Ungrounded Goodness

 "When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.” 

Bruce Charlton has an excellent piece today about the fakeness of altruism which reminded me of this quote from G.K. Chesterton. Altruism is indeed fake because it is an artificial self-conscious imitation of virtue. It is the mind posing as the heart and the self congratulating itself on its goodness. This is not a cynical put down of philanthropic selflessness but points out that the attempt to do good, even the desire to do good, is not a spiritual quality because it does not come from the soul but the calculating mind which is to say, the earthly self. Jesus said in Matthew 6:1 that good works should be done in secret to have any real spiritual impact and altruism is never done in secret because even if it is not done in front of others it is done for and from the self. True goodness is always spontaneous, but the altruistic mind is always looking for ways to demonstrate its own perfection.

Chesterton points out that all goodness to be real must be rooted in the spiritual. When the desire to be and to do good has lost contact with the spiritual it becomes an imposter that adopts the outer appearance of goodness but has no connection to what is really good which is God, and therefore actually does spiritual harm. This is the case even when the would-be good person claims to be and even thinks himself to be motivated by religious faith. If this faith is only in the mind and if it is directed to worldly ends then it is not faith in God for "God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit" (John 4:24). Altruism, or doing good to others, is pulling God down to this world and worshipping him in matter.

Obviously, this does not mean we should not do good. As Bruce points out, two wrongs don't make a right. The argument (if argument is the right word) must be lifted to a higher plane, the plane of spirit and of truth rather  than that of the thinking, calculating, time-centred mind. There apparent contradictions are reconciled and when we act from that plane we do so without thought or ambition or desire. Altruism is a secular imitation of true virtue and, as such, spiritually corrosive.

A Walk in the Jungle

 During the five years Michael Lord and I spent in Yercaud we met many people, both Indians and Western travellers, some through our guest house and some just chance encounters. There was Arati, a Parsee lady in her 60s from Bombay who stayed with us for a couple of months, supposedly for health reasons. Her husband delivered her, or that's what it seemed like, and then asked us to look after her telling us that she could be a handful at times, before disappearing for several weeks. She was rather demanding but we did our best. 

Then there was Evelyn. She has been living in the Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry but needed a break from ashram life which is not surprising since you get all sorts in that kind of environment, ranging from sincere seekers to lost souls and the occasional deranged person. For most people staying there for long is exhausting because you go in as an idealist expecting some kind of enlightenment but then find all the backbiting and petty jealousies you get everywhere else, magnified by the sometimes unbalanced types who end up in ashrams. Evelyn was in some ways typical of Western female spiritual seekers, a middle-aged unmarried woman searching for Oriental light, but, though she was a spiritual seeker, she was a practical one and had a lot of common sense. She stayed with us for 3 months or so, having a break before going back into the often chaotic world of the seeker after truth in India.

Someone who had been on that trail but had now retired from it was Sofie de Mello, a German lady in her late 50s who had come to the East in the post-Beatles hippie pilgrimage time, first married and then been deserted by an Indian and who now lived quietly in a bungalow in Yercaud making ends meet as a schoolmistress. There was something a little sad about Sofie as though nothing had worked out quite as it should but she was a caring and enthusiastic person, always positive. She was a firm believer in the all religions are one idea and for her that religion boiled down to love. That's not a bad code to live by even if it can descend into the bland and sentimental without something more solid to give it substance and depth. At one time it seemed she was setting her cap at Michael but that was never going to work which she realised after a while. We remained friendly though, and were occasionally invited to tea at her house where she gave us freshly baked cakes and little homilies about the universality of all religions. I recently found a note she sent us in an old book and I reproduce it here as it's just the sort of thing she was always saying. I must have cut it down to fit as a bookmaker which is why some of it is missing but it carried on in the same vein. By the way, I am sure that Sofie is long since dead so I don't suppose she will mind me doing this. It may seem I am slightly poking fun at her here, but I am not. She was a good, sincere and kind-hearted person though she had her eccentricities.

This is the front of the card showing Ramakrishna with his disciple Vivekananda on his right and his wife Sarada Devi on his left.

Some of Sofie's sayings.
She got my name wrong here but not as badly as someone who once called me Mr Wheelbarrow.

On one of the occasions when Sofie was entertaining us for tea she and I formed the resolve to walk down the hills through the jungle to Salem. Michael declined to accompany us. Yercaud was 5,000 feet above the plains and only accessed by the loop road along which buses and cars travelled in order to reach the town. However, we had heard talk of a path that descended to the plains and which was used by travellers on foot back in the day. We couldn't find anyone who had used it more recently but apparently it still existed. We made some enquiries but everyone we spoke to about it looked at us in amazement. "Why would you want to walk down when there's a bus?" was the attitude. I wonder if what makes Westerners want to do this sort of thing is one of the factors that caused them to change the world. For the better in some ways and the worse in others. 

We eventually found someone who told us where the path started, and he said it was occasionally used but only to go to and from a couple of smaller settlements lower down the hillside. No one went all the way to the bottom by that route these days. One must remember that at this time hiking was not really a thing in most parts of India other than perhaps the foothills of the Himalayas. But elsewhere travelling on foot was probably too recent to be thought of as something potentially pleasurable. Nothing daunted, we made our preparations though as that only involved some water and a sandwich it did not take long, and early next morning the two of us set off.

This shows a similar looking path to the one where we started out.

The path started in a reasonable state of repair, just a track as in the picture above really but easily navigable, and it was delightful to walk in the coolness of the day before the sun had climbed high with the birds singing and the forest green and sparkling in the morning light. We were in good spirits and optimistic for the journey ahead even though we had no map and no certainty that the path we were on really would take us where we wanted to go. We passed a few little shacks and attracted some attention from giggling children playing outside to whom white people would have been an unusual and strange sight, and then the trail began to degrade quite quickly. I calculated that we had descended about 1,000 feet which meant there was still a long way to go. The sun was now higher in the sky and it was getting hotter. We had hats but there was no shade on the path. Still, it was there and still going down so we knew we were on the right track. To make things slightly confusing there had been turn offs but these were even rougher than the main path so easy to identify. But then, inevitably, we came to a point at which the path split in two and there was no indication as to which one we should take. We had passed the end of the settlements some time before so there was no one to ask. We deliberated a while and then took one of them hoping for the best.

We carried on along this path but it became progressively worse and then split into several smaller paths. We chose one because we had to and continued but after a while we were no longer descending and then the path, by now almost non-existent, simply petered out in some bushes. We went back and followed another path only to find that did the same thing. Retracing our steps again with the hope of finding the main track didn't work because we had followed too many false trails to know what was what. We appeared to be lost.

This is the kind of scrub jungle in which we got lost though the plains were not visible in our situation.

I well remember the feeling of being lost in the jungle. It was not pleasant. At this point we had descended enough for the more temperate vegetation of the higher elevation to give way to scrub jungle (compare and contrast the two pictures above) so there were no large trees but there were thick bushes, many of human height. It was now getting very hot and we only had about half a bottle of water left each. Sofie was becoming nervous and I had no idea what to do except keep walking in hope. The sun was too high for me to be able to tell which way was south west, that being roughly the direction we should be going, but I made a guess and we took one of the crude tracks that seemed to go that way. Of course it only did so for a short distance, and then it too ended. In that part of the world, what with the tropical heat and monsoon rains, the vegetation grows very quickly so any path that is not constantly renewed soon becomes overgrown. That was obviously what had happened to most of these. I wondered why these paths had existed in the first place since, crude as they were, they were something. We had not seen any people for well over an hour and I didn't think there was anyone living in these parts of the hills. Luckily we found out the reason for their existence.

It was probably only around half an hour after we had realised we were lost, though it seemed longer, when we saw two men coming towards us. I felt a wave of relief but Sofie actually gave a little scream. The men were carrying a long pole over their shoulders on which was strung an obviously freshly killed, since the blood was still dripping, wild boar. They were carrying long knives with curved blades and wearing simple loin cloths with nothing on the upper part of their body or their feet. They were obviously tribals of some sort as it was clear from their manner and appearance that their contact with civilisation was minimal, even compared to the villagers and coffee plantation workers around Yercaud which was at least a town of some description. These men were certainly not town dwellers of any description. Their eyes had a kind of wildness to them which was midway between human and animal, and their responses were strangely emotionless. I realise that it is not the sort of thing we say nowadays but it's how it seemed to me and Sofie was definitely  alarmed by them. They weren't threatening but nor were they unthreatening if that makes any sense. Subsequent research revealed that there was indeed an indigenous tribal community living in the Shevaroy Hills from long before Yercaud was established in the 19th century. They were called the Malaiyalis which means mountain men and they have their own customs and religious practices separate from regular Hindu society. They are regarded as socially and economically backward but, like other Scheduled Tribes of which India has many, given certain protection by the government though what that amounts to in reality is hard to tell.

 I have found a picture of members of this tribe and include it here to give an idea of how they looked. It dates from the 1860s but our two were very similar to the fellow on the right.

The two men stopped and stared at us as well they might since we did not belong in that world. They knew no English but between us Sofie and I could muster enough Tamil to ask if they knew the way to Salem. They understood and indicated that we should follow them which we did for about half a mile and then they pointed to a track which evidently was the path down to the plains. We gave them a few rupees in gratitude which they took without response which again was slightly unnerving. Normally in India if you gave anyone money they would either react with fervent thanks or exaggerated disappointment because you had not given them enough. These men didn't react at all.

However, they had rescued us and we were lucky to have found them. The path they had put us on was well marked and we had no more problems in our descent though it did take another 2-3 hours making the whole trip around 5-6 hours in total. Sofie was going on into Salem so we split up and I got a bus back to Yercaud where I arrived just as dusk was setting in. I felt fine then but the next day the backs of my calf muscles were very sore. I discovered later that poor Sofie who was in her late 50s had been laid up in bed for a couple of days.  I have walked down mountains and up them and going down is always harder on the legs.

Humanity today is not creatively constructive but creatively destructive.

 "Creative power is used for destructive purposes. Nearly all modern arts are blasphemy."

This is a quotation from Towards the Mysteries by Swami Omananda (Maud McCarthy) which is presented as a record of communications from elevated spiritual beings. Most of this sort of stuff is spiritually sub-standard and not what it purports to be, but this is one of the rare exceptions that carries the ring of truth.

Anyway, back to the quote which can stand on its own, regardless of claimed provenance. It suggests that human creativity in the 20th century, and by extension the 21st since that has carried on in the same vein only more so, is not in line with divine being but goes against it. I don't see how any sane person could dispute this. For a while the idea of something being new and different as modern art was could perhaps justify it to some extent, but that period was over by the 1920s. Thereafter, most human creativity, and especially that which was lauded by the art establishment and cognoscenti, dismantled divine order and sometimes spat in its face. In terms of popular art, especially music, the trend was backwards, reviving primitive forms of expression that should have been outgrown, though with technological sophistication giving it greater potentcy. I am not saying that none of this had any artistic merit but overall the form in which these musicians worked rendered the content spiritually harmful. As the composer and Theosophist Cyril Scott said in his book Music, its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages, "After the dissemination of Jazz, which was definitely "put through" by the Dark Forces, a very marked decline in sexual morals became noticeable." We don't like to admit this now but the reality is that the influence of less evolved groups pulled down the standards and level of consciousness of Western society in general.

Even when art flirted with the so-called spiritual it was rarely on the level of aspiring to true divine understanding as with the music and cathedrals of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Instead it sought to expand the circle of personal experience and consequently was just as likely to plumb the depths as scale the heights. The creativity involved did not explore truth and beauty and the good, but the supposed wholeness of human nature which effectively means delving into the ugly and the diabolical, and that inevitably damaged and degraded the culture. Human creativity was not aligned with divine order but actually worked against it. As a result it did not refresh or revitalise the human spirit. It exhausted it because it was only attuned to the human mind separated from God and that is a self-consuming, decaying source of inspiration. It retains a certain amount of energy from its origin in divine being but that dissipates over a period and we seem to be coming near the end of that period which is why so much in the field of art and culture now just recycles what came before.

People are acclaimed as great artists today who might have a certain skill and talent but do not have what truly makes an artist which is attunement to the level of Forms, using that word in its Platonic sense. What this means is an awareness of the pattern of divine being and this can unfold in a multitude of ways depending on the individual qualities of the artist. But now we have creative people falling back on themselves and their own minds, and where there is some inspiration from a non-material source it is from the lower levels of being though, as is the way with these things, often mistaken for or claimed to be from higher levels. But by their fruits shall you know them, and the fruit of most art over many decades now is rotten to the core. Humanity is possibly more creative than it ever has been but so often what is created or produced is spiritual poison. This is certainly the case with what gets taken up and promoted. Hence many people seek out the art and beauty of the past which still has the power to inspire. 

I'll tell you why this is done. It's because Satan (using that name to describe the central core of the powers of evil) knows that if he can deform people's idea of beauty he can deform their idea of God and the good. They will consider themselves more sophisticated and 'advanced' than those who don't get it and then they are his toys to do with as he wishes. Unfortunately, he finds plenty of willing egotists in this world to carry out his will.

An End Times Overview

A Survival Guide to the End Times is the latest in a series of books that deal with the spiritual crisis of the present day which, it should be obvious, is the root cause of every other problem we face. 

The series started with Meeting the Masters which describes certain experiences from the earlier part of my life and explains where I am coming from when speaking about these matters. 

There then followed what turned out to be a trilogy of sorts with Remember the Creator, Earth is a School and By No Means Equal which dealt with the reality of God, the reason for our lives in this world, and the soul and how that is a real, immaterial thing.

.

God, the world and the soul are the three fundamentals of our experience but there is a fourth thing and that is time. In most traditional societies time was regarded as cyclical but the Christian West saw it as linear with a beginning, middle (perhaps analogous to the Incarnation) and end. Post-Darwinian materialistic culture took up the linear idea and we generally see time in those terms today though many spiritual people have gone back to the cyclical idea. But what if both are true? Time is cyclical, going through various ages as detailed in Indian and ancient Greek thought to name two of the better known, but it also goes in a line which imparts the notion of progression. So, neither cyclical nor linear but proceeding in a spiral form.

A Survival Guide to the End Times takes up the idea of the present day as being the latter stage in a process of spiritual decay as material forces overwhelm the spiritual, and yet it still sees cause for hope because alongside this decay even now can be found potential seeds for revival in a future age not to mention that the withdrawal of spirit provides valuable lessons that can progress the soul if responded to in the correct way.

Current civilisations will fall but this is not defeatist talk because we are at the end of the cycle so that is as inevitable as the fact that old age leads to death. There is no political or any other kind of solution that can avert the natural course of outer events. The age must come to an end, and the end will likely be chaotic. But from the ashes and debris of the past can come rebirth and the beginnings of something new. The rot and decay must be burnt away as the world crumbles and the sin and lies of the past are destroyed. There will be a wiping clean of the slate for a fresh start which nevertheless will not completely be a case of back to square one because many of the lessons of the previous cycle will have been absorbed by the consciousness of the human souls incarnating at that time.

What this means is that the current age is drawing to a close and that cannot be avoided. But the way we respond to this can have a determining effect on the future, providing seeds of renewal on the subtle level that can sprout when the time is right.

Death and Birth - Two Sides of the Same Coin

 When we are born into this world, alone and defenceless, most of us are welcomed with love and cared for until we are able to look after ourselves. Our adjustment to the world is facilitated by older, wiser beings until we have developed the ability to negotiate its demands and challenges on our own.

It is a truism that the same patterns repeat themselves throughout the universe and at all levels of being. Thus, there is every reason to hope that when we die in this world and are born into the next we will be welcomed by souls who love us and who will look after us until we are able to make our own way in this new environment. Forget heaven and hell for the moment. That is too simplistic a framework for the immediate post-mortem experience. To be sure, there will be some sort of judgement and some sort of purification further down the line, but for the majority, saving the very saintly and very wicked, before this there will be loving help in adapting to our new world just as there is in this world before we must face the next stages.

At least, that will be the case for those souls, whatever their spiritual status, who are open to the experience of the new world and who have not darkened their mind by closing off the possibility of rebirth in the spiritual. In the next world it is your own mind that determines your outer situation. Not your intelligence but your spiritual openness and ability to accept light. By no means everyone can accept light and the cleverer person sometimes least of all. That is why faith is so important and why the innocent faith of a child may be a better guarantee of moving on in the spiritual world than all the wit and wisdom (earthly wisdom) of the philosopher. In the previous post I spoke of people being stripped of their worldly pride and arrogance through the processes of old age and, nowadays, dementia. This is to prise open the barriers they have erected in life and reduce their resistance. This is not done for any other reason than to help these souls make a better transition to the next world. Otherwise they might find themselves in a darkness that is an exteriorisation of their own mental state where they will remain until they start to wake up.

The best way to approach death is through faith, hope and an inner calm that rests on the confident (confident means with faith) belief that it is an integral part of life arranged by a loving God. Death is not a light matter nor can one deny the aspect of pain and suffering that may be involved or leaving people behind, for the time being, whom you love. We cannot escape the fact that death in a fallen world has its dark side. But it is also a release into a higher world and a more expansive state of being, and if we can see it in those terms then its sting will be blunted and we might even regard it as in some respects a blessing. After all, dying might be bad but not being able to die would be much worse.

The physical world is a world of entropy as it must be since only spirit endures forever. Rather than taking this material decay as a sign of ultimate nothingness as the atheist does we should see it as a vindication of belief in the reality of spirit. Viewed in this manner death is the proof of God not the denial.

Preparing for Death

Having recently reached my three score years and ten I've been thinking about how to prepare for death. Not because I think I'm due to go anytime soon, but as you grow older you start to understand that the way you die is the whole point of life. By that I mean the state of your mind which is all you'll take with you. So it makes sense to be prepared.

Actually, I've been preparing for death ever since I took the fact of the spiritual world seriously because when you awaken to the reality of God you understand that everything else must be seen in his light. You cannot add the spiritual on to the everyday or worldly (though many people do). The everyday has its place, of course, it is equally wrong to dismiss it as nothing. But that place stands in relation to the spiritual which is primary. And therefore since the spiritual will only fully come into view after death, you must start taking death seriously. Not in a way that makes earthly life futile for earthly life must be lived and lived properly. At the same time, death is the goal of life, the goal not just the end of it, and you must see it as in a sense the crowning achievement of your life.

That the great majority of people in the contemporary West do not see it like that may be one reason for the widespread dementia that afflicts much of the elderly population. The obvious reason for that is that people are just living longer, kept going by modern medicine. However, there could be an underlying spiritual purpose behind this too or accompanying it. I don't know if dementia affects atheists more than believers but it would be interesting to find out if that were the case though how many self-designated believers do not really believe would skew the results. Still, it could be that dementia strips away the resistance to the spiritual and leaves its victims on some level more open to the next world. An atheist has by definition erected barriers in his mind. Old age in general and dementia in particular might help to dismantle these barriers, but this is only a passing thought prompted by personal acquaintance with a case in point. 

To live every day as though it were your last is a traditional spiritual exercise but nobody can really do that, not for long anyway. The lesson is there however, and it is to live in the moment or from moment to moment, giving full attention to everything you do and with a proper respect for the awfulness of death. This will also imbue your mind with a sense of your own insignificance and utter helplessness in the face of the universe but, when backed up with faith in the living God, gratitude and trust. You realise yourself to be totally dependent on God, but his love supports and sustains you always.

Preparing for death requires a twofold approach, akin to the division of the virtues into cardinal and theological. Traditionally, the former, corresponding perhaps to natural religion, are justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance. This would involve developing an inner calm and detachment that brings emotional firmness and stability. Then the mind must be mastered so that thoughts do not run through your head like wild horses but are harnessed and ridden to where you want them to go. Balance, self -control and order are the foundations on which to build the next stage which is not to say you must wait until these are perfect to begin the next stage, only that it is a step beyond and will work best when it does have this foundation.

The next stage is faith, hope and charity which are the spiritual virtues of true supernatural religion. Mental and emotional control are important and will certainly bring power and insight to the mind. But they won't bring genuine spiritual awareness without the positive qualities of faith, hope and charity. They can make a philosopher or a sage but not a saint which is why Dante needed Beatrice to take him where Virgil could not go. Preparing for death is all about faith and hope but these need to be vivified by love of God for without that they are rather like a car without petrol. They may make the car but they don't make it go.

Your mind is all you take with you when you leave this world but you do take that with you. It may be that you can train and develop your mind when you are in the next world. I'm sure that is the case. Nevertheless, tradition affirms, and it makes sense given the educational nature of this world, that the condition of your mind is all-important when you die and that it will determine much about your ongoing experience. Therefore, preparing your mind for death is the most important thing you can do in this life and that means, on the one hand, mastering it, being controller rather than controlled, and on the other, letting it be irradiated by the love of God. This is the single most important thing anyone can ever do both in life and in death.

A Survival Guide to the End Times

 My new book will be published in July this year.  Here is the back cover blurb.

Almost from the beginning, Christians thought they were living in the end times. It didn’t happen then, nor did it later, when subsequent generations believed that they too were living at a time of universal decline. Now we are faced with a similar dilemma. The signs of spiritual decay are everywhere, with atheism and materialism rampant, and even non-religious people are seeing a future of growing poverty and cultural loss. The end times have finally arrived.

 

This book discusses how to survive a time when the spiritual is either banished or corrupted by the material. Survival means spiritual survival and involves building an inner defence of understanding for the preservation of what is truly important: your own self. A Survival Guide to the End Times explains the processes that have brought us to our current state, and it details how to negotiate these times successfully from a spiritual perspective. As all aspects of the modern world are affected by the prevailing influence of dissolution, this book examines several areas of life from an end times point of view.

 

And here is the cover.

and here's the list of contents.

Introduction

 

Part One: End Times

A Body of Slag 

Space is Contracting 

The End Times is the End of Term 

A New Creation

The Paths of Peter and John 

The Destruction of the West 

How to Save the West

What is the Solution? 

Saving the West 

World War Two and Its Aftermath 

Not Going Along with the Aquarian Flow 

The Secular Corruption of Spirituality 

Satanic Feminism 

Divine Femininity 

The Cassandra Syndrome 

 

Part Two: Spiritual Tradition

Introduction on What Tradition Is

Temptation of the Esoteric 

Buddhist Atheism

Heaven, Hell and What’s In Between 

Astrology, A Signpost to Creation 

The Gnostic World View 

The Guru in the End Times

Jesus Was a Refugee 

The Wisdom of the Left

Who Is Sophia? 

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Tradition and Technology 

The Fox’s Prophecy

 

Part Three: God and the Soul

Meditation and its Limitations 

Consciousness and Christ 

The Root of Reality 

The Omnipotence of God

What is the Soul?

The Expansion of Consciousness 

The Human Form 

Male and Female 

Hierarchy and Complementarity 

No More Sea 

 

Part Four: Spiritual Practice

Spiritual Routine 

Illusion and Sin 

Empathy and Love

What is Evil? 

Give Them Your Mind

Celibacy

Psychedelics and Religion

Is Equality a Spiritual Principle?

St Michael

Christians and the Esoteric 

Don’t Worry 

 

Conclusion

 

The book, like some of my previous ones, expands and develops ideas linked by theme that began life as shorter essays here. There are also several new chapters. The sense that we are indeed living in a period that corresponds to the End Times is widespread now and not just among religious people. An awareness of cultural breakdown is everywhere and will only become more intense. Even those people who outwardly ignore or deny it feel in their hearts that something is amiss in the world, and it is likely that soon denial will no longer be possible. Those who are inwardly prepared for what is to come will be best placed to survive it, survival in this case meaning preserving one's spiritual integrity for that is all that really matters.