Why Leftism is Wrong in One Sentence

Leftism collapses the vertical to the horizontal. That's it. That is its great error or sin as you might well call it since it deforms reality. This is why it can only really infect human consciousness in a time of materialism, and why when it contaminates spirituality, you get a false spirituality that reduces the transcendent to the immanent. It is why it favours egalitarianism over hierarchy and the female over the male, the male being associated with the transcendent.

This world must be seen in the light of it being the outermost part of a far greater reality or else as the furthest removed from the centre. When seen as real in its own light, as it is now, it becomes very hard for anyone sensitive to truth to function in it properly. Its values are false, its priorities absurd. Such an attitude strips meaning from life and real purpose from human endeavour. To renounce the world in such circumstances is only right for what you are renouncing is not the world as God's creation but the world as its own be all and end all with material ends and goals supreme. The material has no meaning apart from the spiritual, but this is the crazy situation in which we find ourselves in the 21st century. All human societies and cultures are focused exclusively in the material, and practically all religions and spiritual approaches, where they do exist function, in that paradigm and defer to it. It is the master and they must obey their master if they wish to be allowed to exist.

It is coming to the point at which a serious person must reject everything in the world. Not just the obvious evil but the public attempts to contest or resist that evil. These are not as bad as the evil itself but they are the products of it in that they arise in response to it. Hence, they still bear its mark. The only true good can have nothing to do with any of this as it must exist absolutely independently. The world has now separated itself from the divine. To encounter the divine in anything like a pure form you must separate yourself from the world. You don't have to run off to the desert or remote northern islands (the world is in those places nowadays anyway), but you must separate yourself psychologically, spiritually even, from the world. It is a fact that no church or spiritual group can help you now. You are on your own or with a few like-minded companions.

But that is the point of living at this time. You are being tested in the fire for your spiritual integrity. So many people use the spiritual to further themselves. They are not bad people so much as people who wish to have a foot in both camps. They see the reality of the spiritual but they only see partially and they still see through worldly eyes. You must train yourself to see with the spiritual eye, the eye of the heart. Only then will you see truly.

Christianity with its democratisation of spirit has given a false idea of the spiritual path due to its idea that all you need to be saved is to believe. I realise this is a simplification of what Christianity really says but it is a common idea both outside and within the religion. It fits in very well with the modern ethos that we are all equal, an ethos, by the way, that is only encouraged by the elite to keep the masses subjugated and pull back all those who might seek to separate themselves spiritually from the mass. It may be true that all you need to do to be saved is to believe but the how, why and what of that are essential. It is not mere human belief but belief that comes from the whole person and consequently transforms being. And then it requires belief in the real as perceived by the inner eye not some manmade spiritual idol of which there are many, including many in the Christian faith. 

Ultimately, only those willing to walk into the fire will be saved. Today those truly on the path are called to a kind of inner martyrdom but to be so called is a gift so if you are one of those in that position be grateful, though know it will involve suffering for that is what purges the soul and renders it a fit habitat for God into which he may enter.

The Pain of Exile

 Every person who has any real spiritual sensibility suffers from being in this world, and the more sensibility you have, the more you suffer. As much as you may love certain aspects of this world, you know it is not your real home. For that matter, the 'you' you appear to be in this world is not the real you either. You know there is a greater self somewhere beyond the one you experience in the here and now.  There is always this existential ache but you are fortunate for it is this that drives you to seek out deeper levels of truth than what the world has to offer, even in most of what it provides in terms of religion.

Your spiritual pain has another purpose too, one beyond the impetus towards personal growth. This world is sunk in darkness and separated from its source. The suffering of those who are aware of the soul helps lighten some of that darkness by aiding in reconnection. This is because it is a transmuting element that opens up the world through you as a part of the world to the higher spiritual that you can sense. Therefore, whenever you may feel particular pain or anguish know that you are bringing light into the world through that pain because you are, in however small a degree, piercing the shell of materialism that surrounds the totality of human consciousness. You are letting some light into the world. While you are in the world you are part of it and as a part that is somewhat conscious of higher reality you help to bring that reality into the world as a whole. In this way your pain helps in the healing of the world which may be a small comfort but should be some consolation. You are serving a purpose beyond yourself.

Those who have a foot in both worlds can act as channels between the two in a manner that benefits and uplifts, though they may not know it, many souls on the cusp of spiritual awakening.

Why pain, why suffering is the cry of humanity to God. Usually there is no answer and that causes the faith of many to fail. But if you looked on the fact of pain and suffering as evidence that this is not your natural state, and used it as a motivation to seek that state, you might be better reconciled to it. I am not saying this justifies or fully explains suffering, but the deepest love comes from the knowledge of suffering which breaks open the self. God himself suffers through his incarnation in matter and yet he joyously gives himself so that his creation might grow and become more like him.

The topic of initiation is one which the modern world, egalitarian, democratic, materialistic, has quite forgotten. However, in many traditional societies it was an important concept which could be applied on a variety of levels from the everyday, the movement from boyhood to manhood, for instance, to the deeply spiritual. Fundamentally, initiation means the transition to a different mode of consciousness and it always involves a kind of death. In other words, there is no initiation without suffering and the further one progresses on the spiritual path, the truer this is. The suffering comes about as part of the outgrowing of a previous phase of being and indicates you are being prepared to move to a higher phase. Suffering leads to death which in turn leads to rebirth. There is no proper initiation without suffering so let those who do suffer spiritually understand that this is a sign they are being prepared for a new and higher state of being.

The Solar Principle

By No Means Equal was published a couple of years ago and I've noticed since then there have been many more books and articles questioning the validity of the modern egalitarian ethos. I would love to think it was because of my book but I'm not that deluded, especially since it hasn't sold very much. The fact is this is an idea whose time has come. The flaws of egalitarianism are just becoming more and more obvious, and in every sphere too. Most people approach this from a political perspective but the real issue is a spiritual or metaphysical one and everything else follows on from that. As always, get first principles right and correct understanding will generally follow. Get them wrong and one mistake leads to another. Don't we see that everywhere now?

Sometimes Christianity is blamed for inspiring this ideology and there is some truth in that even if traditional Christians would point to Masonic influences, the French Revolution, Marxism etc, all the usual suspects. And they are not wrong. But a Christianity emptied of its transcendent qualities can also be blamed and there always was this seed within in it even if it took many centuries to grow fully. Christianity is not specifically a religion of spiritual aristocrats which is at once its strength and its weakness. Christianity is a religion of love and it's very easy to think that love means equality if that's what you want to think. It doesn't but it can be misunderstood as doing so. Christianity externalised the Mysteries, making them potentially accessible to everyone. This is its glory but also its flaw. I'm not saying it was wrong to do this. That clearly is not the case but it is something that was right which carries certain risks.

A previous post referred to the collapse of the vertical to the horizontal that takes place during the end times. This is almost the perfect visual image of egalitarianism. The pole that points to the transcendent is chopped down and lies flat on the ground with the result that hierarchical values are abandoned and replaced with those that promote and sustain equality. But the attempts to enforce a spurious equality lead to the loss of individuality and freedom, and also to the curtailing of growth beyond the material. With an irony that would be amusing if it weren't so destructive the insistence on diversity in the modern world is leading to an increasingly bland conformity. There is probably less real diversity now than there ever has been, partly because of the pressures applied by modern technology, but also because the obsession with equality forces everyone into the same box.

The question of equality is something about which it is futile to argue or debate. Those who believe in it do not do so for rational or intellectual reasons, still less those of common sense. They are ideologically committed, and the real question is why do they wish to deny reality? For some it is because of resentment, for others the search for power and for many now it is because that is what good people are supposed to think. But ultimately it is because of the rejection of the solar principle in man. What I mean by this is that divine spark that lies hidden in the darkness of the self and which, when discovered, tended and brought to full flame makes of man a god. We completely neglect this essential principle now and even many of those who would say they believe in it substitute man-made imitations, more in keeping with their worldly beliefs, for the true inner light. 

The solar principle is the connection to transcendence within the human heart. And yet though it exists within it must also be conceived high up above us, us as earthly man, like the sun which is its symbol. Normally it is obscured by clouds of delusion and ignorance but when these part it shines with majesty and glory. No egalitarian can ever find it because egalitarianism never leaves the earth, the flat ground. The solar principle can only be seen by those who take their eyes off the earth and look up to the sky.

Sex in the Universe

 Sex is the basis of the universe. It is the foundation to everything as the One becomes two in order to manifest and know itself more fully. Call this spirit and matter, God and Creation, subject and object, it amounts to the same thing. The two are always trying to return to oneness and it is this that provides the creative tension necessary for anything first to be and then to develop and evolve. 

Sex means metaphysical sex of which the physical is a lower order reflection in matter. Sex is the most powerful thing in the world but it points to something much greater than itself which is why it can lead to the greatest elevation and, when despoiled or corrupted, the greatest degradation. But even then it is never evil, just the perversion of a supreme good.

In the human sphere sex appears as man and woman which is the expression in creatures, created beings, of spirit and matter. Each have both within them but there is a polarity to each which is different. This points to an important truth, one rejected in our time but understood though often misused in the past. These two are complementary but they are not equal and opposite. In any complementary pair one is ontologically prior, the other appearing as its reflection in duality. In this case, it is spirit which precedes matter and, by extension, the male precedes and therefore should lead the female. If that is not the case as now when feminism has denatured humanity then societal breakdown will ensue and end in chaos which is the degeneration of form to raw material. Male and female represent the vertical and horizontal axes of life, one pointing to transcendence and higher reality and the other to this world and material being, nature, earth, the body. Both are part of the whole but the masculine principle must dominate or spirit will be pulled down into matter where it will be lost in a psychic miasma (see much contemporary spirituality which is all to do with feelings and healing rather than proper self-transcendence).

Only the hero can become divine. That is to say only the fully developed self can transcend self. Popular (feminised?) Christianity ignores this truth thinking that because anyone who believes can be saved then all are equal in Christ. All may be one in Christ but that does not mean that all are equal. There is hierarchy in heaven, and salvation is not theosis. The idea that everyone is saved and when saved equal comes from prioritising the immanent at the expense of the transcendent. It collapses the vertical to the horizontal. The vertical needs the horizontal to express itself and to know itself as subject needs object, but it must always be the dominant principle. 

When the feminine asserts itself over the masculine which it will often seek to do in a fallen world of competing egos, then what is pleasing to emotions overrides what accords with truth. Nurturing virtues, essential in themselves and in their proper place, become over-emphasised and expressed where they don't belong and where they do active harm such as, for example, by undermining justice and responsibility. So-called compassion (which is not love) is weaponised to pull down higher truths, by definition beyond the mundane, to the point where they can be understood by all. But they are destroyed in the process. The tyranny of the masses becomes the arbiter of truth. This is the law of the horizontal applied to the vertical.

The moon transforms the light of the sun and makes of it something very different, mysterious and beautiful, but without that light it has nothing to transform. The Creator has given us signs in the heavens through which we can understand how the dynamics of human interaction should work. If we ignore them we are straying from the path of truth and that means we fall into darkness and illusion. This is our state today.

To say that the increasing domination of the feminine over the masculine leads to loss of connection to transcendent truth is not to condemn the feminine itself but the ego-driven feminine. Obviously, there is an ego-driven masculine too which seeks power for its own ends rather than power in the service of truth. However, there is a difference between corrupted truth and an outright lie. The masculine should rule but for the sake of the masculine and the feminine not for its own sake, and that way lies proper harmony. If the basis of the universe is sex then the expression of that is love. In a fallen world the two sexes become rivals, each drawn to the other but also seeking to dominate the other. It is not right to say the sexes should cooperate as that is far too feeble a word to express the creative harmony that should exist between them, but they should certainly not compete. Each sex must be true to its essential metaphysical Form in which the male represents the reality of being and truth, and the female that of change and becoming. Then they will find true creative fulfilment.

In the end master metaphysician James Brown summed it up thus.

This is a man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing
Nothing without a woman or a girl.

Arrival in Yercaud

 The reminiscences of my time in India in the 1980s are a sidetrack from the main theme of the blog but some of their contents do occasionally overlap with that theme and I enjoy the trip down memory lane so here is another one following chronologically on from the last.

We had arrived in India in April and it was now November. The seasons in South India are described as hot, hotter and hottest and I don't remember which is when but I have the feeling that the cooler weather was on its way now as one might expect at that time of year. This was certainly the case in Yercaud which is a hill station in the Shevaroys 5,000 feet above sea level so has a very different climate to the plains down below. That was one of the reasons the British developed such towns as Simla in the north and Ootacamund in the south, but there was a commercial element too because many of these hill stations were situated in tea growing areas though Yercaud, being slightly less elevated, was better suited to coffee. Coffee estates are more visually interesting than tea estates which resemble nothing so much as neat rows of suburban hedges. Coffee requires both sun and shade so growers plant trees interspersed with the coffee and in Yercaud these were often orange trees giving two crops on the same piece of land as well as two lots of very beautiful and sweet-smelling blossom. 

The van with all our possessions got to the town of Salem at the foot of the Shevaroy Hills without mishap which was somewhat surprising given its rickety state. There didn't appear to be any signs to Yercaud but there was only one road that led to the hills so we followed it. It was a lovely drive made more interesting because as you climbed the vegetation changed from typically tropical trees and plants to more temperate zone types. The air became cooler and fresher, and the light sharper. There were monkeys in the trees and scampering on the rocks by the side of the road like these fellows.

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind

Where did I leave that banana?

Roughly half way up the hill our van broke down. I was surprised it had got this far given its condition, but the driver was unperturbed and soon diagnosed the problem. The trouble was he had to go back to Salem, a good 10 miles away, to get a spare part for the engine. Luckily, there were buses plying this route and he got on one leaving Michael and me with the van. Michael then decided he had better get up to Yercaud to make sure the bungalow we had rented was ready for us and he got on a bus going the other way. These buses came by about once an hour and there was very little other traffic so I sat there by myself looking out over the hot dusty plains spread below and watching the monkeys until I got sleepy and stretched out on the parapet that bordered the road, presumably to stop cars plunging over the side. They didn't always work. On one occasion while I was living in the area a bus went over resulting in several deaths.

Michael came back after a couple of hours and then the driver returned with the spare part and we set off up the remainder of the 20 hairpin bends there were on the ghat road. Here is one of them.

And this shows the entrance into Yercaud. Note the cloud and the evergreen trees, showing that we are high up.

The name Yercaud comes from two Tamil words meaning lake and forest, and the lake is the first thing you see on arrival. I believe it has now been developed as a tourist resort with fishing and boating but in my day it was just a lake with some public gardens beside it on one side. 

Yercaud Lake

 We drove to the bungalow Michael had rented, albeit only for a couple of months as on his previous visit he had also located a property for sale that consisted of a pair of bungalows built on the terraced hillside so that on the lower level you had a well (there was no mains water) and the first bungalow. Then on the next level there was a stretch of garden with a few coffee and banana plants and some orange trees and finally at the top the main bungalow. It was ideal for running as a guest house. Michael had found this property through someone he had met on his initial trip who was a Syrian Christian called Tharyan Matthews. Syrian Christians are from Kerala for the most part and claim religious descent from St Thomas who is supposed to have landed on the Malabar Coast just a few years after the Crucifixion. They are ethnically Indians but use the rites of early Syriac Christianity hence their name. Tharyan (the name is a form of Alexander) and his wife Elizabeth would be good friends to us during our stay in Yercaud, helping us in many ways though the friendship did end on something of a sour note in what one might call typical Indian fashion. We will come to that another time.

The rented bungalow was basic but habitable. There was one large central living area and a couple of bedrooms but one was small and somewhat grubby so we used it to store our furniture, mostly bought at auction in Bangalore when we thought we would be living in Whitefield. We shared the other bedroom, and the first night passed reasonably well though I kept hearing strange noises but since the house was surrounded by quite thick woods I just thought it was the local nightlife. The noises were louder and seemed closer the next evening and then all of a sudden in the middle of the night Michael gave a great shout. It seemed something had run over his face and then tried to burrow down into his pyjamas. We turned on the lights and there were over a dozen rats in the room including several perched on a ledge or cornice that ran along the walls. They were looking at us inquisitively. We were clearly interlopers in their territory.

I can't remember how we got rid of the rats but we clearly did because we stayed in that bungalow for the next few weeks while the purchase of the other property went through. You may be wondering how we bought this other place, given the reason we had left Whitefield was that we, as foreigners, had not been granted permission to buy what was called immoveable property despite being assured by the Indian High Commission in London that we could. The answer is Michael had so set his heart on buying somewhere that he accepted Tharyan's offer to buy it in his name. Michael supplied the money which was about £20,000 (this was 1980 so that was not what it would be now but still was reasonable for 2 bungalows and a fairly decent amount of garden) and Tharyan's name went on the paperwork. I thought this was somewhat reckless but Tharyan seemed friendly and honest, and it was not my money.

We moved into the new bungalow in December 1980. It had taken several months, and a lot of work still needed to be done on the two bungalows and the garden which was heavily overgrown, but we had finally established ourselves in India.