Bruce Charlton's Notions

Reality is made up of Beings. And these Beings exist 'in' Time.

In physics terminology, Beings are analogous to processes. If you try to think of a process outside of Time, it becomes frozen and not really a process anymore - and the same kind of thing happens with Beings.

If you try to think of a universe of Beings that are not 'inside time' then you will get something very unlike Beings - maybe a reality made of indestructible inert spheres, or something like that.  But beings are intrinsically active, doing - to some degree.

Because Beings are in-Time, then they must be 'doing' something - and what Beings are doing is having Relationships with other Beings.

So, this is the irreducible basis of Reality - Beings have-ing Relationships... Time cannot be subtracted from ultimate reality.


Because Beings are active (like processes) and eternal (because fundamental aspects of reality) - Beings are self-generating, self-creating.

If beings were like physics things, Beings would be perpetual motion machines, with infinite inner resources for self-creation.

But as Beings are the most fundamental units, we infer that self-creation is simply a 'property' of ultimate reality.


What about the Self? Well, Self is what a Being calls it own Being - so a Being and it's Self are the same 'thing' - but the Being is externally and abstractly regarded, whereas the Self is a Being's conceptualisation of itself.

I assume that this is an intrinsic property of Beings - that Beings know they are Selves, to some degree distinct from other Beings.

There is no 'inside' to the Self. It is a primary unit of reality, indivisible, unanalysable - and this (I think) means that the Self is 'immaterial' - it is not solid, not localised, does not have a surface, cannot be perceived or detected...

This sounds like lots of negatives, but this is simply to state that when it comes to the primary units of reality, there can be no further analysis. We can describe what a Being is and what it does (much like describing the character of a person in terms of his attributes, or inferred dominant motivations), but we cannot discuss its 'inner workings'. 


What is Consciousness? Consciousness is something outside-of and different-from the Self. The Consciousness observes - and one of the things Consciousness observes is the Self.

All Beings have some degree of Consciousness; although some entities (of what we call the mineral world, especially; but also the plant world) have a Consciousness that is relatively slow and weak, compared with men and some animals.

So all Beings are in relationships with other Beings, and all are somewhat Conscious of themselves and of this relationship with other Beings. All Beings therefore know themselves located within ongoing Time and reality.

What this means is that Self and and Consciousness are both attributes of Being. We can distinguish Self and Consciousness, but they are not divisible - you cannot have a Self without Consciousness or vice versa; S & C are characteristics of Being (which it may be helpful to distinguish), but S & C are not 'components' of Being.


This is a strange way of reasoning! ('Coleridge apparently called it Polar Logic; and you can read about it in Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought.)

But it essential to think in this way if we are to avoid the unresolvable paradoxes and problems that have plagued and paralysed Western Philosophy (and Christian Theology) since the Ancient Greeks invented it.

The key is to include Time in our fundamental metaphysical assumptions about ultimate reality - and this fits with (or naturally flows-from) the Christian scheme; since the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus happens in history, in time.

Christianity is linear, sequential and purposive.

I have belatedly realised (such things always take me a t-herribly long time) that the modern world is being duped - wholesale - by the fake assertion that process is the ultimate source of validity; whereas in fact provenance is the basis of truth...

Allow me to explain... The (modern, fake...) idea is that 'understanding' of something is a matter of being able to describe it in terms of process; and that correct understanding has happened when process leads to predictable outcomes.

So - the modern activity of professional bureaucratic research that calls-itself 'science' claims that valid results are what come-out-of this process of research, and what comes out of this process is intrinsically valid. Science is regarded as The Process.

But, it would be truer to say (although still an abstraction) that science is what comes-out-of scien-tists; that is, out-of individual human creative-beings whose motivation is scientific. Science is what-(real) scientists-do.

Other examples would be my current obsessions of Primary Thinking and Polarity. I have been having difficulties explaining these, including to myself (especially polarity...). And these difficulties are related to my trying to do this explaining in terms of process - which is an abstraction.  I should instead have been trying to understand them in terms of their provenance.

Yet my explicit metaphysical foundation is that ultimate reality is personal, not abstract - my bottom line is that reality is made up of beings (variously alive and conscious beings). Abstractions are therefore merely models - therefore (being models) always simplified and always incomplete and always not-true... no matter how expedient or useful in limited circumstances.

So, trying to explain Primary Thinking in terms of process is always and necessarily wrong - in reality primary thinking is the thinking of that-which-is-primary: i.e. the thinking of our real self, which is a divine self (a son or daughter of God): a self that is in part existent from eternity.

The thinking of this real self is primary thinking - and the validity of the 'products' of divine thinking comes from that provenance: that is from thinking's origin in the real self. Thought that originates-from the real self is valid, and that provenance is what makes thought valid...

And polarity... I have (following Coleridge and Barfield) tried to explain it abstractly, that is as a model... but polarity so-considered is a process; a process consisting of opposed by inextricable centrifugal (feminine) and centripetal (masculine) elements... and so on. And all processes are abstractions, hence wrong.

So, in the end, polarity has not really been understood. And nobody can make a machine or any other model that 'does polarity'... Only beings do it.

Polarity is an abstract model of creativity, and creativity is done by beings.

The ultimate creativity is to create creators - that is, to pro-create, to have offspring. Thus the ultimate reality, of which polarity is merely an abstraction, is the fertile dyad of man and woman; of two complementary beings.

Other types of creativity (literary, scientific artistic etc) are inextricable from the inclusion of beings - a poem without a person to read/ a symphony without someone to hear it... is not a creative product but merely ink marks on paper.

All creativity entails beings. (And beings entail life and consciousness - of some type and degree.)

That is, creativity is also (like polarity, like primary thinking) a matter of provenance, of source and origin...

So, to return to Primary Thinking - we cannot explain it as a process, indeed that is its nature to be inexplicable as a process - else it would not be primary (and instead 'the process' would be primary).

We know primary thinking by knowing that we do it - more exactly, that we have been-doing it: that our real self has-been-thinking. We cannot look-within the process of primary thinking - because primary thinking is what eventuates-from our real self. We know primary thinking by recognising that it has-eventuated - we recognise primary thinking as a product-of our real self, thinking...

Therefore, the deepest understanding is not of (inevitably incomplete and biased) abstract models of processes; but knowledge of the nature of the beings that constitute reality.


Aside: All this is why and how Christians can correctly regard love as primary in God's creation - which would not make sense if ultimate understanding of creation was of the nature of physics or mathematics. Love is primary because beings are primary - thus ultimate reality is alive, conscious, purposive.  

Owen Barfield, in What Coleridge Thought, provided a useful terminology that can be used to help define legitimate from illegitimate abstraction. 

It is always permissible and sometimes useful (or even necessary) to distinguish, that is to 'analyze' and discuss; but when we 'divide' along the lines distinguished, we have done something that may lead to immediate error, and will always lead to problems if pushed far enough. 

Negatively expressed: Just because a distinction is 'valid' (i.e. useful in 'real life') does Not mean that it is valid to divide (abstract) along the lines of that distinction. 

Positively expressed: Reality can be distinguished and analyzed in open-endedly many ways. But dividing along the lines of such distinctions is always ultimately wrong, when that division is made in a way that violates reality.  

This is the problem of abstraction; indeed distinguish versus divide could be used as a way of separating good-abstracting from bad-abstracting. 

An example I've already discussed on this blog is Time. 

The nature of Time depends, ultimately, on our ultimate metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality. My assumption is that ultimate reality is Beings - that reality consists of living, conscious, purposive Beings (such as humans, animals, plants, and including entities that are nowadays regarded as non-living such as - probably - stars, perhaps planets. The assumption I make is that every-thing is either a Being in its own right, or part of a Being.  

If this is reality, then Time must be an aspect of a Being. Time must be something to do with the livingness and consciousness of a purposive Being.

This means that it is OK (in principle) to discuss and analyze Time in relation to a Being or some Beings; but that if we divide Time off from any reference to Beings - then we have committed an abstraction, and are no longer dealing with reality. 

In other words, when we treat Time abstractly, and divided from Beings; we have made a model. It is not necessarily wrong to make a model, and of course models of reality may be useful in many ways - after all, that's what science and engineering are all about. 

But they are only useful when we know that they are models; and in our modern Godless society, where most people believe (mostly on the basis of abstract physics models and biological models, that are assumed to be reality) that ultimate reality is a purposeless accident; it is clear that people believe models, and only models!

What I am saying here; is that the deep reason that so many abstractions (including models, and - importantly - including a great deal of Christian theology) are wrong and harmful (in so many ways!); is that they are not just distinguished as sub-aspects of reality - but in conceptualization and practice, these abstractions have-been divided from their ultimate and real basis in Beings.   

If we are to account for true knowledge, we cannot be reliant upon some multi-stage and approximate process like 'communication'.

There must be direct access of our minds to truths; and this has usually been conceptualised as some single realm of universal truth, to which all people potentially have direct access - a realm that contains... well what, exactly?

This is a kind of 'model' of reality - not reality itself - but assuming we do want a model, then there are two questions that spring to my mind.

The first is to ask where is this realm; such that it is at the same time a single realm and yet every mind can have access to it?

Various answers have been given - but of course, none of the answers maps-onto a materialist world picture of modernity. For example, the universal realm is inside everybody, yet each inside is the same place.

This (or something similar) was an answer found acceptable by many people for many centuries - or indeed millennia - but is now supposedly incoherent. Yet its 'incoherence' is merely a matter of working from abitrary and materialist metaphysical assumptions.

The second question is relatively neglected - which is what kind of ultimate truths are in the universal realm?

Typically, (e.g Plato at the beginning, or Rudolf Steiner and Own Barfield in recent years) the realm is conceptualised as a place of Ideas or Concepts - in other words, by such accounts, universal truth is Abstract.

But this won't do for me; because my understanding is that the universal truth of God's creation is Love - and love is not abstract but Love is the cohesion of reality. 

Love is therefore not an emotion, nor is it a physical 'force' - love is the ultimate cohesion between the beings of creation (and creation consists of beings, and their products).

So ultimate reality is God and God's children (Men, and the various levels and types of angels and other beings - animal, vegetable and mineral as we modern people usually term them) and the Love between them - these beings 'cohere' by love; and love is between living, conscious beings.

So; if we want to be philosophers or scientists, and to know more specifically about creation - our ultimate answer will be in terms of Love - and we can only get access to this knowledge by ourselves being a part of this vast and intricate, family-like network of Love.

But what about evil? Well, evil rejects Love and can never truly know - because for evil all knowledge is ultimately a personal delusion. Evil has rejected God's creation and the network of relationships - the Pride of evil is to rely upon its own, specific, cut-off understanding and motivations.

Furthermore, evil is un-understandable - since it is outside the realm of truth , reality, knowledge - evil is sealed-off in its own world. We know what evil is not - but can never know what it is - because there is no truth in evil... what this means is that truth is a universal, evil is not universal. Therefore, we should never 'believe' evil for the simple reason that evil cannot know; and the assertions of evil are merely delusional manipulations. That is, the devil is a liar, and father of lies, and so are all who have set themselves up as the ultimate source of 'reality'.

So... my notion of the universal realm - or, at least the one I strive to live-by - should ultimately be one of loving human relationships. These might be approximated by 'concepts', 'ideas', 'facts'... but such abstractions are not the bottom line reality.

Creation is Not held-together by concepts or any other abstractions - creation is held-together and structured by divine Love between living conscious beings.

We may agree that materialism is false, evil and self-destroying. But it is hard to say - positively - what is meant by 'spiritual'. Indeed, I once participated in a research project where the literature was reviewed and people were interviewed about what they understood 'spiritual to mean' - and no conclusion emerged about any shared meaning.

The usual definitions (such as they are) tend towards excessive abstraction (in terms of the properties or classes of spiritual entities), or gestures towards a world beyond the material (reality is 'more than' just that which is perceived or measured) - which are true, in their way, but hardly adequate.

Clearly, too, spirituality does not equate with religion. Some religions, including some practices of Christianity, are barely spiritual - for instance religious life that is almost wholly ethical, rule-following, or focused on ritual participation. Indeed, many people claim to be 'spiritual but not religious' - however, strictly there is no such thing. To be coherent, to make sense; spirituality depends on metaphysical assumptions of a religious kind.


When someone tries to be spiritual but not religious - for example by merely believing-in and communicating-with spirits, or the dead - then this simply reduces to a type of materialism - spirits are, in effect, being brought into the definition of material and treated as mundane.

People who say they are Not spiritual seem to be those who regard life as being wholly on the 'level' of the everyday - so that the entirety of life (including personal and leisure time) is of the same quality as the normal, shared, public world of work, officialdom, the media. 

By contrast, when a spiritual dimension of life is desired - this is a wish for a larger life, beyond the mundane - with a different and 'higher' quality. In practice, nowadays, with the current pressures; this seems to entail according 'the spiritual' the highest priority; above (in particular) the political - and this is where so many would-be spiritual people and organisations fall-down.    


It is probably best to think of materialism as the assumption that the world is made of Things, and spiritual as the contrary assumption it is 'made of' Beings. 'Beings' meaning living-entities, conscious and motivated. Thus, to be spiritual means to assume that this universe and reality consists of Beings. 

We could further say that the materialistic perspective says that the universe arose by means of 'physics' processes - it just-happened for deterministic reasons and/ or perhaps randomly. In other words, in materialism there are Things interacting by physical processes.

By contrast, a spiritual perspective assumes that we live in A Creation - that is, a universe made by a Being. Furthermore, the Beings interact by 'relationships'. For the spiritual person; the ultimate reality of interaction is not the forces, particles, processes of physics, but the attributes of relationships - such as motivations, emotions, beliefs...


What prevents a spiritual world view (among those who want it) is many things. Habit, of course, plus that The World requires us to operate on materialist assumptions - to treat everything (including people) as Things.

It can be seen that this is a source of confusion. in that plenty of people assert a living universe, a purposive creation - but then explain it in abstract, geometric, mathematical, and physics terms. This is, indeed, difficult to avoid - for it is seen in Rudolf Steiner, Rupert Sheldrake and a staple of 'New Age' spirituality. I am saying that this is an error, and leads to an unstable hybrid that default-reverts from failed-spirituality back to materialism-in-practice.

This drive to abstraction based on the idea that abstractions are the primary reality - for example the view that ultimate reality is mathematical, or that physics provides the deepest explanation of the origin of the universe.


All this is a version of the ancient Greek metaphysical practice of explain reality in terms of abstractions; which was taken up by Christian theologians who (to varying degrees, but always to some extent) made Christianity fit-into this pre-existing materialistic framework (whereas most of scripture is describes a world of beings and relationships).

In a strange paradox; much Christian theology over the past many centuries represents a continued attempt at maintaining materialist assumptions as foundational for Christianity. Any whiff of anthropomorphism, animism, a world of beings - all such are regarded as childish errors.

In terms of the evolutionary-development of human consciousness, this was an early and necessary step in the direction of increasing human agency, freedom, choice; until the point (reached within the past 200 years in the West) that belief in God became active and voluntary rather than unconscious and passive.


Men began living in a world of Beings - but passively and unconsciously. This was Man's childhood.  The abstraction was part of detaching us from that immersive world and allowing us to think independently - Man's adolescence. The future is to return consciously and by active choice to the deepest truth of the spiritual world view - and again acknowledge reality as created by a Being, and consisting of Beings.

(From which perspective the abstractions - mathematics, sciences, Classical metaphysics, traditional Christian theology - are seen as ultimately tools: pragmatic approximations for particular purposes.)

But it is this vast inherited inertial legacy of abstract materialistic theology - mistakenly regarded as definitive of being-a-Christian - that has made mainstream institutional Christianity fall-into materialism (including bureaucracy); and which makes it so surprisingly difficult to be a Christian and to be spiritual.


Spirituality entails creation having a purpose, and materialism - with its physics universe - has none.

So, I would say that the spiritual world-view - which I want, and which is sought by many - is one in which we inhabit a universe of Beings that was itself created by a Being.

'Spirituality' is therefore thinking and living in such a way that we interact with 'the world' on the assumption that it is a purposeful creation and consists of Beings.

I suddenly had this thought in the bath. (...Where else?) 

That there have always been "way-out"/ "crazy" theories and claims concerning the existence of "free energy" - unlimited energy for no thermodynamic "cost"; and also claims to have discovered or invented a "perpetual motion" machine. 

And yet, my best understanding of metaphysics is that the ultimate reality of Creation consists of Beings in relationships. 

So, free energy/ perpetual motion simply basic properties of all Beings - including you and me. 

I mean that all beings are "powered" by unlimited and cost-free energy - and are themselves perpetual motion "machines". 

When Beings are known as the primary "units" of ultimate reality (Beings are alive, conscious, self-sustaining, eternal); then of course they (we) have properties that include an infinitely-renewable "free" energy... How else could we and other Beings be eternal? 

And, because all Beings are "dynamic" (not static), and all Beings exist "in" Time, in the sense that Time is property of Beings - then some kind of "perpetual motion" must be a feature. 

Another way of thinking about this is the divine creation does not (cannot) depend on any external source of energy else it could not be eternal; because any externally-supplied energy implies entropy, which is the opposite of creation). 

And creation is dynamic, entails change - and eternal change is perpetual motion. 

Because (by my pluralist metaphysics) all real creation is divine in nature (whether that creation is of-God or of some other Being) - that is, all creating partakes is an action of free agency, hence represents the operation of divine qualities - then, it must be a property of Beings to behave like free energy "devices" and perpetual motion "machines". 

So these don't need to be invented or discovered: we all already know dozens of such entities - including our-selves. 

 

NOTE ADDED: Why am I saying this?

Well, the ridiculing of ideas of free energy and perpetual motion has become mainstream exactly because it is a soft-sell (i.e. an indirect and implicit promotion) of the primacy of entropy in reality; and thus the denial of creation. 

The fact we have come to regard these ideas as not just untrue but actually insane, is evidence that we have made false metaphysical choices at a very deep level. 

And it is these fundamental errors in understanding the basic nature of reality that trap so-many of us in nihilistic and despairing materialism.  

I have often come across variations on the theme that this world and the Men, animals and plants who dwell here are perfectible: that this mortal life can be transformed into Heaven. 

The transformation has been variously expressed; one idea is that the gross materiality of bodies will be transformed into light; or that matter becomes spirit; or (in New Age type thinking) that the vibrational-state or frequency of the planet and everything on it will be raised. 

The underlying idea seems to be that this world as-it-is is "entropically" subject to death, decay, disease, and sin; but that the corruptible "stuff" of mortality and imperfection can be transformed and replaced by in-corruptible stuff... Thus Earth is changed into Heaven.

I regard this metaphysical belief as an early manifestation of Mankind's alienation, of our diminishing participation, of the loss of primal "animism" by which we knew that this reality is constituted by Beings - loving, conscious, purposive beings - and these are the bottom-line explanation. 

Because reality is Beings - therefore restatements of ultimate reality in such terms as vibrations or frequencies, of matter-spirit distinctions, or of light or any other physical property - are all abstractions. (All "physicsy").

That is these ways of understanding reality are all distanced, symbolic, representative - but not reality itself; and only a secondary form of understanding.

If, instead, we embrace the original and spontaneous human understanding of reality in terms of Beings, then we can recognize that what prevents Heaven on Earth is not a matter of matter, not about the "substance" of this world (as if it could be separated from the spirit). But instead that death, sin, insufficiency, "entropy" are a consequence on the inharmoniousness of relationships between Beings. 

In a nutshell: it is the lack of complete and eternal love that prevents our eternal lives and Heaven. 

We must rectify relationships and enable eternal Love to have Heaven. 

Heaven can arise only by Loving God first - that is, recognizing and committing ourselves to God's creation and creative methods and purposes. 

And second: by loving our neighbours/ fellow-Men - in other words Loving All Other Beings - forever.

These are the two Great Commandments articulated by Jesus Christ; and can be seen as shorthand for the eternal and irrevocable commitment to live by Love; in harmony with God's creative will. 

When beings live by Love, this is eternal - because there is nothing in Heaven (thus conceived) to disrupt or destroy divine creation.  

Since Love is what is needed, and since Love is a choice - we need to recognize that Love is the free act of a Being with agency as an essential attribute. 

Therefore (because Love cannot be imposed, top-down, from-externally); everlasting life and Heaven cannot be imposed, but must instead be chosen: indeed there must be a commitment to live eternally by Love. 

To make our lives eternal and dwell in Heaven is therefore a matter of relationship, and that relationship is voluntary (again, Love cannot be imposed)... 

Thus Heaven cannot be imposed on Earth by any means - what must instead happen is that all the beings of Earth (including the being of Earth itself) must choose to live by Love.   

I cannot see any way that such a lot of choices would be simultaneous, and Heaven cannot be partial; which would seem to mean that either Heaven must be delayed until every Being has chosen it -- which delay seems contradicted by Jesus's teachings (esepcially in the Fourth Gospel - of "John"). Or Heaven is elsewhere. 

(And also there is the fact of at least some apparently eternally-self-damned demons; which would prevent Heaven ever from happening - if indeed all must repent before eternal life can ensue.) 

Heaven surely cannot be partial; because the dwelling in Heaven of selfish or cruel Beings would not be Heaven! It would lead to destruction of that Loving creation which enables both perfection and eternity - and is itself the state of Heaven.

So, it seems to me that Heaven, and our eternal resurrected life therein, must be elsewhere than this earth; and segregated from this world of sin/ death - such that those Beings who have not committed to Love, do-not and cannot affect Heaven. 

My understanding is therefore that this-world cannot be other than it is; which is a consequence of God's Loving creation in a context of primal chaos, creation in the context of Beings that all have some tendency to death, to selfishness, to sin (and some Beings apparently incapable of Love). 

This world is temporary, and creation here is like the rule of a wise and wholly-Good parent imposed on children (i.e. Beings) who vary in their innate degrees of Goodness, and obedience. 

But for eternal life and Heaven to exist, these Beings (us, you and me, included) must be released from obedience in order to choose freely whether or not we want Heaven. 

So, this world is mixed: and has in it both evil (primal chaos, entropy, selfishness...), and also Good - vast and renewing manifestations of God's creative Love. 

Therefore; every Being or entity in this world has direct and personal experience of evil and Good. 

Every Being in this world is in a position to make the eternal commitment to live wholly by Love in a wholly Good "other place" that is Heaven - a Heaven that already exists, and to which we each can go by following Jesus Christ through resurrection, after death.

In other words; we can, will, and must choose either Heaven; or else "more of the same, mixed, kind of thing".  

But this world is not staying the same. 

This world apparently accumulates evil through time, because evil just-is cumulative, and Beings that choose evil become more evil..

(Unless the Beings repent; which means precisely making a commitment to follow Jesus to Heaven.) 

Also; Beings that commit to Good are incrementally being removed from this-world and segregated in Heaven. 

In other words; this mixed world already contains Hell in part and in places; but is becoming more Hell-ish with time. 

In conclusion; Beings such as our-selves can choose Heaven or Hell - both of which we all have experienced in this mixed world. This is the choice between eternally living only by Love; and not making this commitment. 

We can choose Heaven, or we can choose to reject Heaven. 

We can also choose to "delay" our choice -- but this is, in its actual effect, a here-and-now rejection of Heaven, and embrace of this mixed-world, which is tending towards Hell. 

We can go-back on this rejection of Heaven at any time: repentance is always open to every Being. 

But, in this mixed but evil-accumulating world, and given that un-repented evil will become more evil; delaying the choice of Heaven does make salvation more and more difficult. 

Repentance is never impossible, but always gets more difficult with delay. 

I have developed the metaphysical assumption that reality consists of Beings in relationships; this is a version of the spontaneous ('animistic') assumptions of 'all' young children and (so far as is known) hunter-gatherers - including our ancestors. 

I assume that this is an essentially true way of understanding reality which is why it was and is innate, 'built-into' Men - by God. 

Beings are therefore regarded as the ultimate, fundamental, metaphysically primary units of reality; Beings that are alive, with attributes such as consciousness, and purpose.  

In other words: there are ultimately no 'things' (or, more exactly, no knowable things - because chaos is not knowable - it can only be a label for uncreated stuff, including the primordial background state). Ultimately; there is no 'it' - but only 'him' or 'her' (or some other linguistic term that refers to Beings). 

This seems to mean that the spiritual war of this world includes all Beings, not just us human Beings; but animals, plants, and features of what we refer to as the 'mineral' world - sea, sky, and aspects of the earth - and the earth herself. 

And as usual, as with humans, there are Beings within Beings - just as we contain innumerable cells that are beings - for instance the white blood cells which roam our blood and lymph, consuming germs and debris, that are very similar to amoebae. 

And we Men, as individual Beings, are also biologically (and spiritually) 'social animals', with a 'Beingness' of some kinds of human groups, that is difficult to conceptualize yet also traditionally regarded as true; and which seems to exist above the individual level.    

One among many aspects of this situation is that all Beings have an analogous choice to that of Men, of whether to accepts the salvation made possible by Jesus Christ. Whether, that is, to choose resurrection into Heaven.

(Or not - and thus by default [whether actively or passively] to choose... something else.) 

I assume all Beings are - in their very different ways, due to their different qualities and degrees of consciousness - able to choose resurrection - or not. 

And this would apply to that Being which is 'the planet earth'. 

That there is indeed some such Being as 'planet earth', I am assuming on the basis that it seems to be spontaneous knowledge, and a feature of many cultures of many kinds through history. 

This earth will therefore - like you and me - at some point need to make an eternal commitment to Heaven - if the earth is to become immortal, everlasting... resurrected. 

And resurrection entails death; death is the only portal to eternal life of individual Beings. 

So, in order to become part of heavenly Life Eternal; the earth (as a Being) would first need to die; and must then choose - by an eternal commitment - to be resurrected. 

The death of the earth seems 'inevitable', given entropy; which seems to apply to all material stuff in this reality. And then, after death; will the earth choose to be resurrected? 

It seems to me that the earth will not have made this eternally-binding choice to 'discard' all sin and corruption and become everlasting; until after she actually has made this final commitment; because in this mortal and entropic material world, nothing is or can be eternal - including not our choices.

Our choices are open to change, to revision, until they are final choices; which happens only after death: when the spirit has separated from the (dead) body.  

In conclusion; we cannot know in advance whether the planet earth as a Being will, or will not, be part of Heaven; because that final choice has not yet been made by the Being that is Earth. 

This means that the question is still open; and we can be sure that Satan will be trying to influence the choice of Earth; such that she will reject Heaven; and by using broadly the same kind of methods that Satan uses against Men, to induce Men to reject Heaven.

How might this be working? Well, since the modern era (developing from circa 1500 in The West), and even more since the industrial revolution; Men have been set against Earth. Men's assumptions include that the Earth is Not a Being, that 'it' is dead, and can therefore be manipulated and explained as desired. 

The Earth is not even despised; but is regarded as outside of the drama of creation, because unalive. 

Atheists do this, Christians do this, modern environmentalists do this... 

Environmentalists - in particular - have reduced the living earth to an abstract concept called 'the environment'; which is broken down into a multitude of dead sub-concepts derived from science. 

Indeed - at present - the environment is in practice being reduced to mathematical models concerned with Carbon Dioxide; and everything else is ignored or subjugated to these models and their implications. 

In sum; there are many, many reasons why the planet earth might have developed the same kind of sinful, negative, sins that beset modern Man: I mean such sins as fear, resentment and despair. 

We might suppose that such negative attitudes could lead the modern (here-and-now) earth towards the same kind of attitudes to God, divine creation and Heaven as beset modern Men; and might lead to the same salvation-rejecting attitudes as are characteristic of so many modern Men. 

Indeed, it may be that when Christians (or anybody else - but I am addressing Christians in particular) make assumptions about what Will Happen to the planet earth; by acting as-if the earth had no say in the matter, they may be making matters worse! 

When Christians assume that the planet earth Will Be resurrected into the New Jerusalem - that Heaven Will Be on some version of this earth - are they actually taking-for-grated that the living-conscious earth will do exactly what human beings want earth to do, and thereby treating the earth as unalive, just 'a thing' which exists for the convenience of Men?

Just as if we were to assume that we knew for sure whether some particular human being would necessarily ultimately choose or reject salvation and resurrection; because that outcome is part of our own plans. 

To speak 'anthropomorphically' (which may not be far from the literal truth); when we think, speak and behave concerning the earth as an 'it' consisting of 'things' - the earth knows about this! and presumably does not like it, and may develop negative attitudes in consequence - and yet we continue and increase this way of not-relating to the earth. 

(How many of the troubles of Men with 'natural disasters' that we put down to 'bad luck' are actually a direct consequence of the way we regard the earth as a dead it and an unalive thing - and the same for Beings composing, and dwelling on, the earth? Some of the troubles, for sure.)

If we really dwell in this reality as Beings among Beings; then such matters are of fundamental importance: I mean recognizing the agency of other Beings, and recognizing that each Just Is responsible for his or her own salvation. 

It is so easy for us modern Men to fall-into the evil practice of regarding 'the universe' as a 'machine' - and this is wrong even when what is being-assumed is 'a machine for salvation'. 

We are not components in a mechanism, or elements in a determined-plan - and neither is the planet earth! 

We are all Beings, engaged in a free quest, located in a world which is engaged in spiritual war; a vital aspect of which is relationships. 

And one primary principle of such relationships is that we recognize each other as Beings - not as things. 

Conversely; it is a plank of the devil's program of damnation, that Men cease to do this; and instead habitually (and by conviction) regard 'the environment', animals, plants and other Men - as things instead of Beings.

Making Men into things, and he/ she into 'it'; is the malign intent behind such core evil-strategies as bureaucracy, totalitarianism, transhumanism, 'Artificial Intelligence', the transagenda, and the incremental and coercive computerization and digitalization of Life. 

Beings are not necessarily-determined, nor are they random. Instead; Beings have natures (dispositions), and purposes, can learn, make choices - and until they have made eternal choices, their fate cannot be known in advance.

To think and talk otherwise, is choosing to become a component part of the agenda of evil. 

Note added: On re-reading the above, I find it rather unsatisfactorily expressed; and I think this is because I am preaching something I cannot practice - although I want to! For instance, I found several examples (which I needed to edit out) in which I had used 'it/ its' about the planet earth! Nonetheless; this merely emphasizes how deep and pervasive is this 'objectivizing' and dead-ly way of thinking. It has even permeated what most adults (and indeed older children) regard as 'common sense' - so that it strikes most people as dumb or insane to acknowledge the livingness and consciousness of the universe and its true-components. I myself had to be driven to this conclusion (metaphorically 'kicking and screaming') via theoretical biology, and the attempt to define 'life', discuss the 'origins' of 'life', understand the nature of creativity - and indeed to map the proper boundaries of biology... All of which attempts I found to be impossible without the artificial drawing of boundaries that seemed too-obviously arbitrary. When confronted by the dilemma that - therefore - everything must either be alive, or else unalive. (In reductionist scientific terms; all of reality is either 'biology' or physics.) I felt intuitively compelled to assume the truth of the former - given that the idea that all of reality is ultimately physics (or maybe abstract mathematics), has underpinned the assumptions that have led Western Civilization to where we are now. That life consists in irreducible and primary Beings, arose from noticing the abstract - and again artificial - nature of any other conceptualization of biology/ life/ creation.  

What follows is a train of thought, of reasoning. It was stimulated by watching a fantasy TV program in which the hero fought demons, that is Luciferic evil embodied in actual personal beings that wanted to enslave, torture and murder. The fight was to contain or kill such beings.

It was difficult - for the hero; but the evil was locatable and understandable - the difficulty was in beating the demons.

Then I reflected that the evil we mostly encounter in this, our modern lives, is Ahrimanic - which means it is The System (the Matrix) - which is bureaucracy, which is impersonal, which is dispersed - behind every bureaucracy lies another. There are (it seems) "bureaucracies all-the-way-down"...


But then I realised: this is not so.

Ultimate metaphsyical reality is of beings and their relationships. The ultimate spiritual reality of modern evil is of actual Ahrimanic beings; that is persons, who have motivations and seek satisfactions in a way exactly analogous to the more familiar Luciferic demons. The Ahrimanic demons are motivated, living, conscious beings of a different kind, different nature; that is all.

So, ultimately The System, the bureaucracies are merely a mask, a disguise, a distraction from the reality of purposive evil pursuing its purposes.

What, then, can I actually do about all this? The answer became clear (or so it still seems).


I need to bear in mind - actively, deliberately - that nothing is dead, all is alive.  Consciousness is universal - motivation is everywhere.

The ultimate truth is that everything real is personal. There are no coincidences, no accidents - all has meaning - and there is no neutrality.


No neutrality means that the officials, the drones, the myrmidons, the petty agents of bureaucracy that we see all around (and our-selves very probably: aye, there's the rub!) are actually personal, purposive agents.

The minor implementors of The System - the slaves, serfs, servants - the clerks, managers, security guards, people who deliver... all of them (of us) are active participants in Ahrimanic evil - all have chosen to regard themselves as non-persons, all seek to avoid ultimate responsibility by sharing in the Ahrimanic assertion that 'nobody is to blame' - which means that in The System we are not persons - we are dead, lack consciosuness and purpose...

This is what must not be accepted - must be brought to conscious knowing, and refuted.


Primitive or psychotic paranoia - in which each person understands himself to be the centre of the universe, with life organised around-himself; is basically correct factually; but is wrong insofar as it is regarded as a passive situation - regarded as unavoidable. (The typical paranoid regards himself as a passive victim of external realities. He sees reality as outside himself.)

We are all and each actually at the centre of the universe; because we are co-creating that reality We are never passive (or, insofar as we are, then that is an evil choice: false, a pretence, a shirking of good, a service to evil).

We don't know everything here-and-now (of course!); but everything is potentially know-able - by each of us - in principle; and that 'in principle' makes All The Difference.

(About this Rudolf Steiner, in Truth and Knowledge and Philosophy of Freedom was profoundly and vitally correct).


How to fight demons? With 'magic' - obviously! But what kind of magic?

We know (from fantasy TV, movies and books) how magically to fight Luciferic demons... How then magically to fight the Ahrimanic demons that stand-behind The System; or rather hide behind The System? And use The System magically to make each of us Ahrimanic too. That is to make each of us choose to regard ourselves as material, non-personal, non-responsible - 'functional units' of that System.


The magic of fighting the Ahrimanic demons is knowing; and the effects of knowing. And victory is possible because the Ahrimanic beings assume their own passivity; that is their basic assumption, their metaphysical world picture.

When we are (or become) active and participating knowers; then They are defeated. But they do not realise how They have been defeated. Such is unknowable to Them.

The Ahrimanic magic is to induce people to regard the world passively, with detachment (as if meaning was out-there); to induce people passively to serve this machine, to deny their participation in the construction of this machine. 

Our magical challenge is therefore to see beyond the self-presentation of our world as dead, abstract, impersonal, mechanical, unconscious -- and to know the world as it really is.

The Ahrimanic magic is to make us believe the world is merely material; our counter-spell is to (our-selves) regard that world as also spiritual: more exactly the magic happens when we personally actually consciously experience the world as alive, of-beings; and embrace that experience as valid. 


This good magic will work when we know the servants of Ahriman (including our-selves) as deluded, self-suppressed, evil in avoidance of knowledge - hence respobsility for this vast structure of evil.

Good magic unmasks the beings behind the machine, unmasks the choices behind the obedience, unmasks the active promotion of evil behind the fear and despair.

A day at the office, a visit to the shops then becomes the front-line in the battlefield of spiritual warfare.

Our magic against Theirs.

The history of philosophy from the Ancient Greeks until now has mostly been an oscillation between - or attempt to find a middle-way, a compromise, between - two extremes; which have various labels but any choice of these two extremes always runs into the same problems. 

One is that this is (or was) a single and unified reality (monism); which has either apparently split into a multiplicity - or else people have the illusion that it has split. Unity is ultimate, variety is merely temporary, or an illusion. One God created everything from nothing, The principle of the universe is order - chaos is contained within order, order will prevail. We Men are pieces of God, seeds, droplets from a divine ocean - but everything we are is Of God. Everything In Total is Good - and evil is temporary, a transitory kind of imbalance. God is omniscient and omnipotent. This mortal life is - by comparison with divine unity - utterly insignificant, and cannot affect anything that is eternal. 

The other extreme is that which supposedly derives from Heraclitus: everything flows, everything changes, order and stasis are temporary and illusory; ultimately chaos rules. All 'understanding' is temporary, contingent, or merely delusional. There is no purpose or meaning to reality - it Just Is. There is no God. This apparent mortal life is everything - but it is nothing, really... a succession of subjective impressions merely. The are no real values: no truth, beauty or virtue - neither good nor evil.  

By my understanding, neither of the above traditional extremes offer any meaning or purpose for this mortal life; nor do they provide a solid basis for our individual freedom or creativity, nor for the reality of both good and evil.

I regard Christianity as having become trapped by the metaphysical assumptions of monism, in opposition to the chaos which it regards as the only alternative. As a result, Christianity - as taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ, and described especially in the Fourth Gospel - has been distorted into a pre-existing monist framework which really does not make sense. Although by complexification and mystification - and by the false dichotomy with chaos (regarded as the only alternative) - an illusion of sense can be made and sustained by diktat, threats and authority.  

Yet there is at least one metaphysical alternative to the above two, and that is the metaphysics to which I have adhered for about the last decade. This begins with the existence of beings in the midst of chaos, and has God as the creator, and creation as the making of a world of harmony between beings, aiming at greater freedom, hence greater consciousness; and always increasing creativity.  

This harmony of beings is love - analogous to the love within an ideal family; and it can be understood as shared creative purposes and the mutual accommodation and help which is the consequence of love. 

Therefore is the two classic and traditional views are monism and chaos; then this third view is rooted in creation. We began with chaos as a background, but with innumerable beings already existing. Creation began with God, and it was God who made possible the cooperation (harmony) between beings that began to change the universe. 

Reality is neither and ultimate order, nor is it disorganized randomness; but reality changes, evolves, develops through time - and towards increasing love, harmony, purpose, meaning. This changes happens by the development of beings, under the influence of God. Initially being can passively be raised towards greater consciousness, by adding to their equipment  

The advantages I find, up-front, are that it explains the origins of evil in chaos, the nature of evil in opposition to the Good; the nature of Good in God's creation - and the movement through time from evil towards Good: as God began with a chaotic universe and then made Heaven, and (since the work of Jesus Christ) began to people heaven with those beings who chose to subscribe to the project of Good. Thus it also explains the work of Jesus Christ, and accounts for his essential role in the divine project.

It accounts for the reality of freedom in our independent eternal origin as beings; the spiritual war whereby beings (such as ourselves) choose either the side of God and divine creation; or else to oppose that. It makes sense of the possibility of beings such as ourselves becoming genuine co-creators (ie, bringing something new, additional to God) in the creation that God began. 

It provides a model for the meaning and purpose of this mortal life - its meaning in love which is working with the divine harmony, and acts of co-creation (even in this mortal life, but more so in resurrected eternal life); and as a time for learning and preparation for immortality to come.  

So far, this metaphysics of creation has proved itself absolutely solid in response to the tests and critiques of my interrogations and life-experiences. 

But this third metaphysics seems not to be understood by the adherents of Christian monism, or chaos; and the reasons is that they do not follow the implications of their metaphysics to their conclusions; but instead introduce 'unprincipled exceptions' or 'auxiliary hypotheses' so as to provide a pseudo-rationalization for (in particular) the meaning of mortal life and the reality of freedom. 

These incoherent elements serve to take away the demand for something different; yet they fail to solve the incoherences that have been evidence for thousands of years, and are so obvious to adherents of the opposite views. I mean, the incoherence of traditional Christian metaphysics is obvious to evil-atheist-'materialists', and vice-versa. 

The metaphysics of creation is only seldom held explicitly and consciously; yet I regard it as essentially the simple, instinctive, innate metaphysics of childhood (and, probably, ancestral hunter gatherers) that has been raised to a higher level of conscious awareness.  

It is the metaphysics of the Fourth Gospel ('John') - and implicitly what Jesus lived and taught - and completed by his opening of Heaven to Men. 

Everything is alive - we live in an 'animistic' universe, ultimately consisting of Beings in Relationships. 

This truth is missing from pretty-much all Christian theologies; and even those which explicitly recognize the animistic universe (e.g. Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield, William Arkle) will often lapse-away-from their purported animism into abstractions - e.g. talking as if 'forces' or 'tendencies' - rather than motivations, relationships etc. - were primary realities; or talking of 'consciousness' abstractly, as if it could ever be separated from the specific consciousness of a specific Being. 

Although I assume that Mankind began as unconsciously (implicitly) assuming that 'everything was alive' and reality was made-of was 'Beings'; it seems that the categorization of much of reality as notalive 'things' began very early in human history (many thousands of years ago), at least in some places of which there are records - and that this has been a cumulative trend. 

Initially, it seems, only some small scale things like some 'minerals' were regarded as notalive - but in the twentieth century more and more of reality of reality became regarded as notalive.

From mid-century, it began to be assumed that plants and animals were notalive (being composed entirely of chemicals and their reactions); and in later decades (especially since computers were conceptualized and developed) that even humans were notalive. 

This assumption of notaliveness is mostly implicit; rooted in the widespread assumption (including in mass media) that whatever makes us distinctly human could, in principle, be combined with computers ('cyborg'), instantiated in a computer ('downloaded'), or replicated by some kind of 'Artificial Intelligence'. 

The point is not that this is really possible - it is not; but that many/ most people believe it to be possible; which indicates that there is no distinction between the alive and the notalive, and that in practice every-thing is regarded as notalive 

It therefore seems that, through history (and this trend is broadly repeated in the development of each individual human being) we have gone from assuming everything is alive; to assuming nothing is alive: not even our-selves. 

Christian theology, typically, tries to inhabit a half-way house on this issue. It is sure that Men are alive; but tends to be indifferent to whether plants and animals are really alive - because these are regarded as outwith the plan for salvation. And Christianity follows the general culture of many centuries in assuming that the mineral world is notalive. 

What results from this perspective is (to put it simply) a drama of the salvation of living Men and a transcendent God, that takes place against the backdrop of a notalive world.

This is a deeply alienating and unrooted view of Man's life on earth. To my mind it explains the somewhat shallow, 'two-dimensional' quality that I detect in even the very best of Christian lives. 

Such unsatisfactoriness of the normal (non-animistic) Christian theology is not wholly to do with the inevitable corruption and partiality of mortal life; because I believe it applies even to what can be imagined. 

I think that the only wholly satisfactory life we can imagine is one where there are no 'things', all is alive and conscious, nothing is notalive*. 

Furthermore, beineg alive and to some degree conscious; all Beings are part of 'the drama of salvation' and capable of theosis. 

My belief is that this trajectory from all-alive to all-notalive needs to be regarded as incomplete and incoherent; and therefore the process should be completed by recognizing that this is a living Universe; that the ultimate reality is one of Beings in relationships; but this time doing so by a deliberate act of choice. 

Whereas in the past we unconsciously took for granted that we inhabited a world of living Beings; now we should consciously choose to recognize that reality. 

Indeed if we desire this to happen, we not only can but must choose. If we are passive, and do not make an active decision and effort; then we will continue passively to assimilate the deep and pervasive cultural assumption of universal notaliveness. 

In other words; the answer lies in our own hands - or rather minds. We may make the decision to regard everything as alive; and then begin the (long, perhaps life-long) effort to make this perspective normal, habitual.    

*I suggest that this - in combination with a harmony among all these living Beings - is the special appeal of some fantasy races and settings, such as the elves of Lothlorien. 

Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, simple, discernibly significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical and less prosaic, if you like.

There is a common line of argument in Christian theology - which is rooted in the 'omni' conceptualization of God as creating everything from nothing (ex nihilo) - which concludes that evil is necessarily irrational, i.e. evil makes no sense even from its own perspective. 

(This is sometimes extended into asserting that - therefore, sooner or later - all Men will 'come to their senses' and choose salvation; even those who initially choose hell or are sent to hell.)  

But I regard this as mistaken: partly because its premises (omni-God and creation ex nihilo) are wrong; partly because it fails to acknowledge a core aspect of Christianity - specifically, which is that it is an 'opt-in' and chosen religion; and partly because it fails to grasp the potential rational appeal of evil. 

To be Good is to affiliate oneself with God's will and creation; evil is to oppose this. 

To be Good is to desire to live in harmony with God and God's wishes and with other Beings who have made the same choice; to be evil is to set oneself against creation (and, usually, of other Beings). 

But why oppose creation? There might be several reasons that are rational - one is to resent the fact that God created thus, and not otherwise - and with these aims and not others.

Such resentment comes from our-selves as free agents, as (eternal) Beings who have our own wills and creative potential. Evil may therefore be rooted in a conviction that 'I' personally disagree with God, 'I' dislike Gods plans and methods; and 'I' therefore refuse to affiliate-myself with God's work. 

Such resentment amounts to a preference for 'myself' over God (despite that this is God's created reality - indeed perhaps exactly because 'I' am compelled to dwell in God's created reality). 

Consider: whatever the nature of my disagreement may be, the disagree-er nonetheless finds-himself already-within God's creation. 

Evil amounts to a preference of myself (and my desires and motivations) above God and this world he made, including the changes God made to me - without asking for my agreement!

Thus evil is correctly described as a form of pride - of regarding oneself as The Being who ought-to-be God. 

So far this might be a purely private 'preference', as leading merely to opting-out of God's creation. In theory a Man might disagree with God's reality, and simply desire not to be a part of it...

But in practice, much evil is also fuelled by resentment against God. 

Because he cannot do what God has done; because he cannot' replace God - the evil Man (or other Being) develops an active dislike of God and divine creation... 

Because he knows that he cannot replace God, he reacts by the desire to destroy creation: the desire to destroy all that God has done and is doing; simply because it is not what he personally would have chosen to do. 

To be Good is to desire to live in harmony with God's creation and the other Beings who themselves have chosen to live in harmony with God's creation. 

To be evil is rooted in disagreement with this ideal of harmony; and to take up an attitude of opposition to God and creation - mostly including an attitude to other Beings that regards them as instruments of this opposition (because there is no reason to desire harmony with them), and the desire that other beings with will enlisted to one's own assertion as the legitimate creator. 

(Hence the manipulative and exploitative - 'means to the end of destruction' - attitude to other Beings that is characteristic of evil - albeit perhaps not universal... I could imagine an evil that was group-based, rooted in an arbitrary preference for a particular group of Beings - who then manipulate and exploit the other Beings) 

I infer from this way of understanding; that evil is, at root, a personal response to the facts of God and creation; and that evil therefore need not be irrational, nor need it be self-correcting.  

I assume that some Beings (i.e. Men, Angels/ Demons, and indeed any other of the many Beings of which reality is constituted) may choose to adopt evil as their basic stance concerning God and divine creation.

This ultimate choice to oppose God may be based on a genuine understanding of reality; and evil may therefore be an irreducible preference and choice of perspective - which means that such evil is both rational, and also potentially eternal. 

*
http://www.billarkle.co.uk/greatgift/text/thenatureofgod.html

From The Great Gift - 1976.

*

My own understanding is that the Creator, who is also God, is self sufficient in a sense. That is to imply that, although we need God, in every meaning of that term, God does not need us in the same way.

Against this we have to set the understanding that if God didn’t have a purpose which included us, no doubt He would not have gone to all this trouble of bringing us into existence.

But to have a purpose in which we can play some part is quite a different thing from having an absolute need of us in the way that we have an absolute need of God.

*

In the way that a child needs its mother and father, we need God for sustenance and support of our own reality because our own reality rests upon the reality of God, and all our sustenance comes from that reality.

But in quite a different way, I believe, our God wishes us to come to life, to come to a full expression of our potential, our Divine reality, and that must be for a purpose which is not essential to the Being of the Creator, but which may be essential to a particular longing and delight in the heart of the understanding of that Creator.

*

In simple words, I think that the Creator wishes to have other individual divine Beings who can be His friends with whom He can share the content of His own reality, with whom He can enter into conversation, understanding and discussion about possible experiments in living, in trying to go beyond the understanding that God has already, which to us, at our stage of development, seems infinite, but this is obviously only a relative term, and is not infinite to the Creator’s possible understanding.

(...) 

I believe that it is in the nature of all healthy spirits, all healthy individuals, to want to achieve spiritual goals. And those goals, when we look at them closely, are always goals which are impossibly difficult to reach.

They are goals which are endless goals; they are goals which are concerned with the ultimate perception of the most valuable and beautiful things which, when we reach them, will only incline us to look for more beautiful and more valuable things...

Therefore I think the Creator wishes to have friends, not only to share the delights of friendship with, but also friends who will help Him with the sort of exploration, the sort of experimental living out of life, which will enable us all to stumble upon new potentialities within that reality which we call the Absolute Divine Nature.

*

We can suggest that the Creator is aware that there are potentialities in nature which have not yet been fully actualised.

He also realises that He needs other beings to help Him to permutate, as it were, all the possibilities of the potentialities in that nature.

That is why He wishes to share His nature with us, and give us a nature similar to His own as an outright gift for us to use in our own way; so that each of us actualises it in a uniquely different way.

**


Note added: 

My feeling is that Bill Arkle was making an extremely important point here. Something of potentially great value to all Christians - but perhaps especially Mormons.

That while on the one had God does not need for there to be Men, he very much wants for there to be Men; and that this desire is partly the desire for Children, and beyond that the desire for (adult) friends; and even beyond that - that Men have the potential actually to assist in the divine plan: that God can achieve things with the help of Men that could not be achieved (so well ) otherwise. 

This implies that the creation and salvation of Man was not a gratuitous act; but part of a plan - a multi-phase and indeed infinite plan which is, in its bottom-line and ultimate nature - about society, about relationships, about love.

*

Ultimate reality is a personal-y thing; not a physics-y thing. 

*

In response to a recent post - commenter CCL posed an important question about the incompleteness of knowledge. I had asserted that what is known of reality directly and without communication was true; whereas anything communicated was indirect, selective, biased and necessarily untrue.

Yet even the directly-known reality is incomplete, since we have limited capacity for knowledge, limited time and experience - and ultimately because unless we already know 'everything' including all possible relations of things, then we cannot know anything, absolutely.

This analysis would seem to suggest that, since both direct and communicated knowledge are both incomplete - and incomplete in unknowable ways; mystical knowledge is in principle prone to wrongness for similar reasons to communication. It might be inferred that since both are incomplete, and because the entirety the reality can never be know; we can never really know anything about anything!

But this paradoxical conclusion derives from an unstated assumption which is that true knowledge of reality is being defined in an abstract and absolute fashion - and having set-up this abstraction of infinite and perfect knowledge we then find that any actual knowledge is, by comparison with supposed infinite perfection, always and necessarily deficient...

Yet the abstraction of infinite and perfect knowledge has no necessary reality! It is merely something we have said or thought: a ghost - a vague un-understood, indefinable notion which we then find has apparently invalidated even the knowledge that there is such a things as this supposed infinite and perfect reality!

(In other words; even if there was such a 'thing' as infinite and perfect knowledge, how could a finite and falwed creature such as myself or anyone else ever know that it was indeed real and true?)

I realise that such infinite, perfect abstractions have been the bread-and-butter of philosophy and theology for some two and a half thousand years - but neither that duration, nor the great eminence of the names who wrote as if they really solidly understood such abstraction, does not lend them ultimate validity in face of the intractable paradoxes that result from them.

One way that people try to get-around this paradox is to posit a God who comprehends all infinite perfections (the 'omni' God that is infinite in all respects - knowledge, power, presence etc.). But even such an incomprehensible, un-understandable and non-Biblical entity as the omni-God does not overcome the problem of how you and I could know for sure of that God's reality.

The answer is that knowledge is neither absolute, nor infinite, nor perfect; but is always relative to capacity, experience etc. Truth is a full understanding to the limit of our capacity - attained by direct apprehension, or 'mystically' - but our capacity (etc.) for knowledge may increase.

A being of far greater capacity and experience than ourselves - such as God, the creator - is capable of far greater knowledge. And as the capacity and experience of God increases through time, and the work of his children, so God's knowledge will increase.

Since all beings are finite, there is no absolute-truth, knowable solely by abstract definition, lying somewhere infinitely beyond actually-known-truth. Or rather - there is no reason why we must believe, by metaphysical assumption, that this is a correct description of reality.

Let us then assume that knowledge is Not to be regarded as an abstraction (capable of infinite perfection) - and instead assume that Creation consists of actual Beings (alive, conscious, with purposes), including God the creator, in relationships with one another. Let us assume that that is the ultimate reality.

In other words, let us assume that the basic understanding of children (and - apparently - of the most ancient type of tribal societies) has this basically correct; that the true metaphysics is built-into us; and it is our job to become aware of it and to understand it - rather than to reject it in favour of man-made paradoxical abstractions.

The transcendental philosopher says; grant me a nature having two contrary forces, the one of which tends to expand infinitely, while the other strives to apprehend or find itself in this infinity, and I will cause the world of intelligences with the whole system of their representations to rise up before you. Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity....

It is equally clear that two equal forces acting in opposite directions, both being finite and each distinguished from the other by its direction only, must neutralize or reduce each other to inaction. Now the transcendental philosophy demands; first, that two forces should be conceived which counteract each other by their essential nature; not only not in consequence of the accidental direction of each, but as prior to all direction, nay, as the primary forces from which the conditions of all possible directions are derivative and deducible: secondly, that these forces should be assumed to be both alike infinite, both alike indestructible. The problem will then be to discover the result or product of two such forces, as distinguished from the result of those forces which are finite, and derive their difference solely from the circumstance of their direction. 

Goethe said that in science, and presumably elsewhere, there comes a point where one must stop asking questions, stop analysing phenomena into smaller and smaller units and causal interactions - and this point he called the urphaenomenon - which translates as 'original phenomenon'.

One must stop questioning because the phenomenon is indeed 'original' that is it is an origin, which is also to say it is one of the primary creators of reality.

Ultimately, this might be understood as one of the 'origins' of creation - one of the phenomena that existed before divine creation - from which the divinity created; or else (by a different metaphysics) as one of the primary 'units' that were created by the divinity.

So reality began with urpheanomena; and what we perceive is a consequence of interaction between, addition of, transformation of (etc) the urphaenomena. They are the deepest attainable level of reality.


If we try to (pretend to) dissect the urphaenomena, or try to explain what causes them to be as they are - then we err; we get it wrong. Precisely because the urphaenomena are what make explanation possible, they cannot themselves be explained.

Instead of being-explained, the urphaenomena need to be understood. And we potentially understand them by an act of intuition.

How? Because by real, primary, intuitive thinking we may know directly. That is we may know by thinking ourselves that which is real - the tought is identical with the reality. We can - indeed - only know the urphaenomena directly (and not other kinds of phenomena), because urphaenomena are the only real and universal phenomena; we cannot know other kinds of things in this direct way.

Goethe was mostly concerned to define urphaenomena in relation to biology, to emphasise the livingness of living things; the way in which biology was based on a process of development, metamorphosis, transformation - and could not be understood in terms of physical structures (like DNA or brains) or physical processes (like diffusion or neurotransmission). When we do (try to do) this, we simply stop doing biology by treating the living as if it was not living - destroying the very basis of biology. Goethe also asserted that colour was ultimately an aspect of biology - and thus an urphaenomenon that cannot legitimately be redescribed in terms of combinations of wavelengths.


My opinion is that Goethe made a vitally important point - but my own understanding is that all of reality is living (or a part-of some-thing living) so there is no ultimate difference between physics-chemistry and biology - except that the difference is in the opposite direction than usually asserted (ie. all physics is ultimately biology, and indeed all biology is ultimately thinking - and all thinking is ultimately not-biological!)

I would say, more simply than Goethe, that the urphaenomena are Beings.

When we get to the level of disussing Beings we are at the level where free will or agency applies - in other worlds, the level where 'selves' are uncaused causes. We cannot understand a Self by looking inside it, nor by analysing it, nor by breaking into components - because this would be to break the Self, so that it was not being regarded as a Self. The one thing that cannot be done to a Self - qua Self - is to explain its 'inner workings'. Whatever we might suppose we have found; if is really is a Self, then we cannot have found its inner workings.


What we can do, perhaps, is to understand the process by direct knowing, by identification, which means to 'participate' in the process itself - which is at the level of ultimate reality, which is (a kind of) Thinking.

This is the way we (sometimes, briefly) understand or 'know' another person. And it entails loving that person; because love is the absolute necessity for direct knowing. Only by loving the phenomenon can a scientist know a phenomenon - thus real science is not a methodology but a product of sustained and truthful mtoivation to know reality. 

In sum, we can legitimately keep asking questions as to what-causes-what, until we get back to the origins of causes; until we get back to uncaused causes; at which point we must stop, because there is in reality no observable cause of the uncaused; because we have reached the point at which this particular chain of causes originates.

It is crucial that Christianity is an opt-in religion - it must be chosen, it can only be chosen.

(Therefore Christianity absolutely entails the reality of agency, of 'free will' - and the impossibility of agency on the basis of mainstream modern metaphysics is a reason why normal public discourse is absolutely incompatible with Christianity.)

At the same time, Christianity is true.


This appears to set up some kind of paradox, in the sense that (surely?) if Christianity is true then it must be accepted; yet if it must be accepted then there is no real choosing of it...

My understanding is that this is indeed a genuine contradiction in mainstream 'classical' Christian metaphysics (in which God is omnipotent, and created everything from nothing) - a contradiction to which there is no rational answer; but not in a different theology. Because to deny Christianity on such a scheme, would be to deny reality - which is incoherent.

But, if we instead believe that creation is the effect of God shaping pre-existent chaos - including ourselves as God's children; then reality so far as it is ordered and understandable is God's creation.

However, the primordial chaos included beings: included God, and also ourselves (i.e. Men) but ourselves in a primordial, unconscious, disembodied sense - embryonic and lacking, but existing nonetheless. God's creation was the shaping of chaos, and the parenting of our primordial selves into God's children (as we are now, as we find ourselves). 

 All that is Good is inside this creation - creation is where the concept of Good has meaning. In particular all loving relationships are inside of creation, made possible by God's creation.

Yet there is another reality outside of creation; so denial of Christianity is not incoherent - there is another reality which might coherently be chosen in preference to God's creation.


What would such an opt-out of God's creation entail? Outside creation is not evil; but it is chaotic, meaningless, purposeless and lacking in any true relationships between beings.

Our primary choice is whether to opt-in to the reality of God's creation - or not. This is a real choice - and has real consequences. In principle a person might simply decline to join creation - and to surrender self-consciousness, and all the personhood which has been given us by becoming a child of God. This is not an evil choice - it is the choice of nihilism, of non-reality - but it is not evil (it indeed bears some relation to the ideal of 'Eastern' religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism).

The evil choice is to decline to joining God's work of creation; but to hold onto God's gifts to us - to hold-onto meaning, purpose and relationship - but to impose our own personal meanings upon them. It is to try and take what is personally gratifying from creation, but not to join creation. It is to adopt a stance towards creation that sees it primarily as a thing to be exploited.


In sum, Christianity is true - because it describes the world of God's creation, in which truth is given meaning and value; but this is not the whole of reality - therefore there is an alternative - therefore must opt one way or the other.  And because we are agents (with free will) this choice is real and meaningful.

The necessity of opt-in arises because of the nature of God's plan for creation - which is one in which we (as Men) are agent and divine beings, in loving relationships, engaged in a mutual project of further creation.

(If creation were done and static, there would be no need for agency; but because creation is ongoing and endless, agency is of-the-essence.)

Among divine beings, there is no possibility of ultimate coercion - either we choose to join the great work of creation; or we opt-out fully - or else, as with evil entities, we try to exploit creation for personal gratification.

The work of creation ('Heaven') is both real and chosen.