Evolving Consciousness and its Results

One of the main causes of today's problems is the expansion of human ego and self-assertion which is linked to the development of a more thought-based form of consciousness. This lies behind the male rebellion against God and the consequent female rebellion against the male, and then a whole host of other disruptions to the natural order of being. So, in one sense, all this is the result of a positive evolutionary development, of human beings becoming more conscious. The short-term consequences of it are certainly undesirable, but we may hope that, with time, these problems will be ironed out as we find ourselves going down numerous false paths and learning the lessons of wrong choices made when we have experienced the outcomes of those choices.

Today there can be no doubt that we live at a time of great spiritual danger.  There are two ways of looking at this. One, this is a perfect environment for the destruction of human souls as they are separated from God and led astray by teachings that promote a totally false view of what human beings are. Truths that are real on a spiritual level such as the brotherhood of Man and the oneness of life are distorted and misinterpreted on a material, earthly level where they do not apply or not apply in the same way. Behaviour is regarded as natural merely because it exists in the fallen state. Human stupidity and selfishness combine with demonic interference to bring about a world and a state of consciousness that is ideal for our descent into spiritual darkness and maybe even damnation.

But there is another way of looking at things. In this scenario the spiritual powers are conducting a great experiment. Human beings are being opened up and exposed to spiritual forces which can either overwhelm them leading to an increase in egotism and sexual obsession among other things or, if they purify their lower natures, dedicate themselves to Christ and respond to true imagination, take them closer to the living God. 

I have tried to project my mind forward to a time when humanity has moved on from the lower mind-centred state it now inhabits, in which unsupported thought (though strongly coloured by emotion and prejudice) is the directing principle, and intuition has developed to a certain degree. We would be returning to a spiritually focused way of being but with the bonus of greater self-consciousness and awareness of universal truths. We would be at the same time more self-conscious and less self-centred because the centre of our consciousness would be moving away from our egos and towards the divine. We would not all be struggling to express ourselves but to express the reality of God within the context of ourselves so individuality would still be present. In fact, it would be more present because it would be given the conditions in which to grow and flourish due to its locus being outside itself.

In this world, men and women would understand their true complementary roles, and neither would try to dominate the other unnaturally. That doesn't mean there would be equality. Equality is an illusion which when enforced, as now, leads to a massive distortion of reality. But there would be harmony as each sex took up its true vocation and genuinely respected the other for what it was without trying to imitate that other. Women would not seek to rival men and men would not seek to diminish women.  Each sex would recognise how it needs the other.

At the moment we are like the sorcerer's apprentice. We have found a magical power, that of the self, but don't know how to use it or understand the right way to discipline it. But when we have mastered this power and submitted it to a higher one then we will be in a position to avail ourselves of its proper benefits. The question is, will we master it before it destroys us?

The Advent of Arthur

Rob Floyd, Summer Solstice (2012)

www.robfloyd.co.uk

*******

When the Emperor Honorius withdrew the Roman legions from Britain in the year 410, there were many who thought the country's collapse was close at hand. The land was plagued by pirates - Saxons to the South and East, Picts to the North and Irish from the West. How could the Britons survive without the might of Rome to protect them?

Later that year, Rome fell for the first time, while in Britain, Constantine the Strong - half-Roman, half-Briton - was crowned High King at Winchester. He made a new flag for the country - a red dragon on a gold background - and unfurled it for friend and foe to see from the highest tower in the city. He rallied the people, and for thirty years held all  enemies at bay.

But Vortigern, Prince of Gwynned, was jealous. He put poison in the High King's cup and killed him at the royal table. Vortigern was crafty. He had already won the support of a large number of nobles, promising them money and land and an easier life than they had ever had under Constantine.

As soon as the High King slumped face-forward, Vortigern's men drew their swords and ran through the castle, searching for Constantine's two teenage sons, Ambrosius and Uther. But they were nowhere to be seen. It was only on the eve of his coronation that Vortigern learnt the truth. The boys had been spirited away on the night of the murder by a mysterious stranger, a tall young man in a red and blue cloak. They were in Brittany now, already plotting their return. Many leading Britons had joined them there.

Vortigern, his reign barely begin, was consumed with anxiety. Sensing weakness, the Saxons thrust further inland than ever before, harrying Lincoln and the market towns of the East Midlands. The Picts stormed Hadrian's Wall again, while the Irish seized captives galore from the Welsh coast. Vortigern didn't know what to do. He wasn't the kind of leader who could inspire men to fight and die for him. His usual ploy was to offer them gold, but now he had no gold to give as he was spending it all fighting the barbarians and protecting his throne from Constantine's sons.

He withdrew to the mountains, gathered his druids and asked their advice. 'Stay here, O King,' they replied, 'and build a high tower. Call the master builders, pay them well with what little remains, and you will see a tower rise that neither force of arms nor guile can ever overthrow.'

Vortigen followed their guidance. The foundations were dug and the stones laid up. At the end of the first day the tower was halfway built, but the very next morning the builders arrived and found their work in ruins. Blocks and shards of stone lay scattered and strewn all over the hillside. And it was like that every morning for fourteen mornings. The tower was built by day and cast down by night. Vortigern called back his druids and demanded an explanation.

They studied their lore for three days and nights. Then the Chief Druid stood before the High King and said, 'My Lord, the gods require a sacrifice. You must find a man with no mortal father and slay him here in your throne room. Any man will do. The only thing needed is that his father must be immortal. Only then will they permit your tower to be built.'

Vortigen groaned. He didn't believe a word of it, but felt he had no choice in the matter. So he sent his messengers far and wide and was surprised the next evening when two of them returned with a tall young man in tow. He had a thatch of black hair; dark, deep-set eyes; and a hawk-like nose. He stood before Vortigern in the throne room, carrying himself with dignity and pride, as if he were the king and Vortigern the subject. The setting sun slanted in through the high, narrow windows, lighting up the stranger's haughty face.

'Who are you?' growled Vortigern.

'My name is Myrddin Emrys. In my home town, Carmarthen, I am known as Merlin.'

'Why are you here?'

'It is said in Carmarthen that my mother, Rheged of the Red Hair, was visited by an angel nine months before I was born. Some say an angel of God, others an angel of Lucifer. My mother died shortly after my birth so I never had chance to ask.'

'Kill him at once, Sire,' hissed the Chief Druid in Vortigern's ear. 'The gods grow impatient. He is dangerous too. I smell a threat to your throne.' But Vortigern waved him away. He was curious, and greatly struck by Merlin's nobility of bearing and speech.

'Tell me more,' he said. 'Who raised you after your mother died?'

'I was adopted by Blaise the Bald, the Hermit of the Northern Marches, he who lived to be a hundred and twenty and was reputed the wisest man in the Empire. He taught me many things, some of which will be of interest to your person.'

Vortigen leaned forward. 'What things?' he whispered.

'Blaise taught me wisdom,' said Merlin. 'He showed me how to look deeply: how to see beneath the surface of things. I have studied your tower and can tell you that sacrifice will be no use whatsoever. I say this not to save my life but because it is the truth. Come outside with me, order your men to dig  down beneath the foundations, and you will see.'

So Vortigern ordered everyone outside. The tower, which was made of white stone, loomed above them in the sunset, half-finished as it always was at the end of each day. The builders grumbled when they were told to keep working, but it wasn't long before they had dug down past the foundations and not long after that when suddenly there was no more earth to dig. A vast, round cavern opened up below them, with bare brown earth in the middle and grey rocks around the sides. Two mighty dragons lay sleeping on the rocks, a white dragon to the left and a red dragon to the right. 'Light your braziers,' said Merlin to Vortigern's servants. The sun sank, the torches were lit, and straightaway the dragons awoke, rushed together in the centre of the cave and started to fight. They flailed, clawed and belched out fire all night long. The ground shook and the tower trembled. At first the white dragon had the advantage. He pushed the red dragon back to the rocks until, around the third watch of the night, the red dragon turned the tide and thrust the white dragon back in turn. As dawn approached it seemed certain that the white dragon would be killed but somehow he recovered his strength and charged the red dragon until they were locked together furiously in the middle again. The tower fell at last with a mighty crash, and then, once the sound of tumbling masonry had ceased, a bell began to ring, far-away but clear as crystal in the pre-dawn air.

Vortigern knew the sound. It was the bell for Matins at Saint Martin's Monastery in Deganwy, over the mountains and by the sea. At the third chime the dragons turned away from each other, went back to their rocks and fell asleep at once. Vortigern ordered everyone back inside. Merlin stood before him in the throne room once again.

'What does all this mean?' asked the King.

'The fight,' replied Merlin, 'is a picture of Britain under your rule. The land is paralysed. There can be no peace - no victory for either side - as long as you sit on this throne.'

'No peace?' Vortigern interrupted, but Merlin raised his right hand imperiously and carried on talking.

'No peace,' he repeated. 'The white dragon stands for the Saxons, and the red for the Britons. The white dragon cannot kill the red. If it was your destiny, despite your present difficulties, you would find a way to turn the tables and drive the invader back, as far as the Saxon Shore and beyond. But he would only recover his strength, as the white dragon did, and come at you again, waging war for ever in the middle of your kingdom. But this is not your destiny, nor is it Britain's.'

'Destiny?' yelled Vortigern, standing up and towering over Merlin. 'What do you know about destiny - mine or my country's? Who gave you the authority to pontificate like this? Did Blaise teach you to see into the future as well?'

Merlin neither blinked nor flinched. 'Blaise,' he said, 'gave me wisdom, as I have said, but my father, the angel, gave me the gift of prophecy, and this is what I see. Very soon, Ambrosius and Uther will return to avenge their father. You will not escape. They will crush the Saxons, Picts and Irish, and one of them shall father a son who shall be the greatest king this land will ever know. He will never die and will come again in glory at the end of time to save this realm from its gravest peril and prepare the way for the second coming of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.'

Vortigern sat back down, shaking his head, a broken reed all of a sudden. He knew, in his heart, that Merlin was speaking the truth.  His words and manner had the ring of authenticity. 'But what about me?' he pleaded. 'What must I do?'

'Repent and pray,' said Merlin softly, and he would have said more but one of Vortigern's men who had been watching Merlin closely stood before the High King and shouted, 'Sire, do not believe his weasel words. He is a traitor and a spy. For I have seen him before. On the night we slew Constantine. For it was this man and no other who shepherded his sons to safety.'

There was an almighty commotion and the King's men rushed forward to lay hands on Merlin, but right at that moment the sun rose outside, arrowing in through the high windows and blinding their eyes. When they could see again, Merlin had vanished - gone entirely - as if he had never been in the room at all, as if his presence and prophecies had all been as insubstantial as a dream.

*******

That was exactly what Vortigern's druids told him. That it had all been a dream. But he had no more faith in them. He went to Deganwy instead and confessed his sins to the monks, repenting of the jealousy that had led him to kill Constantine. But everything fell out just as Merlin had predicted. Ambrosius and Uther landed at Falmouth three days later at the head of a great force. Three days after that and they were in Snowdonia, taking Vortigern's stronghold by storm. The fighting was brief but bloody. Vortigern was killed along with most of his men. Some of his druids escaped to the isle of Ynys Môn but Ambrosius, who was the elder brother, decided that too many lives had been lost already and chose not to pursue them. He was crowned High King at Stonehenge four weeks after, and it was Merlin himself who presented him with the royal and ancient British crown, first worn by Brutus the Trojan in the dim and distant days at the very beginning of our island's long, unfolding story.

From that day forth, Merlin was always by the side of one or both of the brothers, inspiring, guiding and illuminating. But Ambrosius, in truth, did not need too much advising. He knew his own mind very well. He had a silence and stillness about him as well that commanded respect - this lithe, slim figure, with his oval-shaped face and cap of dark hair. He had green eyes that the wise women said were twice as deep as the Irish Sea. He was a far-sighted man, a visionary leader, who meditated deeply on the rumours coming from Rome that the city had fallen for the second time. One more fall, he thought, and that will be the end of the Empire for ever. 'If only,' he told Merlin, 'we can make Britain strong enough so that when Rome falls again we can pick up the torch and restore the Empire here in this land, carrying the light of civilisation forward for generations yet unborn.'

Ambrosius, many believed, was well on the way to fulfilling his vision, but he met his death too soon - on a stag's antlers one crisp January morning while hunting in the Royal Forest. Merlin and Uther were far away, marching through the Wirral peninsula to head off a detachment of Irish. That night, a blazing comet scorched across the sky from East to West, bursting apart into two smaller comets, one of which broke up quite quickly in a spectacular display of fire and light. But the other kept going and going and growing and growing until it passed out of sight at the Western rim of the world, three times bigger, brighter and longer than the original comet. Merlin and Uther gazed up at the sky. Merlin sighed and put his hand on the young man's shoulder. 'Your brother, the High King, is dead. See, the first comet burns in his honour. But good shall come from his passing. The second comet is for yourself. You shall fight like a lion and go down in a blaze of glory. And the third comet is for your son, he whose advent I foresaw five summers ago in Vortigern's throne room, the great monarch who will restore all things for Christ, not once but twice.'

So Uther was crowned High King. But his coronation was a rushed and hurried affair, and he struggled for a while to set his lands in order, for the Saxons, Picts and Irish swooped down once more, hoping that Ambrosius' death had left the country rudderless and adrift.

Uther was as strong as an ox and as brave as any man who ever lived, before or since. But he wasn't as mentally sharp as Ambrosius and he relied on Merlin a lot to help him make the big strategic decisions. But after a few months he was happy enough with his progress to declare a week-long coronation party at Caerleon. He invited all of his nobles together and their wives, and that was the first time he set eyes on Ygraine, the wife of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. Uther was impulsive and hot-headed, and he fell in love at first sight, showering Ygraine with attention and gifts. She complained to her husband, and Gorlois took her back to Cornwall and his ancestral seat at Tintagel Castle.

Uther was furious and laid siege to the castle. Merlin counselled against it, as Gorlois was one of the King's best and most loyal generals. His castle was impregnable as well - perched high on the rocks, far above the waves. The only way in was to climb up a long, narrow causeway that only let one man pass at a time. Uther had brought ten thousand men with him but he might as well have come on his own for all the help such strength in numbers gave him.

The siege dragged on for fourteen days and nights. Many lives were lost. Merlin decided to visit the King's tent and urge him, as strongly as possible, to make peace. But as he stepped into the March night he beheld a star shining above the castle which hadn't been there before. It was green and translucent and throbbed and glowed like a ruby or sapphire. Merlin ran his hand through his hair and wondered what it might mean. Perhaps it was a sign? He returned to his tent. Better wait a night or two and see if the star remained. And it was there the next night, and the one after that, and the one after that. Merlin knew then that it was indeed a sign and that the great king to come was destined to be conceived at Tintagel. But how was he to get Uther over the causeway and into Ygraine's chamber?

He pondered the matter deeply. He had been to the castle as a boy with Blaise once, so he knew his way around a bit. He made up his mind and appeared in the King's tent exactly an hour before midnight. 'My Lord,' he began. 'It is time to speak plainly. You cannot win the Lady Ygraine by force. You must try another way.'

'What way might that be?' Uther asked wearily.

'Follow my instructions and I will give you two hours with Ygraine in her chamber.'

'Two hours!' snorted the King. 'I haven't come all this way and lost all these men for a measly two hours.'

Merlin nodded. 'Yet a measly two hours, O King, could lead to many more. Once you make a start and set the ball rolling, none of us - not even myself - can predict how destiny will work itself out.'

Uther threw up his hands. 'Very well. I give up. I can't go on bleeding my army dry, can I? What must I do?'

'Nothing. I will cast a spell and transform you into the very image of Gorlois. I will become the likeness of his right hand man, Briastus, and together, this very night if you wish, we will cross the causeway. No-one will think anything of it, only that Gorlois has left his camp to visit his wife.'

Two hours later, Merlin and Uther were on their way. 'Promise me this,' whispered Merlin as they approached the causeway. 'If by any chance Gorlois should be killed and you marry Ygraine, and if by any chance a child is born nine months after this night, then you will give that child to me and let me raise him.'

'I don't understand,' muttered Uther.

'Surely you have not forgotten what I told you on the night your brother died?'

'No, I have not forgotten. But a child, to be honest, is the last thing on my mind right now. I will do it if I can, but I doubt I will be able to. Gorlois is too shrewd a soldier to get himself killed.'

'Well, we'll see,' said Merlin.

The guards waved them through, and Merlin showed Uther the door to Ygraine's chamber. He withdrew to the courtyard, watching and waiting as the scudding clouds raced across the sky. The star, he observed, was shining brighter than ever, sparkling and twinkling in the raw spring air.

It was a long way back to the camp. When they got there, all the lanterns were lit and everyone was astir. Gorlois, inexplicably, had launched a night raid and had been killed in the subsequent skirmish. Uther was astonished. Gorlois was normally such a cautious general. But there it was, and one hour later Uther was back in the castle, not in disguise this time, but as himself - a conqueror.

He stayed for a year and a day. Ygraine sorrowed grievously for her husband, but over the following weeks and months she grew very fond of Uther and they were married on Mid-Summer's Eve.  He was aware from an early stage, of course, that Ygraine was pregnant. 'It is a mysterious thing,' she told him, 'that at the hour Gorlois was said to have been killed, he himself, or one exactly like him, visited me here in my chamber.' So Uther told her the truth - about the comet in the sky, Merlin's prophecy, and his own promise to hand the child over. Then Ygraine wept again. She had already lost a husband and now she was to lose a son. Yet she marvelled at the same time and wondered greatly at the extraordinary destiny predicted for the boy.

*******

Uther kept his word and handed the babe to Merlin on a frost-flecked late-December night. Ygraine had wrapped him carefully and tenderly in white swaddling clothes to keep him warm. Merlin held him in the folds of his cloak and headed down the sands via a path through the rocks he had made himself and that no-one else knew existed. At the bottom was a cave, which he had carved out of the rock, and in the cave was a pool, and on the pool a wooden boat, which Merlin had spent the last two months building. He stepped aboard, unfurled the sail and pushed out the oar. He was voyaging to a secret place that Blaise had told him of years before, where the wise women who came often to Ambrosius would bring the boy up until the time was ripe for him to appear in the world.

Merlin rowed steadily for five minutes then turned around to look at the castle. It had disappeared into the night. Only the lanterns in the windows and the green star hovering above told him where it was. And as he looked he heard a noise - not with his ears but with his heart - far-away but crystal clear - the sound of falling towers and tumbling masonry. And he knew it was a sign and that Rome had fallen for the third and final time.

He kept looking and the star seemed to grow and expand and change colour, so that it was as big as the sun and not just green any more but green, red, gold, blue and white, all together and all at the same time. It whirled and spun like a wheel of rainbow fire, faster and faster, fizzing and crackling, until it burst asunder into ten thousand shafts of light, a legion of shooting stars, filling the firmament and bathing the world in warm, rejuvenating light. And then, one by one, the spears of wondrous light dipped and fell into the sea - splash after splash after splash after splash, leaving silence and peace in their wake as an almighty hush descended. The silence of the Holy Spirit, thought Merlin - the richest, deepest silence, stillness and peace that he had ever known. 

He held the child tight in the crook of his arm, turned back to the sea and pushed out the oar again. And all he could hear was the beating of his heart, the lapping of the waves and the soft, rhythmic breathing of a new-born babe.

Sad, true, but partial reality of the social media/ smartphone world

An astute and hard-hitting - albeit cynical, bitter and despairing - animation by Steve Cutts. Much too close to my daily experience to be written-off.

What is missing is the spiritual and Christian perspective that points to something better; because - taken at face value - this animation tends to reinforce the bottom-line morality of materialistic and hedonic values... It is based on the assumption that what-is-wrong is insufficient real peace, prosperity, kindness, comfort and excitement.

It does not challenge the distinctively-modern assumption that these values are what-life-is-about; merely suggest that the masses are being fed a fake, a simulacrum, via their smartphones.

The implicit 'message' is that what is wanted is that such things be really-real - not virtual.

But this is wrong, because many people already had such things; and before the current utter dominance of personal social media - there was (for many people, in many places) a world of substantial peace, prosperity, kindness, comfort and excitement... But it was not enough!

Materialism is not enough, and that was the good insight of the late sixties and early seventies counter-culture; when it was last recognised that materialism is not the answer, and indeed the attainment of material success in The West brought the fact into stark prominence. Material problems were solved - and yet the core problems of Life remained, untouched.

Since then, the Western masses have 'dealt with' this factual reality by ignoring it; by simply Not-Thinking - helped by the near universal addiction to the distractions of the mass and social media, and self-gratifying consumerism generally (plus drugs). Masses of people go through almost all of their life in a stunned, delirious and distracted state - never thinking about anything for more than a few minutes, tops...

This is the sense in which Albion and The West is asleep; albeit the sleep often involves frantic, ultra-short feedback-loop mental activity.

This is the state from which we must awaken - even though that awakening will initially be experienced as a slowing, an under-stimulation, a feeling of boredom - by contrast with the normal-everyday Western psychological state of hyped-up, brain-frantic insensibility.

What is Evolution?

Years ago I wrote a book (never published) which I called From Savage to Sage. It attempted to outline the unfoldment of human consciousness from its early state of absorption in nature through our current mode of consciousness to an eventual godlike state of active union with the whole of life. The process was summed up as going from unfallen Adam to fallen Adam to risen Christ, otherwise a state of unconscious union to conscious separation and then finally to conscious union.

It is this process, I believe, that is the real meaning of evolution. It is therefore evolution of consciousness, though the form may also evolve, the better to express the more developed consciousness. In complete contradistinction to our current understanding of evolution, this is not a random development but fully purposeful, and the process is like that from a seed to a tree in that the end result is already present, though in an inchoate form, right from the very beginning. This is evolution as in unfoldment of something existing, in potential, at least, at the start.

We have come a long way. We have left behind our spiritual childhood of instinctive union with nature and moved out of that infantile condition, separating ourselves from the natural world which we have then sought to 'conquer' and bring under our will. This is all right and proper, and helps us develop our innate will and intelligence, two things associated with a sense of self. And this is precisely what we have been doing, developing our sense of an individual self. Early man either did not have this at all or else had it in a limited way. His consciousness would have been tribal before it was individual.

So we have made great progress on our evolutionary journey and are now right in the stage of separation, which is the result of our focus on self. But here is the problem. We should have moved on from this. We should have started to re-embrace a spiritual world view and begin the journey back upwards, envisioning this journey in the form of a U where the top left is the start of the journey, the bottom is our current position and the top right is spiritual completion.

We should have done this but we haven't. We have got stuck in what some people describe as a case of arrested adolescence. Since we are basically rebelling against our Creator, our Father, and asserting ourselves and our independence, that is a good description. The rejection of tradition, the sexual revolution, the all-pervasive leftism, the concern with image and the attempts by the old to emulate the young all point to the same conclusion of spiritual immaturity.

In all its details this process is immensely complicated but fundamentally it is very simple. God creates human beings as individual souls with free will. This is a real creation not a semblance of such. He gives them (us) part of himself, his own reality, and we share in his being even to the extent of being potential little gods ourselves. His children, in fact. God does this for two reasons. One, his nature is love so he wants to share, to give. And two, so that his creation may be more interesting to him. Imagine a creation that runs like clockwork. Pretty dull really. But imagine if you create something and that has the potential to create itself from within. Then you can observe the results which might be surprising even to you, the original creator. Of course, this is crudely expressed and might appear to ignore the fact (I don't think it does really) that God sees the whole of time now, in this very moment, but it does, I believe, cover something of God's purpose in creation.

We start as new born spiritual babes, one with our environment and not consciously separated out from that. But then as we grow and start to explore and experience the world we become more aware of ourselves as the inner subject. As time goes by, the inner subject dominates our consciousness more than the outer object though our lives exist as an interaction between the two. But eventually we become wholly identified with the inner subject, and this results in a sense of alienation which is fairly obviously our current position. It's the bottom of the evolutionary arc. Now is the time to ascend, to go back to the understanding and realisation that we are one with life and to become full participants (I'm borrowing this phrase from Bruce Charlton's writings) in the wholeness of being, but this time in an active, conscious mode which includes creativity and will. Thus attempts to revert to the securities of spiritual childhood, which range from fundamentalist religion to neo-paganism along with a whole host of other manifestations of escapism, are not what is required.

The solution is to grow up spiritually, which we do by accepting the transcendent dimension of life and then seeking to attune ourselves to it though a conscious attempt to think and to know according to its reality. We move from the Adamic state of passive oneness with life, or nature, to a self-consciousness in which the sense of separation is primary, but that means that freedom can start to be known and will developed. That, in turn, leads to the prison of the self-enclosed ego. We have to break out of that, and the only way is to seek our true being in God. Not in the sense of being absorbed by him. The aim is to become conscious partners with God in an ever-expanding celebration of creation. Not equal partners, of course, but joined in a relationship of oneness in love.

So much for the path to be trodden, but how, practically speaking, do we tread it? I think the key to it all is Christ. He was the forerunner who showed us the way but he is also, as he said, himself the Way. It is through him that the path is trodden. He cannot be set aside or even regarded as one way amongst many. He is the Way and the Goal.

The nature and aim of Christianity, now (from Rudolf Steiner)

Edited from Life between Death and Rebirth - a lecture by Rudolf Steiner from 1913.

We will need to bring understanding to every human soul in its essential character. For this communion we can only prepare by gaining an understanding of all religious confessions.

Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha this was not necessary, because the experiences in the spiritual world were each different then. Now it has become essential, and the correct understanding of Christianity is a preparatory step toward it. 

We cannot encounter what constitutes the essential being of Christianity in other religious creeds. It is not correct to place Christianity next to other religious creeds. Indeed, perhaps certain Christian confessions are narrow-minded. Nevertheless, Christianity - rightly understood - bears within it the impulse to grasp all religious creeds and tendencies.

How has the Westerner grasped Christianity? Consider Hinduism. Only those belonging to the Hindu race can be adherents of it. If a racial religion were prevalent in Europe, for instance, we would still have a Wotan cult today that would be the equivalent of an occidental racial religion. 

But the West has accepted a confession that did not arise out of its own folk-substance. It came from the East. Something was accepted that could only work through its spiritual content. The Christ impulse cannot be sucked up into a racial or folk religion. 

(Actually, the folk among whom the Christ appeared did not acknowledge Him. That is the remarkable fact about Christianity. It contains the seed enabling it to become the universal religion.)

One need not take an intolerant attitude toward other religions. The mission of Christianity does not consist in bringing dogma to people. Naturally the Buddhist smiles at a confession that does not even contain the idea of reincarnation. Such a confession must appear to him as erroneous. 

Christianity rightly understood, however, presupposes that every man is a Christian in his inner being. If you go to a Hindu and say to him, “You are a Hindu and I am a Christian,” it will be seen that you have not understood Christianity. Christianity has been truly understood only if you say of the Hindu, “Inwardly this Hindu is as good a Christian as I am. He has as yet only had the opportunity to become acquainted with a preparatory confession. I must endeavor to show him where his religion and mine correspond.”  The best thing would be for Christians to teach Hinduism to the Hindus and then attempt to take Hinduism a stage further so that the Hindu could gain a point of contact with the general stream of evolution. 

We understand Christianity only if we look upon each individual as a Christian in the depth of his heart. Only then is Christianity the religion that transcends race, color and social position. That is Christianity.

We enter a new age. Christianity can no longer work in the way it did over the last centuries. It is the task of anthroposophy to bring about the new understanding of Christianity that is needed. In this connection the anthroposophical view of the world is an instrument of Christianity. 

Among the religions of the earth, Christianity has appeared last. New religions cannot be founded anymore. Such foundations belong to the past. They followed one another and brought forth Christianity as the last flower. 

Today the task is to form and apply the impulse of Christianity. That is why in our spiritual scientific movement we endeavour to consider all the religions of the world more consciously than heretofore, and in loving participation. In this way we also prepare ourselves for the period between death and rebirth when we experience loneliness if we cannot perceive and have no access to other souls within this realm.


This excerpt, and the lecture it comes from, is a representative sample of Steiner and encapsulates my attitude to him.

There seems to me great insight and wisdom here - necessary for the future of Albion and the West in general; and yet I am clear that there are aspects that I don't accept, and which I regard as mistaken. I don't accept Steiner's views on reincarnation - although I am not hostile to them (and they seem similar to the convictions of William Wildblood). There are many other things in the full lecture that seem just mistaken, or wrong-headed...

I am puzzled by his having not mentioned Islam - which came after Christianity and is now at least as large a religion and growing fast by natural increase and conquest. But at the time Steiner was writing, it did look to many Western people as if Islam was on the road to extinction - certainly it was at its lowest ebb around 1900.

Yet, ultimately, any Christian would have to agree with Steiner that Christianity is the 'last' religion, although its nature has developed considerably.

Some further sentences from this lecture are also inspiring to me - when extracted and edited from their accretions:


Since the Christ has united Himself with the earth, we have to gain an understanding on earth for the Christ. We have to bring a Christ understanding with us because otherwise the Christ cannot be found after death. 

That is the important factor — that the understanding of the Christ must be stimulated on the earth. Only then it also can be preserved in higher worlds.

The Christ impulse stands as a fulcrum at the center of earth evolution, the point from which the ascending curve begins. 

To maintain that Christ can appear repeatedly on earth is like saying that the beam of a balance must be supported at two points. But with such scales one cannot weigh. A conviction of this sort is as senseless in relation to the physical world as the statement made by certain occultists that Christ goes through repeated earth lives. 

One has gained an understanding of the Christ impulse only if one is able to grasp that the Christ is the only god who has gone through death, and hence first had to descend to the earth.

The English Radical Tradition - discrimination by Christian motivation

I am currently reading a very interesting book by Geoffrey Ashe - The Offbeat Radicals: the British tradition of alternative dissent. As always with this author, this is full of insights; yet it lacks the necessary Christian framework.

I accept that - quite often - the radical critique was at least partially-valid, often it was mostly-valid; yet if we consider the motivation of radicals, then it becomes clear that most of them were materialists.

Ashe includes William Blake, and he has many excellent things to say about Blake; but he makes the error (at time) of 'bracketing' Blake with Shelley, as if they were both the same kind of thinker and writer. But; although both Blake and Shelley were extremely critical of Established Christianity - their fundamental motivations were opposite.

*

When considering radical ('romantic') critique of The Establishment in general, and the Christian Church/ Priests in particular, it is vital to distinguish by motivation.

In particular whether - like Blake  - the author is critical of The Establishment because its Christianity is too feeble, restricted, impersonal, insufficient - or whether - like Shelley or Byron - the Establishment criticism is because Christianity is too oppressive, too restrictive of liberty and license.

Blake wanted Christianity to be a total perspective and medium of the whole of life - he wanted Christ and spirituality to dominate the inner life of everyman; however, Shelley and Byron wanted to be rid of Christian restrictions, to clear space for them to do what they personally very much wanted to do - which was often sexual: sex with people forbidden by Christianity.

It would be foolish to neglect the revolutionary sexual impulse behind radicalism - sex may even be the primary albeit covert motivation for radicalism, for which politics was only an excuse.

Certainly that would seem plausible from here-and-now; when mainstream-Left political 'radicalism' (and anti-Christian propaganda and coercion) is almost-wholly focused on the sexual revolution. And almost all of the anti-Christian radicals listed by Geoffrey Ashe lived-by and advocated one (or many) aspects of the sexual revolution.

*

My attitude to the post 1780-ish romantic-radicalism is that something indeed needed to be done; but the proper question is what?

Radicals were objectively-wrong to suggest that poverty was the main problem and economics ought to be the focus of reform.

This was an error; based on the fact that after the industrial revolution the poor would survive in poverty rather than simply dying.

From about 1800, the poor raised large (poor) families such that several children reached adulthood; instead of (pre-1800) typically failing to raise any children at all - they would have died in infancy or childhood. In other words, from 1800-ish there was a lot more poverty - but only because there was less mortality; evidence for which is that the British population grew very rapidly, and mostly among the poor.

(An analogous situation can be seen in recent Africa - In the past the child mortality rates were colossal such that the African population was stable and low. But Western medicine nowadays enables most African children to survive, in extreme poverty. Mass African poverty is therefore a product of Westernisation/ the industrial revolution; much as mass 19th century British poverty was a product of economic and technological progress, and a rise in standards of living.)

*

So radicalism can be divided into the worldly-hedonic on the one side (e.g. Shelley and Byron) - the typical Leftist radicalism which seeks as the primary (and only) goal to enhance short-medium term happiness in mortal life, and/or alleviate suffering in mortal life. Mortal life is an end-in-itself; and indeed the only end.

The contrast is with the radical religious motivation (e.g. Blake and Coleridge) - which is to enhance motivation, energy, purpose, spiritual depth, morality, beauty and truth - by orientating mortal life to its ultimate and eternal goals. To a significant extent, this entails regarding mortal life as a means to eternal ends - certainly not as an end in-and-of itself.

*

For example; the Leftist-atheist radical is typically against priests, and wants there to be no priests at all (or else feeble and ineffectual and optional priests: priesthood as a 'job') - because for them priests represent oppression and limitation. Whereas a Christian radical may be against priests on the grounds that every Man should be his own priest. So the contrast is between no priests, and everyone a priest.

With respect to authority; a Leftist radical want no authority and multiple truths, each having his own, and authority must not constrain this. Whereas a Christian radical sees it as a matter of each Man being his own best authority (because no external authority can be trusted with my soul - unless I personally choose so to trust), with every sincere Christian over time freely and spontaneously-converging on the single truth.

The Leftist radical sees the main problem as physical-material oppression with physical-material solutions; whereas (in stark contrast) the Christian radical sees the main problem as oppression by material-ism: that mental oppression that regards Man as essentially an animal... In other words exactly what Blake most railed-against.

*

Thus the Leftist and Christian romantic-radicals have opposite motivations, and Blake and Shelley ought not to be bracketed together!

The Best Image of Christ by an English Painter?

(Note: This post is something in the way of a companion to the previous one).

William Holman Hunt painted more than one version of his famous painting The Light of the World. The original, painted in 1853, is at Keble College, Oxford, and there is a second one at Manchester City Art Gallery. But my favourite is the one below in St Paul's Cathedral. 

This was painted fifty years after the first in collaboration with Edward Robert Hughes, and is thought to represent Holman Hunt's last word on the subject. It's my favourite because of Christ's face. It's in shade in the reproduction above but here it is close up.

The painting shows Christ knocking at the door of the human soul, and is based on the text from Revelation."Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him, and will sup with him  and he with me". It is rich in symbolism. The door is covered with overgrown weeds indicating that the spiritual life of the individual concerned, who is Everyman, has been neglected. It has no handle, showing that it cannot be opened from the outside. We have to make the move to invite Christ into our heart. The night sky with a bat flying at top left above the midpoint between Christ's hand and head (obscured here unfortunately but you will see it if you zoom in) shows that the hour is late, and the fallen apples by his feet refer back to the Garden of Eden and our fall from divine grace.

The painting is called The Light of the World referring to the passage from St John in which Jesus says " I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." There are two lights depicted. The first is that of Christ himself, his halo, and the second is the lantern he carries which is what shows us the way to eternal life, and maybe eventually is passed to us so that we too may have the light within ourselves. Spiritual truth and reality is best understood in terms of light, and Christ is spiritual light personified. I don't mean this as a metaphor. I think it is literally true.

This painting became extraordinarily popular in the early 20th century. It was described as a sermon in a frame, which indeed it is, and it even went on a world tour, visiting many towns in Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and supposedly being seen by millions of people in the process. Reproductions hung in church halls, schools and nurseries. I venture to say it might have inspired many with a greater love for Jesus Christ than countless more conventional sermons achieved at the time. Such is the power of the  true artist.