Wednesday 26 August 2020

Descent into Madness

I have felt disinclined to write on this blog recently and the reason is simple. There just isn't much left to say which hasn't already been said. How long can you keep pointing out that humanity is on course for global civilisational collapse which is what always happens when the impetus that gave rise to a new culture has dissipated and there is no creative energy left? How many times can you say that when the spiritual world is denied as it is now human beings go literally, yes, quite literally, mad and start engaging in self-destructive behaviour? Their minds descend into a kind of anarchic mess, antipathy for the other increases and the most mentally perverted become the most passionate in defending and promoting their perversions.

We are living in times which are both extraordinary and just plain dull. Nothing of any real interest is taking place even though recent events have been both dramatic and unprecedented. But none of it really means anything as nothing can mean anything in the absence of God. Now he has been forgotten for so long that in most people's minds he has become like Odin or Zeus, merely an old tribal god we have long since outgrown. Unfortunately, this simply means that human beings have begun to lose the will to live though they are still afraid of death. Without a spiritual background to life, it becomes merely a sorry succession of moments of seeking pleasure which eventually palls and then all that matters is avoiding pain. Our science is no longer the search for truth and understanding about the universe but a kind of technocratic support system crippled by ideology. Our art is the product of sterile minds digging into the body of the past and thinking they are making something new from the corpse. And our religion, what there is of it, amounts to little more than warming up the leftovers of a feast most of which has long since been consumed so the nourishment has gone. As for politics, well that is all of whatever stripe quite obviously moving closer and closer to totalitarianism.

I am neither a pessimist nor a cynic. I believe that God is always there and will reward those who remain faithful to the vision of holiness. The world in its present form will presumably die but that is not a bad thing. Corruption needs to be cleansed. But souls will survive in one form or another and they will go to where their mind takes them. In the spiritual world we get what we are. In the meantime, this world will become increasingly insane. What is there to love or honour or aspire to? Just an abstraction called humanity but humanity on its own is just a collection of flesh and bones. With God we are the most extraordinary and glorious beings. Without him we are just a lot of clever but foolish monkeys, chattering about nothing but full of self-importance.

In 1924 at a lecture at Arnhem in Holland the spiritual philosopher, or spiritual scientist as he thought of himself, Rudolf Steiner said that by the year 2000 "humanity will either stand at the grave of all civilisation or at the beginning of that age when in the souls of human beings who unite intelligence with spirituality in their hearts the Archangel's Michael's battle will be fought out to victory." It's not hard to see which of those two options is the one that happened. Pretty much everything that could go wrong in the 20th century, especially the latter half, did go wrong. The Nazis and the Communists were defeated on the physical plane but the battle carried on at spiritual levels and we proved too weak and too inept to wage it successfully. We succumbed to the anti-spiritual forces that had been let loose. The higher impulses that had played on human consciousness were reacted to but they were reacted to on the material plane and misinterpreted as relating to earthly man instead of his spiritual self. This is why so-called progressive movements believe themselves to be at the vanguard of humanity. They have responded to the real progressive impulses but they have done so in a regressive manner, from the lower self, and they have corrupted and debased that which should have carried us forward into a new age of spiritual understanding. We can go so far as to say that the thought forms of many intellectuals were demonically inspired.

The dreams of those who thought we would be entering the Age of Aquarius in the new millennium have turned out to be vain false imaginings, in no small part because many of the proponents of this idea thought they could be spiritual without being Christian, perhaps because this does not demand the full recognition that one is a sinner in need of redemption. While there may be a Golden Age in the future I very much doubt present humanity will be here to see it. We really are not worthy. Repentance is always possible but the last twenty years has shown that to be extremely unlikely, certainly in the mass - individuals are a different matter. Steiner's thought that "in the souls of human beings who unite intelligence with spirituality in their hearts the Archangel's Michael's battle will be fought out to victory" still applies on an individual level. So, for those of us who recognise the signs of the times all we need do now, all we can do now, is watch and pray in the sure knowledge that God is there even in this most testing of times. 

18 comments:

Bruce Charlton said...

@William - Excellent, and (for me) worth saying. Your essay encapsulates - and also expands - very well my own understanding of the situation; which I find helpful.

I was particularly struck by your passing remark: "Nothing of any real interest is taking place even though recent events have been both dramatic and unprecedented. "

That's it exactly! We are living through seismic global change in our social and political lives - but, Good Heavens it's *dull*!

William Wildblood said...

Thanks Bruce. I just feel there is a certain inevitability of things now as though it's all just winding down. As one thing leads to another it is like a collective madness. I hadn't realised until recently how much people, when they reject God and that rejection becomes the settled view, basically seek to destroy themselves.

Sean G. said...

I appreciate you writing despite your disinclination. It might be more meaningful to some than you realize.

Brad said...

Very well stated William. Resignation is the word I use, but not despair. Civilization is grinding down, but stragglers will be saved through the process. The only way out is through.

BTW, the Masters you speak of, I think one visited me in a dream a few weeks ago. Ancient being (1000s of years?), not human, but LIVING. Very wise. He was "dumping" info on the spiritual battle raging around us and after each iteration, would inquire "Human Being, do you understand?" This occurred 4 times.

I didn't clearly at the time, but knew I would later. Being called a human being was in no way derogatory, it was simply a reality. I wish I knew his name...

William Wildblood said...

Thanks Sean. All i really meant by that was that I didn't want to keep repeating myself but I probably will anyway!

Yes Brad, you're right, we should never despair partly because it is all going to end well for those who stay true but also because that's what the enemy wants. They know they've lost but want to do as much damage as they can before that happens.

I'm sure we all have spiritual teachers and they try to inform us as best they can. 'Human being' sounds a bit impersonal though. I would be cautious about placing too much credence in anything that addressed me like that. As always with these things you have to exercise common sense and discrimination.

William Zeitler said...

I keep coming back to the Book of Revelation. The part we remember the most is the destruction, the Four Horsemen and all that. But then what? The old and rotten had to be cleared away for the New Heaven and Earth, the New Jerusalem. If civilization mimics the life cycle of an individual, the vigor of youth eventually gives way to the decline of age. We are not aging well -- if anything it almost seems like National Alzheimer's -- the rage and insanity of that. (My wife and I cared for her mother who ultimately succumbed to Alzheimer's -- that is something that has to be experienced first hand to be believed.) Rome ultimately fell, which had to happen to make way for the cathedrals and the Renaissance. Some future civilization, a NEW civilization, will arise from our ashes in some distant future. "Good Times make for a weak and indolent people. A weak and indolent people make for Hard Times. Hard times make for a strong and vigorous people. A strong and vigorous people make for Good Times. Rinse and repeat!"

William Wildblood said...

I suppose there is something like an equivalent of Alzheimer's going on in the collective mind. But there is also a moral component to this. People don't even seem to want God to be real. That is what makes us such a hard-hearted generation to use Biblical language. The only way out of this mess is through repentance.

William Zeitler said...

You are absolutely correct about the necessity of the moral element -- something lacking in my Alzheimer's analogy. But the Book of Revelation certainly has that covered!

Dynamic said...

As William Zeitler mentioned, "Some future civilization, a NEW civilization, will arise from our ashes in some distant future.". Agreed. But what will this new civilization look like? It's easy to forget this nowadays, but religions are fundamental to civilizations, and, like classical paganism, when they become moribund and/or are replaced with other religions, that civilization is on its way out. Problem is, the only contender to replace Christianity right now in Western civiliation is materialistic atheism. A civiliation founded on that (lack of) belief would have a worldview that nothing matters at all except maybe arranging molecules in your brain in states described as "happiness" as much as possible before chemical reactions in your brain shut down permanently. Not sure what sort of civilization would come out of that or whether you or I would want to live there.

John Fitzgerald said...

The quality of writing and insight in this post is on a completely different level to the vast majority of comment and analysis out there. Great comments too. For me there's something very redolent of WB Yeats in what you're writing here. I had intended to say more here but my response has developed into a short blog post which hopefully I'll be able to put up before the end of today (Thursday). It's another way of looking at Wiliam Z's question as well - what next?

Great work. Well done.

William Wildblood said...

I agree, Dynamic, that religion is essential for proper civilisation. But materialistic atheism is not a replacement for religion. It's just something that arises when a religion loses its creative energy and ability to inspire. So it can't be the foundation for a real civilisation. It's just something that accompanies the dissolution of a civilisation. But that's probably your point !

Thanks John. I look forward to reading your post.

Bruce Charlton said...

@William "materialistic atheism is not a replacement for religion. It's just something that arises when a religion loses its creative energy and ability to inspire."

True, but that itself has even deeper causes - religion lost its ability to inspire because people stopped caring about it, and cared more about other (and often evil) things. Our current situation is an accumulated consequence of many, many evil choices of many, many individuals over many decades.

William Wildblood said...

You're right, Bruce. Materialistic atheism was not just a passive consequence of the weakening of religion but something we actively chose. Which makes it a lot worse.

edwin faust said...

What is to come in the way of a new civilization may not resemble any of our speculations, but a short-term prediction can be a reasonable and fairly certain extrapolation of present circumstances. If what is going on now can be summed up in a word, then "reductionism" may be that word: all must be reduced to the same level and anything that rises above that level must be destroyed. Christian Western culture has long maintained that inequality is what makes existence possible: without differences, the one-ness, sameness of pure being would remain static. But there appears to be a desire to dissolve all differences, which would mean destroying human personality. This can be seen in the political world most clearly. And it shows itself in the "spiritual" world through the growing popularity of Eastern religion/philosophy in which there is a denial of the self (as in Buddhism) or an emptying of the self into a higher self, that is, a consciousness in which all distinctions disappear in some imagined pure awareness with no content. I don't expect that what is coming will be clearly articulated by those in charge of it, but there is already an enormous pressure to conform to politically correct viewpoints, which are ever shifting their ground. The point is really conformity and it matters less what it is that we conform to, as least for the powers that be. Obedience is required as a mindset, a default mode. So, in the short-term I think we can expect totalitarianism and increasing degrees of punishment for those who stand against it in any way.

William Wildblood said...

I think that's a good analysis, edwin. What you describe seems to me to be oneness interpreted quantitatively, i.e. as a material rather than spiritual thing. This latter would be qualitative and would include a hierarchical dimension. But we are descending to the unqualified homogeneity of the prima materia. All in line with the Kali Yuga or End Times scenario.

edwin faust said...

If we understand satan's rebellion as a protest against hierarchy, that is, the order of creation, then original sin can be understood not as a temporal event only but as a condition of the soul. If Bolton is correct and we are, in a manner of speaking, reverse engineering creation so as to reduce it to formlessness, as much as is possible, then all the old structures will be destroyed. Individuals can resist the impetus, but it will become increasingly difficult to do so, especially if one doesn't understand what's going on. That is why your writing is important. It informs and strengthens others.

Thomas said...

I've dealt with the phenomenon of "people ignoring reality" for a long time, but it is really growing in intensity. I want to call it stupidity, but it's not that. Mental illness doesn't even seem apt, though there may be much of that. The best explanation I could come up with is that we're living with a very large number of cult worshippers. However, Dr. Charlton's point about metaphysical assumptions is the only thing that clearly make sense of everything and even explains this cult.

This really makes the most sense of our present situation. If we realize we are Christians living in a land of another religion, where the cult believes evil things and refuses to acknowledge obvious things (like refusing to step out of the way of an oncoming train). The cult is so deeply ingrained, through metaphysical assumptions, it is unaware of itself and incoherent beliefs - because that would lead to the awareness that other thoughts are possible. We are on the edge of primarily dwelling in the catacombs and must simply do our best to live a Christian life, help our Christian brothers, and perhaps lead a lost soul seeking good where possible.

The Christian life of pilgrimage"is perhaps more clear now than it has been in a long time.

Anonymous said...

Bruce and William:

I'm sure you've encountered this question before, but have either of you encountered any of the 'Kingdom of the Divine Will' writings of Louisa Piccarreta? I've read about 5% of the 36 volumes she wrote over a 50 year period, and find them astonishing in their clarity and refulgence about the Sanctification by the Holy Spirit which, per the writings, is about to take place (following the Creation and the Redemption as the final and greatest act of love by the Trinity).

Start around 1926, sample it a bit. I don't think you'll be disappointed, and I expect you'll be amazed.

https://luisapiccarreta.co/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/CombinedVolumes-1-to-36-Book-of-Heaven-Jan-2019-use.pdf