Thoughts on the New Pope

 It's understandable that Catholics are happy they have a new pope. A page has been turned and there is naturally a feeling of optimism for the future. Not being a Catholic, I have a slightly different perspective. It may be that the pope makes a difference to rank and file religious Catholics, but from the deeper spiritual perspective the pope is irrelevant. I know nothing about the new incumbent but while a good pope is better than a bad pope (though different people will define good and bad differently in this context), the pope is merely the representative of an outer institution. That institution may carry some spiritual force derived from the inner worlds, but in and of itself it is an outer thing which means it is of the world. This is even more the case in our day when all outer forms have less contact with spirit than has ever been the case - and that includes all religious institutions and organisations.

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. No doubt this can be interpreted in various ways, and clever theologians will bend it to say what they want it to, but its essential meaning is obvious. Spirit cannot be put in a bottle, any bottle. Some bottles are beautiful and some are cunningly fashioned but even those that hold refreshing liquid cannot hold more than a limited amount, and people who wish to drink deeply from the well of life must go elsewhere. The great problem in being a Catholic is that you have to be a Catholic. That is to say, your Catholicism must take spiritual precedence over your own connection to God. But God created you. He did not create the Church. Even if you believe Matthew 16:18 as interpreted, God is certainly in you more deeply than he is in the Church. For the ordinary man or woman it may be enough, but for those who wish to know the mysteries of existence more fully there is a point at which adherence to an outer structure becomes spiritually limiting.

I'm writing this for those who already, in some part, agree with its premise. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything they don't believe, and any faithful Catholics who come across this piece will reject it out of hand which is fine. But for those who have doubts, I would say use the church as support if you wish but seek the deepest truth within yourself. You are made in God's image. The church is not. It may be able to guide those who cannot yet find the spirit within themselves, but it is not the living image of God as you truly are.

The time has come when God will only be found by those who are willing to break barriers and cross frontiers. I do not mean this in a rule-breaking or antinomian sense, but in the sense of going beyond the everyday. It is the pioneers exploring new land who will find God not those who remain in known territory. This is not an excuse for individualism or anything that goes against nature. What was unlawful remains unlawful. However, new wine cannot go into old wineskins, and the Catholic Church, like all churches, is an old wineskin. You don't have to reject it because the truth that was in it remains in it, and transcending something means seeing it in a new light, from above, not necessarily rejecting it completely. But you do have to expand beyond it.

This can be a dangerous doctrine because not everybody is ready to strike out into the spiritual wilds. However, the rewards if you are and if you can do so with humility and wisdom are commensurate with the risk. It may be the new pope can reorient the Catholic church to its traditional self, though I personally doubt it. In any case, in our day, that is no longer enough.

Table Talk by Coleridge

The excerpts below are quotes from Table Talk by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which consists of recollections of his conversations published after his death by his nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge. I came across the first one recently and thought it very pertinent to our present time, particularly with relevance to the reaction during the recent health scare. So I looked through an online version of the book and found it full of similar pithy observations, a few of which I reproduce here with an occasional comment in italics

 

 There is the love of the good for the good’s sake, and the love of the truth for the truth’s sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good’s sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth’s sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth – the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry.

One should add that the real good is the same as the real true so it is the apparent or even the false good that people, especially women, prefer to the real good, and this is because it makes greater appeal to their feelings or to their desire for comfort, safety and general 'niceness'.

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire — which is  not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work — may be stated in  two words : — the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation. 

This is not exactly two words but one can see what he means, and it could be said to be what is happening to the West now.

 

Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals  of distinct races cross, a third, or tertium aliquid is invariably produced, different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to what we call chance ; it is now like one,  now like the other parent. Note this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European complexions, — as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and Portuguese, and so on. 

I have noticed this in people of my acquaintance.

 

There are two principles in every European and Christian state: Permanency and Progression. In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural that the great and the good of the nation should be found in the ranks of either side. 

Many of the present problems are caused by the abandonment of what Coleridge calls the sense of Permanency.

 

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind;  just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts — and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of a soul within us that makes the difference. 

Bring back the use of the word 'methinks'.

 

This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me some political pamphlets of the times of Charles I and the Cromwellate. In them the premises are frequently wrong, but the deductions are almost always legitimate; whereas, in the writings of the present day, the premises are commonly sound, but the conclusions false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to the University of Oxford for preserving the study of logic in the schools. It is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for it. 

You could apply this to our age in the sense that reasoned discourse stripped of ideology is becoming rarer, but I suspect that could have been said of many other times too.

 

St. John's logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in position and parallel; whilst St. Paul displays all the intricacies of the Greek system.

The mystic and the philosopher.

 

The first three Gospels show the history, that is, the fulfilment of  the prophecies in the facts. St. John declares explicitly the doctrine, oracularly, and without comment, because, being pure reason, it can only be proved by itself. For Christianity proves itself, as the sun is seen by its own light. Its evidence is involved in its existence. St Paul writes more particularly for the dialectic understanding; and proves those doctrines, which were capable of such proof, by common logic. 

A proof of Christianity lies in the fact that it offers us more than we could have ever hoped for or imagined.

 

St. John used the term Logos technically. Philo-Judaeus had so used it several years before the probable date of the composition of this Gospel; and it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish Rabbis at that time, and afterwards, of the manifested God. The Jewish Church understood the Messiah to be a divine person. Philo expressly cautions against anyone's supposing the Logos to be a mere personification, or symbol. He says the Logos is a substantial, self-existent Being. The Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind of Arians; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. They placed the Abyss and Silence before him. Therefore it was that St. John said, with emphasis, “ln the beginning was the Word." He was begotten in the first simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression may be pardoned, in speaking of eternal existence. 

To assert that God is a Person is not a childish projection but the most advanced religious doctrine.

 

The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be so.

It certainly has and even more so today.

 

Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.

As now when completely incompatible ideologies unite to contest the real.

Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is Pythagoras.

It's a pity we know Plato by his nickname or we could talk of Aristocles (his real name) and Aristotle. Apparently he was given this nickname, which means broad as in broad-chested, by his wrestling coach. All philosophers should have a wrestling coach.

 

In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The ancients had no notion of the fall of man, though they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most part in Aeschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together. 

An interesting insight.

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

If the highest state of matter is to reflect spirit perfectly you can see what he means here.

The man's desire is for the woman ; but the woman's desire is  rarely other than for the desire of the man. 

A generalisation but not without substance.

 

I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Everything really that is intellectually great in that country seems to me of Grecian origin.

Sometimes he gets it wrong. On the other hand (and see below), the Greeks did make rational what the Egyptians seemed only to understand intuitively.

 

There was, I conceive, one great Japetic original of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanskrit, range as species. The Japetic race separated 

into two branches; one, with a tendency to migrate south-west, — Greeks, Italians, &c. ; and the other northwest, — Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic. 

Japetic means descending from Noah's son Japheth and seems to refer here to Indo-Europeans.

 

I more clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity (that is to say, the Trinity) is an absolute truth transcending my human means of understanding it.

 

The result of my system will be to show that, so far from the world being a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat. 

More true than ever today.

 

The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right and both wrong. They each maintained 

opposite poles of the same truth; which truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premise. 

I see what he means but I would still place the Realists above the Nominalists. The latter could be said to be the origin of modern materialism.

A Fall  of some sort or other — the creation, as it were, of the non- absolute — is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.

The doctrine of the Fall makes sense of so much.

A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart Man seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, 

taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. 

The tragedy of feminism which poses as a liberator but actually corrupts.

The Trinity is the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life. As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union must be as transcendent as the distinction. 

If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial within him, what is there left for us to refer it to, but the fiendish ? Passion without any appetite is fiendish. 

Demons exist.

The best way to bring a clever young man who has become sceptical and unsettled to reason, is to make him feel something. Love, if sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a sense and assurance of something real and actual ; and that sense alone will make him think to a sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is thinking. 

We must distinguish between feeling and feelings.

 

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.

 

I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language, religion, laws, government, blood, — identity in these makes men of one country. 

Immigration without proper integration is a disaster. This is why it should be kept to reasonable limits, limits which it has far exceeded in Western nations in recent years.

 

The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. 

 

Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be undergone by everyone who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all other things. 

It's more important to be on the right side than to believe exactly the same things.

People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of

 Jupiter, all armed: manual dexterity may, indeed, be improved by practice. 

The difference between inspiring impulse and execution.

I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth to the Greek philosophy to be groundless. It sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics only. Then it took in the idea of a living cause and made Pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato asserted or reasserted the idea of a God the maker of the world. The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when Christianity came to add what before was wanting - assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined Theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism. 

Egypt probably did not have an intellectualised philosophy as such but it did have a highly developed knowledge of mysticism and magic. Otherwise this is not a bad history of religion in the West.

 

This is just a small selection from the first half of the book. I may do another post on the remainder but it serves to remind us that Coleridge was much more than just a romantic poet.

 

Intelligence and Vision

 When intelligence, as in IQ, reaches a certain point if it is not complemented by intuition it turns in on itself and becomes destructive. It is not the stupid or the average who destroy civilisation and true culture. It is the bright and brainy who have failed to develop intuitive vision because they have stunted their spiritual growth who do this. And the reason their spiritual growth is stunted is because of wrong motivation. That is why I say they have stunted their own growth. Their intelligence has led them to over-estimate themselves and their capabilities and they have pushed away God. They do not realise or will not accept that they are dependent on God for everything. Earlier this week I had an operation to remove a cataract on my right eye. Lying on the operating table with my eyelids taped open I knew I was completely in God's hands - and the surgeon's, of course! But the point is we like to think we are independent and while to a certain extent we are, in reality we rely on God for everything from the air we breathe to the functioning of our heart and lungs and even our ability to think. Everything comes down to our Creator upon whom we are more reliant than even children are on their parents.

There is a proper developmental progression if it is not interrupted. Our knowing faculties should advance from instinct to intellect to intuition. Each one takes over from the previous and builds upon it. Each one is more conscious and wider ranging than the last.  If this process stalls or fails to proceed as it should then the negative qualities of whatever capacity is the highest at that point become apparent and take over. Looking at the last 150 years (a random figure but not without some substance) this should be obvious. In all fields there has been spiritual deterioration and destruction. We think we are more compassionate than our forebears and we may well be but that is because we have removed our focus from the spiritual plane entirely to the material. Therefore we may be more concerned with the realities of that plane but we are correspondingly less concerned with higher planes. Physical suffering arouses our compassion but spiritual darkness leaves us unmoved. Ultimately, as Jesus demonstrated and as the early Christian martyrs showed, it is spiritual darkness that is the greater evil. This clearly doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to physical suffering. The point being made here is simply that when you deny the spiritual you place more importance on the material but then greater evils may pass unnoticed.

The intellectual phase is that time when we are furthest removed from God and Nature. We live without proper reference to either of them as should be obvious from our behaviour today, our behaviour on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum one should say. It is currently more obvious on the left what with all the woke nonsense which is a specific denial of the reality of natural laws and ways of being, never mind the laws of God. But the right without God has desecrated the Earth in its pursuit of money and power so one can hardly say it is much better. All these people have intelligence (though in the case of the woke, not much) but no intuitive connection to reality. Some of them might think they do but that is because they mistake wishful thinking for intuitive vision which a prejudiced mind finds easy to do.

It was probably accepted by the spiritual powers that be that human beings would temporarily desert God as they developed their own faculties of thought and agency. This was perhaps necessary but it should only have been brief in duration. If humans had been motivated by an honest search for truth it would have been brief. Unfortunately, many of us were not well motivated. The inner corruption of stronger souls led many of them to reject God and weaker souls followed in their wake. This has led to our current state of spiritual apostasy. The only solution is for us to move beyond mere intelligence to intuition but we must make sure it is genuine intuition and that requires humility and a certain love of truth or else our future state will be worse than our present one.

What can remove the cataract on our spiritual eye? The surgeon's knife is faith which means openness to God.

Behold, I Make all Things New

Egypt was once the centre of the highest spirituality on Earth but then it descended into a concern with magic and power and became the oppressive nation we know of from the time of Moses. Israel was once the focus of God's attention, a chosen nation that was the ground from which the Messiah was born, but then it too descended into materialism, corruption and legalism. Christianity was a religion that gave the believer direct access to the Son of God but it gradually lost power as too many of its leaders succumbed to this world, and now its outer structures remain in place but the fire burns low.

Nothing lasts in this world and that is truer than ever in our day which is a time of increasing destruction. There is no outer spiritual body that will save you if you put your trust in it. The time has come when all aspiring souls must strive for truth within themselves. They can still use the outer forms but they must not allow themselves to be restricted by them. I know there is a verse in the Bible in which Jesus says the gates of Hades will not overcome his church but almost immediately afterwards he calls Peter, Peter the rock on which he will build that church and whom he has just praised fulsomely, Satan! I don't think we can build an entire spiritual edifice on one verse particularly when it can't be certain what Jesus meant by the word 'church'.  And given the recent arguments about inner discernment and outer authority we should also note that Jesus commended Peter for knowing he was the Messiah because he had had that revealed to him not by flesh and blood (outer authority) but by his Father in Heaven (inner knowing). 

I have to say that some people seem to mistake the lamp for the light. You can have a beautiful lamp, made of gold and adorned with jewels and with finely polished glass so that it allows the light to pass through clearly and without obstruction. But it is still the lamp. What is more, the glass can get dirty unless it is regularly cleaned, even replaced when it gets old. When that happens those who look for light in a pure form may have to look elsewhere. Some light may still pass through discoloured glass but it is less than it was and to pretend otherwise will help no one. Those who look elsewhere may still value the lamp for its beauty and the light it continues to transmit but what they really seek is light and they will look for that wherever it may be.

Why do we come into this world? If it is just to obey an outer authority we could do that better in the higher worlds. But if it is to learn to become a real divine being then we have to reach inside ourselves to find the living God there. The church serves supremely as a bastion of tradition and authority but it is like a mother. The growing child cannot stay clinging to its mother or it will never grow. Naturally, it will always love and respect its mother but if it is to become a mature adult it must start taking responsibility for itself.

Those designated Romantic Christians merely believe that the sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath. They see the Christian religion as a living thing but living things either grow or start to decay. No one is saying the church should adapt to modernity because that is tantamount to saying it should secularise itself which is more or less what the Church of England has done to its catastrophic loss. But that is changing in a negative sense. There is positive, creative change too that reflects a deeper engagement with spirit (rather than accommodating to the world) and that is all the Romantic Christians are interested in. Speaking as one who may be said to fall into that category, I would say RCs (no pun intended) love and respect the church but their real love is for Christ and they will seek him everywhere.

More on Different Spiritual Priorities

 I am going to wade into turbulent waters again because I feel the need to say something about the ongoing disagreement between those who put their primary faith in intuition and those who put their faith in a church. Ideally there should be no disagreement because in a perfect world these would be exactly the same. Inner and outer would reflect each other completely. But this is not a perfect world. It's a fallen one and the fallen nature of the world corrupts both intuition and outer institutions. There is nothing perfect in our world. That is just a fact and one we have to deal with.

What this means is that we must have checks and balances for both the inner and the outer. This is as it should be. God wants us to grow but he wants us to grow properly. You know those little fences one puts around young saplings to make sure they grow straight and upright? This is tradition and authority. Without that fence the tree might not grow properly. But what if you leave the fence on too long? Then the tree won't grow properly either. It might be hemmed in and stunted. This analogy can't be pushed too far but what it means is that spiritual growth must be guided but it must also come from within.

Regarding churches, I must mention the accident of birth problem. Might it not be that those who are currently ardent upholders of Religion A might have been equally ardent upholders of Religion B had they been born in a different time and place? I have met Hindus and Muslims, especially the latter, who speak in very similar language to that used by the church Christians. They would say heaven or enlightenment or whatever they call it is only gained through adherence to certain customs and rituals belonging to their religion. I'm not saying all religions are equal because I don't believe that but this tendency of human nature should give us pause for thought. 

Romantic Christians, that is to say those who feel unable to give full allegiance to any outer church because they search for what to them is a more fundamental connection to God within, have been described as enemies of Christianity. All those I am aware of merely think that outer forms cannot contain the full measure of spirit and that the modern age is one in which that is particularly true. They see spiritual life as an evolutionary thing, growing and unfolding, not a static once and for all revelation that will never develop beyond where it is now. Of course, they acknowledge Jesus Christ as the foundation on which all truth rests but they do not necessarily think that Christianity, especially modern Christianity, contains all that Christ is. Do traditionalists think it does? They might counter that official Christianity contains enough of Christ for us here and now and that to look beyond it risks falling into deception. That is true enough as far as it goes but I firmly believe that Christ wants us to know as much of him as we can. He calls us to that. What lover is satisfied with just part of his beloved?

This looks like being another sad story of believers fighting each other instead of seeing that there are bigger fish to fry nowadays. If I were an atheist I would be having a good laugh. I might even feel my opinion validated. And I'll tell you something else of which I am absolutely sure. This debate is irrelevant to God because he looks at the heart. If the human heart is open to him and then seeks an honest and loving relationship with him, he is satisfied. It's all too easy to get distracted from that basic element of the spiritual life and focus on side issues.

The bottom line is that no one in this world has all the answers. We are all struggling and growing or should be. We also all have the tendency to spiritual pride and I don't say this lightly. We all do, but as long as we measure ourselves against the reality of Christ and strive to follow him in our hearts and minds then outer disagreements should not be so important. Certainly some disagreements are fundamental and cannot be overcome. Peace at any cost is no answer to anything. But I also think each side in this debate should acknowledge the sincerity of the other even when they disagree with them. After all, no one proposes a radical reassessment of the great bulk of what Jesus taught. It really just boils down to couple of verses of the Bible, Matthew 16:18-19, and whether to take them absolutely literally. To me to do that seems almost totalitarian and not like the Jesus of the rest of the gospels at all. I could be making a mistake but if I am it is motivated by a desire for truth so I would hope to be forgiven.

On Romantic and Church Christianity

 There has been some to-ing and fro-ing online about the differences between so called Romantic Christianity and traditional Christianity. I haven't followed it all but I think this boils down to whether inner discernment trumps outer authority or vice versa. My first reaction is to say that both are necessary. There probably wouldn't be much inner discernment if we had no tradition, no scripture and no religious teaching to bring it out and help give it form. On the other hand, following authority without bringing that alive through inner discernment leads to dead legalism.

I personally don't regard Romantic Christianity as fundamentally different to traditional Christianity but it follows the way of John more than that of Peter. I fully acknowledge the risk of heresy with a more mystical approach that prioritises inner awareness but I think that is a risk we have to take if we are concerned with theosis as well as salvation. Christ calls us to become like him. This really does demand going beyond outer authority and treading the inner path. That in turn requires a correspondingly greater degree of honesty and humility to avoid going off the spiritual rails but it is somewhat similar to swimming when out of your depth. You have to take your feet off the ground for which read the support of traditional authority. That is still there but if you are really going to be a good swimmer then you have to strike out on your own.

From the real spiritual point of view, where is authority located? In the church or in God? Don't tell me they are the same because they really are not. The church may have authority from God to save souls but it does not begin to contain all that God is and it can, as we have surely seen recently, lose connection to the Holy Spirit. It is that connection that the Romantic Christians wish to establish in their own hearts and minds. Yes, the church is the custodian of sacred truth and it preserves that for all humanity but is it not possible that an excessive adherence to the body of Christ can, at certain times, lead to a loss of connection to his spirit? I believe this is one of those times.

Having said that, I sympathise with both sides in this debate. I see this matter as a question of balance, balance between inner and outer though, probably because I was brought up a Protestant, the outer for me is more scripture than a church. I also believe that this argument is not so important to God. He looks at the heart. If this is correctly oriented to goodness and truth in the form of Jesus Christ then outer differences, even (hold your breath) certain (not all, of course) heresies don't matter.

People who should be natural allies in the face of great contemporary worldly evil can disagree but should not fall out. Religious history is scarred by believers fighting among themselves. Absolutely one must defend truth as one sees it but we should also be able to tell if someone is spiritually at fault or merely intellectually so or even just focusing on a different aspect of truth which inevitably is far greater than any one of us can encompass. Can those who see faithfulness to the church as primary not see that others, equally faithful to God, might need to establish the inner connection we spoke of above and treat that as fundamental? Equally, can the latter not see that heresies and false spiritualities abound, particularly when spiritual seekers go freelance, and that part of the function of tradition is to defend humanity against that? It's all about balance, I tell you.