Bruce Charlton's Notions

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog; I address the problem of Frodo Baggins's dream at the house in Crickhollow - and why it seems like an example of false clairvoyance; because it refers to events that (so far as we know) never happened. 

Among all the many Litmus Test agenda issues - which are all very important strategies of evil - what is the most important issue for the most powerful of the demonic factions? 

One can only infer such things indirectly; but I think two things are apparent. 

The first is that the Great Reset stuff - the Ahrimanic grand-plan which purports to build-upon the world coup of 2020 to create a new global totalitarianism - is increasingly a deliberate distraction from an increasingly merely-destructive, spitefully-motivated, agenda - focused on the Fire Nation war. 

My feeling is that almost everyone - even Christians on the right side of the spiritual war and Litmus Tests - is misunderstanding what has been and is going-on across the board; but especially in the FN business. 

I shall try and be plain: The side of evil is not trying to "win" anymore. 

What I mean is that - at the very highest level of evil-power and evil-influence - They are not trying to achieve any particular end result*.

They are not trying to achieve a carbon-zero world, not trying to cool the global climate, not trying to make an inverted world of sexual liberation; nor do they intend or hope to unite the world under a single demonic-controlled bureaucracy with a unified mass media... Nor do they intend to defeat the FN in the current war. 

Not any more.

All of these issues are Now merely means to a destructive end, excuses for destroying whatever is of God, whatever is Good, whatever is divinely-created, whatever is residually Christian - They seek to destroy even whatever is simply functional - including, and this is vital to realize, that which is functional within the agenda of evil.  

In this respect the FN conflict has become the single major issue for the powers of evil. 

While the conflict has been ignored or trivialized among some, and regarded as a traditional two-sided war of conflicting objectives by a minority of others...

While all this has been going-on, step-by-step we are being walked-into all-out and uncontainable WWIII - the objective of which is not victory but chaos and mass destruction on a scale far beyond anything seen in the history of the world.

The pieces are already in place, and the inertial momentum is rolling, and nobody with power or influence on the side of The West has even spoken against it, never mind opposing it. 

Quite the contrary, the leadership class of all Western nations are united in pursuit of an agenda which will lead to the annihilation of the countries they purport to represent: starting-with Europe and the UK, and extending outwards... who knows how or where exactly?

As things stand here-and-now; WWIII gets closer every week, and Will Happen. 

We can only see what we comprehend; and if we want to understand what is being-unrolled and implemented inexorably - we must first understand the nature and reality of Sorathic evil - understand its spiteful motivation and destructive aims.  

Which means recognizing, understanding - and repenting: that is, rejecting as evil - such impulses within our-selves. 

I am not claiming that this insight could happen sufficiently widely and swiftly to stop and reverse where we are heading in the world; but, for sure, nothing positive can happen (globally, nationally, in our hearts) unless understanding first happens. 

Because when an evil dominates the world; it is imperative that it become known as such. 

*Note added: Of course, inducing spiteful destruction and chaos is intended to win in a spiritual sense: i.e. to lead to the damnation of Men's souls.

Further note: The combination of military events - starting today and for a bit more than a week - would be perfect for the Sorathic escalationists to mount a Fake Pennant event. So perfect that it would be astonishing if some such is not planned, at some level - whether or not this actually happens. But - watch out!

Starting when he was forty-five years old, and continuing from February 1974 for the last eight years of his life; Philip K Dick had many religious experiences; which became the focus of his thinking and writing in his last novels and the philosophical notations and letters than have survived as the Exegesis.

This can be understood as a specific example of one of the many ways that God can work to stimulate a man to orientate towards Jesus Christ (i.e. salvation, after death), and to learn spiritually during this mortal life (i.e. theosis). 

PKD's experiences led to a conviction that he was receiving a mass of vitally important information, and the Exegesis records some of his struggles to understand and "deal with" this deluge of incomprehensible input. 

This involved casting-about widely, reading and talking, following hunches, seeking appropriate and adequate concepts, trying out multiple hypotheses: and writing, writing, writing... 

The "conventional wisdom" is that PKD was engaged in wild speculations, circular or self-contradictory notions; was chasing a will-o-the-wisp - and that, in the end, he failed to reach any valid destination.  

But I suggest that - understood in an ultimate sense - PKD was doing pretty-much what God hoped he would do, and that very likely he did achieve a great deal of what he most needed to achieve at the spiritual level. 

God's intent with some men - perhaps many of us - is to galvanize us to to active spiritual work; orientated-towards God, Jesus Christ, and divine creation - and to learn from this process by trial-and-error. 

The terminus of such a process is not some version of "enlightenment" in this world... of unending bliss without experienced suffering...

Nor is it achieving a settled and complete understanding (which, after all, could only be a grossly simplified model of reality)...

Instead; the terminus aimed-at is our mortal death and that which follows thereafter. 

The divine intent (I infer) is twofold: To point us towards salvation; salvation being that we embrace the gift of resurrection offered by Jesus after our death. 

And further; before our death - during this mortal life to gain spiritual learning; learning that will accumulate to benefit our divine-self-to-come; that is, after salvation. This learning from the experiences of mortal life is theosis - because it results in (eventually, not during mortal life) becoming more God-like in our nature. 

This theosis-learning during mortal life needs to be understood in a spiritual sense, because it is not about memory - and is indeed not affected by the brain, body, decay, disease, death or any material circumstances that follows after the spiritual learning. 

Even if what we have learned is immediately forgotten - in this-world, in a material sense; nonetheless, if it is significant for our eternal resurrected and Heavenly life - it is spiritually retained, potentially for eternity; so long as salvation is embraced in the end.  

My interpretation of Philip K Dick's eight years of changing his mind, trying-out innumerable bizarre notions, following multiple blind-alleys, making many mistakes - as well as having transcendent insights, and (briefly) achieving Christian certainties - can therefore best be understood as a valid and appropriate response to his mysterious, perplexing and God-given experiences from February 1974. 

Some would say that God 'ought' to make Himself clear. That God would not really operate in ways that are confusing or ambiguous. And that Men ought to be aiming at some settled and clear and correct understanding. 

Yet, surely it counts as a major success for God; that from early 1974, PKD uprooted and re-orientated his life; that he worked many hours of most nights at his self-imposed task of understanding his spiritual experiences; that he focused (again and again) on understanding Jesus Christ - His real nature, His goals on earth and in Heaven... 

What seems in this-worldly terms to be just thrashing around in philosophy and theology; at times being plagued by obsessive or even psychotic preoccupations; at times making bad lifestyle choices; afflicted by wide mood swings -- as well as experiencing extreme joy, considerable serenity, performing acts of loving kindness, laced with self-deprecating humour, and much else that is positive...

What seems to be misplaced activity or avoidant behavior according to a pragmatic interpretation; may be, in an ultimate sense, not-far-from being the best possible life attainable by the actual man Philip K Dick; given his innate nature, abilities and limitations. 

That is: a life of spiritual learning (theosis) enriching the final choice of disposition with salvation. 

Modern Man has the unavoidable freedom and capability - and, potentially, the curse! - of creating his own reality; as we see all around us as a matter of daily observation. 

But this creating of reality is actually a co-creation; or (as Owen Barfield terms it) a participation. 

In other words; we are each creating our own reality, but using the 'material' of God's ongoing divine creation. 

What this means is that our personal creation may be in-harmony-with pre-existing divine creation, with the knowable universe... Or against it. 

Each Being, including ourselves, can know the universe only by his own participation in it: All possible knowledge is participation, because uncreated reality is unknowable (unknowable because it is purposeless, meaning-less chaos). 

Therefore we must and do create the reality by-which we each live; but we can get it right - or wrong. 

And getting it wrong means being on the side against God's creative purposes and methods. 

In a world that is overall ruled by demonic powers; anyone who (whether passively, or actively) accepts this worldly ways of creating reality will, of course, be set-against divine creation.

This is where 'heart-thinking' or 'direct-knowing' comes-in. It is how we can - if we consciously seek it - know whether, or not, our creation is in-harmony-with the divine.

When our thinking is 'mundane' - when it consists of 'facts' and concepts derived from this-worldly demonic sources; then naturally we will never become aware that our personal created world is a kind of evil delusion... 

Only when our discerning and evaluating thinking is active, conscious, primary-thinking; thinking by our real, divine selves; will we know whether the world we personally-inhabit is true to God's creation - or against it. 

When we are thinking-about the nature of God (probably the single most important thing anybody needs to think-about), as with thinking about any subject: assumptions dictate outcomes. 

Metaphysics is primary. 

And if we are making several assumptions about 'what kind of a thing' God must be; then that is what will be found. 

This statement about assumptions dictating outcomes is not because of errors in reasoning, nor from dishonestly twisting the argument; I am here assuming the Best Case Scenario of correct and honest reasoning. 

Even when we assume there no errors of reasoning; and (which is also frequent) no errors in asserting the real-world applicability of abstract thinking - even then, assumptions dictate possible outcomes. 

...Because reason is just like a 'bridge' between assumptions and conclusions. Where we build the bridge from, determines where it can arrive - no matter how solidly that bridge is constructed.  

In other words, we cannot discover the nature of God by reading the Bible, or by studying the evidence of nature, or by examining the human condition or human society... or from any source of 'information' or any kind of 'evidence'. 

None are any use in telling us what really is the nature of God. 

Because: what counts as evidence, and how we interpret it, is dictated by the assumptions we bring to it. 

This is a particularly important issue for Modern Men, because we often approach God from the position of assuming that there is no God; and that everything which possibly happens (now, everywhere, past ad future) is and must-be either random and meaningless; or determined in accordance with science. 

If that is what we assume, then we can never discover God. 

Furthermore; if someone is instead religious, and comes to the discussion of God with assumptions about what God must be like (to count as really God): then that kind of God is what he will find (or else what he finds will not count as God).

The lesson is simple; which is to be aware of the assumptions you bring to this task of understanding God. 

And make Absolutely Sure that you personally - by your deepest intuitions - believe these are the correct and only assumptions you endorse.

Otherwise, you will just be fooling-yourself. 

It seems to be that most people are negatively-motivated - for example by fear, loneliness, pain, boredom, resentments - from-which they seek relief, seek to escape. 

Insofar as they have an aim; it is for a place of ease, release, comfort, security (in practice; freedom from worry) etc. A place without suffering - including that nobody-else suffers (so that we will not suffer empathically from their suffering). 

The problem is that there exists no permanent answer, no permanent escape, in this mortal life - because everything is temporary, nothing lasts, every-thing ends - there is disease, degeneration, decline, and death. 

Therefore negative motivations in this life ultimately point-towards 'death' (or some simulation of death) - when death is primarily desired to be loss of the self, loss of thinking, loss of consciousness, loss of caring... as the only permanent possibility of escape from suffering. 

When there are positive goals; it is sooner-or-later realized that nothing in the world, nothing in this mortal life on earth, will suffice; because (again) everything is ephemeral, nothing is permanent. 

This is a deep problem. 

What emerges is some variation on the pattern of seeking short-termist palliation in this life, maximizing immediate pleasure/ fun and minimizing current pain/ angst; but trying not to think about the inevitable future - which future is regarded as inevitable annihilation of our awareness/ destruction of all that is us... 

(So we won't be there to suffer the future, anyway.) 

The reasoning is that if life is ephemeral, if decline is inevitable, if death is annihilation; then it is rational to make the most of my life here-and-now, rational to regard the rest of the world as existing for 'my' personal benefit; and try to forget about the future, other people, anything that might interfere. 

In other words; the 'logic' of the situation - the way to be motivated - is oneself to 'be a psychopath' - while trying to persuade others to be altruistic. 

That is; inducing other-people to live for other-people and for the future - so that these others will be amenable to here-and-now psychopathic exploitation.  

In practice; psychopathy requires an incapacity for love - an innate human deficiency. 

Therefore, people who are capable of love are (spontaneously, 'viscerally', for reasons they can't necessarily understand) appalled at such 'worldly' reasoning - and they cannot or will not take this path to embrace psychopathy - or, if they do try to become psychopathic, they will find themselves unable to adopt the requisite 'heart-less' attitudes, and will be tormented by guilt for their actions. 

(A common combination in the world today - it seems to me.)

Instead of taking the worldly path; people may reject The World. 

They may conclude that this-world is useless at best (everything temporary) and evil at worst (because of the expediency and success of psychopathy; of exploitation, parasitism, predation).

Such people may instead embrace the ancient ideal of trying to ignore this-world and focus on the-next: live now for the life to come after death. 

But such an ideal makes this mortal life worthless - indeed worse than worthless - because this is a world of illusion, cruelty, suffering... many bad things. 

The bad things spoil this world, while any good things are temporary (and perhaps illusory anyway).  

Thus; to live for the next world points towards death as something which is desired as soon as possible. And someone who really believed this, would not be alive to tell anyone else about it. 

Consider: Someone who really believed this world was illusion and pain, would not be concerned with morality - indeed he would have no value-preferences for truth, beauty or virtue - since values are merely part of the illusion.  

One who really lived for the next-world would not be concerned about converting others to his belief, or persuading others of his rightness and their wrongness.

One who really lived for the next world would do nothing to sustain himself alive - would, in fact, die within days at most. 

What instead we get (and have had for some thousands of years, apparently) is people who argue for the primacy of the next-world, and who try to prove that it is "better" to live indifferently to this world and be focused on the life-to-come... And many other absurd and incoherent variations on this theme. 

What this tells me, is that just as there is something in most people that rebels-against and is revolted-by the ideal of living as a psychopath; so there is something in most people that values some-things about this mortal life - and cannot write it off as wholly illusion and suffering.  

This is intuition at work in us.

What intuition tells us is that this mortal life should- not either be wholly-accepted nor wholly-rejected; but this-life needs discernment. 

Some of it is good and some is evil, some genuinely ephemeral, other parts can and should become eternal; and we need to know which is which, in order to embrace good and reject evil. 

We need discernment in order to know what to keep, and what to leave-behind...

(In Christian terminology to know what is sin, and what can be carried-through to Heavenly life.) 

Such discernment would need to be comprehensive and accurate, because if this mortal life is valuable we need to preserve some of it for eternity, yet we also need to know what is wrong - or else we would be carrying-through into Heaven the evils of this mortal world, so it would then not be Heaven!  

And yet sufficient discernment is impossible: because there is way too much that needs to be discerned rightly in this world! 

At any given moment, every person is wrong in some ways (probably many ways) about what is good and evil; and there are more and more problems and issue presenting themselves every hour of everyday.  

Although we have both inner-and outer-guidance that leads us towards correct discernment; this operates by trial-and-error, and across time. At any particular moment - we will always be confused and in a state of error. 

Yet another double-bind!... We can neither accept nor reject this world. We must, it seems, discern within this world; yet we cannot sufficiently discern. 

We need Heaven, but cannot find our own way to Heaven. 

This was the situation until the advent of Jesus Christ.

Jesus can be considered a way out from this double-bind; because Jesus was uniquely able to discern his way to resurrected life eternal! 

This was possible, indeed perfectly natural and spontaneous, for Him - because he was in perfect harmony with the purposes and methods of God and of Heaven. 

Because Jesus 'did it' we can do it as well, by following Him. 

After our mortal death, Jesus will be there to will lead us through all necessary discernments about what to take and what to leave-behind. 

All that we need to do is follow Him, and agree to whatever is necessary. 

Which means we must want to follow Jesus. 

A way of saying this; is that we must 'love' Jesus. 

Only that! But that is necessary. 

The development of human consciousness over the past several hundred years (the "modern" era, from c1500) has been towards great self-consciousness - often experienced negatively as cut-off-ness, alienation, isolation, solipsism, despair...

But, in a positive sense; this change has been towards greater freedom or "agency"; and it sustained (during its earlier generations) a great burst of individual geniuses who deployed this new agency in great works of literature, art, science, ideas etc. 

Yet the major developments of modern culture - especially over the past century or so) have been towards a more complete - "totalitarian" control of the human mind.

This, by means of ever-larger and more cross-linked bureaucracies; covering ever-more of life; integrated with a vast apparatus of propaganda and manipulation we term the Mass Media; and these systems have moved from national to multi-national ("global") control, over recent decades.  

In other words; the social trends have been in the opposite direction than the development of consciousness. 

This opposition of social and personal can be understood in terms of the perceived-need for rulers to monitor and control their - more potentially-autonomous - citizens more thoroughly. And this entailed getting them to respond to external motivations rather than to their (increasingly powerful) inner motivations. 

In other words; external society has fought-against the inner trend towards greater freedom, agency, creativity. 

And, so far; external and social control has been winning - hands-down! - against the individual and inward developments of consciousness; especially since the massive spread of Mass, then Social, media from the 1990s. 

But this expanding external control System (of bureaucracy and media) has been overwhelmingly and increasingly evil in its motivations; and this has triggered resistance to this evil among those who were less thoroughly and less-deeply mind-controlled. 

In other words; there have been reactionary movements, opposing the mainstream; and some of these "reactionaries" are Christian. 

Yet, (overwhelmingly) Christian reactionaries have not opposed the social trend towards increased external control - but instead have sought to replace evil-motivated external control with various forms of (putative, because they have not happened) Good-motivated external-control. 

Christian reactionaries are just as opposed to the modern-era developments of human consciousness as are the globalist leftists. 

The difference is that Christian reactionaries are, or aspire to be, totalitarians on-behalf-of-God. 

Thus we can observe all kinds of proposals for what is believed to be a "restoration" of Christianity as an external system of monitoring and control; but replacing the secualr-leftist global leadership with "The" Church... with the the specific identity of this church varying among the advocates. 

The scale of proposed change may be international - for those who adhere to an actual international church - by means of changing the leadership and enforcing the practices of that church. Or the proposed change may be local and piecemeal e.g. setting-up a small personal dictatorship, purporting to be "on behalf of" the real international church - whether institutional or spiritual. 

What Romantic Christianity does, in contrast, is to accept and embrace the inner development towards greater self-consciousness - for its enhancements in agency and creativity; and argue that inner-motivation should become the core of Christianity. 

This implies a move away from, in opposition to, all forms of external control; whatever ideal they serve, or purport to serve. 

It entails each individual accepting ultimate responsibility for his spiritual situation and choices; and moving towards an attitude that evaluates and discerns all forms of external control, and attempts at external motivation. 

Society cannot be eluded, nor opted-out-from; society is necessary and inevitable - and contains much good. 

But the Romantic Christian faces all societies with an attitude of inner-evaluation towards all external influences - including all actual churches, and all possible churches. 

He seeks ultimate motivations from within - and direct from the divine; to clarify and strengthen such motivations; and, insofar as his faith is rooted in the promises of Jesus Christ of resurrected life eternal - then external social influences cannot prevent him achieving what he most desires.  

I suppose the first philosophical (basic metaphysical) ideas that I heard-about and understood, was the debate between Empiricism and Idealism. Roughly: either we get knowledge of reality from externally - e.g. perceptions and experiences; or else, the mind generates reality. 

My eventual conclusion was that - while one might prefer one to the other, if this was a forced-choice of either-or; and while both have elements that I intuitively felt to be valid: both are wrong. 

I later became committed to Systems Theory (in the Niklas Luhmann formulation); which is a completely abstract model of reality that states its own assumptions. 

What I got from this is that there is only knowledge within Systems - and out-with a System is only 'environment' about which nothing can be said - 'environment can only be known by a System being brought-within that System. 

(I later applied this by analogy to Beings versus not-Beings - to divine creation versus primordial chaos.)

After eventually understanding it, a rejected ST because it did not explain where Systems come-from; excluded values (although in practice implicitly valuing efficiency hence complexity); and because it was abstract. 

The core abstraction of ST was that it was based on communications: all Systems were "made of" communications. And yet, by its own account, all communications were indirect hence uncertain - indeed their meaning came from The System itself - which "decided" what was a communication, and what it "meant". 

In essence, ST is circular, explicitly so - much like mathematics. It can be coherent within its own lights' but any applicability is conjectural and unknowable (except by proliferating Systems, Systems to check Systems... which is merely to kick the can).  

Because Systems Theory was abstract, there was co connection between its models and The World, and no way of knowing whether or not ST was applicable in any particular instance. 

Even worse, ST provided no way of knowing whether some-thing was "a System" - or not - or where its boundaries lay. 

The work of ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield made a link between what were (de facto) "Systems" and life: i.e. organisms and other 'units' of biology. In short, they made the connections between Systems and Beings - that genuine Systems were Beings; thus alive, conscious, purposive. 

Yet in their formulations there was still excessive abstraction; such that Beings were "explained" in terms of abstract entities/ tendencies/ forces/ powers...

From which I moved to my current philosophy that understand Beings as the fundamental reality of creation. 

Other elements needed to be added to answer the questions I could not ignore (the nature of God and creation etc); but a further major element added to the perspective of Systems Theory (and which I got from Steiner) was that there cannot be only communication (which is indirect, multi-step, and mediated), but that there must at root be the possibility of direct knowing between Beings.

Threats of Hell ("...if you carry on the way you are going") are useless at best, more often counter-productive, nowadays. 

This seems like a solid fact to me; the only uncertainty is exactly why (and there are almost certainly several, interacting, reasons for it). 

The Big Problem - which, I think, has never been anything-like so common in history - is not that people don't believe in Heaven; but that they don't want it - even if they could (somehow) know Heaven was true, and that they could go there after death.

The term 'projection' was originally given a false causal explanation in terms of nonsense psychodynamics; but the phenomenon is real, and the term is useful. 

People really do accuse others of their own faults, their own illicit desires, their own misdemeanors - and on the perfectly understandable grounds that their own character and behaviour is their 'model' for how the world works. 

So, projection may be perfectly sincere - the projector may really believe that his enemy is exactly the same as himself, as bad as himself - only worse, for not being the projector, because he is The Enemy. 

Currently The West, the global totalitarian leadership class; is accusing its enemies of its own evils all over the place, in an automatic and routing fashion, and without regard to plausibility. 

And getting away with it, being believed... Insofar as anybody really believes anything in this post-God culture: belief is now a passive, externally-driven, and labile state.

Believed because The System echoes back the lies from all directions; especially the mass media reflect back the evil assumptions and hostile projections of the political leadership. 

The masses realize that the leadership class are liars; and the masses even 'notice' (i.e. have pointed-out by the mass media) a few of the more trivial lies of their leaders. 

But the assumption behind all this activity is that liars are the exception among leaders; rather than the truth that only those who will lie to order are eligible for leadership positions. And that while there are specific lies devised, pushed and sustained by The System - these happen against a background of valid assertions, and good motivations. 

People cannot, or will not, assume that The System as a whole is evil motivated, or that it is anti-human. They cannot grasp (and find the idea too despair-inducing) that the leadership class uses the masses, cares functionally-nothing for any peoples or nations, for 'rights' or 'freedoms', for 'law' or 'peace'. 

Any such private sentiments (which are never strong in those selected for system-leadership) are stripped away (if not simply sold) by the realities of wielding and retaining power in an evil-orientated System.  

To notice such matters is regarded as cynical, conspiracy theorizing, and despair-inducing; because in a this-worldly sense all these are true. 

If this mortal life and world are all that there is - then it is needlessly cruel to point-out miserable truths - especially when nothing effective can be done to correct or better them them: at least, nothing in a mainstream, socio-political, materialist way. 

If mortal life is everything and socio-political reality is that we are ruled by heartless, selfish, and cruel people - then maybe it really is better to be unaware of the truth - better not to think about such things? 

This is the 'therapeutic' view of human life, a variant of utilitarianism (in which morality is calibrated against an hedonic calculus) - which traces ethics back to human psychology; and regards the primary duties as reducing suffering, and enhancing gratification.

If this life and world are everything, and yet that everything is hostile and cruel; then it is probably best to regard our discourse as a palliative therapy - the kind of terminal health care provided to those who who are dying, who cannot be cured - but can be helped to suffer less, and maybe experience a few more pleasures. 

In other words; the prevalent morality is one of: "eat, drink, and be merry; because tomorrow we die". 

In such a situation; one who points-out the situation - who increases conscious awareness of the miserable nature of life - is an enemy. 

Only if our world view is rooted in the eternal, and if we our-selves are confident both of our post-mortal salvation, a job-to-do while we still liv. Only when others may share this life-beyond-life if (and only if) they understand and choose spiritual truth... Only then is it worthwhile looking beyond the therapeutic perspective - and to matters of reality. 

We are stuck in habits of materialist, reductionist, abstract thinking that have been inculcated from all directions of our culture; and which are sustained by all public discourse. 

Breaking free and developing better, truer, stronger ways of thinking - thinking with the innate cosmic and unconstrained scope consequent upon the divine part of our human natures - is difficult. 

Furthermore, we cannot really use conscious 'will power' in this task, because conscious will is rooted in the same world of habit which we are trying to escape. With conscious will power; we are in the paradoxical situation of deploying exactly that which we are simultaneously trying to change!

To break the evil habits of our mainstream, mundane thinking; we need to be able to think actively, and from our real (divine) selves. We cannot just let our thoughts happen; but we cannot use will power. 

And I believe we cannot achieve that active thinking by increments, we cannot attain metaphysical transformation by generalizing from earlier and specific successes. 

(This is why Rudolf Steiner's meditation exercises seem to be useless at generating active primary thinking - since they rely upon the mistaken assumption that the general can be built-up stepwise from the specific.)

How then might we 'strengthen' (as Owen Barfield terms it) our primary thinking, and develop the capability of using it more often and more fully? 

The answer is by what Coleridge called "imagination" - if that term is properly understood; which is also what Tolkien called "subcreation". And this is by the act of creating in thinking - i.e. in primary thinking - which is creating in the non-material, spiritual, realm.

All material is spiritual - because matter comes-from spirit; so creation in the material realm - i.e. creating stuff like poetry, music, painting, scientific or philosophical theorizing - is potentially valid. 

Such activities are potentially good for developing 'imagination' so long as they are active and innerly-driven. But these are minority activities - and such material manifestations of creativity are secondary. 

The Real Thing about creating goes on in thinking: thinking is primary, when it comes to the kind of imagination/ subcreation we need. 

Unconscious creativity (e.g. that of a child, or someone who creates something valued by accident, or without trying) is Not what we want and need - if we are to break the materialist mind-set.

No - to develop the imagination; requires that creation be conscious, active, chosen. 

And such creation happens first in thinking. 

Whether or not thinking later results in a poem, song, new theory or whatever - is secondary and inessential. 

The value in creating comes from the thinking - even if that thinking is unspoken, unexpressed. 

Indeed, the expression of creativity is always secondary; and - necessarily - incomplete, distorted and inferior to the original and primary thinking that led to it. 

Thus; whether inner creativity of thinking is recognized by 'other people', or is accorded praise and status - is inessential. "Great" poets or painters may in fact be less primarily creative than one who has never even spoken about his inner states of primary thinking. 

So, imagination, creation, in the realm of primary thinking; is what is needed to develop the desired true and good alternative to the false and evil thinking-habits of this time and place. 

And such creation can only come from the thinker being aligned with God and divine creation; and can only happen when the thinker is motivated by love. 

This is another reason why it cannot be achieved by conscious will power - when the Good-alignment is absent, and/or motives are selfish or manipulative - then primary thinking just does not happen; and a kind of pseudo-creativity is the result.

It might be said that plenty of people are 'already doing this kind of inner-creating without realizing they are doing it'. But that does not suffice. 

We need to be clear that anyone who does not realize he is doing it, is actually not doing it! 

This is clear from the fact that such unconsciously creating people remain trapped in the habit-prison of mundane materialist thinking - often barely aware of the fact. 

Our core task here-and-now is to become conscious about many things which used to be unconscious. 

We need to become conscious that we are indeed in a socially-imposed thought-prison of mundane materialist thinking; conscious that we want to escape this prison; and consciously decide to develop our primary thinking - our inner and spiritual creativity.  

Francis Berger took a break from blogging - apparently he was building a greenhouse - and was much missed by me and others! 

Well, he is back in action again - so please go visit, and encourage him to keep-going...

This, for me, is a big and urgent question. I know (pretty much) what is wrong with the prevalent and socially-inculcated 'materialist' world view; and how I want to 'know' the world; but making the necessary transformation to it? Well, that is another matter!

I find it is so easy to get caught at the level of psychology, of feelings - that is, monitoring and trying to change my feelings about the world - by sheer willpower! Not only is this ineffective, it is the wrong idea entirely! After all, feelings (to the extent they can be manipulated) are only loosely and indirectly a consequence of metaphysical assumptions.  

Yet, the objective is to know the world in a different way, through a different 'framework'. 

If this was attained, then presumably feelings would follow - but a change of feelings won't lead to metaphysical change. Depth transformation necessarily changes the surface, but surface change leaves the depths untouched.

The problem is a variant of the dissociation between (on  the one hand) the relatively attainable objective of becoming a Christin and living a Christian life (which is a matter of willpower and a suitable environment)...

And (on the other hand) the nigh-impossibility actually being a Christian, of becoming a New Man who understands life and the world through a Christian 'lens'; who actually becoming a better Man - such that whatever the environment, and however feeble our willpower happens to be at any particular moment - we will still be in a 'Christian-relationship' with the world. 

One difficulty is that the Christian lifestyle can be attained incrementally, a bit at a time. Whereas a Christian metaphysics seems to be all-or-nothing: if it is not 'complete' then it doesn't really work - the remnant wrong-elements ensure that we just revert to the socially-dominant ways of thinking of the world as dead and determined.

I don't have any lasting answer to this - and perhaps none is possible (at least for me); but I have at times and briefly been able to attain the desired metaphysical transformation; and I think this was by a kind of empathic, intuitive - and indeed loving - identification with some other person or Being who has the desired mind-set. 

A matter of thinking in the same way as another; of relating to the world as they do...

It strikes me that this may be a hint as to how following Jesus Christ is the way (the only way) we can attain to resurrected eternal life. 

Perhaps if we are loving the living-Jesus, then we can identify with Him - mind-to-mind, thinking-to-thinking, metaphysics-to-metaphysics...

And this shared-identity of our personal relation with God and creation, linked with that of Jesus, is what enables us to undergo the transformation that is resurrection? 

In the early Chapters of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tries to explain the nature of his 'mission' - what he brings - using a contrast between water on the one hand, and that which water becomes through following Jesus after death: spirit or some other. 

More exactly; Jesus uses "water" to mean this life, this temporary life in this mortal world - and contrasts it with what he offers - which is "not of this world". 

Indeed, throughout the Fourth Gospel, involving everybody from the disciples through to Pilate, we can see Jesus struggling (over and again) to make people understand that what he offers is not of this world; that he is not a would-be "king" who claims to offers a better life in this realm of "water" in which everything is temporary... 

Instead of that; Jesus describes the Kingdom of life-everlasting coming after death, and only after death: to reach it we must first die, and then be 'reborn', born-again - that is resurrected.  

In Chapter 1, John says that he himself baptizes with water - but Jesus's is a baptism of the spirit - which refers to the distinction between this and the next world, the spirit being from Heaven:

And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.

In Chapter 2, the contrast is given in the nature of the water-to-wine miracle of Cana; where water is perhaps understandable as this-worldly life, and "wine" may be taken to stand for the transformed life after death. 

In Chapter 3; Jesus talks to Nicodemus about being "born again" - which means first to die and then to be resurrected - i.e. a kind of rebirth, but into an everlasting condition: 

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Here we see "water" of this life, again contrasted with the "Spirit" of the next. And again that the Spirit must be preceded by the water. Man must first be born into this mortal world (of "water") if he wishes ultimately to enter the eternal kingdom of God. 

Jesus also introduces a further "analogy" for this mortal life as "the flesh" - to explain that there is no possibility of achieving the Kingdom of God on earth and in this mortal life; but only by passing-through death and re-birth ("Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God). 

A man that is born into this mortal world of the flesh can only be mortal ("the flesh is flesh"); but he that is re-born (i.e. resurrected) into the world of Spirit, beyond death, will himself partake of the immortality of that life-after-life ("the Spirit is spirit"). 

In sum; for a man to become eternal he must be born (that is, re-born; which entails mortally-dying first) in the eternal world.  

Chapter 4 describes Jesus at Jacob's well, talking with a Samaritan woman who is drawing water. 

Again Jesus contrasts the water of this mortal and temporary life which the woman draws from the well, with what He Himself brings to the world: which is everlasting water ("living" water - i.e. by analogy life that is eternally-self-renewing) - for those who desire it, and ask for it. 

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.

The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

In Chapter 5, Jesus goes to the pool at Bethesda, where the "impotent" seek to enter the water and be healed. The "impotent" implies all men in this mortal life and world. 

In this world, therefore temporarily. Jesus heals the man ("Take up thy bed, and walk") but Jesus explains that what he has come to do is not about temporary healing in this temporary world; but is about "sin" (by which, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus mostly means death without resurrection).

Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more...

I think that Jesus's admonitions - here, and sometimes elsewhere - to sin no more, or not to sin, make no sense if understood as ordering people to cease from moral transgression - which Jesus knew (as we know) to be an impossibility in this mortal life. 

"Sin no more" - in the Fourth Gospel - means (more or less) that people should die no more; that is, that they should instead understand, believe, and accept Jesus's gift of eternal resurrected life. 

The instruction to sin no more is therefore roughly equivalent to Jesus urging people to accept the gift of resurrected life eternal, through believing and following Him.

"Sin no more" actually means therefore - as we might say it - "convert to Christianity". 

In Chapter 6 Jesus varies the symbol, somewhat: 

[The people said:] Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.... 

[Jesus replied:] Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. 

Then said they unto him, Lord, evermore give us this bread.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Again the contrast is between the only temporarily-satisfying "bread" of this world, and the eternally-satisfying bread from heaven after-which we will never hunger (and also the drink which permanently abolishes thirst, presumably "living water") - that shall be given - after death - to those who "come to" Jesus. 

Chapter 7: In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Here there is again implicit the earlier idea (from Jacob's well) the idea of ordinary water versus "living" water - to mean resurrected life everlasting. The man who thirsts is one who desires eternal life in the Kingdom of God. 

And the path to that life leads through death via "believing-on" Jesus - implying "belief" entails trusting and following the person of Jesus, at, and after, our death. 

Other similar passages can be cited, where contrast is drawn between, on the one hand, this-worldly and temporary ameliorations (such as Moses's provision of manna); and, on the other hand, the eternal and transformative life-beyond-life that Jesus brings and offers. 

It seems to me that there is a pattern through the Fourth Gospel of Jesus repeatedly denying that His business is to offer what we might term secular improvements - e.g psychological and sociopolitical benefits; and instead many attempts to explain (with various 'analogies', or symbols) that his message is not about this, but about the next, world. 

Now, of course, belief-in and desire-to-accept, Jesus's offer of eternal resurrected life in the Kingdom of God is almost certain to have effects on this mortal life... But any such effects on this-life are secondary to expectation of the-life-to-come. 

This is worth emphasizing, because I think many or most Christian get it the wrong way around - and thereby fall into the error Jesus strove so often to correct. They assume that Christianity is about doing particular stuff in this world in order to get to the next world. 

Indeed, some Christians put so much emphasis on the particular stuff that must be done in this world; that they hardly ever even think-about the next world. 

Some even ignore the primary promise of Heaven; and instead focus almost-exclusively on the quadruple-negative life purpose; of not-doing stuff that must be eschewed, in order to avoid-Hell!  

But Christianity is primarily about resurrected life after and beyond this mortal life; therefore, the effects of Christian belief on this mortal life are secondary to, contingent upon, the anticipated fact of resurrection in a mortal life.

Effects of Christian belief on this mortal life are thus a secondary consequence of the expectation of eternal life.

Any changed behaviours ought-to derive from the different perspective on this-life that results from belief in the life-to-come.  

***

Note: Then there is a long-running disputation about whether we can, or should, be confident about the life-to-come - i.e. "salvation". 

Many Christians have believed that salvation is difficult, complex, rare, only possible via a church and its requirements...

But that is not what comes across in the Fourth Gospel. In the Fourth Gospel; it seems that salvation is something like a decision and a commitment; and that those who have chosen salvation (by means of following Jesus) ought to be confident of salvation (so long as they continue to remain committed to it); and then... live their lives on the basis of this confident expectation. 

Just an observation. Light-irises - i.e. blue/ grey/ green eyes seem to work best on screen (movies and TV) when it comes to acting. 

Here, we need to distinguish 'actors' and stars. 'Actors' are those who are well-known for their ability to act, versus those who are known primarily for their star-quality, for their screen 'magnetism'. 

Stars can have any coloured eyes - but it seems to me that light-irises are certainly helpful when in comes to acting; probably for the simple reason that they are more expressive of emotion, and of a wide range of emotions - and that is much of what close-up screen acting is about.

Of course there are exceptions: i.e. excellent screen actors with dark-eyes (e.g. John Hurt, perhaps the best of his generation?); but considering that blue eyes are always in a minority, often a small minority, in the nations that dominate TV and movies - it is striking how many actors have light irises. 

I have often read that blue eyes (or green) are said to be especially attractive, but I simply do not think this is true. Even if it is somewhat true; it only applies to a minority of intensely blue eyes, and it is a weak contributor to being regarded as attractive - other (facial, skin, and bodily) factors are much more important. 

My conclusion is that there are many aspects to being a good actor, of which eye colour is only one; but that light-irises are an advantage due to emotional expressivity. And this is the major reason why blue-eyes (especially) are 'over-represented' on-screen. 

Declaration: I have blue (albeit greyish) eyes, which I inherit from my Charlton Northumbrian ancestry, which is either Angle or Norse in origin. Northumberland has the highest prevalence of blue eyes in England. My eyes are certainly expressive, and I used to be a decent actor - and lecturer - but nobody has ever praised them for being especially attractive.