Bruce Charlton's Notions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who think entropically will do entropy. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The primacy of primary thinking! - To argue and clarify this counter-intuitive yet vital fact of reality was surely the great achievement of Rudolf Steiner. 

There is nothing more important than our thinking - so long as that thinking is of the most important kind... 

The obvious difficulties are first that almost-everything in our culture and habits tells us that thinking is trivial, is merely an epiphenomenon to the 'real' stuff which is all about action, material things - the perceived and measured world. 

And yet... Why is it that 'thought crime' became a phenomenon in the evil totalitarian dictatorships? And why is it that this crime has returned to dominate 21st century life. After all, what is a 'hate crime' (which can get you sacked, mobbed and imprisoned) except a crime of thinking. 

Even if you don't believe that your thinking matters in the modern world, even if you believe that thinking is just something that goes on inside your head - the Establishment, the Authorities disagree. They believe that thinking what they regard as the 'wrong' thing is a serious crime, and the legal system (and employment law) has been reshaped to accommodate this. 

So - officially - thinking affects reality; and it is assumed that specific kinds of thinking can be inferred or imputed.

But a Christian will recognize that the Establishment/ Authorities/ Officialdom/ Media are evil; and are imposing a system of increasingly inverted values - where lies are truth and truth is 'fake news', where vile ugliness and mutilation is beauty and beauty is oppressive, where purposive evil rewrites morality so that marriage, family and Christianity are presented as breeding grounds for racism and terrorism. 

What They say is good is always evil (in implemented practice, if not theoretically), and what they excoriate most systematically and over the long-term is the genuine good.  

So, when They create (or reintroduce) the concept of thought crime; they are acknowledging the primacy of spiritual warfare; but taking the side of evil. 

Christians, on the other hand, all-too-often ignore or deny that we live in a state of spiritual war - and especially that the side of evil in this war rules the world, including all the major social institutions, including the major Christian churches. 

Such are the End Times, and Christians cannot claim we were not warned. Although the prophecies turned-out very differently than expected - they have turned-out exactly as claimed in the sense that almost all the world has taken the side of Satan, including most (almost all) self-identified-Christians! 

The inverted-fake-Christians (who follow the ideology of The World) persecute the few remaining real followers of Christ, in the name of Jesus!

But how to fight our side in the spiritual war? Primarily by thinking. By primary thinking. 

Most of thinking is passive and shallow and Of The World; either being mere habits of association - drilled by socialization and propaganda, or externally imposed concepts and 'facts'. Small wonder that so many people regard thinking as unimportant and actions as the only 'real' activity. 

That is exactly what They want you to believe! 

While They regarding Your thinking as of ultimate importance, They want You to regard Your thinking as merely trivial, subjective, internal.  

It is a strange aspect of these ultra-materialistic, globally-bureaucratic, corporate-dominated times - that real, primary thinking is probably the single most valuable force for good in the world, now. 

Because such thinking is not 'in the head' or cut-off-from reality; but actual participation in the ultimate reality of divine creation and create-ing. 

It turns-out to be a good deal more difficult to think properly, primarily, intuitively, from our true (and divine) selves, from the heart (rather than intellect or instinct) - yet that is what we most need to do to fight the hourly and daily spiritual battles in the war of good and evil, now and tomorrow.  

Thinking affects the world - just as we knew it did when we were young children. 

We knew then that thoughts come into our mind from outside our heads, and that our own thinking was known-by and affected the world outside our head. 

We knew then that our fear could attract the attention of that-which-is-feared; and indeed could conjure-up that-which-is-feared. Thinking about a bad thing could 'make it happen' - so we tried not to do it. 

(The child experiences this being-part-of-the-world spontaneously and passively; yet it is this basic understanding of 'participation' which the Romantic Christian aims to recover consciously and by choice.)  

Our thinking is a part of the world, and this is the reason why sin is evil; why our 'feelings' can harm the world. 

The modern materialist cannot comprehend why what he thinks or feels 'in the privacy of my own mind' could or should be of any concern to anybody else - and that God 'would not be interested' in such trivial matters as his personal attitudes, fears or desires. 

But the world Just Is Made so that our thinking is part of it. Thinking is Not confined to our brain - the idea that thinking is a free-spinning cog, detached from 'reality' is an incoherent delusion.

(...As Owen Barfield explained in Saving the Appearances, 1965).

Therefore, when we (for instance) experience a powerful fear of what the demon-controlled global totalitarian establishment might do to us (as spontaneously happened to me this morning, shortly after waking) - we are both committing the sin of despair and also making that bad outcome more likely. 

We make the bad outcome more likely by lending the creative power of our imagination to an evil world picture. By yielding-to despair, we take the side of Satan; and lend him material assistance by our spiritual activity. 

And this is why such thoughts come to mind. Since our minds are not cut-off from the world, evil thoughts can be put-into them by evil spirits - as was always acknowledged in the past. 

But the flip side of this frightening reality is that every 'defeat' of evil thoughts in our mind (by our will) has beneficial external effects - which is why we do not get evil thoughts all of the time: defeat wounds Satan. Every repudiation of sin somewhat improves the world

All good thoughts, aligned with God's will, tends to make good futures more likely.   

Thus we ought to recognize fear and despair as sins, and inwardly reject them - make the inward affirmation that we do not want to sin. 

This act of will (of free will) is called repentance; and it has the effect of transferring our creative aid from Satan to God (a double benefit!). 

By repentance (recognition and rejection of sin) we have thus rejected the world picture being imposed upon us by demonic powers and their servants (by all means They can muster), we have made an act of affiliation to divine creation, and we have redirected our soul's effort towards God.

However, this identification and repudiation of sin, and commitment to Good, needs to be distinguished from its perversion as 'the power of positive thinking': the idea that we can 'get what we want' if we want it hard enough. 

Positive thinking is about imposing our personal will upon the world - getting what we want from the world; and this is an extremely different matter from willing our allegiance to God's ongoing work of divine creating; extremely different from taking the side of Good in the spiritual war of these times.  

The positive thinker would - like a Romantic Christian - also try to reject fear and despair; but he would do thins because they are negative emotions that make him feel miserable. The positive thinker is not rejecting fear and despair because these are sins, nor because they aid the attainment of a more complete and extreme demonic anti-creation than we already have. 

Neither would the positive thinker be making a commitment to God's plan for reality. He is instead trying to impose his own plan on reality - and this existential selfishness plays directly-into Satan's hands, is immediately woven-into the demonic anti-creation that opposes God. 

Both positive thinking and repentance/ affiliation are - in a broad sense - concerned with 'getting what we personally want'. To the modern secular mind this means that one is as good (or bad) as the other - merely different forms of self-gratification... 

Nonetheless, there is a distinction between types of self-gratification in terms of their assumed, ultimate metaphysical context. 

The distinction is between a secular attitude of aiming at what provides gratification in this mortal life - on the metaphysical assumption that this mortal life is believed to be the only life. Or, by contrast, a Christian attitude of regarding this finite mortal life as followed by an eternal post-mortal life; with this our mortal life gaining meaning from its purpose. 

The Christian purpose of this mortal life is assumed to be 'educational': we are intended to learn from this life 'lessons' of importance to the eternity which follows.     

A Romantic Christian does indeed want to reject fear, despair, resentment and many other unpleasant feelings; and instead to think positively. 

And repentance does have a positive power. To recognize and repent a sin is to starve it of the oxygen it would otherwise obtain from being regarded as a valid emotion. 

But the aim of thinking positively goes beyond mortal life into Heaven; and the the ultimate 'positive' is seen as our personal, chosen, active participation in God's creation.

 

I have been so concerned to acknowledge that primary thinking of our real and divine self is real - in the sense of having an objective (knowable by others) effect on the world - that I neglected to clarify in what way it is real. And how the reality of thinking differs from that of 'action'. 

When we take an action - do something with our bodies, or by speaking/ writing; the effects are on 'this earthly mortal world'. 

These effects of actions are therefore of the nature of this-world; being evanescent - subject to entropy. And the effects of action are known by other people via perception, from 'outside' them - via their senses and perhaps unconsciously and involuntarily. 

The effect of primary thinking is different; because it does not exist in this earthly and mortal world; but instead in a divine and eternal reality - our thoughts are therefore, in some way, permanent.

But since primary thinking is not 'located' in this earthly world; its actions are not via the sensory perceptions, and do not happen-to people unconsciously or involuntarily. 

For primary thinking to affect other people (other beings) in this earthly mortal world - these persons must consciously choose to access the divine and eternal reality. And they know this divine reality not by perceptions, but by their own primary thinking.  

Therefore, the reality of primary thinking is on the one hand more eternally real and significant than our actions; but on the other hand primary thinking does not effect the perceptible things of this world; it does not move things, or make things happen, or influence other people unconsciously or against their will. 

Instead, primary thinking happens in a potentially shared world; and affects those who participate in this shared world. 

Primary thinking is a form of divine creation - as we think, we participate in divine creation and contribute to it; but that participated creation is not happening here on earth but in 'another dimension'.

That world is the same 'dimension' to which Christians go after resurrection - it is Heaven. 

In sum, our primary thinking while we are mortals on earth has its effects in Heaven. 

 

A question that recurs to me, is how top conceptualize (visualize, imagine) the 'location' of inner world concepts. The ancient Egyptians had a core and vital concept of the 'dwat' or underworld, where lived gods and the dead. Every living being had dealings with the dwat, and indeed it was the ultimate reality. 

Yet it has become very difficult to imagine the reality of something with such properties as the dwat - something which is 'inside' everybody, and yet also everywhere. 

A more recent example is the collective unconscious of Jung; a realm of universal archetypes, which is supposed to be accessed in dream and artistic creation, to be expressed in myth, and to emerge during insanity. 

I found it very difficult to imagine how the collective unconscious was supposed to work - where it was located, how we could get access to it...

Such difficulties are compounded when one wants to add that each of us as individuals are capable to changing the content of the dwat, or the collective unconscious. It is easier to imagine merely observing a kind of diffuse sea of mythic archetypes and gods floating around and doing things - of coming to 'know' the contents of such inner worlds or underworlds. 

But that you or I might potentially alter this collective reality; and to do so my some 'inner' act of ours, such as thinking... well it seems difficult to imagine even how such a thing might work (leaving aside the secondary issue of whether it is possible or plausible). 

I find, when pressing on this problem; that the whole thing has a tendency to become very abstract and detached, and unconvincing to myself. 

My conclusion is that there are very deep and difficult-to-eradicate assumptions in my way of reasoning that block a kind of basic human understanding, which was once widespread. 

For instance, it brings-out the extent to which we moderns almost 'cannot help' imagining our thinking as going-on in our brains and inside our skulls - with no possible way of really interacting with any kind of universal domain.  

It also brings-out the corresponding assumption that thinking is cut-off from the world; so that we cannot imagine our own thinking affecting the world... Except, maybe - in a crude sci-fi sort of way - as something like a 'telepathic beam' of 'thought energy' that affects matter (which we don't believe actually happens, or else it would be detectable and measurable). 

It seems, it feels, 'obvious' that the contents of 'my' thinking is something cut-off from the world; such is the nature of our alienation.

And yet I can recall young childhood when it seemed equally obvious that my thinking could be known to others, and that it could affect the world. For example, fear on my part could attract the attention of bad beings, bad events - and in that sense could make things happen. 

Or my secrets could be 'read' by others - I could not contain them 'inside my head', even when I wished; but they could only remain secret if I was able to 'forget' them.

Thus in early childhood, I naturally understood the way in which all Men (and god/s, spirits, angels, demons, the dead etc) could indeed be both within and also everywhere - albeit I could only envisage this as a passive and one-way process. 

I could not imagine - or believe - that I myself could, by my own thinking, affects this 'collective spiritual underworld'; including affect it for the better. 

I am talking here of the way of thinking variously termed positivism, materialism, scientism or reductionism; and the problematic phenomenon I describe above is what Owen Barfield called RUP - meaning the Residue of Unresolved Positivism which modern Man has as a deeply-ingrained habit; and which is so very difficult to eradicate even among those who - theoretically - fully-recognize the incoherence and evil of positivism. 

It is not too difficult to detect RUP in other people; but a far more difficult/ impossible prospect to eradicate it from our-selves. 

My best guess and hope for doing so is to try and re-discover, learn and extend ways of thinking that correspond to the 'animistic' thinking of ancient history and early childhood - that is, a world populated by intentional, conscious, living Beings - in a web of relationships. To try and translate the positivistic conceptions into these terms. 

But I still tend to 'feel' this in a passive fashion; and have not succeeded in achieving a way of understanding that corresponds to the active and creative engagement of the individual with The World that is Final Participation.    

Although I believe Final Participation is real, and I recognize when it is happening/ has happened; and it is a major aim in my life - it is certainly a disadvantage Not to be able to think-about or conceptualize it in a way that I find both convincing and comprehensible. 

Work yet to do...

Your thinking, and mine, affects reality. 

But this makes no sense to Modern Man, because he regards thinking as a (probably epiphenomenal) brain activity - confined to the skull. 

And probably merely neural activity that is a consequence of other causes (e.g. biochemical, genetic - or socially conditioned). 

Also because he has a false understanding of 'reality'. 

When providing arguments to support an understanding very different from that which is mainstream, habitual, unconscious and based upon unacknowledged and unexamined assumptions... chances of successful persuasion are slim! 

But a particular argument may chime and resonate with a particular individual, and begin to free him from his invisible and self-made prison. 

1. We tend to regard reality as out-there and by definition un-influence-able by our ideas about it...

Against this is that we may remember as young children having the built-in assumption that our thinking could influence reality; for example, that thinking about a scary thing could make it happen to us. That that wishing really hard for some-thing might make it happen. 

This might perhaps be explicable in terms of an evolved instinct with some advantage to reproductive fitness; but it might also be understood by a Christian, as built-in knowledge provided us by God, our beneficent creator.  

2. Then there is a very different argument that the totalitarian leadership of this modern world certainly seem to believe that thinking can affect reality; in the sense that they focus on detecting, punishing, correcting what Orwell termed 'thoughtcrimes'. 

It might be argued that thoughtcrime is only a concern on the basis that thinking may lead to action - thus thoughtcrime may lead to crime. But in fact this link between thinking and action is never investigated or proved - and therefore it looks as if (for example) thinking 'racism' (in the modern mainstream sense of the word) is sufficient grounds for social/ media/ legal vilification, ostracism and punishment - even when no racist action is discovered; and despite there being no evidenced and coherent principle demonstrating that the modern-definition of thinking-'racism' leads to objective crime. 

Clearly, the crime of 'racism' is a thoughtcrime - pure and simple; which implies that mainstream modern government operates on the basis that thinking affects reality directly.  

(This 'spiritual' assumption of government will not seem bizarre to a Christian who regards the world as engaged in spiritual warfare, and the global totalitarian leadership as being on the side of Satan in this conflict.) 

3. My last point is that a clearer definition of reality may help. Here, one must be religious and probably Christian. 

Modern Man tends to regard 'reality' as ultimately dead, unanimate, matter/ forces/ waves/ particles etc. Physics. 

By contrast he regards thinking as part of 'mind' of consciousness; restricted to living-things that have only recently (in the history of the universe) evolved - and might not have evolved. Thus an individual person - like you or me, alone, thinking something or another - seems vastly unlikely to be able to affect reality-understood-like-this...

But if we regard reality as Creation - our understanding may be very different. Creation is the product of a creator, a personal being, of God. And God (for Christians) is our loving Father. Therefore, we are - each and all - a part of creation - and divinely linked to it. 

From such a perspective of reality as creation, it seems quite natural - and indeed necessary - that our thinking would be a part of creation, bound-up with ongoing creation. 

And if we regard humans as having 'free will' or 'agency' - then potentially each person will be able to think from-himself; to think as a 'free agent'...

And in this case, a Man's thinking, which is already understood as a part of creation, will also have an effect on creation. 

Putting together the above, we may reason that our thinking is always affecting reality-creation (for better or worse); and contributing to it - but that this affecting may be on a spectrum from unconscious and passive participation in creation to a conscious, active and chosen participation. 

We may also see that we can chose to think in harmony with divine creation; or against creation - in other words to think in ways that subvert, destroy or even invert God's creative purposes.

This may clarify why evil totalitarians have such an intense interest in controlling our thinking. They are using our thinking to subvert/ destroy/ invert divine creation. 

When a person chooses, or is duped, into evil thinking - this is what he does: he assists in the distortion of reality away-from divine creation. 

Conversely, and positively; we may also reason that by making the opposite choice and rejecting the attempts of evil totalitarianism to control our thinking; we may instead choose to think in accordance with the purposes and meanings of God's creation. 

Thus we can personally strengthen and add-to created-reality, by our thinking. 

Creation-sustaining thinking is indeed the correct Christian understanding of what evil totalitarians call 'thoughtcrime'. 

Two related second thoughts - the first on thinking. I've written much about primary thinking and heart thinking. On reflection it strikes me that 'thinking' is not the right word, because what 'it' is, is not much like thinking, and the word may mislead. 

The problem with conscious thinking is 'the will' in the sense of explicit plans, schemes and strategies that gets explicitly articulated; and which we then try to follow and impose on reality. This is a big problem indeed. It affects religious people, it affects Christians, just as badly - and fatally. It is this idea of making a (necessarily simplified) abstract model of reality, then trying to impose that model which lies behind much of the presently world-dominant 'Ahrimanic' and bureaucratic evil. 

It's hard to conceive of a thinking that is not 'will-full' in this bad sense. The man from whom I took much of this, Rudolf Steiner, fell into exactly this snare, I believe; that is, he gave primacy to a will-full and consciously-controlled 'method' of thinking, which he then forcefully applied to whatever subject matter was before him. This led him into a great mass of what I regard as systematized error. 

I have used primary thinking and heart thinking as synonyms for what might otherwise (and better) be termed intuition; but for many people intuition is mixed up with instinct. Yet I regard intuition as being divine (God in us) - hence always right; whereas instinct is animal, hence often wrong (and even more-often inapplicable). 

My idea of Final Participation (which ought to be my aim) is that it is primary and unanalysable - and identical with intuition; but that to be 'final' it needs to be conscious. The will ('thinking' should be subordinated to intuition. My goal is that I am trying to be aware of my intuition. And, if so, I do not need to 'think' it, or to 'think about' it. 

It strikes me that Jesus (in the Gospels) doesn't 'think'. He knows what to say or do, and does it. 

And that this surely ought to be my ideal too? (As best as possible in mortal life, and as an aim; and fully in Heaven.) So maybe all this stuff I've written about the importance of thinking is mistaken?   

I have also written against ideas of one-ness as the idea, of the aimed-at extinction of self or ego (dissolving-into the divine...); and I hold to that rejection - and I also reject the conception of ultimate reality as a static state of time-less-ness, complete joining, and all space as one infinite. Instead what is wanted is the 'dynamic' state of open-ended creation, in-which God and other being may participate. Time is sequential with a before and and after; space is not infinite but instead un-bounded, endlessly expansile. Creation is growing as well as developing.

As young children we were passively immersed-in divine creation; and what we need to aim at as adults (spiritually adults) is to be consciously active in divine creation; but that doesn't need thinking. Our true creativity is natural and spontaneous - and it is Good, as well as true. 

(This has been my experience also in ordinary mortal-life creating; as a scientist, especially.)

So, in successful meditation, we might first become aware of 'Me, Here, Now' - and then of the loving presence of the divine: the Holy Ghost. We don't lose our-selves in this, but ideally enter into a here-and-now loving relationship, aware of our-selves, aware of the Holy Ghost - and aware too of all other men and women who are in this same state of active creating. Love entails beings. Love is impossible with unity/ one-ness. So, since love is primary for Christians; one-ness is ruled-out as a goal.

We are at that time in meditation (usually brief, perhaps just a moment) tuned-into the ongoing work of creation, and we are aware of that creating; and by our relationship with the Holy Ghost we are playing some part in it. We are then participating, actively and consciously; yet (I would now say) without thinking.

It may seem as if consciousness is here acting merely as an observer, but it is something more; it seems that our consciousness is what makes the choice to do this, to enter into this, to contnue to participate in this; consciousness either embodies or brings with it the totality of our being. 

By contrast, as young children, we may be swept-along by divine creation; caught-up in its flux; unconscious of it, and without any need to choose it (and without any way of choosing otherwise). 

In our spiritual adolescence (from which sadly few emerge) we are isolated and cut off from the divine, and from this participation in creation. This is the state of existential alientation. To escape the consequent despair; we need consciously to choose to re-enter participation... To become aware of the workings of God, and the presence (here and now) of the Holy Ghost, and the possibility (the actuality, indeed) of a personal relationship with these: Me, Here, Now.

It seems that my task, in this situation of the world-at-present, is to make these conscious choices, and to have these experiences; so that I can learn from them to make a firm committment to accept Jesus's offer of resurrection into everlasting life; because this is exactly a foretaste of that Heavenly state. 

By knowing it (and with a transcendental and eternal 'knowing' - not by means of mortal memory, doomed to fade and die), I then know that I want it. 

And this seems necessary given all the false reasons and instinctual manipulations of Satan triumphant - that would probably otherwise seduce me into rejecting the call to follow Christ.

I am absolutely unable to predict the future in any specific way at present - except that I am sure that these are the end times, and the end is accelerating. 

I am not very sure what The End actually means; but Christians will know it when it happens. 

It is not the second coming - because that is not a real thing - by my understanding. Certainly our civilization is ending - from multiple causes: biological, psychological, socio-political - but 'our civilization' now encompasses the world (especially since early 2020) so that the end of civilization will affect every person on the planet. 

But in materialist terms everybody dies, all nations and civilizations end, and the planet will sooner or later become uninhabitable for one reason or another; so that is certain. 

However; at the primary, spiritual intuitive level is where the significant end is hastening. 

To anyone with Christian discernment, it is clear and explicit that the Establishment, the authorities, are actively destroying all that is Good - all that is part of God's creation. Virtue, beauty and truth are under accelerating attack; and anything that is natural, spontaneous, created likewise. They are even beginning to destroy The System, The Matrix upon which their own collective power depends...

This is a very comprehensive strategy of destruction. 

What convinces me that this is the end, is that this attack by the powers of purposive evil is broadly celebrated - indeed, destruction of God, creation and The Good has become the core of the mainstream and 'normal' morality - enforced by law, taught in schools, propagated in the arts and mass media and by all major institutions (including churches).

Value inversion is our value system - already overall, and ever more comprehensively. 

This, I take it, is distinctive of the end of things. 

Thus, materially speaking there is nothing constructive to be done. Any material opposition to the plans, will merely be from supporting one lesser evil part of The System and directing it against a greater evil. At best, this will only delay.

Materially reasoned; there are no grounds for optimism - and in deed no realistic grounds for hope. 

For hope we must turn to the spiritual realm, and take advantage of Mankind's recent capacity for each individual to stand spiritually alone against the world. 

At present, this ability is being used to stand alone against God - and to affiliate with Satan's agenda; but this same human capacity can be deployed on the side of God. 

It is simple and instant. 

But what use is it? Is it any use at all? 

From a materialist perspective, of course not. By mainstream metaphysics: What I think in 'my brain' has no affect outside of my body.  

But what if it does have an effect; what if my thinking has a tremendous effect - but spiritually, not materially. 

What if, for those relatively-brief and transient moments when my thinking is truly aligned with God's purposes and harmonized by love of God (and fellow Men)?... 

What if this thinking is then taken-up by God and amplified and disseminated with astonishing efficiency and strength - to produce positive spiritual effects where possible (where the hearts of others are open to it) and necessary (where the effects will do the most Good) - and by a 'process' not confined by proximity in space or by physical contact?...

I personally would be unlikely to know anything about this - at least not in any detailed or comprehensive fashion - yet I might know that it was happening, or had happened. 

Think of it in terms of causation versus motivation. 

Causation is a materialist concept - cause and effect, billiard balls colliding, chemical equations and the like... It relates to dead things without consciousness or will. 

But if 'things' are really alive, conscious and have purposes - then they don't work on each other by cause and effect; but by means such as motivations, and by acceptance (or rejection)... 

If our divinely-harmonious thinking is motivational it affects other Beings like a personal relationship; and these Beings can choose whether or not to welcome this, and be affected by it -- much as we might accept or reject the love of another person. 

Indeed love is the key. If love is welcomed then it generates more love; amplifying the love. This is a way of picturing how our divine thinking may spread and be amplified in effect; and may do Good in the spiritual realm.  

But the spiritual realm is not cut-off from the material - rather, the material is a sub-set of the wider spiritual world. So the material world will be affected by what we think. And potentially affected for the better. 

There is no need for us to have a strategy - to predict the future: God has the strategy. We 'merely' need to help God with his future. 

Of course, this is an active process of discovery, and of discernment and thinking. But we will learn about where things are going from doing it, from participation - not from material analysis of 'the facts', not from logic/ maths/ models.

These are the end times, but that has long been the case; for many generations. The end is accelerating towards us - but still we do not know what it will entail nor when exactly it will come. Nonetheless - we know what to do. 

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. 

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What I call Platonism is often impilict and may even be denied by its believers - but I think it is a religion, and it does affects people's lives and behaviours, albeit in an individualistic manner (since there is no church of Platonism).

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By Platonism, I mean the belief that behind the everyday, up-front and obvious world of differences and changes and incomprehensible complexity; there is a world of simpler, eternal and unchanging 'forms' - and this world of forms is more real than the everyday world because we can have genuine knowledge of it (whereas the everyday world of change lacks pattern, and is unknowable).

By such a definition, Platonism has been the implicit religion of many of the greatest mathematicians and scientists, of many artists and scholars - and in general many of those who inhabit the world of the mind.

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Platonism may be Christian, or non-Christian - in fact, Platonism has been the basic world view of the majority of Christian intellectuals since at least the middle second century AD (although there is very little evidence it in the Old or New Testament - and none of that evidence is clear or explicit).

But Platonism has been,  in fact, the secret religion of the majority of intellectuals full stop.

Whether this has anything to do with the specific lineage of Plato, or whether Platonism is a basic archetypal pattern of thinking into-which intellectuals tend to fall (a 'strong attractor' as it were) - I am not sure.

And although Platonism has been probably dominant religion of serious intellectuals, it is not necessary nor inevitable as the religion of real intellectuals - there are other equally coherent and motivating alternatives; such as Aristotelianism (a significant modification of Platonism - focused on the primacy of universal forms, rather than a separate world of forms).

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But Platonism is dominant among serious intellectuals, probably because if a serious intellectual is not a Platonist, the philosophy will probably not be strong enough to work as a real religion. So an Aristotelian must be primarily a Christian (or some other type of monotheist) if he is to stay honest and true.

And the same would apply to a pragmatist pluralist such as myself - we could only stay honest if our pragmatism is underpinned by strong, binding, personal monotheism. I think it is too easy for non-Platonists to become corrupted by worldly-things unless they (we) are underpinned by monotheism.

In this sense, Platonism is the strongest of all philosophies

Platonism is the only philosophy which can serve as a way of life, as the bottom-line for living. 

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Even nowadays, and even among those rare and few real scientists who self-describe as non-religious, Platonism is a strong, bottom line, metaphysical religion - as is most obvious when top-notch mathematicians (such as Roger Penrose^) discuss their basic stance and the meaning of their work.

This basic conviction about the nature of reality is - for such people - an important motivation and source of strength and honesty; because it enables then to resist the usually- irresistible worldly considerations of money, career, awards, peer status etc: the Platonist intellectuals regard themselves as working for eternity - their 'reward' for unworldly disinterestedness will be in Platonic Heaven, and will endure long after the expediencies and corruptions of everyday life have been swept away in this world of constant change.

And what is Platonic Heaven? The emphasis is impersonal; the Platonic God is not, primarily, a personal God with whom one has a personal relationship; he is an abstract God of abstract properties such as reality itself and the self-contemplation of reality; so Platonic Heaven is not a relationship but a state of being - some kind of bliss-full absorption in pure knowledge.

The Heavenly reward of the faithful Platonist is eternally to participate-in pure conscious awareness of exactly that eternal and unchanging reality which he has revered, and which he has served.

This is the hope which makes him brave, steadfast and honest in his dealings.

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Yes, Platonism is a real religion, although rarer now in The West than at any time in the past 2000 years: Platonism is a real religion because Platonism makes a real difference.
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^Here is a modern Platonist - perhaps the greatest living mathematical physicist - being explicit about his beliefs, convictions and motivations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Q6SWcTA9w
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It is not the Christian view; but it is very common among both secular/ atheist/ materialists and those of an "Eastern religion"/ oneness/ perennial philosophy type - to regard the sufferings of this mortal life and earthly-world as The Main Issue of Life. 

This is often true implicitly, even when it not stated and affirmed. 

If the suffering is the Main Issue, then its alleviation and elimination are the primary concern. But there is a contradiction between believing that quantitative alleviation of suffering is worthwhile - or whether partial alleviation is meaningless/ actually futile; and only the qualitative elimination of suffering is a valid goal. 

Mainstream politics and its majority-adherents can never seem able to decide whether what they regard as quantitative improvement in (for instance) racist attitudes is worth having; or whether this makes no essential difference, and after some 70 years of active social engineering things are just as bad as ever. 

The tone flips back and forth between self-congratulation at the huge improvements (as the left sees it) since the middle 1960s; and assertions of here-and-now massive, vicious, endemic, 'systemic' racism that permeates and distorts every social institution in The West (and which it ought to be the number one global priority to address immediately). 

I regard this deep incoherence as a modern, secular version of a deep confusion and incoherence that permeates the metaphysical-religious stance which focuses on suffering. Whenever Christianity has focused on this-world conditions, it enters an identical contradiction. 

It is due to the assumption of an objective and subjective world: once this is assumed as reality then there can be no coherent answer to the problem of suffering. 

One reason is because suffering is subjective, yet all action taken to alleviate or eliminate suffering is objective. We live in a world that regards thinking as private, having no effect outside the brain and body; yet we purport to dedicate the world to alleviation of the subjective state of suffering - when thinking (including suffering) is something about which outsiders can know nothing 'objectively'.

Another reason is that we partly believe that suffering is quantitative, such that being imprisoned under harsh condition is worse suffering than somebody saying something mean to us. Yet at other times 'micro-aggressions' (i.e. somebody saying something mean, that hurts another person's feelings - allegedly) is treated as an absolute offence for which no punishment can be too severe (loss of employment, social vilification, violence...). 

Modern Man affects to be focused on suffering as The Evil that must be addressed; but cannot decide whether suffering is quantitative, such that mass genocide is worse than a single death, and enslavement worse than suffering subjective micro-aggressions - and such sufferings can be diminished over time; and this is "progress"...

Or; whether suffering is qualitative and absolute - such that all suffering is equal, and there can be (and has been) no "progress" in the elimination of suffering in this world or in individual persons; and only the 100% elimination of all forms of suffering is really worthwhile. 

Furthermore, anyone who thinks deeply and consecutively on the subject will realize that much suffering is innate to the human condition of this mortal life: disease cannot be eliminated, neither can degeneration, neither can death - and the sufferings caused by the death (etc) of others. And there are many natural disasters and constraints. 

And - of course - much suffering is a consequence of humans living together in society such that we impinge-upon each other's gratifications in a multitude of ways; yet for individuals to live utterly without society is not just impossible, but also a nightmare of suffering.

My conclusion is that to focus on suffering on suffering as The Problem of this mortal life and the world is not just wrong but incoherent; and will lead to permanent frustration and meaningless contradictions. 

If we do - at present - regard suffering as the primary problem of existence; then we are in error. 

And we therefore need to examine and change our fundamental assumptions. 

Note added: It may not be at all easy to change our assumptions regarding suffering. For modern people in the conditions in-which we find-ourselves; it is often quite spontaneous to focus-upon - and be overwhelmed-by - the vast scale of suffering in life: of human, plants, animals, and even for the planet. This applies to self-identified Christians, as to everybody else. What I am saying is that this focus is incoherent, hence futile, consequently counter-productive. We ought not to accept the suffering-focus; but should fight against it - even though this likely will lead to subjective guilt - at least initially; and almost certainly accusations of being 'uncaring'.  

This question arises when comparing the 'impact' of Rudolf Steiner - who founded an international society and movement; and William Arkle, who died known only to a 'handful' of people and remains almost wholly obscure.

In general, the most valuable kind of genius is one who dicovers something 'simple'; that is, something that was difficult to discover (because, in fact, it was Not discovered until the genius did it) but, once discovered, easy to learn.

This can be seen by technologies such as the bow and arrow, wheel or arch, whose origins are unknown, were absent from many (or all) ancient cultures, and were (I believe we can infer) discovered by specific persons (i.e. geniuses) in particular times and places.

More recent examples would include the technologies of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, which were adopted quickly and widely - oince the intellectual heavy lifting had been done by specific geniuses (who often gained nothing personally from the inventions)


Rudolf Steiner was a genius of Romantic Christianity; but he made many serious strategic errors; and in the end embedded his major (and simple) discoveries in a vast structure of mostly-dubious factual-assertion; which formed the (infallible) scriptures of a bureaucractic Anthroposophical Society; housed in a grandiose headquarters of concrete (in both senses) buildings; engaged in all sorts of formal/ procedural/ bureaucratic institutional activities relating to education, medicine, agriculture, the arts etc.

In sum, Steiner attempted to 'impose' his esoteric message on the world via an organisation, by a stepwise process, that is - by a kind of compulsion - and this is an internally-contradictory, hence ineffectual, strategy.

The outcome is that it is very hard to find the core spirit of Steiner anywhere in the world; except among a handful of individuals who are essentially outside of the Society and institutional structures (and even these Steinerites usually remain captivated by the Ahrimanic distortions of their Master, rather than discarding them).

In sum, that of Steiner which we can perceive is merely the distortion. 


By contrast, except for a few disciples (who have not, apparently, made public their thoughts) anyone who has come to share Arkle's ideas must re-experience them for himself.

In other words, insofar as he has affected people, Arkle can only have influenced other people via imperceptible esoteric and direct spiritual routes. One who would share Arkle's thinking, needs to do so on the 'plane' of ultimate and universal reality - since their is neither System nor Institutions to 'educate' him. 

The question is whether the existence and effect of such esoteric and direct ways of sharing are really-real (or just wishful thinking).


It strikes me that William Arkle, especially in his pictures and his 'simple' prose pieces - such as Letter from a Father, Equations of Being and the Late Prose items - made some very simple spiritual discoveries that therefore could be learned rapidly and applied very widely.

Arkle's core insight is that we can come directly and by experience to know the detailed and personal love of God the Creator for ourselves; which will give us a great confidence and faith in our own lives.

And the fact that we are God's children means that we have a share of his divinity, and this will guide us through - enable us to learn from - all possible experiences that our life brings us.


The point is that all this is knowable for ourselves, once we know about it. It is effective, if we genuinely believe it is true. The insight is very simple, and our life can be very simple.

Of course, in works like A Geography of Consciousness or Hologram and Mind; Arkle also produced works with a great deal of complexity, involving metaphors drawn from physics and engineering.

The underlying message remains simple, and I think these complex works were produced as a form of persuasive rhetoric in response to the typical kinds of questioning of modern intellectuals, who are unable to take-seriously or to believe the truth of anything that is simple and obvious.

These works of Arkles function mostly like the mathematical 'working' done to convince a skeptic, when the actual result may be simple; they provide models or analogies of spiritual truths that strike us as childishly obvious; and by that hope to get past the 'watchful dragons' of the modern skeptical intellect (based upon deep and denied reductionist assumptions and dishonest arguments).


It would seem to me that Arkle 'must have' had a considerable influence on The World; since someone of his spiritual quality could not help but have done so! But not, of course, by the normal, perceptible, means of 'communication'.

Instead, I regard the creative insights of Arkle as having made a permanent addition to the primary thought-world that is the basis of divine creation. Anyone who engages in primary thinking, who has direct intuition, may therefore encounter Arkle's insights for themselves and without ever having heard of Arkle.

As a genius, Arkle was able to think some things for the first time; but now they have been-thought - and these thoughts are available to 'everybody' who would not have had the genius to create them anew from scratch.


Since Love is primary and a part of creation; I would further emphasise that the 'spead' of Arkle's ideas depends upon love. The 'range of effect' is therefore set by the scope of Arkle's love, and the difference made will be initially in realtion to that scope.

For example, when Arkle painted something with love that embodied his genius insights, those things will have been strengthened and sustained by that love - in an objective fashion: they will have been 'Romanticised' in an objective and universal sense. A better known example would be Walter Scott or Wordsworth, who permanently transformed the power of The Scottish Borders and the Lake District (and similar landscapes) to inspire and elevate us - even for those who have never read either.

I am suggesting that - as an example, but much more widely - the Scottish Border and the Lake Distict were objectively changed by Scott and Wordsworth - we who lovingly-experience them now, do so in a way that is qualitatively different from the way such landscapes were experienced 300 years ago - and indeed we cannot recover the way they used to be regarded. And later on Tolkien further modified our experience of landscapes.

The new experience is unlocked by shared love.

This can be explained (to use the terminology of Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom) in terms of the concepts we use to interpret the raw perceptual data and memories of these places - our concepts are, when they are true, drawn from the universal, impersonal store of divine creation - and this store has been modified by the 'final participation' of human geniuses.

This, then, (as a general mechanism) is the main way in which a spiritual genius like Steiner or Arkle affects the world; not by their communications, and certainly not by institutional transmission - but by participating-in, and permanently transforming, the ongoing nature of divine creation - henceforth available to all that are attuned to it. 

Pragmatic appeasement is a 'managerial' or bureaucratic mode of thinking that has spread into mass interpersonal discourse. 

It accepts an evaluation of the 'realities' of the current situation as 'the facts'; and then tries to behave pragmatically. This is the bread-and-butter reasoning of 'sensible dissent', which is the only permissible mainstream analysis and discussion of major policies.  

At root, pragmatic appeasement is always is about managing people. It affects agnosticism about reality and real-causes; and focuses on attempting to make the best of things 'given that ' people's attitudes and behaviours are what they (apparently) are. 

So, when the birdemic came - pragmatic appeasement argued that - whether or not it really was dangerous, clearly people were afraid; and therefore it would be 'sensible' to lock-down-etc. Now, it argues that the peck is 'sensible' because (whether or not it 'really' works) the world is locked-down and we need to offer the (even more-) afraid people a way to justify a return to normal. 

Thus people are seen as needing appeasement, and appeasement is seen as being effective.

This is what is very striking about pragmatic appeasement - it is 'agnostic' (or just wrong) about real science, the facts, and implications; but it is absolutely dogmatic about soft assertions concerning what 'people' think, and how policies can shape what people think. 

Bureaucrats thus treat physics, biology and medicine like social policy - and social policy as if it were applied mathematics.  

Trying to discuss matters of physics, or medicine with such people, one is confronted with the fact that such knowledge is explained-away to merely social institutions and consensus. And when confronting ridiculously over-confident cause-and-effect assertions of how this policy will affect that human behaviour - one is confronted with immoveable dogmatism.  

What all this represents is the surface manifestation of deep, metaphysical assumptions concerning the reality of this world. 

Because it operates at the deep and invisible level of assumptions, pragmatic appeasement is robust against anything and everything that might happen at the observable level. It requires only vaguest hand-waving kind of proof (e.g. it was on The News, some Spokesperson, said so...); and is disproof-proof.

Perhaps the largest scale examples are atheism and leftism. The entire world is governed on the basis of atheism and leftism; yet it might appear that these have an utterly appalling track record through the twentieth century, when they began to dominate. 

To name the totalitarian atheist leftist regimes would be to dictate a who's who of the worst in human cruelty and dishonesty. Yet none of this makes any difference At All; and the world continues to be more and more atheist in its functioning (including the churches), and more and more leftist in its aims.    

Pragmatic appeasement assumes an accidental and humanly-indifferent universe in which human lives are brief and finite; and therefore there is no higher purpose than making the best of things, for the time being. Within this framework - all dissent must be sensible, and all action short-termist, pragmatic, realistic and focused on the proximate world of people rather than 'things'. 

The vague hope is that somewhere, somebody is looking at the Big Picture; and taking account of the the fact, the long term, and the whole community; and shaping society in a Good direction... 

But for the little-people like 'us' - our highest hope is to get-through as much of our pointless lives as possible, with the least amount and severity of suffering; and perhaps tentatively aspire to get some sporadic amusement, and even excitement, before we are inevitably crippled by disease or age and annihilated by death.

In the meantime - people make the best of things, and do not go looking for trouble. 

Following from yesterday's post; it seems that the modern Western experience of becoming (or remaining) a Christian is experienced very much as a personal choice - rather than the acceptance of external truths which are forced-upon us. As a simplification: we choose to believe - and there is little point in denying it. 

But the idea of choosing to believe is often dismissed out-of-hand as merely "wishful thinking"; which conflates the perfectly reasonable desire to believe something positive, motivating and hopeful rather than negative, miserable and despair-inducing; with the default assumption that 'real' reality is purposeless and meaningless. 

In other words; our society and most people have the built-in and default assumption that there is no God, and no purpose or meaning to life; and therefore that 'honesty' entails a full acknowledgment that our individual human life is insignificant. 

Take, for example, the observation that many people seem to regard it as a fact of nature that looking at the stars necessarily makes us feel insignificant. Yet bundled-into this assertion is the denial that we live in a created universe - this denial of purpose and meaning is taken for granted when it is assumed that vast numbers and distances necessarily hammer-home our insignificance. 

We have pre-decided the meaninglessness of what we see - but do not notice, because we take it for granted. 

Because if we were instead looking-out at the vast beauty and scale of God's living universe - this would surely be a cause of joy and delight.  

So 'wishful thinking' is a slur only because it carries unexamined and unrevealed assumptions which make it into something like a synonym for 'weak-minded delusion'. 

If, on the other hand, we genuinely take on board that (especially since the millennium) we are all - as a matter of fact, know it or not - actually choosing our reality; and that real reality is not objectively compelled upon us...

Then we can see that it is illegitimate for the atheist to assume that his reality is unchosen, while only the religious person is guilty of wishful thinking. 

The truth is that the atheist is every bit as much of a wishful thinker and belief-chooser as the theist.  

'Objective' in practice, nowadays, means nothing more than publicly-agreed; and in 2022 publicly-agreed merely means 'whatever is currently propagandized and enforced by the mass media and large bureaucracies' - and this 'media-official'-reality is incoherent, and changes on a daily basis. 

Truth is not 'out there'. 

If we genuinely take on board that we just-are (all of us) choosing our reality, then the question arises which reality we are choosing now - and which we ought to choose; because the reality we choose affects our current lives, and affects what happens beyond death (which expectation then, again, affects our current lives).  

This is Not a matter of choosing which specific-facts to believe - it is primarily about the need to identify and choose our assumptions. 

It is the assumptions that dictate what counts as specific facts; and the meaning and importance of those facts. 

If we passively and unconsciously accept the conceptual assumptions of our world, then we are accepting that there is neither meaning nor purpose to life - and no existence beyond biological death. We then arrive at conducting our lives in accordance with short-termist and this-worldly expediency - as we see all around us. 

But if we choose instead to believe that there is a personal and loving God who is creator of this reality;  and that by Jesus Christ we can survive biological death and live eternally as resurrected and divine Men in Heaven - we arrive at a very different way of conducting our lives. 

Of course, at this level of choosing what to believe; this particular vision of Christian life may be rejected as arbitrary, because just one among many (an infinite number?) of possible assumptions. The rejecter may claim to want to know what is really true about reality - in order to believe that. 

But which comes first? The chosen belief or knowledge of really-real Truth? The chosen belief comes first - because we have all already chosen - whether we realize it or not. 

And some already-chosen-beliefs rule-out the possibility of there being, or of we knowing, really-real Truth.

(Think about it.)

Well, the desire for truth is a valid and Good thing - for a Christian. But very few of those who affect a desire to know the truth about such things will expend any significant time or effort in establishing the truth! 

Quite the opposite - they display a lazy, frivolous, distractible impatience with any attempt to discover and examine primary assumptions! 

Their desire to know the truth is in fact just a rhetorical device; because their assumptions rule out the possibility of humans knowing truth. 

Nothing can be done with such people! 

They have made their choice to believe this a world of accident, unmeaning and purposelessness, they are defending this choice by dishonest means (as is consistent with that primary choice) - and only they can unmake that choice. 

Forget about them, forget about trying to convince other people...

Focus instead upon your own choice which cannot be avoided and has consequences that affect every aspect of life (and beyond). 

Just choose what you most deeply want to be true - and take that choice seriously; and if it is correct then you will find your way and be led (step-by-step, by trial-and-error, sooner-or-later) to the real Truth - the Truth of Reality. 

(And if your first choice is mistaken, then you will soon-enough discover your error if you seriously try to live by it. But if, like most people, you are not serious about your own life - nothing can be done for you. You cannot even help yourself - because you do not seriously even want help. Probably you want only to be happy and comfortable, Now. And when you can't get that - annihilation.) 

Continuing the PKD-inspired theme of living as-if a "Secret Christian" (versus The-Empire-that-never-ended); this is rooted in the conviction that we each can - when necessary - do this work alone,  without the assistance of a church, or indeed "other people". 

Also related is the further conviction (from Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield) that clear and true thinking - thinking derived from our true and divine "self" - positively affects the world of creation - including if this thinking is never communicated.  

What is missing from this description of an "asocial" Christian life is some kind of feedback cycle; that essential to-and-fro, trial-and-error interaction characteristic of the best social interactions; by which our understanding is stated, evaluated, developed, and (it is hoped) improved.  

When there are no people on one's side that can be trusted at the deepest level; then the feedback cycle must-be mystical, supernatural, 'magical' - in a word 'divine'; and exactly that has been provided by Jesus Christ as the Holy Ghost. 

This guidance is a case of "must-be", exactly because it is needed - we may be alone as a follower of Jesus Christ among the people around us, but we cannot actually "go it alone" in an ultimate sense; since we are all prone to error and corruption. 

We all need correction; and when there are no suitable people, and no valid institutions, to provide it - then, of course, God will ensure all necessary guidance is available by other means. 

The main question is whether we genuinely want divine guidance. If we are merely seeking validation, and will not listen to anything but validation, then we cut ourselves off from divine guidance. But assuming we really do want guidance, how might we reasonably expect to get it?

With modern human consciousness, such things are different from in the past; and - because of our agency and freedom; we moderns must actively seek and consciously choose that which was more passively and un-consciously imposed-upon more ancient Men. 

A good way to think about this may be to assume that (here-and-now) we must do most of the work of understanding for ourselves. 

Having worked-out some kind of understanding, we need to ensure that we really do understand it; in other words, we need to articulate it clearly and as simply as possible, so that we can fully grasp what it is that we think we know.  

And then we seek feedback by whatever works for us as an individual: through prayer, meditation, or even by doing what I am now doing - by articulating the understanding in writing as clearly and simply as possible.

And then we adopt a receptive frame of mind, a spirit of honest enquiry, of attuned-responsiveness... We make our proposal and then await - in a state of awareness - to experience how it plays-out*.  

And thereby; although we may lack personal help, we will find that "we are not alone". 

 **

To expand a little: We should not expect understanding to pour-in upon us as divine inspiration; but should expect to do the work of understanding for ourselves. That is the way to learn, and to-learn is, substantially, what we are here for. We look to the Holy Ghost simply to confirm, or to deny, what we have proposed. 

And we should not expect to attain answers that are perfectly and eternally true - but answers that will suffice for our current needs. Thus answers may change over time, as we and our needs change. An answer may suffice for a while, and then later we get sent "back to the drawing board" Furthermore, it may be that it is in striving for ever-better answers, rather than in receiving stable and certain affirmations, that we are doing what God most wants from us and what we most need. 

After all, understanding is seldom easy in a world full of lies and distractions; and we may never hit-upon the right answer, despite what seems like our best efforts. And again, ultimately, all answers that we can arrive-at must-be wrong because finite and the product of limited minds. It doesn't really matter. 

What does matter is that we know enough for salvation, and live and learn towards resurrected life-eternal.  

The Transhumanist agenda (like most things) has two sides to it - depending on motivation.

For well-motivated transhumanists, for therapeutic transhumanists (as we might call them - a category including most of the people who openly call themselves by that name of transhumanism); it is the project to alleviate all pain and distress, maximise gratification and fulfillment, abolish ageing and sustain human life indefinitely. In other words, it is a kind of extrapolation of medicine from treatment into enhancement.


At a mild and quantitative level, this soft-transhumanism has nearly always been a part of human life - the idea to use human knowledge and technology to enhance human life. But taken as an imperative, when regarded as a kind of religion-substitute; even well-motivated transhumanism is deadly - because by its focus on trans-cending human limitations, it implies trans-forming humans into something else...

So that if the human condition entails suffering, then humans ought to be abolished; if humans cannot be prevented from ageing, then we should devise some alternative 'life' that is immune to ageing; if humans persist in dying, then humans should be replaced by something that doesn't die...

If the abolition of suffering is the primary goal, it implies the abolition of life - which would be the only way of ensuring that nobody and nothing suffered. Bottom line transhumanism is therefore only one step away from advocating death as prophylaxis.

Transhumanism also provides no reason for having children - and many reasons to avoid having children - since children usually suffer, and are typically a cause of suffering in their parents. The safe option is to avoid them.

Or, short of death, abolishing human consciousness, which greatly intensifies the possibilities of suffering. This suggests that a lobotomised life, a tranquillised life, a sedated life, a false-virtual life, a drugged-euphoric life are all preferable to a conscious and free life insofar as they entail less suffering or more pleasure. Even if such a life led to rapid death, it would be preferable on a purely hedonic calculus. 


But there is another side to transhumanism; which is the transhumanism that denies itself and operates by deception and dishonesty.

This is the transhumanism of mainstream, modern, almost-ubiquitous totalitarianism - a  transhumanism that aims at omni-surveillance and micro-control of the population.

This transhumanism sells itself as hedonic - as enhancing - but is motivated by the agenda of control. It is the strategic push for intercommunicating 'smart' technology, for omnipresent cameras and microphones, a society in which everyone carries a tracking device (smart phone) that monitors their activity to a fine level of discrimination - and seeks always to extend this (artificial 'intelligence', self-driving cars, the skies filled with drones...) - and to make it mandatory (microchip implants etc.).

This transhumanism has infiltrated medicine, with a massive and expanding use of prescribed psychotropic drugs - mostly SSRI-type 'antidepressants' and 'antipsychotics' marketed as 'mood stabilisers'...

These types of drugs (especially when given to young children and teens and essentially normal adults, as at present)  have a pronounced overall tendency to blunt emotions and induce a state of indifference - to partially-zombify people, to put it crudely. They all tend to increase suicide rates. Certainly they do more harm than good, overall - yet usage continues to expand - driven by serious problems of drug dependence and withdrawal symptoms, which are denied and hidden.

Much the same applies to the top-down mass campaigns of propaganda, funding and coercion to induce 'gender' uncertainty and same-sex attraction in children; and to 'treat' such situations with permanently harmful hormones and mutilating surgery. This is a crystal clear case of totalitarian transhumanism pushing forward under the guise of therapeutic transhumanism.


This totalitarian transhumanism is, I believe, an existential approach to social engineering, a core aspect of spiritual warfare; driven by the demonic powers of evil, and with the ultimate aim of compelling humans actually to want and to choose damnation.


So far, this totalitarian transhumanism has been spectacularly successful in persuading people that this is what they want. In this post-religious, anti-religious world it seems that most people are not just prepared to trade off freedom and privacy for amusement and convenience - they are positively queueing-up, and shelling-out large sums of money, to do so...

This totalitarian transhumanist agenda aims to implement a comprehensive system of surveillance and control so complete and dominant that it will be able to shape human emotions, motivations and knowledge as required.

My point here is to ascertain whether they are correct - supposing the totalitarian transhumanist agenda does, as seems to be happening, go-through to a very high level of completion. Suppose the world becomes one of omni-surveillance and micro-monitoring and control of behaviour...

Suppose the world is a single gigantic and interlinked System which affects the entirety of perception and extends into our bodies (via brain and hormone influencing microchips, or whatever might replace them).

Suppose that the demonic evil powers are in control of this total-system - so that they decide what we perceive - and are substantially able to entrain our emotions, and our reasoning processes.

Is this lethal to human agency or freedom of will; or not? Is a wholly controlled human brain-and-body also a wholly controlled person?

The answer is metaphysical - not evidential. If we believe that there is in Man that which is eternal and divine - the Real Self then that will always be free, agent, able to choose... If we believe that Real Self stands-outside of 'material' reality - and controlling the brain and body does not control  the Real Self...

In other words, if the arena of freedom is thought, and if the thinking of the real self is immaterial - then this cannot be touched by the most successful totalitarian agenda; and the demonic plan is destined to fail.


So, are the demons making a mistake? Are they wrongly supposing that they can control thought  by controlling the brain?

No - it is Not a mistake - because the demons already have in-place a metaphysical system which negates the Real Self.


For a long time, materialism (positivism, scientism, reductionism) has been the inbuilt assumption of official, media and all public discourse. This discourse intrinsically assumes that the Real Self cannot exist, because nothing immaterial (nothing spiritual) can exist. So the mind is wholly the brain, and the brain is the mind - and everything else is an illusion, a deception, a mistake...


In practice, this means that although the Real Self cannot be controlled, and cannot be destroyed; the situation has long since been created and sustained that the Real Self can be ignored - indeed ought-to-be ignored, since it is irrelevant, imaginary, an epiphenomenon. Insofar as the thinking of the Real Self reaches awareness, it will therefore be ignored or rejected.

As I have said, this has been going on for a long time by now. For example; a century ago Freud replaced Conscience - which concept carried a quasi divine imperative; with the Superego - which was implanted by parents and teachers as a mechanism of social control. At a stroke, the promptings of conscience changed from potentially divine nudgings, to an instrument of oppression that should be suppressed or ignored.

In a future totalitarian transhumanist society, the same would apply. Our Real Selves would still be present, and free agents; but we would - by our metaphysical assumptions - regard the Real Self as false, unreal, deceptive... and we would suppress or ignore it.

Thus the Real Self is utterly negated by inbuilt (often unconscious) metaphysical assumptions; and the merely-brain processing is a wholly-controlled unit of The System. Humanity has been captured - and can be directed to any goal desired...


I think this is a very important matter for us to get clear - since at present it looks very much as if the strategy of totalitarian transhumanism will succeed. There is little insight about the intentions and implications of current trends in surveillance and control. There is a general metaphysical denial of the immaterial and the divine.

Everything is in place - and the only delay is caused by the process of rolling-out the technology everywhere and to affect everyone...

Is there hope it will fail? Of course there is hope - each and any person can reject the agenda. I'm just saying that it does not look like this is happening.


The other hope - which is more realistic - is that the modern System will collapse before it can be fully implemented. I find this quite likely to happen - since there is a genetic decline in human capability (from the chosen sterility of the most intelligent and able population, and from the accumulation of deleterious mutations due to relaxed natural selection).

Geniuses have all-but disappeared from The West, we have already almost-ceased to make significant 'breakthroughs' in science and technology; and the failure would be expected to spread to R&D incremental development, then to repair and maintenance, then to the ability to manufacture and distribute...

And all this is exacerbated and accelerated by the deliberate dysfunctionality of 'affirmative action' preferences for women, specific races and classes, non-Christians, and those who identify with the goals of the Sexual Revolution. So we are not even trying to have the best people doing the most important jobs. 


So, it is not unlikely that the totalitarian transhumanist agenda - which requires mass advanced technology and a reasonably-competent workforce - will be intercepted and prevented through our faults and blindness and wicked intent; rather than because of our understanding, foresight or virtue.

Prevented, therefore, by a wholesale collapse of modern civilisation; of agriculture, manufacture, medicine, trade and transport - with rapid and colossal mortality (measured in billions) from starvation, disease and violence.

Yet even that scenario (entailing the greatest quantity of acute suffering the world has yet seen) would almost certainly be better than the alternative of a permanent, comprehensive, global system of damnation...


Note added: I forgot to mention that in talking of transhumanism I speak as something of an ex-insider of the 'therapeutic' style of the thing. I was writing from this perspective in my psychiatric and psychopharmacology writings from about 1998 up to the middle/ late 2000s - and my writings from this era were and are hosted on David Pearce's hedweb.com server (Dave being one of the co-founders of the World Transhumanist Association, now renamed Humanity+). There is a video on YouTube from the summer of 2008, of a lecture I gave in which I set out the possible futures as Transhumanist or Religious. It was shortly after making this clear to myself that I became a Christian.

*

Although the only reason for becoming a Christian is that it is the truth, that it is reality; nonetheless, since we humans are weak and corrupt there also needs to be at least some short-term reward for conversion.

There needs to be some therapeutic aspect to conversion.

And that which requires therapy is modern secular life; which (whether pleasurable or miserable on average) is perceived as ultimately alienated, purposeless, meaningless.

*

Alienation, detachment, alone-ness, lack of any connection or relation to the world - is pervasive in modernity.

Alienation can be solved with animism, with paganism; it can be solved in fantasy and sometimes in art; it can be solved in human love (of spouse, of family).

And alienation can also be solved by Christianity which affirms a continuous personal relationship with God (specifically Jesus Christ) so that we are never truly alone.

Also, for a Christian there is the continual reality of Unseen Warfare, of the struggle for salvation affected by angels and demons (which are Christian interpretations of the conscious natural entities of animism or the gods and goddesses of paganism).

Since the Christian is never alone, and always the object of attention; alienation is a temporary illusion - not a permanent reality.

Furthermore, for a Christian the unity of Man is not a mere aspiration, but a fact. We are - whether we like it or not - all in it together; and what we think and do affects not just ourselves but everybody.

No Man is an island: not even in his 'private' thoughts; humans are necessarily social even in solitude. Hence the divisions between practical and personal, work and prayer, contemplation and labour are abolished. A desert-dwelling hermit may exemplify the fullest membership of humankind.

*

Purposelessness is a feature of modernity where life is specialized, each specialism exists only to serve other specialisms, yet each specialism is narrow, literal and un-engaging.

Everything feels trivial because it is going nowhere for no reason.

Some moderns 'lose themselves' in work or human relationships, others in whatever happens to provide temporary distraction or relief from consciousness (e.g. intoxication, busyness, serial pleasure-seeking). But these are merely means to an end which is left blank by modernity.

For the Christian, however, there is an underpinning purpose to life: which is salvation. All our choices lead either toward, or away from, salvation.

Properly understood, there is also the possibility of increasing holiness - which is termed theosis - i.e progress in this life towards God-like-ness. The success of theosis is Sainthood - a Saint being understood as one who lives partly in Heaven while still on earth.

So, for a Christian, nothing is trivial: everything is goal-directed.

*

Meaninglessness is the sense that nothing matters in an indifferent universe. The secular materialist looks up at the stars and feels infinitely insignificant.

By contrast, Christianity states that on the contrary everything is significant.

It offers a cosmology, a description of reality, which encompasses this life, the reality of the soul and its survival of death, the nature of the next world into which the soul survives, the existence of beings intermediate between Man and God - namely angels and demons.

When a Christian looks up at the stars he become partially aware of (is glimpsing) spiritual reality: a universe of life, meaning, struggle - the field of transcendent truth, beauty and virtue - and a reality in which his own soul is a focus of vital importance.

*

So that although Christianity is not about 'being happy' (rather it is a struggle until death, an unseen warfare); and although Christianity is not about re-making the world in accordance with our subjective desires (not about lets-pretend or wishful-thinking  - but rather about fitting oneself to reality); nonetheless adopting the Christian perspective does offer some immediate and profound psychological rewards.

For a Christian things matter: choices matter, what we do has meaning and purpose; and the universe is in personal relation to the perceiving soul.

What happens in life is never lost in time and space - but (for better or worse) is a permanent reality of the soul.

*

Wholeness, weight and significance are restored to life; there is no longer reason to live wholly for distractions.

So although wholeness, weight and significance bring a new set of problems for the convert - Christian conversion is not entirely a matter of struggle, trial and tribulation; it does have immediate rewards.

Conversion to Christianity means reality is real and has our human experience at the centre of things; there is no longer need to live by strategic evasion of consciousness and systematic suppression of thinking.

*