Bruce Charlton's Notions

By the original criteria, my Bacon Number is infinite, since I have never acted in a movie; but inflation affects Bacon Numbers just as it does everything else - and the site now allows Bacon Number calculations for any medium featured on IMDB...

I learned about the supposed cycle of civilisation, and its despair inducing futility, as a pre-adolescent child. You know the one about civilisations having a barbaric youth of growth, an adult maturity of... civilisation, and then... inevitably... a senescent, decadent decline.

There are many variations; but here-and-now, for us moderns, this is essentially a fake insight.

Why? Because we are living in modernity 200-and-some years after the industrial revolution, which was the greatest non-cyclical change in the history of Men (the first and greatest non-cyclical change was the invention and spread of agriculture).

Insofar as there is truth is the cycle of civilisations idea, it refers to the agrarian era - that part of human history between the agricultural and industrial revolutions.  Indeed, if there is any meaning to 'civilisation', it is restricted to the polities, empires, nations of that era.


But the idea has deep errors built-into it. One is to reify the abstraction of 'civilisation' - as if it was 'a thing', and a primary thing at that... rather than merely a by-product and a collection of creative causes.

By their revealed preferences - by what they actually do, nobody at all ever puts civilisation first; nobody builds, enjoys, defends or indeed genuinely cares-about a 'civilisation'.

The so called civilisations were not made by people who were trying to make civilisations - which is why, after a while, they 'decline'. They decline mostly because nobody is even trying to sustain them (whatever they are) - people always have other priorities - and these priorities differ by time and place.


Looking at a couple of the longest-lasting 'civilisations' - the Ancient Egyptians (3000 years) and the Byzantines (1000 years) were religious societies, who strove to sustain and defend and live-by their religion, primarily. Everything else was secondary, and dispensable - as revealed by the end of the Byzantine empire with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. They were defending their religion - to the death; and they would not sacrifice their particular Christianity to the imperative to save the city or the civilisation or empire*.

 
What's my point - what am I trying to say? That we should not be sucked-into an insincere and futile attempt to save something that doesn't really exist and nobody genuinely cares about as a number one priority. But instead should try to save and promote that which we most deeply value.

At best, a civilisation is a temporary and grossly flawed thing of mortal and material life. We, personally - as immortals, will outlast all present and possible civilisations.

At most a civilisation is merely a means to an end - and that end should be spiritual and eternal.


*Note: The impulse of romanticism in Germany led to a distinction between civilisation and 'Kultur' - in which civililisation was seen as superficial, explicit, artificial and French; while Kultur was seen as deeper, more a thing of the heart and soul, and German. By this distinction, civilisation might be subject to cycles and to be a thing that could collapse and disappear; but Kultur would be something that might prove indestructible - remaining viable and powerfully motivating hidden, coded, latent, inexplicit, and beloved. 

 

Jesus promised us Everlasting Life, if we wanted it - but it is usually hard for us to imagine what we could possible find to do forever that would not become utterly intolerable sooner or later - and probably sooner...


I regard the idea of 'Nirvanah' or suchlike to be a response to this intolerability - the goal of losing self-awareness in a permanent bliss state... But this is not what Jesus offered - and Nirvana is not a solution to giving each of us everlasting life, because it entails us no longer being us... Eternity is made tolerable by obliterating awareness of it and of ourselves.

I am not arguing against Nirvana for those who want it - but to want it is to want Not To Be to want to escape from being.

Nirvana is not a solution to the problem, it is a deleting of the problem.


So, let's get back to what Jesus was offering, or meaning by offering everlasting light on the understanding that it would be A Good Thing and would be experienced by each of us, as selves and personally. What kind of a thing might this be?

Well, I'm not happy with saying that we will be changed, perfected, and that will make the difference. That - because of our sins and other imperfections, we cannot yet imagine what everlasting life would be like - but when we have been resurrected and saved, we then will understand...

That is another evasion. Yes, we do need to be changed, perfected to enjoy everlasting life - but that does not make it clearer what kind of a thing that our perfecting will make enjoyable. Jesus clearly expected people to know what he meant, the kind of thing he meant, when he gave the Good News of everlasting Life.


The only kind of a thing that I personally can imagine being Good to experience Forever, is something that endlessly grew and changed in such a way that there was continuity; it remains the same kind of thing, while getting greater...

Jesus told us the key - which is Love. For myself, this is loving marriage and family - plus close friendship... Families grow by procreation and are linked by lineage - and these families become linked by marriages and by friendships.

I can quite easily imagine that a situation of love can change, expand, develop - while remaining itself; and I can imagine this going-on forever and remaining not just tolerable but getting better and better forever.


I am fortunate enough to have experienced reasonably close approximations to this exact situation in my life to recognise that - with love as the basis - the complex of romantic love, love between parents and children, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and between siblings... the whole 'network' of relations... that this is the kind of thing which would be an eternal delight as the core of a larger life of creativity.


There seems to me a reciprocal relation between this extended concept of family-based human relations and creativity: our personal creativity is for the extending family. They are the necessary 'audience' for any act of personal creativity.  

I can see that individuality needs to grow from the embeddedness in family - such that we develop our own distinctness by growing-into the niche we envisage. By our own personal growth and development, we make new and unenvisaged actualities...

What is creativity, in this ultimate sense? Creativity is personal participation in reality - in everlasting life (and sometimes in mortal life, partly and briefly) we live realty; and because we are individual 'agents', by participating in reality, we change reality.


The archetypal creativity which makes possible all other is God's creation. God's is primary creation and we are sub-creators in and from God's creation - but to be a subcreator is to be a real creator - a creator working in the medium of reality...

And when God's creation is understood as something with which we can personally participate; I find it easy to imagine waking up every morning forever with unflagging delight at the prospect of the day ahead - because each day will be new, and yet there will be the continuity of love; we will retain what we most value, yet the scope of everything will expand; and the expansion of everything will be in a loving harmony with what already-is.


In sum, I have experienced sufficient in the way of partial and temporary approximations to it, to recognise that an everlasting life embedded in a loving and growing family, 'cross-linking' with other such families by marriages and friendships, is the kind of medium or basis of a wholly gratifying Everlasting Life; and that within that medium or on that basis the completion of life would be creativity - of an unique and personal kind; with loved people who that creativity is for.

When, and equally, there is the creativity of others for us ourselves. There is our own unique creativity, and there are the unique (and developing) creativities of everybody else... 


How might such a vision be related to Jesus? In what sense did he enable us to have this, and give it to us?

Without getting too detailed, I see Jesus as having been the first actually to do this; and by that act beginning the whole process, making it possible for all other men and women. Both in its general sweep and its specific details; both in its literal surface and in the intuited depths; in its full pre-mortal, mortal and post-mortal context and scope... the life of Jesus was a beginning of the eternal and divine and human family; linking mortal Men with the already fully-divine.

The creativity of Jesus can be overlooked, but it is there. Every day was different, every day was a development of his nature. Each conversation, each personal interaction, each parable or lecture, each surprise and twist that is immediately seen as 'right'... there is a continual and personal creative growth in action in the Life of Christ.


Of course, Jesus being in mortality and among flawed men and evil powers - there is a great deal of the horrible too: Jesus experienced many sins of others, pain, sorrow and other flaws. Such experiences were a necessary learning.

But - having learned, having experienced mortality and death; I do not find it difficult to imagine a world, an everlasting life, in which these aspects were absent; yet life was open-endedly and forever a learning and creating in that context of loving family and friendship.

It is what I already know, raised and refined to a 'perfection' that is a dynamic and evolving perfection - and its dynamic and evolving nature is its perfection completed for eternity.

In the modern era (although, apparently, not much before this) Western people often express confusion and anger over the lack of supernatural help in response to prayer; or that the difficulties and sufferings of our live are not pre-empted. And this is a reason for rejecting Christianity.

For example, God is both loving and extremely powerful; yet a person prays for help or relief and none comes. This 'failure' is taken as evidence that God does not exist, and that 'therefore' Christianity is a lie.


What people fail to realise is that this common scenario and its rationale contains the basic and false metaphysical assumption that a loving and powerful God would have created us in order to be happy and not to suffer during this mortal life on earth!

Since the reality is that we indeed suffer and are sub-optimally happy here on earth; then, logically from these false premises, the idea of such a God must be fraudulent. Either God made a mess of creation, or God is not loving; or God is not real...

The error, as usual, is in background and baseline assumptions: specifically, 'during this mortal life on earth'.


My understanding is that God is indeed loving and also extremely powerful (although not 'omnipotent' whatever that mind-numbing absolute-abstraction might mean in real-life...)- and that therefore help is always available during our mortal lives.

But the proper question is 'help to do what?' What does God want for us?

Given that we are immortal beings whose souls live eternally after 'death'; clearly God's ultimate goal is Not going to be restricted to optimising happiness and minimising suffering during this relatively brief mortal life, here on earth...

Our mortal, physical well being is surely of concern to God, but is not the only concern, and not the primary concern. God's primary concern is not with finite mortality but with our post-mortal eternity, and not with our time-limited bodies but with our souls, which survive the death of our bodies.

Indeed, one primary reason for our mortal lives on earth is precisely that this life will (if done properly) benefit our eternal souls.


We are God's children, so to understand the issues we can imagine how we regard our own children as the grow up to adulthood.

Childhood is extremely important, and we want our children to be happy and do not want them to suffer - and we often give or offer help... But we do not give absolute primacy to the short-term feelings of the child, and we do not always give help when asked; because we are thinking of the long term, and we wish growing children to learn to help themselves.  Children need to learn by trial and error, by doing their best and discovering the consequences.

Indeed, a good parent will only respond to requests for help when this help does not undermine the child's responsibility. This is, indeed, one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent - to refuse help, or even deliberately to inflict suffering in the short term because we believe it will be of greater benefit to the long term.


There are many examples: any form of behaviour discipline that contradicts the child's current desires, deliberately inflicting valuable but unpleasant or painful medical and surgical treatments, confining children to schools for long periods...

The point of these examples is not to justify them specifically; but to demonstrate that saying No to requests for help, failing to optimise here-and-now happiness, and indeed 'inflicting' suffering (intending ultimate benefit) are a necessary part of normal and good parenting; indeed a necessary part of the most ideal parenting.

Since help is always available in God's creation, and God is an ideal parent, part of faith is to trust that help will be given when it is good for us - 'good' in terms of the ultimate reason for our mortal lives here on earth.


In other words, unless we know that there is indeed A Reason* for our mortal lives here on earth, and have some understanding of the nature and fulfilment of that reason; then we are not in a position to appreciate why God sometimes gives help... but more often withholds it.


Note: That Reason is, very briefly: we incarnate into bodies in order to enhance our agency/ free will; we live on earth in order to have experiences from which we may learn - if we use our agency well; and our incarnate bodies die in order to be resurrected to everlasting life.

I have very often used Owen Barfield's categories to describe the evolution of consciousness over the past three years. These are Original Participation (OP), the Consciousness Soul (CS) and Final Participation (FP).

However, I have not been happy about the actual names, which are partly uninformative and, as I now have come to feel, somewhat inaccurate.

Original Participation is not truly a participation in reality and creation because it is a passive and unconscious state. The Consciousness Soul (this term comes from Steiner, rather than Barfield) is simply uninformative. And  the term 'Final' in Final Participation is not descriptive - but rather it informs us that this is the qualitative mode of divine consciousness, and therefore no further evolution (except quantitatively) is possible.

So I will be trying-out a new set of terms: Original Immersion, Detached Agency and Agent Participation.


This refers to the original state of consciousness for Man. Original in the sense of its being both the mode of consciousness of young children, and also of early tribal man - foragers/ hunter-gatherers.

It is a state of passive and unconscious immersion in reality - 'animistic', regarding the world as alive and conscious.

There is little in the way of a separate self - therefore little in the way of agency. The content of thought is mostly caused.

The child's thinking is therefore essentially a consequence, rather than being internally-generated. So, the child is not 'creative' - does not originate or generate thinking. 

It is also something of a 'twilight' state, in some ways intermediate between the awake and asleep state of modern Western adults - and a modern adult can experience Original Immersion in some altered states of consciousness such as trances, delirium and certain 'drugged' states and psychosis (for example).


This refers to the characteristic state of consciousness of an awake, alert, modern Western Man.

Our self is detached from the world, observing it through the senses; and we are strongly aware of this separate self and its agency in thinking.

The evolutionary step is in agency - thinking becomes a primary cause, self-caused: thinking emerges-from the self intrinsically. Thinking need not be a consequence of external factors.

With detached agency, Man becomes creative - originates thinking. However, this thinking is at the level of ideas and imaginations. These thought must be translated into the external world - by 'actions'. And actions are known only via sensory perceptions.

Therefore in the stage of the process is indirect. Thinking does Not participate in reality 

Initially the self may feel cut-off, and doubt the reality of the world ('solipsism'); and ultimately - by inference - may doubt its own reality.

The agent self experiences the world as perceptual/ sensory input that is made-sense-of by reasoning - i.e. a matter of facts and theories. Thus is it is literalistic, scientistic, materialist and reductionist. Reality is dead/ not-alive.

There is no experience of objective meaning nor purpose nor relationships: these are just theories.
Subjectivity is the dominant experience; objectivity is conceptualised sensation.


The thinking of the creative and agent self participates in reality - directly. This is the divine mode of thinking.

That is, thinking is real, and reality is thought - and there is a unity, no separation - therefore reality is changed (expanded) by thinking.

So, with Agent Participation, the Man directly knows reality - not indirectly via senses and reason or facts and theories. Direct knowing means there is no mediation, which means that there is unity.

For a divinity, reality is 'made' by thought; and known directly because the reality is the divine thought.

However, Agent Participation is partial, from a perspective. Thus some of reality is known directly, and creativity has also a limited scope. 

Thus, in Agent Participation, everything than can be thought is real - but only some things can be thought. Everything than can be thought is known - only some things can be thought.

And in Agent Participation with respect to creativity: everything that can be thought is original, uncaused and self-generated (although, naturally, it may and probably will use the existing knowledge of that self).

Everything that can be thought is participated-in, and therefore this thinking is directly creative (without mediation) - but only some things can be thought and only some kinds of creativity are possible.


The idea is that scheme describes the (ideal) development of a child to an adult who is divine - being a son or daughter of God: Original Imersion being young childhood, transforming to Detached Agecy at Adolescence. Most modern men are arrested at this adolescence of consciousness, but almost all will have periods of Agent Participation - even though they may be brief, feeble, and not taken seriously.

The scheme also describes the development of human society from earliest Man through modern Man to the divinely destined future of man. And it describes states of consciousness which we each may move-between - even during one day of our lives.

But the main 'lesson' or value of these categories is that Agent Participation is what we ought to - and need to aim at in our lives - as indeed the primary aim of a Christian.

In other words, these categories are a description of spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification or divinisation. Therefore, Agent Participation cannot be achieved except insofar as a person is Good and motivated by Love.

Because to participate-in creation is to participate in the loving work of God, it is the most profound alliance-with God.

Hence the absolute nature of the first and second commandments: Love of God, and of Neighbour (our neighbour being our co-participant). Only thus may creation proceed.


Note: These three states are - strictly speaking - 'polarities' in the sense that although they can be objectively distinguished (as above) they cannot be fully separated or detached one from another. For example, even a young child is not fully without agency or creativity; and certainly some hunter gatherers display these traits at some times.  

In other words, these are extremes or emphases of a unitary process of human consciousness. Any categorical scheme, when applied to a process, can only result in such polarities - because ultimately the unity cannot be divided without destruction of its nature. 

I think that the above question (or some variant) is a common cause of corruption in people, including people who understand something of the problems of mainstream modernity - because of the assumptions which people bring to trying to answer it.

The most lethal assumption is that humans interact only and mainly by communications - which are intrinsically indirect, uncertain, relativistic.

By indirect communications I mean the usual understanding of communications - that which we see, hear, touch, taste and smell - whether in 'real life' or at work or in the mass media / advertising/ propaganda; whether in unstructured observation and interaction or in formal discourse such as science, technology and the linked-bureaucracy.


IF a person is assuming that the way 'I, personally, an help' only by such indirect means - then they can only go down one of two paths: 1. that of engaging in a communication war of one against multi- millions - inevitably failing and becoming absorbed into the very system that they hope to change and improve; or 2. the path of despair, induced by the utter hopelessness of what they aspire to do and needs to be done. 

Deeper reflection adds the difficulty that communications can be/ will be misunderstood. I can write something, but what I write will (almost certainly) be misunderstood, one way or another.

And, more deeply, I could never know whether or not my communications to another person had been understood - because the only information I have about another person's understanding also comes via communications, which I myself might be misinterpreting.

All I have said about communications also includes actions; because actions are communications - any action we personally take is swamped by the multi-millions of actions of others. The consequences of the actions are impossible to know in advance; and even worse we cannot know (except by communications) what the results of an action actually have been.

In a nutshell, communications are intrinsically relativistic - so to believe that I could only help by my communications is a doctrine of despair.


This is why I have been focusing on the nature and possibilities alternative ways of framing reality like Primary Thinking and Direct Christianity. It is formally necessary - from many viewpoints and arguments, of which the above is only one - that we each as individuals are assumed to have the possibility of direct knowledge and direct participation-in reality - a primacy and directness that has nothing to do with the world of communications.

(...Nor with our own access-to nor influence-in such a world, nor with our skills at communicating, nor with our productivity.)

Only such a metaphysical revision - revision of our basic assumptions about reality; can save us from complicity in the world's evil on the one hand, or the alternative sin of despair on the other.

Having made that revision, and in light of knowing that this world was made by God who is good and we God's children, can we have the hope necessary to work to help things, in absolute confidence that our work will be effective - regardless of what appears-to-be happening in the world-of-communications.

...Today there can be no doubt that we live at a time of great spiritual danger. There are two ways of looking at this. 

One, this is a perfect environment for the destruction of human souls as they are separated from God and led astray by teachings that promote a totally false view of what human beings are. Truths that are real on a spiritual level such as the brotherhood of Man and the oneness of life are distorted and misinterpreted on a material, earthly level where they do not apply or not apply in the same way. Behaviour is regarded as natural merely because it exists in the fallen state. Human stupidity and selfishness combine with demonic interference to bring about a world and a state of consciousness that is ideal for our descent into spiritual darkness and maybe even damnation. 

 But there is another way of looking at things. In this scenario the spiritual powers are conducting a great experiment. Human beings are being opened up and exposed to spiritual forces which can either overwhelm them leading to an increase in egotism and sexual obsession among other things or, if they purify their lower natures, dedicate themselves to Christ and respond to true imagination, take them closer to the living God...

Read the whole thing at Albion Awakening

As a thought experiment; just suppose that both the Left and Right wing parties parties (or Nationalists, Greens, or Libertarians, or whatever you like) were honest and effective - and that which ever you prefer would actually deliver Exactly what they promise...

So what?

If the Left delivered a society which 100% promoted, supported, subsidised and sustained women, non-natives, people of any sexuality or sex than the biological, any social arrangement of humans other than (Christian) marriage and the family; And introduced total economic equality, And proportionate quotas in all jobs without exception and all the rest... So what?

Is there anybody who really believes that this would make life good enough? What would all this be for? What would it accomplish? Having this - what would be the meaning and purpose of a human life?

The answer - a perfect future Leftist utopia would be not one whit nor molecule better than life at present. Qualitatively, it would be identical. All the main and deepest problems of Life would remain unaddressed.

Or, on the Right, if they secured the borders and delivered near-zero immigration, restored the primacy of national culture, made the economy efficient and functional and so on - all that would have happened is to restore (more of less) the situation of a few decades ago...

Was life then (pick a date) good enough? Or was there, then, on the contrary, colossal levels of social and individual discontent?

Politics is a fraud - plain and simple. Not just because the system has zero intention of delivering what it promises; but mainly because what politics discusses and promises is not what we need or want - not what would make any substantive difference if we had it.

The triumph of politics, over the past 200 years, has been to make itself the centre of most people's lives, most of the time. For almost-everybody in the West, politics is primary. Politics is what people regard as the bottom-line - and morality, religion, and everything else have to be fitted-into the primacy of politics.

All large and powerful institutions are primarily political, and so is almost any individual person you will meet. They care about politics more than anything else. Especially, their hatreds are politically directed. They are political beings.

What a stupid, irrelevant, destructive, evil state of affairs!

Indeed - it is precisely evil - this is the product of evil.

The only answer is to set aside politics, step-aside-from politics - restore what really matters to the heart of life: but really do this, deep down, bottom line; in a way that is currently very unusual indeed; indeed hardly ever encountered in the West, here and now.

Leftism insinuates where Direct Christianity fails to be chosen. When there is no direct link with Christ, then that is the way-in. This is how Leftism is now everywhere...

Because if all of a Christian's information/ knowledge and influences come at second-hand, in-directly, via institutions, writings, talking and practices... then each and all of these institutions, writings, talking and practices can be (already have been, and will continue to be) corrupted.

Corrupted, that is, by the usual infiltration, subversion and eventual inversion...

Only direct knowing of reality can - even in principle - combat and defeat ever-more-universal corruption.

(There seem to be two basic ways of directly knowing reality - by prayer for external revelation, or by mediation for revelation from God immanent. In practice these need not be distinct, but may be reciprocal, mutually reinforcing, or fuse to a single activity of meditative prayer.)

To be a young, healthy, bright young woman is to be attractive; to have attention and be privileged through life. Quite naturally and intrinsically, such persons live in a different - easier, more enjoyable - world from the majority of people.

To make attractive women regard themselves as a victim group, in need of special protection and privileges, enforced by the state and large institutions, is really quite an achievement!

But why do it?

We are seeing a resurgence of the late-70s early-80s feminism of resentment and victimhood - with an anti-libertarian secular 'backlash' which is pro- the sexual revolution, even as it is anti-sex.

But why?


Well, if allowed to follow their own hopes and inclinations - young, healthy, bright young women would make successful marriages and raise children - since that is the most deeply rewarding life available to most people in most circumstances.

But the evil global Establishment does not want this - is indeed very much against it - precisely because it tends to serve The Good.

Instead, they want these attractive women in the prime of life and with the most envied of prospects - to squander their best chances of Life fulfilment and Goodness; and instead go into careers... in practice mostly middle management officialdom - until they have lost their youth, health and brightness.

Such women don't naturally want to do this - so the evil Establishment have promised them special treatment and protection in the world of jobs - so that they can depend on something akin to the bubble of benefits that naturally accrue to such people in the natural state of things.


So, on the one hand, marriage has been thoroughly infiltrated, subverted and inverted; while families are taught (explicitly, but mostly implicitly) to be an oppression to be avoided, or at least deferred as long as possible.

Thus one of the naturally and intrinsically happiest and most hopeful classes of persons with good prospects of the best in life; are instead brought-into the public life and workplace world of totalitarian surveillance and micro-management - where they are encouraged to regard themselves as the most threatened and victimised of human beings (even, or especially, those who are the most privileged, powerful, beautiful and clever!); and to regard 'men' with slow-burning, chronic, un-assuageable resentment.


(A further plus, currently rampant in Hollywood and the mass media; and a priority for the opinion-formers, which is why this is happening now - is that the imagined/ manufactured oppression of this privileged and increasingly-selfish class of women into self-identification as primarily victims of sexual aggression and patriarchy; effectively distracts from the real and urgent problem in Hollywood and the mass media - which is the systematic and shielded - because Establishment perpetrated - sexual predation on pre-adolescent children. Now that really is evil.)

Note added: The sexual revolution is negative, oppositional - just as evil in general is negative - being directed-against Christian marriage and families. Thus and therefore, the sexual revolution deploys multiple and often self contradictory tactics and rhetorics: because any stick will do to beat Christianity marriage and family. Mid-sixties sexual liberation and free love at one time and place; mid-eighties separatist feminism, same sex attraction, or the obliteration of sexual categories at other times and places. It is all the same strategy of infiltration, subversion, inversion.

How may Christ be personally-encountered in Direct Christianity? 

The traditional ways of 'meeting' the living Christ is by means of 'sensory' contact - seeing a vision, hearing a voice, feeling a sensation...

Such contact now seems rare; and when-it-happens for this to be in circumstances open to doubt - for modern people, schooled in tactical doubt, seeing is Not-necessarily believing (and most of what is 'perceived' and believed comes via the systematic lies of the mass media).

Modern people are paralysed by their need to 'convince other people' of their claims, and since modern people can doubt absolutely anything, even as they can believe obvious lies - modern people are trapped, held fast, locked-into despair and fear because they refuse to believe anything good, meaningful, purposive, and coherent.


In brief - many modern people yearn to know Christ; but they/ we have rigged the system so that this is impossible for them.

Any way a modern person might actually know, Christ he has already categorised as unreliable and prone to self-deception... meanwhile displaying truly mind-boggling credulity when it comes to slavishly-conforming with the incoherent and manipulative lies of the ruling Establishment of evil...

Still, the question remains - if people regard a sensory experience of Christ as some combination of wish-fulfillment, the hallucinatory and the spiritually-obsolete; then how might a real encounter with Christ actually happen?


What is vital (for us, in this era) is that we have a free and agent relationship with Christ: a relationship of agency and freedom.

That is, we must not be overwhelmed by the experience, must not be numbed into unfree passivity - because that would be absolutely contrary for God's plans and hopes for our personal spiritual development. We must have an adult relationship - Jesus as our elder brother.

(Not with us as beaten or begging children - and Jesus as a wicked step-father, Totalitarian Tyrant or Hanging Judge...). 


It does not matter that people (including modern people) may yearn to have Life sorted-out for them, have Jesus step into their lives, make all decisions, provide all motivations, or whatever.... God (for us Christians) certainly does not want us as obedient puppets or programmed robots.

(If that was what was wanted, we would just be made that way - easy for God!)

So we must be free, therefore we personally must choose - therefore the circumstances must be such as to allow choosing.


This rules out many of the 'traditional' ideas of confrontations with Christ; which are suitable for transmitting information (like the commandments, or instructions, or prophecies) - but are not suitable for developing our spirit in the direction of agency.

So... in a putative modern encounter with Jesus Christ, we must remain clear-headed, and in-control of our own thoughts - we must meet Christ on a level where we are helped by not overwhelmed; certainly we must not be compelled, either by terror or by being stunned with glory and power...


The conclusion seems to be that Christ must appear in our thoughts, insinuate into our stream of thinking; in an authoritative and intuitively-valid, yet modest and reasonable, fashion.

I suggest that this may be the place and fashion where we (nowadays, people like you and me) ought to be 'looking-for' an encounter with Christ. We may direct our thought towards Christ, and he appears - not as words, nor as pictures, but as the content of thinking.

For example, we might ask a question - in a form sufficiently simple and clear; and the answer appears in our thinking as a direct and unmediated Knowing.

Such knowledge is not compelling nor overwhelming us - it is the thinking equivalent of a wise, calm and decisive opinion, suggestion, clarification... (but it is not a voice, we hear nothing - it is a thought).

Over at Albion Awakening, a short story by John Fitzgerald concerning the origins of Arthur of the Britons.

A snippet:

'The white dragon stands for the Saxons, and the red for the Britons. The white dragon cannot kill the red. If it was your destiny, despite your present difficulties, you would find a way to turn the tables and drive the invader back, as far as the Saxon Shore and beyond. But he would only recover his strength, as the white dragon did, and come at you again, waging war for ever in the middle of your kingdom. But this is not your destiny, nor is it Britain's.'

'Destiny?' yelled Vortigern, standing up and towering over Merlin. 'What do you know about destiny - mine or my country's? Who gave you the authority to pontificate like this? Did Blaise teach you to see into the future as well?'

Merlin neither blinked nor flinched. 'Blaise,' he said, 'gave me wisdom, as I have said, but my father, the angel, gave me the gift of prophecy, and this is what I see. Very soon, Ambrosius and Uther will return to avenge their father. You will not escape. They will crush the Saxons, Picts and Irish, and one of them shall father a son who shall be the greatest king this land will ever know. He will never die and will come again in glory at the end of time to save this realm from its gravest peril and prepare the way for the second coming of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.'

Vortigern sat back down, shaking his head, a broken reed all of a sudden. He knew, in his heart, that Merlin was speaking the truth.  His words and manner had the ring of authenticity. 'But what about me?' he pleaded. 'What must I do?'

'Repent and pray,' said Merlin softly, and he would have said more but one of Vortigern's men who had been watching Merlin closely stood before the High King and shouted, 'Sire, do not believe his weasel words. He is a traitor and a spy. For I have seen him before. On the night we slew Constantine. For it was this man and no other who shepherded his sons to safety.'

There was an almighty commotion and the King's men rushed forward to lay hands on Merlin, but right at that moment the sun rose outside, arrowing in through the high windows and blinding their eyes. When they could see again, Merlin had vanished - gone entirely - as if he had never been in the room at all, as if his presence and prophecies had all been as insubstantial as a dream.

Although I live only just over a mile from the city centre, this is something of a 'leafy suburb' and I have a decent garden. Consequently, there is a fair bit of wildlife to be enjoyed - currently a pair of rival grey squirrels are providing much entertainment, and we have begun feeding them.

Another pair - also presumably rivals - are the nightingales whose unsurpassed singing (equally as-good-as but different-from the many virtuoso blackbirds) is easiest to hear after dusk and before dawn - each nightingle showing his ability, then listening to the other, in cycles lasting several seconds.

Woodpeckers (Great Spotted) are another species that exchange messages - in their case drumming as loudly and long as can be managed, until the opposition gives-up from feebleness.

There are flocks of jackdaws who come to feed - these being seldom seen until the past decade. Magpies have always been common and dominant; wood pigeons are beautiful, abundant, loud, and make an appalling mess on the grass and everywhere else.

Among mammals there are foxes - emitting a wide repertoire of blood curdling sounds, and (unless the holes are blocked) digging holes in the lawn and bringing their cubs to play.

One thing I haven't seen for a long time is a hedgehog. There used to be plenty, but as the above species have waxed, the hedgehogs have apparently waned - which I regret.

There are mice and frogs in the longer grass around the edges - although seldom encountered.

Once, a single snipe/ woodcock came and fed on the lawn when it was covered in snow - leaving hundreds of circular holes where its beak had been probing...


There are also large amphibious rats in the vicinity - although I'm pleased to say I've not yet seen one in the garden...