Apathy

Apathy is one of the besetting sins of many on the spiritual path and one you should at all times guard against. You must not become bored with the routine of your daily existence but continually make efforts to keep things fresh by putting yourself fully into spiritual life.

I was told this by my teachers many years ago and I have been reminded of it recently because I have been feeling somewhat drained of spiritual energy of late. Outwardly the world is what we know it to be and it's only going to get worse. Western civilisation is dead and we live in the ruined remains. Spiritual apostasy, materialism, mass immigration, feminism and so on have finished it off and we only fail to see this because of the legacy that was built up which keeps us going for the time being. Sometimes it seems that there is nothing to be done so why even try? 

That, dear readers, is a typical temptation of the evil influences which constantly assail the disciple and it is one we should disregard. We cannot know what our efforts in this direction might accomplish, outwardly or inwardly, and nor should we be concerned about that. Our responsibility is to fight the good fight at all times and not worry about the results. We just need to proclaim the truth as best we can and let God do the rest. But if we feel it we must in some way live it. We must never be discouraged by apparent lack of positive outcome either in our outer work or spiritual exercises. I say this because it is precisely this feeling that what we we do bears no fruit that can lead to a sense of apathy. But we should not allow ourselves to be discouraged. The sense of futility is at once a test of our resolve and our mettle, and also a ploy of the dark forces to derail us from spiritual endeavour.

Slothfulness is one of the seven deadly sins. At first glance, it doesn't seem like such a bad sin. It's not like anger or greed or lust which we might think of as fiery sins. Sloth is more of an earthy sin, a sin of weight and depression and negativity. It may be passive more than overtly active but it is no less a sin because it is rejecting God. God is life and sloth is a kind of giving in to death. There is a theological vice called acedia and this is the same thing. It is spiritual laziness that leads to inertia and that is just what the devil wants because it means he has successfully sidetracked us from spiritual effort. The enthusiasm we may once have had, an energy that fired us up for the spiritual path, has dissipated and we become discouraged to the point that we cease to strive. Our belief becomes weaker and may even fade altogether though we don't realise it. We may still lead an outwardly spiritual life but the passion has been replaced by convention and habit.

What's the solution? First, acknowledge the problem. Then reengage. Pull yourself together. Slothfulness is lack of spiritual energy so you need to reanimate yourself through meditation and prayer and concentration on the good, the beautiful and the true. These are all in hiding at the moment so you need to search them out but they will be revealed to those who make concerted efforts and do not allow themselves to fall prey to apathy. 

Satan is the Ape of God

Ideas for posts often pop into my head when I am out walking which is the closest I usually come to meditation these days. The other day this phrase did. I knew it was a traditional thought but wasn't sure where it came from.  A brief glance at the internet indicates either Tertullian or St Augustine so I will just attribute it to the Church Fathers.

What it means is that the devil, not being creative, can only imitate God but he can only do so in a corrupt, even degenerate, way because of his own corruption. It also means that, the better to effect his deceptions, he does not usually tell outright lies but mixes lies in with truth or else presents part-truths as complete truth or, again, paints what is true on a higher spiritual level as equally true on a lower material or worldly level where it is not true at all. He does this all the time and never more so than in our day when he has promoted the doctrines of leftism, equality, unity and so on, as fundamental truths. They are certainly not so in this world even if they may be considered so in absolute terms. But in fact even in heaven there is no equality though all have as much as they can hold, and unity is always mixed with difference which clearly means inequality.

Leftism is the ape of spirituality. To those who cannot see life in proper spiritual terms it might seem reasonable, though I would contend that even ordinary people not interested in spirituality should be able to discern its destructive qualities and rootedness in envy and resentment. But it presents itself as the only viable humanistic political doctrine and is convinced of its own righteousness. It is, however, based on denial. First and foremost, the denial of transcendent reality. It purports to love science but the science it loves is only that which confirms its prejudices which are materialistic, repressive to the human spirit and put ideology above truth. Any science which goes against it is ruthlessly pilloried, suppressed and condemned in the way leftism always does with whatever comes into conflict with its dogmas. Just now, in this time of coronavirus, it is interesting to see how the left fully supports the lockdown with its implication of increased power of the state and augmentation of control. Science which supports this is called science. Science which does not is caricatured as pseudo-science and conspiracy theory.

An ape is a degraded human being. It is a human form degenerated, both physically and mentally. This is why most people instinctively recoil from the idea that we are descended from monkeys. Now, I am fully aware that evolutionary theory does not say that. It says modern apes and man have a common ancestor. I am not a creationist and I have no problem at all with the idea that the human form has been built up over time, though I would add the important proviso that when the human soul was joined to the physical body that event had a massive impact on the body and started to change it radically. Man is a mixture of the physical and the spiritual, part angel, part animal as the medieval philosophers used to say, and he partakes of the nature of both. So I am not saying that our bodies are not animal bodies in terms of their origins. However, there is a belief in occultism that the modern apes are the result of an illicit interbreeding between early man and animals at a time when we had not fully separated out from the animal kingdom. I have no idea as to the truth of that but it does chime in with an instinctive feeling that the apes might be more like degenerate men than evolved animals. They are regressive and debased forms of the real. It is in this sense that Satan parodies God. He takes what is good and true and fouls it.

Satan is the ape of God. He can only copy and when he does he spoils and inverts turning beauty into ugliness and noble into base. C. S. Lewis seems to be thinking along these lines in The Last Battle. Although it is the donkey Puzzle who unwittingly pretends to be Aslan, it is Shift the ape who is the instigating mastermind behind the operation of presenting a donkey with a decaying lion skin as the incarnate God. (Ass-lion?). Tolkien points in the same direction with the orcs who are not created by Morgoth but are corrupted versions of elves.  

The devil cannot create because he has severed himself from the source of creativity. He can only copy and what he copies, he corrupts. Knowing this should help you see his activity in the contemporary world.

A Spiritual Virus

Yes, there is such a thing and most people these days are infected by it. It attacks the mind and the heart and renders those afflicted by it impervious to spiritual truth. It is a sickness that doesn't kill the body but harms the soul which, according to Jesus, is a much more serious thing. If untreated, it might damage the soul irreparably. And the reason it has made such inroads is because the human immune system has been ruthlessly compromised by the materialism of the last 2-3 centuries.

Western civilisation which was built on spiritual principles has been subverted by those who hate and fear Christianity. These people have used legitimate advances in understanding to destroy the foundations on which that civilisation stood. They have taken scientific knowledge and turned it against real understanding by cutting it off from its roots as the attempt to know something of God by studying his creation. They have taken the idea of freedom, a great gift through the correct exercise of which we may consciously know and love God, and perverted that to stand for freedom of the fallen self to do as it likes including, or even chiefly, to deny God. God becomes an oppressive limitation on human freedom. They have corrupted the imagination, which was intended to guide us into creative vision, and made of it a means to stimulate desire in its lower aspects. We were intended to expand our horizons but we have only expanded them outwardly not upwardly, and as we have expanded horizontally, we have contracted vertically.

Christianity and other religions, though Christianity most of all, are protections against spiritual disease. There are in the unseen universe the spiritual equivalents of viruses and bacteria. These will attack us and gain entrance to our minds unless there is some sort of defence that can repel them. This defence is religion without which we fall into sin which is spiritual disease. From sin comes alienation and from alienation comes despair.

Look at what has happened to the world over the last couple of months. We are so far removed from any understanding of the higher aspects of life, or let's just say life, that we have scurried into dark corners to hide away from a threat we are told is deadly but which even readily available statistics show to be mild in (currently) 97% of cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. And even the great majority of fatalities are elderly people who are well past their 3 score years and 10. It is not that anyone wishes a person to die before their time, and every precaution should be taken to safeguard the vulnerable at a time like this, but we are sacrificing the long term prospects of the majority for the short term prospects of a few. And we are doing this because  governments have allowed themselves to be panicked by the media and the public which, in turn, has happened because we have no faith. The physical virus has affected us mentally as well as physically and it has done so because we have already succumbed to the spiritual virus.

What's the cure? Extending the metaphor, perhaps a bit more than it can take, you could say it's vaccination. Ultimately, it is vaccination by the Holy Spirit but more immediately it is vaccination by faith in Christ, real faith not belief which is a lesser thing often confused with faith. (If you want to know the difference, think of heart and mind.) This will immunise us against fear because it helps us see that the body may fail, one way or another it will fail, but the soul, the spiritual self, when turned towards the flame of eternal life which is Christ will rise up to glory. 

Life in this world without belief in something beyond this world always ends in emptiness. This is why so many old people cling to life in any form rather than accept their time to depart. We should not wilfully seek to go before our time. That is rebelling against the will of God which is why suicide is forbidden by the Church. It is also right and proper to try to prolong life through medical help. This is a world out of kilter with spiritual truth and that means there will be sickness for which cures should be sought.  But we should know that physical life has its own natural cycle and to try to extend that cycle beyond a certain point is refusing to grow. Worse, it is turning life into death. And that is what the spiritual virus does.

Trials on the Path

I want to say a few words about something the Masters told me on more than one occasion during the times they spoke to me. What they said was words to the effect (and I am not quoting verbatim here as in the book but from memory and in my own words though the sense is theirs) that, "You will be subjected to extreme provocation at certain times in your life. This is because the dark forces always attack those who seek to tread the spiritual path but it is also to test your ability to remain calm and not react because of pride or self-will. Accept these attacks humbly even if you believe them to be unreasonable and unjust."

I am not mentioning this here because of a personal situation but for more universal reasons because I think this kind of thing happens to everyone who tries to lead a life in which spiritual concerns come first. You will be attacked. Perhaps by outsiders, colleagues or perhaps by friends and even family. The attacks will possibly contain elements of truth but truth blown up out of proportion and with no sense of a more balanced point of view. We all have faults. These will be homed in on and used to completely define your personality as though the faults were all it were. Sometimes the whole point will be that the attacks are clearly totally unreasonable. This is to get you to react with self-righteous indignation. The fact that you are right will be used to deceive you into thinking that your reaction is right which, of course, it isn't.

I think the only solution when faced with personal attacks is to remember how Jesus behaved when he was attacked in this manner. He remained calm and said nothing. He did not try to justify himself. He did not pity himself even when his friends either abandoned him or actually turned on him. Nothing was more unjust than what he had to endure. 

But he was Jesus, you might say. We can't live like that! Yes, we can. We can certainly try to do so. In fact, we must do so. That was the example he set, the example was specifically for us to follow. He was not doing anything that his followers could not do as the early martyrs demonstrated. It is highly unlikely that we will be called upon to do anything as dramatic as them but we will be personally traduced. This may be on account of our beliefs but it may also be for who we are or how we behave. Anyone who sincerely wishes to follow Christ is stepping out of the mainstream and bringing completely different rules to the game. They might seem exacting, intolerant, critical, judgemental (in the world's eyes) and they might be condemned on just these grounds. But we have to stand firm while always remembering that it should be our behaviour that judges the world more than our words by which I mean that those who would follow Christ must set a personal example.

The dark forces have a lot of power in the world today, partly because they are unacknowledged and their way of working unrecognised. They can act through those close to us, professionally or personally. But God can bring good out of evil and this is one of those tests that burn out self-concern from our character and enable us to turn to God more fully. It has to be said, too, that sometimes something in the attack may have an element of truth to it and we would do well to see that even if the bulk of it is unjust. 

Evil is Not Good

I regard it as a major error to see evil as a tool wielded by God to bring about greater understanding and development. This is a fairly common trope, whether as a Christian heresy, a variation on Eastern monism or an example of the sort of Western occultism that seeks to present itself as more 'advanced' than religion for the unenlightened masses. But it is wrong.

Roughly speaking, the theory goes that without darkness you could not know light so certain angels act on behalf of God as forces of darkness and contraction. They do what we, in our short-sightedness, call evil but they are working for the spread of good. Lucifer, of course, means Light Bearer and, according to this idea, that is what he still is. He is the force that brings about individuality and breaks down spiritual inertia so that new growth may arise. He is sometimes even thought of as Christ's dark twin, the two working in tandem to bring about spiritual evolution as the One splits into the Many before recombining as the One.

I think this is pernicious nonsense. Tolkien (as usual) had it right. In his creation myth, the One God teaches the archangels who are the children of his thought to sing creation into being which they proceed to do along the harmonious guidelines laid down by God. But they have a certain amount of freedom too and one archangel brings in discordant elements, the product of his incipient egotism. Several times God corrects this by introducing new themes that balance it out but it seems that the end product, Earth, is still somewhat corrupted. Evil has come through the pride of the rebellious archangel and though God can use that evil to bring about some new good, the evil is certainly not the source of the good or the necessary means for it. It's more a matter of making a virtue out of necessity. Evil here is not a form of good but a perversion of it.

It is important to see this correctly or you can fall into the trap of justifying evil and not standing against it as the enemy of good rather than its accomplice. And that means you will become an apologist for evil or even an enabler of it. This is the philosophy of people who eschew divine simplicity in favour of over-elaborate cosmologies that appeal to the intellect. It can be dispelled by a proper understanding of Christ who leaves us in doubt that evil is not good. It is evil.

Computers and Demons

 I'm venturing into a field I know very little about here but I have some observations to make about the computer revolution and where it might lead that I believe are not as far-fetched as you might think. 

Computers reduce quality to quantity. That is the basis of their operations and completely in line with the materialistic view of the world. They are also a form of magic insofar as magic is the power to effect change by unusual methods not normally open to us. Much of modern technology could be called that but computers are the most extreme example up to now. 

Magic, it is said, can be white or black but, to all intents and purposes, it is largely the province of the demonic since it is overcoming nature by the will, specifically the will to power. 

I think that the computer revolution has been driven by demons. It has certainly been captured by them but it was probably instigated by them too. 

I think this for several reasons. Computers are wholly materialistic in conception, function and operation but they imitate the spiritual. The effect of computers is spuriously spiritual in that they give theoretical access to all knowledge and have the capacity to simulate reality on a virtual level. Also, there is the ability of a network of computers to create a kind of global oneness even if this is external only and largely artificial. 

The use of computers separates human beings from their source and renders their thinking mechanical. Our minds tend to adopt the form of the technology we use and this is certainly the case with computers. 

Computers distract us from reality, leading us into a rabbit warren of illusion and fantasy and making us less able to discriminate between the real and the unreal. I could go on but really you either see this or you don't. The only question is do the positives, too obvious to mention, outweigh the negatives or vice versa. Given that the positives are obvious and the negatives more subtle that is not such an easy question to answer though I know what I think.

If the IT revolution is demonically inspired the question is why? The immediate answer might be to distract people from the spiritual and make them more susceptible to evil using that word in its broadest sense to mean anti-spiritual. Not just conventionally bad but wrong, that which separates us from truth. Computers are seductive and create a world of glamour and enchantment that allures us. They lead us away from nature into dreams and artificiality.

But is there more?  It seems to be the case that the demons cannot take physical form except under certain very particular circumstances and for brief periods. UFO phenomena indicates that and stories from tradition about other-worldly beings inhabiting a kind of borderland between this world and the next say the same thing. Demons would probably like to incarnate directly on Earth because this would give them greater power over us. There might also be something about being in a body that they covet. Might the drive towards artificial intelligence, quantum computing and developing computers that are carbon-based actually be all about enabling demons to incarnate? CS Lewis explored ideas along these lines in his novel That Hideous Strength where the 'macrobes' sought to take a kind of embodiment through the severed head of an executed evil genius type.

Many people are aware of the problems associated with humanity's current addiction to IT. These are mostly to do with how it denatures us and reduces our ability to respond to the real world, never mind the spiritual world, properly. The increase in global surveillance is also a concern. But what if the true purpose of the computer revolution, the end game so to speak, was to enable the incarnation of demons in this world? Is this a possibility we should start taking seriously?

Evil and How It Operates

Over the course of the last 20 years I have had some practical experience of the way evil operates and how it tries to bring down good. When I lived my semi-monastic existence between 1979 and 2000 my knowledge of this was largely theoretical but going back into the world has given me greater insight into the modus operandi of evil. Particularly, my encounters with certain individuals have taught me quite a bit about the way it goes about its business. I write this piece for others who may find themselves caught up in similar situations because such things happen to many of us on our spiritual journey.

The individuals I am referring to could not be called evil in themselves but they had sufficient spiritual and psychological flaws to be used by evil. They were open to influence because of their misconceptions and personality defects. In saying that, I realise I may sound as if I am claiming the moral high ground for myself which, of course, would make me a typical Pharisee, puffed up with pride, self-importance and self-delusion. But I am not making any such claim. I know full well I have numerous flaws but I am, at least, aware that I have them. The people I am talking about think they are good people and would not accept that they have need of improvement in any radical sense. And this, I have noticed, is a major difference between the genuinely religious person and the non-religious. We are all sinners but the religious person recognises this about himself. He doesn't think he is a good person.

The Masters told me that the more progress an individual makes upon the spiritual path, the more he will be attacked by the dark powers. I have observed this to be true. If you are serious about spirituality or religion you are very likely to have to face something of this kind. The attacks may take place inwardly in the form of temptation to some sort of sin, pride, despair, anger or whatever it may be, wherever you are weakest. Or they may occur in the form of attacks by people you come into contact with, even close contact, even family members.

Here's a list of some of the ways evil seeks to undermine the good and bring down someone who follows the spiritual path. It may seek to do this either directly or by causing that person to react in some way. In conversation it accuses, it abuses, it argues and it shouts. It changes the subject when shown to be wrong and interrupts when countered. It may say that the person who is the object of its attention is mentally ill or morally bad. And, of course, it either lies outright or, more cunningly, subtly distorts reality. I'm sure you get the picture. All of this in the attempt to overwhelm and crush or else provoke some reaction which will drag the person attacked down to its own level. And don't forget that evil always has this advantage over good. It recognises no limit on its behaviour so will always do whatever it takes to get what it wants.

Being subjected to this kind of thing can be most unpleasant but the spiritual powers allow it because there are lessons to be learnt. It is a test of self-control under duress and an opportunity to acquire the ability to rise above personal reactions. It helps one gain a certain detachment and distance from emotion. At least, it can if you respond to it in the way you should which is far from easy. The point is that a person who really is serious about spirituality has to learn to conquer their lower self. The only way to do this for the great majority of people, especially perhaps men, is through the fire.

In the book of Revelation there is an interesting passage which describes Satan and his angels, in effect, the dark powers, as the accusers of the brethren. The brethren are firstly the saints and whole company of heaven, and secondly, and more pertinently, those seeking to join that company but who are not yet worthy in that they have character flaws to iron out. That's you and me. As we journey towards God we must purify ourselves of, putting it in traditional terms, sin. You could also say that we must build a greater spiritual awareness and a deeper love into ourselves. This is a hard task. You may have been told that you only have to believe in God and your salvation is assured. It's not that simple. Belief without inner transformation is nothing. After all, as James famously says in his 2nd epistle, even the devils believe. You have to convert that belief, which can be likened to an architect's blueprint for a house, into the actual building and you must construct that yourself. So, belief is something that must be constantly tended and deepened. The Indian saint Ramakrishna was once asked if it was true that if you bathed in the river Ganges all your sins were washed away. Perfectly true, he replied. Unfortunately when you come out of the river they all fall down from the branches of the trees right back onto you. The point being that belief to be spiritually efficacious must be completely internalised and built into character.

So we are the brethren and the devil and his angels are the accusers. They accuse us of sins we have and sins we don't have because their aim is to disrupt us and cause us to lose hope, succumbing to these sins in the face of relentless attack. But we must stand firm which we can do if we put our faith in God and let go of our attachment to our standing in the world and good reputation in the eyes of others. All those who are intent on treading the spiritual path to its conclusion have to be prepared to face the accusers of the brethren. But in dealing correctly with this experience you will develop the inner poise that God requires of his children and show him that your heart truly is with him and not the world. In fact, this is sometimes the only way you learn to give him your full inner attention. We have always known that the road to heaven is a thorny one but it is these thorns that tear off our self-concern and pride.

Spirituality and Evil

Here are some old questions which have been given different answers at different times but which we should look at again because they are as important now as they have ever been. They are also less likely to be answered correctly today, given the fact that we have closed our minds to so much of reality.

Is evil real? If it is real, is it supernatural in origin? If it is supernatural in origin, what is its purpose? If it has a purpose how can we, mere mortals, respond to that purpose?

We should begin by pointing out that any spiritual approach must include a proper understanding of evil if it is to encompass the whole of life and not simply represent a retreat from unpleasant parts of it.

Next, I'd like to quote the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev who wrote the following. "Is evil only a natural defect, an imperfection disappearing of itself with the growth of good, or is it a real power, possessing our world by means off temptations, so that for fighting it successfully, assistance must be found in another sphere of being?".

 I quote Soloviev because framing the question in this way gives what I regard as the right answer. Yes, evil is real. It is not just an absence of good as darkness is an absence of light. Or rather it is that but it is not only that. There is something deliberate about evil which takes it beyond simple negativity. It is not merely a defect of mind (using Soloviev's word), it is also the product of a warped will.

And this means that evil is a real thing that must be fought against.

If it is real then where does it come from? Some would say it is the consequence of free will and so human in origin, the result of egotism and selfishness. There is nothing we can really call evil in the animal world though some behaviour comes pretty close. But really where there is no proper sense of self, there can be no good or evil. So evil is human. But is the human will the sole ground of evil or is there something further back, deeper in the fabric of life? And, if so, is evil just a kind of growth mechanism in the moral universe that brings out positive good by showing and enabling us to experience its opposite? Or is it the result of a rebellion against the natural order that actively aims to corrupt and lead astray?

A rationalistic philosopher might conclude the first of these two options. Evil is there to help us know good. It serves to awaken self-consciousness and then maybe even take us beyond that. By this criterion, the devil is a kind of dark twin to Jesus and, ultimately, they play for the same side. But this also means there is no such thing as evil really. It's not much more than a trick.

I see the persuasive power of such a theory but I reject it. Because although evil might be used by God to bring certain things about, it did not form part of his original plan for creation. Given the fact of evil, God can incorporate it, to some extent, into his scheme for evolving consciousness but only to bring some good out of an already existing evil. It has nothing good about it in itself and was not envisaged for a specific, spiritual purpose.

I believe the Christian idea of evil to be closer to the truth. The one reality is good but God gave his creatures free will in order that they might participate in creation themselves and help to create it from the inside. Not to mention, to allow for the possibility of real love between self-conscious beings. But as a result of this freedom certain spirits high in the order of being rebelled, pride and the desire to be equal to God being behind this rebellion. These spirits now have an agenda which is to mar creation and turn it against its creator. We are the intermediaries in this battle.

And it is a battle. The purpose of supernatural evil is to destroy spiritual good, and one of the principal places they seek to do this is the human heart. Human beings are the children of God, made in his image, and intended to grow to full awareness of that through experience in the world where they can, so to speak, make themselves from the raw material God has given them, that being their individual souls. This is why we do not have access to spiritual reality now. We must gain that ourselves by right decisions, right thinking and right actions. It could not be ours if we did not win it for ourselves. We cannot just be given it. But the evil forces seek to prevent that for reasons we can only guess at but probably because it is the tendency of corrupted souls to want to corrupt others, perhaps to try to prove themselves in some way right, perhaps out of simple resentment and malevolence.

Evil in our day seeks to disguise itself as good. That is because the purpose of evil is not to destroy minds or bodies but to destroy souls and souls can only be destroyed when they give themselves up to evil of their own volition. But who will do that knowing that it is evil? Very few. But if you can convince the soul that evil is good and good evil then you are well on the way to corrupting it spiritually. Of course, you can only convince those whose inner orientation to truth and real good is weak and in whom egotism is stronger than love of God, and this is the great test of our time. Will we seek the false good which ultimately serves the human ego or the true good which demands we give that up but in love not for some kind of self-advantage?

Jesus famously said "Resist not evil", and he allowed himself to be tried and executed without protest. Does that mean we should not fight evil? This is where wisdom and spiritual discernment are required. For resist not evil does not mean we should allow evil to pass unchallenged. It means don't fight it inwardly by reacting to it according to its own mode. Resist it outwardly but remain detached within, without giving way to hatred and anger (though there may well be such a thing as righteous anger). If evil is not identified and, yes, resisted, it will triumph. But when you, as you should, resist evil in thought, word and deed, do not resist it by fighting it with its own weapons. Keep your heart unaffected by the fight and let your motive be purely and simply love of God. After all, Jesus did not follow his own advice all the time (if that advice is interpreted purely passively). So, don't fight evil with its own weapons but fight it with all your might.

How do we do this? The first thing to do is to identify it for what it is. That is not always easy in modern times when evil, in many cases successfully, seeks to disguise itself as good. But it can be done if we focus on the underlying spiritual reality of being and realise life is a struggle between truth and falsehood. This is where Christianity has the advantage over a religion such as Buddhism or any religion that does not grant a full, albeit contingent, reality to creation. Christ taught the fact of evil and that it must be countered whereas for the Buddha, it is more the product of ignorance, dispelled by enlightenment which takes one beyond the dualistic world of good and evil. Consequently, there is a tendency for the Buddhist to ignore evil. He doesn't acknowledge its cosmic roots, not fully anyway, and so is less able to deal with it in the world even if he can within himself. I would go so far as to say that Buddhism in the modern world is largely ineffectual against evil. How can you fight something that you don't regard as real?

When we have identified it then we must proclaim the good. For evil is perhaps best fought by shining the light of God onto it. Then the spuriously attractive coverings it surrounds itself with are shown to be tawdry rags, and the darkness at its heart is revealed. And what is the good? Surely it is the light of the risen Christ. This is the one thing against which evil has no defence.

Today we live during a time of ever increasing spiritual and cultural evil. This evil is subtler than in the past with the result that most people don't see it and go along with it, even seeing it as good since good it might appear to be according to a twisted metaphysics that denies the transcendent and the natural and spiritual orders of being that are rooted in that. But those who do see it must fight it or they will find that it will conquer them. If you don't stand against evil then you will eventually succumb to it. This is a law. So stand against it and fight it with the word of God.

Evil is Based on Rebellion against Order

Evil can only exist in self-conscious beings which means, as far as we know, humans or angels. Only if you have the possibility of being consciously good can you be actively bad. Evil in the animal world doesn't exist. It's true that you can have a 'bad' animal but that is likely to have a physical or environmental cause. What you might describe as spiritual evil only exists in self-conscious beings.

When God created the world, he saw that it was good. This means it was according to his plan and everything followed its true nature without deviation. Evil, when it came, did not arise through ignorance but through the will. This is the teaching in the book of Genesis and it makes sense. There is an order in creation and to observe this order is to live in harmony with the world and one's own true self. The order is based on the reality of God and includes a natural hierarchy amongst created beings. But free will introduces the possibility that beings can rebel against this order to advance their own agendas. There are several ways in which they can do this but two of the most common are by denying God and by seeking to undermine his order.

I believe that a major cause of evil in the human kingdom is resentment. It's not the only cause. Love of power is another, but resentment is supposed to have been behind Satan's rebellion against God. Pride was involved too and there is certainly a link between these vices, but Satan resented the fact that he was not equal to God and this was the cause of his fall. He rebelled against order because of resentment. This was the first act of evil and it carries on to this day. You may say that this is all a myth but it is a myth, like all proper myths, that describes a truth and the literal reality of it is not important in that respect.

Resentment is a major cause of evil in the world today. In fact, I would say it is the major cause. The serpent incited resentment in Eve, resentment against God and against Adam and against the natural hierarchy that did not place her at the top. The result of that we know. He is doing a similar thing now. He fans the flames of discontent and encourages those who are deficient in positive goodness to rebel.

Evil comes when we deny reality. Reality is God and the natural order of creation. When we deny this, we have given in to evil even though we may find ways to justify our actions. But if we look within our hearts and examine our motives for doing whatever we do, we often find that, while we may claim to be acting for the good, our reasons for doing so are not good. For instance, many political movements are filled with people who think they are trying to improve the world (according to their lights) but whose motivating force for this is really resentment and desire for power.

The archetypal rebellion is often thought to be that of a child against its parents. When a child reaches adolescence, it is quite natural that it seeks to assert its own individuality and break free of parental authority. But we have been duped into thinking that this inevitably means rebellion. It doesn't. Given a wise parent and a basically good-hearted child, the whole process can take place without incident, without major incident anyway. Rebellion is not an inevitable fact of life, either in the context of the parent/child relationship or the wider context of the evolving human being. Only if there is an excessive authoritarianism on the side of the parent or an excessive egotism on the side of the child will it manifest in the family realm. We know that God is a wise and loving parent so our current mass rebellion is not because of him. It can only be put down to our own egotism.

Demons

A large part of the world is currently possessed by demons. I realise this statement would be regarded as, at the least, outrageous and more probably neurotic or just plain insane by most people, including many religious people, and it is one I have reluctantly accepted after quite a long time. But it is clearly true. The degree to which we have embraced falsehood is just too great for any other explanation.

Continued on Albion Awakening.

Deviations of Modernity

At one time, I thought of writing a book on the deviations of modernity but lost interest as the whole thing would just have been one long round of negativity. The more I thought about it, the more I realised I would have ended up including practically everything about the world today in my analysis of what was wrong with it.  Its art, its politics, its science, its philosophy, its culture, its education and even its religion. For nowadays each one of these serves to sidetrack man from his true mission of self-knowledge. None of them really helps to align him with it.  Each one is, to some degree, destructive of truth. Most of them are based on lies and reduce humanity to a spiritually shrunken version of itself.  The prospect was too unpleasant to contemplate.  I didn't want to appear, even to myself, a miserable moaner with nothing good to say about anything.

That having been said, the negativity is not in me but in the world as it is today and though a book is too much for me to do, a post on this blog will make the point almost as well. After all, there isn't that much to say. All these deviations tie up together and come from the same place. They are all a denial of the fullness of what a human being is. They restrict humanity to how it appears to be in this world. They don’t all do this in the same way and to the same degree but each does it to some extent.

Continued on Albion Awakening.

The Persecution of the Innocents

The innocents referred to here are those seeking to extract themselves from this world and return to God. So perhaps not innocent in the normal sense of the word but since to do this one must become as a little child then innocence might not be such a bad description after all.

It was suggested on the comment thread of a previous post that I wrote something about a phenomenon that anyone seriously treading the spiritual path will have encountered. That is abuse and rejection from those still ensnared in the coils of this world. In the modern God-denying West this is so commonplace as to be almost universal but it is something that has always existed. If you go back to the book of Revelation there is a passage which talks about how the accusers of the brethren were cast out of heaven by Michael and his angels and thrown down to earth where they went about trying to corrupt the souls of men. This clearly refers to the devil and his hordes but the term 'accusers of the brethren' can be taken to apply to anyone who condemns another for attempting to walk the spiritual path.

Whenever a person tries to rise above this world they are attacked by representatives of the world and subjected to criticism. This can range from mild disbelief at your naivety through accusations of selfishness and mental instability all the way up to descriptions of you as insane and even evil. Sometimes this might appear to be well-meaning but at others it is plain vicious. If I say that people who do the attacking are under the dominion of the devil that does not mean they are necessarily bad people. As I say, some can be well-meaning, especially family and friends who worry that you might have gone off the rails. The stories about people running off to join cults you used to hear so much about (though I presume that sort of thing still goes on) shows they are not entirely wrong.

 But I am not talking about that. I am talking about the experiences of anyone who wakes up and then tries to devote him or her self to leading a life and behaving in a way that will bring them closer to God. When you do that you can appear to be confronting people with their own darkness and the less pleasant will attack you for that. So the evil powers can exploit weaknesses in these people in their attempt to undermine you. Either by getting you to abandon your spiritual goals and practices or else by causing you to react in self-defence or with fear or anger. When that happens you have entered a state of negative emotion and/or pride and the devil is quite happy for you to continue in your spiritual beliefs if he has succeeded in dragging you down to his level. He doesn't care what you believe. He's only concerned with the state of your soul.

I said your accusers are not necessarily bad people but the truth is that they sometimes are. I mean bad in the sense of identified with sins of various natures and not doing anything to try to overcome them, either because they are unaware of them or else because they don't regard the sin as a sin - which is in itself a kind of sin - or even because the source of their sin is their delight and how they see themselves. It could be said that we are all like that to a degree, but the degree is important as is the amount to which these sins are a dominant part of our character.

Some people resent anyone who turns to spirituality because they think it means you are saying you are better than them. Admittedly one may give that impression. I rather think I did in the heady excitement of first discovering the spiritual path. I didn't mean to but I did think I was now beginning to wake up and most other people were still asleep and that made me more 'advanced'. But again that's a different thing. What I am talking about happens with certain people regardless of any impression you may give. You show up their deficiencies and they don't like it so they try to bring you down. The only sensible response is not to respond. Don't react. Don't enter into arguments. You don't win arguments. They just create more friction and drag you down. The Masters told me that the mind can argue for any position under the sun but truth can only be known, and that's obvious when you think about it. So just state your position and then leave it at that unless asked to elaborate. Sincerely asked, I mean, not asked as a lure to further argument which your opponent is only interested in winning. 

The Masters also told me several times that the greater progress I made the more I would be assailed by evil in all its forms. Why does the devil attack those who set out on the spiritual path so much? It's clear that he has an interest in stopping souls escape from this world. Whether that is because he gains energy from souls locked in the lower planes, the only planes he can relate to in his fallen state, or because of his desire to prove God wrong in giving humanity free will, I am not able to say. He obviously has an interest in destroying aspiration towards the good and in promoting attitudes and behaviour that separate us from God, and perhaps the more you try to escape his clutches the harder he will work to stop you. The sorry fact is the there are powers in the world, supernatural powers, that seek spiritual destruction and it does no good to pretend otherwise. Indeed, to recognise this is important if one wants to understand the state of the world today and also to know how to protect oneself from them.

Which brings us to the heart of this whole matter. Forces of evil do try to attack the spiritual seeker. The stories of early saints being persecuted by devils are not fictitious or even allegorical. They are true. Nowadays this may not take such an overt form as described in the life of St Anthony and most of us are not saints either. Nevertheless attacks will still take place. These might be inner attacks from dark forces which seek to affect our mind through aggravating our weaknesses or appealing to pride and such like, even tempting us to despair about our unworthiness or the horrors of the world. Or they may be attacks on us from external people, people we know, even friends and family. How do we respond to this, especially knowing that the devil loves to attack by accusing us of his own faults and vices so as to prompt our outraged indignation at the unfairness of it all? Then he's got us where he wants us, in a downward spiral of mutual recriminations.

Jesus told us to resist not evil. This doesn't mean you should allow evil to ride roughshod all over you and have its way. That does no one any good. It means don't respond inwardly. Don't allow evil to drag you down to its level. That is what the accusers of the brethren often seek to do, whether consciously as in the inner dark powers, or unconsciously as in ordinary people fallen under their influence. So try not to react. That's hard but it's what we have to do. And then don't allow yourself to feel self-righteous or superior. That way lies pride.  Don't get angry and don't condemn anyone who criticises you as a pawn of the devil. Even if they are on this occasion, and it may well be that they are, they are to be pitied on that account not demonized as evil themselves. Frankly this is hard when you are under verbal assault but you can look upon it as a test that will make you spiritually stronger and bring you closer to God.

So neither anger nor fear nor pride nor self-justification nor the attempt to repay the accuser in his own coin. Patience, forbearance, long suffering, humility. Hard, I know! But none of us will be accused or pilloried as much as Jesus was. He gave us the example to follow.

Are All Saved?

At the end of a previous post I pondered on what might happen to souls who reject the truth of God, and speculated that they might be given another opportunity to embrace reality elsewhere, though it would probably involve a tougher journey for them since they had proved recalcitrant this time around. I thought it might be interesting to explore the idea of spiritual refusal further because there is clearly such a thing and it has consequences, serious ones, which we should try to understand.

It has become almost 'unspiritual' to believe in hell because we think that a God of love could not possibly have made such an environment. The only problem is that the place where we learn most about a God of love, which is the Gospels, is the same place where there is the most emphasis on hell. Jesus, the incarnation of love, speaks many times, and in no uncertain terms, about the reality of hell and how those who reject his message may end up there. How can we resolve this apparent contradiction?

Perhaps we can start by saying that God did not create hell. Hell was created by the rejection of God, firstly by fallen angels and then by those humans who joined them in that rejection. A reasonable definition of hell is a place or state where God is not so how can we blame God for it? We can perhaps blame God for the possibility of it but only because he gave creatures free will to accept or reject him but we cannot blame him for the fact of it. It exists because it has been created by the created not by the Creator.

If it does exist then what is it? What form does it take? Biblical descriptions were probably intended to convey symbolically something of its nature to people at the time, but they may also be external manifestations of internal states since the idea is that in the afterlife outer and inner become one so our environment is, to a degree, a reflection of what is in our mind. However I think the key element of hell is separation. Hell is the state of egotism carried to its ultimate degree where the person is so centred on himself that he is separated from everything else. It is a state where the 'I' has become all there is in the sense that nothing else has any intrinsic reality or value of its own. Everything other than the 'I' is perceived only in terms of its usefulness to that 'I'. And this tells us that not only did God not create hell he does not send us there either. We send ourselves there by our rejection of him and our refusal to let go of our own separate egos. It may even be that we go there in full knowledge of what we are doing.

But do we stay there? The answer must be that it depends on what we mean by hell. I would say that there are places in the non-physical worlds where souls closed to God go who are not past redemption and for whom there is a way back if they chose to take it. It may be that the great majority of erring souls follow this path. But there is also the possibility of spiritual destruction for if free will means anything it must mean that a definitive choice can be made from which there is no turning back. It is this spiritual destruction that is the true hell. The lesser or more relative hells are not eternal in that even here a soul can repent and turn its face to the light. Whether it will or not is entirely down to it but the possibility is there.

The thoughts on this post were prompted by a question I was asked elsewhere about how heaven could be heaven if those we love are not there. That is to say, in hell. This is a very profound question and I am certainly not qualified to answer it fully but I do have some thoughts on the matter.

First of all, it is axiomatic that nothing impure can get into heaven. So sinners by definition cannot do so whether they are those we love or not. But then nor can any of us without God's grace. So there is always hope even for the most obdurate of souls. Secondly, we have to ask what is hell? Heaven is surely supreme reality and that implies that hell is actually unreal. How can it be real if it is outside God who is reality itself? So maybe it is only the unreal part of us that goes there. Inside every human being there is something of God and it is that which gives us our reality. This cannot go to hell so maybe this part of us is always salvaged and somehow made new while the dross is burnt away.

Does this mean that somehow everyone will be saved? That would seem to go against justice and free will. But maybe in the next world opportunities exist for every soul to turn round, though the way back will be longer and harder. If these opportunities are still ignored then maybe the seeds that have not blossomed as they should, or the spiritual essence of these seeds, are gathered up and resown and that might happen until everyone is indeed saved. So the crop that's not grown properly is burnt (in hell) but the essence of it, the essence of the person, is preserved and given another chance to grow correctly, and so on until the spiritual essence of the soul is indeed saved though the form it takes will not be the same as it originally appeared. This idea seems to reconcile the demands of free will, of justice and of love. We, as individuals, must take the consequences of our actions and if we choose not to be saved that is our right. But that part of us which is God himself cannot be destroyed. So this could come back in a new form until eventually it finds its true being in heaven.

This means Hitler as Hitler may have gone to spiritual destruction but the spiritual essence of Hitler, which cannot be destroyed because it is of God himself, will have a new chance somewhere further down the line. It is a fresh start and a new outer person but it is the same divine reality behind that outer person. You might say that this is no longer Hitler because he is gone and you would be correct, but the inner truth that anyone who may ever have loved in him is still there and would be known albeit in a quite different form.

These reflections lead me to think that our notions of hell may refer to two different things. The first is a place (or state) of darkened consciousness where those go who have not accepted God in this lifetime, or those things that God stands for, but who still have a chance of redemption if they will but receive it. They have created this hell for themselves but there is a way out. (Note that this is different to the idea of purgatory because that is for souls who acknowledge the light but are not yet sufficiently pure enough to be worthy of it). But the second hell is spiritual destruction of the individual and that is eternal in that it is final. However it may be that, saved from that destruction, is the divine essence of that soul and this does have a new chance of salvation.

But, as I say, all this is speculation. It is certainly no reason not to seek salvation here and now.

A Devilish Masterplan

This may seem a bit of foolishness but it has a serious side to it. Obviously anyone who does anything like this owes a debt to C.S. Lewis.


Some time ago one of the chief devils and his advisers sat down to work out how they might best mislead humanity. "For a start we need to destroy Christianity." said one. "No doubt" sneered another "but how do we do that?"

They thought for a moment and then one of them said. "To begin with, we need to divide it to make it weaker. Didn't someone once talk about a house divided amongst itself? Then we can attack it with its own weapons".
"How does that work?"
"We emphasise the purely worldly and social aspects of it and push the spiritual aspects to the background. Pretty soon the social aspects will seem all important and the spiritual ones will only have relevance in the light of those, and then they will cease to have any relevance at all."

"Not bad" said the chief. "What next?"
"We'll get some of their thinkers to start expressing doubts about the reality of absolute truth. First of all, whether you can know it and then, when that's done, whether it exists at all. Take things in stages so they don't notice what's happening. That way they will eventually accept what they would never have dreamed of accepting at the beginning of the process. So we'll get their clever people to say that the only things we can know are what appear to us through our senses. Anything else is just theoretical and has no intrinsic reality. Before you know it they'll be thinking that there are no absolutes and everything is relative and that will make them feel that nothing means anything. Which of course is true"
"Give me more".
"We'll inspire them to question the reality of their own creation. We know that some aspects of life are left to chance because of the absurd plan of the tyrant and his ridiculous penchant for freedom. We'll get them to focus exclusively on those and ignore the main elements of the process which they can't uncover with their puny intelligence left to its own devices anyway. This will flatter their sense of self-importance and make them feel they direct their own future instead of, as we know, that little task being our concern."
"More. More"
"We'll make them reject the idea of higher and lower or better and worse in the name of an imagined unity, equality and fairness. They are mostly unable to hold two apparently paradoxical ideas in their minds at the same time anyway so that should be easy. We'll over-emphasise one side of the question and take it out of context, and that will make them reject the other side. We know that when you remove the idea of anything higher from the mix everything settles down nicely to a fairly low level which suits us very well."
" All right, but I want more."
"What about attacking the family and eroding the difference between man and woman? The first gives them too much security and a sense of deep rootedness. They shouldn't have security as it provides them with a nasty inner strength and confidence in stupidities like tradition, and they mustn't have strong roots so they're more easily manipulated. As for the men and women thing, well, haven't we always wanted to deviate nature and turn it against itself? Don't we delight in corruption? Once men and women start to see themselves as fundamentally the same they will lose any connection to an inner life. Then they will regard each other in a competitive light instead of being able to cooperate harmoniously in a complementary fashion as they were originally designed to do. Eugh! Of course, ever since that splendid victory in the Garden we've already made them fight but we can do much better."

"Persuade them that anything done in the name of love is good and if someone disputes that then they are a wicked and unloving person." said another.
"Attack their culture." said one more. " Destroy the sense of beauty and so called truth in their foul works of art. Let them see our more heroic truth in all its glorious abandonment of strait-laced convention and embracing of  the real freedom to do anything you want".
"Corrupt their music" said another. " We know that music can serve us or the enemy, and it affects humans and the way they think and feel in a powerful way. Make it serve us! We want noise and more noise!"

The chief devil considered the matter for a while. "All these ideas have some merit. I congratulate myself on giving you the hints to come up with them. But they are not enough. The enemy will undoubtedly send people to counter them. We need to do more. We need to inspire those humans who respond to us and make them think they are advancing the cause of humanity. We need to make humans believe that their salvation relies on progress in their world, on material progress and more knowledge to bend nature to their will. Give them lots of things to distract them,  then they will more easily be ours. Excite them with sex and more sex and get them to overlook what it's really for. That's always been easy but once we remove those bigoted and unnatural religious constraints it will be even easier. We need to foster atheism and materialism, of course, but we also need to infect their spiritual ideas with our own sweet additions that will poison the mix. We will send some of our disciples to lead astray those humans who are sensitive to spiritual matters but who also have their own ambitions and agendas which are ultimately more important to them. Wherever the enemy has his people we will attack relentlessly. We can sometimes bring them down through their desire for recognition or power. Many of them will resist us but many won't. We will prove to the enemy that our decision was the right one. I want souls! Get to work!"

The meeting closed and the devils went about their business. Far away in heaven the armies of light prepared themselves for the fight ahead. They knew that victory would eventually be theirs, of that there was no doubt, but they also knew there was a battle for souls to be had. Each individual human being was infinitely precious to their Master but each one had to make his or her own decision.

Darkness Masquerading as Light

It seems to me that one of the principal responsibilities of any spiritually concerned person nowadays is to proclaim and bear witness to the destruction of truth and promotion of falsehood in the modern world. Of course, I don't mean that our main duty is not to attend to our own soul. Naturally it is and always will be. We can't be like those Pharisees who condemn others rather than purify themselves of pride and anger. But in terms of outer activity or teaching what is required is to point out like the prophets of old the desecration of truth and corruption of real values, often in the name of so called good which always turns out on closer examination to be a worldly good aimed at the advancement of happiness and curtailment of suffering of terrestrial man and woman, and which takes no account of, indeed actively denies, our true destiny in eternity. The world today chases and promotes the good of the lower self or earthly personality and this is often in direct opposition to the true good of the soul.

There is little doubt that this process is incited and abetted by that power known in Christianity as Satan, aided, unconsciously usually, by the selfish, rebellious, proud, foolish, indifferent and well meaning but naive among us. The world is being remade according to the concept of man as a being entirely of this world, formed exclusively of physical matter and with no deeper quality to his being. And this is not just a question of a natural development due to the superstitious nature of religious belief and the discoveries of science and rational philosophy. It is a deliberate perversion of truth which is being orchestrated by forces antipathetic to God and the good, the beautiful and the true. This statement, which might have seemed almost hysterical in the not too distant past, must surely make more and more sense to more and more people now as we see ideas which weren't even considered realistic on the fringes of society not too long ago become part of mainstream public opinion, with their rejection almost a matter for shame and disgrace.

All this was prophesied long ago so we need not be too surprised, even if the extent of the takeover and its relative speed are rather extraordinary. What can we do about it though? I'm inclined to say that we can do nothing other than, as I say above, try to point out the truth of the reality of God and not let that truth be hijacked (as it assuredly will be, as, in fact, it often is) by political considerations. If you ever see the name of God or the idea of spiritual truth being used to support contemporary fashionable opinion you can be pretty sure it is being used in the same way that the devil cites scripture; to advance his own ends.

We can do nothing because the process is too far advanced. But this is not a counsel of despair. God's kingdom is not of this world, and though that doesn't mean that this world is not important, it does mean that our true focus should be elsewhere. We can warn and try to stand as examples of truth but we should not allow ourselves to become attached to results or get despondent when these don't arrive and things carry on as they are or, indeed, get worse.

There is one thing to watch out for though. It is possible that as absurdity is piled on absurdity and distortion follows distortion as reality is remade according to the dictates of those with an anti-spiritual agenda there will be a reaction. After being pushed to one extreme humanity might suddenly react and rush to the other. That is when religious people need to be careful. They might be given what they want. How will they respond? With humility and restraint or with triumphalism born of relief or maybe something less forgivable? I am speculating but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the figure known as Antichrist might arise as a religious leader who appears to be saving us from the follies of the past, and will seem to offer us release into a golden age of heaven on earth. This will be the temptation for religious people. Heaven is not on this earth and it will not come about through charismatic leaders. Those on the religious right who feel that the liberal left is the focus of most of what I am saying here must look to themselves too. The devil plays for and against both sides and he can distort anything which he does by appealing to our desires and playing on our fears. As I was told 'the greater progress you make the more you will be assailed by evil in all its forms' and this also means the subtler will be your temptations. The only safeguards are humility, love of the true God (i.e. not attachment to an image of our own making) and spiritual discernment. So, if you feel that the world has lost its way, condemn yourself before you condemn anyone else. Focus on principles rather than individuals. And don't look for satisfaction in this world for it may be that those who receive that satisfaction 'have their reward'.

Question On The Problem Of Evil

This question fits in with the two previous articles even though it was not prompted by them. It was asked from the standpoint of someone who followed the spiritual path but felt that any attention paid to the negative aspects of life only emphasised those aspects, and it was much better to take the line that evil was simply ignorance. So it is, but when consciously pursued, as it is by the dark forces, it is not innocent ignorance, and it is certainly not without intelligence, so you really should be wise to their wiles and modus operandi. I realise that the term 'dark forces' can sound almost comically sinister to some but the reality is that there are what the Masters called erring souls whose purpose it is to mislead. It is much better to know about these things than blithely assume they don't concern you. If you are serious about the spiritual quest, they do. However their existence can actually be used to our advantage because the fact that they will exploit any flaws we may have can serve to make us aware of those flaws and correct them. Only if we remain awake, though.

Q. Your Masters do seem to go on rather a lot about evil. Doesn’t concentrating on it to that extent just make you slightly paranoid? Surely it’s much better not to pay any attention to it and focus on the good?

A. By all means focus on the good. The Masters never told me to worry about evil or to fix my thoughts on it. I agree that would be giving it manure in which to grow, if I can put it like that. But they did warn me to beware of it and its machinations, and we have to recognise that evil does exist in this world, both in the physical world and in certain non-material aspects of the world, the psychic plane as you might call it. There are fallen powers that seek to deceive, distract, corrupt and lead astray, and they do focus much of their attention on prospective disciples and those attempting to free themselves from the illusions of this world because those are the ones most likely to escape their net and potentially help others to do the same. That is why the spiritual field, as it exists in earthly terms, is so riddled with half truths and falsehood. It has been thoroughly penetrated by the dark powers who have cooked up all kinds of false paths, most of which contain enough elements of the truth to make some appeal but always deviate from it in a critical way. Usually in a way designed to attract the prideful, desiring, prejudiced lower self. And that is why it is the responsibility of those somewhat established on the spiritual path to point out the false, though this should always be done with humility, dispassion and without descending to the sort of intolerant antagonism one has seen so often in religious history. You also have to distinguish between a path that is incomplete but legitimate (nothing is complete, after all) and one that contains greater illusion than truth. We truly do have to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves and that is not always an easy balance to strike.

On the subtler level, we have to be aware of evil within ourselves. If there is no evil in us, then there is no evil in the world by which I mean that we perceive evil has no fundamental reality. However as long as there is any propensity to falseness at all in us then evil remains in the world. So when the Masters warned me against evil they were saying that, yes, there are powers that seek to deceive and their ways are subtle but they were also telling me to guard against all negativity in myself. Unto the pure all things are pure.

The question of evil has always been there as a problem that must be confronted by anyone who seeks to find out the truth behind appearance. It cannot be denied and it cannot be ignored. It must be understood and the only way to understand it properly is to see that it is not part of God's reality but arises in a dualistic world as a consequence of free will. But that is just the aspect that relates to our capacity to make wrong choices. There is another aspect to evil, what you might call the cosmic aspect, and that is expressed in various religions as the refusal of certain high spiritual beings to acknowledge the supremacy of God. This led to their expulsion from heaven (figuratively speaking) to lower, though still non-material, levels, and that in turn led to the fall of humanity when we lost our spiritual connection and created a separate self. Our task now is to turn our faces back to the light and re-establish that connection. Our task is to reject separation which is the foundation of evil.

Spiritual Pollution

Practically from the moment we are born into this world we have to deal with a polluted environment and a constant stream of toxic energies. I am not referring to the physical environment. We all know about that and make, if we are honest, fairly desultory attempts to clean it up since most of us are reluctant to sacrifice too much towards that end. We don’t want environmental pollution but we do want the benefits of which that pollution is an unfortunate side-effect. But I am not talking about that here. Nor, when I speak of matters toxic, am I referring to what we put into our bodies. If you are a spiritual aspirant you know that smoking, alcohol (in excess, not a glass of wine now and then), drugs and meat are not only bad for your health but have a spiritually detrimental effect too. You know, or should do, that they desensitise you and make access to higher levels of awareness harder to achieve. However, as you progress on the path, your desire for these things drops away quite naturally so there should be little difficulty for most serious seekers to avoid them.

But there are some things not so easy to avoid. The psychic atmosphere of our planet is heavily polluted, and we all live in this atmosphere. The emotional body of humanity is still seriously infected with such things as anger, fear, irritation and even hatred, and we, who are part of humanity, have to learn not to respond to these energies or let them influence us. If they are not present within us then they will not affect us (‘unto the pure all things are pure’) and we can help in the much-needed task of purification, but if they do in any way exist within us (and rare is the person who is free of them), then we may find our emotional reactions are provoked and magnified by what is in the air around us unless, that is, we take steps to protect ourselves. The first and most effective way to do this is to be aware of ourselves – change our habits and replace reactions with non-reactions - but there are spiritual techniques (the word is suitable on this occasion) that may help too.

Before discussing these I must mention other forms of pollution that the spiritual aspirant has to learn to recognise and defend himself against for if he chooses not to, either through ignorance, over-confidence or disbelief, then his progress will be slowed down and it may even come to a halt.

First of all, there is the pollution of false ideas. From a spiritual perspective the most obvious of these is the prevailing materialism but there are many that take an ostensibly spiritual form too. There are wrong spiritual ideas and there are perversions of right spiritual ideas. We protect ourselves against this kind of pollution by sharpening our powers of intuition and discernment. We can also defend ourselves by standing aside from all forms of conditioning and by refusing to follow any of the numerous crowds that clamour for our attention. Perhaps most effective of all, we can submit these ideas to the power of Christ or the Buddha to see how they measure up to the yardstick of their perfection. Here’s how you do that. Visualise one of these two saviours. Align yourself with his vibration and see how the idea reacts when set against that vibration. Does it flourish and expand when exposed to it or does it wither and shrink? Does it take on an entirely different complexion as maybe some aspects of it grow while others die away, or is it seen to have no real value at all? How does it respond to their presence? How is it seen in their light?

Then there is the pollution caused by what we can justifiably call spiritually unhygienic forms of culture, music, art and entertainment. This is extremely widespread at the moment and it is hard to escape. Much of it is superficially attractive, to the eye, ear, feelings or mind, but if you subject it to the acid test of spiritual discernment you see it is goes against the laws of harmony, beauty and truth, and its consumption has a deleterious effect on a person’s spiritual health. In my view, this pollution, rarely seen as such, is one of the biggest problems of the day. Unless you live in some form of retreat you will encounter it so you need to see it for what it is to avoid being influenced by it.

So there are various kinds of pollution other than the commonly accepted physical sort. Somewhat simplistically, but for ease of reference, we might call them emotional and intellectual. These are just as pervasive as the physical variety but potentially even more harmful as they are often unacknowledged so we take no steps to guard ourselves against them. We absorb them unthinkingly and allow our children to be exposed to them with the result that young minds, eager to explore the world, are contaminated by influences in many cases designed to lead them away from the spiritual path. I say they are designed because a significant proportion of them do not just arise from human wrong thinking but from fallen spiritual powers, discarnate beings often described as the dark forces.

Don’t stop reading at this point. You have not inadvertently stumbled across the paranoid ravings of a superstitious conspiracy theorist. The Masters who spoke to me confirmed that evil powers do exist and that they attempt to derail the spiritual progress of humanity. In their words, the greater progress you make the more you will be assailed by evil in all its forms. But, while these powers may assail the disciple individually, they also mount an attack on humanity as a whole through the stimulation of negative energies and the spread of falsehood often carefully dressed up to resemble truth. And that is what I mean by spiritual pollution. Of course, it’s not really spiritual in the higher sense but it has its origin outside the physical world which is why I call it that.

The existence of the dark forces is something that has been known and accepted by all religions until very recently when we have decided that to believe in such things is childish. But I wonder, who are the children? Those who acknowledge something real or those who deny it because it does not fit in with their pre-conceived ideas? Certainly one can react to the concept superstitiously or with fear, both of which are mistaken, but, whether one likes it or not, these dark forces do exist. Through pride, through egotism they have set themselves up against God and they desire to separate human beings from their divine source too because that will increase their power. They do this through a variety of means and one of the most potent is to influence our minds. The Masters warned me that I could be vulnerable to attacks from outward evil that would affect my thoughts if I let it, and the same applies to anyone trying to pull away from the mass consciousness and realign themselves with the soul. This is something all disciples should be fully aware of and it is why we need spiritual protection, a subject I will consider in the next post.

Why Is The World Such A Terrible Place?

I was asked this question recently. It refers to a problem that, in one form or another, bothers many people and prevents them accepting that there is a spiritual reality behind outer appearance. That can lead to discouragement and the attitude that there is really little point in trying to make oneself a better person with potentially disastrous results both for the individual concerned and for society as a whole. But if we could understand why the world is not as ideal as we might like it to be I think that would remove one of the main obstacles to belief. It would give meaning and purpose to our existence, and what is life without meaning and a higher purpose than the satisfaction of personal aims which, even if achieved, never brings lasting content?

Q. Why is the world such a terrible place? Why did God, if he exists, not create it perfect? Doesn’t the fact that it’s so imperfect support the materialistic thesis that it arose in a random way rather than an ordered one? I once heard a famous naturalist talk about a worm that burrows into the eye of a child somewhere in Africa and how he couldn’t believe in a God in a world in which such things happened.

A. Have you ever considered the possibility that maybe the world was created perfect, as in the story of the Garden of Eden, and that it is fallen human consciousness that has afflicted it? Traditional spiritual teachings say that when man fell he dragged nature down with him because his consciousness affects or, in this case, corrupts his environment. Incidentally this is why our current materialistic attitudes actually make our world more material and how altering our attitudes to life can have a positive external effect too. But, setting this aside, the point is that Earth nowadays is a school so it is not intended to be perfect as in all good. There is choice and there is good and evil as a result of that. You might even consider that perhaps the Earth is perfect as an environment for the growing of consciousness as we are given the opportunity for a variety of experiences here. That’s not to say we can’t make it better or worse but to expect this world to be a paradise is to misunderstand its purpose.

That was my original and rather brief answer to the question. It makes for a short post but I intend to do a longer one on a similar theme shortly. In the meantime I'd like to end this post by saying that the world is not a terrible place. There may be bad things in it because the purpose of it is to provide choice so that we may grow. Therefore the possibility of distorting the light must exist. But the light, which is the basis to everything, is good. Bad things only exist as corruptions of good things. They have no intrinsic reality in themselves.