AI is Simply the Latest Manifestation of Materialism

Bruce Charlton has a recent piece on the subject of AI, something about which, I must confess, I know next to nothing. But I do know a little about computer technology which is the basis of AI, and I also have enough spiritual understanding to realise that AI is just another poisoned chalice, something that will suck us into its orbit because of its spurious attractions and the ease it offers to lazy minds. I am pretty lazy myself but at least I know it's a fault that, if indulged in, leads to inertia which is another form of death.

I was encouraged by Bruce's post to offer a short comment which ran as follows: "AI is simply the latest manifestation of materialism, latest and worst because it is the fullest denial so far of spirit. It is humanity rejecting the reality of soul and farming out its consciousness to the machine. This is the modern cult of death in its grimmest form to date because it is a renunciation of both individuality and freedom. Neither can exist in a computer and the more we embrace this technology the more we lose connection to what actually makes us human."

When will we learn that just because we can do something doesn't mean we should? But we will do it. Naturally there will be the usual round of fake debate in which we question the use of AI and wonder if the robots will take over the world and destroy humanity but we will go ahead and everyone will eagerly hop on board just as they did with computers and smart phones. The machine will have made further inroads into our consciousness and we will have separated ourselves even more from the reality of spirit. This is part of the ongoing descent into a world of pure quantity in which nothing exists that cannot be measured. Human creativity will be put in a box with its lid firmly fastened. We will be told that AI and creativity can run alongside each other but it doesn't work like that. You either acknowledge the reality of spirit in which case AI will be recognised as anti-spirit or you ignore it in which case you enter a world in which everything is counted, controlled, numbered and known. That is a form of death because it denies freedom which is life.

Equality Means All Mountains Must be Levelled

Here is the Contents page for By No Means Equal to give potential readers an idea of what's inside the book. It can now be pre-ordered on Kindle as well as paperback. Kindle versions are here and here.

Contents

Introduction

Part I

Liberty and Equality

No Rational Basis for Equality

We Are All One

Quality and Equality

Don't You Want to Live in an Equal Society?

What Is the Great Modern Orthodoxy?

An Attack on Cosmic Order

What Is the Devil Most Seeking to Destroy?

The Elizabethan World Picture

The Descent of Man and the Prophecy of Hermes

Against Inequality

Body, Soul and Spirit

 

Part II

Secular Spirituality

God, Man and Woman

The Humanitarian God

Ideology and Freedom

A Vulgar Age

End Times

Technology Is Not Neutral

I Am God

Why I Am Not a Conservative

Tolerance and Humanism

The Lowest of the Low

The Most High

Death, the Great Equaliser?

Good and Evil, Spirit and Matter, Creator and Creation

Extreme Times

Demons

A Universe of Persons

Conclusion

I should add that the book looks at the idea of equality from a spiritual or metaphysical position rather than a political, ideological, social or whatever stance. But that's the only way to look at anything. The reason people make mistakes in their beliefs is because they have failed to engage properly with the level of first principles. Get those right and everything falls into place. Get them wrong and everything is wrong. Even ideas that may be right in essence become wrong if your reason for holding them is based on faulty premises. 

We live at a time when the idea of equality is pushed by the establishment as a way of diminishing the individual rather than raising him up. Of course, it's the latter aspect that is presented as the driving force behind it all but the real motivation is to reduce humanity to a controllable mass dominated by a small elite served by a large bureaucracy of system enforcers who cooperate and conform for a slice of the pie. This is why such things as racism and sexism have become the deadly sins of our secular age. Anything that might resist the assault on freedom, intellectual at the moment, no doubt more later on, or stand for higher values must be attacked and shamed. Those groups best able to do this are the ones who represent a threat to the narrative and must be undermined. Things can only be equal when everything is at ground level. Equality does not mean justice. It means slavery. 

Good and Evil

 I have written on several occasions about the need for a radical revision of our ideas about good and evil and what these fundamental things might be. This gets more important by the day because the current understanding of goodness has become completely distorted with the corresponding sense of evil and what it really is almost wholly lacking in the modern mind

Basically, good is God. It's that simple. And evil is not God. And not God is effectively Satan. There is no in-between, no middle ground, and if you do not come down positively on the side of God you will inevitably, inevitably, be drawn onto the side of Satan. This sounds extremely crude, sensationalist and lacking in nuance or, a trap for the intellectually proud, sophistication. But there it is. It's just how things are. However, over the last couple of centuries or so we have been lured into the false idea that good is about worldly good which means supporting the earthly human being, often at the expense of the spiritual. Thus, good people are kind and compassionate. They are believers in humanity and the general welfare of all equally. They promote social justice and humanitarian causes. Good is doing as you would be done by and respecting your neighbour but respecting your neighbour without first loving God is not loving your neighbour, not as he really is.

Believing in God means observing his laws. If you love me, keep my commandments. Again, very simple. It's no good saying you believe in God and even thinking you do if you follow a worldly agenda that prioritises the needs and goals of this world. If you believe in God you know that his kingdom is not of this world. That doesn't mean you reject the world but it is not the focus of your main concern. You do not look at life in its light but from a higher perspective

Let me put this another way. What is important is not so much whether you are a good or a bad person in the generally accepted moral sense. I do not say that doesn't matter but it is not the main thing. What is important is which side you are on which means which way your heart inclines. Is it that of God and the priorities of the spiritual world or is it that of this world which means, in the traditional shorthand, Satan? Anything which does not put God first puts Satan first and Satan will always, without exception, throw his acolytes under the bus when they no longer serve his purpose as we are currently seeing. 

But, that aside, if you do not consciously serve God you will serve the devil in one way or another. Perhaps not deliberately as in handing over your soul for worldly advantage but if you do not swim against the worldly tide you will eventually be swept down to the sea of lost souls with all the rest.

People who are on the side of good may behave badly sometimes. They shouldn't but they may though if they do they will repent because they will see they have not lived up to the standards expected which are those of the good, the beautiful and the true. People on the side of evil, either consciously or, which is most people, unthinkingly so, may behave impeccably but they are more likely to admire themselves for doing so. Those on the side of spiritual (true) good know they are sinners. Those on the side of worldly good often think of themselves as by and large pretty decent people, but the closer you come to real good the more you see yourself for what you are because the image you have built up of yourself is being stripped bare.

All good is in God. Nothing outside God can be good. The modern world has become deeply embedded in evil because it rejects God and even when it allows him it is only on its own terms which means it doesn't allow him at all. 

I don't often write about specific current events on this blog and that's because these are almost irrelevant set against the general trends. The task of the spiritual aspirant is to put himself right on the basic level of aligning his heart and soul and will with the reality and purpose of God. Once that is done, or starts to be done, then other things will fall into place. It's all about first principles. Get those right and you will know the difference between good and evil. Get them wrong as most do and you will have no idea and can be herded and corralled by external forces that manipulate you at their will. This is why the only real freedom is in God.

Failing the Litmus Tests

I read recently that as much as 80% of spiritual communities went along with the patently false propaganda of 2020 and got masked, pecked and all the rest of it. This is a staggering proportion, given that such people should be aware of what lies behind appearance and, further, should be focussed in the eternal rather than the transitory. Why such a failure of understanding?

 As I see it, there are several reasons the people in these spiritual communities failed these litmus tests as Bruce Charlton has accurately dubbed them. First, and most obviously, they lack discernment, but why is this? I believe much of it comes down to motivation.

It is not sufficiently appreciated that the reason someone takes to the spiritual path is more important than the fact that they do. There are only two valid reasons. One is a fierce passion for truth. You know there is more out there than is generally recognised and you will not rest until you uncover as much of this as you can. People who fall into this category will not have been misled by the lies and deceit of the recent past. They may not have been able to put their finger on exactly what was going on but they will have felt a profound dissatisfaction with what was presented as fact. To put it bluntly, it smelt very bad.

The other reason for taking to the spiritual path is a love of God. In fact, these two reasons are by no means exclusive. There may be a different emphasis to begin with but the more one travels on the path, the more these two come together and become the same thing. For the person who loves God the machinations of man are evident because these machinations come from a rejection of God. The closer one gets to God the easier it is to discern worldly lies that spit in God's face.

Am I saying that people in spiritual communities who went along with the propaganda don't have sufficient zeal for truth or love for God? Yes, I am saying precisely that. They failed the test because they were more concerned with themselves than they were with God or truth and therefore they may have been in spiritual communities but they were not real spiritual people by any of the criteria that matter. I will concede that it may not have obvious to everyone straightaway what was happening in 2020, and what is happening today might also sometimes take a while to see through. But anyone whose heart and mind are in the right place should be able to tell the real from the unreal. If you can't perceive the shadow cast by demons it means you have not yet properly turned towards the light.

By No Means Equal

 My new book is set to be published on October 27th in the UK and November 1st in the US. Here is the front cover.

and here's the back with the blurb and a typically generous quote from Bruce Charlton whose suggestion it was that I bring out a book centred around some of the writings on the idea of equality that I have produced on this blog. Professor J.M. Smith of the Orthosphere was also kind enough to write a few words about the book which you will find on the Amazon listings, links to which are below.

Those writings were the seed from which the book developed but much of it is new. The theme is the modern concern with equality and how that is actually an anti-spiritual doctrine because it denies both individuality and freedom which are fundamental spiritual principles. This is not on the basis of a crude left/right perspective but something much more important which is true spiritual versus material or false spiritual which I put in the same camp. Thus, equality is a metaphysical matter not a political one. That is a trap which ensnares many people who see the insanity of so much that passes for rational understanding these days but react to it on a worldly level instead of rising above the argument to a spiritual plane which puts both sides in perspective. I am not saying that on the worldly level both sides are the same but the solution to their battle is only found by rising above them as they are in this world. Ultimately, the battle is between God and Satan, to put it in traditional terms, and there are solid grounds for thinking that everything that is not consciously and intelligently for God becomes absorbed onto the side of Satan. Equality which seems so bright and shiny on the outside becomes a means of separating human beings from their spiritual role and purpose. That is why the sub-title of the book is Reclaiming the Soul.

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon here and here. Also elsewhere, of course, but I don't have those details yet.

No More Sea

Commenters Lady Mermaid and J.M. Smith on the previous post about the oceanic feeling drew my attention to some interesting marine phrases in Revelation. The first comes from Revelation 21:1. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea." The second reference is in Revelation 4:6 where it says "Before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal" and then a bit further on we have Revelation 15: 2 with "I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name stand on the sea of glass with harps from God."

These two extracts refer to the end of time when good has finally ousted all evil from the world and the spiritual journey is complete. Creation is taken up into God as the New Jerusalem descends. However, they are a little different. The first is a factual statement. There is no more sea. The second doesn't seem to be meant literally. It alludes to something that looks like a sea of glass but is possibly not actually such. The image may just be used comparatively. Nevertheless, I think they are referring to a similar phenomenon and one that manifests on both the material and spiritual levels because at this stage in the operation these two have become one in the sense that the outer is now a perfect representation of the inner. The Fall has been reversed and time has fulfilled its purpose.

What does the sea symbolise? It is the primeval ocean from which life emerges once it has been fertilised by the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. As Lady Mermaid says (and she should know!), it is chaos and formlessness, and as J.M. Smith points out, it is darkness and deep which are the symbols of origin. We know now what the writer of Genesis could not have known, that life started in the sea and only emerged onto dry land once it had reached a certain state of development.  But it's all there in Genesis.

The sea is potential. It is that from which life is formed once it has been impregnated by the Word of God. Hence, no more sea means that potential has been actualised. That which began in the Mother has been born, reached maturity and returned to the Father. What does return to the Father mean here? It means grown up to become like the Father.

In a psychological sense the sea is also the subconscious, that in which monsters lurk but also a source of imagination and creativity when illumined by the Logos. No more sea from this point of view means no more subconscious and that means that the individual, or, at the end of time, the whole human race, has become fully conscious. There are no dark hidden corners in consciousness. Everything has been irradiated by light. The body itself has become light. Occultists talk of the astral plane which is made up of the thoughts, desires, fears, aspirations and so on of humanity but a spiritually ignorant humanity separate from God. It is regarded as a vale of illusion even if it contains beauty. This astral plane is also the sea and for the disciple risen with Christ it ceases to exist, being replaced by that of which it is a manmade distortion which is the quality of love/wisdom.

The sea, then, is the ground of manifested existence, both physically and psychologically. No more sea means that the journey of evolving life is complete, and I would say that the sea of glass points to a similar reality. In the second quote it is mingled with fire which suggests divine love. Watery love implies something rather soft and bland, a generalised state of sentimentalised concern with feelings. But fiery love is intense, creative, genuinely passionate. The sea of glass symbolises emotions controlled, mastered, stilled. The saints stand on it so they can use it but they are not submerged in it, and the fire shows that unstable, changeable human emotions have been transformed into divine love.

Perhaps the whole evolutionary journey is to make water into light. Life must start in the waters which contain the nourishment to make God's thoughts grow. From its depths life emerges onto dry land but then the next stage is to take flight and go through the air up to fire which is the light of God. Could we say that our current refusal to accept the reality of spirit is a refusal to take the next stage of leaving the hard material earth and soar up to the sky, figuratively speaking? Some of want to return to the sea where we will only drown. Some want to stay on the physical earth but God is calling us to mount up to the heavens.

The Oceanic Feeling

A comment from J.M. Smith on my last post referred to the so-called oceanic feeling. It went as follows:

" For all their talk of individualism, Leftists seem to find selfhood a burden they would like to discard. I think this may explain their attraction to some Buddhist doctrines. I've forgotten who it was, but someone once described this as the "oceanic feeling"--the feeling that one is dissolved in something larger, be it humanity, the cosmos, or a pantheistic god. As you say, Christianity is neither left nor right, but it offers a relationship to God that does not dissolve the self. The self is radically transfigured but it is not destroyed. I might say that Leftists think spirituality is a matter of losing oneself, whereas Christians think spirituality is a matter of finding one's self (largely through destruction of illusions.)"

I replied.

"The oceanic feeling is a real thing but I'm not sure how spiritual in the true sense it is as drugs and even mental illness can bring it about. I see it as consciousness slipping outside the boundaries of the solid core of the rational self and becoming immersed in the universal substance from which individualised consciousness is drawn but that is like the self returning to the spiritual womb rather than growing up and becoming, as you rightly put it, transfigured, thereby retaining its full individuality but expanding that into divine being."

All this prompted me to do a little research into the phrase which I first came across many moons ago in a novel by Arthur Koestler. I thought it came from Freud as a psychological (i.e. non-religious) description of religious experience but when I looked it up it turned out that it was the French writer Romain Rolland who came up with the term (which he introduced to Freud), and he coined it to describe the feelings of being one with the universe and of time being taken up into eternity that he read about in his studies of Indian mysticism, particularly from the life of 19th century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna who frequently experienced spiritual raptures. 

Ramakrishna is a very appealing figure because of his childlike innocence and transparent goodness, and he might be said to be one of the main sources for the Western discovery of Indian mysticism through his disciple Swami Vivekananda. He was certainly a genuine saint in the Indian tradition. However, his experiences have been diagnosed as possibly caused by temporal lobe epilepsy which puts them in a slightly different light to that in which they are normally perceived which is as the ecstacies of an enlightened mystic. It also raises the possibility that the search for higher consciousness in this earthly life, which is what lies behind many Westerners' attraction to Eastern mysticism, may be something of a red herring. Ramakrishna was the first Indian mystic of recent times to be seen as living in a state of heightened spiritual reality. If this state was actually or partially a result of mental illness we have to ask ourselves if the approach to the spiritual path that sees it as a search for higher consciousness might not, in fact, be a mistaken one. This is not to deny the reality of higher states of consciousness but maybe that is not what the spiritual search should be aiming at. Indeed, traditionally higher states of consciousness are regarded as completely incidental to proper spiritual practice and sometimes even positively misleading. We are meant to learn the lessons of this world whilst in this world not try to escape to a higher one, tempting as that might be.

I am not an enthusiast for the theories of Sigmund Freud who seems to me a typical 19th century materialist. Perhaps not typical but operating from the standpoint of 19th century materialism, all the same. When I first heard of the Oedipus complex I thought it complete nonsense which it is. However, some of his work on dreams and the unconscious and the various drives that determine human motivation was valuable at the time even if it is outdated now. And what he apparently thought about the oceanic feeling is also worth considering. He envisaged it as the reversion to a pre-ego state, something experienced by the infant before it becomes aware of self and other. That idea is similar to the one I mention in my reply above which postulates that the mystical sense of oneness in which the ego is blotted out is a reflection of the pre-incarnation state when the soul is bathed in the bliss of non-separation. Thus, it is not where we should be headed but where we are coming from and that means that attempts to recapture it are misguided. No doubt, it will be recapitulated on a higher turn of the spiral once the lessons of incarnation have been learnt but that will mean, as I put it above, retaining full individuality but expanding that into divine being. The oceanic feeling is entirely passive but we are called by God to be co-creators with him and that means able to wield divine powers for the benefit of all creation. The soul submerged in the oceanic feeling remains inert. We are meant to be eagles not fish.