Linking the historical evolution of consciousness with personal reincarnation

The idea of an evolution of human consciousness throughout history has been a part of spiritual thinking for more than a century - I know it mainly through considering the work of Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield and William Arkle over the past couple of years.

(I encountered the idea over thirty years ago summarized in the work of Colin Wilson, but did not then pay much attention.)

The idea of an historical evolution of consciousness seems to go-with a belief in reincarnation, because reincarnation allows each person to participate in the different stages of evolution that are aiming-at a fully divine form of consciousness.

Steiner and Barfield describe this aimed-at state in some detail - in essence it combines on the one hand a direct involvement with, and participation in, reality such as was characteristic of early man and remains characteristic of early childhood; with, on the other hand, a fully alert, self-aware, purposive and analytic consciousness which is characteristic of the adult consciousness and the modern phase of Western history.

So, the idea is that I am personally experiencing the distinctive modern, alienated consciousness now - including the knowledge and aspiration towards a future state; however, in earlier lives I have also personally experienced, and benefited from, earlier phases of human consciousness. At some point later this life, and perhaps further lives, I may incrementally, a step at a time, learn how to combine the positive qualities of all phases. This aimed-at fully divine conscious state is what Barfield calls Final Participation.

According to Steiner and Barfield, these earlier life phases include non-incarnated lives - lives when we were conscious but had no body. So the theory is really one of multiple lives, rather than re incarnation.

Therefore the human spirit or soul (i.e. that entity which is reincarnated) is here conceptualized as undergoing an educational process toward which each life is contributing.

Repeated lives, many lives, seem to be necessary in order to allow for the very large amount of experience and learning required to bridge the gap between being a man and becoming a god. Certainly, one mortal life seems grossly inadequate for this, especially given that most human lives in history were terminated either in the womb or in early infancy - a small minority of humans have reached adulthood, and even fewer of these have had a full experience of marriage, family, maturity and growing old etc.

So, evolution of consciousness and reincarnation seem to make a neat package. However, this package is, if not incompatible with Christianity, at least somewhat alien to the structure of Christianity; which places a great deal of emphasis on the individual life which we are experiencing now, and sees 'this life' as having potentially decisive consequences for eternity.

And certainly, while reincarnation seems to described in the Bible - most notably in the case of John the Baptist apparently being a reincarnated Prophet Elijah - there isn't any scriptural description of a scheme of reincarnation as the norm. And especially not of multiple lives.

My interpretation is that ancient Christianity saw reincarnation as true, but as an exceptional possibility, done in exceptional cases and for specific purposes - rather than as the standard procedure for the majority of people.

Does an exclusion of reincarnation then rule-out the evolution of consciousness throughout human history? No, but denial of reincarnation with multiple lives does limit the role of evolution of consciousness in the lives of individual spirits or souls - it breaks the link between the evolution of consciousness in history and the evolution of my consciousness and the specific consciousnesses of every other individual.

Put differently, the arguments which (in particular) Owen Barfield makes for different types of consciousness in human history, such as his insights into the changing scope and meaning of words, may well be true; but they lose their relevance to the evolution of my consciousness and your consciousness if we were not present (in earlier lives) actually to experience the several stages of this historical evolution.

In sum, the historical evolution of consciousness is a matter of historical but not personal interest, if we ourselves were not present during that history.

My own belief is therefore that I accept Barfield's description of human consciousness having changed throughout history and in broadly the way he describes; and I also accept that we are meant (or destined) to achieve that mode of consciousness Barfield terms 'Final Participation'. But I do not accept that the two are causally linked - for instance I do not believe that I have, myself, personally participated in the historical phases of the evolution of consciousness during previous lives.

Rather, I see the evolution of consciousness as a sequence which is recapitulated in different scales in different situations: e.g. through human history, in each person's individual development from childhood to maturity, and also in the largest cosmic scale of our salvation and divination across eternity.

I therefore would modify the Steiner/ Barfield model, since I regard this evolutionary sequence of consciousness as a basic and necessary process in terms of Man as a whole and also individual men working towards fuller divinity. And I think it is because the process is basic and necessary that we see it appearing and re-appearing here and there throughout reality; operating at many scales and across many time-frames.

More on the link between reincarnation and the evolution of consciousness

Owen Barfield's central idea, and the one for which he is best known, is the evolution of consciousness - meaning that the nature of human consciousness has changed throughout history such that people in different eras and places had very different relationships with the world: these changes fall into three general categories of Original Participation, the Observing Consciousness and Final Participation.

He traces the evolution of consciousness mainly by observing the characteristic changes in the meaning and usage of words, which seem to display a cohesive development - and also looks at other cultural evidence. Barfield's idea of evolution in this regard is not natural selection, but a developmental process (akin to the growth and differentiation of a living entity): the emergence and unfolding of human destiny, interacting with the agency and free will of individual humans.

What is seldom appreciated or emphasized is that for Barfield the evolution of consciousness is divinely designed, and bound-up with reincarnation. To put it concisely, the reason for the evolution of consciousness through history is that this provides the necessary conditions by which successive reincarnations of  human spirits may learn what they require to develop towards divinity.

So, for Barfield (although this is hinted at much more often than made explicit) it is God who 'provides' the evolution of consciousness in order that reincarnating human spirits may have the necessary experiences they need to growth towards the ultimate goal of Final Participation - whereby firstly, and stepwise, the Ego or Self has become separated from its original 'unconscious' immersion in the environment and strong in its purpose and will - awake, alert and in-control; then secondly the now strong and purposive Self/ Ego comes back into a participatory relationship with The World.

To underlying rationale (the 'point') of the evolution of consciousness is, for Barfield, bound-up with the reality of reincarnation; and therefore those (such as myself) who disbelieve in reincarnation as the normal human destiny, yet who believe in the evolution of consciousness, need to be clear that we differ from Barfield; and are, indeed, denying the main reason for evolution of consciousness as Barfield understood it.

To put it bluntly: those individuals who are sympathetic towards Barfield's core idea of the evolution of consciousness yet who do not believe in reincarnation, need to explain what the evolution of consciousness is for - if not to provide the conditions necessary for educating the reincarnating human spirit.  

Implications of the evolution of consciousness

It was Owen Barfield's central theme, through most of his writings from Saving the Appearances (1957) onward, that humanity had undergone an 'evolution' of consciousness through recorded history (and presumably before recorded history).

NOTE: It is vital to understand that when he deployed the term 'evolution', Barfield was using the pre-Darwinian concept; which meant something much more like 'developmental-unfolding'. In other words, the evolution of consciousness is being conceptualised as closely-analogous to the maturation of a human being from childhood, through adolescence into adulthood - but occurring over a timescale of centuries, rather than years. This means that the evolution of human consciousness was intended, and has been built-into the 'species'; and implicitly the evolution of consciousness was built-in by God.

Barfield's special contribution was to trace this evolution through the changing use of language, especially the nature of changes in word meanings, which form an unfolding pattern (most clearly set-out in the early book: History in English Words, 1926).

(I find it best to regard Barfield's mass of linguistic evidence as an illustration of the evolution of consciousness, and consistent-with the theory that consciousness has evoloved; rather than 'proving' that consciousness has evolved; an assertion that is, strictly, a metaphysical assumption - therefore something that cannot be either proven or disproven.)

The implications of accepting the reality of the evolution of consciousness is that the nature of Men changes through history; therefore the nature of human societies will change. This is absolutely inevitable, because societies are made of Men, and when Men change, the same socio-political organisation (the same incentives and punishments, motivations and deterrents) will produce different outcomes.

Men can either accept these changes of consciousness, learn about them, and take them into account; or they can ignore, deny and try to oppose them - which is what we are currently doing.

Radicals (the great majority in The West) deny the idea of God, therefore deny that there could be a divinely-destined - necessary and Good - evolution of consciousness - and insofar as this is acknowledged it would be opposed.

Reactionaries (a shrinking minority in The West) regard human consciousness as fixed, regard past societies as preferable to the current, and therefore hope to try to restore some earlier and better version of society.

But if human consciousness is really developing, and if this is divinely destined; if - for example The West has been in an unfolding 'adolescence of consciousness' since about 1750; then both the present and the past are impossible. The present is impossible because adolescence is a transitional phase; the past is impossible because we have left-behind our spiritual childhood.

If the evolution of consciousness is real, in the way that Barfield explained it; then Man can only move forward, can only accept or reject maturity; and such a move will be into-the-unknown - because, as adolescents, we cannot know what it will be like to become adult until we actually get there.

Owen Barfield's evolution of consciousness - empirical philology or metaphysics?

It seems clear from accounts of those who knew him, confirmed by surviving filmed evidence, that Owen Barfield was a genuinely modest man. Of course, he had the solid, inner confidence that is essential to a genius; but this inner confidence did not come-out in personal interactions, where he was self-effacing and conciliatory. Much the same applies to his writings - which seek common ground rather than confrontation. This was, of course, a virtue; yet there is a consequent tendency to underestimate the depth, scope and originality of Barfield's achievement.

Furthermore, Barfield's writings are extremely careful, precise and balanced to the point that it is sometimes unclear what exactly are his own views. The prose is lucid and aphoristic; stimulating - yet, perhaps from not wishing to over-state or exaggerate, from not wishing to antagonise or dominate - Barfield did not always do justice to himself. He had a tendency to over-prepare the background; to explain and deal with objections, and to surround his assertions with qualifications and distinctions; to such a degree that by the time we eventually get to read his own actual beliefs - they are easy to miss. His considered views are typically articulated without much emphasis, or repetition, or re-explaining - so concisely that they can seem ambiguous.

In introducing my interpretation of Owen Barfield, his modesty can serve as a springboard; because it is the man's modesty that has, I believe, led to a general misunderstanding of the nature of his achievement. And therefore it has led to the potential value of a book which focuses on Barfield's philosophical understanding, states that understanding somewhat baldly, and accepts that understanding as a basis for development -  rather than re-rehearsing the arguments  

One source confusion was Barfield's tendency to present his Big Idea - the evolution of consciousness - as being an outcome of his work as a philologist: that is, he has that his work as an empirical 'scientist' of language development led to a conviction of the evolution of consciousness.

Barfield's early work was on the nature of language, and especially the history of words; and he never ceased to reference this research and his conclusion that it demonstrated the evolution of consciousness. It is a part of Barfield's modesty that he presents his philosophical views as a consequence of this diligent study of precise word-meanings. 

Yet, in a strict sense, it is not (as a matter of principle) possible to discover the evolution of consciousness from an examination of the changing meaning of words. There are, indeed, several possible reasons why there might be discernible patterns of word change, and the most parsimonious explanations would avoid making the radical assumption that they were caused-by a qualitative and directional change in the ways that Men perceive the world and conceptualise it.

Barfield has said that he inferred that an evolution in consciousness was what drove the changes of meaning. But for this to be the case, evolution must be understood as a developmental-unfolding of human consciousness across hundreds and thousands of years of history - and this invites the question why would this happen? What provides the push and direction of such a development?

Barfield does not see the change of consciousness as a response to (for example) cultural change, neither does he understand it as happening due to laws of language change, nor as a random genetic drift; instead he sees the change of consciousness as purposive - he sees consciousness as changing in accordance with a plan.

But this interpretation steps outside of science and empirical operation. Because we need to ask: Where did that 'plan' come from? Well, Barfield would say it came from God - it is in accordance with God's plan for the evolutionary-development of Mankind, and individual Men, towards divinity.

I don't think that Barfield could have deduced the evolution of consciousness from the change in language unless he had already in-place a world view that regarded as possible and plausible a purposive, indeed divinely-destined, development of consciousness across an historical timescale. Once one believes that there is a God, that this God has the purpose of bringing men up to his level of consciousness, and that evolutionary process is the kind of way that God works... then the patterned changes of language that Barfield discovered are indeed absolutely consistent with this set of assumptions.

The above example illustrates one of the ways in which I have reinterpreted Owen Barfield, in distinction from how he modestly self-presented during his life. In reality, Barfield's work is of colossal ambition and scope! - it present nothing less than a comprehensive revision of the basic assumptions that we make about the nature of reality.

In other words, Barfield was working at a level much deeper than philology: he was a metaphysical philosopher engaged in redescribing modern Man's basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality; and Barfield underpinned his metaphysics with a radical Christian theological reinterpretation of the nature and purpose of God's relationship with Man and creation.

I suppose that if Barfield were confronted with the above passage, he would quietly but firmly agree that he was - indeed - essentially working in metaphysics and theology; and would then modestly point-out the large extent of his debt to Rudolf Steiner; that much of Barfield's philosophy can be seen as built-upon the foundations of Steiner's early philosophical books culminating in The Philosophy of Freedom (1894).

And debt is real and vital; despite a few differences, and that Barfield's work leaves-out the great bulk of Steiner's enormous output of 'spiritual science'. Yet it also seems to be true that Steiner's work served more as a confirmation and clarification of Barfield's pre-existing intuitions than a primary source of them.

In the end, it seems necessary to acknowledge both that Barfield's ideas are built-on those of Steiner; and also that Barfield is his-own-man - and for many or most people Barfield could justify the status of serving as one of a handful of truly important philosophers of the twentieth century; one whose work is of potentially-life transforming, life-enhancing value.

Implications of Owen Barfield's Evolution of Consciousness

When Owen Barfield described the evolution of consciousness, he used 'evolution' in a pre-Darwinian sense of a developmental change analogous to the fertilised egg 'unfolding' to become a mature, adult organism.

In other words, Barfield regarded evolution not merely as change, but as purposive change, change with an aim or 'teleology'.

If the evolution of consciousness has a unified purpose and aim (isn't just a different purpose and aim for each entity), then this implies that there is a deity - as the source of purpose. Therefore, the evolution of consciousness is a consequence of some divine plan.

What could this divine plan be? For many Christians it will be 'theosis' - or the process of Men becoming more and more like God; aiming at becoming Sons and Daughters of God.

So, the evolution of consciousness is about our consciousness - that is, our way of thinking - becoming more divine, more like God's way of thinking.

This is a measure of the importance of the evolution of consciousness; and the need for it. Our life on earth is about 1. Accepting that salvation which is the gift of Jesus; and 2. Theosis - or working on the task of making ourselves more divine in our nature.

The moral aspect of theosis is very well known - but the consciousness aspect of theosis is almost wholly neglected - especially in mainstream Christian life.

In theosis we are not supposed only to 'do the right things', nor even to think the right things - but to think in the right way...

We should strive for a divine quality of thinking.

That is how important the evolution of consciousness is.

Barfield misunderstanding Barfield

One of the difficulties about understanding Owen Barfield, is that he did not really understand himself! 

I mean that Barfield did not really understand the nature of his own philosophical work; and thereby said some misleading things about it. 

Barfield's major work was Saving the Appearances; and in his introduction to the 1988 edition of this book (which are Barfield's first published, and framing, words in the reprinted editions since then), Barfield tries to provide a helpful framework to avoid what he terms a misunderstanding, and a difficulty. 

What Barfield regards as the 'misunderstanding' is that "some readers have treating the work as claiming to provide a complete metaphysical theory of the nature of reality. Not so". 

(Leaving aside the weasel word "complete" - because nothing finite ever is complete...) 

But Of Course Barfield is exactly providing a metaphysical 'theory' of reality! Metaphysics is that philosophy which deals in the fundamental nature of reality; and Barfield is claiming in StA that reality is inextricably consequential of both 'chaos' and consciousness; because chaos is meaningless and unknowable without consciousness. 

Also, Barfield asserts that consciousness has changed through time; and therefore (says Barfield) reality itself (and not just perception of reality) has changed through time: "Nature itself [has] changed in the course of time in a mode not covered by the doctrines of biological evolution".

Furthermore; without consciousness (says Barfield) - there is no knowable reality - only chaos. 

So that from Barfield's assumptions: it is incoherent to theorize about a world without consciousness. 

Thus, a cosmology which - like both Big Bang and Steady State theories - speculates on the formation of a non-alive universe in the absence of consciousness is not so much mistaken as simply incoherent; as are similar speculations on the formation and evolution of an inorganic earth before the advent of Life.  

Barfield's (drawing heavily upon Rudolf Steiner's - albeit not identical-with Steiner) is indeed a fundamentally different understanding of reality than anything in the Western or Eastern mainstream of philosophy or theology. 

Therefore, whether Barfield acknowledges it or not: in StA he is indeed "doing metaphysics", and proposing a particular metaphysical description. 

Barfield claims he "tried to preserve neutrality towards all such [metaphysical] speculations, by referring to objective reality (that is to say, reality insofar as it is independent of our awareness of it)... sometimes as 'the particles' and sometimes as 'the unrepresented'. 

But this is not neutrality - because neutrality in metaphysics is impossible. 

Barfield's conceptualization of 'objective' as 'unrepresented'/ 'particles' is itself a metaphysical division and definition.  

Barfield then says: "The subject of this book is not the nature of reality; it is the evolution of consciousness". 

This translates as Barfield saying he is not doing metaphysics, but is (implicitly) doing a kind-of 'science' that he claims to be independent of ('neutral' about) metaphysical assumptions. 

So, Barfield's detailed account of the way that word-meanings have changed through human history; is claimed to be (in effect) 'empirical' and independent of metaphysical assumptions. 

But this is false, because Barfield's understanding of the implications of meaning change being located in consciousness; and consciousness being inextricably a part of reality; are excluded by the implicit and unconscious metaphysics of mainstream linguistic history. 

The changes of word meaning through history are interpreted using a very different and incommensurable significance than that which Barfield proposes - and the mainstream linguists would regard Barfield's interpretation as bizarre and obvious nonsense. 

Likewise, astro- and geo-physicists would regard Barfield's assertion that their theories of the formation of the universe and of earth were incoherent - because excluding any "observing consciousness" from such theories - to be absurd nonsense. 

Such physicists would almost certainly assert that their theories 'work' empirically, have been cross-checked by multiple mathematical analyses and physical observations - and that there is just No Problem.  

The difference between Barfield and the physicists is precisely metaphysics: each is arguing from different basic assumptions concerning the nature of reality. 

 

My understanding of Barfield is that he was Just plain wrong about what he was doing; just as Rudolf Steiner was wrong in The Philosophy of Freedom. 

Barfield claimed to be doing 'science' and Steiner claimed to be doing epistemology; but in fact both were doing metaphysics: both were (in these works) putting forward a different way of describing ultimate reality from that which was mainstream. 

This wrongness had an unfortunate effect in terms of obscuring the reader's understanding; because a convinced reader is given the false impression that Barfield and Steiner have 'proved' their arguments in a neutral fashion (which ought to be universally acceptable); rather than having provided a radically different framework for the structuring of arguments. 

Furthermore, by failing to notice that they themselves are 'doing metaphysics'; Barfield and Steiner both leave out God as a primary explanation for their understandings of reality. 

I have said before that it would be Much easier for the reader to understand Saving the Experiences if Barfield had set-out at the beginning that the 'evolution of consciousness' which Barfield describes is a divine plan, which aims at the incremental divinization of Man towards the level of God as creator.

Lacking this structuring and explanatory reference to God; Barfield's attempted-neutral description of the evolution of consciousness sounds like he is proposing a kind of 'law of nature' - a biological principle that sounds like a rival theory of the same kind as mainstream biological evolution by natural selection.   

I believe the consequences of this confusion can be seen in most of mainstream Barfield scholarship since the 1960s; and this has been exacerbated by a failure to engage with the work of Rudolf Steiner. Yet, if we begin by stating Barfield's metaphysical assumptions as such, including the presence and role of God; it really is not difficult to understand - because then its validity does not hinge on understanding and following complex, multi-step arguments or evidence. 

The Final Participation of Jesus

Edited from this post and its comments: 

...‘wrt. the evolution of consciousness’ and "final participation"...  

The first bit that seems important to me is that [modern consciousness] is not a general state, by which I mean, it’s not defined by the age but it depends on the people. Not every human alive during the European middle ages had a medieval mindset, not every human alive during the axial age had an axial age mindset - but rather, specific places and specific peoples influenced by specific individuals varied greatly. 

And similarly, and more importantly, this is still the case, and is yet another challenge and part of the satanic plan to prevent modern consciousness from emerging from its womb: the majority of the world’s current population does not, in fact, have a modern mindset. 

As moderns we have to deal with this, in several different ways; though of course without the recognition of different types of consciousness, past or present, it is impossible to. 

Equally important, from my perspective, is this: I am very much convinced that the greats of the past and present, be they saints or prophets or artists, operated in a more evolved state of consciousness than their surroundings, and thus their work can help to bring our own consciousness forward. 

On the flip side, in every age there are those who, even though they have a more advanced consciousness, try to pull it back: in our case, the traditionalists are precisely that, and whether they are aware of it or not, and most are not, they are doing the bidding of hell. 

As a paramount and primary example of the positive side, I am convinced Jesus was, not only very well advanced in consciousness compared to his milieu, but really the only man to achieve Final Participation while in this life, and the raising of Lazarus is directly related to this. 

Final Participation will be a sort of synthesis of Original Participation, which was very much an embodied experience, and the disembodied experience of Mind that modernity achieved. so basically, we will have a body of flesh, but also the powers of 'the air', so to speak. 

The raising of Lazarus seems to me to be that: Full Mind raised in Full Flesh. that Jesus was able to do it before he himself resurrected tells me that he had already achieved Final Participation in life, but then went through death to open the door for the rest of us, otherwise he would have to do it personally for each one, like he did with Lazarus, which is definitely not the way. 

Why did he do it for Lazarus then? First because he was his friend and he loved him, and second because, speculating here, he had a specific mission for Lazarus.

**

I would only add, by way of explanation, that the evolution of consciousness can be understood as a development, analogous to the development of a human being from childhood through adolescence to maturity (with this scheme mapping onto human history, and the current "modern" consciousness as the adolescent phase". 

As with the development of a human being, such evolution is not a matter of improvement in goodness. Clearly, many (most?) people are "better" as children, especially as young children, than they are as adolescents. 

Yet we can, nonetheless, see that adolescence is a further ("higher" development than childhood, in terms of becoming more self-aware, which is a step towards higher agency and (however abused in practice) the possibility of greater freedom. 

We could say that a young child is immersed in his environment; and if this is a loving and "good" environment, then the child will spontaneously, passively (ie. by outer-influences) be substantially (but not completely) aligned with divine creation.

In other words, a young child originally "participates" in creation - hence this developmental stage of consciousness is called Original Participation. 

The adolescent, by his greater self-awareness, has the potential for greater independence from his environment; and this archetypally goes to the point of ceasing automatically to accept much of that which he absorbed as a child (good, as well as anti-good: that is, evil).

To become an adult in Final Participation of consciousness, the adolescent should voluntarily and consciously affirm the love, goodness, and truths which as a child he knew only unconsciously. He should, in ultimate terms, voluntarily and consciously choose to align himself - commit himself - to love of God, divine creation, following Jesus Christ to resurrection.

Clearly, this desirable state of affairs is not achieved by everybody, and those who achieve it do so only intermittently and partially - except for Jesus Christ, who achieved it completely and permanently (in the three years of ministry, after his baptism, at any rate).  

Unlike the earlier stages of the evolution of consciousness (i.e Original Participation, and "modern consciousness" - also called the Consciousness Soul); to be-achieving Final Participation is therefore understood as an intrinsically good state. 

Final Participation can be achieved in this mortal life only-when - and always-when - we are consciously and voluntarily motivated by Christian love. This happens permanently after death, by resurrection, for those who choose that path.   

Another way of thinking of Final Participation is therefore that it is the divine mode of consciousness; divine in its many and unique forms of each particular Being (unique because shaped and constrained by the attributes of that Being, at any particular point in time, and its development). 

Barfieldian evolution is equivalent to theosis

When Owen Barfield described the evolution of consciousness, he used 'evolution' in a pre-Darwinian sense of a developmental change analogous to the fertilised egg 'unfolding' to become a mature, adult organism.

In other words, Barfield regarded evolution not merely as change, but as purposive change, change with an aim or 'teleology'.

If the evolution of consciousness has a unified purpose and aim (isn't just a different purpose and aim for each entity), then this implies that there is a deity - as the source of purpose. Therefore, the evolution of consciousness is a consequence of some divine plan.

What could this divine plan be? For many Christians it will be 'theosis' - or the process of Men becoming more and more like God; aiming at becoming Sons and Daughters of God.

So, the evolution of consciousness is about our consciousness - that is, our way of thinking - becoming more divine, more like God's way of thinking.

This is a measure of the importance of the evolution of consciousness; and the need for it. Our life on earth is about 1. Accepting that salvation which is the gift of Jesus; and 2. Theosis - or working on the task of making ourselves more divine in our nature.

The moral aspect of theosis is very well known - but the consciousness aspect of theosis is almost wholly neglected - especially in mainstream Christian life.

In theosis we are not supposed only to 'do the right things', nor even to think the right things - but to think in the right way...

We should strive for a divine quality of thinking.

That is how important the evolution of consciousness is.  

Evolution of consciousness without reincarnation - but how?

Almost everybody who believes-in the evolution of human consciousness, also believes-in reincarnation - but not me.

While I think it probable that reincarnation was usual before the advent of Jesus Christ; I don't believe that reincarnation has been normal since then, at least among Christians - and has indeed been very exceptional (or absent). This for the simple reason that Jesus came to bring resurrected and eternal life in Heaven to his followers, and my assumption is that resurrection happens soon after biological death - which combination (as I understand it) rules-out reincarnation. (although perhaps not something like projected avatars...).

However I also believe that through history (and pre-history) the consciousness of men has developed according to a divine plan or destiny (consciousness has 'evolved' in an old sense of the word). In other words, Men at different points in history have thought and experienced differently - and this is evolutionary-development of mind is (of course) reflected in language (as documented by the work of Owen Barfield), religion, society, science, art and everything else.

But the key point is that socio-cultural change is driven by the inner change in human consciouness - and that inner change has inner causes - and not (or not primarily) the other way around (as most people suppose).

However, if for the past c. 2000 years at least, human souls have one mortal life, and if therefore we can experience only one mode of consciousness and one era of evolutionary history - then what is the value of an evolution in consciousness? Why have consciousness changing through human generations - if, for each individual person - consciousness is Not changing?

My answer is that each of us is unique, therefore each of us needs different experiences in our (one) mortal life; and the evolution of consciousness is a way that God uses to give individual human spirits the many types of experience that each needs.

Other ways of providing different experiences come from different families, different social circumstances, nations, levels and types of civilisation etc. But one of the important ways in which mortal life is tailored to the needs of individual incarnating spirits is through the phases and stages of the development of consciousness.

So that the simple hunter gatherer societies had (in important respects) a very young-child-like consciousness even among adults. Medieval Europe was essentially rooted in the developmental stage of an older child (with its fixed symbolism, hierarchies and rituals). Modern society is essentially the adolescent stage.

And there has never yet been (except among individuals and small temporary groups, perhaps) any time and place where the adult form of consciousness has prevailed - although that is the task of our stage of evolution: i.e. to become properly adult in our consciousness.

Our task (here and now, in The West) is to grow-up spiritually; to attain (and this must be an active and conscious choice, which is a reason why it has not yet happened) what Owen Barfield called Final Participation.

Owen Barfield and The Notion Club Papers

[Jeremy - in The Notion Club Papers, by JRR Tolkien]

Sometimes I have a queer feeling that, if one could go back, one would find not myth dissolving into history, but rather the reverse: real history becoming more mythical - more shapely, simple, discernibly significant, even seen at close quarters. More poetical and less prosaic, if you like.

If you went back would you find myth dissolving into history or history into myth?... Perhaps the Atlantis catastrophe was the dividing line?

Tolkien had a problem with his legendarium: the First and Second Ages took place on a flat earth; but at the drowning of Numenor (i.e. the 'Atlantis catastrophe'), and the advent of the Third Age (and the time of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings) the world became a round: a sphere. By this change - which was accomplished by direct action of The One/ Eru/ Iluvatar - the undying lands (Eressea and Valinor) became qualitatively separated from the mortal lands (Middle Earth); so that only the enchanted ships of the Grey Havens could get from one to the other - ordinary ships that went West just came around the globe to reach the other side of the Middle Earth land mass.

But this change in planetary geography due to the Numenor/ Atlantis catastrophe was also the dividing line between a magical-enchanted world of the elves; and the mundane world of Men. The Third Age was a transitional phase between these, during which the High and Grey elves left Middle Earth, and the 'magical Men' of Numenor faded and were diluted into being like the mundane men of Middle Earth (although in LotR we meet several of the very few-remaining 'pure' Numenoreans such as Aragorn, Faramir and Denethor). 

In the Fourth Age (our Age) the elves have all departed or faded into invisibility; the Men have lost all their magic, and the world is disenchanted - lacking contact with, or belief in, elves, or the Valar. (Presumably the Ents and the Dwarves have gone extinct, or concealed themselves.) Hobbits, as a type of mundane Men, are said to remain, but hidden.

Tolkien was never happy about the mechanics and implications of this flat-to-round earth transition; and he kept tinkering with the 'cosmology' until shortly before he died; even (astonishingly, in his seventies) planning at one point to rewrite the entire Silmarillion as a round-earth mythology, involving enormous changes - quite beyond then-resources of Tolkien's time and energy.


Yet there was a possible solution to this problem - and it was one that had been worked-out in detail by Tolkien's fellow Inkling Owen Barfield.

I shall describe this in a moment - but it needs to be made clear that Barfield's solution was never an actual possibility for Tolkien, for many reasons. Barfield was essentially CS Lewis's friend, and Tolkien and Barfield had never been close - probably they spent very little time together outside Lewis's presence. Furthermore, Barfield did not enjoy Lord of the Rings, indeed he apparently was unable to finish reading it. And then, although both were strong Christians, there was a denominational gulf between the two - since Tolkien was a devout traditionalist Roman Catholic and Barfield a heterodox Anthroposophist-Anglican.

Barfield was, indeed, a philosopher with so radical and original a metaphysics that few - even of his admirers and scholars - have been able fully to grasp and explicate the sheer scope of what he assumed, argued and asserted.

For Barfield consciousness was primary, and 'matter' was merely a secondary 'condensation' from pure consciousness. Furthermore consciousness 'evolved' - which means it changed by a process of developmental unfolding; in accordance with the divine plan to enable Men incrementally (and over many thousands of years, and multiple incarnations) eventually to attain to god-hood.

The aimed at divine mode of consciousness was what Barfield termed Final Participation: 'final' because it was divine, and 'participation' because it entailed becoming co-creators with God. Because consciousness was primary, Final Participation happened in thought, in thinking. God thought the universe into existence, this thought was objectively real; and if man attained to this level of consciousness, each Man (in harmony with God's purposes) would become a participant in this creation.

And, because consciousness is primary, for Barfield there was no reality apart-from consciousness. What we perceive (what know by our senses, and by reasoning from sensory data) is all we know of anything. There is an indescribable stuff (what Barfield terms the unrepresented) that exists independently of our perceptions of it; but perceptions can only be understood with concept,s, by thinking - so we know nothing about this unrepresented reality.

We only know what we think, and our thinking is a product of our consciousness, and our consciousness can change qualitatively.

What we regard as objective facts are actually 'Collective Representations. In other words, beings with the same quality of consciousness, perceive the world in the same way, and therefore usually come to regard the world as consisting of data which they suppose to be independent of consciousness. When everybody perceives a tree, then people tend to assume that what is really there is a tree; when actually 'a tree' is a concept that is absolutely dependent on consciousness. 

(It can immediately be seen how alien this way of understanding would have been to Tolkien, even if he had known and grappled with it - which he would have been unlikely to do; probably regarding it as pride-full and blasphemous.)


If Barfield's understanding of the evolution of consciousness was applied to the Numenor/ Atlantis Catastrophe, we would understand it to be a qualitative change in consciousness, imposed upon the inhabitants of the world by The One. It was consciousness that changed, primarily; and as a result, the world became perceived as spherical instead of flat.

(It is not a matter of whether the earth 'really had been' flat, or not; but that such a question is meaningless - since there is no 'really' which is independent of consciousness. To the Second Age consciousness of elves, men, dwarves, Sauron, orcs etc; the new form of consciousness perceived the world as round. And there is no going-behind this perception.)

So, the drowning of Numenor really was, as Jeremy of the Notion Club Papers suggested, a 'dividing line' - in which the era of enchanted myth changed-into the era of mundane history. The change was instantaneous; but the working through of this change took some thousands of years.

(Such a Barfieldian perspective also explains how Tolkien's legendarium is real: really-real, not just applicable fiction! It is real because it is 'about' consciousness; it is a way of 'representing' consciousness and its development, under divine shaping.)


So where does that leave Modern Man, in our Fourth Age - which Barfield sometimes called the Age of the Consciousness Soul? Well, we are of course disenchanted, can no longer perceive the elves or the gods; indeed we deny the reality of any God at all. Whereas the enchanted world of Tolkien's First and Second Age was one where most things were alive and conscious and in communication to some degree (a residue of this remained in the Third Age, in Lothlorien - preserved by Galadriel's ring)  for mundane man, everything is dead: indeed Man understands himself to be dead, and consciousness to be an illusion or epiphenomenon of material processes. Because only matter is real, and matter is experienced as un-alive...

But this is incoherent, insane; it is not a viable form of consciousness: it is consciousness turned against itself. It simultaneously claims to know, while denying even the possibility of knowledge. It claims to discern meaninglessness, to know exactly that which is un-knowable (i.e. to know with certainty how things really-are, independent of that consciousness which knows). 

We need to move into a Fifth Age of Middle Earth; in which we can begin to know that consciousness is primary, and to know that consciousness and reality are indivisible.

This was not a matter that Tolkien addressed in any of the work published during his lifetime - but it is a special appeal of the Notion Club Papers that Tolkien comes to the very edge of this matter; which is a thing that can be done in high fantasy.

In a nutshell, we can - if we choose - regard the Notion Club as a fantasy version of The Inklings; and the unfinished text as the start of a process by which these Fantasy Inklings would, in the course of the full narrative and as its climax, solve this most important of all the problems facing modern materialistic Man.

The dawn of Romanticism in 1740 - publication of the first novel

Colin Wilson was the first to recognise that human consciousness changed in 1970; and what marked this historic moment was the publication in London of Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson - which was the first novel.

The novel produced an instant sensation and within months had spawned numerous imitations. And the novel was the first evidence of the power of Imagination. Romanticism was born.

From that moment, human imagination exploded in the Western nations: the British Isles, Germany, France - spreading to all the developed countries and increasing until it was the dominant social theme by around 1800 - and the world was never the same again.


But if 1740 really was The Moment - then the direction of causality remains to be established.

Colin Wilson argued that The Novel caused the change in consciousness; but I would argue that the change in consciousness caused The Novel - and that Pamela was merely the first evidence that Man (specifically Western Man) had already begun to undergo a change in consciousness.

Here we come to the ambiguity in the term 'evolution'. Wilson saw the evolution of human consciousness; but he saw this as consciousness adapting to changed circumstances - he saw consciousness as 'passively' following changes in the environment...

But I see a process of developmental unfolding, in accordance with divine destiny. Thus I see human consciousness as developing a greatly-enhanced power of Imagination as a process of a long term plan for humanity. The novel was an early product of this change.

Consciousness is itself the driving force; and it was the change in consciousness which drove the changes in the environment - such as the Romantic Movement and the Industrial Revolution.


Most historians of ideas, on the contrary, regard Romanticism as a reaction-to modernity - especially a reaction-to the Industrial Revolution. (e.g. That Romanticism was a daydream of escape into magic and nature from the grimy and alienating 'realities' of industrialisation.) But this can't be right if we consider Pamela as the beginning of it all, since in 1740 the Industrial Revolution was as yet so small in scale as to be almost imperceptible. The greatest commentator of the age, Samuel Johnson, saw continuity, not revolution.

Instead, I would say that both The Novel and the Industrial Revolution were different products of the same driving, qualitative change in human consciousness; a change that affected England before it affected anywhere else - but which before long had affected everywhere else in Western and Central Europe and the diaspora of these peoples.

This general insight - of changing consciousness driving culture - was articulated by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield; although neither emphasised much the point that this was a developmental divine destiny; and that its ultimate aim was the aim of God in creation: to enable Man to rise to full divinity.


Enhanced Imagination was something that was imposed-upon Western Man - it was not his choice, he was passively-swept-along by this change in consciousness.

But 250 years later I think we can perceive that Imagination was only meant to be the first step - and the divine plan was that Imagination would lead on to Man's explicit choice to embrace an Intuitive consciousness that was also conscious and free. That is, Man needed voluntarily to embrace what I have termed Primary Thinking.

So, the intention was that Imagination would show us the way - but Imagination is not-necessarily-real. Imagination was meant to lead-onto Intuitive Primary Thinking. While Imagination is creative in the realm of public communications, Intuition is creative in terms of universal reality - Intuition is, in fact, human creativity in the context of on-going divine creation. Intuition is Man's participation in God's creativity.


Yet since 1740 this evolution, this developmental unfolding of consciousness, has stalled; and we now live in a world where Imagination is encapsulated, hermetically sealed-off from Real Life which is The System, The Bureaucracy, an invasive totalitarian web of surveillance and control... Intuition (or claims of Intuition) is regarded as merely wishful thinking, evidence of childishness, or an evil attempt to manipulate others for personal advantage...

This happened because, unlike previous unfoldings of human conscious development, this last one (into the divine type of consciousness - divine in quality albeit not - initially - in quantity or scope) must be consciously chosen.

(We must consciously and explicitly choose to become gods - we cannot be made gods unconsciously and without our consent and cooperation.)

We must become explicitly aware of the next-step, then need to choose it. And this entails becoming explicitly aware of God's Plan - of our divine destiny - and choosing to join this; to be, live and work in harmony with God's Plan.

So far - very few people seem to have done this - of those we know, perhaps Goethe, William Blake, ST Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, Owen Barfield are among the well-known examples of people who have made this choice; who have made this choice and qualitative step...

But culturally - the divine destiny of consciousness has been roundly and comprehensively rejected by modern Western cultures; as foolish, childish, meaningless nonsense - itself evil or tending-to evil.


Modern Culture is therefore divided between two wrong answers: between those who reject the assumption of God, and those who reject the assumption of a developmental unfolding of human consciousness.

Yet my belief is that both need to be accepted - which entails recognising them explicitly, and choosing them freely. Only then can Man take-up and resume his development towards divine consciousness.

What evidence for the evolutionary-development of consciousness in Western Man?

On the face of it, there seems little evidence for anything like a divinely destined evolution of consciousness in Western Man. Looking around in the public realm, or even in direct and personal experience; there seems little to suggest anything of the kind. Nothing that looks like 'progress'.

This is because of two things: 1. Materialism and 2. Negativity.

The materialism which absolutely monopolises modern public life means that consciousness appears only in an indirect way. We only see the indirect effect, the consequences, of consciousness change - and we see only its material - this worldly - manifestations.

Abstraction - including the reduction of qualities to the pseudo-materialism of number - is a major aspect of materialism.Indeed, it is more extreme: qualities are denied reality (because qualities are material) yet simultaneously these non-existent qualities are given numbers and used for calculation of decisions. This is the basis of such managerial technologies of quality managements, racial and sexual monitoring etc. 

The negativity means that the change is expressed by criticism, and not by positive assertion. We get some (materialist) version of what people do Not want; but don't get an expression of their goals.

So, the evolution of consciousness can be seen in the dominant aspects of the dominant ideology of Leftism - but reduced and one-sidely.


Take feminism. The positive spiritual ideals of feminism are related to the positive aspiration of a permanent, literally-divine spiritual and creative marriage relation between a man and woman after death and in the life everlasting as Children of God.

But modern feminism has reject the ideal along with the eternal; and the true spiritual impulse has been concretised to this-worldly economics and power differences. The imperfections of mortal marriage means that marriage itself is rejected as oppressive. What remains is only the negative side of anti-Man aggression- and this is implemented materially in laws and regulations. The deterioration in relationships between men and women is then celebrated.


Another aspect of the evolution of consciousness is an awareness of the uniqueness of each individual, and the knowledge that we have a divine seed within each of us - so that we may grow to become a distinct creative deity - each contributing to God's work of creation.

But of this modern culture expresses only the material aspect: we take into account only that which is measurable and mortal - even while refusing to allow the validity of any measure.

There is a negative refusal at accept any rationale for any economic differences - but without any positive desire for actual equality. We reject actual equality, because we demand that differences in individual circumstances be taken into account; but reject any actual method of doing this.

There is a rejection of legal and cultural impartiality, as a sham and a mask for prejudice; but reject individual judgement as also obviously prejudiced.


More generally; modern Leftism generally regards any reference to to the ideals of post-mortal life as merely an excuse for injustices during mortal life ('pie in the sky', 'jam tomorrow').

Another instance: Leftism celebrates racial and ethnic differences, yet refuses to tolerate racial inequalities; and (negatively) there is no acceptable, objective categorisation of race, ethnicity, culture or economics... Race is simultaneously deconstructed and its reality denied - because race is not material; and abstracted into numbers, so as to be implemented in the material processes of modern government.

The same applies to sex and sexual ientity. Modern negativism denies the reality of these categories because they are not material and do not have hard edges; modern materialism simultaneously creates abstract and hard-edged sexual categories for monitoring and control purposes.


In sum; the ideology of Leftism is implicitly trying, but of course failing, to build a positive system from a host of negative rejections. It is always appealing to morality while its materialism erodes the validity of all moral systems.

So Modern Man does indeed show evidence of the development of underlying positive impulses; but because of (covert, denied) metaphysical assumptions these are systematically distorted such that there is not even the possibility of good outcomes, and we get that moral inversion by which bad consequences are regarded as evidence of virtuous motives.

This is why anti-spiritual, mortal-life-focused Leftism has been the main tool of the dark forces; since a system of inevitable, irreconcilable, competing negativities is the perfect seedbed for evil.

In inducing modern Western Man to accept materialism and reject all spiritual things as impossible; and in making these beliefs a matter of deep, metaphysical assumption - woven invisibly into the enitre realm of public discourse; the demonic powers have created a machine by which even good and necessary impulses can only be manifested as evil.

God implicit in the abstract work of Owen Barfield

First, the abstract version...

Abstract thinking, thinking about things in general, is very difficult - so difficult that it is difficult to know when you know - and when you have got lost in abstraction.

A lot of the philosophy I read is made more difficult by lacking a basis in metaphysics - the philosophy just 'hangs there' in mid air - not really explaining, lacking context.

It is an advantage of theology when God is put into position at the top of the explanatory scheme - rooting the further speculations. But then again, for most philosophical writers, God is conceptualised with extreme abstraction - impersonally, as a collection of attributes or non-attributes.

Only when God is understood as a person with personal attributes; a man with a plan; a man who has motivations, hopes and can feel sorrow and joy: our Father... only with such concrete clarity are the abstract schemes rooted.

I find that what was a complex and hard-to-follow explanation often enough becomes something simple enough to tell a child - when expressed in terms of what God wants.

All this is a factor when authors leave-out God. They may leave Him out because they suppose they don't believe him (although their scheme entails implicitly that they actually do), or in deference to the conventions of the genre that they are writing in, or in hope of attracting a wider audience.

But there is a price to pay - misunderstanding by others, on top of the danger of self-misunderstanding.

Is abstraction more explanatory? Maybe not. Maybe the greater scope of abstract explanations is merely the result of a wider deficit of understanding?


Now the concrete version...

Understanding the work of Owen Barfield has been made far more difficult than it need be by the omission of God from the explanatory scheme. In particular, the failure to link the philosophical scheme to what God wants, and why.

For example, great effort is made to explain the evolution of human consciousness through three phases from Original Participation and aiming at Final Participation - but it is never explicitly explained why, what this epic drama of millennia is all for. Nor is it explained why God needs to achieve His goals by such a long-drawn-out and unreliable process. 

Now, all this can be answered, and the answers are implicit and can be quarried out. Barfield was a Christian. But the fact is that most of Owen Barfield's advocates and admirers were and are not Christian (or, if they are, never mention the fact) - and indeed may be 'post-modernists.

Clearly, the modern Barfeldians do not realise that the evolution of consciousness metaphysic is neither-here-nor there without God.

In the first place, it is a metaphysical scheme which, as with all metaphysical schemes, intrinsically cannot be proven empirically. Barfield says he came upon it by studying the changing meaning of words, but that is autobiography. Observations of changing meanings of words can be 'explained' in innumerable ways that do not entail a fundamental restructuring of metaphysical reality. 

But secondly - even if it is true (which I believe it is!) the evolution of consciousness has no significance unless there is some reason for us to live by it - we need to know whether the new metaphysics of consciousness is Good for us to believe, no just whether it is coherent and consistent with the facts.

I presume that Barfield left-out God partly in order to make his work accessible to a wide audience who did not share his Christianity, and partly because he did not himself see his work as flowing-from his Christian belief - but rather as pointing-at it. Whatever the reason, there was a price to pay - and the price was:

1. His work became very difficult to understand , due to its abstract nature. and,

2. People who misunderstood his work were unable to detect their own misunderstanding - again due to the difficulties of extended abstract thinking. Consequently,

3. Most writer about Owen Barfield seem to leave out God, and thereby implicitly reduce the significance of his work to being some kind of conceptual metaphysical schema simply floating in a space somewhere in-between our personal lives and the ultimate basis of reality.


The trouble is that when we force or allow ourselves to be crystal clear about God, it comes across as childish which puts off most intellectuals and academics - thereby destroying ones' audience. It also makes things so clear and easy to understand that people immediately feel able to mock, criticise and to reject - whereas an abstract scheme can seldom be understood well enough to reject it outright, and will be ignored rather than mocked.

So, what should Barfield have done?

Well, I am not sure how Barfield understood God - and probably he had the rather unclear conception which is usual among most Anglicans - that is, he probably regarded God as in some symbolic way our Heavenly Father, but probably felt embarrassed and uncomfortable about 'anthropomorphising' God - and preferred to discuss Him abstractly, symbolically and so on.

But my own view of God is derived from Mormonism, and is straightforwardly anthropomorphic and concrete - also I believe that we can and do know what God wants for us and from us in general terms: he wants us to grow spiritually to become divine like him, so we can eventually have a relationship of 'friendship' rather than a parent-child relationship (or rather, a perfected loving relationship like that between a grown-up child and his Father rather than like the relationship of a perfect Father and his infant son).

Anyway... I think that what Barfield needs is something on the lines of explaining that God wants us to grow up, and attain adult consciousness (which is Final Participation) - but we must ourselves want this to happen. It can happen by the experience of living - experience is necessary, therefore the process takes time.

By our innate agency, we are free to accept or reject each step in our spiritual growth - and this applies not only to the individual soul but to the (various type of) group soul. The individual soul can achieve final participation (albeit temporarily and imperfectly during mortal life), but at the level of the group soul - e.g. the nation, or civilisation, the process is much slower.

This happens because, as the Bible makes clear, God works with 'people's as well as with individuals - because individuals are actually, in fact, like it or not - part of peoples. We began as immersed in a group consciousness, and that link to the group remains. 

The stages in the evolution of consciousness which we may observe in history are the deliberations of the groups soul in moving through the developmental process form childhood consciousness, through adolescent consciousness - but none have yet reached adult consciousness (and indeed the current most advanced civilisation has turned-away-from adult consciousness).

I could go on - but this is just supposed to illustrate how the ideas are easier to express and understand when they are put into the full context.


Men need, Men must have, purpose - and purpose entails a divine plan and the reasons for it - reasons which we can understand and agree to.

If we leave-out purpose from our explanations then those explanations will be abstract, and become very difficult to understand, and more difficult to make sense of; and easy to misunderstand without realizing...

But if we include purpose, clearly and explicitly... everything gets much simpler. The difficulty is then related more to doing what is required, rather than (as so often) getting stuck on trying to understand what it is that we are supposed to do.

The evolution of consciousness is a drive, not a response

When Owen Barfield writes about 'the evolution of consciousness' - he is talking process that is driving human development.

Barfield is not, therefore, regarding consciousness is something which respond-to historical change; but the opposite. So, he is saying that it was a change in the consciousness of Western Man that drove the scientific revolution and 'materialism': first consciousness changed and then science arose...

And therefore Barfield is contradicting any idea that 'modern Man's different way of thinking is a product of the scientific revolution. He was also contradicting the idea that the change in consciousness was due to natural selection. Rather Barfield is stating that changes in consciousness have been driven-by the unfolding of a divine plan (or 'destiny') for Man.

(A plan/ destiny aiming, ultimately, at the divinisation or theosis of Man - Man becoming a god (or full Son of God, as the New Testament terms it), with a god-like way of thinking.)

The development of new forms of human thinking is something which has (again according to Barfield) happened several times in human history, and indeed prehistory. However, in the past the changes in consciousness were driven at an unconscious level and required only the passive acceptance of Men.

Currently (at least since the Romantic movement of the late 1700s), and for the first time, we are experiencing an unconscious drive towards a new kind of consciousness that will not happen unless and until it becomes conscious and chosen.

So, our current situation is that we are being driven 'instinctually' (unconsciously) towards a new consciousness / a new way of thinking. But for it actually to happen requires that we become 1. consciously, explicitly aware of what is going-on; 2. then accept this destined change, but; 3. not just accept it, because we need also to; 4. actively embrace and work-at creating this change in ourselves.

In sum; the modern situation is that we must each, personally, want-to ally our-selves with the destined change in thought and consciousness, and must make efforts to make these changes in our-selves.

Or... it will not happen; and because we cannot go-back to an earleir state of consciousness (any more than an adolescent can become an actual child again), we will remain 'stuck' in the current phase of alienated consciousness - the problems from which will continue to be cumulative.

So far, very few individuals have done this four stage process of theosis - and the great majority of people in the West remain entirely unconscious of what is going-on behind-the-scenes.

Nonetheless, at an unconscious level - the instinctive drive towards the next, and final (because divine) qualitative development of thinking continues; and leads to many undesirable outcomes.

Good vibrations? High frequencies? The language of consciousness

It is common in spiritual writing over the past decades to discuss the raising of consciousness, the evolution of Man towards divinity, in terms of a higher Vibrational state, or high Frequency communications. This is done by many authors and thinkers - including some that I greatly respect (such as William Arkle).

It goes along with several other physics derived terms used in spiritual discussion - Energy is one popular one (especially in Alternative Healing) and of course Light - which is used often in the Bible...


There is a question of the extent to which these are intended to be literal or metaphorical. However, the work of Owen Barfield on the development of language tells us that this literal versus metaphorical distinction may be an artefact of modernity - and not an aspect of reality.

Reality may be, and probably usually-is, both literal and metaphorical; in the sense that literal factuality does not capture the 'symbolism' or meaning of facts, while the symbolism tends to discount or ignore the question of factuality.

So, I recall reading in the Russian Orthodox literature about light emanating from Saints being both literal and symbolic. My understanding is that such glowing could, in principle, be photographed or filmed - and was, in that sense, 'objective'. On the other hand, demons may, it was said, appear in the guise of brightly-glowing angels... so light is not 'evidence' of Goodness.


The question about Frequency/ Vibration is whether there is supposed to be a literal, factual aspect to the description; is high frequency consciousness something that might, in principle, be measurable by a device? Some New Age thinkers clearly suppose so.

But the perspective of Barfield and Rudolf Steiner was that objective phenomena are always and inevitably known via consciousness; and when consciousness is different, what is objective is different. This would include physical records such as photographs, videos, readouts... in reality they are interpretable, know-able, only by human consciousness, and when human consciousness changes, so does our knowledge of such records.

(Perception is thus bound-up-with knowledge.)

In other words, there is no-such-thing as objectivity separable from human consciousness.


This suggests that there may in reality be something describable as a frequency or vibrational state of consciousness, and this attribute may be perceptible or even measurable in some states of consciousness but not others.

On the other hand, I question whether this physics-based way of describing and discussing life and consciousness has in fact been effective - whether this way of speaking and writing is a good idea? My objection is that it is abstract, in the sense of being the opposite of personal.


There is a major divide among those interested in religion ad spirituality between those who seek to escape persons and regard reality as abstract; and the opposite. In general, the movement through human history is to regard higher, more true religion as being abstract. Probably because we all start out, as young children, seeing the world as animated and conscious (everything significant as alive and purposive, motivated - everything as quasi-persons) - then growing-up and becoming intelligent and wise is seen as an incremental process of abstraction.

We mostly regard the abstract as real, useful, generalisable; the personal as childish, unintelligent, crazy... and indeed children, mentally handicapped and psychotic people are often and characteristically 'animistic' in their thinking. (Paranoia, in the technical sense of self-referential delusions, is the natural state of the naive human.)


To discuss spirituality in terms of Vibrations, Frequency, Energy and Light are all ways of abstraction. Abstraction has been the trend for hundreds, even thousands, of years... And how is this abstraction working out, thus far?...

Well, abstraction is alienation, disconnection; it is to understand God as a series of attributes or properties, God's goals as akin to setting-up a machine, a computer, a force-field... a complex system. It is to see persons in terms of how they serve abstractions; virtues in terms of how we interact with a system; sins and vices as disruptions to our efficient functioning.

In sum, such language feeds an understanding of the universe as unalive and unfolding with inevitability and impartially... when, surely, as Christians we ought to be understanding reality in terms of persons, not the universe; in terms of personal aims, wants, needs, hopes... and of course love?


The recourse to physics concepts as a key metaphor or and the bottom-line factual-symbolic primary description of life, is a thing fraught with hazard; at least for the modern mind.

It is, at any rate, something I am working on noticing and expunging from my own thinking. The intent being to replace it with a conscious animism, an aware knowledge of reality as ultimately - factually-symbolically - consisting in living conscious Beings.

Such an animism is regarded as objective, meaning (as objective always does, in reality) shared perceptually between those of the same quality of consciousness. Those of a different quality of consciousness (such as the mass of modern people, and indeed the naive and child-like, would not and could not perceive this reality of reality-as-Beings.

That is to be expected....


(Note: Reality consists of Beings; including parts or components of Beings... Not everything in reality is a conscious Being in its own right; just as our right thumb, a lymphocyte in the blood, or a calcium ion in our nervous system are not individual Beings, in their own right. Yet everything not itself A Being, is part-of A Being.)

Original Immersion, Detached Agency, Agent Participation: Renaming Original and Final Participation, and the Consciousness Soul

I have very often used Owen Barfield's categories to describe the evolution of consciousness over the past three years. These are Original Participation (OP), the Consciousness Soul (CS) and Final Participation (FP).

However, I have not been happy about the actual names, which are partly uninformative and, as I now have come to feel, somewhat inaccurate.

Original Participation is not truly a participation in reality and creation because it is a passive and unconscious state. The Consciousness Soul (this term comes from Steiner, rather than Barfield) is simply uninformative. And  the term 'Final' in Final Participation is not descriptive - but rather it informs us that this is the qualitative mode of divine consciousness, and therefore no further evolution (except quantitatively) is possible.

So I will be trying-out a new set of terms: Original Immersion, Detached Agency and Agent Participation.

Original Immersion (this was OP)

This refers to the original state of consciousness for Man. Original in the sense of its being both the mode of consciousness of young children, and also of early tribal man - foragers/ hunter-gatherers.

It is a state of passive and unconscious immersion in reality - 'animistic', regarding the world as alive and conscious.

There is little in the way of a separate self - therefore little in the way of agency. The content of thought is mostly caused.

The child's thinking is therefore essentially a consequence, rather than being internally-generated. So, the child is not 'creative' - does not originate or generate thinking. 

It is also something of a 'twilight' state, in some ways intermediate between the awake and asleep state of modern Western adults - and a modern adult can experience Original Immersion in some altered states of consciousness such as trances, delirium and certain 'drugged' states and psychosis (for example).

Detached Agency (this was CS)

This refers to the characteristic state of consciousness of an awake, alert, modern Western Man.

Our self is detached from the world, observing it through the senses; and we are strongly aware of this separate self and its agency in thinking.

The evolutionary step is in agency - thinking becomes a primary cause, self-caused: thinking emerges-from the self intrinsically. Thinking need not be a consequence of external factors.

With detached agency, Man becomes creative - originates thinking. However, this thinking is at the level of ideas and imaginations. These thought must be translated into the external world - by 'actions'. And actions are known only via sensory perceptions.

Therefore in the stage of the process is indirect. Thinking does Not participate in reality 

Initially the self may feel cut-off, and doubt the reality of the world ('solipsism'); and ultimately - by inference - may doubt its own reality.

The agent self experiences the world as perceptual/ sensory input that is made-sense-of by reasoning - i.e. a matter of facts and theories. Thus is it is literalistic, scientistic, materialist and reductionist. Reality is dead/ not-alive.

There is no experience of objective meaning nor purpose nor relationships: these are just theories.
Subjectivity is the dominant experience; objectivity is conceptualised sensation.

Agent Participation (this was FP)

The thinking of the creative and agent self participates in reality - directly. This is the divine mode of thinking.

That is, thinking is real, and reality is thought - and there is a unity, no separation - therefore reality is changed (expanded) by thinking.

So, with Agent Participation, the Man directly knows reality - not indirectly via senses and reason or facts and theories. Direct knowing means there is no mediation, which means that there is unity.

For a divinity, reality is 'made' by thought; and known directly because the reality is the divine thought.

However, Agent Participation is partial, from a perspective. Thus some of reality is known directly, and creativity has also a limited scope. 

Thus, in Agent Participation, everything than can be thought is real - but only some things can be thought. Everything than can be thought is known - only some things can be thought.

And in Agent Participation with respect to creativity: everything that can be thought is original, uncaused and self-generated (although, naturally, it may and probably will use the existing knowledge of that self).

Everything that can be thought is participated-in, and therefore this thinking is directly creative (without mediation) - but only some things can be thought and only some kinds of creativity are possible.


The idea is that scheme describes the (ideal) development of a child to an adult who is divine - being a son or daughter of God: Original Imersion being young childhood, transforming to Detached Agecy at Adolescence. Most modern men are arrested at this adolescence of consciousness, but almost all will have periods of Agent Participation - even though they may be brief, feeble, and not taken seriously.

The scheme also describes the development of human society from earliest Man through modern Man to the divinely destined future of man. And it describes states of consciousness which we each may move-between - even during one day of our lives.

But the main 'lesson' or value of these categories is that Agent Participation is what we ought to - and need to aim at in our lives - as indeed the primary aim of a Christian.

In other words, these categories are a description of spiritual progression, theosis, sanctification or divinisation. Therefore, Agent Participation cannot be achieved except insofar as a person is Good and motivated by Love.

Because to participate-in creation is to participate in the loving work of God, it is the most profound alliance-with God.

Hence the absolute nature of the first and second commandments: Love of God, and of Neighbour (our neighbour being our co-participant). Only thus may creation proceed.


Note: These three states are - strictly speaking - 'polarities' in the sense that although they can be objectively distinguished (as above) they cannot be fully separated or detached one from another. For example, even a young child is not fully without agency or creativity; and certainly some hunter gatherers display these traits at some times.  

In other words, these are extremes or emphases of a unitary process of human consciousness. Any categorical scheme, when applied to a process, can only result in such polarities - because ultimately the unity cannot be divided without destruction of its nature. 

When, in the past, would you like to have lived? (Being who you now are)... Understanding the evolutionary-development of Mankind

I expect that we have all day-dreamed about living in the past - and when the present is acutely miserable, or when we cannot seriously imagine a good future; then such dreams are more insistent.  

If you are like me; then these pleasant day-dreams are almost like 'snapshots' - holiday photos in reverse - whereby some particularly appealing scene is conjured and entered-into. 

For example, just before I went to sleep at night, I would sometimes imagine myself on a sultry summer's afternoon beside the Concord River or Walden Pond in the 'transcendentalist' era of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I could feel - physically - an idealized sense of repose against an implicit background of close-knit friends and associates, who shared an opening-out of ideas and possibilities.   

After becoming a Christian; I had a mental picture of Constantinople under a crystalline-blue sky; the city and its streets gleaming white, and with bright and rich colour; the music, painting, statuary, mosaics; and dignified ritual of divine liturgy under the vast dome of Hagia Sophia. 

Behind such pictures lay an imagined sense of what it was like to live, immersively, in a society where Christianity permeated the whole of life - a medium into which one was born, and through which one swam. 

This idea of 'immersion' in life; of life as unselfconscious - of living in the world as given and joyfully embraced - was at the back of most of these pleasant, yearning, day-dreams. 

This bears a more-than-coincidental relationship to similar day-dreams of early childhood; where I can remember some of what it was like to be a happy child in a happy family, in the years before I was five. For instance; Christmas day aged three or four was a total and immersive experience of being swept along in colour, warmth, joy and unfolding excitement. My life in early childhood - when it was good - was good without comparison; it was living in the best possible world. 

When, from the late 1990s, I began to read accounts of the life of 'simple', nomadic, foraging, hunter-gatherer societies; it was impossible to miss the similarity with childhood - which was indeed often pointed-out by anthropologists (before the cancer of leftism utterly destroyed their capacity to experience and think). 

Yet, although there was intense nostalgia for states of being; I could seldom whole-heartedly take the inward step of wanting actually to live in any previous state of society - in the sense that I could not imagine me-as-I-am-now, finding life better in any past society as-it-was-then. 

For the daydream to work properly, I would have to be a different person from the modern Man I had become. 

The problem was 'consciousness' - the problem was my modern self-awareness, my modern knowledge of possibilities and comparisons - and of what happened next. For any fantasy of the imagined past to "work" - I would need to leave-behind a lot of myself-in-the-present. 

This leads onto the next question concerning what I would need to leave-behind. Some of the 'modern' stuff about 'the way I think' that would need to be left-behind is evil - and I would be much better rid of it... not just in order to live in the past, but anyway. I have been corrupted by the evils of modernity - and, like any evil, this needs to be recognized and repented.

But... even when I could imagine being cleansed of characteristically modern corruptions of consciousness; there was a residue of 'me-here-now' compared with people of the past that was different in nature - but not evil; and this made it difficult to want to live in the past except by wanting to be a different person: a fundamentally different person. 

To live 'idyllically' as a simple hunter-gatherer in my fantasy past - or even in Byzantium, or in New England circa 1835 - I had to imagine myself as somebody-else; which really does not make sense, if you think about it...

Indeed; this wishing has the same incoherence as transhumanism - which aims to cure the ills consequent on being a human by abolishing humans!

Or, it resembles the Western oneness spiritualities - which offer a cure of the ills of Modern self-consciousness in the abolition of consciousness of the self.  

Or, it resembles the 'spiritual' strategy of intoxication - whereby consciousness is (pathologically) obliterated by (usually temporary) self-poisoning. A person escapes the miseries of self-consciousness by deliberately causing cerebral dysfunction; such that (e.g.) alertness, self-awareness and memory are rendered physically inoperative. When a drug has euphoriant properties, there may also be a state of pleasure or at least painlessness. 

In a sense; such intoxication - with its obliteration of that which causes and enables angst - implicitly aims at a simulation of earlier (or child-like) consciousness in terms of the experience of here-and-now immersion in the here-and-now. Insofar as it can be achieved, such simulation of unselfconscious immersion is necessarily achieved at the cost of significant dysfunction. 

It was such insights that prepared my mind for understanding the insights of Owen Barfield concerning what he terms 'the evolution of consciousness' - evolution being used in a pre-natural-selection sense of purposive change; much like the psychological aspects of development of a human from baby, through childhood and adolescence to sexual maturity (the purpose ultimately coming from God).  

To regard human history as including a change in the nature of Man's thinking, and relationship with the world - a change analogous to (and sharing similar purposes with)  that of the development of a single Man - is to find meaning in the mental differences between myself and the hunter-gatherer or resident of Constantinople in the middle hundreds AD. 

It is to recognize that for me to live in the past in the same spirit as people did then, would require fundamental changes in my consciousness; but to regard at least some of these changes as on the one hand impossible - in the same sense that an adult cannot really, in essence, become a child again; and also undesirable - in the sense that development is not meant to be reversed. 

This is to assume that when a person develops through adolescence to sexual maturity; this is what God wants - and the 'job' of the adult is to deal with the situation - not to try and reverse it. This is our divinely-appointed task - it is our destiny. 

Likewise; when God has enabled his creation of Mankind to develop from hunter gatherer, through agrarian societies into the industrial revolution - in some broad yet essential sense this is what God wants; and our job is to deal with it - starting from where we are; and not trying to reverse the fundamentals of the later situation in search of recreating the earlier situation. 

Of Course we Modern Men must recognize and repent sin; and insofar (and it is very far) that Modern Man is corrupt, and Modern society not only encourages but increasingly enforces such corruption, we are right to desire that this be changed. 

But the consciousness of Modern Man is unprecedented - and cannot lead-to, nor function-in, any previous type of society. 

Just as the adolescent's consciousness is unprecedented in his own experience - and the only way out is forward; no matter how corrupt an individual he has become, the same applies to Modern Society: that the only way out is forward. 

The only way out is forward; because we cannot find solutions to our unprecedented situation in our past. 

Part of this is due to an increase in sin; but part of it is also due to a change in the nature of Men through time - so that even if past social forms could be re-created, Modern men would not function in them, and they could not be sustained in the same way as they once were - they would be unsustainable, and they would not lead to Good. 

We cannot become unselfconsciously immersed in society again; and even if we could, it would be in defiance of God's expressed creative will - and would therefore lead to demonic outcomes. 

Thus, an understanding and acceptance of the development of human consciousness can make a fundamental difference in how we intend and hope to deal with the evils of modern society. 

These evils are seen, to a significant and crucial degree, as due to a failure to deal-with the development of Man's consciousness. 

An analogy might be when the (common) corruptions of adolescence are seen as a failure to deal with the unfolding inner changes in consciousness. That unfolding was itself a necessary, and a good (God-given) thing. 

But development leads to unavoidable challenges and choices - and if the challenges are avoided and the choices are wrong - then there is a turn towards evil that needs repentance.  

We, here, now are living at the end of innumerable failures to acknowledge challenges, and innumerable bad choices by vast numbers of people - an accumulated legacy of evil which is unrecognized and unrepented.   

But behind all this was a development of consciousness, a growing-up of Mankind, which was divinely-intended; and is irreversible. 

Therefore, although we are not supposed to leave history behind (just as we ought to remember, honour and cherish all which was good in our childhoods); nonetheless, but we ought not to seek to recreate our childhood, nor seek childrens' solutions to adolescent problems: they will not work, and they will do harm - even when well-intended. 

Instead; we must seek solutions appropriate to where we are and what we have become; and the right answers will be unprecedented in fundamental ways.

This quest will almost certainly entail trials and errors; so we need both faith and hope, together with a willingness to discern and repent when things do not work-out. 

But we each have divine guidance (of several kinds) to lead us through the maze of options and alternatives, successes and failures. 

That is the nature of our task.   

Jeremy Naydler's prehistory of computers, reviewed

Published in the current issue of Oxford Magazine – by Bruce G Charlton

Review of: Jeremy Naydler. In the shadow of the machine: the prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness. Temple Lodge Publishing: Forest Row, Sussex, 2018 pp xi, 373.

Oxford residents might have come-across Jeremy Naydler; since he often guides tours of the city and has given lectures to a wide range of local groups over recent decades. He is also a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, and teaches at their London headquarters. Or perhaps you have come-across him looking after flowers and vegetables in the suburbs? Because Naydler’s main lifetime job has been as a gardener.

He read PPE in the nineteen seventies and then pursued scholarly interests independently before completing a PhD in middle age; on the subject of the pyramid texts of Ancient Egypt. Since publishing books on this subject and on Goethe’s science in 1996; Jeremy Naydler has become, in my judgment, one of the most interesting and original living writers in Britain.

Naydler’s central concern is the interaction between human consciousness and human culture; and he is of the opinion (which I share) that changes in human consciousness have been a driving factor in cultural evolution; as well as cultural evolution having affected human consciousness. Hence the subtitle of this book: The prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness.

What makes this book distinctive is that it is a prehistory of computers. In other words, it is about the stepwise change in human thinking and technology that led, over a span of thousands of years, to the situation in the late 20th century in which - suddenly – computers became first possible, then developed with astonishing speed, and then swiftly took-over first the material world and, increasingly, human thinking. For this progression to happen in just three generations from the first electronic computers until today, was possible only because all the necessary pieces were already in-place.

In the Shadow of the Machine is thus a work in the genre History of Ideas, and as such it is exceptionally thorough and carefully argued. The argument is broadly chronological, describing many steps in the development of each significant component necessary for the computers of today. And as well as describing the specifics of the technological changes; these are related to the necessary conceptual change in the people involved, without which the technological progression could not have happened, and would neither have been understood nor implemented.

Naydler starts with some of the most simple of technologies from the oldest societies of which we have record; such as the Ancient Egyptian methods for raising water; or, as another example, medieval clocks and renaissance calculating devices. He explains why there were periods when apparently-valuable technologies were known-about but not used; then quite rapidly, something changed and the technologies became widespread.

But computers are software as well as hardware; so Naydler also lists and discusses the changes in symbolic notation, language, numbers, logic and so forth – and how these were implemented in physical form – via cogs, punched cards, switches etc.

Then there is electricity; without which computers would have remained exceedingly simple and slow. One of the most fascinating themes of this book is the discussion of the mysterious nature of electricity (and electricity turns-out to be much stranger, and much less well understood, than commonly realised); and the way that its ‘reputation’ began as something dark sinister, alien, inhuman – but later took on increasingly positive connotations until it became so pervasive as to be all-but invisible.

In the Shadow of the Machine takes up right up to the early years of modern computers and the threshold of our current era, and concludes with some wise words about the implications of computers for the way we think – and the established and increasing degree to which our own thinking is entrained to being computer-compatible; such that we habitually think like machines, and tend to disregard any thinking that does not conform to this reduced mode.

In sum; this is a book of ancient history that is of crucial importance for the present and future.