Bruce Charlton's Notions

I think it would be fair to say that most people haven't thought very much about what "creation" is, or might be; beyond either assuming that there is really nothing special about it, or assuming that it is a wholly mysterious "black box". 

And I believe that there is truth in both of these perspectives - in the sense that (while some particular Beings are much more often and more intensely creative than others) potentially all Beings are creative in some degree and way because it is an attribute of being-ness; while there is an irreducible mystery in being-ness, including the creativity of any particular Being. 

My long term interest in human creativity and the phenomenon of genius was behind the process of thinking that is recorded in my blog Intelligence, Personality and Genius; and which culminated in The Genius Famine book (co-written with Edward Dutton). 

In these books I both assumed that creativity was, on the one hand, on a quantitative continuum among humans; but also that some humans had a lot more of it (i.e. the qualitative category of "geniuses"); and this was related to a characterological (or 'personality') trait of the Endogenous personality. 

This I envisaged as a type of person whose attention and motivations were highly-innerly-generated (rather than being in response to external stimuli) - endo-genous can mean "generated from-within". 

(The Endogenous personality also explains many of the characteristic unusual personality traits of geniuses. On the one hand; there is not one standard genius personality type, on the other hand, the various unusual traits, as well as the averages for geniuses as a group, can be understood as various expressions of an unusually strong domination by innerly-generated motivations.)

However, these writings of mine were within the field of science, and did not, therefore, address the ultimate questions that lie out-with science. In particular, the origins of creativity were not mentioned. 

Science cannot, of course, discuss where creativity comes-from, except to assume it comes from the other entities and phenomena that are a part of science. 

Therefore, the best theories of creativity in science can only assume that creativity is a process of selections and recombination, interpolation and extrapolation, of what is 'already known' to science - and that the genius is therefore someone with exceptional ability to generate 'random' hypotheses from pre-existing materials, and then rapidly to sort-through and evaluate them. 

The assumed process of creativity therefore (and not by accident) resembles natural selection: undirected generation of variants, followed by a selection among these variants, based upon some functional criterion.  

But it can be seen that such a notion of 'creativity' means that there is ultimately nothing really new about what is created. From the perspective of science; all creation is (by assumption, hence by definition) just selection, recombination etc. 

Such an idea of creation fits-with the understanding of classical Christian theology which draws a qualitative line between God-The-Creator (the one-and-only creator of everything from nothing, in a once-for all act); and Man the "creature" whose creating can only be a matter of selecting and re-shuffling what already exists in God's creation. 

Thus God is the only really-real creator, and Man can only mimic divine creation in a kind of 'paint-by-numbers' process; as a creature wholly made by God and using materials and instructions provided entirely by God. 

From this point-of-view; divine creation is a done deal: it already contains everything, and therefore cannot be added to. 

But if we consider the creative act itself, and assume that there must be the possibility of genuinely original creation - a creation which does indeed make something new; then we come down to the idea of creation as a property of any Being - much like life, consciousness and purpose are other attributes of a being. 

In other words, we can (it is possible, if we wish) assume that creativity is one of the attributes of all Beings - including God and including all other Beings.  

And that is, indeed, what I assume!

But what is creativity? 

In the first place, it can be defined double-negatively (using terms form medieval Christian theology), as an example of uncaused cause or a first mover. 

Another, more positive, way of thinking about it; is that genius is "generative" (as the etymology implies) -- that is, genius is a kind of "spontaneous generation", originating in a Being, whereby what emerges could be regarded as an expression of the Being from-which it emerges. 

It is also helpful to remember that Beings were unembodied spirits before there was incarnation. And, if we assume that spirits (as Beings) are potentially creative; then the primary kind of creativity is thinking rather than doing something to the material world. Genius relates primarily to thought, not artifact. 

(But, by the same account; this concept of thinking is real, thinking is a part of the world; such thinking has an effect on the world.) 

This clarifies that the essence of a human creative genius is not a book, painting or a piece of music; but the thinking from-which an artefact may, or may not, later be derived.   

At the end of this line of reasoning; I arrived at an understanding of creating which includes divine creation and also the potential creativity of Man and all other Beings - God, Man and Beings within a single reality to which all these Beings may (in principle) contribute their creativity. 

Such creativity is potentially originative, generative, genuinely novel - such that whenever God 'enlists' another unique Being into his creative project, that will expand the possibilities of creation-as-a-whole. 

And - because creation is originative in each Being; this understanding makes of creation something potentially open-ended and everlasting. There is no reason why creativity would ever 'run-out'; since it is (potentially) an attribute of any Being.

This also fits with my other understanding of the nature of divine creation as being a process of exactly such 'enlistment'; a process of God creating the universe by securing the harmonious cooperation of other Beings. 

I imagine the primordial situation ()before divine creation) as one in which each Being pursued its own unique and selfish creating; so that the whole did not add-up to anything - the individual purposes just 'cancelled-out' each other. 

God's first act of creation was (by various means, differing through history) to 'recruit' more and more Beings to his creative project; so that these Beings began to share purposes and to cooperate in these purposes. 

The principle of this cooperation was what we call Love. 

Loving Beings align their creativity towards the fulfilment of Love - and this is why Love is the very heart of the Christian understanding of God. 

So, an interest in human creativity and the phenomenon of genius - which preceded my conversion to Christianity; ended by feeding back into my core understanding of the metaphysics of Christianity and the human condition!

I came across a recent book - Ludwig Wittgenstein, by Miles Hollingworth Oxford University Press, 2018), via a podcast interview entitled "Wittgenstein as mystic" - which I found intriguing in several ways; including the Holligworth seemed rather more interesting and personally committed than the usual run of academic philosophers. 

Consequently, I got hold of and read the book with pretty intense concentration; and, at first, was stimulated and excited by the sense of some Big Thing emerging throughout. 

But, in the end, I felt very let-down. The book seemed to promise much, some kind of break-out into something free and creative and beyond the constraints of the usual... But it delivered me back to the same-old/ same-old world of mainstream academia and its solid linkage to The System - as evidenced by the insidious and soul-sapping inversional values that underlie this book, and lurk behind everything mainstream. 

It set me to reflecting, yet again, about that unusual quality in Wittgenstein; the way that he seems to hold-out the possibility of a genuinely alternative answer and 'escape' - and yet does not. And to wondering why this is.

My conclusion is that - for all his rigorous skepticism about The System (about the dominant and superficially-compelling discourse of logic, mathematics, science etc.), and for all the mysticism of that world of the unspeakable, the religiousness of that which lies beyond or behind what can be said (etc) - the whole of Wittgenstein takes-place within the core assumptions of "Western Philosophy", and so of course it cannot escape the implications of Western Philosophy. 

One needs to go deeper than W. went in order to see where we are, and thereby become inwardly free from it. 

In other words, we need to go as deep as our primary assumptions concerning the nature of reality - that is, metaphysics; and Wittgenstein shared the deep aversion to doing this which characterized his era - indeed the refusal to do this. Something which has, to very varying degrees and in different domains, characterized Western philosophy since at least Ancient Greek times when several core assumptions became habitual.  

And Hollingworth needs to go deeper than he does. He mistakes a degree of detachment from the career structures of academia for intellectual and spiritual independence. Yet it is again and again clear that he is himself a (partly explicit, more fully implicit) supporter and sustainer of several aspects of the core and mainstream 'liberalizing' agenda of the globalist-leftist-materialist System.

The explanatory 'climax' of the book purports to be a distinction between physical and mental philosophy, thinking and doing (which is itself a vast metaphysical assumptions!) and a series of reflections of sex/sexuality in relation to Wittgenstein. 

This whole section rings false, is full of strong but wrong assertions, inconsistencies, and - this is the problem - it is bounded by the very recent and local sex-conceptualizations of political correctness... Thus the foundation of the thesis is just A Mess. And since the key explanation is an incoherent mash-up, the whole of the rest of the books structure retrospectively collapses into less than the sum of its parts.

Wittgenstein's mysticism is ultimately a oneness mysticism, because his assumption is that God must be one, and one who created everything from nothing (ex nihilo) - so that everything is of God and one. 

The failure is that W. does not recognize the asserted oneness and this nature of creation as assumptions - therefore he fails to acknowledge metaphysics.

W. also shares the assumption that the world is made of Things as well as Beings; Things that include all manner of physical abstractions (relating to such as matter, forces, fields, and their mathematical descriptions). 

For instance, one major discussed philosophical example of 'freedom' is making moves on a chessboard: i.e. an abstract mathematical game of un-alive pieces within the bounds of a fixed and unified 'world'. Such a model begs all the vital questions concerning freedom. 

The failure is that to assume un-aliveness as ultimate to reality has such downstream consequences of that Beings, such as ourselves, are ultimately constrained by the un-alive. We are regarded as dwelling among un-aliveness. Un-aliveness even permeates the understanding of God (since Wittgenstein's assumed God, as with many mainstream Christians, must be the ultimate source of un-aliveness). 

By my understanding; a fundamental (albeit common!) misunderstanding of Christianity is almost inevitable given such assumptions. Indeed Wittgenstein's reflections of Christ and Christianity are ethically focused, and to do with conduct in this life - as evidenced by W.'s focus on Tolstoy's version of Christianity. Such entails a Great Deal of moral agonizing about the human condition, and its paradoxical impossibilities. 

That Christianity - on different metaphysical assumptions - might instead be about everlasting life versus death, resurrection versus spirit; and love as creation... such cosmic transformations are out-with the scheme created by Wittgenstein's ultimate assumptions.

In all this Wittgenstein is not distinctive nor unusual, but absolutely mainstream within Western philosophy. He brought a new quality to the conversation, as I say a kind of agonized and confessional quality; and the feeling (partly from his own subjectivity, partly asserted) that he was cutting deeper and making a fresh start on thinking - but this is ultimately an illusion.  

(The fact of Wittgenstein's immediate and sustained success among high status and upper-class British intellectuals of a modernists, anti-Christian (pro-evil) type (e.g. the Bloomsbury group and the Cambridge Apostles) - all this ought to be a red flag waving against the idea of Wittgenstein as a genuinely effective mystical or Christian thinker.   

Therefore, once again (and this has happened to me three or more times before), I leave this latest encounter with Wittgenstein once again regarding him as a rather fascinating character, indeed a somewhat addictive character! -- but one whose actual work is ultimately deeply-conventional and therefore useless to our fundamental needs here-and-now: not just useless but (due to its implicit promises) actually misleading.

Wittgenstein famously stated that the philosopher's job ought to be show a trapped fly the way out of a fly-bottle. The bottle was a container into which the fly had strayed (e.g. in search of aromatic food, being used as bait) but once inside the fly could not escape. Instead, he just buzzed about in a panic. To me, this seems like projection - in that Wittgenstein and his philosophy has served as a fly-trap for many people - both at the time, and since. His personality and work is baited with the promise of autonomy of thinking and escape from system; and the philosophy offers certain, limited, satisfactions. Yet once inside the Wittgensteinian bottle - all genuine escape routes are self-blocked by unexamined assumptions. 

So Wittgenstein will be discovered, eventually, to be as useless and misleading as is the work of the entirety of Western Philosophy - being - as it is - rooted in metaphysical assumptions that are unnoticed, denied; or regarded not as assumptions but as necessary truths of existence. 

Such is our situation. 

The reason for the intractability of our civilizational decline, and why the causes of decline are defended, sustained and abetted (at various levels) by Almost Everybody; is exactly that our ideological/ philosophical roots lie so deep... 

As deep as roots can be, which is as deep as our primary assumptions concerning the nature of reality.  

Note: I should give credit to the fact that - for about two-thirds its length - I was pretty gripped by Hollingworth's account of Wittgenstein's life and work. As academic books go, it is a superior product.

Yet the whole basis of the book is that it is more than just another academic book on Wittgenstein: thus it engages in various 'breaking the fourth wall' and Tristram Shandy-esque strategies of authorial insertion. These are seemingly expressive of sincerity and a perspective from 'life' rather than 'career'. 

But, by the end and overall, I felt instead the gravitational pull of the ordinary academic values, and the modern-Western socio-political assumptions into which academia is now locked by bureaucratic structures - as well as the pervasive leftism of the intellectual class. This constrains all official instances of 'rebellion' by the need to ingratiate oneself to the ethical arbiters of The System - of which the Oxford University Press is an integral element! 

So the initial promise - and the scattered and stimulating insights - only made worse my frustration at the eventual let-down: as if I had been 'taken for a ride', fallen for a line of speil... 

Not many people try to do difficult things; either that or else they don't learn anything from their experience. 

If they learned from their own experience of doing something difficult; they would soon realize that if you really want to do something difficult: you have to make doing that thing the major priority. 

And - if you do not make doing it the priority; then either the thing will be done badly, or it won't be done at all. 

Not doing it at all means that it won't be done... 

Or, at any rate it means that the 'function' it would have done will not be accomplished. 

What would have happened if the thing had been done, will not happen...

However (and this is the complication): Not doing it at all is not necessarily or usually fatal to people on the inside, people or organizations backed by power and influence; because the failure will be covered-up and celebrated as success anyway - because most people don't really know or care about the thing. 

Indeed; I have often seen that people who try to do something difficult, and fail, and instead make that thing worse! are celebrated for their work. 

So long as the people say - over and over and loudly - that they are working and trying to do the difficult thing - they can be funded and praised for actually making it worse, pretty much forever.   

Anyway, the main point of this is that it is actually - for obvious reasons, when you think about it - very difficult to do difficult things; but the fact that this is not obvious, or denied, or covered-up - means that someone who really is trying to do something difficult will find himself required to do a lot of other stuff as well; and the other stuff will be regarded as more important than the difficult thing. 

One could, indeed, define Leftists as those people who think the other stuff is more important than the difficult thing; and therefore destroy the possibility of accomplishing anything and everything difficult. 

Leftists just take for granted that the difficult stuff will... happen. And therefore they can concentrate on making all the other stuff a pre-requisite of doing the difficult thing. And before long, everybody is talking all the time about other stuff - and wondering vaguely why the difficult things don't happen any more...

Until they read the mass media; and learn that actually the difficult stuff is still happening (yay!), more than ever (whoop!); and the difficult stuff is happening exactly because of all the other stuff! (huzzah!...)

Two worlds emerge: the world of other stuff and the mass of people who care most about other stuff; and the micro-minority world of difficult things - about which only the few people who really care about that difficult thing are concerned. 

So (here is the moral or this story) if you want to do something difficult, and care about it - then either you work for yourself and the (very few!) folk who really care about that difficult thing...

Or else You Won't Do It - for the simple reason that you are Not Even Trying to do it. 

*Note. I mean Leftists 2023. That is, when Leftism (and its basis in atheistic materialism) is the official ideology of The World; but especially all 'international/ multi-national' institutions and Western nations. Leftists of the past and in other places were/are (by contrast) partial and/or rooted (to some significant degree) in human instinct and common sense; which is Not true here and now. Leftist ideology is (here and now) rooted-in a incrementally-increasing inversion of instinct and common sense (and, increasingly explicit, opposition to The Good): a virtual-world unto itself.

From The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend: the archetypal themes, images and characters of the Arthurian cycle and their place in the Western magical tradition. Gareth Knight, 1983. Excerpted from pp 123-4.

In the matter of Britain the days of the dawn of our epoch, man was far less individualized than he is now. Man was more group-minded and open to inner plane influences. Those who could best guide the destiny of their particular group were those who could be most readily receptive to teachings of a higher order of consciousness from the inner planes. 

Certain blood lines had a natural clairvoyance which was an important corollary of power and vision. This was the foundation of the concept of aristocracy and the 'divine right of kings' - a concept so deeply ingrained in human consciousness that Charles I was proud to be a martyr in defense of it. 

The importance of this sacred kingship, and our inherited ease of contact with the inner planes, is clearly demonstrated in the Arthurian legend of Arthur's conception and birth, which reveal a specific policy of genetic engineering on the part of Merlin. 

Arthur, according to Merlin's intention, was meant to be a priest-king in the ancient tradition of Atlantis, chosen before birth, as a result of a mating carefully planned in the light of esoteric genetic considerations. 

Merlin chose the two parents with great care. Arthur's father was to be Uther Pendragon, of the ancient British royal lines. On his mothers side, Arthur had the blood of an Atlantean princess, Igraine. She was one of the Sacred Clan, who had come to Cornwall and become the wife of the local chieftain; known as Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall or Duke of Tintagel.

**

Gareth Knight was a scholar of Owen Barfield, and aware of the idea that human consciousness had developed through the centuries, in a particular direction from groupish to individualized, from obedience towards freedom; and in accordance with a 'divine plan'. Here he explains and imagines this in terms of the Arthurian legendarium - with the purpose of using the result as a focus for ceremonial magical activities. 

In particular, GK homes in on the transitional stage of human consciousness - the 'classical and medieval' centuries which came in-between the remote era of immersive and unselfconscious groupishness of tribal Man, and the current individualism of modern Man. 

This was a time when group-identity and clairvoyance could be found most strongly in certain blood-lines of inheritance; and when contact with the spiritual world was still achievable - but only by such people, and/or by the use of initiation, ritual, symbol and other 'technologies' and disciplines. 

This passage triggered thoughts of the English then British monarchy, and the occasional rulership of monarchs who - to some degree - approximated to the 'priest-king' ideal. There were several such in the Anglo-Saxon era - most notably Alfred; but the Norman invasion, which was an alien and hostile takeover, caused a considerable disruption. 

Not until Henry II (the first Plantagenet) do we find a monarch that might be supposed to have had some 'magical' attributes - mainly by the female influences of his mother Matilda (who was descended from the Saxon kings) and his wife Eleanor of Aquitane (who had many of the attributes of an fairy enchantress). 

From then, through to the end of the Stuart line (with the death of Anne), there were from time to time English kings or queens with a touch of magic about them, and an apparent capacity sometimes to connect 'clairvoyantly' with higher guidance: e.g. Richard I, Edward III, Elizabeth I.   

By my understanding, this form of natural magic gradually but inexorably dwindled, but persisted as at least a possibility into the 20th century - however it is now so weak a stream that it has become ineffectual. 

Such is the nature of these times, and of our predicament. 

There are three basic possibilities: 

We can yearn for, and try to restore, ancient ways -including the group-ish enchantment of those times; including to hope for the restoration of a sacred monarch, with divine right and naturally 'clairvoyant'  who serves his people by his own subjection to divine guidance. 

We can (and this has been the response of our official and mainstream culture) dispense altogether with the magical and spiritual aspects of life - except maybe as a hobby and lifestyle choice that does not affect our primary motivations (and these motivations are some mixture of political ideology with whatever is currently hedonically-expedient: i.e. the bureaucrat-careerist archetype). 

Or... we can look forward, through, and beyond the present aspiritual, mundane, ideological and hedonic world; and consciously seek as individuals for a qualitatively-different kind of spiritual knowledge and guidance. 

It seems impossible (for many reasons) for us to make ourselves feel good, or even better, most of the time - certainly not all of the time. Indeed, to focus on our feelings seems like the wrong approach altogether. And indeed it is! (although our feelings are nonetheless always relevant). 

Higher consciousness (i.e. a more god-like awareness and perspective) sounds to be working along better lines, with better goals; but it is hardly more attainable in practice - if higher consciousness is regarded as a more divine way of being. 

It does not take much adversity to prevent us achieving higher consciousness (or even imagining that we do), or to knock us off such a perch. And our own sinful natures will do the same, sooner or later.  

Yet if we recognize that consciousness is a kind of awareness, then more consciousness is a frequently attainable goal. 

In the first place we can be aware that more consciousness is needed in general; 

Secondly we can be aware that greater consciousness is desirable in some particular; 

And thirdly; at best we might actually experience that consciousness. 

Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield both regarded this as perhaps the most important task of Western Man in the Twentieth Century - and that fact that Western Man did not even attempt that task, is a deep and primary cause of that profoundly self-hating, and self-destructive civilizational trend that continues to increase. 

Of course, consciousness is a means or a mode; and to become more conscious means conscious of something. That bit often gets left-out when people talk about consciousness. 

The first step therefore needs to be gaining an understanding of that reality of which we desire to become more conscious - and that implies metaphysical reflection which is itself a form of consciousness. 

The first goal (for most people) is to become conscious of our own primary assumptions concerning the basic nature of reality - how reality is 'structured', how things-in-general work... whatever these assumptions may be (and they are likely to be negations, about what is Not; since that is what our culture inculcates).   

Only after we are aware of them, can we decide whether or not our metaphysical assumptions should be allowed to stand, or should be changed. 

For example, yesterday I was writing that I personally want to regard (assume) reality, the universe, this world... as alive, and composed of Beings. And that I want this - because I regard it as true, and because regarding the universe as made of things leads to great evil. 

Such a recognition (a specific wanting) is at the second stage I described above; it is a recognition of some specific awareness that I desire to develop. 

Even of itself, despite that this form of consciousness is known-about rather than actually achieved, this is progress - and it potentially enables discernment and evaluation of the world.  

From this recognition, I can then strive actually to experience this consciousness of the living universe; actually to see things that way, from that perspective. 

This may be achieved to a partial degree, or for a limited period of time; and we should aim to be aware of this achieved degree of success as well. 

At this phase of Man's development; self-awareness, consciousness, is a vital concern; because without it we cannot escape from this arrested spiritual-adolescence that afflicts so many Western people so severely (and indeed - apparently - nearly everybody everywhere to some significant degree). We have painted ourselves into a corner by our fundamental assumptions - and there can be no escape until after these assumptions are revealed and challenged - otherwise we will just set-about rebuilding our own prison. 

There is therefore a necessary inward turn; rooted in a recognition that our external culture is making things worse; but an inward turn that enables and should be followed by an outward turn, whereby we strive for consciousness of this/ then that/ then the other. 

As a task; it has no obvious end point, and is the task of a lifetime potentially. 

However, what it is that we become conscious about, is a thing that will vary between individuals, and at different stages of life. 

For the young adult; love, sex, work are likely to be subjects about-which to become more conscious of our assumptions, and what we would desire our assumptions to be. Such concerns are spontaneous and unavoidable. 

Whereas for an older person; sleep, death and "the dead" may well become much more important subjects than they were for the young adult. Again; such concerns tend to arise spontaneously.  

In general, the subject matter is not chosen but presses upon us spontaneously. However, the formulation of the pressing problem or recurring question is almost certainly wrong (and therefore unanswerable) - unless the earliest stage of metaphysical reflection has been successfully accomplished. 

It may seem that the task of becoming more conscious is a futile and quietistic bit of private piety - irrelevant to the world, and symptomatic of extreme decadence and selfishness! 

But that is itself an assumption based upon metaphysical convictions that are (very likely) to be unknown and unexamined. 

Before validly discarding the ideal of increased consciousness as a valid goal - for you yourself, here-and-now - you would need to understand explicitly what you would regard as a valid goal and why - in an ultimate (not merely short-term expedient) sense. And become conscious, too, of the nature (and 'mechanisms') of relationship between the individual person and society. 

The thing is to Make A Start; from then, the next problem you ought to address will reveal itself - and one thing will lead to another. 

Although I harp-on about the dangers of double-negative theology for Christians; nonetheless the positive achievement of Jesus Christ (and his 'message') would not have much traction unless people felt that there was some-thing basically, fundamentally, ultimately wrong with The World - some thing which Jesus (at least potentially) set right.  

And what I mean here is at the level of our personal feelings of what is wrong: What is it (what kind of a thing) that we personally feel is wrong about our life and the world?

(What problem to which Jesus offers a solution?)

There are probably any number of things that might in theory be thus regarded; but I think there are just two apparently common but distinct wrong-feelings that seem to dominate people. 

Probably the commonest (in the Western civilization at any rate) is that suffering is the main problem, the main thing wrong with the world. So widespread and powerful is this idea that it hardly requires explaining - but anyway...

Any or all kinds of suffering might be meant: pain, misery, disablement, fear, despair, humiliation -- different people mostly experience, are most susceptible to, or focus on; different kinds of suffering. 

And the wrongness of suffering my be my suffering, the suffering of particular loved others - whether human, animal, or something else; it may be the totality of suffering in the world; or it may be the wrongness of suffering of any Beings anywhere, ever (i.e. that there ought never to be any suffering).

In sum: this is the idea that the suffering - whether its existence, its prevalence, or its severity - is what is basically wrong with this world. 

This seems to be a hugely powerful and widespread conviction - it is apparently the basis of several religions, and what they claim to cure. Suffering as the main problem to be addressed is the basis of almost all public moral discourse nowadays; the rationale of preventing, reducing, or stopping various kinds-of-suffering (or putative suffering) is the basis of a great deal of all mainstream policy and political action.  

But there is another idea of basic wrongness - less often expressed, but just as real; and that is that the main thing wrong with this world is that nothing lasts.   

Anything that we value will not last; everything will die, or in some other way be destroyed. 

...No matter how large, strong, how long it has existed - it will crumble, it will come to an end. 

All that we value the most - our love, those we love the most, whatever we most love doing, our achievements - will change, will end. All that is most virtuous or beautiful will end. 

And Be Forgotten Utterly.

We ourselves will die, everybody will die; all the animals and plants will die; our living planet, and the mineral planet, the sun and solar system - all will change, crumble, end.  

This aspect of the nature of our world, I often term 'entropy'; and entropy in this sense, is a rival to suffering as the major candidate for what is wrong with the world. 

The "weight of entropy" may be the tragedy of life.  

Yet suffering and entropy as the main problem of life, are each very different in their nature and consequences. 

For example, a selfish person might feel there is nothing wrong with the world at times when he is personally completely-happy (i.e. when he personally is not suffering); and someone might also assume that if suffering could be abolished from the world - then there would be essentially nothing wrong with it. 

But someone who believed that entropy was the main problem would perhaps be most aware of the wrongness of the world at exactly those times when he was most happy, and did not suffer. Because he would realize that this state could not last. 

(Have we not felt this ourselves, in the first full flush of falling in love? Perfect happiness... all-too-soon undercut by the fear and conviction that it Will Not Last?)

Indeed, the more 'successful' was a Man's life - the more joyous and fulfilled, the more loving and creative -- the more strongly would the fact of entropy weigh upon him; because he would be ever-aware that all this would, for sure, be lost.  

One who regards entropy as the main problem in this life, this world; cannot envisage any this-worldly way in which the situation could be cured - because this world is 'ruled' by entropy. 

No conceivable political program or psychological treatment would make any difference. The better that things became - the more tragic the sense that none of it would last...

This circles back to Jesus Christ; because Jesus did not claim to eliminate or even diminish suffering in this world...

Or, even if you think Jesus did claim this, then the past 2000 years have (surely?) been a massive refutation that He could deliver it! 

Consequently; those who focus the most on suffering as that which is basically wrong with the world, are often those most hostile to Jesus and Christianity. 

But Jesus did claim to offer a way of escape from entropy: this is what Jesus meant by resurrection, eternal life, and heaven. 

I was interesting in philosophy from my late teens; and then in my mid-twenties became gripped by some philosophical problems to the point that they seemed of vital importance to sort-out, in some way. 

These rather abstract problems - such as about how we could know something, and be sure ("certain") that we knew, what did knowing mean? etc - seemed also very relevant to my then personal happiness, and my ability to make life-choices, and to lead a satisfying life in my future. 

I had a general hunch that if I questioned and questioned, rigorously and honestly, I would reach a bedrock of solid truth that would satisfy me, and upon which I could build my life. 

Being then young and gregarious; I thought of philosophy as a group activity; and I wanted above all to be able to discuss it - A Lot - until I got to the bottom of these things. It hurt to put off this discussing, yet of course there was nobody in my circle that wanted to talk (and talk!) about the things that seemed important to me. 

Nonetheless, I though that maybe I could find a situation in which I might be guided to the right sources, and find such conversation. I went to a couple of evening classes, but I presumably did not find them to be what I wanted, because I quickly dropped out of the courses. 

The problem was, at root, I was being taught about the stuff on the course - whereas I wanted to work on what seemed important to me: here, now. I did not want to put-off my life until later. 

So I thought maybe I could go back to university and do a philosophy bachelors degree. I realized that this would still have the problem of being taught other stuff; but I thought that I would there be able to spend a lot of consecutive time on working at the problems that really interested me, I hoped I would find the conversation I wanted; and at the end of it get credentials by which people would 'take me seriously' when I reached my own conclusions. 

There was a mixture of wanting to make a life-commitment - to show to myself (perhaps) that I was serious about this stuff, and of expediency. 

Since I had found Wittgenstein's On Certainty to be discussing almost exactly what concerned me - I went so far as to arrange to study philosophy at his college (Trinity) in Cambridge but in two years instead of three (shortened because I already had a degree); my recollection is that I was to begin the degree in autumn 1986. 

But I did not proceed with this plan, partly because I had seriously underestimated the extra cost of college fees (on top of university fees), and partly because my experience of meeting and talking with three philosophy academics at Cambridge (including Wittgenstein's pupil Elizabeth Anscombe) was disappointing. 

You see; reading about the best old philosophers - and I had been especially reading about some of the more ancient and more 'existential' ones (and in this respect Wittgenstein was a throwback); you get the impression of people whose lives were dedicated to the 'love of wisdom' - but meeting modern philosophers, you meet professional academics whose specialty is philosophy (although some of them can act the part of the old-style type - whether in person or in print). 

This was, of course, my own stupid fault. It was a case of wanting something exact but incoherent that could not be had, and then being disappointed when I could not get it! 

Instead of a bachelors in philosophy, I ended by doing a masters in english literature; but spending about half that year reading philosophy, and informally attending philosophy seminars, and talking to a few philosophers - albeit rather superficially because our interests were so different.

Over the following years; I gradually realized that philosophy was really important to me (e.g. I continued attending seminars while I was on the faculty at Glasgow University), but that it was something I would mostly need to do by myself - navigating my way to the relevant authors and ideas, and working my way through the ideas. 

For a few years I did have a lot of genuine philosophical conversations with a colleague (Peter Andras) about Niklaus Luhmann's Systems Theory - so I did end up having that experience. 

I mean really working ('doing' philosophy, as Wittgenstein called it - but in his case it sound like a kind of monologue to disciples, rather than genuinely dyadic); in real time, sticking to the detail of specific and mutually fascinating ideas.

Talking on and past the surfaces that are usual in social chit chat so that personality falls away - being led by the ideas rather than politeness, or trying to be interesting; the conventions and considerations of sociability and the other limitations that constrains normal discourse to be little more than amusing or arguing for dominance. 

Philosophical conversation turned out to be very helpful in grasping the (already defined) theory, and at developing applications and implications. 

But - since two people are always somewhat different in the content and direction of their lives and destinies - conversation also can have a constraining effect on development and learning. And therefore it became necessary to return to working (essentially) on my own at philosophy. 

My impression was that serious conversation about philosophy is only sometimes and temporarily possible, when the interests of two (maybe more) people happen to converge and run together for a while; but that this has a natural lifespan of value, after which it would become routinized, professionalized, or merely sociable. 

In other words, and despite the allure of Platonic Dialogues - which are, after all, a kind of fiction; and also seem like expositions of ready-made philosophy, rather than depicting a process of genuine discovery - I have come to believe that philosophy is in its essence a solitary activity. 

If we don't do it ourselves; there is nobody that can do it for us. 

Indeed, given all the constraints and difficulties, it is nearly always easier and more philosophically helpful to engage deeply with a book than with a person. And even better to debate 'with oneself'; in the sense that we ought to become our own best critics. 

And the whole business of following set curricula, performing exercises and examinations, developing professional expertise, or being guided by a canon of required authors; that stuff constitutes an activity which is something-else other than real philosophy. 

This is a little gem of television from a BBC TV comedy-drama called The Detectorists - (2014-2017 plus a best-ignored later 'special' edition). 

The series was uneven in quality (any bits about featuring the metal detecting hobbyist duo and their club were superb; those parts about the human relationships... not-so-much); but at its best, this was about as good as modern television gets. 

The following sequence ended series three, episode one; and its combination of script, acting, visuals, with the thrilling harmonies of the Tyneside sisters The Unthanks song Magpie - is literally hair-raising. 

Enjoy!

There is no point in combing-through the mass media, or scientific journals, and trying to filter-out the truth; because there is no such thing as a truth-filter! 

If there was a truth-filter, there would be no need for honesty - and clearly there is need; as we see all round us!

Yet so much of what purports to be alternative or 'based' mass-social media; does little but (post by post, article by article, day after day...) cherry-pick through fake-news and fake-science, fake-government reports, fake-polls; sifting sources that are Not Even Trying to be truthful. 

All this activity is therefore (de facto, if not by intent) just part-of The System; part of The System of attempted manipulation and control - even when, as individuals, the people concerned are genuinely trying to present an independent, alternative, anti-Establishment perspective.

It seems one cannot be sufficiently paranoid about this stuff! Yet he who touches pitch will be defiled; and to engage with dishonesty for much time, has an almost inevitably corrupting effect - at least that's what I observe, in myself and in others. 

Yet we must judge: we must evaluate; we are creatures of values, and the vast amount of incoming stuff of our world therefore must-be - and shall-be, whether we like it or not - evaluated. And evaluated By Us! (I mean evaluated by you and me, specifically.)

So we are compelled to form some kind of judgment on even the most stupid and insubstantial material of our virtual world - showbiz/ royal romances and scandals, show trials, manufactured war news, baseless pseudo-science etc, etc. 

But we should expend the minimum of time and effort on this unavoidable work, in order to avoid corruption.

How can this possibly happen? So Much garbage, and yet we cannot help forming judgments on it!

It seems impossible - yet as Christians we know it is possible - because God has placed us and sustains us in this situation; and therefore we know-for-sure that we personally can do it; not perfectly, of course, but sufficiently well to attain salvation and to learn-spiritually. 

I think the answer lies in first adopting an Us and Them attitude to the world, to this mortal life; where the two sides are defined as those allied with God and creation, versus those who oppose. 

We must trust something and somebody, and should trust Us, not them. 

But we should be ready to accept that the category of Us (those we know sufficiently to trust) is a very small one; as befits a species who have spent most of our history in very small, clannish societies. 

The category of Us is therefore likely to be one containing perhaps a dozen or a score, as it always has been; and indeed in the mega-mass societies of today the category of Us in The West is probably going to be smaller than it would have been 1000, 5000, or 10,000 years ago; or in other parts of the world. If we can trust a handful of people to provide us with informed, competent, and honest evaluations - we are doing-well.  

Secondly, by bearing in mind that this mortal life is about learning, which is often a matter of making mistakes and learning from them. 

In practice; this means making a clear and explicit (at least with ourselves) judgment -- then being honest about whether or not it stands-up to further experience; and being prepared to abandon that which does not stand-up. 

This, in turn, means that while coherence is very important, we should not allow a fear of inconsistency (e.g. being accused of changing our minds) with respect to our past evaluations to stand in the path of learning. 

As of 2023 in The West, this means that most learning will be in the direction of becoming an ever smaller minority! 

Those who claim to be learning by joining-with more and more System-evaluations (e.g. the way that the mainstream Christian churches have claimed to be learning over recent decades!) - are in truth merely converging with the side of evil. 

Such people are incrementally being-corrupted; incrementally rejecting the Us which is the side of God and divine creation; and joining the side of Them who oppose Good.  

In sum: if we find ourselves believing those whom we do not trust, or joining the majority (or large minority) view with respect to an evaluation; then we are almost certainly making a mistake. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) research began by claiming to be able to make a thinking machine: an intelligent computer that was intelligent in the way human beings are intelligent. 

It has ended-up by fobbing us off with computer programmes that use human intelligence to mimic human intelligence (in ways that the uninformed and inattentive users do not always and instantly detect - this being the current ultra-low bar criterion of successful AI!...)...

And then claiming that they have done the job they set out to do! 

It seems that people simply do not notice that human beings are involved at every step of the current so-called AI!

The currently vaunted text AI is first programmed by human beings; then it uses human-produced texts in order to generate human-mimicking texts; then it "learns" by being subjected to continual positive and negative reinforcement by human beings!   

In other words; the "Learning" of AI by "feedback" gathered during usage; amounts to a continual process of re-programming!

It has reached the bizarre situation that a massive and continual process of human-dictation, direction, and correction of computation; is somehow being edited-out from our awareness - and all the 'credit' is being allocated to Artificial, not human, intelligence! 

People are fooled because they want to be fooled; and they fail to learn from experience because they fear to learn. 

Obvious failure may thus be 'sold' as success; and System-sustaining propaganda gets lapped-up by masses of willing dupes who want nonsense to be true.

Note added: Why do so many people want the AI nonsense to be true? Perhaps because they (rightly) mistrust and fear human beings; and have rejected faith/trust in the Christian God so deeply and thoroughly that they are almost insensible to their own consequent psychosis -- therefore they grasp at the straw of potentially wise-and-benign AI, as the only hope they know for avoiding the nihilism of utter despair.

Over at The Notion Club Papers, I describe the real nature of hobbit authority structures in the Shire. 

Clue: The Shire was Not (as so often mistakenly asserted) any kind of an 'anarchy'!

I have noticed that there are a lot of people who believe that They possess secret advanced technology (e.g. ultra-advanced aircraft and weaponry; but also 'free' energy, space travel, time travel). 

These are, overall, the same group of people who regard AI as being actually artificial intelligence, as having massively advanced recently, and as now poised to take-over from humans because it is better than humans. 

I don't! I believe that real science is dead, major geniuses are essentially extinct, the international bureaucracy has partly caused but massively exacerbated both of these problems; and the overall capability of mankind has therefore been declining for some decades. 

I believe that AI is not intelligent At All, and takes over from humans because this is in line with the demonic agenda and expedient from the managerial class; and takes over despite its gross functional inferiority.   

I have also noticed that those who 'believe-in' ultra-advanced technology and AI capability; also tend to believe that this world (and maybe ourselves) is some kind of simulation, a Matrix-like world of energetic projections and images - or something.

I don't. I believe this mortal life and earthly world is absolutely real, albeit temporary; and functionally intended to be an intermediate phase between our pre-mortal life as spirits, and the possibility (if we choose it) of eternal resurrected life.  

We seem to have two different metaphysical systems here; that is, different fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of reality. 

Both can't be right; but the distinction cannot be established by 'evidence' because there is no agreement of what constitutes 'evidence'. Nor can scientific (or other) theories help us; because the truth of such theories is what is at issue.  

As so often; by the normal methods of argument, we are compelled either to ignore the problem, or else address it via useless rhetorical clashes. 

The valid alternative is to expose to awareness our own fundamental but unexamined metaphysical assumptions - and then evaluate with the deepest possible intuition whether we really-do believe these once tacit assumptions; and whether indeed we want to believe them!

(I have written previously on the specific subjects referenced above - if you want to know what I think more exactly; then you might do relevant-word searches using the search-box in the top left-hand corner of this page.)

The Total Lie may be contrasted with both "Normal lies" - i.e. a deliberate dishonesty that has been twisted to serve expediency; yet seeded with truths, to make it plausible... 

And also contrasted with the Big Lie - which has always been possible. 

I would (now) say that the Big Lie is characterized by stunning us with its audacity. 

With a Big Lie, ordinary people cannot believe that anyone could or would lie about such a thing. 

As when someone falsely - for expedient reasons or self-gratification - claims to have cancer, or to have been raped; or that a national leaders would strategically destroy its own people and society, for their own profit and gratification... Such notions are just Too Much for the masses to believe - especially for typical secular-modern-leftist people; whose grasp of the nature and reality of evil is tenuous or non-existent 

There is certainly a significant element of the Big Lie about the vast modern deceptions such as the birdemic, climate change or Fire Nation war - the 'ordinary' (unthinking) person thinks that 'all those people' 'couldn't possibly!' be lying about 'something like that'. 

But there is more to these modern fake reality lies than audiacity; and this is that each Total Lie relies on its being vastly mutually supported by many other lies. 

Each Total Lie comes surrounded by an interlocking shell of multiple kinds of untruthfulness: other lies, distortions, selections, misunderstandings - and supported by a variety of evil motivations (pride, greed, control, destruction etc) and a variety of types of blind incompetence and insightless insanity. 

It is this protective shell of mutually-reinforcing evil, dishonesty and incompetence which makes it, in practice, impossible adequately to address the Total Lie. There are just too many lies-piled-upon-lies for people to believe it possible. 

(Impossible especially given the indifference and impatience of the masses - and their basically wrong assumptions and motivations.) 

In other words, the Total Lie is only possible in a modern totalitarian society; and in a society in which totalitarianism is (in some combination) both accepted and denied: that is; a society where the only truth is external and public truth, and the private individual has implicitly subordinated his inner self to worldly power.

In the past; it was necessary to seed overall-lies with specific-truths - indeed, the most effective forms of dishonesty were mostly-correct, but with a few key falsehoods that made all the difference. 

But when basic assumptions are false, there is no limit to the scale of dishonesty; and nowadays assumptions are false - so we have a situation of unlimited dishonesty: the Total Lie. 

Examples abound!

The birdemic is best understood as a Total Lie. From bottom to top, in terms of its 'facts' and their interpretation - it was essentially a complete falsehood.

CO2 Climate Change/ Emergency-Global-boiling is another such. It is based upon false observations, manufactured theories, nonsensical inferences - to make-up a tapestry of such utter nonsense that one stands awed and aghast. 

The Fire Nation war... It is clear that the 'understanding' of nearly everybody in The West is utterly-made up, a virtual war, completely disconnected from reality. 

The antiracism agenda, the feminist agenda, the whole diversity/ equality/ inclusion/ equity business... Where can one even begin to discuss such a tissue of malignant drivel?  

It seems that the combination of a totalitarian and multinational tyranny - with all significant governments, institutions/ organizations and corporations linked-bureaucratically; and with a vast and growing mass-social media - leeching attention, controlling and coordinating human minds; has led to a virtuality - a Total Lie which most people inhabit most of the time; rooted in cycles and elaborations of false assumptions, fake fakes, and incoherent concepts. 

Corrective feedback no longer happens; since common sense based upon personal experience and observation is is regarded as a kind of evil, and crushed into non-existence by wrap-round consensus from the totalitarian-media complex. 

Ultimately; the Total Lie has become possible because - officially, top-down, and by the assumptions of all institutions - there is no coherence to be had in reality. 

Reality is solidly-regarded as nothing-but a mixture of randomness and blind determinism. 'Truth' can thus only be arbitrary and imposed. 

Ultimately; people have allowed to be built, supported, then walled-themselves-into, a world of Total Lies; by their rejection of God and the spirit.

When there is nothing-but The System, then The System is everything and (of course!) defines "reality".

So, when it is expedient for those who stand out-with and manipulate The System, to lie about everything, then a condition of Total Lie will become the permanent dwelling place of the masses.

I've often written that real science is dead, and that there are no longer any world-class geniuses of the stature of the previous centuries; so it may be an obvious inference that real art* - as of here-and-now, is dead in an analogous sense to science. 

[* I mean art in its wide sense - music, literature, architecture &c. as well as the visual arts.]

That is, the institutions of art are dead - and such art as continues does so at the level of individual persons, or informal groupings of individuals built on dyadic relationships. The end of art institutions/ organizations/ formal relations - makes a significant difference. 

It means that 'objective standards' have become largely irrelevant, since the real art is not mass consumed; but is for self-consumption or 'local' consumption. 

Likewise, professional versus amateur has almost reversed its meaning; since to be professional means putting one's artistry in a very subordinate position - only amateurs can be committed artists. 

Putting all this together; I think we can see how it is that art has lost its power; people neither get, nor demand, strong - life-dominating - aesthetic relationships with art, in the way they used-to, up to a century ago. 

(Consider the intense attitudes to art displayed in Bernard Shaw's writings in the late 19th century, or James Joyce's work in the early decades of the 1900s - but seldom much later.)  

In my generation, a small minority were intense about art for a short phase of adolescence and young adulthood - but even this residue seems to have dissolved away. Nowadays, people demand - and receive - extremely little of art; just amusement or distraction, the stimulation of a bit of conversation (or writing), maybe a brief evocation of (visceral, not aesthetic) feelings; and the 'artists' are just the same... 

There may be the reality (or a simulation of) some aspect of the leftist-totalitarian socio-political agenda, as a claim to seriousness; but that isn't art... As used to be obvious - but isn't anymore.    

Art is dead in the sense that its public manifestations are feeble; and also corrupt - in that 'art' (self-defined) now pursues anti-artistic goals, anti-aesthetic goals; on the basis of that demonically-inspired value-inversion that grips our 'civilization'.

Yet - what it is that made art possible remains a factor in at least some people. And after all, art as a separate entity is a relatively modern phenomenon; since (apparently) 'art' used to be (up to the renaissance, at least) an inseparable part of what might be called 'religion'.   

Since I assume that our destiny is to complete - but this time consciously and by choice - a kind of return to the ways of being, thinking, knowing, doing of childhood (or, probably, early hunter gatherer-type life) -- I therefore suppose that art might again become a small scale, personal/ local, manifestation or enhancement of 'religion'; rather than there being a return of self-sufficient and powerful 'art works'.

After all, it was expected - and to a significant degree it was indeed the case - that each 'art work' (picture, sculpture, building, novel, poem, play, symphony etc) - from the renaissance to early 20th century - would be 'autonomous'; would be able of-itself to generate a powerful and objective (including generally, publicly shared) artistic experience.  

When this intent and possibility goes, and after the expectation of it goes; then people may begin to do art for themselves - including not just making artifacts and alterations to the world, but also in thinking, in imagination. 

Of course; this is not really "art" - not in the sense that art was from c.1500 and until a century ago. But it may stem-from and nourish the same ultimate aspect of Man's nature. 

In terms of objective achievement and autonomous power, such an activity will be as-nothing compared with the genius works of the past, according to the expectations and possibilities of this past.

But it may be much more like the artifacts are remains we see from ancient civilizations; little things and evidences that happened to survive; and which seem to result from the spontaneous impulses of ordinary people doing some-thing for their own satisfaction - and not for the consumption of others. 

Such 'gestures' were common among the better of the relatively less-corrupted people of earlier generations - people who did not look to the mass and social media for continual distraction. 

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, 'I will turn back from here.
No, I will go on farther—and we shall see.'
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

I'm beginning to think that positivity is The Thing!

(Of course, it is vital to positive about the Right Thing - although honest positivity even about a wrong thing is self-correcting, and often a path to truth.)

I find myself often falling into a habit of negation; because, looked at objectively, there is just So Much that we need to reject!

Yet, for exactly that reason, rejection is endless, and therefore leads nowhere.

(Knowing what not to do is almost useless. If not, then what? - must always be the key question.) 

So a habit of negation must be resisted; kept within-bounds - if it not to take-over and wreck everything... 

An ounce of positivity will outweigh a ton of rejections in the scales of God.

As long as the positivity Really Is positive... And not (as is usual) in root and by motivation merely some version of a double-negativity. All of modern mainstream 'leftist' ideology is double-negative; but so is a great deal of religion, including traditional Christianity. 

To do ourselves any Good; we must therefore be positive; but we must find that positive for ourselves and judge for ourselves that which we are positive about and its genuineness...

Also that positivity must come from us, and be endorsed by us; if it is be be any use as a motivator in this adverse, negative world!

I continue to be intrigued by 'ritual' or 'ceremonial' magic, which in the UK was,  I believe, often (in the practice of such as Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight) a valid means of Christian living - up into the middle 20th century. 

But (I think) is nowadays insufficiently-effective (that is; insufficient to resist the strategic evils of our society and civilization) - or net-malign an influence (i.e. when it has 'converged' with the values of globalist-media-totalitarianism). 

This is because ritual magic was (it seems) rooted in the learning and repeated practice of directed imagination. Initiates were trained by being told what to do, and what to think about or imagine: what to visualize and to feel - while doing prescribed rituals or exercises. 

And the rituals or exercises were repeated multiple times; so that performing them either in real life, or in imagination, would lead to these inner sensory and emotional outcomes. At the end of such training, initiates were able to control their own responses to rituals, symbols, narratives ("path-workings") so as to experience them intensely. 

Beyond this, magic works by making 'contacts' with spiritual beings; and these beings were traditionally specifically named and sought - although in later years there was also the possibility of seeking a contact, making contact, and then (perhaps) finding out who that was (to a greater or lesser degree). (By this stage, Magic had begun to overlap substantially with New Age "channeling", in its various manifestations.) 

The purpose of these spirit contacts was perhaps instructional - intended to get information from the contacts; and partly the actual process of interaction with a contact may itself provide intense experiences of consciousness.  

So, for its adherents, magic could provide information about the nature and functioning of the world; and enable the initiate to have experiences of more intense consciousness - imaginations that are visual, auditory or via any other perceptual sense; and accompanied by strong emotions. 

Consequently, the motivational power of a magical kind of Christianity could be enhanced - in directions that depended upon the content of material that was being inculcated, top-down; by the magical society or individual leader.  

This type of Magical practice recognizes that Modern Man can and does (unavoidably) 'make his experienced-reality'; which is the 'reality' he knows and lives-by. Magic responds to this, by attempting to train people to make a more-or-less standard particular and desired reality for the members of a particular magical group. 

In other words; reality is given to magical adherents in a top-down fashion, analogous to the situation ins a traditional church. 

And this is exactly why I believe that ritual/ ceremonial magic has become essentially obsolete. 

Almost all institutions and formal groups have nowadays become converged with the secular-leftist materialism and its Litmus Test issues via which this agenda-of-evil is being pursued throughout Western civilization, and the places and people influenced by it. 

Since organizations are compulsorily politicized by bureaucratic means and through relentless mass-social media pressure (and usually politicized willingly, enthusiastically; since this evil corruption is so widespread among the masses); then this will affect more and more of the activities of ritual magic - the content of which is more and more leftist hence evil. 

In other words; ritual-ceremonial magic is susceptible to exactly the form of corruption that are the "Christian" churches; and for the same reasons. 

Men make their own experienced-reality - but the only true reality corresponds with that of God's creation. All others oppose created-reality, and lead away from resurrection to eternal Heavenly life. They lead, indeed; to self-chosen, self-made, self-imprisoning hells - of various kinds. 

I believe that already and increasingly; all forms of top-down influence are net-evil (that is, they contain some Good, because all that is created contains some Good - but overall and by motivation they are evil); that is. they are encouraging and enforcing one or many of the false realities in opposition to divine creation. 

As of 2023, these top-down experienced-realities are not just destructive of truth and Goodness; but often invert real values: therefore the methods of ritual magic, insofar as they retain effect, will tend to be dishonest and enforcing of lies; will tend to support and promote sin; will call ugliness beauty and reject the truly-beautiful as being ugly and oppressive.  

My conclusion is that here-and-now we cannot trust the content or motivations of any external sources - including magical traditions or societies; because they will very probably, implicitly if not explicitly, be training us in ways-of-being that net-oppose divine creation and serve the powers of evil.  

Group-ish and top-down (e.g. initiatory) practices that were possible, effective and overall Good just a century ago, or eve more recently; now almost always are the opposite; and are either merely ineffective or feeble, or else their power is harnessed against the divine and transcendental values. 

Like it or not; we are forced back upon our own powers of discernment; and the taking of active personal responsibility for our beliefs and practices.

And - as part of this - a recognition that our defense against corruption and possibility of pursuing Good is almost always by becoming aware-of, and actively-choosing-of, much that used to be unconscious, passive, taken for granted, taken on trust. 

Perhaps it is driving the principle too far to say that Being with God is less than Being with Self?

It is something which depends on the way we understand this statement. If we give-up our own individuality in order to be God's own Self - as some, it seems, are trying to do - we simply become God's own Self again, and lose our own identity. This means we are no longer in the context of the statement anyway, as there is no Us anymore. 

If it is a temporary at-one-ment, we can absorb a lot of God's presence quality, and therefore grasp the way His feelings and mind work...

We may still feel that we can know us-being-ourselves better than we can know God being God. It's the Teacher/ Pupil situation again, in which the Teacher wants it to become the Teacher/ Teacher situation - as Friends. 

Excerpted from a letter by William Arkle of 15th September 1995; to Jon Flint. 

This short statement by William Arkle seems to highlight the problem with aiming at oneness with God (or Deity); as so often advocated by Eastern-Influenced spiritual people nowadays; including many self-identified "Christians" whose implicit aims are actually oneness, rather than resurrection and Heaven. 

The problem is that if oneness with God is achieved, then we are no longer ours-selves, and therefore are no longer a part of the situation (the "context of the statement").

And therefore aiming at oneness is a species of the mainstream atheistic assumption that this mortal life is destined for annihiliation. Oneness spirituality may amount to little more than positively embracing the unavoidable annihilation of mind and body posited by secular materialism. 

[Which may be why mainstream secular materialism - even globalist totalitarianism - is happy to advocate and support oneness spiritualties - such as 'mindfulness' and (Westernized versions of-) Buddhism, Hinduism and the like.] 

But Arkle also mentions that a temporary, and somewhat incomplete, enhancement of oneness; can be considered a way of learning more about God's nature and motivations. 

In other words, some partial elements of the kind of passive, immersive, un-selfing, not-thinking meditation advocated by oneness advocates; can be a way of getting-to-know God better. 

A good old-word for this is communion - and may lead to making a useful distinction between the Christian seeking of comm-union with a personal God; and the "Eastern" aim of union with an im-personal God (Deity). 

The value of communion is obvious*; even when it occurs on the way to a temporary state of experienced-union - which by definition (if complete) is not experienced, neither is it remembered - because there is no Self either to experience or to remember what has happened.

Therefore communion with God ought Not to proceed to union, assuming we desire to learn and benefit from our knowledge of God. 

Union is good only for escaping from our-Selves, since it annihilates all experience of being...

*I would go so far as to say that nothing is more valuable to a Christian than a solid and faithful knowledge of God's nature and motivations; since this can serve as the basis of discernment and guidance though all manner of confusions and deceptions; including those propagated by the Churches.

Freedom is of-thinking - freedom is "pure" thinking from one's true (and divine) self - and recognizing that such thinking is not private and subjective, but a part of reality. 

Yet such freedom is not wanted by most people most of the time; not even among self-identified Christians (who might, on principle, be supposed to value freedom more than most). 

Thus, people will not allow their own thinking to be free -- we block and constrain our thinking, and subordinate it to external influences, and desire the same (even more so) for the thinking of others -- and we do this for reasons that seem Good and have partial validity.  

Yet the consequences of undervaluing our freedom and the freedom of others may be serious, eternally; because unfreedom means the rejection of Heaven. 

One who does not desire freedom may desire a Paradise of peace, pleasure, and without suffering; but he does not desire Heaven. Because heaven is a domain of creation , and creation entails freedom. 

Thus one who does not give a core valuation to freedom will reject Heaven, will reject Jesus Christ's offer of resurrection and salvation.  

It is a matter of common observation of our-selves and others that people often set a very low priority on freedom, regard other things as more important: we may prefer pleasure, freedom from suffering, security, or continuation of some sin - resentment, lust, pride etc. 

Indeed that we often fear and resist freedom in ourselves - and do so even more so in other Beings (we fear the freedom of people, animals, plants, the mineral world...). 

And such caution about freedom is rational, sensible, truth-based! Because it is only in Heaven, where mutual love of all Beings is the fundamental and continuous principle, that freedom can or should be unconstrained. It is only in Heaven where freedom necessarily leads to creation.

Freedom plus Love equals Creation...  But, on the other hand; freedom without Love is selfish desire. 

It is therefore rational to fear the freedom of those who do not love us. 

It is rational for those who desire to be Good; to fear their own freedom - since they know that (in this mortal life)    love does not always or fully rule their motivations. 

In sum: Freedom is thinking (thus living) from-oneself; but that is insufficient in a world of other Beings, it does not take account of other Beings except insofar as they gratify us. 

Thus, freedom without love is demonic - and regards the rest of creation as ripe for subordination to its own gratification.  

Yet indifference to freedom is potentially demonic too: especially indifference to the freedom of others - and the idea that "the rest of the world" might be/ out to be subordinated to our own untrammeled freedom to think/ say/ do... whatever we want. 

[This, indeed seems, to be a recurrent demonic temptation - to couple individual freedom with personal gratification without reference to love. The 'offer' is of a situation in which the individual is presented with a absolute-freedom fantasy of doing whatever he wills, whenever he wills it. As for other people/ beings... well in one version everyone is supposed to get this freedom, and we get the prospect of an eternal war of each against all; in another version (popular in recent decades) our personal freedom is sustained and implemented by the reciprocal subordination of others to our will - presented as being 'for their own good' - or, 'for the good of the planet'.] 

The situation is that only those who genuinely value freedom as a core and indispensable basis of life, will want Heaven - because heaven (unlike Paradise, Nirvana, or Hell) is a place of creation - and creation entails freedom. 

Yet, this absolute, non-negotiable ideal of freedom also requires a full acknowledgement that freedom is only Good when it is absolutely subordinated to love; and in this mortal life, love is not absolute, therefore freedom will not be subordinated to love either fully or always. 

There is no paradox or conflict here; there is no place for compromise or a 'middle way' - it is a simple reality rooted in the difference between mortal life and heaven, and a recognition that what is not just possible but absolute in Heaven; is only partly possible and never absolute here on earth.

The Christian will desire and value freedom without reservation in Heaven; while recognizing that here on earth there are inevitable and necessary constraints that mean we require discernment; and that the path of Good will usually tend to be expedient, temporary, and involving compromises. 

For this to happen; I submit that Christians must know freedom while in this mortal life; freedom in thinking. And to know this, we need to seek it consciously and explicitly; because the powers arrayed against freedom in thinking are so formidable.

Yet, at the same time, Christians need to discern and be selective about the consequences of this necessary freedom; because love is greater than freedom. In this mortal life, our free thinking may lead us away from love - it may undervalue other persons/ Beings; freedom of thinking may become negative, may be merely freedom-from instead of a positive manifestation of our innate partially-divine nature.

And double-negation (freedom-from) is a spiritual disaster when adopted as a positive life-program; since it so effectively masks a strategy of active evil.  

Love first, creation, freedom... All are needed, and all are indivisible; because related aspects of the same divine motivation - but love must come first.