Are We in Hell Now?

 In my last post I considered who might go to hell and concluded it could be anyone who didn't want to go to Heaven. Here I want to look at a more radical possibility. Are we actually living in hell now?

As the 19th and 20th centuries progressed human beings became increasingly separated from God. This applied even to religious people because religion became more materialistic, less centred on the sacred mysteries of God and more humanistic in focus. It was demythologised which means stripped of inner meaning and brought into line with scientific materialism. The psychic atmosphere in which everyone lived was secular and the next world was further removed from this one. Reactions sprang up with souls thirsty for the sacred looking to the East or to New Age type beliefs but these were also heavily contaminated by the materialistic ethos and there was a clear lack of genuine spiritual direction. Spirituality meant what you could get out of it more than making yourself right with God. The idea arose that all forms of spirituality were saying essentially the same thing and answering the same call, but a deeper analysis shows this was not the case and for many of them God was peripheral instead of being absolutely central as should be the case. And even if God is central the question remains what sort of God? For there are many false gods born of human imagining and projection not to mention demonic inspiration. The true God is known through revelation, through his creation and in the human heart but the heart has to be tuned to the right note, away from the key of self, to perceive him clearly.

It would be my contention that just as there is a divine plan for mankind so there is also a demonic plan. I won't waste time trying to convince people that supernatural powers of evil exist. If you are a Christian this should be a fundamental part of your belief. Indeed, most religions would acknowledge this. Their aim is to absorb the energy from human souls for their own benefit and use. They have cut themselves off from the source of life and need life energy to maintain their existence. So they seek to corrupt souls. They have been active for millennia, of course, but recently, possibly in line with cycles of existence and stages of evolutionary development, possibly as a lesson and a test, they appear to have been allowed greater influence over mankind. 

What is their aim? It is still the corruption of souls as it always has been but now there is something else. I believe, and I believe this because of what I can observe around me, because of the pattern of recent history and because of intuition, that they are seeking to make hell on Earth. That is to say, they are seeking to externalise hell onto the physical plane, to extend their domain, as it were.This project, ongoing since at least the 1st World War though groundwork was laid much earlier, has clearly moved into a new phase over the last 18 months with the global health scare, a scare that is not rooted in nothing because everybody would see through that quickly, but is rooted in something that has been grossly over-exaggerated and used as an excuse to exercise a radical new level of control over the populace who accept this because of fear forced on them by politicians, the media and, perhaps worst of all, scientists who have sold their souls to the devil and exercise the intellectual authority of their position in a totally corrupt way. There are still many who don't and all praise to them but they are not given anywhere near the same level of publicity that their fallen colleagues who serve the unholy ends of the demonic agenda are allowed. I am not saying these people are aware of who or what they serve but if their hearts are not fully open to truth, beauty and goodness they can easily be co-opted, and they have been. 

Modern culture is largely the creation of hell and it is creating hell on Earth. From music which has descended from concern with the beauty of melody and harmony down to the savagery of contemporary rap in which incessant beat predominates musically and violence and anger lyrically, to the well-known distortions of 20th century art, to film from which simple goodness has long since been banished and we are left with ever more sordid attempts to break taboos. The list is endless and the degeneration affects every branch of the arts. I won't labour the point other than to add that it's important to realise this is not the grumbling of an old man who complains that "Things were better in my day." They weren't as bad but the process was already in full swing when I was growing up in the '60s and '70s. That process has continued on its downward path but it did not originate then. It stems from the severing of culture from the spiritual and its contamination by materialism.

If hell can be defined as separation from God then it should be obvious that we are in hell now. God is meaningless in our contemporary world even in the churches where his spiritual reality is increasingly being lost and his relevance is only acknowledged as support for the secular humanistic project so completely failing to remember the words of Christ that "My Kingdom is not of this world." For many of the modern churches, as they proved when they shut their doors last year, Christ's kingdom is of this world but it's not even a kingdom because it is subordinate to the worldly powers.

We are living in a form of hell now and it's going to get worse. The separation from God will continue. The vice will be tightened and the spiritual corruption spread. But do not despair. Never despair. It is a great privilege to be living at this time. If you are in any way aware of the reality of God and the degradation of the contemporary world this means you have been sent to play a part in a holy war. You are a soldier for Christ. Your fight is on the mental plane and therefore you should know that even your thoughts can be used by God to increase the power of the light in this world. You don't have to go out and do anything publicly but through your thoughts and prayers you can serve God and help souls struggling for truth in the spiritual quagmire of the contemporary world. This world may be turning into hell but heaven awaits those who simply wake up to that fact.

Note: To say this world is turning into hell does not mean it is fully so. Goodness, truth and beauty still remain and always will. Their power and impact is severely damaged but God will never leave us without some kind of access to them. To take just one example, we have access to much of the beauty and wisdom of the past in a way that could not be dreamed of by our ancestors who did not live in such spiritually degenerate times.

Who Goes to Hell?

Anyone who wants to which means anyone who doesn't want to go to Heaven. But understand that wanting to go to Heaven means loving God because God is Heaven. It's not just the desire to be saved or to have a beautiful afterlife surrounded by your loved ones or whatever it might be. It is loving God, your Creator. So, who goes to hell is anyone who doesn't love God. 

Let me explain what I mean by this. I don't see hell as just a place of darkness or fire or cold or whatever it might be, somewhere you are constantly tortured by demons with pitchforks. That may be an extreme version but hell could also be a place of utter banality. There are probably different hells of different degrees of separation from God that are created by the mindsets of those who go there and so reflect different mentalities. There may be hells corresponding to the various vices as in Dante or there may be intellectual hells where clever materialistic atheists go. They won't exactly suffer but they won't know the joys of Heaven and, unless they repent and turn to their Maker, they will start to shrivel up spiritually which means their consciousness and sensitivity to life will gradually attenuate, becoming less and less responsive. They will fade not blossom.

Those who go to hell are not necessarily bad people as the world sees bad. They are spiritually unresponsive in one way or another but they are not necessarily wicked or evil. They have just failed the greatest lesson of life which is to love God. Clearly, none of us loves God as we should but even wanting to love God is enough for him to work with.

Non Volo Peccare

An Imaginary Conversation.

Official: Have you had the medical intervention yet?

Normal Person: No. I've done some unwise things in my time but I still have some sense.

O: What do you mean?

NP: To do something unnecessary and potentially risky out of fear or because you've succumbed to state propaganda or media pressure is surely foolish?

O: It's not unnecessary and if you don't do it for yourself, you should certainly do it to protect others.

NP: Most people's immune system is more than capable of dealing with the illness so it is unnecessary for most people. However, I agree with the last part of what you say but would put it in a different context. Spiritual contagion is worse than physical contagion and to provide an example of someone relatively immune from that is surely the best service you can render your fellow man at the present time.

O: But what if you get ill and infect someone who then dies because of your negligence?

NP: Negligence is a loaded term. When did it become an acceptable word to describe someone's right to determine what goes into their own body? Besides, if the peck works who will die and if it doesn't why are we even having this conversation?

Etc, etc. 

This debate could go on indefinitely and still get nowhere as both participants are starting from totally different premises. For O the body is central. For NP it's the soul.

Note: I translate the title I Do Not Want to be Pecked but it's been a long time since I studied Latin so that may not be entirely accurate.

All Men are Created Equal

 Stanford historian Jack Rakove makes the following interesting point.

"When Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” in the preamble to the Declaration, he was not talking about individual equality. What he really meant was that the American colonists, as a people, had the same rights of self-government as other peoples, and hence could declare independence, create new governments and assume their “separate and equal station” among other nations. But after the Revolution succeeded, Americans began reading that famous phrase another way. It now became a statement of individual equality that everyone and every member of a deprived group could claim for himself or herself. With each passing generation, our notion of who that statement covers has expanded. It is that promise of equality that has always defined our constitutional creed."

This statement in its distorted form has become the basic dogma of the modern world and I would submit that it lies at the root of our rejection of reality. That is to say, it is used as a justification for it, a kind of religious principle that is taken as obvious and good and right, and to deviate from which is the mark of a wicked person. The fact that it is clearly false doesn't stop us from believing or pretending to believe it. For the masses it is a way to get back at those that have been over them or have more than them. For the weak it is a way to cut the strong down to size. For the sentimental it is a way to make them feel they are decent  and kind people. For the demons and their disciples in the world it is a way to bring down real truth and goodness which are necessarily hierarchical. I would suggest a far more accurate statement is one that the Masters made to me which was this. "Men are by no means equal on the earth plane but that is no reason to dismiss anybody." This statement takes care of both aspects of truth. The fact that we are all the children of God, in potential at least,  but there are older and younger children amongst us. If all men are created equal there is then no higher or lower. There is nowhere to go.

Leftism is Materialism

 I often see articles or comments debating which elements of what they call 'wokeism' but is really just a more developed form of leftism have gone too far and how we should pull back from the situation we now find ourselves in. You have writers like Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray as good examples of this sort of thing. Unfortunately, all these articles and comments still accept or assume that some aspects of leftism, whether it be anti-racism or feminism or egalitarianism or whatever, should be retained. It can be hard for a person raised in the modern world to see that all aspects of leftism should be totally rejected but that is the case because if you don't cut it all out, it will just return in some form or other. It is like a poison that will spread throughout the body unless you are cleansed of it entirely. This is because the thing itself is an anti-God, anti-creation ideology. It puts the human being first. That is the, at first sight inoffensive even seemingly benign, seed from which all the other corrupting elements grow.

It's no good bemoaning the dire cultural/spiritual state of affairs if you support any aspect of what's led up to it. You have to go to the source and the source is the rejection of God and transcendent reality, including the laws of creation and the way reality is structured. This doesn't mean we should return to the past. We reached a fork in a road we were meant to be travelling down but we took the wrong turning, the one that downgraded God to first of all something of diminished importance and then to nothing at all. We forgot the reason for being in this world, taking it as something existing in and for itself. Unless we go right to the roots of our problem then whatever we do will be of no significance. The old word for repentance was metanoia which implies something much more deep-seated and visceral than simply regretting or being sorry or changing a few things but leaving the core untouched. It means a complete change of heart, a wiping of the slate and total reorientation of being. Anything less just won't do.

We must understand that we cannot graft some form of spirituality on top of our materialistic assumptions and our human-centred ideologies. We will be no better off. We have to throw out the baby with the bathwater, the baby in this case being materialism in any form. This baby has grown up to be a monster and you can't incorporate it into anything wholesome. It must be destroyed utterly.

This might seem a shocking thing to say because it goes against everything we have been taught over the last few decades but the reason should be clear. For years we have pretended that a humanistic ideology rooted in materialism was basically good, being centred around fairness, equality, compassion etc, but it just got out of hand occasionally as now with the so-called woke agenda. But this is the inevitable outcome of leftism. It's what happens when God is not at the centre of human life, and the true God not some manufactured version that actually just conforms to leftist this worldly priorities and has no proper spiritual purpose. I repeat, this doesn't mean we should return to the past. We couldn't even if we would. But we have to return to God and Christ and live in the full awareness of God's plan for humanity which is the growth of the soul. That can only happen when the soul turns away from the world. Leftism is completely of this world which should be obvious once you realise that it is rooted in the very human characteristics of envy, resentment, fear and self-hatred, albeit disguised in pretty clothes. If you don't see that you have chosen to live in a lie. Why is that?

Things Coming to a Point

“Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every bit of the universe is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?”

His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.
“I mean this,” said Dimble in answer to the question she had not asked. “If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family – anything you like – at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”

I am sure most readers of this blog will be familiar with these words from C.S. Lewis, one of the wisest men of the last century and a prophet for these times. They are in his novel That Hideous Strength which is a better book than either Brave New World or 1984 though not nearly as celebrated, very probably because it is a Christian book. I compare it with those two as it covers similar terrain. If you haven't read it you need to do so as soon as possible. It will help you make sense of the present time.

Bruce Charlton often mentions the idea of things coming to point. What this means is that good and bad, moral white and black, become more separated and there is no neutral ground between them, no grey areas which one might suppose that at one time there were. There never were really but the splitting apart becomes more obvious as the End Times gathers pace. The good and the bad become more clearly delineated and you have to make an active choice. Sitting on the fence is no longer possible. The last 18 months have seen a dramatic intensification of that process. Things that you might have thought were on one side are now revealed as being on the other side. These things include all ideologies associated with what we call leftism which might at one time have seemed 'progressive' meaning tending towards the evolution of the human being but are now more easily seen as destructive of a true spiritual consciousness. Those who are more attached to the destructive aspects of leftism (even if they call these humanistic) will stay with it and put themselves in the camp of the demons. Those who really are interested in a spiritual consciousness will now have to reject all aspects of leftism and that will be hard for many people because these have seemed to be on the side of the good for a long while to those who lack proper spiritual discernment. You are going to have to admit you have been duped. This will require a large dose of humility because you will have to confront the fact that what attracted you to the leftist position was actually part of the old unregenerate fallen man. It was your egotism. If you are a man you are going to have to bow your head to God and accept you are a sinner. If you are a woman you are going to have to reject feminism, Satan's most recent temptation to the female sex,  and that is going to be tough. Your apparent ticket to freedom and fulfilment is actually a deep and dark curse. You ate the apple because it was sweet but it is really poisonous.

Now is the time that good and bad are drawing apart but this will only be apparent to those who have good within them. If you don't have that you are going to be in trouble because that is what this is all about. It's to draw out the good in those in whom it is present and reveal the evil in those who gravitate more naturally to that. The position to take won't be obvious to the earthly mind, the mind corrupted by 3 centuries of atheism and materialism and the teaching of dark prophets from Marx to Freud and including many of the famous names in all fields of human endeavour over the last couple of centuries. In a way the odds are stacked against you because most of your modern education and cultural influences have been on the wrong side. But you have the light of God within you and if you are faithful to the truth that light will illumine your mind and release you from the evil influences that are so prevalent. Besides, there are good influences too and C.S Lewis was a major one. Above all stands the figure of Christ.

Unfortunately, however, in the world today the evil influences are rampant. One might even say they are triumphant and all the more so since totally unrecognised by the majority. I say they are unrecognised because most people don't know what evil actually is. In fact, it's very simple. Evil is that which separates from God. It does this either by denying him outright or by deforming him as in religion which submits to the world or by encouraging the breaking or transgressing of the laws of creation. Now can you see how we live in a world of evil?

To speak of things coming to a point and of the gap between good and evil widening to such a degree  that there are sheep and there are goats depending on which side you fall might lead to an accusation that I am demonising those who don't agree with me, and look where that has got us in the past. But I am not demonising anybody. The truth is those who fail to reject evil and embrace spiritual good are demonising themselves. Possibly quite literally in some cases. Anyway, the point is there is good and there is evil and they have to do with an acknowledgement in the heart or lack of it of God, your Creator. The bad news is you can make the wrong choice because there is nothing that is going to force your hand. It's a test of your inner integrity, your spiritual authenticity. The good news is that your choice, if it's the worldly one, is not set in stone as it now stands. You can turn to God at any time as long as you do so sincerely. Of course, in terms of behaviour, you will still stumble and even fall many times but what matters above all now is the direction of your heart. The needle must point due north to God.

We're All Communists Now

Most of the world now appears to have become communist in all but name.  This allegation will be dismissed by those who only see society in economic terms but if you look at things from a social or cultural perspective, the conclusion is hard to avoid. For a start, everything, even much religion once you scratch the surface, is now atheistic and materialistic. These are the bedrock assumptions of communist dogma and, even if there was nothing else, show its essentially evil quality. Then there is our current obsession with equality and worship of 'the science' - as long as that science supports official ideology. We are today living in a world that more and more resembles a prison camp and only those with a true focus on religion will see that clearly and be able to resist assimilation. I know of no one, other than people I have met online, who has not been absorbed to one degree or another and this is because they have no roots in anything substantial. Consequently, they will bend in the direction the wind blows.

In practise there are always two classes in a communist society. There is the elite and then the rest. The elite have the power and most of the wealth. They pull all the strings even if this is in the name of the populace. That populace will be given enough to keep them quiet or subdued. It depends. They can be terrorised into acquiescence or kept dumb by indulging them with bread and circuses. But whichever method is adopted communism always becomes a totalitarian tyranny in which control is everywhere.

The only escape from this is through a genuine spiritual sensibility. Not religion because religion can be co-opted as System Christianity has been but a proper focus on the reality of God and a realisation that this world is not meant to be perfect for and in itself but exists to perfect us or, at least, to prepare us for perfection on a higher plane.

Communism is a great evil and all sane people used to know that. They knew it because they knew it destroyed freedom and reduced humanity to the level of an insect colony in which the collective is all and the individual nothing. But it is even worse than this because the real goal of communism is  a spiritual one. It came about to break the connection between man and God and isolate man in the material world, separated from his Maker. Its theft and perversion of some of the social aspects of Christianity is directed to that end.

When God has been chased from the world as now you know that the end cannot be far off.