Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

To take the next divinely destined step in the development of Man's conscious being (i.e. Primary Thinking) is extremely difficult. It can't be done by starting from where we are and then trying hard, doing exercises, concentrating, analysing, working at it... Primary Thinking is not a technique.

The reason is because what is needed is the Thinking of the Real Self - and we, here and now, are not 'located' in our real self; but instead in a variety of false selves. Changing this is difficult. How do we locate the real self? How does a false self (which is where we are, now) find the real self - allow its thinking to take-over...

What block us? The answer is (put simply) fear.


Fear is the problem: endemic, existential fear - why? Because (to progress as God wishes us) we must choose reality - choose to set aside fake knowledge. Yet we are locked into unreality and fake knowledge by our materialism, our worldliness, our fear of what will happen if we abandon them...

If we continue to focus on this world - on how this world makes us feel (happy, sad, pleasure, pain, suffering etc) as an end in itself - then we are trapped, because this is a false perspective. By adhering to it - by trying to optimise our responses to the experience of personal mortal life in this world - we are trapped in a vicious cycle.

So why do we continue doing it? Fear. Fear that if we fail to focus on how we feel and the material facts-of-life, then we will feel unbearable and our lives will fall to pieces. This seems very reasonable - everything about this world tells us that it is necessary to focus on such matters - and makes us deeply, existentially afraid not to focus on such matters...

What can possibly overcome such a reasonable, sensible, evidential, existential fear?  


Faith, Hope and Charity (Charity being Christian Love) must come first - and without FHC there will be so significant progress or advance or raising of consciousness.

How can this be? - How does it work?

Faith is trust in God, and the God that we can trust is a God that is wholly good, and loves us as a child (Charity).

Faith is the maximum extreme of an ideal of the child's trust of his parents - it is the ground of a young child's existence that his parents want the best possible for him - over the long run. But God, unlike our mortal parents, is the creator - so our trust in God is also a trust in creation; a trust that the world is set-up for our personal ultimate benefit in the kind of way an ideal parent might set up the home as a place of experiencing and learning.

We need also to know that the point of this life (our mortal life) is Not only this mortal life; but our mortal life is one of experiences from-which we can learn: learn for the benefit of our eternal life (after death).


Mortal life is extremely important, indeed vital for our ultimate goal because we must become incarnate and die in order to be resurrected into that everlasting and Heavenly life that Jesus promises. 

But the importance of our experiences during mortal life are related to what we most need to learn. The experiences of mortal life are not an end-in-themselves; the experiences of our mortal lives are real and important because they have eternal significance.

It is Faith which gives us this perspective, the faith is made possible and reasonable by God's Charity/ Love for each of us an an unique individual in God's creation - and that leads to the validity of Hope.


Hope is what enables us to overcome fear - and Hope is reasonable, valid, believable; because we know that this world and our specific life has been set-up by God for our own personal ultimate benefit... 

(As well as the benefit of our brothers and sisters among God's children; the analogy with ideal earthly parents is exact - they want the best for each individual child; and for all of their children.)

Hope is what allows us to see beyond the pleasures, pains, happiness, sadness and sufferings of our mortal lives.

Hope is what overcomes fear. 


We can escape our false selves, and escape the trap of our low-level and false consciousness, only by transcending fear so that we can know reality; and we can transcend fear only by knowing reality - by FHC...

By knowing in our hearts that there really-is something beyond and more-significant-than the subjective experiences of this world.

We need to know that our experiences in this mortal life are 'in God's hand' and for our ultimate personal benefit - that our life really-is that detailed and personal and specific.

On such a basis (and only on such) we can drop our worldly-materialist-fear-based 'defences' and 'do' Primary Thinking' - we can allow ourselves to think from our real selves; because we are confident that this is what we should do, and can do.