Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 33

The tragedy of historical (and modern) misrepresentations of the Basic Set-up of Christianity

I've said it all before, in different words; but it really was and is an epic tragedy to comprehend how Christianity has been so profoundly misrepresented throughout most of recorded history - with consequences that may be worse than if Jesus as a person had been forgotten, and Men had had to reply upon direct contact with the divine within themselves and with the Holy Ghost. 

(A false understanding often being worse than none at all, especially when complacent error become a delusion that closes-off the quest for truth about reality.)

Of course; there are multiple ways in which the basis of Jesus's work and our salvation have been twisted and inverted; but perhaps the worst is that which regards salvation and something earned by our behaviour in this world; and of God as a judge of our performance in this task.  

(God, our loving Heavenly parent - cast in the role of a heartless, remorseless "hanging judge" addressing each Man as a terrified villain, pleading for mercy!)

This was partly overturned by the clarity of the Reformation of recognizing salvation as a consequence of God's grace for an individual directly, not as something earned or requiring intermediary or intercession. Yet this insight was twisted and inverted by resurgent background assumptions of Man's core depravity and spiritual helplessness - which negated the fact and necessity of Man's freedom in the matter of salvation. Even going so far as the monstrously anti-Christian notion of regarding each Man's fate as pre-destined, and each Man's freedom as an irrelevant illusion.

So many perversions of simple reality! 

Some have rejected the false "weighing in the balance" idea of salvation as earned only to assert the equal falsehood that our actions are somehow irrelevant - as if the material had nothing to do with the spiritual! As if what we did in this mortal life was of zero consequence to eternal life. 

A modern version is one of salvation as un-chosen because universally imposed upon everybody and everything; who are then utterly compelled to become Good according to God's idea of good - again, falsely denying the inexorable reality and necessity of each Man's freedom; and inverting Heaven into a Brave New World totalitarian dystopia. 

I acknowledge that the devising of a coherent metaphysics of Christianity is something no church has yet achieved, something we must therefore do for ourselves (or do without) - so that there never has been an off-the-peg, externally available, understanding of Christianity. 

That this was not an utter disaster is because, for most of history - really until the "modern era" (commencing gradually from the 1500s and evident to all in the West by the middle 1800s) Men were much less self-aware and much more groupish in consciousness; that "group" including aspects of spiritual reality as well as other Men. 

...Such that Men un-consciously participated in truth, even when their theoretical understanding was variously false or opposite. 

Not any more! 

Now our nature is such that our theories dictate our inner realities; so false theories need to be detected, acknowledged, and revised. By us ourselves, because nobody else can be trusted to do it, and because we are each (and nobody else) ultimately responsible.

Freedom is a reality, a fact - not a gift, privilege, benefit or curse. 

And on the flipside, we are able to do what needs to be done, to take personal responsibility for our religious assumptions; in a way that was not really possible for pre-modern Man. 

But for this to happen we have to choose to do it; and therefore must want to do it - and this is the test for Christians. 

Do we actually personally cast-aside the errors and deceptions of the ages and of our time; to make the choice of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven; which entails discovering for our-selves what that really means?

Or do we prefer... something else?

In the spiritual war, motivation is All that matters

In the spiritual war of this world, motivation is all that matters

It applies to all times and places and nations - including here, and now. 

This principle obliterates the value of all politics and mainstream public discourse; because this is all done with bad motivations*.

Differences between the political parties and political ideologies is merely the difference between different species of wrong motivations. 

One of the currently sad and pitiful things about so many US folk who regard themselves as on the Right, and who have allowed themselves to be manipulated into optimism by the announcements of the latest US President; is that these folk have forgotten that it is all about motivation. 

Good and evils are not acts or facts, nor policies nor strategies. Good and evil are sides in a spiritual war: the side for God, versus the side against God.

When people are operating on the side of evil, they are (strictly speaking) incapable of good. 

(Of course this is a mixed world, and we are all inconsistent about the sides we support - to some extent; such nobody - except Jesus Christ - has been always on the side of God; while even the most committed servants of the demonic agenda are occasionally liable to find themselves on the side of God and divine creation - however partially and briefly.)   

Life is not symmetrical because while there are evil policies, there is no such thing as good policies; because goodness depends on motivation. 

(By motivation I mean that whole complex of a Being's (including human beings) nature, intentions, disposition, affiliation, aims etc.) 

There has never been a policy so sensible, or valid, or logical, that evil motivation could not turn it to evil; and there are a limitless number of ways in which this can be accomplished. 

(Surely we know this from experience? When some policy of which we support and of which we approve; is adopted yet - inevitably, it seems - gets twisted to accomplish the opposite? For many people in the UK Brexit is an example. Britain is supposed to have left the EU some years ago, yet immigration continues to ratchet up; and last year there were one million net-immigrants by official (under)estimates - the highest ever. The decision to Brexit was mostly motivated by those who wanted to stop mass immigration - yet implemented by those who wanted to increase it. Guess who got their way?)

So, when people have self-duped into accepting and celebrating as good the products of evil-affiliated Men and Institutions, these people are not merely delusional - but in a core sense wilfully so, and therefore have chosen service to the agenda of Satan. 

Luckily, even wilful delusion in service of evil is not fatal when the sin has been recognized, acknowledged and repented. It is never "too late" for this - never too late from the perspective of God. Even last-nanosecond repentance will suffice. 

But very sadly this seems seldom to happen (as far as may be judged), and it is apparently more usual for people to double-down on their first sin, refuse to admit their self-gratifying error; thereby compounding it with further sins, and cementing these into place. 

So it is useless to try and persuade such people to change their minds - and certainly I have no intention of doing so. In the end we are each responsible for our own souls destination, and not that of others - which is freedom. 

On the other hand, discernment is a vital and unavoidable spiritual challenge and an experience from which we can learn. 

It is worth reminding ourselves that much of modern life in this collapsed Western Civilization entails being assaulted by evil masquerading as good under a multitude of disguises; and in such a way thaht those most prone to fail in discernment are those who engage with the specific lies and detailed untruths and distortions of the demon-affiliated leadership class and their minions. 

In reality, discernment is perhaps too simple to be truly easy; because the goodness-or-evil of some-thing is a matter of motivations, which are a matter of provenance - an attribute of the origin. 

We only need to know, or guess, from-whom or from-where to detect motivational evil.

But those who demand grounds for optimism - who demand an external saviour from in this-world, those addicted to believing the world is getting better - such will be deluded, and by their own choice. 

 

*Note added. I am talking about here and about now - The West 2025 - it was not always thus in the past or in some other places. Indeed some public discourse was well-motivated (overall) even within my lifetime - science in the UK, for example, was motivated by truth-seeking and truth-speaking. But that was then, this is now. Now, "science" (i.e. professional accredited "research") is merely one department of the bureaucratic-media totalitarian System, which is net-motivated by evil intent. Science is a good example, a test case, of why we must continue to practice discernment; because corruption is a real thing, and in our world a normal thing.   

This creation we inhabit depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation

Lazarus was apparently the first Man freely to choose the Second Creation

One big problem with this divine creation, the "primary" creation, the one we inhabit here-and-now; is that it depends upon an inevitable degree of compulsion and unconsciousness.

This is a problem that God acknowledged implicitly; by sending Jesus Christ to make a Second Creation, and ensure that all who wanted-it and chose-to, would be able to move onto that Second Creation after their biological deaths. 

 

God began with a universe of Beings, living without mutual awareness, without cohesion. Creation proceeded by God endowing these Beings with the beginnings of conscious awareness, and by coordinating them with His own divine love - binding them together and providing a direction, and principles of interaction.  

In this, it resembles a Man's young childhood with loving parents. 

The child is born-into this world mostly unconscious, and his life is given shape and direction by the parents' love. (In an idealized childhood...) While still hardly conscious the child lives and develops immersed in the atmosphere of parental love - and the child is required to do little more than return that parental love, and therefore be obedient to the greater wisdom of his parents. 

(This corresponds to the situation of early Man, and the earliest phases of true religions - obedience to God was core.)  

In a negative sense, the child is compelled to go along with parental guidance; but this compulsion is concealed by the child's unconsciousness of it. 

In other words, a young loving child in a loving family just accepts the situation in which he finds himself.  

However, it is a common destiny of babies to develop and mature, to become more conscious; and often to become aware of their situation. 

In other words, as a child becomes more conscious, he becomes aware that he is living in a world he did not choose, and which he is compelled to fit-into - if he wishes to survive and thrive. 

This is a microcosm of the situation in this divine creation that we currently inhabit. Insofar as Beings are unconscious and immersed in divine loving-guidance, they simply go-along-with divine creation. 

But as a Being becomes more conscious, he becomes aware of the essential element of compulsion in this world, this creation. 

This happens in the development of a human, and it has happened to Mankind (overall, on average) throughout history. Primordial Men were more like young children, with little self awareness or freedom of will; and knew God (and the spirit world); and when capable of love - they went along with it, hardly aware there was any alternative.

However, through recorded history, there has been an increase in Man's conscious awareness analogous to the development towards adolescence - Man became more conscious that this universe was based on a compulsion, that he need not obey. 

More conscious Man could, and sometimes and increasingly did, opt-out of creation.

Thus; Men ceased automatically to ally with God's creation - it became a choice whether to join-with God's creation - or else to oppose it, exploit it. 

Or sometimes the reaction was a desire to opt-out of Primary Creation altogether - and return to that primordial unconscious separateness which prevailed before creation began. 

This is, by my understanding, the ultimate but implicit teleological basis of Buddhism, and some kinds of Hinduism -- as well as of some who would call themselves Jews, Christians, or Muslims (I mean the traditions respectively of Qabalah, Via Negativa, and Sufism - for instance).     

I presume that this development was foreseen by God as an inevitable consequence of Man (and other Beings) increasing in consciousness. 

Sooner or later; the First Creation would be know for what it was, which is a top-down and imposed scheme - and as consciousness increased in created-Beings, sooner or later some Beings, some Men, would desire to opt-out of it. 

Therefore; the divine plan was for there to be a Second Creation, which would be individually chosen, an opt-in scheme.

This happened with the work of Jesus Christ; and the way-into Second Creation was to follow Jesus through death into resurrected eternal life. The Second Creation is, therefore, Heaven. 

The Second Creation both required, and was necessitated by, the increase of consciousness of Beings that was a consequence of ongoing divine creation. 

In sum: This "first" creation we inhabit here-and-now depends upon compulsion and unconsciousness; but Man (and other beings) are destined to increase in consciousness - hence the need for Jesus Christ and the Second Creation. 

We now can choose the Second Creation - but the Second Creation can only be chosen - it is not, and cannot be, imposed. 

And choice must be free, which entails conscious. 

Spiritual relationships should primarily be loving, not functional (or, Why is the Holy Ghost called "the comforter"?)

If our relationships ought to be loving; this means that thy ought Not primarily to be functional. 

Yet this is easily forgotten - plus, of course, the functional aspects of friendship and relatedness may lead to, and synergize with, the loving. Yet, for Christian ideals, the loving must be first and foremost. 

For Christians the Holy Ghost is a Being (I personally believe the Holy Ghosts is Jesus Christ, ascended) to whom we appeal for guidance, strength, help in time of need etc; yet the Holy Ghost is also called the "Comforter" in the Authorized Version of the Fourth Gospel (called "John") - especially in Chapters 14-16. 

To provide "comfort", in the modern sense of the word, sounds pretty feeble and insipid as the job of a divine Being!

Yet I now think that - properly understood - this "comfort" is, or should be, the primary aspect of our relationship with the Holy Ghost. 

I have come to understand "Comforter" as meaning the primacy of a loving relationship with the Holy Ghost; such as we might have - at the best - with a parent, sibling, child, spouse, best friend or similar. 

Such a relationship ought to be loving first and foremost; and therefore not to have its foundations built on a basis of functionality, nor of providing useful this-worldly service to each other. We ought to be visiting our parents because we love them, rather then to get a good meal, clothes washed, or for presents. No matter how sustaining and mutual such exchanges may be; they have to be secondary if they are not to be corrupt.  

After all, whatever we might do for each other in this mortal life and world is temporary and expedient, and will (unless resurrection follows) be lost at biological death -- if not (usually) before death.

I think the "Comforter" should therefore be understood as  meaning that there is a primary - and potentially eternal - comfort - encouragement from faith and hope - to be had from the basic fact of contact, and awareness of contact, between us in this mortal life, and the spirit of the Holy Ghost. 

We ought not to regard the Holy Ghost as mainly about helping us navigate through mortal life by the giving of good advice, nor even by providing us with the wherewithal to do  the right thing; these should be regarded as valuable by-products of the simple fact of our awareness of here-and-now contact with the Being that is the Hoy Ghost. 

"Comforter" can then be taken to mean the faith and hope that we might reasonably hope to derive a recognition of the reality of the Holy Ghost; that derives from experiencing contact between our conscious thinking, and the actuality of the Holy Ghost.   

Note added: I would not like to give the impression I regard love as a static state, a kind of time-less bliss or something. Love is inter-personal (including inter-Beings, Beings of all kinds). Indeed, I regard love as bound-up with divine creation, and therefore purpose and direction. This is why (as I understand it) love of God is given primacy in Christian theology - because it is by our love of God that we become part of the whole purpose of divine creation; and also part of the whole "method" of that creation - which "works" by means of the cohesion and desire that is part of networks of mutual loving. To state it very simply; our love of one another provides the cohesion of creation, and our love of God provides its direction. Neither being sufficient without the other... meaning they are inseparably linked in the choice to affirm love as the primary value; that-lovingness upon which the origin and progression of divine creation rests. 

Death and entropy are more fundamental than evil - JRR Tolkien agrees

Over at my Notion Club Papers blog; I discuss how Tolkien's great poem "Where now the horse and the rider" was explained by the author as being about the ultimate poignancy of the transience and oblivion of all that is Good in this mortal life; more than it is a lament for the wickedness of Men and the harshness of this world. 

In my jargon; JRRT seems to agree that The Fundamental Problem which is solved, for those who choose it, by the salvation of Jesus Christ; is death, rather than evil. 

Current-wave AI ("Artificial Intelligence") is just simulated humanness

The current wave of Establishment-styled AI ("Artificial Intelligence") is a fake and a cheat, designed and implemented for the malefit of Men - as must be the case given its provenance.

(i.e. Given the sources that have funded, devised, advertised and imposed these technologies). 

Current-wave AI is not, of course, intelligence; but what is its relationship to intelligence? 

Current-wave AI is a simulation of human intelligence, it is a set of computer programming technologies specifically designed to mislead human beings into supposing they are dealing with another human being. 

Current AI is, in other words, designed to be a way of successfully cheating at the Turing Test.  

But for current-AI to be an effective simulation, for it to fool humans as successfully as it does; entails that humans are operating in such a pervasively reductionistic and computerised environment that this cheating becomes almost undetectable; and that such humans have habitually assimilated computer-like patterns of thinking*. 

The success of AI entails that the full scope of the natural human world has become stripped-down to such a minimal level - for instance; that the fullness of Man's sociality has become brief and hurried interactions with de facto strangers on restricted themes, via type-written media. 

So impoverished, so unnatural, have become our worlds, our relationships with other people and with nature and the cosmos; that within-this-context, it is possible for the outputs of computers to be indistinguishable from the real people who are hamstrung in multiple directions, by the compulsion to operate in such constricted and artificial situations. 

As a thought experiment, imagine current AI technologies being introduced to historical societies - even just a few generations ago, but more obviously some centuries in the past - and then ask yourself whether in such a total-context AI technologies would have been able to pass for human beings? 

Of course they would not; and considering this fact brings to the surface the extremity of reductionism of culture, within which current AI is making its claim of intelligence.   

*See Jeremy Naydler's In the shadow of the machine. 

Supposing you are God, setting-up the world for Men's salvation...

Supposing you are God, setting-up the world for Men's salvation, then how would you devise things? 

You must take into full account that each man has "free will", agency; and also that modern Western adults are cut-off from the spontaneous knowledge of the spiritual and supernatural, and belief in the divine, of earlier times. 

This means that Men must actively decide to seek and engage with God.

Given such constraints; what would be the best way to engage with modern, Western adults?   

Would it be via the mediation of one true church, or even via several valid churches (as churches actually are) - I think not. That would be an exceedingly bad way of providing for Mans salvation. Church is intrinsically indirect, and subject to corruption. 

What, then, about relying upon a sacred scripture, such as the Bible? Again - this would be a highly suboptimal plan; given that there are multiple translated and distorted texts, the sheer difficulties of the texts; and the variability of textual interpretation. Scripture, like church, is both indirect and corruptible.

Or perhaps by relying upon a True tradition, that Men would absorb unconsciously? I think not - traditions are too easily, and too often, subverted - even inverted. 

What about logic and reason? Setting-up a world so Men can work-out their place and role by philosophy, by dialectic? Well, obviously, that would only be possible for a small minority of specially-gifted Men in particularly advantageous situations - and these sages would then need to transmit their conclusions by Church, Scripture or Tradition - and we have already seen how these are inadequate.   

It seems clear that the best and most reliable way to set-up this world for the salvation of all Men, of all kinds and circumstances, to cover all contingencies - would be to provide Men with direct knowledge of God; by a communication that was un-mediated - as some kind of wordless/conceptual telepathy or thought-sharing; and provide all Men with sufficient ability to access this knowledge. 

If Beings are primary, and physics is Not fundamental - then entropy needs to be reconceptualised in terms of relationships

I have harped-on about our civilization's false assumption that physics (or mathematics) is the ultimate reality - whereas I regard Beings as primordial. 

On teh other hand, I am about as prone as the next Man to continue the ingrained habits of thinking that regard the universe as having begun as a world of dead "matter" - of particles, fields and forces. 

Consequently, the picture in my mind of the concept "entropy" - to which I attach such importance, including as the fundamental reason why Jesus made available the Second Creation - is indeed, pretty much, the usual physics/ mathematical formulation. 

But if Beings are primary, then the causality of science is just a pragmatic model of reality, therefore not True (no matter how useful it may be, for certain purposes). 

So, entropy must be reconceptualised in terms of the relationships between Beings. 

(Which I am currently doing.)

 

Attitude to politicians (and other leaders) is All about assumed intentions and motivations - unaffected by actions and facts

People have assumptions concerning the intentions and motivations of politicians; and it is in the light of these assumptions that people evaluate what the politicians do, what actions they take, the facts of their policies. 

The shaping effect of assumptions is so great - so absolute - that it matters very little what actually happens. There is always a way of interpreting events so as to conform-with, and confirm, what has previously been decided about the politician.  

The big and unasked questions relate to our actual but unconscious assumptions: 

What exactly and explicitly are our assumptions about the nature, intentions, motivations etc. of any particular politician? 

Why have we, personally, adopted these assumptions?

And, do we regarding it as valid that we have done so?  

This can be seen in psychiatry, where people may develop persecutory delusions focused upon a particular person or group; and once the patient had made the assumption has been made that this person/group had malign intent towards the patient - then everything that happened (or could happen) was interpreted as evidence of their malignity. 

Alternatively, a man might begin to assume his wife is having an affair, and from then any and all her activities can be understood as further evidence of her infidelity. 

And what is visible so starkly and strangely in psychiatry, is a normal and unavoidable part of human thinking. 

It can be seen in the baddies and goodies of political discourse. The baddies are regarded as malign in the same way as happens in persecutory delusions. 

But the political goodies, in contrast, are assumed (for whatever reason) to have begin and positive intentions towards ourselves; assumed to share our personal values - so that everything they say and do is regarded as evidence of their rightness. their actions either being straightforwardly right and approved of, upfront; or else approved-of on the basis of indirectly aiming-at the right outcomes; but unable to do good directly because constrained by matters of possibility and pragmatism... 

Consequently; a lifetime of personal experience, political transformation, variation in persona and policies, U-turns and betrayals... typically make zero difference to political affiliations; or indeed to faith in the potential power of politics to do good.   

This explains why, although we expend so much time and energy generating, seeking, sifting, and arguing over "facts" and "evidence" - none of this matters; because the real differences lie at a conceptual level from-which the facts get their meaning and are interpreted. 

The implication is that we ought to be focusing on our assumptions, and whether these are reasonable -- whether, indeed, we really choose to endorse and believe-in our own assumptions - once these assumptions have been isolated and exposed to the light of awareness. 

Without such self-awareness and self-examination of their own underlying conceptual assumptions, people can easily and permanently be manipulated - even against their will. 

Because false and evil assumptions may be (and are) implanted unconsciously; so as to shape a person's whole outlook, whole way of understanding the world - in ways of which he is unaware. And because unaware, unable to evaluate or change. 

The fact is that we choose our assumptions - but the choice is not arbitrary, because assumptions are values, and as values they can and should be evaluated. yet assumptions cannot be chosen until they are known. And assumptions cannot be known unless each individual desires to know his own assumptions. 

That is the big blockage - that people do not want to know their own assumptions, and strenuously resist and deny such knowledge. 

And, in a world so permeated by the powers of evil; such an attitude is spiritually fatal. 

 

Charles Williams and Magic

Charles Williams, the Inkling, had been a high level initiate or "adept" in the Golden Dawn tradition of ritual magic. Some thoughts on this subject are posted over at my Notion Club Papers Blog.