A Pantomime Church

 The appointment of the new Archbishop of Canterbury is so absurd as to be almost comic.  It must surely be the final nail in the coffin of the Church of England and seems like a deliberate act of self-harm, proving beyond all doubt that this branch of Christianity is only concerned with social justice ideology with any real religion merely a subset of that. Other Christian churches might look on with astonishment but they should consider the degree to which they too are succumbing to the world because they are, only less so. 

But I want to write here about how this is actually a good thing or, at least, can be used to a good end.  All churches are externalisations of the spiritual but the spiritual can only be known inwardly. The external is there merely to point to the inner. It's a support and guide for those whose inner sensibility is not established. The trouble is that support can become a crutch and then it will weaken the connection we should all be developing to God. There are times when we need the support of an external organisation but there are other times when we should be outgrowing that and now is one of those times. The usual excuses are that without an outer authority all sorts of crazy, egotistical, false and deluded notions of the spiritual will arise, reflecting the psychologies and pathologies of those who propagate them. And this is perfectly true. There is plenty of evidence for that throughout the centuries, and certainly from the last several decades. Nonetheless, this is a stage that must be gone through if a true, uncorrupted inner sense of God is to be developed. A child learning to walk will probably fall over a few times, but if he stays on his backside and doesn't stand up by himself he will never walk.

Therefore, use the current state of the churches, taken to its most absurd level in the C of E, a true pioneer in spiritual ignorance, to forge your own connection to God. For Christ is within, not in any organisation or even church. He can use churches and obviously he has done so in the past, but churches only exist to show the way to those who cannot yet find it within themselves. I don't dispute that they provide a structure to belief and a communal space for worship, and I am not saying they should not exist because we need the outer and the inner. Both together make the whole. But in the context of the present time the real need is to go beyond established churches and find God within ourselves. There comes a point at which what once guided becomes an obstacle, and many have reached that point now. The pantomime that is the modern Church of England serves to bring this home with stunning clarity.

How to Respond to Current Events

All those who recognise we are living through an end times scenario have the problem of how to react with regard to the increasingly spiritually debased condition of these times. That includes not just how to face the bad there is but how to deal with the false hopes that are presented as well.

The answer is don't react. We must accept that the end times cannot be resisted. The energy behind them is irreversible and not meant to be reversed. To think it can be arrested is to put matter ahead of spirit. That does not mean we should not try to promote order, beauty and the good while condemning disorder and ugliness. We absolutely should, but our world has entered a state of dissolution and this is a natural process, inevitable in a material world which has its seasons and cycles and in which a fundamental law is entropy, things running down and running out. Entropy can be staved off at certain times but it cannot be wholly reversed and nor should it be because that would be to give matter the same rights as spirit which is a form of blasphemy. 

Therefore we must accept that the nature of these times is towards decadence and loss. That is not to say we allow ourselves to get caught up in that process. Inwardly we must resist but the outer world will go the way it is going. That is written and cannot be altered. Our task is to fortify ourselves on the spiritual level by focusing attention within and becoming detached from material things and the world out there. It is not that we do not care but we do not allow ourselves to get caught up in care and thereby lose our centre in God and our focus on the next world as the true one. What goes on in this world is not our business. Our responsibility is to put ourselves right with God and act as a beacon so that others may be inspired to do the same. We should observe the world and be aware of its deviation from truth but not let that deviation disturb us. That is hard and can seem like indifference but it is a question of balance between love, knowledge of the real and trust in God, all of which must form a part of our approach to these times.

This should lead us to doing the right thing, regardless of any outcome. The result of our actions is not our affair but the thought behind the actions is. We leave the results to God but we act, as much as we can, as his agents in this world so that he has the opportunity to use us in whatever way he sees fit. How that is is not our concern, and the best way we can serve is by attuning ourselves to the divine through love and dedication to the truth. That way the divine can come through us in some small way. We can act as channels through which God expresses himself in this world. The key as always is love but not love as the world understands love. It is love of God and his natural order. This is not a recommendation for turning turn your back on the world or, if it is, then doing so in the right way and for the right reason. Detachment is not disdain. It is simply a matter of putting first things first and then seeing where that leads you. You may act, you may not. That depends on your individual mission. But if you do you will be acting from the right place which is the God-centred soul as opposed to the worldly success seeking self.

The Recent Solar Eclipse

 

This is the chart for the recent solar eclipse on 21st September. That also happened to be my birthday and the eclipse was just a couple of degrees off my natal sun (the eclipse was late in the day and I was born shortly after midnight hence the distance between degrees for the same day). That is significant enough but an additional factor is Saturn directly opposite at 28 degrees of Pisces which is even closer to a direct opposition to my sun at 27 Virgo. So far nothing untoward seems to have happened other than a leak from a pipe in my bathroom that went through the ceiling in the room below and did quite a lot of damage. It was discovered an hour after the eclipse. A leak might involve the water sign of Pisces and also Neptune which is conjunct Saturn here but it does not have any connection with an eclipse. However, it is said that the effects of an eclipse may start several days before it takes place and continue for up to three months afterwards. 

An eclipse on your natal sun is supposed to herald new beginnings and potentially dramatic changes. With Saturn involved there can be increased responsibilities and new limitations as well. This was my 70th birthday so you might say all those factors come into play. But then everyone gets to 70 who lives that long and not everyone has this pattern on their birthday so I doubt that is all there is to it. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, goes on in my life in the next few weeks. The energies involved in astrology, whatever they are, can be processed internally if one is in tune with the cosmos and consciously aware of oneself and one's personal shortcomings. If one is unconscious and, let's face it, we all are to some extent or we wouldn't be here, they can manifest externally in the form of events that occur. I intend to be as aware as possible of my thought processes and emotional reactions in the coming weeks. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for me to watch myself more closely than usual and bring things I should be doing anyway, but often neglect to do, into sharper focus.

When I first saw the conjunction of the eclipse with my sun I felt mildly apprehensive. I've had experiences with eclipses before as mentioned in Meeting the Masters. But then the thought popped into my head. "Don't be like the heathen. Trust in God." I don't normally think in terms of heathens but that was the word as it appeared in my thoughts. I take it to mean that I should not be superstitious because of this or that pattern in the sky. The stars (so-called) do reflect the workings of creation but above them there is the Creator and one should always have confidence that whatever may play out in our lives down here on earth is always for our spiritual good. The planets are like the gods but the gods are the servants of God who is beyond them all.

Settling in Yercaud

It was now December of 1980. After 8 months in India Michael Lord and I had finally found somewhere we could run as a guesthouse which was our purpose for being in India. Or at least it was the way we intended to make ends meet. Our primary motivation was to lead a contemplative life for which at the time India was still more conducive than the West. And then, as we found out later, the Masters had taken us away from England because of the great cultural changes that were about to take place there and throughout the Western world in the 1980s. In the '60s there had been the feeling in many quarters that a new stage of consciousness was about to unfold. On the popular level this translated into the beliefs and practices associated with the so-called New Age movement, but everywhere there was something in the air, a sense that the old ways were passing and new, supposedly more enlightened, ways would arise to replace them. However confused, misunderstood, trivialised and, in many ways, ignorant this feeling was, it existed.

But every action sets up its own reaction. The world was not about to become more spiritual as many naively hoped. It was going to get even more materialistic. The positive energy of the time was captured and rerouted. In the UK the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher arose to deal with the excesses of socialism but the cure to that ill was equally detrimental to the spiritual health of the nation. I am not some rabid anti-Thatcherite because I believe in a free market and it is obvious that her brand of politics came about in response to the greed and corruption of the left, but it brought with it a materialism and corrupt capitalism of its own. From a societal point of view, it was every man for himself. The moral fibre of the country, already in freefall, took a dive. In different ways and to different degrees this happened all over the West. Living in India in the 1980s I didn't see it as it was going on. I had very little contact with Western media and wasn't particularly interested. But on my return I could see the changes that had occurred. The descent into deeper materialism, now unchecked by the vestiges of a religious sensibility, the vulgarity, the coarseness. This wasn't just caused by the new form of right wing politics because the reaction of the left to those politics caused as much if not more spiritual degradation. In different but complementary ways each side did its own damage, and we are living with the results of that today. 

One could point to many other periods recently when things took a turn for the worse. Again in the UK which is what I know best, the election of Tony Blair (the abbreviation of the Christian name reeking of fake egalitarianism) was another and sharper arrow in the spiritual heart of the nation. But from the perspective of someone just setting out on the spiritual path as I was in the early 1980s it was better that I was removed from the increasingly materialistic atmosphere of the time until I more firmly grounded and better able to withstand it. We are all affected by our environment and adopt its behavioural patterns to an extent. A sapling often needs protective fencing around it while it is in early stages of growth if it is in an unfavourable environment. India was my fencing then though not because it was a particularly spiritual place. It wasn't but it did still value the spiritual and hadn't totally succumbed to materialism. I doubt you could say that now.

The property Michael had bought was on a hillside about a quarter of a mile from the town. It spread over three levels or terraces. Just to the right of the entrance on the lowest level there was the well which was necessary as there was no mains water in the town at that time. 

The well and lower bungalow

All larger properties had their own well and Yercaud itself had a big well in the centre with a few smaller ones here and there. Water was not usually a problem as long as one was sensible except in the summer when several wells would go dry. Ours only dried up once during a particularly hot summer when we had guests in the bungalow who insisted on washing their clothes every day and using a lot of water to do so. We asked them not to but they carried on. They also smuggled in over a dozen people to a bungalow that had three double bedrooms and was priced accordingly. When challenged they insisted that there were only 6 adults, the rest were servants and children who didn't count because they slept on the floor. We had to ask them to leave and as the head of this family was the police chief from Salem things could have got awkward, but since the well was about to run dry he was ready to leave anyway so there were no repercussions which, given how power operates in India, there might well have been. 

The entrance to the property with a wooden gate and one of the two side pillars we added

The stairs leading to the main bungalow on the top level

The bungalow we ran as a guesthouse was on the same level as the well. It had a verandah that ran along two sides of the house, a large central area with a high ceiling for coolness and three bedrooms. There were bathroom areas rather than fitted bathrooms meaning there was just a lavatory, a tap and a space to pour water over yourself with a six inch high ridge around it to stop the water sloshing everywhere. The water ran out through a hole in the wall that led to an external open drain. The idea was that the water would evaporate in the sun which is what generally happened. The drain ran for a few yards and then stopped so any residual water would just seep into the ground. Initially there were no lavatories in this lower bungalow so we had to install a couple and put a septic tank in to deal with the waste. After a few years this tank had to be emptied and believe it or not there was a man who climbed in and did the job by hand. He was a very jovial fellow. I suppose if you do a job like that you have to be able to look on the bright side. If you work in an office and are bored by your 9-5 existence always remember, it could be worse.

The lower bungalow from the road

The entrance to the lower bungalow with a mulberry tree

The lower bungalow viewed from the level above with a large poinsettia bush

We had bought the property from a lawyer who administered it on behalf of the estate of the previous owners. These had been a couple of English spinsters who had died a few years before. They were daughters of a missionary and had lived their entire lives in India. It must have been a lonely existence after most of their compatriots had gone back to the UK but they knew nothing else. Neither of them had ever left India so it was their country though I imagine they had always been outsiders and their isolation seems to have made them increasingly eccentric. Apparently they would take books out of the local library and cut out pages which contained anything of a remotely sexual nature. As this library was housed in a club which had been the social centre for the British coffee planters, most of whom had left by the mid '50s after which no new books were bought, the controversial elements would have been innocent by today's standards. I was actually grateful for this library because the lack of up to date books meant I read a lot of 19th century literature that I never would have done otherwise. These books were the only form of entertainment and information I had for nearly 5 years. I read modern works before and I have done afterwards, though practically no fiction, but I do think those years of only reading books written in a less spiritually corrupt age served me well.

We lived in the bungalow on the upper terrace. Behind this the hill extended further for several hundred yards where it was a kind of scrub jungle. At the back of the house the hill had been cut away to leave a natural wall about 12 feet high and this had grown over with various plants including morning glory and wild pomegranate. The kitchen looked out onto this wall and instead of a solid door just had a wooden frame about 5 feet wide by 6 feet high lined with a wire grill. We usually left this open during the day for air and light and this was responsible for a little adventure I had. I was cooking lunch around midday when I heard a commotion coming from the wall behind the house. Then there was a crash and a lot of vegetation tumbled into the kitchen. This was immediately followed by the cause of the commotion. A python around 10 feet long whose momentum carried him up right up to my feet. He looked at me and I looked at him and then we both turned round and shot off in opposite directions, me into the house and him out of it. But after the initial shock I turned back and followed him. It's not every day you get a 10 foot python in your kitchen. He was going down the waste water gulley at the back and going so fast that he disappeared into the jungle before I could catch up with him which was probably just as well. I wrote about this encounter more extensively a few years ago. https://meetingthemasters.blogspot.com/2018/06/my-snake-stories.html

The Sun and the Planets

 Nietzsche criticised Christianity as a slave religion which sapped the strength of the masculine virtues as a result of its encouragement of humility and self-abnegation. He said it encouraged weakness and condemned its suppression of natural instincts. For him the Christian runs away from life instead of whole-heartedly embracing it. 

It cannot be denied that there is this element in Christianity (though not in Christ) and it is one of the reasons many people these days turn to some form of paganism as a more robust and less vitality draining spiritual approach. There is also an ethnocentric aspect to this in that many Europeans do not wish to adopt what they see as a foreign, specifically, a Jewish, religion. The pagan traditions are regarded as purer and more in keeping with racial identity.

But is Christianity as we know it in the West a Jewish religion or is it really a European one? Although Christ was born a Jew (or half Jewish if you believe the Gospel account of his paternity), the teaching he brought completely overturned the Jewish religion of the time. That is, after all, why he was crucified by the religious authorities or at their behest. That teaching was then absorbed by Europeans and interpreted in the light of their own identity and within the context of their own traditions, Greek philosophy, Roman law and the Germanic/Nordic sense of individuality and freedom to name the three most important. Christ had to have some particular form and he had a Jewish form because the Jews of the time had been prepared by God as a receptacle for his advent, but in himself he is universal and when the religion founded in his name came to Europe it became completely European.

In fact, it was only much later when the traditional European societal structures were undermined and hierarchies destroyed that the enfeebling qualities of Christianity were brought out. Tell the Desert Fathers they had a slave religion, tell St Benedict, St Columba, St Francis and a host of others. Tell the Crusaders or more or less anyone up to the 18th century. It was only when Europe abandoned its traditions and Christianity descended into humanitarianism that it became feminised and lost its spiritual vigour and vitality. Certainly, it was a monastic religion and a priestly religion and suffered much in the way of corruption (though no more than any other religion and a lot less than most), but it was never life-denying even if it did prize celibacy for some and chastity for all. So did many other religions. If you are trying to transcend the pull of this world and the lure of matter you have to take certain steps. It is not denying nature to realise that the sexual instinct needs controlling. On one level spirit and nature truly are at war even if on another level they can be reconciled.

I mention the attraction of paganism for many people these days and that it is seen as a more natural and affirmative spiritual approach for the European mindset than Semitic (so called, it's not really) Christianity. I love many of the pagan traditions, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Norse. Many pagan philosophies are replete with wisdom and insight, the Neoplatonic for instance, or the Indian. In my more fanciful moments I speculate that I may have followed some of these paths in previous lives. But there is a problem. All of them have something essential missing. Before Christ it was not known what that was. After him it became obvious what it was. They were stories without the main character, circles with a missing centre. It's no accident that the principal pagan deities are associated with planets* and that behind them there is often envisaged a hidden One. They are satellites to the central sun who is Christ. Before Christ paganism was a valid spiritual path if it worshipped the One Creator God behind all the gods but with him what was hidden became revealed and the old religions were superseded. Things being what they are there were some aspects of Christianity that were lesser expressions of truth than had existed in paganism even if as a whole it went deeper into the heart of truth and goodness and holiness than paganism ever did or could. And as Christianity lost its force, the further it removed itself from the spirit of Christ, these shortcomings became more apparent. But no pagan god can approach Christ in terms of spiritual power or divine radiance, and the way many contemporary pagans look on their gods today is as bathed in his light. Just like the planets and the Sun. The revived pagan gods have taken on aspects they never had because of Christ, but Christ is the source and to the extent they have any true spiritual substance they are just reflecting him.

Christianity is not a Jewish religion. It was specifically rejected by the Jews. It is not a weak religion for resentful slaves simply because it advocates spiritual power over worldly. Christ may have been a servant in this world in order to teach humility which is the overcoming of the ego, but in heaven he is the great solar hero and a King.

*Note: I realise  that pagans did have deities associated with the sun but they had to have something along those lines, the sun being of such obvious importance. But these were not ruler deities so I see them more as placeholders until the real thing manifested itself in Christ.

Recent Events

 The events of recent days in America seem to me to be significant. A frontier has been crossed with the sacrifice of a young white girl by a brutal savage caught on camera and then the murder of someone whose chief fault in the eyes of his enemies was that he was a believing Christian. It is easy to write these off as terrible but not that unusual killings given more relevance by the fact that the media, mainstream and social, uses them to promote its own ends. There is certainly an element of that and we must avoid being influenced and manipulated to go in this or that direction by unholy powers with their own agendas. 

But there is more because these two events are deeply symbolic of where we are today. First in America but really all over the West. Beauty and innocence murdered by evil and goodness destroyed by hatred. That is what we are up against and it may be that fewer people will now be able to look the other way and pretend that all is more or less ok in the world. We are in the middle of a battle between good and evil. It is a spiritual battle so not all external events will fall neatly into place on one side or the other in the way these seem to do. In a sense the individuals concerned in these two cases are not important. This goes beyond them to what they can be taken as representative of. Things truly are coming to a head. It is essential to avoid being carried away by an emotional reaction because the devil knows very well how to take advantage of that and channel the unbalanced feelings brought out, even if justifiably, into his own work. But we need to feel a cold determination in the face of attack to do what we can to further the work of God and continue to maintain the truth in a world that has abandoned it.

Added note: There are several articles online claiming that both these events were stage managed and either didn't take place or not in the way presented. Frankly I doubt it but similar things have happened before and there is definitely an interest in stirring up anger and hatred and dividing people further, possibly with the intention of provoking a civil war. I am sure there is no depth to which the powers that be will not sink. But still, whatever the truth of the matter it is important not to allow oneself to be stampeded into reaction. Observe, be aware but maintain a level of detachment which is not to say don't allow yourself to feel only that there is a balance to be struck. That is the way to go. God has his own agenda. Try to put yourself in harmony with that.

Beyond Left and Right

If the current struggle between the various factions of humanity proceeds without resolution we will lose ourselves in destruction. These divisions can only be resolved by meeting on a higher plane. Outer differences, if paramount and left to themselves, lead to endless conflict. Only by transcending these differences can any kind of peace and reconciliation be found, and only those who can transcend the outer differences will be able to move on. Those who cannot will be left behind. This doesn't mean that differences are ignored or negated but they are seen in the light of something greater. The differences will remain but be seen as subsidiary to deeper truths.

It is a glib truism to say that humanity is one. Ultimately, everything can be conceived of, and sometimes even experienced, as one but the oneness does not override the differences and not all differences are equal just because of the oneness. Differences are important and while some are just different, others reflect higher and lower states of understanding and insight or a greater or lesser proximity to truth. So when we see differences between human beings we have to take two things into account. Are these differences just on a horizontal plane, different expressions of a similar consciousness, or are they indicative of a wider or narrower exposure to reality or even a rejection of it? Naturally, most people are attached to their own expressions of difference but the person on the spiritual path must exercise detachment and discrimination, the one to see himself and his preferred difference objectively and the other to see exactly what difference is most open to truth.

A major difference of the modern world is between what manifests in the political sphere as left and right. The split goes more deeply than this but that is how it appears most obviously. In fact, this split goes right back to the metaphysical level of truth and love, even if both of these are heavily contaminated by the time they come down to the level of the human mind. But still, the left is motivated by a perception of love, however imperfectly it responds to it, and it is not really concerned with truth, and similarly the right focuses on truth and is far less bothered about love. The question is, which comes first, truth or love? In one sense they arise together because they are both part of the same reality but this is by no means the whole answer. In fact, truth does come before love in what you might call a non-temporal sense and the claims of truth do override those of love even if in God's reality they never conflict. Love must be built on a bedrock of truth. Look at it this way. Truth is represented by the number 1 while love is represented by 2. Truth must always come first.

Increasingly these days the left has abandoned truth. Always secondary in their eyes, it now appears to be actively hated. The right has not abandoned love to the same extent but it is certainly not a priority. Of course, in reality the left only appears to be motivated by love but that is its excuse. Nor does the right have much contact with truth. These are followed more as ideas than realities, still less lived realities. Nonetheless they are theoretical motivating forces, and that tells us that if there is ever to be any reconciliation between these opposing forces it can only come like this. Those on the left will have to give up all their beliefs except love while those on the right will have to see all their beliefs in the light of love. Both must go beyond their limited point of view and understand just what motivates the other. At the same time, the left must know it exists to complement the right not for its own sake and the right must realise it does need complementing.

What is playing out now is a battle between truth and love though really it is between misconceived truth and misconceived love. The only way to resolve this battle is to go beyond form to reality. Then you will see that reality is truth and love, both together, but truth comes first. Those who feel that love must come first fail to see that love can only exist because of truth and that the primal love is actually love of truth. Love is the wife of truth and the wife honours and obeys her husband just as he loves and treasures her. This is metaphysical reality.

The Dissolution of Form

 In the End Times a major principle is dissolution meaning all Form built up sometimes over many centuries crumbles. Organisations created to sustain a culture and civilisation are taken over and rotted from within. They are infiltrated by forces actually opposed to the ideals behind them and, to use an expressive modern term, worn as a skinsuit, subverting their original intention. Churches are a major example of this but the phenomenon is widespread.

This tendency to dissolution works out in many ways and one of them is the self-destructive tendency of modern Western nations. I said in a comment on a recent Bruce Charlton post that in the past all nations or groups sought to preserve themselves but Western nations now are encouraged to destroy themselves, and led to believe that doing this is a virtuous act. The inspiration behind this can only come from the forces of chaotic evil, as defined in Bruce Charlton's post, and it demonstrates how these forces are supplanting necessary evil which, though evil, does not completely deny real good.

Non-Western nations and peoples might enjoy watching this, thinking the wheel of fortune is about to turn in their favour, but in fact once the West crumbles they will be left wide open to chaotic evil themselves. It is interesting to note that when I lived in India 40 years ago many people there were of the opinion that British colonialism had been a net benefit to the country, but now the almost universal belief seems to be, especially among the younger generation, that the colonial powers were just rapacious predators. Such people are usually ignorant of real history and motivated by a mixture of resentment and misplaced national pride not to mention the after effects of over 50 years of Marxist propaganda. The reality is that even if Western colonialism started off as a desire to seize the spoils of undeveloped nations, it became from the 19th century onwards the means whereby the non-Western nations could move forward out of their spiritual stagnation into the era of the consciousness soul as defined by Rudolf Steiner. This represents the fullest development of self-awareness and individualisation and is a necessary precursor to a more positive spiritual awareness. It marks the separation of the ego from its environment and has led to many of the ills of the modern world, but without passing through this stage the soul cannot become consciously aligned with divine reality and a full creator in its own right. It is somewhat akin to leaving the Garden of Eden and the meaning behind the old saying that it requires separation to lead to completion.

That is the justification for the colonial enterprise which had a spiritual purpose, much as those in the colonised countries may not wish to acknowledge the fact now. Ironically, their resentment at their colonising shows they have absorbed its lessons and become more individually aware. The next phase for them is to show maturity and acknowledge the benefits they have received. This is not so much in the form of Western medicine, science, technology, political systems etc as a new form of consciousness, one which marks a break with being largely embedded in nature and provides a launching pad to a higher spiritual awareness. Clearly, I am not saying there was no one in the colonised countries who had not already made this break in their own way but neither the masses nor the culture as a whole had until influenced by the West.

I've got somewhat off track here but only to point out that what first manifests in the West will then spread everywhere. That is the nature of these end times. We are witnessing the breakdown of form as happens in old age and, as in old age, we can either cling to the old mode of life for as long as possible or fix our mind on higher things. The destroyers of form may be doing the work of the end times but they are still in themselves part of chaotic evil. Those who seek to preserve ancient form, and not just as outward structure but in order to preserve the spiritual content it once had, are doing noble work because it is good to avoid collapse for as long as possible. However, they are probably doomed to failure because of the nature of these end times though this is not a doctrine of pessimism anymore than to acknowledge that summer turns to winter. Instead, it should lead us to move our attention away from this world into the underlying reality behind it. Then at some time in the future new forms will arise, forms better able to express that reality, but first we must endure the dismantling of the old whose time seems to have come. 

In these days many people are turning to Tradition to rescue them from the desecrations of modernity, and it is good, even vital, to seek the wisdom of the past at such a time. However, the traditional forms do not have the power they once did and cannot be revived, certainly not to their former glory. We should all learn from Tradition but we cannot restore its ancient structures which are without exception subject to the energy of end times dissolution. Sometimes it is hard to separate form and spirit but that is the lesson of the present time.

Why Leftism is Wrong in One Sentence

Leftism collapses the vertical to the horizontal. That's it. That is its great error or sin as you might well call it since it deforms reality. This is why it can only really infect human consciousness in a time of materialism, and why when it contaminates spirituality, you get a false spirituality that reduces the transcendent to the immanent. It is why it favours egalitarianism over hierarchy and the female over the male, the male being associated with the transcendent.

This world must be seen in the light of it being the outermost part of a far greater reality or else as the furthest removed from the centre. When seen as real in its own light, as it is now, it becomes very hard for anyone sensitive to truth to function in it properly. Its values are false, its priorities absurd. Such an attitude strips meaning from life and real purpose from human endeavour. To renounce the world in such circumstances is only right for what you are renouncing is not the world as God's creation but the world as its own be all and end all with material ends and goals supreme. The material has no meaning apart from the spiritual, but this is the crazy situation in which we find ourselves in the 21st century. All human societies and cultures are focused exclusively in the material, and practically all religions and spiritual approaches, where they do exist, function in that paradigm and defer to it. It is the master and they must obey their master if they wish to be allowed to exist.

It is coming to the point at which a serious person must reject everything in the world. Not just the obvious evil but the public attempts to contest or resist that evil. These are not as bad as the evil itself but they are the products of it in that they arise in response to it. Hence, they still bear its mark. The only true good can have nothing to do with any of this as it must exist absolutely independently. The world has now separated itself from the divine. To encounter the divine in anything like a pure form you must separate yourself from the world. You don't have to run off to the desert or remote northern islands (the world is in those places nowadays anyway), but you must separate yourself psychologically, spiritually even, from the world. It is a fact that no church or spiritual group can help you now. You are on your own or with a few like-minded companions.

But that is the point of living at this time. You are being tested in the fire for your spiritual integrity. So many people use the spiritual to further themselves. They are not bad people so much as people who wish to have a foot in both camps. They see the reality of the spiritual but they only see partially and they still see through worldly eyes. You must train yourself to see with the spiritual eye, the eye of the heart. Only then will you see truly.

Christianity with its democratisation of spirit has given a false idea of the spiritual path due to its idea that all you need to be saved is to believe. I realise this is a simplification of what Christianity really says but it is a common idea both outside and within the religion. It fits in very well with the modern ethos that we are all equal, an ethos, by the way, that is only encouraged by the elite to keep the masses subjugated and pull back all those who might seek to separate themselves spiritually from the mass. It may be true that all you need to do to be saved is to believe but the how, why and what of that are essential. It is not mere human belief but belief that comes from the whole person and consequently transforms being. And then it requires belief in the real as perceived by the inner eye not some manmade spiritual idol of which there are many, including many in the Christian faith. 

Ultimately, only those willing to walk into the fire will be saved. Today those truly on the path are called to a kind of inner martyrdom but to be so called is a gift so if you are one of those in that position be grateful, though know it will involve suffering for that is what purges the soul and renders it a fit habitat for God into which he may enter.

The Pain of Exile

 Every person who has any real spiritual sensibility suffers from being in this world, and the more sensibility you have, the more you suffer. As much as you may love certain aspects of this world, you know it is not your real home. For that matter, the 'you' you appear to be in this world is not the real you either. You know there is a greater self somewhere beyond the one you experience in the here and now.  There is always this existential ache but you are fortunate for it is this that drives you to seek out deeper levels of truth than what the world has to offer, even in most of what it provides in terms of religion.

Your spiritual pain has another purpose too, one beyond the impetus towards personal growth. This world is sunk in darkness and separated from its source. The suffering of those who are aware of the soul helps lighten some of that darkness by aiding in reconnection. This is because it is a transmuting element that opens up the world through you as a part of the world to the higher spiritual that you can sense. Therefore, whenever you may feel particular pain or anguish know that you are bringing light into the world through that pain because you are, in however small a degree, piercing the shell of materialism that surrounds the totality of human consciousness. You are letting some light into the world. While you are in the world you are part of it and as a part that is somewhat conscious of higher reality you help to bring that reality into the world as a whole. In this way your pain helps in the healing of the world which may be a small comfort but should be some consolation. You are serving a purpose beyond yourself.

Those who have a foot in both worlds can act as channels between the two in a manner that benefits and uplifts, though they may not know it, many souls on the cusp of spiritual awakening.

Why pain, why suffering is the cry of humanity to God. Usually there is no answer and that causes the faith of many to fail. But if you looked on the fact of pain and suffering as evidence that this is not your natural state, and used it as a motivation to seek that state, you might be better reconciled to it. I am not saying this justifies or fully explains suffering, but the deepest love comes from the knowledge of suffering which breaks open the self. God himself suffers through his incarnation in matter and yet he joyously gives himself so that his creation might grow and become more like him.

The topic of initiation is one which the modern world, egalitarian, democratic, materialistic, has quite forgotten. However, in many traditional societies it was an important concept which could be applied on a variety of levels from the everyday, the movement from boyhood to manhood, for instance, to the deeply spiritual. Fundamentally, initiation means the transition to a different mode of consciousness and it always involves a kind of death. In other words, there is no initiation without suffering and the further one progresses on the spiritual path, the truer this is. The suffering comes about as part of the outgrowing of a previous phase of being and indicates you are being prepared to move to a higher phase. Suffering leads to death which in turn leads to rebirth. There is no proper initiation without suffering so let those who do suffer spiritually understand that this is a sign they are being prepared for a new and higher state of being.

The Solar Principle

By No Means Equal was published a couple of years ago and I've noticed since then there have been many more books and articles questioning the validity of the modern egalitarian ethos. I would love to think it was because of my book but I'm not that deluded, especially since it hasn't sold very much. The fact is this is an idea whose time has come. The flaws of egalitarianism are just becoming more and more obvious, and in every sphere too. Most people approach this from a political perspective but the real issue is a spiritual or metaphysical one and everything else follows on from that. As always, get first principles right and correct understanding will generally follow. Get them wrong and one mistake leads to another. Don't we see that everywhere now?

Sometimes Christianity is blamed for inspiring this ideology and there is some truth in that even if traditional Christians would point to Masonic influences, the French Revolution, Marxism etc, all the usual suspects. And they are not wrong. But a Christianity emptied of its transcendent qualities can also be blamed and there always was this seed within in it even if it took many centuries to grow fully. Christianity is not specifically a religion of spiritual aristocrats which is at once its strength and its weakness. Christianity is a religion of love and it's very easy to think that love means equality if that's what you want to think. It doesn't but it can be misunderstood as doing so. Christianity externalised the Mysteries, making them potentially accessible to everyone. This is its glory but also its flaw. I'm not saying it was wrong to do this. That clearly is not the case but it is something that was right which carries certain risks.

A previous post referred to the collapse of the vertical to the horizontal that takes place during the end times. This is almost the perfect visual image of egalitarianism. The pole that points to the transcendent is chopped down and lies flat on the ground with the result that hierarchical values are abandoned and replaced with those that promote and sustain equality. But the attempts to enforce a spurious equality lead to the loss of individuality and freedom, and also to the curtailing of growth beyond the material. With an irony that would be amusing if it weren't so destructive the insistence on diversity in the modern world is leading to an increasingly bland conformity. There is probably less real diversity now than there ever has been, partly because of the pressures applied by modern technology, but also because the obsession with equality forces everyone into the same box.

The question of equality is something about which it is futile to argue or debate. Those who believe in it do not do so for rational or intellectual reasons, still less those of common sense. They are ideologically committed, and the real question is why do they wish to deny reality? For some it is because of resentment, for others the search for power and for many now it is because that is what good people are supposed to think. But ultimately it is because of the rejection of the solar principle in man. What I mean by this is that divine spark that lies hidden in the darkness of the self and which, when discovered, tended and brought to full flame makes of man a god. We completely neglect this essential principle now and even many of those who would say they believe in it substitute man-made imitations, more in keeping with their worldly beliefs, for the true inner light. 

The solar principle is the connection to transcendence within the human heart. And yet though it exists within it must also be conceived high up above us, us as earthly man, like the sun which is its symbol. Normally it is obscured by clouds of delusion and ignorance but when these part it shines with majesty and glory. No egalitarian can ever find it because egalitarianism never leaves the earth, the flat ground. The solar principle can only be seen by those who take their eyes off the earth and look up to the sky.

Sex in the Universe

 Sex is the basis of the universe. It is the foundation to everything as the One becomes two in order to manifest and know itself more fully. Call this spirit and matter, God and Creation, subject and object, it amounts to the same thing. The two are always trying to return to oneness and it is this that provides the creative tension necessary for anything first to be and then to develop and evolve. 

Sex means metaphysical sex of which the physical is a lower order reflection in matter. Sex is the most powerful thing in the world but it points to something much greater than itself which is why it can lead to the greatest elevation and, when despoiled or corrupted, the greatest degradation. But even then it is never evil, just the perversion of a supreme good.

In the human sphere sex appears as man and woman which is the expression in creatures, created beings, of spirit and matter. Each have both within them but there is a polarity to each which is different. This points to an important truth, one rejected in our time but understood though often misused in the past. These two are complementary but they are not equal and opposite. In any complementary pair one is ontologically prior, the other appearing as its reflection in duality. In this case, it is spirit which precedes matter and, by extension, the male precedes and therefore should lead the female. If that is not the case as now when feminism has denatured humanity then societal breakdown will ensue and end in chaos which is the degeneration of form to raw material. Male and female represent the vertical and horizontal axes of life, one pointing to transcendence and higher reality and the other to this world and material being, nature, earth, the body. Both are part of the whole but the masculine principle must dominate or spirit will be pulled down into matter where it will be lost in a psychic miasma (see much contemporary spirituality which is all to do with feelings and healing rather than proper self-transcendence).

Only the hero can become divine. That is to say only the fully developed self can transcend self. Popular (feminised?) Christianity ignores this truth thinking that because anyone who believes can be saved then all are equal in Christ. All may be one in Christ but that does not mean that all are equal. There is hierarchy in heaven, and salvation is not theosis. The idea that everyone is saved and when saved equal comes from prioritising the immanent at the expense of the transcendent. It collapses the vertical to the horizontal. The vertical needs the horizontal to express itself and to know itself as subject needs object, but it must always be the dominant principle. 

When the feminine asserts itself over the masculine which it will often seek to do in a fallen world of competing egos, then what is pleasing to emotions overrides what accords with truth. Nurturing virtues, essential in themselves and in their proper place, become over-emphasised and expressed where they don't belong and where they do active harm such as, for example, by undermining justice and responsibility. So-called compassion (which is not love) is weaponised to pull down higher truths, by definition beyond the mundane, to the point where they can be understood by all. But they are destroyed in the process. The tyranny of the masses becomes the arbiter of truth. This is the law of the horizontal applied to the vertical.

The moon transforms the light of the sun and makes of it something very different, mysterious and beautiful, but without that light it has nothing to transform. The Creator has given us signs in the heavens through which we can understand how the dynamics of human interaction should work. If we ignore them we are straying from the path of truth and that means we fall into darkness and illusion. This is our state today.

To say that the increasing domination of the feminine over the masculine leads to loss of connection to transcendent truth is not to condemn the feminine itself but the ego-driven feminine. Obviously, there is an ego-driven masculine too which seeks power for its own ends rather than power in the service of truth. However, there is a difference between corrupted truth and an outright lie. The masculine should rule but for the sake of the masculine and the feminine not for its own sake, and that way lies proper harmony. If the basis of the universe is sex then the expression of that is love. In a fallen world the two sexes become rivals, each drawn to the other but also seeking to dominate the other. It is not right to say the sexes should cooperate as that is far too feeble a word to express the creative harmony that should exist between them, but they should certainly not compete. Each sex must be true to its essential metaphysical Form in which the male represents the reality of being and truth, and the female that of change and becoming. Then they will find true creative fulfilment.

In the end master metaphysician James Brown summed it up thus.

This is a man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing
Nothing without a woman or a girl.

Arrival in Yercaud

 The reminiscences of my time in India in the 1980s are a sidetrack from the main theme of the blog but some of their contents do occasionally overlap with that theme and I enjoy the trip down memory lane so here is another one following chronologically on from the last.

We had arrived in India in April and it was now November. The seasons in South India are described as hot, hotter and hottest and I don't remember which is when but I have the feeling that the cooler weather was on its way now as one might expect at that time of year. This was certainly the case in Yercaud which is a hill station in the Shevaroys 5,000 feet above sea level so has a very different climate to the plains down below. That was one of the reasons the British developed such towns as Simla in the north and Ootacamund in the south, but there was a commercial element too because many of these hill stations were situated in tea growing areas though Yercaud, being slightly less elevated, was better suited to coffee. Coffee estates are more visually interesting than tea estates which resemble nothing so much as neat rows of suburban hedges. Coffee requires both sun and shade so growers plant trees interspersed with the coffee and in Yercaud these were often orange trees giving two crops on the same piece of land as well as two lots of very beautiful and sweet-smelling blossom. 

The van with all our possessions got to the town of Salem at the foot of the Shevaroy Hills without mishap which was somewhat surprising given its rickety state. There didn't appear to be any signs to Yercaud but there was only one road that led to the hills so we followed it. It was a lovely drive made more interesting because as you climbed the vegetation changed from typically tropical trees and plants to more temperate zone types. The air became cooler and fresher, and the light sharper. There were monkeys in the trees and scampering on the rocks by the side of the road like these fellows.

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind

Where did I leave that banana?

Roughly half way up the hill our van broke down. I was surprised it had got this far given its condition, but the driver was unperturbed and soon diagnosed the problem. The trouble was he had to go back to Salem, a good 10 miles away, to get a spare part for the engine. Luckily, there were buses plying this route and he got on one leaving Michael and me with the van. Michael then decided he had better get up to Yercaud to make sure the bungalow we had rented was ready for us and he got on a bus going the other way. These buses came by about once an hour and there was very little other traffic so I sat there by myself looking out over the hot dusty plains spread below and watching the monkeys until I got sleepy and stretched out on the parapet that bordered the road, presumably to stop cars plunging over the side. They didn't always work. On one occasion while I was living in the area a bus went over resulting in several deaths.

Michael came back after a couple of hours and then the driver returned with the spare part and we set off up the remainder of the 20 hairpin bends there were on the ghat road. Here is one of them.

And this shows the entrance into Yercaud. Note the cloud and the evergreen trees, showing that we are high up.

The name Yercaud comes from two Tamil words meaning lake and forest, and the lake is the first thing you see on arrival. I believe it has now been developed as a tourist resort with fishing and boating but in my day it was just a lake with some public gardens beside it on one side. 

Yercaud Lake

 We drove to the bungalow Michael had rented, albeit only for a couple of months as on his previous visit he had also located a property for sale that consisted of a pair of bungalows built on the terraced hillside so that on the lower level you had a well (there was no mains water) and the first bungalow. Then on the next level there was a stretch of garden with a few coffee and banana plants and some orange trees and finally at the top the main bungalow. It was ideal for running as a guest house. Michael had found this property through someone he had met on his initial trip who was a Syrian Christian called Tharyan Matthews. Syrian Christians are from Kerala for the most part and claim religious descent from St Thomas who is supposed to have landed on the Malabar Coast just a few years after the Crucifixion. They are ethnically Indians but use the rites of early Syriac Christianity hence their name. Tharyan (the name is a form of Alexander) and his wife Elizabeth would be good friends to us during our stay in Yercaud, helping us in many ways though the friendship did end on something of a sour note in what one might call typical Indian fashion. We will come to that another time.

The rented bungalow was basic but habitable. There was one large central living area and a couple of bedrooms but one was small and somewhat grubby so we used it to store our furniture, mostly bought at auction in Bangalore when we thought we would be living in Whitefield. We shared the other bedroom, and the first night passed reasonably well though I kept hearing strange noises but since the house was surrounded by quite thick woods I just thought it was the local nightlife. The noises were louder and seemed closer the next evening and then all of a sudden in the middle of the night Michael gave a great shout. It seemed something had run over his face and then tried to burrow down into his pyjamas. We turned on the lights and there were over a dozen rats in the room including several perched on a ledge or cornice that ran along the walls. They were looking at us inquisitively. We were clearly interlopers in their territory.

I can't remember how we got rid of the rats but we clearly did because we stayed in that bungalow for the next few weeks while the purchase of the other property went through. You may be wondering how we bought this other place, given the reason we had left Whitefield was that we, as foreigners, had not been granted permission to buy what was called immoveable property despite being assured by the Indian High Commission in London that we could. The answer is Michael had so set his heart on buying somewhere that he accepted Tharyan's offer to buy it in his name. Michael supplied the money which was about £20,000 (this was 1980 so that was not what it would be now but still was reasonable for 2 bungalows and a fairly decent amount of garden) and Tharyan's name went on the paperwork. I thought this was somewhat reckless but Tharyan seemed friendly and honest, and it was not my money.

We moved into the new bungalow in December 1980. It had taken several months, and a lot of work still needed to be done on the two bungalows and the garden which was heavily overgrown, but we had finally established ourselves in India.

 

Detachment and Indifference

 A couple of weeks ago I saw a television programme in which an Indian man who had been living in England since he was a small boy and who was, to all appearances, completely Westernised went back to India in order to find acceptance for the death of his father to whom he had been extremely close. The shots where he recollected his love for his father were very touching. He came from a Hindu family but was now an atheist due, no doubt, to the influence of the world in which he, a successful journalist, lived. But his father's death had awoken something in him and though he neither sought nor expected easy answers, he did want to explore his traditional background.

The way he chose to do this was to join a pilgrimage to the Kumbh Mela which is a festival that takes place every 12 years when Jupiter, the sun and the moon form some kind of astronomical relationship. The gathering is the most enormous collection of human beings on the planet and wild horses couldn't drag me there. But for many it is the highlight of their lives. Tens of millions of people attend forming a chaotic mass of humanity, and for Hindus it is one of the holiest events with people making many sacrifices to go and bathe in the river Ganges where they can purify themselves of sin and prepare their souls for Moksha which is liberation. At least, that's the idea. I remember reading once that one of Ramakrishna's disciples asked him if bathing in the Ganges really did wash away your sins. It certainly does, he replied. The trouble is the sins sit in the branches of the trees on the riverside and, unless you are attentive, drop back on you as you come out. A good answer that satisfies both faith and reason - sort of.

In the last post I talked about the need for detachment at the present time. There is always a need for detachment but the fact of the end times makes it more important than ever. I spoke of it meaning not that you don't care but that you are not attached to the caring. This might seem a contradiction in terms so let me explain. You care because this world is real but you are not attached to the care because it is not ultimately real. This world is a reflection of a higher world. That doesn't mean it's not real but that its reality is borrowed not innate. The true reality from which springs any reality this world has is located in the higher world. In the heart of God, you might say.

I mention this because as the journalist in the TV programme was going to bathe in the river at the Kumbh Mela there was a stampede. Hundreds of people were injured and dozens died. Naturally, he was horrified and he sought an explanation of how to react from the spiritual perspective from one of the many sannyasis who were present at the event. Unusually, this was a holy woman rather than a holy man, but she wore the ochre robe that signifies renunciation from the word. 

She told him to respond with indifference because birth and death were all part of life which is eternal. This is fine as far as it goes but the problem is the English word indifference carries the meaning of being, well, indifferent, that is to say, not caring about the pain and suffering there is in the world. You might consider this is just a question of the concepts of one language and culture not transferring accurately when expressed in the terms of another, and there is certainly an element of that. I suspect the word she would have used if speaking in her own language would have been vairagya which is a Sanskrit word meaning detachment and dispassion. It describes the spiritual state of being unattached to worldly matters of any kind, including ideas and beliefs, because one is centred in the eternal reality of being, above all the ebb and flow of events in the external world of space and time. It is not a question of the suppression of desire but the transcending of attachment to it. This is an essential quality to be acquired by any spiritual aspirant, Eastern or Western, that involves transferring the locus of attention from the phenomenal world of cause and effect to the stillness of the spiritual plane which is the underlying reality behind all the movement constantly going on in the material.

In classical Indian philosophy it is understood that dispassion does not negate compassion; that, in fact, properly ordered dispassion opens up the path to real compassion. However, there is a tendency, and this seems particularly the case for the Indian mind, for dispassion to actually mean, or result in, real indifference. That's why India is famous for its combination of spirituality with material squalor and degradation. Admittedly, it can be hard to balance detachment with caring but that is the task we are set, to be detached from the world but love it all the same because of the spiritual. Jesus wept. No one knew the reality of the spiritual world more than Jesus but that knowledge did not cut him off from the suffering in the material world.

I suspect that when this holy woman spoke of indifference to the deaths of many men and women at the pilgrimage she really was largely indifferent. I don't judge or condemn her because it is challenging when removing oneself from the world and transferring conscious attention to spirit to retain concern for the world. That is why there is always an element of balancing opposites on the spiritual path, of not going too far in one or another direction but standing on the edge of the razor sharp path. We must have detachment from the world but we must also have detachment from ourself. Then we will find (or so I have been told!) that love arises.

The Creative Side of Collapse

 One wonders at just what point will the supine populations of the West revolt. The latest almost farcical absurdity is that 16 year olds are being given the right to vote in the UK. This has been talked about for a long time but it seems is now really going to happen. The assumption, presumably, is that most will vote for the the left as naive young people tend to do, but it is a deeply cynical and immoral exploitation of both the population as a whole and the young people themselves who shouldn't have to think about such nonsense. The old excuses that 16 year olds can marry and die for their country,* and that, if they have left education and work, they pay taxes, are trotted out, but so what? They are nowhere near intellectually developed enough to make proper choices in how a country should be run. Nor, for that matter, are 18 year olds and while we're about it nor are most actual adults, but you don't put a mistake right by making it worse. This is an excellent example of the replacement of qualitative criteria by quantitative ones and, as such, another significator for us being in the latter stages of the End Times.

Most of the population did not kick back against the totalitarianism of 2020 which was probably a dry run for future restrictions of freedom. Nor have they kicked back against the extraordinary number of foreigners from the 3rd World flooding their countries which has an enormous detrimental effect, both culturally and economically. There is some resistance but it is managed like a little steam that is let off so that the whole pot can continue cooking away. The recent revelation that thousands of Afghans have been allowed to come to the UK focuses more on a data leak than the fact that another huge number of unassimilable people have been let into the country against the clear wishes of the majority, certainly the indigenous majority. How much longer will people refuse to see that this is deliberate subversion? Many current policies are intended to undermine and destroy. Are we so blind and prepared to put up with anything as long as we are comfortable? What a spiritually shameful state to be in.

For this is a spiritual problem. In a materialistic time such as ours people only understand spirituality in materialistic terms which means all they see is the horizontal axis of love thy neighbour. They don't see love God or love truth. Which means they don't see that spirituality does not mean being nice or kind or good as the world sees good. It might mean compassion for all on one level, but on another more important level it means establishing the higher and fighting for the transcendental good. The demons behind the scenes through their acolytes and stooges in this world, for the most part unwitting but corrupted by the desire for wealth, power, status and sex, seek to undermine the real good and replace it by a false good which closes off access to the higher good, the real spiritual as opposed to an ersatz copy. This is why evil shamelessly masquerades as good everywhere you look in the contemporary world.

At one time it was permissible for spiritual aspirants to turn their back on the world and dedicate themselves exclusively to spiritual discipline. This is less possible now. The world situation is so spiritually dire that we are all called upon to actively resist it. This may only be mentally but we cannot just ignore the raging evil that is everywhere and in everything. We can't step aside as though it doesn't concern us. We must stand against it even if it is only in our own minds and hearts. The course of the End Times in the outer world is what it is and cannot be changed, but the salvation of souls is what counts and every individual who sets himself against the current provides added strength to the forces that are engaged in a salvage operation in these times.

Outer collapse is coming but we can build lifeboats of consciousness that will rescue ourselves and others from the debris. In this world now, some, a minority, are active agents in the process of spiritual degeneration though most are passive participants with many self-proclaimed spiritual and religious people among them. But unless you identify and, inwardly, at least, resist the evil of today you are part of it and you will be dragged down with it.

The West is falling because it has lost touch with traditions which were built up over time to maintain and safeguard its material and spiritual integrity. When a culture replaces the strong (or masculine) virtues of belief in itself, discipline, ability to sacrifice and embrace hardship in order to forge a connection with transcendent reality and thereby separate the good from the bad with the feebler qualities of tolerance and relativistic acceptance of everyone and everything, justified by a nebulous compassion, it is a sign it is worn out. It has come to its terminal phase. This is our current state

At such a time the two most important qualities for the spiritual aspirant are detachment and discrimination. Detachment because the world is falling apart, destroyed in large part by bad people using false ideology as a cover to mask their vindictiveness, resentment and spiritual emptiness, and you will find such people in every walk of life. The process, driven also by the nature of end times entropy, is so far gone it cannot be redressed without great destruction. This must be accepted which is why detachment from the world is essential. That does not mean not caring but not being attached to the care. 

Then, discrimination. This is the ability to see through the lies and illusions that are everywhere, not just in politics, the media and academia, but even in religion and spirituality. Things, bad already, are going to get a lot worse but don't let that discourage you. This is all in line with the end of an age, and the outer collapse can actually, if you see it through the joint lens of detachment and discrimination, lead to spiritual renewal.

* Actually, I discovered that they can't anymore, the age being raised to 18 a couple of years ago which makes giving them the vote even more ridiculous. Also, though they can join the armed forces they can't go on the frontline until 18.

The End of a World

 Over the last hundred and fifty years, and especially since the end of the Second World War, Western societies have systematically dismantled the protective devices that guarded them from collapse. Standards, rules and cultural norms that prevented them from internal rot and damage from external sources have been attacked, ridiculed, removed and replaced. This is often at the instigation of particular groups which have worked to make the societies more congenial to themselves. It is true that a healthy society would have resisted these groups, but still they are like viruses that can more easily infect a body whose immune system has already been weakened.

The West has been undermined by sentimentality which is a luxury of the comfortable. It is this that has allowed it to admit elements that do it harm. A perfect example is the present crisis of illegal immigration into the UK with many small boats crossing the Channel from France full of people who have no right to be here and can offer nothing to the country into which they come. The solution to this is obvious but it is unacceptable to a sentimentalised society that has never known true suffering or hardship and indulges in the naive fantasy that its present wealth will always, magically, remain at the same level regardless of what happens. It doesn't see that this wealth had to be earned and can be, is being, dissipated.

Without boundaries everything is dragged down to base level. Boundaries guard. They protect. They keep out elements that would destroy what has carefully and laboriously been built up over long periods of time. Once removed the form they have maintained starts to crumble. Form by virtue of what it is needs boundaries, and higher forms, and yes, there are such things as higher forms, need strong boundaries in order to maintain their structure and integrity. Once those go then the structure goes. Again, to take the example of the UK, though this is true in most other Western nations too, we can see how the present relaxation of boundaries is leading to great cultural and material damage. To deny this may have been possible 30 years ago when the process was not so far gone even if it was well underway. It is no longer possible now except to the terminally deluded and those who, for whatever reason, just lie.

It is unlikely there is any solution to this, and it may be that from the spiritual perspective it was inevitable and might even have been desirable. That is because all societies run their course. The West had clearly reached its limits in the 20th century. No more proper art was being created even if, paradoxically, more supposed art than ever before was being turned out, quantity replacing quality in line with the typical pattern of the end of a cycle. But that is just one aspect of the decline which is well documented so there is no need for me to go into all the signs and symptoms here. Suffice it to say that the loss of the sense of transcendence lies at the root of most of them.

If the West has run its course as a creative endeavour that advanced the spirit of humanity then we may lament its passing because of what it was but cannot shed too many tears over it because of what it has become. A dying thing must die. To be a part of the death process is not pleasant but there are lessons that can be learnt by the spiritual aspirant as his world crumbles, primarily detachment and the realisation that everything true and good and beautiful exists in the higher worlds eternally. Anything that sought to manifest those qualities in the material world is only a reflection of higher things and cannot last. That is no reason not to seek to manifest the good in the world because by doing so we build it into ourselves, but equally when destruction comes as it must we must face it with equanimity and the sure knowledge that the forces of entropy can only affect matter. They cannot touch the spirit.

One last point. Jesus said that evil must come into the world but woe to those through whom it comes. If it is part of the divine plan that the West falls, having come to the end of its useful life, that does not mean that those groups which have attacked and undermined it through infecting it with false ideologies are doing God's work. Sickness and death are never good things though they may be necessary things from one perspective. The attack ultimately comes from non-material levels and the forces behind it are seeking spiritual destruction above all. They use vessels in this world that respond to the debased energies they channel. As the West falls how many souls will fall with it because they identify with the corruption? It is one thing not to regret the passing of a society that has fallen from grace but that society is made up of many individuals and these can either be saved or lost as the society of which they are a part collapses. The only solution is to become aware of the decay and stand apart from it.

Humility and Pride

 Look in any spiritual textbook and it will tell you about humility and self-abnegation, particularly if it is a Christian one. Humility is an important virtue that shows one is not dominated by the ego or separate self which is a materialised expression/distortion of the soul. Self-abnegation likewise indicates that the disciple has overcome the ego. But are things really as simple as that? Is humility the only quality the spiritual self should possess?

There are two aspects to the soul which are to do with expansion and contraction, and both must be realised if the soul is to be complete. What, after all, is the point of the soul? What is its purpose? You may say that the soul just is as an individualised expression of divine being which is true enough, but that just refers to its raw state and there must be more or else there would be no need for the soul to descend to the phenomenal world, the subject/object world of duality in which the keywords are experience, expression and experiment. This relates to the self-actualisation of the soul which means its development from a more or less blank cipher to a glorious star being of many colours.

Humility relates to the awareness of the oneness of life and the supreme reality of God, the knowledge that all that you are comes from God. It is not yours. It is his gift to you. But the soul is also called to become great. The soul is not a servant or slave, and any religion that teaches this is not worthy of your spiritual allegiance. The soul has the potential to be a king or queen, and this is the path it must follow. The more you have, the more you can give. The soul should strive to have everything and to be everything. This is its destiny, and this is where pride comes into the the equation.

The spiritual person is proud. He seeks the exaltation of the self. He strives to express the majesty of God in his person. This is right and proper and what we are called to do. We are kings of the universe if only we knew it. We can wield powers that could destroy planets. We can master and direct the pure force of spiritual will.

At the same time, the spiritual person is humble. He knows that everything comes from God. He knows that all he has, others can have too. He is bound to the rest of life with bonds of love. He lives in a permanent state of gratitude to his Creator.

Humility and pride relate to love and will, and the two are not mutually exclusive but part of the whole. Christianity has focussed, to excess some might say, on humility, while the old pagan religions, especially those of the Indo-Europeans, sought the path of the hero. There is no contradiction between these two if one understands that they relate to different aspects of the spiritual path, the push forward of the undeveloped self to mastery and its subsequent return to the inner knowledge of God. The problem has been the expression of humility and pride in the wrong spheres. The spiritual self should have pride and the worldly self humility. Some Christians have made the mistake of transferring humility to the soul and some pagans in the past made the opposite error, but if you understand the nature of the inner and outer aspects to your being you will see that both humility and pride (of the right sort) have their place in the spiritual life.