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 Winnowing of Souls

I expect the next few years to include tests for the soul that become more and more finely tuned. The soul must eventually be made perfect, and if that seems a tall order, it is. However, the eventual perfection is not ours but God's, and acquired through his grace. All we have to do is be true to God, and to the actual reality of God not our chosen interpretation of that reality. This is what the tests are there to uncover. They are there to examine the deeper responses of the soul, beyond the merely intellectual level. They seek to unveil and reveal the heart. The true heart can be made perfect through the transformative power of God but he needs good ground in order to plant his seed.

Some of the tests will be conventionally spiritual. Do you believe in God or not? But that is just the beginning. What sort of God do you believe in? Why do you believe? What do you seek as a result of this belief? Is God more important to you than anything else, including, obviously, money and power, but also reputation and even family (see Matthew 10:21). Is it a holy God you believe in who acts for spiritual reasons and ends or is it a nice God who loves his children as they are now and accepts everyone for who they are, without requiring inner conversion, sacrifice and repentance?

Some have to do with the world. How do you see the world? How do you see the body? Do they have importance for themselves or as expressions of God and the soul or, perhaps, a mixture of the two? Some are to do with courage and response to stress, some are to do with taste and response to beauty and ugliness. Can you tell them apart? That seems an easy test but many people cannot in our day.

The purpose of the world at this time is to separate the sheep from the goats. The tests examine the mind but principally they examine the heart. The world seems real because it must do to make the tests real. But actually the world is not real in its own right. It can, and eventually will, be transformed or raised up into spirit but at the moment it serves as an environment for learning, and one of the things we have to learn is to reject the world as the world while, at the same time, love it as part of God's creation. That's an easy balance to strike if one perceives from the heart because what is, is, but it may be complicated for the intellectual mind which likes to partition and sees things in either/or terms instead of both/and.

We have it on good authority that not everyone who acknowledges God, of thinks they do, will enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 7:21). This is what the tests will pick out, the straight from the crooked, that which is true all the way down from that which is merely true on the surface. By their very nature the tests will be unexpected and require choice. Sometimes they will require sacrifice. They are a kind of mass initiation, and initiation is always preceded by tests and trails. So, be prepared for what is to come.

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 Battle is Spiritual

 Continuing with the theme of the last post concerning the conquest of the West, the question has to be asked, is the West worth saving? Is it too far gone on the path of truth rejection and God denial? Is it merely suffering the consequences of its apostasy not merely of Christianity but of recognising any kind of spiritual reality at all? The saying "those whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad" (see here) can be reversed and become "those who go mad are destroyed by the gods".  All previous generations would have thought that we have gone mad not only because of our spiritual abandonment but, even more, because of our denial of nature. I won't go into details about that but the same old culprits from anti-racism to mass immigration to feminism to same sex marriage and so on bear witness to what I mean. If you don't see these as denials of nature it's because you have succumbed to the temptation of giving abstract thought and ideology more importance than reality. You prefer theory to simple, naked, honest truth. Congratulations, you are an example of someone who has been educated beyond his intellectual capability and led astray by the glamour of thought. You illustrate the point of why certain spiritual teachers of the past preferred pupils who were illiterate and so could not be distracted by theory. I remember a saying from a Taoist text, possibly Lao Tzu,"Great Tao is very straight but the people love byways". You are one of those who has left the straight path and gone down a byway because it looks more superficially attractive. But it leads to death.

Francis Berger has a very good post about how someone who has not succumbed to the madness should fight it. There are three options. Confront it on its own battlefield through politics, ignore it and tend your own garden or fight it on the spiritual plane which might sound airy-fairy (and, to be honest, can be) but is actually the only way to confront it now because it is so deeply embedded in contemporary life and culture. There may have been a time when it could have been fought politically but that is long past. That does not mean those who feel called to do that should not do it but the fact is they will not win. On the other hand, the attempt to do so will at least invigorate those who see some of the madness and perhaps help them to resist it internally. But, in reality, to fight the enemy on his own terms will just mean that you are drawn into his world. He may give ground in small things only the better to advance his main purpose. You will start to become him.

No, the battle is spiritual and must be fought spiritually. The first thing to do is fight it within yourself. Put yourself right with God by full and complete orientation of your heart towards God and his purpose which requires humility and honesty. The next thing is to proclaim the truth as best you can. Not so much by condemning what is wrong (that too but it is not primary) as by asserting what is right. And then just live the truth, again as best you can. This will have a spiritual force which can't be measured and will probably not have a public and obvious impact but which is nonetheless very real. You will be injecting light into darkness on the mental plane and that light will be picked up and responded to by those in search of light. They won't know it comes from you and you won't know it has gone to them but the effect is real.

Francis's post is written in the context of The Lord of the Rings and points out how confronting Sauron, aka, in modern terms, the System, means you must think and act in ways that he doesn't know. If you fight him with his own weapons, he wins.  He (Francis not Sauron!) says in a comment to the post:

"Thinking like Sauron expands Sauron's influence and power. It creates more Sauron. On the flipside, not thinking like Sauron does not imply never confronting the enemy directly, but for goodness sake, if you're going to do it, be creative, intelligent, and "spiritual" about it". This sums the matter up perfectly and corresponds to Jesus's instruction not to resist evil, a widely misunderstood quote. It means don't fight evil with its own weapons because, just as modern materialistic technology actually alters the minds of its users to become more materialistic, so too do those who live by the sword die by it. The real battlefield is the mind and it's that you must address by showing people how to think and perceive differently.

Sauron was not defeated by armed opposition. He was about to crush his opponents on the battlefield when the ring was destroyed. He was defeated by hidden, secret work which went on without being noticed. It's true that the armies that confronted him did serve as a distraction but that was the best they could do.

Dreams of the Future

You have probably heard of experiments in which people are hypnotised and taken back to previous lifetimes they have lived on Earth. They often describe those lives in very compelling terms and sometimes even report on various aspects of life in the past that are only confirmed by subsequent historical research. You can believe or not believe these accounts or you can, like me, hedge your bets and think there might be something in them but they are not necessarily literally true. Either way, they do pose important questions unless you have decided in advance that they cannot possibly be true because human beings only have one life.

Now imagine you could do an experiment in which you hypnotise a large group of people and get them to progress to a future lifetime to report on what might be the state of the world then. A ridiculous fantasy? Perhaps but this has actually been done and the results published in a book called Mass Dreams of the Future written by a psychologist called Chet Snow who was carrying on the work of another psychologist, Dr Helen Wambach. I haven't read the book, which I believe was based on work carried out in the 1980s, but I have read an account of the experiment and it raises some interesting points.

First of all, we have to ask if the future is fixed. Common sense rebels against this as do one's innermost feelings. The universe is not a machine and anyone with an ounce of spiritual sensibility must acknowledge free will. No free will means no humanity, it's as simple as that. Therefore, the most logical thing is to see the future as something like a cloud of potential which will coalesce into a particular hard reality according to individual human decisions plus the acts, thoughts and behavioural patterns of other forms of life. The future cannot be predicted with precision, though the nearer one gets to it, the more it can be, but various possibilities can be predicated. They are there on a mental level in an inchoate form and the one that solidifies in the physical world is determined by what goes on in the present. I suspect that very advanced forms of life can foresee the future up to a point but I think it unlikely that the actual future has happened on any level before it really does happen. Yes, it will be there in the mental world but it is not fully realised until it takes physical reality and until it does do that it is subject to change and alteration. It's rather like an idea taking shape in your mind before you write it down. That idea arises in the thought world but the form it takes in the physical world can be adjusted right up to the moment it takes form.

It seems that 2,500 people took part in the future lifetime experiment and when their reports of the future were studied it was found that they contained several points of divergence but also some of agreement. Most significant of the latter was that virtually every one of them said that the earth's population had decreased dramatically. It had become considerably smaller than it was at the time (this was in the 1980s, remember). No future date seems to have been given, at least not in the account that I read, but it is safe to assume that the future envisaged has not yet arrived. I think it represents a new age or cycle and we are still living at the tail end of the old one.

The disagreements were over what sort of future we can expect. They split into four categories which were as follows. One was a sterile, technological world of space stations and synthetic food. Another was the exact opposite, a return to nature kind of existence in which people lived in harmony with the natural world and pursued spiritual development. A third was a science-fictiony mechanical world of underground cities and artificial environments enclosed in domes. And the fourth was a post-apocalyptic world of small groups of survivors eking out a living as best they could in the shattered remains of a destroyed civilisation. Futures 1 and 3 were described as 'bleak' and 'joyless'. Future 4 doesn't seem much better. Future 2 seems the best option.

The question is how much of this comes from ideas about the future already existing in the subjects' minds at the time? Quite a lot, I would say. These scenarios are all well known and were in the '80s too, and individuals may have subconsciously picked the one they were most in sympathy with. On the other hand, you cannot rule out the possibility that all these scenarios do exist as potential futures and the real one is yet to be determined. Nor can you rule out the possibility that the actual future is none of these. We can envisage these types of existence now but no one in the 16th century could have envisaged the world as it is today in the 21st. What I do find convincing is the point of agreement about the reduction in population. I think we all know that the situation cannot continue as it is and already, although world population is increasing, the birth rate is dropping in many parts of the developed world. That not withstanding, my feeling is that a great number of souls are being gathered together today to experience a critical time in earthly development but when that phase has worked itself out there will be a return to a lower level of population.

Perhaps these hypnotised subjects tuned into the psychic plane in which the future is gestating but if they did so they did it from the point of late 20th century humans which is to say they were only able to bring through what they could comprehend within the limited framework of their own minds and so they interpreted what they saw according to their own understanding. They didn't see reality (if they saw anything, of course, and it wasn't just fantasy), they saw symbols and patterns which they then formed into images based on what they already knew. So there was an element of projection there. And even within these limitations what they saw were potential futures not actual ones. The 30 plus years since the experiment will have changed much.

The future is a cloud that is taking shape. At a certain point one can detect several patterns in this cloud but the final one in which, so to speak, the cloud descends to earth and takes a concrete form cannot be known until it does that. That is why both free will and destiny are true. Just like you and me, the world has a destiny. It was set up from outside by God and his helpers to go through a certain pattern of development but that pattern is constantly modified from the inside by us.

I don't believe these people saw the future. Given they all saw different futures that's hardly surprising. But they may have tuned into a level of reality in which possible outcomes are beginning to form as mental images. The one that actualises could be any one of these or even something quite different if new information enters the field. What we think and do now determines the future or certainly has an impact on it. This is why one should never give up but always strive for the best.

The Beginning of Sorrows

 Western civilisation is dying. At its peak it scaled great heights but it has fallen a long way down since then because of its denial of spirit. Pitifully, most people think of this as an advance and a liberation from superstition because the denial of spirit freed us to explore and exploit the material world to a greater degree, but the initial burst of energy that came from that is rapidly dissipating. Progress is petering out. Even our increased recognition of the horrors of violence and war can be understood as a greater fixation on the physical self and material well-being.

I don't know how anyone can live without acknowledging God. Within each human soul there is the divine stamp that is our life and the core of our being. How can we ignore this? But it seems millions of people do. What is going on inside these people that they have closed themselves off to such degree from reality and all that makes life worthwhile? There is no doubt that the material world has solidified so that the connection to spirit is much harder to make but still it is there. There is also no doubt that demonic powers have attacked on numerous fronts to make us believe the material world is all there is but we don't have to succumb to their lies. Even if everyone around us prefers darkness to light we do have the light within us and we can respond to that if we are spiritually responsible and true children of our Father.

Perhaps that's it. Most people don't care about God because they care too much about themselves. They are too fixated on their worldly hopes and ambitions and their personal desires. They are too identified with their bodies or their feelings or their thoughts and so never look more deeply within themselves. Then there are those who are too attached to a particular sin to be willing to acknowledge that it is a sin. Such people are setting themselves up to be the victims of the dark powers to whose influence they will become more and more susceptible. They are cutting themselves off from all that is good and if that alarms you, it should do.

We are unable to perceive the deep inner workings of spiritual evil because we don't acknowledge spiritual good. This makes us easy to manipulate and deceive and lead astray. An essential task for all human beings today is to recognise that the source of evil is hidden. It does not come from this material world. It actually emanates from powerful beings on the spiritual plane working through their emissaries at lower spiritual levels and in this world. Those regarded as evil in this world are merely pawns of these higher beings who are the principalities and powers spoken of by St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. These demons think in the long term. They have prepared for this time over many centuries and if we look back we can see the gradual turning of the screw. This should show us that mortal men alone cannot be responsible for the plan of spiritual destruction even if they are indirectly responsible for enacting various of its stages.

Does this sound sensationalist? That thought again would come to mind as a result of seeds sown by evil powers over many years. They function best when unrecognised or downgraded to cartoon characters or softened by being fictionalised. In the public mind the teeth of supernatural evil have been drawn by its regular appearance in film and on TV. It can be dismissed as entertainment or deriving from fantasy and fiction. This is not without some advantages though. When you have a writer such as Tolkien, who was very aware of the reality of supernatural evil, you have a powerful depiction of its reality and how it operates and then your mind is primed to recognise it later on when you begin to wake up.

People don't believe in God because there is no proof but you cannot prove spiritual realities by material means. Expand your horizons beyond the material world and you will find proof. But this will not be intellectual proof. Spirit cannot be proven by the intellect or the mind as normally considered. It can only be known. This is why faith is important. Faith is not just belief but the opening up of the mind to wider vistas. It is like being in a dark room with the curtains drawn. Faith is opening a window through which daylight can stream in.

It is probable that as the limitations of the materialistic worldview become more apparent to more people there will be a reaction. This has already happened to a limited extent, beginning in the 1960s though the movement seemed to lose energy around the turn of the millennium. But as material privations start to manifest themselves, as they are about to do, it may happen again and this time to a larger degree. This is when we have to be ready to warn people that not all that seems spiritual is good. At the end of the Roman Empire mystical and occult sects flourished but these were mostly degenerate remains of the ancient mystery religions with an emphasis more on the psychic than the spiritual. They were demon infested and only cleaned up by the purity of the vital Christian force that also spread at that time. This phenomenon could recur. The demons will have in place a spiritual movement that will bestow mystical experiences of a sort and also increase the lower psychic powers thus exposing their possessors to a false spiritual plane. We need to be rightly motivated, which means searching for God rather than spiritual pyrotechnics, to avoid falling into this trap. As was the case almost 2,000 years ago, the key will be our acceptance or otherwise of Christ.

A Dehumanised Future

 We supposedly live in a humanistic age, one in which mankind is central and owes nothing to anything or indeed anyone beyond itself. We are our own justification. We celebrate ourselves, and our art, politics and science are all based on expanding our knowledge and deepening our fulfilment of ourselves as ourselves. For some our potential is limitless but it is still our potential as human beings even if we bring the universe into it on some abstract or quasi-spiritual level.

What we don't realise is that humanity restricted to humanity is doomed to a solipsistic nihilism, however much we may give our fundamental emptiness a false glamour. The human being can only find any real fulfilment when it goes beyond itself. In fact, the human being is only properly human when it understands itself to be more than human. Humanism actually means separation from God so it is an anti-spiritual philosophy. Truth to tell, it is an anti-human philosophy because the human being without God is destined for death.

We don't live in a humanistic age. We live in an inhuman age. We cover up that grim reality with technological distractions and false ideas about ourself. We are lost, on our own, floating off into the void. We are so insane that people who are aware of this are regarded as mad or childish because they, so it is said, cling onto fantasies. But the biggest fantasy and the greatest arrogance is that we can live without God. Remove the artificial supports that modern human beings have, take away the elaborate structures we have built up to keep out reality and most people might reflect a little more deeply on what they are and what they should be.

The ground is being prepared for the incarnation of a being known as the antichrist by Christians who is probably the same as the one named Ahriman by the spiritual philosopher Rudolf Steiner. This is that aspect of evil which seeks to bind human beings to the material world and cut them off completely from the spiritual. The advent of this being has been prepared by our reduction of life to what can be weighed and measured. Our modern arts, science, politics and philosophy and even medicine have all been pressed into service to accommodate the ends of this individual who may already have been born. Even religion, which now focuses on materialistic humanitarianism more than true spirituality, serves the ends of antichrist/Ahriman. When he appears he will not be obviously evil like some of the despots of the 20th century. He may even appear benign by the materialistic standards we have built up over the last 2 centuries. But he will seek to divert us from true divine understanding and spiritual life. We need to understand that anything or anyone that promises happiness and fulfilment in this world, whatever it calls itself, is not of God. That doesn't mean that hardship and suffering are good in themselves. That also can be a false path. But this life is intended to serve the greater life and can never be justified in itself. 

The current state of the world has been brought about to make us ripe for the picking when the antichrist arrives. But God has not abandoned us. If we can see through the lies we become spiritually stronger. The lies are permitted because they must be brought out into the open in order for us to overcome them and that which corresponds to them in our own souls. If they were not made manifest and outwardly present in this way we would not be able to defeat them and nor could we deal with the same tendencies that exist within ourselves. There is risk involved. The darkness can overwhelm us or we can use it to see the light more clearly. But we are, or should be, spiritual adults now and we can only progress spiritually by facing reality and dealing with it. God will protect us but he will not overprotect us for then we would never grow up.

Ahriman/antichrist has many servants in the modern world, most of whom don't know they are his servants even though they serve his agenda and prepare his way. I would go so far as to say that more or less everyone in the public eye who has any form of power serves his agenda. If they didn't they wouldn't be there. This will only become more so. The plans are laid for complete control of human consciousness. That's not just control of human beings but control of human consciousness. The best slaves are willing slaves and that is what Ahriman wants and what his agents are currently working for in preparation for his appearance. We have to be aware of this. Preserve your freedom. God gave us complete freedom, making us free even to reject him. No one and nothing can take that away but you can give it away. Never sell your birthright, no matter what is offered in exchange for whatever is offered is worthless really. Stay free.

Learn From the Past But...

 We live in a time when the past is more within our reach than ever before. We can access ancient works of literature, art and religion from within our own homes. Almost all the learning of humanity that has been preserved is at our fingertips should we choose to search it out, and more is regularly unearthed. But, at the same time, our connection to the past is being systematically destroyed. Tradition, through which our forefathers were linked to the past, is rejected almost completely, and modern education focuses increasingly on the modern world to the exclusion of earlier times. Even history in the UK, I am both amused and disturbed to find, seems to be centred on World War Two with an occasional nod to the Tudors.

When you are separated from the past you are at the mercy of those indoctrinating you in the present time. You no longer have a wide palate of thought and various differences of approach to explore and thereby enrich your mind. You are marooned in a world in which only one way is allowed and if that way is, as it now is, atheistic you are cut off from any proper idea of God who will still be around but only as an outmoded superstition. Many people today think that religion is childish but that's because their knowledge of it has never progressed beyond the child level. They have never been instructed in religion to any serious degree.

All tyrants try to destroy the past. The tyrants of the present day do exactly what has been done before but they do it more subtly. The end result is no different.

So, it makes sense to seek out the past and give yourself a greater understanding of the world than that afforded by contemporary thought (or lack of it, I am tempted to say.) However, it's not quite as simple as that. Learn from the past but do not be restricted by it. The past has much to teach us but we also have to go beyond it. When Jesus came he built on the law and the prophets. He brought something new but it was adding an extra dimension to what had come before. It did not replace it and without having that foundation his teachings would not have shed the light they did. Truth is alive and what is alive grows. It grows from what it is but it grows all the same. We too need to grow but we grow from our roots. Today, we are being cut off from our roots. Things that are cut off from their roots die.

Another Year, Another Turn of the Screw

 Here we are at the end of another year in which everything the conspiracy theorists said has turned out to be true though the great majority still won't see it. That's won't not don't. People do not want to wake up. They prefer the illusion of thinking that the world is ok really and everything will get back to what they think of as normal. It will not. We have entered a downward spiral in which such things as disease, climate change and the woke agenda (feminism, anti-racism, homophilia etc, the whole levelling off and making everything equally good and true if you want it to be) are used as instruments of social control and destruction of the traditional, the natural and the common-sensical, and as preparation for a future in which the supposedly friendly ideas of equality, sustainability and security are pressed into service to crush freedom of thought, diversity of opinion or any kind of dissent. The rulers behind the rulers, whoever/whatever they are, are seeking to erase all spiritual, indeed all real human, sensibility from the mind of man. Their aim is that we will be stripped of individuality and forced to lead a herd-like existence in which we will essentially be owned. Whatever else they may be, the pecks are clearly part of that agenda. They are a forerunner for a future process in which everything about everyone is known and counted. If you don't see this, you are living in a dream world. 

So, the future is grim? Not necessarily. This world was never meant to be a perfect place of joy and happiness. It is a training ground for the soul. Joy and happiness are there sometimes but they are not the natural state of the earthly plane. They are interruptions from above, incursions of divine light into the material world. For those who perceive this and choose to align their being with the source of divine light which is God then whatever happens in this world can be seen in a different perspective. That does not mean we should just accept evil. We should always fight against it and strive to defeat it when it seeks to seize the initiative as now. A successful outcome for the globalist totalitarians is not assured. But we should also know that the increase of materialism and everything associated with it, such as the quantitative approach to life that is now paramount, an approach summed up by the computer which typically reduces quality to quantity robbing it of real life in the process, is inevitable. See here for more on that. The end of an age is a time when spirit has ebbed away and matter becomes ever more present. And yet even that can be a good thing for it forces us to look for spirit within ourselves and makes it all the more pressing to begin the search for God. It is said in the Indian tradition that all the sincere seeker has to do to be saved in the Kali Yuga is call on God, even just repeat his name. This may be understating the case a little but the idea is that we do not, as in earlier times, have to perform heroic acts of spiritual athleticism. In times of real darkness the greatest spiritual act is simply to believe and live as though your belief was real. Because it is.

Things to Come

 To all those concerned about current political events, I would say, don't be. The world situation has long been such that no external help can be expected. In fact, it is not even desirable because what is happening today is a spiritual test. In times that are orientated towards a true vision of God, there is no particular test. But we are now expected to maintain a connection to truth inwardly even when it is dismissed as a lie and an illusion.

Do you really think that if Donald Trump had won the recent American election things would have been much different spiritually? Some of the more obvious desecrations of the human spirit might not have happened as quickly as they probably will, but the general trend would not have changed.The ongoing destruction of truth would have continued. Are we any better off in that respect than 4 years ago? Of course not. We are worse off. The only question is whether we would have been even worse off than we are. I'm sure we would have been but it's only a relative thing.

I'm not saying it doesn't matter who wins elections but it doesn't matter much now. There is no political knight in shining armour and there is not meant to be. I repeat. Now is a time for holding fast to truth when it has been abandoned outwardly. Don't expect someone else to save you. You have to save yourself. This is your responsibility. Don't waste your energies and passions on political matters. Focus on the spiritual and understand that when you do that you have to make sacrifices and you have to expect suffering. There is no way round this. Spiritual paths that don't involve sacrifice and suffering are not ones that lead to God.

Rejoice that the secular world is now truly revealed as one of complete lies. As long as you thought truth might win, you would still be involved in the world. I'm not saying you should abandon the world or cease to proclaim truth but don't expect many people to listen or imagine  that the current situation will get any better. Our job, those of us who wish to serve God, is to reach out to individuals. The world may fall into darkness but in that darkness light will shine more brightly.

No doubt false saviours will arise even now. They will say "Follow me, believe in me and all will be well." Don't be misled. God does not want his children to remain children and he is not going to send a leader to whom we can hand over our responsibility. You must be your own leader. Of course, there will be those who can offer guidance but this guidance is only there to push you in the direction you already want to go. You should not expect your guides to do more than this and any who claim they can should be ignored. God will guide you from within your own heart if you allow him to do so which means stand ready in humility and love of truth and goodness.

The future is likely to be a global totalitarianism with a humanitarian veneer. It may incorporate the notion of God but it will deny all that is real about God. In the West (I don't know about the East) everything that does not actively stand against this will be incorporated into it. No one will be able to stand on the sidelines. No one will be allowed to be neutral. The only thing that can withstand this takeover of the soul, for that is what it is, is Christ. Other forms of spirituality will not be strong enough to resist evil, defined here as rejection of God and the laws of Creation. Those who practise them will be swept up into the over-arching anti-spiritual belief system in which Man is basically his own God and makes his own reality. Only those who remain faithful to Christ can hold out against this because only they will have the strength to resist, a strength given them by the supreme reality of Christ.

Recent events should have taught serious Christians or anyone correctly orientated to spiritual reality not to expect salvation from the outer world. I am neither a pessimist nor a defeatist. There is great hope for the future but this will manifest on the spiritual plane and only those who dedicate themselves to the truth of God will realise it. But it is not going to be a collective thing. Everything now is down to the individual.

What's (Possibly) To Come

Psychics announce that 2021 will see a big improvement in our way of life with everything set to get better.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/dec/26/im-getting-clarity-a-time-that-will-feel-lighter-psychics-share-their-2021-predictions

Well, that's a relief. However, I have an alternative prediction which is that things will get worse but that it doesn't matter. Things will get worse because of the huge success of the lockdowns and the masks and the complicity of most populations in their own ongoing servitude. The natural reduction of infections that always happens when the spring arrives will be hailed as a triumph for the vaccines, but the precautions that we have accepted are here to stay in one form or another and can be rolled out again at any time. They aren't going away. The increasing control of governments over their people will spread into more and more areas of life but it will be managed so that most people who want to ignore it can do so. They will be given explanations for this control that appear to justify it, and they will think it is for their own good or protection or whatever other reason that will be dragged up. The destruction of traditional and natural understanding will proceed with all official bodies, including churches, joining in.

But it doesn't matter. This is a time of darkness and those who have any kind of spiritual sensibility will feel that acutely. It affects us not only outwardly but inwardly too. God may seem very distant but I would liken this to a time of crucifixion. The life of Christ prefigured the life of any disciple. It was a kind of template for those who would follow him. We may feel spiritually forsaken but God is there. We may be ridiculed by mainstream opinion but that is just worldly wisdom that has rejected the Creator. We are being tested in the fire and all we have to do is keep our trust in God, however far away he seems. It's time to prove ourselves worthy of entering his kingdom. Did you think that was going to happen without a great effort? Remember that the sun is always there behind the clouds.

How Things Change and the Prophecy of Hermes

Not being racist used to mean white people not being nasty to black people, treating them fairly and honestly. But then it changed and meant not acknowledging there was any reality to the concept of race at all and that all groups were equal in every respect with no distinguishing characteristics apart from superficial ones like skin colour. And more recently it has changed again so it now means the tacit acceptance that black people are, in fact, superior to white people, morally superior by virtue of what they have suffered, and if you don't accept this you are a white supremacist.  Indeed, you can now get called a white supremacist merely if you value and want to preserve the good things of Western civilisation.

Not being a sexist used to mean not behaving badly towards women, treating them with proper respect. Then it meant not acknowledging there was any difference between men and women at all and that they were both fundamentally the same, except physically of course. But now it means, tacitly at least, accepting that women are superior to men who are fundamentally flawed. And even the physical differences are being challenged.

The same applies with regard to homosexuals and transsexuals  and any number of groups who were previously marginalised or not regarded as top of the hierarchy. It is the revenge of the underclasses as rankings are reversed. 

The question is, does any of this matter? Is it just the inevitable over-reaction as human beings move towards creating a more equitable society with things eventually sorting themselves out? Or is it a real problem as natural hierarchies are disrupted, indeed inverted, with the result of a collapse of civilised values and a divided world. Is it a recipe for increased harmony and justice or will it lead to a descent into chaos and antagonism? The answer is clear when we look at the world now. It mirrors the state of affairs predicted in the famous Prophecy of Hermes which concerned what would befall ancient Egypt but which in a certain manner can also apply to us today since the downfall of civilisations always follows a similar pattern.

"Since it is fitting that wise men should have knowledge of all events before they come to pass, you must not be left in ignorance of this: there will come a time when it will be seen that in vain have the Egyptians honoured the deity with heartfelt piety and assiduous service; and all our holy worship will be found bootless and ineffectual. For the gods will return from earth to heaven.

Egypt will be forsaken, and the land which was once the home of religion will be left desolate, bereft of the presence of its deities.

This land and region will be filled with foreigners; and Egypt will be occupied by Scythians or Indians or by some such race from the barbarian countries thereabout. In that day will our most holy land, this land of shrines and temples, be filled with funerals and corpses. 

Do you weep at this, Asclepius? There is worse to come; Egypt herself will have yet more to suffer; she will fall into a far more piteous plight, and will be infected with yet more, grievous plagues; and this land, which once was holy, a land which loved the gods, and wherein alone, in reward for her devotion, the gods deigned to sojourn upon earth, a land which was the teacher of mankind in holiness and piety, this land will go beyond all in cruel deeds. The dead will far outnumber the living; and the survivors will be known for Egyptians by their tongue alone, but in their actions they will seem to be men of another race.

O Egypt, Egypt, of thy religion nothing will remain but an empty tale, which thine own children in time to come will not believe; nothing will be left but graven words, and only the stones will tell of thy piety. And in that day men will be weary of life, and they will cease to think the universe worthy of reverent wonder and of worship. And so religion, the greatest of all blessings, for there is nothing, nor has been, nor ever shall be, that can be deemed a greater boon, will be threatened with destruction; men will think it a burden, and will come to scorn it. They will no longer love this world around us, this incomparable work of God, this glorious structure which he has built, this sum of good made up of things of many diverse forms, this instrument whereby the will of God operates in that which he has made, ungrudgingly favouring man’s welfare, this combination and accumulation of all the manifold things that can call forth the veneration, praise, and love of the beholder.

Darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven ; the pious will be deemed insane, and the impious wise; the madman will be thought a brave man, and the wicked will be esteemed as good. As to the soul, and the belief that it is immortal by nature, or may hope to attain to immortality, as I have taught you, all this they will mock at, and will even persuade themselves that it is false. No word of reverence or piety, no utterance worthy of heaven and of the gods of heaven, will be heard or believed.

And so the gods will depart from mankind, a grievous thing!, and only evil angels will remain, who will mingle with men, and drive the poor wretches by main force into all manner of reckless crime, into wars, and robberies, and frauds, and all things hostile to the nature of the soul. Then will the earth no longer stand unshaken, and the sea will bear no ships; heaven will not support the stars in their orbits, nor will the stars pursue their constant course in heaven; all voices of the gods will of necessity be silenced and dumb; the fruits of the earth will rot; the soil will turn barren, and the very air will sicken in sullen stagnation. After this manner will old age come upon the world. Religion will be no more; all things will be disordered and awry; all good will disappear.

But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that god who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the counterworking of his will, which is the good. He will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse 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. And thus he will bring back his world to its former aspect, so that the Kosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with unceasing hymns of praise and blessing.

Such is the new birth of the Kosmos; it is a making again of all things good, a holy and awe-striking restoration of all nature; and it is wrought in the process of time by the eternal will of God. For Gods will has no beginning; it is ever the same, and as it now is, even so it has ever been, without beginning. For it is the very being of God to purpose good.”

 

It is important that we keep in mind the conclusion of this prophecy. It is echoed in Indian religion where Krishna always restores the good after a period of universal collapse. We may be living in times of spiritual darkness but, in a way, this is only superficial. The only lasting reality is that of God.

 

Don't Be Unreasonable

I guarantee this is something we are going to hear more and more. We already hear it about those who refuse to wear masks or accept Covid-19 as the Black Death of our day. Trump supporters are being told it after the recent election, despite widespread evidence that fraud was indeed a factor in the Democrats' victory. No doubt when Brexit turns out to be not Brexit after all we will be told it again. When the coronavirus vaccine becomes widely available those who are reluctant to take it, for very good reasons - why accept an improperly tested vaccine for a largely non-fatal illness?- will be told they are being unreasonable.

If you haven't learnt by now that evil's modus operandi is to start small and then incrementally ramp things up until you are doing and believing things you never would have dreamed of doing or believing 10, 20, 30 years ago, then you really have not being paying attention. If you haven't realised that the coronavirus is being used as an excuse to dismantle long-cherished but now taken for granted freedoms from a largely supine population then you are asleep. This is all fundamentally a spiritual assault but even those who have no spiritual concerns should be able to see what is going on, and be deeply concerned about it. Human beings are being herded into pens, ideological pens and even, what with the lockdowns, physical pens. The most likely to be able to resist this, white males, are the ones who are being most denigrated so that their powers of resistance are diminished. This notwithstanding the fact that it is also white males in large part who stand behind the creeping totalitarianism.

There will be plenty of excuses for those who do not want to see the truth or who are too lazy to stand up against it. The lockdowns, the masks, the vaccinations are all there to protect us. This is a lie. They are there to control us. Of course, the need for them is dressed up so as to appear beneficial to human beings, and it can be hard to prove that there is no need for them. But it is not hard to see this if you bother to look with clarity. This is one of those cases where arguments can be made on both sides but those who are in any way aware of spiritual realities know what is going on. Arguments are really a waste of time in this case, even if it is good to have them at one's disposal. It is not arguments that will convince most people. It is intuitive realisation. What is required above all today is the power of discernment. This is a spiritual survival tool that everyone must develop and the way to develop it is to learn to look up, beyond this world and to the real source of the good. Not ideological good as the modern world prizes but actual good.

Therefore I say to everyone who reads this that it is time to be unreasonable. Because now to be unreasonable in the eyes of the world is to be reasonable in the eyes of God. The two positions do not always conflict with each other but they often do and they certainly do now. Don't be swayed by the smooth words you hear to justify the loss of freedoms. However plausibly dressed up the excuses for this are, they are lies. Don't be afraid of seeming unreasonable. Don't be deliberately contrary or picture yourself as some kind of freedom fighter for truth. That is also a trap, designed to push you into egotism if you do not fall into compliance. But hold fast against worldly arguments while being centred in the truth of God, dedicating yourself to his service in love and humility. Then all will be well.

Be Prepared

In the coming years as the world descends more deeply into the grip of atheistic materialism and (probably) some form of totalitarianism, we can react in two ways. We can either withdraw completely from the world to focus on our personal relationship with God.  Get our own spiritual house in order and leave the outer world to itself. Or we can engage and speak out against the spiritual desecration of the world and of human beings by adding our voice to those that attempt to provide some light in the darkness for individuals who may be seeking it but who cannot find guidance in a world of inverted values.

Whatever we do will depend on personal temperament and mission. Don't be put off by the word mission. Many of us come to this world with a task to perform and that may be great or small but, whatever it is, is still our task. What we are meant to do.

It is of course possible to do both, and I would say we should do both though the proportion of inner to outer activity will vary, and do so at different times. I personally spent 21 years leading a more or less contemplative kind of existence during which I paid very little attention to the world. Then circumstances changed and I was thrown back into the world. I stopped meditating and started to engage much more with outer reality. I acquired duties and responsibilities. I paid more attention to what was transpiring in terms of how the world was being actively corrupted whereas previously I was focussed only on inner things. But even when I wrote my first book in around 2010 I was still largely only concerned with spirituality in a pure sense, and, from my perspective then, the world just had to get along as best it could.

But sometimes you have to come down from the mountaintops. I would still say the spiritual is really the only thing that matters but the difference now is that the world has moved on to the point at which ordinary life is not just not spiritual. It has become actively anti-spiritual. I would put it like this. In the past, God and Caesar occupied different realms and Caesar kept to his own realm. However, now he has invaded God's realm and started to assume spiritual (actually of course anti-spiritual) rights. We must effectively worship him. His values are not just values relating to this world but absolute values that are supposed to reach into the mind and conscience. He claims the right to define goodness and truth. This is not a sudden change. It has been coming on for several decades but now a tipping point has been reached, and if you want to be true to spiritual values you cannot just ignore the world in a passive sense and get on with your life, unpestered. You have to actively reject the world. 

When was the last time this happened? It was probably the time of the early Christians when people were required to acknowledge Caesar as a god and worship him even if that only meant burning a bit of incense before an image. It would have been easy to do this and no doubt many did, telling themselves it was only a meaningless gesture that kept the authorities happy and they could then get on with their life undisturbed. But others realised that to do this would be to cross a threshold. Gesture or not, it was effectively accepting the primacy of this world over God. Once you have done that, it becomes harder and harder to keep God at the forefront of your life. One little gesture so easily leads to complete capitulation.

The contemplative might think that it doesn't really matter what he does outwardly, and sometimes it doesn't. But sometimes it does, and to accept an evil thing puts you on the side of evil. If you really have no choice, that is different but if you do have a choice you can make the right one or the wrong one.

I expect the time is coming when we will have to make that choice. Signs are in the air but the time is not yet. This is more a rehearsal, I would say. A rehearsal and a tilling of the soil. It is a preparation but we too should, in the immortal words of Robert Baden-Powell, "Be prepared".

The Great Experiment

Let me start off this post by saying that what I am writing here could be down to the pessimism of advancing years. On the other hand, I have felt something along these lines for most of my life without necessarily expressing it in the way I do now. 

God has conducted an experiment that has failed. It could have led to a great expansion of consciousness but has collapsed into atheistic materialism and a retraction of consciousness. As the experiment has failed, he will bring it to a close.

Let me join in the fashion of blaming white people, or, as I would rather call them, people of European ethnic origin, for the woes of the world. White people have failed. They have failed by allowing leftism, which is basically atheism, to overtake them instead of incorporating some of its more useful beliefs into a predominately traditional worldview based on the reality of God and the importance of qualitative differences.  And they are further failing by not standing up for and defending their culture for fear of criticisms of racism, sexism or whatever is the current cardinal sin. (On which point, please note that neither racism nor sexism can be real sins as, even if we take them for what their believers claim them to be and do not see them as sticks to beat the people most responsible for the creative good in the world with, they are only forms of deeper moral flaws, pride, hatred, egotism and the like. Which is why they are not mentioned in any traditional spiritual or ethical code of correct behaviour.)

It was the people of European ancestry who were behind the great experiment. They had reached a sufficient stage of intelligence, creativity and sense of individual self to bring about the leap forward in consciousness. They were behind the art and science that built the new mind which was a mind that could begin to interact with God in a positive sense. This is the real source of white privilege. It was an achievement unparalleled in the history of the world and advanced the human race considerably.

However, it has failed. Problems built into the experiment, which might have been corrected and ironed out had they been addressed properly, have developed to the point at which they have derailed the whole thing. One cannot discount deliberate demonic intervention either as these problems have been exacerbated by being encouraged. Atheism is foremost among them but there is also the perversion of the strong individual into the selfish egotist and the turning of innovation from creative, spiritually healthy channels to destructive and/or subversive ones. Give someone a box of matches. He can harness fire for useful purposes or he can burn the house down. We started to do the former but we are now busily engaged in the latter. It would be nice to think we could come to our senses but the process is clearly too far gone for that to happen. The experiment has failed and will be terminated.

But has it failed completely? I would say, no. The many benefits it brought about remain, certainly on higher levels of being where they have been built into human consciousness. And many individuals, probably many more than might be apparent from what we know, have moved on in their spiritual lives and developed the potential to approach God more closely than before. It may well be this was the real intention all along and that the collateral damage was expected. After all, we know that many are called but few are chosen. I am sure God knew exactly what he was about.

If the West has fallen, and it has, it is because of its own stupidity and complacency and substitution of an atheistic pseudo-humanitarianism for the true God. It had the opportunity to build on its Christian past by incorporating that into a new creative outlook but was seduced by materialism and false ideology into thinking it knew more than it did and could redefine reality. All that remains is for those who understand to hold fast to the original vision which will be made manifest in a higher world.

What Will It Take to Wake Us Up?

So far this year we have been sent to our rooms like naughty children and have obediently complied. Then we have been told that our country is not ours anymore and expected to accept that on pain of being regarded as hateful extremists. This on top of the already existing demands that we acknowledge men to be women and women men if that's what they want. Our history which, though not without black spots, is largely the history of humanity's greatest successes, has been traduced and vilified.  And we are not yet halfway through the year. What could be next?

I'll tell you what. The Christian religion will be completely reframed. Already it has been hollowed out and its proper spiritual function reduced to a secondary concern. Soon it will be made completely secular, a system of belief whose sole function is to promote equality among the people of the world. An anti-sexist, anti-racist arm of the mainstream political ideology with which it will agree in all important respects. Christ will become what he often is already, a social worker of 'good will' whose teaching was only about humanity as it is in this world. The rest was just an unfortunate consequence of his living in an antiquated superstitious society. The religious aspect of Christianity will not be directly denied but it will be reduced to almost complete insignificance. 

Real Christians will have to leave their churches. I realise this is not a nice thing to say and might even make some people think of me as some kind of devilish tempter so let me be clear. I am not saying this because I think people should leave their churches. I am saying it because the churches have left Christ so if you want to follow Christ you will need to follow him directly. I know people will say this church may have done that but mine hasn't and I am not so foolish as to think that the spiritual apostasy has affected everywhere equally. But it is everywhere and getting worse. "My kingdom is not of this world". If you want to enter Christ's kingdom you will soon, if you have not done so already, have to look beyond this world.

But this is a decision for each individual and I make the point only to offer assistance to those who already feel like that but have a sense of guilt or fear. Do not worry. If you love Christ then you may assume it is him guiding you on this path. He still loves his churches but if those churches no longer serve him in the way they should then he will, as he promised, speak to us directly through the Holy Spirit. Now is the time when that Spirit is starting to speak more openly to more people, even if it is still relatively few. Many will miss the communal aspect of the churches but the real spiritual work is always done on a solitary level and an individual basis. We are saved one by one and today that is truer than ever. We have to take the spiritual bull by the horns and rely on ourselves. All institutions and that includes religious ones will now let us down at best and may corrupt us if we follow them in the way they have themselves become corrupted.

I do not wish the churches to disappear. After all, they have preserved Christianity for centuries. Through them millions of souls have come to God. But they have fallen far from their proper place and it may be that they have to retract dramatically so they can be purged of their secular accretions and become real islands of sanctity again. Be that as it may,  they are certainly not what they were and they will fall still further as described above under relentless attack from both outside and within. Those serious about seeking God will have to look beyond the churches now.

A Text For Our Time

There are many ideas put forward as solutions to the crisis of the modern world (not Covid 19, that's just an element, albeit an important one, of something much larger), political, ideological, even spiritual of sundry sorts. But they all lack overall coherence. However, there is something that stands above them all which reconciles any good there might be in them at a higher level without including the dross, illusion and bad qualities they all contain without this thing. It can be summed up in a sentence.

That sentence is Matthew 12:30. "He that is not with me is against me". This pithy injunction means if you are not actively for the truth of Christ, you are against it. Not passively against it, actively so. According to this saying, there is no middle ground. If you are not for Christ, you oppose him. Neutrality is not an option.

This might seem unreasonable. Why, if you don't accept Christ, does that mean you are the enemy of Christ? Why can you not be a good, upstanding, morally decent person without acknowledging Christ?

You can't because Christ is the embodiment of truth and if you don't recognise that then you don't recognise truth in which case you will be on the outside of truth, working against it whether that be in a greater or lesser sense. Christ is like magnetic north. If the lodestone of your being does not point to him then it is broken. You are broken. Your soul is sick.

These may sound harsh words but what they amount to is this. You want to be good. You may think you are good according to the standards of the world. But those standards are false standards because they do not recognise the reality of what this world is; that it is not justified in and for itself and human beings do not exist for the fulfilment of what they appear to be in the light of this world. You want to be good but you don't acknowledge what good is for it is summed up in Christ and his teachings.

And here's the strange thing, something that goes right to the metaphysical roots of life. You might think you can be good without Christ, and perhaps you could be if the fundamental reality of life were abstract principle, something like pure being. But it is not. God is love. Life is ultimately personal. Truth is a person not a thing and that person is revealed for us in Christ.

So these are not harsh words. They are simply true words because they point to the reality of what life is. If you do not recognise Christ, you are rejecting real truth and goodness and replacing the genuine source of these things with some kind of idol. A person who thinks he can be a good person on his own without Christ is an idol worshipper and whether that idol be his own self or some kind of philosophical ideal makes little difference in the end.  He is still substituting a false reality for the truth and he is doing that because of a spiritual falseness within himself. Christ is the truth and if you don't know that you don't accept truth, and if you don't accept truth, well then, you reject it.

The only exception to this rule I can think of applies to people who have not been made properly aware of Christ but who follow his closest approximation in another religion. I believe that after the Incarnation the spirit of Christ was spread across the globe and did influence other religions through forms in them that could accommodate that spirit such as the Bodhisattva ideal in Mahayana Buddhism. That is a secondary thing to knowing Christ in himself but in this case if the spirit of any religion has absorbed something of the Christ influence, the Universal Christ you might call it, then people of true heart can follow the pattern of Christ as it is manifested in their own religion. This does not apply to modern secular substitutes, however, which are based on the rejection of the transcendent reality of Christ. Christ can manifest through a religion other than Christianity if the spirit of that religion is open to him but not through something that denies not only his form but his very spirit.

The converse to this is those professed Christians who nevertheless do not follow the spiritual reality of Christ, who perhaps are external Christians only, people for whom the trappings of religion, the lamp, is more important than its inner reality, the light. These are the people spoken of by Christ when he said in another text from Matthew, this time 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father in heaven". For Christ has an outer aspect and an inner aspect and only those who dedicate themselves to the truth of the inner aspect are really with him. To be for Christ means to put the reality of Christ, the spiritual reality, above everything else, at all times and in all circumstances. If you are not for him, you are against him.

The Good is spiritual. If your conception of the good is material only, supporting people as they are in this world with no understanding of the needs and destined purpose of the soul, then you are effectively standing against the true good which means you are doing spiritual harm whether that is your intention or not. Christ taught that his kingdom was not of this world but that does not mean that the world should not fall into line with the truth of Christ. It means that the truth of Christ can never fall into line with this world. If there is anything in this world that for you comes before Christ then you are not with him.