WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY
(An Extract from the book: The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black)
Consider, finally how your consciousness is different from
your parents’ consciousness. Yours is probably more liberal, more sympathetic,
more able to appreciate the point of view of other races, classes, gender,
sexual tastes and so on. In some way you are probably more aware of yourself.
Because of Freud’s ideas… you are less likely to remain unaware of the
underlying sexual motivations of your impulses… Or of commercial motivations– because
of Marx. You are probably less repressed, less fearful of authority, more
questioning and have less strong family ties. You probably tell lies more
readily, have weaker power of concentration and less determination to stick at
boring tasks for the sake of a long term goal… Few would want to stay with the
same sexual partner for a lifetime… Part of you wants to run from the
responsibility that being loved brings. Our consciousness is then different
from our parents’ consciousness.
…Jesus Christ lived on earth in the middle of the history of
the cosmos. His life represents the great turning point of history. Everything
after it mirrors what happened beforehand.
For example, in AD 2000 our lives mirror the life of Abraham
in 2000BC, walking among the idolatrous skyscrapers of Uruk. Today’s skyscraper
may be taken as representing fundamentalism. On the one hand there are right
wing Christians, whom we should bracket with the crude forms of Islam…On the
other hand there is the militant scientific materialism that wants to snuff out
the human spirit. Machines are making us machine-like. This is the influence of
Satan, who wants to go further and squeeze out our spirit altogether and make
us mere matter.
…the Anti-Christ will do away with much dangerous superstition
and work to unite the religions of the world… How to recognize Satan? Or any
false prophet? Or any false purportedly spiritual teaching? False teaching
usually has little or no moral dimension, the benefits of reawakening the
chakras, for example, being recommended merely in terms of selfish ‘personal
growth’. True spiritual teaching puts the love of others and love of humanity
at its heart – intelligent love, freely given. Beware, too, of teaching that
doesn’t invite questioning, or tolerate mockery.
…these societies were concerned to help forge new; more
highly intelligent forms of consciousness…humans once had unhindered access to
the spirit worlds. Then this access became obscured and dimmed as matter
hardened. Now the barrier between ourselves and the spirit worlds is becoming
thinner again. The material world is fraying and becoming threadbare.
…We may become less quick to presume that our intuitions,
our brilliant ideas are our own- and more open to the suggestion that they
might be outwardly promptings…we may develop a heightened sense that our
interactions with other people is a far more mysterious process than we routinely suppose.
…The world is like the perspected picture that can equally
well be seen as a witch or a pretty young girl. People often choose one
world-view in preference to another because somewhere in the depths of their
being that is what they want to believe.
…we become aware of the rhythm of our breaths, our hearts,
our sexual rhythms, the rhythm of waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep. If we
can consciously attune our own individual rhythms to the rhythms of the cosmos
…we may eventually join our evolutions to the evolution of the cosmos.
…Philosophy calls for a rediscovery of the spiritual … a
discovery of the divine capabilities ranged within us. This was the secret
preserved and nurtured by geniuses as diverse as Plato, St Paul, Leonardo,
Shakespeare and Newton:
1.
If you can think so deeply that you can
rediscover the spiritual root of thought, if you can recognize thoughts as
living, spiritual beings…
2.
If you can develop a strong enough sense of your
own individuality that you can become aware of your interaction with the Thought-Beings
that weave in and out of yourself, yet not be overwhelmed by this reality…
3.
If you can recreate the ancient sense of wonder
and use this sense of wonder to help awaken the willpower that lies sleeping in
your deep, dark recesses…
4.
If the fire of love for your fellow human beings
rises from your heart and causes you to weep tears of compassion…
…then you have been working on the 4 Elements. You have
begun the process of their transformation. This is the mysterious fourfold
‘work’ also alluded to by St Paul in 1 Corinthians 13… ‘And now abideth faith, hope,
love, these three, but the greatest of these is love…’
Intuition is transformed intellect that perceives the spiritual
beings as real. Paul calls this faith.
Wonder is transformed feeling, feeling that has become aware
of the spiritual workings of the cosmos but is not overwhelmed by them. Paul
calls this hope.
Conscience is transformed will, when by the exercise of thought
and imagination, faith and hope; we have begun to transform that bullish part
of ourselves, including the will that lives beneath the threshold of
consciousness. Paul calls this charity or love.
By applying faith to hope, and by applying faith and hope to
love, a human being may then be transformed into an angel.
+So the scorpion is transformed into an Eagle. The Eagle
works with the Bull, then the Bull grows wings. The winged Bull works on the
Lion, so that it grows wings in its turn.
And the end of this fourfold process is that the winged Lion
works on the Man so that he is transformed into an Angel. This is a great
mystery…
The 4 Elements play a crucial role in the formation of the
physical universe, and to work on them … is to transform not just ourselves but
the whole universe, even to its outer limits. If an individual cries tears of
compassion, his animal nature is to some extent transformed, but so, too are
the Cherubim that interweave throughout the whole cosmos.
Changes in human physiology become seeds of the
transfiguration of the entire material universe…eventually there will be no
single atom left that has not been worked on by man.
…The world and humanity were created in the following order:
first the mineral part, second the vegetable, third the animal, and last, as
the crown of creation, the distinctly human element.
…In the latter stages of history, these parts will be
transformed in the reverse order, human, vegetable and lastly, mineral. At the
end of time even the very atoms of our material natures will be transformed
like the physical body of Jesus Christ in the Transfiguration.
…humanity is only briefly dipped into matter, that the hardening
of the earth and of our skulls has enabled us to evolve a proper sense of self,
and so the potential to think, will and love freely. But before this brief
sojourn among physical objects, our experience was of ideas. The objects of our
Imaginations, which we conceived of as coming from the spirits, angels and
gods, were real to us.
The lesson of modern history is that matter is being
transformed, dispersed, so that in the not too distant future we will re-enter
the realm of imagination.
…history is divided into 7 days. Saturday was the rule of
Saturn, Sunday was the age when the earth was united with the sun, Monday was
the age before the moon departed. Tuesday was the age that started with the
locking into place of the fixed material world.
…Our waking consciousness will develop so that it bears the
same relationship to our present –day waking consciousness as today’s waking
consciousness bears to our dreaming consciousness. We will realise that,
although we have believed ourselves to be awake, we have actually been asleep.
This development will be hard-won… As matter becomes less
dense, so our bodies will respond more and more to spiritual impulses. The
goodness in good people will shine out of them, while the faces and bodies of
evil people will be molded by the animal passions that dominate them.
Good people will find it increasingly hard to be happy if
they are surrounded by people who are miserable. Eventually, no one will be
happy until everyone is happy.
If the material world is brief, so too is death. In time we
will no longer die but sleep very deeply, and then less and less deeply. Death,
as St Paul says will be swallowed up…biological generation will eventually
become unnecessary. We will discover the ‘Word that has been lost’… we will be able
to create by power of the voice.
…time as we understand it today will no longer exist. Our thoughts
will take on a life of their own, working on our behalf but independently of
us.
…Eventually, not only will the sun come up differently as St
John Chrysostom predicted, but a sun will rise up inside each of us.
All of this will have been accomplished by the power of thought!
By and large the people who have most changed history have
not been the generals or politicians, but the artists and the thinkers.
…in a mind before matter universe there is more than romance
and excitement in thinking- there is magic too. It is not just what I do or say
but what I think that affects my fellow humans and the whole course of history.
Plato said that all Philosophy begins with wonder. Modern science
is killing of wonder…Science is not certain. It is a myth like any other,
representing what people in the deepest parts of themselves want to believe.
…if we take a fresh look at the basic conditions of our existence…they
may be seen in a way that is nearly completely opposite of what we have been
brought up to believe. This is what Philosophy does, if it is done well.
The remains of an ancient wisdom lie all around us in the
names of the days of the week and the months of the year, in the arrangement of
the pips in the apple, in the strangeness of the mistletoe, in music, in the
stories we tell our children and in the design of many public buildings and
statues and in our greatest art and literature.
If we can’t see this ancient wisdom, it is because we have
been conditioned not to. We have been bewitched by materialism.
Science assumes materialism will remain the dominant
philosophy until the end of time… Materialism will come to be seen as a mere
blip.
…The physicist Niels Bohr said, ‘The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth’.
…The truth is that we must use our imagination.
…Imagination is the key.
