Bruce Charlton's Notions

I was an Outsider more than thirty years before I became a Christian - having read Colin Wilson's book in 1978. Wilson himself never became a Christian, despite getting very close to it in his first two books (The Outsider of 1956 and Religion and the Rebel the year after).

Why should this be? - why should the inner-motivated Man, who regards himself as set-apart (for good, or more often for ill), perhaps having an unusual destiny, the 'existentialist'... why should such a person fail to recognise that his only satisfactory terminus lies in the truth of Christianity?

I think the reason is partly to do with the Outsider wishing to hold-onto his favourite vices (drink, drugs, promiscuous extra-marital sex and the like) but it is also the fault of Christianity - which has become identified exclusively with specific churches (with, quite often, each one stating that it uniquely holds the keys of salvation).

The Outsider sees Christianity as a choice of churches only. Now some Outsiders - such as GK Chesterton or TS Eliot - do find a home inside one of the established Christian churches (the Roman Catholic church being a favourite in the early 20th century). But they are clearly a minority.

There is insufficient awareness of the possibility of being Christian outside of any specific church. And/ or of becoming a Christian before, or without ever, joining a church.

For instance William Blake is an Outsider hero, and Blake was an absolutely devout and explicit and focused Christian in his Life and all-through his work. And (not 'but') Blake was a non-church Christian who was extremely unconventional/ heterodox/ heretical. Since Blake regarded himself as a solid and inspired and proselytising Christian outwith any church and with an unique set of convictions and practices; so too can any Outsider.

Furthermore, many churches conflate (link-inextricably-together) the possibility of believing in God, Christ and the immanence of God-in-all-things including ourselves (such as The Holy Ghost).

As that great non-church and heterodox Christian Rudolf Steiner said: to disbelieve in God is to be, in a real sense, insane; in other words, it is to disbelieve any possibility of coherence, meaning and purpose - which is to regard all of life as a delusion.

The reality and significance Christ is the only source of hope and ultimate happiness - all other religions are - if true, at their best and by their own account - miserable by comparison with Christianity.

And to deny God within us and the world is to live earthly life in a state of detachment - since we can only observe and never actually participate in reality: we can never know.

For an Outsider everything must, sooner or later, be tested by intuition in its widest and deepest sense; there must be a solid sense of personal conviction and relevance. With a church orientated Christianity, this is applied only to the question of whether a particular church is the one path to truth, reality and salvation.

Clearly, most Outsiders have the intuition that such claims are untrue, and therefore cannot and do not even wish to join a church for which they do not feel any such conviction.

But if existential conviction is the truest test, then it ought to be applied to sub-parts, and not merely to 'the whole package' as put forward by a specific church. Thus, an Outsider may be intuitively sure that there is a God who is creator.

He may additionally be sure that (in some vital sense) Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our saviour and central to our ultimate happiness (even though the exact meaning of the key terms is something he will need to strive to elucidate).

And the Outsider may also realise that his knowledge depends on there being something like the Holy Ghost - a divine spirit inside himself, and everybody else, and every-thing else - which makes possible true understanding and knowledge; and works over time to guide us to a more divine salvation.

Any Outsider who becomes a Christian is highly-likely to be heterodox, or regarded as heretical by many or most church members - but he ought not to be put-off by this: he should still become a Christian, simply because it is true (true in a real sense, albeit a sense that needs working-on).

Without Christianity, the Outsider is doomed to be merely a psychologist - since the most he can say in favour of anything is that it tends to make people happier... or at least to suffer less.

If the Outsider is to be able to use the concept of 'ought' then he needs to be a theist; and if he is to be someone who regards mortal life as important he needs to be Christian; and if he is to regard his own freedom and creativity as important, he needs to believe in the possibility of direct, unmediated contact with the divine.

What the Outsider gets from this kind of direct apprehension of the truth of Christianity; is great assistance in finding, sustaining and growing his true self - and then in discovering and pursuing his destiny.

He may well also become happier, more motivated and more confident in Life - but these are side-effects and never the primary aim.

In sum - the core reason for becoming a Christian is to convert an Outsider from being merely a Psychologist to becoming a real Prophet.

I am currently reading an extremely-long (14 volumes, each about 1000 pages) fantasy novel serial called the Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan (the pen name of James Oliver Rigney Jr. - 1948-2007) the totality of which was published between 1990 and 2013, having been posthumously completed by Brandon Sanderson.

I say 'reading' but in fact I am listening on audiobook - the readers are the husband and wife team of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading - who are first-rate exemplars of this difficult craft.

I came to Wheel of Time via the wonderful novels of Brandon Sanderson, who completed the series; and a further link is that Sanderson's audiobooks are also done by Kramer and Reading.

Apparently Jordan's The Wheel of Time is very well known in the USA, where it was a 'best seller' - that is not the case in the UK; where these books are not stocked by shops or libraries.

It is a large commitment to begin such a long haul, and I rather doubt whether I would have done it if I had had to read rather than listen; but I am delighted by the experience so far. First thing every morning, and doing doing chores, and at other times - I listen to the books and am transported into a vast world populated by numerous characters.

What I like best about the Wheel of Time is that the invisible authorial presence, behind and permeating the text, is one of a wise and good man. That makes a big difference for me; because I find most authors to be ultimately untrustworthy - most good writers are, indeed, bad Men. 'Robert Jordan' was clearly a fine person.

The structure of the narrative is more like a serial than a single multi-volume novel or sequence of linked novels; when there is such extreme length, the overall story is backgrounded, and functions mostly as a thread to join-up the various scenes, and from which to develop character. The books are capable of depicting beauty and horror, moving me to tears, making me laugh, and sustaining my attention and interest. As a prose stylist Jordan is therefore good-enough - but not great or special.

(Something similar applies to JK Rowling, and to several other major fiction writers such as Charles Dickens. Not all great novelists are great writers - and most great writers are not great novelists.) 

Why is the book so very long? The main reason is that there is a large cast of characters - six main characters, but dozens of others from whose perspective we get to see things. The reason why the books are long is the detail - the scenes are described in more minute detail than I have come across elsewhere (except, significantly, in Brandon Sanderson - who I guess may have learned this from Jordan). Reading the scene therefore takes longer than the scene would take in real time - which is a 'Wagnerian' way of doing things.

(Wagner's operas, or at least the late ones, can be enjoyed only once it is understood that events on stage are happening in 'super-slow-mo'; the orchestra, not the voice, describing the smallest nuances of what the characters are thinking and feeling.)

The main strength of Wheel of Time is that it does extremely-well what Fantasy is supposed to do: it makes an inhabitable world in which the eternal and essential human things are dominant - a world of truth.

The importance of Fantasy is that the everyday modern world is one of lies and triviality; so people like myself almost need the Fantasy genre in order to 'exercise' the proper priorities and evaluations.

If you like the sound of what I have indicated, then I would recommend Jordan's Wheel of Time. Don't think of it as being 'like' some other author. WoT does what it does supremely well - and it is a delight to be able to enjoy it day after day, week after week, month after month... and still not have reached the halfway mark!

(Beep-Beep! Heavy-handed satire alert...)


It’s perfectly simple…

In the unprecedented event of a man with a knife killing people as fast as he can; we simply run away and hide until a policeman comes along to shoot him.

This might take quarter of an hour in the centre of London, ten or twenty times as long elsewhere. And only fit (and lucky) adults can successfully run and hide…

But the knifeman can only kill so-fast those unhidden who are unlucky, unfit, women, children and old people; and the police will, eventually, arrive.

Of course if the killer has a gun and plenty of bullets then a lot more people will be killed while we wait for the police – but that is unfortunately necessary; because it is better than the alternative of people defending themselves.

It’s perfectly simple – the government has a strategy to import extremely large numbers of people including a substantial proportion who will cause violence; and another parallel strategy to make self-defence high-risk and harshly-punishable.

The obvious answer is to have an extremely large number of armed police everywhere, at all times; total surveillance and micro-control of the entire population’s thoughts and actions. Problem solved!

Of course, some anti-diversity, Christian fundamentalist Right-wing white supremacist fascist Nazi literally-Hitler extremists would object to that state of affairs – but the answer to that problem is obvious as well…

I think that covers all the points?…

I call for an awakening in The West, because people are asleep. Just look around: look at the eyes.

People sleep through life, which means they never actually think from themselves (but instead only 'process', automatically, passively - massive inputs of external stimuli).

The great demonic discovery of the 1960s was that modern people could be controlled (into damnation) by keeping them always asleep. Half the time they are asleep in a totalitarian regulated bureaucracy; and the other half in an instinctual world of primary process 'Id' fantasies (and nightmares).

And they do not want to wake-up, because of what they will find. What they will find is too overwhelming to contemplate without religion, and religion is The One Thing that modern people are Sure they do not want.

But even if they had or have, religion - it is not enough; because modern religion is rotten with the same corruption that affects everything else.

The only answer is to awakening to a religion in which we each have direct and personal engagement with the divine creative mind and process - how else could we survive as individuals in a world of near-total corruption?

Fortunately, exactly this is there for the asking - everything they most need... Unfortunately, everybody is asleep, and if they begin to stir from slumber they are aggressive in their attempt to resume unconsciousness.

What they want is only more sleep, deeper sleep, and better dreams (preferably never to wake up, preferably a blissful slide into extinction - to be on the safe side).

Unless they awaken, nothing positive can be done - because anything positive done must be with consent and indeed active agreement and effort. They cannot awaken unless they want to wake. They show no signs of wanting to wake.

Well - Because God loves us, people will get what they want - but what they want, won't be what they expect. This is not a threat - simply that God cannot override Man's agency (even if he wanted to, which he does not).

What we insist upon, in our freedom, will be; but it will be what we really insist upon - and not merely what we unreflectively and dishonestly 'say to ourselves'.

That's the order of it, I think...

First we need to look-within - introspect - and that is difficult for most people. Which means we need to want to look within before it can be attained - want it enough to persevere.

Once Introspection is attained then there is the possibility of Intuition.

Intuition is a process - it is thinking with the real-true-divine Self. It is the most fundamental thinking of which we are capable; compared with which the great mass of what we call thinking is merely passive 'processing'.

Most of our thinking is 'caused', automatic, un-thinking - that is, it is 'programmed' by our environment and experiences - but the real-true-divine thinking is itself a cause and has no cause - it is a spontaneous origin coming from nothing prior (that is because it is divine, and that is what divine is).

But real-true-divine thinking is not just some different kind of process that happens to be uncaused - it is participating in reality, which means it is intrinsically true.

(Real-true-divine thinking is Freedom; it is indeed the only Freedom - the only time when we our-selves are agent, because autonomous from being-caused.) 

So when we are thinking intuitively, our thinking is true; intrinsically true, necessarily true - as well as being creative. It is true because it participates in reality, it is creative because it is uncaused - and these attributes are indivisible because they all are consequences of its nature.

Let us call this real-true-divine thinking Imagination - using Coleridge's distinction of Imagination in contrast to 'Fancy' - which is merely passive, caused, secondary and not-true because relating to not-real things. Fancy is merely a product of normal, automatic processing, an output rearranged from inputs...

But when we define Imagination as the primary, creative thinking that participates in reality; we can see that Imagination is intrinsically valid.

Imagination is indeed primary - it is not merely useful or expedient, Imagination is knowledge.

Imagination is indeed the only knowledge - only that which is imagined (in the way and sense described above) is real and true; and other forms of thinking are not.

In normal discourse, Imagination is synonymous with 'imaginary' i.e. untrue, unreal - but now it is apparent that Imagination is our divine selves thinking in the universal realm of reality: Imagination is knowing.



 

1. We were brought-up in the first officially post-Religious (specifically post-Christian) society in the history of the world.

(i.e. The first in which religion was not, explicitly and by authority, the most important thing.)

That was our challenge. Then:

2. We failed to recognise, repent, and convert.

(And still do.)


(Note: The Baby Boom generation I take to be approximately those born between 1945 and 1975. By post-Christian - I mean to reference that the mainstream, official and media public discourse and culture was - inflecting from the mid-fifties onwards and accelerating to completion  - utilitarian, secular and excluding of Christian assumptions.)

When the British lost their belief in Christianity, they became victims of the national characteristic of being practical and common sensical.

Because when this characteristic loses ultimate hope and divine context; and reverts to materialist hedonism; then being 'pragmatic' means perceiving oneself as utterly powerless in the face of officialdom, bureaucracy, mass media and corporations and therefore doomed to obedience and conformity to their wishes.

If mortal life is all there is; and if - in this life - you know that (in the end...) you are outnumbered and out-gunned, and therefore you must and will (eventually) conform to the demands of power.

And when you deny any possible reality greater than such conformity, then there is no reason to think; and British people don't think - indeed they are extremely hostile to thinking.

The British are masters of pre-emptive conformity (because, what is the point?...)

By this I mean that there is considerable anger or fear at the prospect of thinking-through moral and spiritual matters to see whether current ideas are coherent, what their motivations might be... There is an aggressive uninterest in establishing what is really going on, where things are going and 'what I really think' about what is going on and where.  

I think this is because British people perceive themselves as in a hopeless situation, now and until extinction at death - so any deep thinking can only waste time and energy, and make matters worse; by introducing futile discontent or despair or attracting the malign attention of authority.

Therefore, there is a single-minded and rather irritable strategic pursuit of pleasure and distraction in order not to think.

At root is rooted despair. Nothing really matters, reality is merely-material, and nothing 'I' can do will make any real difference to anything'.

Consequently, the British - who used to be renowned foes of arbitrary authority and totalitarianism; independent and eccentric - are now mostly short-termist, selfish and cowardly deep-conformists - who are living in denial of the resentment-motivated totalitarian society they have willed upon themselves - and who cannot even imagine any better way of thinking, feeling and living.

And, if life really-is as the ubiquitous atheists conceive it, then why not?

British institutions are all too-big, waaay too big (except when they are collapsing - and begging to be taken-over by the state management).

This has happened especially over the past couple of decades. All UK universities have quadrupled in size or more - and the teaching classes within them have trebled (more buildings of all types - except for teaching facilities!). Hospitals likewise; schools, and pretty much everything. Professions (law, medicine, academics, scientists, bishops!...) have trebled or more, with massive decline in motivation and vocation and ability; and become permeated with part-timers who regard themselves primarily as for-hire functionaries.

Too may people indifferent, alienated, uninvolved. 

The world is vast and mediocre - and always the shadow reality of bureaucracy.

Well, on the other side the previous state of affairs was far from perfect, and could never be really satisfactory; people could never really be satisfied by life as part of an institution - even a small, self-governing and elite.

Smaller is indeed more-beautiful; but a small village, college, school, factory, nation... is not really beautiful in any unqualified fashion.

Still all that has gone and we are left bereft - we are on-our-own now (most of us); life is a matter of gigantic bureaucracies (wo-)manned by mediocre drones and our-selves.

So be it; this is the hand we have been dealt; this is the world we must live-in like it or not.

That self needs to be found, sustained, strengthened; and not by institutional means by by direct contact with the divine - that's what we must do if we want anything other than a life dedicated to obliterative hedonism and distraction.

And, come to think on it; that it very likely what we ought to be doing anyway!

Not that this life is or ought to be solitary - but that 'soceity' is not going to support, but rather to subvert and corrupt, anything Good and creative that we are trying to do.

The mind is free: thinking is free - so long as it is our real and divine mind; and that mind is intrinsically creative; and we need to revel-in and explore that freedom, and be our own judges and enjoyers of the genuine creativity which eventuates from such living.

In this instance (and not by accident) what we must do and what we need to do are coincident.      

Back in 2010-11 especially, I was reading Father Seraphim Rose a lot - especially in relation to the End Times: that era of the world in which events move towards the end of this reality and the second coming of Christ.

The data of this is unknown and indeed unknowable - but the fact of us living in the End Times has been apparent for about 200 years, in a broad consensus across thinking Christians whom I respect.

One aspect is the corruption of human institutions, including the church; and the 'antichrist' phenomenon by which evil masquerades as Good: in other words persons and organisations that have evil motivations and intentions, deliberately and explicitly adopt and emphasise some good attributes in order to deceive Christians, and enlist their cooperation.

This is now very familiar from global political groupings, charities, NGOs and the like; but perhaps especially in the mainstream Christian churches - the current Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby) is an exceptionally clear example.

But the meaning of the End Times for Christians is worth pondering - because the message is that there is no safe way to be a Christian.   

Actually, this has always been the case - because Christianity cannot go to any extreme. But the fact that the churches are corrupted, and mostly from the top down, means that they will be organised such as to do net evil. A Christian who joins a church and then does what it says will - probably - be led away from Christianity and into de facto apostasy.

Yet of course, all the old strictures against Christians going-it-alone still apply! Several major churches assert (without much conviction, sometimes) that there is no salvation to be had outside of their membership and ministrations.Yet, all honest churchmen will freely admit than being inside, in and of itself does no good either - and there have always been acknowledged exceptions when the church was not vital.

What is vital to keep in mind is that God is the creator and our loving Father - hence it is inconceivable he would leave any one of his children without the means of salvation and the ability to discern it - IF our motivations are genuine.

Motivations are (almost) everything!

That seems to be the lesson of the End Times. Surface appearances, and indeed actions - mean very little by comparison. Bad motivations will contaminate any organisation and anybody; good motivation will win salvation and theosis in the end.

But of course the problem is in discerning motivations! Especially in these latter days; the surface of things is deceptive; there is more dishonesty than honesty - and what is most deceptive is that truth is cunningly mixed with lies to be maximally misleading.

There is no escape from the absolute requirement for individual judgement as the basis for life: this seems to be the great lesson of the End Times. 

Nonetheless, if we work on the genuineness of our motivations; trying, failing and self-correcting; ensuring we learn from experience; then we have been given everything we need to navigate to where we want-and-need to be.

Since nothing is random or uncaused, and God is our loving Father; and since this modern world is a spiritual desert - then why are we here-and-now?

Why were we placed here, why - perhaps - did we choose to be placed here and at this most unspiritual and antireligious of times?

What possible spiritual benefit can a modern life bring us?

The answer, in a nutshell is: Living here and now compels us to reach inward to our true, divine self; because other (past) sources of Christian guidance are (for nearly all of the people in the world) either absent or corrupted. 

We must become active agents, we must become spiritually - Christianly - autonomous to a degree not seen before.

*

Our faith tells us that God would not allow any of his beloved children to be placed in this era and situation unless there was a very good reason: something of which we, personally, have great need.

Yet this situation is one in which the Christian religion is absent (from many parts of the world), or essentially abandoned and corrupted (in the developed nations). All the usual sources of guidance are tainted - tradition, scripture, hierarchical authority, philosophy... all are much more likely to do us harm than good if we go to what is most available and accept it uncritically.

We can get nowhere without discernment. 

Therefore spiritual passivity is - for us, here and now - ruled-out.

When the human aspects are all tainted or unobvious, then a policy of subordination and obedience are much more likely to do us harm than good; because we would probably be serving the Enemy rather than God.

*

In modernity we are brought to a state of utter isolation of our selves, and a loss of confidence in the reality of the world and of that self which is all we can experience. And our self and the world is dead, inert, passive and perceived as unliving - an accident, merely an illusion or delusion of our own limitations. We cannot perceive God, Jesus, angels; and even other people are merely shadowy entities justified only be the comfort or pleasures they provide.

We have so decisively lost the ability to know the external environment, that we regard it as a product of our minds; yet our minds are (in mainstream understanding) merely temporary, contingent, arbitrary collections of brain circuits - unreliable, prone to malfunction and doomed to extinction.

This is the state of nihilism when nothing is really-real and despair is inevitable and ineradicable.

*

So why are we here and now?

When there is no reliable external guidance, we must look within: and must means must, because there is no alternative.

Our Loving Father, the Creator would not have placed us here unless we had the resources to attain salvation and to make steps towards theosis (becoming more divine).

Since these resources are not to be found outside us, then everything we need must be found within -  and by invisible, spiritual means of communication. 

Specificially, what we need to begin is found within, and everything else follows as consequnces.

*

We must look within to find and feel our internal spiritual compass - that which is divine and eternal within each of us; that in us which is a child of God (still merely a child, but certainly that!).

Once we have located that inner reality; then - and only then - we can look outside; look (that is) not by our senses but directly to the world of spirit: open our real selves to to direct knowing and personal revelation from God, and the personal friendship of Jesus Christ.

*

That is why you and I are here and now; because what we personally most need, is to learn to find God within us.

Modernity is, indeed, a harsh spiritual lesson - but presumably that was the only kind of lesson that you and I were capable of learning.

(Earlier people in earlier generations, or people in different parts of the world, have other things that they need to learn . I am here talking about a reason why living in The West, the developed nations - is the best realistically-possible thing for some people; people such as you and me.) 

And of course this is a lesson each and every one of us absolutely needs to learn if we are ever to develop from the passive state of being immature, externally-driven, dependent-children of God into what he hope for us to become: active, agent, autonomous grown-up 'friends' of God (and ultimately perhaps spiritual parents in our own right); at a level where we can fully participate - Son or Daughter of God - in the great and endless divine work of love and creation.

 
  

On the one hand an ambience of restless activity, financial and emotional insecurity, and growing social and cultural fragmentation; and on the other the 'still centre' of the great cathedrals, the rugged coastline, the lakes and mountains, and the ramparts, hill-forts and 'tors' of pre-Christian antiquity. William Blake called this second aspect 'Albion', and it is his evocation of the primordial spiritual essence of this land that animates both his poetry and his painting and accounts, I believe, for his enduring popularity. This is the eternal Britain, the true Britain. It has always been here and always will be. Sometimes it is visible, other times not...

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/a-deeper-reality.html

The literal insanity of mainstream public discourse, and the lack of insight of this fact, suggests that Man without religion is non-viable.

To put matters another way - religion is the most important thing in the human world. 

Of course, a few individuals, in the short term, can survive atheism mentally intact; but there is no evidence at all that this is a possibility for human societies over more than a few decades - then the signs of insanity (incoherence, exitinction) become more-and-more obvious... or they would do so if loss of insight was not itself a prime sign of insanity.

So insanity shields us from knowledge of our own insanity, because insanity destroys insight as much as it destroys judgement - it affects the whole mode of thinking.

How, then, do we know we, as a society, are insane?

1. By applying older judgements, from the time before Men became insane - reading old books, talking to non-modern people...

2. By looking at the basic biological viability of atheist societies in terms of reproduction, demographics, response to direct and immediate threats, scale of priorities ... Compare societies and groups that are biologically viable, with the modern atheist societies that are not...

3. By reflecting on how we feel about Life. Insane people are almost always miserable - dysphoric, despairing, desperate... almost all of the time. Even the euphoric frenzy of mania is brittle, and crashes into suicidal self-destruction with a high frequency. Is there hope?

In conclusion - religion is the most important thing.

Religion is necessary for long term motivation, for social coherence, for purpose, and to enable the individual to be a part of the whole.

Since religion is necessary, if or when humans either dispense with religion or else place it anything lower than first in priority; then they as individuals and their societies will begin to fall apart and spiral towards alienation, purposelessness, inability to perceive or reason what is important, cowardice (i.e. short-term selfishness), desperation and all the rest of it.

Modernity is the experiment of Man living without Religion. The experiment has been running for several generations.

But the experiment of modernity has deprived modern people of the motivation, honesty and ability to evaluate the results of the experiment - by the always changing criteria of modernity, modernity sees no alternative to itself...

Conclusion: Religion is objectively necessary; and, by one kind of reasoning, therefore true. If you are not religious you are living in error. If you are not religious then you need to become religious. The question you must settle is not whether you should be religious, but which religion you will adopt.

The mass media, who are - after all, bastions of the Establishment, and the prime origin and focus of strategic evil in The West - are currently encouraging the English people to mutilate themselves with tattoos, as being an authentic and constructive response to the wave of terrorism (itself unfolding as a direct and intended consequnce of decades of purposive and coordinated laws and policies).

The British ruling Establishment has therefore created a passive and self-hating population, is unleashing lethal terror upon them, and is now channeling the response into public rituals and permanently-displayed symbols of passivity and self-hatred. 

Self-mutilation as a response to emotional trauma is indeed a perfect example of exactly what 'they' want from 'us'.

As a psychiatrist, I used to see people with Personality Disorders who did just the same thing: cut and scar themselves whenever they felt bad. We tried, mostly ineffectually, to stop them doing this, since it was recognised as being at best manipulative, and at worst fuelling a down-cycle of self-loathing headed at suicide.

It is therefore entirely appropriate that the mainstream media should be encouraging this mental pathology; but it is nonetheless, beneath contempt that they do so.

And those who go along with it, get tattoos, and boast of the fact, and egg-on others to do likewise; they too are contemptible.

Such extremity of depravity - so openly-endorsed, encouraged, celebrated - is repellant; and the best part of all-of-us feels this, at a visceral level.

Yet it is precisely that we are being urged into violating our own spontaneous taboos, and the shocked frisson consequent, that makes approved mass self-mutilation such an effective means of corruption and subordination.

Of course, (Thanks be!) Christian repentance can wash our souls clean; even when the skins remain stained and tainted. But repentance requires admission of wilful error and prohibits seeking approval, even covert approval - or else it is not repentance but instead covert pride.

This insightful piece from Luke Torrisi in Australia observes the profound state of demotivation and hopelessness that is the consequence of many generations of increasingly-totalitarian secular Leftism in Britain: the country that first invented the ideology.

https://sydneytrads.com/2017/06/05/luke-torrisi-13/
Or see below for a copy of the article.

There is no mystery about the British people's helpless passivity.

On the one hand we have been cowed by decades of extreme surveillance and bureaucratic micro-management combined with mind-numbing and addictive saturation by hostile mass media.

http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/

The consequence is a state of semi-delirious idiocy and continuous low-grade insanity that has inverted common sense, ignores direct personal experience, refuses to connect the dots and is unable to grasp the simplest reality - for example that the ruling Establishment (in all social domains) is actively-hostile to the people; and is pursuing a strategy of total-control, moral inversion and induced permanent chaos.

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk/

On the other hand this pathetic (in several senses) situation has been both caused and permitted by the nation's mass and near-complete Christian apostasy; so that, as a population, we almost-completely lack courage, motivation and any sense of direction.

Because the cause is spiritual; there is no chance at all of any positive change without first a spiritual awakening.

Therefore if, like me, you want to do something constructive - then that 'something' ought to be in the realm of Christian evangelism - primarily and as a matter of urgency.

Politics is utterly useless - because there is no basis for it. One cannot expect positive and powerful change from a society of de facto drones and hedonists. The British - specifically the English - must be inspired by ultimate hope.

And must means must.

***


London: Apocalypse at Airstrip One Anarcho-tyranny on the streets of London, 4 June 2017. By Luke Torrisi.

I have been conditioned by the world of fiction to regard London as an impregnable fortress. In Skyfall, MI6 could be blown up by terrorists yet keep on working from its underground alternate headquarters, with “M” and “Q” safe and well. Despite its title, in London Has Fallen, with heads of state dropping like flies, the terrorists infiltrating the highest levels of security (three cheers for diversity programmes!), and international terror masterminds owning whole buildings necessary for the take-over plan to function (now that is just wild fantasy fiction isn’t it?) – the good guys prevail (with a little American help).

To get to the stage where you have a militarised police filtering the population with detailed searches, ‘hand-on-heads’ type containment of ‘innocents’ with the appearance of martial law, one must turn to 28 Weeks Later. In that doomsday classic, the UK has undergone a literal ‘zombie apocalypse’ scenario at the hands of the Rage Virus. Even then, London is still the safe haven – albeit militarised – for all the non-flesh-eaters who want a break from the incessant running.

As it turns out, fact is stranger than fiction. All it took for the zombie apocalypse was three Islamics in a van, armed with knives. We’ve all been saturated with the details and statistics of the carnage, we’ve all been subjected to overdoses of the predictable hand-wringing by the political classes and elites, we’ve all seen the news turning a handful of interviews into hours of coverage to the point where we can lip-synch the dialogue.


Of all the approved media coverage, the images that sit most starkly in my mind aren’t the ones of people sitting by the curb holding bloodied cloth to their cuts and slashes. I am struck by the actions of police. We were assured after Manchester that the police presence would be truly awesome – they couldn’t guarantee another attack wouldn’t happen, but the public was to be reassured by the show of force. We were told after London Bridge, that within 8 minutes all the terrorists were shot. There was carnage all the same.

What I noticed was an unprecedented level of aggression from police towards the general public. People were being ordered to cower under tables – under threat of police action. At one point I saw film of police getting very aggressive with those they termed ‘gawkers’ – not gawking at dead bodies – just wanting to understand the mayhem. Then I saw pictures of Londoners being sent down streets with their hands on their heads as if in a state of martial law.

I understand that in the chaos police didn’t know if they had apprehended all the culprits, that they didn’t know if more attacks were planned, that they had reason to fear that the knife attackers also carried explosives. I understand all of that. However, truth be told – what I saw (not being there of course, and having to appreciate the situation via media reports) was a police force cracking down on its own civilians with a militaristic zeal because it didn’t know what else to do.

I was especially touched by one account from a man who witnessed a girl being stabbed multiple times. He wanted to help her, he looked for a weapon, a chair or table – but everything was ‘bolted down’ and he felt totally helpless. The constant refrain from witnesses was ‘helpless’. The terrorists walked into bars and restaurants and just started stabbing. Some reported throwing pint glasses at the attackers, but despite outnumbering them hundreds to one, despite being attacked with only blades, the public felt helpless and the injury toll mounted. It was police bullets that ended the fray – I can only imagine the toll had the terror had been allowed to carry on for a few more minutes.

Again, truth be told, I can’t imagine three Englishmen walking through Beirut, Baghdad, Tehran or even Constantinople on a stabbing spree and getting very far. In fact, I can’t imagine them even engaging in a swearing fit or ‘racist tirade’ in such cities and avoiding hospitalisation. I imagine that the average Briton would be terrified of standing up in a cafe in Cairo and bellowing obscenities about Mohammed – they would genuinely fear for their very lives. I imagine that an Egyptian Muslim standing up in a London bar and swearing obscenities about Her Majesty or Christ or the English generally, would be met with a stunned silence, a cluster of filming smart phones, perhaps – in the right area – even agreement and applause.

I am not suggesting here that: I’d prefer London be more like a Middle Eastern city, that the English are weak, that the London attack lacked the presence of local heroes or even that I’d fare any better in the same position as most of the witnesses. All I note is that for some reason, which I won’t be attempting to analyse or even diagnose here, the average Englishman feels helpless in ways that I (and most of you if you’ll be honest with yourselves) don’t see in many other parts of the world. He feels helpless in ways that we can’t imagine our fathers or grand-fathers feeling helpless.

This is all very anecdotal, somewhat emotional, and perhaps even tinged with idealism and nostalgia – but instinctively, we all know there’s something to it. This idea that I am grasping at like a blind man in fog is the same one many others know is out there and are challenged to describe too. When I see the reaction of the police and security forces towards the English people, all I see is the underscoring of this sense of helplessness.

I recall the words of Roger Scuton, who writes in his ‘eulogy’ for England: “The police force was not an arm of the central government, but a local organisation, responsive to the county councils. The ‘bobby’ himself was trained as a friend of the community he served, and the sign of this was that he was armed only with a notebook and a comic tin whistle. he knew the people on his beat, and took a benign and paternal interest in their welfare. Children went to him when they were lost; strangers asked him directions, and everybody greeted him with a smile.”

Earlier, Scruton notes that: “[w]hen a felon transgressed it was not the state but the law which pursued him, and the essential goodness of the law was symbolised by the fact that policemen carried no arms. Policemen were chosen for their height, with hats that emphasised their superior stature. But they were representatives of authority, not power – the authority of a law that stood above all earthly powers and could never be reduced by them. In popular films the police confronted gun toting criminals with the same phlegmatic confidence as radiated from those idealised schoolroom portraits of General Gordon of Khartoum, in which the General faced the spears of savages with a calm acceptance of his fate, as safe and unflustered in death as he would have been on the thickly carpeted stairwell of his London club, conscious that his authority was only enhanced by his lack of power and that one day, thanks to his quiet sacrifice, order would be reimposed.”

I am not sure I see either of these images when I scrutinise those I receive filtered through the media. It would seem that a generation of diversity programmes, heterogenising of community and state centralisation, has produced a different effect. The image of General Gordon remains apt – because now it would appear that the Mahdi’s troops are on the rampage.

I can’t help but think that the response to theses attacks; pink balloons, flowers and candle vigils, and a rock concert – won’t be the magic panacea everyone is hoping for. Rather it will entrench whatever this phenomenon is that is turning the stiff upper lip into a quivering one.

The Englishman is increasingly looking confused and helpless, he is looking brow-beaten by those the State assigns to protect him, he is looking the way I imagine the souls of Airstrip One to look.

What frightens me the most, outside of the immediate carnage, is the erasure I detect of the quintessentially English character that I know and love. It flows within my veins, it is the stuff of my ancestry. I do not want to become an eccentric repository of it because I am cast to the antipodes, shielded by the prophylaxis of distance.

Just because the buildings still stand, it doesn’t mean that London hasn’t fallen. She is truly slain when General Gordon sits rocking on the third step, weeping and confused, not knowing what to do.

– Luke Torrisi is a retired legal practitioner and now an academic researcher and host of Carpe Dieum, Sydney’s only explicitly Traditionalist and Paleoconservative radio programme


Post Scriptum: Since writing this earlier today – the news headlines (here at least) run with ‘heroes emerge from the London terror attack’ and it just convinces me more than Scruton’s Eulogy is wise. There was a police officer who took on all three terrorists with just a baton – and was wounded extensively. He actually is a hero. Unfortunately the word is being abused when applied to many others. There was a Romanian baker who clobbered one of them with a basket – that takes a fair bit of guts and genuine bravery – but again, the twitter-verse comes alive as he is exalted as a ‘migrant hero’ who might be thrown out because of Brexit! As for those who are heroes because they called out to warn people, gave someone a bandage, asked a person if they were okay … that just shows a deformed view of what a hero actually is. I note one ‘hero’ applied a tourniquet to a person caught by a bullet in the crossfire … seems that the wounded weren’t all victims of terrorists.

It was in the summer of 1978 that I first read Colin Wilson's The Outsider, borrowed from the Edinburgh City Library; and for only the second time I came across a book which addressed my condition directly and exactly (the first such book was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig, which I had read two years earlier).

I was, and am, one of those Outsiders which Wilson defined and (for a while) brought into popular parlance. His method is by following the argument through themed biographies, summaries and excerpts of those with what was then termed an existential relationship to the world.

(There are many such figures - e.g. TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Sartre, Camus, Van Gogh, Nijinsky, Lawrence of Arabia, Tolstoy, Dostoievski, Kierkegaard and many others.)

Since then I have read literally dozens of Colin Wilson's books, and browsed The Outsider frequently, but have not read it through. And indeed when I decided to re-read it a couple of weeks ago, I could not find my old Picador Paperback copy. Presumably I must have lent or given it... anyway I bought a new copy and set-to.

I was amazed at how good it was! Really superb! I would say that The Outsider is as good as anything CW ever wrote, and as good as any non-fiction I have ever read. It has a real strength and seriousness about it; a youthful vitality and incisive urgency. So much is there.

It is rather strange to realise that if I had been able or willing to give The Outsider serious consideration forty years ago, my life might have been different and better; because although it does not take the reader all the way to where I am now - it did take me to within shouting distance. Surely I could have filled in a few gaps and extrapolated where needed?

Well, I didn't - and the reason was mostly my impatience with those more religious sections of the book, which I think I skimmed over; certainly I did not given them genuine thought. Yet in The Outsider and its equally fine sequel Religion and the Rebel, Wilson was more genuinely religious than later in his life; and was especially attuned to the visionary mind, including William Blake.

As I approached the last few pages of The Outsider, I was feeling that it was a near-perfect literary-philosophical achievement; but for the last few pages and conclusion - specifically the section on the work of TE Hulme - the argument becomes convoluted and very difficult to follow; indeed Wilson does not make clear why Hulme is being included, since his expounded views seem to add nothing substantive, and instead thwart the books powerful momentum.

Perhaps it was the memory of this rather stumbling ending (after some 250 pages with hardly a mis-step) that had unjustly somewhat diminished the book in my memory?

Anyway, I would give Colin Wilson's first book the highest recommendation for anyone who feels himself to be an 'outsider'.

   

Against the background that our destiny is to become like God, we will all - sooner or later - reach a zero point from-which only Christ can transform us.

*

An analogy is adolescence. Through childhood, our self becomes more and more concentrated and detached until at a point we reach total isolation: the world becomes doubted, as being a delusion of our imagination of our own minds - and then at the zero point we feel that our own minds are a delusion too.

This zero point is one where all seems subjective, and subjectivity itself a temporary illusion.

But to grow-up we must go through this zero point...

(The zero point is very unpleasant to experience and fraught with spiritual dangers; But adolescence is a necessary step in growing up.) 

How can this be done? We cannot do it ourselves.

We cannot do it ourselves because at the zero point we utterly lack resources to do it. We have been reduced to impotence - that is indeed the essence of the situation.

*

Our society is stuck at the zero point. We believe nothing is really-real and despair - and therefore we utterly lack the resources to escape this mental trap.

(But the trap is a necessary step in growing up.)

We deny in our basic assumptions the reality of any external, ordered and benign reality. So, even when we are offered help - we reject the offer as merely another delusion. In fact things are worse than this, much worse... We prefer to reject the offer of help even when we know it to be real.

We therefore respond to the trap by not-thinking about our situation as much as is possible - by distraction, intoxication, frenzied hedonism - and our ultimate hope is painless oblivion after mortal life.

When this fails we despair. And remain trapped. 

For modern Man, there is nothing but Man; and at the zero point Man has been brought to nothing.

*

At the zero point we can only move forward with help - with help from something that is not ourself.

Some agency that will transform us - because we cannot transform ourselves. (It must be an agency; it must be some-thing - some being - that wants to transform us.)

This agency is Christ.

*

We might consider the transforming agent as God-within - not our human self but the immortal divine self we were born with and accompanies our 'human self' through mortal life; or we might consider it as external God, looking down with mercy upon our plight...

Either way this is Christ - because Christ was himself transformed. Christ was himself brought to point zero such that he had to be rescued and moved forward by God the Father.

(God the Father cannot himself help us through the zero point - because God has not been through the zero point: this is why Christ was necessary for human destiny to be fulfilled. By the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus - God was brought to-and-through the zero point.)

*

When we are helpless, we must be helped.

Yet even in the extremity of helplessness Men have agency. This is a fact of existence. Men choose.  

At zero point Men choose whether or not to accept the help that Jesus Christ offers.

Because Man is always agent; help cannot be given where it is refused.

*

When we are brought to the zero point; when a society or civilisation is brought to zero point we cannot help ourselves, we can only be helped.

We will be offered effectual help: Christ will offer us the answer: He will bring us through point-zero and to the other side.

But this can only happen if we let it happen; if we agree to the reality, Goodness, love and authority of Jesus Christ.

(Christianity cannot be coerced - and I mean cannot be coerced. We can defy God - and that is the temptation of all temptations - called pride. We mortals can in fact defy the creator. He cannot compel us to acknowledge his reality, Goodness or love.)

This is not to be regarded as something like a threat, a legal condition, or a price to be paid for a privilege but instead as a simple recognition of reality and the consequence of recognition.

Christ cannot transform us if we do not agree to it; and we do not agree to it unless or until we regard Christ as real and Good - which is to acknowledge the actuality and Goodness of God's creation and its plan; and our own destiny in that creation. And if we regard Christ as loving us; that is having our own personal interests in his heart. 

*

Christ can save us if we let him; but we will only let him if we know him as real and Good and loving of us, personally.


Note: The above has been stimulated by some sections of Owen Barfield's Unancestral Voice (1965)

These two aphorisms from William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell...

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/blake_ma.html

....combine to elucidate something I have, in my own life, found to be a profound truth - Blake's is a profound  insight into the path to truth. The aphorisms also explain why so many people so often get stuck in falsehood: stuck for all of their lives.

Error is self-correcting IF we stick by it honestly, and follow it through to conclusion.

Being wrong is not a spiritual disaster - it is dishonesty which is the disaster: it is living by expedient lies which leads to Hell. Because expedient lies prevent us from recognising error.

This created world has ultimate coherence, since it is the product of one God. Therefore, all error will reveal itself in incoherence.

(Of course, coherence is Not the same as logic; since logic, like mathematics - or which it may be the parent - is a partial model of reality; and logical coherence therefore leaves out most of reality.) 

Some people with a reputation for blunt honesty are nothing of the sort! - they  wriggle and writhe in the face of the conclusions of their assumptions.

A couple of decades ago I used to admire and defend Richard Dawkins - mainly because I considered he was unsually honest; because he was clear and blunt in expression and unafraid of contradicting people to their faces. But I gradually realised that, on the contrary, he was evasive and expedient in his reasoning.

Dawkins is a good example of one who refused to follow his path of excess to the palace of wisdom; because he was not even aiming at wisdom; he refused to persist in his folly, hence he remained a fool rather than becoming wise.

Two examples. The book Unweaving the Rainbow (1998) was an exercise in distraction, a non sequitur in response to the century-plus of observations that If natural selection were indeed regarded the ultimate truth, Then art, poetry, morality, science (including natural selection) and much else are invalidated.

(This is a fact; because all our feelings, indeed all our knowledge is revealed by the assumption as merely the side effects of adaptations to enhance reproductive success. For example, if natural selection is primary; the theory of natural selection destroys its own validity; all scientific theories being merely side-effects of the process of enhancing differential reproductive fitness.)

Somewhat later (but a couple of years before I was a Christian) I met Dawkins at a dinner party, and asked him - as, I intended, a preliminary to a deeper discussion, why the USA was both by far the leading scientific nation in the world and also by far the most Christianly-religious of the developed nations?

Dawkins's reaction made clear that this paradox had not occurred to him - and he did not have an answer ready.

But instead of noting the apparent contradiction and exploring it as possible evidence of an error in his oft asserted assumption that Christianity was intrinsically and necessarily anti-scientific; Dawkins visibly shook-off the potential discussion with the irrelevant comment that it was not the most Christian people who were the actual scientists. Then having dismissed the matter, he turned and walked away to terminate the discussion - leaving me standing and more-or-less gaping! - which had not gone further than a few sentences. After just a few steps Dawkins looked as if he had already forgotten the whole thing.

Dawkins's folly is to believe that natural selection is the primary reality. I know exactly what this feels like, because I have believed this too. Indeed, I have believed this probably considerably more deeply and comprehensively than Dawkins (reaching its peak in the appendix to my 2003 book The Modernization Imperative).

But I persisted in my folly - and kept coming up against paradoxes and contradictions. My excessive devotion to this particular simplification therefore led me towards the palace of wisdom, because I was honest enough that I would not be satisfied with irrelevant pseudo explanations.

If I have any virtue in a higher than usual degree it probably is exactly this - that I persist in my folly, with honesty, until its falsehood becomes evident and unavoidable; and then I abandon it.

I have, indeed, adhered to most of the starkest follies of modernity over my life; and my life has therefore been a process of adopting then exploring folly before abandoning it. This continues - however, the follies are probably less 'excessive' these days; since after becoming a Christian I perceived the starkest insanities and evils of mainstream modern secularism.

But mainstream modern secularism is foolish in the extreme, and yet at the same time avoids learning from its folly; because it is dishonest.

Modern media/ bureacratic culture is systematically and pervasively dishonest - dishonest in public, dishonest in private, dishonest with itself. (This is sufficient evidence of its demonic origin, since such thoroughgoing and peristing dishonesty must be purposive; and only supernatural purpose could span generations.) No folly of modernity is too extreme to escape the correction of even common sense and direct experience (for example, the current official and coercively-imposed belief that being a man or woman is - in actual practice - a reversible state).

This is why dishonesty dismays me far more than error. An honest fool will sooner or later become wise - indeed in essentials he already is wise, as such things are measured in mortal life.

By contrast; a dishonest man is a fool; no matter how great his knowledge, skill, status, wealth or power - and as such he is self-damned with a certainty that is sure, for as long as his dishonesty persists.

There is no cure for the dishonest soul.

The meaning of the fact that Jesus Christ was both Man and God has proved very difficult to elucidate - despite that it is true. Clearly, the fact does not fit our normal categories of explanation.

I'm not about to solve this mystery; but one aspect has become clearer to me as a consequence of reading Owen Barfield's elusive but inspired 1958 essay The Son of God and the Son of Man. What follows is my thoughts triggered by the essay and not a summary of Barfield's conclusions.

The parentage of Christ can be considered in two ways: Jesus is a direct Son of God due to God his Heavenly Father and his Mother the Virgin Mary; Jesus is also the Son of Man by his lineage from Abraham in particular - and ultimately Adam - and this descends to him by his Mortal Father, Joseph.

Joseph is asserted to be the true King of the Jews, by his lineage from David - and Jesus inherits this 'right' from Joseph - but this is not merely a legal claim but also a divine fact. Joseph is therefore more than just the husband of Mary, but in a mystical (not genetic) sense is also and vitally Jesus's true Father.

In other words, both of Jesus's mortal parents (not just his mother) were necessary to the fullness of his nature.

I think this is most clearly seen in the genealogies at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel and Chapter 3 of Luke's Gospel. These lineages are not identical - but my point here is that they are present in the Gospels and that they culminate in Joseph.

So - we must not be misled by our modern reductionism to suppose that if Jesus was not genetically related to Joseph, then he was not related at all; thus Jesus was Joseph's true Son.

Why is this important? Well, I think it relates to the historical placement of Jesus - to the fact that he was born where and when he was; and to the fact that he was a Jew with a valid and divine claim to the Kingship of that people.

It seems to have been necessary that Jesus's lineage was on Mary's side direct in its link with God - he was the direct Son: the Son of God; and at the same time he was also, on Joseph's side an indirect and lineal, multigenerational one: the Son of Man.

This is Christ in his simultaneously Cosmic and Historical aspects - and it seems that both were and are necessary.

William Wildblood brings his usual calm, comprehensive and loving perspective to bear upon this vital theme. One of the most insightful pieces I have read on the subject:
http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/same-sex-marriage.html

In which John Michell explains why feet and inches, pints and gallons, pounds and ounces are divine in origin - whereas metres, litres and grams are the devil's work...
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/the-sacred-measures-of-albion.html


I got the idea for posting this from a similarly-themed post by Brett Stephens:
http://www.amerika.org/politics/there-is-nothing-wrong-with-hating-the-metric-system/

So there is no point in discussing the subject.

Christian sin is a concept relating to the reality of God and his plan of salvation. Normal, mainstream, secular people deny this framework; hence they equate sin with illegal, and assume that sin implies some kind of physical punishment.

Such a misunderstanding is inevitable - if you don't believe that God is real, then naturally all morality must be secular, hence ultimately legalistic.

But it is an easy trap to engage in talking at cross purposes. Therefore, if a secular person asks 'do you/ Christians regard X as a sin?' - then you need to ask-back: 'What do you mean by 'sin' and what are its implications for you?'

Only then can you give an answer. There is no point in saying 'Yes! I/ we regard X as a sin' if that statement is absolutely certain to be misunderstood.

The only possibility for going further than such a denial is when there is a genuine interest from the other party in understanding what is meant by sin; and such a conversation would take at least several minutes of exposition and clarification. Most people can't be bothered; indeed they prefer to misunderstand.

The interesting thing is that  - by the above test - 'liberal Christians' (e.g. the type who make a point of advertising the Diversity of their churches, or who make a point of apologising for past bad behaviour .. not by themselves, but of their predecessors); such types also fail to understand the nature of sin - in this respect they are just as ignorant as mainstream atheists; however much they dress-up their ignorance in Christian terminology.

(Which should, itself, be enough to remove any lingering doubts you may have gullibly entertained regarding their Christian falseness and fakery.)