Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 28

Instead of a Dark Lord...

 

Instead of a Dark Lord, you would have A Cat! 
Beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! 
All shall love me... and despair!

H/T - My wife; for the idea. 

The spiritual failure of All objective Systems (including institutions and corporations, including churches)

What we have witnessed over the past century is the failure of each and all Systems to be sufficiently spiritual that they can avoid the gravitational pull of corruption by totalitarianism (which is intrinsically evil). 

In other words, all Systems - which include all churches, and every other kind of spiritual organization (such as Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophical Society) have become detached from the individual and personal sources which were their only link with the spiritual. 

In making religion or spirituality into a System - the essence has been made objective, social, public - and therefore they have been corrupted. 

This did not necessarily happen in the more remote past, because individual humans who operated within Systems were spontaneously (often unconsciously) spiritual Beings - that is, people just-were in-touch-with the world of spirit, gods, the dead - the supernatural, the magical etc. This inevitably had a spiritually-leavening effect upon even the most rational, mathematical, objective kind of System. 

Another aspect was that people were spontaneously and necessarily group-ish in their consciousness and behaviour. 

But as people became more fully "modern" - which is to say alienated, cut-off from the world of spirit, and from human groups; they ceased to leaven the objective structures of institutions with an unconscious spirituality - and the institutions became "objective" - on the surface, public, bureaucratic - in their essence. 

The individual human had to conform to the System, subordinate to it, obey it; in a one-way fashion - and thus totalitarianism was born.

Now, from here-and-now, there is no hope in Systems; including no hope in any possible or conceivable Church or spiritual organization - because these are now objective social structures in their essence. 

Detached, alienated, cut-off from the spiritual. Their structure and processes exclude the spiritual. 

That is why all Systems/ Institutions/ Organizations etc have become assimilated to totalitarianism. It is impossible that they would not be, because they cannot be anything else.  

To put it another way: As of 2025, there is no System that can - of itself - lead to positive spiritual results; and the stronger and more comprehensive is the System - the more spiritual harm it will be doing. 

**

Note added: If you are one of those who manage to convince yourself that Yes, this is true! All Systems are indeed assimilated to totalitarianism for everyone... But not for my church...

Then I would say - think again just how much discernment, evaluation and selectivity you have to apply to your church in order to be able to deny that it is fundamentally corrupted... just how much of your church you must in fact ignore in order to regard it as essentially true. 

And consider that the amount of discernment, evaluation, selectivity and ignoring that you must apply is continually increasing. 

Commenting suspended for a while

As I like to do from time to time, I'm taking a break from monitoring and moderating comments. Old comments are hidden but not lost, and will be restored when my current laziness has diminished. 

The weird delusions of geopolitics (to which we are nearly-all prone, nearly-all of the time)

If you can imagine yourself to be a human from another planet who had arrived to observe the denizens of the "Western" civilization on earth; I think you would be amazed at the amount of mental time and effort that we expend on having (strong!) opinions on geopolitical matters. 

So much of our public discourse is occupied by political and social issues, national and international - which are remote, second-hand (to put it kindly), and over which we can have no conceivable influence. 

It is a spell cast over almost all of us; and from which we only seldom and briefly awake to be astonished at ourselves... Before lapsing back into the bizarre world view in which "my opinion" on something geopolitical is supposed to be crucially important - both to the world and to my own identity and moral status. 

What is strangest of all, is the inbuilt expectation that - not only must we all have the "right" understanding of... everything; but also we are each supposed to have some sort of plan or blueprint for "fixing" the world! 

Indeed, the expectation is that we are not really entitled to an opinion unless we also have a plan to fix it: not only are we required to consider all the questions, but we are expected to know all the answers...

Not only should we have a plan to fix everything; but we ought to be doing something about fixing it. That "something" may, objectively, be of ludicrously trivial - like participating in an election every few years - but it is nonetheless believed to be morally mandatory, and causally linked to all that happens in the world! 

We are defined by that microscopic act - defined, I mean, in our own minds. 

More exactly, we must subscribe to, subordinate ourselves to, be loyal to; some kind of ideology (if not religion) that claims to be coherent and comprehensive: to have all the answers to all the questions - because any gap in the Qs or As is supposed be be a fatal deficit! 

That loyalty is (supposedly) what makes us a responsible human being.  

And if our ideology doesn't have a viewpoint on everything that happens to be in the news today - then it's no good, and we ought to change it!

 

I do not exempt myself from membership of this obviously-delusory way of living - it's just that very occasionally, such as the past few minutes; my mind clears of the smoke, I come-to-my-senses, and realize my insanity. 

Before lapsing back into the morass. 

"AI" and Schadenfreude

One of the multi-pronged and actively-corrupting effects of the current global establishment push of so-called text and image-generating "AI" is its encouragement (if encouragement were needed!) of that besetting sin of this time: Schadenfreude.  

I have come across many online binges of spiteful (almost erotic) glee, when people imagine the devastating effect that AI will supposedly have on destroying the livelihoods of journalists, illustrators, script-writers, novelists - and in general those involved in the visual and verbal aspects of mainstream media and public relations...

Nearly-all of whom enthusiastically put their talents in service to the agenda of value-corruption, and who appear to be 101% on-board with the demonic program of totalitarianism. 

The orgies of delight at what is hoped will be the deserved sufferings of these myrmidons of Satan is a certain evil in its own right... Which evil has nothing to do with the fact that these most of these people are apparently on the wrong side in the spiritual war of this world.

The idea that those destroyed deserve their sufferings, and that therefore it is right to take pleasure in their misery; is just one of those deadly rationalizations that prevent sin from being repented.

Therefore; the evil I describe comes from  resentment - not repented but instead actively celebrated, and rhetorically-intended to induce celebration in others. 

Of course; this is only a small aspect of the many evils that AI is planned to wreak upon the human spirit; yet it is a calculated consequence of the strategy of implementation, and deserves at least cursory acknowledgement. 

Jesus Christ and the ongoing Second Creation - reason for a personal relationship with Jesus during this mortal life

I have been blogging recently about the idea that Jesus's "cosmic" role was the Second Creation that is Heaven - Jesus made possible resurrected eternal life, and therefore Heaven. 

But, in addition, Jesus has a role as the Good Shepherd, who will lead each of us to Heaven, if we choose to follow him from love. 

One part of this leading, is for Jesus to show the way and make possible our transformation from mortal to immortal that is resurrection. 

Another aspect is that Jesus - who is the Holy Ghost - can (if voluntarily sought) provide guidance, comfort and positive encouragement, on a moment-by-moment basis, during this mortal life on earth. 

This guidance/ comfort/ encouragement from the Holy Ghost may come via prayer - in other words, by prayers addressed to Jesus. Or it may come by any other manifestation of a loving friendship with Jesus; such as in meditation, or by directing our thoughts and attention to Jesus at any time or place or situation.   

(It's not that I regard prayers and thoughts directed at God the Primary Creator as a wrong thing to do - but it seems to me that these are not specifically Christian. A Christian should, surely, be focused on Christ? And that includes prayer, meditation, and our best kind of thinking.)  

The purpose of this mortal life can be conceptualized negatively and positively. 

Negatively, there is the matter of learning from problems and mistakes, from disease and death, repenting sins... and the like. 

But a positive and strongly-motivating life goal is essential in these adverse times; and this motivation (because of the corruption of churches, along with other institutions, to the-side-of-evil) must be something that arises-from and works-at the individual personal level. 

In the first place it seems evident (from our own set-up and the way the world now is) that this motivating-purpose is something we need to work-out for ourselves, consciously and by active choice. 

This needs to come primarily from our intuition - which means from our real and eternal self. 

But this inner source is, of course, prone to error and self-deception; and that leads to the special role of the Holy Ghost. 

I think that, in general (there are exceptions), the role of the Holy Ghost is Not to provide primary guidance: Not to "tell us what to do". 

But instead the Holy Ghost is meant to serve as a check and confirmation on what we have personally discerned and worked-out. 

As a mega-simplification (!): First we decide what we ought to do; then we consult with the Holy Ghost that we have got-it-right; that this is, indeed, what we ought to do. 

So far; we are still in the double-negative territory... 

However; the positive role of the Holy Ghost is then in the comfort and encouragement, the energizing and enthusing, deriving from "knowing" that we are indeed personally and in these exact circumstances: doing the right thing.    

Destroying "enchantment" in the arts

Ever since I became self-aware in my mid teens, I have valued "enchantment" - that magical quality of what I might now call "participation" - which is depth and breadth, significance and beauty. Enchantment is the same thing that CS Lewis called Joy, and Novalis called Sehnsucht - and was something of an obsession for the Romantic Movement.  

I found it first in Tolkien - and realized quickly how rare it was, and how it was altogether absent from most of what most people valued and praised. Furthermore, there didn't seem to be anybody else who valued it as I did - rather, more exactly, there were differences of opinion as to where it might be found, even among those who did value it. 

Finding it was therefore something of a personal quest; and I began to realize that even when I located a source of enchantment, the trend of our times was working against it. 

I found enchantment in the work of the electric folk group Steeleye Span, especially in their supernatural and magical ballads. But after seven LPs of reliably enchanting music - I noticed that in 1975 "All around my hat" was a considerable step down in this respect. It was something to do with a feeling of "overproduction" in the music - which was apparently intended to make it more "commercial", more instantly appealing to a mass audience; and this being achieved by what seemed like excessive messing around with sound and arrangements and (presumably) performance; excessive production-control - such that the delicate bloom of the songs was somewhat rubbed-off. The following album - Rocket Cottage - was poor, and then the band broke up. 

The thing about enchantment is that it isn't usually a conscious goal, but happens as a by-product, as a part of a larger and spontaneously integrated activity. Indeed, it is not possible to get enchantment by making it primary - as CS Lewis describes and explain in Surprised by Joy.

But enchantment can be prevented or destroyed by any focus on almost any specific - it can be pulled-down, but also killed by breaking-up.

So, whereas I quite often found an almost accidental enchantment in many amateur plays and music; I only seldom found it in the work of professionals - especially when they were required to repeat performances, and these became routine. I have never seen a play with enchantment in the West End London theatre, for instance - where actors do long runs of the same play. 

Routine is a killer of enchantment; as is management, "mugging" (exaggeration for effect, as when performers show-off); more generally a striving for entertainment, shocks, horror, laughs. 

A political agenda dominating is maybe the commonest cause of deadly disenchantment. Politics is one of the most disenchanted of all domains. 

Any priority, that is, which arises from outside, and imposes onto the creative process and interaction.

The death of enchantment is a product of separation... Modernity takes an original unity, analyses it into components, treats it as a collection of attributes - and then pursues these singly, perhaps in sequence - or emphasizes on or a few at the expense of the whole.

I have even come across modern attempts - some genuine, others probably insincere - to make enchantment itself an externally imposed priority, to layer it onto works or an intrinsically anti-enchantment aspect of life (such as politics, bureaucracy, mass media, or corporate life) - as if it was some kind of sauce! This never works, but achieves the opposite. 

Enchantment is either integral to the creative process, to Life; or else it is absent   

Now, although enchantment is still discerned and valued by a few people, and can still be found and still arises (but almost exclusively outwith professional and official sources); our civilization lies on the far side from it - the nature and trend of our whole world is systematically and pervasively hostile to enchantment.  

This is apparently what I sensed fifty years ago, back in 1975; although I didn't realize how far the process had yet to go. 

And, as usual, we can't go back. The future of enchantment in the arts, or anywhere, must be something essentially unprecedented; because it can only arise from the large perspective of a lived enchanted life - more exactly from that part or aspect of a Man's life which is enchanted. 

Note: Exactly the same problem of disenchantment happens in churches, and over much the same timescale. There is near zero enchantment in church services, or in any aspect of church life - even when the Christianity is sincere, the atmosphere is as mundane as an office. And probably a majority of serious modern Christians have set their face against many of the manifestations of enchantment - which they reject vehemently as demonic. The truth his the opposite: enchantment is a manifestation of the divine, is indeed Heavenly, and the hope of resurrection. Whatever its intent; mundane Christianity does the work of Satan, quite literally.  

The Beings of this world are neither wholly-evil, nor wholly deluded - but always these are mixed with good

The entities of this world (excepting demonic spirits or resurrected angels) are mixed Beings, including illusion and evil as well as good. 

But it is important that they have good in them. It is impossible for a Being to survive in this world without some good - by which I mean, some-thing that is aligned with the purposes and nature of divine creation. 

If there was any such Being that wholly excluded good - it would die, and presumably become a demon.

Likewise, all Beings in the world are subject to illusion (which is the partial but wrong insight of "Maya" that this world is of-its-nature and wholly a delusion: that is to say absolutely false, and we convinced that falsity is true) -- because this world is, in many respects, deceptive; and we are limited and flawed Beings. 

However, no Being is wholly deluded else he would not survive more than a few moments. 

The assumption that this is a mixed world, includes that all Beings are mixed Beings; which is a hopeful reality; because it means that there is some good, and some apprehension of reality, in every Being. 

This doesn't really have any implications for our everyday conduct - since we must deal with the realities of evil and error, despite their ultimate self-curability. 

But it does mean that there is always grounds for hope with respect to any Being, any person, in an ultimate sense. 

We can't ever be sure that anyone has irrevocably chosen self-damnation - that necessary goodness which is mixed into them; means they have the potential to make that choice for God, divine creation, The Good - and to follow Jesus Christ to Heaven. 

Mystical experience in 2025

Claims of mystical experience are not popular in our culture! 

There are bad and good reasons for this: 

A bad reason is that (in a world without God, purpose or meaning) mystical experiences are always and necessarily false (e.g. insane, dumb or dishonest); because there is No Such Thing. 

A good reason is that those who claim mystical experiences often claim that it has given them knowledge and authority - such that "we" ought to  believe and do... whatever the mystic tells us. 

However, when all is said and done; it seems to me that nothing is more important in life than real mystical experiences. Even when (as usual) these are infrequent and pretty mild or incomplete; nonetheless, they are "what it's all about". 

On the other hand, there does seem to be a strong tendency for many people to deal with their mystical experiences in mistaken and adverse ways - for instance, by trying to persuade other people and convince them that a mystical experience was really-real, and true, and really-happened...

Or to get hung-up on explaining the experience in terms of causes, meanings, implications etc. - explanations that tend to get more and more complicated. 

Yet it is surely valid to seek an understanding of any mystical experience. 

But for understanding ourselves, primarily. And not in relation to other people, and the world. 

And in seeking understanding, it seems likely that the real answer is neither complex nor abstract; but some-thing very simple - easy enough for a child to grasp. 

Cosmic significance and "will power"

There is a recurrent spiritual problem in relation to what might be termed will-power. A vast amount of spirituality has been, and is, about study, training, practice, knowledge, technique... all manner of relatively arduous things that need to be acquired as a matter of habit. 

In sum: the spiritual path is seen as one that requires will-power... with the proviso that in some traditions the will-power is supposed to come from the divine; and this divine-will merely be "channelled" by an individual human being. 

(This may be paradoxical in practice; as a self-less, ego-less person is somehow supposed to overcome other temptations and idleness; and instead strive continuously at years of arduous spiritual exercises - which are themselves dedicated to expunging his personal will!) 

 

It seems natural and inevitable - and is indeed true! - that our spiritual cosmic significance will have effects on material this-worldly affairs. In other words, insofar as we have spiritual experience, and attain spiritual learning; this will benefit "the world". 

But! This effect of the spiritual on the material, the effect of the cosmic on the earthly, does not happen in accordance with our personal will!

A Big Mistake (it seems to me) - and one that recurs often - is that spiritual people explicitly strive to change the world in accordance with their spiritual insights. What specifically they do varies greatly; but the general point is that the individual spiritual person tries to change the world in accordance with a pre-decided goal. 

Attainment of this goal then becomes an index against-which spiritual power is calibrated.

Another way into this matter is via "power". Most people want power in some sense, for some reason; but it is pretty foolish to supposes that it would be a good idea if a person's spiritual power was equated with his ability to achieve (pre-decided, explicit) worldly plans. 

On the flip-side, it is equally absurd to adopt a view that spiritual power can lead to absolutely anything in this world, including catastrophic outcomes for those we most love and value. 

Yet the question of what counts as spiritually-catastrophic, rather than materially-catastrophic, is a necessary one to consider. After all; the powers of spiritual evil dominate this world, especially in The West; and these demons may engineer materially bad outcomes for spiritually good-motivated actions; just as they often engineer worldly success, status, wealth and influence for those who serve demonic interests. 

My conclusion is rather one of understanding than of advice. 

We (and especially men) inhabit and intellectual environment that grossly overvalues a caricatured Nietzschian version of will-power; we tend to hero-worship and wish to emulate examples of people who set ambitious (worldly) goals, and go on to achieve then - by sustained and long-term endeavour against temptation and difficulties.   

But a closer examination of these persons will reveal that almost all or then are pervasively corrupted, and spiritually malign - such that it seems their efforts have in fact been in an opposite direction to good.  

Spiritually good persons are rare indeed, but they seem quite different; and much more concerned with learning and experiencing and developing creatively; than with imposing their will upon other people and the world.