Monday, February 13, 2006

Mainly to Announce ...

Dear Friends, Known and Unknown,

This second entry today is mainly to announce that, due to all kinds of personal demands, this weblog will be taking a hiatus until Monday 13 March. I hope to resume properly at that point, but cannot make guarantees.

However, if anyone wants to see anything further of my thoughts during this time - there is a website now containing a very, very long piece.

This is a piece some of you have seen - Hermetic Catholicism: A Letter to My Friends. Which was originally written mainly to a number of known friends. Many of them from my past in the New Age subculture in the UK - for whom the idea that Catholicism had anything meaningful to offer the world, could often seem like *science fiction*.

Perhaps a conscious pause should be made here to allow us who know the Mystery of the Church to breathe in the tragedy of those words ...

Countless spiritual seekers, often very sincere, who have NO idea about the Mystery of the Church ...

Be that as it may, this long piece is now available in two places.

Either to be read off the screen in a very basic 'bare bones' format:

http://www.graphicmath.com/roger/Hermetic_Catholicism.html

Or as a pdf file in an easier to read, more attractive format, if you wish to download and print:

http://www.graphicmath.com/roger/Hermetic_Catholicism.pdf

I should also say this piece is very personal and autobiographical in parts.

Again, my very warm gratitude to all of you who have participated in this venture with me. Thank you for all you have shared with me, in whatever way. (I also hope to finally catch up with my mail in this hiatus).

Jesus Christ be ever with you,

Roger

Letting Love Flow

When I was young and at the New Age community of Findhorn, I believed I had a found a new way to social change.

The way for me was not social revolution and destruction.

The way was quietly to build the 'New' leaving behind the Old ...

How long it took me to see that this new way was still subtly unloving and rejecting - abandoning the old in favour of the 'new' ... Pretending that the old had nothing to offer!

And at what price! I deeply appreciate what the head wrote here a few weeks ago: "a weakness of religionless spirituality is that it may fail to integrate the various aspects of life into a greater whole - for that is needed a community that can transcend the moment of one's civilization."

Amen. Yes, it seems to me the New Age subculture is so bound to the zeitgeist, at the expense of a far wider and richer framework ... in which perhaps one feels more keenly and vividly 'the atmosphere of piety and sacrifice' and perhaps greater disquiet and alarm at the 'utilitarian' nature of so much of modernity and its reductions.

How long it took me to see a third way beyond both social revolution and the New Age movement.

A third way of deeper love.

To let love flow. Love from the past and the present ....

To let myself be loved, loved by Christ ... Christ through his Church, through the tradition ... and that this was far, far richer than anything I experienced in the New Age.

And in return, to love, actively LOVE the Church and the tradition ...

Much of the greatness of Anonymous d'Outre Tombe lies in the radicalness of his call to love, and to the renunciation of violence and rejection, even in its subtlest forms. (Though he has far more to offer, in addition).

A Call to LOVE

With regards to the dasacralising, de-souling of the world; with the regards to its growing aridity and mechanisation of the spirit; with regards to the loss of the Christian MYSTERY; with all this in mind, I believe Anonymous d'Outre Tombe said:

‘La Mission de Jean est de garder ***la vie et l’ame*** de l’eglise …’

The Mission of John is to guard ***the life and the soul*** of the Church.

And with regards to these tragedies, I believe, he also sounded a call to LOVE:

"Are we not called, we theologians of the world and you theologians of the Holy Scripture to watch at the same altar and to fulfill the same task of not letting the lamp illumined to the glory of God be extinguished in the world?

Is it not our common endeavour duty to provide for it, to provide the holy oil so that its flame is never extinguished, so that … it continues to burn from century to century?

Has not the time finally arrived when we Hermeticists shall take account of the incontestable fact that it is thanks to the Church that we have air to breath and that we have a place of shelter and refuge in this world of materialism, imperialism, nationalism, technologism, biologism and psychologism?

It is in so far that the Church lives that we live. The church once reduced to silence, all human voices desiring to serve the glory of God will also be reduced to silence.

We live and we die with the Church. Because in order to live, we need air to breath; we need the atmosphere of piety, sacrifice, and appreciation of the invisible as a higher reality. This air, this atmosphere in the world, exists in the world only by grace of the Church.

Without it Hermeticism--indeed, every idealistic philosophy and all metaphysical idealism--would be drowned in utilitarianism, materialism, industrialism, technologism, biologism and psychologism.

Dear Unknown Friend, imagine to yourself a world without the Church. Imagine a world of factories, clubs, sports, political meetings, utilitarian universities, utilitarian arts or recreations--in which you would hear not a single word of praise for the Holy Trinity or of benediction in its name.

Imagine to yourself a world in which you would never hear 'Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancti, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper et in saecula saeculorum, or 'Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater, Filius et Spiritus Sanctus'.

A world without worship and without benediction...how deprived of ozone the psychic and spiritual atmosphere would then be, and how empty and cold it would be! Do you think that Hermeticism could exist and live for a single day?....

Therefore make use of the balance of Justice and judge impartially. When you have done so, you will no doubt say: Never will I throw stones against the Church, since it is she who makes possible, and stimulates and protects, human endeavour for the glory of God.

And as Hermeticism is such an endeavour, it could not exist without the Church. We Hermeticists have only one choice: either to live as parasites(for it is thanks to the Church that we are able to live), if we are strangers to or hostile to the Church; or to live as her faithful friends and servants, if we understand what we owe to her and so begin to love her.

Now is the time for the Hermetic movement to make true Christian peace with the Church and to cease to be her semi-illegitimate child, leading a half-tolerated life more or less in the shadow of the Church – and to become eventually an adopted child, if not a recognized legitimate child.

But “it takes two to love”. And there is many a pretension to be abandoned in order to accomplish this. What is sure however is that if the two parties in question have at heart only the glory of God, all obstacles to this peace will evaporate in smoke.”

Friday, February 10, 2006

What Steiner Saw

In a Catholic weblog, it might be asked why I devote so much space to the thought of one so contrary to the Church as Rudolf Steiner.

In response, I might say that, over 80 years ago Rudolf Steiner was a singular Christian Hermeticist, who I believe recognised far, far ahead of his time, several things that are relevant to the concerns of this weblog.

He recognised that materialism – philosophical and practical - would continue to increase.

In contrast to so many New Age teachings of an imminent civilisation of light and love, he warned that materialism could be ascending for centuries.

He was deeply concerned about the likely triumph of Western capitalism, leading to an ever more soulless and **mechanical** civilisation.

But I believe he recognised that there would also be a growing minority of people searching for the Spirit, in a way that the Church was not well equipped to address …

Yes, in highly Hermetic and technical terms regarding the development of the Etheric Body in human evolution, he spoke of a time **soon** approaching, where many people would both begin to recognise and be ever more drawn to the mysteries …

I believe that this time that Steiner predicted is mirrored in the burgeoning New Age movement. And that alas, the Church is indeed not well-equipped to meet this.

And that this is particularly true of the Protestant churches, which dominate the English-speaking countries (Ireland, excepted).

Catholicism and Orthodoxy are not so crippled in this way – and have vast, vast treasures to offer. Though the so-often banal liturgy that has recently emerged in the Catholic Church does not help.

But to return to Steiner, this intense lover of humanity also predicted many efforts to **deflect** the spiritual search away from the Mystery enacted on Golgotha, on Calvary …

This deflection would not necessarily be materialistic – whether capitalist, communist or a materialistic ‘Christianity’ matters not – for there were also other spiritual currents seeking to BURY awareness of the Mystery of the Redemption.

After many years of painfully wrestling with Steiner’s claims in these regards, I have come to the difficult conclusion that these latter currents DO exist – and cannot be separated from many aspects of the New Age movement.

This is not however to deny that many truly Christian tendencies are also at work in the New Age. Christ is present wherever love is present.

And although the New Age tendency to nonchalance, as I have called it, **is** lacking love – there are also many shining examples of love, within holistic circles to be found as well.

Nonetheless, it seems to me, that the New Age flattening of the Christian Mystery – with a concomitant flattening of the senses of tragedy and evil, alongside joy, gratitude and devotion in the wake of the Redemption – works against love, rather for it.

‘Works against love, rather than for it …’ I do not say these words lightly.

Though I have not sufficiently studied Rudolf Steiner’s enormous literary corpus to say with certainty – all of this I imagine was immanent within his call to preserve the Christian Mystery …

Now the purpose of this weblog is not to extol Doctor Steiner’s problematic Anthroposophy. It contains many elements incompatible with the Church. And I am definitely not seeking to challenge the Church, but to love and to support her.

For alongside Anonymous d’Outre Tombe, I believe that the disciple that Jesus loved holds the mission of esoteric Christianity and that:

‘La Mission de Jean est de garder ***la vie et l’ame*** de l’eglise …’

The Mission of John is to guard ***the life and the soul*** of the Church.
(Emphasis in original).

Nonetheless, I do not see many of Rudolf Steiner’s Hermetic insights into the world-process as contrary to the teaching of the Church. And there are many aspects of his Christian Hermeticism, which it seems to me, can be brought to the aid, the loving aid of the Church, without challenging her …

I plan to return briefly next week before taking another hiatus.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Losing the Mystery ...

“Was heute zu retten ist, das ist das Mysterium von Golgotha.” Rudolf Steiner in 1920. Which means again: What is to be saved today, is the Mystery of Golgotha.

So much, I think, can be inferred from this simple statement. Including the fact that Rudolf Steiner was very awake to the forces that would seek to eclipse the Christian Mystery …

Now from the beginning, this weblog has hardly been systematic. It is fragmentary at best. However it is even more fragmentary, than I would like at the moment. And we will soon be pausing for another hiatus mandated by events in my personal life.

But first, I thought I would take a brief dip into autobiography for some things that may serve to illumine these issues – and why I write about them.

I came into contact with the relatively young New Age movement in 1980, age 16. At that point, I visited the Findhorn Community in northern Scotland – which is widely seen as one of the leading New Age centres of Europe, if not the world.

Later, I would live in Findhorn for an extended period, and for many years I drew much inspiration from its work, rooted in noble aspirations and marked, I feel, by a great deal of sincerity and love.

Now in those comparatively early days of the New Age culture, the movement was relatively invisible. For example, one did not generally find New Age literature in a mainstream bookshop.

No, where I lived near London, one had to visit specialist bookshops in the area. Outside the metropolis, I am sure such literature was even harder to find.

However in 2004, I visited the largest bookshop in Europe - Waterstones, Piccadilly in London. There, in this VAST emporium, which cannot in anyway be considered ‘specialist’ or anything less than mainstream, but which presumably represents the concerns of Londoners - I found four **gigantic** bookshelves devoted to Christianity.

Across the same room, however, I found and began to count, one, two, three … 30 **equally gigantic** bookshelves devoted to ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’ – the literature of the New Age movement.

Now this is a very personal and approximate image – but it nonetheless suggests a ratio of 30:4 - 30 to 4 in modern Europe seeking spiritual satisfaction through ‘New Age-ism’ as opposed to the Church. (At least modern Protestant Europe. My experience suggests that although Holland and Germany, for example, may be similar to Britain in this regard - the Catholic countries are not so much.)

It also suggests a vast shift has taken place this last quarter of a century.

While those of a Hermetic orientation may note with relief that people at least seek spirituality and mystery beyond the materialism and empiricism which choke our culture, yet it is so often a spirituality in which the Christian Mystery is flattened …

And I find myself wondering what the ratio might be in another quarter of a century? 60 to 4? … 60 to 1??!

I also find myself wondering about the desiccation of the Christian **Mystery**. Which again, it seems to me, is most pronounced in the countries of Protestant heritage.

And I am also wondering how many thousands (millions?) completely **ignore** the Church, as I did, while they search for Mystery ...

Tomorrow, I hope to return to Rudolf Steiner’s notion that not only did the Mystery of Golgotha need to be preserved – but that it was definitely under threat.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Unconscious Dogma

I gather that a wide spectrum of people have been reading this weblog.

At one end of that spectrum are folk for whom esotericism and the New Age milieu are very alien and I imagine, unknown.

At the other end are folk of a ‘holistic’ orientation, for whom traditional Christianity is equally alien – and I am sure, often almost totally unknown.

Thus it is that I may say things here, that may seem so blindingly obvious to one group, that it might be asked why I trouble to say them at all …

The reason is, that to the other group they may not be at all obvious. And very possibly radical and highly controversial - to say the least.

What is in my mind as I write this, is that for some days, this weblog has been devoted to the idea that Christian spirituality – including esotericism – has major differences from other forms of spirituality.

In contemporary parlance, this will be ‘no-brainer’ for traditional Christians who have bothered to read these words. Why even mention it at all?

What I fear may not be sufficiently grasped, is how completely radical this idea is in much of the New Age milieu I experienced for nearly twenty years, at Findhorn and in many other venues.

And the reason it will appear so radical, in my opinion, is that the New Age milieu serves to FLATTEN differentiation.

Now this flattening of differentiation is based on noble aspirations to peace and unity. Those in the New Age milieu often look at a past when Catholics killed Protestants and vice versa, when the God of other religions, Islam say, was not seen as the same God …

And the result in my view, is that in the New Age milieu as elsewhere, an effort has been made to emphasise the commonality of spiritual aspiration to such extent that not only are differentiations flattened, but that the things I have been saying recently could be actually **mind-boggling**.

Could be actually mind-boggling … That is to say, the very idea of holding **sacred** notions such as the Fall and the Redemption (common to both Catholicism and to the Christian esotericism of Rudolf Steiner, for example) could actually be **startling**.

At least, taking these **seriously** as profound Mysteries, which can serve to shape a **very different** spirituality, could be greeted in certain circles, not only as radical – but I suspect, even as **contemptuous**.

And if I am right, it seems to me, it is because, without even realising it, the New Age movement is united by an often unspoken, often even unconscious dogma that all paths are the same, or are so minimally different as not to matter …

And to take the universal Fall and Redemption seriously, just doesn't jibe with what I'm calling flatness. Yes, a flatness, no matter how noble the intent may be ...

But as I look out on a world of increasing hyper-individualism, consumerism, ever more brutal capitalism, environmental catastrophe ... as I look out on this world and search my heart, I feel the time has come to challenge this unconscious dogma – that all spiritualities are more or less the same, and that they thus presumably **shape** people and societies in the same ways …

I think the question needs to be put to the New Age movement: what if they DON'T shape people in the same ways?

What if the ascending spirituality of the New Age movement makes little difference to the secular trajectory ... towards disaster?

What if our culture needs to reclaim the Mysteries held most especially by the traditional Church (Eastern Orthodox and Catholic) ... ?

So, so much more I feel in my heart about the **ascending** ‘holistic’ paradigm that I need to try to say … all the while feeling ever more deeply those words of Rudolf Steiner: 'Was heute zu retten ist, das ist das Mysterium von Golgotha'.

This means literally: 'What is to be saved today, is the Mystery of Golgotha'. By which I take it, that he meant that as far as he was concerned, the world needs, burningly needs the Mystery of the Redemption from the Fall …

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

No Accident

These last days I have been suggesting that there is a certain **distinctive** form of spirituality that animates much of the New Age movement.

Now it seems to me that the image often given by the New Age is that much of its spirituality is **not** so distinctive – but rather that it is universal and all-embracing.

But I have been trying to suggest that although I blithely accepted this for many years, it no longer seems true at all to me.

And that one can observe certain distinct qualities that highly differentiate much of New Age spirituality, from other kinds of spirituality.

I suggested, for example, that one of these was a call to detached centredness, sometimes with a corresponding nonchalance in the face of tragedy.

Still although I sense more and more deeply a distinctive kind of spirituality that lies behind the claim to an all-embracing holism, it remains difficult for me, at least at the moment, to do more than **suggest** all I feel in this regard.

But in the unfinished manuscript I have been quoting (with a few small changes), I turned to the image and example of the Christian esotericism of Rudolf Steiner, again, just to suggest what I am trying to say …

“Whatever Rudolf Steiner’s faults and failings, whatever his regrettably critical attitude toward the Church, and the Church’s understandably critical attitude to Rudolf Steiner, neither the Church, nor the neo–paganism of the New Age, should be under any illusion that Rudolf Steiner’s esotericism is simply just another species of New Age esotericism.

Clearly it is not. Its entire thrust is very, very different. If Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Hermeticism is not so concerned with the objective of simply becoming calm, centred, detached, unconcerned;

If Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Hermeticism is about epistemology via thinking, passionately thinking and strengthening thinking so as to cognise a vast spiritual world centred in the Mystery of Golgotha;

If Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Hermeticism is about engaging passionately with the culture of the West from Plato and Aristotle to Goethe, Hegel and Schelling;

If Rudolf Steiner painted a profoundly tragic picture of human evolution since the Fall and the battle with the forces of darkness,

If Rudolf Steiner drew profound strength from the daily intonation of the Pater Noster (though admittedly an esoteric version thereof) and encouraged the profound value of saying 'forgive us our **debts** ... deliver us from **evil**' ...

If Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Hermeticism is about all of these things … so profoundly different from so much of the New Age milieu;

If Rudolf Steiner’s esotericism appears so different from, say, the neo-theosophy of Alice Bailey, it is not simply by ACCIDENT.”

Monday, February 06, 2006

Christianity and the New Age Idea

The last entry was concerned with distinctions between Christian spirituality and esotericism and non-Christian spirituality and esotericism.

I confess this theme has been uppermost in my mind for years now. And a major reason for this is an overriding sense I am left with, after many years in the New Age movement …

That overriding sense is that the New Age movement is fundamentally based on a belief (whether implicit or explicit, conscious or unconscious, is not so important) in having found a **core** to all religions and spiritual philosophies.

That is to say, to have found one central, perennial philosophy - and to assume that any variation from that core, including for example, key aspects of Christianity, together with Christian esotericism, is of lesser importance – or just plain wrong.

Now not only is it now clear to me that this fundamental belief is so widely accepted as to be akin to dogma, but within a vast growing movement, at least, I have hardly ever seen it challenged.

Yet I grow ever firmer in the conviction that it is absolutely vital that this idea is challenged.

As I have been suggesting, it seems to me that the Christian concepts of the Fall and the Redemption lead to a spirituality of profound meaning for our times. To say the very, very least ...

And it also seems to me that the much-vaunted idea that this ‘holism’ is all-embracing, because it takes the true, central thrust of all religions and discards non-essentials (including the Christian Mystery!) is not at all holistic, inasmuch as it is subtly but *highly* dismissive.

And inasmuch as it is based on an agenda, which after many years, I am now unable to see as anything other than arbitrary - arbitrary in its selection of a central set of tenets, and also filled with (often unconscious) bias.

Yes, it seems to me that this arbitrary agenda is oft unconscious. But it is also so often filled with truly noble and humane aspirations. Many of the people working within the New Age movement are animated by profound love and idealism. Profound …

Thus, there is a terrible paradox here. A paradox at the core of my life – that something I spent years enthusiastically supporting alongside people I truly admire, now seems deeply flawed. And as I hope to eventually detail in this weblog, the flaws have very real consequences ...

Yes, in these weeks after Lovelock's message, I feel more than ever that a challenge - kind, loving and decisive - must be mounted to the vast and growing New Age phenomenon. But speaking very personally, I am not yet really sure what form that challenge needs to take. I am still wrestling ...

That being said, tomorrow I will resume quoting from my manuscript, which was one attempt – however inadequate - to wrestle with these very issues …

Friday, February 03, 2006

Christian Spirituality Versus …

The last days have seen some sort of attempt – however inadequate - to suggest that the Judaeo-Christian recognition of evil and the Fall is intimately connected to a profound spirituality of FEELING.

Far from being uncreative and morose, these core concepts can serve to deepen and intensify the pure feeling of the heart. And it seems to me, that the spirituality which then results often stands in contrast to forms of spirituality wherein notions such as tragedy, evil and the Fall are either relativised, absent, or actively dismissed and negated.

As I wrote in my original manuscript – which with a few changes I resume quoting today:

“Here lies one of the principal differences between much of the New Age and Christianity …

What do I mean here? I am going to reply by way of images. Many of these images come from my long involvement with the fields of non-Christian esotericism and the related New Age movement. There I had occasion to observe a recurring nonchalance, regarding the horror of the world:

The suffering of disease – a karmic pattern one had brought simply on oneself.

Or “one creates one’s own reality” - and thereby the universal tragedy of the world is missed or denied.

Or even nonchalance in the wake of the bomb – the bomb, that was dropped on Hiroshima ... It is a fact, for example, that the neo-theosophical writings of Alice Bailey actually describe this event as one of the greatest spiritual events that has happened for many millennia.

Yes, these neo-theosophical writings, which have more to do with the genesis of the New Age subculture than is generally recognised, speak of the bomb with a call to regard its advent as something of vast spiritual significance. And the feeling of horror is relativised there, if not dismissed altogether …

And there are other New Age writings which seemingly emphasise a call not to be overly-concerned at mass catastrophes or massacres – for the dying are simply being ‘born’ into the spiritual worlds. Now the fact of this birth is not to be disputed. But nor is it a justification for nonchalance in the wake of immense tragedy or murder.

Nonchalance, which my dictionary defines as ‘the quality of appearing calm and unconcerned’. Calm and unconcerned … Is not a central preoccupation of the New Age movement the ideal of centredness, staying in one’s centre, remaining calm …?

Yes – it is. Throughout the literature of the New Age movement and much non-Christian esotericism, one can find this leitmotive – centredness, centredness, do not be overcome by the horror of the world .,.

And is this not surely the concern of Christian esotericism, as well? I can hear a bewildered and perhaps exasperated New Ager asking me this question. The answer is yes and no. Dear friend, if you are with this question, do not allow yourself to be deceived – as I was deceived for many years – that the goals of Christian esotericism are simply identical to non-Christian esotericism.”

A perhaps pedantic footnote. In a way, I feel dishonest putting quote marks here. Though it is substantially the same, I have made changes and additions to this material. Nonetheless I seek to emphasise again that this material is very much ripped out of context, and put to service in this weblog in a less-than-ideal way.

I also regret that I lack easy opportunity to double-check or reference what I say regarding Alice Bailey. Nonetheless, I remain completely confident I report it accurately. In fact, I think I have put it quite **mildly**. Certainly my memory of the relevant text is more disturbing than I indicate.

I hope to continue Monday.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

The Vision of the Heart

We will shortly resume with my original writing, reflecting on the Christian Mystery of Feeling - and the nonchalant quality I now see in a great many holistic approaches, so-called.

But first, I want to amplify, by drawing more today from a profound soul, whose genius of the Heart - steeped in the Christian Mystery of the Fall and the Redemption - has healed me more than I can ever tell you.

Here he compares the vision of pure feeling (the Heart) with that of pure thought and pure will:

"Leibnitz, the philosopher of optimism, said that the given world is the most perfect of possible worlds.

Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism, said that in the given world the sum of suffering outweighs that of joy, and that the world of our experience is therefore not only imperfect but also, in the last analysis, evil.

Both Leibnitz and Schopenhauer looked at the totality of experience of the world, as we are now seeking to, and what a difference in what they saw!

From the point of view of **pure thought**, which is that of Leibnitz, the totality of the world shows up without any doubt a perfect arrangement of equilibrium, a harmonious functioning of its essential parts and - despite what may take place in its more obscure nooks and crannies - the totality of the world taken in its great outlines, in its **essential** outlines, is harmony itself.

From the point of view of **pure will**, which is that of Schopenhauer, the experience of each individual being in the world confirms the diagnosis of the world given by Gautama Buddha, which diagnosis is therefore to be accepted as true.

And from the point of view of the **heart**, which is that of Hermeticism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, what can one say about the world?

The heart says to us: the cosmos, this marvel of wisdom, beauty and goodness, suffers. It is ailing.

This great organism which cannot have been born out of sickness, whose birth must have been due to perfect health, i.e. to perfect wisdom, beauty and goodness, the totality of which was its cradle - this great organism is ailing.

The continents - and the planets - grow ever-more hard, petrifying: this is the "sclerosis" of the cosmos. And on the surface of its land-masses in the process of petrification, and in the deeps of the seas, and in the air, there reigns the struggle for existence - this is the fever of inflammation in the world.

But sick as it is, the world still retains - everywhere and always - characteristics of its primordial health, and shows the working of forces of its new health, its convalescence.

Because alongside the struggle for existence there is cooperation in order to live, and alongside the mineral petrification, there is the succulent and breathing cover of the plant kingdom.

The world can therefore be lauded and wept for at the same time.

This is the origin of the problem of the Fall: that the world is worthy of being sung for and wept for at the same time.

The world is not what it should be.

There is a contradiction between the totality and the details. For whilst the starry heavens represent a harmony of equilibrium and perfect cooperation, animals and insects devour one another and innumerable legions of infectious microbes bear sickness and death to men, animals and plants.

It is this contradiction which the term 'the Fall' alludes to."

Evolution and The Fall

Yesterday this weblog offered reflections about “***a new quality of feeling*** born into the world with Christ”.

I want to continue elaborating this in contrast with a certain nonchalant attitude that is found in much, if not all, New Age spirituality. At least, I certainly experienced such an attitude in so many holistic venues, over so many years.

But rather than continue from my original ‘script’ now, I want to pause to offer some relevant thoughts from Anonymous d’Outre Tombe over these next two days.

Here the author will be speaking of the Judaeo-Christian idea of the Fall, an idea which - like that of evil - is sometimes dismissed from New Age thought, as being nothing but uncreative and morbid.

But the Unknown Author reveals here not only why this idea need not be morbid at all, not only the importance of considering the tragedy of the Fall - but he also demonstrates the blazing quality of feeling that was, it seems to me, born far more deeply into the world with the coming of Christ – and his Church.

Here then an Unknown Genius of the most profound thought – and heart:

“The doctrine of the circle of involution and evolution is generally a platitude in occult literature, but it is not so when it is a matter of involution understood as the **Fall** and evolution understood as salvation.

There is a world of difference between the orientalistic doctrine concerning the semi-automatic ‘process’ of involution and evolution, and the Hermetic, Biblical and Christian doctrine concerning the Fall and Salvation.

The former sees in the circle of involution-evolution only a purely natural process, similar to the process of respiration in a living organism –animal or human. The Hermetic, Biblical and Christian tradition in contrast sees here a cosmic tragedy …”

A cosmic tragedy which, when a person really begins to FEEL it, I wish to add, can only lead to the joy, the wonder, the infinite gratitude that is owed to the cosmic work of SALVATION …

Thus I do not believe there is anything at all necessarily morose with a true appreciation of tragedy, the Fall and Evil. And I am deeply concerned by the DISMISSAL of these ideas within the so-called Holistic perspective. So-called I say, because so very much it seems to me, is actually dismissed.

And this is why tomorrow I will add some further words from this Unknown Genius of the Heart, which can also help us come to the very core of Christian Spirituality ...