The Four Ages of Tradition

 I write a lot about the end times these days and that is for two reasons. The first is that we are deep in them though that has no implication as to how long they might still have to go before their inevitable conclusion in collapse and, probably, destruction. It could be 2082, it could be 100 years hence or more. It doesn't matter. All that matters is to be aware of them now and take steps to build our own inner ark which simply means to recognise and love God, and then see this world not as true in and of itself but as the outermost station of divine being which has its place and its purpose but is not our real home. As for how long they still have to run, that is not our concern. We are in them and that is all we need to know. If we knew when the end times were destined to conclude that would artificially alter our response to them. Our hearts would not be properly examined. That is why Jesus says only God knows.

The second reason is that everything about the modern world, literally everything, its many minuses (spiritual) but also its pluses (material), and its art, culture, science, politics, religion and lack of it, can be explained by the end times. Once you understand what these are and what brings them about and how they conclude you understand pretty much everything about the world today. Even how it could not be other than it is though that is not to excuse the factors and individuals that bring it about. Just because the end times are inevitable does not mean that those who facilitate or go along with them are anything other than God-rejecting sinners who will suffer the consequences of their thoughts and actions.

But let's go back to the beginning and put the end times in their proper context without which they have little meaning.

According to all traditional thought, human civilisations degenerate over time. How can this be, you say, are we not kinder, more tolerant and more advanced in every way, moral and material, than ever before? No, we are not. You see, you only say this because you are a materialist even if you are ostensibly a believer in one of the religions or some other form of spirituality. I will explain. We are more moral in what relates to man as he is in this world because we have rejected the higher reality of the next world. We have made great advances in what pertains to the material world, including human relations in that world, because we have denied the spiritual world and man as primarily a spiritual being. Energy follows thought. Our thought is all in the material so that is where our energy goes. 

Obviously, the past was far from perfect but, to the degree that it honoured God, it was better than us. And since God is the highest truth, to deny that truth and its implications (because you can believe in God but believe in this world more which means you don't really believe in God), means that however advanced you are in material terms you are still in an inferior place to one who honours God. Past cultures including our own in the West left a great deal to be desired but they were better than us because, however imperfectly, they paid tribute to a higher reality.

This is the traditional view. We do not progress but decline and this decline takes place over the course of four distinct cycles or ages. Before proceeding with this thought, an increasingly familiar one, I should add that I do not fully go along with it. There is a decline in the spiritual state both of humanity and of the physical and psychic environments in which we exist. That is true. However, there is also an evolution because the ages have a purpose. They are not just (though they are this too) an example of entropy in action. As the environment thickens and we become separate from the higher worlds, we are thereby forced back onto ourselves and we start to develop ourselves as more individual beings. We become less spiritually conscious but more truly individual with greater powers of both thought and self-expression. We move from passive beings swimming in the ocean of consciousness to a more active, though separated, mode of existence. God wants us to be free and independent, in effects, gods. This we cannot be without a strong sense of self, and not just a sense of self but a developed self with its own powers, talents and expressible attributes. This self inevitably becomes fixated on itself. It loses contact with its higher being because it must in order to develop, but that does have a spiritually adverse effect, and as the ages go by and the self further descends into separation its spiritual condition worsens. This is where we are now.

So, there is an explanation for the descent. However, that does not justify fully succumbing to it, and this is important to understand. Yes, conditions are adverse but still at all times we have the voice of God within us, and just because that becomes harder to hear is no excuse not to hear it or, at least, make the effort to listen out for it. It is only those who have hardened their hearts against God who reject him. We are never left without teaching, and you might say that the available teachings now deep in the end times are more abundant and more accessible than ever. This is one of the consolations of our time.

In the present grand cycle mankind has gone through three previous ages and is currently at the tail end of the fourth. In the Golden Age we walked with the gods and listened to their words. We were not perfect but we were in tune with the universe and in harmony with God. But then conditions began to cloud over and the division between this world and the higher planes started to harden so interchange between the two became more difficult. The gods began to retreat. In a way, it was the end of the nursery stage and the beginning of the move to adulthood.

We now live in the Iron Age which represents the nadir of human spirituality and therefore of civilisation and culture. We do not know precisely when the Iron Age actually began but for the sake of argument we can say it was about 5,000 years ago which is the beginning of historical time. So quite a while back. The Iron Age itself has cycles reflecting gold, silver, bronze and iron states of consciousness, and we are now at the end of the final cycle within the overall Iron Age as is demonstrated by the fact of our total materialism and atheism, our material accomplishment, our addiction to and absolute dependence on materialistic technology, our rejection of both God and Nature, our perpetual state of decline, denied publicly but obvious to anyone, and the sense of finality felt by many. Add to that globalisation and the destruction of nations which that entails, the fact that both science and art have lost their way, environmental degradation, uselessness of leaders, institutional collapse and a host of other things from the ongoing battle between the sexes to the general meaningless of life, and you can only draw one conclusion.

All this may seem negative and depressing but it is not a matter for doom and gloom. Quite the reverse, in fact, for the end times can be seen as a period of great potential, even hope. The outer world may be on fire but that drives us within. It gives us the tools to reject materialistic illusion and seek the real. The death throes of our current old world are merely the birth pangs of the new. Nothing good, nothing true can ever be lost. The good seeds of the past will be saved and replanted. The bad crops will be taken away and the ground prepared for a new harvest. No spring without winter.

Today we are addicted to technological devices that separate us ever more from God and reduce the quality of our experiences which become increasingly etiolated in nature. We are jaded and dulled. What we thought would liberate us actually saps our psychic vitality. This is unmistakable signature of the end times. 

And yet despite the fact that we live in a dying world this is an extraordinary time to be alive. For those who can read the signs, the opportunity for spiritual progress is greater than at any other time. Even a little effort in the right direction will be rewarded precisely because it is so much harder. Those who seek to establish a relationship with God and who are pure in heart will successfully pass the test of these times. Those who fail will be kept back at lower levels of being but I would surmise that missed opportunities will not present themselves again for some time as these things have cycles. It's not a question of being cast into a fiery pit but of going where your heart and mind take you which means to a dimension of being that corresponds to your heart and mind. This tells us that the conventionally religious are by no means guaranteed to be saved just because of their beliefs and desires. It is the quality of those beliefs and desires that matter. Moreover, belonging to any particular church or religion means very little now. The time has come when an individual response to God is required. An institutional response belongs to the past. We must think for ourselves. This is what it means to be an individual. Traditionalists might regret that if they are attached to the old institutions but the sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath, and now each person must forge his or her own inner relationship with God to be saved.

Today we are living deep in the end times or Hesiod's Iron Age, the Indian Kali Yuga. Our task is to reject the illusions of the material world, now stronger than ever, and seek God, but it must be the true spiritual sun that exists both within and above us not one of the many imitations that are present at such a time. For when the material is as strong as it is now there arise many false spirituals which are themselves part of the material because they are just pure reactions to it. This is the task we face. Not simply to reject the material but to be able to discern true gold which is rare in the world from the many varieties of fool's gold. The spiritual is not the opposite to the material but in consciousness terms completely transcends it.

In the Iron Age values are inverted so we praise the lesser and scorn the higher. We call evil good and good evil. The whited sepulchre wicked are honoured and rewarded while those attempting to tread the path of virtue are ignored or derided. However, even these latter will become contaminated to a degree by the qualities of the Iron Age so the best course is to participate in the modern world as little as possible. Most of us must live in it and use its tools but we need to be fully aware of the corrupting nature of the world today and detach ourselves from it as much as we can. Do not get sucked into resisting it as the current will be too strong and you will be drawn into the very thing you fight against. Let it take its course knowing that God has everything in hand and his purpose will be served simply by you directing your whole attention to him. This is not defeatist because the world is dying and it is dying because it has lost its connection to higher principles. Just recognise that and stand back. The death of the world is not a tragedy but a necessary part of its purification and regeneration.

The end times will progress into disorder and collapse but there is a purpose to this collapse because it creates the conditions for rebirth. It forms the souls of men and women who can be the seeds, whether literally or, more probably, spiritually for a new age. It will be a simpler age because it will be a fresh start but not entirely fresh because the best of the past will be preserved on the level of consciousness. Now the sins of centuries are coming to the surface like erupting pustules so they can be lanced so think of the end times as a time of mass purification. That is what they are. Is this not a wonderful thing? Humanity is being cleansed so it can start anew in a fresh cycle. Some souls will go to higher worlds, some will be recycled and some who have failed here will go to dimensions of being appropriate to their level of consciousness.

Civil War

 To continue the theme of the last post, the sad reality is that certain factions of Western men are complicit, either knowingly or unknowingly, in destroying their own group. Putting it in political terms, you have elements of both left and right piling up the logs for the funeral pyre. Mass immigration is the most obvious tool used, and this is promoted by the globalist elites who merely think of humans as homo economicus, fodder for the marketplace, and also by leftists who, for reasons of perverted ideology (a tautology since ideology by definition is perverted as it's what you have when religion is abandoned), push their obsession with equality to the limits of sanity. The one is driven by greed, the other by anger and resentment as we discussed in an earlier post. Here we see how the anti-God forces behind all this take advantage of human sin, their preferred modus operandi, stimulating it wherever it already exists.

Is Britain really on the path to civil war as some are beginning to predict? This is no longer the impossibility it would have seemed 20 years ago. You have the refusal of the elite classes to defend the idea of a shared national identity as they import vast numbers of foreigners who can have no sense of loyalty to or even understanding of the history and heritage of the country to which they are coming. And in response to this you have a growing sense among the indigenous native population that they really are beginning to lose their country. These people are condemned by most of the mainstream (in hock to the elites who control both government and press) in all the usual ways as ignorant, racist, etc, etc, but these stigmas no longer work against people who see their cultural identity rapidly being destroyed.

And then you have Islam.

Muslims can never assimilate with anyone else. That is a basic tenet of their religion which is not so much a pure religion like Hinduism or Buddhism as a political ideology with a religious component which aims at complete totalitarian control, both externally in the community and internally in the mind of the believer/victim. Romantic Westerners like to imagine Islam in terms of the Alhambra Palace, the Taj Mahal, the Golden Age of Baghdad, beautiful gardens and wise Sufis, and there is certainly this aspect to it. Some of the architecture is stupendous, the Abbasid Caliphate was responsible for an extraordinary cultural expansion and Sufism is replete with profound mystical insights. But the Golden Age was done by the end of the 13th century and Sufism, which is considered heretical by most orthodox Muslims, did not get its insights from the Koran so much as advaita, Christianity and pre-existing Persian spiritual teaching. More to the point, none of this is what Islam means now. It's not just a simple monotheistic religion like a non-Trinitarian version of Christianity, but a political ideology that has sought to destroy everything that stands in its way from the beginning. Muslims, who make up an increasingly large section of the population, cannot assimilate. It is against their religion to do so. They also have a long history of spreading their ideology through the sword. That is their tradition.

The spiritually corrupted elites tell us that diversity is strength, in total contrast to historical reality. Moderate diversity can be a strength if there is a common centre, a shared identity and a high level of social trust, but that is precisely what is lacking. National identity has been trashed and replaced with a spurious (spurious because no one feels this in their blood) all-purpose liberalism that is the same everywhere. But incomers keep their identity and it seems inevitable there must be eventual conflict. When has that not happened?

If conflict does arise the elites will blame everyone but themselves. They will condemn the people whom their policies put in an impossible situation rather than admit those policies were utterly wrong. The incomers, flushed with numerical power, will reject the time-honoured wisdom, and, frankly, common courtesy, of when in Rome do as the Romans do. They will seek power, at first democratically but eventually by any means. I believe this is what the demonic powers have been working for all along. It is, therefore, something we really need to avoid, and the only way to do that is to get tough now before the situation gets out of hand. 

We must remember though that the reality behind all this is spiritual. It is bad to lose your country. It is worse to lose your soul. War creates hatred. Well, it comes from hatred but it lets that hatred rip. It is spiritually extremely dangerous for that reason. It's all very well to teach as Krishna taught in the Bhagavad Gita that if you remain detached you can do your duty in war without fear of spiritual consequence. Krishna is right but most people are not capable of that, and war unleashes and seemingly justifies terrible, spiritually destructive, passions. Christianity is not a pacifist religion because it recognises that we live in a world in which evil exists and must be dealt with, but nor is it a martial religion like Islam. War must be a last resort for a Christian and we need to recognise how the demonic powers are trying to manipulate us and take steps to prevent the outcome they are working towards. This will mean hard choices and strong actions but better that than war. The fact that the demons are working towards it shows we should work to avoid it, but we cannot avoid it by refusing to confront the problems that are leading us towards it. The corrupt elites will pay a spiritual price. The rest of us should do what we can to prevent ordinary people being dragged down with them, but the time has passed for all purpose peace and love. These should still be there, of course, but now they will have to take a more rigorous form, one which bends more towards the justice of the father than the mercy of the mother.

I must make one final point to put this all in a wider framework. The elites are plainly wrong and the new arrivals who seek to usurp power are also wrong. This does not mean the native peoples are right. The situation has come about because everyone has abandoned God and truth. If one is not acting from awareness of the spiritual then one's actions are contaminated. If one does not think from an understanding of God one's thoughts are degraded. There is national loyalty and there is spiritual (spiritual not religious) loyalty. The former is right and good but if it is not seen in the greater context of the latter it will not lead to a healthy outcome.

File under wars and rumours of war.

Why Was Western Man Selected for Destruction?

 It certainly seems that way. In almost every situation nowadays the white male is seen as the villain, and has been for at least 20 years. This is despite the undeniable fact that the white male is responsible for almost all modern advances, and that's using modern in its widest sense, going back several hundred years. Is this just the jealousy of the resentful or has that been utilised and exploited for a deeper purpose?

I was recently sent this link and asked for my opinion. It's a familiar trope. China, India and the Islamic lands all had great civilisations when Western Europe was an uncivilised backwater (what about Greece and Rome?). Why did Europe and not these areas develop modern science? The answer supposedly is that Europe took a great deal from these more advanced civilisations, stole, some might say, and that therefore its achievements are not really its own but dependent on those who came before.

Of course, there's some truth in this. Europe did acquire knowledge from other civilisations, but to go from that to saying its achievements are less as a consequence, and to surmise that these could have happened elsewhere, given slightly different circumstances, is to make completely unwarranted assumptions. There was something about the Western European psyche that advanced everything, not just science, but everything, the arts, philosophy, ethics, medicine and much more, to places other civilisations had not dreamed of. No one disputes that other civilisations had some sort of science and that they inspired Western scientists, but they all got so far and no further because they lacked something which the West had. Not so much raw intelligence but they lacked what we call now, after Spengler, I believe, the Faustian exploratory spirit of Western man. 

This refers to the ever-restless search for truth, the expansive attitude that is never satisfied with the known but seeks to go beyond all boundaries and to understand everything; in religious terms, certainly, but not only in religious terms. Just as important, this was coupled with (or perhaps they are part of the same thing) the strong sense of individualism that Western Man developed and a greater devotion to rational enquiry than displayed anywhere else, even in the great civilisations of India and China. Revisionist historians who put Western superiority (which exists in all fields) down to luck or trade networks or exploitation or to geographical advantages are promoting minor and secondary factors to the main one. And they are often doing this in bad faith to support their undeclared ideological prejudices.

 So, why is Western Man subjected to the relentless undermining of the present time? Those who look only from the outside might say it is because Western Man has caused many of the problems of the modern era, and they would point to ill-treatment of other groups, destruction of the environment and similar faults to substantiate this, ignoring the fact that every group has done this kind of thing, given the opportunity, and Western Man is actually the only grouping to acknowledge it and seek to do something about the problem. Another theory might be that the underperforming groups who have reaped the benefit of Western Man's discoveries and advances resent this fact and spitefully seek to bring him down.

Both of these have a degree of truth but they are not the real reason. The reason Western Man, or the white male, is subjected to relentless attack is spiritual, using spiritual in its broadest sense to include all that is non-material. This attack originates from the demonic level, from a centre that seeks to separate humanity from God and exploit it for its own purposes, principally as a source of energy. To do this most successfully they need a conformist, relatively supine population.  White males are the freest, most individual, most focussed on the pursuit of truth and excellence grouping of human beings. They are the ones who will fight for truth. Women are not particularly concerned with truth, preferring security and consensus and a situation where everyone is comfortable. They cannot defend truth and are not designed to do so. That is not their role which is why they are encouraged by the powers that shouldn't be.  Non-Western men are not overly concerned with truth either, principally seeking wealth, power and status. Of course, most Western Men are the same but there is still a significant proportion who seek and will fight for truth and excellence. It is because of this grouping that white males are targeted and undermined with accusations of racism and sexism, neither of which, be it noted, are sins in themselves, being merely legitimate observations of real differences. But no matter. If white males are removed from the equation humanity will become much more susceptible to demonic misdirection.

This is not to absolve white males or Western Man of his faults. But to focus, as we do, entirely on these is to miss his real and vital contribution and, above all, the protection his particular mindset affords to those forces that would lead humanity astray.

Added note: One might also point out that the quality of Western Man has deteriorated over the last 100 years so he is partly complicit in his own undermining.

Virtue

 Every virtue has a complementary virtue which stops the excesses of the first virtue turning into a vice. Mercy and justice is one obvious example. Tolerance and adherence to truth is another while humility and strength is a third pairing of virtues with one filling in the gaps of the other and curbing its tendency to fall into a deformed version of itself. You might add patience and resolve which stops patience drifting into apathy. Then there is compassion which without discernment falls into sentimentality. Each virtue naturally suggests the other and if it doesn't for any individual, that means that its motivating impulse is in some measure deficient or even defective.

It is the same with divine qualities such as love and truth. One without the other leads first to imbalance then disorder and finally to evil. When virtues are seen as emanating from the reality of Christ they will automatically include their balancing opposite because Christ is the central sun from which the virtues originate, and they are like rays. They don't exist in their own right. He exists and they come from him. When severed from the reality of Christ, the supposed virtue loses its spiritual force and becomes a caricature of itself, often ending up as a path to sin.

To be spiritually creative virtue must operate in a proper metaphysical structure which incorporates a sacred centre. The virtue must both express the quality of that centre and be a means of guiding the human soul towards union with it. This is why the virtues without Christ are sterile and then potentially destructive. I am not saying that only a professed Christian can have these virtues but it is easier for a professed Christian to do so because he knows whence they arise. This is also why virtue in the Christian world is followed because it is right whereas in Eastern religion virtue is often just part of technique and a means to an end rather than a justification in and of itself. If the goal is Nirvana the virtues are meaningless except as a way of facilitating that goal. If the goal is Christ the virtues become both means and end.

The modern world has lost Christ but kept some of the virtues associated with him, but cut a flower from its stalk and pretty soon it withers and dies. This is increasingly apparent where the virtues are concerned, and now they are often used as a way of attacking their source. This is a natural outcome of a thing being separated from its founding principle but it has also been exploited by the forces of darkness. There was no need for it to have gone this far for a humanity that was not looking for excuses to sin or a justification for hatred and resentment. Evil is using decayed good to advance its own rotten agenda, and there is no excuse for those who go along with this because in their hearts they know what they are doing. Some may be dupes but no one is innocent. That is the nature of these times when the heart is being examined.

Some Objections to the End Times Idea

Many people are resistant to the notion of end times. For some it's just defeatist pessimism that serves no use other than to encourage negativity and despair. Others reject it because the idea is Christian even though it is universal in one form or another. Then there are the people who say that the world has always had problems, wars, famines, disasters of various sorts. In reality, we are much better off now than we have ever been.  

I can see some justification for these attitudes as negativity and pessimism do exist, and it can't be denied that, in many respects, we are better off than ever before. At the same time, none of that changes the reality that the signs we are approaching some sort of collapse, both spiritual and material, are very clear, and it requires a degree of almost wilful blindness to ignore them. I speak in terms of the West as that is what I know but I strongly suspect that where the West leads everyone else will follow. Materialism and atheism are rampant everywhere, and these are the two key significators of the end times. They have never been as pronounced as they are now. Add to that the fact that religions have all reached a point of spiritual exhaustion. There may be good still left in them on some levels but real spiritual good, salvific good, is draining away. Alternatives to religion are widespread but so many are shallow, without real substance, almost as if they were designed to catch those fleeing materialism as part of a two-pronged attack on the soul. 

Critics might assert that writing about the end times is fear-mongering and provokes anxiety during global crises, but they miss the point that if the end times really do exist and we are in them we had better know how to respond. To ignore a situation can be fatal. One always operates best from a position of understanding. It is quite true that fear-mongering paralyses people but spiritual preparation enables us to face what may come from a point of inner strength and knowledge. If the house is catching fire isn't it wise to point that out so steps can be taken?

 

Doubters would also say that people have claimed they were in the end times on many occasions over the centuries with nothing untoward happening. Perhaps, but past error does not excuse ignoring obvious warning signs in the present.  The object in writing about these things is not to convince anyone of anything they don't already believe but to support those who feel something is amiss and would like to make sense of it all. At times like these when the outer world and its institutions are crumbling, understanding why it is happening and how to respond becomes critical.

 

People also react against the idea of end times because it seems sensationalist and that's fair enough. It is an emotive phrase, but what it really means is the end of old, unsustainable ways of living. The end times are only about external collapse on one level. On a deeper level, what they call for is an internal spiritual upgrade. I'm not entirely happy with that expression because of its mechanical connotations but it serves to emphasise that, in the face of the breakdown of outer structure, we need to discover the light within and build an internal sanctuary. That is a big task not, as it might sound, a glib catchphrase. It requires daily practice of prayer, meditation and the retuning of the soul. It demands clarity of thought and purity of motive which sounds simple but is a lot to ask of any human being and needs a strong degree of honesty with oneself and ability to look into all the dark corners of the psyche with humility and detachment. But it will pay dividends because the more you centre yourself within, the less you will be damaged by fear or anger or any one of a number of negative responses to outer turmoil.

 

Another objection that might be raised is that if we are in the end times and everything is predestined to collapse, why should people bother trying to improve the world or put things right? In that case, isn't talking of spiritual survival just a form of escapism?

What matters is state of mind, the one thing you take with you when you leave this place. One should always try to make things better and not turn one's back on destruction and decay, but we can take an analogy from human life. We try to heal the body but there comes a time when we have to accept the inevitable. Saying this is the end times is not saying, do nothing. Do whatever you feel called to do. Things can always be made better in some way, and passive fatalistic acceptance will guarantee that nothing will ever improve. At the same time, you should know that cycles have beginnings, middles and ends and there are strong indications that we are in the end part of a particular cycle. You can make that as good as it can be but you cannot alter the trajectory of a cycle. 

Looking at the world today from the spiritual perspective shows we are in some kind of crisis. That is what I mean by end times. How long this period will last and what comes afterwards, nobody knows. The period may last a long while or not. Outer collapse may come in some form, great or small, external destruction from comets may even come as some speculate, but none of that really matters. The essential point is that we live in a world that has lost contact with God. We have sought to become our own God and that is to invite consequences. At such time each individual must seek to realign his being with the word of God. That is all the phrase end times means. God has been chased from out there so now we must look for him in here.

 

The Seven Deadly Sins Today

The unholy alliance between a globalist capitalism that treats human beings merely as economic units and a leftist ideology that insists everyone is equal is destroying the West, something no doubt intended by their demonic sponsors. The one is motivated by naked greed, the other by envy which leads to hatred as you can easily see by its reaction when scratched or even threatened. These forces are extremely powerful in the modern world, supported as they are by the political system, the media and the establishment in general whose only interest is self-preservation. Even so, they can be resisted, not always outwardly but certainly inwardly which is what matters if one would defend one's soul from spiritual attack. The question is how?

To begin with, do not try to attack them on their own ground. They have sewn up the discourse so if you use their own framework and language to challenge them you will fail as both of these things have been designed to render their position impregnable. You have to disregard the assumptions they put forward as baseline truths and introduce a new approach that starts from a new standpoint, one outside their assumptions. And that is a simple three part question. "What are we, where do we come from and where should we be going?"

Neither capitalism nor the liberal ideology that has given rise to modern leftism can answer any part of that question but until you do you cannot understand how life should be lived. The answer to the first part has long been known but is currently ignored. A human being is made up of body, soul and spirit, and any culture or civilisation worthy of the name must take this threefold being into consideration, dismissing no part of it. Any that doesn't will collapse. And once you have answered this first and primary part answers to the other two parts will follow.

The seven deadly sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. You can see from this list that the primary drivers of the current state of Western civilisation are the second and fourth but pride and wrath are also big motivators for the globalists on the one hand and the leftist activists on the other. Traditionally, greed or avarice is countered by charity or generosity and envy by kindness, and this is interesting because the major players often disguise their true motivations by  exploiting the good in these virtues which they wear with ostentation, so much so, in fact, that charity is now often seen as a form of self-promotion and kindness as a mask for destructive impulses. And while all this is going on, the populace is stimulated by the media to lust and gluttony and a large segment of it by the ruling powers to sloth (ever greater dependence on welfare payments).

It seems that the seven deadly sins are in full play today but when have they not been, you may ask. Certainly, they are always there as a basic part of human nature but they are now often actively encouraged and are becoming increasingly acceptable in our modern world. Is this not yet another indication of the end times? I don't offer this as a black pill as it is termed nowadays but, perversely enough you might think, as a sort of encouragement. The rewards for those who see through the lies and hold fast to the truth will be great. This is the test of our times.

The 2026 Eclipse

On 11th August 1999 there was a solar eclipse which was about 90% of totality in the south of England where I saw it. This coming 12th August there is another eclipse which will again be seen at about 90% of totality in much of the British Isles. The 1999 one was at 18 degrees of Leo and this one will be at 20 degrees of Leo which might seem a coincidence but apparently has something to do with how sun, moon and Earth realign over multi-year cycles.

Be that as it may, there is still a significance to this phenomenon. I have long thought that the 1999 eclipse was an important one in that it heralded radical change. It was the last eclipse of the 20th century, and something really did change with human consciousness in the new millennium. We became different people in many respects, moving from a mentality largely based on past thought and attitudes, though with modern influences, to one where modern attitudes became central and past beliefs moved out to the periphery to become fringe. This change has carried on ever since, not in a smooth and straight line as things never go like that, but with a direction of travel that is unaltered. You might say that this is always the way of the world but look at how so many fundamental beliefs that had endured in various forms for centuries have been jettisoned over the last 25 years. It is quite extraordinary.

Perhaps this new eclipse will bring that particular cycle to an end. Not that we will go back to how we were. That is neither possible nor even desirable, but some kind of change in mental attitudes over recent years might be expected. The end of one cycle means the beginning of another, and there will always be several other processes going on at the same time. Even so, I venture to suggest that, in Europe especially which is on the direct path of these two eclipses, changes might come in the coming months. I am not speaking in terms of improvement. This eclipse cycle, if such it be, is a minor event in terms of the greater descent into the Kali Yuga/End Times phenomenon and the forces associated with that and they will continue to gather pace. But it is still an event.

These two eclipses also interest me because of personal involvement. As those who have read Meeting the Masters will know, the 1999 one coincided with the death of my friend Michael Lord whose Jupiter was on the exact degree of that eclipse. Jupiter in my birth chart forms a very close conjunction to the degree of the upcoming 2026 eclipse. I take that in a positive sense.

Note: I am not saying that it was only the 1999 eclipse that prompted the radical changes that have occurred since 2000. Merely that it may have been one factor among several, and that the new eclipse may be bookending a particular period that started then.

From Siegfried to Tristan to Parsifal

 Last year I wrote a post called The Spiritual Failure of Tristan about the character in Wagner's famous opera. In it I maintained that Tristan represents the failure of a spiritual test though, if failure is too strong a word, one might also interpret the opera as showing how a soul can only learn and grow through experiencing the intensity of desire for perhaps in order really to know the fullness and depth of spiritual love you must experience earthly love in its highest form, just as only a strong self can reap the deeper benefits of transcending ego. To renounce fully you must know completely.

I had forgotten about this post but a couple of days ago someone added a comment disagreeing with my interpretation. I then disagreed with his disagreement, though I wasn't entirely sure on what basis he was disagreeing, but this made me reflect further and I recalled something I had once seen, and maybe even came from Wagner himself, about how Siegfried, Tristan and Parsifal can be seen as the same character at different stages of development. I would like to explore that idea a bit further here.

The premise is that these three characters depict successive stages in the same soul's spiritual evolution. It is already the soul of a hero so not an everyman but one who has been brought to the apex of worldly achievement and is now ready to move beyond that into spiritual consciousness.

Siegfried appears first as a child soul linked to the world of nature and the instincts. Born and raised in the forest, he has no contact with the world of men and lives in a state of pre-conscious innocence. He cannot, certainly does not, reflect because his ego is directed only outwards. He is free and fearless but also insensitive to others and totally ignorant. And yet he is a hero which means he has on some level reached a certain degree of achievement. Nevertheless, he is only awakened to himself by his mountaintop encounter with Brunnhilde, demonstrating how we can only know ourselves and become fully self-conscious through experiencing the other. That is one of the fundamental meanings of the division into two sexes. Siegfried, however, betrays his other half through his lack of self-awareness, and this same lack leads to his downfall and death. 

Tristan is Siegfried reborn. He too is a hero but a more self-aware one. He loves Isolde from the beginning but obeys custom and convention and the mores of society, things that would have meant nothing to the pre-adult Siegfried, until the magic potion breaks down his resistance. The potion, by the way, could just as well be water as it is not magic that makes it no longer possible for Tristan and Isolde to conceal the truth of their love but the belief they are about to die. 

Henceforth, Tristan is consumed by passion, first the passion of Eros and then the passion for Thanatos. This passion is so intense it reveals to him the nightmare of the separate self, isolated but desperate for completion in the other. His sense of the pain of duality means he can find no resolution except through annihilation in death and darkness. Tristan is the earthly self brought to the realisation that it must go beyond itself to escape pain and suffering, but he seeks this outwardly in another created being rather than on a spiritual level. He must go through the fire of having all his earthly attachments burnt out before he can progress.

And so we come to Parsifal. To begin with Parsifal is Siegfried reborn, perhaps showing that we must recapitulate past experiences before we can move on to a higher level. He is the pure fool and must go through many trials before he gains wisdom. Unlike Siegfried, who fails through lack of thought and self-awareness, or Tristan, who fails by surrendering his will to desire, Parsifal resists temptation when he refuses to succumb to Kundry in the pivotal Act 2. By transforming sensual passion into divine compassion, he overcomes the desire that brought down Tristan and moves out of the state of ego-driven will into that of the redeemed self who can now become a saviour for others. It is no coincidence that the spear which killed Siegfried now becomes the holy spear that heals the wounded Amfortas who also may well stand for Wotan whose original sin in seeking power rather than love led to the whole corrupt state of the world which can only be healed by compassion.

In the light of this, perhaps my anonymous commenter was right after all in that Tristan's failure was not so much a failure as an inevitable stage that all souls must go through on their journey from the Adamic innocence of Siegfried through Tristan's full human immersion in self-consciousness which he sought to escape in the wrong way, to the transcending of that in Parsifal's eventual union with God. 

I don't know how much Wagner was conscious of this and how much came from his profound artistic intuition, but I believe he was aware of the significance of his characters. I would still have a bone to pick with him in that, even in Parsifal, he downplays the importance of Christ and God who are both shadowy figures in the opera, almost peripheral to its development when they should be central. That is a weakness, but then Wagner was writing in the 19th century when the weight of official Christianity may have been artistically stifling. He sought to break free from the trappings of religion to find its essential source, and in these operas he depicted the progress of a soul with extraordinary beauty and insight.

I could stop here but before concluding it is worth looking at the three female protagonists because they are far from being mere passive foils for the male hero. They are actually crucial to the whole story, and they have their own progression too. 

Brunnhilde represents the descent of the soul to the human state. She loses her spiritual qualities and knowledge but gains the capacity to suffer which may not seem like a gain but is because it opens up the heart to love. She becomes vengeful and bitter when betrayed but in the end, purged by suffering, in the great immolation scene, a Viking sati, she transcends both her human condition and her earlier immature spirituality (immature because it knows nothing else) to reach a kind of omniscience based on universal compassion. To love all is to know all.

Isolde's evolution is similar to Tristan's in that she starts off trapped by duty, the marriage to King Mark, but she is also consumed by pride and anger until her ego is rent asunder by her love for Tristan after that love can no longer be denied. Her trajectory is different to his in that she does not seem so consumed by her passion but she too ends up by dissolving her individual identity into the universal sea which may be seem a spiritual transfiguration but is actually a return to the pre-creation state so spiritually regressive from the Christian point of view. It ends suffering but does not bring true divine union. It doesn't appear that Wagner thought of it like this but it may be that on some level he knew he could not leave his female archetype there and had to move on to Kundry.

Kundry is Wagner's most developed female character, the one he had been reaching towards in all his previous operas. She is the eternal feminine at its most powerful and its most destructive before being transfigured by submission to divine will. After laughing at Christ on the cross she is condemned to wander through the centuries, acting as a despised servant by day and a demonic temptress by night, the one in payment for her sin, the other as the direct expression of the psychic state behind it. This sin cannot be atoned for until she meets someone who can resist her. Only when Parsifal does resist her kiss, which he does out of compassion, that is important, is she freed from her curse which is basically the prison of her own ego. 

This is not the end, either for her or for Parsifal himself, because she must endure many more years of purifying servitude, and he must undergo many more trials during which he cannot use the holy spear as a weapon however much he is attacked. But it is the beginning of the end, and it is brought to its conclusion when Parsifal returns to Montsalvat (Valhalla again, but built this time to support spiritual renunciation rather than worldly power), and she bathes his feet, in return receiving baptism from him. Her spiritual journey is complete and, though this is not brought out in the opera, she can now serve in the lineage of the Virgin Mary who is the eternal feminine fully spiritualised.

A Survival Guide is Now Published

A Survival Guide to the End Times was published in the UK yesterday (August 4th in the US), and you can now look inside on the Amazon website and see some of its contents. It's a simple title which plainly describes what the book is about, but it does raise a couple of questions. What are the end times, and how do you survive them? 

To address the second part of that double question first, survival is preservation and what you need to preserve is the integrity of your soul because, when it comes down to it, that is all you have. That is what survives physical death, and so you need to make sure it is in the best possible condition for what comes after. Surviving the end times is not about preserving the body in the face of collapse. Bodily survival can only ever be temporary. The only true survival is spiritual. 

The reality is that the end times threaten your soul. They do so because all the prevailing tendencies are anti-spiritual. Look around you. Is that not the case now? This is one way we can tell we are in such times, and every day the situation degrades further. On the other hand, on the individual level I believe many people are beginning to wake up, no doubt due to the deteriorating world situation, but when you do start to wake up and see your world crumbling about you, what do you do? 

You can fight against the loss through political action but part of the end times scenario is that all outer things including institutions and even modes of action are corrupted. Political action may bring temporary reprieve here and there but it cannot bring real improvement in the sense of turning things round any more than medicine can cure a dying man. This doesn't mean one should do nothing, just as the fact someone is dying doesn't mean you shouldn't try to help them, but you have to be realistic. The world cannot stand against the end times. The word end is not there for nothing.

This brings us to what the end times might be and why many people believe them to be now. One of the simplest ways to conceive of them is as an example of entropy.  Left to themselves, established systems run down and will naturally revert to chaos and disorder. This can be circumvented by intervention but there comes a point at which the forces of decay are too strong and will outrun any attempt to correct them. Dissolution increases and then gathers speed. 

Another way to understand the end times is as the last phase in a cycle, and for this you have to understand the reality of how our world exists. It is the expression of spirit in matter. These are the two forces or modes of being that correspond to consciousness and that in which life externalises itself for the purposes of self-revelation, essence and substance we might say. At the beginning of a cycle, the spirit aspect dominates but as the cycle unfolds spirit recedes and the material aspect comes to the fore. Spirit never withdraws completely or all life would depart and matter return to its prime condition of formless chaos. But awareness of spirit is diminished by the greater involvement of consciousness in matter as well as the phenomenon of matter itself becoming more material, meaning more opaque to spirit. The fact that over the last 100+ years the culture has become one of atheistic materialism is another strong indication that we live in the end times. Spirit is inaccessible for most people and it requires great effort to be aware of it other than as an intellectual possibility.

To survive the end times you must actively resist the flow of life as it is now. You must stand apart from prevailing attitudes and behaviours and position yourself in the eternal which alone is unaffected by the end times tendencies of dissolution and collapse. This is what survival is all about. It means disassociating yourself from the world and centring your mind in the truth and reality of God.

There is a doom and gloom aspect to the end times. How could there not be? But in fact these times offer tremendous opportunity which is why I would guess so many souls have opted to be born now. Precisely because you have to go against the flow you can make much greater spiritual progress than at a time when outer conditions helped you and more or less took you along with them. What you achieve now is truly yours instead of being achieved for you.

That having been said, how many people are actually taking advantage of the opportunity available? It seems not many. Every aspect of life is corrupted, the ostensibly spiritual as much if not more than any other. This new book aims to help those open to the idea identify end times tendencies and then resist them. That is what is needed for survival.

The Day I Didn't Meet Geoffrey Ashe

 I first read some of Geoffrey Ashe's Arthurian books in the early days of my spiritual researching. They were not exactly spiritual books but there was an overlap because the Arthurian mythos taps into a deep level of the psyche where imagination, legend and spiritual exploration all meet up and feed off each other. The Arthurian stories are an entrance into a world of myth and magic, part pagan but with a strong Christian underpinning. The connection with Atlantis cannot be ignored either. Merlin and the Lady of the Lake both have a relationship with that drowned world which reached great spiritual heights before collapsing in hubris and wickedness.

I had long loved the Arthurian tales as any right-minded person from the British Isles or its diaspora should do. I was introduced to them through a vividly illustrated children's version with medieval knights fighting each other before courting beautiful maidens, and then gravitated to the Roger Lancelyn Green version which is a classic of its kind. Thus, when I encountered Geoffrey Ashe's work which tried to put it all in historical context I was interested to learn what he had discovered about the period. Then I went to India and my interests shifted direction, but when I returned to England I lived for a while in Sherborne in Dorset, and that is only 6 miles from Cadbury Castle, the Iron Age hill fort that some identify as the site of Camelot. I visited Cadbury and let my imagination wander, and thenceforth I was reconnected with the Arthurian world. 

I had been to Glastonbury a couple of times in the '70s but in 1987 I went for another visit. I visited the Tor, which has never really spoken to me, Chalice Well which has, and the Abbey which does most of all. Then I went to a tea shop, that bastion of Englishness which has now almost disappeared, for a cup of tea and a slice of homemade cake before wandering up the High Street and into a bookshop for a browse in the richly stocked (it was Glastonbury) metaphysical section. I had my nose deep in some tome which, oddly enough, I remember as a Gareth Knight book, when what seemed to me to be a rather elderly man came in and began browsing next to me. He saw what I was looking at and said "Ah, yes, that's good", or words to that effect, and I nodded my appreciation. He then moved over to the cash desk to buy a couple of books. The cashier addressed him as Geoffrey and he departed. When I bought my book I somehow knew that this person was somebody so I asked the cashier who he was. "That was Geoffrey Ashe", he said.

I didn't regret not talking to him some more. First of all, I had nothing to say, and secondly it must be annoying to be buttonholed by strangers. But I was intrigued that someone like Geoffrey Ashe would still be buying books like an ordinary person. I know that's ridiculous. Writers are first and foremost readers, but it was somehow reassuring to know that a proper author would still behave like the humble folk and retain the same passions and enthusiasms. He was only in his mid 60s then but seemed older to my relatively youthful self. Some might call this a missed opportunity but I saw it as a chance encounter made more interesting by its sheer everydayness.

A Survival Guide to the End Times

My new book to be published shortly, 28th July in the UK and 4th August in the US. I notice that according to its page on Amazon, it weighs 7.4 ounces and its dimensions are 5.51 x 0.64 x 8.5 inches. Perhaps more to the point, it has 256 pages. Here is a list of the contents. 

Introduction

Part One: End Times

A Body of Slag

Space Is Contracting, Time Is Accelerating

The End Times Is the End of Term

A New Creation

The Paths of Peter and John

The Destruction of the West

How to Save the West

What Is the Solution to the Current Crisis?

Saving the West

World War Two and Its Aftermath

Not Going Along with the Aquarian Flow

Thoughts on the Secular Corruption of Spirituality

Satanic Feminism

Divine Femininity

The Cassandra Syndrome

Part Two: Spiritual Tradition

Introduction on What Tradition Is

The Temptation of the Esoteric

Buddhist Atheism

Heaven, Hell, and What’s In Between

Astrology, A Signpost to Creation

The Gnostic World View

The Guru in the End Times

Jesus Was a Refugee

The Wisdom of the Left

Who Is Sophia? What Is She?

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Tradition and Technology

The Fox’s Prophecy

Part Three: God and the Soul

Meditation and Its Limitations

Consciousness and Christ

The Root of Reality

The Omnipotence of God

What Is the Soul?

The Expansion of Consciousness

The Human Form

Male and Female Created He Them

Hierarchy and Complementarity

No More Sea

Part Four: Spiritual Practice

Spiritual Routine

Illusion and Sin

Empathy and Love

What Is Evil?

Give Them Your Mind and They Will Take Your Soul

Celibacy

Psychedelics and Religion

Is Equality a Spiritual Principle?

St. Michael

Christians and the Esoteric 

Don’t Worry

Conclusion

It has received three endorsements, all of which I very much appreciate.

In End Times, spirit withdraws from the world leaving a

physical corpse. Many rejoice over this inanimation because

they believe progress exorcises spirit, a phantom in any

case. Their rejoicing is part of End Times because this is a

great winnowing of souls. William Wildblood writes as a

Johannine Christian, so his End Times is not merely a wasting

Götterdämmerung or a decomposing Kali Yuga. It is a test that

divides men and women by their responses to the withdrawal

of spirit. Some rejoice and some lament, and some who lament

lose faith that the withdrawn spirit was ever real. This book is

for those who lament but keep faith, and hope to remain good

grain in the great winnowing of souls. It is an excellent and

much-needed survival guide for those who have entered the

wilderness and hope for more than to leave their dust in this

dry and stony place.

Jonathan M. Smith, PhD, Professor, Department of Geography,

Texas A&M University, Editor of Philosophy and Geography

 

There are many signs that these are the End Times; but what

does this really mean?

William Wildblood’s subtle and nuanced explanations are

focused on the underlying spiritual realities behind the more

obvious material changes.

He explores many of the necessary implications for our attitudes

and behaviours, if we hope to survive this challenging era with

integrity and hope.I have been reading William Wildblood’s writings for a decade,

and he continues to surprise and challenge me by the depth and

originality of his insights.

Bruce G. Charlton, MD, author of Addicted to Distraction:

Psychological Consequences of the Modern Mass Media

 

A powerful, thought-provoking, and candid assessment of

our current Western cultural state of decline, inner decay, and

existential disintegration in terms of Christian end times and

the Kali Yuga cycle. The remedy proposed is in terms of inner

orientation — a commitment to being in but not of the world as

Christ preached, and a recognition of the need for a purging of

the old before the new can come into being.

David Lorimer, Global Ambassador & Programme Director of

the Scientific and Medical Network, Editor of Paradigm Explorer,

and Chair of the Galileo Commission

 

It is available through Amazon and other booksellers and also directly from the publisher here. If anyone who reads it would like to leave a review I would be very grateful as these things help draw attention to it.

Note: This is in response to Chent's question below. The Kindle version is available here and here for the US and UK respectively. It is in other territories too, of course.

Bede Griffiths

Introductory note: This is a slightly revised version of a piece I have previously posted. It seems pertinent in the light of the previous post serving as an example of what I consider to be a well-meaning but misguided and ultimately failed experiment.

 Most of the time during our years in Yercaud not much happened. The idea was to lead a quiet life of meditation and spiritual focus in a suitable environment without disturbance or distraction. I have nothing to write about these times, the bulk of my life there, but they were the most important part. 

 Sometimes, though, we went travelling, and I might mention here a visit we made to the ashram of Bede Griffiths, the Christian monk who had adopted the lifestyle of a Hindu sannyasi. Michael and Bede Griffiths had a mutual acquaintance who had given us a letter of introduction and so one time when we were travelling in the vicinity of his ashram, we decided to pay him a visit. By one of those little quirks of fate which you might take to mean that someone on the other side has a sense of humour, it transpired that Bede Griffiths had that very day gone to Yercaud for the funeral of a fellow Catholic priest. However, he was expected back the next day and the people at the ashram kindly said we could stay there. I recall that the ‘bed’ we were offered was basically a slab of concrete jutting out from the wall, resembling a shelf you might put pots and pans on more than something you would want to sleep on. Still, you don’t go to ashrams for the creature comforts. The site itself was idyllically situated on the banks of the sacred river Kaveri, the Tamil equivalent of the Ganges, and though the life led by the devotees there was simple to the point of austerity, the natural beauty of the place more than compensated.

 

Father Bede came back the next day. With his long white hair and beard, barefoot and simply dressed in an ochre robe, he looked every inch the holy man. We talked to him for an hour or so and it was clear that his appearance was a true representation of what he was which is by no means always the case. He had been a pupil and friend of C.S. Lewis and we spoke a bit about that. He was very friendly and happy to talk. When we told him we had lived for a while at Whitefield he asked us what we thought of Sai Baba. “At best, a false prophet” was my diplomatic response. Father Bede was less condemnatory but thought confusion arose when Indians did not sufficiently distinguish between their mythologies and their philosophy. Perhaps he was being diplomatic too.

 

 

I liked Father Bede, but I did have some reservations about his ashram and the form it took. The church was built along the lines of a southern Indian temple with statues of Jesus and Mary in the form of Hindu deities which made it look like something out of an Indian Disneyland. We went to a service which was half Mass and half Puja and, although conducted with obvious sincerity, seemed to me to be fundamentally misconceived. When you mix the outer elements of religious traditions you end up with a hybrid that may preserve something of the externals of both but has nothing of the inner nature of either. Truth may be beyond form but form can express or misrepresent truth, and if you try to blend traditions that have grown completely separately, you lose most of what matters and are just left with a caricature of both. It is true that religions have borrowed from each other and that, for example, the now unmistakably Eastern form of the Buddha owes much to Greek influence but when a religious iconography and ritual has taken on a settled and defined form, to mix it up with that from another tradition negates its whole purpose which is to act as a channel from the inner to the outer.

 

 I am not saying that religions cannot learn from one another, but to seek to combine their outer trappings and forms of worship robs them of their operative value and results in a maybe well-intentioned but effectively confused mishmash, all style no substance. The mystical elements of the various religions may be reaching for the same inner truths (though they may not, see this post), but you cannot mix and match the externals, and to see a picture of Christ sitting like Siva seems blasphemous to me. I understand that Father Bede himself was aware of the dangers of syncretism, and I mean no disrespect to his person in writing of my impression of his ashram like this. He was born in a time when religions were very exclusive and it is understandable that, as a mystic, he sought to move beyond that, but I think the approach tried at his ashram was a mistaken one even if it was well meaning and sincere. 

 

My visit to Father Bede's ashram was nearly forty years ago and it may be completely different today, but that's not the issue. My point here is that the 'all religions are one' attitude, popular during the 20th century, doesn't really work. Because there is nothing hidden anymore and we appear to have easy access to everything that has ever existed, it is tempting to blend traditions and think we are getting the best of all worlds. But greater breadth often means less depth. I do think we can learn from other traditions, and one of the advantages of living at the present time is that we have that possibility. But if you blend the outer forms of traditions that have sprung from totally different revelations you will lose the connection they both might have had to the source of all.

When I visited Father Bede I was more persuaded of the idea that all religions express the same truth than I am now. Today, we can see that God is conceived very differently in some religions compared to others, and the desired heavenly destination is not the same in all cases either. Obviously, there are strong similarities, the mystics of every religion do have much in common and the moral codes are largely identical, but we live in a world which is increasingly dominated by spiritual evil, and it seems clear to me that only Christ has the power to stand up to that evil. I wonder that if Father Bede were still alive whether he might reassess the wisdom of blending Hindu and Christian iconography at his ashram. His friend and mentor C.S. Lewis certainly regarded the two religions as very different. That doesn’t mean there are not many points of contact but there is something unique about Christ that does not exist in Hinduism even in the figure of Krishna who may be similar in some respects but is utterly different in many that count.

Jesus Wept - The Difference between Non-Duality and Christianity

 This is a follow up to the previous post which stated that Christ can operate through avenues other than mainstream Christianity. This is because Christ is not only the historical Jesus. He is also the eternal or archetypal pattern of divine truth which can appear wherever a form is open to it. In fact, this inner Christ is more spiritually important than the historical Jesus though it was fully present in him and best revealed in him.

What this also means is that to be a Christian in the proper sense and not just a believer requires that you allow Christ to be born in the heart and so live in the same divine truth he does though note that Christ does not just live in this divine truth as anyone might. It is grounded in his being so while we can share in it, he is it and it is him. 

The spirit of Christ can overshadow any religious approach that is open to it. That is not to say it operates equally well in any religion, but if there is something in the soul of an individual that accords with the reality of Christ then that individual can find something in most religions that will develop that connection to some degree. We must accept this if we make an unbiased study of non-Christian religions and realise that all of them have their share of genuine holy people.

However, this fact has led some people to draw the conclusion that all religions are essentially the same with the same ultimate goal. When we encounter other religious traditions and see that they are authentic guides to spiritual transcendence and do contain significant numbers of saints and sages, it is logical to assume they must simply be different ways of describing the same thing. This was the conclusion drawn by the group known as perennialists.

It can be hard to argue against this conclusion, and yet I was never comfortable with it because of the obvious uniqueness of Jesus Christ who cannot be reduced to just another enlightened soul or even avatar. You cannot escape what Christ said about himself or that he was the one human being genuinely without sin or stain and the absolute incarnation of goodness and truth in a way that no other person, alive or dead, comes near.  This is clear from the Gospels and brought out by meditation on his holy image.

The perennialists thought that all religions in their higher aspects led to the same goal, but to reach this conclusion they had to set aside much of what Jesus taught. Specifically, he did not teach the extinction of the self as in Nirvana which is the Indian way. I am aware it is not the only Indian way but it is the way usually regarded as the summation of the spiritual path by all those who teach the universality of religion. Everything is subsumed into the One in which the human does not survive. As far as this path is concerned, the individual self is the barrier to truth and must be killed, conquered or transcended. It makes no odds how you express it. The self must go.

Now, this is a real path and does lead to a form of God when the end is attained though that is extremely rare, especially in our day even though there are many claimants to the title, people who may have had a taste of the non-dualistic state but who are not fully established in it. However, the God it reaches is not the personal God of Christianity. Absorption into impersonal pure being is seen as a step beyond the personal God but what if the reverse were the case? What if everything comes from the personal I AM and the impersonal is part of the stuff from which God creates consciousness, his spirit but not his self? This would be the Christian position even if Christians unaware of esoteric teachings might not understand it in this way as they do not have the linguistic and philosophical tools to do so. To support this idea consider the fact that pure impersonal being as ultimate reality could not give rise to an 'I' unless that 'I' was already there in some form. It is the 'I' that comes first as, indeed, it does in language when we say I am. The person comes before impersonal being which shows there is a profound difference between union with the transcendent God and oneness with immanent being.

The non-dualistic Eastern religions and the Christian religion both lead to a form of God but it is not the same divine form. The Eastern way concludes in Nirvana in which the individual is dissolved while the Christian way leads in salvation where the individual is sanctified rather than expunged from existence. The Christian disciple still has to transcend the ego aspect of the soul, the separative sense, but individuality is a gift from God. The Christian way is to return it to God who then gives it back filled with his grace and his spirit.

Thus, we can see that the Traditionalist idea of the transcendent unity of religions is based on a metaphysical error, the assumption that all religions are subsumed in a type of Buddhism in which the I is transcended and left behind as nothing. But non-dualistic religions and Christianity aim at two very different destinations, and while non-dualists would claim that salvation belongs to the relative world because it is still part of Maya or creation, and their goal is the absolute, the truth is that salvation, properly understood, is greater because it includes both the absolute and the relative. It has everything of the peace and bliss and oneness of the non-dualistic state but it also incorporates love, beauty and goodness which belong to the world of created beings.  God did not create man simply to re-absorb him into himself. He did so to watch his children grow up to become god-like themselves.

Non-dualistic religion has no understanding of creation or growth or judgment or purpose or even, really, love. For it, time is an illusion rather than a means to grow and a path to an end which is better than the beginning. But if creation has no purpose, what is it there for? Why go through all that stress and strain just to go back to the beginning with nothing added?

If you talk to a non-dualist about sin or the Fall he will not understand or else he will reframe those things in terms he does understand but that robs them of their meaning. They are more than just ignorance. They relate to a malfunctioning of the will which is where the self is situated, and they mean that good and evil are real things between which there is a battle from which you cannot just turn away by denying its reality. The non-dualist would say only God is real but precisely because God is absolute reality what he creates is also real. Not as real as him because it has dependent being but it is still fully real, and that means that good and evil are not just illusions. They are part of reality as it exists for the individual.

Since the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ a new goal has opened for humanity, one that leads to the divinisation of the self rather than its destruction. This new goal does not make merging into the One obsolete but that does now become the lesser option, a truth which the non-dualist would reject, failing to understand that times have changed since the Vedas were revealed and the Buddha preached. More is on offer. It seems God has left the door to Nirvana open, but I wonder if that is really so or whether those who follow this path might have to return and be required to work out their salvation once more. Or else they might wish to once they realise what is on offer in the greater spiritual universe.

Jesus wept because he shared in the suffering of Mary and Martha. For the non-dualist that suffering is ultimately an illusion and to weep would be to partake in that illusion. But for Jesus, Mary and Martha were real beings in themselves and not merely manifestations of the divine. The new spirituality brought by Christ did not aim to kill the self but to raise it up to eternal life. Yes, it must die to itself but after that death it is resurrected in glory.