Love vs Compassion

 I've been thinking about the difference between love and compassion. Spiritually speaking, compassion is a Buddhist virtue while love is Christian. Some people would say these are the same thing, just differently viewed. I don't believe they are the same at all. Compassion is supposed to be rooted in a recognition of the unity of all life. You are me and I am you and so on. So, compassion is logical because in feeling for you I am feeling for myself in a certain sense. We are all one and compassion is the appropriate response to that spiritual realisation.

Isn't this rather thin gruel? First of all, the logical nature of the thing is demeaning to true feeling. And secondly, if feeling for you is really a form of feeling for me then it's not really feeling for you at all. It isn't self-interested but nor is it seeing you in your own right as a real individual person

I know this is an over-simplification of what Buddhist compassion is but it does point to something real.  Compassion is calm, measured, dispassionate. It is kind and good. It is the cool light of the moon. But love is the blazing light of the sun. It bursts its bounds. It can dazzle and even burn. It is not kind or good or even loving in the usual sense of that word because it cannot be contained. It overflows. It is radiant, glorious, intolerant of whatever might limit it. There really is no connection between compassion and love. They are not the same or even similar because love comes from the sea of fire which is the hidden cause and substance of all the created worlds while compassion is the reflection of that fire in matter after it has descended from the throne of God to the worlds below. It is love at second hand. Compassion is the good man's response to the human condition but love is the direct spirit of God as it flows through the universe giving it its very life.

Don't take this to mean that compassion is not a good and worthy thing. But it is not love. Compassion lives for others. Love dies for them.

Ramana Maharishi

  Another instalment from my life in South India 1980-85

Yercaud is only 100 miles from Tiruvannamalai and it was inevitable that at one time we would visit the ashram of Ramana Maharishi who is generally regarded as the greatest Indian holy man or saint, or whatever he might be called as he really escapes categorisation, of the 20^th century. Michael respected him but was not especially interested in going to the ashram, having been to enough ashrams in the early ‘70s when he had spent some time in India. But I wanted to visit the place where the Maharishi had lived as he exemplified the ancient rishis of the Upanishads like no one else. He seems to represent a genuine conduit back to ancient India with a spirit uncontaminated by modernity or egotism. Just as one can see the falseness is some of the other religious figures I have mentioned, one can see the truth in him. 

I first came across him in the same way I imagine many people did, through Paul Brunton’s A Search in Secret India. When I read this book in 1978 it served as an excellent spiritual guide and travelogue and I’m sure it still does even though it is almost 100 years old. We may see further than Brunton in some respects now but that is because we stand on his shoulders and on the shoulders of people like him, those early writers who introduced the spiritual teachings of the East to the West. He combined a practical common sense with well-developed spiritual instincts and even today when so much more has been written and explored he remains a good bridge between Orient and Occident, cutting through the superstition of the one and the scepticism of the other. There is some minor controversy surrounding him but it only seems to come from one source and he has been dead for 40 years anyway, so we can overlook it. Meanwhile, his books, possibly outmoded in certain ways, remain a testament to his pioneering research and insights.

 

We wrote to the ashram asking if they could put us up for a few days, and they replied offering us a room for a date about a month away. There were regular buses from Salem to Tiruvannamalai which took about 3 hours and so, at the due date, we boarded one and off we went. The ashram was situated a short distance out of town at the foot of the famous Mount Arunachala where Ramana went when he was aged about 20 shortly after his ‘death experience’ at 16. This was when he became convinced he was going to die and lay down in preparation. While waiting for death he realised that it is only the body that dies, and his consciousness became absorbed in Brahman where it remained ever after. Put like that, it seems almost mundane but the transformation in him was profound for this was not just an intellectual realisation such as anyone might have but the actual experience of spiritual deathlessness and destruction of the idea of a separate self. I will have more to say about this later. Suffice it to say here that Ramana’s experience does seem rather different to that of many people who have mystical experiences in that his ego self did not lay claim to the experience afterwards as is often the case in such instances. I would suggest his experience was more profound and his level of spiritual maturity much greater than the norm. The self exists whether we accept that or not. The experience of self-transcendence can come to anyone at any stage of the mystical life but only one in whom the self has become almost transparent can process this experience in the complete sense, untarnished by ego. Ramana was one of the very rare examples of such a person. To use a Sufi expression, he was able to convert a state into a station meaning he truly became what he experienced.

 

After arriving at Arunachala Ramana lived in various caves in the foothills of the mountain eventually settling in Virupaksha Cave where he stayed for 17 years. When he had first arrived in Tiruvannamalai he had remained sunken in deep meditation oblivious to the outer world but gradually he returned to normal consciousness to the degree that he could interact with the world and the devotees that his advanced state inevitably attracted.  

 

In 1922 following the death of his mother who, after initial disapproval, had joined him and become his disciple, he moved to her tomb at the base of the hill and the ashram began to form around him. One indication of the authenticity of his realisation is that as his fame increased and many more people came to see him, literally to sit at his feet in many cases, this had no effect on him whatsoever. He led a simple and spartan life with barely any possessions and there was no hint of scandal of any kind. He remained in service to his devotees and, such was his innate modesty, resisted any attempt to deify him which is something Indians love to do with their holy men. His purpose was to be accessible to anyone who wished to see him, and I cannot think of a better example of someone who taught by “silence and the rays you give out” (see Meeting the Masters, p. 255).

 

Ramana died in 1950 and his body was buried on site in accordance with tradition in India for a holy person. The ashram developed as a spiritual centre to perpetuate his memory and teachings, and now includes samadhi shrines, a meditation hall and a library amongst other facilities. I don’t recall the library being very large when I went in the early 1980s but there seems to be a big building there now so perhaps a new one has been built. When we went, we spoke to the librarian there, an Englishman slightly older than me who has written extensively about Ramana and some of his disciples. He was rather reserved in his manner but possibly that was because he saw us, as we were, as sympathetic observers rather than true devotees.

 

At that time the ashram still carried something of the peace of Ramana’s presence. It wasn’t crowded and when we walked up the hill to Skandashram, the cave where Ramana lived from 1915 to 1922, there was not a soul to be seen. I went back some 20 years later for a brief visit and it had become busier and more, one has to say, institutional in feeling, but that is inevitable as the further something gets from its source, the more the energy from that original inspiration will be diluted.

 

Ramana was an almost unique religious personage. But does he serve as an example of the way to follow, especially for Westerners? I would say definitely not. He left no lineage and those who came after him and claim to manifest his realisation are, at best, several rungs below him in attainment. It must be remembered how his realisation came to him. It did not come as the result of any spiritual practice. He equated his realisation with what was in the Hindu scriptures some time after his experience as they seemed to describe it, and so he adopted their terminology to explain it, but they were not what brought it about, at least not in this life. I am not questioning his spiritual achievement and status, but I would base that more on his personality and the obvious aura of saintliness about him than the state of consciousness he attained. For what reveals Ramana to be on the upper tiers of spiritual development is not his impersonal realisation but the quality of his personal response to it.

And yet, what exactly was the point of his spiritual realisation? For true believers he had reached the pinnacle of enlightenment but is that really all there is? To become one with the universe and have no self left? It seems a waste of effort. God's effort in creating, that is. Why go to all the trouble of creating if the end is the same as the beginning? Of course, for those who believe that the ground of reality is impersonal being or pure consciousness there is no problem. But if that really were the case then how did anything ever happen? 

I'll tell you how. It happened because God willed it so. There is no other possible answer unless you fall back on the complete fluke response but that is just question begging. God willed it and he had a purpose in doing so. That purpose was to make the universe a universe of many beings in loving communion rather than just one being by himself. It sounds naive perhaps, but why shouldn't the answer be simple? In fact, it should be simple.

Ramana had reached a high state by tracing consciousness back to its source but he had retracted his being into pure oneness. This might be the foundation of existence but it is not the building and it does not negate the reality and meaning and purpose of the building. The building is creation which is real. Your self and my self are real and God gave us these selves so that we might bring them to a state in which they could be divinised not discarded, though the separative element in them should be outgrown. Ramana was a saintly man, though not I repeat because of his realisation but because of his character. Even so, he does not indicate the way of Christ which is the greater way because it includes the whole of life not just part of it. Life is not just one. It is one and many, both together, and that gives it its unending richness and beauty.

Salvation and Enlightenment part 2

Eastern religion is the quest for enlightenment or liberation, the two words amounting to much the same thing. This entails the death of self-identification and a state of consciousness in which the outer world has little or no substantive reality. This is regarded as the zenith of spiritual achievement and at the same time the underlying eternal reality which has always been. Given it transcends time, that makes sense. But are time and the individual self really irrelevant to the spiritual quest or do they have a part to play in that there is a growing process involved and the end result is not just the realisation of something that has always been there? Christianity speaks of a new creation which the saved soul enters through Christ. This is radically different to absorption in eternity. One might call it eternity plus time, the two together making something completely new and more than either on its own.

This is a fallen world. Most religions accept that. The Buddha called it a world of suffering and the Hindu search is for moksha meaning liberation from the need to incarnate in the material world which is an endless process as long as the jiva or individual soul makes new karma which it will do if attached to the outcome of its actions. It may be that the spiritual path before Christ did entail the escape from material bondage through fully transcending identification with the phenomenal part of one's being up to and including the individual self. Hence, enlightenment, nirvana and so on. But Christ brought something new. He defeated the devil, the prince of this world, and thereby redeemed matter. He made a new creation, heaven, and from that moment on there was a higher destiny for the soul than absorption into the all. It could become spiritualised or sanctified which would mean the good in it, love, beauty and goodness itself, all of which are superfluous in strict non-duality where form has no function, would not just be preserved but enhanced. Spirit could transform matter by entering into it instead of matter needing to be left behind for spirit to be known. Christ ascended into heaven with his body which means heaven is not just spirit but spiritualised matter too. It is not a divorce but a marriage.

This does not mean that the Nirvikalpa Samadhi state of Indian mysticism in which subject and object differences cease to exist is not fully real. That does represent contact with the ground of our being. But it is still part of the old creation even if it is the most fundamental, the most primal, part. It is the deepest level of reality but it still exists in nature by which I mean a human being can experience this state through its own efforts unlike salvation which takes us beyond our present spiritual state to a new existence, and which is dependent on grace bestowed by the Creator.

Salvation in contradistinction to Enlightenment does not open our eyes to what already and always is but transforms us into a being which combines the divine and the transfigured individual. The Heaven promised by Christ is very different to the Buddhist and Hindu concepts of heaven which would be better called paradise. The Buddhist and Hindu heavens are transient and below the Nirvana level whereas Heaven is eternal. And, as stated, it cannot be gained by the unsupported efforts of the creature. Entry depends on the grace of God though one must be fully open to this grace which means fully open to him.

Enlightenment is not Heaven. Heaven is a new creation whereas the non-dualistic consciousness called enlightenment is the ground of awareness which is always there albeit overlaid by form. When God saw creation he pronounced it good and, though original creation was spoilt which is why early mystics sought liberation from it, since Christ there is a new creation in which goodness and beauty and love all exist in perfect form, fully transparent to spirit. 

We must understand the difference between the beatific vision which is union with God after death (the degree of union being proportionate to the spiritual condition of the soul at death), and mystical states that can be experienced while on earth. The beatific vision is qualitatively different to the experience of being one with pure consciousness because that is not God but the imprint or image of God within us. The divine image is a living reality but the image is not the actual Person. We can be totally identified with the image within us but that is not oneness with God who is the source of the image. For that we need to go beyond the impersonal which is the spirit of God spread throughout creation to the personal or God in himself.

The identification of the individual self with universal spirit can lead to the erroneous idea that the subject is one with God. In fact, he is one with the root of his own being or God in him not God in himself. This spiritual error can lead to moral and ethical confusion if the subject is not sufficiently aware of the distinction between Creator and created, and many Indian gurus have succumbed to this form of spiritual narcissism though the renowned Ramana Maharishi is not among them. His case was exceptional. He was an ordinary boy who at 16 had a death experience which dramatically altered his consciousness for evermore. He found parallels for his new state in the Hindu tradition, notably that of advaita Vedanta, but he did not come to it through that tradition or any spiritual discipline. He claimed never to have practised sadhana of any kind. The question is what caused his experience? Was it spiritual, psychological or even physical as in a chemical change in his brain? It is not to denigrate his spiritual status to ask this because that was demonstrated in his life afterwards. His personal reaction is a better guide to his high status than his impersonal realisation.

 

Whatever the answer to that question what can definitely be stated is that no experience attainable by mystics in this world necessarily leads to or guarantees salvation and the post-mortem seeing of God face to face which is a spiritual vision that includes and transcends both dualistic and non-dualistic modes of being. No mystic is spiritually saved by his experiences but only by the love of God and faith in Christ, however they may see him because members of non-Christian religions can respond to the spirit of Christ if that appears in their religion which it may do under a form congenial to that religion. Christ appears as he is only in Christianity but his spirit did influence other spiritual approaches after his death to the extent that they were able to respond to it.

 

 Over the past several decades thousands of Westerners have sought mystical transcendence through Eastern religion. The reality is that most people who have followed the gurus and holy men of India and elsewhere in the quest for enlightenment have not got much real benefit from the exercise, and many have even become more spiritually self-absorbed because they have pursued heaven instead of God.

 

It is precisely to correct this that the disciple after mystical transports, which are often given as early encouragement to tread the path, may (if he is lucky) suffer periods or even a whole lifetime of aridity. He must learn to do the right thing for the right reason. He must learn to love God for God's sake not his own. This is the only way to salvation.

Salvation and Enlightenment part 1

 The most distinctive feature of advanced mystical experience is the dissolution of self in which the sense of "I" is subsumed in the totality of what is. To be strictly accurate, this cannot really be categorised as an experience because there is, or seems to be, no self remaining to experience anything. There is simply a pure, universalised consciousness of bliss that shines in the mind and breaks down the barrier between outer and inner so that the duality of self and not-self disappears. It is a state beyond time, space, thought and any divisions of form when everything is taken up into illimitable being. But we do call it an experience because the experiencer always returns. For note this. These experiences are extraordinary but they do not make you a better person when they pass and you reenter the everyday world. And if you think about it, how could they since they have no relevance to life in the normal world with its characteristics of light and dark, good and bad, better and worse. They are above all that, relating as they do to being not becoming.

Two questions arise. If these experiences bear no relation to the world of becoming do they render that world meaningless? Or does the fact that they bear no relation mean they do not represent the ultimate goal of human endeavour as some would claim, but are simply expressions of one side of it and, in that respect, might even be seen as deceptive? That is to say, is life the absolute alone or the absolute and the relative together? The second would surely be more than the first even if the concept of more has no meaning in the light of the first taken on its own terms.

 

When the individual who experiences these transpersonal states tries to interpret them afterwards it is by no means certain he will arrive at the correct understanding. An experience and its interpretation are very different things. In this case, the ineffability of the experience might lead the person to draw the conclusion he has cracked the cosmic code of life. After all, what could be more than something that goes beyond the very idea of more or less, something that is whole and complete and unarguable in its completeness? But if the point of spiritual life was to enter into this supernal state what reason would there be ever to have been born in a world of duality? What need was there for a self in the first place if the goal was just to discard it? To think of life in those terms is to ignore a good part of reality which is obviously more than just pure being or we would not be able to ask the question.

 

Mystic states of oneness, sometimes regarded as pointers to enlightenment if they become permanent, are real. They may be rare for most people and they may not last long even when they are attained, but they certainly exist.  The question is what causes them? Are they a purely spiritual phenomenon or might they be the result of chemical changes in the brain and therefore linked to the physical body which would mean that the death of the body would probably bring them to an end and they would have no bearing on the post-mortem state and fate of the soul.

Mystical states can arise spontaneously or they can come about through spiritual or mental disciplines in the same way as body-building, diet, exercise, training etc, can develop powerful muscles. In India techniques have existed for centuries to manipulate these states into existence and we know they can also be brought about through psychedelic drugs which does rather suggest that chemical changes in the brain might be responsible for changes in consciousness. If we accept that we are spirits in corporeal bodies which are designed to experience the material world then we can see that these bodies might act as filters which block out higher consciousness so we can function in this world. It may well be possible that these filters can be removed under certain extreme circumstances causing mystical experiences to occur, either arising spontaneously through brain changes or else being engineered by technique and discipline.

 

But does this mean the subject is a more spiritual person? His I may have been removed for a spell but in itself it remains what it was. It has not been rendered pure and holy which I would submit is the whole point of the spiritual exercise and which, moreover, is something that can only happen through grace. God gives us a self for us to grow and develop until the point is reached at which we give it back to him and then he restores it, filled with his presence. This is a process not a sudden transformation of being which can take place at any time, and it is not restoring our original nature but creating something totally new which is the divine self, the God-infused self as opposed to re-absorption in the pool of original consciousness from whence we were drawn out at our creation.

 Some Indian gurus teach that enlightenment can be attained through awakening the kundalini energy. To be sure, they will say this is dangerous and should only be undertaken under the supervision of a qualified instructor but what they don't make clear is that kundalini has its roots in the physical body and so the consciousness changes its arousal can instigate are down to material changes not spiritual ones. As a Master in the book Towards the Mysteries in a talk given to Pandit Gopinath Kaviraj, an eminent Hindu scholar of the mid-twentieth century, says "Kundalini is not ‘spiritual’. It is ‘material’". The proper procedure is that it will arise naturally concomitantly with proper spiritual development but it can be forced artificially which is what these renegade gurus (let's call them what they are) teach. They may get results but these are unholy results because not in line with the correct way which is growth within character. Furthermore, being bodily instigated, they will cease with death leaving the subject back where he was or even worse off because he has sought to steal divine fire from God. This may well be the state of many supposedly realised yogis and the like after death. Their occult manipulations will have no bearing on the eventual salvation or otherwise of their soul. They may indeed jeopardise it.

To be continued.

The Recovery and Renewal of Tradition

Christianity can seem soft and feeble to many men today, a sentimental palliative that answers none of the deeper questions of life. It has become something of a nursery religion that looks to make people behave nicely to each other rather than something that addresses absolutes and can overcome death and darkness. The fire has gone out of it, and managers and consultants are raking over the ashes making the Christian religion just another form of liberal humanism.  What we need is a return to Tradition using the capital to make clear that it is the spirit behind Tradition we must rediscover rather than any particular form it might have adopted in the past.

Tradition isn't a theory or ideology and to think of it in those terms is to see it through the eyes of secular modernity. It isn't a system or a codification of some intellectual analysis or argument. Though it may have those elements within it, they are secondary and used to express the ideas behind it. They are not the source of them. The real source of Tradition is insight into the reality behind outer appearance, and this may either come from revelation or mystical experience which is to say it derives from the spiritual world which is primary. For Christianity and the West in general, the revelation was obviously Christ, the descent of the Logos into human form. Therefore, to restore the Christian vision we should go back to him as the source.

 

However, tradition in the Western world was based on Christ but not just Christ. Greek philosophy and thought, Roman law and military strength and the Northern European sense of the individual all determined the form it took. These coalesced into a spiritual ethos that shaped the world until it lost touch with the transcendent and collapsed into modernity which in turn collapsed into whatever we have now when not only the spiritual but more recently the rational too have been rejected.

 The rediscovery of Tradition does not mean going back to the past as it was because we are not the same people we were, and the experiences of the last few centuries have marked us indelibly. What it requires is the recognition of the transcendent and the divine principles rooted in that. At the same time, the forms Tradition took in the past were highly effective means of communicating those principles and until we have anything better we would be well advised to understand and appreciate them because they still have power when understood as receptacles for spiritual truth. We should not limit spiritual truth to the forms it took but nor should we neglect those forms since few of us are able to fully intuit spiritual reality directly. We usually need an outer vessel to convey its essence for us and there is still much to be learnt from the vessels that were built up by wise and inspired men over many centuries.

That having been said, our main goal should be to become aware of God ourselves, and the best way to do this remains through the figure of Jesus Christ. But which Christ? The unfortunate reality is that we have built our own images of Christ which reflect our own prejudices so how can we circumvent these false Christs and discover the true one? Obviously, there are the Gospels, especially that of St John, but there is also Western art and I would suggest that the image on the Turin Shroud is of particular relevance in this respect. It really does seem authentic not just in the sense that scientific analysis has, so I believe, confirmed that the cloth is of the right time and place, but also the image itself, the method of creation of which we still cannot explain. If I were told this was how Jesus looked I would not be disappointed. The face has such nobility and power and inner strength that it exceeds any artist's representation of what the Son of God might look like.

These are outer approaches to Jesus and we cannot do without them. But there is also the inner approach. This is the quest to find Christ within our own heart. I am not referring here to any concept of our own Christ nature or an abstract or Cosmic Christ. There is no inner, no abstract, no Cosmic Christ without the real person of Jesus Christ. That is the reality and the others merely borrow from that reality. But I do believe we can meet Christ within ourselves through prayer and meditation on his holy self, and that by this means we can start to know something of God and eventually unite our being to his. Then we are in touch with the true source of the Christian Tradition.

This is how we rediscover Tradition today. We go back to the source but we also look for it within ourselves. Each is required for the whole approach. Tradition is made up of both body and soul, the body to preserve it and the soul to renew it.

The Fight Against Evil

 Early on in my spiritual instruction I was told that the more progress I made the more I would be assailed by evil in all its forms. We know from the lives of the saints that as they advance on the path towards God they are increasingly attacked by the demonic forces, and we can conjecture this is so because every person who escapes the dominion of those forces weakens their power. The general populace can be corrupted by general corruption but those seeking release from the net of this world require special attention. God allows this to take place because it tempers the soul. Unto the pure all things are pure. Evil can only work on us by bringing out our own weaknesses, but when they are brought out into the open they can be dealt with if we are honest, alert and true, and if we turn to God for help.

Greater progress equals increased attack. How does this work? One might think that evil thoughts and desires that arise in one's mind show one's own sinful nature, and they might do. But they might also be put there. In dreams, for instance, we might encounter horrible things but this does not necessarily mean these things arise from our own subconscious and are somehow unresolved parts of our own nature. They might be, but they might also be a demonic assault. Attack might come from outside and other people, but it more often comes from within our own mind and we must learn to recognise it and see it for what it is. Then we just don't react to it. We don't fight it because that gives it energy and attention. We simply ignore it.

Evil in all its forms, they said. Evil has many forms. Obvious evil is obvious. We can easily recognise it, but the devil is a trickster. He can lure us down a path of sin through apparent good. How many people have thought they were fighting for God and truth when they had been deceived into following their own desires or had adopted an idol of their own making as God? The devil has corrupted whole religions in this way, not to mention political ideologies, and he can certainly corrupt us on an individual level if we are not alive to the possibility. We might think we are serving God when we are really just serving ourself.

Evil attacks at our weakest points, and these are often aspects of our character of which we are unaware. In a way, the whole spiritual path is the fight against evil which really means against our own fallen nature. The temptations that came to Christ on the mountaintop will come to all of us eventually though perhaps not in such a dramatic fashion. The way to deal with them is as Christ did. Submit yourself to God and keep him as your only goal.

What makes a real saint is conquering evil. Imagine a saint who never knew evil, who was always sweetly loving. Isn't that rather a shallow thing? What gives depth and wisdom and nobility is fighting and conquering evil within oneself. Someone who has never known evil can never be a saint. Does this mean evil is part of God's plan? I don't know but I do know he uses it to make good even better. He's clever that way.

Of Lions and Lambs

 We are living through the end times when spirit is obscured by matter as a result of which even when the spiritual is acknowledged it is often perceived through the distorting lens of modernity.

One of the characteristics of the end times is that the whole era returns as part of a general summing up of the age, but it does so in a form that is misrepresented by the reigning characteristics of the zeitgeist. Thus, we now have access to spiritual traditions of the past in a way undreamt of not long ago, but what we have access to are really only the bones on which we frequently put modern flesh.

An example of this is paganism which appears to be making a comeback in various forms. One particular form has come about in response to the feminisation of modern Christianity and the perception that it is a Jewish religion. The idea is that adopting a foreign religion has weakened the West as a whole and men in particular, and if you look at the Christian religion as it is today you can see there is truth in this. The new Archbishop of Canterbury makes it almost comically obvious. However, if you look more deeply the picture changes somewhat.

To begin with, despite appearances, Christianity is not a Jewish religion. See here and here. Obviously, it was born in a Jewish setting but Christ transcended that which was why the Jews rejected him. And then when the religion took root in the West it was transformed by its host to reflect the sensibility of Western thought and behaviour. The supposed feminine nature of Christianity is only because it shows the way to go beyond the egotistic self. Christianity has become feminised over recent years but that is not its real nature. There is nothing feminine about Christ nor his disciples who all fought and conquered the world but did so through force of spirit rather than force of arms.

Nonetheless, because Christianity has become a bland non-judgmental religion with its idea of love, originally fiery, become wet and soggy, it is not surprising that a more masculine mindset rejects it. Yet those who do reject Christianity for its supposed weakness are not seeing it as it is, only as it has become. Reacting against the soft and sentimental side of modern Christianity, some men adopt hard pagan beliefs in which self-mastery is key. Your mind must master your emotions, they say, if you are to be the master of yourself. They are right. The mind must master the emotions or you remain a slave like most of humanity. 

And yet, is this spirituality or is it self-development? Are you going beyond the self or are you reinforcing it?  It is easy to mistake self-development for spirituality. There is overlap but the former is only a preliminary phase, and problems arise when it is seen as an end in itself.

The resurgence of masculinity often goes with bodybuilding and working out at the gym but then these become ends in themselves, narcissistic ends. Its advocates want success and achievement and to make a mark in the world, and while these are part of human development, especially male development, they are not spiritual things. The self should be strong but it is an error to regard that as a spiritual state. It is only a foundation and it needs refinement and to learn sacrifice or it will degenerate.

Action and reaction are always equal and opposite. We should not allow the absurdities of the left, of feminism, of anti-racism and all the rest of the crazy catalogue of errors Western man has built up over the years, to lead to an excessive response. There are signs this is happening and I suspect the only thing that can keep us on the straight and narrow path, the razor's edge of true spirituality that combines both lion and lamb, is the risen Christ. Happy Easter!

della Francesca's Resurrection of Jesus

A Dark Guru

 Previously in this series about my life in India during the 1980s I've written about Europeans we knew but not much about Indians except in passing. But, of course, we knew many and were friends with several. There was Krishnamurti the tailor who always wore a crisp white shirt and sharply pressed khaki trousers. Then there was Ali who ran the Yercaud Club and who looked (I thought) like a benevolent crocodile. Dilip and Ashok were two brothers who, with their father, had a geranium plantation that produced an essential oil used for perfume and skincare. Subramaniam was one of many coffee planters in the area and Ramalingam lived in the bungalow next to ours. He fell on financial hard times so leased the front of his house to the Bank of India and moved to the back. It seemed to work for him.

But our main friends, apart from the Matthews whom I have previously mentioned, were Mr and Mrs Neelakantan. He was a Brahmin and had been well off, but he was persuaded to invest his money in a film studio which went bust and lost the lot as a result of which he had come to Yercaud where his wife Prema found work at one of the private schools in the town, enabling their sons, Kumar and Prakash, and daughter, Sudha, to get decent educations. They were all very bright and took full advantage of the opportunities offered. Neelakantan was probably in his mid to late 40s but retired or, at any rate, no longer working, considering himself to be in the Vanaprastha stage of life which, according to Hindu teaching, is the third stage when one starts to withdraw from the world and focus one’s energies more on Moksha or liberation. He sought us out because he heard we were interested in spiritual matters, and we had many conversations, even debates, about Indian philosophy. He was a disciple of Swami Muktananda who was a prominent guru of the day teaching something called Siddha Yoga which claimed to be able to awaken the kundalini in its practitioners. Traditionally, this was a secret path only open to a dedicated few after years of spiritual discipline, but Muktananda offered the awakening to anyone, and Neelakantan said he had experienced it. It did not seem to have changed him in any significant way for the better though, and he admitted as much which was more than many others who have undergone this experience are willing to do.  

Neelakantan gave me Muktananda’s autobiography to read, and I could see that the man did have power of some sort, but it was also obvious that it was not true spiritual power. Like many Indian sannyasis he had tapped into a form of occult energy through his guru, but this energy appeared more demonic than divine. And rather like Sai Baba, you only had to look at a photo of Muktananda to see a darkness in his soul. When the stories of his sexual misdemeanours came out, as almost inevitably they did, I was not surprised.

 

There was a misconception of spirituality common at the time which many of the gurus flooding the West took advantage of as they preyed on the naive. They may even have been victims of it themselves. It saw the spiritual in terms of consciousness, experience and power, and believed that the self could be transformed before it had been fully purified, and that what was required to do this was technique regardless of motivation. They would have spoken of proper motivation as one must to be taken seriously, but it was not put front and centre as it should be and was often confused with aspiration. It was the old spiritual problem of the desire for heaven, even the greed for it, taking precedence over the love of God.

 

It could not be denied that Muktananda had been through some extraordinary psychic experiences under his guru, but these cannot be regarded as spiritual in the proper sense because in cases of genuine spiritual transcendence the self is not splintered and shattered as happened to him. It is more a case of the ego falling away as it is outgrown, or melting in the light of the spiritual sun. There may be an initial pain and sense of loss, but there is not the violence and terror described by Muktananda which indicate that something other than divine forces is in play. Many Indian gurus mistake the occult for the spiritual, and Muktananda certainly did. 

 

Neelakantan admitted he had not been changed by his experiences, but others were not so lucky. A commenter on this blog a few years ago wrote that he had followed an Indian guru (unspecified but obviously Muktananda) who gave shaktipat which is a supposed infusion of grace that opens the kundalini and sends the energy upward through the chakras. He said he had had many amazing experiences but even now long after he could not sit to meditate without being taken over by spontaneous pranayama and mudras, as well as the occurrence of strange mantras. He had left the guru’s organization years before when the stories of scandal and abuse surfaced, but the psychic experiences persisted. He thought they could be the result of astral forces and wondered what to do. My opinion was that they were undoubtedly caused by the premature opening of psychic centres in the body which, it cannot be emphasised enough, is an occult procedure not a spiritual one. The remedy is prayer and focus on Christ. This is the best way to cleanse the soul of the unhealthy psychic residues it picks up through these techniques. 

 

The moral of this story is that one should not be deceived by the spurious glamours, antinomian delusions and false promises of the lefthand path. The road to God is through purity and love, not magic in any form.

 

I would not have suggested focus on Christ to Neelakantan who was a proud Brahmin and not going to abandon his heritage for a Western religion, but fortunately he had not gone too deep so not suffered adverse consequences. He reverted to his traditional path and turned for inspiration to the Jagadguru of Kanchipuram, a genuine holy man who lived for nearly 100 years (1894-1994), spending his life travelling round India teaching the sanatana dharma or ancient religion of the Vedas. The Kanchi Sankaracharya was a traditional guru who was the 68^th in line from the famous advaita philosopher Sankara, and exemplified the best of his religion in contradistinction to most 20^th century gurus, obvious exceptions like Ramana Maharishi aside, who seemed to be promoting themselves. He made no grandiose promises but simply taught love of the divine for its own sake.

 

An amusing postscript to this story comes in the form of two young evangelical Christian missionaries who stayed at our guesthouse. They were sincere and enthusiastic but didn’t fully appreciate the richness and depth of the Indian spiritual tradition. On one occasion they were with us when Neelakantan came round for morning coffee as he sometimes did, and we introduced them before they left to visit a local church. A couple of days later we heard they had gone round to his house to try to convert him and his family, no doubt with the best of intentions, but you don’t convert a Brahmin to Christianity. Neelakantan, normally a very courteous man, had lost his temper and thrown them out. I tried to explain to them that it was very bad form to tell a Brahmin that he worships demons, especially when you are a guest in his house, but they were fired by missionary zeal and didn’t understand that Christ may be universal but Christianity, especially the desacralised 18th century form they promoted, is probably not which is why it will never catch on in India except in a limited form. It is too foreign.

 

Ancestor Worship

This blog is called Meeting the Masters which indicates its origins, but I don't write much these days about the spiritual beings I call the Masters. That is partly because my experience with them ended over 25 years ago though perhaps I should say my conscious experience since I believe they are still a factor in my life, just one of which I am not outwardly aware. That means they could be a factor in many people's inner lives, acting as guides and instructors. Perhaps we contact them in sleep or perhaps they communicate on the spiritual plane in the form of impressions which we then must pick up and interpret as best we can. That way we can grow as individuals because we are responsible for ourselves.

This leads to the other reason for me not writing much about the Masters now. This is my blog and while I do think they have prompted me from time to time, I do not know what might come from them and what comes from me. I am neither a medium nor a messenger which is as it should be in the modern world in which we are called to the path of spiritual adulthood.

Enough of that. What I thought I might do here is examine what the Masters are and how they stand to us, and I say us because although I may have had the experience of talking to them in my younger days that doesn't mean I am associated with them more than anyone else. If, as I believe, they represent the teachers of humanity (under Christ), then any spiritual aspirant is associated with them to some degree. We all have our teachers and guides in the higher worlds.

So, what then are the Masters? First off, they told me to think of them as messengers from God, and I do. But that just describes their function. What are they in themselves? I have considered this and I have decided that the best way to think of them is as spiritual ancestors. The group that spoke to me would be my ancestors and, no doubt, the ancestors of many others, but other people might have other, different but similar, groups as their ancestors.

As above, so below runs the famous saying. Everything true, natural and good in this world is a reflection of a higher reality. We have biological families and ancestors, and I am sure we also have spiritual families and ancestors. Not linked by blood as in this world but by something else which would be a similar point of spiritual origin meaning here origin of the soul, the individual component of our being. There will be a spiritual version of blood, perhaps some quality of light, and this is what binds spiritual families together. Sometimes these families may coincide with our earthly families, but sometimes not for reasons of learning since that is what we come here to do. What a wonderful thought it is to know that we have a loving family in the higher worlds, one to which we completely belong and from which we cannot be separated. The bond is actually closer than to any earthly family since spirit is thicker than blood.

The Masters then are the senior members of that family. They are our spiritual ancestors which is why we owe them honour and respect. They have gone before us on the journey of life and reached the destination or destination as it applies to the human state. There is no point at which spiritual growth and expansion stops as long as life is in a state of manifestation. Heaven cannot be a static place because it combines being, eternity, the absolute, stillness, oneness, with becoming, change, development, growth, variety, individuals, to make something more than either of these on their own. Love comes out of that. Can there be love in pure being, absolute oneness?

In the pagan past we venerated out ancestors and this was a good instinct. Sometimes we thought of ourselves as descended from the gods, or some of us at any rate, and I see this as founded in something real too. The gods in this sense might be those who have gone before us, who have achieved, and this is how I perceive the Masters. They are forerunners who have done what we are trying to do. They are the realised end of the human state which is attainable by all of us if we do the work. I like to look at the origin of words to see what the root meaning behind their current meaning might be. The modern English word 'worship' derives from the Old English weorðscipe meaning the condition (scipe) of being worthy (weorð), hence of being due honour or respect. With that in mind, thinking of the Masters in terms of ancestor worship seems appropriate.

You might say what need have we of such beings if we have Jesus and that is a fair point, but I would counter that Jesus worked through his disciples as well as directly so the one does not preclude the other.

Spiritual Atmosphere

 Certain places, even in today's world, retain an atmosphere that speaks of a reality beyond the everyday and the mundane. There are natural sites that have this quality and these were often adopted as sacred places in bygone days by our pagan forefathers. Springs, wells, mountains, caves and many other naturally occurring features were marked out by a sense of presence which indicated that a god or spirit of some kind was in attendance. Nowadays we might be inclined to think of this, if existing at all, as a phenomenon associated with earth energies, perhaps coming from a geological peculiarity or even mineral deposit of some sort, but our ancestors always associated sacredness with spirits. That is to say, with beings either from another world or another dimension of this one.

Some places have a sacred aura but others can acquire that aura by the action of human beings who gather there to worship and pray. I say action but contemplation might be a better word as the spiritual power engendered by contemplation can build up and imbue its environment with a special quality that is detectable to the sensitive soul. Places of worship can have this property, and they are often designed to help in its creation with their high ceilings and vaults on the one hand and enclosed sanctuaries on the other, bringing to mind the open sky on a mountain top or a deep, dark cave representing respectively the Father and Mother of Creation. These spaces can then receive and hold the power built up the worshippers. This was the genius of architects of the past that their descendants in our day have either lost or failed to understand. The atmosphere is not created by the architecture but can be supplemented by it, and it does not depend just on the ritual but the ritual and attitude of the worshippers, both together. A ritual can be designed to build up power but it will only be properly effective if the participants attend with their heart and spirit as well as their mind and body.

I suppose it is possible that a modern church can have a spiritual atmosphere, but it is unlikely due to its construction being based on secular/materialist principles and its lack of connection to the transcendent principle. Not to mention, its ugliness. I once met a monk who told me that it doesn't matter what the outer form in which you worship is like, it's the worship that counts. The silly fellow meant well but he was ignorant. In that case why did people put so much energy into building stone hymns to the Creator? Of course, a loving heart can worship anywhere but the outer affects the inner just as the inner affects the outer, and to dismiss beauty as irrelevant shows a dead spirit. The grandeur of a Gothic cathedral is not required as a pure simplicity can be just as effective in its own way, but harmonious proportions and natural materials are important if one wishes to create a holy space in which to connect to the divine. Beauty is part of God just as much as love and wisdom.

Three places come to mind for me as environments where I have felt a strong spiritual atmosphere. There are many more I could add, but these three form a good cross section, being illustrative of different types of atmosphere. I am referring to man-made places only here so leaving out examples from the natural world.

The first is the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza. The first time I went there was 1978 and I was fortunate enough to be left on my own for a while in the dark centre of the structure. There was a slight artificial light but I shut my eyes and was absorbed by the stillness and silence around me. There was a sense of extraordinary antiquity as though one had been taken back to the beginning of things before form of any kind developed. This was the very ground of creation, but also the seat of the tiny seed of spirit at the core of the heart from which all life grows. For a moment I felt myself to be entering the originating point of mystery and returned to where all things began.

The second place was Akbar's Tomb which is the mausoleum of the Mughal emperor Akbar in Sikandra just outside Agra. When I first went there in 1979 I felt as if part of me knew this place and I had a right be there, though I am not claiming a past life as a Mughal courtier. This was just a feeling, but it was a happy one and it came over me as I walked along the path that led through the quadrangular charbagh, representing the garden of paradise, up to the mausoleum. At the southern entrance to the tomb there was the most beautifully decorated vestibule with geometrical patterns picked out in delicate blue and vivid gold and then, in stark contrast, you entered a dark passage leading to the plain, unadorned central chamber that was Akbar's cenotaph. Here in the dim light under a high vaulted ceiling an attendant sounded the Muslim call to prayer. It echoed and resounded throughout the chamber, lasting for several seconds before gradually dying away, and, in that environment, seemed like the voice of God calling all the worlds into being out of the darkness of primeval space. If the inside of the Great Pyramid was like the time before creation, this resembled a microscopic scale version of the creative moment at the beginning of time.

The vestibule ceiling

The cenotaph chamber

My third example of spiritual atmosphere comes from Verona in 1987. It was in one of the numerous old churches in that city though unfortunately I can't remember which. There are a few examples here. I was there as a tourist, visiting the various sites as tourists do. There is a 1st century Roman amphitheatre in an excellent state of repair and still used for opera performances, and then there is the Casa di Giulietta with its balcony that is certainly not authentic but serves as a touching homage to young love. There are also several Romanesque and Gothic churches such as the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore and the Chiesa di Santa Anastasia which is stuffed full of extraordinary artworks. But it may have been while visiting one of the city's smaller churches that I opened a door to a little side chapel and was hit by a wave of such power that I almost fell back. It was rather like exiting the air-conditioned interior of a plane in the tropics when the outside heat suddenly crashes into you. A guide told me that monks had conducted a service there shortly before, and the after-effects of that service were certainly a testimony to the intensity of their worship. 

Although I had once encountered something similar at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight I had not previously appreciated the extent to which true worship can build up an atmosphere so strong it seems almost a physical thing. If the previous experiences had brought to mind the early days of the universe this one was different in that it spoke of the reciprocal love of God and Man. It also seemed noticeably Christian and was a reminder that not all experiences called spiritual are necessarily the same thing.

Basilica of San Zeno

The Last Europeans in India

Michael and I were not the only Europeans living in Yercaud. I mentioned Sofie de Mello from Germany in a previous Indian Story post but there were a few other European residents there as well. One, an Englishman, Vic Tate by name, had been born in India around 1915. I say he was an Englishman because all his ancestors had come from England but he had only visited the country once, for a short holiday in the 1950s. Otherwise, he had lived his entire life in India, having stayed on as a coffee planter after Independence in 1947. He was an Indian citizen but thought of himself, as he was, as an Englishman. Vic was a widower when I knew him and a hale and jolly fellow with a bungalow stuffed full of Victoriana. He was more English than most English people because his Englishness was defined by the Englishness of the 1940s and was unaffected by the internationalism of the following decades. He may have lived through those decades but he remained culturally where he had been in 1947 because although he mixed with Indians on perfectly friendly terms he did not regard himself as Indian so the normal societal influences and changes a person experiences as time goes by had no impact on him.

Another resident was an Italian of about the same age as Vic. He was as Italian as Vic was English though he too had spent all his life in India.  His name was Tito Simonelli and his father had been chauffeur to the Maharajah of Mysore before Independence. Thus, Tito had grown up in India. He was an engineer and took great pride in his Alfa Romeo as well he might, given every other car in Yercaud at the time (and there weren't many) was an Ambassador, the ubiquitous Indian car of the period based on the Morris Oxford. Tito upheld the romantic reputation of his nation by having an Indian mistress over 30 years younger than him though whenever we went to his house she was presented as his housekeeper, a fiction everyone politely observed.

Both these men were Indian citizens who had been born in India and lived there throughout their entire lives, but they thought of themselves, and were regarded by everyone else, as English and Italian respectively. They knew what people nowadays seem to forget that blood and ancestry count for more than your passport and where you happen to live.

Me, Tito and Vic in front of Vic's bungalow after church

There was one other European from pre-independence days who lived in Yercaud at this time and this was a very old English lady called Connie-Mae. I forget her surname. Ostensibly, she ran the Yercaud Club, a colonial era establishment where planters gathered to drink, play cards and snooker and generally relax back in the day and still did although now they were Indian rather than British planters. Connie-Mae had been the daughter of an English planter and she had stayed on after 1947 but never married. She had come to the point at which she had had to give up her bungalow, and the club committee said she could live out her days at the club where she was given a small bedroom. For appearance's sake, she was described as the secretary but she didn't do anything. She still had a devoted servant called Walter, almost as old as she was, and he and his wife looked after her even though she couldn't pay them much. Michael and I visited Connie-Mae at the club quite regularly where she would give us a cup of tea and talk of the old days. 

At one time we had a guest in our establishment who was called Samir or Sammy for short. He was a well-spoken and apparently well-educated Muslim in his mid thirties  He said he had come up to Yercaud to convalesce after a car accident. He was witty and entertaining and as he was with us for several weeks we got to know him quite well. He would come up to our bungalow for coffee and conversation and all went normally until one week when it was time for him to pay us he said that his brother hadn't sent through his money for that week and would we mind waiting. We didn't mind but then it stretched over to the next week and he said his money had still not arrived. Could we lend him something until it did? Again, we didn't mind but when the same thing happened the following week we said no. Then his money seemingly did arrive and he paid us.

We had introduced Sammy to Connie-Mae and he became a regular visitor at her club, the two of them apparently getting on well. But then Sammy vanished, owing us a couple of weeks' rent. It was a disappointment but not too serious. However, the next time we went to Connie-Mae and told her of Sammy's disappearance she began to look alarmed and then burst into tears. It turned out that she too had lent Sammy money and not just some money but the entirety of her remaining savings. He had charmed the lot out of her and what in a way was worse she had even borrowed a large sum from her servant's savings to lend to him. Such was his devotion he had given it to her without question. We had actually warned Connie-Mae to be careful of Sammy after our earlier experience but she had ignored us because of his smooth reassurances that his brother was just about to send the money. 

A couple of weeks after this Michael and I were down in Salem, the town in the plains about 20 miles from Yercaud where we did occasional shopping for luxury goods such as tinned cheese. We had gone there because Muthu our gardener had fallen down and broken his leg while drunk on bootleg arrack laced with battery acid and strychnine, apparently added because in low doses they are stimulants. There was no proper hospital in Yercaud so he had been taken down to Salem. We were in an auto rickshaw on our way to the hospital to visit him when suddenly we saw Sammy walking along the roadside. We shouted at the driver to stop and jumped out. Michael grabbed Sammy by the arm and told him to turn out his pockets. He protested and said he didn't have much but Michael took his wallet and emptied it. It wasn't much. We then told him we would call the police unless he gave us some more money at which he said he had some back at his hotel. So we marched him back there and went up to his room where he had a briefcase with some money in it. A reasonable sum but nowhere near the amount he had stolen from Connie-Mae. We took it and he swore he was going to pay Connie-Mae back but we knew he was lying. So we left and did report him to the police but by the time they got to the hotel which was a few days later, of course, he had absconded as we knew he would.  Michael gave the money to Connie-Mae and she gave it to her servant though it wasn't enough to reimburse him fully but it was something. I still feel angry when I think of this. To steal an old woman's entire life savings, which may not have been much but was all she had, and then get her to borrow from an old and trusting servant with seemingly not a twinge of conscience is inexplicable. He wasn't starving. He dressed well and was quite chubby as in well-fed chubby. He was simply bad. 

The only good thing to come out of this was that the club members made up the deficit to Connie-Mae's servant and told her that she could live there, board and lodging free, for the rest of her life. She was still alive when we left Yercaud, but I heard that she died shortly afterwards. 

I call these three people, Vic, Tito and Connie-Mae, the last Europeans because they were among the final generation of people born in India, probably in the 1910s, who were too settled to leave at Independence in 1947 and had stayed on. There were never that many British people in India. Even at the height of the Raj they only numbered around 150,000, civil and military, for the whole country, present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh included. Most of them left in 1947 or shortly afterwards. But a few remained, people who had been born in India and made their lives there. By 1980 when I arrived in Yercaud the great majority of these people had died and with them a human type and way of life that was unique. They were not especially imaginative and it's easy for the modern sophisticate to make fun of them, but they were honest, decent people who believed in doing the right thing.

Wars and Rumours of Wars

 There have always been wars so the end times prediction of wars and rumours of wars should not seem especially relevant now, and yet it does. Perhaps because wars usually have some kind of sense to them, territorial, tribal, monetary and the like. But recent wars seem to be without any sense at all and simply war for the sake of war. There undoubtedly is a reason for the current entry in the list of wars but it's hard to see why the main protagonist is acting as it is because the net benefit to that country is minimal if there is one at all. It is for this reason that we need to look beyond ordinary politics for an explanation.

The world is breaking down. When that happens the structures of civilisation develop cracks and start to fail after which the normal forces of entropy and decay take over and do the rest. Recent wars are the result of a loss of centre. The centre is the spiritual focus of a society, what it is grounded in and what sustains it. When that no longer holds then things do fly apart, as the poet says. We have had no centre for a long time in the West which is why we have pitiful replacements such as human rights and democracy but these have no real substance to them. They are feeble ideological substitutes for what we have lost or rejected and they don't really inspire anybody for long.

Wars come about because of ambition, and that is certainly a factor with the present one. But there is something else going on which is a simple desire for destruction. When the world has no meaning, and it has none without a sense of something beyond itself, we can find a crude purpose of sorts through destruction. Destruction is easy and it's exciting. It can stimulate the jaded palate and thrill the mind that has become bored and without a deeper goal. And that is just on the human level. The nature of the end times is that certain supernatural forces that work against divine being can take advantage of the prevailing currents of dissolution and breakdown to advance their agenda. The tide that flows towards matter and away from spirit is in their favour. The more matter is separated from spirit (in appearance, of course, it never can be in reality), the less it can hold the imprint of Form and so the more it reverts to its primal condition of chaos. This is why wars are happening and wars themselves hasten the process.

Jesus said that when wars and rumours of wars come about we should not be troubled because these things must be. They must be because this is the same phenomenon we can observe when a physical body breaks down after the soul has left it. The soul has left our civilisation and this is why it is breaking down. However, we need not be a part of that. We must stand apart from it and observe but not get caught up in it. It can be hard to watch the destruction of something we love but death comes to everything in this world and while it is painful it is necessary so that life may progress in a new form. Letting go of the past is required of us at this time but that does not mean embracing the present which, as it is now, is not a new born thing but a decaying corpse. It means transferring attention to the world above where eternal verities remain in their pristine form, waiting to reinvigorate the world once the current stage of dissolution has done its work and the ground has been tilled ready for new seed.

Wars are part of this process. They are not good but they are inevitable as Jesus made clear.

Christian Polytheism

 The rivalry between Christianity and paganism seems to be reviving in the West as the secular materialism of the post-war period becomes increasingly threadbare and unsatisfactory. Once our stomachs are full and we have a roof over our heads and maybe a family of our own, many of us find there is still something lacking in our lives and we look for what might fill that lack. What is missing is meaning, of which there is none in the modern world. Meaning is only to be found in religion, though some seek it in art but even there it only exists when art looks beyond this world for inspiration.

It is the search for meaning that is behind any revival of religion. Some people turn to Christianity but often today some look to the pagan traditions which can provide an ethnic foundation to spiritual practice that Christianity does not have. A problem for would-be pagans is that the pagan religions died out centuries ago so all we have are modern simulations, based on records from the past but not living traditions. Therefore, any modern pagan is of necessity being somewhat performative when he practices his religion. It's rather like Westerners following the path of Hinduism which can never be a natural thing. There is always a cultural difference, in one case caused by space, in the other by time, and that renders the act artificial which is to say false. That doesn't mean it has no value but it will only have limited value.

Another problem is that paganism died out for a reason. It was superseded by the advent of Christ who really did make all things new. And yet some things were lost in the process, in particular a real connection to creation and a contact with the inner workings of nature as well as a proper relationship with the spirit of place. This is why the contemporary Christian needs to re-engage with paganism and even add a pagan element to his Christianity. This element should be seen in the light of Christ, in other words it must be baptised, but it provides a form of spiritual nourishment that Christianity lost as it lost touch with nature, with the earth and the land.

This is what I mean by Christian polytheism. Such a polytheism does not mean believing in many gods rather than one God. It means that under God there are many what we can justifiably call gods who carry out his work in creation. This is not too great a leap from where Christians already are, characterising them as angels, but angels are often regarded as somewhat abstract or, worse, sentimentalised. By seeing them as gods our minds can enter more deeply into the spiritual universe and the inside of creation. You could call them the inner energies of creation though with the understanding that behind these energies are beings not mere impersonal forces.

As a matter of fact, many of us have long been exposed to Christian polytheism without necessarily recognising it as such. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were Christian polytheists, at least in their fiction, and that is a good deal of what makes their work appeal so much to the imagination. They were devout Christians but they were pagans of a sort too due to their creative absorption in the myths and legends of the past which deeply marked their literary work. Their reconciliation of pagan and Christian elements shows how each tradition can bring greater life to the other. You might see this as paganism providing soul to Christianity while in return Christianity brings spirit.

 150 years ago what had been esoteric began to be revealed until now all hidden teachings are out in the open, available for anyone interested to see. And yet the esoteric remains for there is always something more behind the scenes. How do you discover new levels of the esoteric now, ones that have the power of spiritual transformation that is largely lost when what is secret becomes externalised? You must go beyond the human mind and start to enter directly into the mind of Christ, and this you can do through love and imagination. An imaginative engagement with Christian polytheism in which the spiritual levels between the Creator and his emissaries, the gods and angels of creation, are explored will act like water on earth under the sun of Christ causing many beautiful flowers to grow.

When the One becomes Two

In May of 2024 I published on this blog a short series of excerpts from Coleridge's Table Talk which is a collection of his conversations with friends round the dinner table recorded for posterity. One of them ran like this.

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

I added a brief commentary saying that if the highest state of matter is to reflect spirit perfectly you can see what he means here. This extended Coleridge's insight to the metaphysical plane but that is the only place the solution to the war between the sexes can be found because it is here that the division into two poles of being first takes place. This is where it works as it should.

The modern version of female rebellion against the male dates back to the early 19th century. It might be seen as a consequence of masculine leadership, backed by all order-based religion, tipping over into tyranny or else of man's prior rebellion against God. However, the reality is that it goes much further back to the Garden of Eden. It is nothing new, and though it may be provoked by male oppression that is not the cause of it. The basic cause is female ego which is not to say that male ego is not involved in the sex war for it surely is but that is not the primary reason for seeking to overturn an order ordained by God from the beginning. Men have certainly abused that order, though, ironically, less so in the culture in which the modern rebellion arose than practically all others, but that does not make the order itself invalid.

With that in mind let us consider the following.

Premise: The feminine can only blossom and flourish when it submits to the leadership of the masculine. Societies can only blossom and flourish spiritually when this is the case.

Proviso: This leadership must be a loving one or authority becomes authoritarian. 

Qualifier: This does not mean women must submit to men at all times for there are certainly areas in which women should take the lead and men should follow. Nonetheless, in overall terms the feminine should submit to the masculine if order is to be maintained just as in the broader sense a man's soul should submit to God, all souls being feminine to God - feminine soul, masculine spirit.

First Principles: In terms of absolute reality the masculine force relates to being and the feminine to becoming and change.

In terms of manifestation the masculine or active force acts and the feminine or passive reacts. The feminine principle is subordinate to the masculine principle though both are parts of one co-existing whole. You can say they are spiritually equal if you understand that in the context of their differing functions in a hierarchy of being. In the real world there will inevitably be permutations and variations depending on individuals and their circumstances but underlying these there must always be cognisance and acceptance of the basic form if society is to function as it should and men and women to realise their proper spiritual purpose.

Dion Fortune was told this by one of her Masters as related in The Cosmic Doctrine. "You will be given certain images (which) are not descriptive but symbolic, and are designed to train the mind not to inform it. Therefore, you may think of the Unmanifest as interstellar space*; and of the Logos as a Sun surrounded by its Solar System of Planets; and of the emanations of the Logos as rays. The Unmanifest is the only Unity. Manifestation begins when duality occurs." He goes on to say that the prime duality is space and movement. That is one way of putting it. There are others. For instance, movement is time. Space is darkness. Movement is, or is akin to, light. This is the root of male and female and it goes back to the beginning of things. Here you will see that the male acts on the female who is passive as is space. God moving on the face of the waters. The mystery of time and space is the mystery of masculine and feminine. Space is all potential but it waits to be fecundated. Time, which is movement, fecundates. Only when we understand metaphysics will we understand the mystery of the two sexes and to do this we must detach ourselves from an exclusive association of sex with its expression in human beings. That must be seen in the light of metaphysical principles which are the realities behind it.

* In fact, the Unmanifest is not interstellar space which only comes about when the Unmanifest manifests but this is the best image the human mind, based on forms, can grasp.