Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Did God make entropy a law of the known universe, or is entropy prior to God and God constrained by entropy?

Could God have made a world without entropy, could He have made this world without entropy - a world that was not tending to corruption and chaos - and if so why didn't he?

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For the medieval 'scholastic' theologians, the mortal sub-lunar world was the place of entropy - of decay, death and sin - and the Heavenly world was a place of eternal and perfect harmony. Entropy was therefore pretty much a product of Satan and his demons (all entropy is evil, but not all evil is entropy).

But it is hard to make such a world picture coherent, and hard to understand how two such different worlds can have any meaningful relationship (i.e. an always-corrupting and death-filled world of entropy, versus an eternal and changeless world of perfection).

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Although entropy is destructive of life, we moderns find it hard to imagine life without entropy; in the sense that any active process would seem liable to accumulate damage.

Or, to put it the other way around, if something is static, eternal and perfect - and therefore invulnerable to entropy - we find it hard to suppose that it is actually alive.

So the medieval view of divinity and Heaven seems to secure invulnerability to entropy only at the cost of something that sounds very much like death!

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I think that a Christian requires that a life, a specific life, must have a distinctive and personal essence which is eternal and indestructible - despite entropy.

Rather than zero-entropy stasis; what I think this implies is an eternal, active, energy using-and energy-generating process acting to purge entropy from each eternally-living entity.

In a nutshell, this is the process of making form, structure, organization - as a fundamental principle.

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So, anything alive is alive because of the form-generating principle; and also tends to lose form and die due to entropy - the end-result depends on the relative strength of these processes of form versus entropy.

On this earth, it seems entropy is stronger than form (death is stronger than life) - so all living forms will sooner or later be overwhelmed by entropy, and will die.

Eternal life requires the opposite predominance - of form over entropy, life over death - so that although (presumably) entropy continues to occur, it is continually purged and structure continues... forever.

The possible implication is that we inhabit this high entropy world for a reason to do with the domination of the process and tendency of change - corruption, ageing and sin. But also that this mortal life is temporary and will necessarily end in death. The domination of entropy will end.

And that our habitation of this entropically-dominant kind of world is not an accident, but in some way a part of God's plan for us.

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I use the term 'entropy' to describe a very fundamental concept that emerges from an insight - or rather experience - of Mankind emerging as self-awareness begins to develop.

This insight-experience that dates back at least to the Ancient Greeks when (it seems to me) it was that which led to the very first philosophy - which was concerned with change versus stasis, movement v stillness, the temporary v the everlasting, chaos v order, the earthly v the divine, illusion v truth etc... In all these dualities, the first term corresponds with what I am terming entropy. 

To feel the truth of this realization is rather heavy mass that presses down upon all awareness and thinking. This insight can be described as experiencing the Weight of Entropy: in other words the realization that everything we know and know-of in this world will change and be lost; that  - in this world, and for all particular entities - death has the upper hand over life. 

Not everybody seems to have had this experience*, and (it seems) many of those who have had the insight choose to ignore and try not to think about it, or to deny its validity. 

But for those who have felt the Weight of Entropy, it has the ring of a profound intuitive truth. 

It is a metaphysical assumption hence cannot be proved, but it is consistent with everything in our experience - and nothing has been found in this material world (e.g. by 'science') that escapes entropy. 

Yet, the very fact that we can experience and recognize the Weight of Entropy in its fullness implies some kind of contrastive possibility; is a kind of proof that it cannot be the whole story, and is not inevitable in some kind of a cosmic sense. 

My understanding is that we are Beings who experience, think, and know from creation; from our innate experience of being-part-of creation. 

As original Beings, before divine creation; insofar as we had consciousness our awareness would have been of isolation in a universe of chaos (other Beings seeming like aspects of chaos, because they were behaving as such) - except we would not have regarded it as chaos, only as what is.

It is our inclusion in divine creation - and our experience of loving (cooperating with) other Beings, that gives us the basis of something alive and purposive, from which we can experience the workings of entropy dragging-us-down. 

And it is also that inclusion within divine creation that provides the awareness of at least a theoretical possibility of escaping - eternally - from entropy.

In other words; to feel the Weight of Entropy is usually a horrible and chilling experience - and it will remain so if we stop at that point (as so many people have, in the modern West). 

However, if we fully acknowledge the Weight of Entropy - instead of trying (and failing) not to think about it by distraction, intoxication, dishonesty etc; then we 'stay with it' and learn from it; we can go through entropy to the other side: which is awareness of divine creation.   

Note: A similar and related experience of 'weight' is that of sin - the insight that (for all the Good in the world, and that it is what many people, apparently, most desire) there is a sense in which sin is cumulative in a way that Good is not; and that corruption is an insidious influence that requires conscious and recurrent (if not continuous) resistance. But such an insight is perhaps restricted to some but not all cultures; whereas I suspect that the Weight of Entropy may occur to individuals in any kind of society. 

* When I read an ancient, or merely old, writer - I feel that I can sometimes recognize whether or not he has had this experience; when present, it seems like mind calling-to-mind across the ages and between vastly different circumstances. 

Reconceptualizing natural selection as primarily concerned with counteracting entropy (e.g. mutation accumulation)

Michael A Woodley and I have developed a new conceptualization of the fundamental process of natural selection. It draws on diverse perspectives such as a couple of years of conversations about the cause of decline in intelligence (g) since Victorian times (especially the importance of mutation accumulation due to the massive decline in child mortality rates - http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mutation), the work of WD Hamilton on the evolution of sexes, Graham Cairns-Smith's work on the origins of life, an old paper of mine on 'endogenous parasitism', recent discussion on the implications of the 'mouse utopia' experiment and more.  



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The essence of the idea is that replication is not the main problem for living entities, indeed replication can be taken for granted.

The big problem for living entities is entropy; the main answer to entropy is natural selection, and the main anti-entropic mechanism of natural selection is massive overproduction of offspring with various means of selectively culling the most entropically-damaged offspring.

In terms of genetics; this could be understood in terms of saying that something like mutation-selection balance is the essence of natural selection

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On Graham Cairns-Smith's conception of life, natural selection is built-into reality – NS is simply a part of the world – certainly part of chemistry (e.g. crystal propagation), probably physics too. In evolutionary terms, there is no dividing line between organic and inorganic, alive and dead.

Therefore, Life (in the sense of replicating entities subject to natural selection) is to be found pretty-much everywhere – not just in biology.

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So the main problem for a living entity is not to make copies of itself, replication can be 'taken for granted' as a kind of universal phenomenon, but the main problem is to counteract entropy.

Entropy, that is to say random damage to replicating entities from many sources and copying errors during replication, is inevitable. Indeed, entropy will tend to degrade any identifiable structure, and any form of organization. Over time, the tendency is for all structure and organization to be returned to randomness.

This means that all lasting structures and all types of organization must overcome entropic degradation.

So, any actually-observable entity has already solved the problem of entropy to the extent that it is indeed observable! Any structured or organized thing which exists has solved the problem of entropy such that it at least came into existence, was sustained long enough to be observable by us, and - unless it is unique - has some mechanism for making more-of-itself: for replicating.

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Furthermore, entropy affects all replication - so there are errors in replication that enter in the transmission of information between parent and offspring.

In a nutshell, this means that there is an unavoidable, intrinsic and cumulative entropic tendency for the fitness of any naturally selected lineage to decline to zero - to extinction, to non-life.

An example of this would be the tendency for mutations to occur in each parent organism, to be transmitted from parent to offspring - with new mutations occurring during the replication process, and for such mutations to accumulate generation upon generation until extinction.

Indeed this is not just additive accumulation, but there is a tendency towards a positive feedback cycle, in which mutations damage functionality which leads to more and additional, and uncorrected mutations.

So, the suggestion is that the fundamental problem for any entity is not replication, but combating entropy.

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One implication is that the basic function of a molecule like DNA is not a matter of achieving replication - because replication would already have been happening, and can be taken for granted; DNA (and its evolution) is primarily about a mechanism of more-accurate/ less error-full replication.

So, the main question for living things is: how is entropy controlled?

And the main answer is: Natural Selection.

The context of Natural Selection (NS) is thus massive over-production of offspring (and spores, seeds, ova, sperm etc), and the strongly-selective reproductive-culling of offspring to eliminate accumulated entropic damage (such as mutations).

Thousands or millions of offspring (etc) may be generated, and selectively eliminated.

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So, the context of the intrinsic decline of fitness in all replicating entities means that the main thrust of evolution by natural selection is simply to maintain fitness - to prevent extinction from intrinsic entropic tendencies - and not to improve fitness, nor to evolve adaptations.

So, this is a Red Queen phenomenon (in which there is running fast just to stay in the same place). Natural selection is necessary to maintain fitness in the face of the entropic tendency for fitness to disappear.

In other words, the phenomenon described as mutation-selection balance is not a specific, contingent, occasional circumstance: but the normal and indeed primary nature of natural selection as it applies to a genetic organism.

The genetics of NS is not primarily about evolving new genes but primarily about preserving from (entropic) destruction what are already-successful genes. It is about preventing the intrinsic tendency towards corruption/ degradation of an already- known-to-be-successful genetic recipe.

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In sum, NS happens in what are ‘already fit’, already replicating, massively-over-reproducing, entities. Lacking which, fitness inevitably regresses to zero.

So – the main thrust of evolution (NS) is to maintain fitness. (A Red Queen sort of thing.)

The usual method for combating entropic damage is massive overproduction of offspring, and therefore Disposable Offspring.

The usual, background situation was that replication was not a problem, and sufficient offspring survival could be taken for granted in the immediate short –term – the problem was the distal long term of a few generations ahead at the point when the tendency was for mutation accumulation to destroy fitness.

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Short term fitness, over the next few generations, was not the major problem - since there was such over-production of offspring; therefore long-term fitness beyond the next few generations is THE major problem.

Therefore, because in this conceptualization, natural selection implicitly looks-forward several generations,  so this is not about the single organism and its fitness but is instead a 'group-ish theory' kind of selection process.

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With such a concept, it is trivially easy for individuals to ‘sacrifice’ their own fitness to some degree, or even the fitness of the immediate next generation or two - when the longer term fitness of the group of descendants is significantly enhanced. (This is a consequence of short-term replication being 'taken for granted' due to the context of massive over-production of offspring.

There is a very low cost to ‘adaptations’ which somewhat lower individual fitness if there is a fitness advantage in the next few generations – because the next few generations are almost guaranteed – they are not the big problem. The big problem is entropy, hence mutation accumulation – and that takes a few generations.

A pay-off two or three generations down the line is therefore almost-directly selected for, in the sense that the short term costs are trivial in the context of massive overproduction and a world of replication-not-a-problem.

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Sexual reproduction was, by this account, relatively easy to evolve; because it enabled better control of entropy (see the work of WD Hamilton - but replacing/ adding to 'parasites' with spontaneously occurring entropic damage), e.g. the purging of mutations, the purifying of the gene pool of second, third etc –generations of offspring.

What gets naturally selected is therefore fitness down-the-line.

In a sense, the proximate locus of natural selection is a few generations ahead; specifically the future generations whose fitness would have declined to zero absent the operations of natural selection.

(This is different from the main emphasis of the conceptualization of mainstream selfish gene theory - which only very seldom allows for the possibility of long-term 'group' fitness advantage overcoming a significant short-term fitness disadvantages. In our view the short-term disadvantages are trivial in effect in a context of 'replication taken for granted' and the usual situation of massive overproduction of offspring.)

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The new conceptualization of NS implies that ‘competition’ with other living things is mainly about preventing the accumulation of entropic damage. Competition with other living things, including other members of the same species, is primarily about the purging, purifying or culling of a large majority of offspring - as the primary method for removing what would otherwise be fitness, lethal accumulations of mutations.

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Note added 11 Sep 2014:

New concept of Natural Selection: RES
1. Replication
2. Entropy
3. Selection

1. Replication is taken as given, 2. entropy tends to degrade structures and organization to stop replication (extinction of lineage), 3. natural selection controls the entropy - lineage is maintained.

By contrast -

Traditional concept of Natural Selection: ERS
1. Entropy
2. Replication
3. Selection

1. Entropy generates variants 2. some of which replicate, and 3. some of these undergo natural selection to expand and create a lineage.

Although I harp-on about the dangers of double-negative theology for Christians; nonetheless the positive achievement of Jesus Christ (and his 'message') would not have much traction unless people felt that there was some-thing basically, fundamentally, ultimately wrong with The World - some thing which Jesus (at least potentially) set right.  

And what I mean here is at the level of our personal feelings of what is wrong: What is it (what kind of a thing) that we personally feel is wrong about our life and the world?

(What problem to which Jesus offers a solution?)

There are probably any number of things that might in theory be thus regarded; but I think there are just two apparently common but distinct wrong-feelings that seem to dominate people. 

Probably the commonest (in the Western civilization at any rate) is that suffering is the main problem, the main thing wrong with the world. So widespread and powerful is this idea that it hardly requires explaining - but anyway...

Any or all kinds of suffering might be meant: pain, misery, disablement, fear, despair, humiliation -- different people mostly experience, are most susceptible to, or focus on; different kinds of suffering. 

And the wrongness of suffering my be my suffering, the suffering of particular loved others - whether human, animal, or something else; it may be the totality of suffering in the world; or it may be the wrongness of suffering of any Beings anywhere, ever (i.e. that there ought never to be any suffering).

In sum: this is the idea that the suffering - whether its existence, its prevalence, or its severity - is what is basically wrong with this world. 

This seems to be a hugely powerful and widespread conviction - it is apparently the basis of several religions, and what they claim to cure. Suffering as the main problem to be addressed is the basis of almost all public moral discourse nowadays; the rationale of preventing, reducing, or stopping various kinds-of-suffering (or putative suffering) is the basis of a great deal of all mainstream policy and political action.  

But there is another idea of basic wrongness - less often expressed, but just as real; and that is that the main thing wrong with this world is that nothing lasts.   

Anything that we value will not last; everything will die, or in some other way be destroyed. 

...No matter how large, strong, how long it has existed - it will crumble, it will come to an end. 

All that we value the most - our love, those we love the most, whatever we most love doing, our achievements - will change, will end. All that is most virtuous or beautiful will end. 

And Be Forgotten Utterly.

We ourselves will die, everybody will die; all the animals and plants will die; our living planet, and the mineral planet, the sun and solar system - all will change, crumble, end.  

This aspect of the nature of our world, I often term 'entropy'; and entropy in this sense, is a rival to suffering as the major candidate for what is wrong with the world. 

The "weight of entropy" may be the tragedy of life.  

Yet suffering and entropy as the main problem of life, are each very different in their nature and consequences. 

For example, a selfish person might feel there is nothing wrong with the world at times when he is personally completely-happy (i.e. when he personally is not suffering); and someone might also assume that if suffering could be abolished from the world - then there would be essentially nothing wrong with it. 

But someone who believed that entropy was the main problem would perhaps be most aware of the wrongness of the world at exactly those times when he was most happy, and did not suffer. Because he would realize that this state could not last. 

(Have we not felt this ourselves, in the first full flush of falling in love? Perfect happiness... all-too-soon undercut by the fear and conviction that it Will Not Last?)

Indeed, the more 'successful' was a Man's life - the more joyous and fulfilled, the more loving and creative -- the more strongly would the fact of entropy weigh upon him; because he would be ever-aware that all this would, for sure, be lost.  

One who regards entropy as the main problem in this life, this world; cannot envisage any this-worldly way in which the situation could be cured - because this world is 'ruled' by entropy. 

No conceivable political program or psychological treatment would make any difference. The better that things became - the more tragic the sense that none of it would last...

This circles back to Jesus Christ; because Jesus did not claim to eliminate or even diminish suffering in this world...

Or, even if you think Jesus did claim this, then the past 2000 years have (surely?) been a massive refutation that He could deliver it! 

Consequently; those who focus the most on suffering as that which is basically wrong with the world, are often those most hostile to Jesus and Christianity. 

But Jesus did claim to offer a way of escape from entropy: this is what Jesus meant by resurrection, eternal life, and heaven. 

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

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

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


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

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


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

The answer is: divine creation.

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


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


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

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

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


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

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

'We will come', said Imrahil; and they parted with courteous words. 

If entropy is a real thing on this earth; then it is not caused by God but represents the continued reality of primordial chaos. 

This means that not everything that happens is caused by, nor intended by, God. 

Yet this world is a created world, God is continually-create-ing this world. 

I see this world as continually being-created by God; as it is continually being-dismantled by the tendency to revert to primal (meaningless, purposeless) chaos. 

I imagine this to be a matter of God's creative 'energies' always-shaping that which is always-dissipating.

The consequence is that all of this mortal life has a divine meaning and purpose despite that not-everything is caused or intended by God. 

The activities of evil Beings are included in this basic schema. Evil Beings (e.g. demons, sinning humans) are continually doing evil things for evil reasons; and these are continually (in a sense instantly) being-shaped by God in accordance with divine destiny. 

No matter how much evil is at work and being-done; God is always (instantly!) shaping it to situations from-which individual Men may obtain Good: that is, to situations from-which Men may learn that which they most need to learn (would benefit from-learning) for their resurrected life in heaven. 

Therefore, although entropy rules this material, mortally-incarnated world, in the sense that entropy is never absent; divine creation dominates entropy. 

This explains how our life is always (potentially) meaningful and purposive; and why 'there are no accidents' - no luck, chance or randomness.   

Note: It seems to be a necessary consequence of the Christian understanding that Life (this mortal life) does Not have meaning or purpose for those who reject the post-mortal future of resurrected life in Heaven. This world, this Life, was-designed and is continually being-shaped to advance the learning of those who follow Jesus. 

The created world will also be shaped to create situations in which those who do Not follow Jesus can come (repeatedly) to understand what Jesus offers, and the clarity of mind and heart to decide whether or not they want it for themselves. 

But those who have rejected what Jesus offers are doomed to a life without meaning or purpose; because they have rejected the purpose of creation and the purpose of this earth. They have instead decided to inhabit a entropy; a world of inevitable degeneration, disease and death with nothing to follow but annihilation. 

It is always a positive choice to follow Jesus; and every Being, every Man, is free to reject that choice. But - in a created world, shaped by God for God's purposes - that rejection carries the consequence that ultimately Life has nothing lasting to offer but death. 

Palliative medicine is the name for a speciality when, at the end of life ( a terminal illness) the focus moves from curing to helping the patient feel better. But ultimately all of medicine is palliative, because all "cures" are partial and temporary; and everybody degenerates and dies eventually...

 

Analogously; all secular ideologies (all politics, all social reform and radicalism) are palliative - even when imagined to be wholly effective - palliative, because they do not address the core problems of this life on earth; which are entropy and evil. 

(Entropy being the tendency of creation to fall back into chaos leading to degeneration and death; evil being the purposive opposition to God's plans of divine creation.)

But, assuming that all religions do indeed offer what they claim; only Christianity claims to cure the core problems of mortal life: only Heaven claims to be a complete and permanent cure for entropy and evil. 

All other religions are variously palliative - in their aspiration, in their promises. 

The difference between Christianity and all other options is firstly Resurrection of our-selves, so that we remain ourselves - but everlasting and without evil, but wholly and forever living by love of God and Fellow Men. 

And secondly; the Christian aim is Heaven - when is understood as a Second Creation, inhabited only by those Beings who have eternally committed to live by love only; and thereby left-behind "sin". That is they have left-behind both evil and entropy. 

Such that Heaven is wholly creative. 

Heavenly resurrected life does not solve all problems of existence, and is not intended to do so; because there is endless scope for love and creation. But Christian Heaven does claim to solve the problems of evil and entropy: solve them once and for all. Nobody else even claims that - every other option is palliative: at best. 

The great lesson I got from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield, is that reality is co-created by consciousness - that is, by thinking. We make the world by our thinking - and the kind of world we make - or unmake, depends on the kind of thinking. 

The only thing out-there and independent of us is formless chaos - all that can be known has been created; and creation formed by consciousness, and all consciousness has this property of creative formation. 

The primary creation that we inhabit was formed by God's consciousness (God is the prime creator); but our own consciousness affects divine creation - either positively or negatively. 

As our consciousness has become detached from God - we must now choose whether again to affiliate with the living reality of primary creation through love and heart thinking; or to remain alienated, to regard reality as consisting of dead things affected by material processes - and thereby to affiliate with the entropic, parasitic, destructive cognitive processing of mainstream modern life. 

It has become very obvious that humanity is splitting into Christians and anti-Christians; into those who affiliate with God, The Good and Divine Creation - and those who oppose these. 

This split can also be seen as between heart thinking and entropic thinking. We are being compelled to choose between these. 

It is the choice between loving creation; or the subversion, deconstruction and destruction of creation. 

Entropic thinking is normal, abstract, mainstream, 'materialist' thinking - it is 'brain thinking', which is increasingly conformed to machine or computer thinking. 

Entropic describes how you are (almost certainly) thinking now; and how nearly everybody (or everybody) around you is thinking - it is how everybody in societal authority and institutional leadership are thinking. It is the processing embodied in public discourse, bureaucracy, computers, management, media, laws, regulations, procedures...  

This entropic thinking assumes the world is made of dead things, and these dead things are subject to life-less processes, energies and forces. Built-into this is the assumption that entropy rules the world - rules reality - entropy in one place can only be reversed or delayed by increasing entropy elsewhere - thus 'creation' is actually the predatory consumption of one source of order by another - and (because entropy is relentless) this predation (or parasitism) must continue until all order is consumed and formless chaos remains.

Thus, entropic thinking is the world view of the self-damned, the demonic; those who believe in Satan's conceptualization of reality: the sin-motivated war of each against all (only expediently delayed by transient mutually-exploitative demonic alliances directed against God and creation).

Heart thinking is in complete contrast and opposition to the entropic in its nature, origin and motivation. 

Heart thinking is based in love and life; it assumes a living universe of beings - and God's creation gets its origin, form, order and coherence from love. 

Thus, love and creation are polarities of the same essence - loving-creation and creative-love.  

This love - which made creation, and holds-together creation - and which is self-sustaining - is between beings. Beings are living and conscious entities - all beings are alive and conscious, but there are different degrees of aliveness and forms of consciousness.  

Heart thinking is of those beings who have first become modern and alienated; who have first assimilated into entropic thinking - where the reality of God is not entailed. Those who from that position of detached freedom have consciously chosen to recognize, embrace and align-with the reality of God and of a 'universe' consisting of beings living in a divine creation. 

Those who choose heart thinking will find that they need to recognize the greater authority, depth and truth of a thinking based in love, and operating with love - in order to reject the otherwise overwhelming powers and persuasion of entropic thinking. 

It is the terrible choice of modern Man to choose - and his choice lies between the divine work of co-creating the world, or else the demonic project of destroying creation. 

Those who think entropically will do entropy. 

By the way they conceptualize the world, they project deadness onto the living world, they project abstract forces and energies onto a creation that is actually sustained by love; and by these projections these remake their world in the image they have chosen. 

Despite the opposition (implicit and explicit) of The World; heart thinking will need to be accorded primacy again and again, as it conflicts in method and motivation with the dominant, prevalent this-worldly entropic thinking - which asserts its monopoly of objectivity and that heart thinking is childish, foolish or insane.

Entropic thinking labels heart thinking as wishful thinking; yet the truth is both heart and entropic are wishful - and the wishes become reality.  

The entropic thinker wishes entropy onto divine creation - converting that which is alive and conscious through love into a meaningless, purposeless dead universe. 

It is entropic thinking that is destroying our civilization, our humanity - and beyond that it destroys the possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven. Because the entropic thinker (and he is apparently most people in the world, including most self-identified Christians) is co-engaged in the progressive killing of beings, the elimination of love, the reduction of life and consciousness into 'people' who self-identify as Dead Things. 

The heart thinker instead works from the love in his heart, from actual interpersonal and inter-being love (not abstract love); he recognizes and affirms that love, and makes it the motivation for knowing reality. He regards reality as that which known by this loving thinking. 

The heart thinker regards the world from his heart - it is his love of particular beings which connects him with reality; it is his love that motivates the connection-with and knowledge-of reality. 

That which is outwith his love is not truly known - but merely hypothesized, modelled from simplified and incomplete variables, and therefore certainly false. 

Thus the primacy of the two great commandments: love of God and neighbour. In heart thinking; modern Man chooses to participate in co-creating his own reality (and potentially the reality of other heart thinkers) by rooting his knowledge in love of God. And the scope of this knowledge is defined by the scope of those other beings ('neighbours') whom he also loves. And if he wishes this active joining-with loving creation to be an eternal state - this is attained by loving and following Jesus Christ to resurrected life in Heaven. 

Note: The above analysis is indebted to a section of a lecture on Crop Circles from Stanley Messenger to the Wessex Research Group, delivered in the middle 1990s. Stanley Messenger was an expert on Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, having been a Waldorf teacher. He was also involved in, and approving of (in what I regard as an uncritical and credulous way) pretty much all of the New Age crazes of his era; and was also a proponent of the sexual revolution. He was highly intelligent and knowledgeable, and a gifted improvisatory lecturer (having been a professional actor). My eveluation is that Stanley Messenger was (much like his Master, Steiner) someone who sporadically generated some superb and vitally-important insights, which are scattered among a great deal else that I must set aside as mistaken and wrongly-motivated. Anyway; my above post was inspired by re-listening to a genuinely-intuitive, superbly truth-full section of the linked lecture which runs from about 23 minutes to 42 minutes. This section strikes me as more vivid, comprehensible, exciting and motivating than anything Steiner ever expressed (that I have come across) - while being deeply and explicitly indebted to Steiner. 

While I realize that civilization could begin to accelerate irreversibly into collapse today, tomorrow, or next week; the fact that this has not already happened is more and more astonishing - because essentially every single policy change in the Western world has been destructive for the past three or more decades. 

Entropy rules - the trend is against creation and towards disorder. 

If you doubt this, take a look at the mainstream media and the major stories it is pushing on any given day - including the major narrative, fictions, images, concepts, and 'facts'; and (assuming you can interpret things from a Christian basis) you will be forced to agree. 

Every week, the powers-that-should-not-be seem to unveil another body blow against civilization - piling in another upon another. 

The astonishing thing is that civilization has not yet collapsed - I mean, this is really astonishing. On the one side, we have the entirety of the global, national and local leadership class; and the leadership of all the major corporations, professions, and (supposedly-) functional social institutions - all of whom are doing their level best to destroy their own functionality and destroy what remains. 

Why have they not yet succeeded? Why has entropy not been able to succeed in reducing civilization to chaos? 

What is that which opposes entropy: what is, on other words, the source of negentropy in Western civilization? 

I regard this as a genuine mystery - at least at the material level. 

Looked at materially, we have most of the world functioning entirely on smoke and mirrors, on lies and delusions. 

And yet - here we are!

My best guess is that - although The System is corrupt (i.e. does not aim at functionality, aims primarily at anti-functional leftist goals) most of The System is useless or harmful. Therefore, damaging functionality makes no real difference, or may have a mildly positive effect. 

Even within valuable systems - the necessary work is done by relatively few people, in minority sectors of the overall institution. So long as these continue to perform their jobs, then things can keep going for the time being.  

Of course, by this material analysis; in the end they will win, civilization will collapse substantially, and billions will die --  unless the trend to destruction and increased entropy is reversed. Because the way things are going the functional aspect of civilization is shrinking towards the point that it cannot be sustained - no matter how effective are the minority of real workers and doers.  

Yet this analysis does not account for why the minority of the functional workforce are motivated to keep doing what needs to be done; in a world where everything official, bureaucratic and of media-origin (literally!) conspires against them.  

When all the incentives are for more entropy; who is opposing it?

Who is behaving negentropically?

What makes this situation even stranger is that I strongly suspect that most of those few who "do the world's work" are not aware of any compelling reason why they should do so - they just do it. 

(Farmers, maintenance engineers, repair men... these are not usually self-consciously aware of the distinctive reasons behind the fact that they maintain an ideal of functionality in a world where the mass majority are indifferent or actively-hostile to it.) 

My best answer, so far, is that these are still operating instinctually, unconsciously; with a residue of that Original Participation that used to be almost universal and which once coordinated communities and societies. 

They (perhaps) do not (like most people) feel themselves to be wholly alienated individuals; essentially detached from other men, and from The World and Nature. Because they experience themselves (implicitly) as part of Life; they continue to fulfil their roles in the scheme - regardless of incentives.  

If so; this cannot last. The irreversible trend for several generations of adults; has been a dwindling to extinction of such unconscious, instinctive communality and service. 

We therefore cannot rely upon the dwindling stocks of 'real workers' to sustain civilization. In the first place, they will not be allowed to: the target is painted on them, and the missiles are flying. 

(Just consider how quickly the ethos of courageous service in a good cause has been crushed in the US and UK police or military - where it is now essentially illegal to be a good cop/ soldier; just as, much earlier, it was made impossible to be a good scientist or a good teacher.) 

The only sustainable positive development will be for individuals to become aware of the needs of the community, and the powers of evil that work to crush it. 

And then, in face of this, such people will need to make a conscious choice to know and repudiate evil, and instead seek Good - so far as they are able. 

The age of unconscious, automatic, common-sense Good-ness is past; and unless people come to recognize purposive evil explicitly, to discern the root of Good in God, and to ally with God and divine creation; then evil will be unopposed - and entropy will lead to chaos.   

Entropy (the tendency to decay, the inevitability of death) is dominant in this mortal world and the known universe. 

Entropy is a type of evil: because so long as entropy is, then whatever is Good will decay, will die. 

Thus decay and death are an evil. 

And yet, since Jesus Christ; death is also potentially a path to everlasting life in Heaven... In other words, to a mode of existence without entropy, without decay or death.

(Because all evil - including entropy - has been left-behind.) 

Indeed, death is the only path to eternal, sinless life. 

Therefore; while death is an evil, for a Christian death of the mortal body it is also the death of evil: the one and only path to Good. 

Exactly such is the Christian's experience of the fact of death: 

For us; death is a terrible and unavoidable evil. 

And death is our necessary path to an otherwise unattainable everlasting, wholly-Good, way of being. 

Although the specific meanings of life are specific to specific persons (each in their specific situation) - there is a metaphysical level of understanding of why there is illness, and why there is ageing - and what their functions are, in a general sense. 

At an ultimate level; this reality (incarnate mortal life on earth) illness and ageing are inevitable; because this is a reality dominated by entropy. That is: there is a tendency for creation to return to primal chaos. 

In this reality - degenerative change is inevitable; hence illness, disease, ageing (and, sooner or later, death).  

So in this sense it can reasonably be stated that there is No meaning to illness, disease, ageing. It is something that Just Happens; as a property of the world we live in...

Thus far considered; entropic change is both inevitable and anti-creation, therefore A Bad Thing. 

But in fact we are looking upon entropy from the far side of creation. We live in a created reality - our starting point is of creation in-being: creation manifested. 

This means that chaos from here is not the same a primal chaos. Primal chaos was neutral - it had no meaning; but chaos from the standpoint of creation is the destruction of exactly that creation which enables us to ask the questions. 

If primal chaos is amoral - because morality cannot exist until there is creation; then to return to chaos is a moral act - it is indeed the destruction of the possibility of morality, and therefore anti-moral. 

So - here we have a conceptualization of illness, ageing and death as evils; as the destruction of God's creation; as the destruction of Good and even the possibility of Good.  

Yet there is yet another perspective. This acknowledges that creation is ongoing. That God's creation is actually a create-ing. 

So that disease, ageing and death as they actually occur do so through the medium of God's creating. 

This means that we never perceive 'raw entropy' but only the combined effect of entropy with divine creation. Our world is a mixture of the spontaneous consequences of dis-integration and the continual synthesis of creation.

In yet other words; God's creation in this world operates on the raw material of entropy; so that everything we actually perceive is compounded of both... 

And therefore partakes of divine purposes and meanings. 

What the whole things adds-up-to is: there is always meaning and purpose in the phenomena of degeneration, illness, disease and ageing. 

But what that exact meaning and purpose are, is contextual on the individual life in which they occur - depending on the particular nature and circumstances of that life. 

And therefore the particular meaning and purpose of some particular instance of degeneration, illness, disease or ageing (why do I have chronic and worsening arthritis, why is my knee swollen, why does it hurt?) is knowable only to someone who has sufficient particular knowledge...

And this particular knowledge must include not only physical but also spiritual aspects; seen in an ultimate context that encompasses resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

So, the meaning of a specific health/age-adversity in a specific person is typically knowable only by that person - and even then, only when that person is able to relate it to the needs of this mortal life in relation to immortal life. 

This can crudely be summarized in the question: "What is this trying to teach me?" or "What should I be learning from this?"

And it should not be expected that the real answer be one that we can express to other people, or even one that we can express in language - the answer might well be a word-less and direct apprehension of some-thing. 

What is vital is that we learn it - not that we can tell others, or even ourselves, precisely what it is we have learned. That is a quite different, and secondary, matter. 

Things began with chaos, among-which were Beings. Beings are self-sustaining - from Beings come the energies that shape chaos into creation. 

As soon as creation had begun, there was entropy - which is the tendency for the created to revert back to chaos. 

In this current stage of creation (which we also inhabit) creation must always be-overcoming entropy; by the self-sustaining energies of Beings. 

The reversion of creation to entropy releases 'energy'.

Therefore evil Beings, those who hate God and creation, encourage the reversion of creation to chaos. They do this partly in order to destroy creation, and partly to use the released 'energy' for their own purposes. 

Luciferic-evil Beings reduce creation intending to feed-upon the released energies. 

Luciferic evil is thus parasitic in nature - a Luciferically evil Being will feed-upon the energies of creation, as he destroys it.

 

Ahrimanic-evil Beings destroy creation by opposing chaos with 'order'. 

Creation becomes confined within The Global Bureaucracy, The System, The Matrix: the Black Iron Prison (BIP). 

Dynamic self-sustaining creation is held in stasis - thus the energies of creative life are squeezed out from the imprisoned Beings. 

After taking a tithe for vampiric (Luciferic) self-reward; these energies are used to maintain, extend and reinforce the prison: to extend the BIP globally, to include all Men; and to eliminate all perception and awareness of any-thing at all beyond the prison.

(Actually not all Men; because Ahrimanic evil entails a sharp distinction between prison inmates and warders; between the Beings who are-processed and the Beings who-do-the-processing - between Us and Them.) 

The death-factory is constructed and fueled by the energies released from its destruction of life. Ahrimanic evil is thus an entropy-factory, a processing plant; it takes living creation and reduces it to dead matter: creation to chaos. 

Ultimately, Ahrimanic evil turns creation against itself; uses life to crush life. 

Sorathic Beings are saboteurs - they were supposed to be warders sustaining the BIP, but they have begun smashing the buildings, wrecking the machines, and torturing the inmates. 

Sorathaic Beings are defectors from the Ahrimanic plan - because they have come to regard the Ahriminic factory as too slow, too dull, too unrewarding, too conjectural in effect. They want to destroy creation Now, directly, indiscriminately. 

Sorathic Beings perceive the contradiction of creating a Black Iron Prison as a means to destroy creation - when the base motivation of evil is to destroy all of creation (including BIPs). Pure evil cannot postpone universal destruction when it can be started already. 

Thus, Sorathic Beings will burn the death factory, along with its inmates and the warders; will return every-thing to chaos without attempting to harness or use the energies for any purpose. 

The motivation is not pleasure (like the Luciferics), nor mass effectiveness (like the Ahrimanic) - but a spite-driven, burning-zeal for pure destruction of all - here and now. 

Sorathic evil is born of a distrust of complex, long-term plans and schemes, a revulsion against the hypocrisy and pretense of the Ahrimanic strategy; which poses as 'good' and continues to create, albeit justified in order to destroy.

Sorathic evil emerges and waxes when the Ahrimanic scheme is nearing completion - when it comes to be believed that There is Only the BIP - there is only a whole world of evil, inescapable, with no alternative. 

Then evil has only evil as a target - so the greater evil turns-against and consumes the lesser.

 

The religion of the Ancient Egyptians - which is massively documented - provides a detailed picture of how the world of God's creation was before the work of Jesus Christ. 

Creation was made by the pushing aside of chaos; civilization was like a clearing in the wild forest; and the chaotic forest was always trying to take back the world of religion, agriculture and the domain of the creating Gods. 

Most of the Gods were Good, but the representatives of chaotic evil remained - such as Set (or Seth) who dwelt in the deserts around the fertile and civilized state of Egypt; and Apophis the primal world-serpant who, every night, attacked the ship of the sun, to try and prevent dawn. 

Thus light/ life/ goodness/ order was engaged in a continual and eternal battle to hold-back the chaos/ evil that surrounded on all sides; and which would otherwise return the world to its primal disorder. 

 

This may be taken broadly to represent the situation of divine creation on earth before the work of Jesus. And Jesus's work can be seen as the additional creation of Heaven, as a New Place to be inhabited by resurrected Men who have first been temporarily incarnated onto earth as mortals. The mortal state is that from-which each Man must choose Heaven - or Not.

 

By this understanding, Heaven is - and for the first time - a place that free men can inhabit where evil has been excluded - permanently.

By 'free men; I mean Men who are agents; operating-from their own distinctive divine selves; generating their own thoughts - mini-gods. In other words: In Heaven Men are secondary creators (operating within God's primary creation) - who can fully participate with God on the continuing creation of God's ongoing, expanding world. 

 

Jesus gave Men the possibility of resurrection to eternal life. Resurrection means eternal bodies; and bodies can only be eternal in an eternal environment - which is Heaven. In other words, Heaven in a world without death.

By contrast; this mortal life we know, here on earth, is ruled by chaos (or 'entropy', dis-order). All changes and decays, nothing lasts unchanged; there degeneration and disease are everywhere and death is the inevitable terminus. This mortal world - taken in isolation - is therefore the same as that described by the Ancient Egyptians.

However, since Jesus Christ; we have the chance to opt-into Heaven; which is an everlasting world without evil - without chaos or entropy.  

And at the same time, when resurrected into Heaven, we remain our-selves; indeed we become even more our-selves and able to participate in the ongoing work of God's creation. 

So, our mortal lives on this earth give us all lived experiences of chaos, entropy and evil; and the opportunity to learn from these experiences in order to make a final, irreversible commitment in favour of Good. 

In other words; mortal life on earth is what enables us to understand what is being offered by Jesus: eternal resurrected life in Heaven. And knowing (by contrast and implication) both sides, both possibilities... our free choice may be informed.   

 

My understanding of this new possibility of heaven; is that it is due to the possibility of each Man making a permanent commitment to Goodness, to creation, to the work of God. Because Heaven is composed only of Beings that have made this permanent commitment - then Heaven is a place without evil. 

All the inhabitants of Heaven (Men and others) are on the side of God and creation; and everything they (we) do in Heaven is in-harmony-with God and creation. Thus, In Heaven there is no tendency towards chaos, entropy, evil...

In another description; Heaven is based on the principle of love. The harmonious working of many free agents is possible by their mutual love. It is therefore love which is the principle of cohesion in creation - which 'organises' the work of many free individuals into a coherent, ongoing, creativity. 

 

The 'process' by which any mortal Man from earth was made able to be resurrected-into Heaven was made possible by Jesus Christ; and the 'method' made simple and accessible. Since Jesus; anyone who wants Heaven merely has to 'follow' Jesus, who will lead us through resurrection and into Heaven (a path which he himself has taken) as The Good Shepherd. 

It seems that (here on earth, in this mrtal life) not everyone knows-about Heaven, not everybody wants Heaven; and among those who do want to go onto Heaven, there are some who do not want to follow Jesus, or do not believe Jesus can or will lead us to Heaven. 

But we can trust that God the creator will ensure that everybody will have the fullest chance to know such things sooner or later; and before each needs to choose between a commitment to Heaven - or Not.

I hope the title is largely self-explanatory. 

In this mortal state we all live in an entropic world, among many evil Beings; the tendency towards death is endemic, omnipresent, cumulative - and therefore we will always die, sooner or later. 

What sustains us alive in face of this constant tendency to change, corruption, disintegration, degeneration and disease - is that we are each a part of God's creation. 

Thus life is a continuing and moment-by-moment divine gift of God; continual, that is, for so long as God sustains it - until God's creation is overwhelmed by evil acts, or inevitably/ eventually by entropy. 

In a basic and overall sense, therefore, it is not God that kills us; and also we may be killed against God's plan for us, against personal divine destiny (especially when acutely overwhelmed by evil intent). 

However; while we live, it is God that is keeping-us-alive. 

Yet God may withdraw His creative sustenance; and then we will soon die from evil or entropy. 

God is keeping us alive for His divine, creative purposes; including the hope that we will choose salvation when we die (and thereby escape both entropy and evil, by entering the second creation); and will learn the spiritual lessons that would most benefit us while we live.  

Those who have been sustained alive for unusually long periods, into extreme old age; might therefore assume that this is for the purpose of our divine destiny; either in hope we shall chose salvation, or in hope that we will learn some-thing God regards as important for us. 

How was it that the End Times were (broadly) predictable so long ago? Why was it clear that evil would (sooner or later) prevail in this world?

The basic reason could be that the demonic powers are immortal spirits while Men are mortal. And this was, of course, a fact well known to our ancestors - who drew conclusions that were, perhaps, much clearer and more obvious (at least, to the more thoughtful and insightful among them) then they are nowadays.  

This fundamental asymmetry means that evil is able to plan and scheme on a timescale across the whole history of the earth and multiple human generations; whereas, by contrast, each human generation must (in a sense) start afresh with learning about the world. 

Thus, the demons tend cumulatively to out-strategize Men. 

Another ways of thinking about it is that this mortal world is ruled by entropy. Although we are created-creatures in a created-world, and God is still create-ing; nonetheless we are mortal incarnates, and entropy must win-out eventually.  

Over time, entropy will overwhelm mortal creations. 

However; evil spirits are excluded from Heaven; and in Heaven, Men are eternal incarnates: There is all-creation and no entropy. 

Therefore, as  this mortal earth wears-down, the odds increasingly favour evil; and the End Times were always inevitable. 

But in Heaven... well, there things are very different. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. 

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. 

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

 From the Conclusion to Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

**

I can recall the excitement, and optimism for my life ahead, with which I read the above passage in my middle teenage years. It seemed like I was being offered a key to open the locked door of life - a life that, since adolescence, had become more sinister and oppressive in term of how most people lived it. 

I have since read many similar passages and extended arguments. The point may be summarized as asserting that if only we would adopt the right perspective, the right attitude to living, then the fundamental problems of life are soluble. 

Such statements remain common - although less culturally influential than they were up to the 1970s.  A more recent example is the work of Joseph Campbell - whose slogan of "follow your bliss" was saying very much the same as Thoreau.

 

Although there is no mention of deity - such statements do assume a purposive and benign universe; because built-in are such beliefs as that "more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him".

In other words, there is an implicit assumption that the proper attitude in ourselves will elicit from reality an appropriate response - we will "make our own luck". 

This is strictly nonsense on the basis of modern mainstream scientistic materialism; where the universe and Men's minds are alike the accidental and undirected products of random and determined processes. 

Yet something deeper and unreasoned continues to evoke a response and expectation that, indeed - despite "rationality" - we might perhaps make our own luck. 

 

Looking back, I would say that Thoreau's statement is false ultimately and overall - and that his advice does not solve the fundamental problems of life: it did not for Thoreau himself, nor has it done so for anybody else of whom I have knowledge. 

This is because the fundamental problems are life are consequent upon the inevitability, and ineradicable nature, of evil and "entropy" (by entropy I mean the innate tendency, operating through time, towards disease, degeneration, and death). 

And false because we are not only surrounded by evil and entropy in our environment; but these are both also operative within us - so that, even if we lived in an earthly paradise, we would carry evil and entropy into that paradise. 

 

On the other hand; although fundamentally untrue; Thoreau's advice is helpful! 

It is an attitude that can lead to a more fulfilling life - especially if (as was not the case with Thoreau) it comes to be underpinned and explained by faith in a creator God, who is our loving Father.

And Thoreau's vision may become literally true and eternal on the other side of death; if we choose to accept the gifts of Jesus Christ. 

We must die in order to be remade - to be resurrected. 

This is salvation. 

Damnation is the other choice: to reject salvation. 

We must be resurrected to enter that state called Heaven*; because for Heaven to be 'heavenly' - all within it must have-been remade, wholly-good - without disposition to evil. 

Or, to enter Heaven, we must make a permanent commitment to repent and repudiate all sin - all evil, all that opposes divine harmony - and the way that this permanent commitment is made is by resurrection -- in which all that is Good (God-harmonious) in us is retained; while all that is not is left-behind and discarded.

Such a permanent commitment is made from love; and therefore must freely be chosen - cannot be compelled; and can only be made by those capable of love who choose to make love their eternal foundational principle. 

(Only thus can Heaven be a place that is wholly Good (a place without any evil-motivation) and also wholly-free - inhabited by beings with divine powers of creation; who will always and spontaneously use their godly-powers harmoniously with God and other Heavenly beings.)  

The need for death is true for men and women - and for all other beings. 

Which is why this incarnated mortal life on earth is dominated by entropy: because every-"thing" must die, if there is to be a possibility of resurrection. 

In other words: If every being on earth is to have a chance of attaining and choosing Heaven - they all must die, sooner or later. 

Pre-mortal spirit life, although wholly-good, is very imperfect - especially in terms of freedom, of agency. 

The harmony and goodness of pre-mortal life is dependent on the passivity and obedience of spirits; because pre-mortal beings are not innately wholly good (in the way that God is wholly-good, or resurrected beings are wholly good). 

Because pre-mortal spirits are not-wholly-good, the harmony of goodness in pre-mortal life is attained top-down, by the direction and control of God. 

In effect, so far as pre-mortal spirit life goes; God is the wholly-good parents of a mixed bunch of children - some mostly-good, some mostly-evil - none wholly good. It is only by the obedience of these children that goodness prevails. 

But pre-mortal spirits mature, they grow-up, they change... Sooner or later, they get to a point where they must throw-off the passive goodness of obedience to parental authority and control. 

Then these pre-mortal spirits have a choice...

Either the spirits can incarnate on earth - some time afterwards to die, and make the choice of resurrection, or not. 

(This is God's plan - because God wishes to make and inhabit Heaven with resurrected (incarnated everlasting) beings, who have have by their choice of resurrection made an eternal commitment to live in harmony with divine creation.)

Or else those pre-mortal spirits who do not want to die and be resurrected; or who simply do not want to die - and those who reject the divine plan for an harmonious Heaven of free-beings who have chosen to be remade without evil... 

These spirits can escape their previous state of obedience to divine goodness, and enter the sphere of earth while still spirits - and therefore immortal. 

These are the demons. 

(This explains why demons are spirits - not embodied; and why they are immortal. They are spirits because they have refused temporary mortal incarnation, and are immortal because they are spirits, and unaffected by 'entropy'.)

If the pre-mortal spirits choose mortal life on earth, they must choose temporary incarnation and death (as necessary pre-requisites for resurrection); but if they reject this package, then such spirits have rejected even the possibility of Heaven.

This is why all demons are evil, and why demons are worse than incarnated Men - because demons, by their rejection of mortal incarnation, have all chosen to reject the possibility of that death which makes salvation possible. 

(If demons changed their minds and repented, and wished to prepare for the choice of Heaven; they would need first to incarnate and die. Whether this this is possible or ever actually happens I do not know.) 

So - demons have rejected the passive ('secondhand') good of pre-mortal spirit life under the parental influence of God; and they have also rejected that mortal life on earth which is a necessary stage to prepare for remaking-by-resurrection, and Heaven.   

The ruling principle of creation (that which makes creation cohere) is love; and love is the reason why the dead choose resurrection and heaven.  

The essential reason why demons have rejected mortal incarnation, and why some dead mortal Men reject the offer of resurrection into Heaven and instead choose damnation; is that demons and the damned are either incapable of love, or have rejected love as the basis of life and chosen... something else.    

Differently phrased: Demons are those never-incarnated beings who have rejected living under the domination of entropy (i.e. mortal earthly life); and by doing so rejected God's plan of salvation. 

The damned are those who chose to live and die as mortal incarnate Men on earth, and have become dis-carnated beings (i.e. souls severed from their bodies); and who die and then reject resurrection and Heaven; instead choosing some other fate.

*Note: Why our final God-destined state-of-being is embodied, incarnate - rather than spirits - is a topic I have considered elsewhere.   

There is the physical or material world inhabited by incarnated mortal Beings (i.e. the only world acknowledged as real by the modern mainstream ideology). This contains a mixture of good and evil, some Beings on the side of God and divine creation; other Beings opposed to this - and all mortal Beings are some mixture of these motivations. The material world is subject to entropy - subject to change, decay, disease, degeneration, and death - the irrevocable dissolution of physical forms. 

Then there is the Divine World - "inhabited" by God, the ascended Jesus Christ/ The Holy Ghost. And also - since the work of Jesus Christ, the divine world is inhabited by the denizens of Heaven - resurrected Men (and, presumably, other Beings). It is a realm entirely of Good, that is to say that all is motivated by love. It is also an eternal realm, without entropy. 

But there is another realm: the underworld/ dream-world realm of spirit Beings. 

The spirit world. 

For ancients, this was the realm of dreams, the place where souls went after death (perhaps being reincarnated from there). 

A wide range of Beings have been supposed to inhabit this "psychic" realm: gods, angels, demons, nature spirits, chthonic monsters, ghosts, non-human sentient spirits of many kinds and degrees.

Like the physical realm the "underworld" is mixed; with Beings that contain both good and evil motives - and including Beings affiliated to the agenda of evil. 

However; this realm, like the physical realm, will also be "visited" by the wholly-good denizens of the Divine Realm.  

The spirit realm is like the physical world in being also subject to entropy - in that, although spirits do not "die" in the way that physical Beings die; they are subject to destructive change - to degeneration, disease, loss of self... 

The spirit world is a fact of life. It is "all around" us, always, and wherever we happen to be; and has influences. 

This means the spirit world is (like the physical world) differentiated, heterogeneous, varied by time and place.

Thus the spirit world (whether we are aware of it or not) will affect us - somewhat like geography, climate, seasons and weather affect us. At some times and/or some situations the spirit world will be benign and helpful, maybe enjoyable. 

But in other circumstances, the spirit world will be net hostile, fear- or misery-inducing perhaps, or having evil influences - therefore hostile in specific ways.  

The striking fact of modern life for Men - including most, not all, Christians - is that we have all-but lost any spontaneous consciousness of the spirit realm. We live "in" it, but unaware, typically denying its reality. 

It is as if we wandered from the Arctic to the Sahara, while unaware of the differences, and taking no account of them in our lives. 

This is part of our alienation: modern Man is cut-off from a multitude of relationships with the world. These relationships are potentially bad and good both, as with the physical world: but most importantly they are real and unavoidable. 

The consequence is that we "miss" the spiritual realm - and (even if unconsciously) we know that our experience and knowledge of reality is incomplete. We are, to that extent, maimed. 

Further: this situation is made worse by many Christians, who regard the spirit realm as nothing but a threat, a spiritual danger, the domain of demonic temptation - that must be avoided. They regard the underworld as at best inessential, at worst a constant threat. 

More moderately, but with the same result; Christians regard the spirit world as an "optional extra" for life; something that we do not need, and is therefore best avoided because of its spiritual hazards. 

This is one way in which mainstream, orthodox, traditional Christianity has not just failed to meet the challenge of modernity; but has indeed worsened the situation. 

But suppose that we do - as a matter of fact - both need the spirit world, just as we need the physical world; and anyway cannot avoid it - even when we want to? 

We may fence ourselves in - but we cannot fence the spirit world out. We can only make ourselves unaware of it, and explain away its effects. 

What then?

Well, in my judgment there are no really good models from the past, that work for this present among Western people, no good models concerning how we ought to regard and relate-to the spirit world.  

There are, of course, plenty of people who - even nowadays - are aware of the spirit world in some way - "clairvoyants" or "psychics" of many kinds. Maybe they have visions of spirits, converse with spirits; and seek-out such contacts. 

The problem is that these are mostly Not wise or knowledgeable people. They are often silly, or motivated badly. By my evaluations; their knowledge (apparently derived from contacts with spirits) is unreliable, and often incoherent nonsense, or rather blatant self-gratifying fantasy. 

They often seem to be seeking spirits to help them gain worldly gratifications (health, sex, power status - the usual stuff). 

Or, on the other side, they seem to be seeking to surrender to the world of spirits, to be overpowered and controlled by the spirits they encounter. Self-annihilation... Not good.  

At any rate, the "fruits" are often bad - in that a majority of those who are (or claim to be) in contact with the spirit world are (to me) unimpressive, and usually have taken the side of evil in the spiritual wars. But then again, so have most self-identified "Christians", and those of other religions! 

(There is no "safe" path to salvation and theosis that can be objectively described or externally imposed - and the greatest danger is for those who believe there is.)   

To me, "the Spiritual" are mostly unimpressive... and yet not always! 

While - like all mortal Men - mixed-Beings who are prone to errors and being misled; there have been some people (and in the "modern" era) such as William Blake, Rudolf Steiner, Dion Fortune, and Gareth Knight - who seem in important ways to have benefitted from their contact with the spirit realms. These I like, respect and admire. 

Nonetheless, we cannot assume that any of these people are themselves a model for other people differently constituted, and belonging to later generations, whose consciousness is different. Nor (whatever they may have claimed) can we assume that such past-exemplars were able to describe a general model by which other people can (or should) attain a positive relation with the spirit world. 

In particular; I am increasingly convinced that past attempts (and maybe successes) in positively affecting human society (e.g. nations, or relations between nations) are not possible here-and-now - due to the change in human consciousness. 

Those same changes that have made spontaneous spirit awareness so rare, have also enhanced the potential human spiritual autonomy and individual agency. Past human consciousness was social, pooled, in ways that is no longer the case. 

Our situation is different. What was effective and good then, is often feeble and harmful now.  

As so often nowadays, external influences are overwhelmingly likely to be bad; so we need to (and should) rely on our personal judgment and take spiritual responsibility for our choices. 

My own notions are as follows:

We should be aware that there is a spirit world of Beings, that it is real and important. 

And, on general principles in this era, we should strive to become aware of whatever is real; so, in some fashion, it is good to become conscious of the spirit world as it is affecting us "here-and-now"; and where possible be prepared to act on the implications of that effect. 

(Maybe avoiding situations in which the spirit world is exerting a malign influence - or continuing a life-path that seems to be sustained by that which is good in the spirit world.)  

What about developing personal relationships with specific spirit Beings? 

Well; many spirit Beings are benign; and some of these are likely to have a positive and personal interest in ourselves. 

For instance, there may be deceased and resurrected relatives or close friends whom we loved, or willing "spiritual mentors".  And such Beings may be in spiritual-proximity ("near") to us in the spirit world, and maybe be actively-desirous of aiding us in particular ways. 

My best guess is that such potential relationships with spirit Beings, are good and perhaps necessary. 

How to develop such relationships, while avoiding deceptions and temptations, and shallow or wishful thinking; is, in principle, a problem not different from the same question about our social relations among human beings in the physical realm. 

We cannot plan a good human-social life in the physical world - and rules or blueprints for good relationships are a misguided or malign attempt to subordinate the personal soul to inhuman materialistic-bureaucratic thought processes. Same for the spirit world. 

What is needed is realistic assumptions about the nature and purpose of life, then a secure rooting in personal intuition and responsibility - with a willingness to recognize and repent our errors.

Since, as Christians; we know that we inhabit a divine creation within-which we have a personal destiny; and that we are God's children capable of valid judgment, and that the guidance of the Holy Ghost is always available when required...

Knowing all this, and if our attitudes can also be grounded in such knowledge; there is every reason to suppose that we will be able to navigate the spirit realm in such a way as will benefit us spiritually - now and in the context of eternity.