Meeting The Masters

 Ma'at and Ṛta are two words signifying concepts whose meaning we have almost completely lost today. The first comes from ancient Egypt, the second from ancient India and they mean more or less the same thing which is truth, universal order or simply that which is right. The cosmos is built on these things and the earthly state or nation should reflect that as should the microcosm, the inner state of the human being. The human soul should conform to Ma'at if it is to walk the correct path and the nation must be based on its principles if it is to be favoured by the gods and prosper. As soon as these principles are deserted because of human corruption or sin or for whatever reason, the benevolence of the gods will be withdrawn and things will start to fall apart. The nation may even be conquered by outside forces or overrun by uncivilised, barbaric elements.

In Egyptian theology Ma'at was personified as a goddess, sometimes shown with wings symbolising her divine origin. She was the daughter of Ra the creator God, so high up in the hierarchy of spiritual beings. She represented the order and harmony of the universe, the pattern on which it was designed and the principles according to which it should be governed. She was also of great importance in determining the post-mortem destination of the soul. After death every soul was required to enter the Hall of Judgment where its heart would be weighed on a set of scales set against Ma'at's feather of truth. If the heart balanced with the feather then Thoth the god of wisdom would record that fact and the soul would be admitted by Osiris to the Sekhet-Aaru or Field of Reeds which was the Egyptian heavenly paradise. If, on the other hand, the heart was heavier than the feather it would be consumed by the goddess Ammit who combined the features of crocodile, lion and hippopotamus, these being the most fearsome beasts known to the ancient Egyptians. This grim fate implied the destruction of the soul. Such was the importance of living by the principles of Ma'at.

The Judgment of the Soul with Osiris (far right) and the Feather of Ma'at in the right hand scale. The jackal-headed god Anubis officiates.

Ṛta expresses a very similar idea. It describes cosmic and moral order and is mentioned over 300 times in the Rig Veda which is the oldest Sanskrit text, currently regarded as dating back to the second millennium BC. The chief god at that time, the sky and ocean god Varuna, is called the king of rta and through its power restores the good order lost from time to time because of sin and ignorance. However, even he is subject to rta in the sense that it precedes him in the order of creation so he may serve and exemplify it but its origin lies further back than the gods. In ancient India the word itself faded from use but its meaning persisted in the idea of dharma which became fundamental to Hindu religion.

These two words convey a similar meaning to the idea of the Tao as used by C.S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man. This is more his adoption of the term than the traditional Chinese sense of the word as the mysterious undercurrent of being, but it fits in with that well enough. For Lewis it is a universal moral structure that transcends the vagaries of the times and cultures in which it may be expressed. It is not verifiable by conventional scientific means because its ground lies in the realm of first principles which cannot be proved as they just are. Lewis traces its presence through many religious traditions, all of which had intuited the reality of this Natural Law as we may think of it. But today we have lost touch with it because we have abandoned the sense of a transcendental absolute. Indeed, a definition of modernity could be that it is the triumph of relativism which might have seemed reasonable at one point but inevitably just ends up in nihilism.

Ma'at, Ṛta, the Tao, all these things point in the same direction, to an eternal, absolute, unchanging, incorruptible reality. We need to rediscover the truth of that reality and start to build our lives and our cultures on that basis. It is flexible enough to allow for different expressions of the one truth but these will differ only in form. In essence, they will be one. However, we must also remember that since Christ natural virtue, which is what Ma'at etc call for, is no longer enough. Piety, worship of the gods, following the path of dharma, supported by the traditional four cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude, are the foundation but on these must be built the house and that is constructed of the spiritual virtues of faith, hope and charity. The difference is that whereas the natural virtues can be acquired through right thinking and human effort, the spiritual virtues can only come from God though God will only bestow them to the soul that has made itself ready to receive them. This should tell us that faith, hope and charity, spiritually considered, are rather more than they are conventionally thought to be as anyone can have them in an ordinary sense but in the proper spiritual sense they are gifts of the Holy Spirit and so qualitatively different to the human versions.

Without the idea of an overarching Absolute human beings have nothing to anchor themselves to reality, and so will make up all sorts of fantastic notions to further their ambitions, desires and goals. But these can never go beyond the limitations of human experience and the human soul is so constituted that it must do this or suffer spiritually. The rediscovery of Ma'at is essential if we are not to drown in relativism.

Right and left are largely meaningless terms nowadays but they are still used because it suits the establishment to perpetuate its power with this charade. The two sides give the illusion of choice but are just variations on the same theme. Most people know this but go along with it anyway as there seems no alternative. 

Now there is the bogey man of the far right used to terrorise the sheep back into the fold. Quite soon a person will be described as far right who

• Loves his country
• Respects the laws of nature
• Thinks men and women are different 
• Honours beauty
• Believes in God and behaves accordingly
• Is a Christian

This last point shows the way forward. There is no political solution to the downward spiral in which we find ourselves. The only solution is spiritual. It always has been but the peculiar nature of our time is that this will become ever more apparent and eventually reach a point at which it cannot be ignored without a conscious effort of denial. If you feel like lamenting the loss of your country remember that your true home is not here.  Use the destruction of your earthly home positively, as a stimulus to focus your thoughts on where you really need to go. "My Kingdom is not of this world."

 I have been made aware that somebody recently has complained about some of the contents of this blog. I don't know exactly what but assume it is something I have written calling into question one or other of the shibboleths of modernity. One of the liberal dogmas that a good person must hold and if they don't it is because there is something morally wrong with them. A classic case of the illiberalism of liberalism.

The problem is that most people nowadays are unable to conceive that reality might have a metaphysical basis and so for them if something offends against feelings it is bad. What I write here is wholly based on metaphysical, that is to say, spiritual, assumptions. Worldly beliefs and ideologies do not enter into it. I say assumptions but I really mean traditional teachings and personal intuitions. My worldview is essentially Christian though with some modifications based on mystical and esoteric thought and personal experience. This involves the idea of the development of consciousness leading, put in its most basic terms, from animal man to modern man to God-realised man, a trajectory that moves consciousness from identification with Nature to self-identification to union with God. As far as I am concerned, this journey is what life is all about and anything that opposes it or would arrest it or reverse it is anti-spiritual and it doesn't matter whether that be human or supernatural in origin. It is working against the will of God. So to offend against modern sensibilities if those sensibilities are spiritually corrosive, and most of them nowadays are because they are grounded in a rejection of God and divine purpose, is not a choice but an obligation. I am not writing for a personal reason but out of what I consider to be necessity. I am not alone in that. Many other people are doing similar things because they too realise the gravity of our current spiritual position.

Enough about me! This post is just to say that I will continue to write about things I believe to be relevant whatever they might be. It is never my intention to cause upset but if God is a God of Love he is also a God of Truth and we can only really encounter his love in the full sense when we open our hearts to his truth. This may involve offending human feelings sometimes but that is only to awaken our minds to the deeper and, yes, more loving reality beyond personal feelings. 

 The full quote from Matthew 24 is "For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." 

Jesus is talking about the end times. It seems to some that our times are the end times, and even if they are not they certainly do a good impression of it. It's true that often over the course of history people have thought they were living during the end times but the widespread apostasy of the present day has not occurred before nor has the fact that the gospel of the kingdom has indeed been preached in all the world which Jesus said would be an indication of the approaching end. Be that as it may, the same patterns tend to repeat themselves at similar stages so while we may or may not be living in the actual end times teachings relating to that will still be relevant for no one can deny we are living through some kind of cultural and civilisational breakdown with the spiritual being chased from the world in most places.

Jesus says that even the elect might be deceived by the signs and wonders put out by those serving the dark agenda. Who are the elect? I suggest it is anyone who holds fast to the truth and is not deceived, neither by lies nor by half truths which always involve a subtler attack on the psyche. These people remain true for the following reasons. A love of truth, spiritual integrity and humility. They seek their reward in heaven and are not tempted by earthly riches or reputation. A tall order. We would all like to think we belong among this group but we should do well to remember that we are tested where we are weakest and even the elect can fall. We might think we have resisted one illusion but then we be deceived by something coming from the opposite direction. We may be impervious to some assaults on truth but still succumb to something that plays on our weaknesses. Right motivation is essential on the spiritual path. It will not protect us from everything, we have to have right discernment too, but it will guide us through many difficulties and enable us to resist many temptations.

To be part of the elect is not a glamorous position. Their role is to serve and quite possibly to suffer too for the suffering of the saints is a kind of expiation for the whole of humanity. They will not be thanked or acclaimed or rewarded. They may even be condemned as their Master was but then the mark of the elect is that they seek only to tread the path of light in truth and love, come what may. If we would join them we must have that attitude too.

 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.

Commenters Lady Mermaid and J.M. Smith on the previous post about the oceanic feeling drew my attention to some interesting marine phrases in Revelation. The first comes from Revelation 21:1. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea." The second reference is in Revelation 4:6 where it says "Before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal" and then a bit further on we have Revelation 15: 2 with "I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name stand on the sea of glass with harps from God."

These two extracts refer to the end of time when good has finally ousted all evil from the world and the spiritual journey is complete. Creation is taken up into God as the New Jerusalem descends. However, they are a little different. The first is a factual statement. There is no more sea. The second doesn't seem to be meant literally. It alludes to something that looks like a sea of glass but is possibly not actually such. The image may just be used comparatively. Nevertheless, I think they are referring to a similar phenomenon and one that manifests on both the material and spiritual levels because at this stage in the operation these two have become one in the sense that the outer is now a perfect representation of the inner. The Fall has been reversed and time has fulfilled its purpose.

What does the sea symbolise? It is the primeval ocean from which life emerges once it has been fertilised by the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. As Lady Mermaid says (and she should know!), it is chaos and formlessness, and as J.M. Smith points out, it is darkness and deep which are the symbols of origin. We know now what the writer of Genesis could not have known, that life started in the sea and only emerged onto dry land once it had reached a certain state of development.  But it's all there in Genesis.

The sea is potential. It is that from which life is formed once it has been impregnated by the Word of God. Hence, no more sea means that potential has been actualised. That which began in the Mother has been born, reached maturity and returned to the Father. What does return to the Father mean here? It means grown up to become like the Father.

In a psychological sense the sea is also the subconscious, that in which monsters lurk but also a source of imagination and creativity when illumined by the Logos. No more sea from this point of view means no more subconscious and that means that the individual, or, at the end of time, the whole human race, has become fully conscious. There are no dark hidden corners in consciousness. Everything has been irradiated by light. The body itself has become light. Occultists talk of the astral plane which is made up of the thoughts, desires, fears, aspirations and so on of humanity but a spiritually ignorant humanity separate from God. It is regarded as a vale of illusion even if it contains beauty. This astral plane is also the sea and for the disciple risen with Christ it ceases to exist, being replaced by that of which it is a manmade distortion which is the quality of love/wisdom.

The sea, then, is the ground of manifested existence, both physically and psychologically. No more sea means that the journey of evolving life is complete, and I would say that the sea of glass points to a similar reality. In the second quote it is mingled with fire which suggests divine love. Watery love implies something rather soft and bland, a generalised state of sentimentalised concern with feelings. But fiery love is intense, creative, genuinely passionate. The sea of glass symbolises emotions controlled, mastered, stilled. The saints stand on it so they can use it but they are not submerged in it, and the fire shows that unstable, changeable human emotions have been transformed into divine love.

Perhaps the whole evolutionary journey is to make water into light. Life must start in the waters which contain the nourishment to make God's thoughts grow. From its depths life emerges onto dry land but then the next stage is to take flight and go through the air up to fire which is the light of God. Could we say that our current refusal to accept the reality of spirit is a refusal to take the next stage of leaving the hard material earth and soar up to the sky, figuratively speaking? Some of want to return to the sea where we will only drown. Some want to stay on the physical earth but God is calling us to mount up to the heavens.

I sometimes get challenged about remarks in my books and online in which I condemn leftism as spiritually destructive. I realise there are many spiritual people who would define themselves as of the left, probably the majority in fact, so let me try to explain what I mean though the basis of it all is in the title of this piece. 

First of all, it doesn't imply that the political right is the way to go. Spirituality goes above and beyond all politics and wants nothing to do with any of it in the sense of identifying with any party or the aims and objectives of any party. I would put the spiritual at the apex of a pyramid that transcends both left and right on the baseline, i.e. in the material world. 

That having been said, you have to ask where did leftist ideology as it is today originate, and the answer is that it arose in the 18th century with the specific rejection of God and his replacement with humanitarianism. Now, this may have been a necessary development at the time because it reflected the growth of awareness of the self throughout all sections of society. This awakening of the consciousness soul, as Rudolf Steiner terms it, required a new approach to life and the world and human beings and their relationship with one another. 

But that should have been in a spiritually aware context. What actually happened was that God was removed from the centre and Man, humanity, put there. What should have been a dietary supplement became the main source of nourishment, and the resultant ideology was more and more focussed on this world, seeking to establish what can only be truly known in the spiritual world down here in the material. And it did this by ignoring the reality that this is a fallen world and we are sinners. I know people don't like this idea today but anyone who is honest must know it is true. There is a spiritual corruption within all of us and denying that fact changes nothing. The left tries to redeem fallen man as fallen man instead of getting him to transcend that state for a higher state of being. This transformation absolutely demands we see ourselves for what we are and the left would say we are largely ok as what we are. That is just not true. It's like telling a sick man he is not sick. 

Spiritual people when they are on the left are so because they believe that is the compassionate approach. But what is real compassion? Consolidating someone in their ignorance or giving them the wherewithal to transcend that? Most answers to most questions are given by Jesus, and if you look at his life you will see that in some respects he acted as might a left wing person and in others as might someone on the right. That's because he was neither. He went above and beyond both for both are limited ideological approaches not founded in truth. A good example is when the crowd were going to stone the woman caught in adultery. Jesus stopped the stoning and forgave her (left) but also told her to sin no more (right). So, there is forgiveness but there is also the recognition of sin as sin and the insistence on repentance. 

If you boiled left and right down to their core principles you might get something like equality and freedom and these are mutually exclusive despite the French Revolution slogan. It is actually freedom that is the deep reality of the human soul. Equality is not a real thing. It never can be except in unexpressed non-being. As I aspire to be a charitable person I would say spiritual leftists are well-meaning  but interpret spiritual reality in terms of their experience in this world when the opposite attitude is what is required if you would know truth. This does not do away with compassion but expands it by incorporating wisdom. Again, I emphasise that condemning leftism in this way does not mean recommending its opposite/rival. But I do condemn leftism or what, since definitions can be slippery, is usually thought of as that nowadays, because it separates us from God, replacing him with a man-made idol if he is allowed at all. What is the difference in most things between a spiritual leftist and a material one? Hardly anything really which means that the spiritual person is being influenced by the worldly one to see reality in terms of the priorities of this world.

I know none of this will convince anyone not already convinced but perhaps it might give some people insight into a different perspective.

I mentioned the 18^th century as the origin of leftism but you could go back further as nothing comes from nothing. Specifically, you could go back to the Reformation which introduced relativism and subjectivism into Western culture. Some of the effects of this were good or even necessary because they allowed for the greater expression of self-consciousness, as already mentioned, but there were also rather severe negative consequences which resulted in an increasingly secularized society with moral, social and even religious values centred in the worldly human being rather than the reality of God. The immanent started to drive out the transcendent. From all this came liberalism which started off seeking to free man from oppressive external authority but soon escalated to other forms until now it seeks to liberate us from both God and Nature.

People might say what is the left of which you speak? Surely it is just the belief that human beings should be treated with fairness and compassion and allowed to express themselves as they wish? Who could possibly not be on board with that aspiration? Perhaps this is how it presents itself but in reality in the modern world the left is purely oppositional. It is against natural law and the natural order. It is anti-white, anti-male (and anti-female or, at least, anti-feminine too if the truth be told), anti-marriage, anti-nature, anti-creation and anti-God, especially anti-God the Father. The compassion of the left is often just an excuse to deny our duty to our Creator and has more in common with an act of rebellion than true love.

It is often said that when the antichrist comes he will be a humanitarian.

 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.

Here are some frequently repeated sayings which are believed to encapsulate the essence of good moral behaviour as far as the modern mind is concerned but which are all wrong. Sometimes only slightly wrong but it's the gap between partial and full truth that is critical. These sayings may shine superficially but if you mistake them for sound moral instruction you will stay becalmed in materialistic thought - whether or not you believe in a God or spiritual background to the universe

Number 1. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you don't harm anyone else.

 According to standard esoteric teachings, human souls come to this Earth to evolve their consciousness, this being the perfect environment in which to do that given the sense of separation to be found here. It's somewhat like a child being turfed out of the secure family home where everything is done for it in order to make its own way in the world and as a result become a mature, responsible adult able to engage with life creatively and actually contribute to the world in a positive manner. These teachings assume reincarnation and say we come back here many times, seeking experience and means of expression to grow as souls. This is linked to the doctrine of reaping what you sow with the consequence that everything we do, and possibly even think, sets up a flow of psychic energy which we must deal with. It may manifest materially as external circumstances and conditions or internally as character traits but we are responsible for all that we are. This is not to punish but to teach. We evolve in this way until we are able to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level while in an earthly body. It's more complicated than that but this is the in a nutshell version.

Sometimes these teachings picture us as similar to cells in the body of a greater being which would be the spirit that stands behind our sun. This being or Solar Logos is also evolving and would be part of a Galactic being who, in turn, would form part of the being who stands behind the whole universe who would, I suppose, be God. There is a pleasing symmetrical order to this scenario and it makes sense on an intellectual level. I believe it to be broadly speaking correct with the solar and stellar spirits as something like great archangels and so on upwards.

There is a problem with this vision though. It doesn't really fit in with Christian teaching. Esotericists realise this and, as a result, tend to jettison Christianity, reducing Christ to a great spiritual teacher or Head of a Spiritual Hierarchy that oversees humanity or else picture him as the Solar Logos and say this was what was meant by Son of God. You can absorb most other spiritual approaches into this one which is what its partisans generally do, but you cannot really absorb Christ, not without making him something other than what he said he was or altering his teachings to mean something other than what he says they meant. Christ didn't talk about evolving consciousness and he was not inclusive. He said he (underlined) was the Way, the Truth and the Life. That is unequivocal. He is not part of some all-purpose spirituality but goes beyond mere spirituality to something higher, deeper and truer, something approaching proper holiness. Christ taught that we should love God whom we could see revealed in him. This is extreme to say the least but it is what he taught and if we believe in Christ we must believe that.

Is it possible to reconcile these two teachings? Many people don't bother. They believe one or the other but I find myself in the tricky position of believing both. I do believe that human souls are supposed to be evolving their consciousness and this Earth serves as the background for that, a kind of playpen in which we can build things though what we are really building is ourselves. But I also believe that Christ goes beyond that. This means that spirituality and evolving consciousness is one thing but Christ is another. He comes to the worldly and the spiritual alike and offers them both something more. The spiritual may be further along the path to God as things stand but the wonder of Christ is that anyone can come to him from any background and is accepted by him if they give themselves heart and soul to him, and this acceptance will transform their soul to a higher degree than any self-pursued spirituality can ever do. You may be building a humble village church or a grand cathedral but both are hollow structures without the light of Christ illumining them from within.

Could it be that before the advent of Christ scenario 1 operated? Human souls reincarnated after a period in the spiritual realms to further their spiritual evolution and this proceeded in a certain direction, developing all aspects of the whole being, unless brought to a close by the attainment of Buddhist Nirvana meaning a complete disidentification with the phenomenal world and, in a sense, rejection of creation. But Christ came to bring a higher understanding, one in which the soul could be made like him by allowing him into itself. Any soul on any evolutionary level could do this though naturally the more developed the soul, the more of Christ it could absorb and express. Thus, the path of spiritual evolution exists and so does the path of Christ but this latter brings more of divine reality to the picture. For instance, an evolving soul might, in esoteric parlance, have opened all its psychic energy centres including that at the crown of the head, but unless it has fully accepted Christ it is still operating in the spiritual world rather than the true Heaven of Christ which is a new creation containing more of divine being than can ever be attained just through evolution.

I realise a lot more has to be done if one is to develop a proper understanding of how Christ impacts and goes beyond standard issue spirituality but this is my attempt at a start.

 Bruce Charlton made a comment on a recent post of his which you can find here. (The comment is at the bottom.) He said "Metaphysics is prior to science, therefore science cannot 'inform' it." This is something I have long thought, ever since the days when there were popular books linking mysticism and quantum mechanics and the like, and there was much excitement that science was confirming the wisdom of the ancients about the nature of reality and consciousness. I thought then and I think now this was a mistake. You see, metaphysics to be truly spiritual in content must be founded on intuition and insight, direct perception. It comes from above to the below, from the spiritual. Science is just the opposite. It comes from the physical or material. Please don't tell me scientists have intuitions. That isn't the point. It's the primary level of awareness that matters, the plane of insight. The true metaphysician thinks from the metaphysical level. The scientist speaks from the physical or mental which is part of the material.

Science may, using its own language, confirm some of the insights of the metaphysical but this is of no spiritual use because it comes from below. Science might "prove" in some way that God exists but this would be spiritually meaningless and spiritually worthless. It would just create a thoughtform of God on the mental level and would have nothing to do with the real God who is spirit and must be worshipped/approached in spirit and in truth. The commenter to whom Bruce was responding said that reality is one and the divisions in knowledge are human artefacts but this is wrong. Reality may be one but the divisions in reality are real. The different levels of consciousness, at their most basic, the spiritual and material, operate in quite different ways. What operates materially, as science does, can never inform the spiritual. It can describe it in its own terms but it cannot enter into it. It remains forever outside unless it approaches it on its own terms. The lesser can never encompass the greater though the converse is true.

Science is a noble pursuit because it seeks to uncover truth. (At least, it used to. It's hard to have the same positive attitude these days and even harder post 2020.) However, it always remains outside the metaphysical because it only relates to the phenomenal world. It can approach the spiritual when rightly oriented but the scientific method is of no use when seeking to understand the spiritual in the proper sense. You can only understand the spiritual spiritually. A scientific understanding of the spiritual is by definition materialistic. You cannot comprehend music in terms of the shape of the notes even if you theorise that the notes are expressing something more than their physical form. If science really wants to get to grips with the metaphysical world it must humble itself and knows its limits. Then it might start to go beyond them but it will be transformed into something else in the process.

This is not saying science is a waste of time in terms of the pursuit of knowledge (I'm not talking about its technological applications) or a futile endeavour. It may well be that by having gone through the scientific mode of thought spiritual understanding if and when one gets to it will be richer. The mind will have been sharpened and therefore more receptive to higher truth than it might otherwise have been even if this higher truth can never be known by science as it is in itself.

 Fate has decreed that I have a close and ongoing association with a couple of people who might be described as hard left in their outlook. That is, they are thoroughgoing egalitarians whose morality is based on materialistic utilitarianism. I have nothing in common with these people but I am grateful that I have had this association because I have learnt a lot from it, and one of the things I have learnt is that if someone is wedded to a particular ideology there is literally nothing you can say that will shake them from that. Both these people (atheists, of course) pride themselves on being rational and scientific but both of them are emotionally bound to their ideology and use reason only when it supports that. Reason, in the limited form it is viewed today, can be made to support the leftist, egalitarian ethos but that is only because vast swathes of reality have been ruthlessly cut out of the picture. It is unreasonable to deny the spiritual, it is unreasonable to deny nature and biology and it is unreasonable to deny God but for these people and people like them a circular argument is all that is required. We cannot see spirit by material means therefore spirit cannot exist. What?

What do you do when you are confronted by people driven by ideology? First of all, you cannot argue with them. Any argument will generate a lot of heat but no light. You are operating from totally different root assumptions. Your first principles have nothing in common and unless that is acknowledged you will get nowhere. If it is acknowledged you have to ask them what their first principles are based on. They will probably say they are based on humanity. Then you might ask what is humanity? The point is that unless humanity has a spiritual origin it is of no consequence, a random assemblage of mindless forces with no coherent centre or actual integrity. What happens to such a thing simply doesn't matter because it isn't in any serious way real. If it is agreed humanity does have a spiritual origin then you must ask whether that should determine how we live and think and act. Does it mean we see our destiny in this world or is there a wider purpose which goes beyond this world and how we see ourselves at present? If spiritual is what we ultimately are then spiritual understanding is what we should be working towards and that means seeing everything in the light of the spiritual not its own light. Materialists are like people who only live at night and insist the moon is the source of its own illumination.

But really all this is irrelevant. People believe what they want to believe and if they don't want to believe in God then they won't. Leftists don't want to believe in God. Even when they do adopt a form of spirituality you will find that it is centred in the human being and how to bring benefit to that. I am not saying it is wrong to seek happiness. We are bound to do that. It is right and healthy to want to do so. But this should be in the light of the reality of God not as a personal agenda. The true spiritual believer wants to bring his soul into conformity with the reality of the Creator and his creation. The leftist, whether believer or not, wants to bring creation into conformity with the desires of his soul and will do everything to further that end. In this sense the leftist is always a materialist even when he follows a spiritual path.

You can't talk to ideologues because their ideology is their idol, their replacement for God. They will accuse the believer in God of having his own ideology and being no different to them, and nothing will persuade them that there is a world of difference between opening up the mind and heart to reality and creating one's own version of reality in line with one's own desires, one that may support and enable flaws in your character and in which sins are not sins. I realise that the believer will always bring something of himself to his beliefs but adding a few decorative touches to a building whose foundations are grounded in solid rock is not the same as building in sand. Some ideologies can contain elements of reality but they are still mental constructs not perceptions of truth and their mental aspect always dominates the reality aspect.

When all is said and done it is probably only experience that can change someone whose mind has been contaminated by an ideology. Arguing is useless. Example might be better but really it is only the consequences of wrong thinking that will help to bring about right thinking. However, bear in mind that most ideologues have adopted their ideology to rationalise and justify a character defect. This is an uncomfortable truth and why it can be hard to argue with a leftist without, in the end, getting personal. So it is best avoided.

 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.

 It's not either/or. It's both/and. We would be foolish to reject the wisdom of tradition but we have to make that wisdom our own and that means we must bring a personal approach to it. There is also the important point that in the modern world things have changed. We have crossed a threshold and are now required, yes, required, to find truth within ourselves rather than simply take it from an external source, however august that source might be, however authoritative.

If I had been born in Saudi Arabia 100 years ago I would no doubt have been a fervent Muslim. If I had been born to a Brahmin family in 18th century India I would have been a Hindu of some kind, pledging my spiritual allegiance to Vishnu or Siva. If a Roman Catholic today who lives his life according to the rules of the Church and believes what the Church decrees had been born in Tibet he would almost certainly have been a Buddhist. That should give us pause for thought. This is the same soul born in a different time and place and believing something totally different according to the milieu in which he had grown up. Unless you consider this impossible. But if you do it seems to me you are putting material things before spiritual ones for you are determining the soul by the body and its outer circumstances. Certainly the soul is qualified by these things but it is not formed by them or bound to them.

Personal discernment can be faulty but the fact that it is not perfect in this world is no reason not to strive to develop it or be guided by it. It should have its checks and balances and tradition and authority can help in this regard. They can also give it the impetus it needs to start it off and set it in the right direction. But they are not perfect either. Besides, do you think God wants obedient servants or co-creators who can work with him to expand and glorify creation? Asking the question gives the answer. If he wanted the former he would not have put us in this world which is specifically designed to foster the development of free will.

In a way that is what all this comes down to. Free will is not just a matter of making the right choice. That is just the beginning, necessary but not sufficient. It really has to do with making gods out of men. If that is to happen these men cannot just be followers. They must be captains of their own ships, able to navigate anywhere in the creation they want to go though always, of course, according to the laws of God not their own whims and personal preferences or they will capsize and sink.

One of the arguments against personal discernment is that it can be unreliable. At this stage of our development that is quite true. But two points need to be made. The fastest sprinter had to learn to walk at one time. If he hadn't done that, and probably fallen over on a few occasions, he would never have become a sprinter. We are at an early stage of inner discernment. We will make mistakes but we will learn from them. God will guide us back to the true path if our motivation is right. If it's not right, that is a different story and then we need to get it right.

The second point is this. Do you think tradition is perfect and, even more, complete? It is not. It may be enough for salvation (though it may not nowadays for this is a different world to that of the past and has its own demands) but it is not enough for theosis which requires full personal and spiritual responsibility.

The question then arises what if discernment and authority clash? Which bows to which? I would say you have to use discernment to decide this question which perhaps answers it. But what use is discernment if you reject it when it differs from authority? If it merely confirms authority and tradition it is obviously just conditioned by them and not personal at all. If it is perversely different then it is too personal and not rooted in spiritual awareness as it should be. Generally, discernment will add to and develop tradition and cast it in the light of here and now. Without it tradition and authority become ossified.

Egypt was once the centre of the highest spirituality on Earth but then it descended into a concern with magic and power and became the oppressive nation we know of from the time of Moses. Israel was once the focus of God's attention, a chosen nation that was the ground from which the Messiah was born, but then it too descended into materialism, corruption and legalism. Christianity was a religion that gave the believer direct access to the Son of God but it gradually lost power as too many of its leaders succumbed to this world, and now its outer structures remain in place but the fire burns low.

Nothing lasts in this world and that is truer than ever in our day which is a time of increasing destruction. There is no outer spiritual body that will save you if you put your trust in it. The time has come when all aspiring souls must strive for truth within themselves. They can still use the outer forms but they must not allow themselves to be restricted by them. I know there is a verse in the Bible in which Jesus says the gates of Hades will not overcome his church but almost immediately afterwards he calls Peter, Peter the rock on which he will build that church and whom he has just praised fulsomely, Satan! I don't think we can build an entire spiritual edifice on one verse particularly when it can't be certain what Jesus meant by the word 'church'.  And given the recent arguments about inner discernment and outer authority we should also note that Jesus commended Peter for knowing he was the Messiah because he had had that revealed to him not by flesh and blood (outer authority) but by his Father in Heaven (inner knowing). 

I have to say that some people seem to mistake the lamp for the light. You can have a beautiful lamp, made of gold and adorned with jewels and with finely polished glass so that it allows the light to pass through clearly and without obstruction. But it is still the lamp. What is more, the glass can get dirty unless it is regularly cleaned, even replaced when it gets old. When that happens those who look for light in a pure form may have to look elsewhere. Some light may still pass through discoloured glass but it is less than it was and to pretend otherwise will help no one. Those who look elsewhere may still value the lamp for its beauty and the light it continues to transmit but what they really seek is light and they will look for that wherever it may be.

Why do we come into this world? If it is just to obey an outer authority we could do that better in the higher worlds. But if it is to learn to become a real divine being then we have to reach inside ourselves to find the living God there. The church serves supremely as a bastion of tradition and authority but it is like a mother. The growing child cannot stay clinging to its mother or it will never grow. Naturally, it will always love and respect its mother but if it is to become a mature adult it must start taking responsibility for itself.

Those designated Romantic Christians merely believe that the sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath. They see the Christian religion as a living thing but living things either grow or start to decay. No one is saying the church should adapt to modernity because that is tantamount to saying it should secularise itself which is more or less what the Church of England has done to its catastrophic loss. But that is changing in a negative sense. There is positive, creative change too that reflects a deeper engagement with spirit (rather than accommodating to the world) and that is all the Romantic Christians are interested in. Speaking as one who may be said to fall into that category, I would say RCs (no pun intended) love and respect the church but their real love is for Christ and they will seek him everywhere.

 I am going to wade into turbulent waters again because I feel the need to say something about the ongoing disagreement between those who put their primary faith in intuition and those who put their faith in a church. Ideally there should be no disagreement because in a perfect world these would be exactly the same. Inner and outer would reflect each other completely. But this is not a perfect world. It's a fallen one and the fallen nature of the world corrupts both intuition and outer institutions. There is nothing perfect in our world. That is just a fact and one we have to deal with.

What this means is that we must have checks and balances for both the inner and the outer. This is as it should be. God wants us to grow but he wants us to grow properly. You know those little fences one puts around young saplings to make sure they grow straight and upright? This is tradition and authority. Without that fence the tree might not grow properly. But what if you leave the fence on too long? Then the tree won't grow properly either. It might be hemmed in and stunted. This analogy can't be pushed too far but what it means is that spiritual growth must be guided but it must also come from within.

Regarding churches, I must mention the accident of birth problem. Might it not be that those who are currently ardent upholders of Religion A might have been equally ardent upholders of Religion B had they been born in a different time and place? I have met Hindus and Muslims, especially the latter, who speak in very similar language to that used by the church Christians. They would say heaven or enlightenment or whatever they call it is only gained through adherence to certain customs and rituals belonging to their religion. I'm not saying all religions are equal because I don't believe that but this tendency of human nature should give us pause for thought. 

Romantic Christians, that is to say those who feel unable to give full allegiance to any outer church because they search for what to them is a more fundamental connection to God within, have been described as enemies of Christianity. All those I am aware of merely think that outer forms cannot contain the full measure of spirit and that the modern age is one in which that is particularly true. They see spiritual life as an evolutionary thing, growing and unfolding, not a static once and for all revelation that will never develop beyond where it is now. Of course, they acknowledge Jesus Christ as the foundation on which all truth rests but they do not necessarily think that Christianity, especially modern Christianity, contains all that Christ is. Do traditionalists think it does? They might counter that official Christianity contains enough of Christ for us here and now and that to look beyond it risks falling into deception. That is true enough as far as it goes but I firmly believe that Christ wants us to know as much of him as we can. He calls us to that. What lover is satisfied with just part of his beloved?

This looks like being another sad story of believers fighting each other instead of seeing that there are bigger fish to fry nowadays. If I were an atheist I would be having a good laugh. I might even feel my opinion validated. And I'll tell you something else of which I am absolutely sure. This debate is irrelevant to God because he looks at the heart. If the human heart is open to him and then seeks an honest and loving relationship with him, he is satisfied. It's all too easy to get distracted from that basic element of the spiritual life and focus on side issues.

The bottom line is that no one in this world has all the answers. We are all struggling and growing or should be. We also all have the tendency to spiritual pride and I don't say this lightly. We all do, but as long as we measure ourselves against the reality of Christ and strive to follow him in our hearts and minds then outer disagreements should not be so important. Certainly some disagreements are fundamental and cannot be overcome. Peace at any cost is no answer to anything. But I also think each side in this debate should acknowledge the sincerity of the other even when they disagree with them. After all, no one proposes a radical reassessment of the great bulk of what Jesus taught. It really just boils down to couple of verses of the Bible, Matthew 16:18-19, and whether to take them absolutely literally. To me to do that seems almost totalitarian and not like the Jesus of the rest of the gospels at all. I could be making a mistake but if I am it is motivated by a desire for truth so I would hope to be forgiven.

 There has been some to-ing and fro-ing online about the differences between so called Romantic Christianity and traditional Christianity. I haven't followed it all but I think this boils down to whether inner discernment trumps outer authority or vice versa. My first reaction is to say that both are necessary. There probably wouldn't be much inner discernment if we had no tradition, no scripture and no religious teaching to bring it out and help give it form. On the other hand, following authority without bringing that alive through inner discernment leads to dead legalism.

I personally don't regard Romantic Christianity as fundamentally different to traditional Christianity but it follows the way of John more than that of Peter. I fully acknowledge the risk of heresy with a more mystical approach that prioritises inner awareness but I think that is a risk we have to take if we are concerned with theosis as well as salvation. Christ calls us to become like him. This really does demand going beyond outer authority and treading the inner path. That in turn requires a correspondingly greater degree of honesty and humility to avoid going off the spiritual rails but it is somewhat similar to swimming when out of your depth. You have to take your feet off the ground for which read the support of traditional authority. That is still there but if you are really going to be a good swimmer then you have to strike out on your own.

From the real spiritual point of view, where is authority located? In the church or in God? Don't tell me they are the same because they really are not. The church may have authority from God to save souls but it does not begin to contain all that God is and it can, as we have surely seen recently, lose connection to the Holy Spirit. It is that connection that the Romantic Christians wish to establish in their own hearts and minds. Yes, the church is the custodian of sacred truth and it preserves that for all humanity but is it not possible that an excessive adherence to the body of Christ can, at certain times, lead to a loss of connection to his spirit? I believe this is one of those times.

Having said that, I sympathise with both sides in this debate. I see this matter as a question of balance, balance between inner and outer though, probably because I was brought up a Protestant, the outer for me is more scripture than a church. I also believe that this argument is not so important to God. He looks at the heart. If this is correctly oriented to goodness and truth in the form of Jesus Christ then outer differences, even (hold your breath) certain (not all, of course) heresies don't matter.

People who should be natural allies in the face of great contemporary worldly evil can disagree but should not fall out. Religious history is scarred by believers fighting among themselves. Absolutely one must defend truth as one sees it but we should also be able to tell if someone is spiritually at fault or merely intellectually so or even just focusing on a different aspect of truth which inevitably is far greater than any one of us can encompass. Can those who see faithfulness to the church as primary not see that others, equally faithful to God, might need to establish the inner connection we spoke of above and treat that as fundamental? Equally, can the latter not see that heresies and false spiritualities abound, particularly when spiritual seekers go freelance, and that part of the function of tradition is to defend humanity against that? It's all about balance, I tell you.

 There's a fair amount of Libra in my birth chart - Mercury and Venus are both there as is Neptune. Maybe that's why I usually try to look at both sides of a question. With that in mind this post is going to be about the importance of esoteric understanding if one wants to make real spiritual progress. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for salvation but it is very helpful and, though the intellectual mind is not the key to unlocking the door of spiritual truth, it can certainly guide the key to the lock.

Faith and knowledge are often separated and regarded as almost in opposition but I see them as twins with each one both complementing and deepening the other. Without faith knowledge is dry and spiritually sterile. Without knowledge faith can be impotent and immature and rooted in ignorance. Ignorance is never good. It will likely lead to error and then becomes faith in what is false. What use is that?

Esoteric teachings are simply a guide to the higher aspects of the human being, where we have come from, where we should be going and how we get there from here. Then they describe the spiritual structure of the universe. They are, properly considered, the knowledge aspect of religion and so are a form of spiritual science. Like material science they can be abused but in themselves they are good because they are founded on truth though I would add the strict proviso that any teaching calling itself esoteric needs to be subjected to the rigour of intuition, common sense and cast in the light of the reality of Christ. If it conflicts with the latter, it can be rejected.

There may have been a time when knowledge of the higher worlds was relatively unimportant for the work we need to do in this world to grow and develop spiritually but now human beings have evolved their minds and the mind needs to be catered for. It must have food. If it does not have real knowledge it will have false knowledge and it will act according to that in ways that would not have been possible before as it has more agency. Therefore, you could say that esoteric understanding has become more important. A developing mind has to have something to know. 

Moreover, there is a God-given impulse in the mind pushing it towards growth. We need to understand. We are in fact obliged to understand and esoteric teachings provide some form of understanding. They are not perfect because we are still very limited beings but we are growing towards the light and esoteric teachings can be a kind of fertiliser that help us to grow. As long, that is, as they are balanced by growth in the spiritual and moral sense. I refer back to the previous post.

 Spiritual errors are usually not outright lies but distortions of truth. That way they seem more plausible and can be more effective in taking one off the straight and narrow path. Two such modern errors or heresies, if you can call them that since they are not really Christian heresies even if they have infected Christianity, are almost opposites. One is that the love of one's neighbour is the pre-eminent mark of a spiritual person. This could only be believed in a materialistic world. The pre-eminent spiritual quality is love of God. That should go without saying since Jesus said it. Love of one's neighbour comes after love of God and, properly speaking, is dependent on it which tells us that love of the neighbour means acting for his spiritual good, doing what will bring him closer to God. Love always means working for spiritual good. If you think you love your neighbour but use that supposed love to solidify him in his sins you are not responding to real love at all but to some imagined imitation of it.

This inversion of the true spiritual order has come about, as so many errors do, because one aspect of spiritual teaching has been emphasised at the expense of others which are neglected. The story of the Good Samaritan has been taken as the central pillar of Christianity with more important teachings such as for instance the love of God, the recognition of Christ, the rejection of the world and the fact of good and evil as spiritual realities downgraded. But spiritual understanding is dependent on maintaining the correct balance between truth and love, the vertical connection to God and the horizontal radiation to Man, and note that the horizontal radiation can only be real when the vertical connection is true. Otherwise what you do is not radiate but project and what you project is not spiritual love which wholly depends on the spiritual connection being true since that is its source.

The second error of the two I referred to above is the elevation of abstract spirit as the supreme reality and spiritual goal. This idea can be seen in Buddhism, some forms of Hinduism and even elements of Green philosophy. But it misses the point that God looked at creation and saw that it was good. Why create just to throw the fruits of that away at the end? Creation must clearly add something new and better to the mix and this was demonstrated by Jesus at the Ascension. He didn't just disappear as a spirit. His body was resurrected and then ascended into heaven as Christian teaching says ours will be. Now, this doesn't mean we will all rise from our graves in our old bodies. The body will be transformed but we will still have a body as indeed we must if we have an individual self. Can you imagine a self without a form in which it appears? No body means no beauty. It means no love for love requires appearance if it has any blood in it. Maybe it is creation that gives blood to spirit as in the loving warmth of life.

Abandoning materialism for spiritual belief is a step forward but it can also be a step away if one is not careful. Spiritual error lies waiting for all of us when we set out on the path to God but it is also a good marker of right motivation. We may believe what it suits us to believe. On the other hand, if our heart is true what we believe in our head is of secondary importance.

Sometimes in today's materialistic world in which traditional values have been turned on their head and good and bad redefined, a person who approaches the spiritual path might be confronted with some version of the following question. This question might come from someone else or it might even come from within oneself. We have all been brought up in the modern world and its attitudes cannot help but rub off on us. We are taught that certain beliefs are moral and good and others are immoral and wrong so if and when we turn to the spiritual path we already have preconceived ideas about good and bad derived from the world. It is important to know whether spirituality is supposed to build on these or to supersede them, putting them in a different light.

The question is this. "What is your position with regard to (any or all of these) homosexuality, racism & feminism?" These issues have become sacred cows of the modern age and usually when the question is put there are inbuilt assumptions as to the correct answer but I would like to approach this question from a spiritual level rather than the secular one from which it it is posed because that is the only way to answer it properly. Consequently, I would respond to it along these lines.