the Incarnation, but the well is now running very dry which explains the spiritually catastrophic (not too strong a word) state we are in.

If something is inevitable what should our reaction be? Ignore it and go along with the ride? Certainly not. That is to participate in it, contribute to it. Fight it with all we have? Maybe, but that is to engage in a war you cannot win and you may well be drawn into what you are fighting by combatting it on its own level. Withdraw into the desert or mountains (so to speak)? That is an option that may work for some and I did it myself for 20 years but there is a potential element of self-absorption at play. 

There is no one solution which will work for everyone always but I think the old advice to watch and pray is good. Attempt to live and speak the truth wherever you find yourself and respond to the needs of the moment as they present themselves. The most important thing in the Kali Yuga/End Times is to construct and preserve an inner link to God and then you will know what to do. It won't be the same for everyone. There will always be an individual aspect involved, particularly now when the spiritual path becomes more individual the further you go on it (individual opened to God not enclosed within itself). But remember that if you fight the world you often end up becoming the world. Focus on the inner fight because that is one you really can win.

*Though not Christ himself, of course.

 This blog is now 10 years old, the first post here being on February 28th 2013. I don't suppose I thought it would last that long when I started it but it has because in a changing world with more and more spiritual challenges there still seem to be things to write about. It began as an extension of the book I wrote about my encounters with the spiritual beings I called the Masters in order to develop themes from that book and it has done that but it has also gone its own way over time. That means I hardly ever write about the Masters now, and it's true that I have not had any outer contact with them since 1999 so the title might seem redundant. However, I believe they lie behind many things I do write about. They themselves said that they sought to impress ideas on my brain but this would be on a spiritual and non-verbal level which has to be translated by my own mind so it does come from me in the form it comes out but often (not always, of course) the seeds are planted by them. I should add that I am sure they do this with many people, wherever there is a receptive mind. My case is by no means exceptional.

What I am saying is that the title still applies though in an indirect way. I did consider changing it to just my name to mark the ten year anniversary but what would be the point? It is what it is and may as well remain that. Besides, if there is anything that marks this blog out it would be my experience with the Masters. For new readers who aren't aware of that I would refer them to the books on the right or else to this post which is of a talk I gave a couple of years ago, but the essential point I wish to make here is that though it may seem we are on our own in this world, that is not the case. We are guided and supported by our spiritual teachers, Christians might call these guardian angels, and they are constantly trying to influence us for the good. But their object is to bring us up to their level, possibly so that we can perform the same function as they do for future generations, and so they cannot hold our hands as though we were spiritual babies. Now every serious believer is called to be a saint and saints have to learn how to suffer. They also have to learn to be completely single-minded in their pursuit of God, a single-mindedness that should come from love.

God is all around us but he also withdraws so that we are obliged to go up to meet him. That is, go up to meet him where he truly is. This effort to meet him on his own spiritual level will develop our spiritual faculties. It is the meeting with God that is the goal of all spiritual endeavour. The Masters are just staging posts on the greater journey, as is any spiritual teacher, but staging posts can be very helpful and sometimes you can't get to journey's end without them. Their goal, as implied above, is to encourage us to develop our own relationship with God and that has a twofold aspect. There is the relationship with God the Father, the transcendent Creator of Heaven and Earth, and there is also the relationship with the God who dwells within our own hearts. If you restrict yourself to just one of these aspects your spiritual development will be limited. Your path must encompass both to be true.

Many times over the past 10 years I have written that this is a time of testing. Of course, that is always the case in earthly existence but today the work of the past 2,000 years is coming to a head. You can tell this because at no other time has there been so little awareness of God. People have always sinned and behaved badly but the culture was always religious. No longer. Now even religion is not religious for the most part. But that is good because it means we are being forced back on ourselves. We must become spiritually self-reliant if we want to become spiritually mature. This doesn't mean every man is his own pope but every man must make his own connection to God. This is not an easy task because the fallen self within us constantly gets in the way but making your own connection to God does not mean rejecting outside help in the form of scripture, religious teachings, whatever. It simply means not depending or relying on that outside help. Use it to illuminate your own soul. That is the proper goal of all spiritual endeavour.

 It didn't seem so at the time and it might not seem so now but I believe we can say that the globalist attempt to take over the world that came into full force in 2020 and went on through the next couple of years was a relative failure. To be sure, the great majority of people submitted to the propaganda and accepted the yoke but a substantial minority did not. They didn't believe the lies, they didn't don the facial costumes and they didn't offer their arms up to be stamped. This minority may have been bigger than it appears because they are not reported on by mainstream media, other than very occasionally and then in terms that deride them as idiots, but they supported each other online and so knew they were not alone.

It is this minority that has protected the whole of humanity. Some were quite public in their pronouncements. These were usually people who had some professional knowledge or else those who had insight into the lies and manipulation of governments and other public bodies, knowing that all of these have been captured by powerful vested interests that work against freedom. We owe a debt to these people. Others acted for spiritual reasons and though these are not publicly prominent in  any way their thoughts go out into the world and have a fertilising effect on minds ready to receive truth. You might think of the mental world as a great cloud of images. The more people that focus on a particular thought, the more that thought becomes defined and accessible to other minds that may be reaching out in a certain direction. It is given stronger form and brought closer to the earthly level. 

The attempted coup in 2020 was only a partial success for the globalists. I call them that for want of a better term but they are the body of men and women operating in the physical world who seek to curtail human freedom for their own ends, sometimes to do with money and power but not exclusively so because what these people are really doing whether they know or not, and most don't, is working for discarnate powers whose goal is damnation. What I mean by that word is the spiritual consequence of the human rejection of God. Souls who fall into this unhappy state then provide energy on which the demons, these evil powers and intelligences, can feed. Demons have cut themselves off from God and the true spiritual. They cannot get life energy directly from God. To continue in existence they must therefore steal energy from elsewhere and this is why these fallen beings seek to draw weaker souls into their power through spiritual corruption. This is their ultimate end game. It is why they do not at the moment seek total collapse and destruction. The risk then is that souls turn to God but if they can keep people clinging to the physical while rejecting God and calling good evil and evil good, as we now do to a greater extent than ever before, their goals are well served.

Nevertheless, it appears that more and more people are beginning to wake up from the bad dream of the last three years and realising that this was an orchestrated attempt to enslave humanity. It nearly worked but it didn't work as was hoped because too many people saw through the lies and spoke up about it. Now, the problems with the peck are becoming harder to hide because of the excess deaths figures. The fact that the illness for which the peck was supposed to offer protection was nowhere near as bad as was painted is also becoming better known, and the home imprisonment tactic, which only worked in the first place because so many people actively enjoyed it not suspecting where it might lead, is also being shown up as harmful on many levels from economic to psychological. Not forgetting that it didn't work as a barrier to disease anyway.

However, though the globalists may not have had quite the success they wished for and though their lies are gradually being revealed, they have more tricks up their sleeves. The two main ones they are running at the moment are to do with the hysteria concerning changing weather patterns and dragging the Western world into a war which really has nothing to do with it. Again, we are being fed lies and again there is practically no mainstream publicity given to views that conflict with the official one. I suppose this could only happen because of the corruption of education over the last few decades as people are taught what to think not how to think. I'm almost embarrassed to write such a cliché but it's a fact. There is also the feminisation of thought that has taken place with feelings regarded as more important than truth and harm avoidance and equality the principal aims of policy. More clichés, to be sure, but also more facts.

If I were asked whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about the future I would say both. Despite the relentless propaganda there remains something in the human soul that is oriented towards the true good which is God. In most people this lies dormant but it is there waiting to be woken. Having said that, I don't see the mass of humanity waking up but this is a time of the testing of souls. Those who make the grade will go on to higher worlds. Those who fall short will find themselves in planes of being that correspond to their own consciousness but I believe even most of these will be given new opportunities. A soul is only truly lost when it makes a definitive and permanent decision to reject God. Until that happens there is always hope.

 The time has arrived when the full meaning of the saying that "He who is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30) has become apparent. There is no more fence sitting. You can no longer simply be a good person or even a spiritual or religious person in a generalised sense for if you are you are likely to be caught up and absorbed by the universal inversion of true spiritual values that is well underway. If you don't consciously see this for what it is and actively stand out against it you will become part of it. Remember that this inversion of values is always presented as a good thing and the acceptance of it the mark of a good person so you do have to make an active stand against the good opinion of the world though without lapsing into egotistic defiance or rebellion for the sake of it. What it does is reverse the hierarchical relationship between spirit and matter, putting the spiritual in a distorted form as existing only insofar as it reflects the requirements and priorities of the material. Good becomes this worldly good only.

We are living at a time when the human sense of individuality has reached a peak. This is at once an opportunity, a test and a real danger. It is a danger in the sense that the consequences of a developed free will mean our choices matter. In the past it may have been spiritually acceptable for our choices to be wrong if the culture in which we lived bent them that way. We were not regarded as so personally responsible because our individual sense of self had not been built up so much. Now we are responsible. The influences of the tribe, the culture, the society are no longer acceptable as extenuating circumstances. This also means that even believing the right thing is insufficient if that belief comes from outside. It must be personal, something we have reached through inner awareness.

I have speculated before that the vastly increased population of the world at the present time may be because many souls are returning to make a definitive choice at a time when that choice will be theirs and not just their culture's. Human evolution has reached the point at which our inner mettle can be tested. The test is made both harder and easier in that religion for most people in the West is no longer the default option. If we are going to believe we must actively develop that belief without the coercion of the past. But then things are also made easier because the results of atheism and materialism are more and more apparent to the unprejudiced mind. God is asking us, "Is this what you want? There is an alternative but you have to seek it out. It won't be given to you ready wrapped as before. If you want it you must look for it but if you do look for it, seriously and sincerely, you will find it."

 Yesterday I said to an acquaintance that the climate change conference is surely pointless (I was being diplomatic) since Russia, India and China weren't even going to be there. He, triple pecked, of course, looked at me with real hatred as someone deviating from the party line so naturally I had to ask him why he thought excess deaths in England and Wales are currently higher than they were you know when. See here. The article hedges its bets but the comments seem to have a good idea. That tipped him over the edge and he literally snarled at me saying he listened to experts not gossip and hearsay. Follow the science. 

People are certainly doubling down in their wrong choices now. It seems that something inside them of which they aren't consciously aware is telling them that the only way they can prove to themselves they are right is to entrench themselves even more deeply in their wrongness. Darkness hates light and always wishes to depict it as the real darkness to justify itself. 

This implies that on some level every sinner knows he is a sinner. And they are sinners because the litmus tests (® Bruce Charlton) are actually bringing out the spiritual sickness within souls. Bad people are making bad intellectual choices. That is not to say that those making the right choices are good but they are at least facing the right direction and not bad. I know this sounds very black and white and that is not a popular way to think about people in the modern world. It does appear though that it is how things are increasingly becoming. Anything that was grey must now become either black or white. With every day that goes by the division between sheep and goats is becoming more marked.

 Clever people engage with reality through thought or reason, regarded spiritually as the functioning of the material mind, but the foolish and the wise meet on common ground because they engage with reality as it is, just as they see it. The wise see more deeply and with more understanding but both foolish and wise engage with reality at first hand. Nothing comes between them and their perception of things and beings. Their understanding is not analytically derived but direct.

Thought divides and separates. Clever people exist outside the true reality of life because they work through conceptual thinking, living in a world of abstraction and theory rather than what is. For them nothing is seen as it truly is but as theory presents it. They don't see the thing but the image of the thing, a representation. This is a world of duality in which the individual and the world are completely sundered. The individual then  projects his own interpretation of the world onto all reality and that includes his own reality. He is cut off from life and lives in a fantasy world of his own manufacturing.

There are a lot of clever people in the world today which is why the world has fallen so far into ignorance. These are people who live through the lower mind which gives them the power to manipulate the material world but completely cuts them off from the spiritual which they end up either denying or interpreting according to their limited concepts. The only way out of the mess they have created for themselves, often, it must be said, out of intellectual arrogance, is for them to simplify. Simplicity in this sense means looking rather than calculating and becoming responsive to the mind in the heart in which feeling and thinking are united and taken to a higher place, higher as in embracing more of reality.

The path of evolution involves human beings developing their own sense of themselves as full individuals. The clever stage is therefore one that must be gone through but it is a stage not a destination. We must move beyond it and not become becalmed in it but that is exactly what has happened to large sections of humanity especially in the Western world though increasingly in the East too. It's like being stuck in adolescence and refusing to grow up. We need to grow up.

 I haven't posted much recently because I've been working on a book but even if I hadn't been occupied with that I would not have had a great deal to say at the moment. The world continues its plunge downwards even if most people don't seem to notice that. Not only is spiritual reality denied but even the truths of nature are rejected nowadays what with all the absurd reconfiguring of the simple and basic fact of man and woman. We are messing with the foundation of life and it can only end badly. Then there is the creeping totalitarianism which also seems to be ignored by most. Strange times.

But setting that aside for the moment, the current period seems to be a betwixt and between one. It's as though the demonic powers are gathering their forces for another assault on humanity but holding back for the time being. We can see how preparations here and there are underway but now is a relatively calm period. I suspect that will not be the case for much longer.

This is where Jesus's advice to watch and pray becomes important. We must keep a spiritual weather eye open, look out for the signs, but also retain a certain distance so we don't get too caught up in the storm to come. We can't avoid it but must try not to be swept away by it. I understand those who think that believing that the battle in this world cannot be won is just shouldering arms and ceding the ground to the enemy, but the battle is for souls not territory. Certainly, we should try to make outer conditions as healthy as possible for souls and proclaim both the truth of God and the lies of this world, but part of the test of being alive now is to trust in God when the outer world rejects him. This is the examination of your spiritual mettle. The wind is blowing hard in your face but you must continue to climb that hill.

The world cannot be made better at this time. That doesn't mean we should let evil take its course. We must speak out against it always. But we should look to effect inner transformation not outer change. Humanity is too far gone in evil to turn back collectively now and yet many individuals may do just that. It's actually possible that every individual may do that. (Very unlikely but not completely impossible.) Such is the strange paradox of spiritual life. As the world descends into darkness more people may wake up and I believe that those who are to some degree already awake have to hold themselves in readiness to assist their fellow men and women, so many of whom have been denied basic religious education. I am using the world religious in a broad sense. The time is past for insisting that this or that outer form of religion is required. All that is required is repentance and awakening to the truth and reality of Christ. All the churches are compromised, both intellectually and spiritually, and now salvation has to come from within yourself. Not through yourself because it comes through the grace of God but within yourself. You have to do the work and not rely on any outer human authority.

I am an extremist. As, most probably, are you or anyone who retains faith in a higher power and sees man's destiny as beyond this physical world. We are not really extremists in the sense that our position is bizarre, outlandish, unnatural or one-sided but we have been forced into apparent extremism because of the actually extreme nature of modern civilisation. It is the modern world that has adopted an extremist position of God-denying materialism. It is this world that has evicted itself from reality and propagates lies and illusions. Anyone who holds fast to God and spiritual truth necessarily becomes, by the standards of the extremist ideology of the present day, an extremist. 

Jesus was regarded by the religious and secular authorities of his time as an extremist. His disciples when they spread the word after his death were extremists. All the saints have been extremists even in the context of the religious societies in which they lived, and now when spiritual goodness and truth have been chased from the world and fakes and imitations are put up in their place anyone who affirms the inner reality of God will be condemned as a fanatic, an upstart, mad, even dangerous to societal stability and public order. Such a person is obliged to reject the fashionable ideas of the world. He must go against many perceived public values. In consequence, he will be branded a hater and perhaps, in some not too far off time, a criminal.

This situation has not happened by accident. It may appear that society has evolved in a certain direction over the last few hundred years because of science, education, secular progress etc, but actually we have been like sheep herded in a certain direction and we are now enclosed in the pen that was always waiting for us. Unfortunately, it was not the Good Shepherd who was doing the herding. The only way to understand our present predicament is to see it as the result of evil powers seeking to corrupt humanity and capture our souls. We have been fed half-truths and lies in order that our minds may conform to a certain shape for the demons who are behind the whole process (and no one can deny their skill) know that we cannot be forced into rejecting God against our will. We can be lured into that sorry state but, when all is said and done, it must be our decision. They have set the trap and sweetened the bait but we have voluntarily walked into it with our eyes open. No one has to do this. Even if the path is opened up invitingly before us we still have to set foot on that path and there is always a voice within to warn us against this if we will pay attention to it. If we don't listen to that voice that is because of a spiritual deficiency within us, hard as that may be to hear for anyone raised in the modern world. Don't blame the world. It inclines but does not compel.

As the world descends further into spiritual darkness it becomes more important for us to reject the whole of materialistic atheism and not retain any aspect of it within our minds. There are today many people who protest against this or that aspect of modernity in its most up to date guise, transgenderism being the latest inevitable phase, but who still accept the basic background premise of the materialistic ethos. This position is becoming increasing untenable as the initial harmless-looking seed has grown into the mighty choking weed it has now become. This does not mean a return to the past for the reasons given here but once you accept the reality of God and the spiritual path that puts everything else in a different perspective. We have built up a philosophy of life over the last 300 years based on a false view of man. Throw out that view and everything must be reassessed. You may be able to keep some aspects of the recent past but even they will have to be seen in a completely different light.

One bad apple in a basket soon rots the whole lot. We cannot retain anything of materialism and that is hard because we are soaked in the wretched thing. I don't suppose there is anyone alive, certainly not in the Western world, who is not intellectually affected by materialistic atheism in some form or another. But we do have to try to liberate ourselves from it because it will restrict our spiritual freedom and pollute our minds. That is why we have to be extremists, albeit extremists that walk humbly with God.

 We supposedly live in a humanistic age, one in which mankind is central and owes nothing to anything or indeed anyone beyond itself. We are our own justification. We celebrate ourselves, and our art, politics and science are all based on expanding our knowledge and deepening our fulfilment of ourselves as ourselves. For some our potential is limitless but it is still our potential as human beings even if we bring the universe into it on some abstract or quasi-spiritual level.

What we don't realise is that humanity restricted to humanity is doomed to a solipsistic nihilism, however much we may give our fundamental emptiness a false glamour. The human being can only find any real fulfilment when it goes beyond itself. In fact, the human being is only properly human when it understands itself to be more than human. Humanism actually means separation from God so it is an anti-spiritual philosophy. Truth to tell, it is an anti-human philosophy because the human being without God is destined for death.

We don't live in a humanistic age. We live in an inhuman age. We cover up that grim reality with technological distractions and false ideas about ourself. We are lost, on our own, floating off into the void. We are so insane that people who are aware of this are regarded as mad or childish because they, so it is said, cling onto fantasies. But the biggest fantasy and the greatest arrogance is that we can live without God. Remove the artificial supports that modern human beings have, take away the elaborate structures we have built up to keep out reality and most people might reflect a little more deeply on what they are and what they should be.

The ground is being prepared for the incarnation of a being known as the antichrist by Christians who is probably the same as the one named Ahriman by the spiritual philosopher Rudolf Steiner. This is that aspect of evil which seeks to bind human beings to the material world and cut them off completely from the spiritual. The advent of this being has been prepared by our reduction of life to what can be weighed and measured. Our modern arts, science, politics and philosophy and even medicine have all been pressed into service to accommodate the ends of this individual who may already have been born. Even religion, which now focuses on materialistic humanitarianism more than true spirituality, serves the ends of antichrist/Ahriman. When he appears he will not be obviously evil like some of the despots of the 20th century. He may even appear benign by the materialistic standards we have built up over the last 2 centuries. But he will seek to divert us from true divine understanding and spiritual life. We need to understand that anything or anyone that promises happiness and fulfilment in this world, whatever it calls itself, is not of God. That doesn't mean that hardship and suffering are good in themselves. That also can be a false path. But this life is intended to serve the greater life and can never be justified in itself. 

The current state of the world has been brought about to make us ripe for the picking when the antichrist arrives. But God has not abandoned us. If we can see through the lies we become spiritually stronger. The lies are permitted because they must be brought out into the open in order for us to overcome them and that which corresponds to them in our own souls. If they were not made manifest and outwardly present in this way we would not be able to defeat them and nor could we deal with the same tendencies that exist within ourselves. There is risk involved. The darkness can overwhelm us or we can use it to see the light more clearly. But we are, or should be, spiritual adults now and we can only progress spiritually by facing reality and dealing with it. God will protect us but he will not overprotect us for then we would never grow up.

Ahriman/antichrist has many servants in the modern world, most of whom don't know they are his servants even though they serve his agenda and prepare his way. I would go so far as to say that more or less everyone in the public eye who has any form of power serves his agenda. If they didn't they wouldn't be there. This will only become more so. The plans are laid for complete control of human consciousness. That's not just control of human beings but control of human consciousness. The best slaves are willing slaves and that is what Ahriman wants and what his agents are currently working for in preparation for his appearance. We have to be aware of this. Preserve your freedom. God gave us complete freedom, making us free even to reject him. No one and nothing can take that away but you can give it away. Never sell your birthright, no matter what is offered in exchange for whatever is offered is worthless really. Stay free.