Bruce Charlton's Notions

I still can't find any - but does anyone anywhere know any of the stats of corvid serious illness or deaths among people who are:

1. Not Chinese/ East Asian ethnicity
2. Not aged above 70 (or 75, or 80)
3. Not suffering from other significant medical conditions

In other words: are there any counts of mortality relevant to the level of totalitarian take-over and economic suicide in the UK/ Europe/ the US and among the healthy European population of working age, teens and children (i.e. the majority of those who are currently being treated as if at significant and imminent risk of severe illness or death).

Notes:

1. The birdemic is v.prob. weaponised, and the suppressed evidence is now coming-out from under the official cover-up-blanket. This suggests that lethality to Europeans would be lower. The ethnicity of the mortality stats in Italy, for example, is important to know. I can't find it.

2 & 3. Those above 70 (or, if you prefer, 75, or 80), and with significant other medical conditions; involve those beyond the natural human lifespan, who are always more prone to severe illness and death from all diseases.

And those who are not expected to make a recovery back to normal functionality - so that a 'cure' is not realistically possible.

In general some combination of increasing extreme age and chronic sgnificant illness are in the realm of those who do not, routinely, receive high intensity 'curative' medical treatment ventilation/ life support/ Intensive Therapy if dying of an infection.

The normal proper attitude to the extreme elderly/ multiply-diseased who are dying of infection (such as pneumonia - traditionally termed 'the old man's friend') may well be 'his time has come'. Because to extend life artificially (by heavy use of technology) leads merely to a future of chronic decline, increased suffering; and (eventually) a more painful or miserable death from some other cause.

Leftism is very generally misunderstood as being 'about' some positive program such as equality, diversity, feminism, the sexual revolution or the environment. Not so.

Over the long term, and in terms of ultimate aims; the Left is not in favour of anything in particular - but it simply picks up and discards causes as happens to be expedient - just as it picked-up and made a fetish of 'the proletariat' (essentially native-born, white, working men) for more than a century; before turning-against, vilifying and demonizing the exact same class.


If we are indeed entering Phase Two, as I suggested last weekend - then we should not be surprised if the Establishment very suddenly drops its obsession with the aspects of Leftism that have been dominant since the 1960s.

We should not be surprised if recent SJW/ Woke crusades - such as the Trans agenda, Global Warming, Western population replacement by mass migration - are simply thrown under the bus over the next few weeks and months.

The world may suddenly appear to be more (so-called) 'Right Wing'.

(Not true - because the only alternative to the Left is religion.) 

But this is not a good sign! - from any point of view. All it means is that the gloves are off, and the totalitarian agenda is being pursued under another and more effective justification: the Establishment posing as saviours from the masses gripped by abject fear of death.


[Establishment: You are all going to die horribly, unless you allow us to convert the world to North Korea. The Western Masses: Fine by us... Well, what are you waiting for? Get on with it already!]


The real agenda of the Establishment is not Leftism but evil; or we could say - Leftism is merely a name for the demonic strategy that is (overall, in the long-term) anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-Good and anti-natural-Creation.

Therefore, if it is expedient that the Global Esablishment can get what they want by dumping the  rainbow coalition of politically-correct New-Leftism and instead encouraging aggressive individual survivalism, militarism, nationalism, racism... whatever is secular and materialist and happens to work at controlling the populations in the directions they want - then they will not hestitate to do so.

I've been brooding on a few paragraphs Rudolf Steiner wrote - not for the first time; but they came to mind - seem relevant.

(See excerpt below.)

A large proportion of people nowadays, far more than in Steiner's time; are de facto atheist - either explicitly or implicitly. And this means they are ill - mentally ill, superficially, but with a subtle physical-biological cause.

Even in a strictly biological evolutionary context; humans are made to believe in deities. And when they don't, when they deny the gods; they cannot function - become incoherent (lacking any centre and focus for their instincts and learning) and all-but cease to reproduce.

Atheist Man also ceases to be able to learn from experience - because his experience breaks down into disconnected, arbitrary, incomprehensible pieces.


Living in an arbitrary world; the God-denier lacks even the basic instincts for survival - he feels no reason why he, people like himself, his family, his groups - why any of this has any reason to continue; he indeed typically harbours hatred and resentment against whatever is like himself - a desire of suicide, extinction, to be replaced; he regards death as annihilation, and hope that it will put an end to all consciousness.

Yes - this is already a world of sickness and death.


Edited from How do I find the Christ? A lecture by Rudolf Steiner (1918)

In the first place there is in man an inclination, a proclivity, to know what may be called in a general sense, the Divine.

The second inclination in him — that is, in the man of today — is to know the Christ.

The third inclination in man is to know what is usually called the Spirit or also the Holy Spirit.

There are men who deny all these inclinations. In the course of the nineteenth century, in European culture at any rate, men have denied the existence of anything Divine in the world.

What is it that makes a man deny the existence of the Divine — the Father God in the Trinity? In every such case there is an actual physical defect, a physical sickness, a physical flaw in the body. To be an atheist means to the spiritual scientist to be sick in some respect. 

It is not, of course, a sickness which doctors cure — indeed they themselves very often suffer from it — neither is it recognised by modern medicine. There is an actual sickness in a man who denies what he should be able to feel, in this case, not through his soul-nature but through his actual bodily constitution. If he denies that which gives him a healthy bodily feeling, namely that the world is pervaded by Divinity, then, according to Spiritual Science, he is a sick man, sick in body.

There are also many who deny the Christ. The denial of the Christ as something that is essentially a matter of destiny and concerns man's soul-life. To deny God is a sickness; to deny the Christ is a calamity. To have no relationship with Christ is a calamity.

To deny the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, signifies dullness, obtuseness, of a man's own spirit.

Atheism — denial of the Divine — denotes an actual pathological defect. Failure to find in life that link with the world which enables us to recognise the Christ, is a calamity for the soul. To be unable to find the Spirit in one's own inmost being denotes obtuseness, a kind of spiritual mental deficiency, though in a subtle and unacknowledged form.

Since the birdemic crisis seems to be unfolding almost exactly as the evil Establishment will have hoped - it is worth looking ahead to the primary spiritual challenges of the kind of global collapse which is, apparently, being prepared.

From the demonic perspective, a global collapse will kill astonishing numbers of people very quickly. I will focus on The West.


We have experienced many decades of social atomisation, our old group-ish-ness has been dismantled; modern Western people are mostly selfish, short-termist and unwilling to self-sacrifice for any reason.

Therefore, any possibility of people 'pulling together' - as with the 1939-45 war - is gone. People care little for their nation, their region, their town or village; they have no strong church; even the professions and trades unions have been busted, and traditional family firms have all-but gone.

Deeper than this, Godless materialism dictates that at the profound level of metaphysical assumptions modern Western people see no purpose or meaning to life; and just hope to get through it with the least suffering and most pleasure - again fuelling the short-termism and selfishness.

So - the world may collapse, and we will be effectively 'on our own' and facing impossible odds.

We must do it, each for himself, or else it won't be done.


The demonic temptation is to induce people to behave in an evil fashion in order to survive (albeit just a few more days or weeks). This is certainly how a lot of people are talking.

For serious Christians, this is not an option. If we are faced with the alternative of deliberate and real sin, or our own death (and we will each certainly know if or when such a situation arises) then I think we must assume that this is the divinely-appointed time of our death.

Of course we ought to do all legitimate and good things to survive - when motivated by the right reasons. But biological survival is not, ultimately, a sufficient reason.

And (on the other side) to die from despair is as much a sin as to murder the innocent for mere survival. Hope is a Christian commandment - and this entails our hope be rooted in Heavenly life everlasting. So long as it is, this hope is invincible.  


This time - Now - is a very personal test therefore; a test of our faith and trust in The Lord; a test of our love for Jesus. In one sense it is a very easy test - literally anybody can pass it, no matter how feeble he or she may be. We simply need to follow Jesus.

In another sense it may be difficult to die, when the time comes, and for the right reasons. I think we can be sure that the demonic powers will  be trying to make this as difficult as possible.

I was completely unaware of the early folk rock singer Vashti Bunyan, at the time when she was briefly famous in the sixties.

(I came across her story in a - not recommended - account of the kind of folk music I used to like and play: Electric Eden by Rob Young.)

Hearing her unique and appealing, close-miked, understated style of singing; and observing that she was extremely cute in an archetypal 'sixties dollybird' way (as you can see from the above) - it's hard to understand why she did not make it big.

Anyway, here are a few of the early, wistful, whimsical songs she seemed to do best.


There's a load more stuff on YouTube if you like these; including some of her earlier Pop material; and recent things she recorded - having been rediscovered after 'disappearing' for some three decades. 

I don't find it surprising that most people in the world - past and present - find Christianity incredible, ridiculous or outrageous - at any rate: unbelievable. That was how it struck me, for most of my life.

In the West this is mostly because the official assumption of all adolescents and adults in public discourse - is that there is neither purpose nor meaning to human life: it is all a consequence of abstract processes, grinding-away because that is what they do.

But in most of the world, where a God is believed and assumed, Christianity is recognised to be an assertion of the limitations of God: that God is a person, and concerned with this world. For many that is a human limitation imposed on an unknowably great God - who can only be discussed indirectly, by negations and abstractions.

And, most strongly, other religions recognise that for Christians God is limited. Non Christians recognise that Christianity is an assertion that God is Not omnipotent - that there are things God cannot do. Such is implied by the Christian assertion that Jesus Christ was necessary.

If Jesus is necessary (and assuming he is not just a projection of God, an 'avatar') then there is something vital that God could not do; and that Jesus was needed to do.

This seems obvious to other religions; and it really ought to be obvious to Christians; however most Christian intellectuals deny these obvious inferences. Many Christians assert that God is omnipotent and also needs Jesus, who is a different person than God. Christians assert that God is unknowably great - omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent - and also loves each individual person as a Father.

And this is, and always has been, a weakness of Christianity; a weakness that looks very much like dishonesty. Christians should stop attempting to 'have it both ways'; and to admit that - increasingly this fails to convince, for the simple reason that it does not make sense (at least, it does not make 'common sense').  

If Jesus Christ is regarded as a fact and as a necessity; then it ought to be possible for Christians to accept the implications of that core belief - rather than to insist on fitting this into an idea of God as impersonal and abstract, all-powerful, and not-human: utterly alien - a concept that was, ultimately, derived from Non Christian religions.

For metaphysical pluralists such as myself; Jesus as both God and Man entails that I have some idea of what (on the one hand) constitutes the divine and what (on the other) characterises a Man.

By saying Jesus was a Man we mean he was subject to mortality: to change, disease, decay and death. He was 'doomed to die' as Tolkien's One Ring said about 'mortal men'.

 And Jesus was divine for two reasons - one present from birth, the other from the Baptism by John (the final three years of his life, and the time of his ministry).


Jesus was chosen to incarnate as the Saviour because, in pre-mortal life, he uniquely attained harmony with God's divine purposes, his motivations were fully aligned-with Creation.

Thus he was born divine - but until age 30, apparently Jesus did not know he was the Saviour. That is, he was wholly- and always-immersed-in God's creation; and implicitly but not consciously working in total-harmony with God's purposes.

Therefore, the pre-ministry era of Jesus's life corresponds to Owen Barfield's definition of complete Original Participation - a total but passive and unconscious participation in the work of creation.


From the baptism by John; Jesus became conscious of his divine nature and destiny; and therefore attained the fullness of active freedom, of choice and agency: became a co-creator, shown in the miracles, where Jesus was working deliberately with God. This is Barfield's Final Participation.

So, the post-baptism Jesus was fully divine, and a mortal Man.

The life of Jesus illustrates the distinction between Original and Final Participation - and the nature of the destiny of modern Western Man - here and now; as we attempt, albeit partially and temporarily, to achieve was Jesus did, wholly and at-all-times.

I've written recently about 'oneness'- distinguishing it from what I believe to be the correct understanding of Christianity.

But I should clarify that the teaching of oneness as an ideal always entails duality in practice: monism is always really dualism.


And this has been the case since the very earliest, pre-Socratic philosophers and Plato and the Neo-Platonists; Hinduism and Buddhism, and the Platonic-influenced but mainstream versions of Christianity... Some of these claim variously to be monisms, but all actually are dualisms.

This can be seen in the attitude to change and changelessness. All assert that ultimate reality is changeless, outside of time, unified and perfect.

But all are forced to account for the fact that the world as we know it is changeable - characterised by with disease, decay and death - and im-perfect.


This is regarded as an illusion (maya), a temporary misunderstanding and/or misinterpretation (eg. due to sin, perhaps due to a 'fall') - nonetheless, this claim only kicks the can; because if all is truly one-ness and perfect - where/ why/ how, then, does illusion come-from?

Sooner or later, some kind of dualism of reality must be introduced; and always is introduced.


Total reality is - in effect - divided into two abstract categories; one true real-reality and the other erroneous mere-appearance. The key assumed fact - needed to complete the basic picture - concerns the source of that error. 

*

The only alternative to dualism (or the ultimate two-ness of reality) is not oneness (which simply does-not-work), but pluralism: more-than-twoness. I am a pluralist, and my ultimate category is Beings, which are living/ conscious, eternal, many, and remain them-selves - through whatever transformations they undergo. Other pluralisms are possible (e.g. pluralism seems to be the spontaneous assumption of children and hunter-gatherers; and is proposed theoretically by William James and Mormon theology), but the assumption has never been popular among philosophers; and is regarded as a mere mistake in reasoning by the vast majority. Regardless, I believe it to be true!  

A double-negative is not the same as a positive - but the result may be a close approximation; or essentially very similar.

So, when the Establishment (i.e. 'Them' = governments, large corporations and institutions, or the mass media) label something as 'fake news' - and when these organisations are all themselves essentially fake and fundamentally dishonest - then we have the phoneomenon of Fake-Fake News.

Fake-Fake News =  
Accusation of Fake News, from a Fake source

How should we regard Fake-Fake news? - When a major global/ powerful/ wealthy/ influential entity starkly announces that X Is Fake (and, implicitly, therefore needs to be suppressed)?

We should, I suggest, regard it as - if not exactly 'true', because truth is seldom/ never known (especially not by these groups) - something this group believes to be essentially correct or to contain an important but unwanted fact.

In sum:

Fake-Fake News = Some-thing They believe to be true. 

I read today that the UK government has (oh so reluctantly, I am sure) begun to monitor and censor/control-access-to public on the current (?) plague of Jackdaws.

Specifically mentioned was the allegedly-'fake' fact that some people (including myself) are saying that these are no ordinary Jackdaws: not naturally-evolved Jackdaws, but instead corvids that show evidence of having had their genetic programming weaponised.

My tentative understanding already was that the weaponisation of Jackdaws is a factual-fact, rather than a fake-fact (based on both public and private information); now I am sure the fact is real (not fake).  These plague birds are not your common or garden Jackdaws!

That real-factual-fact does not affect, either way, the severity of the plague - which remains sub-significant by one or two orders of magnitude, and in quality; nonetheless, it is probably something that is worth taking into account.

This is how the modern UK government deals with inconvenient realities; it is the way managers always deal with inconvenient realities. We may confidently expect that the very-real problems due to the manipulated-reaction to the manufactured-crisis will be dealt-with likewise.

That is to say: real problems with bionic-Jackdaws, and with the panic-justified response to the proliferation of engineered-attack-corvids in general, will be managed-away - rather than actually cured.  And this managing away will contrive to be authoritarian, coercive, entailing increased surveillance and control... in one word totalitarian.

Spiritual preparedness is primary; the crisis and incipient collapse has been unleashed only because the demonic powers have decided that the West is ready for it.


Phase One was corruption through the sins of lust and greed - the sexual revolution and consumerism.

Phase Two has just begun: corruption through the sins of fear and despair (and make no mistake: these are sins).


Our only antidote to fear and despair is perfect love, faith, trust in the promises of Jesus Christ - that we can follow him through death to eternal resurrection in Heaven..

All that happens in our earthly mortal life is directed towards that ultimate destination.

Lacking such a perspective; fear and despair (and therefore deliberately-chosen damnation) are highly likely, if not inevitable.

(Which currently explains the demonic strategy.)


Assuming I am correct about the shift to Phase Two (long-prepared) - here is a prediction:

Look-out for the moment when the mass media start discussing/ seeding the idea of escape by suicide (for those who haven't already thought about it) as a response to the crisis and collapse - then (deniably) encouraging suicide - finally preaching suicide as a public duty.

Note: As with all sins; it is by motivation that suicide is sinful; e.g. when suicide is a response to  ineradicable and spiralling fear and despair with the objective of destruction of the soul, the self. This class of suicidal act is self-damning - because a consequence of (and an expressed belief-in) materialism, nihilism, denial-hatred of God and divine Creation; and rejection of Christ's offer of resurrection into Heaven. 

What do You think about bodies - because there is so much confusion and incoherence on the subject that you probably need to think this through for yourself.

What is wrong with bodies? Well, in the first place, our mortal bodies are subject to change - to decay, disease and death; so our mortal bodies as-they-are can be only a temporary solution; and should indeed be seen mainly as transient vehicles desgned to provide changing experiences to enhance the possibilties for learning.


But what about everlasting bodies? That is a different matter... yet there is a strong and wide-spread religious aversion even to this idea - the idea of resurrection. 

Those who crave the spiritual, and oneness (including some who self-identify as Christians), dislike bodies and hope to become pure spirits. Oneness is only possible without boundaries - so that every-thing can merge to one - and bodies are all about boundaries.

Oneness-seekers love that which is name-less and form-less - and therefore implicitly reject Christianity; which is all about a specific person (the Christ), with a specific name (the name of Jesus); who was a man, had the body of a man; and what is more, Jesus was resurrected to have a man's form for all of eternity.


An eternal body implies eternal boundary... eternal separation, autonomy and agency. Since Jesus asks us to follow him through these transformations; this implies there will be an eternity of many persons-with bodies - and Not of boundary-less one-ness...

Since Christians regard Jesus as divine and he is eternally incarnated with an indestructible body; then the idea that Jesus's Father (God the Creator) also has a body should not be regarded as silly or blasphemous! It is, on the contrary, both a plausible and coherent inference.

But bounded bodies imply a physical location; and a Heaven of eternally alive persons is not found on earth; so it must beelsewhere: 'in the sky'.


In other words; if you are a Christian, you should be careful about adopting spiritual-oneness beliefs that are incompatible with the bodily resurrection of Jesus and of our-selves. We need to think of ourselves as - ultimately - embodied eternally.

And if you are a Christian; it is also worth considering the implications of resurrection: what this fact implies about Heaven, its inhabitants and locations - and the nature of life in Heaven. Because - from the fact of resurrection, Heavenly life must surely be a kind of being involving separate, incarnate, embodied individual persons.

In sum; the only thing genuinely wrong about the supposedly ridiculous (because 'anthropomorphic') idea of God the creator as an Old Man in the Sky - is that God is not necessarily old-looking, and God may not be solitary and a man.

Across eternity, ultimately - creativity is the most important thing of all.

This may sound to be rather an elitist and intellectual perspective; but that is the conclusion I draw from my life. First is love; and from love springs creativity. Love is the necessary context of goodness, a good life; creativity is what we 'do with it'.

Of course, it requires a considerable amount of definition and background clarification to explain what I mean...


Heaven is a place of creation, development, eternal growth. My understanding is that Heaven is the way God devised to enable Men to create with God, in the context of, and extending, God's original and continuing creation. Heaven is what enables Men to create with God, and with each other, in harmony and with the same goals.

The implied reference to the first and second commandments (to love God and Neighbour) is deliberate; because I regard creativity as linked to love, in polarity with love: an overflow of Love; just as God's work of creation is the overflow of our Heavenly Parents' love for each other; and the yearning for more people like themselves, more love.

Thus creation is linked with procreation - with the having and raising of children.


So creation is for everybody, one way or another. In this earthly mortal life, the creativity of a genius is most obviously like that of God; because the genius creates somewhat new from-himself. But procreation is also potentially a divine kind of creation - for the same reasons.

What of children, the simple minded, 'uncreative' people? Well, if the genius and the parent are types of active creation; then children and others may participate passively in the work of creation that is 'led' by others. If the genius creates from-himself in freedom, the creative participant chooses or consents to join-with this creation - not to originate, but to assist.


Different people are differently constituted - for some (for me), their nature aims to be a primary creator, as much like a genius as possible - at whatever scale and with whatever scope.

Others prefer to be part of some scheme that originates elsewhere, with someone else - like actors in a drama, or the builders of a great cathedral, or young children in a family.

The link to love is absolute - because primary creativity emerges from love. It is love that is the difference between mere novelty, or destructive innovation that tends to destroy primary creation - and contributes to the permanent and eternally-growing work of God's original creation.


Thus Heaven is entered only by those who love: who love primarily Jesus; and via him the work of God and other Men.

The transformation that is resurrection is enabled by this love (it is this love that makes a person and and commit forever and irreversibly to resurrection and its conditions) ; and resurrection into Heaven is what enables the permanence of love and the harmony of creation.

And - since evil and un-love cannot resurrect, cannot enter Heaven - it is love that ensures the indestructibility of creation. 

This is a matter about which very wide differences of opinion are evident. Some have believed that this is an evil reality, dominated by evil; others see the powers are equally balanced over the long term.

Mainstream 'Classical' Christian theology is at one extreme; positing an omnipotent and wholly-good God creating that everything from nothing. This suggests that ultimately there is no evil; evil is a temporary aberration - or a matter of deceptive appearances. Evil cannot win.

From my own perspective; I see God as a creator Being (indeed as Heavenly Parents); and creation as a developing, ongoing 'project' in a universe of chaos. Evil is regarded as opposition to creation, the destruction of creation: in essence opposition to God's project of creation.

And men are regarded as children of God - as pre-existing eternal Beings who have been procreated and thereby transformed to be more-like God, which includes greater free-will or agency via higher consciousness, greater awareness. 

So, evil is a genuine possibility; but ultimate evil entails self-destruction because each Being is himself a product of God's creation. So opposition to God is aiming-at destruction of one's own consciousness, and destruction of that of oneself that was created by God. The overall aim would be a restoration of creation to universal chaos, including (if possible) the destruction of God's capacity or will to create.
 
I understand Heaven to be God's way of placing creation beyond the power of evil; since the process of Man's voluntary resurrection to eternal incarnation places Men beyond the power of evil; and places Heaven itself beyond the influence of evil.  

I think it is probably necessary - in this era - for serious Christian churches to avoid all Good Works.

It's just one of those things that we can't really afford to get involved in. Good Works are the temptation and mainstream sin of our age, all the trends and pressures are in that direction and it is too likely to be swept away sooner or later.

For a serious Christian church to get involved in Good Works is like an ex binge alcoholic trying to drink moderately with his old boon companions on a daily basis.

From a comment in response to Edwin Faust...   

This two minute audio is the clearest and most concise description I've come across of the difference between Nirvana and Heaven - and the difference between the aspirations of Christianity and 'Eastern' religion (as it is known in The West).

What John Butler expresses is the desire for oneness with minimally-conscious, immersive, abstract bliss; an impersonal absorption into the unity of divine love. He describes deep meditation - which he practices for about five hours a day - as being similar to death (as he understand death).

And he yearns for death to come; to be rid of his body and the thinking mind - and thus to become a discarnate and ego-less spirit.


John Butler calls this state the Kingdom of God and Heaven - but of course it is not: it is instead the stripping-away of all that makes us human. JB uses Christian language, but this is not a Christian desire.

There would be no reason for Jesus Christ to incarnate as a Man - to experience mortal life and to die and be resurrected; if our ultimate destiny was to become impersonal spirits fused with the abstract divine. In fact; if such was our intended destiny, there is no reason for mortal incarnate life at all - this embodied, thinking, personal life serves no positive function. 

Jesus Christ offered us a totally different kind of Heaven: a resurrected life eternal of immortal Men with indestructible, solid bodies. We die, but remain our-selves. We continue to think! Christ was resurrected, not reabsorbed; he continued to think and be a separate person; he did not lose his ego-identity and consciousness.


The Christian Heaven is one of persons, each different and distinct. And the loving relationships of Heaven are not any kind of fusion, but are inter-personal; they depend on us remaining individuals. As I understand Heaven, it is a place of creating; and we will participate with God, and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost in the eternal work of continued creation.

By contrast, in Nirvana there is no creation - only being: it is change-less; outside time and space. The God of Nirvana is not really a God of creation; because our created world is seen as an evanescent illusion (maya); and for us to believe creation is real or eternal is a delusion. The God of Nirvana Just-Is, unchanging, forever. 


There seems little doubt that John Butler genuinely wants a blissful and impersonal Nirvana; and does not want resurrection to the Christian Heaven. He wants to cease to be as an embodied thinking person; he wants to remain alive forever, but conscious only of the bliss of being absorbed-into divine love - with 'love' being understood as an impersonal disposition (perhaps something analogous to glowing light, a gas, field of force or magnetism, or a vibrational state).

How would God, our Heavenly Parents, be likely to regard John Butler's wishes? Would God be likely to grant them?

I think God would be sad that JB has rejected the great gift made possible by Jesus Christ; and sad that JB regards incarnation, thinking and the capacity for inter-personal love as worthless. Sad that JB regards this world, and the mortal lives of Men as worthless. From JB's perspective, implicitly - this life and our experiences are temporary errors that he wants to be undone forever.

God might be irritated, or even angry, at John Butler's preaching of Nirvana as if it was Heaven, and by his denigration of God's work of creation, and Jesus's work of salvation. But this may well be regarded as a product of humanly understandable confusion - since there are major inconsistencies in JB's ideas. For instance he praises and responds very powerfully to nature, animals, the stars, even human beings sometimes! Yet, ultimately he regards them all as worthless, indeed meaningless; implicitly he regards his powerful subjective responses as mistaken.

God would therefore be understanding of the misery that mortal life seems to hold for JB; and sympathetic about his desire to 'hand back the entrance ticket', and give-up on being a Man. Listen again to that recording above: there is a man who - at the bottom line - really wants to be dead, with his death conceptualized much like a permanent, deep sleep of unawareness.  


More importantly, resurrected Heavenly life is voluntary, a opt-in situation. God would not, therefore, punish those who chose otherwise, as such; else the choice would be coerced and the followers of Jesus merely conscripts!

Heaven is for those who love Jesus, and fellow Men and such love is free and cannot be enforced. Those who are incapable of such love, or who have other priorities, will have other fates. From various clues and insights; the 'system' seems to be that the eternal consequences of each person's own free choices are themselves their own justice - we judge our-selves: external 'punishment' is neither required not appropriate.

In sum, Men make their own Hells by their own choices; and, presumably, their own Nirvanas too. A Man who wishes to cease being a Man, and wishes to become fused with what he sees as the impersonal reality of the divine (since he is unable or unwilling to regard God as a person); will presumably be given pretty-much what he asks for - that is, an eternal state in which his consciousness experiences what he most desires.

So, I would expect that, when John Butler dies, he will reject the possibility of following Jesus to resurrection; and instead be enabled to experience what he so much wants: that is, a state of mere-being, aware of impersonal bliss with no perceptible change, and an absence of experienced time and space. As consciousness dwindles towards this minimum, John Butler will (I guess) probably be very pleased and grateful at the prospect!

On the one hand; is pretty clear that mainstream, modern, materialism corrupts people - we can see this for ourselves, in our experience.

But on the other hand; Christianity does Not necessarily make someone a better person. Conversion may well make a person different, but whether he is better is not obvious. Indeed, Christianity is not terribly effective at preventing people from getting worse; at least, a lot of serious Christians seem to me to get worse in the same kind of ways that non-Christians are getting worse.

Quite a lot of Christians expect that Christianity will at least tend to make people better behaved, make them more likely to live by Christian morality. Maybe so. Sometimes it does; but often it does not - and perhaps especially not when institutional Christianity is (as now) declining, weak or itself corrupted and corrupting.


Why not? Well, in the first place, Christianity is primarily about immortal resurrected life after death; not about this life. So we shouldn't really be looking for its effects on here-and-now behaviour; except insofar as this is secondarily derived from a desire to repent and follow Jesus.

However, repentance is known only to God - or to put it another way, the evidence for repentance is known for sure only after someone has 'arrived in Heaven'.

Yet, clearly Christianity is about this mortal life as well - even if not in any kind of clear, one-to-one mapping of beliefs and behaviours. To discover how I think we need to return to the insight that mortal life was instituted by God, and entered voluntarily by each of us; in order that we experience and learn through living in this changing world; with the twin aims of:

1. Choosing to follow Jesus - by love, faith and trust - through death to life everlasting. And also:

2. To prepare for that Heavenly life - by 'theosis': that is, through becoming 'more divine', more 'Christ-like', or 'sanctified'.


In sum: what I think Christianity does do in mortal life is precisely to enable us to learn from our experiences.

We cannot learn from the experiences of this mortal life if we do not correctly understand the set-up of mortal life, what it is for, how it works. Materialism is false, therefore it prevents us learning.

Christianity - being true - is exactly the understanding we need in order to learn. Lack of Christianity (and especially its inverse, which is what Leftism is increasingly becoming) is to have a wrong understanding, and therefore to be unable to learn the true lessons of mortal living.


Learning must, in this, be distinguished from memory; we need to assume that learning is an objective process that affects us at a spiritual level and in a permanent way that cannot be effected by the changes and hazards intrinsic to mortal life.

If learning depended on memory, the benefits of a Christian life might be abolished by psychosis, dementia or a head injury.

So we need to posit that there is an indestructible kind of learning from life that is not bound to the body; and which is carried through the transformation that is resurrection. This was not a problem for our ancestors to understand, but we moderns often can't explain it - because we try to  using the simplified models of science that exclude-by-definition just the kind of phenomena (such as soul or spirit) that does the job.


Anyway, assuming we can perhaps imagine that the experiences of life, including repentance of sins, can have a permanent effect; and be carried through the portals of death and the transformation of resurrection - then we can have a basic understanding of what difference Christianity makes to a person.

And we see that there is no symmetry between being, and not-being a Christian - each isn't a reflection, nor an opposite of the other...

Being a Christian does one kind of thing, and not being a Christian does another and different kind of thing.


Note added: It strikes me that this idea of Christianity enabling us to learn from the experiences of life is a plausible way of explaining some of those rare but remarkable behavioural transformations that do sometimes follow Christian conversion. For example when addicts, accountants or thugs suddenly repent and reform - and go on to lead a qualitatively better life. This may be understood in terms of acquiring a new ability to learn (by understanding the ultimate context of our specific behaviours). Without Christianity: (Proverbs 26:11) As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. But with Christian understanding, the individual may be able, for the first time, to learn from recurrent experiences of vomit-eating.

I wrote a few years ago about 'mindfulness'* - and that kind of empty meditational practice; which is at best an analgesic, but is probably being pushed by The Establishment for much more malignant reasons.

This came to mind in watching one of John Butler's recent videos. I find him interesting because he exhibits the best and the worst aspects of the (Hindu/ Buddhist-derived) perennialist oneness spirituality as it affects the Western mind.

JB says much that is wise and valuable in the early part of the vid - and then towards the end demonstrates a stunning lack of discernment that comes through in supporting the vacuous 'mindfulness without God' fad, and references his dumb-evil belief in CO2-global-warming-totalitarianism that nowadays goes with New Agery. And the equally dumb-evil assumption that the rise in billionnaire-funded, mass media and state bureaucracy supported, mindfulness-training and climate-hysteria are steps in the right direction, that JB personally supports!

I mean, how unwise, how dense, does someone need to be to suppose that anything good for people, good for the planet, would really be emanating from such people and sources?


(The chap who interviews JB - Phil Shankland - is an Extinction Rebellion activist, who can be seen on his Facebook pages taking part in demonstrations. So much for the spiritual benefits of knowing and spending loads of time with a contemporary wise man, and meditating for hours every day - plus an active life associated with a liberal-'Christian' church!... JB himself - in other videos - apparently takes for granted the validity of Warmist claims to be able to predict and control the world climate by a - necessarily totalitarian - global government; empowered to monitor and control all human activity.)


Of course, if a oneness, Nirvana seeking, anti-ego meditator were trying to be consistent; he would have no political views at all; and no interest in other-people or the way that things apparently happen in this - by definition illusory - mortal life. He would have No Morality - because morality is regarded as just as much part of the illusion of This Life as is everything else we think is real. 

However, in practice, such folk mostly seem to be on the stupid and ranting extreme of Leftist moralistic posturing; and when followed-up through time (which, in theory, they also regard as illusory) exhibit a stunning inability to learn from life experiences.

That is what oneness spirituality seems to do to Westerners - it makes them indifferent to personal experience, and indifferent to the truth (i.e. indifferent to the maya / illusion of this changing mortal life) - but just to a sufficient extent to prevent them from taking life seriously enough to learn from the experience! Just to a sufficient extent to reject the reality of traditional sexual morality; but not quite enough to reject the moral imperatives that justify the ever expanding claims of the modern sexual revolution.

Somehow the effect of oneness and loss of ego is never quite enough to induce them to set-aside mainstream, approval-seeking, virtue-signalling, fashion-dominated Leftism...

*

I would say that meditation does indeed begin with self-remembering, being here-and-now; knowing the 'presence' of God. So far, JB is valuable, helpful. But meditation then should - instantly - move-on-to being aware not of God as a diffuse omni-presence (analogous to our immersion in the sea, or floating in air); but to knowing God as a person: indeed knowing God as our loving parent (here, now, with-us)...

(Knowing, that is, God as a Being - not an abstraction.)

And meditation should not be seeking to annihilate 'the ego' or 'the self', nor to dissolve it into the abstract one-ness of deity - but to bring forth our true and divine self.


(What would be the point of God creating mortal life if its purpose was to annihilate the body and the self? Better not have mortal life in the first place! No - the purpose of this our mortal life is to experience and learn from temporary incarnation and self-hood, so that we may be able to choose - or reject - Christ's offer of immortal incarnation and divine self-hood.) 


And meditation should be about our true-self meeting-with a Being: such as our Heavenly Father; or other divine, spiritual or other presence - perhaps the beloved dead.

And why should we meet such? Not for happiness, coping, to kill pain or reduce anxiety - But through love; that's the proper reason. It is indeed the proper reason for meeting anyone. Love of that person, or love of of God's creation.

And inter-personal love - between Beings; not love understood as a kind of gas, force-field, or high frequency vibration! 


Also, meditation should Not be about trying to sustain itself as a solid lasting state; but about (when needed, at will) touching-base with this underlying reality to reorientate ourselves in life.

We are not - clearly, from the design of this world - meant to spend our lives suspended in a static-state of meditation or prayer; but (mostly) in loving and creating. And meditation is in order to make this possible, set us on the proper direction etc.

What I (personally) aim-for: is to be able to meditate and pray often, on demand; but not continuously. As Arkle says; God does not want us to be thinking about Him most of the time; but God wants us to do what we are here to do; live in the way God wants us to live (roughly: loving and creating).

Broadly; we best serve God by doing what God wants us to do (and that is an unique destiny for each person), not in continuously contemplating God.


Meditation and prayer are therefore best 'used' as ways of reminding our-selves of this situation; and of clearing away that evil addiction to fear that JB so well describes early in this video.

To leave aside fear is necessary; but not an end in itself. Unless detachment from the temporary and irrelevant concerns of worldly angst is only a first step; then meditation becomes just a drugless Valium.

Context is everything; the meaning of meditation depends absolutely on the spiritual, religious, metaphysical assumptions that are used to understand it, and its purposes. 

We ought then to move straight-on to consider this mortal life in terms of our faith and hope of immortal resurrected life, through following Jesus. 


*Note: Mindfulness is meditation without religion, without God. Mindfulness is thus meditation embedded-in an the assumptions of mainstream, materialist, Leftism. It is meditation reduced to pure technique. Hence mindfulness is directed merely at human happiness in this mortal life, to the individual in the present moment. This amounts to, as I say, merely a non-drug form of painkiller, anxiolytic or antidepressant. It is a way of 'coping' with the incrementally-escalating psychological evils of totalitarian Leftism - which then, of course, is able to grow unopposed and unabated.