Bruce Charlton's Notions

It was seemingly difficult for Owen Barfield to express clearly what he meant by Final Participation of human consciousness - indeed I think he exhibited a reluctance to be explicit on this point.

I now feel I have sufficiently understood Final Participation to re-explain it in my own words; but in doing so I take a step further than Barfield was willing to go in most public fora; and I think I can understand why.

To make Final Participation clear involves acknowledging its basis in Christianity - which has a tendency to alienate non-Christians; while at the same time claiming to move-forward-from, and in that sense 'supercede' Historical Christianity - which would tend to alienate most Christians: thereby leaving Barfield with only a very small audience!

Anyway, whether or not the above understanding is a correct guess: here is my understanding of the assumed historical sequence of Original Participation - going through various phases to our current almost wholly-alienated Modern Western Consciousness Soul - to Final Participation.

The key concept is theosis, which is the process of becoming divine. The consciousness of theosis therefore clearly depends on the concept of the divine: in becoming like-god it depends what we understand by god.

Original Participation was the situation of the first Men - who lived in hunter gatherer societies. They understood the divine to be something like energies in a process of circulation and transformation. Theosis was therefore the living daily experience of participating in these energies and transformations. The system was closed, all is as it was and ever will be. Man is part of the divine, but not a separate self.

This was the childhood of Man.

Then came the start of an increasing degree of self-consciousness, of Man as aware of Himself as an Agent with 'free will'; which brought with it an increasing sense of separation from the divine. At first the separation was only temporary and could be overcome by the activities of priest, performing rituals, in temples - and the ultimate aim was to restore each man into the divine. Mundane life was an exile - the aim was reabsorption of the individual self-consciousness back into the divine consciousness. Man conceived himself as as 'a worm', with the merest glimmer or vestige of autonomy - and that autonomy essentially wicked.

By stages, over many centuries, the separation of self-consciousness and awareness of the self as unique increased until it became almost (but never fully) complete; so that now and for many generations Man regards himself no longer as a worm, but as the only god - which either leads to absolute (but brittle) pride at his self-creation of his own reality out of nothing; or (and eventually) to despair at his belief that therefore reality depends on his own continuous creation and is therefore feeble and temporary and doomed to end with death - Man regarding himself as something even-less-than a worm.

At this stage theosis has stopped, is no longer a purpose, life has no meaning outside of the contigent and ephemeral and private subjective consciousness.

This is the adolescence of Man.

Final Participation is the renewal of a new kind of theosis in which God and the Self are both regarded as real (eternally real) - and there are many selves, each on the path towards divinity. So the aim is not immersive participation in divine energies; it is not reabsorption into the divine; but the aim of Final Participation is instead to participate in the process of ever more, and ever more loving and creative, relationships between the many eternal selves of Men on the one hand and God (in divine multiplicity) on the other hand.

Final Participation is Final because the system is no longer closed (as it was in Original Participation) but open-ended and capable of eternal expansion, as we as individuals each and collectively grow towards a divinity of the same kind and level as God - but an unique, and continually added-to divinity; and with many others (being added-to) all around us, in relationships with us, who are doing the same.

To move towards Final Participation we need to consider the nature of our relationship with the divine - and that we are to understand ourselves as immature and very-partial divinities - but that God has a loving and paternal relationship with us; so we need have nothing to fear from him and an attitude of trust and confidence in him as he will always want the best for us and work for that end.

For Final Participation, therefore, we need to see God as a person and a personal friend; and not somebody or some-thing vast and mysterious to be awed by and needing to be appeased, not somebody to be pleaded-with, nor an alien and incomprehensible being to be worshipped - and not an abstract infinite perfection which we seek to 'lose ourselves' into. At least, such attitudes cannot be foremost and regulative of our relation to God - but only background, exceptional and temporary.

Of Course, God condescends greatly to meet us at our level, and for that we should be grateful; but having said that we just need to put aside that fact and get on with the relationship at our own childish or adolescent level (just as a child knows that the adult is condescending to play, but the play cannot be play unless that condescension is 'forgotten' while the play is in progress). Respectful friendliness, trust, confidence - and an 'equality' which (like the child's in play with  parent, as he grows) is not less real for continually being superceded by higher levels of maturing and diminishing magnitudes of difference. 

Barfield - following Coleridge - saw reality in terms of distinguishable, dynamic but not separable polarities. The Polarity of Final Participation may be between God as an eternal and fully-divine person; and each of ourselves as eternal and partially-divine persons. The poles never to be united, but always bound-together in dynamic process, energized by that thing we could call Love - so long as we are clear that Love contains many positive aspects such as creativity, intelligence, power...

In sum - the movement from Original to Final Participation (leaving-out the long transitional state that occupies recorded history, and in which we still seem to be 'stuck') is therefore centred on the work of Christ; understood as enabling the change from theosis as loss of the self and reabsorption back-into the divine - to theosis as a stronger and maturing self-awarness and consciousness; closer and closer towards the adulthood of a full friend-like relationship between the personal loving God and his growing-up child.

It is the lived experience of this theosis which is Final Participation.

*

Note added: Having posted the above I almost immediately came upon an explicit confirmation of my interpretation on page 154 of What Coleridge Thought by Owen Barfield:

...The polarity God [polar-with symbol] Man is the basis of all polarity, in nature and elsewhere.

This leads to my final summary:

Original Participation = Divine Unity
Consciousness Soul = Human Separateness
Final Participation = Divine-Human Polarity

If we assume that because Final Participation (FP) is our destiny, what God wants from us at this stage of things; then perhaps it ought not to be impossibly difficult or rare. Perhaps we should expect to see Final Participation in our own lives; and in those of at least some people whose work is recoded in the public domain. 

Maybe the difficulty in locating Final Participation is in recognizing it as something genuinely different and new, and therefore misclassifying it under old categories - because the old categories are all we know.  

To clarify; Final Participation is an engagement with reality, in which we bring to bear our own creativity - to participate in creating. 

This could be participation with divine creation (this is what I understand to happen in Heaven); or participation with another person's created work - perhaps someone from the past. 

This can serve as an illustration - taking the example of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (LotR). 

Two widely known categories of engagement with life, with works; could be termed 'projection' and 'channeling' - and I will contrast these with Final Participation.

Projection

Projection is not intentionally a participation, because it describes what happens when a reader of Tolkien projects his own concerns onto the book. 

This seems to be the usual practice of Tolkien mass-fandom. Except minimally; the projecting fan-reader does not experience what Tolkien himself felt or intended; but instead uses the book (selectively and distortingly) as fuel for his own interests. 

For example such a fan might read LotR as-if it were a "sword and sorcery" novel, being interested only by the fights, magic, monsters, spectacle etc; and either not-noticing, skipping-over or forgetting the other material. Or, to judge by the content of one genre of fan-fictions; quite a few readers even seem to read Tolkien in a subversive fashion, as fuel for their personal sexual fantasies.   

Therefor projection is not a form of 'participation' except very minimally, unconsciously, unintentionally; because the intent is to impose oneself upon the-other. 

Channeling

The ideal behind the form of participation I am calling channeling, is that the reader become so totally immersed in the work that he identifies completely with the author. 

This is a contemplative, not creative, ideally-non-participating form of engagement - because the ideal is that the reader be passive, absorptive, and reflective. The reader seeks to lose-himself-in the work 

This is, indeed, the form that has been called 'inspiration' and which used-to be (in the pre-modern era) the form that so-called 'creativity' took. The 'creator' was supposed to be a clear-channel for God/ The Gods/ The Muses - and himself to play no personal role in what emerged.

In other words; with channeling, with inspired work, the ideal is non-participation. 

This channeling is therefore a particular example of what Owen Barfield termed Original Participation - which is the primal relationship with the world of the child or the early tribal Man. It does have elements of participating; but only in the secondary sense that we are then (and almost fully) engaged with the world, with life, with other beings. But (when channeling works) we are so immersed in the flow of external things, that while our own participation in them is inevitable, it is intentionally minimal.  

Perhaps the ideal of the medieval sculptor working on one of the great cathedrals might serve as an illustration. He is contented to be anonymous, and forgotten, and to work in exactly the same style as every other mason - because his personal nature should 'stand-aside' and should not have anything to do with the product. I have heard of musicians (conductors and soloists) who regard their interpretations likewise: they try to identify so closely with the composer that they lose-themselves in the perormance altogether. 

In terms of Tolkien, this is perhaps the ideal of the best kind of literary critic of the old school: he attempts to expound Tolkien, and not to 'interfere' by interjecting personal views or evaluations. In particular, he is very wary of 'projection', which he regards as itself a gross and unscholarly error, leading to distortions such as anachronism.  

Final Participation

For an example of FP we need to go to Tolkien himself, in his writing of Lord of the Rings; and to that activity which he termed "subcreation". 

This - I suggest - is the relationship between JRRT and his 'source material' - which came from the author's engagement with his academic subject of philology (the language-focused study of old texts), and his other concerns such as mythology, and the matter of England. 

I believe that Tolkien not only had a deep immersion in his sources; but that he also went beyond immersion in his 'sources'. That is; JRRT went beyond the contemplative-passive processes of channeling, and brought his own creativity to bear on the material that he was experiencing from-within. 

There are innumerable examples. Tolkien's elves are rooted in Icelandic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic material from his philosophical studies - the words for elves, their histories, their implications (as discussed by Tom Shippey in Roots and Branches); but Tolkien also brought a deep and intense personal interest and concern with elves - which he envisaged as an ideal type of certain aspects of Men; blessed with innate health and extreme longevity, greater love of the earth, greater skills and intelligence, and magical powers. 

And yet Tolkien felt a need to explain (to himself, primarily) how and why it was that elves were (more or less) estranged from, then replaced by, Men - who became rulers of this earth; despite that Men seemed inferior, overall. 

To generate acceptable answers to these (and other) questions about elves, problems about myth, England and so forth; Tolkien needed to go beyond existing material and theories: he needed to enlist his own creativity. 

I consider Tolkien's writing of LotR as a publicly-available example of Final Participation. 

In the first place JRRT was inspired by many, already existing, source materials; and had immersed himself in these materials so that he could, when needed or desired, 'channel'/ expound/ explain these materials in their own terms, in the context of the times and places of their composition. 

But in the second place Tolkien wanted to do more than just passively be-inspired-by; he wanted actively to generate something new by bringing to bear from-himself to participate with that which others had created.  

This was (pretty much) what he termed subcreation. 

To generalize, I think it would therefore be reasonably accurate to state that:

Final Participation = Inspiration plus Personal Creativity 

As such, examples can be generated from other areas of the arts, sciences etc. The pianist Glenn Gould did not just 'channel' Bach (as some have wrongly claimed), because, although he was steeped in Bach's creative mind and intent - Gould also added his own creativity, to make something participated. A synthesis, rather than recreation. 

A creative scientist of genius must, of course, build upon the valid science of his precursors; but as well as selecting from among the already-existing scientific literature that he deeply understands in its own terms (which might be said to 'inspire' him); and as well as extrapolating this work; the great scientist will bring something new, something original: from himself - in order to make a qualitative breakthrough.  

In sum; I hope the above might help make clearer what is meant by Final Participation; and to help recognize when it occurs in our own lives. 

I have very often used Owen Barfield's categories to describe the evolution of consciousness over the past three years. These are Original Participation (OP), the Consciousness Soul (CS) and Final Participation (FP).

However, I have not been happy about the actual names, which are partly uninformative and, as I now have come to feel, somewhat inaccurate.

Original Participation is not truly a participation in reality and creation because it is a passive and unconscious state. The Consciousness Soul (this term comes from Steiner, rather than Barfield) is simply uninformative. And  the term 'Final' in Final Participation is not descriptive - but rather it informs us that this is the qualitative mode of divine consciousness, and therefore no further evolution (except quantitatively) is possible.

So I will be trying-out a new set of terms: Original Immersion, Detached Agency and Agent Participation.


This refers to the original state of consciousness for Man. Original in the sense of its being both the mode of consciousness of young children, and also of early tribal man - foragers/ hunter-gatherers.

It is a state of passive and unconscious immersion in reality - 'animistic', regarding the world as alive and conscious.

There is little in the way of a separate self - therefore little in the way of agency. The content of thought is mostly caused.

The child's thinking is therefore essentially a consequence, rather than being internally-generated. So, the child is not 'creative' - does not originate or generate thinking. 

It is also something of a 'twilight' state, in some ways intermediate between the awake and asleep state of modern Western adults - and a modern adult can experience Original Immersion in some altered states of consciousness such as trances, delirium and certain 'drugged' states and psychosis (for example).


This refers to the characteristic state of consciousness of an awake, alert, modern Western Man.

Our self is detached from the world, observing it through the senses; and we are strongly aware of this separate self and its agency in thinking.

The evolutionary step is in agency - thinking becomes a primary cause, self-caused: thinking emerges-from the self intrinsically. Thinking need not be a consequence of external factors.

With detached agency, Man becomes creative - originates thinking. However, this thinking is at the level of ideas and imaginations. These thought must be translated into the external world - by 'actions'. And actions are known only via sensory perceptions.

Therefore in the stage of the process is indirect. Thinking does Not participate in reality 

Initially the self may feel cut-off, and doubt the reality of the world ('solipsism'); and ultimately - by inference - may doubt its own reality.

The agent self experiences the world as perceptual/ sensory input that is made-sense-of by reasoning - i.e. a matter of facts and theories. Thus is it is literalistic, scientistic, materialist and reductionist. Reality is dead/ not-alive.

There is no experience of objective meaning nor purpose nor relationships: these are just theories.
Subjectivity is the dominant experience; objectivity is conceptualised sensation.


The thinking of the creative and agent self participates in reality - directly. This is the divine mode of thinking.

That is, thinking is real, and reality is thought - and there is a unity, no separation - therefore reality is changed (expanded) by thinking.

So, with Agent Participation, the Man directly knows reality - not indirectly via senses and reason or facts and theories. Direct knowing means there is no mediation, which means that there is unity.

For a divinity, reality is 'made' by thought; and known directly because the reality is the divine thought.

However, Agent Participation is partial, from a perspective. Thus some of reality is known directly, and creativity has also a limited scope. 

Thus, in Agent Participation, everything than can be thought is real - but only some things can be thought. Everything than can be thought is known - only some things can be thought.

And in Agent Participation with respect to creativity: everything that can be thought is original, uncaused and self-generated (although, naturally, it may and probably will use the existing knowledge of that self).

Everything that can be thought is participated-in, and therefore this thinking is directly creative (without mediation) - but only some things can be thought and only some kinds of creativity are possible.


The idea is that scheme describes the (ideal) development of a child to an adult who is divine - being a son or daughter of God: Original Imersion being young childhood, transforming to Detached Agecy at Adolescence. Most modern men are arrested at this adolescence of consciousness, but almost all will have periods of Agent Participation - even though they may be brief, feeble, and not taken seriously.

The scheme also describes the development of human society from earliest Man through modern Man to the divinely destined future of man. And it describes states of consciousness which we each may move-between - even during one day of our lives.

But the main 'lesson' or value of these categories is that Agent Participation is what we ought to - and need to aim at in our lives - as indeed the primary aim of a Christian.

In other words, these categories are a description of spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification or divinisation. Therefore, Agent Participation cannot be achieved except insofar as a person is Good and motivated by Love.

Because to participate-in creation is to participate in the loving work of God, it is the most profound alliance-with God.

Hence the absolute nature of the first and second commandments: Love of God, and of Neighbour (our neighbour being our co-participant). Only thus may creation proceed.


Note: These three states are - strictly speaking - 'polarities' in the sense that although they can be objectively distinguished (as above) they cannot be fully separated or detached one from another. For example, even a young child is not fully without agency or creativity; and certainly some hunter gatherers display these traits at some times.  

In other words, these are extremes or emphases of a unitary process of human consciousness. Any categorical scheme, when applied to a process, can only result in such polarities - because ultimately the unity cannot be divided without destruction of its nature. 

Owen Barfield claimed not to be very clear about the nature of that Final Participation which he saw as the destiny of human evolution of consciousness.

(Original Participation is that immersive and unselfconscious living in-the-world of hunter-gatherers and similar tribal peoples, and modern man is detached from the world, and even his own thoughts, in the Consciousness Soul).

But I think that sufficient clarity can be arrived at by considering the phases of human love through human life as an analogy (or rather, as more than an analogy - since the one is an example of the other).

Infant and young childhood love is an Original Participation; immersive and undifferentiated - the child is hardly aware of himself as distinct from his parents and family; his experience of the world is of a world alive and sentient because he is himself a part of everything he perceives. Love is everywhere (in an ideal childhood) like a sea in which everything is immersed, or like a gas in which each individual thing is merely a slight concentration of the element. We know everything, but we hardly know our-selves, and everything blurs into everything else.

With adolescence comes self-consciousness, which intensifies until the Self experiences itself as detached from the world. Indeed the Self experiences most mental activity as detached from itself - our Selves are cut-off from all experience, looking out upon the world, such that they world seems uncertain and unreal (how do we know that it is real), and indeed the Self is also experienced as perhaps unreal - since it changes, and can only rely upon itself for validation.

The point of Consciousness soul is 'freedom' in the sense of agency: to be free we need to be able to live from our-Selves (our true Selves). The consciousness soul is the condensation and concentration of the self, such that we can work from it. This is, indeed, a divine state of being - and that is what this phase is necessary to human spiritual progression.

To evolve towards a fully divine state of being, we must pass-through the Consciousness Soul. But it is meant to be a transitional phase, a short-lived phase - a phase we merely touch upon in passing...

This Consciousness Soul state of consciousness is also the state of modern culture. Modern culture is stuck, arrested, in stasis in the consciousness Soul - so intensely subjective that subjectivity itself is destroyed - experiencing the external world only via perceptions and instruments, and unsure about the reliability of these senses and mechanisms... THE problem being epistemological - how do I know if I really know? No answer forthcoming (because the assumption is of a gulf between the self and the world) and Modern Man is stuck in Consciousness Soul - held, trapped, imprisoned by the assumptions of modern culture.

Modern Man is stuck in Consciousness Soul - and that was not, and is not, meant to be - the CS is meant to be just a phase (albeit a necessary phase) on the way to Final Participation. Being stuck in the Consciousness Soul is a precise analogy to being stuck in adolescence, unable to grow-up, paralysed in that state of alienation, in which uncertainty erodes all potential solutions - and unable to move on.

Final Participation is like the ideal of spouse - indeed married love is a type of Final Participation.

In married love at its highest, each individual retains the full self-consciousness of the Consciousness Soul, but has a certainty of contact with another, distinct, self-conscious human being. There is no problem of communication, indeed there is a certainty of communication. Each party is not trapped in the nutshell of their own skulls but is able to share, participate in the life of the other, but with full self-integrity and self-awareness.

On the one hand individuality is assumed and valued, and is part of the essence of married love; on the other hand there is no problem of communication between these individuals - because the universal immersive state of Original Participation still is real and exists as much as it ever did. We are still part of each other and of everything - but with Final Participation our individuality, our Self, has been clarified, strengthened... has become a free, autonomous agent.

Final Participation is Original Participation plus the Consciousness Soul - it is the sea of infant family love, plus the individual island of adolescent self-awareness. 

There is no desire among loving spouses either for a return to the detachment of the Consciousness Soul (the state before love) or to return to the immersive and undifferentiated love of childhood family. They have the best of both worlds. The differentness and individuality and self-awareness of the other is essential, and so is the given background of universal communication.

In conclusion, when married love works as it is meant to, then it is a species of Final Participation - which is to say a state beyond Consciousness Soul, a moving-forwards and not a regression (or atavism).

Culturally, human destiny is to have an analogous relationship to ideal married love, but inclusive of all reality - and that is what Barfield meant by Final Participation.

I am re-reading Colin Wilson's last substantive book - Super Consciousness: the quest for the peak experience (2009) - which serves as a summation of this area of his interest that began with The Outsider (1956). Wilson cites and describes a 'variety of religious experiences' - or Peak Experiences, in Abraham Maslow's terminology - in which there was an alteration of consciousness and a feeling of well-being, elevation, understanding. 

Looking at Wilson's accounts of these experiences through the perspective on the evolutionary-development of consciousness that I have derived from Owen Barfield; I see the reports can be understood as beginning with our normal, everyday, mundane, socially-functional "Consciousness Soul" state of feeling cut-off from reality, alienated and trapped in superficiality. 

Consciousness Soul is the implicit baseline from-which Peak Experiences/ religious-mystical experience emerge. 

From this baseline, and despite that Wilson did not recognize this distinction; these mystical/peak experiences of positive 'Super Consciousness' can be understood as falling into Barfield's two categories of Original Participation and Final Participation.  

Most of the mystical experiences described can be regarded as a kind of functional impairment, and these seem like a reversion to the Original Participation of early childhood and tribal-Man, by a selective suppression of those (more recently developed) parts of the body (especially brain) needed for the manifestation of self-awareness in the Consciousness Soul stage. 

In other words, this kind of mystical experience deletes consciousness of 'the self' as a separate entity from 'reality'. 

Examples include those reported experiences of William James and Ouspensky which were triggered by nitrous oxide (laughing gas); and the same applies to other consciousness-altering drugs. 

Others were associated with dream-like passivity; stasis of the body, fainting, or sleep - and mentally there are descriptions of  becoming blissful in emotion yet unaware of any thinking (stopping the exhausting and futile treadmill of thoughts, worries, plans...); the apprehension of Time is suspended or deleted. 

The kitchen and garden were filled with golden light. I became conscious that at the centre of the Universe, and in my garden, was a great pulsing dynamo that ceaselessly poured-out love, This love poured over and through me, and I was part of it, and it wholly encompassed me. (Cited pages 54-5)

In this Original Participation mystical state; problems are not solved so much as dis-solved; it is not a matter of 'knowing everything' so much as recognizing that knowledge does not matter. 

Other, less common, reports of higher consciousness states sound more like Final Participation. In this state, the description is of thinking not stopping, but conversely having vastly greater power and comprehensiveness, such that the experience is one of 'knowing everything' - of direct-knowing without need for perception or for reasoning.

My train of thought accelerated and vastly improved in quality... New and convincing ideas came into my mind in a steady torrent, flaws in my existing ideas were illuminated, and as I made mental corrections to the the diminishing gaps in the logical sequence were filled by neat, brand-new linking concepts which made a beautiful logical pattern. (Cited page 56)

I interpret this difference as being due to the Original Participation being what Rudolf Steiner called an 'atavistic' state, that is a reversion to an earlier developmental-state (childhood, 'tribal' Man) which is being-induced by a lowering of consciousness,; resulting in a temporarily 'delirious' impairment of brain function (by drugs, drowsiness, hypnosis, illness etc). 

While Final Participation is an enhancement of consciousness, the next 'evolutionary step' towards a more-divine, and more free and independent, mode of thinking; in which thinking is clarified and strengthened; and increases in scope and validity. 

This relates to the 'flow state' Wilson describes earlier from the work of Csikczentmihalyi; which is associated with increased, indeed the highest, levels of functionality.

For instance; when people such as creative artists, artistic performers, athletes, and craftsmen sometimes attain their supreme performance. Sometimes called being 'in the zone' - they find themselves unerringly doing things they could not usually achieve, and with total confidence. 

Thus Original Participation reduces functionality, and constitutes 'time out'; whereas Final Participation is associated with the highest, most creative and adept, levels of functionality. 

Yet these two Super Conscious states - Final and Original: the one thinking, the other a cessation of thought; the one knowing without constraint, the other an indifference to knowledge; the one a flow, the other a suspension of time and movement; the one cognitive, the other contemplative... these states are not usually distinguished, are indeed generally conflated.  

I do, however, regard Original Participation as potentially-valuable - but mainly as a glimpse of alternatives, a 'holiday', a recharging process, a therapeutic rest. 

While Final Participation is - I hope - the ultimate state of God-like, Christ-like, divine consciousness in which - eventually - Christians will spend most of our post-mortal resurrected lives. 

As for the Consciousness Soul in which we Modern Men spend most of our mortal lives, trapped and cut-off form living and reality - I regard it as merely a transitional phase between Original and Final Participations - much as adolescence should be a swift transition between childhood and maturity; therefore I expect that 'mundane' consciousness will very seldom be experienced in Heaven - although it may be normal, or at least common, in Hell. 

Looking back, I can now perceive that Original Participation provided an unconscious and spontaneous direct-link with The World, and other people and Beings, until late in my twenty-second year. 

Through childhood, adolescence, and up to that point, there was a baseline (albeit dwindling) sense of 'belonging in the world' that sustained me, and enabled me to connect with nature and life; despite that I had developed extreme atheist and materialistic (scientistic, positivist) philosophical assumptions. 

But from that point I began to feel alienated, cut-off from things, trapped inside my head, unable to 'lose myself', forget myself, or stop thinking; except when intoxicated in one way or another, or passively-immersed in music or literature - which was presumably a temporary illusion... 

At any rate it could not be sustained and was incompatible with the business of mundane living 

My reaction was partly to accept the situation, and adopt an 'hedonic' approach to my life; in hope that continuous pleasurable activities (and maximum freedom from suffering) would suffice. The aim was to live well until, at some point, I died - preferably instantly, without realizing it.   

Life was something to be got-through - as pleasantly as possible. Nothing more.  

But as the years rolled-by, nostalgia for the lost Original Participation became stronger, and I developed a very powerful (including scholarly) interest in the disenchantment of life, alienation - and yearned for the immersive animism I regarded as normal for our ancestral hunter gatherers - as well as young children.

Yet such a state was seldom, and mostly weakly attainable by even my best efforts.  

In the middle of this I became a Christian; however, at first this conversion did not significantly provide an answer to the problem of alienation - because mainstream Christianity barely recognizes, and does not address, the problem. However, it does uniquely provide the potential to do so - if one is prepared to venture beyond the orthodox. 

It was not until about 2014 that I began to be aware that there was another way of organizing my efforts in life. The choice was not only between an immersive and unconscious absorption into living versus the typically modern and alienated detachment... There was also what Barfield Termed Final Participation. 

It took me a while to grasp what this meant; and to do this I needed to tackle the daunting business of reading Rudolf Steiner's early philosophical works focused on a kind of thinking in which Final Participation was (implicitly) achieved. 

I also, by providential synchronicity, rediscovered William Arkle - who approached this same matter from the different angle of levels of consciousness; and the possibility of attaining (for periods) a level of consciousness in which thinking was real and creative. 

And finally came the understanding that this mortal life was a time for learning (learning needed for our for resurrected eternal life); so that what mattered was learning-from experiences - rather than trying to attain and stay-in any particular state. 

The fact that it was impossible to live always (or even mostly) in a state of Final Participation did not detract from the value of those times when FP was possible, and did happen - so long as we learn from them. It is the learning that can be permanent! 

This is where Christianity comes in; because this mortal life is (among other things) a learning phase before eternal resurrected life - and Final Participation is the divine way of thinking and being. 

(That is why it is correctly termed 'Final' - because divine living is what is aimed-at.)  

So to participate 'finally' - in thinking - was both a foretaste and a preparation for Heaven; therefore an extremely important life-experience to learn-from. 

That is - broadly - how matters stand. Romantic Christianity has emerged as a term to describe that Christianity in which participation is regarded as crucial, and taken with primary seriousness. 

In other words, Christians need to acknowledge and overcome alienation; and work to experience the world, other people and Beings directly; in thought. And know that that thinking is reality.  

What I have observed in myself in recent years, is that the surface of thinking - with thoughts rapidly changing and lasting from fractions of seconds to a few seconds - is not much different from what it always was. There is a constant and superficial play of images and ideas - which are heavily influenced by immediate concerns, the environment, and System manipulations. 

The Real Self experiences this level of consciousness as if a pond skater moving across the surface of water that is constantly changing its colours and patterns - but which can never be penetrated; can only be known indirectly and by observation and reasoning...

But as well as this there is a participative thinking, which moves more slowly (minutes, hours, days...). This is like the flow of a stream, and the thinking of Final Participation is not on the surface of, but instead a part of this flowing stream yet capable creating and of adding to the flow - something from itself.  

Final Participation is unimpeded by the surface of the stream; because it operates at the level of consciousness that includes air, surface and water - yet we, as incarnate Beings, remain many and distinct - loving and creative - selves. 

So, although surface alienation remains, moment by moment; there is an underlying direct participation which lies on the edge of my consciousness, and of which I can become aware at (almost) any time; but which, even when not actively attended-to - constitutes a healing of the rift between my-self and the world which opened up some months before my twenty-second birthday.  

It is interesting to consider how the relationship between sleeping states - deep sleep and dreaming sleep - and the awake state may have changed through the evolutionary development of Men. 

If we start with the historical (and early childhood) conscious state termed Original Participation by Owen Barfield; then it was a striking idea of Rudolf Steiner that this is characterized by what we would consider a less complete difference between sleep and waking. The awake person was not so fully awake is the case now; and aspects of deep and dreaming sleep remained active throughout the daytime. 

This would be a more passive and unconscious form of waking; whereby we were involuntarily influenced by the sleeping states; immersed-in them. In Original Participation Man's consciousness was integrated, but dominated by sleep.  

A suggestion is that the sleep states are (in some fashion) in communication with the divine and spiritual world; and therefore in Original Participation awake Man has direct experiential knowledge of the gods and spiritual reality. This may be why all early Men and all young children assume the reality of gods and the spiritual realm - because the experience and know it; not just when asleep but all of the time.

The idea is that, as Man's consciousness evolved through history, the division between sleeping and waking states became more distinct; until with modern Man it was complete (the phase called the Consciousness Soul). We are not aware of our sleeping and dreaming consciousness while awake (although they continue); and indeed we almost never remember anything from deep sleep, and even dream memories tend to be absent, partial or uncertain.   

It struck me that presumably the same applies in the opposite direction: that waking consciousness has probably lost access to deep and dreaming sleep. Perhaps in earlier phases, waking consciousness could affect dreaming sleep, and even deep sleep; and therefore in original Participation these sleeping states were more conscious, more subject to waking motivations, and probably more memorable. 

Whereas nowadays (for many people) dreams are characterized by their own crazy illogic and irrelevance; perhaps for early Men they were coherent, useful, memorable - by the waking Man. And maybe something analogous applied even with the slower, simpler, 'tidal' consciousness-world of deep sleep. 

(Steiner suggests that in dreaming sleep, ancient Man - and children - are in communion with the lower angelic powers; and in deep sleep, the higher angels - or, I would guess, perhaps even the simple and basic aspects of the knowledge of God, Jesus Christ and/or the Holy Ghost.) 

So, modern Man's consciousness states are not integrated; but instead divided, alienated, encapsulated. 

And what of the goal of Final Participation? We might assume that the division between sleeping and waking would again become crossable, 'permeable' - but this time dominated by waking consciousness and by its capacity for free agency, for conscious choice. 

Thus we may be able to choose to bring our waking consciousness and cross into dreaming, and even deep sleep; there to both gain conscious control of these states, and to remember better what happens in them. 

So we may again become integrated in our consciousness; but this time with awakeness dominating. 

However, this state is voluntary - not automatic; conscious not unconscious; and is subject to the constraints of Final Participation - which is, after all, an attainment of divine consciousness (albeit usually partial and always temporary) even when we are mortal on earth. 

Therefore, we might be able to choose to bring awake consciousness into dreaming and deep sleep; but only insofar as we our-selves are aligned with God's purposes, meanings and mode of thinking. 

If a person has chosen the side of Satan against God, then Final Participation is not (at that time) possible. 

Furthermore sin interferes with Final Participation. Un-repented sin blocks FP in the long term (because we are not aligned with the divine); while currently-active sin in thinking will curtail FP for its duration; which is surely one reason, albeit not the only reason, why Final Participation is always temporary - indeed usually very brief.  

Nonetheless, even with all these provisos, this gives an idea of what to aim for in Final Participation how to go about it; and how to know when it has happened. That is, we can aim towards more frequent and fuller integration of the waking and sleep states; do so consciously; and within a Christian context.  

Over the past couple of years I have fully engaged with the writings of Owen Barfield, and incorporated some of his key ideas and perspectives into my thinking; one of these is dividing human consciousness into three phases: Original Participation, the Consciousness Soul and Final Participation.

This sequence is primarily concerned with human society, or civilisation through hunter gatherer, agrarian and industrial phases and pointing at the destined future - but also corresponds to the development of Man from birth to mature adulthood.

Thus the consciousness of Original Participation can be seen both in the 'childhood of Man' (the earliest, simplest and most spontaneous society: the hunter gatherer life), and also in each Man's childhood. 

*

I became extremely engaged with understanding the hunter gatherer mind some twenty years ago - by immersion in all sorts of books on the subject; both by leading twentieth century academics (mostly anthropologists) who lived among such people (or among those who had recently been hunter gatherers) and also by looking at some examples of 'first contact' literature from previous centuries when a variety of people - e.g. explorers, missionaries - described their encounters with hunter gatherers.

My interest was then focused on spontaneous animism; or the way in which hunter gatherers - and young children - interpreted the world 'anthopomorphically', or socially; in terms of being a collection of person-like agents. So large animals (such as the bear) or environmental objects both living (such as a tree) and 'non-living' (such as a mountain) would be understood as persons, each with a character, motivations, desires and intentions.

Thus, for the hunter gatherer the whole world was social; a web of relationships. And if we can remember and introspect about our own early childhoods, we can perceive that it was the same situation for each of us; we used to see the world as social, as full of living and conscious entities.

(This may also re-emerge in altered states of cosnciousness - such as the 'paranoid' delusions of self-reference in psychotic illnesses, or in some types of brain pathology, or some types of drug intoxication. The social perspective seems to be something of a default.)

*

The perspective of Barfield brings a further aspect to this subject; which is to notice that for the hunter gatherer the Self was much less developed and distinct than it is for us (living at an advanced stage of the Consciousness Soul); the individual hunter-gatherer is not, therefore, very aware of himself as an individual - does not perceive a line of demarcation separating himself and 'the world' (when 'the world' includes both the society of other people, and the society of significant entities in the environment - bear, tree, mountain etc.).

The hunter gatherer participates in the world because he perceives no separation between himself and the world; and much the same applies to young children even nowadays. But as civilisation developed, grew, became specialised... each Man separated from the world, and perceived life as himself one one side of a line, and everything else on the other side - losing the sense of participating in the world, and feeling more-and-more like a detached observer.

Indeed, matters have reached such a point, that we even feel detached from our own thoughts - that is, the thought in our minds are not regarded as the same thing as our-selves.

The disadvantages of the modern condition are obvious enough - alienation from life, and despair. But the advantages were also perceived by Barfield, drawing from the early work of his master Rudolf Steiner. The key word is freedom. By separating our perceived self from the world, the self becomes free.

The hunter gatherer is hardly free, because he hardly feels himself separate from the flow of the human and other environment in which he lives; and much the same applies to the young child. Modern Man in the Consciousness Soul phase is, by contrast, in a position in which he may becomes free, may be able to stand apart from the influences on his life; and consciously, deliberately, in full self-awareness exercise his divine creativity as a source of original thought, and potentially other actions as well as thought (although Steiner clearly described that it was in Thinking that Man primarily was free). 

The equivalent phase to the Consciousness Soul for the developing Man is adolescence; when a man becomes conscious of himself (self-conscious) apart from other people - and this becomes 'a problem'.

As for growing-up into Final Participation; Barfield (and Steiner) would say that this seldom happens in the way that it should - it happens to few people (and only partly and intermittently) and has not yet happened to any human society. Final Participation would be a state of consciousness which retains the autonomy and freedom of The Self (which emerged during the consciousness soul) but returns to a felt-participation-in The World; but a participation of a new type.

*

The way I envisage Final Participation is that we participate in The World through loving relationships; in the sense that only an autonomous self, distinct from other selves, can love. And this means that in order to participate we must (again) recognise the world as wholly alive and conscious - just as was the case when we were young children, or as did hunter gatherers.

So, we have much to learn from hunter gatherers, and from young children - but not so as we can go back to that form of consciousness, but so that we personally - and also our modern societies - can go forward to Final Participation in which we would have 'the best of both worlds': both and simultaneously the felt-and-lived engagement with the world typical of hunter gatherers and children, and also the freedom and distinct individuality of the Consciousness Soul.

Final Participation, I would therefore regard as the destiny of each Man, and of Mankind as a whole - if we choose to accept it.

Owen Barfield's terminology of Original and Final Participation represents an important distinction, whether by that name or some other.

Original Participation happens in early childhood (and early in human pre-history); reality is unconsciously and spontaneously apprehended; reality is obvious - it is 'out-there'. We see or hear, and we just-know what everything is and what it means.

In OP we are immersed-in reality, and just accept it as obvious, without thinking about it. We are in creation, directly in-contact; and we are swept-along by creation.

It was our unconsciousness and our lack of agency that made this immersion-in-reality possible.  


In the stage of Consciousness Soul - now; we still suppose that reality is out-there, but we must consciously construct its meaning using logic, science... by abstraction and system-building. This, obviously, involves thinking - but that thinking is not a part of the abstraction and system building (unnoticed, ignored, denied).

So we are conscious of reality as a problem, and because conscious we are 'free', 'agents'; yet our consciousness of our-selves knows-itself to be cut-off from reality - because reality is out-there, and we are in-here.

In-here is experienced as real, yet out-there is supposedly the only reality...

We, in-here, can only make theories, have hypotheses, build 'models', about what is out-there - hence the ubiquity of alienation: we know we don't have direct access to reality.

In the end, nothing seems real - neither the self in-here, nor 'reality' out-there


Final Participation 'notices' that thinking is always and necessarily used in understanding reality; therefore reality is both in-here and out-there - reality is, in actuality, located in the process of thinking.

But not, obviously, in all kinds and instances of thinking... For example, the thinking of Consciousness Soul is not about reality (just theories, models, hypotheses); but the thinking of the Original Participation was about reality... however it was unconscious and passive and didn't know explicitly...

So... Final Participation is the same spontaneously apprehended reality as Original Participation - but conscious of itself.

And, being conscious of itself, it is an active participation; it participates in the creation of reality.

In other words, Final Participation is divine thinking.
 

The Romantic will always come-up against the fact that for most of the time he is mundane. Of course, life and (especially) surrounding people are often a real drag upon any aspirations to Higher Consciousness. 

After all, our world is built upon assumptions of anti-God, anti-spirit materialism - and when we are engaged with the world, our minds are entrained to this pervasive mundanity. 

Yet, even with as near a perfect 'environment' as this mortal world offers; the Higher Consciousness of intuition/ heart-thinking- mysticism that is desired sought by Romanticism; is always an intermittent state - and often disappointingly infrequent.

Indeed, some Romantics have ended-up being more distressed by the evanescence of Higher Consciousness, than encouraged by the occurrence of such states. 

Especially; if one is aiming at Final Participation as the goal of consciousness - the destined and necessary stage in human evolutionary development - then there are neither methods nor training to achieve it. 

It is tempting, indeed usual, for serious Romantics to try and escape this - apparently - unsatisfactory situation of endemic failure, by some or another method of 'training the mind'. 

This is what lies behind the grades of initiation beloved by some esoteric societies, the prolonged and daily practice of meditation; and external aids such as ritual, script, music, architecture.  

There seems little doubt that these are at least somewhat effective in training the mind; the question is: what is the effect of such training? 

My distinct impression is that all methods of training the mind that are aimed at Higher Consciousness will fail. 

Either they will just 'not work', will fail to achieve anything sufficiently powerful and lasting to make a significant different to the problem of mortal life; or else (more insidiously) they will succeed in imposing a System upon thinking. 

And this System will either become unconscious and habitual, thereby subjecting thinking to uncontrolled lower consciousness (while terming this state 'higher'). This would apply to Jungian-derived methods; based on lucid dreamlike trances; and also to meditation practices that aims to eradicate 'the self' or 'ego' or discard 'thinking' itself. 

Or else, it will subject thinking to the conscious will, yet this conscious will is merely ordinary mundane consciousness - and subject to the external influences of mundane consciousness. This would apply to the types of meditation that focus on training concentration, imagination and 'visualization' - such as those of ritual magic societies and Steiner's Anthroposophical 'exercises'. 

The apparent 'success' of training may generate increased gratification in life (make people 'feel better' in some way) - but do not achieve the objective of Final Participation.

Both the System and the training in 'concentration' may be effective in producing change - but they are not effective in encouraging Final Participation. And, in failing, they lead to that contamination of genuine insight and achievement with confident error and vast delusion which has been so characteristic of those who aim at Higher Consciousness. 

The limitation is a consequence of Final Participation being a participation in divine creation; which can (for obvious reasons) only happen when a Man is fully aligned with divine purposes of creation. 

This alignment with God happens seldom and briefly, is easily blocked or reversed; which limits the frequency of this state of consciousness. 

But when a Man is fully aligned with God's creation - what a man is following his destiny and that of providence; then Final Participation will happen - spontaneously, without effort or intent. 

Our main job is to recognize when this is-happening and recall when it has-happened. 

And for the Romantic Christian these are the key moments of our mortal life - vital life lessons from which we ought to learn. 

So; these Final Participation experiences will not happen often, and we cannot 'make' them happen by training.

Attempts at training and beliefs that training is efficacious are, indeed, counter-productive. 

But we can notice Final Participation states, value them, learn from them.

It has often been recognized that modern Man is alienated from life, feels cut-off by his consciousness from both the divine and from the "Spirit World". 

A desire to alleviate this alienation is behind a lot of spiritual activity, and many of the spiritual "movements" of the past couple of centuries. 

The problem was incisively analysed by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield: both were clear that we should not, and indeed could not effectively, "go back" to earlier modes of unalienated consciousness.

Instead we need (and must, unless we are not to suffer spiritual death and self-chosen damnation) to move forward to a new kind of integration with the divine and the spirit world: this desired state Barfield termed Final Participation. 

(Named on the basis that participation-in the world is the opposite of alienation-from it.) 

Steiner believed (or, at least, asserted) that Final Participation could be attained by spiritual exercises in a new kind of meditative practice, and made schemes of such training - but after a century of near-total failure, it is reasonable to conclude that such techniques/ methods/ training don't work - or don't work well enough to make a significant difference.

I think the reason that Final Participation cannot be achieved by such procedures is partly that FP must be part of a Christian life and operate in that context. Christianity is necessary, and must come first.

(A fact sometimes apparently denied, and often backgrounded or down-played by Steiner and Barfield - certainly it was not clearly explained in terms of God's motivations.) 

And also that this kind of participating consciousness requires to be motivated by Love. And Love cannot be attained by techniques, nor can it be had simply by deciding. 

It is false to try and make ourselves love this or that (or everything). 

Therefore, Final Participation needs to begin from actual Love; and build from that.

I now strikes me that this also makes sense from the perspective of what exactly is is that Final Participation should desire to participate-in.   

We should not - as Christians - desire to participate in The World, not the entirety of reality - because this includes evil. The attempt to participate in "everything" is not Christian, but part of oneness spirituality - which has a very different aim than salvation*. 

Instead; we should aim to participate in Divine Creation. That is, we should aim to participate in that of this world (and only that) which is a "product" of Love. 

Not try to participate in the whole world, but to align myself with Divine Creation... I find this insight to be clarifying! 

(Whether the insight will lead to greater success in my seeking of Final Participation remains to be seen.)

*Note added. To clarify - those who wish to participate in the world, the whole world; do so on the basis that all is one - and the distinction between good and evil is illusory because this mortal world is illusory. I would have thought it fairly obvious that this is not what Christians believe; despite that many who call themselves Christian espouse it. Christians should (surely?) believe that evil is real, not illusory. Although - in this mortal life - we cannot help but be involved in evil, this ought to be discerned, and repented. So it does not make sense to have an an ideal participating in everything that goes on in this world. Our hope is to be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven, where everything may be participated, because all derives from love.   

Field of Dreams is a movie I like - I rewatched it recently to check. At the time I first saw it, which was perhaps 1991, it coincided with an awakening of yearning for what I would now regard as Original Participation. In other words, I sought meaning and purpose in life in something like a return to the consciousness of early childhood of early tribal Man.

(Spoiler alert.)

Original Participation is participating in the creative love of the universe by a passive immersion in it; in the way that we all did in early childhood. And this is what the Field of Dreams 'dream' is about - it is about recovering and reliving that child's-perspective; by watching baseball games featuring  long-dead players, in an idyllic situation which literalises a common set of yearnings and fantasies.

That is what I wish to emphasis. Much 'fantasy' is popular because it suggests that 'if only' we could literalise our fantasies, then we would be perfectly happy forever. Of course, they are seldom foolish enough to state explicitly the idea that any kind of external objective situation would really make us perfectly happy forever; but that is what innumerable works of art (novels, plays, movies, tv series) show us.

In Field of Dreams we are shown a man who (obediently) follows his deepest promptings (in the form of an hallucinatory voice, unsought), and is rewarded by what looks to be a wholly satisfying life (with his wife and daughter; and an expanding circle of aficionados, who pay him for the privilege and continue to make it possible...) of watching old-time baseball and tending to the ball park where it happens.

Or, as the movie blurb has it: His dreams came looking for him.


Thus, the 'lesson' is that our destiny comes to us from externally, as a perceptual communication; and our job is to obey it - the reward is to be 'made' happy. It is the theme of so many fantasies; If Only (we think) fairies, Middle Earth, Hogwarts or whatever were literally true and I could live there, or meet them - then I would have a wholly-satisfying-life.

Yet, the stark reality is that if we had everything we wanted; exactly as we most want it - if our fantasy situation was literalised - it would pretty soon cease to be wholly-satisfying. We would get used-to-it; and probably we would get fed-up of it.

Watching the Chicago 'Black Sox' ghosts play every day, a couple of times a day, while feasting on hot dogs would certainly be great At First... but it is very far from enough!


For post-adolescents the fact is that a literalisation of Original Participation would not suffice, and we only suppose it would suffice because we know it cannot happen. We can daydream that the Field of Dreams would 'make us' perfectly happy forever, because we know it wont happen - this the illusion is maintained, and may harden into delusion.

(I mean - and this is a position I personally reached before I became a Christian - we may come to believe that the best possible life would be a benign delusion; that is, something gratifying but untrue that we nonetheless believe. This seems to be the logical conclusion of atheistic hedonic materialism; and is the underlying reason why transhumanism is becoming mainstream; since that promises that technology will provide us with a life of benign delusion by means of drugs, genetic engineering, virtual reality etc.)  

This is the way in which we - modern Men - are maintained in a state of spiritual paralysis. A bureaucratic, materialistic, totalitarian ('Ahrimanic') machine - such as Hollywood, big business and the mass media - produce multiple ('Luciferic') dreams of passive, immersive Original Participation; which we yearn for but which we know cannot happen... We simply try to spend as much time as possible living 'in' these dreams; in the (shrinking) gaps between serving the machine.

The sixties showed, and the lesson has been confirmed multiple times since; that we are not going to be able to return to Original Participation, that we don't truly want to; and most importantly that even if we did, it would not suffice.


We simply must find a third path into the future - that which Barfield terms Final Participation. This is the state we can confidently hope for in Heaven; but also a state which we can inhabit and cherish for periods of time, and rather imperfectly, here on earth - as part of that learning from experience which is our task.

Because, on closer examination; even the daydreams of Original Participation have elements of Final Participation about them; they are often highly conscious, active rather than passive, exist in the realm of thinking rather than inarticulate Being, and are developing situations into which we bring creativity from our-selves.

If we recognise that our goal should not be a static-suspended-state of blissful passive immersion with minimal consciousness; but instead a process of participating and joyful active creation with our unity attained in the world of thinking - then we are most of the way to where we ought to be.

It is hard to conceptualize Final Participation - not least because it is usually explained in terms of what it is not.

But just as Final Participation is the same thing as development of the individual person - but at the level of groups or societies - so Final Participation can be understood as what happens with an ideal marriage as the most mature form of human relationship.

The child is, to start with, in Original Participation - immersed in parental love and with his self not differentiated from this environment. Everything is conscious and alive in a delocalized, overlapping and undifferentiated way. He lives inside Love.

With maturation and especially adolescence, the child differentiates himself from this diffuse and unlocalized state. At some stage he reaches a point of inflexion when he is cut-off from love, loses all ties of relationship, and find himself a fully detached self, observing his environment - sometime the environment seems real and himself an illusion (positivism/ materialism), sometimes the opposite (solipsism). This adolescent phase of alienation may last a moment, or it may persist for the rest of his life (as - apparently - with so many modern people).

Marriage is (ideally) Final Participation: it is engaged objectivity. The spouse is seen not as a subject (about whom we can think whatever we choose, indifferent to the person), nor an object (to evaluate you spouse objectively - by checklist - is a failure of marriage) - but as a as a spiritual subject.

We do not see our husband or wife as we see other people: he or she is one-off and incomparable. The spouse is past, present and future all at once - and eternally. The spouse is always changing, yet his or her immaterial essence remains the same.

So it is Love which makes for Final Participation in marriage - and in everything else. Love is the primary reality.

Ideal marriage is the model for all human inter-relation with all things. And the further extension of Final Participation is itself therefore though Love - which is why no real work is ever done in science, art, crafts or anything else without Love.

In some situations such as a ritual, the entirety of a tribe may see spirits - but the modern Western anthropologist who is also present sees nothing. Are spirits really there?

Most Western people would say no; and they would explain-away the observing of spirits as some kind of group hypnosis, or wishful thinking, or a conjuring trick of the shaman... or something. Because modern people know (or rather assume as a metaphysical certainty) that spirits don't exist - therefore it doesn't matter what people say or claim: there were no spirits.

Yet, of course, everything we know about everything depends on no more than a consensus among people who report it; or perhaps a consensus among people in some restricted category - sensible people, intelligent people, adults, calm people...

Implicitly, therefore, the modern Westerners claim that all people who see spirits are unreliable, and over-emotional, gullible, unintelligent, immature, dishonest - or something of the kind. When whole tribes or societies claim see spirits - then this is exactly how modern Western people actually, in practice, regard them (although of course they are too afraid, or feel to guilty, actually to say so).

Yet there is something different about spirits... The Western anthropologist and the tribe he is studying all see most things in common - they see the huts, the spears, the food, the animals... but when it comes to spirits the tribe see them and the anthropologist doesn't.

There is something different about spirits - are the really there?

One thing than can be suggested is that there has been a change in human consciousness between the traditional Tribal Man and the modern Western Man. Tribal Man may regard stones as alive and plants as conscious... and he sees spirits.

All true - consciousness differs; but since we are not postmodern relativists - we can still ask what is really going-on. When Tribal Man sees a spirit - is there an object there, or not?

My understanding is that the seeing of spirits is an example of what Owen Barfield calls Original Participation. There is a spirit, but there is no object because it is immaterial - and the evolution of consciousness  includes that Modern Man cannot perceive the immaterial...

Why is this? The given answer is that by Not seeing the immaterial, Modern Man is made free.

That which we perceive makes us passive - it is given, we are not free not to respond to it - because the mechanism by which we know it is unconscious. Tribal Man sees spirits, and spirits dominate him in the same way that Modern Man is dominated by whatever he sees.

Where Modern Man goes wrong is is asserting that because he cannot perceive spirits (and neither can he detect spirits with any technology), the spirits are not there: typically, Modern Man claims that the imperceptible does not exist.

The way ahead is to Final Participation; so, what would a Man in Final Participation experience in the situation described? Would he see spirits? No - but he would know the spirits were real. Instead of perceiving, he would know directly.

A Man in Final Participation would consciously know that spirits were present, would know about them (what kind of spirits and where) - but he would not see, hear, touch smell or taste spirits. What is the advantage in that? The answer is Freedom - the answer is Agency.

In Final Participation knowledge is in conscious thinking (i.e. 'primary thinking') - hence all knowledge is thinkable, all thoughts are inter-relatable.

All (primary) thinking (in FP) is real and true.

But the perceiving of Tribal Man is Not real and true - because perceptions are not complete; because all perceptions need to be interpreted. Tribal Man may see spirits, but he must still make sense of what he sees, and there is no guarantee that he will understand spirits correctly - indeed different people in the tribe will probably interpret what they have seen very differently.

Seeing is Not believing; because seeing is incomplete.

It is better Not to see, but instead to know directly - because what is known directly is true. That is why Final Participation is 'final' - because it is true; and it is also Final because it is divine. God knows by Final Participation - once FP is attained, there is nowhere further to go: it is indeed final.

Folk song, dance and music are a product of Romanticism, including the Romantic Nationalism which swept Europe in the 19th century. That is, Folk is a modern concept for something that was not previously a distinct category. 

(It being, presumably, whatever ordinary people, however defined; would do, in whatever time and place; in terms of singing, dancing and playing music.) 

But it was of great potency because - by means of Folk - a modern person could (for a while, to some extent) feel and experience that deep and Original Participation by which we were vertically rooted-in a spirit of people, and horizontally connected directly with other people. 

This was (originally) spontaneous and unconscious. What was once just a 'part of life' became for modern people something consciously chosen, learned, 'performed'. It still 'worked' (for a while) but must be sought and worked-on.  

But for people like me it was potent; because from adolescence the modern Man feels himself being crushed by the The System - and all meaning, purpose and participation being squeezed out of life. Folk represents a way of re-introducing some of these. 

As such, Folk had great importance to me in the mid teens of my life. It was a dream, but it could be a living-dream. 

Some of my best memories of those days are myself playing and singing folk music (often for myself, also performing a little), attending folk clubs and concerts, and especially dancing in Barn Dances/ Ceilidhs. Actually doing these dances could create a feeling of being a part of something bigger and more deeply rooted than normal life. 

These gave me a taste of participation - I felt (for a while, to some extent) a part of the world, a part of 'a people'. 

Yet I get a distinct impression that such feelings are both weaker and less common since the millennium transition (which seems to have been a further stage in the evolution of consciousness away-from the possibility of spontaneous and unconscious participation). 

Folk is now both less widespread, and more professional - hence more Ahrimanic and more a part of The System. 

Folk music always had politically-motivated nationalists and communists who tried to politicize it by equating 'the folk' with (for example) the Irish 'struggle' for 'freedom' or the Marxist 'proletariat'. As with all institutions; this surface and social aspect spread with the New Left victimology of women, races, sexuality etc. 

The consequent politics of resentment goes exactly counter to the Romantic participation which was originally sought from this music; it reduces the magic to the mundane. 

But what were we, what was I, supposed to do with Romantic Folk experiences? 

What actually happened was either that people tried and failed to return 'society' (as a whole) to the Folk-type, to an 'organic community', to Medieval-style villages or idealistic self-sufficient communes... To a neo-pagan inspired (intended to be) unconscious and spontaneous 'original' participation in living nature. 

This was the failed aspect of the post-war counter-culture - the deepest aspirations of both 'beats' and 'hippies' which got left-behind as all their agenda items were stripped of Romance, filleted into bureaucratic bullet-points, and embodied into managed systems.  

I think what we were supposed to do is to bring the Romantic Folk experience into conscious spiritual thinking; that is, retaining its Romantic power (based on the assumption that all of nature (including human society) is alive and a makes a continuum of direct knowing from-which we gradually separated-out, but to which we may return in our thinking. 

Nowadays this may not involve current experience of Folk singing, music or dancing - because such phenomena have been dwindling in power and popularity - even before in 2020 they were all suppressed and forbidden (for lying, 'healthist' fake-reasons).

Any (legal) future for such Folk activity seems to be one in which these activities are all closely-monitored and tightly-regulated as fully-assimilated System manifestations. 

So, what is required is that we each do for our-selves what we previously relied-upon live and communal singing, music and dance to do for us. 

The Romantic moves from the public and social realm to the private and conscious realm - and Folk (as part of the Romantic) likewise.

We are called-upon to be actively-creative in our own thinking - getting what assistance where and how we may; but ultimately engaging in a direct participation with creation. Any memories of past Folk experiences (or the Romantic essence thereof) can seamlessly be integrated into this spiritual activity.  

Instead of aiming to embody these Folk ideals into this mortal and transitory world, we should refocus on preparing our-selves for the immortal and permanent inclusion of the essence of Folk into the post-mortal and Heavenly world. 

For several years in the early 2000s I was working on Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory, publishing dozens of papers, articles and a book from that perspective - its central tenet was that communications are primary. I now understand that communications don't actually exist - and indeed, that is the conclusion of Systems Theory - although self-awareness of the fact is obscured by paradox.

Systems Theory is a formalisation of the usual view of science - for example that we know about the world via senses which detect signals. The things 'out there' are detected by light, sound (etc.) communications; and in response to these communications our minds make 'representations' of the things.

Systems theory clarifies that communications cannot actually communicate - and our 'knowledge' of things is actually a representation which arises in the mind - and which indirectly interacts with the environment. By this account, we never actually know things, but only our models of things; and these 'internal' models are never more than un-disproven in our interactions with (what we cannot help but regard as) the outside world.

This Systems Theory may sound excessively abstract, but it is merely a formalisation of normal modern Western consciousness - in which modern Man has become paralysed and demotivated by the 'fact' that his communications are unreliable. So, the Bible cannot guide us anymore, nor can the instructions of The Church; because we believe that all communications are partial, biased and prone to misinterpretation without any possible way of achieving objectivity.

*

For instance, we may believe we have understood a communication, but how do we know for sure? - The answer is only by further communications. But each further communication - intended to clarify the first one - is itself equally ambiguous, uncertain...

So we conclude (correctly) that later communications cannot ever (in principle) clarify the meaning of previous communications. All that happens is we get more and more communications!

In other words, once we have accepted the metaphysical scheme that communications are the way we attain knowledge, we realise that communications cannot - in fact - lead to knowledge; but only back to ourselves.

Apparently, we are trapped in our own minds and can never know what lies outside them. In fact it is worse than that because we cannot consciously know even our own minds! - since conscious knowledge is itself a communication about the mind - and therefore prone to all the uncertainties and ambiguities of any other communication.

*

The way 'out' from this is to return to the original understanding that when we know something we do so by participating in it, or by identifying with it - in a literal sense. So when we know another person's mind, or understand the behaviour of an animal, or the properties of a rock, or the lay of a landscape... this is because we share the being of that thing.

So we do not make an inference about the thoughts of another person, but we actually think the same thoughts as that other person - we share in the exact same (and to us both available) thoughts.

Or we understand the animal we are hunting by becoming that animal - not by thinking a copy of that animal's thinking, nor by stopping being ourselves and becoming the animal - but by both the animal and our-self sharing the exact same thinking.

This is (seemingly) the spontaneous and untheorised way that young children think (you may remember thinking this way yourself), and also hunter-gatherers and Men in less complex, more aboriginal societies. They just think this way - to the extent that they do not have the same intuition of separateness - they live 'in' their environment - identified with it. They do not observe their environment, they participate in it, un-self-consciously.

Indeed, their selves are substantially a product of that environment - they do not set their conscious selves against the environment, do not separate their personal purposes from the purposes of the environment.

(This state is what Owen Barfield calls Original Participation.)

*

Now this metaphysical scheme has become very difficult to modern Man because we have a powerful intuition that we ourselves are separate from everything else - that we are cut-off from everything else, that we are observers of the rest of the world and lack direct access to it.

Trapped in the alienated state of our own consciousness, many modern people yearn to return to that state of Original Participation of childhood, or of tribal Man - yet this yearning has been evident form more than 200 years (since the Romantic Movement, especially) and we are further from the goal than ever - clearly we cannot do this, even if it was the right thing to do.

Two centuries of failure to return to Original Participation, and the same period of profound alienation and nihilism as reinforced by the focus on the primacy 'communication' and its implication of the impossibility of communication; is evidence that we can only go forward not back.

It seems that alienation can only be alleviated by a different kind of participation - by a metaphsyic and experience which allows for genuine participation/ identification in a context of the self-aware consciousness. That is, we remain self-aware, we remain located inside our minds - but acknowledge  the possibility and actuality of identification with the environment.

In modern man, identification is no longer the un-self-conscious and spontaneous and uncontrolled thing it was in childhood or tribal Man; but instead identification happens in conscious, self-aware thinking. In other words, when we are thinking - purposively, consciously, in the normal way - we may achieve (and we aim to achieve) an identification with the reality of our environment, and the things in that environment. So that our own thinking is a sharing in the thinking of the environment - the identification is at the level of thinking, not of being.

This is (even if regarded as false) understandable in the case of people - we understand how we might conceivably share the thoughts of another person. But if there is to be a possibility of real knowledge (and not merely of our own 'models' of reality) this must also apply to everything else - not just to people, but to animals and plants, rocks and hills, water and chemicals...

To be crystal clear, we must be able to share the thoughts of animals, plants, rocks, hills, water, chemicals and everything else; which means that (in the first place) these things must have thoughts in order that we may be able to share them.

This explains the necessity for our basic assumptions, our metaphysical framework of reality, to be animistic - if we want to really know about reality, we need not only to regard the whole world as alive, but also as thinking.

If this principle is accepted, then we can move forward to Final Participation; we can cure alienation, can really know about reality, can have human relationships based on truth not illusion, and can feel and be 'at home in the universe'.

*

Of course the secondary question is concerned with how we know when we have achieved Final Participation, and identification of thinking - and are not merely fooling ourselves, or making an error?

Well, that is a secondary question - it does have answers, but such answers themselves depend on the acknowledgement of the possibility of direct participation.

For as long as we persist in regarding everything as communication, we shall always be uncertain about everything, and will only have more and more communications - each as fundamentally uncertain as every other.

So there can be no answers unless and until we move forwards to a metaphysical system, and personal experience, of direct participation, actual identification of thinking - sharing in the thinking of other entities.

At which point we can understand the answers to questions about error, self-deception and accuracy. But from the perspective of Modern Man's current detachment from, alienation from, the world and from his own mind - there are no answers to anything.

We first need to live-by a new metaphysics.

When I encounter a special author, I will initially hurl myself into trying to understand him - read many books, think a lot, take notes (in a meditative fashion); and often talk and write about these experiences. 

After a while, when I have become surer of what they mean and have a fairly sold grasp on it; I find that what I have learned amounts to some particular things; but I then need to detach these specifics from the whole of the writer's assertions - because I have never found any writer whose views I can endorse or believe fully.

Eventually, I get to a point where I have (more or less) obtained 'what I needed' from a writer; and may (more or less) cease to re-read or explore actively that author's works. 

I have, at this point, built-into my own philosophy of life, some elements from the special author; and from then onwards, these ideas may undergo further development and refinement - and may indeed end-up by being very different from how they are in that author's own work. 

So, the end result is that I retain a special gratitude to the author for insights that I needed; but I have ceased actively to engage with that author, and am then often more aware of my points of disagreement with him, rather than agreement. 

Yet the core debt remains - I have been changed, and for the better, by the encounter. 

I have almost reached this stage with Owen Barfield. I do continue to engage with his writings; in a cyclical fashion - but his importance to me has by-now been fed-into my own philosophy-of-life, and they have interacted with other ideas from elsewhere; have been modified; and have developed in (sometimes) different directions. 

Looking back; what I got from Owen Barfield - in a general sense - was a positive and hopeful attitude to life, deriving from his articulation of Final Participation. 

Until I encountered Final Participation, I could not see any positive direction for human life - here and now. I saw life as a binary choice between the present and the past; a present which was alienated and increasingly evil - and a past which seemed both irrecoverable and harmful to try and recover. 

It was as if an adolescent hated being an adolescent, and yearned for childhood - but knew that childhood could not be recovered - so that this mortal life had no real hope within itself: no real positive purpose. 

But through his concept of Final Participation; Barfield made me realize that there was a third possibility. Barfield terms the 'childhood' state Original Participation and the adolescent state Consciousness Soul; and he analyses how the one derived from the other through a process of unfolding development of consciousness, that stretched across different generations and historical eras. 

The 'original' participation was an immersive, passive, unconscious sense of being part of the world and knowing the spiritual; while the consciousness soul was that active, self-conscious way of thinking that finds itself cut-off - alienated - from the spiritual, and indeed from the world. 

I personally have found (since adolescence) this cut-offness, this being an 'observer' of life, trapped inside one's head - locked into one's thinking; to be appalling. It removed depth and meaning from experience, it dissolved all sense of purpose. 

This was a demotivating and depressing situation - which recurred daily, almost hourly, and needed always to be fought; but where the fighting seemed to provide no more then a subjective and ephemeral amelioration. 

For me alienation was The Problem of my adult life - and I was always seeking solutions; but never found any that were convincing, effective, strategic. 

Barfield convinced me that this development pointed forward to Final Participation which was an active, chosen, conscious state of being part-of the world; and of contributing creatively to the world. 

I realized that many of my best and most hopeful experiences in life could be seen as glimpses of this Final Participation state, but without Barfield's insights I could not make sense of them - could not learn the lessons they had to teach...

Instead I merely treasured these 'moments' (epiphanies', 'peak experiences'. moments of 'joy'); held onto them, and tried to seek them out - but with small and dwindling success... And the treasuring of these moments was itself alienating - given their temporary and very partial nature.     

But now, with Barfield's analysis to help; these moments could be seen in terms of a developmental process, a growing towards a future and better state - and this future and better state could be recognized as resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

Having been given certain analytic tools and deep insights by Barfield; I was then starting to use them in a Christian context that I had already in-place, but which was deficient in exactly the areas that Barfield supplied. I began to see - more and more clearly - my path to the Romantic Christianity that I had always implicitly wanted but had not been able to articulate. 

That is; a Christianity that supplied the Romanticism which could cure my alienation, cut-offness, trapped-in-the-headness which had been left almost untouched (or even exacerbated) by mainstream Christianity.  

I found (I find, now) that I was was going beyond Barfield, and into areas where he would very probably not have followed; but I could not have done so without Barfield's help. 

So, now I find myself having integrated Barfield into my own thinking; having changed some of his core ideas in the process - yet I know the Barfieldian provenance of my situation; and that he ranks as one of a handful of vital sources in my own deepest convictions.