Rebellion Against Authority

If you see the modern world as the result of a rebellion against authority, you are not mistaken. First there is the rebellion against God, then against established hierarchy. There is rebellion against nature, rebellion of woman against man, of youth against age and so on all leading to an overturning of the natural order of reality, and all based on ego.

But not only based on ego. Ego is a major driving force but there is also the legitimate search for freedom which is part of the general evolution of the human being. The problem is how do you allow for one without falling into the excesses of the other? That is a major question of the present day because at the moment it is certainly the rebellion of ego that is determining conditions, and it is doing so because there is too little understanding of what there is that is more than ego.

The parallel with adolescence is obvious and it is not too far -fetched to see contemporary humanity as in an adolescent stage. The worry is this though.  Adolescence is something that should be got through relatively quickly but we appear to have got stuck in it. We think it is natural for adolescents to throw off the shackles of their elders, and so it is to a degree, but we are probably over-influenced in this view by the recent past. Traditionally, adolescents did not completely reject the wisdom of their elders nor did they have as much freedom to go wrong as we give them now. There was more of a balance between authority and the need for self-expression. That balance is being lost and needs to be rediscovered.

But where can it come from? Where will we find wisdom in this day and age?  We cannot return to traditional religion because it belongs to an earlier age of complete submission to authority. Those that do seek so to return run the risk that they do so artificially, as a self-conscious rather than a natural act. The freedom we are developing, while it has many problems due to our spiritual immaturity, is nonetheless essential for our development. We can certainly be inspired by tradition but cannot wholeheartedly re-embrace it. We can seek inspiration from the past but must apply that to an inner awareness that seeks to know God more directly. As so often, it's a question of choosing the middle way.

Real spiritual authority must ultimately come from within, from a personal connection to God. That is what we must all strive to develop, and it is why Christianity, as it stands, is no longer enough. It can even be conceived of as restrictive. However, before you have developed this connection you do need external guidance, and if you throw that off prematurely, you lose the centre and can go very wrong. See the world today for a perfect example of that.

Here is my suggestion. We need, first and foremost, to return to Christ, the Christ of the gospels, but especially that of St John because it is in St John that we best see Christ in his dual form as both the external Light of the World and also as the inner light that lights every man that comes into the world. This is the balance we are looking for, Christ out there as the incarnate Son of God who reveals both truth and law in his person, and Christ within who shines in our hearts when we acknowledge his presence there. 

Remember, though, that we do need both. Those who restrict their spiritual approach to one or the other will fall short. If you look for Christ only beyond yourself, you will remain on the outside of spiritual reality looking in. If you seek Christ only within, as many who follow Eastern paths effectively do, you risk isolation in a spiritual vacuum which may seem peaceful but ends up by being narcissistic and potentially illusionary. We need to follow higher authority, as in the true spiritual pole star, and inner realisation to be complete. 

Contemporary humanity has rejected traditional authority which had its roots in revelation but it has replaced that, because replaced it must be, with its own authority. But this is not an authority that comes from an inner connection to truth. It is unsupported authority based on nothing substantial since you cannot understand the totality of reality by focusing only on its outermost aspect any more than you can know what an apple tastes like by examining the peel. We do have a personal connection to truth but we have cut ourselves off from that by misidentifying with the outwardly expressed parts of our being. The way back is through Christ, first by following him as the living image of truth and the touchstone to reality, and then by finding him within ourselves. But the two go together. If you think you have found spiritual truth within but don't recognise Christ as the real source of that inner reality, this can only mean that your vision is still blurred and your journey incomplete. Certainly there are other spiritual paths but they must all end, one way or another, in Christ.

For Christ is at the centre of all true spiritual paths and, if there is not something in your soul that recognises that, it is probable that your soul is not in harmonious relationship with reality. Christ is the point at which authority meets truth.

Can Albion Awaken?

It seems a valid question to ask if Albion can awaken when a large percentage of its population today has no racial, genetic, blood, cultural (call it what you like) relation to Albion. How can people who have no inner links to this country, yet have made their lives here, respond to the idea of Albion? I believe that some can through a sense of empathy, response to the landscape or to history or if they have a feeling of respect for the past of the country to which they have come, but how many recent arrivals genuinely have this? If it's even fading among the native population how can you expect outsiders to have it?

Continued on Albion Awakening.

Science and Spirit

The other day I was talking to a scientific enthusiast who flatly denied that science is materialistic. He said that it simply saw things as they were and was always willing to revise its position in the light of new evidence. There was no evidence for a spiritual background to the observable world and life could be explained quite well according to the current consensus so any attempt to bring in a collectively unverifiable theory to explain what didn't need explaining was superfluous. All spiritual beliefs were arrived at personally, he said, and there was no way to transfer these to other people who could then confirm them for themselves. Therefore this evidence was inadmissible. The very words spiritual and material made no sense to him because there was empirically perceived reality and nothing else. Material only exists in opposition to spiritual and if there was no spiritual there just was what was. No need to call it material.

I said that the evidence he was demanding was evidence that satisfied the scientific method but that since the scientific method was restricted to the physical world this was clearly impossible. It was like trying to explain the sensation of love to someone who understood life only in terms of chemical reactions or trying to prove things had meaning that existed independently of the words which described them to someone who thought the words were the primary thing. His attitude, I said, was similar to saying that meaning could not exist outside of the letters that made the word. But he was adamant. No evidence meant no scientific evidence. That was what evidence was and there was none other.

I asked him what his idea of root reality was, whether matter or spirit, but the question made, so he claimed, no sense to him. It just was. So I asked whether he thought mind or matter came first. Did consciousness arise from material causes or was consciousness the ground reality and all else derived from that. Again, he affected not to be concerned by that. So I tried again. Was reality something or nothing? If just matter or energy then nothing would really matter (no pun intended), but if it was something then getting it right really would be important. But none of this meant anything to him either. He couldn't or wouldn't see that if matter rather than mind was the basis of anything then nothing had any value or meaning or even truth. His ideas certainly didn't, but he is actually a radical environmentalist who thinks that meat eating should be outlawed as it is an inefficient use of resources, and private transport should also be banned for similar reasons. He has very clear ideas about how an ideal society should be run and is uncompromising in his attitude, freely admitting that, if he had the power, he would enforce his ideology on the rest of the world.

To me such a person has severed his links with any natural instinctual understanding of life and replaced that with a purely intellectual attitude which brooks no input from any other source. In effect, he has spiritually castrated himself and made himself a spiritual eunuch. The analogy is apt because there is a desiccated inhumanity about him (and people like him), and a sterility because for him nothing is spontaneous and free. Everything is the outcome of careful analysis and planning.  He studies classical music but only a few composers interest him and what fascinates him about them is mostly the way they construct their music. He does not deny the emotional charge that music has but seems to regard it as a mechanical thing that simply exploits patterns in the brain.

I don't know what to do with such a person! I gave up talking to him and he to me as we were so far apart there could be no meeting of minds. In a way I admire his uncompromising, almost ruthless, dedication to an idea but since it is a false idea I feel he has done himself real spiritual harm. He has simply denied and cut out what threatens his controllable worldview and I wonder if that is the root of this type of atheism. God threatens. His reality turns your safe world upside down. You lose control. For a person who wants to control his world completely the idea of God is not acceptable. So this person has control, or thinks he does, but at the cost of killing something vital within himself.  

Those Whom The Gods Would Destroy They First Drive Mad

Some reflections on this phrase on Albion Awakening.

Pollution

Environmentalists worry about the pollution of the planet and suggest all sorts of ways to correct this. I sympathise. It's clear that we are laying waste the world around us and, for all our fine words and good intentions, this looks set to continue. Our desire for a comfortable life with all the benefits of modernity exceeds our ability to make sacrifices. However, the pollution that concerns us is usually that of the natural world. But there is another, far greater, threat to humanity than any physical pollution which is the pollution of the mind and heart or spiritual pollution. Who worries about that?

As a matter of fact, I'm sure plenty of people do but they are not in the mainstream. They are not in government or the media. They are not in politics or science, they are not self-righteous activists and they are not normally given any kind of platform at all. Even, I have to say, many religious leaders seem reluctant to draw attention to this kind of pollution because it would mean condemning the world, and modern religious leaders are strangely reluctant to do that.

What form does this pollution take? Principally, it comes through the way we view the world and ourselves. Since we have denied God we have moved increasingly to a vision of ourselves as material beings who owe no sense of gratitude to a loving Creator. We belong to ourselves, and what we are is what we appear, on the surface, to be. A physical body and a mind that is the outcome of mindlessness. We have the right to make our own reality instead of coordinating ourselves to an already existing reality.

That is the root of the pollution and its chief cause is science as that is the authority on which other, more actively polluting, agents justify their existence. Without the authority of materialistic science these other agents would not have arisen in the way they have. Although it might not always be obvious, they gain their initial inspiration from materialism, and materialism is the consequence of science or, better put, scientism since science itself is not necessarily materialistic. It only becomes so when it denies forms of knowledge and reality which are not accessible to its methods.

The pollution is spread through education which is totally based on materialism, and is not seen as functioning in the light of a spiritual reality. When education is severed from the sense of the transcendent, it becomes destructive and actually 'diseducates'. That is what it does now, and to a steadily increasing extent.

It is spread through social and political ideologies that do not put themselves as existing within the greater framework of spiritual truth. Any form of politics that seeks to make a better world without regard to the reality of God is detrimental to true human values, never mind spiritual ones. The false ideologies that seek worldly progress without giving full priority to spiritual matters always harm the soul and end up in inevitable failure. The social movements that have as their aim the reconstruction of human beings away from their traditional norms damage both society and the individual. They favour short term (apparent) gain for one section of society over long term harm of the whole.

Perhaps most of all the pollution is spread through the arts, the media and contemporary culture. No one can get away from this. It is everywhere and proclaims the universal message of materialism. That is to say, the many branches of the arts and the media, and practically all of the culture of the present day, stem from the same materialistic assumptions. Even when there is a spiritual or pseudo-spiritual content to the product the real roots of it are materialistic. This is the case for popular culture where it is obvious but it is also the case for the more highbrow variants whose sophistication disguises their spiritual vacuity.

How can we counter this all-pervasive pollution? First of all, we must recognise it and, having done that, we must seek to insulate ourselves from it. Avoid corrupting music, avoid films with no moral compass. Be very circumspect in your engagement with the media. These are things not to do but there are also things you should do and, first and foremost, there is prayer. Speak to God as to a friend or parent. Confide in him and ask for his help in the daily struggle. Examine your soul to see where you have fallen short of what you know you should be.

Reading old books can be a purifying experience. When I lived in India without television or radio the only entertainment available was books and the only books I had access to were in the local club where there was nothing printed before 1945. So for 5 years that's more or less all I read. I did buy occasional books myself but these were all on spiritual subjects. But I read novels by authors I'd never heard of, and most of them were good. Practically all of them had a religious sensibility, either openly so or as an assumed backdrop to the story. It was like entering a different world with quite different assumptions about life.

Seek out the natural world. More and more of that is being destroyed but the natural world is the reflection of God, albeit in a fallen state. As we experience it directly less and less it's no wonder we lose faith in a creator.

I read an article recently which said that the IQ scores of young people born after 1975 have been falling at the rate of 7 points per generation. This is after a fairly long period of regular rises of 3 points a decade, probably due to environmental factors. One can argue about the whys and wherefores of this, whether it is true and what it means if it is. But I can't help noticing that this period coincides with a massive degradation of culture. It is a strong indication of one of the effects of pollution. Unless we take steps to redress the situation it will just get worse.

Mere Christians

The Christianity of the past was that of Peter. But there is a deeper Christianity, one which has always been there but was only followed by a few. Now the time has come when many more people must discover this more mystical Christianity which is that of the apostle John. The religion of authority and obedience is to be superseded by one of love, vision and intuitive insight but, and it's a big but, you cannot move on to this new religion unless and until you have fully absorbed the lessons of the old which are not dismissed but built on. If you try to construct the new without basing it on the foundation of the old your edifice will collapse as so many have over the last 100 hundred years. They responded to the inspiration of the new light dawning on the horizon but they did so from the perspective of the unreconstructed lower self seeking to eat the fruits without tending the roots.  Those who reject tradition will have to relearn it.

This is the conclusion of a piece I have put up on Albion Awakening.