Bruce Charlton's Notions

A mistake I have made is to try and (introspectively) observe my thinking. But this is not possible - at least not when the thinking is being done by the real or true self. 

The reason that it is impossible is that the real self has agency, free will: is a free agent. The thinking of the real self is the bottom-line. 

Being a free agent entails that the thinking happens creatively, generatively, originally - as an expression of the real self. Negatively put - the thinking of the real self is irreducible, un-analyzable, hence un-observable. 

 

If we consider a model of the real self, we could imagine something like an egg, from which thoughts are radiated in all directions. We can - and indeed should strive to - observe the thoughts as they emerge from the surface of the egg; but we cannot see inside the egg. 

Our consciousness is outside the egg, observing the outside of the egg, and the radiating thoughts arising at the egg's surface. 

It is as if the true-self egg was indestructible and its surface was impenetrable. What happens inside it can never be known - it is primarily creative. The egg creates by spontaneous generation, it creates thoughts from nothing. 

The egg is, indeed a mini-god! 

Yet the true self egg is sensitive. The egg can know directly what occurs in the medium of thinking, in the medium-between real selves (the medium in-which real selves exist), in the 'collective consciousness'. The egg senses - but its output of thoughts is not constrained by its input of thinking. 

 

A remarkable egg indeed! Each true-self-egg is, as I said, a god - capable of its own creating, albeit the creations will be ephemeral in this mortal world, which is ruled by entropy. But also capable (in principle) of becoming part of Heaven (where there is no entropy); and of participating with God in the work of eternal creation. 

Furthermore, any thinking of which we Are conscious is Not the thinking of the real self. It is merely superficial and secondary 'mental processing'. It is thinking that is not genuinely creative, but merely manipulative; taking inputs and deploying selection, combination, transformation of these inputs into outputs. 

Observable thinking is not divine but merely human. Observable thinking is materialistic; maybe thinking at an analogous level to computer processing.   

 

Anyway, this metaphor of the egg is meant to provide a way of thinking about thinking, and a way to graps how we should be conscious of our thoughts, but cannot be conscious of our thinking. 

Note: the real self is not actually solid, like an egg; but is a spiritual entity. However, I personally can't think about spiritual entities without things getting too abstract to be of any use; which is why I have fallen back on this indestructible, impenetrable egg.  

One of William Arkle's core insights is that - in normal, everyday life - people act from a multitude of false selves. The true self, which is of divine origin and potentially able to become a god, is what makes us what we are - but it may be completely buried beneath false selves; the true self may be utterly ineffectual.

These false selves are of many types. Some are the collections of traits - hereditary and socialised - that constitute our 'personality' as described and measured by psychology. Others are that mass of automatic, robotic skills and responses that we learn to deal with the problems of living; including skills like typing or driving, small-talk and routine social interaction.

You can see that false selves are the totality of what a person presents to the world; and usually also everything that a person is aware of in himself, insofar as he is aware of anything. So, our consciousness is not the same thing as our true self, because it may be unaware of the true self, may even deny the reality of any such thing as a true self.

False selves are therefore necessary but a problem, because whenever we make an effort to change ourselves in any way, the probability is that this will be a matter of one or more of the false selves trying to change us in a superficial and false direction.

This is why methods of meditation,. methods of self-improvement, will-power... all such endeavours are nearly always ineffective. It is just a matter of distorting ourselves by exaggerating one or more false selves.

And how can we consciously strive to discover and nurture our true self, when the striving is being done by a false self?

Or if we try to relax and let-go the true self; simply 'allowing' the true self to emerge from under the false ones; there is a likelihood that we will instead be releasing one or more of the false selves...

The problem is not insoluble, because it has been achieved by others (and perhaps even by our-selves, albeit infrequently and briefly); but Arkle makes clear that there is no method to it; and indeed part of solving the problem is to recognise why there is no method. We must 'quarry out' our real self from the false ones, by some kind of trial and error - discovering what works for us, here and now; but never able to make the process a standard one.

The answer can be summarised as 'intuition' - but that is just giving a name to the fact that there is no method. But the start of a solution is to define the problem - and after that to recognise when the true self is emerging and strengthening. And this can be done by learning to recognise the uniquely self-validating quality of the true self.

Once you know it is there, real and vital - we can feel the reality of the true self in an absolutely distinctive way - even though we cannot describe it.

 

The consciousness of our real self is largely beyond the understanding of our more familiar 'personality self'. 

At its most fundamental level, the real will is divine; and at this level the purpose of the real will mixes perfectly with the purposes of other divine beings. 

The real will is the manifesting of this already-harmonised divine purpose throughout the lower levels of creation, and eventually right down to the physical level. 

Thus our real self witnesses itself as it becomes more fully mature and at the same time helps to perfect the purposes of others. The real self has this power in it as a part of our divine heritage. 

All nature responds to the proper command of the real will of the real self. But the will does not command 'willfully' - it achieves command by being more fully what it is. Thus the 'sound' of the quality of its individual being mingles more loudly with the creative sound of God. 

What we usually call 'will' is actually more like 'desire power' and 'idea power', through which our lower self focuses on things it feels it wants or needs. 

But what we feel as a need in the deepest sense is not something we can 'make a decision about', we just pretend that it is a decision. Our real will has already-decided, and is something we can only be either true-to, or untrue-to: the real will is not something we are in a position to use.

Edited - for clarity, punctuation, emphasis and language - from the Summary of chapter sixteen - The Will; from A Geography of Consciousness, by William Arkle, 1974.

Notes:

1. The true individual nature of each person is divine - that is, it belongs to the nature and function of the absolute - as a consequence of all men and women being God's children.

2. Therefore, we are, each of us, directly in touch with the power and purpose of the absolute, with the divine nature - at least potentially; simply because some of the divine nature is within us.

3. However, although the divine is active within us; we are initially (personally and culturally - in childhood and in early tribal societies) unconscious of the divine within ourselves. It affects us - but we are not aware of the fact.

4. As human consciousness evolves towards higher (ie. including more self-aware) levels - we get to a 'dead centre' of total self-consciousness cut off fro awareness of the divine. This state has been called the 'dead centre' of consciousness, or the consciousness soul - it is the adolescence of human personal and cultural evolution - a necessary transition phase. This position must be moved-through before we can become actively aware of the divine within us; that is the actual experience of the divine within us (not merely the abstract fact of their being a divine element in us). 

5. But, even before we are actively aware of the divine within-us; it may be at work in an unconscious way - expressing itself (or at least trying to express itself) as may be evident implicitly. For example, our behaviours may be shaped against our conscious will - our superficial and intellectually- or socially-moulded plans and schemes may be self-sabotaged; or synchronicities may channel us in certain directions.

6. The real self - that is, the divine self, is attuned-with the divine level of action. Each person is, in this way, an essential part of the divine plan of creation. However, to participate; he or she must freely opt-in to this plan, on the basis of love and awareness of the divine plan (made possible by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ).

7. At the highest and deepest level our Life is a destiny - and indeed an unique destiny - yet that destiny is a gift, and as-such it may be declined.

8. At the deepest and highest level the true 'will'  of our true self is not chosen by us - because only at this divine level - in which the wills of many beings are harmonised.

9. Thus, because of this high-level harmonisation; the will of any one individual cannot 'sabotage' the divine plan of creation by any act or will at a lower level of consciousness. Each individual can either join in the work of creation, bringing his or her unique nature to the open-ended task; or he or she may decline to participate - leaving a gap in the original divine plan, and causing a change in the unfolding of creation.

10. The divine plan cannot be sabotaged in its character and aim (the specific plan is optional, non-mandatory, freely chosen); but it can be changed in its specifics (the plan is not a blueprint but evolutionary, pluralist, endlessly creative).  

Most of our thinking is not Pure Conceptual Thinking - indeed, it is possible and perhaps likely that most people will never engage in Pure Conceptual Thinking at any time.

Most people may, indeed almost certainly will, at times think in the realm of universal concepts - for example, this is the spontaneous thinking of childhood.

After all, at first we only have real true universal concepts to think-with - because they are 'built-in' in the sense that we are born able to access them (albeit very partially at first). However the spontaneous thought of childhood (or of, apparently, some hunter gatherer and tribal societies) is a passive thinking - by which I mean that the thinking is a product of prior causes.

By 'passive' I mean not-creative; we think what we do, because of what - in our environment, experience, memories etc - has triggered thoughts: this type of thinking is an effect not a cause. Childhood thinking is not free; but a constrained and channeled product.

If the passive thinking is using real true universal concepts, then it is true; but it is not free. It is not 'our' thinking, it does not change the web of causes and effects in the world. Such a thinker is in the (real true) world, participating in the world; but does not change the world - rather is changed by it.

However, most modern people, most of the time, do not in their thinking participate in the real, true and universal world of concepts; instead they think by using what might be termed communicated-concepts.


Communicated concepts are not a part of the realm of real, true universal concepts - they come from communications - from the people around us, from schools and colleges, from government propaganda and (mostly, nowadays) from the mass media.

Communicated concpets may also be devised by ourselves - in what appears (superficially) to be an act of creativity, but it is actually merely 'novelty'; is actually merely a selection, combination or extrapolation of other communicated concepts.

Communicated concepts are therefore percepts, inputs - and they are only possible because of the already-existing world of real true concepts that serve as an interpretative background and provide that which makes communicated concepts 'work'.

However, the communicated concepts may (usually do) make-up a surface world of thinking, a 'fake personality', which may come to occupy all attention and block our ability to think with real true concepts - indeed, that has been precisely the history of modern thought as it developed over the past several centuries.

Because communicated concepts are an artificial thought world, they can be shaped to serve immediate human wishes, to achieve human will - sometimes useful, sometime harmfully - but never in a way which engages with with the real true world.

So communicated concepts are the cause of the modern malaise of alienation - the sense (and reality) of our thinking being cut-off from reality, from each other - and from our-selves.

In thinking with communicated concepts, modern grown-up man has detached himself from the web of cause and effect, he is no longer a passive responder only - and is in that sense Modern Man is free.

Modern Man is Free but he is disengaged from reality; free but only among artificialities and pragmatic notions.

Free; but cut-off from the truth of universal concepts. 



Pure Conceptual Thinking is therefore a thinking with real, true and universal concepts - but it is a free, active and purposive thinking in this realm of universal concepts - and in that vital respect differs from the thinking of childhood.

The difference can be summarised by the concept of creativity. A young child thinks with real true concepts (albeit in a partial, selective and therefore distorted fashion) and therefore spontaneously lives in the realm of reality - but passively because immersed in the web of cause and effect. The typical modern adult thinks with artificial, arbitrary and merely-expedient (although often very 'useful') communicated concepts - but is free, because detached from the web of causation.

Pure Conceptual Thinking is like spontaneous childhood thinking, in that it is in the realm of universal concepts - therefore intrinsically dealing with truth and reality, and naturally engaged with the primary stuff of reality - overcoming of alienation.

But Pure Conceptual Thinking is free - in the sense that the thinking is not passively caused; the self is detached from the web of causes and effects, stands apart and both observes the flow of concepts in the thinking of universal reality and also (from its status as free, as an agent, as capable of uncaused thoughts) may contribute one or more new concepts to Mankind's sock of universal concepts.

This is primary creativity: which is to contribute to the universally-available stock of real true concepts with which Man may think.


Primary creativity happens (or may happen) during Pure Conceptual Thinking - and it happens in full and purposive awareness of what is happening - in awareness of the web of existing universal concepts, and in awareness of our own originating of a new concept added to that stock.

Such new universal concepts are available to all Men (capable of thinking them) without any need for communication; although those who subsequently use these new concepts do not necessarily realise that they are new, now do users of the new thought typically know anything of its origin.

Unless a primary creative thought has been communicated 'by the normal channel's (e.g. by speaking, reading and other media) - and all such channels use merely communicated concepts, hence are prone to falsehood, distortion and even inversion - the user the user of a new universal concept does not know who first thought it; does not know who created it; nor where or when this happened.

Typically only the one who first made this new universal concept, when engaged in Pure Conceptual Thinking and acting freely as an agent among the web of universal concepts, will know for sure what has been done.

But to contribute to Mankind's stock of universal concepts is, surely, the primary act of purposive creativity in this mortal life.

How should we make big life decisions? - Given that the usual two methods - logic or gut-feelings - are each inadequate, yet they cannot be combined.

The logical method is most commonly represented - at the extreme it involves something akin to stating a proposed course of action then making a list of pros and cons - and subtracting the disadvantages fro the advantages to see whether the outcome is net positive or negative. The inadequacy of this is apparent from considering how it might be employed to decide whether or not to marry someone.

Yet gut-feelings, in many ways the opposite of logic - and regarded as tending to compensate for the inadequacies of logic - are also inadequate. Their main inadequacy is that they are unstable - they vary from day to day, often from hour to hour - also, they are easily manipulated. And furthermore, gut-feelings tend to favour short-termist and selfish courses of action.

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Christians also have recourse to asking for divine revelation - and when this is clear and forthcoming it should be decisive. Yet it seems likely that there are many problems in life which we are meant (and I mean divinely meant - as part of the destiny of our particular lives) to struggle-with and work-out for ourselves. In such instances - for our own good - there will be no divine guidance forthcoming; and we will - for our own ultimate benefit - be thrown-back onto our own resources.

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My sense of it is that we need to sort-out several aspects of a situation, before we can make good decisions. In the first place we need to have an understanding that there is indeed such a things as a right decision to make - and that this rightness is defined in terms of spiritual aspects.

For instance; the right decision is not defined as the one that leads to optimal health or happiness, comfort or convenience, in the short term - but the one which is most likely to help in achievement of our eternal spiritual destiny (or necessary personal development); and this is difficult for us to evaluate given our limited and distorted perspective.

This implies that we need the right motivation - or at least to aspire to the right motivation - if we are to make the right decision.

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Having established this framework there are two main things to get right: The first is that it needs to be our true self which makes the decision; the second is that in asking for a decision, the true self must think in a way that is active - being both purposive and intuitive.

It must first be our true self that is doing the deciding - because only the true self is free, autonomous, an agent. Most people, most of the time, are working from false selves - habitual personalities that 'automatically' process information and make decisions on the basis of socialisation or training; and by being trammelled with external constraints, and learned or spontaneous compulsions.

Modern false selves are mostly materialistic - thereby ignoring or denying most of our experiences and thoughts - things known by instinct, inspiration, imagination, intuition etc. The non-materialistic 'subjective' modern selves tend to be distortions - sometimes inversions - of instincts; which we have been corrupted and propagandised into - or are the consequences of the artificiality of life.

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So we need to do the two things of thinking actively, consciously and universally (in a way which includes all aspects - not just the material) - and this thinking must be done freely by the true self (and not automatically by false selves).

Since not very many people can - at present - do this combination - then difficult, strategic life decisions will usually tend to be made badly.

And our important decisions will, therefore, usually have bad outcomes. Bad - because the decisions have been made by false selves using false reasoning...

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This analysis suggests that learning how to think properly is - or ought to be  - a major priority for modern people.

Yet, of course, real thinking is not just a means to an end - but an end in itself; and if we treat real thinking as merely a means to an end, then we will not be able to find the motivations needed to develop it.

We need to recognise, we need to be convinced that -  real thinking of the kind I describe above is something we ought to be doing for the highest, deepest, most necessary of reasons; that it is, in a phase, divinely-destined.

Which turns things around - because if real thinking is divinely destined and yet we do not do it nor do we strive to do it - then this failure is a defiance of our divine destiny: a very serious matter indeed...

This is why I feel strongly that real thinking - conscious, universal and purposive thinking by the true self - should be a major priority here and now, and for (almost) everybody.

That's the order of it, I think...

First we need to look-within - introspect - and that is difficult for most people. Which means we need to want to look within before it can be attained - want it enough to persevere.

Once Introspection is attained then there is the possibility of Intuition.

Intuition is a process - it is thinking with the real-true-divine Self. It is the most fundamental thinking of which we are capable; compared with which the great mass of what we call thinking is merely passive 'processing'.

Most of our thinking is 'caused', automatic, un-thinking - that is, it is 'programmed' by our environment and experiences - but the real-true-divine thinking is itself a cause and has no cause - it is a spontaneous origin coming from nothing prior (that is because it is divine, and that is what divine is).

But real-true-divine thinking is not just some different kind of process that happens to be uncaused - it is participating in reality, which means it is intrinsically true.

(Real-true-divine thinking is Freedom; it is indeed the only Freedom - the only time when we our-selves are agent, because autonomous from being-caused.) 

So when we are thinking intuitively, our thinking is true; intrinsically true, necessarily true - as well as being creative. It is true because it participates in reality, it is creative because it is uncaused - and these attributes are indivisible because they all are consequences of its nature.

Let us call this real-true-divine thinking Imagination - using Coleridge's distinction of Imagination in contrast to 'Fancy' - which is merely passive, caused, secondary and not-true because relating to not-real things. Fancy is merely a product of normal, automatic processing, an output rearranged from inputs...

But when we define Imagination as the primary, creative thinking that participates in reality; we can see that Imagination is intrinsically valid.

Imagination is indeed primary - it is not merely useful or expedient, Imagination is knowledge.

Imagination is indeed the only knowledge - only that which is imagined (in the way and sense described above) is real and true; and other forms of thinking are not.

In normal discourse, Imagination is synonymous with 'imaginary' i.e. untrue, unreal - but now it is apparent that Imagination is our divine selves thinking in the universal realm of reality: Imagination is knowing.



 

The answers to such questions vary extremely widely; from those who say that being a Christian is strongly associated with greater happiness, more hope, love and courage; through those who say it has no necessary effect either way; to those who emphasise that to be a Christian has often been to invite isolation, persecution, suffering, and a miserable existence.

There are several reasons why the answers vary - the first is that there may be a big difference between what happens-to a person and how they feel inside. There is no necessary correlation, positive or negative, between the external conditions of a person's life and their inner state. Some of the happiest of people have been among the poorest and weakest and most despised; and many of the most prosperous, comfortable, powerful and high status people are utterly miserable.

Another reason is that there is a kind of here-and-now surface pleasure or misery; but there is also a deep, tidal happiness or despair. To put it differently, life can be seen as bounded by birth and death; or it may be known as extending across infinite time - and the infinite perspective recontextualises the ripplings of immediate positive and negative emotions.

But there is a deep reason for the variation in effect that becoming a Christian, or being a Christian, has on people - and this relates to the variation in 'the self' they inhabit.

Most people in the modern Western world identify with a false self in themselves (a superficial, fake, socially-inculcated, often labile 'personality') - and this also applies to most Christians. But some Christians live (some or much of the time) from their real self. The real self is the divine within us - God-within-us, by which we are children of God. The false self is false, but the real self is true.

Probably nobody lives all the time from their real self; and this state is usually something intermittent and partial. But when a Christian is living from their real (and divine) self; he will be happy - even when he is also suffering.

Because to live from the real self in knowledge of the truth of Jesus is to be happy.

I think many Christians miss this fact and necessity; because they neglect the extent to which the modern world alienates us from our real self - that is what such phenomena as the mass media, bureaucracy, totalitarian monitoring and control are all about. And an alienated Christian - a Christian living from a false self - is probably unhappy even though he is a Christian.

In conclusion, Christianity IS therapeutic, and DOES make a person happier WHEN that person is living from his REAL self - but not necessarily when they are not.

There isn't an agreed word to describe the kind of Christian I am - so I will label it Intuitive Christianity for present purposes - and compare it with what might broadly be called Catholic and Protestant versions. Understand that this is a short post - and what is described are 'ideal types' meant to capture a particular essence of each version. I am talking of ultimates - not of practical living - which will surely be multi-factorial...

The transition between childhood and adulthood takes place at adolescence - and adolescence is the only path from the one to the other. The essence of this transition - from an ultimate and divine perspective - is the transition from Obedience to Freedom.

(Noting that Freedom means something like Agency - i.e. becoming a conscious, actively-autonomous, personally-strategic adult: a source of innate motivation, decision, creativity.)

Obedience roots The Good externally - in some person, institution or social group. The Christian assumption is that these external sources are conduits of God's will.

(As in childhood - the child's role is to know and follow the guidance of parents, family, church, school, social group etc. - and such obedience is 'passive' - it does not require consciousness, and indeed young children are only somewhat conscious.) 

Freedom roots The Good in The Self, internally. The Christian assumption here is that God is within-us - as a deep, true Real Self.

Note that Freedom (that is Agency) is truly Good only if the Real Self is Good. And in practice this is a matter of contention among Christians - because clearly the overall-self is not wholly Good - so some kind of discrimination, definition and distinction concerning the Self is required.

1. The Catholic belief is that the Church (the mystical Church, contrasted with the organisation) is Good, is the conduit of God's will - but the individual is fallen and (in essence) depraved such that for the individual to be Good entails Obedience to the (mystical) Church.

God intervenes to ensure that The Church is and remains the conduit for God's will, and worthy of Obedience. Freedom is mostly about choosing this Obedience.

In practice, therefore, all Men are more-or-less permanently children; so permanent Obedience a necessity. Freedom/ Agency of The Self would be a cruelty; because as individual agents all Men are damned... self-damned by their sin and incapacities.

Freedom is therefore, and necessarily, tightly circumscribed by the overall duty of Obedience.  

2. The Protestant also believes that Men are depraved; but with the capacity to know Good by Obedience to divine revelation, especially as encapsulated in Scripture.

That is, all Men - as autonomous selves - are incapable of Freedom in the ultimate sense of agency rooted in the Self; but all Men have the innate capacity to understand Scripture and choose Obedience to it.

God intervenes to make this understanding of scripture possible; and that the Freedom of choosing to obey Scripture will be under God's will. Freedom is tightly circumscribed by the overall duty of Obedience.

3. My understanding (Intuitive Christianity) is that Freedom/ Agency is our proper, divinely-destined and ultimate goal - here-and-now, in The West; superseding the primacy of Obedience (whether to Church, Scripture or any other external source).

Christianity therefore ought to be rooted in the Real Self and pervasively based upon the Real Self; and Freedom ought not to be constrained to the primal chose of Obedience to Church or Scripture; but this discerning Freedom ought to be incrementally extended to all other matters of primary importance.

This is based upon a conviction that the Real Self is in fact God-within-us; and also distinctive to ourselves alone. In other words, as children of God we inherit God's divinity - but also each child is unique and has an unique destiny within creation.

(There must be a distinction between the true-real-divine Self which is intrinsically Good - and the multiptude of false selves which arise from error, sin, by inculcation, for expedience etc. - which may be good or evil; but are not divine, are often arbitrary and typically transient.) 

We all (potentially) know The Good innately and directly - and the ultimate authority is therefore with, not external; the ultimate value is Freedom to live from the Real Self, not by Obedience to any external source excepting our direct knowing of God.

Therefore, in an ultimate sense, my conviction is that Man - any man, any woman - may attain to salvation and live a life of theosis from-within; without membership of The Church or access to Scripture of other external sources; and, indeed, in an ultimate sense it is proper and best for a Christian's Life to be rooted in n the Freedom of the Real Self, and not in any external source.

In sum: Freedom is a higher (more mature, more adult) value than Obedience. 

External sources may of course be helpful, perhaps very helpful - but here-and-now in The West external sources may also be extremely harmful - the Church may be (usually is) subverted, corrupted and anti-Christian; Scripture, its translation and its interpretation is likewise usually corrupted, distorted, selective, misrepresented - inverted.

Indeed, it is precisely this situation that creates the urgent necessity of an Intuitive Christianity based on the individual and Freedom.

My understanding, therefore, is that Freedom has always been an essential element of Christianity; but in the past Freedom was used to make a single choice of Obedience; of whom or what to serve. In the past Obedience was more important than Freedom.

My contention is that this primal and vital Christian Freedom ought now to be extended to all major and significant aspects of Faith. From now, Freedom is more important than Obedience. That is our divine destiny; if Man is to move from his current spiritual adolescence into adult maturity.

In attempting to cure ourselves in ingrained habits of positivistic, nihilistic and despair-inducing modes of modern thinking; rather than trying to develop our imaginations and to acknowledge the reality of extra-sensory communications (as I suggested yesterday) - another different (but complementary) approach is to recognise that what we are accustomed to sense as as 'hard facts' of reality - that seem to force themselves upon us, such that we act as passive receivers, those thngs we feel ourselves to be 'sensing' rather than 'imagining' (the sky, this chair, my fingers)... these are as thoroughly 'imagined' as anything else. 

Which is not to say the the sky, my chair, this computer are unreal - but that they are imagined. Facts do not have a direct route into our brains thereby to make accurate representations of themselves - rather, everything we get 'directly' is in a primary sense of divine origin - given us or built-into us by revelation.

Vision, hearing, touch, taste, smeel and feeling are not the direct communication routes for reality; rather the direct route for communication runs between God the creator, and our inmost true self - by 'pathways' (or mechanisms) imperceptible, undetectable, un-measurable to physics and biology. 

It is not 'us and them', mind and facts - because us affects our sensory (as well as imaginative) grasp of them. Indeed (pushed to the limit) with no us, there would be no them - interpretation is more basic than facts, spirit is more basic than material.

Hard facts are neither hard nor facts - although there is a real reality.

The contrast between 'fundamental' sensations which force themselves upon us, and 'fabciful' imagination which we steer from our free agency, is a hierarchy which should be inverted - the most powerful evidence for which is that this has been inverted, by most humans, through most of history and even now in many places of the world.

Instead of perceiving 'reality' (like Western Man does) as a dead and meaningless world with a few temporary subjective and unreliable floating-islands of life and consciousness; the spontaneous and traditional human view is apparently the opposite - of an alive and purposive world, with 'objective' analysis merely an temporary, expedient, pragmatic tactic for attaining certain discrete goals - a means to an end.

In reality there are no facts - so that the contrast between the world of sensed objective facts and the world of imagined subjective ideas is a false dichotomy: these are one world.

This notion is a truth much emphasised in recent decades, partially and to create a falsehood. The project is sometimes termed de-literalisation: and the idea is that we should cease to regard things as true or false, but instead symbolically. This sustains the kind of self-refuting, yet universally destructive, relativism which is now mainstream.

But this relativism is a consequence of atheism, which takes a correct but partial analysis then removes the religious context - indeed, all ideas become nonsense when detached from any root in the divine.

(Most obviously in science - the whole endeavor of science becomes nothing but generic bureaucracy - careerism, as modern research mostly now is, when detached from a religious framework and the pursuit of transcendental truth.)

However, within the religious context of God the creator as our loving Father, then we can understand that imagination is primarily a way of understanding the workings of our deepest true self - which is divine (because we are children of God) albeit only embryonically, or nascently, divine.

In other words, much of our lives are 'automatic' - vegetative and animal processes, many of them simply functioning to perform routine tasks, or else arbitrarily implanted in us by culture and training. But that which makes us human is a deep, divine level of self-consciousness - and that is the core of our being, that is what looks out onto the world - and that is what apprehends reality by the faculty of imagination.

In sum, this is what we need to train in ourselves: this is what we need to make a habit -- that when we look-out-onto the world, we do not either lose-ourselves in a fluid undifferentiated reality (like that of childhood) that seems to 'drown' our self-awareness; or else a world in which our own  self-awareness is mocked and crushed by the rock-like objectivity of cumulative hard facts.

We should aim to retain self-awareness at all times - that is indeed the destined (divinely intended) future of human consciousness.

We should regard what used to be hard facts from our dominant and sustained centre of self-awareness - of consciousness.

So that we look-out-from our sense of self onto a world which contains many kinds of things - we will see, feel and know that all is secondary to that regarding consciousness; that there is nothing out there in the world which is not imagined.

BUT, that the self which does the regarding is not imagined. That conscious, regarding self is the 'given', the 'assumption' which makes possible all other knowledge. It is not infallible nor is it 100 percent correct - but its basic,potential validity is real and fundamental because the true self is partly divine, and it is in communication with the fully divine. 

If we use the nomenclature of 'self' to express our true, innermost and embryonically-divine nature, and 'persona' to describe the public, interactive aspect - the 'personality' which is a consequence of experience; then we can see that while they need to be distinguished, the two are bound together as a polarity.

We start-out as the self, interacting with nature (the environment, everything that is not-the-self) and participating in it. At this stage life is real and involving because our selves are interacting with it and we know, therefore, moment to moment; that everything 'out-there' is known only by the interaction with the self 'in here'.

But at this stage, 'nature' overwhelms us and drives us, because pretty much all of the self is used in this interaction. We do not feel separate from the environment (or hardly so) but the cost is that we are unfree - because we cannot separate our self, the self is swept-along by the environment.

(The environment is experienced as real, alive, conscious - but the self is unnoticed and has no distinctive role: life is lived, the self does not live life.)

So, the self develops the persona - the public mask - which serves the useful purpose of interacting with the environment using automatic algorithms. The persona is like a protective robot which does the routine work of dealing with nature (including other people) - and the robot leans from experience how to do this.

(In each life, a human moves - to some extent - from the naked self dealing with the environment in the un-self-consciousness of early childhood, absorbed in the mother and family, home and community; to the later childhood and adolescent experience of becoming self-conscious - when the self is experienced as distinct from, potentially set-against, the environment (both social and physical).

The self benefits from the persona (at least initially, potentially) by having the persona do much of the routine work, and thus the self becomes increasingly aware of itself, and aware that it is separate from the environment - because now the persona is interposed. The self has autonomy, time and energies to devote to contemplating its self, its condition and situation, and to considering strategy beyond the moment to moment interactions with nature. Philosophy becomes possible.


As the environment becomes more complex and demanding (for example with increasing complexity of society) so the self diminishes in significance, and the persona increases in importance; until the persona is doing almost everything, using the 'automatic' (robotic) processes it has evolved. The self begins to lose contact with reality, because it no longer deals with nature; the self - that was master - becomes a helpless prisoner of its slave, the persona  - the robot takes-over and imprisons the divine self.

(Initially the self was like an ideal manager who deals with strategy; while the persona was like the front-like workforce who mostly implement standard protocols to deal with the outside world. The manager knows about the outside world via the workforce and has a strong sense of the identity of the whole organization. But later the front-line workers imprison the manager and there is then no strategy at all, nobody has any knowledge of the overall situation of the organization in term of its own goals or the organizations situation in the environment: there is just the workforce, who are unconscious of everything except the immediate business of implementing predetermined protocols.)

So the persona is now doing pretty-much all the work and the self is no longer aware of 'nature' nor is the self directing the persona strategically; but is living in enforced idleness and impotence, having no direct contact with outer reality. Since we as individuals live ultimately in the self as the default to which we revert when not actively engaged with the outer world; insofar as we are aware at all, we experience our state (i.e. the state of the self) as alienation, impotence, meaninglessness, frustration - and indeed begin to doubt first our significance and then our reality.

Thus nihilism; when our self begins to doubt first its own reality (materialism, positivism), then - by a natural inference - doubt the reality of everything else (solipsism).

However, the relationship between self and persona is one of polarity; they cannot really be divided. The self can be overwhelmingly dominant, or the persona can be - as in modern culture; but they are both part of the same phenomenon (there must be an inner core and there must also be a periphery where this inner core interacts with what surrounds it - although the relative size of core and periphery may vary widely) and the reality is that the persona is generated continually by the self, and vice versa.


There are three possible futures:

1. We might stay as we are (and have been for more than two centuries in The West): We have a self that is unaware not just of the outer world but of its own reality - and therefore utterly unaware of the work of the persona: a self that simply takes for granted the persona, and since it lacks contact with environment it is unconscious of that too. So there is just a demoralized and self-despizing isolated self, for whom 'reality' is the product of the persona - and the self is alternately overwhelmed by this reality and doubting of its own reality; or doubts outer-reality and supposes that everything is a product of the self: the state of solipsism.

2. We might go back to the earlier stage of the self interacting directly with the outer world (unprotected by the persona), and unconscious of itself - the persona shrinking back to its earlier minimal state. This could probably only happen if the environment was greatly reduced in complexity (including size). This move to extinguish self-consciousness also amounts to a kind of death wish by which consciousness wills its own extinction.


3. We might go forward to a state of greater consciousness. The Self becomes aware of the persona, aware of the reality of the persona (and therefore of the outer environment with which the persona deals), and aware of the work-methods of the persona - aware that is, of the standard protocols of the persona in dealing with nature.

 This is metaphysics as an active process; it is awareness of our fundamental assumptions. Stage 3 is, indeed, primarily about increased awareness - new awareness of that which we previous took for granted hence were constrained by. It is therefore awareness that makes us ultimately free.

(It is as if we are currently sleepwalking, and have indeed been sleepwalking through all history - either unconsciously dominated by or unknowingly cut-off-from the outer environment. The evolution of consciousness is about increasing that of which we are aware, of bringing it to consciousness: a matter of waking-up!)

The self again becomes real - remains free and autonomous, because it retains the benefits of being protected by the persona. But the persona is no longer taken for granted nor assumed to be giving a complete and unbiased picture of the outer environment - rather, the persona is brought to awareness in its reality and qualities.

We will know that the outer environment is real, and we will also know that we are inextricably and necessarily involved in that outer environment - because everything we know about it comes from interaction. The division between inner and outer is therefore erased, and replaced by awareness of the distinction (but not division) between the self and the persona.


So, with the polarity of self and persona we reach an ultimate reality - beyond which we cannot go, because it makes no sense to try and do so. The polarity of self and persona is the conscious recognition and awareness that the two are different but make up a single process operating through time - indeed, operating eternally.

It is meditation on, contemplation of, the polarity between self and persona that holds the key to moving onto Stage 3.

**
(Beyond an ultimate reality of the polarity of self and persona, lies the ultimate polarity of God and Man - but that is already dealt with by Christian faith; within which the above schema should be embedded.)

Real freedom is something that happens - or more often doesn't happen - in thinking; and only in thinking. (What we do is constrained - but how we think may be free.)

Of course, much, most and in some people all thinking is automatic; merely trained or habitual - or a product not of thinking but instead of some causal factor, whether internal or external.

Free thinking is self-caused - and if your metaphysical understanding does not allow for self-causation, then you cannot be free (or, you cannot acknowledge and will deny your own freedom).

Freedom is that thinking which comes from the true self - and the true self is able to be free because it is divine - at least partly.

We are divine because we are children of God - and not fully divine because we are only very immature children of God. It follows that we are not always free - and some people are, apparently, not-at-all free - not least because they deny their freedom (as above).

(Self-caused thinking is a property of the divine; and for an individual person to be free entails that that individual person is individually divine.)

Self-acknowledged freedom is, therefore, pretty much restricted to Christians - and among Christians only to those who really believe that: 1. we are really Children of God; 2. with something of divinity in us (even in mortal earthly life); and 3. (sometimes, potentially) autonomous agents, capable of originating new, uncaused thoughts from an uncorrupted (albeit embryonic) true self.

**

Note added in explanation: By 'restricted to Christians' I mean that Eastern philosophies tend to regard external reality and the self as illusions - as does scientism/ positivism/ materialism; and the pure monotheisms tend to regard the autonomous self as essentially operating in defiance of God - and indeed quite a few Christians have also seemed to adopt this assumption in practice, if not in theory. Only a (relatively) few Christians seem to give free will/ agency/ the autonomous and primarily creative self the full value (both in theory and in practice) which is in line with the fundamental requirements of Gospel teaching.

*
Modern man is prone to destroy his own possibility of happiness by adopting a nihilistic framework of belief - that is, Man adopts a set of basic, metaphysical assumptions about reality, which makes-impossible anything more than momentary and unrelated 'incidents' of 'subjective' happiness.

*

In contrast, we need to recognize that

1. We are not separate from reality, we personally are part of the whole manifestation of everything. What applies to reality, also applies to us as individuals.

2. We are not accidental. We are purposive; there is reason for things being the way they are, happening the way they do.

We are thus an intentional part of all the on-going schemes in the universe.

*

We are also free agents within this scheme - we are each a source of causation, not just a passive consequence of other causes.

We are each an active part of a kaleidoscopically-evolving pattern.

*

If we saw things aright, then the perception of synchronicity - that paradox of meaningful coincidence - would be normal, not exceptional. We would know it, not guess it: learn from it, not doubt it.

We would recognize that although life is a matter of problems; alienation and nihilism (subjective-isolation and meaningless-purposelessness) are neither of them real problems - they are modern pseudo-problems: implanted in us by a false, destructive, self-hating, self-annihilating impulse.

Having reduced modern man to despair, modernity then offers the palliatives of pleasure and self-forgetfulness via the mass media, self-medication and sex - that is, those momentary and unrelated 'incidents' of 'subjective' happiness we started-with.

If happiness is defined as subjective, and when happiness is momentary, and when each state of happiness is seen as detached from each other - neither linked in a pattern nor organized by a purpose - then happiness itself becomes a source of despair.

Which is the modern situation.

*

You most probably already know all this, in your innermost true and real self - yet that real self is not in control; and instead the real you is being passively-carried from one state and situation to another, by a false personality self that was supposed to be a servant to your real self, but has ended up as master.

So now, your automatic responses to the world have become organized and linked-together to make a formidable obstacle to your real happiness. Something which is, and ought to seem easy - i.e. recognizing that we are apart of a purposeful reality - has come to seem absurd and impossible.

The simple act of recognition of the meaningfulness and purposefulness of all things and our intrinsic place in this scheme... this simple mental act has to work-against a net of linked illusions and the inertia of entrenched habit - it is so 'natural' to lapse back into the prevalent illusions of nihilism and alienation; and if you don't you will be seen as dumb/ crazy/ dangerous by those who are paralysed and passive.

*

In the end, it is up-to-you and your-responsibility; only you - the real you - has the power to make the necessary decision to recognize and acknowledge your true situation.

You have the power both to recognize it or to deny it. 

And the worst of all uses of this power is to deny-to-yourself that you-yourself have this power - but instead to pretend-to-yourself that you are merely a passive, contingent, sense-less, self-deluded, momentary spark in a void.

That is the ultimate in alienation and nihilism; and it is ultimately self-imposed. 

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

If we imagine the Real Self as the yolk of an egg, surrounded by the white which is Consciousness - and the egg being immersed-in the World - then the evolutionary development of consciousness can be (crudely!) envisaged as the thickening of the white (Consciousness) until the yolk-Self is absolutely cut-off from the World.

This thickening, and reducing permeability of Consciousness develops through the lifespan, and also through the history of  Man - reaching its maximum in The West: first and at the greatest extreme in England. We begin with our Self in direct contact with the World - but this contact diminishes through development.

What happened is that our sense of perspective, our sense of who we are, became located in the white of the egg, in Consciousness - from-which we can look-out at the World; or inward at the Real Self... thus we get the separation of the objective and the subjective; and modern alienation.

The usual solution is to try and weaken Consciousness, to obliterate the white - for example by trances and other altered states, perhaps by taking intoxicating drugs such as alcohol. This creates a simulacrum of the childhood/ early man state of the yolk-self immersed in the World. But it is only partly effective, and at the cost of generalised behavioural impairment, reduced memory etc.

Another idea is to try and strengthen Consciousness by some kind of training in concentration, meditation or the like. This also fails, because we are still alienated; because when Consciousness leads, it will be all about planning, simplified modelling, narrowing and focusing... It is like trying to live by a flow chart, or by protocols.

Such life - located in Consciousness - feels dry and two-dimensional, and is prone to gross error; because it forces its simple systems onto reality - it imposes itself, and Man remains isolated.

What, then, is the proper (divinely destined) future? It strikes me that we need to regard Consciousness as more like a forum, a medium; a place where the Self and the World meet and join-up. 

Our real self, our Being, generates thought; and the Beings of the World generate thoughts; and these thoughts both meet in our Consciousness, so that we are no longer cut off.

But Consciousness does Not impose itself; does Not attempt to control either the Self or the World. We need to cease to strive, plan, organise, choose... instead we need to allow the right behaviours to emerge, in full consciousness, from the interaction of Self and World.

This is what intuition ought to be; that 'knowing' when something is true, beautiful and virtuous because we observe it is real; because we observe it is creation. But this happens, consciously, 'in' the egg-white of Consciousness - whereas in childhood, in early Man, it was un-conscious - we then simply were; we were being but did not know it. Now we know it; because the joining of Self and World happens in Consciousness; instead of (in the past) joining directly.

This is to have a creative relationship with the World, it is to participate in divine creation, and to know we participate, and how. 

There is no place for our Consciousness to try and impose itself on creation - when we are in the proper mode of Consciousness our original thoughts meet with the thought of the Beings of the World; and naturally these are harmonious and coherent aspects of the totality of creation.

What I get from this, is that the attempt to stand-outside the process is the mistake. We want to be a part of it; which means that our Consciousness ought to be much more like observation than (a failing attempt to) control.

Another mistake is to suppose that Free Will is conscious choice; or that Agency is about consciously inserting our-Selves into reality... 'Agency' ought to be a matter of our real Self Participating-in reality; and this must be a loving co-operation - there is no place for 'will'.

We should neither strive to obliterate Consciousness, nor to pump-up Consciousness into a pseudo-God; instead we acknowledge that the Consciousness can 'watch' as our thinking emerges from the primary source of the Self, but cannot penetrate the Self; can 'watch' as the thoughts from the Self interact with the thoughts flowing in from the World - but ought not to try and distort or compel what happens between these realities.

It can't anyway - but the attempt to do so is what keeps us alienated.

There is a school of though that says our fundamental assumptions cannot consciously be chosen - or, more accurately, that if they are thus chosen then they will be feeble. The idea is that only those fundamental beliefs which we have without choice are genuinely motivating. 

Robert Frost indignantly denounced college teaching that 'frisks Freshmen of their principles'. At Bread Loaf in 1925 he declared that a boy with all his beliefs drawn out of him is in no condition to learn. Or even to live. Everybody needs some beliefs as unquestionable as the axioms of geometry*. No postulates deliberately adopted could ever have the force. We had to have unarguable, undemonstrable, unmistakeable axioms, just three or four. And if we didn't abuse our minds we should surely have them. One such is genuineness is better than pretense. Another is that meanness is intolerable in oneself. And another is that death is better than being untrustworthy. 

From A Swinger of Birches: a portrait of Robert Frost, by Sidney Cox (1957)  

There is something valid in this argument, that requires response, because our fundamental assumptions are not arbitrary. 

We surely cannot just stick a pin in a list and choose anything that comes-up as our baseline beliefs, and then expect to be motivated strongly enough to resist being derailed by the many temptations of life and infirmities of our own nature. 

On the other hand, it seems obvious that - on the one hand - peoples fundamental assumptions are being inculcated-into-them by deliberate and socio-political propaganda, in ways that harm the people. So, if we just accept our assumptions as something 'given', we are in fact merely blinding ourselves to our own exploitative psychological enslavement.  

Furthermore; modern motivations are actually very feeble, by comparison with the past; as can be seen by the collapse of personal courage and individuality of character - which has been very obvious and evident over recent decades. The docility, homogeneity, and automatic-obedience of Western Man is now astonishing to behold; when compared with the middle twentieth century. 

So, it seems that there is no valuable alternative but to become aware of our own deepest values, assumptions, metaphysical beliefs; and to evaluate them; and then to choose between possibilities. 

It is this choosing upon which all depends: because what we choose must not only be something we regard as right, true, correct; but it must also be something that provides us with a strong motivation - such that we can avoid being deflected off-course by the first problem, the first contrary expediency, we encounter... 

So that we may have the courage of our convictions... Because - without courage, convictions are worthless.  

People often talk as if 'will power', determination is the answer; but the strength of will-power itself derives from fundamental convictions. It is our assumptions that provide the power of will. So our will cannot overcome feeble and false assumptions. Again we are returned to the need to choose assumptions; but to choose the right assumptions. 

Choosing our assumptions is (and should be) more like a quest, or a path of discovery; than it is like an arbitrary coin-flip. 

It is a matter of finding our most fundamental values. We each need to find-out what things we most value, deep down, through time. 

These profound values may be very different from, may indeed oppose or contradict, the values we have expressed, or implemented in previous living. Our fundamental values may be a kind of secret knowing: and, at first, secret even from our conscious-selves.

It may also be the case that these fundamental values turn out to be inconsistent among themselves, that they clash - and therefore tend to cancel-out: this may be another cause of feeble motivation and cowardice of conviction.   

So the choosing of deep assumptions is also, potentially, a choosing-between. 

What is the it that does the exploring, questing, discovering, choosing? That's another matter - I am talking about the real self or true self - which is also the divine self. 

Only when it is the divine self who is doing the choosing can we expect a Good outcome. 

If, instead, the above process was merely done by our 'personality self', that 'self' constructed by societal inculcation, a mere selfish-self, and pleasure-seeking self, or any other kind of evil-motivated self... Then clearly the end result is going to be bad (i.e. bad in a Christian sense). 

It would then merely be a choice made by that which is propagandized, passive, controlled... Thus no real 'choice' at all... 

Therefore, as always, there are (at least) two changes that must be made, two processes that must simultaneously be implemented. 

...This is nearly always true. When only one obstacle is before us, when only one kind of change is needed for our betterment; it will usually be overcome sooner or later, spontaneously, without need for profound change.

What separates us from awakening, from betterment, from initiation of a positive transformative process; is the requirement for (at least) two simultaneous efforts: in this case 1. the need to find and work-with our real/ divine self, in 2. the project searching-for and choosing our fundamental assumptions.  

In conclusion: Yes! fundamental assumptions really can be known, evaluated, and chosen; but for this to be valuable and effective entails that we discover something about our deepest values, and also that this 'discovery' is accomplished by that which is divine within us. 

 

*Note. The fact that there is more-than-one axiomatic system of geometry, more than one set of postulates - and that the best choice between axioms depends on the function to which the geometry is being-put - undercuts Frosts analogy in an ultimate sense; although it still retains rhetorical validity. 

As infants in school; we sometimes used to make a gang by the simple expedient of going around the playground and asking other boys if they wanted to be in our gang. Most would say yes, simply because they wanted to be inside the new gang; not outside.

The standard threat to some other boy who displeased was to say 'I'm going to get a gang on you'. Typically nothing was done; but the idea was that the threatener would form a gang against the threatened. It could be done, quite easily, because plenty of kids could be found to go along with it - on the side of any random kid who asked, and against any other random kid... at least for a while.

And a great deal of adult life depends upon the innate desire to join gangs and to avoid being ganged-up-on. This is the primary social basis of tribal society and probably of our ancestors.


Yet this gang-forming propensity is very weak among modern Westerners. In a sense, we want to be gang members a lot more than we want actually to be In a gang. We want protection and a share in the power of a gang; but will not, we cannot accept the necessary group standards of behaviour, leadership, loyalty.

The key thing is 'cannot'. Modern Man just-is an individualist. He cannot form groups.


This is just a fact - but the problem is that he is a weak individualist. He is enough of an individualist not be be able to form groups, even when he wants to. But he is not enough of an individualist to take responsibility for his beliefs, for his thinking.

Indeed, modern Man does not take his individuality seriously enough to find out what it is. He accepts what he is told about his real nature, his true self. He expects to find his real true self outside himself, in the culture! So nearly everybody simply goes-along-with making a choice of self, a selection from prevalent mainstream notions of how 'we' are - all of which happen to be false, incoherent, and demotivating.

In effect: Modern culture gives us a finite, approved, checklist of characteristics; and we are invited to tick-off which apply. The uniqueness of that selection is supposed to be our individuality. The checklist's limitation is what makes us 'belong'. 


Genuine individuality of thinking is a glorious and optimistic thing; but the individualism of the large majority of modern Men is a pathetic and grovelling sham; with most of the disadvantages of group membership and very few of the advantages.

If modern man is regarded as being stuck in spiritual adolescence; then we can see that the problem of adolescence is that it is a transitional state between child and adulthood. When what should be a transition becomes permanent, then we get our situation.

The adolescent is individualist enough to be rebellious against parents and tradition; but groupish-enough that he is slavishly conformist to the fashion driven whims of peers - and these adolescent fashions are imposed top-down and with an exploitative and corrupting agenda. That is the permanent state of modern Man.

In sum the adolescent is primarily negative: knowing what he does not want, but unsure and labile; changeable about what he does want. And that is precisely the nature of the mainstream, modern, secular, Leftist socio-politics. It is essentially negative, defined by what it opposes (here and now) - but without any stable or coherent notion of what it wants and aims-for in the future.


It is understandable that the solution for the self-destructiveness of modern Man is seen in a restoration of traditional forms of groupishness - ie. individual conformity to churches. Traditional groupishness is vastly superior to the arrested-half-rebellion of modernity. If that was the choice, the choice would be straightforward.

But it is not the choice. It is not possible. Once adolescence has been reached we cannot return to spiritual childhood, not genuinely nor honestly. Childhood is not an option. Our actual choice is between arrested adolescence and growing up.

In spiritual Christian, and cultural, terms: we began as individuals subordinated and loyal to the group-church of our environment. We entered a semi-individualist adolescent phase of rejecting the church; and ideologically self-subordinating to the partial, expedient individualism of a rebellious teen gang mentality. We need to continue through adolescence, and out the other side, to become fully individual.

As spiritually grown-up individuals, we may choose to work with traditional groups, with churches - but the relationship is then conscious, voluntary, and contingent upon the behaviour of the church. Since we have become adult individuals, we no longer regard loyalty to the church as the primary value.


Much of the desire for a strong church; and to be in a church, of a church - is an unrealistic and impossible yearning for that lost playground security of being 'in a gang'; and not having the gang set against you. Modern Man finds he is not, and cannot be, truly in a gang; yet the fact scares him - it scares him at an existential level, a pervasive and intolerable angst - from which he escapes into distraction and intoxication and Not Thinking.

Having a developed sense of self-consciousness - being rooted in this; we cannot help but evaluate and judge the 'external' church against our personal standards. Internal standards, personal intuition, is the only evidence we will accept - yet modernity undercuts all personal intuition as arbitrary, epiphenomenal, self-deceptive, lacking any objective validity.

This is why we need, more than anything else perhaps, to understand how and when intuition has objective validity; to develop confidence in genuine intuition - as being a form of direct knowledge of the divine: the divine within that makes us Sons of God, and the divine without: the Holy Ghost, which is the living Jesus Christ.

It is essential to stop teaching morality in terms which can be mistaken for the philosophy of external and obvious valuation; of valuation which concedes that behaviour must be good if it is not ‘found-out’ to be bad. Rather must it be said that unless the inner aspect of one's attitude is healthy, the result of any behaviour will be psychological unrest and discontent.

One may succeed in the world and gain the adoration of many people, but if this is to fail to remain true to innermost nature it will mean failure in our own judgement of ourself and in the relating of our many parts to our whole nature. Since this is the root cause of unhappiness it is also where real success and failure lies and where one reaps and enjoys the real treasures of existence.

The essence of real religious and moral aspiration is not between ourselves and God but between ourselves and our Self. At the same time the monitoring activity of God and his many divine assistants is necessary, but not as a substitute for Self-confrontation, but rather to ensure that this condition comes about.

Aspirations towards God are therefore of the utmost value, not as a means of becoming a slave or servant of God, but in order that they can be directed towards the true goal which is the valuation of our True Self.

As we direct the love our children have for us in such a way that it enlarges their own nature and not in order to make them more devoted and servile, so our divine parents divert our love in such a way that it reflects back into our own essential nature again.

Love is therefore valued by God, not as something he wishes to possess, but as a positive expression of our highest attitude which he can receive in the spirit in which it is offered and then use for his creative work. This is the bringing of our individual nature to a condition of divine Self-consciousness.
Extracted from the close of the Chapter 'Education' in William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness (1974)

**

This is a passage which is easy to misunderstand but which I have found to be important. Arkle is clarifying the kind of God wants for us by examining the kind of love we want (or ought to want) from our growing-up children.

In other words, God wants us to give our love from our deep and true self, by an act of agency - and not from the kind of servile devotion that is implicitly based more upon terror than adoration. Arkle is saying that we ought not to fear God (any more than an adult Man ought to fear his father) - but to trust in God's love. 

Of course, a lot of our lives are spent growing-up - but it is important to know what is being aimed-at in full adulthood - not least so that we don't get into bad habits or have false structuring beliefs and expectations. 

Arkle here, as elsewhere, is suspicious of the traditional Christian emphasis on 'worship' as the defining quality of Man's relationship to God. While it is right and proper for a young boy to worship his father - this is not a suitable basis for a grown-up child's relationship with his father.

Arkle is suggesting that the same applies to religion - and he bases this on his intuitive understanding of the fundamental reason why God (who is in fact a dyad of Heavenly Parents) created Men (their sons and daughters) and everything else.

Arkle believes that the rationale for creation was ultimately in order that some (as many as possible) Men might 'evolve' and grow from our current partial and embryonic divinity to a full divinity on the same level as our Heavenly Parents. Therefore, our mother and father in heaven do not want us to get stuck in a stance that regards them as infinitely remote - but rather as finitely (albeit vastly) remote, and incrementally approachable over time. 

We probably tend to feel a superstitious anxiety about thinking or doing this; as if God was some kind of hyper-irritable and easily-offended tyrant; but Arkle is trying to reassure us that friendly affection and trusting confidence is exactly the attitude that God most wants us to have; as illustrated here:

http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-final-words-of-geography-of.html.   

See also a fuller excerpt of the above at:
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-deep-nature-of-morality.html
        

There are just so many ways in which modern culture is actively subversive, inverting values and corrupting behaviour - that to focus upon any in particular is to invite failure. 

Special attention paid to a specific response to a specific problem (which will usually result in the need to do something quite complex and effortful) - opens us up to a weakened and distracted response to the many other simultaneous problems. 

If we take a single-issue approach to dealing with our sins, in a world where there are So Many sins, we will end-up chasing our tails. Even if we weed-out one form of sin by great effort, meanwhile the others will have grown unchecked*. 

What is required is that values we live-by, be rooted in some source of real and true values that is autonomous from the mainstream culture. 

In other words; when Western civilization is become an ocean of corruption in which we must swim - because its corruption has invaded all institutions; we can no longer lead a Good life by the double-negative strategy of avoiding evil; but only by the positive strategy of pursuing Good. 

And to do this requires living in accordance with a source of Good that is independent-of, and uncorrupted by, our civilization.  

Then it does not matter what that culture is - past, present or future; nor what is does to us - because so long as we are rooted in reality and truth, we can recognize and repent whatever is corrupting, subversive or value-inverting. 

The traditional way for this to happen, was that the individual would obey the guidance of a religious group (typically a church) that was autonomous and Good. 

But now there are no churches or other religious groupings that are both big-enough and autonomous from the subversions of culture nowadays - and which can be relied-upon to remain autonomous for as long as we may need them. 

To be rooted-in a church, is therefore merely to be rooted in a variant of the mainstream corrupt-culture. 

The other way is for each individual to 'obey' the guidance of some internal source which is both Good and autonomous. 

Is this possible? Is there a source within-Man that is sufficiently autonomous of the evils of culture, and also Good? 

For me, the answer is Yes - because this is a matter of metaphysical Christian theology. 

In other words; my fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of God and divine creation assume that God is Good, and we are God's children - and therefore we each have within us that which makes God Good.

In other words we each have in us (because we are God's children) a True and Uncorrupted Self which is in harmony with divine creation, and from-which we can be guided towards that which is Good.  

If one believes-in a real-divine self, and that this True Self can be 'consulted' for guidance; then that potentially solves the problem of living in a corrupting civilization where that corruption includes the churches. 

Furthermore, in principle, each of us can deal with problems of corruption on an individual, case-by-case basis; rather than by - as with traditional religions - seeking generic solutions to particular classes of problem, or following general guidelines such as laws or prescribed practices. 

It all seems to depend, in the first instance, on whether one believes this source of inner guidance is real/ true/ possible.

*It is possible that a person may be dominated by a particular besetting sin, which needs to be weeded-out before anything else can be done - alcohol or drug addiction is an example. But we should not pretend that dealing with a single sin makes someone overall a better person - assuming that the sin was already repented. 

I mean that what is vital with a besetting sin is repentance. Reform of a sin is good, in and of itself; but only Good overall when it is indeed Good overall! 

Reform may, or may not, be possible in a particular instance; but it is at best is preparation for a subsequent change in overall attitude to life.

Since being impressed by David Icke's grasp of the significance of the Brexit vote four weeks ago  -

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-david-icke-phenomenon-and-brexit.html

I have been investigating the thought world of this man, who the media dub the world's major conspiracy theorist.

I have watched or listened to many speeches and interviews, and read his most recent book The Phantom Self - which covers a similar theme and contains many rather similar arguments to those I have come-across in Colin Wilson and William Arkle and blogged about here; concerning the true and free versus automatic and false Self; and the important problem of each person finding then living-from the true Self.

Icke adds to this the valuable perspective that in this modern era (and in addition to our natural tendency to develop a false Self) the false Self (what Icke terms the Phantom self) is substantially a product of a programmed manipulation by the Establishment (i.e. the Conspiracy). In other words, our Phantom Self is actively working-against the interests of our Real/ True Self.

My impression is that Icke is primarily a spiritual thinker and teacher, who personally is most concerned by the spiritual corruption of the world and what to do about it. There are two long chapters at the end of The Phantom Self concerned with how to wake-up to the fact that we are in reality 'Infinite Consciousness' and our mortal life ought to be seen in terms of educational experiences. We are not the product of those experiences, our true selves lie behind and beyond any possible experiences. With some changes in nomenclature, I think this is correct and vital.

Icke is strongly against any form of organised religion, and his spiritual advice is mainly to live life by the intuition of the heart, which will lead to the synchronicities that we personally most need as experiences. This, again, seems correct so far as it goes, and very much like 'the discernment of the heart' which some Christians regard as our best guidance in this world - especially since Icke does a good analysis which clarifies what he means by the heart - contrasted with the mind and gut-feelings which are the focus of manipulation by The Conspiracy.

Reading Icke, I was quite often reminded of Rudolf Steiner in a broad-brush fashion - for instance, both disseminate their views primarily via speaking: in Steiner's case by a multitude of smallish lectures, in Icke's case by videos, podcasts and interviews; and very large public lectures (currently on-going in Australia). Of course, Steiner was a world class accredited intellectual and a genius; whereas Icke is, although above average intelligent and articulate and much better than Steiner at structuring evidence and arguments, operating on a much more common sense and middlebrow level.

But the same basic problem affects anyone who tries to come to terms with Steiner as one who tries to give Icke a hearing - which is that they have a strong, clear view on every subject under the sun, and most of these views are bizarre, many are wrong, and all are over-precise. This, presumably, is because both are working from an intuitive method which always yields conclusions on every topic - even those on which the intuiter is scantily or erroneously informed - and which provides for the reader real and important (and, otherwise, hard to come-by) truths, closely mixed with falsehoods and illusions - but Steiner and Icke themselves are unable to discern which is which.

This does not much bother me - so long as I take them in large enough doses that I can allow the bizarre elements to 'blow through me' (maybe enjoying their ingenious arguments, meanwhile) while focusing on the basic perspectives and primary teachings. This is a matter of having made the basic decision that Icke is a decent and well-motivated person who is doing his best in the available situation, as was Steiner.

Both Steiner and Icke are much more spiritually-focused than the mass of their followers (to whom they need to cater) and this has a distorting effect on the balance of their output. In Icke's case this leads to one of the main problem with his conspiracy theory - which concerns the ultimate aim of The Conspiracy.

For Icke, this world is conceptualised as a kind of idealism; our reality is 'a hologram' (akin to the situation in the movie The Matrix, 1999) - because perceived reality is essentially a facade, and its reality comes from our interpretation. For Icke, there is no God or gods - and ultimate creative goodness is conceptualised abstractly and deistically in terms of higher consciousness, higher frequencies and vibrations.

The source of The Conspiracy for Icke is a group of immortal evil 'demons' (as I would interpret them), aliens, Archons, shape-shifting reptiloids - whose aim is drag humans down to a low-frequency level, and then to control humans in every respect, in order vampirically to live-upon human psychic energies (especially the emotion of fear, but also other negative emotions such as hatred). Ultimately, therefore, Icke correctly diagnoses the Big Problem as Spiritual Warfare.

However, perhaps due to the interests of his followers, in quantitative terms the bulk of Icke's output is focused on political, social and worldly concerns - and the idea that the Conspiracy callously delights in making miserable, tormenting, making sick and killing humans. This is a basic flaw in the sense that modern Western people are - overall and compared with any previous or alternative society - prosperous, comfortable, convenient, healthy and long-lived. Since The Conspiracy's plans are (currently) well advanced, this basic fact is broadly incompatible with The Conspiracy wanting to torture our mortal bodies.

Icke is not a Christian nor anything else, and seems strongly 'anti' all actual Christian churches, especially any focused worship, ritual and symbolic elements - since he regards focused worship situations as set up to provide a kind of energy-vampirism, and ritual and symbolism as almost-always characteristic of The Conspiracy beings. The 'Archons' are fundamentally-uncreative beings, therefore they rely on such crude, repetitive procedures to force or compel a kind of pseudo-creativity. Also, Icke apparently experienced a - possibly - hypomanic-type episode around 1990 during which he appeared on prime-time TV and asserted he was the Son of God, in a way that suggested he was a reincarnate Jesus, or something similar. I think he has since rather over-reacted-against the content of this transient and delusional state.

Having said all this, and taking it as the mixed whole it is; what is my overview of David Icke's work? The answer is that I am overall impressed - and I think he provides many valuable perspectives and examples that I have found helpful and clarifying. I think he is a genuine intuitive, who has access to a deeper level of understanding than is normal - and that this has been show by a number of insights which seemed very far-fetched until they were shown to be correct.

(Interestingly, and again on the same lines as Arkle, in seeking intuition Icke does not practise meditation by any formal or specific technique - rather he says that he sits in quietness and solitude and lets his mind follow its own logic by 'daydreaming'. This, combined with the way that synchronicity shapes his life and brings particular people, books and things to his attention, is how he gets his insights.)  

For example, Icke seems to have been among the first to describe (naming names, several of which have since been confirmed) the covert and covered-up network of paedophilia which permeates the British ultra-Establishment.

Icke saw the extent to which modern Establishment elites deliberately (e.g. by false flag operations and agents provocateurs) cause the atrocities and problems which they then 'react-to' by implementing pre-decided programs tending towards population pacification and control - and the way that the mass media, technology, the law and its enforcement, officialdom, education, and also modern medicine are all combining to make a docile, distracted, drugged, dysfunctional and despairing humanity.

And also that this depends upon divide-and-rule procedures which create conflicts, and provide the incentives by which the dupes do the work of the demons; in building their own prisons, herding people inside, and then policing each other to prevent anyone escaping. 

Icke also correctly predicted (when nobody else did) that 2016 would be the crux year, and potentially the beginning of the crunch-time potentially a turning-point - a window of about three years - when we either turn away from our current suicide course, or it becomes irreversible.

Icke's lack of the coherent metaphysical structure and the overall story of (Mormon) Christianity is a significant problem, although his criticisms of actually-existing Christian churches are mostly accurate and reasonable. But, depending upon your tolerance for excessively detailed wrongness and your capacity not to let it interfere, there is much in Icke's work that is valuable and which you will probably not find anywhere else.