Spiritual Teachers are Largely Useless

In fact, many of them are net negative. I was prompted in this thought after being sent this link to the London Mind, Body and Spirit Festival which takes place shortly near to where I work. Most of the spiritual professionals who appear at these affairs in talks and workshops are just selling their wares. They are basically business people who have a talent for giving a spiritual presentation but they cater to those who seek spirituality as a lifestyle accessory or means to develop themselves. They are the psychics, intuitives, positive thinkers, motivational speakers, wellness experts and aura readers who offer a kind of therapeutic self-help for people tired of materialism or, since few of them actually renounce it, looking to expand their horizons a bit beyond materialism. I suppose you could say they are a stage to be gone through but you shouldn't need to experience that stage to realise the essential emptiness and self-indulgence of it.

I'm sure some of these teachers believe they are doing good and perhaps some of them are but in my opinion they are mostly leading people away from true spiritual understanding down one of the many blind alleys that the novice might encounter when he first starts to aspire to something more than this world has to offer. Anybody who makes spirituality their profession, other than a bona fide priest who anyway follows a vocation not a profession and is certainly not in it for fame or fortune, is either a fraud or, since most of them are not that, an opportunist or, best case scenario, on a low rung of spiritual understanding. Some years ago my guides informed me that there were many teaching half-truths at present and, though they were not all evil, they were not very evolved. I wouldn't say the picture has changed since then. I am not saying these people are evil but what they have to offer is a spirituality intended to make one feel good, and the spiritual path is not about making the earthly self happy and fulfilled or even loving and good. It has one purpose only which is to reorient the heart and mind to God.

So, are there no spiritual teachers worth following? It depends what you mean by teacher. There are certainly people from whom one can learn but the whole concept of a spiritual teacher is foreign to the West. It is imported from Eastern religion, the guru and so on, and therefore it is operating on a different sort of level. But even on that level I would maintain that the spiritual teacher role as it exists now exists as much for the teacher's sake as it does for the pupil. Certainly we can and should share our understanding but the spiritual path today is an individual path and all teachers can do is give us a push in the right direction at an early stage. Thereafter, we must form our own relationship with God. No doubt many teachers would say exactly that but often by their behaviour they encourage dependence, personality worship and idolatry. Nowadays the spiritual teacher is just another manifestation of celebrity culture.

Third Course of Table Talk

Here is a third and final selection from Coleridge's Table Talk, again with comments in italics.

Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material. 

Truth is made up of facts but it goes beyond facts as reality transcends things.

 

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance ! 

Dance, like music, can exalt or corrupt but it tends to increase self-awareness so compounds a loss of innocence.

* s face is almost the only exception I know to the observation that something feminine — not effeminate mind — is discoverable in the countenances of all men of genius. Look at the face 

of old Dampier, a rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft is the air of his countenance, how delicate the shape of  his temples!

The evolved soul will combine elements of the masculine and the feminine though always in the context of the man or woman that he or she is. You could see transexuals as a corrupted debasement of this idea.

 

On Astrology and Alchemy

It is curious to mark how instinctively the reason has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of the various sciences, and how immediately afterwards they have set to work, like children, to realize that end by inadequate means. Now they applied to their appetites, now to their passions, now to their fancy, now to the understanding, and lastly, to the intuitive reason again. There is no doubt but that astrology of some sort or other would be the last achievement of astronomy: there must be chemical relations between the planets; the difference of their magnitudes compared with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise; but this, though, as it were, blindly and unconsciously seen, led immediately to fortune- telling and other nonsense. So alchemy is the theoretic end of chemistry: there must be a common law, upon which all can become each and each all; but then the idea was turned to the coining of gold and silver.

 

It is my profound conviction that St. John and St. Paul were divinely inspired; but I totally disbelieve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or argument throughout their writings. Observe, there was revelation. All religion is revealed;— revealed religion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Revelations of facts were undoubtedly made to the prophets; revelations of doctrines were as undoubtedly made to John and Paul;—but is it not a mere matter of our very senses that John and Paul each dealt with those revelations, expounded them, insisted on them, just exactly according to his own natural strength of intellect, habit of reasoning, moral, and even physical temperament?

The way the heavenly powers work is to impress ideas on their disciples in the world. That way human will is left free and we have to, as it were, find the original within ourselves, stretch up to it from the clues given so increasing our own intuitive faculties. 

 

So little did the early bishops and preachers think their Christian faith wrapped up in, and solely to be learned from, the New Testament,—indeed, can it be said that there was any such collection for three hundred years? —that I remember a letter from x to a friend of his, a bishop in the East, in which he most evidently speaks of the Christian Scriptures as of works of which the bishop knew little or nothing.

Interesting if true. I don't know enough of early church history to know.

In natural history, God's freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In moral history, God's necessity or providence is shown in man's freedom.

What makes a human being human? Freedom.

 

The sum total of moral philosophy is found in this one question, Is Good a superfluous word,—or mere lazy synonym for the pleasurable, and its causes;—at most, a mere modification to express degree, and comparative duration of pleasure?

What is the Good? We used to know but we don't any more. We have lost the idea of the true good.

 

It is curious to trace the operation of the moral law of polarity in the history of politics, religion, &c. When the maximum of one tendency has been attained, there is no gradual decrease, but a direct transition to its minimum, till the opposite tendency has attained its maximum; and then you see another corresponding revulsion. 

Hope for the future then.

 

Never take an iambus as a Christian name. A trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and Rotha are my favourite names for women.

I have no idea what this means but how could I leave it out?

 

No man was more enthusiastic than I was for France and the Revolution: it had all my wishes, none of my expectations. Before 1793, I clearly saw and often enough stated in public, the horrid delusion, the vile mockery, of the whole affair.

You could say this about many movements ostensibly for freedom which after the initial burst of energy turn sour as freedom becomes disorder and the breaking of boundaries leads to chaos.

 

Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, except as the consequence of an impression made on the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold to be fanatical and sectarian.

Any preacher or orator who seeks to appeal to his audience's emotions might enflame but does not illumine. In fact, he does the opposite. Wisdom is sober.

 

You are always talking of the rights of the negroes. As a rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of England here, I do not object; but I utterly condemn your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights to the blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly reminded of the state in which their brethren in Africa still are, and taught to be thankful for the providence which has placed them within reach of the means of grace. I know no right except such as flows from righteousness; and as every Christian believes his righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an imputed right too. It must flow out of a duty, and it is under that name that the process of humanization ought to begin and to be conducted throughout.

Which comes first, rights or duties? Certainly there can be no rights without duties. The first section shows the folly of the idea of reparations.

 

I think St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans the most profound work in existence; and I hardly believe that the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have been deeper.

 To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood;…. this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talent. 

To preserve innocence while still absorbing experience is to maintain the contact with God.

 

I quite agree with Strabo that there can be no great poet who is not a good man, though not, perhaps, a goody man. His heart must be pure; he must have learned to look into his own heart, and sometimes to look at it; for how can he who is ignorant of his own heart know any thing of, or be able to move, the heart of any one else? 

 

Some music is above me; most music is beneath me. I like Beethoven and Mozart—or else some of the aërial compositions of the elder Italians, as Palestrina and Carissimi.—And I love Purcell.

Some music comes from the higher world, some from this world and some from the lower world. In fact, not just some but most now in the case of the latter.

 

The most common effect of this mock evangelical spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation and busy-bodyism. 

Wokery summed up.

If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage of men are not beasts; they are worse, a great deal worse.

 

For compassion a human heart suffices; but for full and adequate sympathy with joy an angel's only. And ever remember, that the more exquisite and delicate a flower of joy, the tenderer must be the hand that plucks it.

 

The Trinity is the idea: the Incarnation, which implies the Fall, is the fact: the Redemption is the mesothesis of the two—that is—the religion.

 

I am, dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope— those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love,—for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream; Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not predicable at all of aught below Heaven. Hooker wished to live to finish his Ecclesiastical Polity;—so I own I wish life and strength had been spared to me to complete my Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating, continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my heart were to exalt the glory of his name; and, which is the same thing in other words, to promote the improvement of mankind. But visum aliter Deo (God wishes otherwise), and his will be done.

This was spoken on July 10th 1834.  He died 2 weeks later.

 

 

More Table Talk

Here are some more excerpts from Coleridge's Table Talk. It's just a small selection but what seem to me to be the most interesting pieces and most relevant to our day.

Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some of the sublimest passages I ever read are in his works.

Plotinus is indeed sublime but he lacks one thing which is the knowledge of Christ.

 

I was amused the other day with reading in Tertullian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract themselves, and wriggle about like worms.

Makes sense.

 

Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of the nature and ends and duties of the wedded life I ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not mystery, as we translate it.

A symbol, presumably, of God and Creation.

 

Why need we talk of a fiery hell? If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness — a horrid thought ! 

Perhaps this is what hell is. When the will has so turned against God that it starts to disintegrate. Madness must ensue.

 

An ear for music is a very different thing from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, a good fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself when a thing of Beethoven's followed. 

I understand this, being in the same boat with regard to ear and taste.

 

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton ; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler. It is in the order of Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind — the Kepler — should come first ; and then that the patient and collective mind — the Newton — should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius upon record than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension of the law of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind.

 

Bacon, when like himself — for no man was ever more inconsistent — says, "Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae". 

This is from Roger not Francis. Translation: To ask the proper question is half of science. 

 

It is a melancholy thing to live when there is no vision in the land. Where are our statesmen to meet this emergency ?

If he could have lived now!

 

Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on the principle of a representation of interests or of a delegation of men? If on the former, we may, perhaps, see our way; if on the latter, you can never, in reason, stop short of universal suffrage; and in that case, I am sure that women have as good a right to vote as men. 

This is from 1830. I'm not sure if it is in favour or against universal suffrage. It depends on what he means by 'if on the former we may see our way'. But see further excerpts below for more light on this.

 

Rousseau, indeed, asserts that there is an inalienable sovereignty inherent in every human being possessed of reason; and from this the framers of the Constitution of 1791 deduce that the people itself is its own sole rightful legislator, and at most dare only recede so far from its right as to delegate to chosen deputies the power of representing and declaring the general will. But this is wholly without proof; for it has been already fully shown that, according to the principle out of which this consequence is attempted to be drawn, it is not the actual man, but the abstract reason alone, that is the sovereign and rightful lawgiver. The confusion of two things so different is so gross an error, that the Constituent Assembly could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of rights without some glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all political power; are they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason resides? Yes! but in them the faculty is not yet adequately developed. But are not gross ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habitual tyranny of passion and sensuality, equally preventives of the development, equally impediments to the rightful exercise, of the reason, as childhood and early youth? 

Democracy by putting the unit (one person, one vote) above its actual capacity (reason) clearly prioritises quantity over quality. This is its fatal flaw.

The principle on which the whole system (of democracy) rests is that reason is not susceptible of degree.

The above comment in a nutshell.

 

Necker, you remember, asked the people to come and help him against the aristocracy. The people came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or other, they would not go away again when they had done their work. I hope Lord Grey will not see himself or his friends in the woeful case of the conjuror who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils to do something for him.  They came at the word, thronging about him, grinning, and howling, and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee; but when they asked him what he wanted of them, the poor wretch, frightened out of his wits, could only stammer forth,  " I pray you, my friends, be gone down again!" At which the devils, with one voice, replied, " Yes! yes! we go down! we go down  — But we take you with us to sink or to drown! "

A warning to those who open the door to mass immigration from 3rd world countries in order to boost their own power, popularity and/or wealth.

 

The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiversations of the specific Whig newspapers are to me detestable. I prefer the open endeavours of those publications which seek to destroy the church: there is a sort of honesty in that which I approve, though I would with joy lay down my life to save my country from the consummation which is so evidently desired by that section of the periodical press. 

Tergiversation is 1: evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement: equivocation. 2 : desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith. Merriam Webster definition. This refers to the bad faith of large sections of the left. Bad faith is often a sign of wrong motivation.

 

The darkest despotisms on the Continent have done more for the growth and elevation of the fine arts than the English government. 

 A perennial complaint.

 

So long as Rubens confines himself to space and outward figure — to the mere animal man with animal passions — he is, I may say, a god amongst painters. His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs are almost godlike; but the moment he attempts anything involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods and goddesses, his nymphs and heroes, become beasts, absolute, unmitigated beasts. The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone, and something substituted for it, — very pleasing, but different, and different in kind and not in degree only. Portraits by the old masters are pictures of men and women: they fill, not merely occupy, a space ; they represent individuals, but individuals as types of a species. Modern portraits — a few by Jackson and Owen, perhaps, excepted — give you not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark.

Wait for the 20th century!

 

As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed. 

 

O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever fellow. He is for the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q. mean by the word happiness and, secondly, how does he propose to make other persons agree in his definition of the term? Don't you see the ridiculous absurdity of setting up that as a principle or motive of action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very nature — an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness ? But what happiness ? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping his fallen enemy, pursues his happiness naturally and adequately. A Chickasaw or Pawnee Bentham or O. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible number of savages for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this absurdity unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty, imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh ! but, says O. P. Q. I am for the happiness of others. Of others! Are you indeed ? Well, I happen to be one of those others, and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your banquet of happiness. Your mode of happiness would make me miserable. To go about doing as much good as possible to as many men as possible, is indeed an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then, in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others to your particular views, which may be quite different from your neighbour's, you must do that good to others which the reason, common to all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so very true as to be a mere truism. 

The problem with this Benthamite utilitarianism which Coleridge rightly condemns is that we rarely know what constitutes true happiness or where it lies.  If heaven is the real home of happiness, which it is, then everything that may lead to heaven is good and everything that does not do that or leads away from it works against happiness.

 

Demagogues always appeal to men as men; and, as you know, the most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought by such phrases as Rights of Man, Sovereignty of the People, &»c., which no one understands, which apply to no one in particular, but to all in general. The devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very clever fellow; I have no acquaintance with him, but I respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly in the end overcome everything; but inconsistent good can never be a match for consistent evil. Alas, I look in vain for some wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty in the ears of this generation. 

The devil is a clever fellow until you are wise to his wiles and then he is a total idiot. But he does know how to bait a hook.

 

The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding — between a principle and a maxim — an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a million moss-roses all red, concludes from his own experience and that of others that all moss-roses are red. That is a maxim with him— the greatest amount of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only true until some gardener has produced a white moss-rose, — after which the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with fear; and even at the end of a thousand years, all that a man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. 

It seems to me that this is an important difference between religion and science; one deals with eternal truths while the other is based on conclusions generalized from a great number of facts.

 

I never from a boy could under any circumstances feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. Not that I have any author's vanity on the subject.

A fitting comment to end this group of extracts and something to which we should all aspire. 

 

Table Talk by Coleridge

The excerpts below are quotes from Table Talk by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which consists of recollections of his conversations published after his death by his nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge. I came across the first one recently and thought it very pertinent to our present time, particularly with relevance to the reaction during the recent health scare. So I looked through an online version of the book and found it full of similar pithy observations, a few of which I reproduce here with an occasional comment in italics

 

 There is the love of the good for the good’s sake, and the love of the truth for the truth’s sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good’s sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth’s sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth – the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry.

One should add that the real good is the same as the real true so it is the apparent or even the false good that people, especially women, prefer to the real good, and this is because it makes greater appeal to their feelings or to their desire for comfort, safety and general 'niceness'.

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire — which is  not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work — may be stated in  two words : — the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation. 

This is not exactly two words but one can see what he means, and it could be said to be what is happening to the West now.

 

Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals  of distinct races cross, a third, or tertium aliquid is invariably produced, different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to what we call chance ; it is now like one,  now like the other parent. Note this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European complexions, — as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and Portuguese, and so on. 

I have noticed this in people of my acquaintance.

 

There are two principles in every European and Christian state: Permanency and Progression. In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural that the great and the good of the nation should be found in the ranks of either side. 

Many of the present problems are caused by the abandonment of what Coleridge calls the sense of Permanency.

 

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind;  just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts — and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of a soul within us that makes the difference. 

Bring back the use of the word 'methinks'.

 

This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me some political pamphlets of the times of Charles I and the Cromwellate. In them the premises are frequently wrong, but the deductions are almost always legitimate; whereas, in the writings of the present day, the premises are commonly sound, but the conclusions false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to the University of Oxford for preserving the study of logic in the schools. It is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for it. 

You could apply this to our age in the sense that reasoned discourse stripped of ideology is becoming rarer, but I suspect that could have been said of many other times too.

 

St. John's logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in position and parallel; whilst St. Paul displays all the intricacies of the Greek system.

The mystic and the philosopher.

 

The first three Gospels show the history, that is, the fulfilment of  the prophecies in the facts. St. John declares explicitly the doctrine, oracularly, and without comment, because, being pure reason, it can only be proved by itself. For Christianity proves itself, as the sun is seen by its own light. Its evidence is involved in its existence. St Paul writes more particularly for the dialectic understanding; and proves those doctrines, which were capable of such proof, by common logic. 

A proof of Christianity lies in the fact that it offers us more than we could have ever hoped for or imagined.

 

St. John used the term Logos technically. Philo-Judaeus had so used it several years before the probable date of the composition of this Gospel; and it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish Rabbis at that time, and afterwards, of the manifested God. The Jewish Church understood the Messiah to be a divine person. Philo expressly cautions against anyone's supposing the Logos to be a mere personification, or symbol. He says the Logos is a substantial, self-existent Being. The Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind of Arians; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. They placed the Abyss and Silence before him. Therefore it was that St. John said, with emphasis, “ln the beginning was the Word." He was begotten in the first simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression may be pardoned, in speaking of eternal existence. 

To assert that God is a Person is not a childish projection but the most advanced religious doctrine.

 

The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be so.

It certainly has and even more so today.

 

Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.

As now when completely incompatible ideologies unite to contest the real.

Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is Pythagoras.

It's a pity we know Plato by his nickname or we could talk of Aristocles (his real name) and Aristotle. Apparently he was given this nickname, which means broad as in broad-chested, by his wrestling coach. All philosophers should have a wrestling coach.

 

In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The ancients had no notion of the fall of man, though they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most part in Aeschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together. 

An interesting insight.

"Most women have no character at all," said Pope, and meant it for satire. Shakespeare, who knew man and woman much better,  saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless. Everyone wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife, — creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.

If the highest state of matter is to reflect spirit perfectly you can see what he means here.

The man's desire is for the woman ; but the woman's desire is  rarely other than for the desire of the man. 

A generalisation but not without substance.

 

I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Everything really that is intellectually great in that country seems to me of Grecian origin.

Sometimes he gets it wrong. On the other hand (and see below), the Greeks did make rational what the Egyptians seemed only to understand intuitively.

 

There was, I conceive, one great Japetic original of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanskrit, range as species. The Japetic race separated 

into two branches; one, with a tendency to migrate south-west, — Greeks, Italians, &c. ; and the other northwest, — Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic. 

Japetic means descending from Noah's son Japheth and seems to refer here to Indo-Europeans.

 

I more clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity (that is to say, the Trinity) is an absolute truth transcending my human means of understanding it.

 

The result of my system will be to show that, so far from the world being a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat. 

More true than ever today.

 

The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right and both wrong. They each maintained 

opposite poles of the same truth; which truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premise. 

I see what he means but I would still place the Realists above the Nominalists. The latter could be said to be the origin of modern materialism.

A Fall  of some sort or other — the creation, as it were, of the non- absolute — is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.

The doctrine of the Fall makes sense of so much.

A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart Man seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, 

taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. 

The tragedy of feminism which poses as a liberator but actually corrupts.

The Trinity is the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life. As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union must be as transcendent as the distinction. 

If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial within him, what is there left for us to refer it to, but the fiendish ? Passion without any appetite is fiendish. 

Demons exist.

The best way to bring a clever young man who has become sceptical and unsettled to reason, is to make him feel something. Love, if sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a sense and assurance of something real and actual ; and that sense alone will make him think to a sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is thinking. 

We must distinguish between feeling and feelings.

 

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.

 

I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language, religion, laws, government, blood, — identity in these makes men of one country. 

Immigration without proper integration is a disaster. This is why it should be kept to reasonable limits, limits which it has far exceeded in Western nations in recent years.

 

The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. 

 

Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be undergone by everyone who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all other things. 

It's more important to be on the right side than to believe exactly the same things.

People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of

 Jupiter, all armed: manual dexterity may, indeed, be improved by practice. 

The difference between inspiring impulse and execution.

I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth to the Greek philosophy to be groundless. It sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics only. Then it took in the idea of a living cause and made Pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato asserted or reasserted the idea of a God the maker of the world. The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when Christianity came to add what before was wanting - assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined Theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism. 

Egypt probably did not have an intellectualised philosophy as such but it did have a highly developed knowledge of mysticism and magic. Otherwise this is not a bad history of religion in the West.

 

This is just a small selection from the first half of the book. I may do another post on the remainder but it serves to remind us that Coleridge was much more than just a romantic poet.

 

Strait is the Gate

 A few days ago I was out for my usual early evening walk. The particular circular route I was taking this time started off in a local park then proceeded up a road that goes to the downs and then across a field with horses that leads to a small wood from where it's a mile or so home. I like this walk because of its variety but this day I was feeling the routine and, to be frank, monotony of my daily life more than usual. Many years ago I was told by my teachers that my life must continue in a routine until I left my physical body, and such has been the case up until now. I realise this is necessary, unglamorous as it seems, as a spiritual discipline but sometimes it can become frustrating and on this occasion I was feeling that frustration. The spiritual darkness of the contemporary world was also weighing down on me and I lamented this out loud, asking God and my guides if a little break in the clouds might be possible. Don't be weak, came the response as a thought in my head. You are lucky to be in the position you are in where you can see what you do. When you reject the world you cannot expect worldly reward and satisfaction. When you allow God to work on you, you must be prepared for hardship on the level of the earthly ego. That was all very well, but still I asked for a little light in the darkness.

When these thoughts were going through my head I turned off the road going to the downs and into the field with horses. Luckily I had my phone with me as I was expecting a call from my daughter. I don't usually carry it when I go out. This is what I saw. 

The last time I had gone through this field there was a path that led to the woods at the end and it was twice the width it was now. There had also been no gate. The landowner had clearly decided to reduce the size of what was a public right of way through his field and put up a gate and posts to narrow the path. That was a pity but what struck me was that here, almost immediately after I had asked my question, was the answer to it. It came from Matthew 7:14. "Strait is the gate and narrow the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it." I had been lamenting the circumscription of my life but here I was being told in no uncertain terms. "What do you expect? This is how it is. Stop complaining, open the gate and go through!"

If it weren't for the fact that this teaching is applicable to others I wouldn't mention it here. After all, it's a tiny incident and its significance would be lost on most people. That significance could even be entirely imaginary. But I do think God speaks to us at certain times. He does not thunder from on high. He speaks so softly we might miss it if we weren't paying attention. On this occasion, though, it seemed to me that he answered my question in a perfect way.

Space is Contracting, Time is Accelerating

I suggest this is a real phenomenon. You may say space appears to contract because technology has reduced distance while time seems to rush by because life has become so fast and rapidly changing, and I would not dispute that but I would also maintain that this is more than an impression because of our circumstances. It is actually happening though it cannot be measured because any instruments we have would be subject to the same forces that are bringing it about. And the reason it is happening is that we are deep in the Kali Yuga or End Times when spirit withdraws from the world and matter becomes more dominant. This means the very stuff of our current world, now old and worn, is less resistant to the forces of decay and entropy. Consciousness, too, is affected becoming more constricted.

The idea of there being four ages in a cycle is well established in religious cosmology. Many traditions speak of this. Egyptian, Indian and Greek myths all refer to it, and these are only the best known. The ages can be characterised as Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, and in every case there is a descent from a high spiritual state of being to a low material one. At the beginning space is vast and time moves extremely slowly. This is why there are the stories of men living for several centuries back in prehistory. It is also why change only comes about after great spans of time. There is no sense of history since the patterns of life just repeat.

But as the ages proceed people's sense of time changes. Everything is cyclical for early man, each new year resembles the one before, but gradually there arises the notion of linear time. The material aspect of the world condenses and the spiritual moves further away from perception. The process gathers pace until, as the end of the whole cycle approaches, the cosmic framework in which we live has reached such a point of degeneration that it becomes unstable.

This world was originally structured on the pattern of the heavens. What that means is that the eternal realities of the higher worlds of being, somewhat like Platonic Forms, were the template on which human life was based. We can see this clearly in the case of ancient Egypt and India but it would apply everywhere to the degree that it could, based on the human consciousness of the period. A principal principle, as one might say, was the idea of a complementary duality which was the source of creation, heaven and earth, spirit and matter and, in biological terms, male and female. In the beginning there is a correct relationship between these two polarities and they function harmoniously and creatively, but towards the end of the cycle, due to the widening gulf between higher and lower states of being, this relationship is disrupted and becomes antagonistic. This leads to both an inversion of the hierarchy and also attempts to flatten any kind of hierarchy, indeed any kind of difference, at all. This is all in line with the rapidly developing predominance of matter over spirit. When the active and receptive poles of being are functioning correctly and according to their proper nature, all is well. But in a decaying environment everything starts to break down, matter seeks to usurp the rights of spirit and the relationship between the two ceases to operate creatively. The end approaches.

Back in the day advocates of New Age theory looked forward to the world entering the Age of Aquarius when people would experience a so-called quantum leap shift of consciousness. They acknowledged there would be earth changes as the old age crumbled but appeared to think they and many others would be around to enter into a glorious New Age once that had occurred without facing death. This was fundamentally to misunderstand the doctrine of the ages. It is not like winter turning to spring and a new year carries on in more or less the same way. The end of an age is an end. A new beginning is precisely that. It is a fresh start, perhaps on a higher turn of the evolutionary spiral but the past is completely cleared away. When a new heaven and a new earth arrive everything that belongs to the old order must die. Perhaps to be reborn if it has oriented itself correctly, but still it must first go through death. Transformation always requires death.

You might wonder where Jesus Christ comes into this scenario since, as depicted in tradition, it is a universal phenomenon, independent of him. What Christ adds to the teaching of cyclical ages is the idea of a linear progression to the End Times and a glorious new creation. The Kali Yuga and the End Times have much in common in how they play out. The Kali Yuga even concludes with the incarnation of Kalki, an avatar of Vishnu, who ushers in a new Golden Age or Satya Yuga. However, this is still part of an ongoing cycle which doesn't really have a conclusion except in Mahapralaya which is the complete dissolution of the cosmos and return to non-manifestation. What Christ offers is different. It is a new creation, a new heaven and earth. This is not just another Golden Age which will inevitably degenerate. It is a radical restructuring of reality in which evil and suffering, decay and death no longer have any part, and it is open to all those who wish to partake in it with the proviso that they must also restructure themselves in accord with it. This, of course, is impossible in the literal sense but we can at least allow ourselves to be restructured by opening ourselves up completely to Christ. This entails not just belief but love.

Christ is the lifeboat that rescues us from the spiritual wreckage of the Kali Yuga. Increasingly, all people who regard themselves as on the spiritual path or who are just looking for answers in these times of universal decline, value inversion and all-pervasive spread of evil will find they have to turn to him. As time rushes on towards its final destination there really is no other solution.

Ex Nihilo or Ex Deo?

 "I repent me of the ignorance wherein I ever said that God made men out of nothing: there is no nothing out of which to make anything: God is all in all, and he made us out of himself. He who is parted from God has no original nothingness with which to take refuge."

George MacDonald, Weighed and Wanting.

George MacDonald was one of the first important writers of fantasy and a great influence on C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, among many others. I was given some of his children's books more or less as soon as I could read properly. The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie and At the Back of the North Wind played a large part in forming my imagination as a child though I can't remember much about them now, other than that they had a magical atmosphere to them. Then as a teenager, hungry for more Lord of the Rings-type novels, I came across Phantastes and Lilith which, again, I don't recall much of other than I found them rather obscure and definitely not Tolkien. His complete works in an online version run to over 14,000 pages and include children's books, fantasy, regular novels and sermons but I haven't read anything more by him since my teenage years though, as my great grandmother was a MacDonald from George's part of Scotland and he died in Ashtead, Surrey, just a few miles from where I now live, I feel almost obligated to investigate further.

I came across this quote of his in a book by the Catholic writer Stratford Caldecott. It struck a chord with me because it took me back to a time when I was about 8 years old when I wondered to myself what would there be if there was nothing. I can actually still see myself having this thought for the first time. The human mind can't imagine nothing. All we can come up with is empty space or darkness but that is still something. I'm sure we've all had this thought. It's not uncommon as we start to think about the world, what it is, why it is or even where it is. In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who hasn't thought about this is a bit of a dullard! For most people it passes but for some it can provide an entry into deeper considerations on the subject of God, the only important subject one might justifiably say.

Does God create out of nothing as Christianity teaches or is it as George MacDonald says and he creates out of himself? Perhaps we can resolve this conundrum by saying it is both, but the nothingness out of which God creates is not outside him but within him. He makes a space in himself, in fact, forget the article, he just makes space, and then projects his being into that space. As George MacDonald says, there is no nothingness out of which God can make us. There is nothing apart from God. You might say there are no things in God until he creates them but there is never nothing. God is indeed all in all but he creates things that are other than himself in order to give expression to love, beauty and the good and to become more than himself. He is never other than perfect but through creation he becomes more perfect.

That is not all. The human soul is a created thing, created by and out of God, but within that soul, giving it its life and being, there is an uncreated part. This is our spirit which is God within us and explains why we can be united with God. There is a part of us that already is God but we cannot knowingly become this part until through grace but also through our own efforts, the two factors are both required, we go beyond our identification with the soul and replace self at the centre of our being with God. Then we know that we ourselves are indeed as nothing and everything we are comes from God.

Satanic Feminism

 This is the title of what looks an interesting book but I haven't read it and I'm not going to because it is an academic treatise and I am more concerned with the basic thesis than a trawl through history to make a point. The sub-title is Lucifer as the Liberator of Women in Nineteenth-Century Culture, and the book appears to be about the link between feminism and Satan which goes right back to Eve. As far as I can tell, the book is not written from a Christian point of view and no moral conclusions are drawn. If anything, I would imagine this particular Lucifer is cast as the Promethean hero who awakens consciousness as he is regarded in certain schools of occultism, but it more likely that it is simply a scholarly look at an obscure subject.

Obscure it may be in the overall context of 19th century history but it has had a massive impact on the modern world. Feminism according to the official narrative is a natural result of Enlightenment concern with egalitarianism and reason, and a consequence of the changes in consciousness that accentuated individuality and the sense of agency. But what if it is also part of an attack on the human race and attempt to unmake the natural order of creation by something that we may as well call by the traditional name of Satan? For Christians this is an evil force that acts against the will of God and seeks to increase disorder, chaos and, ultimately, bring about spiritual dissolution, but for some people it is a liberating force that brings freedom from oppression. There are reasonable grounds for thinking it likes to present itself in this way and make an appeal thereby to human egotism even if those who succumb to the temptation offered would cast the appeal as one to strength and individuality.

Is the devil the evil being he is depicted as in Christianity or is he a misunderstood champion of universal life who seeks to bring about evolutionary advancement in those who are bold enough to accept his challenges? Does he liberate us from servitude or does he lure us to destruction? (Sidenote: You can see how this could also be applied to feminism.) The answer to a proper spiritual sensibility should be obvious. The Christian view is the correct one and those who fall for his blandishments do so because of their own egotism. They are greedy for power and he offers it to them but the old stories tell us that, while he may give something in the short term, it is of worldly benefit only and he always claims something in return, and that something is the soul.

The devil always prefers a half-truth to a lie. It is much more persuasive, much more seductive. The truth that really is in it can blind us to the lie that is smuggled in and contaminates the whole idea like a worm in an apple. Where feminism is concerned, the time had come for certain changes in line with the changes in consciousness, but they should still have been in the overall context of the eternal nature of things. That may evolve but it does not change fundamentally. Just as feminists are wrong in their pursuit of equality (which anyway is often just a front for seeking to dominate men) so dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists are mistaken in thinking that the situation should revert to a time when women were regarded as purely passive and completely subordinate to men - if there ever really was such a time which I doubt. What was required was a deeper understanding of both masculinity and femininity in their spiritual and creative aspects which can be gained by meditation on the relationship between spirit and matter or life and form which relationship contains both a hierarchical element and a complementary one, and is above all the source of creativity. Modern feminism is like an attempt to make two suns from a sun and a moon or even, in its more demented aspects, an attempt by the moon to swap places with the sun. It turns what should be a loving relationship of two complementary halves making a whole greater than the sum of its parts into a competitive rivalry which is spiritually destructive to them both.

If Satan really is the inspiration behind feminism there are only two options to which I have already referred. By being an attack on the human form, it is an attack on the human soul. An attempt to separate us from the reality of our being and thereby separate us from God. This would be the Christian view. Or else Satan is the great liberator who comes to free us from oppression, first women from men and then all humanity from a capricious and tyrannical deity. That is how he would depict himself but this freedom is an illusion because it makes us slaves to our ego and worldly desires. The feminist is betraying her higher, spiritual self to further the ends of her earthly ego. She is reverting to Eve or even Lilith when she should be following Mary.

What's the Solution to the Current Crisis?

 Everyone recognises that we live at a time of crisis, whether that be spiritual or material. We might call it by different names and have different degrees of insight into the reality of our present predicament but any thinking person knows we are in trouble. Talk about the massive amount of government and private debt, about societal breakdown or climate change (if you believe in that) or about the complete loss of direction of Western societies. All these, real or imagined, are indicative of some sort of crisis but they are just the froth on the surface. Everyone reading this blog will know that the true crisis is spiritual but even those who don't recognise that realise that something is amiss and badly so.

So, what's the solution?

There is no solution and those who look for one or, worse, try to enforce one will only increase the chaos and confusion. There is no solution because we live at the end of an age or cycle which means we are in a phase of universal decline and increasing disorder. To say this is not to be pessimistic or negative. It's just a plain fact. The world goes through cycles which follow the natural pattern of spring, summer, autumn or fall and winter. To recognise we are deep in winter is simply to see the truth. To seek a solution to that is like an old person pretending to be young and, not coincidentally, that is something we do often see nowadays. In the case of modern man there is a mass falling away from spiritual belief which leads to materialism and atheism to begin with and then in many cases to various false spiritualities. This is the way the world goes when the initial burst of spiritual energy behind the forces that set it in motion starts to fade away and humans make their own reality.

We are in the Kali Yuga or End Times which were predicted and were predictable because the tendencies to decline, loss and value inversion are typical of matter replacing spirit as the predominating force, that being a basic definition of the Kali Yuga. The beginning of a cycle sees the injection of spirit into the world system. This determines the path to be followed but over time its force decreases though the framework it has built remains and can even be developed. But eventually material conditions overwhelm that and then they begin to dominate. There is no solution to this other than to build an inner ark and that is the test of these times. To maintain faith in a world which has either lost it or corrupted it. But this is how the wheat is sorted out from the chaff which you may find an objectionable metaphor given its implications but take that up with John the Baptist.

The world is primarily designed to develop consciousness but at certain times it also has the function of testing the soul. This is one of those times. The test now is for the soul to acknowledge and turn to God as its Creator but also to recognise evil as that which opposes God and his purpose for creation. It is no good simply believing in God if you are not on his side. That just means the God you choose to believe in is one of your own imagining which is the case for many. Humanity has reached a point at which it must make a conscious choice to align itself with God, and the nature of the world today is that this must take place on an individual level. In the past we operated collectively because the culture inclined us in a certain direction but now the culture is in the service of anti-God forces and we have to stand against that if we are to succeed spiritually.

Don't be deceived by people who say that a spiritual person has above all else to be a good person. Good by what criteria? First and foremost, we have to recognise what spiritual good is and consciously, completely, align ourselves with that. It is the full acknowledgement of God. No more and no less. Obviously, we should try to behave in the way that befits a disciple of Christ. Faith alone is not an excuse for bad behaviour or a justification for antinomianism. If you love me, keep my commandments. If you don't keep the commandments you surely do not love he who gave them.  Besides which, proper recognition of God will automatically incline a person to seek to be like him. But to be good as the world sees good is not the same thing. Moreover, we all fall short. That does not matter as long as we sincerely try at every moment of the day to "walk humbly with thy God" in the simple but profound words of the prophet Micah.

There is no outer solution but there is an inner solution. Know yourself to be a soul born in the world at this time to prove you are able to turn your spiritual compass to true north in a world in which all outer influences mitigate against that. Not south, materialism and atheism, not east or west, false forms of spirituality, and not even north east or north west. True north. You have to find the way to God within yourself and that is the case even if you follow an established form of religion which is no longer sufficient on its own and can often be a diversion from the true inner path. Now there has to be a real inner connection. And when you have attained that you simply follow where you are led, wherever that may be.

How to Save The West

Anyone can see that Western civilisation is on the way out. Let me rephrase that. Anyone should be able to see that Western civilisation is on the way out, but most people don't because they are too wedded to their own paltry pleasures or selfish resentments or greedy desires or shallow ambitions. The list continues but it basically encompasses all those who do not place the good, the beautiful and the true above their own egos, and that is the majority. If ever a civilisation deserved to collapse, it is ours because we are not worthy of those who established that civilisation. We, who place the temporal above the eternal, put ourselves at the mercy of the temporal and our time has passed.

There is a solution but we will never take it. The solution is to return to tradition and the soul of Christianity. That would include a form of what is now dismissed as patriarchy since, by and large, it is only men who are willing to fight for truth and to preserve it in the face of the inevitable attacks on it, inevitable because Satan exists and wages an ongoing war against creation. This has become so apparent in our day, and especially over the last 25 years, that anyone who wishes to tread the spiritual path has to see that path in terms of the war of good and evil. If you refuse to recognise that and retreat to an 'everything is one' position you are simply being spiritually blind, not to mention irresponsible. The mask is almost completely off now and the face of evil beginning to be seen for what it is.

Satan has weakened the West with, among many other things, the debasement of culture, mass immigration and feminism. In a society that wished to preserve itself immigrants would not be given a say in how the country was run (in other words, a vote) for at least 2 generations, and their number would be restricted. The number of immigrants that flood (the word is fair) into Western countries now will inevitably change them utterly. This may have good or bad results in the long term (I'm being diplomatic), but clearly for the host nation to permit it is borderline insanity because it will destroy itself thereby. A basic instinct is self-preservation. To go against this instinct is to succumb to the unnatural and the anti-spiritual. The failure to reproduce and the desire to kill yourself are ungodly.

Feminism is the devil's secret weapon because, while ostensibly based on reason and justice, it actually seeks to reverse natural hierarchies and turn the two sexes, meant to be complementary, into rivals on the same ground. The promotion of women to previously male spheres damages society because establishing harmony and consensus becomes more important than the search for truth and excellence. This again is one of those things that its so obvious it shouldn't need saying but the ideologically committed will never acknowledge it. That having been said, feminism is not the cause of the collapse but a symptom of it though it does hurry it along as well.

I say the remedy would be a return to some sort of modified patriarchy, meaning one that takes into account the evolution of consciousness and agency of both men and women, but I am not recommending this even if it were possible which it isn't as things stand.  The West must die and that is right and proper. The energies that sustained it are now weak and feeble and it has come to the end of its life. It is becoming a corpse on which the parasites will feed as it dies. But in the greater scheme of things that is not a problem because everything in this world only exists to serve spiritual needs. As the West collapses there are great spiritual opportunities for those who know how to take advantage of them. We may lament the collapse because of past good but everything dies and the West has rejected God so become evil. There is no more to be said. It must go but since the primary function of this world is as a school for consciousness and sphere in which the soul may choose or reject God and be tested thereby that is no great loss. All that is good and true and right exists in the higher worlds eternally.