Satanists

This is a post the premise of which some readers may think excessive. I hope not because there's a serious point to be made here. 

It has occurred to me recently that many people today are actually satanists. I put the word with a small 's' because these people are not actively practising, fully aware of what they are doing, Satanists but satanists by default in that they allow themselves to go along with the deviant madness of today's world. They don't find it important enough to stand up against and so they are part of it and will easily be drawn into the next stage because, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, there will be a next stage. There always is.

If we are in a spiritual war, and we are, then there are sides. The sides are becoming more and more clearly delineated, and neutrality is increasingly not an option. There is no Switzerland in spiritual warfare. Jesus' words that " If you are not for me then you are against me" are taking on greater significance in our time and they apply to everyone. Perhaps especially they apply to church hierarchies, many of which seem to have an inverted scale of priorities with this world at the top and God somewhere below. But if God is not at the top then he's not anywhere.

Some people like to say that spirituality is a much broader term now than it was so anything that works for human progress is spirituality. The word covers all sorts of potential advancements. So climate change activism is spirituality, wanting countries to sink their differences into an over-arching unity is spirituality, promoting equality in all areas of life is spirituality, seeking to extend human life for as long as possible is spirituality, even computer technology is a sort of spirituality as it brings people together, overcomes barriers and spreads knowledge. All this is progress and that's spirituality.

This is nonsense. All this is 100% materialistic because it is all focussed on the earthly human being and seeks to advance him in his current state which it aims to expand or improve or change in some way for the supposed better. This has nothing to do with spirituality. Spirituality sees the earthly human being as fallen and separated from God. A sinner, however much you improve him. The only thing that is truly spiritual is the search for God and the attempt to transform the earthly self through repentance and self-purification with the idea of rendering the soul worthy, once stripped of ego, the ego that always wants progress, to receive grace from God.

A lot of things apparently leading to progress (in the worldly sense) may not seem evil in themselves but actually lay the groundwork for evil to build on. If we are rightly orientated to God we can perceive this, but if we ignore God we may well miss it.

The world is becoming ever more separated from truth and there will soon be only two options. God or the devil. Spiritual transformation or earthly progress. Previously there was a third which was the natural way, neither good nor evil but not spiritually unhealthy. Not positive, not negative, just ordinary. This option is being removed from us and we will have to make a choice. God or the devil. I know people who see themselves as good people, on the side of justice and what is right, but almost every moral decision they make (and they think themselves highly moral) is against God and for extension of the degree of separation between the world and God, between human beings and God. They are satanists but they have no idea of that and would scoff if told. You don't have to be actively evil to be on the side of evil.

In war you have to know what you are fighting for and who your enemies are. We have been told to love our enemies and we must never forget this, but that does not mean we don't recognise them for what they are.

Clever People

Looking at the recent antics of the British establishment as they make it only too obvious they will stop at nothing to thwart the democratic vote of the British public to leave the EU made me think about the difference between clever and intelligent. These people are very clever, no doubt about it, but I submit that they are unintelligent. They are all highly educated, extremely proficient with language and adept at argument but they see nothing and they understand nothing. Their minds are capable of constructing and finding their way through elaborate mazes but they have no clarity of vision or ability to see the deeper picture. They remind me of the Pharisees who constantly sought to entrap Jesus in some theological or legal nicety but did so not for love of truth or goodness but simply to maintain their positions of authority and places at the top of the financial pile.

The same patterns always repeat themselves. The people Jesus came to were simple people. Few of them were of the elite of the day. I am not romanticising the common man. After all, these were the ones who shouted for Barabbas. The common man has no special claim to virtue. However, there is a class of person who make their way to the top, especially in a so-called meritocracy when the merely clever often get on at the expense of the truly intelligent (no, this is not sour grapes!), because they have ambition and a gift of self-marketing and are able to fit in with bureaucratic procedures. They are the people who would gladly sell their soul (partly because they don't believe in a soul) for worldly advantage. They are subtle and articulate and able to grasp abstraction well but they lack any true insight.

In the modern highly educated world there are clever people in abundance. This partly explains the mess we are in.

Metaphysical Ignorance

Have a look at this comment which I have taken from an article on the Guardian website. At first sight it seems plausible, philosophically sensible even, but it is based on a completely false assumption.

" It's a bit like how I felt about homophobia for a couple of decades: astonishment that such a mindset existed. The fact that a thing exists means - it exists. Full stop. As part of the human condition. So how can anyone be 'against' something that is part of the range of human behaviour? It's a bit like saying someone accepts the presence of tulips and roses but not geraniums. Geraniums 'aren't right'. So we'll make a law against geraniums.

The 'is-ness' of a thing creates its own authenticity. No further justification is needed."

The assumption is that we live in a materialistic world with no higher truth behind it and no absolute reality. But what about murder? That exists. What about all the flaws of this world, what about human vice and error? They all exist. Does that justify them? Of course not. No one would claim such a nonsensical thing but this person seems to think that the mere existence of a thing justifies it completely. Note that word, completely. It is not just something to be understood but something to be fully accepted and given equal authenticity, to use his word, with everything else that exists.

If you don't understand the spiritual background to the world then you understand nothing about it at all. If you think that truth just means what is or happens to be then you have no conception of truth. There is an objective reality 'out there' which, by and large, human beings have always acknowledged with varying degrees of insight. Not now.  Now we do not just ignore it. We actively reject it.

The single most destructive thing in the world today is metaphysical ignorance. It is this which is driving the ship of humanity onto the rocks of wreckage with the difference that in this case many of the sailors on board are actively steering the ship to disaster. A few shout out in warning but they are not heard. The good news is that the lifeboats are still available and will take anyone to safety if they just hop in.

I believe that the truth is in all of us and it requires an effort of will to block it out*. This means that the rejection of truth and attempt to establish ideas and modes of being that are in conflict with it is a moral issue. This is clearly more the case where there is active participation in falsehood but even those who passively accept the new status quo as it is established cannot be held entirely innocent. They are complicit in evil to some degree. God has not left us without witness to his reality, externally or internally. Those who deny him will be held to account.

God allows us to think or do whatever we want but if what we think or do is contrary to how life is we will suffer the consequences. We can eat rotten food if we like but we will get sick.

*Note: When I've made this point before I've been questioned by people who ask what about genuine agnostics or people who would like to believe in God but find they can't? I still say that the truth is in all of us but the ones I am really referring to here are the ones who take an anti-God stance which includes an anti-natural order of being as established by God stance as evidenced in the Guardian comment above. If you find yourself unable to accept God but sincerely try to understand, you may be outside the gates of heaven but are at least not walking in the opposite direction and that's a significant difference when accounts are reckoned.

The Road Back To God Is Not An Easy One

A mistake people who set out on the spiritual path often make is to think that after they've chosen to do so life will be smooth, even full of peace and love. They have turned their face godwards and he will smile on them. Such is far from the case. In fact, if you find it is, you are probably doing something wrong.

Sincere spiritual endeavour often leads to suffering. This is because once you have made the decision to lead a spiritual life, by which I mean not just to believe but actively seek to conform your being to the reality of God, you are accepting that your lower self, the ego-centred worldly me, must be fully converted to truth. This is not done through a simple mental inclination towards spirituality. You should be changing direction at every level of your being, abandoning mental and emotional habits of a lifetime or maybe, if you believe in reincarnation, several lifetimes. This is a hard task, not accomplished without a great deal of work. The suffering involved is that of the old self being burnt away, its ingrained tendencies, desires and fears, being uprooted and tossed on the fires of true spiritual love. 

You think your relationships will be easy and pleasant after you have converted? That is by no means necessarily so. You might be faced with difficult people who bring out the worst in you. That's because the worst has to come out. It won't if you just mix with convivial souls and people who think like you. That might be pleasant but it's not spiritually creative because there's no challenge, no irritation to make the pearl of truth grow within the oyster shell of the separate self.

Peace may be found but it must be an inner peace. Don't expect your outer circumstances necessarily to be harmonious or 'spiritual'. By accepting God you are accepting to be remade in his image. Yes, he made us in his image at the time of our creation but this was a potential not yet realised. Besides, we are certainly not in his image now. The spiritual path is a path of trials and tribulations but it is these that root out the corruptions seated in the soul caused by the ego. 

It is common that those setting out on the path experience uplifting moments at the beginning of their journey. This is to give them strength, to confirm them in their decision to embrace the spiritual life and because of the contrast between their old mind and the new one. But after the joy comes the work and this may last for the rest of their lifetime with no comfort offered. Accept that with happiness. God is paying you the compliment of thinking you equal to the struggle. The rewards after this life will be out of all proportion to the difficulties you may encounter during your earthly sojourn.

Computers and Demons

 I'm venturing into a field I know very little about here but I have some observations to make about the computer revolution and where it might lead that I believe are not as far-fetched as you might think. 

Computers reduce quality to quantity. That is the basis of their operations and completely in line with the materialistic view of the world. They are also a form of magic insofar as magic is the power to effect change by unusual methods not normally open to us. Much of modern technology could be called that but computers are the most extreme example up to now. 

Magic, it is said, can be white or black but, to all intents and purposes, it is largely the province of the demonic since it is overcoming nature by the will, specifically the will to power. 

I think that the computer revolution has been driven by demons. It has certainly been captured by them but it was probably instigated by them too. 

I think this for several reasons. Computers are wholly materialistic in conception, function and operation but they imitate the spiritual. The effect of computers is spuriously spiritual in that they give theoretical access to all knowledge and have the capacity to simulate reality on a virtual level. Also, there is the ability of a network of computers to create a kind of global oneness even if this is external only and largely artificial. 

The use of computers separates human beings from their source and renders their thinking mechanical. Our minds tend to adopt the form of the technology we use and this is certainly the case with computers. 

Computers distract us from reality, leading us into a rabbit warren of illusion and fantasy and making us less able to discriminate between the real and the unreal. I could go on but really you either see this or you don't. The only question is do the positives, too obvious to mention, outweigh the negatives or vice versa. Given that the positives are obvious and the negatives more subtle that is not such an easy question to answer though I know what I think.

If the IT revolution is demonically inspired the question is why? The immediate answer might be to distract people from the spiritual and make them more susceptible to evil using that word in its broadest sense to mean anti-spiritual. Not just conventionally bad but wrong, that which separates us from truth. Computers are seductive and create a world of glamour and enchantment that allures us. They lead us away from nature into dreams and artificiality.

But is there more?  It seems to be the case that the demons cannot take physical form except under certain very particular circumstances and for brief periods. UFO phenomena indicates that and stories from tradition about other-worldly beings inhabiting a kind of borderland between this world and the next say the same thing. Demons would probably like to incarnate directly on Earth because this would give them greater power over us. There might also be something about being in a body that they covet. Might the drive towards artificial intelligence, quantum computing and developing computers that are carbon-based actually be all about enabling demons to incarnate? CS Lewis explored ideas along these lines in his novel That Hideous Strength where the 'macrobes' sought to take a kind of embodiment through the severed head of an executed evil genius type.

Many people are aware of the problems associated with humanity's current addiction to IT. These are mostly to do with how it denatures us and reduces our ability to respond to the real world, never mind the spiritual world, properly. The increase in global surveillance is also a concern. But what if the true purpose of the computer revolution, the end game so to speak, was to enable the incarnation of demons in this world? Is this a possibility we should start taking seriously?

Why Did Frodo Fail?

Apparently many readers of The Lord of the Rings are disappointed when Frodo, having struggled heroically to reach Mount Doom in the wastelands of Mordor, fails at the last and claims the ring for himself, refusing to destroy it. Since I first read the book 50 years ago I can't remember my reaction but I suspect I may have shared in the disappointment. I certainly understand it.  It's not what you expect to happen to a hero.

But this shows Tolkien's genius and ability to go more deeply into the reality of the human soul than many other more vaunted writers. More vaunted by academia anyway. Because, from a Christian perspective, it is absolutely the right thing to happen. For the Christian cannot claim complete goodness, still less holiness, for himself. All goodness comes from God and all we can do is turn ourselves, heart, mind and soul, over to God, letting him work through us. This we do by cleansing ourselves of sin, pride, anger and all the rest. Then God acts.

The point is we cannot become spiritual by our own efforts. Ultimately, we must rely on grace. Our own efforts are essential to bring us to the point where grace may operate, see Frodo's long and arduous trek to Mordor during the course of which he has to sacrifice nearly everything. But the final transformation of an earthly being into a real spiritual one depends on the grace of God.

Frodo did all that any mortal being could have done and it required an exceptionally high rate of personal purity and integrity even to do that. Nonetheless his personal qualities were not sufficient to accomplish an act the achievement of which went beyond mortal power. This is why Providence had to intervene at the last. But Providence was only able to intervene because of the mercy and compassion that Frodo had shown before to Gollum, and because of Frodo's personal heroism and sacrifice God was able to turn evil (Gollum in his fallen state) into good where good itself or human good was not able to finish the task.

Christianity has been criticised, most famously by Nietzsche, because it seems to favour the weak over the strong, supposedly leading in our day to the celebration of the perceived victim as the purest and most lacking in sin of any human being. The last will be first and all that. But actually Christianity does not favour the weak at all. Christianity has no time for weakness. It favours the strong. But it favours the spiritually strong not those who may be rich and powerful but who are steeped in sin and worldliness. Those people are the true weak when viewed correctly. Frodo may have been one of the little ones in the eyes of the world but seen with the eye of spirit he was a giant. Christianity has compassion for the weak and suffering but those who are highest in its estimation are the strong in spirit who fight and sacrifice and endure. There's nothing weak about these people. They are a vital bulwark against the evil that would otherwise overrun the world as it nearly did in Tolkien's story.

Frodo failed in one sense because he was unable to see his task through to the end by himself. But he succeeded in a greater sense because he brought his mission to the point at which the desired result could be effected. Tolkien's depiction of this spiritual struggle (which is obviously what it was) is all the subtler for showing us failure. "I can of myself do nothing". This is the lesson we must all eventually learn.

The End of a World

Whenever we feel inclined to lament the deplorable spiritual state of the world we should remember one thing. Not only was this time predicted by many of the world's religions, most particularly Christianity with its doctrine of the Latter Days and Hinduism with its prophecies of the Kali Yuga, but it is also an inevitable part of a world age. It is the final point in a cycle when all forms built up during the course of that cycle start to disintegrate prior to the establishment of a new dispensation. Everything is dredged up from history (witness the unprecedented access we have to the contents of the past now) but in a spiritually redundant form, meaning we have the things themselves but their creative potency is no more. The body is there but the soul has departed, a point to bear in mind for those who seek to revive ancient religions.

The concept of a world cycle is familiar from both Indian and Greek mythology with the former positing a descent from the Satya Yuga down through the Treta, Dwapara and Kali Yugas, and the latter a similar progression from Gold to Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages (not to be confused with the periods when those last two metals began to be in general use). This is regarded as a descent because in earlier times humanity lived in close contact with the spiritual realm but as time passes and one age moves into another, that contact becomes fainter, no longer direct so that religions spring up to compensate for its loss. The material world assumes great prominence, physical matter itself becomes denser, weightier, more impenetrable. But there are compensations and these are mostly to do with the development of mind and the sense of self which come about as the feeling of separation increases. Nevertheless, later ages are always envisaged in terms of a loss, of spiritual awareness, of proximity to truth and of virtue. Eventually mankind lives for itself and denies God who is seen as an illusion of the past.

Creation might be said to come about when the two basic forces of spirit and matter are actively expressed in a relationship of polarity. God speaks the Word which brings form to matter, making order out of chaos. We can see this process as subject or consciousness and object or material appearance and the relation between them. The ideal is to hold these in balance though with spirit as the dominating principle. But spirit needs matter to express itself and to grow through that self-expression. Can God grow? Can the infinite and eternal source of all being become more than it already is? In one sense, no for it is and 'is-ness' does not grow. But in another, yes, it can grow through its self-expression because God may be the infinite and eternal but when he creates he is expressing himself in form and so development and change become possible. God plus one human being or even one blade of grass is more than God alone even though God is the all. And God delights to reveal himself through creation.

In earlier ages humanity still breathes the air of its origins in spirit. But as time passes the veil descends and matter becomes more opaque until finally substance, the objective world, obscures the direct perception of essence, the subjective reality.  Consciousness is still there, of course, but it is contracted and regarded as the secondary principle, an outcome of material processes. And everything associated with matter assumes greater significance.  Believe it or not, this fact is behind such modern day phenomena as socialism, egalitarianism and feminism, matter being the feminine polarity of being and also that which reduces all things to the horizontal axis with spirit being the vertical hierarchical principle. It is the Logos that gives quality to existence while matter is the principle behind quantity.

When matter has reached its furthest extremity from spirit it is a sure sign that the cycle is nearing its conclusion. That time (can it be doubted?) is now. We cannot know how much further this process has to go but we are surely in a late phase given the complete loss of spiritual awareness. This has created a reaction of sorts but most of the time this reaction takes place within a materialistic framework, witness the many distortions of spirituality we see today.

It might be asked what the point of all this is, why do we have to lose our spiritual awareness and 'descend' into materialism? The answer has to do with the evolution of consciousness and the conversion of spiritual babies into fully aware spiritual adults. In earlier times we may have been immersed in the wholeness of life, one with our environment and not conscious of ourselves as separate individuals with the many complications that entails. But all this was passive. We were not free.  The hardening of the cosmos (figuratively speaking) enables the development of the self and gives the opportunity for the self to return to God but this time in full consciousness, as a positive act in freedom and love, two conditions that were unknown in earlier times. However, this is not a foregone conclusion and depends on the individual soul being able to rise above its environment and the degenerative cosmic influences that are responsible for the descent into materialism.

We are living at the end of our world. Not the end of planet earth but the conclusion of a great cycle of thousands of years. This is a time of testing but also of opportunity. Those, sometimes called a remnant, who remain faithful to spiritual truths will move onwards to greater things, a life "which God has prepared for those that love him". Those who fail to do this will experience the consequences of that decision. Not all seeds that are sown sprout.

The Marriage of Being and Becoming

There have long been two strands of thought in religion, and these appear within as well as between individual religions. Boiled down to their essence, they relate to a different understanding of the relation between spirit and matter. That is to say, between the uncreated plane of existence and creation. Should we deny or abandon or suppress or try to rise above the latter or do we somehow incorporate it into the former to make something new that neither has on its own ? Traditional Buddhism would generally take the first path, though later versions of the Mahayana tend more to the second. Christianity has both strands within it, often fighting for dominance, and they can be seen in the different approaches to marriage and celibacy in the priesthood. The attitude to sex can sum up the conflict between the two approaches because sex is the outer manifestation at its most obvious of what this debate is all about. Desire. Is desire good or evil? Is it something to overcome or is it the seed from which, when purged of its lower and selfish elements, love can arise?

All agree that identification with this world or any of the goods of this world is a profound spiritual error. We are called to locate our being in the spiritual world. There is no dispute among religious people about that even if the vast majority of people nowadays would not go along with it. However, here we are talking about serious people orientated to the spiritual life, those who know that this world is not our true home and the body and earthly mind are not the true centre of our real being. But if this world and all that pertains to it, which must include our very self when you come down to it, are regarded as obstacles to a proper perception of reality, are they obstacles that must simply be discarded or are they to be included in a more all-embracing vision that accepts everything (everything not the product of sin and illusion, that is, which are basically no things) but accepts them in a hierarchical vision of reality with the greater being seen as greater yet the lesser also having its own place, subsidiary but vital, in the whole?

I have been attracted to the former position at times. It seems more absolute, more final, more what everything should ultimately lead up to. Gain spiritual truth by cutting everything else away. Strip the veils from reality until you are left with nothing but pure being or even non-being as some might phrase it. And I suppose this might be possible. The state of complete rest in absolute oneness exists. But does it exist as a permanent destination or is it only a temporary experience which it is not possible for man to remain in?

I submit the latter is the case. Many people have experienced the state of absolute oneness but I don't think any remain in it. The history of gurus bears witness to that. These people may once have been touched by grace but they cannot remain on that exalted plane so they have to pretend if they are to preserve their authority, pretend to their disciples but also to themselves. The one possible exception to this is Ramana Maharishi but I wonder? Did he perhaps identify with an experience and then preserve that in his mind? I don't doubt he was one of the true spiritual giants of the 20th century but his is not a path for Western people to follow because it was not balanced. He effectively rejected matter for pure abidance in spirit and that is not the way to go if we are to fulfil God's purpose in creation.

Why did God create if the goal for human beings is to return to spiritual oneness as though our life in the world was a complete irrelevance that contributed nothing? First of all, let me say that any spiritual person needs to understand that this is a creation and there is a Creator. Many people do not acknowledge that but I am writing here for people who have already come to that conclusion, the only rational one really. So God created and, we are told, saw that it was good. Creation is good. It is not an illusion. Something that is good is real. It may not represent ultimate reality, it is a creation after all, but it is real and it is good. Then God created us and he did so as a couple, two of us, two separate souls who find their fulfilment in each other. This is traditional teaching but it is also universal experience despite all the things that can go wrong. Now, the question is when we return to God, as all serious religions teach we must, do we do so by stepping out of creation completely, and remember that would include our individual selves, or do we bring creation and its fruits with us? That is to say, do we integrate our material and spirituals selves, obviously with the latter as the ruler in a hierarchical pairing (because it is the more fundamental and the closer to God himself) or do we jettison the former like the part of a rocket that carries the fuel load as it leaves the Earth's atmosphere?

The answer is given by Christ. When he ascended into heaven he took his body with him. He was not just reabsorbed into God but the human part of his being was retained, completely translated into light perhaps but retained not rejected. This tells us, or it should, that the true spiritual path demands the integration of spirit and matter not the dismissal of matter as illusion or evil. This is the mystic marriage and it is a greater thing than the spiritual celibacy of the Buddhist. It is important to realise that in this marriage spirit must be the dominant partner, the spiritual path is all about bringing the material self under the dominance of the spiritual, but the goods of creation are incorporated into the highest heaven at the end of time, not rejected. Time really does add to eternity as does becoming to being, and what they add are beauty, goodness as an active principle and love.