Death is the meaning of life. At least, properly understood it is. Misunderstood, it shows the meaninglessness of life, being the return of existence to non-existence which makes existence more or less pointless. But seen as the moment at which material life returns to spiritual it puts earthly life into perspective, giving it purpose. Imagine life without death. That really would be terrifying in its banality even if it included eternal youth.
At one time early on in my spiritual journey I read some of the spiritualist literature. While interesting and optimistic about the afterlife it was always slightly unsatisfactory because so much of the life described seemed too much like the better aspects of this life stripped of pain. I realise this would be what is called Summerlands and that spiritualism posits higher levels of spiritual reality above that but even so there was always an element of the mundane and expected about the whole spiritualist description of the post-mortem world. I am not denigrating it because I do believe it gave something that blind faith didn't to millions at a time when people were reaching out for something more, but it never really presented the next world as much more than a continuation of this one and the people in it as very little different in the fundamentals to how they were here.
Now, this may be the experience of a large section of humanity. They may find themselves in an environment that reflects what they are within, and if they are not particularly spiritually attuned in this life nor will they be in the next. But death in the real spiritual sense must mean something more than just relinquishing the physical body. To take away its deep existential significance, as spiritualism tends to do, is to diminish something that should be of profound relevance to the near trite. If death is tamed and made almost comfortable it will not be the transformative experience it should be.
Modern man has lost sight of the beauty of death. Isn't that a strange word to choose to describe something so often seen as full of terror and horror, something that signifies loss and suffering? Perhaps it is and I am certainly not recommending a "half in love with easeful death" attitude. To seek or wish for death is a spiritual sin because it is an evasion of responsibility. But the beauty of death lies in its transformative power and reward for a job well done. When your work here is over and you have been true to your calling as an incarnated soul then death comes as a release from the trivial mundanities of mortal life and entry into glory. The only people who need fear death (as in be frightened of, we should all have an attitude of humble awe before it as we should before any mystery) are those, unfortunately numerous now, who deny life because life is far more than worldly, material things and death, rightly considered, is the doorway to greater life.
Wednesday, 20 May 2020
Sunday, 17 May 2020
Decline and Fall
In the world of print media, newspapers, magazines and the like, circulation has been steadily falling for around 20 years, more or less since the turn of the millennium in fact. The reason is obvious. Computers and the internet. Whenever figures come out they are always down from the previous year. Year on year - x%, year after year. It's a case of managed decline.
There is a parallel with the world. If some authority were able to produce figures on the spiritual state of humanity this too would show a steady decline. And if you compared, say, 40 years ago with today the difference would be marked as many older people would be sure to tell you. This is even taking into account the human tendency always to see deterioration from the good old days when they were younger, life was new, the mind was fresh, hope was buoyant and they had fewer aches, pains and emotional scars.
Of course, many others, probably many more, at least before the coronavirus scare, would tell you that things were getting better but what is their yardstick? To the spiritual eye, it is totally materialistic. We have more and better technology but that separates us from our natural selves. We have greater physical comfort and wealth but remember what Jesus said about the rich. We have a fairer society but what if fair in this sense just meant a quantitative levelling out at the expense of quality? The real point is our disconnect from God is greater than at any time ever. And as we lose connection to God so we lose connection to our real selves and identify with false aspects of our being, seeing the lower, which has its place in the totality of what we are, as either higher or all there is. We are contracting and shutting out the light.
This is what happens at the end of an age. Matter becomes more dense so that the spiritual world is increasingly obscured. Can you not feel that the quality of consciousness is becoming more self-enclosed? If you could weigh it, it would be heavier. If you could see it, it would be darker. How should we react to this? By accepting it as real and going along with life as it now appears to be? Or by holding fast to the truth within, to our inner knowledge of the reality of God which may be obscured but is not obliterated by this thickening of the psychic atmosphere?
Clearly, the latter. This is the test of the present time. Who succumbs to the darkness and who resists it. The world is once again killing God as it did 2,000 years ago but he will rise again in the human heart though only in those hearts who have left a space for him. The virus is part of the test. We can give in to the fear that it engenders and which most of the media are doing their best to spread or we can adopt a more mature attitude towards it, taking precautions where necessary but not allowing it to dominate our minds or overwhelm our faith in God. It is part of living in a fallen world but we have always lived in such a world. Sin and death are always there, try as we might to deny them, and the remedy to them is the same as it always has been. Turn to God with a humble heart.
The spiritual darkness will increase. That is an inevitable part of the process of an age coming to its natural end. The quality of human civilisations will continue to decline. Evil, spiritual evil, will spread. But, unpleasant as this is to live through, it should not alarm us unduly. We are privileged to be living at a time when God is giving those who hear his voice a great opportunity to make strides forward in their spiritual growth. All we really have to do is see through the lies of the world and lift our minds above its darkness to the clear vision of the holy heights.
There is a parallel with the world. If some authority were able to produce figures on the spiritual state of humanity this too would show a steady decline. And if you compared, say, 40 years ago with today the difference would be marked as many older people would be sure to tell you. This is even taking into account the human tendency always to see deterioration from the good old days when they were younger, life was new, the mind was fresh, hope was buoyant and they had fewer aches, pains and emotional scars.
Of course, many others, probably many more, at least before the coronavirus scare, would tell you that things were getting better but what is their yardstick? To the spiritual eye, it is totally materialistic. We have more and better technology but that separates us from our natural selves. We have greater physical comfort and wealth but remember what Jesus said about the rich. We have a fairer society but what if fair in this sense just meant a quantitative levelling out at the expense of quality? The real point is our disconnect from God is greater than at any time ever. And as we lose connection to God so we lose connection to our real selves and identify with false aspects of our being, seeing the lower, which has its place in the totality of what we are, as either higher or all there is. We are contracting and shutting out the light.
This is what happens at the end of an age. Matter becomes more dense so that the spiritual world is increasingly obscured. Can you not feel that the quality of consciousness is becoming more self-enclosed? If you could weigh it, it would be heavier. If you could see it, it would be darker. How should we react to this? By accepting it as real and going along with life as it now appears to be? Or by holding fast to the truth within, to our inner knowledge of the reality of God which may be obscured but is not obliterated by this thickening of the psychic atmosphere?
Clearly, the latter. This is the test of the present time. Who succumbs to the darkness and who resists it. The world is once again killing God as it did 2,000 years ago but he will rise again in the human heart though only in those hearts who have left a space for him. The virus is part of the test. We can give in to the fear that it engenders and which most of the media are doing their best to spread or we can adopt a more mature attitude towards it, taking precautions where necessary but not allowing it to dominate our minds or overwhelm our faith in God. It is part of living in a fallen world but we have always lived in such a world. Sin and death are always there, try as we might to deny them, and the remedy to them is the same as it always has been. Turn to God with a humble heart.
The spiritual darkness will increase. That is an inevitable part of the process of an age coming to its natural end. The quality of human civilisations will continue to decline. Evil, spiritual evil, will spread. But, unpleasant as this is to live through, it should not alarm us unduly. We are privileged to be living at a time when God is giving those who hear his voice a great opportunity to make strides forward in their spiritual growth. All we really have to do is see through the lies of the world and lift our minds above its darkness to the clear vision of the holy heights.
Thursday, 14 May 2020
God is not the Absolute
I have made the mistake of equating God and the Absolute in the past when I was under the misapprehension that all spiritual approaches said fundamentally the same thing and differences were largely down to expression. And that the mystics of all ages pointed to the same reality. I have also believed that the intellectual idea of the Absolute described something real. But I don't believe this anymore and, if truth be told, probably never really did, the confusion being more on a mental plane than a spiritual one.
What I mean is that God is not an abstraction but the most concrete in the sense of most real thing there is. The concept of the Absolute is the product of abstract speculation and is, in the striking words of Pascal, the god of the philosophers not of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Absolute is being absorbed into non-being. It is thought taken to its limits and then, unable to go any further, postulating a theoretical void or emptiness beyond itself. It makes no difference if you call this a plenum-void as something is effectively swallowed up in nothing. The Absolute is the result of a mode of cognition restricted to form trying to conceive of what lies beyond itself and coming up with something like dimensionless space, existence without being.
But God is not like that. The Absolute is existence as theory. God is existence as reality. He cannot be objectified as a thing. That is obviously true or he would be part of creation. He is not some thing. But he is not nothing either or even no-thing. He is the eternal Subject, the Great I AM, and note that in this statement the I comes before the AM. Person comes before being. There is no being without a Person to be. Abstract pure existence is a fantasy of the philosophers.
There may be no such thing as the absolute in the philosophical or even metaphysical sense but there is depth and there is mystery. Mystery is what exists beyond the limitations of the world as it is bound by space, time and form as normally conceived. It is the ground of freedom which is the essence of God and which he bestows on us in the form of our individuality. Mystery is also the source of creativity which is God expressing himself in love. Love, creativity, freedom, these are real things and the true essence of God. The Absolute is really just an idea.
What I mean is that God is not an abstraction but the most concrete in the sense of most real thing there is. The concept of the Absolute is the product of abstract speculation and is, in the striking words of Pascal, the god of the philosophers not of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Absolute is being absorbed into non-being. It is thought taken to its limits and then, unable to go any further, postulating a theoretical void or emptiness beyond itself. It makes no difference if you call this a plenum-void as something is effectively swallowed up in nothing. The Absolute is the result of a mode of cognition restricted to form trying to conceive of what lies beyond itself and coming up with something like dimensionless space, existence without being.
But God is not like that. The Absolute is existence as theory. God is existence as reality. He cannot be objectified as a thing. That is obviously true or he would be part of creation. He is not some thing. But he is not nothing either or even no-thing. He is the eternal Subject, the Great I AM, and note that in this statement the I comes before the AM. Person comes before being. There is no being without a Person to be. Abstract pure existence is a fantasy of the philosophers.
There may be no such thing as the absolute in the philosophical or even metaphysical sense but there is depth and there is mystery. Mystery is what exists beyond the limitations of the world as it is bound by space, time and form as normally conceived. It is the ground of freedom which is the essence of God and which he bestows on us in the form of our individuality. Mystery is also the source of creativity which is God expressing himself in love. Love, creativity, freedom, these are real things and the true essence of God. The Absolute is really just an idea.
Sunday, 10 May 2020
Evil in the Modern World
Last Friday was VE Day when we commemorated victory by the Allies over Nazi Germany in Europe, an obvious case of good triumphing over evil. However, I find a deep irony in this. In my view, most of the people who celebrated that victory are themselves in their way of life, their beliefs, their actions, their behaviour, completely in thrall to a different kind of evil, one that may be less obvious in its appearance but is possibly even more spiritual corrosive.
It is often asked how the Germans in the 1930s could have been taken in by Nazi propaganda and gone along with its programme. I would ask a similar question. How can so many people now not see the anti-spiritual insanity of the present day? How is it that we do not just accept but often actively celebrate contemporary evil? The answer presumably is we don't recognise it as evil but why is that? It is because we don't know, or don't wish to know, the true purpose of life or what a human being actually is. We don't (or won't) think of ourselves as souls but as material beings whose material needs, desires and goals are primary.
Modern evil is the refusal to recognise truth. It is the rejection of God and his replacement with a worldly ideology that equates good with what leads to mortal happiness and evil with what causes suffering to mind or body. But as most people once knew, certainly most people who framed the pattern of civilisation, good is what leads to the development of the soul and brings Man closer to God and evil is what separates Man from God. By that criterion, we are among the most evil people to have existed anywhere ever.
Think about this for a moment. We imagine ourselves as enlightened, compassionate, caring human beings but in point of fact we have egotistically (and it is the unrepentant ego that is behind this) rejected the reality of what we are. If all good is in God, and it is because God is Truth, and we have abandoned God, that makes us evil. There are no two ways about this and I believe that we know it. We don't accept it but we do know it at a level of our being that we keep suppressed. We know it because God is inside us, every one of us, and speaks to us of his presence if we allow it. If we don't hear his voice that is because we don't want to. I know that many people would say they do want to but can't and I'm afraid all I would say to that is, try harder. I realise it is difficult in this modern world when so much is against it. The whole culture is against it and all the religions are pale shadows of what they once were but let me make two points to support my assertion.
First, it is more and more apparent that a world without God is heading for utter disaster. Everyone recognises this or should. If they don't they are either too young and time should bring understanding or else they are too besotted by shallow worldly pleasures or caught up in political ideologies that pander, in one form or another, to the ego. I'm sorry if that seems extreme or offensive but it's time for straight-talking. People who are ready to understand will understand. Those who are not perhaps need to suffer before their minds are receptive to reality. That is no one's responsibility except their own.
The second reason that we are not left spiritually bereft even in this age of triumphant materialism is that today, more than ever, there are teachings to suit a wide variety of tastes and intellectual proclivities readily available. There are many people writing, talking and so on about the evil of the present times. Most, admittedly, do not have a high public profile but anyone who sincerely wishes to find truth will be directed towards someone who can help them. This someone may just be a stepping stone to something else of greater truth but the point is guidance is there if you search for it.
Evil is subtle and always attacks in ways we least expect and the areas where we are weakest. So my teachers told me and so I have found. The Nazi form of evil is clearly a non-starter in the West nowadays despite sections of the press being obsessed with right-wing extremism. We are too familiar with it. But the evil that pervades the Western world now presents itself as good and this is the evil we have succumbed to and we have done so because of the evil within ourselves. That is how it always works. Our own shallowness and egotism is reflected in the world we have created which, in turn, feeds back into the shallowness and egotism.
It is the materialist who defines evil in material terms, violence, murder, rape and so on. All these things certainly are evil. That is not being denied. The material world is part of the totality of reality. But it is not the only part. Reality is primarily spiritual and the contemporary attack on the soul is every bit as evil as the evil of the Nazis. It is just evil manifesting in a different sphere, spiritual rather than material. Our refusal to recognise spiritual evil and the hubris that goes along with this is why the Western world is dying. It cannot be saved but that is not important. What is important is individual souls and these can be saved but only if they renounce the world as it is and do what I believe is called in the terminology of mobile phones and other electronic devices, a factory reset in which all or most of the accumulated data is wiped clean and you start afresh. This is repentance or, to use a word I prefer because it signifies something more comprehensive, metanoia, a total change of mind and heart driven by penitence.
The need for metanoia means that a vague, generalised, intellectual kind of spirituality is not the answer. There's plenty of that about but it does not reach to the bottom of the soul and can often by engaged in without the renunciation of worldliness. It's a new suit when we need a new mind. The true religious goal is not to make us happy in this life but to prepare us to enter the next. Too much contemporary spirituality is therapeutic when it should be transformational and this is part of the form evil currently takes in our world.
It is often asked how the Germans in the 1930s could have been taken in by Nazi propaganda and gone along with its programme. I would ask a similar question. How can so many people now not see the anti-spiritual insanity of the present day? How is it that we do not just accept but often actively celebrate contemporary evil? The answer presumably is we don't recognise it as evil but why is that? It is because we don't know, or don't wish to know, the true purpose of life or what a human being actually is. We don't (or won't) think of ourselves as souls but as material beings whose material needs, desires and goals are primary.
Modern evil is the refusal to recognise truth. It is the rejection of God and his replacement with a worldly ideology that equates good with what leads to mortal happiness and evil with what causes suffering to mind or body. But as most people once knew, certainly most people who framed the pattern of civilisation, good is what leads to the development of the soul and brings Man closer to God and evil is what separates Man from God. By that criterion, we are among the most evil people to have existed anywhere ever.
Think about this for a moment. We imagine ourselves as enlightened, compassionate, caring human beings but in point of fact we have egotistically (and it is the unrepentant ego that is behind this) rejected the reality of what we are. If all good is in God, and it is because God is Truth, and we have abandoned God, that makes us evil. There are no two ways about this and I believe that we know it. We don't accept it but we do know it at a level of our being that we keep suppressed. We know it because God is inside us, every one of us, and speaks to us of his presence if we allow it. If we don't hear his voice that is because we don't want to. I know that many people would say they do want to but can't and I'm afraid all I would say to that is, try harder. I realise it is difficult in this modern world when so much is against it. The whole culture is against it and all the religions are pale shadows of what they once were but let me make two points to support my assertion.
First, it is more and more apparent that a world without God is heading for utter disaster. Everyone recognises this or should. If they don't they are either too young and time should bring understanding or else they are too besotted by shallow worldly pleasures or caught up in political ideologies that pander, in one form or another, to the ego. I'm sorry if that seems extreme or offensive but it's time for straight-talking. People who are ready to understand will understand. Those who are not perhaps need to suffer before their minds are receptive to reality. That is no one's responsibility except their own.
The second reason that we are not left spiritually bereft even in this age of triumphant materialism is that today, more than ever, there are teachings to suit a wide variety of tastes and intellectual proclivities readily available. There are many people writing, talking and so on about the evil of the present times. Most, admittedly, do not have a high public profile but anyone who sincerely wishes to find truth will be directed towards someone who can help them. This someone may just be a stepping stone to something else of greater truth but the point is guidance is there if you search for it.
Evil is subtle and always attacks in ways we least expect and the areas where we are weakest. So my teachers told me and so I have found. The Nazi form of evil is clearly a non-starter in the West nowadays despite sections of the press being obsessed with right-wing extremism. We are too familiar with it. But the evil that pervades the Western world now presents itself as good and this is the evil we have succumbed to and we have done so because of the evil within ourselves. That is how it always works. Our own shallowness and egotism is reflected in the world we have created which, in turn, feeds back into the shallowness and egotism.
It is the materialist who defines evil in material terms, violence, murder, rape and so on. All these things certainly are evil. That is not being denied. The material world is part of the totality of reality. But it is not the only part. Reality is primarily spiritual and the contemporary attack on the soul is every bit as evil as the evil of the Nazis. It is just evil manifesting in a different sphere, spiritual rather than material. Our refusal to recognise spiritual evil and the hubris that goes along with this is why the Western world is dying. It cannot be saved but that is not important. What is important is individual souls and these can be saved but only if they renounce the world as it is and do what I believe is called in the terminology of mobile phones and other electronic devices, a factory reset in which all or most of the accumulated data is wiped clean and you start afresh. This is repentance or, to use a word I prefer because it signifies something more comprehensive, metanoia, a total change of mind and heart driven by penitence.
The need for metanoia means that a vague, generalised, intellectual kind of spirituality is not the answer. There's plenty of that about but it does not reach to the bottom of the soul and can often by engaged in without the renunciation of worldliness. It's a new suit when we need a new mind. The true religious goal is not to make us happy in this life but to prepare us to enter the next. Too much contemporary spirituality is therapeutic when it should be transformational and this is part of the form evil currently takes in our world.
Thursday, 7 May 2020
Mysticism of Escape
Let's not talk about the coronavirus which, dare I say it, is not important in the greater scheme of things*. Let's talk about more serious matters to do with the reasons for us being here in the first place rather than what may or may not provide the means of exit. Let's talk about that old favourite, the meaning of life.
There is a spiritual approach which seeks to transcend all idea of self, of form and of time and space. Its goal is to rest in complete 'presence', a state in which there is no movement, no change, no anything. This is the spirituality of pure being and is regarded by some as being at the zenith of true knowledge; the finishing point to which all paths must eventually tend.
I see the appeal of such a state for people who have suffered in this world and yearn for peace but I also think there is an element of spiritual escapism in the attitude behind it. Consequently, it is my contention that those who follow it will, after they have experienced a Nirvana-like state for a period, long or short, be impelled by an evolutionary inner urge or drive back into the world of time and space. They will be required to learn all the messy lessons of life they have avoided.
In this type of mysticism a person aims to dissolve his self into the universal sea of life and so be freed from all pain and suffering. Usually it is pursued by those of a contemplative turn of mind who wish to escape the hurly-burly of the created world and who see reality as transcending all form. As it does in its absolute sense but a key teaching of Christianity is that God looked at the world and saw it was good. So a Christian, and really by that I mean anyone who wants to live the life intended by God, does not reject the created world but resolves it by drawing it up into its spiritual origin. The uncreated plus the created is more than just the uncreated alone. Life manifests to become more. What this boils down to in practical terms can be summed up by asking the following question. Is the individual self a transitory thing to be transcended in a higher vision of the One or is it a fundamental reality which, to be sure, does merge into the One but which, when it does, retains its full integrity? Otherwise put, is the purpose of life found in returning to the One and being reabsorbed or is it found in a joyful union of the One and the Many with ceaseless interplay between the two? This interplay is love which can only be known in the latter case though, as a legacy of Christianity which is very much the religion of the latter case, it has been appropriated by devotees of the former, notwithstanding the fact that in their scenario it makes no sense and, indeed, would not even be possible. Love demands the full reality of the person.
Monistic mystics, those who seek to renounce the self completely, are actually looking for a return to the spiritual womb. Might this be, contradictory as it seems, because their real motive is not the desire to love and know and serve the living God but to enjoy a personal bliss, albeit in an impersonal form? They might spend years in meditation to perfect themselves for this but if their inner orientation is off then their meditation might bring them peace and detachment but it will not deepen real understanding. There is a big difference between renouncing the self for a perceived spiritual benefit (though who is this supposed to benefit?) and laying down your life for your friends. One is almost an investment or 'deal' while the other is a gift of self-sacrifice in love.
The approach criticised here can be associated with quietism which often has the allure of an advanced form of spirituality. The quietist turns his back on the world for absorption in contemplation. But the danger here is moral neutrality and moral neutrality actually enables immorality and must therefore share in the wickedness of the latter. If you don't give a proper recognition to creation, you will be unable to perceive or to stand against evil and will therefore be drawn into it. This is the trap for the monistic mystic.
*Note: Just to be clear, I am talking about the virus itself. Our reaction to it is important in that it is driven by fear and will potentially lead (was this the intention?) to vast numbers of people directly dependent on the state for their survival.
There is a spiritual approach which seeks to transcend all idea of self, of form and of time and space. Its goal is to rest in complete 'presence', a state in which there is no movement, no change, no anything. This is the spirituality of pure being and is regarded by some as being at the zenith of true knowledge; the finishing point to which all paths must eventually tend.
I see the appeal of such a state for people who have suffered in this world and yearn for peace but I also think there is an element of spiritual escapism in the attitude behind it. Consequently, it is my contention that those who follow it will, after they have experienced a Nirvana-like state for a period, long or short, be impelled by an evolutionary inner urge or drive back into the world of time and space. They will be required to learn all the messy lessons of life they have avoided.
In this type of mysticism a person aims to dissolve his self into the universal sea of life and so be freed from all pain and suffering. Usually it is pursued by those of a contemplative turn of mind who wish to escape the hurly-burly of the created world and who see reality as transcending all form. As it does in its absolute sense but a key teaching of Christianity is that God looked at the world and saw it was good. So a Christian, and really by that I mean anyone who wants to live the life intended by God, does not reject the created world but resolves it by drawing it up into its spiritual origin. The uncreated plus the created is more than just the uncreated alone. Life manifests to become more. What this boils down to in practical terms can be summed up by asking the following question. Is the individual self a transitory thing to be transcended in a higher vision of the One or is it a fundamental reality which, to be sure, does merge into the One but which, when it does, retains its full integrity? Otherwise put, is the purpose of life found in returning to the One and being reabsorbed or is it found in a joyful union of the One and the Many with ceaseless interplay between the two? This interplay is love which can only be known in the latter case though, as a legacy of Christianity which is very much the religion of the latter case, it has been appropriated by devotees of the former, notwithstanding the fact that in their scenario it makes no sense and, indeed, would not even be possible. Love demands the full reality of the person.
Monistic mystics, those who seek to renounce the self completely, are actually looking for a return to the spiritual womb. Might this be, contradictory as it seems, because their real motive is not the desire to love and know and serve the living God but to enjoy a personal bliss, albeit in an impersonal form? They might spend years in meditation to perfect themselves for this but if their inner orientation is off then their meditation might bring them peace and detachment but it will not deepen real understanding. There is a big difference between renouncing the self for a perceived spiritual benefit (though who is this supposed to benefit?) and laying down your life for your friends. One is almost an investment or 'deal' while the other is a gift of self-sacrifice in love.
The approach criticised here can be associated with quietism which often has the allure of an advanced form of spirituality. The quietist turns his back on the world for absorption in contemplation. But the danger here is moral neutrality and moral neutrality actually enables immorality and must therefore share in the wickedness of the latter. If you don't give a proper recognition to creation, you will be unable to perceive or to stand against evil and will therefore be drawn into it. This is the trap for the monistic mystic.
*Note: Just to be clear, I am talking about the virus itself. Our reaction to it is important in that it is driven by fear and will potentially lead (was this the intention?) to vast numbers of people directly dependent on the state for their survival.
Monday, 4 May 2020
The Spiritual and the Worldly
In my last post I described leftism as the ape of spirituality. By this I meant that it is a degenerate, corrupted imitation of spirituality which seems to many people in the absence of any real spiritual understanding to be a moral thing. But it is actually profoundly immoral because it grounds itself in a denial of the very source of true morality which is God. You may say that some people on the left believe in God but they don't really, not the living God and Father of Creation. They believe in humanity first and foremost, that is their idol, and in fact I wonder if they actually even believe in humanity or just believe in believing in it.
The ideas behind what we call the left seemed to many people to come about for a good reason. There was injustice. There was cruelty. There were great classes of human beings who were treated badly. The attempt to address the problems was often well-motivated, even if motives were mixed with resentment and envy. However, the answers put forward were either completely bad or had enough bad in them to do harm, especially as time progressed and the seeds within them blossomed. That is because they were all founded on the fact of this world and that it is justified in itself instead of being simply a training ground for the next. Which should be obvious as everything here ends in death, the one inevitability of earthly life
Why has the left become so powerful? So powerful that it is now the air we breathe whatever our supposed political persuasion. It is because once religion in general and Christianity in particular have been destroyed people have no understanding of what is the good. They locate it in this world and see it as tending to the well-being and defeating the harm of individuals as they are in this world. Human beings wish to be good or, at least, be thought to be good. Leftism says, "I am good, I care". But what do you care about? Earthly things only. Traditional thought doesn't say that. It says, "Worship God and when you do that everything else falls into place". Its principle is that when first things are put first, secondary things proceed as they should but when secondary things are given primary consideration which is what the left does then not only will first things be lost but so eventually will the secondary things which replaced them because these cannot live unless sustained from above. Nothing has any reality except what it borrows from God. When this is not understood, we live in illusion and living in illusion sooner or later always leads to disaster.
It's the same on an individual level as a global one. You are a soul, a mind and a body. If you live as though the mind or the body were the primary thing, you will die. I don't mean physically. I mean spiritually which is the true death. If you live as though the soul were the primary thing, which is the case, then mind and body will be healthy or as healthy as they can be given your individual destiny which may require a certain amount of hardship and suffering. But your moral and spiritual state will be healthy and that is the foundation of everything else.
However, I do have a word of warning for people who think of themselves as religious. For many, their religion is really only a worldly thing, a formal thing. It is not based on the spiritual reality of God and the soul but on a materialised imitation of that. This is easy to tell when the spiritual and the worldly come into conflict. Which bows to which? Which has more meaning and reality to you, the hidden truths of God or those based on human interaction in the material world?
Another question is this. What is more important to you? The outer form of your religion or its inner truth? Its social and communitarian aspect or the unseen vital creative life rooted in transcendence? If you are not careful, religion can easily be co-opted by the world but you need to keep your religious instincts pure and you also need to engage the imagination as well as have faith or else the thing you direct your faith to will be a bland thing, unable to transform you spiritually which is what the religious path is really all about. It is the unimaginative who are most likely to have their religion corrupted by this world because they have not vivified it with the waters of life and done what is required to light from within what is often just a system of beliefs, essentially religious secularism such as is practised by many of the churches today.
God is a consuming fire, as Hebrews 12:29 has it. This fire destroys all that is not divine, and if ideas, sentiments and priorities that are not founded on the absoluteness of the divine exist within you then the God you worship is just a figment of your own imagination using that word in a different sense to that in which it is used above. (The difference being between imagination as creative inner vision and as mere image maker). Do you worship the living God or just your idea about him? Now is the time when that is being put to the test. The current sorting out of the sheep and the goats is not just a crude division between those who are religious and those who are not. It is subtler than that. It is between those who wish to live by eternal truths and those who, even if religious, are of the world. And here is a fact for consideration. If you do not reject the world, particularly at this time when it is more severed from its spiritual source than ever before, you are of the world.
The ideas behind what we call the left seemed to many people to come about for a good reason. There was injustice. There was cruelty. There were great classes of human beings who were treated badly. The attempt to address the problems was often well-motivated, even if motives were mixed with resentment and envy. However, the answers put forward were either completely bad or had enough bad in them to do harm, especially as time progressed and the seeds within them blossomed. That is because they were all founded on the fact of this world and that it is justified in itself instead of being simply a training ground for the next. Which should be obvious as everything here ends in death, the one inevitability of earthly life
Why has the left become so powerful? So powerful that it is now the air we breathe whatever our supposed political persuasion. It is because once religion in general and Christianity in particular have been destroyed people have no understanding of what is the good. They locate it in this world and see it as tending to the well-being and defeating the harm of individuals as they are in this world. Human beings wish to be good or, at least, be thought to be good. Leftism says, "I am good, I care". But what do you care about? Earthly things only. Traditional thought doesn't say that. It says, "Worship God and when you do that everything else falls into place". Its principle is that when first things are put first, secondary things proceed as they should but when secondary things are given primary consideration which is what the left does then not only will first things be lost but so eventually will the secondary things which replaced them because these cannot live unless sustained from above. Nothing has any reality except what it borrows from God. When this is not understood, we live in illusion and living in illusion sooner or later always leads to disaster.
It's the same on an individual level as a global one. You are a soul, a mind and a body. If you live as though the mind or the body were the primary thing, you will die. I don't mean physically. I mean spiritually which is the true death. If you live as though the soul were the primary thing, which is the case, then mind and body will be healthy or as healthy as they can be given your individual destiny which may require a certain amount of hardship and suffering. But your moral and spiritual state will be healthy and that is the foundation of everything else.
However, I do have a word of warning for people who think of themselves as religious. For many, their religion is really only a worldly thing, a formal thing. It is not based on the spiritual reality of God and the soul but on a materialised imitation of that. This is easy to tell when the spiritual and the worldly come into conflict. Which bows to which? Which has more meaning and reality to you, the hidden truths of God or those based on human interaction in the material world?
Another question is this. What is more important to you? The outer form of your religion or its inner truth? Its social and communitarian aspect or the unseen vital creative life rooted in transcendence? If you are not careful, religion can easily be co-opted by the world but you need to keep your religious instincts pure and you also need to engage the imagination as well as have faith or else the thing you direct your faith to will be a bland thing, unable to transform you spiritually which is what the religious path is really all about. It is the unimaginative who are most likely to have their religion corrupted by this world because they have not vivified it with the waters of life and done what is required to light from within what is often just a system of beliefs, essentially religious secularism such as is practised by many of the churches today.
God is a consuming fire, as Hebrews 12:29 has it. This fire destroys all that is not divine, and if ideas, sentiments and priorities that are not founded on the absoluteness of the divine exist within you then the God you worship is just a figment of your own imagination using that word in a different sense to that in which it is used above. (The difference being between imagination as creative inner vision and as mere image maker). Do you worship the living God or just your idea about him? Now is the time when that is being put to the test. The current sorting out of the sheep and the goats is not just a crude division between those who are religious and those who are not. It is subtler than that. It is between those who wish to live by eternal truths and those who, even if religious, are of the world. And here is a fact for consideration. If you do not reject the world, particularly at this time when it is more severed from its spiritual source than ever before, you are of the world.
Friday, 1 May 2020
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.
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.
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