Bruce Charlton's Notions

I was browsing the Project Avalon Forum yestereve, looking at some threads concerning (a friend from the late 1970s) Bill Ryan, its founder. 

(Bill was the man who recommended and lent me Robert M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - which had a big and positive effect through my early adulthood.)

In a thread; Bill discussed the idea that there were three kinds of people on the planet - a small minority of Good-affiliated/ 'awakened' people, a larger minority of those in service to the evil globalist establishment - these being the two sides in the spiritual war. 

And then there is the third group, by far the largest, the majority whom Bill jokingly termed Muggles. 

The perspective from which this three-part division was derived was broadly gnostic-Christian; in that it accorded a primary position to Christ, but in a philosophical framework derived from the dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library. 

This is not my own understanding - nonetheless, the simple division brought to mind this question of the spiritual status of the spirit-denying/ spiritually-insensitive Muggle majority - especially in this post-international-totalitarian era. 

The mass of Muggles are now on the side of Establishment evil. From the perspective of the Establishment the Muggles are functionally regarded as a mixture of useful-idiots and useless-eaters. 

The useful-idiot Muggles generate the wealth and do the work upon which the Establishment parasitize. The useless-eaters are regarded as a waste of resources; and the plan is to keep them docile in the short-term and eliminate them - as soon as (deniably) possible.

Spiritually speaking, however, it is the Muggles over whom the spiritual war is being fought. 

From my perspective; the awakening are the real Christian, who are 'saved' because they have decided (at least as-of-now, but this may change) to accept Jesus Christ's offer of resurrected eternal life - and who therefore the their lives in that context. They naturally want as many as possible of the Muggles to join them in Heaven, because the more (and more various) the inhabitants of Heaven - the bigger, and better - more loving and divinely-creative it will be. 

The Establishment want as many as possible of the Muggles to reject Heaven, to live and die in fear, resentment and despair; and therefore eventually to adopt the value inversions of purposive evil and affiliate against God and creation. 

Meanwhile, the Muggles become less and less spiritual, more and more mundane and materialistic in their perspective. Indeed the mainstream 'evil plan' seems to be that the Muggles will in the short-term regard themselves as purely material, and therefore become controllable by material manipulation - but once attained, they will be induced into an inversion of Christian spirituality, with an inverted value system which sees Heaven as evil, and will therefore (with open eyes) deliberately choose their own damnation. 

In other words - the two minorities are engaged in recruiting Muggles to their own sides; the difference being that (as of now) the evil side is doing so by pretending that there is no spiritual war, and that the sides are therefore purely material - ie. socio-political. 

This is Leftism in its many facets, which now wholly occupies all the mainstream of politics and public discourse. There is only leftism in mainstream public life - whether that Leftism self-labels as socialism, feminism, antiracism etc - or self-labels as conservative, republican, libertarian, fascist or whatever: all are Leftism, all just parts of the anti-God mundane-materialist ideology. 

Leftism is (in essence) the dominant Establishment anti-spiritual ideology for the Muggles; which opposed the (variously defined) 'awakened' real-Christian spiritualties on the side of God.  

I was interesting to see that Bill's positive suggestions were not all that different from mine - although differently conceptualized. He regards the main spiritual work as clear and true understanding of the situation in this mortal life on earth. 

And the 'method' for positively influencing Muggless being primarily that of 'morphic resonance' - by which is meant that true understanding and good intent in 'awakened' individuals will have a direct beneficial effect on the mass of individual Muggles - especially insofar as there is any serious intent to understand on the part of specific persons. 

In other words; although the awakened try to communicate truth and Goodness to other people by speaking, writing etc; the primary and most powerful way that things work is by a direct influence of a spiritual (invisible, imperceptible) kind. And some of the spiritual warfare is aimed at trying to disrupt such direct influence - eg by attacking the awakened via seeding confusion, spreading doubts of reality, and encouraging fearful-insecurity. 

In sum - I was surprised and pleased to find myself broadly on-the-same-side with Bill Ryan and the Project Avalon grouping - despite innumerable difference of understanding and tactics. And this was encouraging! If indeed such very different assumptions and methods can converge onto essentially the same set of basic 'answers' and attitudes, then 'we' are stronger than I had previously suspected. 

It is my impression that many who have communicated their philosophy of life, have been more or less seriously impaired in this work by a kind of embarrassment: a fear of damaging their social status and self esteem because of saying or doing something.

This embarrassment leads to an attitude of guardedness, defensiveness - the embarrassed Man develops a continual self-filtering of communications to try and avoid spontaneously revealing something that might be used against him, or might lead to him being rejected. 

Such embarrassment can blend with attempts to impress others - with pretentiousness; but it can also be found in an almost purely negative form by a sense of inhibition. 

This is so common as to be normal - yet when it comes to the communication of matters of the greatest depth, embarrassment can provide a formidable barrier to generating what ought to be as clear and comprehensible as possible - or else it probably will not be understood.

When I consider some of the influencers and 'mentors' who led to my Romantic Christian perspective; I can see that William Blake was a Man who was free from embarrassment, and who communicated in a spontaneous and bold fashion - apparently without caution against being misunderstood, or mocked.

Another of this ilk was William Arkle; who seems unconcerned about making an impression, who seems unguarded in his attitude - and whose communications appear to flow without going-through a filter of caution. 

A third 'William' of this type, is Bill Ryan of Project Avalon; who is unembarrassed about revealing and discussing his strange experiences with ETs - and many other unusual subjects - without regard for how such comments will strike other people. 

Bill Ryan (although not a Romantic Christian) is helpful in understanding this, because I knew him some forty-seven years ago; and can therefore recognize that his candid spontaneity seems to have been characterological, innate - a gift of nature. Yet a gift he still retains at the age of seventy. 

And I think the same applies to Blake and Arkle - they were 'made this way', from childhood, presumably from birth - yet also they 'stayed this way', throughout the stresses and temptations of their long lives. 

Therefore; the achievement of the Three Williams has the quality of retaining that which was, in origin, a natural confident unguardedness.

There are far more examples of writers whose work is hampered by - greater or lesser - degrees of embarrassment. 

One is CG Jung; who was mostly a confident and bold thinker; but who would (again and again, as he approached his conclusions) back-away-from the direction of his reasoning and the implications of his thinking; exactly as if he had suddenly become embarrassed, and feared the effect of his words. 

For Jung; this negative tendency to take away with one hand what had just been given by the other, was exacerbated by a positive desire to impress people, a pretentiousness. He would back-away from clarity and honesty, partly so as to impress others, and gain the rewards of higher status. 

But embarrassment can impair communication even among those who are wholly lacking in any pretentiousness; such as Owen Barfield. 

By all accounts, and confirmed in his writings, Owen Barfield was a very modest man - although with a great inner strength that was generated by intellectual mastery, deep thought, and inner confidence. 

Yet I find that Barfield's ability to communicate clearly is impaired by what seems like embarrassment - a diffidence at expressing anything that might seem like boasting, a reluctance to speak simply about the deepest matters of his understandings - such as the nature of God, God's nature and purposes. 

Just as Barfield approaches his conclusions, again and again he veers off into defensive abstraction - or excessive brevity - so that his argument is set out with meticulous clarity, but the final 'answer' is ambiguous, unclear, difficult to understand.  

The writer Charles Williams was someone who was remarkably unembarrassed in all social situations - even when mixing with the rich, prestigious, and famous; but also one who pretentiously desired to impress people. 

His life and work were both impaired by this pretentiousness: because it led to a strong element of play-acting, and indeed dishonesty, in his social relationships.

While in Williams's poetry, theology and novels there is a strong element of deliberate obfuscation and obscurity - a striving to appear profound.

Well, we are what we are - at least to begin with; and only a few of us have been blessed with unselfconsciousness. 

But character is a beginning only - and innate disposition can either be corrupted by choices made and habits developed; or it can (to some extent) be overcome by effort and practice. 

For myself; I had an original disposition somewhat the opposite of Owen Barfield and more like that of Charles Williams; in that I did not suffer much from embarrassment (i.e. negatively, I did not much care about how other people might react in a negative sense); but I tended towards pretentiousness - (i.e. I positively wanted to impress people - or, at least, some people). 

This was an obstacle to communication - because anything is an obstacle to communication that interferes with the primary desire to communicate. 

On the one hand, we cannot help the way we are; but on the other hand we are here (in this mortal life) to learn. Part of this is learning about ourselves. 

Often, our strengths are the obverse of weaknesses; but by recognition and striving we can move in the right direction. 

Conversely, by failing to recognize and acknowledge our defects; the modern world has a strong and pervasive tendency to corrupt people, to encourage people to ignore their deficits and instead regard them as strengths. 

Thus (as we sadly observe among family, colleagues, acquaintances and friends), however they start-out, most people get worse.

And these applies even to those who are innately and naturally Good. 

Thus the originally confident and unembarrassed child becomes a self-conscious and peer-group dominated adolescent - and never goes beyond this... 

While the 'show-off' child becomes the pretentious adult; more concerned about the impression created and rewards obtained than making actual achievements.   

These are among the lessons of life that we need to learn - and we can learn them from our own experience, and also by sympathetic yet honest understanding and critique of the lives of others.

What made these three books so very disappointing is that in all cases the authors were people who I first encountered in my teens, at an age when books made their maximum and most lasting impact. 

All the authors of the disappointments had previously published particular books that I greatly appreciated, and there had been a prolonged wait with expectations.

I had been hoping for some kind of a 'follow-up' that would provide me with something of the same quality and flavour I had received from the previous book; or at least be complementary. 

1. The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (1977)

I had appreciated The Lord of the Rings as no book before or since, having encountered it about a year before Tolkien's death, written to the author asking about its progress, and then waiting for four teenage-years for the publication. 

When The Silmarillion was published, I immediately bought it in hardback and took it to college as a special treat - yet I found it so dull and... wrong that I could not finish it; and did not do so for many years.  

2. Lila by Robert M Pirsig (1991)

This book came a decade and a half after I had been bowled-over by the author's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which had originally been lent me in 1976 by Bill Ryan on a month long Outward Bound course where he was a group-leader. I had bought myself a copy, another for the school library - and some as presents; I had exchanged a letter with the author, and published a critical essay. 

As with The Silmarillion, I disliked the feel of the book, it seemed a bit sordid rather than having the freshness and hope of ZAMM. And its argument contradicted some of my favourite aspects of ZAMM. I've tried re-reading, but still feel the same. Very disappointing, for sure. 

3. Seven Days in New Crete by Robert Graves (1949)

Robert Graves's I Claudius/ Claudius The God were the first grown-up novels I read after Lord of the Rings, when aged about 13 or 14. Soon afterwards I got The White Goddess (1948), and constantly consulted it, and brooded on it, through the following years. About a decade or more later I discovered in a biography that Graves has followed-up the WG - which is non-fiction (sort of..) by a novel that expressed the ideas; called Seven Days in New Crete. It took me ages to find a copy of this - but when I did, I was avid with anticipation... 

But, as you will have guessed, I was extremely underwhelmed - on several levels. For a start, it is a poor novel qua novel - never comes to life, is just rather boring. But more damningly, Graves apparently regards his 'New Crete' as a kind of utopia, where the White Goddess rules and is worshipped - as Graves advocated for real-life, and which I had found persuasive in adolescence. Yet his depiction of the Goddess-dominated world was completely unappealing, and without a trace of the romance that permeated White Goddess. In sum: a dud. 

Have readers had similar experiences of seriously-disappointed literary anticipation?