Dealing With the Modern World

We currently live in a world of such spiritual darkness that almost everybody, the apparently virtuous and the obvious sinner alike, lives in a state of deep illusion. Illusion about the world and illusion about themselves. Does that mean that if we are beginning to see through this illusion and the modem myth of human progress we can congratulate ourselves? A little perhaps. It is certainly to our credit if we do see through it given the forces ranged against us. Our education, our culture and often even our religion, if we have any, are all dominated by the modern ethos. However we should mostly respond with gratitude and humility. For if we do see through the illusion it is not primarily on account of our own personal qualities but through grace. Yes, in a certain sense grace has to be earned but, at the same time, it is God given and cannot be considered a right in the unfortunate modern way of looking at things. There are no rights in spirituality. There is love and there are gifts but there are no rights.

So education and the media, practically all contemporary arts and sciences and even much religion, all conspire today against spiritual truth. They would have it that we live in a world of chance, without purpose, and with beauty, goodness and truth being subjective realities that have no existence beyond the material world and our own minds. This is the artificial reality we have created for ourselves and for which we strive to invent a way of being that fits its emptiness but at the same time gives us some sense of meaning, however denuded of real meaning that is. Our false reality becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy as the more acceptance we give it in our minds, the more real it becomes and a downward negative spiral that feeds on itself is created. The walls of our prison become thicker. If we want to escape we cannot accept some parts of this illusion and try to adjust any burgeoning spiritual beliefs we have to that. We must, if we are to liberate ourselves from its snares, reject it wholesale. If we don't do this our spirituality will inevitably accommodate itself to the false reality. 

This puts us in a difficult position and for two principal reasons. On the one hand, there is the temptation of pride. We are enlightened and pure. Others are blinded by ignorance and a refusal to see things as they are. The understanding that all truth and goodness is of God and if it comes to us then he has given it should help to deal with that. 

But then there is the problem of how we relate to those, the great majority, who are not only ignorant of spiritual truth but who actively reject it. This is a real problem, especially when such people may be our own family members. However I think the answer is simple even if it is not easy. We must just remain faithful to the truth as we know it and never compromise. That doesn't mean we should become confrontational but we should quietly yet firmly hold to what is right and true, not pushing it where it is unwanted but offering it where it might be needed. I have learnt (through long and sometimes bitter experience!) that there is very little point in arguing with those who deny or don't want to know spiritual truth. You can state first principles but should then leave it at that. The mind can argue for or against anything and you won't get anywhere by trying to persuade someone of something he doesn't want to believe. (Which raises the question of why people don't want to believe but that's a different story). So simply state the truth of God's existence and expand on that if asked to do so. 

Otherwise remember the words of Jesus that “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Clearly these are not meant literally and are not an excuse for cult members to abandon familial love and responsibilities for note the addition of one's own life. However they do point to the fact that truth must come before all else and if people close to us consistently reject truth we must not allow that to deflect us from the proper path.

Ultimately dealing with the modern world is not that hard. We have to reject its falsehoods and illusions, knowing that the Kingdom of God is not of this world. But then nor is this world separate from God and one day it too will be redeemed and made holy.

Heroes and Heaven

I am currently re-reading Colin Wilson's 1959 book The Age of Defeat (aka The Stature of Man) in which he analyses the decline of the hero from his origin in the Romantic movement.

The context established by Wilson's previous books - The Outsider, and Religion and the Rebel) is that all lives are ultimately unsuccessful - so the problem of depicting a convincing hero is almost an impossibility... or superficially so.

Wilson is correct that all lives are necessarily unsuccessful in the profound sense that they are terminated by death (and even if death was somehow indefinitely postponed, the unsatisfactoriness of each human and of the world means that the problem remains).

But a life may potentially be regarded as successful when regarded in the context of immortality, eternity and divinity.

In a nutshell, a true hero requires the context of Heaven. And the modern problem of depicting a convincing and appealing hero is a consequence of the modern inability to conceptualise a convincing and appealing Heaven.

Because it is very hard to be both convincing and appealing together in a depiction. Few have achieved it - and probably nobody has achieved it universally; but those who have achieved it even in a form which only works for some people have rendered great service, and deserve gratitude.

An example is the poet William Blake - who is at his best able to make some of us believe in a Heaven which we would wish to inhabit. This is probably the ultimate secret of Blake's appeal and influence.

Another is the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith - who depicted a Heaven which is so real and satisfying that it has shaped the lives of millions, created a deep optimism and taken the sting from death with an effectiveness that is astonishing in a modern Western context.

(This is convincingly documented by Professor Douglas J Davies - a sociologist of religion and not a Mormon - in his The Mormon Culture of Salvation, 2000.)

Another example is CS Lewis in the final Narnian book The Last Battle; when he combines elements of abstract-spiritual Platonism with more concrete and 'physical' elements - such as retained sex and personality, landscape, family and friends - to produce a Heaven which is both attractive and believable.

Another example is William Arkle - especially in his Letter from a Father (1977) -


http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/letter-from-father-by-william-arkle.html

My point is that the hero must succeed in an ultimate sense; and ultimate success requires immortality, eternity and divinity; which requires that we must believe in Heaven. The modern phenomenon of no-more-heroes and the Outsider perception that all lives are failures are correct but only when mortal life is assumed to be everything - or when what follows mortal life is unconvincing or unappealing.

One who really believes in Heaven and wants Heaven and expects to get there can be a hero, can recognise heroism in others, and could potentially (if he had the creative talent) also depict Heroes in a Heavenly context.

Things Jesus Didn't Say

Sometimes it can help to remind ourselves what Jesus did not say because he is often taken as promoting ideas which did not form part of his real teachings. Many people with an agenda try to co-opt him as an ally, frequently leaving out much of what he said and taking bits in isolation or out of context.

With that in mind let us recall that he did not say any of the following:

All you need is love.

Suffering is always bad. 

You need to get rid of poverty. 

The important thing is for everybody to be nice to each other. 

Everybody's equal.

Everything is one so differences don't matter

Everything's good in its own way.

There is no better or worse.

Evil is just ignorance. 

The devil has no reality other than in your own mind. 

Unity comes before all else.. 

I come to bring peace not a sword. 

My Kingdom is of this world.

Many are called and many are chosen.

You are God.

Most of these are half truths which are not completely wrong but need to be considered in the light of greater truth and not taken out of overall context. Heresies arise in just this way, by isolating a part from the whole and exaggerating it.

Why not add some more yourself?

Guarding the Sacred Flame - Winston Churchill and Geoffrey Ashe on King Arthur

'Modern research has not accepted the annihilation of Arthur. Timidly but resolutely the latest and best-informed writers unite to proclaim his reality. They cannot tell when in this dark period he lived, or where he held sway and fought his battles. They are ready to believe however that there was a great British warrior, who kept the light of civilisation burning against all the storms that beat, and that behind his sword there sheltered a faithful following of which the memory did not fail ... Nonetheless, to have established a basis in fact for the story of Arthur is a service which should be respected. In this account we prefer to believe that the story with which Geoffrey of Monmouth delighted the fiction-loving Europe of the twelfth century is not all fancy. It is all true or it ought to be; and more and better besides. And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.'

Sir Winston Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples: The Birth of Britain (1956)

*******

'Here is a spellbinding, indestructible theme, national, yet transcending nationality. For better or worse it has affected the country where it began. It has survived eclipses and demolitions, and Britain cannot be thought of without it. Yet no conceivable movement or government could trap it in a programme. That is a comment on the limitations of movements and governments. The undying king is a strangely powerful reminder that there is Something Else. By nurturing that awareness, and a questing spirit, his fame may have its effect on human thinking. It may influence history again, outside movements and governments and not only in Britain.'

Geoffrey Ashe, The Discovery of King Arthur (2003)

The UK General Election - what to look for?

The UK will have a General Election in a few week's time - almost a year after the historic result of the Brexit referendum.

While there is some limited interest in seeing how the election proceeds - it nonetheless seems-like the most pre-decided election of my life; assuming that the current government indeed presents itself as the part of uncompromising Brexit. But the election specifically, and politics in general, is certainly not going to change any of the most important things that need changing. That can only come from a spiritual and Christian awakening.

Yet, a General Election might also and far more importantly provoke a period of general reflection on the nature and future of Albion... If it does, this will be invisible to the mass media and public discourse - but only discernible in private and sincere conversations; and by those (few, presumably) who can intuit the spiritual reality of the nation.

It is this which we ought to be monitoring, ought to be aware of - and to assist - in what ways we can - and whenever possible.

Spirituality, freedom and consciousness

So much nonsense and wickedness has been advocated in the name of Freedom that it is easy to be put-off the concept, and stampeded into advocating some kind of repression in a good cause; but there is reason to believe that freedom - properly understood - is our destiny.

Christianity absolutely depends on freedom - because the Christian religion must be freely chosen. Or, in other words, Christians must be agent - that is autonomously able to create rather than simply being effects of some other, prior and external cause. This is captured by knowledge that we are sons and daughters of God, because only the divine is able to create and to be a primary cause.

In this sense we are, and ought to be, essentially free - free, that is, to be an origin of action... but the question is what is it that we are free to do (given that the world is so full of constraints, and we ourselves are constrained in multiple ways). The answer is to think - we are free to think; but again, there must be an immediate caution that not all of our thought is free - indeed for most people extremely little, Much of our thinking is unconsciously, or habit, or channelled by something external such as the conversation of other people, or the mass media, or simply (and frequently) bad habits of automatic and robotic 'thinking'.

Indeed, we are only free when we are aware; alert, conscious of our thoughts, when we are in purposive control of our thinking - precisely when it is not automatic or passively guided. We can assume that the fully-divine is wholly aware and alert and conscious, and thus wholly free - and this tells us clearly enough the direction in which we, personally, ought to be evolving/ changing/ developing. We ought to be tending towards a situation in which we are wholly free in our thinking, therefore aware of everything... eventually, even in dreams we would need to be conscious and purposive.

So, when it comes to wanting a more spiritual world, and a more spiritual Christianity - it is absolutely vital that this spirituality NOT be the kind of automatic, unconscious, dreamlike or altered-state semi-consciousness of much spirituality. It is not so much that this unconscious, instinctive kind of spirituality is bad - it isn't; but that it is immature, child-level, passive - and our destiny is to maturity, agency - towards a situation in which each man and each woman is fully divine.

Modern people are split between materialism in public life and some degree of passive and unconscious spirituality in private - in dreams, visions, altered states (perhaps intoxication or drugged states) and the passive and guided spiritual states of immersive experiences in arts and media... For all the potential benefits of good novels, plays, movies etc - the spirituality they induce is more-or-less passive and guided - during the actual experience there is not agency... the aim cannot be for people to be in a perpetual state of living by some externally-induced spiritual state (even if that spiritual state was induced by some divine, or divinely-inspired source).

What is needed is therefore quite clear - and the state aimed-at is one of clarity - it is a state of thinking from our true self(our soul, perhaps) with full agency, full freedom, full autonomy. And therefore that this kind of primary thinking is, must be, the aimed-at freedom. Ideas of freedom which are located in physical actions - doing and not doing - are missing the point badly and dangerously. Our freedom is in our thinking - and what happens in the physical world depends on many other factors and can never be a pure and complete expression of our thinking.

Reality - ultimate reality - is therefore something which is at the level of thinking. It is not, for example, at the level of perceptions (these depend on our sensory apparatus, and our ability to decode senses) - nor at the level of the material (although we often work via the material - the material expression is always constrained by time and space and therefore incomplete, and at any point in time or space it is distorted by these constraints).

Albion Awakening is therefore ultimately something which happens - or does not happen - in the realm of primary, pure, real thinking - and any other detection or measure of it will be secondary, and necessarily distorted. Does this mean that it is inaccessible? No - because for the above metaphysical scheme to make sense requires that real thinking takes places in a universally accessible 'realm' - which is therefore (potentially) objective - in terms of being in principle wholly available to anyone able to access it.

I keep asking myself whether there is an awakening in Albion - and at present I don't know. But I have to avoid assuming that any such awakening would only 'really' happen if something in the material world was to indicate it - because while an awakening of the nation (or some sizeable section of it) certainly would be apparent in the material world - I really couldn't say just how it would be apparent. Since what would 'count' as an awakening would be something new and unprecedented - then I don't know how it would work through into something detectable and measurable in the material world...

(And this would apply to the institutions of religion as well - Christian churches need to change, to become more spiritual, and that spirituality to become more conscious - but what exactly this would mean to the organisation of churches, or indeed whether it implies a loss of institutions after that consciousness has been attained - is unclear until after it has-happened. I don't see how we could possibly know this stuff until after the change in consciousness; and the idea that we could short-cut to material change before there is spiritual change is precisely the delusion that would prevent the consciousness and spiritual change...)

To detect it I would need to perceive in in thought, in the universal realm of thinking when I myself was in the state of real thinking from my real self. I have felt that I did indeed perceive exactly this, but of course when I lapsed out of this way of thinking, and returned to the usual passive, automatic, inculcated, robotic thinking in which I spend most of my time - then I can no longer perceive it; and worry that I was just fooling myself with wishful thinking.

This blog began after the Brexit vote - and with the hope (perhaps conviction) that that vote was in indicator of some deeper change in national consciousness of a positive kind - that inference itself being something which was intuitive and not any kind of logically-entailed thing. I still feel not much further on - except that there does seem to be a sense that there may be deeper forces at work which lead to otherwise-inexplicable patterns at the material level. However, for these to become what are needed; then this change in thinking (if it exists) must sooner-or-later become absolutely clear, conscious, and purposive.

Unconscious instincts are not going to save us, and they are not what we need. Each of us should strive to bring to light the nature of our truest, realest thinking.

Apologies to commenters for delayed moderation

I was out of the country, and 'therefore' Google locked me out of my blogs (for the first time) - so some comment approvals were very delayed and I couldn't post anything to explain why...

Resurrection

The Resurrection is the one thing that finally makes sense of the world. Without it everything tends to confusion and mystery but with it everything falls into place. It shows how evil is overcome and that good is ultimately real. It explains what we are, where we should go and what we have to do to get there.  It is the key to everything. I do not say that the religions that lack it are wrong, but they are incomplete. Of course, many people won't be able to accept this, for cultural reasons or because of some prejudice but once you see it it's just so obvious! Compared to all other spiritual approaches the Resurrection is like adding a third dimension to a two dimensional model, one that gives it a completely new appearance and makes you see it clearly and wholly for the first time.

So Christianity is true but what form of Christianity should we follow?  I don't mean what denomination. Some denominations are certainly better (in that they include more of spiritual truth) than others but, in the end, it does seem that they all belong to a form of human consciousness that is passing. I am not talking about some fantasy of an Aquarian Age, but human beings do evolve (as in unfold their divine pattern and grow into that), times change and the form our religion takes should reflect that. Or so I believe. Others will not but then the only valid form of Christianity for the West would be Catholicism and it does seem to me that, for all its glorious truths and beauties, it does somehow belong to the past. Catholicism is largely what has made Western civilisation but its spiritual, as opposed to religious, force is not what it was and I don't think it can inspire a civilisation any more as it once so magnificently did. I know many will disagree but I think religions pass through the same cycle of growth, maturity and decay as everything else and there is none now that is not in the latter part of that cycle. That is not to say the truth is not there but truth needs a body or form and the latter is not eternal.

Is that a depressing thought for Easter Sunday? I don't mean it to be. The revelation of Christ is for all eternity. The fact of the resurrection is too and we celebrate those today. But can Christianity ever be what it was? Can it universally supply spiritual needs in the way it once did? Or have we changed too much for that to happen?

My feeling is that we cannot go back. The West has largely rejected Christianity and that rejection appears to be decisive. Despite occasional revivals it really does seem that way. However we now have something considerably less than Christianity. If we cannot go back to Christianity as it once was then we need something more than Christianity as it was. That means a new form of Christianity. But just as Jesus came to fulfil the law and the prophets not to deny them so this new form must incorporate all the truth and virtue in Christianity as it was to make of them something that might be new in form but is the same in essence. We need Christianity but with a new dimension added to it, a dimension which was certainly contained in the old form for those who knew how to look but was often dormant or neglected.

You could call it the mystical element but that is a little vague. What it is is the inner truth of Christianity. The truth that we are all sons and daughters of God with the potential to become Christ-like ourselves. Christ is in us. We are not called to worship him so much as to become him and this requires a radically different view of our humanity, a realisation that we are neither sinners (or, at least, not only sinners) nor intelligent apes (though that is what we have made of ourselves) but spiritual beings already with the potential to become gods. I repeat, all this is present in past forms of Christianity, especially Catholicism, but whereas past forms focused mostly on the idea of salvation now we need to bring the deification or divinisation of man aspect out considerably more. We have become (partly, indeed, because of Christian teachings) much more aware of our individuality. We are more mentally orientated than ever before. These things need to be taken into account though we must see them as subordinate to the spiritual consciousness, as means for that to manifest not realities that exist in their own right and for their own self-expression as is the case now.

Christianity is true, now and always. The Resurrection is our guarantee of eternal life if we accept it. But it may be that a new form of Christianity is needed for human beings today that will be able to inspire them as the old forms did in the past, spiritually, morally and even artistically. For we cannot go back. And yet on one level this may be new but on another, more profound, it will not be new at all for everything is already fully present in Christianity as it is now.  The truth of Christianity will not change, it could not, but the form of the religion may have to be born again. I realise this is a controversial thing to say and I have no suggestions as to what that form might be, but I cannot see how Christianity as it has been will ever be as universally influential as it once was and we desperately need some form of Christianity or else we are lost.

And so we come back, as we always must, to the idea of and the need for resurrection. 

R.J. Unstead - Historian and Storyteller

I have studied history for nearly forty years now, yet no historian has made as great an impact on me as the first one I read - R.J. Unstead (1915 - 1988) - a schoolteacher from Kent who wrote or edited  almost fifty books, aimed principally at young readers. Most of these are out of print now, and that is a shame, as there is much we can learn from them. I have just reread Unstead's The Story of Britain (1969) and found it every bit as stimulating and inspiring as I did three and a half decades ago.

The clue lies in the title. Unstead is as much a storyteller as a historian. The Story of Britain is written as a tale, with highs and lows, ups and downs, and heroes and villains a-plenty. There are few concessions to the egalitarian spirit of the age. 'Much of the book,' as the fly-leaf says, 'is about ordinary people; but in the main it tells its story through great figures in British history: the knights and barons, kings and queens, the invaders; the soldiers and sailors, explorers and adventurers.'

Unstead is also unashamedly Christian. His gloss on the period following the Synod of Whitby in 663 illustrates this perfectly: 'English monasteries, English schools, English scholars and churchmen became famous throughout Europe. The Lindisfarne Gospel, with its wonderful illuminated capitals and covers of gold, the carved stone crosses, the new churches and the singing of the choirs in the great monasteries were the marvels of their time.'

I studied history to M.A. level, and the higher I got the further away I felt from the simplicity and the imaginative vitality of Unstead's world. The 'great man theory of history', as they called it, was openly scorned at my last university, and to have mentioned Christianity in anything but a pejorative sense would have invited embarrassed silence at best and outright hostility at worst.

All this is to be regretted. R.J. Unstead believed in the capability of men and women to achieve greatness. This gives the reader agency, liberating him or her from helplessness and passivity. We are so much more than impotent pawns shuffled around on the chessboard of history by vast, impersonal, socio-economic forces. Unstead's Christian faith provides the wider frame of reference a nation needs if it is to bind itself together, become more than the sum of its parts and build a sense of  continuity between its past, present and future. Both these aspects are sorely lacking in our time. Unstead's chapter on King Alfred brings them together in a telling and instructive synthesis ...

*******

... Alfred was not called 'the Great' simply because he was a good general. At heart, he was a man of peace and, in those dire months as a fugitive at Athelney, he had come to realise what his people needed.

Wessex was well-nigh ruined. Trade had ceased, the farms were derelict, the churches and monasteries were roofless and empty. The people were hungry and lawless.

Almost single-handed, Alfred rebuilt the kingdom. He travelled up and down the land, praising and encouraging, building with his own hands and setting others to work. He fetched skilled men from abroad to teach the Saxons the arts they had forgotten, for on every side he found ignorance. 'Hardly a man in the kingdom can read his prayer-book or write a letter,' he said. 'I would have all the boys now in England set to learning.'

Schools were started and even the nobles had to go to their lessons if they wished to receive the King's favour. 'It was a strange sight,' wrote a bishop, 'to see aldermen and officials, ignorant from boyhood, learning to read.'

Since few teachers were left alive, invitations were sent to France, Wales and Ireland for monks and scholars to come and work in Wessex. Not all of them were good men and, to Alfred's sorrow, they sometimes quarrelled. Once, two of the foreign monks actually killed their abbot. But among the newcomers was a Welsh monk named Asser, who became Alfred's greatest friend and helper.

Books had almost completely disappeared, so Alfred kept the scribes at their desks making copies of old books that had escaped the flames. Almost all were written in Latin, for there had been little or no writing in Anglos-Saxon since Bede's time. Alfred set himself to improve his own knowledge of Latin and, with Asser's help, he translated parts of the Bible and works on history, geography and science.

This wonderful man never ceased toiling for his people. He found time for building, writing and governing and was keenly interested in stars, in trade and in foreign places. He rewrote the laws of King Ine and kept in touch with the Pope, for it was his Christian faith that gave him the strength to do so much. As one of the monks wrote: 'The King attends daily services of religion ... he goes to church at night-time to pray secretly, unknown to anyone.'

The noblest man who ever occupied an English throne died when he was barely fifty, but he left an example to his people and a message to his successors. 'I pray thee, my good son, be a father to my people,' he said as he lay dying. 'Comfort the poor, protect and shelter the weak and put right the things that are wrong.'

The World Today

It's always difficult to tell if one's impressions are purely subjective or if there is an objective element to them too, but at the moment it really does seem as though the vice of materialism (pun intended) is growing ever tighter in our world.

The environment is actually becoming what it is stated to be by science. Inner quality is withdrawing and consciousness is being constricted. The world is becoming harder and more solid. Don't you feel that?

At the same time, space is contracting and time is speeding up. And distinctions are being erased. Differences between male and female, human and animal and even good and evil are all being diluted and broken down and though there are corresponding reactions to this, reactions are what they are. The general direction is towards a sort of uniformity. Everything is being ground down to the undifferentiated state of prime matter.

It can never get to that state, of course, because that would be extinction but it can approach it and this is what spells the end of an age. Quality is replaced by quantity and the digitalisation of information is a good example of that. This is clearly the most spiritually destructive thing there could be but it is happening and the speed at which it happens in all areas of life is increasing. What can we as individuals do about it?

To begin with, we can recognise that outwardly it is inevitable. That will save us a lot of grief. But then we must understand that inwardly it need not,  I won't say affect, but it need not contaminate us.  We can stay detached or at least relatively so. We don't have to be swamped by the spiritual ignorance of our time. Indeed we don't have to be and we should not be for it is precisely this that is the test of our time. We are summoned to remain faithful to the truth even when the truth is trampled underfoot. And this is not just an intellectual matter. It's an affair of the heart. There are many people who adopt a spiritual worldview but don’t make that primary in their life. It's an add on to ordinary existence which remains their basic focus. Don't be one of them.

I am not talking about a religion. Lots of people do make their religion central but is it the outer form that is important to them or the real inner truth behind that form? Perhaps it's a mixture of the two but we must make sure that the real motivation behind all we are and do is dedication to the inner truth. I doubt religion as we know it will exist in the higher worlds because it will not be necessary and we must try to have a mind that lives as though we were in those worlds now because in a  certain sense we can only gain entry to them when we have the corresponding mental state. Like attracts like in the spiritual world absolutely not just in the general sort of way it does here.  I am certainly not dismissing religion but ultimately it is a tool not the real heart of the spiritual exercise.

If God does not exist there is no point to anything.  That is not put forward as a reason to believe but it's a big indication that he does exist.  The reality of meaning and purpose is demonstrated by the fact that their lack is so keenly felt. Not by everyone. The majority of people live in a state of distraction. But some people always, and most people sometimes, stand back from the superficialities of daily life to ponder on why, where and what. This is the voice of God calling you home. You should listen to it and seek to retrace that thread to its source.

We have to understand that our world is sunk in illusion partly as a result of the increasing materialisation of the environment as time moves along from the beginning of an age to its conclusion, but this process is accentuated when our passive submission to the illusion reinforces it. We do partially create our own environment. If we (the collective we) imagine the world to be nothing but matter then nothing but matter is what it starts to become. The environment actually becomes denser to our perception and more spiritually impenetrable. But we are not obliged to accept this and we must stand against it if we wish to be amongst the seeds that actually sprout and grow rather than those that fail to reach up towards the sun and so die.

The world today is in a parlous state because human beings have denied the fullness of their humanity, seeing themselves as animals ascended rather than spirits descended. This has led them to reject the hierarchy of being and replace that with various false ideologies based on mistaken metaphysical concepts. If you don't know where you have come from you won't know where you should be going. If you don't know what you are you won't understand what you should be. But first the intellectuals of the world, seduced by the cleverness of their own minds, and then, following on from them, the ordinary people have closed their hearts to what they are and where they come from. The thoughtform they have built up has become a powerful elemental being which is actually turning this world into what they have imagined it to be. A hard material world with nothing behind that.

Nevertheless, as dark as this world might become, God is always there and he will triumph. This we have been promised and it is impossible for it not to be the case anyway. Therefore all we have to do is stand firm and hold the line. Manifest the truth and be a light in the darkness for those who may be looking for one even if they don't know it. There will be many such, souls born into the spiritual ignorance of this contemporary world who in their hearts cannot find any joy in it. They sense its falseness but cannot see in which direction lies truth because all their education and all their culture has denied it to them. Be ready for them when they come your way and know that in helping them you help the world because you are helping in the fight against the hardening of the mind and the darkening of consciousness. 

Perhaps you think this all sounds rather vague but it really boils down to the most unvague and concrete thing there could be. God is real and our task is to know him.

Bureaucracy and the Ahrimanic influence - Rudolf Steiner's uncanny 1921 anticipation of the following century

To understand the following, you should know that Rudolf Steiner described 'Satan' as consisting of (at least) two beings: which he named Lucifer and Ahriman. Ahriman is about abstraction, materialism, and systematic reductionism - mechanics, technology, procedure...

As you will have guessed, Ahriman is regarded as the most dominant demonic influence of the modern era (waxing in influence, according to Steiner, from the end of the middle ages).

It should also be noted that Steiner regards both evil demons as redeemable - in other words, as having potentially Good and valuable aspects if or when their influence is ruled by, contained within, that of Christ. Thus the intention is not to destroy them utterly, but to defeat and enlist them in God's work.

**

Edited from the lecture Lucifer and Ahriman, given October 23 1921 as part of the series Cosmosophy, in Dornach, Switzerland - and reprinted in the collection Guardian Angels from Rudolf Steiner Press, 2000:
 

The Ahrimanic beings want to keep humans bound forever to earthly existence. This is why they want to mechanise everything. By doing this, they would transform the earth in their way.

They do not have the desire to rob human beings of action; indeed they want them to be as busily active as possible - so long as this is all done in a routine and stereotyped way.

Ahriman is a great fan of convention! He, it is, who insires the constant compiling of statutes  Whenever Ahriman sees a committee at work compiling statues, he is in his element!

Point 1, Point 2, Point 3... First this will be done, then that; thirdly this member has these rights, fourthly that member ought to do such-and-such. The member would not dream, of course, of respecting these rights, nor doing what it says at all...

But this part of it does not matter. The important thing is to compile the statutes and cultivate the Ahrimanic spirit. Then, you can point to paragraph so-and-so.

Ahriman would like people to be active, but everything should be run along programmed lines. Everything should be forced into legal terms...

Every morning, a person should (as it were) find a list lying on his bedspread telling him what to do throughout the day, and he should do it mechanically...

We do, of course, now and again see modern human beings rebelling against the work of Ahriman; grumbling about bureaucracy, which is absolutely Ahrimanic - complaining about the stereotyping of education and so on. But as a rule they only fall deeper into what they are trying to get away from.

The only thing that can lead us out from all this, is a complete change of attitude; a turning towards knowledge of the spirit, to the kind of thing that will once more fill our thinking with genuine spirituality - so that the living spirit can take hold of our whole being, and not merely our head.

Typing carried out in the Ahrimanic spirit could just as well remain unwritten; one knows, anyway, what it contains; it really does not need to be put down in black and white - the content is actually unimportant; and the real significance of typing etc. is its Ahrimanic form and spirit.

And in taking hold of our whole being, the living spirit can also conquer Ahriman. And when Ahriman is conquered, he will be redeemed.

I am not censuring the justified typing and enumerating of paragraphs - but spirit must enter into all of this. Indeed, in modern societies, we can hardly avoid carrying out Ahrimanic activities.

But if we bring spirituality into our civilization we can raise up into the sphere of the spirit even such Ahrimanic phenomena as typing! - and then Ahriman will be redeemed.

However, all this will only become possible if we are absolutely serious about the spirit. That must be our priority.  

Truth and Love

The gate to the kingdom of heaven has two pillars which are truth and love and you must conform yourself to both of these to a high degree before you are worthy to enter. That's a tall order as no one can be perfect, perfection coming only through the grace of God. But you must attune yourself to both these two qualities as best you can, holding them in a more or less equal balance in your mind and heart.

This balance is important for without it you will not only be unbalanced (obviously) but even lose touch with that which you are over-emphasising. That is because each suggests and assumes the other and if one is over-privileged at the expense of the other it means that you are not responding to the reality as a whole and in its totality but to a personal interpretation of the reality. With true love always goes wisdom. With proper wisdom there is always love. If you follow one of these paths and neglect the other then you are surely following a false path for you are not even following the reality of your chosen path, merely your idea about it.

The devil exploits our sense of fairness and will to do good to the detriment of truth so that truth ends up being denied. You might say that if love is observed what does truth matter? That's just sentimentality. If you do not honour truth above all, and seek to incline your being to it, you will have no chance of aligning yourself with the reality of God. You will remain enclosed in the earthly mind and that means you won't even be observing love. All you will have will be a mental approximation of or idea about love. Just its shadow. Thus by pushing us too much towards an idea about love, a false image of it, the devil effectively cuts us off from truth.

Same sex marriage is a case in point. Any right thinking person, heterosexual or homosexual, can see that it is a complete contradiction in terms, a metaphysical impossibility*, but we have been deceived into accepting it because we wish to be just and because we think that short term happiness of individuals in this world matters more than their education for eternity. That is, of course, because we do not acknowledge eternity or, if we think we do, it's only an eternity that is seen in the light of the desires, aims and purposes of this world. We are putting the earthly personality ahead of the spiritual soul and either denying the latter or else seeing it as an extension of the former. None of this will get us anywhere except deeper into illusion and chaos.

But the devil can also exploit the idea of truth to get us to deny love. The Inquisition is an obvious example from history but many cultures have damned and ostracised those who don't conform to their ideals. The protection of truth is important. There are so many arrows aimed at its heart, so many attempts to corrupt and distort it, so many half truths masquerading as the full version, that we all have a responsibility to fight for truth. But we should not let this fight lead us into blaspheming against love just as we should not take the reality of love, as a spiritual truth, for a reason to offer love to everything equally, regardless of its approximation to truth. Things that contradict truth should not be loved in their expression even if in their essence they are due love. The classic example of this is in the Christian exhortation to hate the sin but love the sinner. In fact, this saying cuts right across the divide between love and truth, successfully reconciling them both.

We live at a time of increasing polarisation when worldly extremes confront each other in mutual incomprehension and antagonism. These can only be reconciled from a spiritual perspective which transcends both of them, and I mean a real spiritual perspective not one that derives from either of these worldly viewpoints. One of them is a distortion on a lower plane of love and one of them is a distortion on a lower plane of truth. Neither has much relation to real love or truth but, just as evil has no reality in itself but can only exist as a perversion of the real, so the worldly viewpoints which dominate today can only arise from a spiritual reality albeit one misconceived, distorted and at many removes.

Spiritual awakening, if it is genuine and sustainable, requires awakening to the understanding that love and truth lie at the heart of the universe. I believe it is through the imagination that we can start to realise this for imagination is the key that unlocks the door to the higher worlds. It is the forerunner of intuition or spiritual intelligence, and it has always been my contention that those who deny the reality of God lack imagination. Such people might think they have imagination and be affronted if it is implied they don't, but what they call their imagination is earthbound in that, though it might extend horizontally as far as the (mind's) eye may see, it cannot rise much above ground level. It is a flat thing that is not proper imagination at all for it cannot see behind outer things to their inner essence which is what real imagination is all about. Unsupported reason, which works by proceeding from one thing to another, can never see the spiritual reality of truth and love but imagination, which perceives directly, can and, if it is real, will. Start cultivating the eye of inner vision now.


* I see the legalisation of same sex marriage as a real frontier that has been crossed. We were asked to believe the unbelievable and basically did without demur. The process had been led up to in stages but, even so, the breaching of that final barrier showed that humanity had officially become insane.

It all began with a million miracles...

It must begin with individuals - because the organisations are corrupted: the organisations (including the mainstream Christian churches) are the problem, not the answer.

It must therefore begin in the individual minds of people - that is the place where awakening is most difficult to prevent.

It must begin with some change in assumptions about the nature of reality - after that, experiences change their significance - which means that miracles can be acknowledged as miracles...

*

A million miracles in a million minds - ten million! Not difficult, not unusual; in a sense it is happening already and is always happening - but until now people refuse to acknowledge the miraculous.

People have been sure that miracles cannot happen, and always explain-them-away on the basis of that prior conviction.

But once miracles are deemed possible; they will be noticed....

A million miracles every day - each personal, individual, each to awake, sustain or deepen faith.

Each miracle personal, individual, invisible - a million such, cumulatively unstoppable!