Recent Events

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

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

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

Beyond Left and Right

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

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

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

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

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

The Dissolution of Form

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Leftism is Wrong in One Sentence

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Creative Side of Collapse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End of a World

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Test of the End Times

 In the End Times all institutions will be controlled, either directly or indirectly, by demonic intelligence. They will ostensibly function as before but their influence and effect will be spiritually corrosive. In few cases will the reality behind that influence be obvious to the ordinary person but it will be apparent to anyone whose spiritual eyes are open. Every individual serving those institutions will be serving the dark forces though most will be unaware of that fact. But they will have made compromises to get to positions of authority, and those compromises will have stained their souls. They will be the whited sepulchres spoken of by Jesus. Beautiful or virtuous or honourable on the outside, but rotten within. These are hard words but we live in unprecedented times. It's not like the end of Rome. There may be similarities because the same patterns do inevitably repeat themselves, but the situation today is of an order of magnitude different to any time we know of in the past. The scale of our spiritual destitution is unparalleled even though it is disguised by improvements on the materialistic humanitarian level. The bread alone level. 

You might ask, where is God in all this? Why does he allow the sheep to be led astray by wolves? Where are the shepherds? The analogy makes the point. We are not sheep, not anymore. God requires us to be spiritually responsible these days. No longer obedient followers but able to develop our own spiritual insight and make our own spiritual decisions. If the outer is corrupt it means we must go to the inner. Souls are being tested for their intrinsic quality. It's easy to make the grade when everything is in your favour but your true orientation only comes out when it manifests in spite of outer circumstances. God has planted seeds in a ground in which only the hardiest will survive and grow. But this is how he determines what is the best seed and what will just turn into weeds or not grow at all. One of the most dangerous doctrines is that God loves us. Of course, God does love us but what does that actually mean? Does this love disregard what we actually are or does it mean that God wants the best for us? We may all have the image of the divine within us but that image does not come alive unless we make it so. If we are equal because of that image within us it is only potentially so because the image must be developed.

The good seed will grow into a beautiful flower but not all seed is good. In fact, if we look at nature most seeds just get recycled back into the earth. That is a sobering thought for these end times and should alert us to the need to aspire towards the light and not remain trapped in the darkness, comforting darkness though it may seem to some, of the earth.

Current Events in the End Times

 In a crumbling world such as ours it's very tempting to feel one should react to current events and respond in some way to what's happening 'out there', whether it be in the field of politics, the economy, social or cultural matters. We feel obliged to have an opinion or else it seems we are being irresponsible and don't care about the world. We must approve or disapprove. If we don't, we are turning our back on the world and that's wrong.

I disagree. One can safely say that everything now is bad. That's just reflects the general degradation of the world and is the way of the end times. We do not have to react to events in the end times when they are all going to be spiritually negative. Even if some are less negative than others, they are all still negative. This is especially the case when you realise that many of these events are manipulations anyway, designed to push us in this direction or that. Our task at this time is to attune ourselves to the spiritual by which I mean the reality of God not some idea of ourselves as higher beings in our own right. Forces will try to pull us away from this central truth. We will be distracted or diverted, our passions aroused, provoked into anger or indignation, required to take sides on worldly matters. All of this just keeps us locked in the material even if we give our reactions a spiritual justification.

I am not saying one should turn one's back on the world although it may come to that. But nor should one partake in it or even take it that seriously. Of course, if one lives in the world and not as a hermit one has to take it seriously up to a point, but one should not allow oneself to get involved in it. There will be many attempts to force involvement on us. You may see x is wrong so assume that what opposes x must therefore be right but often they are just two different aspects of what is seen to be the same thing when viewed from above. 

All the attempts to elicit emotional involvement should be ignored even when they appeal to supposed spiritual concerns. Try to see everything as part of collapse. That may seem a depressing attitude to take but it is the only realistic one in an end times scenario. If you feel it is your part to resist collapse then by all means go ahead but you should still know that the outer world only matters as support for the inner world, and that must always be primary. To try to maintain the outer world as a structure for inner growth is the sole requirement, but there will come a time when that is no longer possible and one must retreat to the fortress of one's own mind and not take any part at all in what is happening out there. You cannot act as a beacon for those who seek to flee the collapse if you allow yourself to be defined by it or are in any way identified with it. Detachment is the need of the moment though this should be the detachment of one who is attached to God not simply lack of concern for the world.

Fear of the Dark

Few of us know real darkness nowadays. Unless you live deep in the countryside you will be probably have some buildings nearby that keep their outside lights on all night. Business premises have been like this for some time but now many private properties do it as well, presumably for security reasons. I remember as a child waking up in the night and not being able to see my hand in front of my face. There's no chance of that where I live today as there's always some light coming in through the curtains, some from lights on a neighbouring property but also a great deal from the night sky itself which reflects back light from the earth, from street lights and lights left on all night on the exteriors of buildings, both private and commercial.

It's insane. We evolved to need darkness to have proper sleep. Without darkness our sleep is more easily disturbed and more likely to be shallow, and this means our waking life will be lived more on the surface too because our minds have not engaged with deeper levels at night. The constant noise we put up with is a contributing factor to that as well, but the lack of darkness in our lives means we live in an increasingly artificial state. Darkness helps us to go inwards. It takes us away from the distractions of life and the excessive stimulation of the modern world. Too much stimulation makes us live on edge, on the outside of things, caught up in the endless movement of material life, and unable to find true rest and restoration which can only be known in stillness and silence, and in the deep darkness that is conducive to peace. Darkness is a friend we no longer wish to know.

We can do this because of electricity. It's no coincidence that the discovery and exploitation of electricity has accompanied the rise and growth of materialism. The two are clearly linked and not just because electricity has powered the modern world. If we ask where electricity comes from we find that it has its origin in the world of sub-nature, and what comes from that world partakes of that world and carries the influence of that world. Jeremy Naydler wrote an interesting book about the prehistory of the computer called In the Shadow of the Machine in which he examines this question of electricity. He concludes with Rudolf Steiner that it is a form of degraded light which might mimic light but lacks its spiritual qualities because it comes from what we might justifiably call the nether regions. Our reliance on electricity and addiction to its use will affect our consciousness which will also become, has become, degraded and desensitised. This is because what we use imparts its qualities to our minds. We enter its world and become part of that world. Our injudicious and excessive use of electricity is taking us out of the world of nature, never mind the spiritual world, and into the underworld which is where electricity comes from.

This is obviously all part of the end times scenario and we can't escape it unless we trek off into the wilderness which is not feasible for most of us and may have its own problems for souls who have elected to live now. What we can do is become aware of the problem. We may have to use electricity to live in the world of the present time but we can be sparing in our use of it, and not allow ourselves to become caught up in the products it powers which will inevitably have a despiritualising effect on us. Electricity is not just material as opposed to spiritual. It derives from a place below the natural world which is our proper earthly home. Who does not feel a greater sense of emotional well-being in a room lit by candlelight or even gas than one with electric light? We may have found a great source of energy but it demands something of us and what it demands is of a spiritual nature.

Symbolically, darkness is ignorance and death, and light is knowledge and life. But there is also good darkness and bad light and we must know the difference.

We Cannot Get to There From Here

 When people take seriously the condemnations of the modern world, its various ideologies, its materialism, its addiction to technology and all the rest, they might ask, what do we need to do? How can we get back on a proper spiritual track? The answer is simple. On an individual level, this is possible and a return to first principles with the appropriate beliefs and practices will help to realign the soul with reality. For, make no mistake, the vast majority of human beings today are completely divorced from reality and living in a degraded fantasy world 

And that is why that on a societal level it is no longer possible to get back on track and has not been for some time. Things are just too far gone. As a culture we cannot get to where we should be from where we are now. When something has grown and become established to the degree that modernity has, it cannot be put right. It can only be completely uprooted and then we must start again from scratch, or if not scratch then something not far off. 

This became even more obvious to me than it already was during the course of writing my recent book on the end times. When I examined certain modern ideologies, it was clear that these were too entrenched in the contemporary mind to be dealt with effectively. The mind will have to receive a great shock to exorcise these thought forms which have sunk so deeply into consciousness that they cannot be erased without a massive upheaval. Even when many people turn to spirituality, they take these ideas with them, and see spirituality through the prism of modernity and its ideological assumptions. This is the legacy of centuries of actual or effective materialism, coupled with the degradation of consciousness that occurs in the end times.

No new political movement can save us. Not even a revival of religion could do that. Such things might correct some of the more extreme forms of crazy thought and behaviour, but they cannot at this stage address fundamental problems, other than superficially. 

This presents a dilemma. Does recognising the reality that real change is no longer possible mean we do nothing or should we at least try to do something while understanding that can never really succeed, though it might make some improvements here and there? Everybody must make his or her own mind up on that score. There is no ready-made answer. The basics of life are simple and will come naturally into view when we are faithful to first principles, the chief of which is to love or, at least, acknowledge God and respect his order, both natural and spiritual. If we get that right everything else will fall into place. If we fail in that then nothing will ever be right. It's like trying to keep the outside of the circle in place when you have lost touch with the centre.

I have sometimes been asked in response to a criticism of the modern world, "Well, what would you do to make things better?" All I can do is point out that this is an impossible question to answer. When the rot has set in so deeply there is nothing you can do. You can't say you should revive Christianity or bring back paganism or abolish communism or democracy or feminism or whatever it might be. In the case of the former, their time of spiritual effectiveness on the societal level has passed. In the case of the latter, they are indelible parts of the modern psyche. We cannot return to where we were and any attempt to do so would fail. All we can do is get our individual houses in order and wait for whatever is coming to clean up the mess. Or, as Jesus said, watch and pray.

This is not a counsel of despair but one of promise. This world was never meant to be the main focus of our lives, meaning our lives in the whole. Eventually, this world will be redeemed and raised up into spirit. The whole of matter will be transformed as Jesus's body was at the Ascension. But that is a long way off. For the time being, the world serves mostly as a training ground for the soul, and one of its functions is as a platform to push against in the search for spirit. Therefore, the fact of its imminent large-scale purification is something to look on with hope. Destruction on one level will lead to resurrection on another. When the degraded environment and corrupted human consciousness are purified by what is to come then a new humanity can arise, cleansed of the dirt it has accumulated over the last several centuries, if not millennia.

A New Age Prophecy

 In the 20th century many mystics believed that we were about to move into a new age when humanity would shrug off its materialism and  dedicate itself to its proper spiritual mission. There were a number of channelled messages that spoke of this, of varying degrees of credibility it has to be said. But besides these messages from discarnate sources there were also prophets in this world who claimed to have received visions of the future, and one of the more striking of these was from the Bulgarian mystic Peter Deunov who, in 1944 at the age of 80 and just a few days before he died, said he was given an insight into the future whilst in a trance state. It is up to us what we make of this as the psychic and mystic worlds are notoriously unreliable with fiction mixed up with fact, but though Deunov was declared a heretic by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, he was by all accounts a devoted Christian, albeit one influenced by the teachings of Rudolf Steiner hence his difficulties with the official church.

I was recently sent this prophecy due to my current interest in the End Times and reproduce it here without comment other than to say it has at the very least a poetic quality that gives it some kind of authenticity. Actually, I will make one comment. I think that visions of this kind are gleaned from the spiritual world, using that term in a broad sense to mean they are picked up from the higher mental plane where the ideas received exist in symbolic form which the mind of the recipient then translates into words according to his own mental settings. So, it may not be literally true but there is truth in it. Make of that what you will.

“During the passage of time, the consciousness of man traversed a very long period of obscurity. This phase which the Hindus call ‘Kali Yuga’, is on the verge of ending. We find ourselves today at the frontier between two epochs: that of Kali Yuga and that of the New Era that we are entering.

A gradual improvement is already occurring in the thoughts, sentiments and acts of humans, but everybody will soon be subjugated to Divine Fire, that will purify and prepare them for the New Era. Thus man will raise himself to a superior degree of consciousness, indispensable to his entrance to the New Life. 

Some decades will pass before this Fire will come, that will transform the world by bringing it a new morality. This immense wave comes from cosmic space and will inundate the entire earth. All those that attempt to oppose it will be carried off and transferred elsewhere.

Although the inhabitants of this planet do not all find themselves at the same degree of evolution, the new wave will be felt by each one of us. And this transformation will not only touch the Earth, but the whole of the Cosmos.

The best and only thing that man can do now is to turn towards God and improve himself consciously, to elevate his vibratory level, so as to find himself in harmony with the powerful wave that will soon submerge him.

The Fire of which I speak, that accompanies the new conditions offered to our planet, will rejuvenate, purify, reconstruct everything: matter will be refined, your hearts will be liberated from anguish, troubles, incertitude, and they will become luminous; everything will be improved, elevated; the thoughts, sentiments and negative acts will be consumed and destroyed.

Your present life is a slavery, a heavy prison. Understand your situation and liberate yourself from it. I tell you this: exit from your prison! It is really sad to see so much misleading, so much suffering, so much incapacity to understand where one’s true happiness lies.

Everything that is around you will soon collapse and disappear. Nothing will be left of this civilization nor its perversity; the entire earth will be shaken and no trace will be left of this erroneous culture that maintains men under the yoke of ignorance. Earthquakes are not only mechanical phenomena, their goal is also to awaken the intellect and the heart of humans, so that they liberate themselves from their errors and their follies and that they understand that they are not the only ones in the universe.

Our solar system is now traversing a region of the Cosmos where a constellation that was destroyed left its mark, its dust. This crossing of a contaminated space is a source of poisoning, not only for the inhabitants of the earth, but for all the inhabitants of the other planets of our galaxy. Only the suns are not affected by the influence of this hostile environment. This region is called “the thirteenth zone”; one also calls it “the zone of contradictions”. Our planet was enclosed in this region for thousands of years, but finally we are approaching the exit of this space of darkness and we are on the point of attaining a more spiritual region, where more evolved beings live.

The earth is now following an ascending movement and everyone should try to harmonize with the currents of the ascension. Those who refuse to align themselves to this orientation will lose the advantage of good conditions that are offered in the future to elevate themselves. They will remain behind in evolution and must wait tens of millions of years for the coming of a new ascending wave.

The earth, the solar system, the universe, all are being put in a new direction under the impulsion of Love. Most of you still consider Love as an insignificant force, but in reality, it is the greatest of all forces! Money and power continue to be venerated as if the course of your life depended upon it. In the future, all will be subjugated to Love and all will serve it. But it is through suffering and difficulties that the consciousness of man will be awakened.

The terrible predictions of the prophet Daniel written in the Bible relate to the epoch that is opening. There will be floods, hurricanes, gigantic fires and earthquakes that will sweep away everything. Blood will flow in abundance. There will be revolutions; terrible explosions will resound in numerous regions of the earth. There where there is earth, water will come, and there where there is water, earth will come. God is Love; yet we are dealing here with a chastisement, a reply by Nature against the crimes perpetrated by man since the night of time against his Mother; the Earth.

After these sufferings, those that will be saved, the elite, will know the Golden Age, harmony and unlimited beauty. Thus keep your peace and your faith when the time comes for suffering and terror, because it is written that not a hair will fall from the head of the just. Don’t be discouraged, simply follow your work of personal perfection.

You have no idea of the grandiose future that awaits you. A New Earth will soon see the light of day. In a few decades the work will be less exacting, and each one will have the time to consecrate spiritual, intellectual and artistic activities. The question of rapport between man and woman will be finally resolved in harmony; each one having the possibility of following their aspirations. The relations of couples will be founded on reciprocal respect and esteem. Humans will voyage through the different planes of space and breakthrough intergalactic space. They will study their functioning and will rapidly be able to know the Divine World, to fusion with the Head of the Universe.

The New Era is that of the sixth race. Your predestination is to prepare yourself for it, to welcome it and to live it. The sixth race will build itself around the idea of Fraternity. There will be no more conflicts of personal interests; the single aspiration of each one will be to conform himself to the Law of Love. The sixth race will be that of Love. A new continent will be formed for it. It will emerge from the Pacific, so that the Most High can finally establish His place on this planet.

The founders of this new civilization, I call them ‘Brothers of Humanity’ or also ‘Children of Love’. They will be unshakeable for the good and they will represent a new type of men. Men will form a family, as a large body, and each people will represent an organ in this body. In the new race, Love will manifest in such a perfect manner, that today’s man can only have a very vague idea.

The earth will remain a terrain favourable to struggle, but the forces of darkness will retreat and the earth will be liberated from them. Humans seeing that there is no other path will engage themselves to the path of the New Life, that of salvation. In their senseless pride, some will, to the end hope to continue on earth a life that the Divine Order condemns, but each one will finish by understanding that the direction of the world doesn’t belong to them.

A new culture will see the light of day, it will rest on three principal foundations: the elevation of woman, the elevation of the meek and humble, and the protection of the rights of mankind.

The light, the good, and justice will triumph; it is just a question of time. Religions should be purified. Each contains a particle of the Teaching of the Masters of Light, but obscured by the incessant supply of human deviation. All the believers will have to unite and to put themselves in agreement with one principal, that of placing Love as the base of all belief, whatever it may be. Love and Fraternity that is the common base! The earth will soon be swept by extraordinary rapid waves of Cosmic Electricity. A few decades from now beings who are bad and lead others astray will not be able to support their intensity. They will thus be absorbed by Cosmic Fire that will consume the bad that they possess. Then they will repent because it is written that “each flesh shall glorify God”.

Our mother, the earth, will get rid of men that don’t accept the New Life. She will reject them like damaged fruit. They will soon not be able to reincarnate on this planet; criminals included. Only those that possess Love in them will remain.

There is not any place on earth that is not dirtied with human or animal blood; she must therefore submit to a purification. And it is for this that certain continents will be submerged while others will surface. Men do not suspect to what dangers they are menaced by. They continue to pursue futile objectives and to seek pleasure. On the contrary those of the sixth race will be conscious of the dignity of their role and respectful of each one’s liberty. They will nourish themselves exclusively from products of the vegetal realm. Their ideas will have the power to circulate freely as the air and light of our days.

The words “If you are not born again” apply to the sixth race. Read Chapter 60 of Isaiah it relates to the coming of the sixth race, the Race of Love.

After the Tribulations, men will cease to sin and will find again the path of virtue. The climate of our planet will be moderated everywhere and brutal variations will no longer exist. The air will once again become pure, the same for water. The parasites will disappear. Men will remember their previous incarnations and they will feel the pleasure of noticing that they are finally liberated from their previous condition.

In the same manner that one gets rid of the parasites and dead leaves on the vine, so act the evolved Beings to prepare men to serve the God of Love. They give to them good conditions to grow and to develop themselves, and to those that want to listen to them, they say: “Do not be afraid! Still a little more time and everything will be all right; you are on the good path. May he that wants to enter in the New Culture study, consciously work and prepare.”

Thanks to the idea of Fraternity, the earth will become a blessed place, and that will not wait. But before, great sufferings will be sent to awaken the consciousness. Sins accumulated for thousands of years must be redeemed. The ardent wave emanating from On High will contribute in liquidating the karma of peoples. The liberation can no longer be postponed. Humanity must prepare itself for great trials that are inescapable and are coming to bring an end to egoism.

Under the earth, something extraordinary is preparing itself. A revolution that is grandiose and completely inconceivable will manifest itself soon in nature. God has decided to redress the earth, and He will do it! It is the end of an epoch; a new order will substitute the old, an order in which Love will reign on earth.”

Some of this is standard New Age fare which always seems to me to forget that this world exists as a training ground for souls and that the creation of Heaven on Earth will not necessarily help with that process. But certainly the world could be a lot better than it is. There's no doubt about that. Nonetheless, this world exists to prepare us for heaven, not to be heaven until, perhaps, the end of time when it becomes the New Jerusalem and is taken up into Heaven itself. But I don't see that as just around the corner. However, he does say that the earth will remain a terrain favourable for struggle so the sense of a training ground does still exist in some form.

The bit I find the most interesting is the idea that our corrupt state is partly the result of the Earth moving through what you might call a diseased part of the Galaxy and that when we come out of that our own nature will improve. We have been infected by the cosmic environment. There is also the thought that those that do not make the grade will be taken elsewhere to continue with their spiritual evolution, in effect they will have failed their exams and be held back. Deunov says for tens of millions of years which is a chilling prospect. Nonetheless, I think this is correct and that we are coming to a point where we self-select our future with, as far as I can see, only a relatively small minority continuing on this Earth if/when it undergoes purification. One needs to remember  that this prophecy comes from 1944 to appreciate some of the points in context. For example, the elevation of women which has happened but in the wrong way. He also says this will come about in a few decades. It's been 8 decades since then and I would not call that a few but then timing is notoriously unreliable in prophecies. For what it's worth, it does coincide with Indian, Christian and Hopi (Native American) tradition, in that the end times conclude with societal and environmental, even geological, breakdown with a new beginning promised afterwards to a purified and much reduced remnant of humanity, and that time does seem closer than ever.

The Fox's Prophecy

This is a chapter from my book about the End Times 

It is not just in the great myths and religions of the world that the end times are foretold. The Fox’s Prophecy is an English poem written in about 1870 by a Mr D.W. Nash about whom not much seems to be known. The scene is set on a beautiful crisp November morning in the Cotswolds when “the diamonds of the hoar-frost were sparkling in the sun” and “the varied tints of autumn still lingered in the wood”. A huntsman becomes separated from his hounds and turning to look for them he is suddenly “struck by an aged fox that sat beneath a tree”. Surprise turns to astonishment when the fox fixes his “sparkling eye, which shone with an unearthly fire” on the huntsman and addresses him “like a Christian man”. The talking fox says that as the last of his race he has been given the power of prophecy, and he proceeds to unfold a vision of the future which is not a happy one. 

 

The fox is clearly no ordinary beast but a supernatural being, and the fact that he is the last of his race tells us that the supernatural is on the point of being chased away from the everyday world and to its great detriment because without some contact with the supernatural we fall into complete materialism, as indeed we have. Materialism does not just mean that the spiritual is no longer regarded as real. It means that everything is sacrificed to the utilitarian and the monetary, hence the modern obsession with the economy and the destruction of beauty unless it can be made economically viable.

 

The fox first predicts the end of hunting, but he says he regrets this because the end of hunting means the end of traditional rural life, of community and living according to the seasons of nature. He says that “not upon these hills alone, the doom of sport shall fall: O’er the broad face of England creeps, The shadow on the wall.” Thus, he equates the demise of foxhunting as going along with a more general decline. It doesn’t cause that decline but the state of mind that ends hunting has other much broader effects as well. “Hedgerow and copse shall cease to shade the ever-widening field” is a prediction that has certainly come true.  But then he says that “The manly sports of England shall vanish one by one;…The manly blood of England in weaker veins shall run.” England was the first nation to industrialise and reap the benefits of a reduction in infant mortality through such things as improved sanitation and healthcare. In 1800 the infant mortality rate was 33%, in 1870 when the poem was written 26% of children died before their fifth birthday, but now the figure stands at 4%. On the face of it this is an unmitigated good, but nothing is that simple. What is happening in this case is that the weaker are surviving and adverse genetic mutations that would have been weeded out of the stock by natural selection are carrying on and spreading. Forget the moral issues for the moment. On a purely pragmatic level the consequences are what they are, and the fox was right. Moreover, these adverse genetic mutations (and the vast majority of mutations are adverse) do not just have an impact on physical well-being but affect the brain even more as 84% of the genome is active in that organ, more than any other part of the body. This will potentially lead to personality disorders, problems with mental health and even decline in intelligence. All predicted by the fox in a couple of pithy lines and again further on when he says, “Degenerate sons of manlier sires to lower joys shall fall”.

 

The fox goes on with his tale of woe as the ancient landmarks sink under the waves of progress, time-honoured creeds go down and traditional faith becomes a joke though there arise a swarm of new self-made religions. Education is dominated by utilitarians who do not teach how to think but what to think. “The only god is gold” needs no comment, and the fox then predicts the ravages wrought by feminism when he says, “The homes where love and peace should dwell, fierce politics shall vex, and unsexed woman strive to prove herself the coarser sex.”

 

Politicians become useless demagogues, and the army and navy are cast aside as too costly to maintain. The wise fox even predicts the mass immigration of recent years. “The footsteps of the invader then England’s shore shall know”, and the country becomes “disarmed before the foreigner ….and yield(s) the treasures she lacked the wisdom to defend”.

 

All is not doom and gloom, however. The fox foresees a restoration when “purged by fire and sword, the land her freedom shall regain”, and “taught wisdom by disaster” with “the greed of gold departed….Old England’s sons again shall raise the Altar and the Crown”. At this point the cry of the hounds breaks in on the scene and the fox vanishes leaving the huntsman alone to shake his head in wonder as indeed he might, given that the numinous has just broken in on his everyday world. No one is ever left the same after such an experience.

 

When I first read this poem I was reminded of the Prophecy of Hermes which is a very different but at the same time similar work from around 300 A.D. Contained in the Book of Asclepius, it describes the downfall of ancient Egypt when it abandons the gods. It is different because it is much more religious in tone, but it is similar in that it predicts the tragedy of cultural loss through human ignorance, egotism and materialism. In the Egyptian case there is a spiritual restoration when God “cleanses the world from evil, now washing it away with water-floods, now burning it out with fiercest fire, or again expelling it by war and pestilence”. This is proper end times, conclusion of the cycle stuff. The fox’s version is simpler and humbler though it too includes a purging by fire.

 

The fox’s view is simpler because it is a peasant’s or countryman’s version of the end time scenario that is more concerned with national than spiritual loss though there is an overlap. Don’t forget the fox may be a supernatural being but he is still a member of the animal kingdom. His prophecy is written not from grand metaphysical insight like the Egyptian one and others, but a deep instinct that comes from being in tune with the environment and a sensitivity to changes which do not arise organically. It lacks the spiritual awareness of more sophisticated versions but makes up for that by its sympathy with the natural and the traditional which serve as guides to right thought and behaviour. The fox realises that the modern world is abandoning these things to go its own way, and sees it as being very much the loser by that. He speaks from an awareness of natural rhythms and cycles, and knows that when human beings turn their back on nature and act on egotism they fall into materialism and greed which lead to disaster. But he has no real understanding of the spiritual processes involved behind all that so the restoration he foretells is of a much more elementary nature. His prophecy is accurate as far as it goes but it doesn’t go far enough.

 

The Decomposition of the World

Here is a short excerpt from my book about the end times. 

An important point to grasp about the end times is that they are the result of a process of decomposition. In old age the body breaks down and then it breaks up and is returned to the elements whence it arose, eventually to provide material for new life. This is what is taking place in the world today, and it is a natural part of the stage of the cycle in which we now live. That is one aspect of our current situation.

However, taking advantage of this process, riding on its back, as it were, are the dark forces which have the aim of separating human beings from their divine origins, partly to use them as energy sources since they can no longer receive energy directly from God so they must take it in a downgraded form, partly to make psychic slaves which can serve them and partly because that is the nature of a being voided of light which is what they are and why their name is what it is. You have, therefore, this dual process in which natural decay is hurried along with deliberate stimulation and encouragement, and it applies to the psychological and spiritual realms even more than to the physical. Not true spiritual but spiritual as it is perceived and visualised in terms of the human mind.

Once you understand that our modern world is in a state of spiritual decay much about it becomes clearer. Our material affluence is both an inheritance from the past and the result of focus on the material plane, but it hides a yawning chasm of spiritual emptiness. Even liberalism, surprising as it may sound to the mind brought up on it, is the result of intellectual and moral decomposition, order dissolving into disorder and structure into chaos, which is not to say that conservatism in our day is any solution as that is mostly just a reaction against liberalism and not grounded, as it should be, in spiritual understanding.

There is no outer thing, group, institution, organisation or even religion, in our world that can protect against the dissolving qualities of the end times. That is because they are all affected by those qualities. Some more than others but all are affected. Your only recourse is to go within and forge your own link to God, and that is what you are meant to do. You can certainly use outer things for support and guidance if you find that helpful but you should do so with discrimination. You cannot rely on anything external to save you. That doesn't mean you can save yourself but you must go within to find that which can save you.

End Times Introduction

 This is part of the introduction to what I am currently calling, following a suggestion by JM Smith, Surviving the End Times.

Ever since the beginning of Christianity a large group of believers have thought they were living in the end times and prepared accordingly. Basing this belief on the words of Jesus himself and the book of Revelation, they saw the world around them as lapsing into spiritual decay and human beings as falling away from God into self-concern and atheism. For them this prefigured the return of Christ in glory and the salvation of all those who believed in him.

It never happened. Despite Jesus’ words that "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled", the end times never came. But this didn’t stop many subsequent generations from believing that they too were living at a time of universal decline. Now we in the 21^st century are faced with a similar dilemma. You could think, here we go again. Those believers never learn from their mistakes. How they must love their pessimism and the sense of self-righteousness it gives them.

 

But something is different today. The signs of spiritual decay are more obvious than ever before with not just atheism and materialism dominating the minds of most people but even spirituality, where it exists, being often just a form of therapy aimed at comforting the lower self rather than enabling one to go beyond it. And then Christianity has spread all over the world, as predicted must happen before the end times, but its power has greatly waned, especially in its former heartlands, and Christians themselves are increasingly persecuted, on the one hand, while, on the other, their churches have fallen into a sort of secular humanism, voided of the supernatural element and more concerned with this world than the next. Meanwhile even many non-religious people, especially since the turn of the millennium, feel that history has run its course and no longer look with optimism towards a brighter future, but see instead one of growing poverty and cultural loss.

 

This book takes for granted that we are indeed living in the end times though whether these extend for several more years or decades or even longer is a different question. If even Jesus said that only the Father knows when these things will happen, it makes little sense to speculate. Nor is there any real speculation here as to how the end times may conclude or what comes after. Christians expect the advent of the Antichrist followed by the return of Christ himself, and a more universal tradition sees the conclusion of the current Iron Age in large-scale destruction followed by a new Golden Age. Given that spiritual ideas are often expressed symbolically, these could be pointing towards the same thing which is not to say that Christ is just one more avatar among many, but that pre-Christian and pagan ideas were visions of what became reality with Christ.

 

Entropy exists in the spiritual sense as well as the physical. At the start of a new cycle spiritual energy is released into the world from above and it forms a new culture which subsequently runs through the normal stages of growth, maturity, decline and death. The initial energy can be renewed at various points in the cycle, rather like saints can revivify religion, but there comes a time when even this possibility has passed. Now, we live at a time when spiritual energy has dissipated to such an extent that the power of matter has asserted itself over everything. The physical and natural environments have actually hardened and coarsened while, on the mental plane, everyone is cut off from the presence of spirit. This affects even believers which is why saints and miracles are so thin on the ground these days. I do not say that there are no evolved souls around. There may, paradoxically enough, be many but they too will suffer from the world conditions which are universal.

 

In this book we will examine the end times from a variety of perspectives. We will look at its manifestations, some of which are often regarded as positive by those still in thrall to the psychological consequences of the end times inversion of spirit and matter, and consider its significance from the spiritual perspective. We will look at ways in which the soul may separate itself from the downwards pull of end times energy and also examine how greater familiarity with the ideas of tradition might rescue modern people brought up and educated, brainwashed one might say, in modern ways which are ways that derive from the afore-mentioned inverted ideology of end times energy in which quantity and matter take precedence over quality and spirit. The subject has endless ramifications and we will only look at a selection of them, but if one bears in mind the basic theme of the end times, that being the dominance of matter over spirit, it becomes easy to recognise it and therefore resist it in almost every walk of life here and now in the 21^stcentury. That way lies freedom because if you submit to the end times energy, notwithstanding the fact that no one can fully escape it, you are a spiritual slave. These days it is necessary to swim against the current but, in so doing, we develop our spiritual muscles more than we might do in a more convivial age.