Bruce Charlton's Notions

From Exegesis by Philip K Dick (2011): November 17 1980.

Do not try to know; you cannot know. Guess on the basis of the highest pile of computer punch cards. There is an infinite stack in the heap marked INFINITY, and I have equated infinity with me. What, then, is the chance that it is me? You cannot be positive; you will doubt. But what is your guess?”

I said, “Probably it is you, since there is an infinity of infinities forming before me.”

“There is the answer, the only one you will ever have,” God said.

“You could be pretending to be God,” I said, “and actually be Satan.” Another infinitude of thesis and antithesis and new synthesis, the infinite regress, was set off.

God said, “Infinity.”

I said, “You could be testing out a logic system in a giant computer and I am—” Again an infinite regress.

“Infinity,” God said.


“Will it always be infinite?” I said. “An infinity?”

“Try further,” God said.

“I doubt if you exist,” I said. And the infinite regress instantly flew into motion once more.

“Infinity,” God said. The pile of computer punch cards grew; it was by far the largest pile; it was infinite.

“I will play this game forever,” God said, “or until you become tired.”


I said, “I will find a thought, an explanation, a theory, that does not set off an infinite regress.” And, as soon as I said that, an infinite regress was set off.

God said “Over a period of six and a half years you have developed theory after theory to explain 2-3-74 [February-March 1974; PKD's first mystical experience]. Each night when you go to bed you think, ‘At last I found it. I tried out theory after theory until now, finally, I have the right one.’ And then the next morning you wake up and say, ‘There is one fact not explained by that theory. I will have to think up another theory.’ And so you do.

By now it is evident to you that you are going to think up an infinite number of theories, limited only by your lifespan, not limited by your creative imagination. Each theory gives rise to a subsequent theory, inevitably.


Let me ask you; I revealed myself to you and you saw that I am the infinite void. I am not in the world, as you thought; I am transcendent, the deity of the Jews and Christians. What you see of me in world that you took to ratify pantheism—that is my being filtered through, broken up, fragmented and vitiated by the multiplicity of the flux world; it is my essence, yes, but only a bit of it: fragments here and there, a glint, a riffle of wind ... now you have seen me transcendent, separate and other from world, and I am more;

I am the infinitude of the void, and you know me as I am. Do you believe what you saw? Do you accept that where the infinite is, I am; and where I am, there is the infinite?”

I said, “Yes.”

God said, “And your theories are infinite, so I am there. Without realizing it, the very infinitude of your theories pointed to the solution; they pointed to me and none but me. Are you satisfied, now? You saw me revealed in theophany; I speak to you now; you have, while alive, experienced the bliss that is to come; few humans have experienced that bliss. Let me ask you, Was it a finite bliss or an infinite bliss?”

I said, “Infinite.”

“So no earthly circumstance, situation, entity or thing could give rise to it.”

“No, Lord,” I said.

“Then it is I,” God said. “Are you satisfied?”


“Let me try one other theory,” I said. “What happened in 2-3-74 was that—” And an infinite regress was set off, instantly.

“Infinity,” God said. “Try again. I will play forever, for infinity.”


“Here’s a new theory,” I said. “I ask myself, ‘What God likes playing games? Krishna. You are Krishna.’” And then the thought came tome instantly, “But there is a god who mimics other gods; that god is Dionysus. This may not be Krishna at all; it may be Dionysus pretending to be Krishna.” And an infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said.


“You cannot be YHWH Who You say You are,” I said. “Because YHWH says, ‘I am that which I am,’ or, ‘I shall be that which I shall be.’ And you—”

“Do I change?” God said. “Or do your theories change?”

“You do not change,” I said. “My theories change. You, and 2-3-74, remain constant.”

“Then you are Krishna playing with me,” God said.

“Or I could be Dionysus,” I said, “pretending to be Krishna. And I wouldn’t know it; part of the game is that I, myself, do not know. So I am God, without real¬ izing it. There’s a new theory!” And at once an infinite regress was set off; perhaps I was God, and the “God” who spoke to me was not.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again. Another move.”


“We are both Gods,” I said, and another infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said.

“I am you and you are you,” I said. “You have divided yourself in two to play against yourself. I, who am one half, I do not remember, but you do. As it says in the GITA, as Krishna says to Arjuna, ‘We have both lived many lives, Arjuna; I remember them but you do not.’ ”

And an infinite regress was set off; I could well be Krishna’s charioteer, his friend Arjuna, who does not remember his past lives.

“Infinity,” God said.


I was silent.

“Play again,” God said.

“I cannot play to infinity,” I said. “I will die before that point comes.”

“Then you are not God,” God said. “But I can play throughout infinity; I am God. Play.”

“Perhaps I will be reincarnated,” I said. “Perhaps we have done this before, in another life.” And an infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again.”


“I am too tired,” I said.

“Then the game is over.”

“After I have rested—”

“You rest?” God said. “George Herbert wrote of me:

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessnesse.
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least,
If goodness leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.

“Herbert wrote that in 1633,” God said. “Rest and the game ends.”

“I will play on,” I said, “after I rest. I will play until finally I die of it.”

“And then you will come to me,” God said. “Play.”


“This is my punishment,” I said, “that I play, that I try to discern if it was you in March of 1974.” And the thought came instantly, My punishment or my reward; which? And an infinite series of thesis and antithesis was set off.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again.”


“What was my crime?” I said, ’’that lam compelled to do this?”

“Or your deed of merit,” God said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

God said, “Because you are not God.”

“But you know,” I said. “Or maybe you don’t know and you’re trying to find out.” And an infinite regress was set off.

“Infinity,” God said. “Play again. I am waiting.”

A very amusing new video from that astonishingly creative, always enjoyable, group of Mormon-Dads known as The Piano Guys.

Modern science acknowledges a single universal tendency called entropy - which is assumed to explain everything and applies everywhere and eternally (entropy never 'runs out'!); which leads to the problem of why anything exists in the first place. There is also the difficulty of explaining why reality hasn't wound down long ago.

Physics has expended ingenuity on 'explaining' such matters - but the point I am making is that the need for explaining everything in terms of undirected and degrading forces arises only because of the fixed assumption that only such entropic tendencies exist.  

Entropy crops-up in biology as natural selection - which is supposed (assumed) to explain everything; despite that it is a negative, destructive, disordering tendency. 'Teleology' - direction, tendencies towards form and function... these are excluded by assumption from modern (post 1950s) biology.


An opposite force is sometimes posited and termed negentropy - and this is hypothesised to explain why there is anything in the first place and why everything hasn't already been destroyed... But in a world dominated by entropy as its prime reality - the assumption is that any countervailing tendency is limited, and will run-out sooner-or-later.

So the most ridiculous thing in physics is to posit a 'perpetual motion' machine - because physicists 'know' (i.e assume) that all positive, form-making, movement-generating, reparative and functionally-innovative tendencies are limited, and will (soon or late) get used-up.


But if entropy is negative then negentropy is a double-negative... so what is the positive thing that negetropy is trying not to name?

The answer is: divine creation.

So, the proper name and concept of negentropy is divine creation.


(Thus we discover why only entropy is allowed by mainstream science. Science is based on the exclusion of the divine from explanations - that is what makes it useful, practical. There is nothing wrong with that assumption - so long as it is remembered that the divine has been excluded by assumption; and not because it is unreal or unimportant. However, that is exactly what scientists have forgotten, and which they now deny! Scientists excluded God by-assumption, forgot what they had done - then claimed that the fact God was not present in science, meant that God did not exist!)


It seems that Mankind was spontaneously capable of supposing divine creation as the primary reality - as an inexhaustible source of form, order, motivation and whatever else was supposed to be characteristic of creation.

The negative forces came after - as the product of evil/ demonic beings - creatures 'gone bad' - or bad in their original natures.

So entropy exists in a world of divine creation. There is ongoing creation - and there is a countervailing entropic tendency that tends towards death, destruction, disorder...


Most important, therefore, is for us to make a very different, opposed, assumption that divine creativity is inexhaustible; and therefore 'perpetual motion' is actually the primary and natural state of things as we know them!

We live, in fact, inside and part-of that perpetual motion 'machine' which is divine creation.

The usual explanation for evil in a world that is (according to standard explanations) created-from-nothing by a wholly-good God - is that it is a consequence of God having given Men free will; then Men choose to do evil.

This explanation doesn't make sense to me; because I don't see where the evil is supposed to have come from. If creation is the product of a wholly good God, then I would assume it had 'no evil in it'. If freedom is given to a good creature (a creature created by a wholly good God) then how could that creature do evil? There is no evil for it to do!

A creature made by a wholly good God and living in a wholly good world... Where would such a creature even get the idea of anything evil? Both the creature and its environment were made by God, and both are wholly good...

The same would apply to Satan and the demons - how could such evil creatures exist in a wholly-good world? That they have free will makes no difference... 

As I say, this standard theological explanation does not make sense to me.

Which is why I believe something else that does make sense of God the creator being wholly good, the free will of Men being real; and evil is also real.

From Exegesis - by Philip K Dick (published 2011): [83:76]

The space-time world of this sacred time is found in the Bible as the book of “Acts.” Thus when I wrote [Flow my tears, the policeman said] I discerned this stratum, showing through in a ghostly fashion, as the basis of reality. 

“Acts” describes the power of Rome as expressed in the Procurator Felix. He interrogates his prisoner Paul; Paul is under arrest and in the hands of the Roman authorities. He will eventually be released. [i.e. presumably, from what is stated in Acts.]

This is the supratemporal template: the power and presence of Rome; the Procurator; the prisoner who is interrogated and finally released. The Empire would like to destroy him but in the final phases of the encounter between them fails. 

Thus the life of the prisoner ends not in martyrdom but in freedom, in release. This is in a sense an opposite story from that of the crucifixion where the prisoner is condemned to death and dies. 


Here the prisoner is set free and this means that sacred time has moved forward from the time of the Gospels to a different time. The prisoner slides through the fingers of the Empire. 

This story is found in the life of John Taverner, the 15th century English musician who was arrested on suspicion of possessing heretical books but then released “because he is but a musician,” as Cardinal Woolsey put it: the Empire has lost the ability to state its case; it cannot close the trap. 

The later history of this archetype will be that the Empire will lose even more power; eventually it will not even be able to arrest its victim, let alone crucify him. That time has not yet come. 


At this point the Empire, expressing itself through its police system, is puzzled by its victim; it suspects him of wrongdoing but does not know what that wrongdoing is. The Empire does not know enough; its information is too limited. So for it the victim is an enigma. 

(The evolution from Pilate’s bewilderment in confronting Jesus can be seen; bewilderment was there already.) 

The Procurator Felix interrogates the suspect but cannot determine from what he says what precisely he has done. Time passes. The Empire tries again and again to get information, but fails. 

This is Kafka’s The Castle in reverse. In talking to the suspect, the prisoner, the Procurator begins to suspect that the prisoner himself does not know what he has done; he himself does not know if he is guilty, and if guilty, of what. The prisoner cannot tell the Procurator what he would like to know, even if the prisoner is willing to. This increases the puzzle. 

Perhaps the enemy of the Empire is so large and so vague that the prisoner is not the adversary at all, but only a sort of front for it, an extension of it. This, for the Procurator, is a dreadful thought. 


The archetype of this is Euripides’ The Bacchae, in which the King of Tears arrests the Stranger only to find that he has a priest of the god Dionysus in his prison; the priest as the god bursts the prison and drives the King into insanity such as to cause him to lose his identity even as a man. 

The King—or the Procurator—can release the prisoner but he himself will suffer great harm; instead of Christ crucified Pilate suffers unbearable loss. 

Time, which starts with the Gospels, has moved forward to what is al most a complete reversal of the image. The arrested and tried god does not die; the interrogator suffers spiritual death or physical injury, the prisoner goes free. Everything that the prisoner lost is restored to him. 

This is referred to in the Bible as the end-times day on which everything is restored. It is a sign of the Parousia. The Empire is not glad to know this because it means that God himself is taking the field; God is entering the battle.

**

This strikes me as just a staggeringly profound line of speculation from PKD; that something-of-the-kind must indeed occur - and all the time.

It is, in a deep sense, evil operating against itself; to thwart its own major objectives. A blindness and impotence afflicts The Empire, about-which it can do nothing; because analysis is thwarted by at first puzzlement then (if persisted-with) insanity, spiritual death and 'great harm'. The unjust prosecutor of innocence destroys himself and the System he serves - but at no point does he attain clarity of understanding, because evil is self-blinded.

I find this vastly (cosmically!) encouraging - that is generating of both courage and motivation.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” Sam, in Mordor - in The Lord of the Rings. 

(A conjectural modern educationalist might say...)

"There are some people who assert that human abilities vary widely as a natural gift; and that, for example, some people can just sing better than others - and nothing much can be done about it. 

"However, this is merely covert fascism; and, in reality, everybody can sing equally well - except that some individuals are repressed by patriarchy, racism and class snobbery. 

"I believe that if only people could be given the confidence to sing-out in a wholly natural and spontaneous way, without embarrassment, we would all realise that everybody can sing; indeed anybody can do anything they want to do - if only they are encouraged really to try their hardest..."

Following the great success of 'I'm dreaming of a Scheidt Christmas' four years ago here's a little ditty from everone's favourite musical homophone:


It has been said that when the above Scheidt was unveiled, the composer was advised to put it 'where the sun don't Schein':


Nonetheless, the above piece was pronounced 'crumm(horn)y'...

Most likely it will leave things uncertain; which is not surprising considering what it actually is. But some significant results are possible: the most significant of which would, I think, be a massive abstention - a very low proportion of votes cast; representing a recognition that the people have seen through the whole business of general elections, voting, 'democracy' as it has become.

This as a consequence of the blatant fakery of having an election triggered by the ongoing (successful) bipartisan policy not to deliver Brexit; being continued by an election not allowing anybody actually to vote in favour of Brexit (by which I mean a real 'no deal' leaving of the EU rather than a fake Brexit-in-name-only, which is the only possibility 'on offer').

The degree to which the entirety of the ruling Establishment has been willing to sacrifice everybody-else over the past three and a half years, means that voting as a choice between the uni-Establishment is not just futile, but harmful. Of course, I believe that all voting is harmful; but to come to a realisation that elections between all-bad candidates ought not to be participated-in is a step in the right direction.

So, the value of this election might be as an indicator of the mass of British opinion on The Ruling Establishment, in general. Or it might be - as the election campaign has been - 'business as usual' - ie. incremental descent into evil-motivated totalitarianism. 

The trouble is that - as nearly-always - things can only get better via at first getting worse (otherwise they already would be better). But it is difficult to imagine Britain voting or beginning to live in light of that fact.

So, we shall see - or not; as the case may be.

Note added: I am taking it for granted that this will be the most corrupt, most 'fixed' election ever in the UK; and that that fact will continue to remain unremarked, undiscussed. Certainly The Establishment don't seem to be at all worried. I think, after three years of messing around with the masses, They are getting pretty confident about the gullibility, the manipulability, of the modern Brits; confident that They can get away with, pretty much, anything - more and more openly and explicitly. Unless I am surprising in some surprising way - if this election goes according to Their plans, then it will be the inflexion point - the point-of-no-return in a political sense (and perhaps also a spiritual sense - which is what matters); the nature of which will unfold swiftly over the first months of next year: 2020... Although I personally am not a numerologist, They seem to be, and one suspects that this will be a significant, long-planned year for Them.  

I am continuing to read-/ listen-through Philip K Dick's journal Exegesis (2011); and continuing to find it just what I need, just now. Indeed, of its kind (a private document of spiritual examination and speculation) I can only compare it with Pascal's Pensees, or Wittgenstein's notebooks.

Especially in its first four years; the Exegesis has the advantage and disadvantage of being genuinely private notations, for personal consumption - whereas Pascal and Wittgenstein were writing with an eye on future publication - this means the Exegesis is honest to the point of being embarrassing (like watching somebody else's dreams).

I am struck by the fact that PKD was (and is) surrounded by non-religious, non-Christians - who have consistently failed to take seriously the Christian revelations of his last eight years (described by author Brian Aldiss as that God and Madness 'got him'); while orthodox Christians are (understandably!) repelled by Dick's record as five-times married, drug abuser and addict, parasuicide and mental patient etc.

Anyway, the outcome is that PKD was working alone, and that his post-mortem admirers and critics explain Exegesis by (essentially) explaining-it-away - or at least never taking his revelatory experiences as qualitatively how Dick himself regarded them. 

In section 22:24 - about 44% through the volume, and in 1978) PKD is speculating on the covert significance of his novel A Maze of Death (1970); which I happened to finish yesterday. Here he uses the word Maze to refer to what we might term the Matrix, or (my term) Virtuality - which is the man-made world of images, ideas, propaganda, officialdom and bureaucracy and (in general) mass/ social media. I've added explanatory links and emphases; my cuts are indicated thus...

**

[22:24] It is the nature of the maze, which is quasi-alive, to thwart knowledge. Maze and knowledge are antithetical; also maze and reality are antithetical. Out of this I derive: knowledge and reality are interrelated. 

So we can expect the active deceptivity of the maze to interfere with our ability to know, which means that it will perpetually occlude us in every way possible... Further, that we are occluded will be a fact occluded off from us...

Yaldabaoth is the quasi-mind of the maze, not its creator—since in fact it does not really exist; it is a condition or state we’ve been put in, not a world or place at all; all it really consists of is info fired by the two info-processing sources. 

The quasi-mind of the maze is as if insane, senselessly generating and destroying: it is like a wizard generating illusion upon illusion which shift and change constantly (thus giving rise to the spurious impression of the passage of time). 

It is the plan of the maze to establish and maintain disorder, because out of disorder arises the senseless—a condition which promotes intellectual confusion on our part, which aids in defeating our attempt to understand—which is to say, possess knowledge: the essential thing we must have if we are to triumph over the maze. Thus maze equals disorder or anti-Gnosis. 

No system of thought derived through our senses or a priori is going to be correct due to the calculated noise or inexplicability generated by the maze—only revealed Gnosis emanating from outside the maze—i.e., by/through Zebra—will be of any use. 

What is required of us is that we abandon both our reasoning power (as occluded or impaired) and our percept-system results (likewise) and try to hear the “low, murmuring voice” from outside the maze. This requires the ordeal of terror and destruction of our false self...

“Outward” explicability and inner occlusion are the twin weapons of the maze: that [process] which makes no sense, is fed to that percept and cognitive system which is (unknown to itself) impaired. 

The result is hopeless confusion, the antithesis of Gnosis. You have a deliberately damaged mind trying hopelessly to make sense out of a reality (and process) which adds up to nothing anyhow: a lethal combination, but quite in keeping with the purpose and nature of the maze and its quasi-mind; this is why we should speak of it as a maze—and a good one! 

Every hypostasis, intellectual or moral, is doomed to prove a failure; events will defeat it and expose its inaccuracy. Even nihilism and pessimism don’t always accurately depict the real situation: calculated runs of moral and intellectual order are introduced to cause us to keep trying to make sense out of what we are compelled to live through. Irony and paradox abound, and a constant calculated frustration of expectation and hope, a purposeful ruin of plans. 

The maze’s quasi-mind acts in a perverse way, but it is not malignant or malicious, just “insane”—which is to say irrational. This is why virtually every system of human thought simultaneously works and does not quite (perfectly) work. 

Until finally you get into ultimate absurdities, as “the theory alters the reality it describes,”... which, when you uncover this, you are faced with the obvious impossibility of ever correctly formulating a workable world view—without knowing why you can’t!

**

This strikes me as a brilliant prefiguring of what has become much more obvious in the past forty years - the public/ media/ bureaucratic 'Matrix' world as we now experience it.

Elsewhere, PKD describes how we brilliantly constructed the Maze so that it would be realer-than-real and could fool us, and then we voluntarily entered the Maze with the hubristic conviction that 'I' am too smart to be fooled by it; then unsurprisingly, once inside we took it for real - and were trapped. Trapped, until or if there is some outside intervention that will take us out from the Maze - i.e. Jesus Christ.    

I would add that the Maze is only half the story; and the other half is that - having reduced the populations of The West to the state of chronic stunned perplexity and angst; the same System that has made the virtuality then offers an arbitrary but mandatory structure of order: international laws, micro-regulations and coercive enforcements; underpinned by methods of onmi-surveillance - leading to the modern form of totalitarianism that we see unfolding on a daily basis.

And that is the mainstream dominant-culture choice: live in permanently confusing chaos, or accept arbitrary tyranny (or some combination of chaos and tyranny - which , indeed, seems to work best).

The story of the prodigal son and his father is about Man and God. No matter what mess, what depths of depravity he falls into by his choices, the son will always be welcomed home and taken-in by his father.

Our situation is the same... and yet we don't ask for that help which would so freely and lovingly be given. Because to do so would mean admitting that we had been wrong; and an explicit admission of error and sin is the one thing that modern Man refuses to do (even unto death).

(This shows why pride is the core sin.)


No matter how far we have fallen, no matter how terrible our situation actually is - we are never left bereft by Jesus: always he is there and ready to lead us to life eternal; but we must acknowledge his reality, ask for his help. Jesus helps by consent and desire; he cannot help those who turn from him, hate him, deny him. 


Modern Man is too proud to allow himself to be the prodigal son. No matter what depths of misery he sinks-to by his own choice, he will not turn-to God - just as he will not turn-to his family. The two refusals are related.

I often read biographies (and I have know the same in real life); and it is striking how often modern people leave home, fall into sin and find themselves in a situation of - by their own accounts - extreme poverty, violence, loneliness, misery, depression and despair... such that they consider suicide (either actual suicide; or the covert suicide of alcohol, drugs or repeated patterns of reckless courting of violence and disease). They are - by their own accounts - actually living in a verson of hell.

Yet, it often emerges that the whole time he was in this (self-described) hell; there was a family back home who would have wanted nothing more than to welcome and take-in the prodigal, feed and shelter him, love him.


In few things is the evil of modern mainstream official (mass media-bureaucratic) life so clear; as the fact that this refusal to acknowledge error and sin and seek help with 'the father' (and mother) is regarded as admirable, a strength to be emulated.

The idea propagated is that it is better to die alone, in misery and despair, by slow- or fast-suicide; than to acknowledge the error of an hedonic, responsibility-avoidant lifestyle (sex, drugs, violence, rock and roll - or whatever).

This is how we have come to the point of officially-funded, propagandised and (increasingly) mandatory celebrations of unrepentant prodigal status - the many demonic festivals of Pride. That these festivals are celebrated by self-styled 'Christian' churches, tells us all we need to know about such churches.


The parable of the prodigal son is also a picture of how and why people choose hell and reject Heaven; because Heaven and hell are a choice, rather than a judicial judgement.

Another (spiritually lethal) deficit of modern people is that they affect not to understand why anybody would choose hell, knowing the nature of Heaven; and yet here we have it, in our daily lives!

Even in this mortal life we see people choose a version of hell - despair, nihilism, spiritual death; when all the time an actual living, loving family (an imperfect Heaven, but the closest picture we know) is ready to welcome them.


Note: Nowadays, the prodigal 'son' is perhaps most-often a daughter. 

The 'red pill' in The Matrix movie has become a trope for awakening someone from a world of illusions, a Virtuality; but the movie - being a mainstream product - gets the effect significantly wrong.

In the The Matrix the red pill taker awakens from normal, modern, everyday reality to a nightmarish physical situation in which humans are used as 'batteries' - which makes little sense. But the original idea was that that the red-piller would realise that his human brain was one of millions interconnected to form a vast living computer - which makes a lot more sense. Anyway, the sequence goes from a pleasant but false imagined fake-reality; to an horrific physical reality.

We certainly live already and increasingly in a fake and manipulative Matrix world of Virtuality; but the real waking-up is to a mental horror; not a physical horror. It is awakening to recognise that what we have being believing and wanting and striving-for is evil.

...Waking to discover that we have been actively arguing and working-for the implementation of a totalitarian world of humans under omni-surveillance and micro-control with the objective of persuading us to hate virtue, beauty and truth and love their opposite; persuading us to reject God, Good and Heaven and instead actively to desire our own damnation.

To live in the Matrix is to live wholly within The System - which is, increasingly The World; and therefore to live by the values of The System.

To awaken is to recognise and to experience another world beyond The System, outside Virtuality; and to recognise that it is the Real World.

But this awakened-to Real World is not physical, but Christian and 'spiritual; however, it is not just spiritual - nor is it 'oridinary' Christianity as externally instantiated in Book, Institution, Behaviours: rather the awakening is to the here-and-now experience of chosen-conscious-active participation in the divine work of loving creation.

I have called this Real World: Romantic Christianity.

It is not a world that we can dwell-in on a lasting basis, this side of the portal that is death; but it is more than a mere 'glimpse' or 'taste' of Heaven to come (if we want Heaven); it is a mild and brief experience of what it is to be in Heaven.

So (contra the movie); the real red pill experience of wakening out-from the Matrix is not just pleasant, nor just happy: it is literally Heavenly.
 

This is a deservedly very well known concerto, and is usually performed on a standard orchestral B-flat clarinet - but that is sub-optimal. It ought to be done on a basset clarinet, which is somewhat longer instrument, and pitched about five semitones lower.

Why? The first answer is that Mozart composed it for basset clarinet (not the basset horn, which is a different clarinet, and even lower pitched); and from this the second reason follows: Mozart wrote for the full lower range of the instrument in some of the key passages... Including my very favourite passage - the one that is, for me, the climax of the whole (exceptionally well-integrated across-movements) concerto.

This passage is in the 'middle' section of the last movement, it is the descending 'sequence' in which the same pattern of intervals is repeated going down the scale.

Hear it first, as written, on the original basset horn - tuning in from 23:45 with the sequence starting at about 24 minutes...


But if this is performed (as has been usual practice) on a standard B-flat instrument, then it runs out of low notes after the statement of the sequence - so the player has to go up an octave for the second and third cycles of the sequence.

This performance has similar timings - you should start at about 23:55 and the sequence begins at about 24:10.


Of course, this is just a few seconds in isolation - and you should really listen to the whole movement to get the musical shape of it. But I think you will agree that (setting aside the quality of performance - neither of these being top-notch) the musical sense is far superior when the notes-as-written are performed - and there are other instances here and there though the concerto.

In conclusion, Mozart's basset clarinet concerto K. 622 is (ceteris paribus) best done on... a basset clarinet.

The novelty of modern mainstream Leftism is that it is inverted in its values and incoherent in its ideology; this means that it cannot passively and unconsciously be absorbed; but instead those who follow it must do so by deliberate collusion with what they know to be evil.

A person growing up in the modern West may superficially seem merely to be engaged in the passive and unconscious absorption of whatever evil is propagated and imposed by The System of totalitarian evil as it is implemented through the mass media, schools and colleges, the legal system, the workplace etc. People might thus be assumed absolved from blame... But the process is in reality neither passive nor unconscious.

Every individual knows naturally and spontaneously that the mainstream values are wrong, therefore there must be a conscious choice to adopt evil - knowing its evil.


This is the case because mainstream Leftism is both un-natural and incoherent; and therefore each person has innate abilities to discern this evil simply by instinct and common sense. In other words, the inversions, untruths and incoherence of modern Leftist ideology are so stark that they require no education in order to know them.

For instance, the unbiological nature of the sexual revolution as it applies to sexual identity, sexual practice, positive valuations of behaviour etc, are (in increasingly many respects and in extremity) directly opposed to our innate biological instinctive knowledge. Thus modern sexual revolution is anti-survival, anti-reproduction, anti-child-rearing - and is instinctively known to be a path to extinction.

Therefore, Leftist sexual morality can only be adopted by a deliberate choice to invert our built-in, natural law and spontaneous evaluations. Thus, modern Leftists need to embrace childlessness, a declining and ageing population, and extinction as positive values. This cannot be a passive and unconscious process.

As another example, the grossly contradictory assertions relating to the mainstream Leftist themes of equality, feminism, antiracism is judged incoherent by the simple application of 'common sense' - that very basic and necessary use of reason and logic which all normally-developed adults posses in order to function even minimally.

To assert mutual contradictions is necessarily a choice, and therefore cannot be regarded as merely passive and unconscious absorption of values. Thus, incoherence needs positively to be adopted as an inversion of spontaneous morality (a new morality as inversion of common sense) - and indeed incoherence is increasingly a mandatory and coerced behaviour that must be cooperated-with, endorsed and celebrated.


So far, this has nothing to do with specifically Christian morality and values - I am simply talking about the basic, biological - often evolved - social equipment of Man; about 'natural' and spontaneous behaviours.

Where religion comes in, is in valuing that which is biological and common-sensical above that which is anti-biological and incoherent. That requires a divinity, outside of the social system.

In rejecting its native Christianity and not replacing it with any other religion; The West has made 'values' merely into 'whatever The System says'; and rendered itself helpless in face of the permanent revolution against biology and coherence that is modern Leftism.

What do the social conditions in the modern West tell us of the nature of souls being incarnated in this era? These are, after all, novel conditions - unique in the history of Man.

We may potentially be able to reverse engineer our features and trends; that is, we may be able to discover the spiritual functionality, on the assumption that God has designed this world for the salvation of souls.

The features include a pervasive arrested adolescence due to a refusal to grow-up spiritually. This includes an extreme of adolescent detachment from The World, self-consciousness, solipsism, sensitivity, mood instability. Alternations between hedonistic excitement and existential despair. And the usual tradition/ parent detaching adolescent rebellion perpetuated to the point of subversion and then a satanic, systematic value-inversion.


So far, so bad - and the evidence of increasing demonic domination is undeniable; but the fact that this is allowed to continue should lead us to suspect that God is 'using' the evil with the intent of turning it to some good.

Specifically, it may be that the people (that relatively small and shrinking minority of the human race) who are born into The West include many souls for whom this is a suitable environment for them to attain salvation (paradoxical though that may, at first, seem).

Here is a guess. The Modern West takes us to an historically unprecedented extreme point of driving home harsh lessons; to the point that there is No Escape. The soul is finally stripped down to a level at which Life has nothing to offer, and then the soul looks at God... Eventually, there is nowhere else to look.

This is things coming to a point - this is the point toward which things are tending.


We live in a world of increasing incoherence, and this incoherence is increasingly coerced. What might be learned from an environment of mandatory incoherence, official insanity, moral/ aesthetic and truth inversion?

The answer: to experience these, each for himself, in the fullest possible degree; to have them strike deeper and deeper; past the many and superficial facets of personality and fakery; and in towards our true and divine selves.  This is the confrontation that God (perhaps) is engineering; the starkest possible contrast between our naked self and the literally-hellish environment of The World...

A stark contrast leading to a stark choice: affirmation of that which we know (from experience) to be incoherent and nihilistic; or affirmation of God. That is, affirmation of love.

A hammered-home knowledge of meaninglessness, purposelessness and utter isolation in a dead world of materialism; and then, a direct knowing of creation, Being, and the friendship of Jesus Christ.


Things are brought to a point where the experiential knowledge confronts our divine self, by virtue of being children of God; our true self with its innate and hereditary knowledge of the divine. And this need not be taught - it is a fact, spontaneously knowable.  

If we further assume that many or most people born into the modern West are souls who were, before incarnation and from our pre-mortal spiritual existence, exceptionally beset with sins... then this extreme harshness of experience may be necessary for there to be the best chance of salvation. These are souls so short-termist and selfish that these sins must be stripped-away by despair to leave-behind what may be a small residual core of divine goodness.

In other words, the consequences of the sins are allowed the fullest operation to provide the harshest spiritual outcomes in order that their true nature may become as obvious as may be contrived; such that at the moment of choice the starkest possible contrast with salvation will become apparent to the densest and most recalcitrant of selfish hedonic natures (such as seem to prevail here and now).


Of course, Men are free agents and there is always the possibility of denial - every Man can deny God the creator of the universe (it was his prideful intoxication by this astonishing fact that seemed to corrupt the Lucifer, and many others). Yet we can imagine that at the 'moment' of death, that 'moment' can be concertinaed-out - much as we experience in a dream - so that the full consequences of Life may be surveyed fully and the choice made.

And not just our own life is relevant, not a person's residual love; but also the love of others will (at that expansile 'moment') be known as experienced reality.

Those whom we love, those who love us; this goes into the balance at the moment of choice, and tends to draw us to choose salvation and the Heaven where such love may be sustained and increased for eternity.


Thus evil is used against itself. The worse the evil, the deeper and more considered the evil, the more sustained and systematic the evil - the greater the incoherence and despair at the last - and the more complete the stripping away to reveal the residuum of the true self in its nakedness.

So long as there is indeed love, there is a chance. But those souls that lack love have nothing to set against the evil. They have nothing to weigh in the balance; and their choice is highly likely to be for damnation, where their sins are retained, and the 'promise' is that they may be indulged without restraint. What would such people want with a Heaven that is eternal loving creation?

But God cannot see-into our divine self to know whether there is, or is not, love. The conclusion of our time of choice cannot be foreseen. And this is exactly why the earthly experiences and trails are necessary; why - in our current extreme - the situation is engineered that things are brought to a point of maximum contrast and clarity.


Our time is one by which love will be revealed no matter how small and feeble: if love is there, somewhere, hidden, buried deep and covered-over by sins... by superficial materialism, short-termism, selfishness, hedonism; no matter how distorted by value inversion and lusts for sex, power, status...

The conditions of modernity are well-suited to bring those who most need it to a clear recognition of the nature of good and evil, the distinction and difference between them - and to the making of a final choice based upon the malign experience of sin that is intense, painful; and very hard (but not impossible) to deny.

The modern pianist Lang Lang is a 'base breaker' - i.e. among the fans of classical piano he evokes extremes of both approbation and rejection. Some regard him as - either already or potentially - one of 'the greats'; others as a hyped, shallow, flashy showman.

Here is my impression, for discussion among those who care about such matters. The range of evaluation suggests a combination of significant strengths and weaknesses, and one's attitude perhaps depends on the relative valuation of these strengths and weaknesses.

His main strengths are that, technically, he seems to be able to do almost anything; and furthermore he can play with that lyrical phrasing (musicality) that is indispensable but innate (and not teachable). 

His weakness is a musical equivalent of 'short-attention span'. He cannot sustain his concentration and grasp across the long spans of music that are a feature of classical music.

Consequently, his performances consist of (often) wonderful sections, each lasting some tens of seconds; but not joined together into the larger arcs of movements and whole works. Superficially, Lang Lang seems to get bored, and 'messes around' every few bars - in reality, he probably does not musically comprehend the structure of the work he is playing.

Lang Lang is like the sculptor of a bust who carves beautiful eyes, nose and mouth - but cannot assemble them into a face.

Those music critics who are able to apprehend and appreciate musical architecture therefore rate Lang Lang pretty low - while recognising the virtuosity; those who focus on the close-up musical detail (and perhaps can't grasp musical architecture, or who don't much value it), perceive that he can do this at a top-notch level, as well as anybody. 

(If I am right) Lang Lang's weakness is rare among the highest level of pianists - an architectural grasp is something usually to be take for granted at that level; and the disagreement about stature is concerned with which performer's interpretation is the best exemplification of the musical architecture of a particular work.

In other words, I am saying that Lang Lang is indeed a technical virtuoso rather than a great musician; but he is a virtuoso who has genuine, original musical insights at the level of musical detail.

I wrote the other day that it seems - from the rhetoric of the Global Establishment, their servants and pawns; that the Apocalypse is coming on a timescale of months.

In other words, that (apparently) there will soon be an engineered crisis that will be used to justify a power grab and a qualitative (and, it is intended, irreversible) move toward totalitarian world government operating by a single, linked-and-converged bureaucracy.

If so, then what?


Well, what must be done, must be done by individuals - specifically by me and by you - because if we wait for groups or institutions to decide to do something, nothing will be done because all are corrupted or too weak. All the strong institutions are corrupted, all the uncorrupted institutions are too weak to stop the Apocalypse - and that is why it is coming Now.

So what should we do, you and I?

The answer is very simple: prepare spiritually.

Not to prevent the Apocalypse, because we can't. They have power to collapse the world economy and developed societies; and to perform innumerable major atrocities such as war, famine, epidemic...

What we can do is decide and resolve how we personally will react when it comes - what we will do and what we will not. Because, no man is an island, and no Good action, nothing derived from love of God and Neighbour, from faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour - including our thoughts - will lack general effect.

I think this is the vital matter. 'Actions' include inner actions, include our real, active, free thinking. At the ultimate and most-real level we aren't isolated minds; but are instead all Children of God, therefore with 'a bit of god' in each of us and linked together by the Holy Ghost.


We must recognise that Apocalypse is a spiritual war, and all else is secondary; the stakes are damnation.

Even if the world-as-we-know-it is brought-to-its-knees, yet if we ourselves do not embrace damnation, then we have won.

That is one thing (The one thing) we can certainly do; and it is the basis of any other Good thing we might do; such as, by our love, helping to save one or more others from damnation.

Leftism is not a religion, it is an anti-religion; Leftism - like all religions, like all world views of any kind - is indeed based upon metaphysical assumptions.

The slur of accusing Leftism of being 'a religion' is that being 'a religion' is A Bad Thing. The implicit (if unarticulated) contrast is with the accuser's own world view - which is covertly assumed thereby Not to be 'a religion' but to be... what? 'Based on 'evidence', or 'observation', or 'facts' or something....

What the accuser is implying here is that a world view based upon basic assumptions is a religion - and that a religion is A Bad Thing because it is possible (and better) to have a world view that is Not based on assumptions, but based on evidence/ observation/ facts or whatever. 


This is the incompetence of the slur. Because all world views are actually and always based on metaphysical assumptions.

It is these assumptions that define and validate whatever counts as evidence/ observation/ facts. Because - for the accuser of another world view 'being a religion' - some things count as evidence/ observation/ facts and other things do not.

But how to tell evidence/ observation/ facts from the other things that are not really evidence/ observation/ facts? 


The usual (incompetent) answer is that these particular evidence/ observation/ facts under discussion) are validated by another bunch of evidence/ observation/ facts... OK, but what then validates those evidence/ observation/ facts?

In the end - if we are honest and competent, it is either an infinite regress which must be 1. false - or, 2. explains nothing - or else 3. 'infinite regress' is itself the metaphysical assumption!

Either one of them; or we get down to some metaphysical assumptions that are regarded as Just True.

But few people are competent thinkers, and even fewer are honest thinkers (the two are related, since competence follows honesty) - so people do not acknowledge the necessity of assumptions; and we get the accusation that "X 'is a religion' - whereas I personal am Not religious".


Therefore Leftism is Not a religion, but it is - of course - inevitably, based-upon metaphysical assumptions... But then everything is based on metaphysical assumptions - so saying 'Leftism is a religion' is either untrue, or thoughtless-meaninglessness parading as meaning; or else (too often) a dishonest attempt at propaganda.

The lesson? we all of us, every one, actually has a world view based on metaphysical assumptions that are unsupported by evidence/ observation/ facts.

The distinction ought-to-be between those who:

1. Acknowledge that they have metaphysical assumptions, and those who (ignorantly, incompetently or dishonestly) deny that they have metaphysical assumptions.

and...

2. Those who know their metaphysical assumptions, and those who - while they acknowledge their existence - do not know them.


For me (and this is one of my metaphysical assumptions) - our destiny (in The West, among adults who are psychologically mature enough to read this) is to first acknowledge, then become-aware-of, our own metaphysical assumptions.

By become-aware-of I do Not mean 'communicate to other people', nor do I mean even 'articulate to ourselves' - what I do mean is to become aware of, apprehend, grasp intuitively, our own metaphysical assumptions.

If so, then...

3. We need to reflect deeply upon our own actual metaphysical assumptions; and discern whether these metaphysical assumption Which We Personally Have are valid.

Or not.

John Dowland (c1563-1626) was the greatest of Tudor lute composers - Folorn Hope Fancy is perhaps his best piece (although Lachrimae was certainly the most famous). Here it is performed by one of my favourite of all musicians Julian Bream with hair raising intensity and profundity. It repays the closest listening.

Dowland's music is nearly all 'melancholic' in that bittersweet Elizabethan-Jacobean way we know from Shakespeare. In my early twenties, I listened to my LPs of Bream's lute music (mostly Dowland) more than to any other composer-performer combination excepting the Glenn Gould - JS Bach combination.

Speaking of Shakespeare; the following sublime passage from The Merchant of Venice matches Dowland for me - since I was enchanted by during my Bream-Dowland era. The occasion was an RSC performance in 1978 - starring, as I now discover, Captain Jean-Luc Picard as Shylock.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn!
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress’ ear,
And draw her home with music.

Some subtle and balanced reflections from Francis Berger on the business of feeling pity towards those who are on the other side.

https://www.francisberger.com/bergers-blog

Looking back, I have had periods of life in which I was unhappy; indeed I was unhappy for most of my post-adolescent, adult life until I married. In particular the period in my late twenties, early thirties - and overall it just kept getting worse.

I had nothing much to do in life, except do what I wanted to do; to seek happiness in whatever way suited-me - and that was pretty much my philosophy-of-life (albeit that it included quite a few traditionalist constraints that I was, apparently 'stuck with').

But I could not (except briefly) be happy, and then only on the surface - the baseline state (my deep mood) was of futility and loneliness. Underpinned, as it was, by false and self-destructive assumptions; no matter what I tried (stick, or twist), 'life' didn't work - for one reason, or another.

God was in fact doing me a big favour, in making me unhappy. I was unhappy because my life was inadequate and far away from its destined track, and aiming further away.


So, in retrospect; the worst thing that could have happened to me was that I would succeed in doing what I aimed at doing; which was to find a way of being happy in what was for me the wrong life.

In particular, it would have done me no favours to be successful at inhabiting the kind of amoral, self-gratifying, selfish-hedonic nihilist role that I so-often was aiming-at. As I said: I wasn't very successful at dropping my 'inhibitions' - they got in the way of the ideal of hedonism; but that was my covert long-term strategy. 

By contrast, when I joined the proper track for my life; I was always deeply fulfilled and happy; whatever surface miseries and sufferings might dominate.


It is nothing to do with perfection of life! It is Not about having 'found' the truth. It is - in essence - about living a life in which one is learning from experience. And these experiences are not - ultimately - cumulative. It is more like a daily, or hourly, life of attaining true insights - even if, as often happens, these insights are forgotten, or slip from my grasp. Even on the right path; we may not get noticeably better as persons, but nonetheless we are learning.


I would now conceptualise this trajectory as learning from experience; which is why we are here, in this earthly mortal life.

But learning from experience is - literally - the hardest thing in life.

The reason (and this is what I failed to grasp, for so long) is that with the wrong assumptions we have the wrong aims; plus, with wrong assumptions, we cannot learn.

It took me about a dozen years or more to begin the (daily) process of learning from adult life; because it took that length of time even to begin fixing the false (and getting ever-falser - errors feeding-off themselves) metaphysical assumptions that had been incrementally undermining my life from adolescence.


Chronic and cumulative underlying unhappiness was, I now see, the predictable outcome of year-upon-year of failing to learn from the predictable consequences of my chosen beliefs. To cure the unhappiness without curing its cause would have done me no favours at all; and I am glad that I never succeeded in doing so.

Continuing on questions that Christians might consider asking themselves; what about babies that die in the womb, are born dead or die shortly after birth?

It seems likely that most of the humans who have ever existed fall into this category - but whatever the exact proportions, this group accounts for a huge number of people (billions), especially before the modern era.

So these are people who have incarnated, but never had a chance to lead an independent existence from the mother - with hardly a chance to have experience, and no possibility of making any choices.

Were all these lives then futile? If so, it seems strange that matters should be arranged thus.

Given that God is our loving Father; I think the true explanation would need to be one in which there was a purpose to all these intra-uterine deaths, a reason for such people to have lived - some benefit these billions of souls had from their short experiences.

I found an explanation that 'works for me' in Mormon theology - which has it that these people have benefited from incarnation, from 'getting a body' - and it is this mortal body, no matter how short it lives for - which enables us then to be able to become resurrected.

In other words, we need to live and die as mortal incarnates, in order that we may become immortal incarnates - it is a necessary step on the way. So, even the briefest of lives spent entirely in the womb is of tremendous potential benefit to that person.

That is my explanation based on my assumptions - the question is whether other Christian traditions have similarly coherent accounts for this phenomenon? Or is the question simply regarded as trivial?