A Reader's Question

I recently received an email from a private correspondent which I think expresses feelings many people are currently experiencing and so, with permission, I include it here together with my response.

"I must say this corona virus time is not a walk in the park for me and I guess that is true for many many other people.

I am suffering more than ever before. I cannot go into details, but sometimes the tension and pain seem to be unbearable. The worst is also that despite my prayers and meditations, I seem to stay in the midst of a dark night of the soul. Sometimes I can understand those folks talking about ascension, especially in the US because I too feel these symptoms. There is, they say, a huge transition taking place to another dimension. We are evolving from a carbon body to the light body. Many scientists-pioneers in different fields like Candice Pert, Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden, Rupert Sheldrake, Lynn Mc Taggart, Erwin Laszlo, David Wilcock. Masaru Emoto etc seem to come to the same conclusion of the some spiritual traditions, that there is a unifying field of consciousness at the basis of all this and that everything is ONE. Again, I am confronted here with the question how this relates to my Christian faith. Another issue is the evolution of consciousness. And still another the wisdom traditions. 

Cynthia Bourgeault, Richard Rohr, Raimundo Panikkar, Teilhard de Chardin etc are all going into a seemingly other direction through these ideas. There is also an amazing work by a Catholic, published anonymously but subsequently shown to be by Valentin Tomberg , with an afterword by the great theologian Hans von Balthasar. The different spiritual opinions can be confusing.

I see people around me laughing and enjoying things and that I compare them with my situation. I would like to know your opinion about all this."

My reply was as follows:

"I'm sorry to hear that you are going through a time of suffering but I really do think that for all spiritually inclined people this present period is like a baptism by fire. We know that the world is mad and even evil at the moment, now more than ever, but still we are caught up in it. We have to accept that it is our destiny and God's will that we go through this time. I can tell you that there are several things in my own life that are difficult now. It comes to us all, I fear. It is a big mistake to think that we can experience some kind of permanent spiritual state of consciousness in this life. This life is for learning not for joy. Joy comes sometimes and should be treasured but we cannot expect the fullness of joy until after we have left this world. That would simply stop the learning process. This is something that does actually happen to many spiritual people. They think they have reached the goal and thereafter they stagnate and that means they go backwards.

I don't think we are evolving out of our physical bodies into light bodies just yet. That lies way off in the future. Even the greatest of saints rarely experience this and saints are few and far between. I know some of the names you mention but I'm not that interested in them except Tomberg whose book is a classic. For me they fall into the New Age category which I feel is now slightly out of date. It arose at a time when people wanted to explore spirituality beyond Christianity but many of them lost Christ in the process as he got swallowed up in a generic mysticism. The problem with that is that you start to see yourself as the source of your own divine power and lose touch with the real God. Tomberg is good precisely because he avoided this error.

Anyhow, try to stay cheerful. Cheerfulness was one of the qualities the ancient yogis were supposed to cultivate and everyone knows the value of positive thinking. The spiritual counterpart, hope, is one of the three theological virtues. This may be a dark time but there really is light at the end of the tunnel for those who stay spiritually hopeful and true. We have to be tested to be found spiritually worthy, and the trials may be hard but the rewards are eternal.

Yes, people are laughing and enjoying things but I expect they were just before the Flood too. I am not predicting that but still most people are quite oblivious to the reality of the situation. Those of us who are aware of the spiritual disaster zone that is the 21st century should be grateful that we are so aware. What is worse? To be aware and to suffer or to be ignorant but content and carry on sinning which is what most do even if the sin is "only" neglecting God. When it comes down to it that may be the greatest sin of all."

The Fall and the Rise

Somebody asked me how I could square the idea of a fall with the theory that we are evolving to higher states as I believe in both of these and, at first sight, they might appear contradictory. If we once lived in Paradise and knew neither good nor evil, how could we ever change? Why should we ever change?

That's a good question but I think the two ideas can be reconciled without too much trouble.

We were always intended to evolve from unconscious to conscious oneness. That is, from a state of passive non-separation from life to a creative union with it in which we could wield its powers in love. God created us as individuals and we were intended to grow to personal godhood through expressing our individuality. A static condition was never envisaged. But something went wrong and this evolution is consequently harder and longer with more suffering involved. But it still proceeds towards the always intended goal of divine union.

If Adam and Eve had not sinned by disobeying God then sin and death would not have entered the world. I am not saying that I believe in the literalness of the account in Genesis but it does contain a very profound truth presented as a simple story which all can understand. What actually took place probably did not occur in the physical world at all and was unlikely to have been the responsibility of just two individuals. It seems more reasonable to speculate that humanity as a whole, such as it was at the time, took a collective wrong turn, no doubt instigated in part by the forces of evil as the story says, and the result of that was a descent to a lower dimension of being in which full separation from the creative source of life was known. This had the knock-on effect of allowing for the development of individual consciousness but also meant there was nothing to stop that development from proceeding into permanent separation from God with no chance of a return until Christ was born to give that chance to those who would accept it.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen I believe they would still have developed as individuals but in an environment in which their growth proceeded without pain and suffering, and in an orderly way that was what you might call spiritually organic. It would have been a natural progression, as a tree grows or as physical growth occurs in human beings. Now, our spiritual growth is uncertain, sporadic and may not even occur. Without the Fall growth would have been rhythmically arranged, like seasonal change, and without pain. Because of the Fall it involves much greater hardship and is not inevitable.

God can bring good out of evil. The Fall was evil. I think that those who theorise that it was an intended part of the cycle of growth, on the basis that knowledge of good and evil allows for self-consciousness and the growth of mind, are mistaken. These things would have happened but they would have happened in a different, presumably better, way. God did not mean to leave Adam and Eve, nascent humanity, sitting in the Garden of Eden picking fruit forever. He meant them to become gods themselves, beings in whom (perhaps in contradistinction to the angels) spirit and matter were united and who could create something new out of that union. (Note: this is where those who acknowledge the reality of duality are more spiritually perspicacious than those who espouse a purely monistic philosophy - as long as their duality is grounded in monism.) He meant them to evolve according to the root meaning of that word which is to unfold. So this evolution is not of the Darwinian kind but the unfolding and expression of already present, albeit in a rudimentary form, elements. 

Human beings fell into a lower state of being through the misuse of their free will. But they can rise in the same way by reorienting their will to divine reality. I don't know if this can only be done through Christ but I do think it is best done through Christ. Before his advent the way to escape the prison house of matter (in that it had become separated from God, not absolutely because then it would cease to exist but apparently) was by renouncing it in the manner of a Buddha. But Christ, through his life and death, reopened the connection between spirit and matter and enabled the union between the two to take place which they first fully did at his Ascension. Christ brought the light of spirit to the darkness of matter and gives us the opportunity to do the same. 

If we had not fallen we would still have risen from Paradise towards Heaven (looking at those things in terms of conscious connection to God) but this would have been a natural process. Now it's not natural but it's possible that through the experience of sin and death something is gained by those who overcome them that would not have been available to us before. Might that be a deeper awareness of the reality of love?

How Do You Know?

This is a question I have been asked many times. The reply below is an expanded version of what I usually say.

Q. How do you know what you say is right and not just the product of your imagination?

A. That is a reasonable question but I would point to several factors which confirm the truth of what is written here though these tend more to the general than the particular. For instance, I have no doubt that basic reality is spiritual, that Jesus Christ is the prime exemplar of that reality, that there is meaning and purpose to life, that demonic activity takes place which seeks to destroy that purpose, that we are living during a period roughly corresponding to the Biblical end times and so on. But a matter like reincarnation, in which I also believe as the means consciousness evolves, is of lesser importance.

So what are these factors? First of all, I have to put my experience with the Masters as detailed in the book shown on the right. Obviously this is a personal thing but I would hope that most people who read the book feel that it has, at least, a certain plausibility and maybe even the ring of truth. These Masters were spiritual beings who spoke with the knowledge of having transcended the limitations of this world and the human form. They had realised their oneness with God. When they spoke they did so from direct experience of a sort that went beyond the need for subjective interpretation. I would like to think that something of that comes through in the book even though it has to do so through a very imperfect medium - me!

Secondly, there is scripture and revelation. Either one believes these things or one doesn't but I cannot see how anyone reading the Bible, specifically the Gospels, can fail to detect that here is the description of something real and, more than that, something holy in the sense of carrying a truth not of this world. Particularly insofar as the figure of Jesus is concerned. The sheer quality of his teaching and the profound beauty of his person leave no room for doubt to a mind that is not too corrupted by this world. Across 2,000 years Jesus is more vividly real than any other person, alive or dead.

Connected to scripture there is tradition. Tradition is the residue of humanity's best understanding about life. Just as the best works of art survive down the ages (generally) and the second rate is weeded out, so humanity's best ideas survive the rigorous examination of time and become tradition, tried, tested and found true. And tradition speaks with one voice of the reality of the spiritual world. Details differ but the fundamental reality of God is confirmed by tradition. It is only the present age, blinded by its own narrow focus, that doesn't see this.

This leads to the next factor, in some respects the most important of all because it is the most personal and the one that goes the deepest. It is intuition. Now clearly that is a vague word which can be used to cover many different things from emotional responses to wishful thinking to half-formed impressions etc. But proper intuitive insight is not a vague thing at all. It is direct knowledge and is a faculty of the mind that begins to develop as you start to go beyond your limited self and align yourself with reality. To be sure, much is called intuition that is not this. It generally comes from people who have begun to be aware of  the intuitive faculty but have not yet developed it enough to be able to discern what comes from their own self and what comes from a deeper level. However that does not alter the fact that real intuitive insight does exist and it is the voice of God within us, just as, in a different way, conscience is too. Intuition is, quite simply, seeing with the mind. Not thinking or feeling but seeing.

Connected to intuition are two other things which I should mention. One available to us all, the other not. The first is common sense. Common sense has been under attack over the last century or so because the increasing intellectual polarisation of humanity has tended to focus the mind on the plane of theory and abstract thought. This can help us to understand what we know but it can also get in the way of real knowing which is replaced by knowledge. We lose connection to common sense and get caught up in ideas which may or may not be based in reality. Common sense tells us that this world is not all there is to life.

The second thing connected to intuition is impression. I was told by my teachers, and I believe this because I have occasionally been conscious of it, that they sought to guide me through impressing thoughts on my mind at a higher spiritual level which I would then have to bring down to the mental level. Thoughts in this connection does not just mean ideas in the conventional sense of that word but living spiritual realities as in the thoughts of God are real things. The truths impressed would need to be interpreted by my brain because they are not given in verbal form, but the main thing required is to interfere with the thought as little as possible. Not to put too much of oneself into it, though it would necessarily have to be expressed in the mental language of the person concerned.

A final confirmation that the points made here about the spiritual world are grounded in reality and not just wild speculation or fantasy on my part is what you might call the signs of the times. It's becoming increasingly apparent that the world today corresponds to descriptions given in Christian, Hindu and other scriptures about the end of an age when connection to spiritual truth is lost and human beings see themselves as existing only in material terms with all the concomitant illusions, misconceptions and overturning of the natural order that brings. The spiritual pole of essence is overshadowed by the material pole of substance. Normally there should be a balance between the two with the latter being seen in terms of the former, but at the end of an age this true state is reversed as substance increasingly dominates essence. Who could deny that this is the current state of affairs? It results in many upheavals as traditional understandings and hierarchies are overturned and new ones are established, based on the false perception of matter being the determining reality. For some it is liberating to be freed from the constraints of the past, but others see this as tragic since it separates us from all that is good and true as well as all that is highest and best in ourselves.

For it should be borne in mind that the constraint of the natural has as its purpose the eventual blossoming of the spiritual. Obviously when these constraints are lifted (the sexual revolution being a prime example), and all attention is focused on the physical plane, there is a great initial sense of freedom. The destruction of traditional forms releases an energy which is very exciting to begin with but this is soon dissipated and the inevitable hangover follows the binge. And then you have nothing left. You're like the profligate young man who blows his inheritance in riotous living and ends up in poverty. This is happening to us for we have squandered our spiritual inheritance and, as a result, we do now live in great spiritual poverty, all the worse for being largely unrecognised. All this was predicted, and these predictions support the thesis of those who say that we must turn to a proper spiritual understanding both of the world and of ourselves if we would find a way out of our impasse. There really is nowhere else to go.

These are the things on which I base the writings here but ultimately the question posed above is of secondary importance. What really matters is whether what is said here calls forth a response in you, the reader. If it does, that can only mean that, on some level, you already know it.

Why Does God Allow It?

Further to my last post, there was a comment on Bruce Charlton's post (which inspired mine) asking why God allowed the demons to manipulate our world to the extent they do. Why are we left defenceless against their onslaught? What chance do we have?

I've put my thoughts on this question over on Albion Awakening.

The Divine Androgyne

I received the following interesting question in a comment on the Same Sex Marriage post. (See here.) It strikes me as worth exploring in rather more detail than a comment at the end of a thread allows so I include my response with the question that prompted it here.

Q. Rabbinical literature contains a belief that Adam was first an androgyne made in God's image. Only later when God realised that Adam was lonely, did he split Adam in two; the 'rib' was in fact the female half of the androgyne Adam.

The phrase used to describe woman’s creation from man’s rib – mi-tzalotav – actually means an entire side of his body because the word “tsela`” in it is used in the book of Exodus to refer to one side of the holy Tabernacle.

Young's Literal Translation of Genesis 5:2 reads,

"a male and a female He hath prepared them, and He blesseth them, and calleth their name Man [or Adam - the word for the forename, and human being are the same] in the day of their being prepared."

If the first human was originally androgyne, and made in God's image, then God contains both male and female. That which was created first, is surely a higher expression of creation, nearer to God the creator, and something human beings are attempting to regain. Part of that might be the loss of separate maleness and femaleness in the post-mortal state - a return to the divine androgyne spiritually.

Young's Literal Translation of Matthew 22:30 says,

"for in the rising again they do not marry, nor are they given in marriage, but are as messengers of God in heaven."

There seems to be no need for sex in heaven.

Might it not be that homosexuals contain both male and female qualities within the one body, and that they may be spiritually advanced? This is not to say that therefore gay marriage is correct. It may be possible that gay people are ignoring their advanced spiritual natures when they turn to other gay people for sexual expression, and that their true role is to use their combined male/female soul (or even spirit) to teach others the way back to God.

In native American culture, there is the concept of the two-spirits people. These are individuals who we would recognise as gay. The two spirits refers to the belief that these people have a male and a female spirit within, and they often have a special spiritual role within the tribe, that we would call priest.

Perhaps the native American people are recognising what rabbinical literature recognises, and that I have outlined?

A. I have heard this theory before and can see the attraction of it.  There’s a similar story in Plato, though it’s not meant to be taken literally there. However it has several problems for me. If homosexuality reflected some state of divine perfection, as in the archetypal androgynous being, we would expect the majority of gay people to be strongly spiritual, and, though certainly some homosexuals are drawn to spirituality, that isn't the case for most.  We would also expect the divine ideal as manifested in Jesus to be like that, and there is no indication that he was. He may have had certain traditionally feminine characteristics, gentleness, compassion and such like, but these were spiritually expressed not physically or emotionally, and they were within the overall context of strong masculinity.  It's the same with all highly advanced spiritual people, saints and mystics.  They are not androgynous, which if this theory were correct they would be. They are definitely male or female.

To me homosexuality is best explained by the theory of reincarnation, though there may be psychological reasons in many cases as well. But I believe all souls are male or female, created in pairs, and if a feminine soul is born in a male body for whatever reason, karma, lessons to be learned etc, homosexuality may be the result. But this does not make them prototypes of androgyny nor does it legitimise the physical expression of homosexuality. The lesson might be to turn away from sexuality not embrace or explore it, just the opposite to what is happening nowadays. You suggest that yourself.

I see the divine androgyne theory as relating to uncreated spirit but not to the world of creation. It is a symbol expressing an inner spiritual truth in an outer materialised form. God created the two sexes so that love, one being fulfilled by the other, could be known and expressed. He contains everything within himself, of course, though as Creator He is masculine with the whole of creation as His Bride. That may even be a reason for him creating. Outwardly projecting a feminine, receptive side in order to get a wife!

So the two sexes can complete each other in love. That could not possibly be the case with two androgynous beings who would not need this completion and so could not know this love. It’s clear that marriage and sex only make sense in the context of two sexes. A true androgyne, by definition, would have no need of either. They would be meaningless, and so the love and creativity they provide could not be experienced.

So basically androgyny relates to inner consciousness not the expression of a being in form. Spirit not soul. It’s a confusion of levels to think it applies to created beings in their outer expression. We are spirit, soul and body. Spirit, which is our being, may well be androgynous. Soul and body which is our individuality and its outer expression have sexual qualities being either male or female, not both except when things have gone amiss which in a fallen world is always possible.

I believe that some people are born homosexual to push them into spirituality. That is why you find quite a few homosexuals at early and intermediate stages of developing spiritual awareness, but not so many at the latter stages in which all aspects of one's inner being have been brought into balance.

And from personal experience I can confirm that the beings I spoke to were all male except on one memorable occasion when the person who spoke was definitely female, even though this was through a male medium. These beings were fully developed spiritually but they were still men and women or the spiritual equivalents thereof.

So I have to say that I believe homosexuality to be the result of living in a fallen world and not an indicator of future evolutionary attainment. That is why it plays out primarily on a sexual level. If it indicated an advanced spiritual state, homosexuals would be completely self-sufficient sexually and not require any outer completion. But that is clearly not the case.

If you are born homosexual by all means seek a companion but know that love should be pure which means, hard as it may sound, its physical expression should be limited to male and female and the creation of a family. It should, at least, have this potential to be in line with spiritual truth and God’s will for humanity.

To sum up, my feeling is that you should not project spiritual realities pertaining to the uncreated world onto the material plane of creation, which is one of the interaction between polarities. And even on the inner spiritual planes the same rules apply as long as you are talking about conditions in which any kind of expressed duality exists. 

A final point. You say human beings are attempting to regain the androgynous state, but surely the reason for creation was to introduce multiplicity into oneness so that love and beauty and goodness could all be positively expressed? To go back to a pre-creation state of oneness on all levels (though there could be no levels in such a state, of course) takes away the whole point and purpose of creation. We have to see the androgyne as a symbol of undifferentiated spiritual being and not an actually real thing once creation has occurred. Nor is it a suitable symbol for the end point. For the end is like the beginning in some respects, in that oneness is realized, but not like it in others in that differentiation is preserved. That’s why creation and evolution make things better than they were in the uncreated or pre-creation state. We are not aiming to go back to what we were but to advance to something new and higher. There is a purpose to creation, and that is to bring difference into undifferentiated being. Yes, we return to  inner oneness but a oneness which is expressed in multiple ways, through countless individual beings who manifest either masculinity or femininity (as even the Sun and the Moon do) which, in a universe based on polarity, they must. The androgynous state only exists in terms of unmanifested being, but in that state no actual qualities are expressed at all.