A Winter Walk

 Yesterday was a beautiful sunny winter afternoon and I walked further than I had intended, going across the local common and on into some woods beyond that I had only visited a few times before. There is supposed to be the remains of a Roman villa somewhere around there but you'd have to be an archaeologist with a trowel to find it. As far as I can tell there is nothing more than some sunken ground where once it might have been. Still, it is nice to think that there was something of the sort there at one time. It reminded me of when I was at a school and we had a Roman tea party during which we were all supposed to speak in Latin (it was that kind of school). There was dormouse and honey on the menu, a Roman delicacy apparently, but I think we had dormouse substitute.

When I came out of the woods it was still light though the sun was about to set. In front of me was a wide stretch of farmland which was all newly sown grass but the farmer had kindly left a path through which you could walk to get back to the common which was my route home. In the middle of the field there was one solitary tree standing rather like a scarecrow. He had lost all his leaves but stood proudly like a sentry on duty. "This is my field", he seemed too say. "You can cross it but don't linger too longer or trample the young grass."

So I began to cross the field and then I saw some deer in the distance at the other side of the field, near to the wood in the photo. Roe deer live on the common but I've only seen them twice in five years. They saw me and scampered away before I could take a picture. I thought of the contrast between the tree and the deer, both aspects of God's creation but completely different. One, strong, immobile, commanding, seemingly ancient. The other, swift, graceful, nervous, youthful, always on the go. What contrasts but both part of God's prodigious self-expression.

I looked behind me and there was the sun on the horizon, shining brightly though with a wisp of cloud over it. I looked ahead of me and my shadow stretched way out into the distance.

I looked back again and saw that the cloud had left the sun. The land had now become a deep orange. I took another photo. There is just a 30 second gap between the two.

What a change. Some of it might be due to how I took the photo though I don't think I did anything differently. To be honest, I wouldn't know how. All I can say is that the second one is an accurate depiction of the rich ochre glow of the early evening light.

However, it didn't last long and when I got to the other side of the field and entered the wood it was starting to get darker. The ground was quite muddy and I knew that if I took the quicker path that went straight through the wood it would be even muddier. But I heard some Canada geese honking furiously from the pond which is on that route and thought I would see what the fuss was all about. There was a stand off between a couple of geese and a heron, for fishing rights perhaps? The geese were very vocal but the heron didn't seem perturbed. Eventually however, he lazily took to the air and drifted away to the other side of the pond. Who needs noisy neighbours?

Walking through woods and open clearings like this field is one of the things that can connect us with our ancestors and the ancient ways. It's one of the few activities we share with them. I go for a walk every day with longer excursions at the weekend. For me it's a time of contemplation when I can look up at the sky envisaging it as the vault of heaven or try to contact the life force that runs throughout nature, expressing itself in a myriad different ways. Even in today's world when both God and the gods have been chased out of our lives we can still go for a walk in the country or, if not that then at least, a park and capture something of the magic of the true reality behind everyday material existence. We need this if we are not to dry up and wither spiritually inside.

What is Sin?

 I seem to be writing quite a few articles in response to other people's work at the moment. This is another such, inspired by Bruce Charlton's post about why souls might reject Heaven. Because in our time many do. These individuals would probably not put it like that, or even think of it like that, but it is what a person does and what he is that counts not what he says or even what he thinks with the outer mind. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he" as it says in the book of Proverbs. And many people do reject Heaven because they reject the mindset that is required to get there. Like attracts like. You only get to the true heavenly world if there is that in you that corresponds to that world. If you are on some level made of the same stuff, spiritually speaking. In fact, to get to heaven you must already be a subject (it's a kingdom not a state) of that world.

A major factor in the rejection of Heaven is unrepented sin which means identifying yourself with a sin to the extent that you will not or cannot renounce it. You may even no longer accept that it is a sin because it has become part of your sense of self. It has become what you think of as you. 

A commenter on Bruce's post asked the question in the title of this one. He went on to answer it himself and said that sin is loving the physical over the spiritual. That is right as far as it goes though I would change the word loving to desiring. But we can unpack this idea of sin a little more and I suggested in a further comment that sin is not loving the physical over the spiritual so much as loving oneself over God or putting oneself before God. That is not to say one should hate oneself, that also is a sin as we are God's creation, but God comes first.

Bruce Charlton defined sin as not being aligned with God's will and divine creative purpose. This sums it up. We are all sinners to some extent because we are all in thrall to the ego. It is the mismatch between ego and God or the human self and the Divine Self that is the root of sin. As long as the human self seeks its fulfilment in something other than the Divine Self it is a sinner and this might even include  those who seek absorption in impersonal being. They may be sinners of omission rather than active sinners but they have rejected God as a personal being and so they have rejected love. That is a sin of sorts and will have its consequences, even if these are what the individual in this case wants or thinks he does. So he may get what he wants but it is not the best that God has to offer the soul.

What is sin? Fundamentally, I would say it comes down to one thing and that is not loving God. Therefore you can be as virtuous as you like but if you don't love God you are a sinner. To those of an antinomian disposition who might claim that loving God excuses you of all moral obligations or lapses I would say that "If you love me you keep my commandments". The true love of God automatically makes a person behave in a godly fashion or, at least, aspire to behave like that. He may fall short but he always seeks to stand in the light and to reflect that light as best he can. To claim you love God and carry on disobeying his commandments shows that not only do you not love God, you don't even begin to know him.

Meditation and its Limitations

Bruce Charlton wrote a piece recently about meditation  and how it is sometimes regarded as a panacea for the problems inherent on living in a body and with a mind, problems which we can sum up as those associated with the idea of duality, the sense that there is the 'me' and then there is the world, everything outside of our self. In meditation the split between these two things can be overcome as they are made, or seem to be made, one. Thus, suffering is banished and the one meditating knows peace.  

But is this the aim of life in this world? Are we here merely to escape being here, having learnt or gained nothing from the experience of duality? Does duality exist only to be destroyed or, if you prefer, seen as non-existent in reality? Assuming that we derive from the spiritual world of oneness and bliss why would we leave that world only to re-enter it the same as we left it? That makes no sense. If impersonal bliss is the goal, if the spiritual end is to lose all sense of self and be absorbed into oneness, there is no point in coming to Earth. No point in becoming aware of or valuing qualities of the good, the beautiful and the true, no point in love because all these things dissolve in pure oneness. Yes, even love which depends for its fulfilment and expression on the reality of the person. Universal compassion is not love and is a sorry substitute for it.

Through meditation we may escape the alienation and suffering to be found in the physical world of duality but we also escape the good which becomes an illusion of the unenlightened.

The only conclusion is that we come to this world in order to learn to be more than naked spirit. That means to have a personal relationship with God, the living God, and that means to be a person. Spiritual approaches that emphasise the impersonal aspect of deity are only half right. There is a part of God that is impersonal but this is an aspect of his overall Person not a higher part of it and we can know this because a theistic approach that sees God as personal includes whereas the impersonal approach excludes. What is included or excluded? Everything! It is creation and the reality of created beings. These have no reality in impersonal spirituality. Neither me nor you have any fundamental reality. And if you think about it how could the personal arise from the impersonal? The idea is that it comes about through faulty identification, as pure consciousness mistakes itself for the form it takes. But why should consciousness do this if there was no self to do this to begin with?

Those who pursue the path of impersonal spirituality seek to deny or destroy their personality, the sense of themselves as individual beings. Perhaps this is possible (it may not be, it may lead, if pursued rigorously, to complete destruction) but they have misunderstood their spiritual purpose. In a comment to his original post Bruce added that in meditation "What needs to happen is that the momentary impression of an all pervading and impersonal benign deity needs to transform and 'condense' into the person of God, and a personal relationship with God." This is a superb way of putting the matter. The impersonal state of bliss known in meditation is a bit like formless chaos on which cosmic order needs to be imposed to bring it into the clear light of day and give it cohesive and coherent form. For God is not just formless being, He is that plus personal reality. He is the All not the part. He includes for ultimately what is impersonal oneness but a particularly extreme form of separation, the separation of one part of life from the rest, of spirit from matter and of the One from the Many? We come to Earth to learn to reconcile and bring into harmony the polarities of life, of being and becoming, universal and individual. To effect a cosmic marriage not a divorce.

Science and God

 Adam Piggott has written an interesting piece on his blog about science and God that takes no prisoners. His conclusion is that you can have one or the other but not both. One part of me agrees but another part feels that science is just a word for knowledge and surely it is not wrong to explore the creation as long as one does it while fully acknowledging the Creator and understanding everything in his light? I have to say that my personal feelings incline towards Adam Piggott’s position but I am not convinced I am correct. It may be how things are now but is not necessarily how the situation always would be. Perhaps the problem is that science easily corrupts the scientist and the type of person who becomes a scientist is often (not always) a materialist who lacks both imagination and intuition not to mention faith. Maybe the scientific method and way of thinking actually require one to close off parts of one's mind that are spiritually attuned or to atrophy these parts*.

But notwithstanding my uncertainty on the matter, let's take the position of assuming there is indeed a dichotomy between science and God. Here are some thoughts put forward as a theory – no more. This also echoes a previous post I did on technology.

What if all our science and, especially, our technology actually comes from a highly intelligent but spiritually dead demonic source, and is given to humanity to separate us from God and bring about our spiritual corruption?

 

The stories we hear about scientists being inspired in dreams which are sometimes taken as being somehow divine in origin may be something quite other. The spiritual and the demonic are often confused by those who have no experience of such things.

 

What brought about the Fall of Man from Paradise? It was when the serpent promised Eve that she could be the equal of Adam and even God if she ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Now, this tree and its fruit were presumably created by God so were not bad in themselves but the sin was to eat from the tree before being ready and against the specific instruction from God not to do so. The fruit represents the mind or thought which are not bad things except when they are separated from the spiritual source and regarded as independent of God. That is science, is it not?

 

Eating the fruit means awakening to mind and the world of opposites it reveals and that in turn brings about the sense of a separate self. It destroyed Paradise and resulted in the Fall. Sin and death entered the world and they entered, it could reasonably be said, with science.

 

The process has continued. Over the last 200 years technology, put through from demonic levels, has destroyed tradition and religion and turned the world into an outpost of hell. Look at our art and architecture just for starters. Technology has corrupted our minds and now, with the diabolical fantasies of transhumanism, is even beginning to deform the human image. The Faustian pact gives us power over our world and our outer self but at the price of severing the link with the divine and our true being.

 

We get material power but each new form of technology takes us further away from God and the soul. We accept this happily because we only see the benefits which are not even benefits really because they soon pall and we demand more like a junkie with his fix.

 

Technology is about replacing man with machine, first externally but increasingly internally. Depending on machines for everything just makes our consciousness more mechanical and less alive which is why everything is duller these days. Our minds and our very consciousness become desensitised by technology and shrivel. The computers we increasingly live our lives through are stealing our souls and eroding our spiritual faculties which range from imagination to awareness of the sacred. Even our moral sense is undermined.

 

Where is all this leading? Is the aim to turn this world into hell and human souls into soulless zombies which the demons can exploit for their own ends? That may be why they wish to have people mentally and physically remade by technology. It is like the corruption of elves into orcs by Morgoth in Tolkien’s legendarium. But perhaps the technological advancements have another aim as well.

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Demons lack bodies. They have lost their angelic forms and do not have a physical form either. They are spirits in the inner dimensions but they crave form for the greater powers of self-expression and freedom this would give them. Is it possible that through technology, through computers, through artificial intelligence, they are trying to gain an entry into this world? Could this provide the platform they need to incarnate directly in matter? Remember they are currently neither in spirit proper nor matter. They exist in a kind of limbo world, cut off from God. By remodelling the physical world so it is no longer the natural creation they make it possible to connect directly with it. Through digital and mechanical means they can incarnate. Sensitive souls have complained about the spiritual ravages caused by the Industrial Revolution from the beginning. Blake and Wordsworth were at the forefront of this but we have ignored them because we are so easily seduced by material goods. But now things are potentially much worse. The dream of freedom offered by technology is close to becoming the nightmare of slavery to it.

 

This is a theory. From the normal point of view it’s crazy, the stuff of science fiction as the saying goes. But maybe science fiction can warn us of what may happen if we let it. No, what will happen if we do not take active steps to stop it. We absolutely must rediscover God and reject completely the lure of the demons before they destroy us. Could this be what happened before and brought about the necessity for God to drown a previous humanity at the time of the Flood? For one thing is certain. Even if the demons succeed their success won’t last long. God will not permit it. Surely they know that? Perhaps, but maybe their pride thinks they can get away with it this time. It's up to us to make sure they do not.

* Adam Piggott has written a later piece clarifying that he is referring to science as it is today. So, as it has become rather than what it intrinsically is though the question still remains as to whether that is inevitable given the nature of science and the type of thought that is required to pursue it.

What is the Major Lesson Today on this Planet?

We come to this world to learn. On the spiritual plane, which is our true home and point of origin, we exist in a state of peaceful bliss but without challenge. We are still united with our source though we are not able to comprehend that or express it in any serious or creative sense. If we are to engage with God in a more than passive way and if we are to be able to wield divine powers and energies ourselves as fully conscious beings then we must descend to the material world of choice, the only place in which we can begin to unfold our potential. In a world of oneness there is nothing to bring out innate qualities which will remain inchoate. Only when the reality of God is withdrawn from our awareness can we start to develop spiritually as real individuals. Intelligence needs problems in order to grow. There are none in the spiritual world. Also, the quality of the soul, meaning whether in a situation where God is not it will aspire towards him in love, cannot be determined unless the soul is given the choice to believe or not believe which it is in a material world where God is not obvious and you can (apparently) do without him. Here in this dimension of being the environment is such that God is not evident to the human mind. If it is open to God it can begin to be aware of him and the effort to become aware will increase the awareness. If the mind closes itself to God then the reality of God will become more obscure. To him that has more will be given, to him that has not even that which he has will be taken away. This might sound unfair until you realise that it is a simple fact of receptivity. The more the mind opens to God the more it can receive from him. The more it shuts him out the more it enshrouds itself in darkness.

It is not that we cannot learn and grow at all in the spiritual world. But there are certain lessons we can only learn here and certain tests we can only be subjected to in a world in which we have to choose between God and not God. In this world it is not just a question of choosing between good and evil. That's a fairly elementary decision to make but there is also the matter of spiritual good which is God and good as conceived in materialistic terms which may actually be spiritual evil if it denies God. Worldly people think of spirituality in ethical terms which could be summed up by the Golden Rule. But actually how people interact with each other on the material plane of being is a secondary consideration. That doesn't mean it is unimportant but the primary spiritual concern and the true test of the human heart is how you interact with God. Whether you acknowledge him or not and, if you do, how deep that acknowledgment goes. 

That is the major lesson on this planet. To become consciously aware of God and then conform your soul to his. The best and easiest way to do this is through Jesus Christ but there is a catch. You can follow Jesus in your head or in your heart or both. The last two approaches to him work, the first doesn't.

Are Atheists Bad People?

I know, a judgmental question but one that needs to be asked in the light of the challenges facing individual souls today. In our secular, materialistic age we have no proper idea of good and bad anymore and we need to reestablish certain important truths, important from the standpoint of spiritual salvation, that is.

So, are atheists, those who deny the spiritual, bad people? From a certain point of view one would have to say, yes. It is not that atheists cannot be moral or even compassionate people. God is in them whether they acknowledge him or not and so they will have a moral sense by virtue of their humanity. But their morals will, when pushed, tend to become expedient or utilitarian or may be zealously maintained but from pride rather than love of their source which is the only thing that really makes morality integral to the personality. And what is the source of modern atheistic morality anyway? Setting aside the fact that it usually derives from religion in some way, its source is generally considered to be reason. But this means it is intellectually based so is always at one or several removes from the actual person. A genuine morality, one that doesn't change and is not dependent on time or tide, has to be spiritual, based on something that exists eternally and independently of human beings. 

So atheists can be moral but it is not morals that make a good or bad person. Obviously, a person with bad morals is a bad person but a good person has to have more than good morals. What determines whether you are a good person or not is if your heart inclines to the source of true good. And the source of true good must be God. There can be none other if good is to be a living reality and not a mere abstraction. This means that if you reject God it is because you do not respond to the reality of the true good and if you do not do that you cannot be considered a good person, however virtuous your outer behaviour. The heart knows. A sinner who believes in God is a better person than a virtuous atheist. Of course, the sinner must genuinely repent his sin which he will do if he really does believe in God but even so he may fall many times. No matter. God forgives those who sincerely turn to him whatever their transgressions. He cannot forgive or save those who do not turn to him because the one thing God cannot do is transgress free will, not without destroying his creation.

But is a non-believer in God really a bad person simply by virtue of rejecting God? Spiritually speaking, because God is the ground of the real good which derives from and is located in him then yes, he is. The atheist has rejected the real good and you can only do that if you do not love the real good and it is love of the good that makes a person good. Nothing else. If there is that in you that will love the good, you will see the good. If you don't see the good then you lack that love. The well-meaning but spiritually rejecting atheist may want to make the material world as comfortable as possible for man in his material state. Some religious people even follow this path though they may give it a religious or spiritual overlay, and they are the ones of whom Jesus said "I never knew you." They are followers of worldly ways before spiritual. But what the real spiritual person seeks or wants is to go beyond the material state altogether which he recognises as a false state of being, and transform the inner man to spiritual glory, a new being. This is the true rebirth rather than simple conversion. It is the recognition that man must not change but transform.

This is the only path for a human being to follow if he would discover the meaning of his humanity. To deny it, as the atheist does through his atheism, is the definition of bad because it rejects the true good.

Are atheists bad? If it is bad to deny the source of life and love and truth and thereby effectively deny these things as real themselves, then yes, they are bad. If it is bad to deny the human being growth into a higher state then yes, they are bad. If it is bad to reject one's Creator then yes, they are bad. If it is bad not to honour your Father and Mother, well, I won't go on.

But all this is sincere, you might say. Belief in God is not a moral matter. It's an intellectual one. It is an honest opinion, based on the facts as a particular person sees them. No, to claim that is to ignore the fact that God is within each one of his creatures as he is within his entire creation. To refuse to see this is an act of a rebellious will and so it is a moral matter. Listen to St Paul in Romans 1.

"For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools."

These are words which may be too strong for us moderns because they are spiritually condemnatory, judgmental not inclusive, but they are no less true for all that.

I admit to being provocative with this talk of good and bad in order to make a point but these are times of choice and decision. Black and white are being more clearly delineated and the gap between them is widening. There is a winnowing taking place, a separation of wheat and husk and that is happening both in humanity as a whole and within each person. Moreover, the nature of this world is such that everything that does not actively turn to the good becomes bad. That process is accelerating.

All this having been said, we have to remember that all souls are on a journey and all are at different stages of that journey. In saying atheists are bad I am not referring to each and every individual who happens at this stage of his life not to have arrived at a belief in God but only to those in whom the condition of God denial has settled down and become fixed. It may well be that atheism is a temporary state for many in the modern world as people grow out of affiliation to an organised religion and seek a more personal understanding that fits with humanity's development in fields of knowledge other than the religious. That is normal at the present time but atheism is not a place to stop, and it is to those who stop there, rather than those passing through on their spiritual journey, that I refer.

So, are atheists bad people? That depends on how you define good. If you mean personally kind and decent then one would have to say no, not necessarily. There will be good and bad atheists as there are good and bad in almost any grouping of human beings. But if you define the bad as a rejection of the true good and the true good as spiritual (and the good to be true has to be spiritual because the spiritual is the only thing that can give meaning and fundamental reality to life) then yes, they are bad. At the very least, they are spiritual failures. However, the good news is that they can turn to the spiritual good at any time and when they do, who knows?, some of them may be better servants of God than those who were religious all along.

No Middle Ground

 Democracy only makes sense if all members of a nation or community or whatever it may be have the same idea of where they should be heading and differ only on what the best route is to this destination. This obvious but often ignored fact is allied to the equally obvious point that all members of a community must trust each other. Without that simple connection the case for democracy makes little sense and it becomes just a battle to come out on top with each side or sides despising the other. In other words, for democracy to have any meaning all members of the democracy must be on the same side in terms of what really matters to them.

I saw an interview the other day in which someone, very reasonably, said that current society risks falling into extremes in which there is no middle ground and this is a dangerous situation in which to be. She advocated what she called nuanced conversation in which each side tries to understand the concerns of the other without demonising them. You might think this a sensible and considered approach, one which avoids outright confrontation and seeks harmony between opposing forces.

In many circumstances this approach might be the right one. People have different opinions based on different perceptions and experiences. Fair enough. We can all learn from others to our mutual benefit. The trouble is adopting this approach when it comes to truth and lies. Advocating a middle ground approach is an excellent tactic for the liar. But for the person aligned to truth it is a disaster.

If you and I are arguing about the merits of Bach and Beethoven there is no point in coming to blows. I prefer Bach but I respect your position. However, if we are arguing about whether God exists or not there can be no middle ground. This is an absolute truth and not to abide by it will lead to bad things. I don't respect your position and will have none of it. That doesn't mean I don't respect you or your right to hold that position though it may well mean the former. It depends what in you is causing you to have that belief, whether it is an honest search for truth or whether you are someone who denies God because he doesn't like the idea of God.

If you come to a fork in the road and one path leads to heaven and the other goes to hell do you respect the people who want to take the left hand path in the same way you do the ones who want to take the right? Only if you are naive. Again, it is very important to look for motivation. Why do those who want to go left want to do so? Is it a genuine quality in them which has just made a mistake such as a desire to find truth for oneself rather than do what an institution tells them to do? Or is it down to what I will call  a spiritual perversion of the will? What you do, though important, is always less important than why you do it.

In today's world there are forces, psychological forces, spiritual forces, that are sifting human souls, sorting out those who will go on to higher states of being and those who will be left behind in the material realm or equivalent. In such circumstances to advocate the middle ground is to be sucked into making the wrong choice. If you are not actively for God you will be absorbed by the side that is against him and you will find yourself on the outside with the naysayers. It is true that in normal times and situations you should not demonise your opponents but what if your opponents are demons? Or, to put it less provocatively, what if the line your opponents are taking is one that demons have put forward? It is said that demons are subtle. I don't think that is true. Human souls, all of them, yours and mine included, can be too easily led astray by lies that appeal to desires or fears or vanity or pride. If we make wrong choices it is not because the demons are so clever. It is because we have been led astray by our own shortcomings.

In spiritual terms there is no middle ground though this does not mean that those on one side are all personally good and those on the other side are all necessarily bad. But it does mean that whoever is for God is for the good and whatever is against him is for evil. At the same time, human beings are all sinners and it is not our place to condemn individuals. We can judge them with righteous judgment but the righteousness is God's not ours. Any soul can repent and it is our job to lead those who are wrong to repentance not to condemn them. But we can and should condemn their position if it is wrong. This is the only middle ground we must strike, the one that condemns the sin but prays for the soul of the sinner.

Secular Gain Means Spiritual Loss

It's often said today that we are much more enlightened than our forefathers because we are less violent, more egalitarian, more concerned for the weak and poor and so on. The psychologist Stephen Pinker has written books about this from the point of view of Enlightenment rationalism and these are regarded as authoritative by secular materialists.

It can't be denied that we have improved on the past in many respects. However, it's not quite as simple as it might appear and the improvement is not necessarily an improvement in overall terms. We now see ourselves in a purely materialistic light so naturally we pay more attention to that sphere of life. But the spiritual loss we have undergone at the same time, along with the contraction into the hard nut of the ego-self, far outweighs any gain in worldly terms. What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul? That saying has become almost a cliché. Yet it is precisely what we have done.

Obviously we will put our energy into areas we think are important. By the same token, we will neglect those areas we think unimportant or even non-existent. Modern man has shrunk his awareness of reality right down to the material world. Of course, he focuses on that as the sphere of his concern. Therefore he works to make material improvements, changes that will benefit the material man, increase his worldly happiness, reduce his suffering. But these changes might actually be spiritually harmful, especially if they encourage identification with the earthly man. Then they will cut the human being off from his true self. It's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Another cliché. But all we are doing now is making ourselves rich in the worldly sense. Do you think Jesus was referring only to money? He was referring to any and every aspect of material life and particularly when it is severed from spiritual life.

I am not condoning violence but could it be we are less violent because we are more cowardly, more self-indulgent, less tough than our ancestors? Nor do I condone exploitation of the weak by the strong but have certain improvements in the social sphere been driven only by compassion or is there also a greater amount of envy and resentment in our make-up these days? JM Smith has written an excellent piece on The Orthosphere about how democracy fosters envy*. Present developments in almost any area of life you care to look at seem to bear that out. If we're all equal why should you or anyone else have more than me? Even if you're more intelligent and work harder, it's still not fair. I resent it in a way I might not have done in a world where society was based on more traditional lines. The fact that these could degenerate is not an argument against them because everything degenerates if not maintained properly.

Does this mean that any gains in the social and material spheres are inevitably a bad thing spiritually? By no means. There will certainly be a tendency to spiritual loss for, as we have been told, you cannot serve two masters. (Cliché number 3). But if the material world is seen fully in the context of the spiritual there is no reason why the part of life that rightly belongs to it cannot be honoured any more than focus on the soul means you neglect the body. But the chief area of one's attention should always be the spiritual soul and if that essential fact is ignored then any improvements you make in the secular sphere are not just immaterial but positively harmful for they take you further and further away from your true purpose as a human being in this world.

* By pure coincidence, and I assure you it is, I see Professor Smith has just linked to an article of mine from The Orthosphere. It's strange how these things work out.

Bodies Without Souls

In one of the recent interviews I did I was asked if I thought there existed in our world bodies without souls. As I recall my reply was somewhat non-committal and I said something along the lines that everyone has a soul but some people by their choices, their actions and their thoughts may have cut themselves off from their souls to such a degree that they could be regarded as soulless entities.

I didn't want to get into anything too esoteric in these interviews because they were about the Earth is a School idea and I wanted to keep the discussion simple. However, the world is currently under an occult attack of such proportions that it is incumbent on all religious people to deepen their understanding of the supernatural realm, the better to withstand this attack. What is taking place is part of a longstanding scheme to enable demonic forces to get a greater grip on the material world and human beings. Their plane of existence is largely cut off from the source of spiritual energy and so they want, perhaps even need as a matter of survival, to interact in some way with the physical world where they can have access to life energy. This they have previously done through attacking the energy fields of human beings, chiefly emotional but mental and vital too, but the growth of technology has given them other means of achieving their ends, and I would suggest that one of the methods they are developing is incarnation in the physical world through computers. Artificial intelligence can never in itself be anything more than mechanical but it is possible that demons could use it to interact with the physical world and, in that sense, it might become real. Computers are surely one of the greatest sources of evil ever to have afflicted the human race. Yes, I know I am using one now to write this but that really isn't the point. What computers do is reduce human beings and a large part of human consciousness and many aspects of human relationships to the quantifiable and the mechanical and the easily controllable. Basically, to the inhuman. I'm sorry if this offends some readers but, be honest, look at the world and how it has changed over the last 50 years and is changing increasingly. Can you deny what I say? And this is just the beginning unless something derails the process. To use the terminology of Rudolf Steiner, computers are the manifestation of Ahrimanic evil.

What is man? Essentially, a human being is various intermingling fields of energy, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, to keep it to its basics. The lower levels are the ones we normally function in on the material plane but these only have life in them because of the higher levels. It is the soul that animates the mind and body. Now, through wrong thinking, wrong imagination, which is both the creative and destructive force within us, wrong exercise of the will and wrong action we can separate ourselves from the source of our life to such a degree that we isolate ourselves on the physical plane. We can actually sever our contact with the soul, our spiritual core, so that it may continue to give life to the material side but that is all it does do for the consciousness has descended so far that it is locked in the material. It has erected a wall of darkness between itself and the spiritual. This is effectively a body without a soul. The soul is still there on its own level but contact with it (influence by, perception of) has been completely lost. This can be perceived by someone spiritually attuned in this world. You can perceive it in many people currently in positions of power. The eyes are indeed the windows to the soul. There is an emptiness in some people's eyes, a blankness.

Demons are beings in whom this process has been taken to its conclusion. They are non-physical but non-spiritual in the higher sense too. This means they have severed the connection to the spiritual and therefore to the life force. That is why they must steal energy through various means from incarnate humans. Because they are non-corporeal they are not bodies without souls but they could be seen as minds without souls.

Soulless entities are not necessarily evil in the conventional sense though those who are evil in that sense could potentially fall into this bracket, beings absorbed by their own shadow and open to domination by the aforementioned demonic forces. But you can be intellectually evil too and those cold, calculating, highly intelligent individuals who have, according to their own estimation, used logic and reason to dispel the notion of God also risk turning themselves into soulless entities. These would perhaps be defined as Ahrimanic evil as opposed to Luciferian evil, again using Rudolf Steiner's helpful terminology. They will be more defined by pride and lack of love than one of the 'hotter' sins such as lust, greed or selfishness. They can be capable of living almost like monks in terms of poverty, chastity and obedience (obedience not to God but to the laws as they see them of reason), but the motivation for this is purely intellectual and utilitarian. Cold and dead. There is nothing spiritual behind it at all. Study such types and you will see that there is never anything spontaneous about them. Everything is done from calculation. They will be drawn to computer technology because the mindset behind that represents their worldly ideal. Everything can be quantified, controlled, reduced to data. As I say, these people will not seem evil by the traditional standards but they are anti-God, anti-creation, anti-love, anti-beauty and if that is not evil I don't know what it is.

Before concluding there is one other aspects of the question I'd like to address. According to some esoteric teachings not all human beings have the same origins or come from the same source. Some have come down from higher worlds and so they are souls that have incarnated in matter to further their spiritual development. But others have risen up through the material side of existence. These people, usually fairly simple and primitive in consciousness, have not yet developed a soul. They are in the process of doing so and their life trajectories will lead them to that end if faithfully followed. Of course, this won't be a popular thought today but why should all human beings be the same in terms of their origins? Once you accept a spiritual world you can see how improbable that actually is.

But these souls are not evil in any sense, certainly not in the way the soulless entities who have cut themselves off from their spiritual side have made themselves to be. They are simple, more attached to the material world than most and more obviously belonging to that world. They will be less intellectual in outlook but quite capable of creativity and accomplishment in terms of their consciousness. You might think I am referring to one particular class of people but I don't think these types can be defined in terms of human groups. They could be in all groups though most probably in some more than others.

Everybody in this world must have some spiritual contact or else they would die. But there are some who have, to a greater or lesser degree, cut themselves off from their souls because of wrong thinking and perverted will. For this is not just a matter of ignorance. To lose touch with your soul is chiefly the result of a will that has turned against God and creation. The root of all sin is in the will.

2022

We have been through a bad pandemic over the last two years, not a physical but a psychological one in which fear has been weaponised - see my previous post. The purpose of these two years has been to accustom people, the whole world, to the idea of control. The lockdowns, masks and pecks all have this idea behind them. None of them were really necessary but they have all been put forward as the only solution. If not for you then for the community as a whole, and this bit of emotional manipulation is the most cynical of all.

What will the next year or years bring? The pieces have now all been put in place. We are accustomed to behaving in a certain way. The programming is near complete. What will be brought forward to justify its use next is hard to predict but something will. Climate change is always a good bet but any threat can be conjured up or produced by modelling to bring us into line. Alien invasion? Far-fetched but possible. Those who have seen through the agenda this time will be somewhat protected next time around but the majority will react as before, refusing to accept they are being played. Evidence won't convince them. Most people don't want to confront the possibility that the whole system is rotten. Politicians may be corrupt, the media may have an agenda  of some sort but really that's not important. Scientists can be trusted. Most people are honest. The world will carry on more or less rationally and reasonably or so they think. 

Or is it that they cannot face not thinking that? When I have tried speaking to friends and family about what has taken place over the last couple of years they will not listen. Some tolerate me for a short space but then close down the conversation. Some get angry straightaway. It can get very emotional so I withdraw. There is certainly cognitive dissonance going on and pointing that out makes you the enemy. More and more we are told, and the majority either believe because they have no strong intellectual or spiritual roots or because they just go along with what everyone else thinks, that black is white, lies are truth, the unnatural is natural etc. Everything from the past is destroyed so that human beings can be remade into a form that suits the globalist, materialist agenda. 2022 will see a continuation of this process and even though obvious cracks in the structure will appear they will be glossed over and ignored by the mainstream. Most people, it seems, will believe whatever they are told to believe for the sake of an easy life or to fit in with the crowd. We always knew this but we thought we were better than those in the past who had done a similar thing. It seems not.

Today all institutions and organisations are corrupt and all movements that oppose these institutions and organisations are also corrupt. Even the so-called grass roots level of organisation is corrupt. Where does that leave us? It leaves us where we always are which is at the level of the individual. Only at this individual level can any real change take place. But if it does don't make the mistake of thinking you have to promote, organise, codify or spread it to others in some way so that it breaks through into society. Speak it when appropriate. Share it if the opportunity arises but if you seek to push or promote it in any organised way it will inevitably be absorbed by the world and so will you in some way or other. Now we need to be absolutely free and the only way to do this is to be fully individual but not in an individualistic way. We need to be fully individual in God.

This is the apparent paradox. We must be true to ourselves and true to God at one and the same time. In fact, we find that only if we are true to God can we really be true to ourselves and vice versa. In this sense, God and the individual self are two sides of the same coin and you cannot have one without the other. I suggest that fully exploring this idea could be a task for 2022. God himself is pushing us in this direction because he is clearly showing us that everything in the world is now false. We have to find him within ourselves. That is not to say that we are God, an insidious and common modern error. God is God and we are created beings. But there is God in us and it is our religious duty to find him there and bring him out.

My New Year's Resolution

My New Year's resolution is to encourage everyone to get inoculated and if you are already inoculated then get the top-up and when the time comes for a 4th and 5th dose get those too. We live in dangerous times in which our health is at risk. We need all the protection we can have to help our natural immune system so please don't be foolish. Get inoculated.

Carl Jung is not normally the first person I would go to for spiritual counsel but, if you take him selectively and with your spiritual armour on, there is wisdom to be found in his writings. I read a quote of his recently which is very apposite for our time. He says,"The greatest danger threatening man is not famine or earthquakes or microbes or cancer but man's well-being. The cause of this is quite straightforward: there still does not exist any effective protection against psychic epidemics - and these epidemics are infinitely more devastating than the worst catastrophes of Nature. The supreme danger which menaces both the individual and the populace as a whole is psychic danger."

Most of this is very true. We are living in the midst of a psychic epidemic now, one which appears to have infected the great bulk of the population. It has certainly affected all branches of the established system from politics to the media to science, and from there it has been transmitted to the general populace. We need protection against infection by this epidemic.

The part of Jung's statement that isn't true is that there does not exist any effective protection against epidemics of this nature. In fact, there does. It has been around for a long time but is usually ignored these days and when not ignored often distorted. It is faith in God. Get inoculated with the Word of God and you will be protected against all epidemics of this nature. Keep your faith topped up through prayer and contemplation and you will remain healthy.