From Steeleye Span - electric folk music of the early 1970s at its wonderful best.

The first part is a composite Luddite social history/ protest ballad about the impact of factories on the lives of handloom weavers, and of love among the weavers - and remarkable for its fiddle 'obbligato' and top-notch singing (and word-pointing), also an astonishing and irregular time signature and syncopation using electric guitars, bass and dulcimer.

(There was a vogue for unconventional time signatures in early 70s rock - the most famous is perhaps the 5/4 rhythm used in Jethro Tull's Living in the Past.)

The second part (starting at 4:25) is a lament for the old days, done by Maddy Prior as a multi-track unaccompanied harmonization - And if you can concentrate and listen to this in stereo, without your eyes welling and neck hairs prickling... well, you must have a heart of stone or a tin ear, or both!

One thing I have learned from asking people about their own experience of thinking is that most people have never thought about it - and quite a few seem unable to think about it.

Many people find it very difficult/impossible to introspect, that is, to look within themselves - their own thinking is experienced as a 'black box' process - they feed things into the box, things come out - but they have no idea what goes on inside the box (and perhaps very little interest).

But a couple of interesting answers were:

1. That thinking about a topic was like selecting a video and replaying it - experiencing pictures and sound; and

2. That thinking was like looking-up text - being in a library and reading passages -  thinking was primarily in words, and words were then experienced as pictures and sounds

Neither of these experiences much resemble my own - which is neither visual nor auditory, but rather that of  trying to grasp simple concepts, a process of 'feeling' around in a medium, or discarding inessentials... trying to get things so simple that I can grasp them whole... Probably something more tactile than visual or auditory.

I would be interested to hear about other people's experiences of thinking, described in this kind of metaphorical way?...

Over a period of two half days, I mas moved to read the bulk of the middle of John's Gospel - that Book being my favourite part of the Bible - and I found myself to be in an unusually receptive mood for scripture, such that several things seemed clear for the first time.

For those who do not know it, John's Gospel was written by Jesus's disciple, who was the most spiritually advanced of the disciples, and the only one who remained loyal to Jesus after his arrest and who was present at the crucifixion - where he was given the care of Mary, the Mother of Christ.

John's Gospel it is the only direct, detailed eye witness account of the life of Jesus - although such accounts are embedded elsewhere the New Testament. (Furthermore, the disciple John is - so the end of this Gospel tells us - still alive and at work.)
As an eye-witness account there are many vivid, apparently arbitrary details which are included (one feels) because they were remembered vividly and in case they might be important. Jesus writing in the dust during the parable of 'the woman taken in adultery' is just one example.

Among all of scripture, John's Gospel therefore has immense and distinctive authority.

The take-home message of this Gospel is perhaps the most wonder-full, positive and optimistic statement of the human condition that has ever been. Such is the simplicity, that to attempt summary leads to an impression of platitudinous bathos.

But importantly we are instructed to be of good cheer and not to worry, to be loving - especially among Christians, to be engaged in the world, but indifferent to the world's opinion.

In sum, John's Gospel teaches us what it should be like to 'believe on' Christ; and if our lives are not like this, then we are not living it. In particular, if we are filled with angst and fear of the future, and are focused on what 'the world' thinks and does - then we are (so far) missing the point.

We are also told firmly that  - because of the example and teaching of Christ and the continued witness of the Holy Ghost - we know everything we need to know: we know the nature of God, and that we share in that nature; we know that both the Son and the Father regard us like beloved friends, and not as servants or vassals; we know what we should do and how we should be; and we know that there is ultimately nothing stopping us doing everything necessary now.

If it is accepted that Rudolf Steiner was inspired in the remarkably exact and accurate prophecy of 1918 about which I posted recently

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/rudolf-steiners-remarkable-prophecy-of.html

Then it is worth thinking for a while about the causes.

I will attempt here to explain what I think Steiner was saying, in some mere generic version of his frame of understanding - rather than my own beliefs; and I think this exercise may be worthwhile given the validity of his prophecy.


To summarize (as I understand it); Steiner was arguing from a belief that humanity is supposed to move towards a new kind of consciousness - that is a new relationship between Man and the world - one which combined the 'immersive' awareness of spiritual realities that characterized the most ancient human societies (think about the shamans of hunter gatherers), with the alert self-consciousness of more recent eras (think about an archetypical scientist skeptic).

One intended mechanism for this evolution was the work of angels operating on what Steiner terms the Astral body - which I understand to mean the alert, awake consciousness... I think this means that we are supposed to know, explicitly, about this change of consciousness and to choose it.

The spiritual problems of our day are said to derive from the fact that instead we consciously fight, deny, and reject spiritual evolution; and instead of working on the Astral body, the angels are forced to work upon us while we sleep - and cannot resist them.

But this means that the angels are forced to work on us at an unconscious, inexplicit, instinctive level - they 'show us' (I presume he means in dreams, mostly un-recalled but still having an effect) images and simple ideas about the future goals.

I think Steiner is saying that the deep problems of our day derive from unspiritual attempts to enact spiritual goals - so that we actually enact in modern unspiritual society something like a hideous parody of spiritual goals.


The spiritual gaols which angels are attempting to communicate are threefold:

1. Brotherhood of Man - a sense of direct empathic communication between all people.
2. Divinity of Man - a direct appreciation of the divinity of all Men which will render formal religious practice unnecessary because all of life will then become a sacrament.
3. Final Participation - the change in consciousness whereby Man will be able to relate with spiritual realities through alert, conscious thought.

The effects of consciously rejecting this step includes, according to Steiner, the threefold consequences of disordered sexuality, the deployment of medical knowledge to harm and manipulate, and the abuse of powerful physical forces.


How do we get from the spiritual goals to the consequences? My understanding is that what happens is that good instincts are perverted by a culture which is spirit-denying.

So, for instance, the good and necessary spiritual instinct to regarding all Men as brothers is taken by modern society and made, on the one hand, into the utterly un-spiritual indeed anti-spiritual form of political and economic organization that used to be known as socialism, or Leftism.

In sum; in the un-spiritual context of modernity, spiritual brotherhood is re-made into social equality.

And this is made the focus of existence - as if it was a religion.


But on the other hand, spirituality cannot in practice be expunged from humanity - and the goal of brotherhood works at an instinctive level via the sexual instincts; to drive the sexual revolution - an incremental expansion of ever-more disordered sexual possibilities and practices.

In a sense, the sexual revolution can be regarded as a distortion of the impulse to universal Brotherhood - an impulse towards a kind of utopia of universal unrestricted sexuality.  

And this is made the focus of existence - as if it were a religion.


The direct perception of the divinity of Man, and the goal of a world where spiritual realities are so immediate that 'the church' is not needed, is something foreseen in the Book of Revelations of The Bible - but that is in The New Jerusalem, on the other side of death, and as Heaven.

The unspiritual parody of this unconscious impulse is anti-clericalism (a major feature of early communism), hostility to the Christian church, and the dismantling and destruction of 'organized religion'.

The church is discarded, but not because Man has moved to a higher level of spiritual consciousness and the need for formal structures has been transcended; not because Man no longer needs the church, being spiritually-perfected; but because the church is seen by modernity as something which is preventing progress to the ideal state of divinity of Man.

So, instead of the divine impulse that church organization will at some point disappear because Man has spiritually progressed to the point that the church is no longer needed; in modernity the church organization is destroyed because it is regarded as preventing spiritual progression.


This is part of the inversion-of-the Good which Steiner also predicts, in an exact description of our times:



In sum - the prophecy presents an interpretation of our current malaise which suggests that the evils of modernity can be seen as unconscious, un-spiritual and instinctive parodic distortions of Good impulses - impulses that are, indeed, being divinely encouraged and inspired (which perhaps explains their near universality, their simultaneous occurrence in many cultures).

Modern Man chooses consciously to reject these Good impulses by believing only in anti-spiritual rationality on the one hand and the unrestricted expression of instincts on the other hand - therefore the impulses emerge in horribly distorted forms; and yet their Good origins and benign intentions somehow make these evil distortions very difficult to defend against or to attack: our culture seems somehow helpless to resist them.


The answer? (Using Steiner's frame, more-or-less.)

We must (presumably) acknowledge the badness of our current situation, including the inadequacy of our consciousness; we must stop resisting the divine impulses so that they do not merely influence us against our will and during sleep, but also in our awake state; we must acknowledge spiritual realities - and allow ourselves to acknowledge, think about and experience spiritual realities in a state of full, alert awareness and in public discourse.

In sum, we need to stop fighting God's plans, and admit that God does have plans - and that we already-know enough of what these plans are (because this knowledge is built-into us); indeed, we need to stop actively denying the truth of God and of the spiritual, divine realm of reality - that would be a first step!

And the personal test of our success in moving towards this goal would - I think - be the advent and development of direct conscious experience of spiritual realities - including some kind of perception of the work of the angels.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-not-so-reactionary-political-views.html

Since I wrote Thought Prison back in 2011

http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.uk

I keep on emphasizing that a mass Christian revival in the West is the essential pre-requisite to fixing any of the major problems which afflict us and which will certainly lead to cultural annihilation (and - sans a Christian revival - good riddance, some would say) - in particular not so much saving the civilization of the West, but saving the souls.

(Including both Western souls, and also those souls under threat from the West by their immigration into the West, and by the projection of Western influence elsewhere in the world.)

Since modern Leftism is pre-immunization against so much of traditional Christianity - the old methods have lost and are losing effectiveness. This doesn't mean we should stop using them, but it is a fact they don't work so well - why not try adding some new tactics?

So - are there any novel ideas out there about how Christianity might get past the antibodies of the secular immune system?

(And be careful what you say and how you say it - don't give away anything which might aid the enemy. Put it 'Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it' - as Robert Frost once said.)

My recent exploration of Owen Barfield's work in relation to the evolution of consciousness, and the idea that Man went through three stages of consciousness (ancient immersive absorption into a living reality, an intermediate alienated phase of the ego/ self cut-off from the world*, then a return to a relationship with the living world but retaining the ego), continues to yield insight and make unexpected links across subjects.

For example, I used to be a deep reader of Robert Graves - and was fascinated by his account of the poetic trance state. Graves was vehement that when he wrote poems or his best novels and essays. For instance, in the state Graves felt himself to be actually present in other times and places - and it was this realism which made his historical novels so vivid and convincing.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/analeptic-trance.html

When Graves was 'inspired', this was not an unconscious state - it was not a matter of 'channelling' the poetry, not a bubbling up of the subconscious, not a matter of 'automatic writing'... All of these he damned and rejected as contrived pseudo-poetry when he seemed to detect them in the work of other modern poets such as WB Yeats, or Dylan Thomas, or surrealists.

By contrast, Graves claimed to remain alert, critical, purposive while in the trance state. In Barfieldian terms Graves achieved Final Participation - in which he accessed 'the gods' and spontaneous sources of intuitive knowledge but while retaining the more 'modern' ego/ self.


And in this respect Graves seems to have been mirroring (from a very different direction of approach) the same demand as expressed by Rudolf Steiner whose 'clairvoyance' was done in clear consciousness and a state of concentration, or CG Jung whose Active Imagination attempted to combine dream imagery and imagination with conscious awareness and purpose.

Despite that all these men were born in the 19th century, this goal has not yet become understood or pursued. Instead we have a mainstream secular culture oscillating between scientific-bureaucratic objectivization of reality (in which the world is regarded as un-alive and lacking in awareness and purpose, and Man is increasingly regarded as ultimately the same) and a Beat/ Hippy/ New Age type of 'regression' to the childlike/ primitive/ spontaneous spiritual state of un-conscious surrender to a reality that is felt to be alive, self-aware and full of gods - this being achieved either via the alternative reality of media and arts, or by killing-off consciousness with alcohol and drugs.


The message of Barfield - and Steiner and perhaps (more confusedly) of Jung - and implicitly of Graves - is that we should not stay where we are - alienated and alone in a dead world; nor should we try, and fail, to go back to an ancient world of immersive animism - but should move forwards to a conscious state which combines the best of both worlds - living as conscious selves in relationships with a world of conscious selves.

The failure of this perspective has, I believe, been related to its becoming detached from Christianity; and from Christianity's rejection of any need for it - or from a Christian rejection of its validity as a spiritual path. Many Christians have denied the need for regarding the world as alive - so that human existence becomes a matter of nothing more than the isolated ego in a relationship with God - and everything else in the universe (except other egos, barely glimpsed) perceived as dead and either unimportant or actively evil

What I would like to see - and am working to attain in my own life - is to take the spiritual insights, perspective and aims of Barfield et al - but pursued within the Christian framework.

*Note - This is the phase that Barfield called the consciousness soul
http://davidlavery.net/barfield/Encyclopedia_Barfieldiana/Lexicon/Consciousness_Soul.html
The chronology of when this occurred seems to be complex, and to differ somewhat between authors - or else I may have misunderstood. My impression is that the Consciousness Soul was made possible by the Ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and the divine intention was that this phase shuld come to an end after the birth, death and resurrection of Christ - but that this did not happen (at least, not in the West) but instead the CS intensified right up until the Romantic movement when it began to be challenged. However, this challenge was usually in the nature of a return to Original Participation rather than an advance to Final Participation. In other words, and with some usually temporary exceptions here and there, humanity has so far chosen to refuse - or was unable to take - the step to Final Participation.  


Note added: As a further illustration of what these three stages entail, consider that in pre-Christian, pagan religions it was usual for the adept (or at least the shaman or priest figure) to seek unification with the god - to seek to become possessed by the god, taken-over by the god, a channel for the god. The self was never very distinct in such cultures - and the line between the self and the god was blurred, and easily crossed.

But when the ancient Hebrews (also, in parallel, and very differently conceptualized, the Ancient Greeks) developed a new concept of God. He was utterly different from Man - there was a gulf between and no possibility of unification nor even possession. This 'alienated' attitude later (but mistakenly) was then carried over and became almost mainstream in many types of Christianity; such that the desire to become divine was often regarded as sinful - or at least extremely hazardous. The danger was of possession - but since possession could not be by God, nor even the gods/ angels; therefore possession was intrinsically demonic.

However, some of the greatest individual Christians (and also some of the Old Testament Prophets) achieved the goal of Final Participation in terms of themselves becoming purified and holy persons, and accepting the offer of a close, loving, wholly harmonious personal relationship with God - and especially with Jesus Christ; whose work could be interpreted as having made this possible.

So now, since Christ, Christians have the possibility of again moving beyond alienation and into participating with the living world in the closest and most fundamental way - but not by absorption, fusing or possession by a god - instead, in terms of becoming more like God, more divinized in our nature; and developing with God the Father, Jesus Christ and/ or the Holy Ghost a direct and loving relationship with the divine person.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/review-of-charles-williams-third.html

I am assuming, here, that modernity is indeed a hellhole - although mostly a tepid and padded hellhole. The extent to which moderns strive-continually, desperately, to lose themselves in distraction and intoxication and/or stimulate themselves - up to and including cultivated degradation and deliberate self-mutilation - makes this obvious to me (although I accept that the typically successful, exemplary and admired, modern life may strike other people as just 'fun').


Alienation - Needs to be changed to relationship; but not only nor primarily human relationships; but an experienced relationship with the world. Relationship being in both directions - our attitude to the world, the world's attitude to us.

And this relationship needing to be (or become) one of love. Because everything is alive, and in relationship - love (not gravity nor electromagnetism nor any unified field!) is the primary force of reality.


Nihilism - Needs to be changed to meaning, which depends on purpose - and this purpose must be personal, for ourselves and ourselves uniquely.

In the end, this entails a personal God with whom we have a personal relationship; everything is alive - and personal. God (a person/s) has a role or task or destiny for us individually; and we can choose (and it must be a choice - it is not compelled) to accept this, and participate with and modify it - or not.


Despair - Must, of course, be reversed to hope.

And Hope entails that this mortal earthly life be framed by (at least) an eternal after-life; such that mortal life is significant (the vital aspects must be remembered forever, not merely blown-away by the winds of time) yet mortality be known as not-everything in-and-of-itself.


Thus the experience of mortality is eternally significant because it is (in part) part of a progression achievable in no other way.

Significance comes from un-repeatability and permanence combined.

In few matters has the impossibility of a viable secular culture been shown so clearly as the current debate on what to do about the existential and imminent threat of mass migration.

The secular debate offers two alternatives: either embrace mass migration and open borders, and accept cultural annihilation; or else develop a counter-revolutionary ethic of hatred towards mass migration.


This dichotomy is being forced upon people by the secular framing of the debate in purely material terms: in terms of life being reduced (by the secular frame) to economics and crime; of spirituality and national character being reduced to mere traditions and habits; of ultimates being reduced to the utilitarian hedonic calculus of emotional states of happiness or misery, fulfilment or suffering.

The hatred is being forced upon people by the need for motivation and the fact that (as more than two centuries of experience with secular cultures shows us) hatred is the only kind of powerful, sustainable, manipulable mass motivation available to the secular perspective.


Actively to embrace unlimited mass migration requires that the host culture must develop powerful self-hatred and Despair; such that people feel it is just and right and necessary that that they destroy themselves.

To resist, repel, and reverse mass migration (from where we are now) would require a tidal change in cultural attitudes - a reversal of many decades of the consensus of mass media propaganda, laws and regulations and training - which could only imaginably be achieved in practice by the power of organized other-hatred and the deliberate inducing of pride (I mean sinful Pride, well-understood by Christianity).


Of course people can (and should), in the privacy of their own minds, adopt a non-hating attitude - but public discourse will be channelled into one form of hatred or the other - because there is nowhere else for it to go.


Only if we are able to see the problem of mass migration in a religious frame could we potentially be able to adopt a public, national attitude which is (as it should be, and as it must be if it is to be Good) both 1. non-hating and 2. very powerfully motivated.

The choice is stark: between the sin of Despair on one hand, or the sin of Pride on the other hand... or a powerfully-motivating revival of Christianity such that the public discourse on mass migration can be re-framed, and the problems addressed, in ultimate and spiritual terms.


Since I do not see the prospect of such a Christian revival on the horizon among the nations of The West - I am a pessimist, either way.

But a Christian revival is not excluded from possibility, not at all; so I continue to hope.

It is pretty much mandatory for Christians to believe in angels, since they are mentioned so frequently in the Bible. But the angels in which people believe are rather various.

I would be interested to know some details about what those who believe in angels believe about them.

If any of the following questions seem relevant to your experience and knowledge, please comment.

Comments will, as always, be moderated - but even if I do not print your comment I will still reply to it.

(BTW I am asking here about the good-angels, the un-fallen angels, those angels engaged in doing the work of God - not demons. )

1. Are angels all of the same origin - or are there various ways of becoming an angel? 
2. Is each angel an unique personality (in the way that Men are)?
3. Can angels make spiritual progress - or do they stay at the level they are created? Can an angel be corrupted into evil intentions? 
4. Can an angel learn? Can an angel make mistakes? 
5. Do angels have autonomy (in the way that Men do): are they free agents in their work? (Or, are they always working on the basis of very detailed instructions, implementing God's will directly?) 
6. Could an angel not know he was an angel - but instead think he was a Man, and be performing some role as such? Related - were any famous people of history actually angels? 
7. So far as you know, have you encountered an angel in actual life? Do you believe such nowadays encounters are universal, common, normal, rare or extremely-rare? 

Ref: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=angels

Of Robert Conquest's three 'Laws'...

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

The one which I used to find hardest to agree with was the Third.
(Note: I can't find any authoritative internet provenance for these Laws - but they have been posted on numerous blogs.)
*

But I have come to realize that the Third Law is correct - so long as we notice that it refers specifically to a bureaucracy - and not to every type of organization.

Indeed, the point at which Conquest's Third Law is noticed to become true can be taken at the point when an organization actually becomes 'a bureaucracy'.  
*

The point is that any bureaucracy shares more in common with other bureaucracies than it shares with its former or historical self before it became a bureaucracy.

In other words, every bureaucracy usually begins life as an organization with a distinctive, sometimes unique, ostensible function - it's 'bumper sticker' role, or 'what it says on the tin' - but when it becomes a bureaucracy it starts behaving as if it was aiming and structuring-itself to do everything-except its ostensible function.
*

I have experienced for myself two types of organization crossing that line and becoming bureaucracies - the National Health Service - which shed its professional domination and became a bureaucracy in the early 1990s - quite suddenly as a result of intentional legislation; and the British university system which lagged by just a few years and changed less abruptly, but crossed the line in the late 1990s.

Take the example of universities. Leaving aside the research function ; universities used to function mainly to pursue educational goals. They would try to admit those students who had the best educational qualifications and who would do best in examinations, and beyond - within the educational domain.

I am not at this point trying to defend the way that universities used to function: they were very imperfect institutions! But simply to note that - within the limits of human incompetence, the survival need for income, idleness, corruption and bad luck - they operated to pursue what they considered to be educational goals.
*

But now universities are bureaucracies, and Conquest's Third Law applies; so that - overall and on average, they have become organizations that pursue everything-but educational goals. This may sound far fetched but it is true! The educational function is now treated as a constraint rather than as the aim.

As a constraint, this means that universities more-or-less have to pretend to do educational things; but they do as little as possible of this, and what little they do (if you know what is really going-on, in actual practice) is mostly a matter of appearance rather than substance.
*

This can be seen in the number of things which British universities now do, and which they state to be aims, that they did not used to do - and this corresponds to the deployment of resources (money and time) including manpower: affirmative action/ inclusion/ multiculturalism/ sexual revolution across all activities (such that this is perhaps the single major aim) - and activities now including 'engagement' with the local community, sustainability and other green issues, active and frequent publicity via the mass media, internal advertising (propaganda directed to faculty and students about the success and excellence of the institution), programmes of new building and environmental enhancement.

When it comes to teaching, the activity is redefined in terms of a multitude of things which are not actually teaching - matters such as the structure and organization of courses; the procedures for approving and monitoring courses; the aims and objectives of courses; achieving uniformity across courses; gathering feedback and responding to feedback on courses; the use of visual and audio-visual aids, internet and new technologies in courses; educational research and auditing of courses; and the allocation of teaching awards and prizes to people who teach little or not-at-all, and whose contribution has been administration of teaching 'innovation' in teaching subjects or methods, or research into teaching; schemes and notions for improving teaching of neglected or oppressed groups such as women or people who cannot speak well the language in which instruction is given...

The point is that all this new and extra effort, all the extra personnel and resources concerned with 'teaching' are directed at pretty much everything-except actual... teaching (teaching being that inter-human activity that goes on, or is supposed to go-on, in the classroom). 

And therefore: de facto, the bureaucratic emphasis on 'teaching' is at-the-expense-of real teaching.
*

The same applies mutatis mutandis in all bureaucracies.

In a nutshell; just as bureaucracy is parasitic upon organizations, so bureaucrats make all organizations into generic bureaucracies of a primarily bureaucratic nature; thus bureaucracies are intrinsically organizations that are parasitic upon their ostensible function. 

And this is the explanation of Conquest's Third Law. 

Let us assume that there is such a thing as 'esoteric knowledge' - in particular correct information that is accessible via... well, perhaps we could call it supernatural means.

In other words, not by being told it by other people, nor reading it in a book, nor reasoning it out, nor any other of the other usual, accepted, ways of gaining knowledge.

I am talking about the kind of claims, which have occurred in almost all cultures throughout history, and indeed still do occur even in the modern West, that there are sources of knowledge which may become accessible during trances, dreams, by divination etc.


The claimed source of such knowledge may be personal or abstract - personal would be when the esoteric knowledge comes from a supernatural person - a spirit, god, angel, demon or God for example.

The provenance of personally-given information is easily understood - but abstract information less so.

By abstract I mean when the knowledge is supposed to have come from a record or chronicle which is to be found out-with normal reality - for example the 'Akashic' records of theosophy and anthroposophy - which is conceptualized as an account of spiritual realities to be found on the astral plane of existence.


This concept led me to speculate on what properties such a record might have - if it were real.

1. It seems plausible that there might indeed be some kind of spiritual record of all significant knowledge - indeed, most religious people would believe this - although mostly they would assume that such knowledge was in the 'memory' of the gods or God.

2. If such a record was not in personal and private memory, but was more like an annal or chronicle that could be consulted by many people, then it would seem that - since hardly anybody can read it - such a record is not meant to be universally read; at least not as a matter of routine.

3. I would expect that any such record, if accessed, would be difficult to understand and easy to misunderstand - since this is the case with other forms of record, such as multi-volume encyclopaedias or ancient archives of newspapers. Understanding needs contextual knowledge.

4. Such a record would have to be extraordinarily vast and of widely varying comprehensibility - which would presumably mean some parts of it were more accessible than others.

5. Since most people cannot (or cannot consciously) access abstract esoteric records for most of the time, the ability to link to the would presumably be via some sort of sympathy, resonance, special motivation or brooding desire - which would inevitably be specific.

6. Perhaps, access to abstract records is difficult because it is personally controlled (by some higher power, or the laws established by a higher power) - and would only be allowed to somebody judged worthy. The usual situation in a large library is that access is restricted; a given person is allowed access to a specific part of the record only.

7. There is no convincing evidence that I know of where someone has learned by esoteric means anything which is implausibly beyond their interest and competence - except when the person or persons are plausibly prophets or divinely inspired, when there are what seem to be miracles of knowledge, just as there are miracles of healing. Usually the knowledge is very specific, or a matter of filling in gaps; but in some instances more extensive texts have been produced.

8. Overall, if it is accepted that valid knowledge is available via esoteric routes, then it can be seen that such knowledge is not exempted from the constraints of ordinary, mundane knowledge. In other words even if the source it eternal and truthful, the transcription and translation and interpretation of that source can be wrong, can contain errors - is to some extent susceptible to the intrinsic selectivity and bias of the reader; and any further readers of that reader.


Esoteric knowledge can be no more infallible than any other type of knowledge; indeed, since its form is usually reported as very different from mundane knowledge, then esoteric knowledge may be especially prone to error and misunderstanding - reporting esoteric knowledge might be less like translating a foreign language, and more like trying to describe an orchestral symphony by making small clay models; or summarizing a philosophical treatise by dancing.

This would explain why there is often a convergence of basic simple ideas between apparently valid sources of esoteric knowledge, but great differences in detail (and the more detail, the more differences).


Alternatively, it could be argued that everybody accesses eternal abstract esoteric records all of the time (which form some kind of collective unconscious, perhaps; which are perhaps even that which binds conscious beings in unity through Time); but most people are mostly simply unaware of doing so; they do not realise it is happening (because they do not need to know, so long as it just happens) - maybe because such access is like a physiological process (analogous to digestion, of immunity) that just happens unconsciously.


Or maybe access occurs during sleep, and we are aware of it then: but afterwards it is forgotten.

Or, maybe accessing the records is so alien a process to waking consciousness and reason, that we can't make any sense of it  - but just live-by the results.  

If one of the above, then people who claim to access these records may, in fact, simply be becoming more-aware of something - some process - which happens to almost everybody pretty much all of the time.

It could be like a life-support-system undetectably plumbed into us - but only a handful of people have ever noticed.

Continuing from yesterday's post:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/just-exactly-how-are-we-supposed-to.html


If Final Participation is accepted as the goal, then it is clear that this has only been achieved sporadically and temporarily - and also clear that there is no discernible cultural trend towards this goal.

Indeed, my feeling is that the West is considerably further back from the goal of Final Participation than it was forty years ago - we are going in the wrong direction: and since the evolution of consciousness is analogous to the development of an individual, this means that culturally we are refusing to grow-up.


In other words, the West is therefore stuck in adolescence, refusing to move on to adulthood - and in terms of adolescence the West is more immature now than it was forty years ago.

I don't suppose this is controversial - indeed it is blazingly obvious as one looks around that we live in a culture in which perpetual adolescence is the ideal: young adults, the middle aged even the elderly all and increasingly feel, behave and try (harder and harder) to look-like teenagers - and are proud of doing so.

The only general cultural alternative, for those who recognize that adolescence is properly a transitional stage and not a resting place, and that overall adolescence is (by far) the worst, most miserable and selfish, phase of a normal person's life; is a return to childhood: to aim at the immersive state of original participation.

This return to childhood has more, and less, healthy possibilities - the more healthy include an interest in childlike and magical things, reminiscence and nostalgia, an interest in the ethnic and tribal life and the religions of hunter gatherers, The dark side includes attempting to destroy self-consciousness, self-awareness and purpose by the deployment of intoxication, drugs, sex, and immersion in the mass media.


My impression is that every generation or so, the West has been brought to some kind of decision-point - at which there is a more-or-less inarticulate awareness of The Problem of Consciousness - and there is a more-or-less discernible path ahead towards the evolution of consciousness... or the possibility of refusing to take that path and continuing along the path of more of the same.

I think I have experienced two such times - in the late sixties and early seventies, and then much more weakly around 1990. Both nascent spiritual developments were stamped out by renewed materialism, renewed consumerism, renewed focus on luxuries and distractions (and progression of the sexual revolution) - most recently with the advent of the internet and personal media.


The reason for refusal is, I think, the mass abandonment of Christianity and the prevalent combination of indifference and hostility to Christianity. Despite vague hopes that Christianity would be replaced by some other religion, or spirituality, none of this has happened and instead people are left without any context for the evolution of consciousness; because the evolution of consciousness cannot be regarded as the primary goal or purpose, but only makes sense in religious terms - indeed it only makes sense in terms of Christianity (defined in some broad bu objective sense); since Christ was what made it possible.


The centrality of Christ is a common insight to all the deepest thinkers on this subject of the evolution of consciousness. If this can be grasped as a fact, then perhaps the next time our culture is given a choice for the future, there may be a better change that we will go forward towards maturity instead of refusing to grow-up.

The scheme of the evolution of human consciousness, goes something like this:

1. A child-like state of immersion in the world, the world experienced as alive, conscious, purposive - from which the self is not clearly differentiated - there is little or nothing in the way of self-awareness, conscience, individuality, 'ego'. The 'gods' are very close, frequently experienced, involved in life, our task is simply to discern the will of the gods and the patterns of the world and to fit to it, smoothly, seamlessly.

2. The adolescent-analogous stage of differentiation of the self, of self-awareness, self-consciousness - and also the being cut-off from the rest of reality, which is experienced as remote; often as non-living/ dead, purposeless, random - all meaning being located in the subjective self- and/or a qualitatively remote and utterly un-like God.

This phase was supposed to have been achieved by the ancient Hebrews, with their one personal supreme God and rejection of the (minor) gods; and by the Ancient Greeks with their philosophical concept of one abstract god as the explanation for creation, the first cause, and encompassing everything eternally.

3. The future and final adult and mature stage in which we retain the self, self-awareness, conscience, a personal identity... but move back into an active relationship with the world - all else again becoming conceptualized and experienced as alive, purposive, conscious (to various degrees and in various ways).


So we are no longer 'immersed' in everything, but neither are we trapped, alone inside our consciousness - instead be are participating and related to 'everything'.

*

The idea from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield is that Jesus Christ - coming after the Ancient Hebrews and Greeks, made possible this final participation - for Himself, and for everyone... if they choose it.

So final participation is what we are 'meant' to do: if we agree with this analysis, and choose to take this as our goal; then how do we set about achieving this?

A few things can perhaps be said:

1. The first, vital and most important step is to understand what it is that is being aimed-at, and making the inner choice that this is what we want.

(In other words, we need the right metaphysical system, a correct basic understanding of the fundamental structure and nature of reality.)


2. Since we are talking about relationships, our destiny is individual, personal - each person is meant to be somewhat different and distinctive (because that is the nature of relationships) - this suggests that we are significantly different to begin-with, and in at least some respects each is intended to have a distinctive path. (What is meant for us is unique overall, and in a specific aspect may not be meant for all others; and vice versa).

We should expect to find and use some general guidance, that is indeed applicable to all; but also some specific and personal destiny - applicable only to ourselves. We will share some of the path, and other parts of the path we will tread alone.


3. To embark on this quest, it seems necessary to have a belief in the ultimate power of individual discernment. We must, that is, believe that the situation of Life has been set-up such that we are equipped with inner guidance that can - over time - lead us to the truth.

On the one hand, it seems obvious that we cannot possibly (and are therefore not intended to) use personal discernment for each and every choice; but on the other hand, we cannot accept authoritative guidance (for example from scripture, the church leadership, tradition, reason or whatever) without some valid discernment about which of the innumerable self-styled, claimed sources of 'authority' are genuine (overall, and in any particular instance).

Therefore we need to assume that we have some kind of reliable 'inner guidance system', some personal revelation at some level of analysis, that will - if properly deployed, and in-the-end - enable us to discern good from evil, truth from dishonesty, beauty from corruption and so on.

I envisage this as God-within-us, an inner divinity - albeit partial - which is a direct consequence of us being Children of God. Often this works by our personal guidance informing us (cumulatively, over time) which are, and which are not, valid sources of knowledge, authority, inspiration etc.


4. There is no single organized or institutional group, no religion or denomination, within which an individual can pursue Final Participation or the development of consciousness in himself, and to make this as widely as possible available for others. But some are better suited to this than others - which are actively antagonistic.

The same applies to methods or paths: there is no single one, necessary to all. Meditation may help some, harm others; a particular Christian practice or tradition (rules of life, confession, regular Eucharist, group improvised prayer etc.) may help some, many or most people - but not everybody; and will harm some people overall, maybe including you.

(This does not apply to the Commandments and other definitions of basic sin and virtue - some behaviours are bad and need to be repented.)

Also, some groups are better suited to any specific person than others (in terms of the dispositions, strengths and weaknesses of each specific person).


5. In the end, spiritual progression towards Final Participation of consciousness is something which each person must chisel-out for himself: knowing where he wants to end-up; proceeding by the best authority he can recognise (plus trial and error and repentance); and learning to detect and read-off his divinely installed inner guidance system.

Several of the big British bureaucracies - the National Health Service, and the State education department - have got hold of a notion they called 'mindfulness' (which they claim comes from Buddhism) which is now is being officially promoted... by the usual network of committees, recommendations, protocols and quality-monitoring methods.

(If only the ancient Buddhist monks had known about modern Managerial and accountancy methods... If only they could have recognized that modern officials would be able to reduce mindfulness to a set of processes... Think how much they might have achieved!) 

For example, mindfulness has been added to the compulsory school curriculum in some places, 'taught' by advisers and experts, evaluated by the same kind of systems as evaluate the teaching of mathematics and history...

This has happened before with 'Quality'.

http://hedweb.com/bgcharlton/clingov.html

In other words, we can see here a precisely analogous process of getting a complex concept, making it into a word, then making that word into... well, pretty much whatever the bureaucracy happens to want at that particular time.

As always, we must ignore the high minded introductory spiel (always ignore what managers say), and the assertions that mindfulness is a good thing... and see what it boils down to in practice.

Are there bullet points about doing mindfulness? Checklists? Who is telling us to do mindfulness - are they the kind of people who might know something - or anything - about the subject?

Do they in the slightest degree behave mind-fully or show any evidence of actually caring about actual mindfulness?


(How would the mindfulness-managers react if someone began being mindful while attending (or giving) a lecture or committee on the subject? - or mindfully filled in a form being used for external evaluations? - or became mindful instead of preparing a Power Point Presentation for the clients? - or experienced an intense and prolonged episode of mindfulness during a Personal Review and Staff Development session?)

The ideas of William Arkle are based upon his imaginative identification with, intuitive understanding of, and (I believe) direct mystical revelation concerning the purpose of God, the Creator in manifesting this world. All his work is an exploration of this theme, in its many ramifications.

 

I have edited the following from a little, self-published booklet called Equations of Being: notes on the nature of love - originating from Arkle's home in Backwell (the village in Somerset, England where I spent all my school years) - which seems to date from about 1980. 

 

I would advise copy, pasting and printing-out the excerpt below; if you want to get the most from it. 

 

**

 

By trying to put ourselves in the position of the Creator whose nature is love and spiritedness, we may be able to draw conclusions which help us to understand and accept the situation on Earth as we find it at the present time. 

 

We may come to realise that the difficulties of life, while often painful, are also extremely valuable if we can view them as a part of the process of making us into real and responsible individual spirits who can become companions of the endless life in which the Creative Source wishes us to meet Him.

I wish to suggest that we put ourselves in the position of this Creative Source, the God of what we love, and begin to see things from the position we would be in if we were about to make the plans for this scheme of manifestation of which our worlds are a part.

 

*

When we put ourselves in the position of this Creator, it is then that we have to look more closely at the nature of love, and try to understand the principles which it contains. Unless we can do this we cannot begin our designing, for we will not be clear about what we are trying to achieve.

 

We might, for instance, try to design a scheme which would be like a continuous, perfect, summer holiday situation. We would begin with the idea of ease and happiness in mind. We would find that our schemes did not contain responsibility or difficulty. 

 

I think we would find that our plans would take for granted that it was easy to include other people in our perfect world; but we would make up a perfect and easy world where everyone was like ourselves; and where all the things that really mattered to us were simply put into the picture, ready made.

 

All our schemes would contain other people, for none of us would want to be lonely, and all of us would sooner or later begin to realise that other people were an integral part of all that we enjoyed about ourselves.

But we would rapidly discover that a sort of mythical ‘deckchair on golden deserted sands’ situation was a trap. A little would be pleasant, but only because it is what we are most short of in our experience of life as it is on Earth. Even if we allowed ourselves a companion, or even a family, we would find that there was still a lot wrong. The family who sat about with us would soon get restless - as we would.

 

*

 

So we would want to explore a bit, go for a walk, see something new. We may go for a swim. Swimming and short walks, on a perfect beach in perfect weather, with all our loved ones about us; such might be a beginning...

 

But the walks would have to get longer and the swimming would have to include diving. The diving would lead to exploring the seabed and the walks would become voyages of discovery. We would wish to feel that family or friends were on the sands for us to come back to, but we would want to feel free to explore, we would want to feel free to experiment with different sorts of walking and swimming, different combinations of walking, swimming and sitting in the sun...

 

We would wish to talk to our companions, we would wish to enjoy their company. We would wish to laugh and have a bit of fun. And we would need for them to be real in their own right, so that the laughter and fun was real and full of surprise and the unexpected. 

 

(Because if we had programmed the other people to be just like ourselves, we would find it very difficult to keep up the pretence of enjoying their company, their fun and their affection. For pretence it would have to be, since we were merely entertaining ourself in other guises.)

 

*

 

If we looked into the matter further, we would discover, if we play with this problem, that whatever form we take and whatever environment we take it in there are certain basic requirements which stem from the nature of love itself. 

 

Our sense of loving to explore and experiment is as real as our love of basking in sunny happiness. And our sense of love needs other people to do these things with. We require fun and delight with other people's company, and these other people need to be just as real as we are. 

 

So, a big problem is that any idea of existence requires us to people our world with beings who are different from ourselves, who most certainly must not have been programmed or brainwashed by us in any way. In fact we find that other people who are as real and independent as we are, is something we cannot do without.

 

So we face this situation that when we start the scheme off, we have to accept that other people might wish to do things that did not appeal to us. We would have to learn to accept one another’s different approaches and the fact that although we may have designed the scheme, we would have to give to others the same rights as we have. We would have to hand over the control and outcome to other people.

 

*

 

Against this argument is the realisation that a creative scheme has to ensure that the freedom which is allowed to the other individuals who live in it is handed to them gradually as their responsibility grows and is able to bear it safely. 

Because although we need to give to our friends, those with whom we wish to live in our designed creation, the freedom and independence which makes them real to us and therefore makes the experience of their company completely valid; we would not wish to reach a stage at which we ourselves were over-ruled by them.

 

So, when we begin to imagine ways of bringing our companions into our creative scheme in such a way that we can give to them their own reality, and give it to them in such a way that we do not dominate them, we realise what a subtle thing this process will have to be...

 

Such companions will eventually have to be given the same creative reality as ourself, the creator, but they will begin their lives in a condition of great potentiality - a potentiality which will be entirely unrealised by them.

 

So our scheme of creation will have to be largely educational to start with; before our friends will have grown-up enough to enter into its delightful creative purpose with their own unique individual ways of looking at things and doing things, and with the responsibility which will ensure that their desire is to enhance all things and not to destroy or diminish.

 

*

 

We will need to help our friends to come to themselves gradually, and take the gift of their own reality upon themselves deliberately, by their own choices.

 

We will have to discover ways of showing them why the good and the beautiful qualities are considered by us, the creator, to be good and beautiful. And the only way we can do this, is by giving them a taste of the opposite qualities in order that they can knowingly say to themselves: ‘I have experienced beautiful and good attitudes which seek to enhance all things; and I have experienced ugly and evil attitudes which seek to diminish and enslave all things, and I chose the good and the beautiful and will always resist the opposite’. 

 

*

In conclusion, when each of us, now, is considering our situation in life, we need to consider whether we would prefer to be given a very full and thorough education, in which difficulties acted upon us to strengthen all our characteristics which we feel to be valuable - because this is the situation of our actual world.  

 

Or would we have preferred an easy form of education in which we could obtain a token reality for ourselves in circumstances which required little effort on our part?

 

Or, again, would we have preferred to have been created with all our individuality ready-made and programmed into us? In which case we would not need education, for we would simply respond with the conditioning already at work in our nature, effortless and automatic and not within our power to change. 

 

In the long run I think we realise that the difficult and thorough way - the way of our actual lives in this world - was what we most wanted; because, above all, we wish to be real.

 

We want to be valuably real, and we do not want to be artificially valuable. 

 

 

"Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home”

https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-and-church-history-student-study-guide/the-worldwide-church/president-david-o-mckay-no-other-success-can-compensate-for-failure-in-the-home?lang=eng

That statement, from a President of the CJCLDS - and often quoted since, is an example of the unique Christian perspective of Mormonism.

My conviction is that the statement is empirically true, and a nearly-always applicable generalization.

What a difference it would make to the world, if human life (including political life, law, work, education and so on) was organized on this basis! - on the assumption that this is the condition towards which we ought to be striving!

From Edward Dutton & Bruce G Charlton. The Genius Famine - why we need geniuses, why they're dying out, and why we must rescue them. University of Buckingham Press - in the press.

I used to be, pretty much, an adherent of the Perennial Philosophy; and even since I became a Christian I am not hostile to it. But I see no hope in it.

The reason is simply that it has been around for generations, but never gets any further; also I see no evidence that it has any significant tendency to strengthen and improve its adherents - whom seem to just as susceptible to the pathologies of modernity as is anyone else (and indeed among the leadership of Perennial Philosophy, the standards of behaviour - when judged by traditional values - are, on average, perhaps lower that the population average).

I have returned to this matter through my current project of reading Jeremy Naydler, and seeing that he teaches at the Temenos Academy, which is perhaps the most prestigious of Perennial Philosophy organizations - since it is actively supported by many establishment figures including HRH The Prince of Wales (presumably our future King).

What is the Perennial Philosophy? Here is a video self-explaining:


My own pragmatic definition is that the movement was (historically) set-up by, and continues to attract, disaffected ex-Christians and intellectuals who have positive views about most religions, spirituality, and selected aspects of some actual churches; but not about what they term 'fundamentalist' Christian churches. The PP is thus, pretty much, the intellectual wing of the New Age movement.

The basic idea of the PP is that all world religions (properly understood) share a core body of beliefs, and this core is true and the most important aspect of them, and these core truths can-be and ought-to-be the basis of the highest and best kind of religion/ spirituality.

I personally agree that all real religions share core truths - but I do not agree that what is shared is necessarily the most important thing - and especially not for these times. I certainly do not agree that the shared core it is the best kind of religion/ spirituality - and in practical terms I think it has been empirically proven by experience that these shared core things are not a sufficient basis for a strong and good lived religion/ spirituality.

In sum, the Perennial Philosophy seems too weak, too feeble, too diffuse and easily dispersible to be the core of a human life. And indeed, adherents do not behave as if the PP is the core of their lives; rather, they fit it into other priorities.


So, Perennialists tend to be positive (in a semi-detached way) about Eastern religions generally (especially Buddhism, but also some aspects of Hinduism such as the Bhagavad Gita - although not the caste system! - and especially keen on Taoism; also Sufism, sometimes Kabbalism, and the mystical traditions of Christianity; such as Eastern Orthodoxy, the meditative tradition of monasticism in the Roman Catholic Church, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism.. and many types of ancient paganism, animism, totemism and... have I missed anything?

Among Christian churches PP-ers do not seem to like Protestants generally and Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists or modern conservative evangelicals or Pentecostalists in particular... in sum they show no interest in the currently growing parts of mainstream Christianity. And they are either bored-by, or hostile-to, newer and thriving churches such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists.


As so often, there is a cleavage line around the sexual revolution. Perennial Philosophy advocates are almost all advocates of, and adherents to, one or more aspect of the sexual revolution, and the expansion of sexual relationships beyond religious concepts of marriage. This is very obvious among both leaders and followers - and the PP environment is often sexualized; with multiple marriages, cohabitations, affairs and the rest of it - in line with mainstream modern secular life.

Furthermore, in their political views they are Leftist - often the ultra-idealistic Leftism of Anarchism, Deep-Green ecology, Voluntary Simplicity etc. They may or may not support mainstream Left parties (often they do - but some ultra-Leftists do not); but they never support 'Right wing' parties - even by the insipid mainstream standards of mainstream politics whereby what would have been hardline Leftism two generations ago is now supposed to be far Right!

In general, the PP adherents never, in their analyses, regard the problems of the modern world as a consequence of Leftism - despite the close temporal correlation; but almost always as a consequence of something described as Right Wing - whether capitalism, libertarianism, industrialization, patriarchy, racism, colonialism etc.

In terms of their lifestyle, Perennial Philosophy advocates have adopted most of the post-sixties markers of New Left modernity - 'alternative'/ bohemian styles of grooming and clothing, ponytails and ear-rings for men, body piercings and tattoos with increasing popularity, green consumerism, a focus on Africa and a pro-ethnic stance, alternative- and psycho-therapies, Fair Trade products and vegetarianism, an interest in 'renewable' resources, 'organic' horticulture and farming, Anthropogenic Global Warming and so on, and so forth.


My point is that the Perennial Philosophy has been around for an awfully long time now - at least three generations of significant visibility (since, say, the Beat Generation of the 1950s), yet there is no evidence that it makes any significant difference to the lives of its adherents - they do not stand-out against the currents of our time in any way which would lead to significant problems for them.

On all the litmus test issues of our time - the kind of things that could get you sacked or made a public pariah - i.e. the issues of Political Correctness - the Perennial Philosophers are all comfortably on the side of the secular mainstream.

This must be either a terribly lucky coincidence! - or else demonstrates that the PP has no real backbone, no capacity to en-courage and strengthen its leaders or followers in face of adversity; but is merely a weathervane for mainstream secular Leftism.


On the one hand I still read and enjoy, and am not much worried about the Perennial Philosophy; on the other hand I don't expect anything substantive from it. Despite its hostility, it is no real threat to real Christianity. No doubt, as a half-way house it is sometimes a distraction from potentially better things; yet it may also be a stepping stone to better things (as it was for me).

So while I am not hostile, and I often find much to interest me in the work of Perennial Philosophy advocates - for instance, there are often good diagnoses of the deep problems of modernity even when the prescription and treatment-plan is usually worthless or just more of the same-old - I cannot be optimistic or enthusiastic about the future of the movement.

I see not the slightest evidence that the PP can be a real religion; and on the contrary I do see a recurrent pattern of hopes leading nowhere.

In sum; the Perennial Philosophy is at best an intellectual activity - part of the History of Ideas, more typically a feel-good Lefty lifestyle; but it is not a thing capable of deeply-motivating, nor of powerfully-inspiring, its adherents.

Mostly Harmless.