Soul Loss

 The well-known Alice Bailey books are a development of Theosophy though with greater emphasis on Christ than Blavatskian Theosophy, even if he is still not the Christ that Christians know but a kind of grand hierarch. But then, since the assumed source of these books is Buddhist, that might be expected. Also, we must remember that Theosophists were often reacting against the 19th century version of Christ, a time when he was well on his way to his conversion to humanitarianism and starting to lose his purely spiritual qualities. So, when they downgraded Christ that may have been part of an attempt not to be bound by the developing materialism of Victorian Christianity.

That admittedly large failing aside, by most other criteria these books are impressive. Their sheer volume for one. Then their wisdom. Yes, I do think there is much spiritual wisdom in them though that doesn't mean I agree with all that is there. I also think they come from a reputable spiritual source though I would guess that there is a fair amount of Alice Bailey and her own ideas in there too. Maybe she was impressed on a non-verbal level and clothed the ideas in her own words. Or something along those lines. But there is a happy medium between complete acceptance of these writings on their own terms and total rejection. I accept what makes sense, and a lot does, reserve judgement on what seems to me to be doubtful, and reject what I think is wrong. I haven't looked at the books for a long time, and I'm not sure I've ever read one all the way through, certainly not A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. But using the index to pick and choose was a helpful way to approach them for me, and the compilations that condense the several thousand pages to manageable proportions are also useful.

I bring this up because in a recent comment on Bruce Charlton's blog in response to a post on AI I wrote that "the real basis behind all these developments (in AI and computer technology in general) is spiritual destruction, going beyond mere atheism up to and including the destruction of the spiritual component of our being which I believe is possible when we reach the point that we totally deny all that spirit is."

My point was that for a long time many developments in technology and thought have supported the denial of the soul, the aforementioned spiritual component of our being. AI is the latest and most serious. Every time we get on board with one of these developments, all the way from simply not rejecting it to accepting it gladly as a real advance, we play into the hands of the forces of spiritual destruction. To a certain extent, it doesn't matter if we think we don't believe in God as long as we act, both mentally and in day to day life, as though there was some kind of spiritual reality to our being. For example, we might revere beauty or believe in free will. These are something though probably not enough. But they are something. But every step we take away from the soul, and embracing AI is a giant step in that direction, the more we lose contact with what it stands for, and the more we do that, the closer we are to severing our connection to it completely. To losing our soul.

After I wrote my comment I was reminded of something in the Alice Bailey books so I looked it up. Here's what she says. It actually comes from A Treatise on Cosmic Fire though I took it from The Soul, the Quality of Life which is one of the compilations I spoke of above. I've edited it slightly.

"If man neglects his spiritual development and concentrates on intellectual effort turned to the manipulation of matter for selfish ends, and if this is carried on for a long period, he may bring upon himself a destruction that is final for this cycle. He may succeed in the complete destruction of the physical permanent atom and sever his connection with the higher self for aeons of time. We must emphasise the reality of this dire disaster."

This warning comes in the context of discussing occult work and saying it must be undertaken in the light of spirit and guided by love and unselfishness. Consequently, it might be considered irrelevant in terms of the current scenario. But I would maintain that computer technology is a form of magic, and its development is motivated by the same ungodly impulses that motivated the black magician. Any attempt to bend matter to our will that is not guided by spirit is illicit. By the same token, any behaviour that denies the soul is selfish which may be an unusual definition but is true on a deeper level than the normal one. From a spiritual perspective, selfishness is acting according to the earthly self - even if the earthly self considers itself to be spiritually motivated, a common phenomenon. That aside, the more we deny spirit, and AI is the denial of spirit almost by definition, the more we cut ourselves off from it, and there may come a time when certain people who go all the way into this dark place cut themselves off entirely. The tragedy of the modern world is that the whole culture is sending us in that direction.

Leftism is at the very least the Pawn of Satanism

 It is said that evil often proclaims itself as such in some way. This may be because the law of free will dictates that if people are to be corrupted they must have some clue that this is the case. Within that criterion though there is ample scope for evil to disguise itself as good to the eye of one who does not wish to see beneath the surface and, on some level, actively wants to be taken in because this will justify some sin or fallen desire.

In occultism the left hand path is the path of transgression, black magic and sexual licence. Often rebranded as a short cut to enlightenment, crazy wisdom, breaking the rules for greater freedom, rising above good and evil and other pseudo-glamorous deceptive descriptions, it is, in fact, the path that leads away from God and towards not God which is all that rejects God and the natural boundaries and standards of his creation. This ends up, if pursued and unrepented, in a spiritual state analogous to hell because hell is nothing more nor less than separation from God. That is a state in which light must be stolen as the soul can no longer get it directly from God. A soul has to fall a long way before that will happen but if it persists on the left hand path and does not turn back to its Maker that is what will happen.

The left has long been associated with the unnatural and the dark side of life. Obviously this is not the case literally but symbolically there is a certain truth to the idea. We take our modern usage from the time of the French Revolution when supporters of the monarchy sat on the right in the National Assembly and supporters of the revolution sat on the left. A pure coincidence you might think but those who are symbolically minded will see more to it than that. We are being told something. None of this means that elements of what became the Revolution, which term I am using to mean the overturning of traditional ideas in the 18th century, were not genuinely progressive. Human consciousness was evolving. The relationship between all sections of society from aristocrats to the ordinary people and between men and women had to be adjusted in the light of greater self-consciousness. Not to mention that a new approach to religion was called for with a greater emphasis on internal enquiry. But the whole process was hijacked and continues to be, and the clue to the hijacking was right there at the beginning.

The hallmark of Satanism is rejection of God and the order of creation. This involves undermining and then inverting all natural hierarchies and if you look at the last couple of centuries, and especially the last 50 years, you simply cannot help but see this as the underlying tendency of the left. It moves from one group to another but always with the aim of subverting the natural order. The excuse is compassion or justice but the real motive is resentment and even hatred of God.

It would clearly be absurd to say that every leftist is a Satanist but every one has allied him or herself to a degree with the Satanic agenda and has done so because of spiritual failings. At the bare minimum every one is a dupe of some kind. And note that when I talk of Satan I am not talking of an individual being though there may well be such. But the prime manifestation of this impulse is the tendency in the created individual motivated by corrupted desire and badly turned will to want to sit on God's throne. This is what is behind the left, particularly as it is in our day.

Consciousness and Christ

 According to standard esoteric teachings, human souls come to this Earth to evolve their consciousness, this being the perfect environment in which to do that given the sense of separation to be found here. It's somewhat like a child being turfed out of the secure family home where everything is done for it in order to make its own way in the world and as a result become a mature, responsible adult able to engage with life creatively and actually contribute to the world in a positive manner. These teachings assume reincarnation and say we come back here many times, seeking experience and means of expression to grow as souls. This is linked to the doctrine of reaping what you sow with the consequence that everything we do, and possibly even think, sets up a flow of psychic energy which we must deal with. It may manifest materially as external circumstances and conditions or internally as character traits but we are responsible for all that we are. This is not to punish but to teach. We evolve in this way until we are able to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level while in an earthly body. It's more complicated than that but this is the in a nutshell version.

Sometimes these teachings picture us as similar to cells in the body of a greater being which would be the spirit that stands behind our sun. This being or Solar Logos is also evolving and would be part of a Galactic being who, in turn, would form part of the being who stands behind the whole universe who would, I suppose, be God. There is a pleasing symmetrical order to this scenario and it makes sense on an intellectual level. I believe it to be broadly speaking correct with the solar and stellar spirits as something like great archangels and so on upwards.

There is a problem with this vision though. It doesn't really fit in with Christian teaching. Esotericists realise this and, as a result, tend to jettison Christianity, reducing Christ to a great spiritual teacher or Head of a Spiritual Hierarchy that oversees humanity or else picture him as the Solar Logos and say this was what was meant by Son of God. You can absorb most other spiritual approaches into this one which is what its partisans generally do, but you cannot really absorb Christ, not without making him something other than what he said he was or altering his teachings to mean something other than what he says they meant. Christ didn't talk about evolving consciousness and he was not inclusive. He said he (underlined) was the Way, the Truth and the Life. That is unequivocal. He is not part of some all-purpose spirituality but goes beyond mere spirituality to something higher, deeper and truer, something approaching proper holiness. Christ taught that we should love God whom we could see revealed in him. This is extreme to say the least but it is what he taught and if we believe in Christ we must believe that.

Is it possible to reconcile these two teachings? Many people don't bother. They believe one or the other but I find myself in the tricky position of believing both. I do believe that human souls are supposed to be evolving their consciousness and this Earth serves as the background for that, a kind of playpen in which we can build things though what we are really building is ourselves. But I also believe that Christ goes beyond that. This means that spirituality and evolving consciousness is one thing but Christ is another. He comes to the worldly and the spiritual alike and offers them both something more. The spiritual may be further along the path to God as things stand but the wonder of Christ is that anyone can come to him from any background and is accepted by him if they give themselves heart and soul to him, and this acceptance will transform their soul to a higher degree than any self-pursued spirituality can ever do. You may be building a humble village church or a grand cathedral but both are hollow structures without the light of Christ illumining them from within.

Could it be that before the advent of Christ scenario 1 operated? Human souls reincarnated after a period in the spiritual realms to further their spiritual evolution and this proceeded in a certain direction, developing all aspects of the whole being, unless brought to a close by the attainment of Buddhist Nirvana meaning a complete disidentification with the phenomenal world and, in a sense, rejection of creation. But Christ came to bring a higher understanding, one in which the soul could be made like him by allowing him into itself. Any soul on any evolutionary level could do this though naturally the more developed the soul, the more of Christ it could absorb and express. Thus, the path of spiritual evolution exists and so does the path of Christ but this latter brings more of divine reality to the picture. For instance, an evolving soul might, in esoteric parlance, have opened all its psychic energy centres including that at the crown of the head, but unless it has fully accepted Christ it is still operating in the spiritual world rather than the true Heaven of Christ which is a new creation containing more of divine being than can ever be attained just through evolution.

I realise a lot more has to be done if one is to develop a proper understanding of how Christ impacts and goes beyond standard issue spirituality but this is my attempt at a start.

The Gospels and Everything Else

  Since becoming interested in spiritual matters I have, as one easily can nowadays, investigated all sorts of  mystical and occult highways and byways. On a literary level, I mean. I have never belonged to any group or followed any outer teaching but I have read numerous books, both in an Eastern and Western vein, on the subjects of mysticism and occultism. Some, a few, have been inspiring, some have been insightful, some have been informative and some just recycle other books. But I have to say that nothing compares to the New Testament. Of course, to a large extent that is because of the figure of Jesus but it is also because the spiritual teachings in the Gospels are presented simply and within the context of a story. They are not philosophical or metaphysical or esoteric in form, though they are all these things to an extremely high degree in essence. They are presented as the expression of the personality of a man and this makes them living truths rather than intellectual statements. They go straight to the heart and soul instead of just feeding the mind.

I must admit I find a lot of the classics of occultism unreadable. I have tried The Secret Doctrine and the Alice Bailey books on several occasions but always given up faced with their turgid, repetitive style and habit of saying things fifteen times that need only be said once. In a word, they are dull. In two words, they are dull and verbose. Even Dion Fortune, who otherwise writes very readably, produced in The Cosmic Doctrine something only an ardent disciple convinced he is penetrating the secrets of the universe could plough through with enthusiasm. Maybe they are the secrets of the universe but like many occult tomes these and other books lack the inspirational and intuitively satisfactory qualities of true spiritual writing. These works remind me that all occultists fail unless they eventually renounce their occultism. That is because "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

The Gospels are stories, true stories, but still stories. The life of Jesus is commonly referred to as the greatest story ever told which it clearly is. Stories have the power to take us beyond the mental world we habitually live in to a higher reality. This is why the works of Tolkien have had such an impact and have been such a force for good. The Gospels are stories that speak to children of all ages, as are those of Tolkien. To be a child in the spiritual sense does not mean to be intellectually undeveloped but not to be limited by the intellect. Jesus did not say become children but become as children. There is a critical difference and I will end this brief post by leaving the reader to think about that.

The Temptation of the Esoteric

 Ancient mysteries, hidden secrets, the wisdom of the ancients. Whose imagination isn't stirred by the idea of arcane knowledge preserved from initiates of the distant past? The magic of Egypt, the mysticism of India, the occultism of Tibet can all be powerful drugs to the questing mind seeking to penetrate the veil between this world and the next. It's intoxicating stuff and there undoubtedly is a reality behind it all. It's not just dreams and fantasy. There is a real substance to it. But is it what spirituality is actually about, especially for us here and now in the modern West?

It's just a coincidence but esoteric and exotic do sound very similar. And it's not just the words that are alike. They both conjure up the sense of something fascinating and strange that can open up unsuspected new areas of experience. They can take you beyond the mundane and everyday and give you a feeling of superiority over ordinary people if you explore or even possess them. 

Wise teachers have always warned of the difference between magic and religion. The esoteric, even if it is spiritually focused, has much in common with magic in that it is to do with knowledge and power. It certainly appeals to those who hunger for these things and who may be motivated by that hunger. But I am always reminded of something the Masters said to me. Spiritual truth is simple but it is easy to get lost in philosophical speculations which lead nowhere. And not just philosophical speculations. Anything that is not inspired by the love of God is a spiritual sidetrack, and the esotericist is often a long way from simple faith and worship, using the word worship in what I regard as its proper sense which is loving God.

Everything changed with the advent of Christ. I appreciate this more and more as the world sinks further into spiritual darkness and Christ is neglected not just by the people but often by the churches that preach in his name  Before his time there were many forms of spirituality and they could open doors into the unknown for the qualified initiate. But they did not lead to Heaven. Those who go back to the past without fully accepting Christ are not revivifying ancient teachings that will give them access to the Mysteries. The spirit has departed from them. It was once present but is no longer and though you may be able to recreate a simulacrum of the once living and vital truth embodied by these spiritual forms, you will not find the living truth itself. That is now in Christ.

I don't know much about Freemasonry but I suspect this is why it is condemned by the Catholic Church. No doubt there is a kernel of esoteric wisdom behind its ceremonies and rituals, possibly passed down from ancient Egypt though it will have travelled a long way and perhaps been subject to the Chinese whispers effect. Nevertheless, I expect there is something there. But if Christ is not there, and as far as I can tell he isn't, that renders the whole enterprise suspect. Hidden truth without Christ is not truth. Moreover, in the case of Freemasonry, it has always been too concerned with building a New World Order. There is a definite whiff of the Tower of Babel about it.

I am not condemning the esoteric. We are called to knowledge and we should seek it out. That is our destiny and our spiritual duty. Greater knowledge will enable us to interact with both God and the universe on a deeper level. I myself have explored esoteric teachings for over 40 years as is easy nowadays when so much has been published and made widely available to anyone who can read. But I do say that if we do this we should always do it under the banner of Christ or we risk falling into illusion and worse. 

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.

The Serpent and the Dove

 When Jesus sent his disciples out into the world to preach the good news he said they would be like sheep amongst wolves, and told them therefore to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. In ancient mystery religions the serpent was often regarded as the personification of wisdom, especially occult wisdom, wisdom to do with secrets and hidden things, and, of course, it was the serpent, the most cunning of the beasts of the field, that tempted Eve to disobey God in the Garden of Eden, specifically tempting her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So it might seem strange that Jesus advised his disciples to be like the serpent. Perhaps then we should ask ourselves what is this wisdom of which the serpent is the chief exemplar?

It is not true spiritual wisdom for that arises in the heart and comes from God. Rather, it is the wisdom acquired through evolution. It is intelligence, discrimination, reason, even foresight and, yes, cunning. Now, this is good when brought under the overlordship of spiritual wisdom but potentially evil if not. That is why we also need the innocence of the dove. And what is the dove? For information on that we can go to John the Baptist who was the first to recognise the adult Jesus as the Messiah and who proclaimed when he baptised him that he saw the Holy Spirit descend on him in the form of a dove. The dove is the Holy Spirit, and the innocence of the dove is true spiritual wisdom compared to the earthly, even if it is occult or esoteric, wisdom of the serpent. The serpent represents the wisdom of experience or evolution. In a way, it is the wisdom of matter. But the dove symbolises the wisdom of purity and innocence and truth that comes from God.

This holds good even when we consider the raised serpent which is regarded as the opening up of spiritual consciousness in many systems of esotericism. And it is true that this process of raising the serpent does open up consciousness to the inner planes of being. But unless the dove also descends there is no proper spiritual awakening. The raised serpent is re-orientating the energies of matter to spirit. Instead of these symbolically being on their belly they are lifted up and re-purposed. Hence the raising of the serpent is restoring cosmic order in the soul. But on its own it is not enough. It can even make a black magician. The serpent, after all, was the first to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. There must also be the descent of the dove, the Holy Spirit. That which comes from above must meet that which comes from below to bring true spiritual enlightenment. This is the union of spirit and matter that is the real birth of a soul into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Ancient Aliens and Shamans

I've been watching a few more Ancient Aliens programmes. (See here for a previous post on the subject.) The series gives an interesting overview of ancient history, mythology and sacred sites as well as more modern unexplained phenomena and events, and even if you don't go along with its underlying premise and see everything through the same unvarying prism it does, it still raises many thought-provoking questions about our past. Its main fault for me is that it materialises spirituality by reducing all supernatural things to extraterrestrial intervention. The higher spiritual is brought down to the level of the technological so, although the contributors think they are breaking into new ways of seeing and understanding the universe and consciousness, they are actually just transferring the contemporary world view, basically a secular one, to the spiritual plane. We need to see the spiritual in terms of the spiritual not in our own terms.

The most recent programme I saw was about shamans and how they might be tuning their minds and bodies to other dimensions of being where they encounter intelligent life forms, inevitably in the context of this series interpreted as extraterrestrials. The techniques used include dance, rhythm and drugs derived from various plants. I don't doubt that shamans do indeed enter into otherworldly realms of being and supernatural states of consciousness but I would caution against regarding all these as spiritual. One of the most important lessons to be learned on the spiritual path is that between the purely physical world and the real spiritual there is a vast area of being in which live all kinds of creatures, some highly intelligent, some non-human. This psychic or astral world may seem a spiritual world because it is a non-material one but it is not where God and pure truth are to be found. It is an intermediate domain between Heaven and Earth and you will find good and evil there just as you do here but you will not find Christ though you may well find beings imitating him or masquerading as him or even thinking they are the equivalent to him. If shamans really did have access to the spiritual they would be much more than they are which is a curious mixture of the psychically powerful healer and the everyday human with all the virtues and vices of the everyday human. Shamans are magicians not saints.

Colin Wilson and Consciousness

 I am currently reading Gary Lachman's biography of Colin Wilson and although I'm only about two thirds of the way through I'm impressed by the combination of meticulous research and keen insight that Mr Lachman displays. As indeed he does in all the books of his that I've read which are his biographies of Rudolf Steiner and Madame Blavatsky and one called The Secret Teachers of the Western World about Western esotericism which I did a post on for Albion Awakening a few years ago. I would say his books are always worth reading.

But for me there's a problem and that's Colin Wilson himself. Like us all he was a product of his time and his was a time of deep materialism so to achieve anything of a spiritual nature outside of orthodox religion would always be a challenge. We are somewhat better off in that respect now because, although this is still a time of deep materialism, there has been so much published, unearthed and discussed on the metaphysical, supernatural and spiritual over the last 50 plus years that we have an abundance of riches to draw upon. Some of it is by Colin Wilson himself. That having been said, and a debt to him acknowledged, I would have to add that I still find something of the outsider (pun intended) looking in about Colin Wilson's approach to the spiritual.

I first came across him in the early 1980s when I read The Occult and Mysteries which are really two compendiums of occult and mystical history. They show Wilson's prodigious reading and also his ability to synthesise his research and incorporate it into his own ideas about life and the mind. There is a wealth of fascinating facts and characters in these two books and they are written in Wilson's typical highly readable style which nonetheless shows no concessions to populism. I enjoyed them very much at the time but for me they also read like the work of someone who was in many ways a materialist but who sought to acquire the benefits of the spiritual without actually going all the way to embracing a full spirituality.

The focus on consciousness and how it might evolve is key to what I mean here. I don't know if Colin Wilson believed in God but if he did God did not appear to play a very big part in his thought, certainly not the central part as should be the case. This has long been a problem amongst many of those interested in the esoteric, the occult and the mystical. They want the fruits of the spiritual and the supernatural but they want them on their own terms. They are quite prepared to work, even work hard, to get these fruits but they are less prepared to open their hearts up fully to the reality of God. They are very interested in the expansion of consciousness and higher states of being but they see these in the context of the human (even if that is superhuman) rather than the context of God.

John Fitzgerald wrote a piece about Colin Wilson for Albion Awakening which he also included in the book he and I put together from that blog. I have just reread it and it comes to more or less the same conclusion that I have though John is more charitable than me in that he thinks Wilson might have been deflected from a more spiritual path because of the poor reception given to his book Religion and the Rebel which John thinks, and I agree, is one of his best. But, while appreciating that, I have to say that if you really believe something it shouldn't matter what the critics say. He was still young at the time and should have found his way back to a more genuinely spiritual path though I am not that widely read in Wilson's oeuvre so I don't know whether he did or not. But that is not the impression I get.

Wilson's great value is that he opened up the possibility of evolution in a psychological/spiritual sense in a serious way and on a popular level. Yes, he was a populariser but he was much more than just that and I certainly do not wish to limit him by that description.However, I do get the impression that he was more of a writer and a talker than someone willing to really engage with the reality of religion at a deep level. As far as I can see, he never took that extra step from spiritual outsider to proper believer who accepts the truth of God and who sees himself in the light of God rather than God in the light of himself.

This was a problem with many people at that time who rejected materialism and is a problem now too. Such people saw the work to be done to escape the drab robot self of everyday existence as involving the evolution of consciousness meaning by that a deepening and intensifying awareness of the self. That is true enough but they tended to stop there with the result that none of them really made the jump to a true spirituality. I include people like Jung and Gurdjieff in this category. The human being undoubtedly has higher aspects to his being into which we should be evolving. We have moved from instinctual consciousness to a more self-centred and rational (up to a point) consciousness. Higher states of consciousness are there to be discovered. But the fact remains that these can only be truly and fully known when we give ourselves over to God. A human-centred spirituality which seems to be the path Colin Wilson followed will get us so far but no further.

The Left Hand Path

 In occultism the left hand path is the path that seeks to acquire spiritual power by illicit means. Often justified by its acolytes as the direct path or the heroic path, it is really just the path of the unrepentant self who wishes to steal from God what he has not earned and is not prepared to earn. It is the path of the ego, pursued by those who do not accept that the spiritual can only be known by those prepared to sacrifice their own little egos. It can never bring one to true spiritual illumination but it can take its practitioners to a dark imitation of illumination which they confuse for the real thing.

To me it is no coincidence that the modern way which has rejected God is that of the left. All thought that falls under that general heading shares the belief that man is pre-eminent and that humanity does not need, in fact, is much better off without, God. The left is the way that denies transcendence and the fact of the divine and which seeks to remake the world according to man. To begin with, this may have been innocent enough and an attempt to see that God is within as well as out there, but the small seed has grown into something monstrous that not only rejects God but is also rejecting nature and soon enough will reject humanity. You may scoff at this idea since the left considers itself the defender of humanity but its progression of destruction and deconstruction, all based on the original diminishment of God, leads inevitably to the destruction of everything. It is a maw that must continually be fed. 

The ideology of the left will lead (I am tempted to say has led) to the destruction of Western civilisation. One of its principle expressions is feminism. Feminism arises in a culture when male creative energy has built up a structure it can latch onto and feed off. With its push towards equality in which nothing and no one is better than anything or anyone else, perhaps driven by feminine empathy which is a wonderful thing but only in its proper place, it results in a world in which the safe and the mediocre are the ideals to aim for and celebrate. This inevitably leads to intellectual and spiritual decline, the decline of freedom too because my freedom gets in the way of your safety. Is it a coincidence that the female powers are brought into prominence and propitiated on the left hand path of occultism? And that these powers are independent of masculine spiritual direction and do not manifest the true spiritual qualities of the feminine as reflected in the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary which is the feminine that has given herself over to God? The left side is the female as the right side is the male and it is no coincidence that the normal human condition is to be right handed. This seemingly unimportant fact does point to a greater spiritual truth for those alive to the realities of symbolism.

Feminism is a new twist on the old story of "ye shall be as gods" and like that story it involves a disruption in the natural order of being. The left in general is a rebellion against divine order and seeks to install man on the throne of God. It can never succeed but it can cause a lot of damage before it eventually destroys itself which it inevitably does when it has nothing else left to destroy.

Esoteric Teachings

I have been interested in both Western and Eastern forms of esotericism for many years but never written much about them and for a variety of reasons. To begin with, if I did it would really just be passing on what I have read elsewhere as is the case with practically everything written on the subject. People learn about it from other people who have learned about it from others and so on. It is largely an intellectual thing. When esoteric knowledge is not just intellectual but is supplemented by experience of some kind that experience has usually arisen because an individual has followed certain techniques or methods designed to induce it. I don't believe real spirituality comes about in this way. Spirituality is of the heart and esotericism, fascinating as it can be, belongs to the occult world not the spiritual one; the difference being that one takes the human being as its centre even if it is the human being in its higher aspects while the other is centred around a relationship with God.

Christians have long considered the esoteric as a diversion from proper religion. This can be a form of spiritual cowardice, intellectual laziness or reluctance to explore the inner worlds which may be seen as belonging entirely to the devil which is a mistake. But it can also be the recognition that the esoteric is not what the spiritual is really about. That is a simple love of God. Only this love takes you beyond yourself without doing harm to the self for it raises you up in a way that transforms the ego from a self-centred thing to a God -centred one. The ego-transcending techniques of certain esoteric practises, even assuming they work, do not sanctify or make holy. They just bring about an expansion of consciousness and this is effectively putting the cart before the horse. Such an expansion is a by-product not the purpose of the religious life.

Increasingly in the modern world the esoteric can potentially be a spiritual diversion or distraction. Everything now that is not centred on Christ is tending towards the triumph of Satan in this world. My younger self would no doubt have been amused or even shocked by such a statement. I didn't and still don't consider myself a fundamentalist in any way. But as the latter days gather pace and history approaches a point of denouement we are either for or against Christ and if we are not for him, for him in spirit and in truth not just nominally, then we are against him. The middle ground is vanishing and there is only high ground or low. The choice must be made. It's a simple question and the esoteric will not really help you answer it. It may even hinder especially if it takes you away from the heart too far into the mind or the desire for personal experience. The devil is the most learned of esotericists. Which is not to condemn the esoteric as such but just to say that it is not the true spiritual.

We are meant to acquire knowledge about God and know our true purpose and destiny but this knowledge must be grounded in Christ, and the true Christ of the Gospels not a re-invented form tailored to fit into a particular esoteric perspective. Christ came to reveal the Mysteries and to make the hidden visible which is why there are no secrets in Christianity. My teachers told me that truth is simple but people love to get caught up in theory and speculation. This doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to know and to understand but that should always be secondary to a love for God.

Ancient Aliens

I have been watching a series of programmes called Ancient Aliens that I came across by chance on an obscure channel. It discusses the theory that human civilisation was initially seeded by extraterrestrial beings who visited this planet when we were in a primitive state and, so to speak, jump-started our evolution, giving us the rudiments of technology and culture. It is even suggested that these beings manipulated our DNA to advance us intellectually and in terms of our conscious awareness of life. Constructions and artefacts from around the world are brought in to support the theory ranging from the Mexican pyramids at Teotihuacan to the rock cut Kailasa temple at Ellora in India and many other places. Myths and legends are also examined to help give credence to the idea. The programmes even investigate the possibility that there were extraterrestrial bases on Mars which may have been destroyed in massive thermonuclear explosions for which there is apparently some physical evidence.

It's all very intriguing though I wish the subject wasn't presented in the sensationalist manner it inevitably is. It is a sensational idea, of course, but it doesn't need portentous music, melodramatic commentary and over-the-top graphics to make its point. Some of the people interviewed, experts in their fields, are interesting even if they are only allowed short bursts in which to speak. All of which is to say that while there may be some substance in the programmes they are tabloid in style. 

But what about the theory? I suppose it goes back to Eric Von Daniken whose books were bestsellers in the 1970s though I haven't read them. As I recall, even at the time they were shown to be full of errors and false assumptions. I don't necessarily dismiss the theory on that account. Von Daniken may just have been over-enthusiastic in presenting it and seeing evidence for it all over the place through eyes that wanted to see it. But, as these programmes make clear, there are a lot of unexplained mysteries about the past, and when you factor in the many contemporary reports of UFOs and alien abductions from all over the world, it is obvious that something is going on which our modern worldview cannot explain.

But what? My understanding is that flying saucers and so-called extraterrestrial visitors, where they are real, come not from another part of this physical universe but its inner dimensions. They can materialise at certain times and under certain conditions but not for very long. This is why they appear and disappear suddenly. I believe there are many beings that exist on different levels (planes) of the material universe (using the world material to include non-physical realms outside the true spiritual world) and some of these may belong to what we might perceive as advanced (compared to us) civilisations. But this does not make them spiritual in the true sense. They may have great knowledge, psychic powers, occult abilities. They may have technologies beyond our knowledge and they may even, as one of the programmes claims, be trying to psychically inspire us to develop these technologies through impressing our brains with ideas. But that does not make them spiritual. Indeed, let me tell you that real spiritual beings have no technology. They do not need it. Technology is a material thing.

I notice that none of the programmes mention God, still less Jesus. They do mention higher states of consciousness, paranormal powers, inner dimensions of being, advanced evolution, that sort of thing, all of which is dubbed spiritual which most people think it is. However, I would say that these things can be grouped under the category of occult rather than spiritual. They are not necessarily bad but they relate to the non-physical levels of the material world rather than the true spiritual levels that we associate with God, Christ and heaven. They can be accessed by developed mind power regardless of spiritual or moral state and are to do with knowledge rather than the spiritual heart. Hence they fall into the category of "ye shall be as gods". 

Does this give us a clue as to what might be going on here? I am sure that true spiritual beings, angels from God, have been with humanity from the beginning, inspiring us and trying to move us along the spiritual path. But we know that demons have also been present from the beginning and they too seek to influence us in their way. Both operate through the mind but at different levels. In early times both may have been physically present in the world. Mythology alludes to both and sometimes it can be hard to prise them apart. But we know that Christ is the touchstone to which all things must relate to be true. As far as I am concerned, if these higher, supposedly more advanced beings do not reflect the real light of Christ, they are not spiritually healthy. I am not saying they are all evil. Some are demons but others may just be beings from other dimensions of the universe who have their own agenda as we humans would too if we encountered other beings, indeed as we did when we explored the globe and different peoples encountered each other. They might be good, bad or indifferent but they are not messengers from God.

Apparently this television series premiered in America on the History Channel in 2010 and has had 16 series with well over 100 episodes so far. I can't really recommend it because of its tabloid style and uncritical stance but it does have some interesting points to make.