Bruce Charlton's Notions

A typically thoughtful and honest post from "trad" Roman Catholic blogger "Bonald" at The Orthosphere has had me mulling over his arguments and implications. 

As purpose and meaning are being, decade by decade, leached from public discourse and major institutions and the world (especially The West) descends into ever more explicit and aggressively imposed value-inversions -- is it really conceivable that such a situation is what we need for our spiritual well-being? 

Maybe this is not so far-fetched, if I consider the specific instance of myself. 

I grew-up into early adulthood in a much better world - more honest for sure, with a better appreciation of beauty; and a definite sense that the various social systems (law, academia, science, education) ought to be trying to perform these functions for the long-term benefit of everyone. 

Yet the fact was that living in this better world, even when living by the highest standards of this better world; was grossly insufficient in terms of ultimate realities. To take my own field of science in the context of academia: in actual practice - in my own life - the fact that science and scientists in the UK sought truth and spoke truth; and that academia broadly supported this activity (or, at least, did not actively dis-courage it); had the effect of my life and work being a partial satisfaction of profound drives. 

Because these profound impulses were partially satisfied in actual life, the fact that my life and world were ineradicably insufficient was for long concealed from me. There seemed to be (but actually was not) a valid hope that the inadequacies would be cured by some future change, some reform or improvement in the conduct of science and universities. 

My life was Not satisfying, despite its many satisfactions; there was Not a genuine purpose to my life in context of humanity, nor adequate meaning to my work in context of reality - because I believed (in line with my culture, the Western Civilization I inhabited) no purpose or meaning to reality-itself. The universe was a mixture of blind-determinism and randomness, and was utterly indifferent to humanity in general, and me-personally in particular. 

To summarize; the better world of my youth was At Its Best an only-partially-effective mere-palliative for a fundamentally inadequate world-view and a fundamentally meaningless public world. Yet the palliative was, for many years, good enough to prevent me seeking for anything fundamentally better. 

Therefore, I did not acknowledge the reality of a God, a Creator, until my late 40s, and did not become a Christian until I was nearly 50. 

And why did this truth eventually dawn upon me, after so long in this world? Probably the main proximate stimulus was the corruption of science and academia, such that their inadequacy was At Last forced upon me. 

In other words, it was the world getting worse that made me realize the nature of the world, and led eventually to a grateful acceptance of Jesus Christ's offer of everlasting resurrected Heavenly Life. 

My point is that it is at least conceivable that in some broad and general sense, the same may apply to many other people; and it may be that many people are led away from mainstream materialistic atheism and to conversion only by the worsening of the world, and the removal of partial-palliatives.

It may be that - in some average sense - a worse and worsening world may be the best hope for many or most people. 

Not that God wants a worse world for us! Of course not. God desires the best world for us, and our highest happiness in this (inevitably flawed and corrupt) mortal life - followed by the choice of immortal resurrection into Heaven. God desires us to be born-into and develop and be nurtured, in a context of loving relationships and Godly ideals. 

But Western humanity won't do that, does not even want that, and (increasingly) chooses the opposite; and therefore God (as creator) is able-to and does make the best of the evil choices of sinful Men. 

For me, the decline of The West made me recognize that - even at its best - our secular civilization was not merely inadequate, but actively harmful. My own strong distress that the top-down imposition of corruption and lies on the once relatively 'pure' worlds of academia and science, actually functioned as a trigger to deeper reflection and a fundamental reorientation in what I desired for myself and others.

It seems that I actually, in practice, in real-life - actually Needed a worse this-world to be induced to desire a better next-world; and maybe there are (in very different ways, mostly) many other people in a similar situation? People who will not be cured of this-worldly materialism, except by the withdrawal of this-worldly gratifications? 

It is not, of itself, an improvement in the world that real science has been (all-but) eradicated from professional "science"; and that the activity is now reduced to careerist bureaucrats striving to impress their official superiors rather than seek the truth; seeking funding rather than answers to real problems; publishing deliberately misleading deniable-dishonesties rather than the truth as they see it... 

None of this is Good; and it comes from the short-termist expediency of modern Godless Men. yet from it; God can lead some Men (me, for instance) to recognize that even science at its best and noblest, is a radically-incomplete and dangerously-distorted human endeavor when made primary; an activity that cannot satisfy the needs of our soul; and a discourse which does not deserve to be the basis of a Man's mortal life.   

Therefore, perhaps this "sorrowful" world that Bonald well-describes, may be God's way of making the best of modern Man's innate and accumulated evil - and maybe, therefore, this actual world does what is most necessary in ways that are actually more effective than the actually-available alternatives?  

Further to yesterday's blog post: 

It strikes me that it is worthwhile to analyze the general, public significance of my - or anyone else's - claim of experiencing spiritual contact with an author - whether dead, or indeed still alive!  

In terms of such public activities as literary scholarship or criticism, (because false claims are so easy, and none can be checked externally) a person's claim of special spiritual understanding cannot be allowed to have any formal or explicit significance: Scholarship or criticism ought to stand or fall on its intrinsic qualities. 

(This is what ought to happen in an ideal sense; despite that, in practice, this is seldom the case - and that instead high status institutional affiliations and educational certifications of the scholar or critic are too-often taken as validation of specific claims.)

So, we ought to judge for ourselves and not accept spiritual claims of another person simply because they have been made. Nonetheless; it seems absolutely valid to take-into-account such matters as spiritual affinity, when (as a merely specific example) evaluating Tolkien scholarship and criticism. 

And, in practice, this is done; both by the majority mainstream, secular and academic, Tolkien scholars, and also by the significant minority of scholars whose perspective on Tolkien is rooted in his devoutly Roman Catholic religion. 

For myself; I make an evaluation concerning each scholars spiritual sympathy, that is his empathic understanding of Tolkien - and my attitude is (broadly) that the scope of a scholar's understanding is constrained by the limits of his spiritual sympathy. 

That does not exclude the possibility that - within that scope - a scholar may make a vast contribution to the understanding of Tolkien: thus (IMO) the greatest of Tolkien scholars so far - Tom Shippey - is neither a Catholic nor a Christian. 

Nonetheless, that constraint is still operative; and I would not expect Shippey to have much to contribute to a spiritual approach to Tolkien - that is, to the idea of regarding JRR Tolkien as a spiritual mentor and guide (as I do).  

Broadening-out the argument; my summary is that each of us whose concern is spiritual and Christian, can and should be discerning and evaluating, and taking into consideration, the degree and nature of spiritual affiliation between a specific scholar, critic or philosopher - and any person under discussion. 

In sum: making decisions concerning another person's spiritual affiliation is not just relevant, but a necessary activity in the world generally - as well as literature specifically.  

Excerpted from a post at The Notion Club Papers blog...

**

I have a strong, and still increasing, conviction that we ought to move away-from the kind of impersonal abstraction that has been characteristic of spiritual, mystical, meditative and prayer life for many centuries - so much so that the two are often regarded as synonymous. 

Christian mystics have, for instance, often been Neoplatonic in their rationale and experience, and mysticism is often asserted to be a negative state of indescribable, inexpressible experience.  

What I mean is that the ultimate is often supposed to be an experience and a 'subject' that is beyond the personal. 

On the other hand, personal experience of the spiritual - that is, when there is some kind of contact with a Christian personage - whether Jesus Christ, Blessed Virgin Mary, a saint of angel, or any other individual of higher spiritual stature - have also often been reported. 

But typically such an interaction has been conversational... 

An experience of meeting-together perhaps, and conversing. Such experiences as as talking-with a statue or crucifix, an icon, or at a shrine; speaking oneself and hearing replies in the mind... 

Maybe meeting with another person in a dream-like state (or an actual dream), accompanied by vivid visions. Perhaps writing questions and then being dictated answers; or automatic writing. 

These two seem like the options - either, on the one hand, a sophisticated and intellectual kind of abstraction and negation; or else, on the other hand, a rather child-like interaction with a personage that operates rather like a mundane conversation. This tends to encourage adult (and educated) Christians to abandon the personal and embrace the abstract. 

But there is at least one other option, which is something I have at times experienced. An example is when I was immersively reading and thinking about the Fourth Gospel - but an earlier instance relates to more recent historical people who I came to regard as spiritual teachers: William Arkle and JRR Tolkien. 

I have elsewhere talked about the Fourth Gospel and Arkle experiences; but not really about Tolkien... (Continued) 

** Read the whole thing at my Notion Club Papers blog **

I feel as if I am channeling WmJas Tychonievich, in reporting this following (sort-of) "synchronicity" -- which is that immediately after writing my post on the question of evidence of God; I continued my re-reading of The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K Dick (1982), in which I came across the following (edited, and with my additional emphases):

**

Most people in the West "know" that God does not exist; and they think they "know" this from the "lack of evidence". 

They may ask some variant of - "If God is really-real; then why doesn't God communicate with us?"

But of course there are countless people (now and in the past) who state they know that God exists, have seen or heard or reasoned-out evidence of this. 

What "most people" in the West actually mean is much more like "I, personally, don't believe those people who say that God exists, and I don't believe that the evidence the believers provide is real". 

What is really meant is something more like "I choose to believe the people and institutions that state God does Not exist; and I choose to disbelieve anyone who claims God Does exist."... which is a very different thing from there being "no evidence". 

That's a first line defense. People choose who to believe - what "authorities" to trust. But they then pretend that they have not made this choice! - they claim that their choice was not a choice, but was objective reality; to deny which is irrational self-deception... 

To make a choice, then to deny this was a choice, is surely the very worst kind of self-deception - because impossible of correction?

It also goes deeper than that... 

"I personally do not know of any evidence that convinces me that God exists" is the kind of phrase - and what this actually means is that no such evidence of God is possible, because "my" understanding of "reality" excludes the possibility of God - my understanding of The World has no space for God. 

Someone who says they personally know of no "evidence" that God exists is therefore in truth saying something about himself - not about reality. 

Because his grounds for claiming there is "no evidence" are rooted in many chosen-assumptions that might be otherwise; and these assumptions were themselves chosen. 

(Or else the assumptions were passively-accepted at first, and then later defended as being necessarily true - defended by personal choice.) 

"I know of no evidence that God exists" actually means something-like: 

"I deny the possibility that there could be any evidence of God's existence - because I already have decided there is no God, and therefore any supposed-evidence cannot be true".

Yet such convictions, like all convictions, are ultimately chosen; and therefore we are personally, and ultimately, responsible for both our beliefs and for our disbeliefs, equally. 

And "responsible" means that we personally will take the consequences for the life we choose to lead - which life is most deeply and essentially our thought-life: that of our lives over which we have the greatest choice, and in which our agency is manifested...

We have little or no direct control over the material context of our lives: we don't choose the physical world we inhabit. 

Yet, our thinking is free - if we choose it to be free. 

In particular; we can choose to affirm the ultimate truth, goodness and reality of whatever we want; and to deny the reality of whatever we want*. 

By That we make our life, and judge our-selves. 

*Note - Believing "whatever you want" does Not means that all alternatives are equally true; and choosing to want-to-believe that which you judge to be false or evil will have consequences. 

Many Christians, many people in general, approach the problem of human life in terms of a frame of its pleasures and sufferings - especially the sufferings. 

In other words, they primarily, as their main goal, seek to understand and explain - and find an answer for - the sufferings of 'the world'. 

This approach, while it may be spontaneous for Modern Man, is spiritually lethal; because it is an incoherent, hence insoluble - and in practice actively-harmful - way of understanding the world.   

I think we need to understand this world, this reality, from a starting point that assumed the reality of Man's agency, free will, capacity for autonomous motivation... 

And a reality in which Men are mixed in their nature; a mixture of Good-loving with evil (i.e. which opposes Good).

That is what God has to work-with in creation; and from-which Heaven must be made. 

God's creation includes Men with agency, and evil as well as Good - that is the starting-point.

And from such ingredients it is God's self-imposed task to build "Heaven" (a world of love). Heaven is to be made from a multitude of Men - each of whom just-is an agent, capable of choice and commitments. 

The question is how can God made a Heaven, using Men with agency who each 'contain' some evil - as well as loving motivations? 

Therefore; in creating Heaven God needs to work to encourage Men to choose to make the eternal commitment to live wholly and permanently by love: this outcome cannot be imposed on Men.

We cannot understand this up-front experienced world - including that we cannot understand human suffering - unless we understand 1. what God is trying to do with us, and 2. what God had to work-with. 

We need to understand God's aims and 'materials' as being related, bound-together, inextricably; by the nature of reality. 

Only thus can we grasp the meaning of the two great commandments: to love first God, then to love our 'neighbour'; to understand that these laws are a terse summary of God's great task in creation; and also a brief description of how it is that God can (in principle) make Heaven from a multitude of Men with innate agency...

Men who choose to commit-eternally to love God and the 'neighbours' (i.e. other men who have made the choice of Heaven) - are enabled to make this eternal-commitment by that resurrection - which was offered by the work of Jesus Christ. 

The result - among those who have made this choice - is Heaven. 

The Arrakis conflict has led to the reintroduction of of 1960s style mass "protest" for the current generation of would-be radicals. 

This is something that delights the kind of self-righteous people who most value the 'pure altruism' of public concern about the reported-doings of remote and barely-understood strangers. 

And, just as happened in the 1960s; the new generation of radicals are being offered a range of low risk/ high visibility opportunities to advertise their pure-altruism and anger-on-behalf-of strangers. 

The Establishment have created just enough Establishment homogeneity and resistance to the radical agenda - including a modicum of 'oppression' - such that the new radicals can imagine themselves engaged in a fight for right against wealth and power. 

This is perhaps the first large scale leftist radicalism since the "Occupy" movement of 2011; but the Fremen cause is more effective, because it provides young Western leftists with a chance to imagine themselves in 'solidarity' with a satisfyingly 'alien' ethnic-religious group - and whose agenda is almost completely different from, and hostile to, that of the new radicals... 

All of which (if it comes to awareness) increases the feeling of pure altruism. 

In terms of the large-scale trends of the agenda of evil; this re-emergence of youth (and boomer!) radicalism is something of a step backwards for the Ahrimanic bureaucrats, but one by which they can still imagine themselves to be in control of the situation - because of their massive influence in the mainstream pseudo-radical media -- which are increasingly hard-line in their pro-Fremen stance with every passing day - and their close monitoring of the situation by means of surveillance and tracking media. 

But, by my understanding, the reality underlying these rationalizations is that the radicals are being neutralized by negative emotions and motivations (fear, resentment, pseudo-empathic compassion, guilt, despair) even as they are encouraged to emote publicly. 

Meanwhile the progression of the increasingly dominant Sorathic agenda of encouraging global and within-nation chaos proceeds under these masks. 

As was, indeed, the intention all along; and (presumably) the reason why the current Arrakis situation was collusively set-up in the first place. 

I seem to discern a pattern of belief or motivation among some of those who oppose the mainstream totalitarian Establishment; which is that they desire to combining maximum physical self-sufficiency with maximum spiritual dependency on their chosen church. 

Unfortunately, both physical self-sufficiency and spiritual dependence are so categorically impossible in the modern West that they cannot even be approximated; therefore this fantasy is delusional. 

The world is the most inter-dependent it has ever been, there is unprecedented surveillance, and attempted physical detachment from The System is treated as criminal. Physical self-sufficiency cannot even be approximated. 

But spiritual dependence on external church authority is likewise impossible. All the churches are so deeply corrupted that they are incoherent, their authority is internally fractured, their instructions are labile: fluctuating, contradicting, self-undermining. 

This means that anyone who desires to obey his church, must in fact continually be discerning which aspect of his church he ought to obey, and which disregard or oppose. 

The ideal of physical self-sufficiency and spiritual dependence is an inversion of what is unavoidable - and indeed Christianly-desirable. Physical self-sufficiency is not just impossible, but irrelevant. Spiritual dependence on the authority of a church is not just impossible, but the opposite of what Christians ought to be doing. 

Christians cannot - no matter how much they may wish it - avoid discernment and live-by obedience. Since Christians do discern and choose; this ought explicitly to be directed at God and Jesus Christ - and not at any (inevitably compromised) human institution.  

And, since we are - by any realistic calculation, all-but powerless in socio-political terms; we ought not to be focusing our attention on 'changing the world': nor on positively transforming and protecting one little corner of the world (as with the idea of self-sufficiency).  

We are responsible only for that over which we have genuine choice and control - our inner discernments, commitments, aspirations... 

In this actual world we inhabit; necessity combines with desirability to enforce a focus upon individual spiritual activity in a direct relationship with the divine. 

Ultimately; the physical (including socio-political) world is something with which we must cope - and not a valid object for our life's creative work. 

Ubik (1969) is a science fiction novel by Philip K Dick. Without summarizing the plot, or giving away the punch line; suffice to say that it depicts an evil-permeated and rapidly entropic world, which is opposed by a 'god' who is excluded from all mainstream and normal ways of communicating and helping. 

In this world, The System is all-pervasive. God's messages must come from peripheral and unexpected directions in order to get past the monitoring intelligence. Good can only work indirectly. "God" is to be found only in the "trash" of this culture. 

We might imagine an equivalent for our world, in which the real Christian needed to disguise itself as trash, and move out to the places into which The System does not (yet) extend. It can only find an outlet among the despised people, those regarded as absurd, insignificant - or labelled by The System as insane, idiotic, evil...

The System fights back by mimicking the secret divine messages by deploying fakes as bait... The System pretends that these people and messages are radical, anti-Establishment, or disapproved; yet The System contrives to draw attention to them, nonetheless. 

The System advertises (under pretense of warning against) exactly these baited traps; which it hopes will be mistaken for divine messages - but will lead back into The System. 

Meanwhile, the real messages from the divine, real goodness, are unknown or unnoticed except to those who honestly seek them, and are sensitized to their truth. 

The System is entropic, parasitic, destructive - and opposed to The System is Ubik. 

Ubik is found in various trashy forms, such as an aerosol that (albeit temporarily) opposes and reverses entropy; it heals the dissolutions of The System. 

Ubik is, indeed, understandable as an allegory to the Eucharist; the bread and wine of the Mass as it is supposed ideally to function; yet which is but a "momentary stay against confusion" (to use Robert Frost's description of poetry). 

Even if it was available in unlimited supply and on-demand (and, in PKD's story as in our world, Ubik is actually difficult and dangerous to locate, and has a short 'shelf life'); Ubik does not provide a permanent answer, as does Not the Eucharist.

But Ubik provides a chance to break free from the constancy of destruction by the entropy of the world -- a chance, perhaps, to clear our thoughts and make further enquiries; to seek and discover the availability of a permanent - an eternal - solution to entropy

To discover how to reach a world without entropy, without evil.

 Over at my Notion Club Papers blog. 

It has been noticed in this corner of the blogosphere; that the Litmus Test issue of the current Arrakis war has flipped some people (both Christian and 'based') to the Establishment side. 

The observation is that a significant number of individuals who had seen-through the birdemic, antiracism, climate energy etc. and stayed on the right side of the spiritual war - have fallen for the aggressively pro-CHOAM Western Establishment line (with anyone who fails to toe this line branded racist). These people have, in effect, changed sides in the spiritual war - at least on this major issue; and, unless they repent, we can expect them to 'converge' increasingly from now onwards. 

Less remarked is that those who have taken the side of the Fremen in the Arrakis conflict are doing exactly the same thing, but less obviously! 

Because, on this issue, the mainstream media and political institutions are, in fact, divided between a pro-CHOAM majority and a pro-Fremen minority - but both are included within the mainstream narrative, both have significant Establishment support: both are part of The Narrative. 

This may sound fiendishly clever, implying that it is therefore difficult (impossible?) for anyone to navigate such Litmus Tests - where, apparently, people are caught by whatever their choice. 

But really this isn't difficult! The rule is that anything which features strongly in the mainstream media, and major point-of-view - whether presented as pro- or contra- is significantly and decisively wrong. The very fact of major and sustained media coverage shows this. 

Whenever the mass media makes a big story, and whenever that story is presented as having two sides; we can be sure that we are being played and the side of real Good is not being mentioned. 

Both presented choices of mainstream sides are surely wrong; because Establishment-endorsed. 

As I say, this isn't difficult - so far; although it may be more difficult to learn where the concealed, un-mentioned Good choice actually lies - if there is one. 

If there is one... because with some major mainstream issues, there is no Good position that can be adopted; the whole issue is rotten. When both sides are wrong, the whole issue is tainted. 

The Fremen war is an example of this: it represents a black hole for true values. It insatiably sucks-up attention, learning, evaluation, opinions; and triggers participants to engage in prognostication and policy-mongering. 

Another example is electoral politics: the entire discourse of 'parties'. 'leaders' and 'elections' is itself a corruption; and participation is itself a choice of taking the wrong side. 

Whatever it is that the evil-liars of the Establishment want us to attend-to and discuss: we know that must be wrong - and the rule applies to (supposed) minority and unpopular attitudes and ideologies (e.g. pro-Fremen, pro-Trump, sensible environmentalism, 'free speech', meritocracy...) as much as to the mass- and leadership-endorsed opinions.

Through the twentieth century, but especially since the late 1960s - and associated with Hippy/ New Age spirituality - there have been many repeated attempts to erect a middle realm to mediate between the private and subjective realms, and the public and objective realm. 

In other words - for many people The spiritual problem of modernity is alienation: the severing between subjective and objective - and the consequent denigration of the subjective; so that modern people experience life as a personally-purposeless and -meaningless, temporary and brief, state of mere-existence in an indifferent universe, which is operating on the basis of randomness and mechanical causality. 

In the pre-modern era, this situation was - to varying degrees - ameliorated by "the church"; which provided a shared, public, 'sacred-realm' of ritual and symbolism. 

This meant that the individual had an indirect (because mediated) relationship with divine reality; yet the symbolism and ritual was (although intermittent) so effective in bridging the gap, as to enable engagement ('participation') between Man and reality; making life broadly tolerable, and sometimes spiritually-fulfilling. 

Due (I believe) ultimately to changed in Man's consciousness, the symbolism and ritual lost its connecting-power; and left modern Man bereft and alienated. The new and traditional 'middle realm' systems were, implicitly, an attempt to replace what the churches had once provided. 

There have been, and are, many middle realm systems. 

One, and the most explicit, was provided by CG Jung and various neo-Jungians such as Joseph Campbell and James Hillman. Such people envisaged an underlying, mostly unconscious, collective "objective psyche"; shared by all Men in all times and places. 

The idea was that modern, subjective Man could engage with this middle realm of the Psyche as a kind of symbolic/ ritual bridge - accessed via meditation, dream, psychotherapy, personal creativity (arts, crafts) etc.  

Such Jungian ideas provided a rationale for a massive resurgence in occult traditions and new systems of symbol and ritual; which had the advantage over traditional churches of novelty and abundance. Novelty and abundance together overcome habituation and fatigue; so that a whole life could be spent in exploring, sampling, and permutating spiritual systems selected from the New Age smorgasbord.  

So, there have been big revivals of astrology, Tarot, alchemy, , numerology, Neo-Platonism and the like; and new systems based on UFOs, crop circles, geomancy, earth energies, cosmic radiations - and a multitude of healing therapies with spiritual implications. 

I'm afraid I regard all such attempts as essentially misguided because regressive, hence ineffective. 

And indeed, despite great hopes for a "New Age" inspired global spiritual revival, the world has become more and more materialistic, bureaucratic, and totalitarian. Spirituality (as well as religion) has been eliminated from the public realm in the West.

(Or, at the least, reduced to reactive, insincere, and ineffectual rhetoric - such as the regular call from-and-to explicit atheists to 'pray' for such-and-such victims. Politics now - very obviously - drives religion; and spirituality merely fits-around prior left-ideologies such as antiracism, carbon-environmentalism, socialism, feminism, healthism etc.) 

Middle realm construction and advocacy is misguided, ineffectual and a dead-end. 

What actually happens with such middle realm constructions, is that they become absorbed-into materialism. Instead of making a bridge connecting modern Man from the material to the spiritual; these systems either do nothing but provide lifestyle options...

Or else the rituals and symbols crystallize into the material to become large, difficult and complex systems - the preserve of experts and professionals - standing between the individual and the spiritual in much the same way as institutional churches. 

This is why I am filled with a mixture of boredom and dismay whenever I come-across one of these middle realm systems; describing some large/ difficult-to-understand/ complex layer of ideas; or purporting to give 'information' or 'teaching' concerning the higher or spiritual world (which spiritual world always seems to resemble a complex, hierarchical, multi-specialized, multi-national corporation, or bloated state bureaucracy!). 

These middle realms purport to be bridges and mediations; but I see just-another barrier.  

After many centuries during which the effectiveness of mediation has progressively dwindled; and all churches and religions have become corrupted to the agenda of this-worldly, materialist-leftist, socio-politics; we are now confronted by a situation in which our choice is either to abandon the subjective along with the spiritual (and accept our status as depersonalized 'units' in a transhumanist world)...

Or else: To approach reality (including God) directly and (as much as possible) un-mediated. 

One of the reasons that argument and persuasion (in general) are ineffective with modern people; is that their wrong ideas are based upon more-than-one false assumption. 

This means that if just one false assumption is challenged (and an argument can only do one thing at a time); the error remains - because held in place by the (currently unaddressed) false assumption. 

Modern Man begins with a conviction that death is annihilation - that death of the body (including brain, and all brain activity) entails total destruction of that person. 

Thus; rejection of the desirability of eternal resurrected life by following Jesus Christ, is held in place by the modern person's materialism; his unbelief in even the possibility of life after death; unbelief in a spirit (or soul) that can exist without the body and after the death of the body. 

To become a Christian, a person first needs to cease to be a "materialist". 

But, when a modern person is persuaded that there is more than "the material" the spirit is real, that there is a world of the spirit; then this is not sufficient to direct him towards becoming a Christian. 

Those who newly believe in a world of spirit are presented with - on the one hand - a Christianity that is manifest in the materialism of this-world, including the bureaucratic-institutional reality of the churches... 

And on the other hand, the newly 'spiritual' individual is culturally offered a variety of pure-spirit, 'oneness' ideals* - whereby the spirit is presented as a separate and superior realm of being, and the individual self (and our  thinking) as this-worldly incarnation-caused delusions that need to be overcome in order to enter fully the realm of spirit. 

Repelled by the bureaucratic materialism of Christian churches (each of which presents itself as essential in order to achieve salvation after death)...

The newly-spiritual person is told that he needs to leave behind his ego-self (and our thinking). 

Therefore; the idea of bodily resurrection after death becomes regarded not so much as nonsense; as actively undesirable - a 'clinging' to the delusion that is the body, and an egotistical refusal to give-up the autonomous thinking agent.   

This is important: After (and this is a difficult transition) a modern person becomes convinced that there is a spiritual realm; that the spiritual is eternal and therefore superior to the corruption and death of this world; and that he will survive bodily death in a spirit form... Then he is inclined to regard the Christian offer of bodily resurrection as a childish thing, a kind of simplistic regression, a step backwards not forwards.

The newly-spiritual person is likely to regard with disdain (or dismay) the Christian ideal of remaining a separate being from God - both physically separated by having a body, and mentally-separated by retaining selfhood and the capacity for independent thinking. 

While Christians regard love as existing between free-individuals; the newly-spiritual modern person is more likely to understand "love" as being universally-directed at the entirety of reality; and a state of complete absorption-into "the divine", which is also "everything".

For the newly spiritual modern person; 'spirituality' implies a giving-up of individuality, and a return to an original state of undifferentiated oneness. 

So, instead of the self being annihilated at death by ceasing to exist (as mainstream modern people believe); the self is annihilated after death by giving-up its selfhood and autonomy, and all capacity for thought - by assimilating-into-universality.      

My point is that the Christian finds himself at (at least!...) two removes from conversion of a mainstream modern materialist. 

One (big) step being to induce belief in the realm of spirit; but then there comes a whole other business of trying to explain what resurrection means, why Christians want it, what Heaven is like...

And why Christians desire to retain personal agency, the capacity for thought, and gain a "new body" after death. 

*Oneness spirituality may also appear in the guise of a quest for 'wholeness' or 'holism'; under the assumption that anything less than everything is incomplete, and thereby insufficient. Christianity is about eternally loving relationships, (and with each loving relationship unique, irreplaceable) - not about attaining oneness/ universality/ wholeness/ holism. 

I am very dismayed when (which is often, usual) I come across Christians who conceptualize Heaven in terms of a reward of some sort, and God as some sort of spiritual examiner - allocating salvation on the basis of performance. 

And threaten the agents of evil with exclusion from Heaven; or express delight at the misery to be caused by their exclusion.*

This asserted scheme is a terrible, false, and deeply aversive misrepresentation. 

The reality of the situation is - surely? - much better expressed by presenting Heaven as a choice? 

To enter Heaven is a choice - and, because Heaven is a situation utterly without evil (or else it would not be Heaven) - to exercise that choice entails leaving behind all this is evil in us... 

Discarding at the porch all that is evil; heaping each and all of our sins and defects "in a pile on the doorstep"; before proceeding through the gates of resurrection, and on to Heaven. 

Anyone can enter Heaven who wishes to do so - so long as he will pay the price of admission; and everyone capable of wanting Heaven is capable of paying the price of admission - because that price is (simply) to disarm himself of all that is not-Good. 

Those who insist on holding-onto their sins, are denied admission whether they want Heaven or not - which is a simple matter of coherence, because insofar as they 'want' Heaven, those who will Not discard-repent all their sins have decided that (in fact) they want their sin/s more than they want Heaven. 

But that reality is not well expressed in terms of God's allocating places in Heaven, and each Man being brought to the bar of God's judgment'. 

We choose or reject Heaven and what is needful to become a part of Heaven; we are not barred from Heaven by anything except our own choice.  

In a salvation-focused sense; all our mortal life can be boiled-down to that point on the threshold of Heaven when we decide whether irrevocably to allow our-selves to be made-Good... or Not.  

But, it is a choice. 

Jesus came to give us this chance, to offer the gift of Heaven. Whether we take that chance, and accept that gift, is up to each-of-us. 

*Rhetorically speaking, this is actually counterproductive. The majority of unbelievers regard such threats as a lame joke made by pathetic losers. And, more generally, those who do not go to Heaven overwhelmingly don't want to go to Heaven - are repulsed or bored by the whole idea of Heaven. So there is not much reason to suppose they will regret being "somewhere else" - at least, not at first.    

It is not the Christian view; but it is very common among both secular/ atheist/ materialists and those of an "Eastern religion"/ oneness/ perennial philosophy type - to regard the sufferings of this mortal life and earthly-world as The Main Issue of Life. 

This is often true implicitly, even when it not stated and affirmed. 

If the suffering is the Main Issue, then its alleviation and elimination are the primary concern. But there is a contradiction between believing that quantitative alleviation of suffering is worthwhile - or whether partial alleviation is meaningless/ actually futile; and only the qualitative elimination of suffering is a valid goal. 

Mainstream politics and its majority-adherents can never seem able to decide whether what they regard as quantitative improvement in (for instance) racist attitudes is worth having; or whether this makes no essential difference, and after some 70 years of active social engineering things are just as bad as ever. 

The tone flips back and forth between self-congratulation at the huge improvements (as the left sees it) since the middle 1960s; and assertions of here-and-now massive, vicious, endemic, 'systemic' racism that permeates and distorts every social institution in The West (and which it ought to be the number one global priority to address immediately). 

I regard this deep incoherence as a modern, secular version of a deep confusion and incoherence that permeates the metaphysical-religious stance which focuses on suffering. Whenever Christianity has focused on this-world conditions, it enters an identical contradiction. 

It is due to the assumption of an objective and subjective world: once this is assumed as reality then there can be no coherent answer to the problem of suffering. 

One reason is because suffering is subjective, yet all action taken to alleviate or eliminate suffering is objective. We live in a world that regards thinking as private, having no effect outside the brain and body; yet we purport to dedicate the world to alleviation of the subjective state of suffering - when thinking (including suffering) is something about which outsiders can know nothing 'objectively'.

Another reason is that we partly believe that suffering is quantitative, such that being imprisoned under harsh condition is worse suffering than somebody saying something mean to us. Yet at other times 'micro-aggressions' (i.e. somebody saying something mean, that hurts another person's feelings - allegedly) is treated as an absolute offence for which no punishment can be too severe (loss of employment, social vilification, violence...). 

Modern Man affects to be focused on suffering as The Evil that must be addressed; but cannot decide whether suffering is quantitative, such that mass genocide is worse than a single death, and enslavement worse than suffering subjective micro-aggressions - and such sufferings can be diminished over time; and this is "progress"...

Or; whether suffering is qualitative and absolute - such that all suffering is equal, and there can be (and has been) no "progress" in the elimination of suffering in this world or in individual persons; and only the 100% elimination of all forms of suffering is really worthwhile. 

Furthermore, anyone who thinks deeply and consecutively on the subject will realize that much suffering is innate to the human condition of this mortal life: disease cannot be eliminated, neither can degeneration, neither can death - and the sufferings caused by the death (etc) of others. And there are many natural disasters and constraints. 

And - of course - much suffering is a consequence of humans living together in society such that we impinge-upon each other's gratifications in a multitude of ways; yet for individuals to live utterly without society is not just impossible, but also a nightmare of suffering.

My conclusion is that to focus on suffering on suffering as The Problem of this mortal life and the world is not just wrong but incoherent; and will lead to permanent frustration and meaningless contradictions. 

If we do - at present - regard suffering as the primary problem of existence; then we are in error. 

And we therefore need to examine and change our fundamental assumptions. 

Note added: It may not be at all easy to change our assumptions regarding suffering. For modern people in the conditions in-which we find-ourselves; it is often quite spontaneous to focus-upon - and be overwhelmed-by - the vast scale of suffering in life: of human, plants, animals, and even for the planet. This applies to self-identified Christians, as to everybody else. What I am saying is that this focus is incoherent, hence futile, consequently counter-productive. We ought not to accept the suffering-focus; but should fight against it - even though this likely will lead to subjective guilt - at least initially; and almost certainly accusations of being 'uncaring'.  

Christians sometimes develop a spiritually-unhealthy desire to gossip about Jesus; and, maybe, a craving to know more and more information about Jesus's life and teachings - then we could answer some burning question, or another; get fuller guidance of what to believe, how to live etc...

I have come to feel that this is a spiritually unhealthy attitude for the 21st century. 

But what about Jesus? Surely it would be good to know more about Jesus?...

Well, I feel we 'know' far too much about Jesus! 

(And most of it is wrong.) 

If everything known about Jesus had been the Fourth Gospel ("John") - that would have been better than what happened; but even that is really too much. 

There is too much so that people get confused, bits have been added, errors have crept in... The simple and necessary truth is there (and oft-repeated) but (history shows...) that isn't enough!

Once people get that craving for "more information", once they need (for whatever reason - professionally, to fill-in-time) to gossip and speculate about Jesus... Well, there is no end to the business, and it soon swamps and displaces the needful.    

But what is the needful, and how could people know it? 

In the end, this question can only be addressed and (maybe) answered by paying personal attention to knowing, understanding, experiencing in-and-for ourselves. 

Supposing that we only knew about Jesus that he died and he rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, and said that others could do the same by 'following' him. 

Suppose we each then had to try and work-out what this meant, understand what it meant for each-of-us; and what it meant for this problem or question in my everyday life now? Suppose that we were trying to know this for our-selves, and not trying to justify ourselves to others?...

Supposing we needed to find answers to the innumerable and open-endedly-varied questions and difficulties of our life, by working from the simplicity of understanding Jesus? 

What I am suggesting is almost the opposite of the traditional idea that being-a-Christian is a matter of learning a lot of stuff and then doing what it says - and refraining from whatever it prohibits - and (if in doubt) only doing what it says. 

Opposite to a top-down, complexly-attempting to be a comprehensive notion; opposite to "Christianity as a blueprint for life"... 

What I am advocating is that the real Christianity is something very small, simple, and quickly graspable about Jesus... Yet its existential and specific understanding is a lifetime's work; and (unlike many other religions) it is a life's work for each and every Christian.

And realizing-this and doing-this is (pretty much) what makes you a Christian.

(Even if you reach no stable conclusion, or a mistaken conclusion.)

I've just re-read an enjoyable light novel called Looking for the King; which is set in 1940 just before the Battle of Britain, It concerns two Americans (young man and woman) visiting England, getting caught up in a quest for the Spear of Destiny, and being helped in this search by The Inklings (and falling in love). 

Over the years I have heard, from several directions, about the real and imaginary occult and magical propensities of the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" (NSGWP)*. 

The idea is that there was an occult battle going-on - directed against Britain - at the same time as the war was being fought on the physical level. 

Some of this material is real: for example, there was Dion Fortune's Magical Battle of Britain; or Churchill's "silent minute" - which were both supposed to mobilize the power of mass meditation and prayer, against presumed counter-forces. 

On the other hand, a fair bit of the material I have encountered seems to be descended from a fictional (pretending to be factual) account by anthroposophist Trevor Ravenscroft * about Adolf's supposed quest for the Spear of Destiny Indeed this strange book seems to be a concealed and unacknowledged, but highly influential, pop-history classic. 

As I mentioned before; there was indeed an important and socially-motivating spiritual dimension to the socialism and nationalism of the NSGWP; which was completely absent from the other (and even worse) totalitarian dictatorship of Lenin and Stalin in the USSR. 

This means that it was rational to fear the potential for occult spiritual attack from Germany (as well as the threat of material invasion), whereas the idea would seem absurd with respect to the USSR - who had slaughtered (etc) many thousands of priests, monks and nuns; and many millions of devout Christians - in their attempt utterly to eradicate the spiritual. 

But to my mind this unspirituality does not reflect to the credit of the USSR. The Communist ideology was indeed more advanced in its materialistic-evil, than was the partially-reactionary (because anti-communist) socialism of the NSGWP. 

Plus, there is, and was, the influential crypto-communist aspect of the British and American ruling classes; which put the USSR as a higher priority than Britain and America. 

So, even though the USSR was on the same side as Germany in 1940; and even though the USSR had, by the Battle of Britain,  invaded and occupied 2/3 of the British ally Poland -- the UK did not declare war on the USSR, hardly seemed to recognize them as an enemy - and since airbrushed history and national memory accordingly. 

While unconstrained fantasies of the occult and magical evil of the NSGWP (and allegorical equivalents) constitute a staple of mass media, movies, TV and novels - the greater, more enduring, and still-with-us cancer of the ideology of Communism (and its evolutionary descendants) have (during my lifetime) been almost washed-away from Western consciousness. 

* I like to use the full name of the party - here in an English translation - to emphasize just how explicitly leftist they were. Socialist Worker Parties are leftist parties - but Nationalist SWPs are usually left-anti-communist. But not always. In Scotland, the Nationalists were originally also (substantially) communists (or similar); and nowadays are mainstream pro-totalitarian leftist. Anyway, the point is that the hatred between fascist and communist was a civil war of the left; not a difference between extremes.  

** Trevor Ravenscroft's son, saxophonist Raphael, was also a massive, covert social influence via his solo on the bluesy single Baker Street. 

The Establishment has become extremely dominant in the world now; far more thoroughly than ever in the past - because of the mass and social media, globalization, and the way that the leadership class (of all major social institutions) is now enlisted in the leftist-project.

Everybody knows - because it has been going on for centuries, indeed millennia - that the ruling class uses religion to control populations. But because religion had an ultimate reference outside of this world and the material realm, this limited the way it could be used. 

Nowadays religion has been replaced as a tool-of-control by a materialist, this-worldly, secular ideology ("leftism" in its various and evolving manifestations) - which substantially (not entirely) encompasses the leadership class of the whole world. 

And ideology - in contrast to religion - is this-worldly, materialist, lacks reference to anything else - and therefore there is no limit to the usage to which ideology can be put by the rulers. 

Of course; religions and churches still exist, but it seems perfectly clear that all of these (at least, those with significant size, power, wealth etc.) are incorporated into the mainstream leftist ideology; and are on-board with the materialist-this-worldly agenda in its essentials.  

It is much less well appreciated that the same applies to 'spirituality'. 

Looking back over the Western spirituality movement - which goes back to the late 19th century - one can see the fingerprints of the Establishment with respect to many of the key, influential individuals and 'movements'. 

I have described how the introduction of "Eastern" religion and spirituality of a oneness type has been promoted officially - presumably due to its complementarity with the materialist-this-world core agenda. Much the same can be said of the (indirect but effective) promotion of drugs for spiritual usage in the 1950s and 60s; 'countercultural' lifestyles, pop and rock music, sexual promiscuity and 'experiment, and the New Age... 

By my judgment; it has been sufficiently documented that all the above was - covertly but consistently - supported by Establishment elements; and was involved with intelligence/ spying/ "spooks" - through tools such as class and family connections, covert influence on the mass media, selective subsidies or harassment - etc. 

I think there is insufficient awareness of the way that spirituality movements, teachings, lifestyles; have-been and are manipulated; in a way that is highly analogous to the way 'institutional religion' was controlled by the ruling class in earlier centuries - and that this continues.  

This is masked by the false assumption that spirituality is 'purer' than religion - and intrinsically anti-Establishment, individualistic etc; yet that is clearly not the case in the sense that the 'spiritual' people are a very homogenous group in terms of their affiliation to the officially-promoted side in the major social-cultural-political issues of these times: egalitarianism, feminism, antiracism, diversity, climate-based environmentalism, the sexual revolution and so forth.  

Indeed, the control of spiritual movements is so effective that this is invisible to those concerned. The pressures applied are so deep and pervasive as to seem like natural phenomena, forces of nature! 

The exact same people who subscribe to the globalist establishment agenda (on an almost point-by-point basis) therefore also and simultaneously regard themselves as radicals and rebels; fighting government, big corporations, officialdom etc! 

Consequently; the very same people (and institutions) who are most feted as leaders of the counter-culture, 'alternative' lifestyles, spiritual detachment, un-worldliness; those who pride themselves on their bold stances against authority! - are exactly those most likely to be agents, tools or dupes of the Establishment "Spook Agenda"!

The evidence is there, easily seen - in terms of background, affiliations, core beliefs; and the fact of high levels of mainstream public attention, esteem markers and and status - but such evidence makes no difference without the framework of assumptions that allow it to be interpreted as such.  

My take-home point is that while 'everybody' has encountered the idea that church religion can be (and has been) used by the ruling classes as a mechanism for mind-control; the same also applies to 20th and 21st century form of spirituality. 

And the obvious way in which apparently religious leaders (at many hierarchical levels) could actually be agents, tools or dupes for a socio-political agenda - is mirrored by the supposedly rebellious, radical, counter-cultural, alternative, spiritual leaders and 'influencers' of today. 

It is real, it happens, it is all around us; and the chances are that you are, or have-been - like me - (wittingly, to various degrees - or not) significantly involved in "the spook agenda" yourselves.