Bruce Charlton's Notions

The Northern Lights have been seen over Britain...

An apocalyptic part of me wants to protest at this. Surely the coming of the Lights is a sign? A foreshadowing of some great event to come, as the appearance of Halley's Comet in April 1066 gave notice retrospectively of the impending Norman Conquest. A balance needs to be struck, therefore, between a rationalistic, unimaginative reading of natural phenomena and a credulous 'signs and wonders' mentality, which leaves us finding messages in cloud formations and the like...

The eye of imagination, the eye of faith, sees beyond the physical components that make up the universe. It does not deny their existence but neither does it view what something 'is made of' as its sole and absolute reality. It goes past the material level (the validity of which it respects) to the spiritual essence which lies at the heart of every created thing...

This theme is illustrated superbly in a passage from Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian novel Sword at Sunset (1963). Ambrosius Aurelianus, the High King, is dying of cancer. He takes his lieutenants, Artos (Arthur) and Aquila, on a winter retreat in a remote hunting lodge to secure the succession. A tense political discussion is interrupted by the appearance of the Northern Lights. The tone and flavour of the evening is altered dramatically as new perspectives open up for all three men.

Hearts start to soften. The display outside triggers deep-lying memories in Artos and Aquila and sparks a moment of fraternal understanding. Ambrosius, when he rejoins the conversation, speaks with an imaginative fluidity that was lacking before. The political becomes the mythical. Something hard and tight has been broken apart, creating a space for the deeper pattern behind the flow of surface events to emerge.

This is the lasting impression left on the reader by Sword at Sunset - the political transformed into the mythical. Artos, in the end, follows Ambrosius' recommendation and succeeds him after his death, though not as High King but Emperor of a restored Romano-British Empire. Artos has many scars - physical, emotional and spiritual - and gains little satisfaction from his twenty year reign. He does, however, bring peace and security to the land, and through his words, deeds and presence, sows the seeds of the great national myth that has sustained the imaginative life of our country ever since.

The Northern Lights, on this occasion, are heralds of restoration rather than harbingers of doom, signalling the advent of a mythic, archetypal hero and the flourishing of the realm. Let us hope that their most recent manifestation prophecies equally glad tidings. There is no reason why not. 'We live in a time of revelations,' wrote the maverick English mystic, John Michell. 'When our minds are ready, the pattern will appear.'...

Edited from a longer piece at Albion Awakening.

What follows is a recent exchange of e-mails between myself and A Correspondent - in which he makes some excellent and clarifying points on the nature of Primary Thinking. I hope this may help others who are working-through this vital theme...

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My Correspondent: If primary thinking is certainly true (not just hypothesis), and if it is free, then it seems to follow that it is literally creative. If it is free, it need not conform itself to the world; but if it is true, then there is nevertheless a correspondence between what is thought and what actually exists. There can be no necessary correspondence without some sort of causal relationship, and if primary thinking is not caused by external facts, then the inescapable conclusion (if, given what I have just said about the freedom of thought, I may be permitted the phrase) is that the causation runs the other way: external facts conform themselves to thoughts. Primary thinking creates the world.

My first thought was to call that a reductio ad absurdum and reject the whole "primary thinking" model, but on second thought I think it has to be accepted. After all, theism requires some such concept in order to make sense of God's role as creator. We can hardly imagine that God created the world by physically moving matter around with some kind of construction equipment; rather, he created everything by his "word" or logos. And what is possible for God is possible in a general sense -- and, if we are his children, possible for us.

[In Mormon doctrine, it is said] that Adam helped create the earth, but that when he entered mortality he forgot that fact. And when Adam fell, the earth fell with him. Did God deliberately wreck his own creation as a way of punishing Adam -- or was the world in some way directly dependent on Adam's thoughts, Adam's state of mind? The knowledge of evil came first, and the existence of evil followed. And of course Adam, the prototypical man whose name simply means "Man," represents all of us.

(Is "faith" primary thinking? It, too, is supposed to be both free and true. In the New Testament, faith can make you whole, enable you to walk on water, and cast mountains into the sea -- in other words, the external world changes to conform itself to true faith.)

One problem with this idea is that it threatens to destroy the re-ality ("thingishness") of the world by making it wholly dependent on thought -- a hallucination, essentially. Without something that exists independently of our own thoughts there is, it seems, no world. Another problem is the question of how the thoughts of potentially billions of different primary-thinkers interact to create the one world we presumably share -- and what it is about God's thoughts that make them uniquely powerful, making him "the" creator. But I suppose the second problem offers a solution to the first. The reality of the world comes from its being the production of many minds, and not of mine alone.


Myself: That is my understanding too. We seem to have reached the same place, more or less.

I have found Steiner vital for this, mostly the early three books on Goethe's conception, the PhD thesis, and the Philosophie der Freiheit (variously translated) - but I only came across a dense and inspiring summary of his early philosophical work yesterday - in the following introduction to a book from 1900:

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA007/English/GA007_Intro.html

"One problem with this idea is that it threatens to destroy the re-ality ("thingishness") of the world by making it wholly dependent on thought -- a hallucination, essentially. Without something that exists independently of our own thoughts there is, it seems, no world. "

Not quite. There is a world - a world of raw phenomena, without meaning. There really are things, and we really sense them - but without 'concepts' (which we provide, in thinking) nothing means anything, then nothing could or would add up to anything (our experience would be of a blooming, buzzing confusion, to quote William James).

"Another problem is the question of how the thoughts of potentially billions of different primary-thinkers interact to create the one world we presumably share -- and what it is about God's thoughts that make them uniquely powerful, making him "the" creator."

My understanding is that this makes sense only if it is real/ true thoughts and creations that affect this 'one world' (the world of universal reality). I can't see that it could be reality if it was affected by wrong/ false/ evil thoughts from billions of people - so I assume it is only affected by true/ correct/ good thoughts of people engaged in primary thinking. Perhaps most people, most of the time have zero connection with this real world, and never influence it in any way - while others have interacted significantly.

Another factor is perspective. It seems that part of this view is that in primary thinking we only grasp, but we DO grasp, a corner of reality. This would seem to imply why it is 'a good thing' to have many, many people going on-and-on thinking, and creating, reality - multiple perspectives, so that universal reality becomes more rich and dense, without any end.

That's about as far as I have reached, so far.


My Correspondent: I think we have to go quite a bit further than just saying that thinking gives meaning to existing phenomena. Of course we are free to conceptualize given phenomena in this way or that -- James somewhere uses the example of a hexagram, which can be conceptualized either as two interlocking triangles or as six triangles touching at their corners -- but this is not the true creativity required by thinking which is both free and true. Above and beyond investing phenomena with meaning, primary thinking must be capable of altering the phenomena themselves. Simon actually acquired, by thought alone, the physical ability to walk on water, not merely to interpret his sinking as meaningful. And God is the creator, not the mere interpreter, of the world.

I lean toward thinking of the world of raw, meaningless phenomena as being an effect, rather than a precondition, of primary thinking. The "raw" world may be meaningless in the same sense that a hundred different voices speaking simultaneously produce a meaningless cacophony. The unintended interaction of various meaningful primary thoughts may yield a meaningless hodgepodge. Forging this into a harmony (not a unison!) is the work of creation.

I agree with you that it must be only thoughts that are in some sense "true" that affect the world. The question is what "true" means in this context. It can't have the ordinary meaning of correspondence with pre-existing facts; that would make it impossible for true thoughts to change anything, since their truth would consist in merely reflecting what already existed. It seems we must work out an alternative answer to Pilate's question.

A post of yours that I keep returning to in my thoughts is the one about Hobbes and whether or not he is "really" alive. If we could understand how and in what sense Hobbes is invested with real life (and I certainly accept that he is so invested), I think we would be one step closer to understanding primary or creative thought.


Myself: Corrections accepted, you're right.

My first thought about what is true, is that which conforms with, is compatible with, God's (already in existence) plan of creation.

Maybe this truth could be defined by motivation... by Love?

Christianity is a necessity, and yet most available versions of Christianity present Life as an obstacle course of rules and regulations: do and don'ts.

Yet we are so weak and labile that such a recipe is overwhelming in its difficulty. Most of us would have no motivation or energy left-over after satisfying the requirements...

We yearn to be free, and creative, and face Life with as care-free an attitude as possible - we want to live from our-selves not to somebody else's blueprint.

The Good news is that Christianity, but only Christianity, enables exactly this; because the gift of repentance allows us to do our best, fail, and start again - without limit.

Instead of being paralysed (or hardened) by impossible laws, we are enabled to face Life as an adventure, secure in the infinite power of repentance.

Indeed, wasn't this the Main point of Christianity?

Blog Views here have taken another big hit, between 17th and 18th of August, with a sudden halving in daily Views - a change that seems permanent.

I am struck by the fact that we regard thinking as an activity which can (and should) only destroy. It is thinking that has destroyed the unconscious and spontaneous spirituality of our childhood, and of earlier cultural epochs. So thinking is clearly powerful... yet we deny the validity of thinking when it is used to cure the ills of modernity.

We assume that if something good needs thinking-about, then it is not really-real but only a kind of delusion of 'wishful' thinking. We assume that a Life cannot be built from thinking, that thinking is strong enough to destroy, but too weak to be a foundation of good living.

Of course, thinking can be and is manipulated all the time (but so is feeling, even more so!)

I now understand better that truth comes to us in thinking in a way that deliberately and necessarily does not 'overwhelm' us.

After all, is God overwhelmed by His feelings? Surely not! God is free; and so should we be.


Read the whole thing (including a reappraisal of my reaction to Brexit) at Albion Awakening.

Those angels who are wisest and most experienced are Men who have been born, lived, died and been resurrected: these are the post-mortal angels, and are Man's greatest spiritual teachers.

Post-mortal angels can communicate with us by the usual means of communication - spoken, visual, by writing etc - but of course (in the modern West, especially) such communications are prone to inattention, misrepresentation, misunderstanding; and are quantitatively utterly swamped by the mass media, government and corporate propaganda, trivial and dishonest social interactions and many other net-evil communications.

Therefore, the post-mortal angels also use direct knowledge, in the universal realm of reality. This is the 'underworld' realm which Man spontaneously but passively and unconsciously accesses in early cultures, early childhood and in sleep. But in such circumstances, the knowledge is not explicit and we are unaware of it except as feelings.

For modern Man, feelings are not enough - even if those feelings are broadly benign. For modern Man we must know - and know that we know - and what we know must be thought so that it may be integrated with all other knowledge.

(That is after all, the divine way of being - God knows everything explicitly, not as instinctive urges and aspirations.)

So - what the post-mortal angels need to tell us is incorporated into the universal realm of reality; and we can each of us know it IF we can think in such a way that we too are thinking in this realm. This is what I have termed Primary Thinking, which is the conscious and purposive intuitions of our true self.

However, modern Man does very little thinking with his true self, instead functioning mostly from a variety of superficial, labile, automatic, inculcated ways of 'processing' information... And when modern Man does think with the true self, then his modern metaphysics tells him that such thinking is meaningless, subjective, 'wishful thinking' or delusional.

However, THAT is where the knowledge of the spiritual teachers of Man is located - and if we want to know it (rather than merely to feel it) then we need to engage in Primary Thinking, and take it with the utmost seriousness.

So... the first message of the post-mortal angels is the two-fold information that Primary Thinking is necessary, and that it is primary... In other words, that this is what we most need to do; and that if and when we can achieve primary thinking it will become our primary basis for living - ultimately superseding all external forms of communications from authorities (including from churches).

We are to base ourselves and our lives upon our own, personal direct knowledge of reality; and not not secondhand/ communicated/ interpreted knowledge.

The second type of information involves hints as to what we will discover. This is already known, from the writings of prophets - but that is not sufficient, because we need to know it for ourselves and directly.

But what we will discover is that all Men are a family, we are all actual (not symbolic) brothers and sisters because we are actual children of God - who is therefore our Parent... or rather parents: Father and Mother. God, the creator, is our loving Father and Mother. This is absolutely vital knowledge without which we cannot understand anything of importance - and we each need to know it directly, not as an hypothesis.

This information also means that we are all divine, of God-nature; but embryonically so. We are flawed and immature Gods; but Gods we indeed are.

Furthermore, we are (potentially) even more closely spiritually-connected into families and 'clans' - our blood relations, our married spouses, and even (that rarest of rare relationships) our true friends may spiritually be bound by commitments of voluntary and mutual love. We are therefore connected in multiple ways, really connected. We are not alone: we are never alone. 

This is a modern revelation - not to be found in the ancient scriptures; because it is an insight from the lives of post-mortal angels, our closest spiritual teachers; and results from their experiences in relatively-recent lives (past few hundred years), which have taught them the necessity of this truth.

Now, all this is vital and urgent knowledge, and will lead to a transformation of earthly life. But of course it will not lead to Heaven-on-Earth because we don't treat our known spouses, families and real-friends perfectly well... we are only flawed, incomplete, partly-grown gods.

Why am I saying this, as a mere 'communication' - with very limited distribution, prone to incomprehension and misunderstanding? The answer is that by knowing these things first as 'hypotheses' - some people may be encouraged to seek their validation: to look for them by seeking the reality-of and developing their ability-at Primary Thinking.

(Don't believe Steiner, don't believe me: take these insights as hypotheses - then find-out for sure, for yourself.) 

And then they may find some or all of the hypotheses confirmed and clarified by their personal intuitions - which is the only thing that can make them real, and provide a solid basis for Life: for Life as it should-be.


NOTE: The above is a re-explanation, with what I regard as corrected metaphysics, of the content of Rudolf Steiner's 1918 prophecy - usually published with a title something like The Work of the Angel/s in Man's Astral Body. I have also added what I regard as the core of Mormon teaching, the vital essence of what Mormonism has added to Christian doctrine, and which is ever-more necessary for us to grasp (something of which Steiner, knowing nothing substantive of Mormonism, was unaware).

The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne*, 1974

This is one of the best autobiographies I have read; perhaps because it has a fascinating theme, satisfyingly discussed - as well as being very well written, by someone whose personality was sympathetic to me.

The main explicit theme is that of living (up to age 52 at the time of writing) with the strange and vast fame of being Christopher Robin from the four books published by his father in a four year period from 1924-8: two collections of poems - When we were very young, and Now we are six; and two volumes of Winnie-the-Pooh stories - Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.


My own relationship with these books came in two stages. As a child I loved the poetry books, which I continue to regard as containing some of the best comic verse ever written; but I was ambivalent about the Pooh books. I liked some aspects of them - perhaps especially the characters of Piglet and Roo; but I found the tone to be what I would now characterise as 'arch': as a child I was aware that adults were being addressed over-my-head and that I was being laughed-at.

When my own children came to the books, I think the response was similar - the poems had a massive impact, but they did not want to hear all of the stories read-out, and didn't especially respond to them - despite that, by then, I had come to like them a lot more. On the other hand, they really enjoyed the Disney Pooh movies (and TV programmes) and watched them multiple times.

Nonetheless, I candidly acknowledge that these four books are all first rate classics of children's literature, and thoroughly deserve their reputation.


Christopher Robin's response to these books was positive as a young boy, but became negative as an older child, adolescent and young adult; mainly because he was an exceptionally shy and sensitive person (a trait inherited, with interest, from grandfather Milne, he tells us). Try as he might, he simply never got used-to the endless parade of people who made comments about this; and never was able to react spontaneously and appropriately - but became tongue tied and embarrassed. However, writing the autobiography was a coming-to-terms with the whole situation - and this provides a satisfying sense of closure to the book.

The implicit theme, which really gripped me, was the question: What to do with the rest of your life, after having a very happy childhood?


This was also the question that dominated the life of Christopher Robin's father - AA Milne himself; and consequently Christopher writes extremely well about the father with whom (especially aged 9-18, after his Nanny had left) he had such a close and empathic relationship.

It is also a question which has been very much a part of my own life trajectory; since I too had a very happy childhood including early-middle teen years, and I too felt (for a long time) that adult life did not remotely match-up. Indeed, according to the most vivid and cherished memories, one of the best aspects of being a non-child was the reawakening triggered by loving relationships with younger children - first my brother, later my own children.

Neither Christopher Robin nor his father ever came to terms with this, or found a way of regarding post-childhood life as anything other than a let-down - to be escaped-from to some extent, but never integrated with the world of work, chores, and shallow public interactions.

It is that matter of alienation again. As a child, especially a young child, we are not alienated because we are not self-conscious; we simply live 'in' our perceptions and feelings - we belong in the world; and when these sensations and perceptions are happy then we belong happily.

With the dawn of self-consciousness, we become aware of our-selves and that the sensations and perceptions are subjective, that we have a perspective, unique to our selves - and that survival and thriving in the 'external' world depends on living in an objective way that prioritises the 'external' view, and the separation of our-selves from Life.

As an adult, we are caught by an (apparently...) inescapable dilemma that we can only feel at home in the world by losing our self-consciousness; yet the more we attain this dissolving of awareness, the less we are aware of the situation - and the less we remember it. Adult Life becomes shallow, unreal, meaningless; especially when contrasted with the mythic depth of childhood.

Therefore, the happiness of a happy childhood is what makes of childhood something we are able to and want to think about; but this emphasises the inferior quality of adult 'happiness'... which seems merely a series of detached, separable, implication-less almost 'glandular' kind of 'pleasure' by contrast.


Here is centrally significant that both AA Mine and Christopher Robin were atheists (as adults) - because for the modern atheist this dilemma is absolutely inescapable; and the situation of adulthood can only get worse as (with age, and/or disease) feelings become blunted or unpleasant, and memories are distorted and/or lost.

True happiness is past, and the longer we live the more it slips away from us - even in imagination... For an honest and rigours thinker, the inescapable conclusion is that adult Life (therefore most of a full lifespan) is a waste of time, and worse than a waste of time: a horrible prospect with only one possible, miserable, ending...

It seems to me that very few modern people escape this fate; because the metaphysics of modernity enforces it. I mean, the fundamental assumptions of modern life ensure that this is the only outcome.

The situation is that childhood experience (for some people, anyway) feels to be the most valid thing experienced; yet the metaphysical assumptions of modernity has it that childhood experience and its memories are without validity. On the other hand; these fundamental assumptions are, indeed, assumptions; which means that they can be challenged and changed - but only by abandoning atheism and - first of all - becoming Christian. Christianity is the only positive, optimistic faith...

However, most Christians now and throughout history have been neither positive nor optimistic about mortal life. Happiness was deferred until post-mortal life in Heaven; and this world was pretty-much written off as a trial of temptations or even a torment. Hence the sense of being cut-off from God, from happiness; the yearning for death and resurrection among so many of the holiest Saints 


To escape this utter misery requires a particular kind of Christianity, with a very different metaphysical basis than has been usual. It is still Christianity, but the philosophical explanation of the religion is utterly different from that taught by most theologians past and present.


And that is the main theme of this blog: developing a Christianity that is capable of integrating our-selves with this world, and our mortal selves with our post-mortal resurrected life... A Christianity that makes it clear what this life is positively for, beyond mere avoidance of damnation...

A Christianity which includes both the un-conscious world of a happy childhood and the self-awareness of functional modern adulthood; which explains how that childhood is permanent and actively relevant to life here-and-now.

This is what is made possible by regarding pre-mortal, mortal and post-mortal life as theosis, and regarding intuitive and aware primary thinking as the divine mode of being, and this thinking as a real, true and external world in which we our-selves may participate.

If successful, this kind of Christianity will transform the bitter-sweet, down-trending Life-tragedy of a happy childhood seen from the perspective of alienated adulthood; into an unmitigated good-thing. Because we will know that nothing significant is lost and everything good remains objectively available - both now, and beyond the doors of death.

I wish I could have explained this to Christopher Robin and AA Milne; but it is simply too hard to explain; every individual must discover it for himself or herself; and for that to happen they must want it to happen and believe that it is a real possibility; and very few people will admit either, let-alone both, of these propositions.


*Note: I was impelled to read this book (which I have long intended to tackle), by the appearance of a new movie which is apparently 'inspired by' Christopher Robin's 'True Story'; which I will probably end-up watching, sooner or later... It seemed important to grasp the reality before it could be over-written by the 'inspired by'.

The only answers worth having are utterly simple and clear, such that they can be grasped wholly by a single act of comprehension.

(Only such answers are lucid, unambiguous, hence even potentially-valid.)

Utterly simple and clear... Yet of course reality is (ahem) extremely complex...

So how does this work?

*

It works because :

1. We must know enough to ask exactly the right question, and

2. We must know enough to understand the simple-clear answer.

*

This point is general; whether we are talking about science, metaphysics or Christianity. The only answers worth having are simple and clear; but knowing enough to ask the right questions and to understand these simple-clear answers requires a lot of effort and time.

I don't get it. All Leftists - and nearly-all who self-identify as being on the Right - seem obsessed by materialism (economics and politics) and completely and utterly ignore what very-obviously-to-me seems to be The Problem: I mean alienation.

Alienation is a convenient term for the cut-offness of modern life, its perceived meaninglessness, its purposelessness; the nihilism and despair which is - or at least seems (very obviously) to me - to be everywhere and near-universal...

Very obviously (to me), it is not lack of stuff that is the main problem for modern people; but that it all adds-up to nothing - and nothing they do add-up to anything.

(Take a look at modern Western people - and compare their situation with people elsewhere and at any point in history - and you would not jump straight to the conclusion that we are being oppressed by lack of stuff.) 

Thoreau remarked that the mass of Men lead lives of quiet desperation - He was right; but apparently Men nowadays are utterly unaware of the fact; or else assume that their quiet desperation is due to lack of stuff...

(Rudolf Steiner writing:) Natural scientific thought has deeply influenced the formulation of present-day ideas. Those who are alert to the pulse of the times must take this trend into consideration.

Ideas derived from natural science conquer our thought-life with gathering momentum, and our unwilling hearts follow hesitantly and with apprehension. Not only the number thus conquered is important: there is a power inherent in natural scientific thought which convinces the observant that a modern conception of the world cannot exclude its impressions. This method of thought has gained widespread recognition and attracts people as if by magic.

The situation is not altered by the fact that isolated individuals can see how true science, through its own power has “long” led beyond the “shallow doctrines of force and matter,” taught by materialism. Far more important are those who boldly declare that a new religion should be built on natural scientific ideas. 

Even if such people seem shallow and superficial to those who know the deeper spiritual requirements of humanity, nevertheless they should be noted. And those also must be considered who have allowed their heads to take precedence over their hearts. 

These people are unable to free their intellects from natural scientific ideas. They are oppressed by the need for proof. But the religious needs of their souls cannot be satisfied by these natural scientific ideas because science offers too comfortless a perspective for their satisfaction. 

Why be enthusiastic about beauty, truth and goodness if in the end everything is to be swept away into nothingness like a bubble of inflated brain tissue? 

This is a feeling which oppresses many people like a nightmare. Therefore scientific ideas also oppress them, pressing their claims with tremendous authoritative force. 

As long as they can, people remain blind to the discord in their souls. They think in accordance with natural science - so long as the experience of their senses and logic demand it, but they keep to the religious sentiments in which they have been educated, preferring to remain in darkness concerning these matters, a darkness which clouds their understanding. They have not the courage to struggle through to clarity.

*

There can be no doubt whatever that the method of thought derived from natural science is the greatest power in modern spiritual life. And one who speaks of the spiritual concerns of mankind may not pass it by heedlessly. Nevertheless it is also true that the method by which it attempts to satisfy spiritual needs is shallow and superficial. 

If this were the right method the outlook would indeed be comfortless. Would it not be depressing to be forced to agree with those who say, “Man is a machine into which we put what we call food, and produce what we call thought. Think of that wonderful chemistry by which bread was changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet!” Countless people, influenced by the natural scientific method of thought, seem compelled to assume an attitude in line with the above quotation, even when they believe they are not doing so.

But are the demands made by natural science really as they are described by some of its representatives? The behavior of these representatives themselves proves that this is not the case. Their behavior in their own field is not such as many describe and demand in other fields. Would Darwin and Haeckel ever have made their great discoveries about the evolution of life if, instead of observing life and the structure of living beings, they had gone into the laboratory to make chemical experiments with tissue cut out of an organism? 

Let us really follow in the footsteps of these explorers who appear as monumental figures in the development of modern science! We shall then apply to the higher regions of spiritual life what they have applied in the field of the observation of nature. 

One who is investigating the nature of spirit can only learn from natural science. He really needs only to do as science does. But he must not allow himself to be misled by what individual representatives of natural science would dictate to him. He must investigate in the spiritual domain as they do in the physical, but he need not adopt their opinions about the spiritual world, confused as they are by their exclusive consideration of physical phenomena.

We shall act in conformity with natural science only when we study the spiritual evolution of man just as impartially as the naturalist observes the material world. We shall be led to higher methods which, although they cannot be those of natural science, yet hold good in the same sense.


The above has been edited, by me, from the first section of Christianity as Mystical Fact by Rudolf Steiner, published in 1902.

**

My comment: It is telling that Steiner wrote the above analysis more than a century ago, yet we are certainly no further forward with this core, essential problem of our civilisation; indeed we are considerably further back from it - since it is hard to imagine any diagnosis so accurate being publised today.

Modern rigrous thinking has now narrowed the options down to acceptance of the scientific world view as authoritative and accepting the wholesale spiritual (then physical) destruction that this brings; or rejecting scince (either in totality, for the more rigour thinkers, or else rolling it back to some earlier civilisational level and holding it just-there - for those who allow themselves wishful thinking).

But the very possibility of a spirituality that is truly-scientific in method has essentially disappeared from Western apprehension - it is no longer even comprehensible (and this includes nearly all of Steiner's modern self-styled followers whom I have encountered in print; because the whole Anthroposophy movement has been fundamentally corrupted/ inverted by the incoherent and anti-Christian evil of New Leftism).

Yet Steiner was correct in 1902. He was, as Owen Barfield saw - completing the movement of human consciousness which began with the Romanticism of Coleridge and Goethe. Steiner was (in 1902, although this became sadly obscured and muddled in his later over-production of lectures and writings) decribing in outline the necessary basis of a true Christianity; both satisfying and robust.

This was based upon Steiner's philosophical breakthroughs in what he termed 'epistemology', but was actually metaphysics, leading up to The Philosophy of Freedom published in 1894.

Steiner described the reason for, and the basic method to attain, what I have been calling Primary Thinking - which is itself the true scientific attitude applied to human consciousness, and thence to Christianity.

The Thing that we (all) most need to do is to develop our consciousness by learning and practicing primary thinking.

Nothing is more important and everything Good (including, ultimately, our ability to be Christian) depends on it - and this is why purposive supernatural evil is incrementally shaping the world towards the prevention of primary thinking.

We must get in touch with reality directly (by primary thinking) by learning and actively, consciously attaining direct knowledge of the universal realm of reality.

At present, in mainstream modern life, we know the world only 'secondhand' - we know only a virtual and constructed world - and have been persuaded that this secondhand world is the only metaphysical reality. We ignore/ violently-reject even the possibility of first-hand knowledge.

Our 'facts' are increasingly only what is perceived by our senses (and tools/ machines/ computers fed by sensory data) - and these perceptions (the 'basic data') are increasingly those selected and invented by the mass media, bureaucratic propaganda and official regulations.

Our concepts (by which we make sense of these 'facts') are less-and-less those which are universal and eternal; and more-and-more those which are absorbed from socialisation, education and the conditions of modern living. And these concepts increasingly derive-from, are controlled-by, the mass media, bureaucratic propaganda and official regulations.

In sum, our secondhand world is globally controlled and - because of our false metaphysical assumptions - has become not just primary but the sole world. Insofar as the world of primary reality still exists in our lives, it is systematically denied validity - written-off as childish, crazy, arbitrary, repressive, subjective...

Modern life has become almost-wholly virtual, external, secondhand and controlled - but the fact is obscured by the pretence that only such perceptual, conjectural, changeable, contingent and authority-validated hypotheses are rigorous.

This situation is why there is no higher priority than each of us connecting with primary reality - by means of primary thinking, and recognising the ultimate authority of direct knowing derived from primary thinking.

Christianity without such development of consciousness and renewal of metaphysics cannot suffice; because we will be unable to evaluate, think or reason about Christianity using only the assumptions, 'facts' and conceptual tools that are all that modern life allows us.

William Arkle believed in reincarnation, and a means of Men gaining experience and being-educated across multiple lives. Angels are seen as a separate creation from Men, and angels gain their experience and education by moving 'downward' from spiritual Heaven deeper into the material realm of incarnation and earth - the job being both to help and educate Men and themselves to learn about the problems of imperfection and evil.

By contrast, my understanding is derived from Mormonism - which is that there is a three stage progression from pre-mortal life, as spirit angels, through incarnate mortal life ad via death to post-mortal resurrected life; this time as incarnated angels.

Yet, brooding on Arkle's understanding of the nature and role of angels and Men, which can be found in his works Letter from a Father and Equations of Being; I have realised that these provide considerable insight when interpreted from his scheme.

Arkle's angels correspond to pre-mortal existence; and he emphasises that the innocence, bliss and purity of this life is a deficiency of understanding - angels have no spontaneous understanding of the constraints of incarnation, mortality, and the evil effects and suffering resulting from free agency.

Therefore, while spirit angels work to educate and assist Men (when such interventions are of benefit - given that our purpose in mortality is primarily to learn for ourselves, by trial and error); the angels are of limited knowledge, and prone to make errors due to their lack of understanding. In fact, angelic errors are themselves an accidental but inevitable contribution to the evil and suffering of mortal life.

We might imagine a ladder from the spirituality of highest Heaven to the materiality of earthly-mortal existence; angels are descending that ladder, Men are ascending it; angels are the teachers, but also learning - Men are the learners, but indirectly acting as teachers of angels; both angels and men benefiting from the interactions.

Spirit angels existed before the first Men were incarnated as mortals, and have always been involved in earthly life; but we can assume that they will have found mortal problems both confusing and appalling - and they needed to learn from the experience.

We can imagine that - over time - more and more spirit angels will have learnt enough to recognise that they would benefit (in terms of progression towards full divinity) from voluntary incarnation as mortals; and then do this.

Over time, from the first mortal Men, there would be a development of angelic expertise, and eventually spirit angels were supplemented by incarnate angels who had experienced mortality.

However, over this timescale, there will have been an accumulation of the effects of evil - so the problems of mortal life have also accumulated.

And the evil of mortal life has also been increased by the activities of fallen spirit angels - I mean demons. These demons perhaps include individual spirit angels whose interaction with mortal Men have led to various responses such as hatred, resentment, fear and the desire to dominate mortals.

For example, the prime demon - The Devil, Satan or Lucifer - is depicted in Mormon scripture as having rejected the divine plan for free agency in Men; and having fallen in order to destroy Men's free will, and to enforce a compulsory plan on Men (and other demons). The devil is therefore the prototypical totalitarian dictator; who believes he 'knows best' what is best for Men.

Arkle also assumes that the difficulties of mortal life, the accumulation of errors, evils and demonic power will eventually make mortal life just too difficult for the need for learning by experiencing; and this world will need to be ended, and another begun. In other words there will be an end time terminated by the end of this world (i.e. equivalent to Christ's second coming, the New Jerusalem).

Anyway, I find that this understanding of spirit angels descending and Men ascending and both interacting - to be helpful in making sense of what has happened in this world since the original incarnation of Adam and Eve; and the ways in which the problems and tasks of mortal life have changed throughout history.

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA008/English/RPC1961/GA008_c01.html

I have been blogging a lot about 'Primary Thinking' in recent months, but it has been difficult to make a short definition of what I mean by it. Here is an attempt...

Primary Thinking is Active, Conscious Intuition

Intuition is usually thought to be an unconscious, spontaneous, event - something that happens-to-us... But, in contrast, Primary Thinking is intuition done with effort; purposively, deliberately, and in awareness of what we are doing and what we discover.

On the other hand, my own understanding of this took me several years of considerable effort; and there is no particular reason why I can make the process of understanding quick and 'easy' for readers.

Since it wasn't easy for me, why should it be easy for you? To understand, you would need to meet me half-way, or more than half-way; you must make more effort in understanding than I make in communicating...

You must, in fact, meet-me in the realm of universal reality! Only there can communication become knowledge.

We live in an increasingly totalitarian world, and one in which totalitarianism is escalating rapidly via a single, increasingly global and interlinked, bureaucratic system of monitoring, control, enforcement.

The purpose of totalitarianism - that is, of intended thought-control, is to ingrain and enforce habits of passive, superficial and 'information-processing' thinking - which will crowd-out, monopolise the interpretation of all perceptions; and to have all thinking driven-by perceptions.

Thus, ideally, the mass of people would never think from their real, divine selves.

Hence people would never think true, beautiful or virtuous thoughts.

We could (and would) then be fed only with perceptions and concepts that are virtual, fake and manipulative.

Once the situation is in-place (embraced by the masses as the only sure way that people can be prevented from the sins against Leftism, the only sure way that all people will be guaranteed happiness - or at least pleasure, or at least freedom from suffering...)... then the Good can be destroyed in our thoughts; we can be induced actively to will our own spiritual damnation.

When thought is monitored, controlled, enforced - people need never become aware of God the creator; nor even of God within-us.


(In such a world, deeply-ironically, the only entities who would be aware of the reality of God and The Good would be the ruling demonic powers, who work against them.) 

(The above description is of the intention of the totalitarian world. The extent to which it is fully achievable is doubtful - given that God may act to ensure that a choice is presented to each individual, sooner or later, during mortal life or after. However, the demonic powers can and do ingrain evil metaphysics and habits, which would presumably tend to make the free choice of damnation more likely.)

Primary Thinking (or Pure Thinking, as Rudolf Steiner generally terms it*) has no limits to potential knowledge, and is fully conscious, self-aware.

This means that because we are fully conscious of our thinking (and active, not passive, in the free agency of this thinking) - we can know (for sure) when we are 'doing it'; and of course when we are not; and we can therefore chart our own progress.

On the other hand; given the unbounded power and scope of primary thinking (that is in the realm of truth, beauty and virtue) - we also know with certainty how very partial, embryonic, our own achievement actually is.


*This can be discovered in his magnum opus 'The Philosophy of Freedom'; which is very helpfully expounded and interpreted in 'Rudolf Steiner on his book The Philosophy of Freedom', edited by Otto Palmer.


(Since primary thinking is the creativity of a genius, the combination can be illustrated by Isaac Newton - who knew that he was one of the greatest of mathematicians and physicists; yet also knew that his discoveries, while significant, were relatively minuscule - merely a lovely pebble or shell compared with the whole ocean.)

When I became a Christian it was with the idea of joining a church and being spiritually guided by it - to be obedient to a true church; but this world is one in which the churches are corrupted, subverted and often inverted.

It used to be that the way to be a good Christian was through obedience to external authority, but I came to recognise that authority was corrupt; indeed that authority was more corrupt than anything else - the worst and most evil forces in modern institutions including churches are those with highest status and greatest power.

A Christianity based on obedience to church authorities is therefore - in practice - harnessed to an anti-Christian agenda and policies.

(In the past, when an individual disagreed with a church, it was assumed that the individual was most likely at fault; but nowadays any serious Christian must be on the alert against being led astray and into evil by the church itself. The modern Christian must - and usually does - evaluate and judge the church, not submit to the church. In sum, our conscience used to be external, but now must be internal.)

Is this an accident? I think not. My understanding is that this is the way that divine destiny has found (given the choices of the mass of modern people) to compel us to confront the necessity for personal freedom and individual spiritual autonomy: when the churches cannot, and should not, be trusted - we must look to our-selves.

This is the mystical, esoteric or 'spiritual' path of Christianity - but it is not usually recognised that traditional modes of spirituality are also corrupted by modernity. In modern societies, the situation is ever closer to the 'totalitarian' - which means that the forces of evil (the political and government systems, the interlinked bureaucracies, the mass media) control ever more of our sensory inputs for ever more of the time.

Traditional spirituality was based upon perceiving,  and then passively being guided by those perceptions - yet what we perceive is mostly (overall and in purpose) evil - therefore any passive and perceptual spirituality (for example based on trance states, altered consciousness, or intending to see or hear evidence of the spirit) will mostly be corrupted by the same forces that have corrupted the churches.

So traditional spirituality, esoteric or mystical techniques will generally do more harm than good - which probably explains why most of the most spiritual people are among the worst adherents and proponents of secular Leftist ideas, and supporters of the worst elements in politics and the mass media.

This means that although the present is intolerable, tradition is no better - all institutions including churches are (more or less) part of the problem, and so are traditional spiritual practices.

In sum we can see that anything which tends toward mental passivity, towards handing-over responsibility, is not an option any more; and that the only viable future is to be more mentally active, more responsible and more free in our personal agency.

And my understanding is that this is precisely what God wants from us, because it constitutes spiritual maturity, growing-up or theosis - becoming more god-like.

Our choice compels us to either assent to the tide of public and external evil, or else to seek within, and develop our spiritual freedom and agency.

This only makes sense if one believes that humans contain the necessary resources within themselves; but if we regard ourselves as children of God, having - by inheritance - the divine within us; and if we can seek with proper motivation (for the sake of love; and not for power, wealth, gratification etc) - then our faith in the goodness of God suggests that we will find what we need.

Or, since what we need is not to be found in the world, and no authority has the kind of legitimacy to which we can trust our souls, then we are compelled to develop a direct relationship with God, and to rely on the capacities for a direct relationship that he has planted within us.

We need to trust that what guidance we have is sufficient. And we need to expunge the nostalgic desire for living unconsciously or passively, as was possible in the past. If we immerse ourselves in The World then we will be corrupted by The World, since The World is (overall and everywhere) corrupt.

The situation is not, therefore, hope-less, indeed it is one of great optimism, if we accept and embrace what is necessary. We have the possibility of living from our freedom which is a consequence of living from our true self - our true and partly-divine self.

We have the capacity to stand 'alone' as Christians - and to experience, learn and develop as Christians - in the face of a collapsing world of corruption that embraces the churches...

Except that we are not alone, because all such persons share in the same universal reality, in which knowledge is direct and person-to-person contact is direct (not communicated, and therefore independent of The World's communication systems).

Our freedom is in the world of universal truth, beauty and virtue; and that world is reality, and we can know that world directly, actively, consciously. And anybody can choose it at any time because it is indeed universal and our knowledge of that world, our capacity to know that world, is spontaneous.

The harder that things get in the external world of lies and fakery, the more urgent and obvious becomes the alternative world of reality and truth.

(This constitutes the weakness of the plans of the currently dominant agents of evil; the closer they get to total success, the more brittle their situation becomes.)

Nothing stops us from accessing it (except our own rejection, and distraction); and sooner-or-later we will be confronted by its reality: the choice - reality or fakery - will then be ours.

 

I have had considerable difficulty in conceptualising Love - but I keep trying because it is at the heart of Christianity, and because false conceptions cause trouble; especially in a society like ours, where The Good is under continual attack; and all Good things are subject to subversion, corruption, inversion.

Obviously (to a serious Christian) Love isn't a feeling-just; and obviously also it isn't a justification for sex - it must be a metaphysical (structural) reality of creation. But if one makes a serious formulation of Love along the lines of its being 'cohesion' (as I have previously done) then Love comes-out as being something like the imposition and preservation of 'order'...

And if order is achieved then love will stop, because everything will be frozen, static. Most Christian metaphysical understandings of Love do exactly this, and therefore end up trying to assert that something which is unchanging and eternal - all knowing, omniscient - is also-somehow dynamic, generative, and the primary motivation.

Yet, to conceptualise Love as expanding, always changing - open-endedly and forever - is to fall into something akin to the sexual revolution (as approximated by a free love commune or 'bath house' culture); a continuously-expanding appetite for variety, intensity and transgression.

*

In fact, Love turns-out to be the best example of polarity (or polar logic) as described and proposed by Coleridge as the fundamental metaphysical reality. Once this is grasped, we can see that the usual way of dividing up the world into alternatives - as, for example, the division used above that Love is either static or dynamic - when what we actually get is alternatives neither of which is true.

The idea of polarity asserts that at the very heart of things is a principle (or are principle) that have the character of being indivisible; so Love must be envisaged as containing stasis in terms of its poles of cohesion and expansion - but the things itself is living, dynamic and continually re-creating itself; re-creating its differentiations (into cohesion and expansion) and recreating the tendencies (of cohesion and expansion).

(I picture this polarity, metaphorically, as a swirling, dyadic, bipolar 'star'; in which each different star that constitutes the system orbits the other, and the orbit oscillates in diameter - now larger, now smaller - but growing over time, in which energies are continually generated and continually thrown-off. The stars are complementary - each differs from the other and needs the other. The two-fold and orbiting nature of the system is perpetuated forever, but/ and the other features of the system may change open-endedly by expansion, contraction, combination etc. It's only a metaphor and breaks down it pushed, but it helps me.)

If we can suppose that the heart of reality is a polarity of love-as-cohesion ad love-as-expansion, then we can understand how Love may be perpetual - because creative. Love as a polarity is the kind-of-thing which might make the universe, the kind of thing which might keep it alive even while holding it together.

And creativity itself has to be understood as polar - because it includes preservation as well as novelty. And Life, likewise.

*

This is a profoundly different way of understanding reality than we are used to - it requires a fundamental change in assumptions. And one reason that polarity has never become normal (although the idea has been knocking-around since Heraclitus) is that - taken seriously - it destroys the established way of understanding things, including mainstream-established Christian theology.

And like any metaphysical change, polarity doesn't make sense when considered in the light of a different and habitual metaphysical system, such as we deploy in public discourse.

Plus there are distorted and misleading versions of failed-polarity knocking around; such as the idea that the ideal is some kind of balanced-mixture of opposing forces - for example the common modern trope that Order and Chaos ought to be in balance. Yet the Order versus Chaos idea is typically one in which the opposition is between static-states, not between forces or tendencies; and is often poisoned by the dishonest attempt to destroy order and allow something otherwise forbidden (sex, drugs, unconstrained pleasure-seeking etc). Order-Chaos might be conceptualised as a true polarity, but in fact it very seldom is.

(It is always possible to reject metaphysical discussion as too theoretical, but it seems to me that in an age such as this one (an age of questioning) wrong metaphysics will sabotage the Good, even when the attacks on it are incoherent.)

A further problem with polarity and Christianity is that most Christians attempt to be monotheists, and are very concerned to assert the one-ness of God. Whether they are successful (given the full deity of Christ) is moot. Non-Christian monotheists such as Jews and Muslims (and common sense analysts) would say that Christianity is polytheistic - but Christian philosophers have regarded it as metaphysically crucial that God should ultimately be one, However, if God is ultimately one then polarity is not profound - only superficial.

Therefore a metaphysics of polarity implies that deity be polar - and Coleridge argued this using the Holy Trinity as polar components - although I find that I cannot follow his argument. Nonetheless, for a mainstream Christian to believe in polarity as primary, it seems necessary the Holy Trinity somehow be understood as a polarity. 

For those, like myself, who believe that Mormon theology is correct, the answer is obvious - that God is a polarity of masculine and feminine, that the ultimate basis of polarity is God conceptualised as a complementary dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother; and this primary polarity creates all others.

This idea of polarity at the root of everything fits with the Mormon understanding of reality as evolving, because evolution is also a polarity of continuity and newness. Evolution is a transformation, a changing of form in a retained entity, not the substitution of one entity for another different one. Evolution is about eternal lineage as well as here-and-now difference. 

*

It is not easy to grasp; but I have found that the idea of polarity as the fundamental metaphysical reality is one of great clarity, strength and power; and I recommend it.


(Further reading on polarity is What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield, 1971.)

Due to the subversion, corruption and inversion of the mass media and all major social institutions...

Communication is useless.

(That is, communication via the senses - via visual and auditory channels)

*

What remains is direct knowing.

...In which pure thinking (of an individual) participates-in universal reality - thereby knowing other people, places, times, things... directly.

Our world, here-and-now, is one of Fake thinking generating Fake knowledge - yet we swim in a sea of mutually-reinforcing fakery, and are unaware of the fact.

For us only the Fake is Real... 

*

Awakening cannot be compelled - nor is it a mass phenomenon. It is a consequence of individual freedom, it must be chosen.

What, then, could compel people - I mean individual persons - to a situation in which the choice of Awakening was stark and simple, and evasion become all-but impossible?

*

In The West, we go further and further into the false knowledge of false selves: this is our public world; and (with mass media, social media, propaganda) our public world is more and more pervasive.

We inhabit a vast superstructure of deliberately-manufactured and elaborately-sustained falseness, irrelevance, uselessness: a fake world.

But if this fake world is not continuously sustained, imposed, fuelled, repaired; then it will collapse within the mind - and an individual will be confronted by its opposite: which is intuitive knowing.

So, awakening may come to a person when he or she is confronted by the fake knowledge of their fake selves. The two go together: the self and the knowledge. Both the self and our knowledge need to be recognised as fake simultaneously.

*

In a world were communication is pervasive and addictive and fake - communication is the core of evil. The enemy of communication is direct knowing.

Our primary task is therefore to know directly; which entails to live from the primary thinking of our true selves.

We will all, sooner or later, be confronted by this reality: confronted but not compelled - we cannot be compelled to reject the fake and embrace the truth.

But we can be compelled to make the choice in a situation of maximum clarity about the issue at stake; that issue being the salvation of our souls.


The above is edited and excerpted from an essay at Albion Awakening.

I don't take much note of the mass media, and there are very few Christian blogs which I like and which post regularly - but up to now, I have continued to read a handful of secular anti-leftist blogs and follow blog aggregators (variously self-styled as paleo-conservative, alt-right, neoreactionary... those who in practice put politics before Christianity; and when religious put some Church before Christianity).

And apparently, quite a lot of my readership come via such sources.

These 'alternative' media have served to keep me in touch with the mainstream news - at one remove, and via a different lens. So I have continued to make tactiacal, to some extent topical, 'political' comments on this blog - and these posts tend to be among the most 'viewed'.

Well, I have decided - from today - to dump this vestigial connection with the mainstream; because it has a bad effect on me - it encourages me to think along secular lines, and to develop opinions on current topics which are 'pragmatic' (i,e within the frame of mainstream politics) rather than fully principled and ideal.

I think this bad habit was encouraged by the apparent good new of the pro-Brexit vote in England in June 2016 - in that I assumed that because the vote represented a rejection of elite opinion, it was also a possible sign of hope that there would be a far more radical reappraisal of principles... and that a spiritual awakening was a possibility.

Paradoxically, this encouraged me to scan the media, albeit the 'alternative' media for indirect signs of such a revival - but even this circumscribed engagement was nonetheless an engagement - and I think it has done me harm, has set my mind working in a counter-productive way.

Therefore, it is my intention to take matters even further than I have in the direction of total rejection of the mass media agenda - to include rejection of the alternative media.

This is an era when not only is (as always) the good an enemy to the best; but any good short of the best is in practice evil. When the socio-political system is built-up falsehood, then anything which fails to reject this foundation must be building towards evil.

Here and now, we cannot answer even the simplest of socio-political questions, we cannot give the simplest of opinions, without exposing and rejecting the false metaphysical assumptions behind all such questions.

All our shorty-expressed views will, therefore, seem foolish, crazy, evil or just incomprehensible. This is a fact of modern life, and unavoidable. We might as well get used to it. But at any rate, we should not even be trying to meet culture half-way. 

In a sense, this makes life simple - because tactics are discarded at a stroke: no tactics, all strategy; no compromise, all idealism - we just need to be truth-full, all the time, and about everything.

Simple - albeit very difficult.

Edited from William Wildblood writing at Albion Awakening:

In the second epistle to the Thessalonians St Paul writes of a 'strong delusion' that God will send to those who refuse to love truth... You might say that God gives you enough rope to hang yourself with if that's what you want to do...

So what is this strong delusion? Assuming we are living in the end times what could it be?

(By the way, it seems more and more likely that we are indeed living in something approximating to the end times; since however far man has fallen in the past he has always known that he has fallen whereas now he likes to think he is progressing, so much has he lost sight of his origins and destiny. It is only recently that he has sunk so low from a spiritual perspective he believes himself to be higher than ever.)

Assuming, then, that these are the end times, what is the delusion? There are several candidates ranging from general atheism to materialism to Marxism (hard or soft) to Darwinian evolution which sees intelligent conscious life as arising from dead matter through random mutation of its component parts. 

It could be any of these but today there is actually something that combines them all and that is Leftism, the popular belief system of the modern world. 

The strong delusion must be shared by many, if not most, people. It must be the accepted wisdom of the worldly elite. It must be anti-Christian in spirit. It must corrupt nature. And it must be thought of as good in the light of how we see the world. All these things apply to Leftism. 

Leftism is the strong delusion of the modern world.

More at Albion Awakening

The pervasive nihilism of modernity serves to block any move away from the prevalent insanity and despair; because our problems are at the level of basic (metaphysical) assumptions, yet any attempt to discover, examine and revise these assumptions is shipwrecked instantly by nihilism.

Nihilism therefore functions as the conservatism of radical inversion - it serves to conserve the metaphysical assumptions that underpin secular leftism.

Nihilism, by this meaning, is disbelief in reality; it is the feeling (rather than the conviction) that nothing is really-real, that everything is uncertain - that anything may be wrong.

The modern world view is based on the objectivity of perceptions (eg. in science) - yet we also know that perceptions are often wrong (seeing is not believing). Modern morality is based on the primacy of feelings - modern ethics are all versions of utilitarianism, that is of good being happiness and evil being suffering - yet we know that feelings are temporary, reversible, influenced by psychology, illness, drugs and propaganda.

In sum, in a world built on perceptions and feelings - we know that neither are reliable, nor solid, nor even known for sure. Hence the nihilism.

Modern nihilism is indeed a feeling, rather than a thought - because (pretty obviously) one cannot have a conviction that 'nihilism is true', because that is self-refuting; rather the strength and intractability of nihilism comes from its being a feeling we can't shake-off, rather than a proposition that we are logically-compelled to acknowledge.

Consequently, modern people are stuck in a situation in which their nihilism ruins their lives, but in which they do not take their nihilism seriously - because if they did they would behave very differently. They would not argue-in-favour of nihilism, they would not use nihilism as any kind of argument - they would not even attempt to communicate, they would not plan, they would not do anything which interfered with their current selfish gratification... and so on.

What happens is that people have a feeling of nihilism, which is unpleasant and usually takes the form of fear. So they address the situation at the level of feelings by some combination of displacing nihilism with other feelings and obliterating the feeling of nihilism.

For example by distracting with the mass media, by distracting with the pursuit of sex or status; or obliteration by intoxication with drugs or sleep or immersive media - and all the other characteristically modern evasions.

That modern nihilism is a matter of feeling rather than thinking is in fact a potential solution to the problem. If we take nihilism seriously, and seriously think about it - and keep thinking about it, we will be forced to make a decision between:

1. Accepting the truth of nihilism, and behaving accordingly.

2. Discovering that nihilism is not the bottom line of our conviction.

Of course, this is a dangerous tactic, since accepting the truth of nihilism may lead to suicide or a short-fast-track to death by short-term-self-indulgence (including harming or killing others, when doing so happens to gratify an individual).

But - given the rarity of consistent nihilism, it is likely that most people would recognise that their deepest and most pervasive feeling is not nihilism, but something opposed to nihilism.

In sum, individuals may discover their own bedrock convictions - their personal certainties, stronger than nihilism, upon which they can begin to build meaning purpose and genuine relationships.

Dangerous though it is; taking nihilism seriously, and rigorously thinking-it-though for ourselves, is probably the only way out from its trap.

It was for me.