Bruce Charlton's Notions

The Thing that we (all) most need to do is to develop our consciousness by learning and practicing primary thinking.

Nothing is more important and everything Good (including, ultimately, our ability to be Christian) depends on it - and this is why purposive supernatural evil is incrementally shaping the world towards the prevention of primary thinking.

We must get in touch with reality directly (by primary thinking) by learning and actively, consciously attaining direct knowledge of the universal realm of reality.

At present, in mainstream modern life, we know the world only 'secondhand' - we know only a virtual and constructed world - and have been persuaded that this secondhand world is the only metaphysical reality. We ignore/ violently-reject even the possibility of first-hand knowledge.

Our 'facts' are increasingly only what is perceived by our senses (and tools/ machines/ computers fed by sensory data) - and these perceptions (the 'basic data') are increasingly those selected and invented by the mass media, bureaucratic propaganda and official regulations.

Our concepts (by which we make sense of these 'facts') are less-and-less those which are universal and eternal; and more-and-more those which are absorbed from socialisation, education and the conditions of modern living. And these concepts increasingly derive-from, are controlled-by, the mass media, bureaucratic propaganda and official regulations.

In sum, our secondhand world is globally controlled and - because of our false metaphysical assumptions - has become not just primary but the sole world. Insofar as the world of primary reality still exists in our lives, it is systematically denied validity - written-off as childish, crazy, arbitrary, repressive, subjective...

Modern life has become almost-wholly virtual, external, secondhand and controlled - but the fact is obscured by the pretence that only such perceptual, conjectural, changeable, contingent and authority-validated hypotheses are rigorous.

This situation is why there is no higher priority than each of us connecting with primary reality - by means of primary thinking, and recognising the ultimate authority of direct knowing derived from primary thinking.

Christianity without such development of consciousness and renewal of metaphysics cannot suffice; because we will be unable to evaluate, think or reason about Christianity using only the assumptions, 'facts' and conceptual tools that are all that modern life allows us.

William Arkle believed in reincarnation, and a means of Men gaining experience and being-educated across multiple lives. Angels are seen as a separate creation from Men, and angels gain their experience and education by moving 'downward' from spiritual Heaven deeper into the material realm of incarnation and earth - the job being both to help and educate Men and themselves to learn about the problems of imperfection and evil.

By contrast, my understanding is derived from Mormonism - which is that there is a three stage progression from pre-mortal life, as spirit angels, through incarnate mortal life ad via death to post-mortal resurrected life; this time as incarnated angels.

Yet, brooding on Arkle's understanding of the nature and role of angels and Men, which can be found in his works Letter from a Father and Equations of Being; I have realised that these provide considerable insight when interpreted from his scheme.

Arkle's angels correspond to pre-mortal existence; and he emphasises that the innocence, bliss and purity of this life is a deficiency of understanding - angels have no spontaneous understanding of the constraints of incarnation, mortality, and the evil effects and suffering resulting from free agency.

Therefore, while spirit angels work to educate and assist Men (when such interventions are of benefit - given that our purpose in mortality is primarily to learn for ourselves, by trial and error); the angels are of limited knowledge, and prone to make errors due to their lack of understanding. In fact, angelic errors are themselves an accidental but inevitable contribution to the evil and suffering of mortal life.

We might imagine a ladder from the spirituality of highest Heaven to the materiality of earthly-mortal existence; angels are descending that ladder, Men are ascending it; angels are the teachers, but also learning - Men are the learners, but indirectly acting as teachers of angels; both angels and men benefiting from the interactions.

Spirit angels existed before the first Men were incarnated as mortals, and have always been involved in earthly life; but we can assume that they will have found mortal problems both confusing and appalling - and they needed to learn from the experience.

We can imagine that - over time - more and more spirit angels will have learnt enough to recognise that they would benefit (in terms of progression towards full divinity) from voluntary incarnation as mortals; and then do this.

Over time, from the first mortal Men, there would be a development of angelic expertise, and eventually spirit angels were supplemented by incarnate angels who had experienced mortality.

However, over this timescale, there will have been an accumulation of the effects of evil - so the problems of mortal life have also accumulated.

And the evil of mortal life has also been increased by the activities of fallen spirit angels - I mean demons. These demons perhaps include individual spirit angels whose interaction with mortal Men have led to various responses such as hatred, resentment, fear and the desire to dominate mortals.

For example, the prime demon - The Devil, Satan or Lucifer - is depicted in Mormon scripture as having rejected the divine plan for free agency in Men; and having fallen in order to destroy Men's free will, and to enforce a compulsory plan on Men (and other demons). The devil is therefore the prototypical totalitarian dictator; who believes he 'knows best' what is best for Men.

Arkle also assumes that the difficulties of mortal life, the accumulation of errors, evils and demonic power will eventually make mortal life just too difficult for the need for learning by experiencing; and this world will need to be ended, and another begun. In other words there will be an end time terminated by the end of this world (i.e. equivalent to Christ's second coming, the New Jerusalem).

Anyway, I find that this understanding of spirit angels descending and Men ascending and both interacting - to be helpful in making sense of what has happened in this world since the original incarnation of Adam and Eve; and the ways in which the problems and tasks of mortal life have changed throughout history.

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA008/English/RPC1961/GA008_c01.html

I have been blogging a lot about 'Primary Thinking' in recent months, but it has been difficult to make a short definition of what I mean by it. Here is an attempt...

Primary Thinking is Active, Conscious Intuition

Intuition is usually thought to be an unconscious, spontaneous, event - something that happens-to-us... But, in contrast, Primary Thinking is intuition done with effort; purposively, deliberately, and in awareness of what we are doing and what we discover.

On the other hand, my own understanding of this took me several years of considerable effort; and there is no particular reason why I can make the process of understanding quick and 'easy' for readers.

Since it wasn't easy for me, why should it be easy for you? To understand, you would need to meet me half-way, or more than half-way; you must make more effort in understanding than I make in communicating...

You must, in fact, meet-me in the realm of universal reality! Only there can communication become knowledge.

We live in an increasingly totalitarian world, and one in which totalitarianism is escalating rapidly via a single, increasingly global and interlinked, bureaucratic system of monitoring, control, enforcement.

The purpose of totalitarianism - that is, of intended thought-control, is to ingrain and enforce habits of passive, superficial and 'information-processing' thinking - which will crowd-out, monopolise the interpretation of all perceptions; and to have all thinking driven-by perceptions.

Thus, ideally, the mass of people would never think from their real, divine selves.

Hence people would never think true, beautiful or virtuous thoughts.

We could (and would) then be fed only with perceptions and concepts that are virtual, fake and manipulative.

Once the situation is in-place (embraced by the masses as the only sure way that people can be prevented from the sins against Leftism, the only sure way that all people will be guaranteed happiness - or at least pleasure, or at least freedom from suffering...)... then the Good can be destroyed in our thoughts; we can be induced actively to will our own spiritual damnation.

When thought is monitored, controlled, enforced - people need never become aware of God the creator; nor even of God within-us.


(In such a world, deeply-ironically, the only entities who would be aware of the reality of God and The Good would be the ruling demonic powers, who work against them.) 

(The above description is of the intention of the totalitarian world. The extent to which it is fully achievable is doubtful - given that God may act to ensure that a choice is presented to each individual, sooner or later, during mortal life or after. However, the demonic powers can and do ingrain evil metaphysics and habits, which would presumably tend to make the free choice of damnation more likely.)

Primary Thinking (or Pure Thinking, as Rudolf Steiner generally terms it*) has no limits to potential knowledge, and is fully conscious, self-aware.

This means that because we are fully conscious of our thinking (and active, not passive, in the free agency of this thinking) - we can know (for sure) when we are 'doing it'; and of course when we are not; and we can therefore chart our own progress.

On the other hand; given the unbounded power and scope of primary thinking (that is in the realm of truth, beauty and virtue) - we also know with certainty how very partial, embryonic, our own achievement actually is.


*This can be discovered in his magnum opus 'The Philosophy of Freedom'; which is very helpfully expounded and interpreted in 'Rudolf Steiner on his book The Philosophy of Freedom', edited by Otto Palmer.


(Since primary thinking is the creativity of a genius, the combination can be illustrated by Isaac Newton - who knew that he was one of the greatest of mathematicians and physicists; yet also knew that his discoveries, while significant, were relatively minuscule - merely a lovely pebble or shell compared with the whole ocean.)

When I became a Christian it was with the idea of joining a church and being spiritually guided by it - to be obedient to a true church; but this world is one in which the churches are corrupted, subverted and often inverted.

It used to be that the way to be a good Christian was through obedience to external authority, but I came to recognise that authority was corrupt; indeed that authority was more corrupt than anything else - the worst and most evil forces in modern institutions including churches are those with highest status and greatest power.

A Christianity based on obedience to church authorities is therefore - in practice - harnessed to an anti-Christian agenda and policies.

(In the past, when an individual disagreed with a church, it was assumed that the individual was most likely at fault; but nowadays any serious Christian must be on the alert against being led astray and into evil by the church itself. The modern Christian must - and usually does - evaluate and judge the church, not submit to the church. In sum, our conscience used to be external, but now must be internal.)

Is this an accident? I think not. My understanding is that this is the way that divine destiny has found (given the choices of the mass of modern people) to compel us to confront the necessity for personal freedom and individual spiritual autonomy: when the churches cannot, and should not, be trusted - we must look to our-selves.

This is the mystical, esoteric or 'spiritual' path of Christianity - but it is not usually recognised that traditional modes of spirituality are also corrupted by modernity. In modern societies, the situation is ever closer to the 'totalitarian' - which means that the forces of evil (the political and government systems, the interlinked bureaucracies, the mass media) control ever more of our sensory inputs for ever more of the time.

Traditional spirituality was based upon perceiving,  and then passively being guided by those perceptions - yet what we perceive is mostly (overall and in purpose) evil - therefore any passive and perceptual spirituality (for example based on trance states, altered consciousness, or intending to see or hear evidence of the spirit) will mostly be corrupted by the same forces that have corrupted the churches.

So traditional spirituality, esoteric or mystical techniques will generally do more harm than good - which probably explains why most of the most spiritual people are among the worst adherents and proponents of secular Leftist ideas, and supporters of the worst elements in politics and the mass media.

This means that although the present is intolerable, tradition is no better - all institutions including churches are (more or less) part of the problem, and so are traditional spiritual practices.

In sum we can see that anything which tends toward mental passivity, towards handing-over responsibility, is not an option any more; and that the only viable future is to be more mentally active, more responsible and more free in our personal agency.

And my understanding is that this is precisely what God wants from us, because it constitutes spiritual maturity, growing-up or theosis - becoming more god-like.

Our choice compels us to either assent to the tide of public and external evil, or else to seek within, and develop our spiritual freedom and agency.

This only makes sense if one believes that humans contain the necessary resources within themselves; but if we regard ourselves as children of God, having - by inheritance - the divine within us; and if we can seek with proper motivation (for the sake of love; and not for power, wealth, gratification etc) - then our faith in the goodness of God suggests that we will find what we need.

Or, since what we need is not to be found in the world, and no authority has the kind of legitimacy to which we can trust our souls, then we are compelled to develop a direct relationship with God, and to rely on the capacities for a direct relationship that he has planted within us.

We need to trust that what guidance we have is sufficient. And we need to expunge the nostalgic desire for living unconsciously or passively, as was possible in the past. If we immerse ourselves in The World then we will be corrupted by The World, since The World is (overall and everywhere) corrupt.

The situation is not, therefore, hope-less, indeed it is one of great optimism, if we accept and embrace what is necessary. We have the possibility of living from our freedom which is a consequence of living from our true self - our true and partly-divine self.

We have the capacity to stand 'alone' as Christians - and to experience, learn and develop as Christians - in the face of a collapsing world of corruption that embraces the churches...

Except that we are not alone, because all such persons share in the same universal reality, in which knowledge is direct and person-to-person contact is direct (not communicated, and therefore independent of The World's communication systems).

Our freedom is in the world of universal truth, beauty and virtue; and that world is reality, and we can know that world directly, actively, consciously. And anybody can choose it at any time because it is indeed universal and our knowledge of that world, our capacity to know that world, is spontaneous.

The harder that things get in the external world of lies and fakery, the more urgent and obvious becomes the alternative world of reality and truth.

(This constitutes the weakness of the plans of the currently dominant agents of evil; the closer they get to total success, the more brittle their situation becomes.)

Nothing stops us from accessing it (except our own rejection, and distraction); and sooner-or-later we will be confronted by its reality: the choice - reality or fakery - will then be ours.

 

I have had considerable difficulty in conceptualising Love - but I keep trying because it is at the heart of Christianity, and because false conceptions cause trouble; especially in a society like ours, where The Good is under continual attack; and all Good things are subject to subversion, corruption, inversion.

Obviously (to a serious Christian) Love isn't a feeling-just; and obviously also it isn't a justification for sex - it must be a metaphysical (structural) reality of creation. But if one makes a serious formulation of Love along the lines of its being 'cohesion' (as I have previously done) then Love comes-out as being something like the imposition and preservation of 'order'...

And if order is achieved then love will stop, because everything will be frozen, static. Most Christian metaphysical understandings of Love do exactly this, and therefore end up trying to assert that something which is unchanging and eternal - all knowing, omniscient - is also-somehow dynamic, generative, and the primary motivation.

Yet, to conceptualise Love as expanding, always changing - open-endedly and forever - is to fall into something akin to the sexual revolution (as approximated by a free love commune or 'bath house' culture); a continuously-expanding appetite for variety, intensity and transgression.

*

In fact, Love turns-out to be the best example of polarity (or polar logic) as described and proposed by Coleridge as the fundamental metaphysical reality. Once this is grasped, we can see that the usual way of dividing up the world into alternatives - as, for example, the division used above that Love is either static or dynamic - when what we actually get is alternatives neither of which is true.

The idea of polarity asserts that at the very heart of things is a principle (or are principle) that have the character of being indivisible; so Love must be envisaged as containing stasis in terms of its poles of cohesion and expansion - but the things itself is living, dynamic and continually re-creating itself; re-creating its differentiations (into cohesion and expansion) and recreating the tendencies (of cohesion and expansion).

(I picture this polarity, metaphorically, as a swirling, dyadic, bipolar 'star'; in which each different star that constitutes the system orbits the other, and the orbit oscillates in diameter - now larger, now smaller - but growing over time, in which energies are continually generated and continually thrown-off. The stars are complementary - each differs from the other and needs the other. The two-fold and orbiting nature of the system is perpetuated forever, but/ and the other features of the system may change open-endedly by expansion, contraction, combination etc. It's only a metaphor and breaks down it pushed, but it helps me.)

If we can suppose that the heart of reality is a polarity of love-as-cohesion ad love-as-expansion, then we can understand how Love may be perpetual - because creative. Love as a polarity is the kind-of-thing which might make the universe, the kind of thing which might keep it alive even while holding it together.

And creativity itself has to be understood as polar - because it includes preservation as well as novelty. And Life, likewise.

*

This is a profoundly different way of understanding reality than we are used to - it requires a fundamental change in assumptions. And one reason that polarity has never become normal (although the idea has been knocking-around since Heraclitus) is that - taken seriously - it destroys the established way of understanding things, including mainstream-established Christian theology.

And like any metaphysical change, polarity doesn't make sense when considered in the light of a different and habitual metaphysical system, such as we deploy in public discourse.

Plus there are distorted and misleading versions of failed-polarity knocking around; such as the idea that the ideal is some kind of balanced-mixture of opposing forces - for example the common modern trope that Order and Chaos ought to be in balance. Yet the Order versus Chaos idea is typically one in which the opposition is between static-states, not between forces or tendencies; and is often poisoned by the dishonest attempt to destroy order and allow something otherwise forbidden (sex, drugs, unconstrained pleasure-seeking etc). Order-Chaos might be conceptualised as a true polarity, but in fact it very seldom is.

(It is always possible to reject metaphysical discussion as too theoretical, but it seems to me that in an age such as this one (an age of questioning) wrong metaphysics will sabotage the Good, even when the attacks on it are incoherent.)

A further problem with polarity and Christianity is that most Christians attempt to be monotheists, and are very concerned to assert the one-ness of God. Whether they are successful (given the full deity of Christ) is moot. Non-Christian monotheists such as Jews and Muslims (and common sense analysts) would say that Christianity is polytheistic - but Christian philosophers have regarded it as metaphysically crucial that God should ultimately be one, However, if God is ultimately one then polarity is not profound - only superficial.

Therefore a metaphysics of polarity implies that deity be polar - and Coleridge argued this using the Holy Trinity as polar components - although I find that I cannot follow his argument. Nonetheless, for a mainstream Christian to believe in polarity as primary, it seems necessary the Holy Trinity somehow be understood as a polarity. 

For those, like myself, who believe that Mormon theology is correct, the answer is obvious - that God is a polarity of masculine and feminine, that the ultimate basis of polarity is God conceptualised as a complementary dyad of Heavenly Father and Mother; and this primary polarity creates all others.

This idea of polarity at the root of everything fits with the Mormon understanding of reality as evolving, because evolution is also a polarity of continuity and newness. Evolution is a transformation, a changing of form in a retained entity, not the substitution of one entity for another different one. Evolution is about eternal lineage as well as here-and-now difference. 

*

It is not easy to grasp; but I have found that the idea of polarity as the fundamental metaphysical reality is one of great clarity, strength and power; and I recommend it.


(Further reading on polarity is What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield, 1971.)

Due to the subversion, corruption and inversion of the mass media and all major social institutions...

Communication is useless.

(That is, communication via the senses - via visual and auditory channels)

*

What remains is direct knowing.

...In which pure thinking (of an individual) participates-in universal reality - thereby knowing other people, places, times, things... directly.

Our world, here-and-now, is one of Fake thinking generating Fake knowledge - yet we swim in a sea of mutually-reinforcing fakery, and are unaware of the fact.

For us only the Fake is Real... 

*

Awakening cannot be compelled - nor is it a mass phenomenon. It is a consequence of individual freedom, it must be chosen.

What, then, could compel people - I mean individual persons - to a situation in which the choice of Awakening was stark and simple, and evasion become all-but impossible?

*

In The West, we go further and further into the false knowledge of false selves: this is our public world; and (with mass media, social media, propaganda) our public world is more and more pervasive.

We inhabit a vast superstructure of deliberately-manufactured and elaborately-sustained falseness, irrelevance, uselessness: a fake world.

But if this fake world is not continuously sustained, imposed, fuelled, repaired; then it will collapse within the mind - and an individual will be confronted by its opposite: which is intuitive knowing.

So, awakening may come to a person when he or she is confronted by the fake knowledge of their fake selves. The two go together: the self and the knowledge. Both the self and our knowledge need to be recognised as fake simultaneously.

*

In a world were communication is pervasive and addictive and fake - communication is the core of evil. The enemy of communication is direct knowing.

Our primary task is therefore to know directly; which entails to live from the primary thinking of our true selves.

We will all, sooner or later, be confronted by this reality: confronted but not compelled - we cannot be compelled to reject the fake and embrace the truth.

But we can be compelled to make the choice in a situation of maximum clarity about the issue at stake; that issue being the salvation of our souls.


The above is edited and excerpted from an essay at Albion Awakening.

I don't take much note of the mass media, and there are very few Christian blogs which I like and which post regularly - but up to now, I have continued to read a handful of secular anti-leftist blogs and follow blog aggregators (variously self-styled as paleo-conservative, alt-right, neoreactionary... those who in practice put politics before Christianity; and when religious put some Church before Christianity).

And apparently, quite a lot of my readership come via such sources.

These 'alternative' media have served to keep me in touch with the mainstream news - at one remove, and via a different lens. So I have continued to make tactiacal, to some extent topical, 'political' comments on this blog - and these posts tend to be among the most 'viewed'.

Well, I have decided - from today - to dump this vestigial connection with the mainstream; because it has a bad effect on me - it encourages me to think along secular lines, and to develop opinions on current topics which are 'pragmatic' (i,e within the frame of mainstream politics) rather than fully principled and ideal.

I think this bad habit was encouraged by the apparent good new of the pro-Brexit vote in England in June 2016 - in that I assumed that because the vote represented a rejection of elite opinion, it was also a possible sign of hope that there would be a far more radical reappraisal of principles... and that a spiritual awakening was a possibility.

Paradoxically, this encouraged me to scan the media, albeit the 'alternative' media for indirect signs of such a revival - but even this circumscribed engagement was nonetheless an engagement - and I think it has done me harm, has set my mind working in a counter-productive way.

Therefore, it is my intention to take matters even further than I have in the direction of total rejection of the mass media agenda - to include rejection of the alternative media.

This is an era when not only is (as always) the good an enemy to the best; but any good short of the best is in practice evil. When the socio-political system is built-up falsehood, then anything which fails to reject this foundation must be building towards evil.

Here and now, we cannot answer even the simplest of socio-political questions, we cannot give the simplest of opinions, without exposing and rejecting the false metaphysical assumptions behind all such questions.

All our shorty-expressed views will, therefore, seem foolish, crazy, evil or just incomprehensible. This is a fact of modern life, and unavoidable. We might as well get used to it. But at any rate, we should not even be trying to meet culture half-way. 

In a sense, this makes life simple - because tactics are discarded at a stroke: no tactics, all strategy; no compromise, all idealism - we just need to be truth-full, all the time, and about everything.

Simple - albeit very difficult.

Edited from William Wildblood writing at Albion Awakening:

In the second epistle to the Thessalonians St Paul writes of a 'strong delusion' that God will send to those who refuse to love truth... You might say that God gives you enough rope to hang yourself with if that's what you want to do...

So what is this strong delusion? Assuming we are living in the end times what could it be?

(By the way, it seems more and more likely that we are indeed living in something approximating to the end times; since however far man has fallen in the past he has always known that he has fallen whereas now he likes to think he is progressing, so much has he lost sight of his origins and destiny. It is only recently that he has sunk so low from a spiritual perspective he believes himself to be higher than ever.)

Assuming, then, that these are the end times, what is the delusion? There are several candidates ranging from general atheism to materialism to Marxism (hard or soft) to Darwinian evolution which sees intelligent conscious life as arising from dead matter through random mutation of its component parts. 

It could be any of these but today there is actually something that combines them all and that is Leftism, the popular belief system of the modern world. 

The strong delusion must be shared by many, if not most, people. It must be the accepted wisdom of the worldly elite. It must be anti-Christian in spirit. It must corrupt nature. And it must be thought of as good in the light of how we see the world. All these things apply to Leftism. 

Leftism is the strong delusion of the modern world.

More at Albion Awakening

The pervasive nihilism of modernity serves to block any move away from the prevalent insanity and despair; because our problems are at the level of basic (metaphysical) assumptions, yet any attempt to discover, examine and revise these assumptions is shipwrecked instantly by nihilism.

Nihilism therefore functions as the conservatism of radical inversion - it serves to conserve the metaphysical assumptions that underpin secular leftism.

Nihilism, by this meaning, is disbelief in reality; it is the feeling (rather than the conviction) that nothing is really-real, that everything is uncertain - that anything may be wrong.

The modern world view is based on the objectivity of perceptions (eg. in science) - yet we also know that perceptions are often wrong (seeing is not believing). Modern morality is based on the primacy of feelings - modern ethics are all versions of utilitarianism, that is of good being happiness and evil being suffering - yet we know that feelings are temporary, reversible, influenced by psychology, illness, drugs and propaganda.

In sum, in a world built on perceptions and feelings - we know that neither are reliable, nor solid, nor even known for sure. Hence the nihilism.

Modern nihilism is indeed a feeling, rather than a thought - because (pretty obviously) one cannot have a conviction that 'nihilism is true', because that is self-refuting; rather the strength and intractability of nihilism comes from its being a feeling we can't shake-off, rather than a proposition that we are logically-compelled to acknowledge.

Consequently, modern people are stuck in a situation in which their nihilism ruins their lives, but in which they do not take their nihilism seriously - because if they did they would behave very differently. They would not argue-in-favour of nihilism, they would not use nihilism as any kind of argument - they would not even attempt to communicate, they would not plan, they would not do anything which interfered with their current selfish gratification... and so on.

What happens is that people have a feeling of nihilism, which is unpleasant and usually takes the form of fear. So they address the situation at the level of feelings by some combination of displacing nihilism with other feelings and obliterating the feeling of nihilism.

For example by distracting with the mass media, by distracting with the pursuit of sex or status; or obliteration by intoxication with drugs or sleep or immersive media - and all the other characteristically modern evasions.

That modern nihilism is a matter of feeling rather than thinking is in fact a potential solution to the problem. If we take nihilism seriously, and seriously think about it - and keep thinking about it, we will be forced to make a decision between:

1. Accepting the truth of nihilism, and behaving accordingly.

2. Discovering that nihilism is not the bottom line of our conviction.

Of course, this is a dangerous tactic, since accepting the truth of nihilism may lead to suicide or a short-fast-track to death by short-term-self-indulgence (including harming or killing others, when doing so happens to gratify an individual).

But - given the rarity of consistent nihilism, it is likely that most people would recognise that their deepest and most pervasive feeling is not nihilism, but something opposed to nihilism.

In sum, individuals may discover their own bedrock convictions - their personal certainties, stronger than nihilism, upon which they can begin to build meaning purpose and genuine relationships.

Dangerous though it is; taking nihilism seriously, and rigorously thinking-it-though for ourselves, is probably the only way out from its trap.

It was for me.

Man is a limited being:

1. He is a being among other beings.

2. He is located in space and time.

Therefore, only a limited part of the total universe can be given to man at any time - understanding is serial.

In sum, Man's knowledge is constrained by perspective of time, place and persons.

This may sound like a limitation, but every specific thing is linked with the other parts in all directions - so there is no limit to the possibility of knowledge.

*

Perspective is necessary to freedom; because if our existence were linked to all of reality, and all persons, simultaneously - then there would be no distinction between our-selves and everything else. Anything that happened would pass instantly into everything else - the cosmos would be an undifferentiated unity,

It is due to the specificity of our perspective that things appear single and separate, when in reality nothing is wholly single and separable. And it is this which creates the possibility of free agency by introducing distinctions within the totality.

Thus reality is a polarity: there are real distinctions within the unity; but that which is distinguished cannot ever be separated from the totality.

*

Because the primary basic reality is a unity, communications are not 'a problem'. Cohesion is not a problem. Knowledge is not a problem.

The only 'problems' arise because we can grasp only a corner of reality at one moment - and because we then try to detach this part-of-unity in order to do something with it. For example, if we personally, here-and-now, want to use some grasped-fragment of knowledge to achieve a specific purpose... then this really is a problem.

This is the problem of making a valid distinction into an arbitrary division. All possible divisions are ultimately false - since they are fragments of unity that ignore unity.

But there may be ways of using such false divisions pragmatically, for specific purposes constrained by person, place and time...

All of science (and all applications of mathematics) are working in this arena. All science is perspectival, all science operates with divisions treated asif they were separable.

Therefore all science (all possible science) is false; and all science will - sooner or later, in some place or another, some individual or another - break-down and fail in its specific, intended usages.

Note: The above is my paraphrase of a passage in Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom. 

Half of the problems of modern life come from trying to communicate; when what is actually required is that each person grasp reality directly, for himself.

(The other half comes from trying always to exploit - for personal gain - that which is known.)

A lot.

Christians have often claimed that many atheists are actually (deep down...) believers in God; but I suggest the opposite: that here-and-now the problem is that most self-described Christians are really atheists.

How do I know? By application of an insight from Rudolf Steiner, which is that when someone denies the God - that is, denies a Divine Principle in the world - then there is an actual physical defect, sickness, and flaw in that person.

The atheist denies something that he should be able to feel, and feel naturally, simply by means of his actual bodily constitution.

And when someone denies that which gives him a healthy bodily feeling, namely that the world is pervaded by Divinity, then he is a sick man, sick in body.

By this test, as well as the large proportion of explicit atheists, many or most professed Christians are also atheists - and this is an objective, observable fact which is seen in their behaviour: that is, they behave as sufferers from the same physical illness which can be seen in atheists.

The effect of this illness is profound - indeed it accounts for the dominant and striking distinctive features of modernity... that blank, defocused, ungrounded, alienated affect which almost everybody displays (whether covered by a superficial striving, or not).

...This is the behaviour of someone who believes that reality has no meaning, but is merely a combination of change and rigid determinism; and therefore the behaviour of someone who inhabits a world in which only business of an individual is to maintain some kind of emotional adjustment to a senseless situation over the short-term.

This behaviour, characteristic of deep atheism, is the norm; so much the norm, indeed, that little else can be found anywhere - whatever convictions, or lack of conviction, an individual may profess. Just look-around, just speak to people with this in-mind...

By this test I discern that we inhabit a world of atheists, almost entirely.

Our problems go much deeper than we commonly recognise; and 'conversion' to normal Christianity believed in the normal way is grossly inadequate. To profess a belief in God is ineffectual when what is necessary is a new world-view, rebuilt from the ground of fundamental convictions and attitudes, upwards.

The current answer is - trying not to be old.

The current mainstream and approved idea of old age is that it ought to be a time of sport, travel, socialising and sex - the greatest compliment to pay an old person is that they seem (look, behave) younger than they actually are.

Thanks to technology and prosperity, old people do indeed - on average and especially at peak - seem younger than their chronological age would suggest - and celebration and assertion of this fact emphasises there is no doubt that being old has no function.

Biologically, of course, senescence (getting old) has indeed no function (at least, not for the individual) - it is merely an accumulation of damage, with a progressive increase in degenerative pathologies, and an increased probability of death.

Socially, old age has no function; since the elderly are less socially-useful than younger people.

Therefore, so far as mainstream secular society is concerned - old age is wholly a bad thing, except insofar as its effects can be compensated, hidden or delayed.

Yet the guilty secret of The West is that it is the oldest society in the history of the world.

*

So, from a spiritual and Christian perspective; what ought to be the function of old age? Well, CG Jung was on the right lines when he said that the last quarter of the archetypal lifespan (of approximately threescore years and ten) was a time for spiritual matters. In an ultimate sense this is so - ageing brings a kind of enforced simplification of the problem of living - as the errors and evasions of younger life becomes less and less viable.

Young people are wrapped-up in their desires or wrapped-up in The World - they are focused on pleasures and distractions.

Age is a simplification of the problem of living, a distillation towards its essence - even the mental changes of age.

Of course, in this corrupt and inverted culture - the facts and duties of age are resisted with extraordinary stubbornness: at resent, old people are no more spiritual than the young, and indeed perhaps less so. There has been a massive abandonment of the proper function and spiritual responsibilities of ageing.


As always, we must consider the matter in terms of each individual person's destiny, and the purpose that we gain important experiences and learn important lessons: the harshness of lives may be (as I say, in some individuals) harsh lessons in life.

For example; Mental decline with age may be a harsh lesson in inner priorities - a stripping away of capacities, that may be trying to teach the sufferer what is ultimately important, and what is not. Such lessons are needed now more than ever before, since so many people have led entire lives of the most extreme superficiality, evasion, worldliness, materialism and spiritual-denial,


All humans are free agents - and we must assume (since God is Good, our Heavenly parent/s, and has created this world for our progression towards divinity) that this is retained - inwardly, and to a sufficient degree - in everyone. In general we cannot understand the reason why things happen-to other people - but we should Not assume that things happen Only because of bad luck or for purely biologically-determined reasons.

In ourselves, and in those we know or love, we can (if we ask in the right spirit) know the workings of destiny at an individual level; we may sometimes know what is intended. From this perspective, the purpose of ageing is often clear enough.

The fact that the purpose is routinely unacknowledged and denied is a tragedy of our petty and trivial, and increasingly damnation-seeking, civilisation and society.


Old Age is therefore a barometer; a society's qualitative understanding-of and attitude-towards old age is a litmus test of its deep spiritual and religious health.

Unless or until we can learn the meaning and purpose of Old Age - not only in general terms but also but in each specific person we love; and in particular our-own-selves - we are indeed lost, adrift, self-damned,

The main reason that God created people was related to love, the desire for children, the desire to raise up these children to (ultimately) full divinity to become co-creators...

But another sliver towards understanding 'why' is related to knowing, to the cognitive effects of creation. For Christians God is a person, a self - hence God has a specific perspective.

I think this is how Christians are supposed to conceptualise God - there is no real scriptural support for the idea of God as impersonal and universal in perspective: the Biblical God has a distinct point of view. Furthermore, this is endorsed (for me) by intuitive reflection - at any rate this is my starting point...

So - God has vast knowledge, vast power... but he has power and knowledge from a perspective. When Men were created, what ensued was a multitude of embryonic mini-gods, each with a perspective; and as theosis continues these persons become more divine.

So there are as many perspectives as their are Men (and angels) - and in some individuals these perspectives have been, and are, developing, evolving, increasing...

Therefore, creation has gone from a uni-perspectival universe (God only) to a multi-perspectival universe (as many perspectives as Men and angels) with each perspective becoming greater in scope and power and depth...

This is an overall increase in knowledge - but what binds these multiple perspectives? Well, they are not synthesised into one perspective (which would be self-defeating) - rather they cohere. What makes the multi-perspectives cohere? Well, that is love.

In sum, the totality of knowledge, of cognitive power, increases with time; but only via love. Love is (to reiterate earlier posts) therefore a metaphysical principle (not merely a feeling) - it is the principle of cohesion in reality.

Love is the principle by which multiple perspectives are harmonised, as a consequence of having the same aim, the same motivation.

And this applies to cognition, as well as to human affection.

There is a parable about the solitary Christian being like a single glowing coal removed from a fire which becomes dark and cold until replaced in the fire: the single Christian being regarded non-viable and his faith doomed unless or until he is warmed by the community of a church.

But this parable is only a valid analogy when the church is indeed a fire of faith and truth; when the church is cold, dark, dead - then there can be no sustaining of faith.

Indeed matters are much worse than that in most self-identified Christian churches - since the faithful coals are being gathered and extinguished and used for some other (and unChristian) purpose. As when the church leaders chill the church fires, and the resulting dead coals are used to surface a path leading to some Leftist political goal (African economic aid, climate-environmentalism, supporting socialism, encouraging mass immigration, extending the scope of the sexual revolution... whatever).

In modern conditions, in most places, for most Christians, most of the time - there is no social-fire of faith and truth which can warm and sustain them.

What then? Well, a great enemy of faith is incoherence; someone identifies and Christian, tries to be Christian - but some aspect of their belief system is at war with this and they end-up being incrementally corrupted; indeed may end-up being inverted and (overall, on average) anti-Christian.

What are the enemies of faith? Dishonesty is the most significant, neglected enemy of faith - many people, especially among the most educated segment of the population, have jobs that depend on positively asserting untruth, distorting and concealing the truth as they best understand it... This is cumulatively-lethal to Christianity unless it is acknowledged and repented - which seldom happens (instead people excuse themselves and rationalise the necessity of lying).

Another example is allowing left wing politics to underpin Christianity, instead of the other way around - to take politics more seriously than religion. Examples are legion - but one would be that the Church of England allows its clergy to deny the divinity of Christ/ the virgin birth/ the resurrection/ and be atheists and communists (which is an intrinsically atheist ideology) and to advocate sex not-between a husband and wife --- but CofE priests are not permitted to be members of (legal, semi-mainstream, moderate) English or British nationalist political parties. This demonstrates that the CofE leadership is rooted-in leftist politics, and not Christianity. Organisationally, it is not a true church, but a fake church.

(The same applies to most other mainstream denominations as much or more; I use the CofE as my general example because I know it best and am officially a member. And despite that the specific church I support is on-the-whole faithful and alive like a fire, and does sustain faith for several hundred people, in the style of the parable. Yet there are significant incoherences of belief and practise, and these do weaken and dissipate members.)

At the very least, to be a church member and a serious Christian requires an attitude of extreme suspicion, of mistrust - since otherwise one will likely be led-astray.

I would therefore revise the analogy of the coal and the fire to apply to individuals and their core beliefs; instead of individuals in their social organisations. I mean, if a specific Christian belief is a glowing coal, then it needs to be surrounded by other glowing coals of Christian belief in order that it does not fade and die.

Christians therefore need to work towards coherence in their beliefs, and to discover and change any beliefs which tend to isolate and chill faith. And each person can only do this for himself or herself - there may be nobody trustworthy such that it can be second-hand. Other people can help with pointers - but most other people are likely to do more harm than good.

In sum, for Christian faith to be strong, resilient and personally-sustaining; we now 'always' need to validate all important aspects of faith for ourselves, by direct knowledge and revelation - through prayer, meditation, contemplation and whatever method works for an individual.

And only by such validation can our faith become coherent and cross-linked and robust-enough to survive in a deviously-hostile world.

Yes, maybe.

Some insights on why Susan Pevensey did not return to Narnia in The Last Battle, from William Wildblood at Albion Awakening.

If you suppose you are a person without a spiritual bone in your body you are wrong - you are merely unaware of what is happening in your thinking; and perhaps (as a theoretical act) prone to deny its validity.

You may suppose that you live merely by 'evidence', by the evidence of what is actually-there; but a few moments of reflection should remind you that perceptions-as-such have no meaning.

If spiritual is understood to refer to anything which comes from outwith the five-sense perceptions (whether or not amplified with scientific machinery) then you are spiritual, because the meaning of all perception comes from somewhere that is not perceived.

Ideas, concepts, all kinds of understanding... these are not perceived - so, where do they come from? Maybe you suppose they are 'subjective', they comes from the minds of people? Yes, but... it all depends on what you mean by subjective...

Real-reality, in actual practice, is always and everywhere and by everybody made-sense-of with - or by means of - the human mind.

So, we are not cut-off from the world outside, we are not cut-off from other people - we are not cut off from anything that we think about because we are involved-in making sense of everything that is made sense of.

And that also means that whenever there is agreement between people as to what is real - this is due to agreement in their minds. We share all ways of making sense of the world - indeed we could not even discuss the matter, we could not even disagree about interpretations! - unless we shared a basic understanding: shared a basic way of making-sense of our perceptions.

This is where things start getting interesting... because if there is any real-reality, then it means that the concepts, ideas, understandings must be objective - or else there would be as many realities as there are people, and each person's reality would change with age, mood, illnesses, and a thousand other factors.

So this analysis brings us beyond evidence and to metaphysics - to the point of basic assumptions which we must make on the basis of intuition, inner convictions - whatever you want to call it. Because we are, I think, forced to decide whether this is a world in which real, genuine, understanding is possible - or whether it is not.

If you, personally, assume that understanding is possible, then you are a spiritual person - whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not.

(And if not - then why are you reading this?)


Note: The above argument is adapted from Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical works, especially The Philosophy of Freedom (aka The philosophy of Spiritual Activity/ Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path).

Owen Barfield argued, many times in several ways, that creation was first of the spirit, the non-material - and that only later did matter develop/ evolve.

In a sense, perceptible matter was concentrated- and condensed-from spirit.

Also, that consciousness came before matter: consciousness was present before bodies.

In the beginning there was spirit and consciousness...

Since I first took this idea on board about three years ago I have realised that it is necessary for coherence; and therefore that the standard 'scientific' view taught now (of matter first and consciousness later - spirit late or never), is one that blocks a valid metaphysics.


Note: The best place to read this argument is probably in Barfield's philosophical Saving the Appearances, or his Platonic dialogue World's Apart - depending on literary taste.