Bruce Charlton's Notions

Just in case you have forgotten the three 2020 Litmus Tests for being objectively against God, creation and Christianity - that is, actively on the side of Satan - they are belief in: 1. The Birdemic, 2. Antiracism, 3. Climate change. 

OK, no surprises or anything - it was just striking to see the three marks of evil in the same headline(s)*, as the major policy priorities; plain, upfront, explicit. 

Evil strutting the global stage (well, not exactly strutting...), endorsed by the totality of The Establishent: evil proud and confident.

Evil with the gloves-off. 

*Note: Actual headline may differ slightly from that above, due to settling of contents during transit...

There is a scale of sinning - of doing the right or wrong thing (and bearing in mind the wrongness is motivation):

1. Do the right thing.

2. Do the wrong thing and realise it was wrong, and learn from the experience.

3. Do the wrong thing and realise it was wrong.

4. Do the wrong thing and deny to yourself it was wrong.

5. Do the wrong thing and say to yourself it was the right thing.

6. Do the wrong thing, say it was the right thing - and try to persuade other people it was the right thing (aka. "Doubling-down"). 

7.  Try to persuade as many people as possible that categorical wrong-ness is abstractly right.

4-7 are all necessarily self-damned states - increasing in severity.

7. Is the leftist intellectual: leftism being the philosophy of value-inversion as a means to evil (evil being the motivated destruction of God and divine creation). It is the worst; because such a person is not merely (like all of us, some-times) a sinner who failed to resist temptation; but (and without excuse of personal temptation or participation) someone angling to join Satan's strategic management team from a basis in shared goals.

What follows may be one of the weirdest things I have written! Nonetheless, I am sure that it is on the right lines and there is something behind it. 

It derives from my personal interpretation, my decoding, of Rudolf Steiner's lectures published in 2016 as The Electronic Doppelganger; and particularly a lecture from 16 November 1917. Steiner's speculative essay, and this one, addresses the question: What happens to damned souls in an age of materialism? Where do they go, what do they do?

The matter is interesting because this is an age of Materialism in which the dominant form of evil is 'Ahrimanic' - that is, coldly-cruel, materialistic, controlling, bureaucratic;  an 'Antichrist'-type of evil that pretends to 'good' (i.e. altruism) and does its work of damnation behind a facade of 'caring' (healthism, antiracism, environmentalism, sexual liberation and rights, etc.)  

So - Materialism is the dominant ideology in our world - indeed, the only working ideology in public discourse. And Materialism has it that there is no God, no soul, no spiritual, no afterlife, no Beings, no love; the really-real is only that which is perceived by senses and physics, and modelled by mathematical and symbolic abstractions. 

Materialism mostly says that death is annihilation. We die and nothing of our 'self' is left-behind. But there is another possibility, a 'loophole' - not offered to all, but aspired-to by groups with the character of initiates ('secret societies', one might call them). I mean the transhumanist project of the abolition of aging and death by technology, of indefinite 'life extension' of a material kind. 

This combines with another strand of transhumanism which aims to combine Man and computer - in a cyborg fashion;  which aims (in various ways - surgical, electronic, genetic etc.) to 'integrate' the electronic and digital world of the computer, with the living flesh of Men.

This technological pseudo-salvation has been taken-up by some strands of explicit transhumanism; and also, but without that name, is now (2020) mainstream, dominant, global public policy; being a strategy for the Ruling Establishment in their UN Agenda 2030, the Great Reset idea and others.  

This idea of what might happen to sustain 'life' (or personal identity) after death, has been propagated in various ways; such as the mind being like a computer, and therefore down-loadable onto a computer; the cryogenic idea of preserving a brain for future reanimation; and even the common Hollywood (hence presumptively evil-motivated) trope that 'we live-on' after biological death, 'in the memories/ hearts of those who remain alive'. This trope may - deceptively - have a literal meaning intended; behind the sentimental metaphor.

Ancient Greeks and Hebrews, and probably others unrecorded, had an understanding that death was (mostly) a matter of the spirit being severed from the body; and surviving in an Underworld (Hades, Sheol...) as witless, gibbering, demented ghosts without consciousness or free agency or sense of self - but not suffering. 

Perhaps those materialists who want to live forever in a material way, are offered a 'deal' whereby instead of going to the underworld (or to Heaven, which they usually disbelieve; and mostly wouldn't want if they did believe it) - they instead remain on earth and involved with earthly life in return for serving the Satanic agenda. 

This is achieved by these 'ghosts' living-on in the material 'minds' ('brains', 'hearts') of the secret societies, and of any other men who the secret brotherhoods persuade ('brainwash') into providing brain-space' to these spirits. 

This may be one actuality of Biblical Hell; which is often referenced to being on earth, with demons being ghosts of the evil-affiliated deceased, still active among living people - i.e. the 'principalities and powers' - serving the agenda of Satan who is thus a 'ruler' of the earth in a literal sense. 

This would mean that the Satan and the demonic powers recruit not just living Men to their side - including in secret societies dedicated to evil; but that some of these same Men, when they die, desire or consent to become 'evil ghosts', remaining on earth and still active in this world, in a form of perpetuated, materialistic (but not embodied) life; a 'reward' for which they pay by being bound to the service of Satan. 

The idea is that these spirits of the evil and deceased are materially instantiated in the brains, minds, symbols, rituals etc of living Men. These 'evil ghosts' live-on in the minds and brains of Men of the secret societies - Men who believe-in, know, and side-with Satan: the servants of Satan, in other words. These Satanic servants are are aware of the doppelganger, consent to it; and use the evil-ghosts in their evil strategies - e.g. for gathering information and covertly influencing other men.

And the evil-ghosts also live-on among the masses of materialistic unrepentant sinners, who have taken Satan's side against God. These masses are unconscious of being hosts of evil-ghosts; indeed they do not believe in ghosts, do not believe in Satan - and are standard, unthinking dupes to the incoherent ideology of Materialism. 

These masses of un-conscious, ignorant, God-denying, Satan-affiliated yet Satan-Disbelieving Men; are therefore acted-upon by the evil-ghosts of self-damned Men. This is what Steiner meant by his term 'doppelganger' - he meant the evil-double, unconsciously hosted, and unconsciously influencing the minds of those who host it. These are the dupes of Satan, rather than his servants.

(As always, the spiritual 'law' is that evil must be consented-to, must be - like an archetypal vampire - be 'invited-in', invited to cross the threshold into the mind. This, at least, must be a conscious decision. It corresponds to what some people call 'taking the ticket' - the Faustian bargain which is presented to almost everybody, nowadays sooner rather than later; of knowingly consenting to do evil, in return for some worldly advantage. But then most people explain-away, bury and deny this decisive corrupting-event - saying to themselves that they 'did nothing wrong'; and therefore they never repent it and must take the consequences. Of course, repentance would immediately negate the damnation, and anybody can repent at any time (albeit on certain conditions); but typical modern people do not believe in the reality or possibility of repentance.)

Evil ghosts may also live-on after biological death by inhabiting electronic devices, such as computers and the internet. This is possible because of the pseudo-brain/ nervous system, quasi-intelligent, cognitive-processing qualities of modern electronic media.  

Of course, 'electronic media' are not distinct from (not separable-from) Men's thinking - indeed nothing is distinct from Men's thinking (except primordial chaos). In other words, God's creation is made by thinking, as well as from 'stuff'. Our thinking is inextricably part of the world. 

(This is another insight of Rudolf Steiner's - articulated in his early philosophical books Truth and Knowledge and The Philosophy of Freedom.)

What this means is that we should think of electronic media, computers, the internet etc as part of the web of human thinking, continuous with human thinking, and indeed sustained-by human thinking. 

And this is the inverse of the transhumanist ideology, which considers human thinking to be wholly a matter of brain activity; and brain activity to be wholly abstract mental processing, which processing can then be instantiated in electronic media. This ideology makes the possibility of its own validity.

To conclude, Hell on earth is the hosting of evil-ghosts (who are the post-mortal spirits of evil men) by the minds of Men who have joined-with the agenda of Satan; and by the electronic media that are manifestations of materialistic, hence Satanic, thinking. 

Hell lives in the mind of evil-affiliated (unrepentant) materialistic Men, who may well be a large majority of Men in this year of 2020.  

These evil-ghosts can only influence by consent; so the doppelganger must be 'invited-in'. A few Men (servants of Satan) are aware of this 'double' and manipulate it, for evil purposes; but most (dupes of Satan) are unaware or in denial - and are therefore open to manipulation by their doppelganger. 

The vast modern world of electronic media also provides a dwelling place for these evil-ghosts; but again they can only influence those who 'invite them in' to their minds, for example those who are willingly addicted-to, and who subordinate themselves to, the ideology, propaganda and manipulation of the mass media.

But those who know the reality of Satan, and can discern his influence, and who have chosen to follow Jesus and accept his gift of resurrected Life Everlasting in Heaven - such Men are immune to the evil doppelgangers of mind and machine. 

Traditional religion regards the bottom-line of knowledge as deriving from one or a combination of Tradition, Theology, Church authority and practices, or Scripture. These are external and 'objective' (i.e group consensus) sources.

By contrast, Mysticism is the conviction that the bottom-line source of knowing is subjective and experiential. Personal and subjective is regarded as potentially ultimately real; indeed the primary understanding of reality is subjective, personal, experiential.

In short: Mysticism is a kind of experience; and for 'the mystic', Mystical Experience is primary.  

The primacy of Mystical Experience can be seen in its use both as validation and source. It may be used to check the validity of external sources of information, such as tradition, theology, church authority or scripture. 

And Mystical Experience may also generate knowledge. For example, knowledge may arise in thought as ideas, concepts, information; or knowledge may arrive via perceptual communications - as with visions, or hearing voices - or combinations, as when reading the vision of a written text.  

Thus Mystical knowledge is not defined by the nature of its content; but by how the knowledge is acquired. In other words, Mysticism is a theory of 'epistemology' (the philosophy of knowledge). 

But an assertion of epistemology requires metaphysical foundation - because a theory of valid knowledge entails a metaphysical theory about the ultimate nature of reality - to explain why Mystical Experience is the most valid source of knowledge. 

So, Mysticism is always (whether implicitly or explicitly) associated with an understanding of reality that explains how valid knowledge may arise by mystical means. For example, to explain why Mystical Experience is necessarily primary, or how subjective personal knowledge is also objective reality.

Mystical Christianity can therefore be understood as that Christianity for which knowledge of Jesus Christ - e.g. his identity, nature, teachings, mission, work, achievement, current role etc. - are primarily based-upon Mystical Experience; derived-from and/or validated-by subjective, personal experience. 

Being a Mystical Christian first entails a conviction that Mystical experience is important, valuable - indeed essential. And having reached this conviction, will naturally set the stage for wanting Mystical Experience, for understanding (including checking) such experiences in oneself, and for developing Mystical capacities and practices.

I spent three years of my life employed as a university lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in Epidemiology and Public Health: that most corrupt and mediocre of all medical specialties. 

The reason Epidemiology/ Public Health is so corrupt (and getting worse) is that its work consists in providing pseudo-objective rationalisations for Leftist political programmes; and that is the reason E&PH has long been mediocre - because such externally-driven service-work has no place for a genuine scientist or a real doctor. 

Among other things, this period gave me an insight into the fake morality of Healthism; which currently dominates the world, and bears the brunt of responsibility for rationalising the global totalitarian coup of 2020. 

Like all moralities which purport to be altruistic (that is, to favour others above oneself); the ideology of Healthism is impaled upon its own contradictions. But bear in mind that incoherence is a feature, not a bug, when it comes to evil; and the Leftist programme (which Healthism serves) is itself primarily-negative and destructive - therefore incoherence is baked-in.   

The birdemic shows the way that Healthism works in practice, intrinsically. The 2020 global reality is extreme, sustained raw fear of multi-millions of individuals - fear of dying from the birdemic. 

...A fear that leads to mass social avoidance, and treating all humans as rabid-leper-zombies. 

The world believes that it is living in the midst or a rabid-leper-zombie Apocalypse! But, even worse, this is an invisible rabid-leper-zombie Apocalypse! 

Therefore, everybody is dying, but invisibly: the bodies are being stacked like cord-wood in secret locations - too many to bury or burn. 

The birdemic sickness is one of the great plagues of the world - the Black Death On Steroids; yet at the same time, we only know about it via the mass media; and we don't know if somebody has become a rabid-leper-zombie, unless they get a special Test. 

The Test tells you that you are In Fact a rabid-leper-zombie - but The Test can never tell you that you are Not a rabid-leper-zombie.

SO... The terrifying scenario is that the world is full of invisible rabid-leper-zombies, who are dying in droves; and anybody I meet, anywhere might be an invisible rabid-leper-zombie; and I Myself might be invisible rabid-leper-zombie! 

The Whole World might be invisible rabid-leper-zombies; past, present or future; whether dying or already-dead!

How Terrifying Is That!

This is how the morality of Healthism goes: Because I am terrified of invisible rabid-leper-zombies, I want everybody kept away from me and wearing masks - but I know that this doesn't really work - but I want it anyway because I am terrified of invisible rabid-leper-zombies. 

But because I am a Leftist, I care more about other people than myself; so I want to wear a mask because I might be an invisible rabid-leper-zombie. If not today, then tomorrow.

Indeed, I demand that I myself, and everybody else, be compelled to wear a mask; because when it comes to an invisible rapid-leper-zombie We Just Don't Know that anybody is safe to be in proximity to anybody else. 

Therefore, I keep my distance from everybody I most love and care for; and I demand they do the same for me; and I want this made compulsory, to make sure; because nothing is worse than an invisible rabid-leper-zombie.

(Except a White Supremacist, obviously.)

But I don't really love and care for anybody in particular - that would be *-ist, obviously... Instead I care Most about everybody-in-the-whole-world-at-the-same-time: and especially people I have never met, know nothing about, and who hate me. 

(Except for White Supremacists, obviously.) 

Obviously, when I say 'care' I mean specifically the birdemic; because Nobody wants to live in an invisible rabid-leper-zombie Apocalypse; stopping that must surely be the priority, yes?  

Let's get this clear: I care most of all about about global birdemic health statistics - although I neither know nor care about how those statistics are generated, nor what they mean, and am resistant to learning this. 

To be clearer yet: I care most in the world about what my chosen mass media tell me about global birdemic health statistics. Today... 

That, for me, is The Bottom-Line. 

(Unless it is Climate Change - which is also the bottom line. And antiracism. And sexual liberation... I mean 'rights'. They are also the single, core, key, essential, priority bottom line.)

My point is that Healthism works by an unholy alliance of extreme short-termist selfishness and clinging to life, now, at any cost; and the self-hating suicidal recklessness of systematic altruism - of favouring others above self. 

(Altruism has to be systematic and compelled, because it is un-natural. People must be forced to be altruistic. Except for the Global Billionnaire Establishment, obviously - They just-are naturally altruistic, which is why they are multi-billionnaires. Obviously.)

"I am wearing this mask for other people, 'because' I am terrified of dying in the invisible rabid-leper-zombie Apocalypse." 

In a world of invisible rabid-leper-zombies, invisibly infecting each other, and dying like invisible flies; Nothing matters but Health. 

...Yet the basis of Health (food, economy, other people...) is systematically-being-destroyed by the pursuit of Health At Any Price. 

After all; it makes a kind of Leftist sense. In a world gripped by terror of of invisible rabid-leper-zombies; the only escape from fear is for the invisible rabid-leper-zombies all to die. For them all to die; all must be killed (one way or another; preferably deniably). 

If the cost of ridding our world of an invisible rabid-leper-zombies is that most people (including me) are killed by the measures ostensibly taken to rid the world of invisible rabid-leper-zombies - then That is a price worth paying...

We can, at least, then look forward to the a birdemic-free-world! A world finally free of fear...

We won't be there to enjoy it, nor will many other people (except the multi-billionnaire Global Establishment - obviously), and anyway it will not be an enjoy-able world. 

They are doing Us a favour by killing us for our better health, if you really think about it.

And - in the end - what does it all matter to someone truly altruistic? 

A mistake I have made is to try and (introspectively) observe my thinking. But this is not possible - at least not when the thinking is being done by the real or true self. 

The reason that it is impossible is that the real self has agency, free will: is a free agent. The thinking of the real self is the bottom-line. 

Being a free agent entails that the thinking happens creatively, generatively, originally - as an expression of the real self. Negatively put - the thinking of the real self is irreducible, un-analyzable, hence un-observable. 

If we consider a model of the real self, we could imagine something like an egg, from which thoughts are radiated in all directions. We can - and indeed should strive to - observe the thoughts as they emerge from the surface of the egg; but we cannot see inside the egg. 

Our consciousness is outside the egg, observing the outside of the egg, and the radiating thoughts arising at the egg's surface. 

It is as if the true-self egg was indestructible and its surface was impenetrable. What happens inside it can never be known - it is primarily creative. The egg creates by spontaneous generation, it creates thoughts from nothing. 

The egg is, indeed a mini-god! 

Yet the true self egg is sensitive. The egg can know directly what occurs in the medium of thinking, in the medium-between real selves (the medium in-which real selves exist), in the 'collective consciousness'. The egg senses - but its output of thoughts is not constrained by its input of thinking. 

A remarkable egg indeed! Each true-self-egg is, as I said, a god - capable of its own creating, albeit the creations will be ephemeral in this mortal world, which is ruled by entropy. But also capable (in principle) of becoming part of Heaven (where there is no entropy); and of participating with God in the work of eternal creation. 

Furthermore, any thinking of which we Are conscious is Not the thinking of the real self. It is merely superficial and secondary 'mental processing'. It is thinking that is not genuinely creative, but merely manipulative; taking inputs and deploying selection, combination, transformation of these inputs into outputs. 

Observable thinking is not divine but merely human. Observable thinking is materialistic; maybe thinking at an analogous level to computer processing.   

Anyway, this metaphor of the egg is meant to provide a way of thinking about thinking, and a way to graps how we should be conscious of our thoughts, but cannot be conscious of our thinking. 

Note: the real self is not actually solid, like an egg; but is a spiritual entity. However, I personally can't think about spiritual entities without things getting too abstract to be of any use; which is why I have fallen back on this indestructible, impenetrable egg.  

You would have thought that anybody who worked in any kind of job in (or interacting-with) any kind of bureaucratic large institution, organisation, corporation... would recognise the pervasive - daily, hourly - corruption. 

And would therefore adjust their expectations of corruption when it came to... oh, I don't know... elections? 

Yet people continue to assume the null hypothesis of No Corruption, of Systematic Honesty. Truthfulness until otherwise 'proven' (and each item of proof treated the same - if there is any other explanation than dishonesty (and of course there always is) then it should be preferred.

How are so many people missing such a vast Fact about our civilization, that it been becoming more corrupt for decades, and that the corruption is accelerating month by month in the year of 2020? 

(2020! - the Year of the Lie! - the Year of the Biggest Lie in the history of the world!)

How can they miss this corruption, exclude it by assumption and by argument?

Well, they do miss it, because the corruption is itself concealed by pervasive, systematic, compulsory dishonesty - which affects almost everybody, and everybody at high and middling levels in all large bureaucracies/ organisations.

Generalised, severe, pervasive corruption naturally conceals specific instances. And when (as now) there is enough corruption; specific instances become un-proveable... 

When everybody is lying all the time; why pick on a particular person, time, place for special attention? 

People have become so used-to public relations, advertsing, hype, spin, selection, distortion; to manipulation and propaganda... that nearly-all people are adapted to dishonesty in its multitude of manifestations. They have long since ceased to notice it. 

Dishonesty can become such an ingrained habit that awareness of lying gets buried very deep; that the slightest insinuation of the plain fact that most people are dishonest for their own advantage nearly all the time (especially during their working hours and social interactions), is met by outraged, indignant incredulity. 

The point is that dishonesty is so normal that people are not even trying to be truthful - and operate on a mixture of obedience and expediency. 

After all - who is responsible for societal honesty? 

At what level is honesty regarded as normal, necessary, mandatory? Obviously national leaders and corporate bosses are the biggest liars of all. And the people at the bottom are expected to obey, or be sacked. But nobody at any point of the unified global bureaucracy and hierarchy of the linked social institutions is expected or allowed to be wholly honest in intention and expression. 

Not 'scientists', not scholars nor academics - not anybody At All. 

Everybody (here, now, 2020) is pursuing some other primary agenda than it says on the tin - every institution is thus, in itself, A Lie. 

Organisations pretend to focus on health services, educaton, policing, religion, whatever... but the bottom line is always and everywhere leftist socio-politics: that is, all institutions are converged onto the mainstream Global Establishment line as expressed by mainstream media, international bureaucracy and the dominant nations; whatever that line is on any particular day.

Since the Global Establishment is purposively-evil (strategically working against God and creation); then it means that as many as possible of the assumptions of the mainstream are designed to pursue and cover the workings of evil. As of 2020 this domination of assumptions by purposive evil is itself an established fact. 

And this means that truth telling is no longer about facts, but must be about assumptions. 

Have you ever tried even rasining and questioning assumptions in a bureaucratic setting? You will be treated as devious and evasive not honest. (Or else as childish, or else as insane.)

And when one of those assumptions you expose and challenge is that of the honesty of the bureaucracy?... 

It is the world-blanketing culture of pervasive, insensible, denied dishonesty that serves as cover for all the many other major, systemic evils; it serves as a cover for the entire web of Big Lies that makes up the world of public discourse.

There is apparently no limit to the power of Big Lies in such as world as we inhabit. The whole world can be bankrupted over a total fabrication such as the Climate Agenda; can be shut down ad incrementally destroyed over a trivial infection to be managed by unconnected, false and human-destructive policies; can operate on the basis of official personal, sexual and racial assumptions and procedures that are an inversion of truth and reality... 

And so on. 

Yet people, official people, worldly people, people who would know from experience, if they were capable of learning from experience... such people persist in regarding honesty as the norm - and demand literally-impossible levels of 'proof' for the blatantly obvious. 

In 2020 there is nothing more false than a fact-checked 'fact'; nothing closer to reality than officially-labelled 'fake' news; nothing more arbitrary than authoritative sources; nothing quite so distorted and agenda-driven as objective statistics... 

Dishonesty is - surely - the biggest and baddest sin in this modern world: it is the Master Sin - the sin that hides and encourages all other sins. 

And precisely because dishonesty so big, so integral The System, and as-of 2020 The System is everywhere: dishonesty is (all-but) invisible. 

Rudolf Steiner had a remarkable prophetic era in his life, around 1917-19. At that time he seemed to have all kinds of insights about what was coming; including what was coming if Man did not re-connect with the spiritual aspects of the world (if - in a nutshell - Man did not take the path of Romantic Christianity). 

I have been reading some lectures given in Zurich, dating from November 1917 (significantly, Steiner seems to have made several of his best and most prophectic lectures to the Zurich Anthroposophical Society). 

These lectures are focused around the question of relationships with The (so-called) Dead; including how these relations can be good, or evil. 

But as a framework; Steiner makes a very important point (text edited by me):  

There are still many people who say: “Oh, well, in all good time we shall discover what transpires after death; why trouble about it now? Let us attend to the requirements of life and when we reach yonder world we shall soon discover what it is.” 

Well and good, but if it is true that in yonder world a man becomes what he has pictured himself to be, then something else is also true. 

Take the idea that is not at all uncommon nowadays. Somebody dies, leaving relatives behind him. Although thought may not be entirely lacking in these people, they may be materialistically minded, and then, quite inevitably, they will think either that the dead man is decaying in the grave or that what still exists of him is preserved in the urn. 

If materialism were to triumph, the conviction would still further increase that all that remains of the Dead person is disintegrating in the urn or in the grave. This thought is, however, a real power; it is an untruth. 

When those left behind think that the Dead person no longer lives, is no longer there, this is a false thought — but it is real and actual in the souls of those who form it. 

The Dead person is aware of this thought-reality, is aware of its significance for him. And it is a matter of fundamental importance whether those left behind cherish in their souls the thought of the Dead person living on in the spiritual world; or whether they succumb to the woeful idea that the Dead, well, he is dead, he lies there decaying in the grave. 

Far from being a matter of no importance, there is a very great and essential difference. (...)

This is illustrative of the way in which modern Man prejudges issues that he has not considered; makes up his mind about the fundamental, metaphysical nature of reality; meanwhile pretending that he is merely being 'common sensical', focused on 'what matters' and 'keeping an open mind'. However, common sense here-and-now is often the opposite of history, 'what matters' depends entirely upon what actually-is true and important, and keeping an open mind on one subject entails closing the mind on other possibilities.

Modern materialism conceals itself behind such assumptions as taking the attitude that we can (and should) defer dealing-with questions such as whether life, or human identity, continues after death; or whether The Dead have some kind of an ongoing relationship with the Living. These assumptions are reinforced by statements that 'we cannot know' such matters - or cannot know them with certainty, and therefore need-not/ should-not consider them. 

Yet at the same time, the same people behave in every way as if they were certain that (for example) 'racism' (undefined) is a great evil everywhere in the world today; or that 'science' (undefined) has proven that global warming is real, caused by CO2 and can be stopped or reversed by carbon taxes and 'green technology'. Or certain that the birdemic virus has already been a major cause of death, and is a major threat to global health. 

In truth, people refuse even to think-about death and The Dead - because they have already decided, they are certain, that the dead are annihilated and therefore there can be no genuine relationship between dead and living people.

Yet people are wrong about certainties; and then their wrongness has consequences. If The Dead continue to live and seek a relationship with the living, and if this relationship (like other personal relationships) may be good or evil in nature; then this denial Will have adverse consequences - especially if evil persons abuse their knowledge of the continuing relations with The Dead for their own evil purposes. 

This abuse is the subject of other parts of Steiner's November 1917 Zurich lectures: the ways in which 'dark brotherhoods' manipulate the situation of The Dead to cause harm to human health and the development of consciousness. 

As always with Steiner, I find that reading these lectures requires considerable sifting, discrimination and modification; but I feel a solid ring of truth about the subject matter and his basic points. And I think it is very likely that something of the sort is actively happening among the Global Establishment at the highest levels - where (to all appearances, by action not words) belief in the supernatural is normal and regarded as vital (albeit deniable and denied); and where initiations, symbols and rituals of many types have such an important role (albeit shrugged-off as mere vestiges, artistic subversions, parody and 'fun').  

One point Steiner makes is that when 'initiates' of these dark brotherhoods die, they may consent to become what are essentially 'evil ghosts' (as a mode of live extension - a very popular goal among the 'elites', as 'transhumanism') --- dead, still tied to the earth, and able to cooperate with the dark brotherhoods, and to continue their work of opposition to God and creation. 

Indeed, Steiner regards the hope or promise of life-extension to be the materialist evil-inversion of the Christian goal of life eternal; with the promise that it can be obtained by technological-magical procedures. 

I am personally Not certain about all this, but I'm pretty confident that there is 'something in it'. And much more so now than a century ago, when Steiner was speaking - hence the prophetic insight on display here. And like all prophets (as contrasted with mere predictors) the future is seen as contested territory, subject to human free agency; and something we all help to decide, and contribute to making.

Another way of considering this is to ask in what way resurrected Men in Heaven differ from mortal Men on earth. 

The key explanatory concept is that God is the creator - the prime creator: creator of Men and of all creation.

(...But not creator of every-thing - there was/is already primordial chaos. Creation is from chaos, by God.) 

The difference is that in Heaven we work with God, inside God's creation - among only those Men who do likewise. In Heaven there are only those men who have (like ourselves) made a permanent commitment to God's loving plan of creation. 

(So there is no evil in Heaven - because evil is the purposive destruction of creation.)

Heaven is bound-together by love, and directed-towards creation: creation is, at a deep level, the intrinsic consequence of love. 

In Heaven, whatever creation we do (according to our disposition) beomes a part of God's already-existant and on-going creation; harmonised with it by loving affection and being directed to the same goals. 

(And Heavenly creation includes pro-creation - the begetting of spirit children, who may in turn then choose to incarnate, die, and follow Jesus Christ to Heaven.) 

So, to be divine is to participate-in divine creation. To some extent, and temporarily, this may happen on earth during mortal life. But full divinity is self-conscious, chosen, eternal participation.  

It seems that (based on what we know of young children, tribal hunter-gatherers - and by empathic and direct intuition) that our ancestors did not conceive of human life as having a purpose or destination: it just was. 

Life was a cyclical, dynamic matter of transformations. 'Reincarnation' was a recycling of finite souls, in different combinations and forms. 

If so; then this was a transitional stage of consciousness; when there was just enough self-awareness to have ideas about the nature of life, but not enough consciousness to require a coherent purpose (destination) beyond the present. 

When more consciousness developed in Men, curiosity-about and knowledge-of purpose emerged - and present mortal material life became symbolic of that spiritual purpose (i.e. the emergence of 'totemic' religion - precursor of all the classic institutional religions). 

Thus mortal incarnate Man became more future orientated, and also more alienated - as he looked-forward to becoming an immortal spirit. 

So, the highest destination after death was at first (and still is, mostly) regarded to be as spirit. The core idea was/is that the physical and material is changeable and temporary - and the spirit remains unchanged and eternal. 

But with Christianity and the resurrection of Jesus came the idea that the highest destination was not the spirit, but the eternal material: the immortal destination was not as spirit, but as a resurrected-incarnate Being. 

This idea that the incarnate is (potentially) higher than spirit was/is very seldom clearly apprehended until made lucid by the theological-philosophical breakthroughs of the Mormon Restoration (from 1830); which remains neither widely known nor generally accepted among self-identified Christians.  

Yet it is all there in the Fourth (earliest, most authoritative) Gospel ... 

However, the meaning of the Fourth Gospel has been thoroughly obscured by post-Apostolic decisions concerning the Biblical canon, and how to read and understand the Bible - which decisions themselves came from institution/ priest-orientated church-establishers and theological leaders; who were themselves (in several ways) rejecting of the simple, individual-familial essence of the Fourth Gospel. 

In the end, as usual, we must each discern the truth (and the truth of 'authority') by the intuitions of our real and divine selves. 

But it seems necessary that some-how Christians explain to themselves that, why and how it is that our highest and final destination after death is both immortal and incarnate - exactly like Jesus Christ himself.

The greatness of God is, in a sense, 'incomprehensible'; but only in the way that an adult parent's motivations are incomprehensible to a young child. 

The unlikeness of God to ourselves is vast; yet there is 'qualitative' sameness, based on sameness of kind, and the love of God.

(We are literally God's beloved children - literally, not 'biologically'.)

We are eternal Beings, and at some level we know this. Therefore, the eternal future is a subject of compelling concern - albeit that concern may well be expressed by an absolute refusal to think or speak about it. 

I am suspicious of the common modern 'belief in' (which I interpret as desire-for) death as annihilation. I mean, the standard mainstream belief that biological death of the body also entails a complete destruction of every-thing about that person... There is no 'soul' or 'spirit' separable from the body... Dead means dead and gone.  

As I mentioned, I interpret this belief as a desire; and my understanding of this desire is that it often arises in those who will not repent (perhaps they will not acknowledge the reality of sin?)... People who are deeply and ineradicably ashamed - and who want (more than anything) for their shame to end. 

In sum: those who desire annihilation want permanent annihilation of their own self as a final solution to unendurable existence in a reality with No Hope.  

'Death as annihilation' is a manifestation of existential despair. 

In the ancient past - at least among both the Hebrews (Sheol) and the Classical Greeks (Hades) - there was a belief in "death" as becoming witless, demented ghosts; spirits with no memory of life and who had lost self-identity. 

This was not a torment, nor a pleasant state; rather it was neutral - and implicitly a situation of waiting. The fate of the dead soul was undecided, and there was a possibility of being-rescued. 

And this, indeed, happened; since Jesus rescued as many of these souls as wanted to Follow Him.

The anticipation of Sheol/ Hades was therefore for a state after death with hope of escape. But it seems a distinctively modern thing to desire death to be irrevocable; death to be a permanent and complete annihilation.

The modern idea of death is the desire to make an eternal commitment of negation. And, once thus conceptualised, I think that modern death can be seen as a mirror of Christian hope for Heaven. 

The Christian believes that he can make an eternal commitment in favour of God; and can thereby join-with God (and others who have made this positive commitment) in the continuing work of loving creation. 

In contrast; the mainstream, modern idea of death as annihilation is the opposite desire; the wish to make an eternal commitment to reject God, love and creation.

...And is, thereby, a decision to join-with the side of Satan and the powers of darkness; working against God. 

In sum, the normal, mainstream, modern desire for death as annihilation is evil: it is a manifestation of the unrepented sin of despair: it expresses an active rejection of God, love and God's creation. 

Note: A somewhat less 'final' version of the death-as-annihilation desire is the wish for death as a state of 'sleep', 'rest', 'peace' and so on - which seems to have become popular in England in the 19th century; and is still expressed in the unthinking repetition of 'RIP'. 

This seems to express a desire for death-as-annihilation; but of a potentially revocable type; allowing at least the possibility of awakening after a period of sufficient rest/ sleep/ peace.  

Further note: I have not discussed the matter of reincarnation, in its many and contrasting forms; nor what desires they reflect - because I am not yet clear on that matter.

As of 2020 when the Global bureaucracy has taken-over; there is No Hiding Place - to quote the title of an old TV programme which used to chill me as a young child.

It seems natural, and necessary, to find a 'hiding place'; somewhere un-known to The Enemy where we may shelter and escape his attention and demands. Why? (those not Of The Left complain) can't They just leave us alone, to live the way that we want?

To mainstream materialistic thinking, this situation looks-like one of a vast System deployed against a series of helpless individuals, each of whom will inevitably be crushed. And that is certainly how things are portrayed, and how their personal situation is described, to those individual dissenters who find themselves the focus of The System. 

(I know. I have been there, twice: it tends to feel like Me against The World.)

Yet, if that captured the essence of the situation, The System would not bother about individual dissent. After all; focusing The System on detecting and eliminating each and every incidence of dissent inflicts vast costs and inefficiencies, and cripples actual System capability. Why bother?

Why indeed - if Leftism really was materialist... But it is Not. 

Sure enough, Leftism says it is (and acts like it is) a materialistic philosophy at its lower levels (among the un-thinking, un-conscious minions and propagandists); but the demonic powers at the top of The System are driven by spiritual aims: they are fighting a spiritual war. 

(Albeit Leftism is engaged in a spiritual war of a distinctively anti-spiritual kind; in other words Leftism seeks to eliminate the spiritual from Life; to track down and eliminate all people who are genuinely spiritual in their thinking.) 

And this should be obvious from how modern, world-dominating Leftism actually behaves. Leftism is (after all) about the thought police; Leftism is about propaganda, persuasion, public relations; it is about 'winning hearts and minds' via the censored and controlled (yet attention-grabbing and addictive) mass/social media, a corrupted arts establishment; (fake) news, (pseudo) science. Leftist crusades are quasi moral - abolition, pacifism, socialism, enviromentalism, healthism, antiracism, sexual liberation...

Leftism wants zero dissidence; requires every last person (in every 'hidey-hole' on the planet) to be On Message, With the Program: actively and internally supportive of this-week's moral imperatives.

(This was the clear message and lesson of Orwell's 1984: every single person must love Big Brother: every-single-person, Must, Love... Big Brother.)  

And by this demand; Leftism reveals its weakness to those with spiritual-eyes to see: that any single individual person who dissents in thought (no matter how apparently obscure) is a significant threat to The Agenda at the level which matters most: i.e. the spiritual level.     

The individual has never been so objectively empowered as here-and-now. 

The Global Establishment demands that you, specifically (no matter who you are), decide to be On Their Side. 

When the demonic powers view our planet; any dissidence, any one Godly Christian, stands-out of this world like a blazing beacon.

(This, ultimately, is why there is "no hiding place".)

Of course it is vital to The Enemy to persuade Christians that Resistance Is Futile... 

Meanwhile, by everything they actually do; Leftism makes clear that any resistance, by any person, anywhere is In Fact a colossal threat to The System - at its primary and spiritual level. 

Note: This general phenomenon was brought home to me some twenty years ago when I refused to put my signature to a bureaucratic performance-surveillance document in the university system. 

I did the perfomance review, but would not sign-up to targets: I would not formally agree to performance measures. I refused because signing was legal agreement, and weakened my employment protection - by modifying my contract in favour of the employer and with zero advantage to myself. Obviously, I wouldn't sign... 

(And equally obviously, 'everybody else' did sign.)

In order to persuade me to sign, I was alternately told that my signature was a trivial formality that meant nothing - so I might as well sign; and also that it was essential that I sign Or Else. 

In other words, that my formal agreement to institutional goals and practices was completely insignificant; yet also that it was vital I formally-supported institutional goals and practices. 

Writing my name at the bottom of my form meant nothing whatsoever, and at the same time my failure to sign was of major concern to the organisation. 

This is just an analogy for the spiritual reality. But, in the end, each of us must decide which is the truth about our situation: are we insignificant specks of dust (one among billions), or are we personally a significant threat - whose thinking might, potentially, materially damage the plans of the Global Elite?

One or the other.

It is a deep truth that we co-create The World: not just 'our' world, not just subjectivity, not just the world 'as we personally perceive it... But that we co-create the objective world*. God is the creator; Man lives as part of God's creation; and Man co-creates reality in the context of God's primary creation.

(We co-create The World including the world of 'science' - which is rooted in the false assumption that the whole truth of reality can be made the subject of a discourse between humans, which discourse ignores/ excludes human consciousness.)   

When our creativity is un-conscious - which it nearly always is - then it is un-free. 

Our un-conscious creativity is passively swept-along by external influences. Here-and-now this means that our un-conscious creative activity is being-manipulated. 

Because Modern Man chooses to be un-conscious of his co-creating; he can be and is manipulated in his activities by those Beings who are conscious of the reality of Man's co-creating, but who oppose God's work.

Our creat-ing is, in actuality, being-manipulated into destruction; into the destruction of divine creation. Human creation has been turned-against God's creation. 

That is the meaning of the prevalent and increasing value-inversion of these times. When Man's values are inverted - so sin is seen as virtue, ugliness beauty, and lies are truth - then Man's creative activities have-been turned-against God's primary reality. 

Man's un-conscious, manipulated creat-ing is then made destructive of divine creating.

In a nutshell: When Man is un-conscious of co-creating reality, he is un-free; and (thus self-blinded, thus self-made helpless), has-been manipulated into destruction --- Then, Man has joined-with Satan in the destruction of divine creation, of God's plan for our salvation and thesois, and of the Goodness this makes possible. 

And, since God is Love; therefore un-conscious Modern Man has joined Satan's mission against Love - his intent to dis-place and re-place Love with sin (e.g. pride, fear, resentment, despair, and their wages of death as chosen-annihilation of the spirit). 

But when Man's co-creating is conscious and freely-chosen; then we cooperate with God in the work of divine creation; we change the (objective, real) world: for the better. 

Therefore - unless we are objectively to aid in the Satanic work of destruction  - we must become aware of our work of co-creation; and we must choose (voluntarily, from our freedom) to work with God, to work on God's side. 

And doing this will, In Fact, make a better creation: a better world.

*This may best have been explained in Owen Barfield's book Saving the Appearances. The above post was stimulated by my reading (in a particularly intuitive mode of thinking) a strange and inspired lecture by Rudolf Steiner, from 1919.