I recently had the guilty pleasure of a YouTube binge (when the cat’s away…). The algorithm on my computer decided I was in the mood for some Christian apologetics so I ended up watching Justin Brierley (of Unbelievable? fame) in debate with Stephen Woodford (Rationality Rules) swiftly followed by the latest episode of Word on Fire, in which Bishop Barron comments on the recent Joe Rogan interview with Richard Dawkins, on the back of the release of his new book Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism, which I then obviously had to watch as well.

I was curious to see how “Rationality Rules” in particular would argue against the reasonableness of Christian belief. How would atheists respond to the theist arguments I was familiar with? What was the comeback? Interestingly enough, there wasn’t one. Woodford merely repeated the usual atheist anti-religious platitudes without engaging with Justin Brierley’s points at all, while at the same time taking great pains to present himself as the epitome of rationality. He came across as by far the more dogmatic, almost as if he was the one who held to a faith-based worldview immune to rational argument, instead of, as he clearly hoped to persuade us, his “irrational” religious opponent.

So what is the atheist worldview? According to both RR and RD, we are merely evolved apes. We are mostly if not wholly determined by our genetic inheritance and the chemical processes going on unconsciously in our brains. Free will is basically an illusion and there if no objective morality beyond socially agreed norms of behaviour, which are ultimately only “good” because of their “survival value”. Even out ability to reason is the product of an evolutionary process directed by natural selection based on survival.

We are just animals. All the fancy religious guff about the specialness of human beings is just an expression of speciesism and anthropocentric arrogance. At the end of the day, we are just animals, cleverer than walruses, but not any “better” than them. Maybe we can speak more eloquently than they, but when all is said and done, they are much better swimmers. Who says people are better than walruses? Maybe The Beatles were right all along.

This, it seems, is the great crime of religion, that it has alienated us from our true animal natures and the natural world of which we are an integral part. We have become the “Super Predator” destroying everything in our path precisely because we refuse to accept that we are just animals and have no rights beyond any other. Presumably, if we truly and honestly admitted to ourselves that we are nothing but evolved apes, we would stop lording it over all the other animals. Really?!

The false logic is breathtaking. Why should we then have any moral obligations at all? Why shouldn’t we dominate everything within our power? Isn’t that the whole point of the “survival of the fittest”? If we are driven by pure animal self-interest (even if dressed up in fancy clothes), why bother keeping up the pretense? We don’t need to pretend to the other animals of course. They don’t case what our motivations are. We pretend to each other simply because we prefer to live under the illusion that we are “human”. The more “enlightened” among us slyly wink at us. They know better.

If you sincerely believe that you are nothing more than a puffed-up animal, you can have no claim to Reason or Value beyond the self-interested demands of personal and collective survival (genes look after their own apparently). There is no such thing as the Good, the True or the Beautiful. These also are just pretty romantic illusions spun out of the loom of philosophical vanity. Things are only relatively or subjectively “good”, “true” or “beautiful”, if they somehow promote “survival”.

According to naturalist atheists like Woodford and Dawkins, we are animals. In which case we belong to the bottom right corner of the Tibetan Wheel of Life. Utterly determined by our biological needs and appetites, we have no free will, and therefore no possibility of rational or ethical choice. We may believe that we are rational, ethical and free creatures, but it’s just an illusion.

According to the Tibetan Buddhists, the animal realm is a close neighbour to the hungry ghost realm and the hell realms. This shouldn’t be terribly surprising. If you really are ruled by nothing but appetite and self-interest, what is to stop you taking this dismal state of affairs one step further? In one direction, you become a “hungry ghost”, an addict enslaved to all manner of desires which can never finally satisfy.

There are four broad types of addict: substance addicts (addicted to food and stuff, drugs and alcohol) and behavioural addicts (addicted to sex and love, entertainment and information). This is exactly what you would expect if you were really an animal with excessive desires and no free will. The other direction is into the demonic realms, which are ruled by the destructive negative emotions of rage, hatred and violence. Here manslaughter, torture and murder are commonplace. But these things are not “evil”, according to the naturalist atheists. They are just an expression of natural exuberance (Rationality Rules reasons that Genghis Khan cannot be called evil in any absolute sense for example).

If we are “animals”, we are also inevitably on occasion “demons” and “hungry ghosts”. But that’s fine because it’s all perfectly natural. We are not responsible for our actions anyway. It’s not as bad as all that, however, because atheists are also generally humanists. This means that although they believe that we are just evolved apes, they also believe that evolved ape societies have evolved in such a way that we have become highly socialised, and our animal instincts have to some extent been tempered and subjugated by social pressure, a condition we call the “human condition”.

Humanists don’t think we are just animals. They think we are human. What they mean by this is that we have evolved social structures and practices which have lifted us above the level of brute nature in which the rest of the animal kingdom lives. We have clothes and houses, read books and use knives and forks (or chopsticks as the case may be). In other words, we have civilization. Which is generally a good thing, notwithstanding Freud’s anxieties about “civilization and its discontents”.

This is in no way incompatible with the naturalist claim that we are evolved apes. We are simply evolved apes who have also evolved complex social arrangements. These arrangements obviously include concepts such as goodness, truth and beauty, although these ideas are ultimately socially constructed and have no absolute reality outside the social contexts in which they emerge.

The human world is thus a world of socially constructed conventions. Members of the human world are members of a “polis”, which only grants membership to those who abide by the norms, conventions and laws of the polis. It is thus based on a “social contract” and on mutually agreed values. Conform to the prevailing culture, with all it’s morals, laws, manners, aesthetics, etc. and you enjoy approbation as a valuable and valued member of that society. Those who are especially successful within any social system will inevitably rise to the top and enjoy greater powers than the rest of the population. These become the “high and mighty”. Don’t conform on the other hand, transgress or break socially accepted behaviour, and you will be punished, imprisoned, exiled or put to death.

But because human societies are only ever commonly agreed social constructions temporarily established by the coercive power of the majority, rival social conceptions will always emerge to challenge the status quo. When perceived injustices grow beyond a tolerable level, a portion of the population will fight to overthrow the existing system in favour of a more equitable one. If they are successful, a new social order becomes established.

This socio-political reality explains the top half of the Tibetan Wheel of Life, which consist of the three higher realms: the “Human Realm”, the “Asura (Fighting Spirits) Realm” and the “Deva (Heavenly Host) Realm”. Just as the Animal Realm is the default position in the lower half of the system, so is the Human Realm the default position of the higher. We are ordinary Animals, but sometimes degenerate into Hungry Ghosts and Demons. We are ordinary Humans, but sometimes become Devas or Asuras. In my updated terminology, we are either muggles, divas or muppets.

This sums up the atheist worldview: we are basically Animals (and therefore also Hungry Ghosts and Demons) but also Humans (and therefore also Fighting Spirits and Devas). It is a closed system. Our position on the Wheel is determined by extrinsic forces. All things are contingent and inter-connected and there is no absolute, objective truth, goodness or beauty. Since the conditioned nature of the system precludes anything acting on the system form outside, there is no Transcendent God but neither is there free will or consciousness. All these are merely clever illusions generated from within the system itself.

The religious worldview is very different. Here there is a God, which is the transcendental ground of goodness, beauty, truth and consciousness. Human beings are neither mere animals nor mere humans nor a strange amalgam of the two. Rather, human beings are “children of God”, made in the image of God.

The classical arguments for the existence of God are therefore also arguments for the existence of the children of God. I will consider seven such arguments. The first three deal with the question of Being. They are the Cosmological Argument (why is there something rather than nothing?), the Fine-Tuning Argument (why are the universe’s physical constants so precisely fine-tuned for life?) and the Origin of Life Argument (how could organic life emerge in a pre-biotic environment?). Atheist hold out for future scientific advances to eventually solve these problems, but only because they misunderstand the nature of the problems.

The other four arguments are more immediately relevant to our present lived experience. They are the Ethical Value Argument (how do you derive an “ought” from an “is”?), the Aesthetic Value Argument (what is Beauty and what’s the point it?), the Argument from Reason (a naturalistic explanation of reason undercuts itself) and the Consciousness Argument (how can consciousness emerge from purely material processes?).

These seven argument for the existence of God also describe the essential qualities of a human being according to the religious conception. If we combine the first two arguments, the Cosmological and the Fine-Tuning arguments, we end up with six. The archetypal human being who can embody the cosmic understanding of existence contained in the first two arguments is the Mystic. The next argument, which deals with the essential nature of life, is personified in the archetype of the Shaman.

The other four archetypes correspond to the remaining four arguments for the existence of God. The Warrior archetype represents Karma Yoga and our intuition of goodness and moral value. The Monk archetype represents Bhakti Yoga and intuition of beauty and aesthetic value. The Philosopher archetype represents Jnana Yoga and our ability to reason and intuit truth. The King archetype represents Raja Yoga and our intimate intuition of our own consciousness and will.

For materialist atheists, none of this exists. It’s just fantasy. They experience reality as consistent with their beliefs about it and therefore assume it must be true (for the simple banal reason that it is rational). For them, life is just the play of “animal nature” and “human nature” on the Wheel of Samsara.

For the religious on the other hand, whether Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Taoist, Jewish, Muslim or Christian, the experience of reality is very different. Reality is about communion with Being, Consciousness and Bliss, and with the transcendental realities of Goodness, Beauty and Truth. Human beings are not understood as deterministic biological creatures or socially constructed humanoids. Human beings are children of God, created by God in the image of God, just “a little lower than the angels”.

But only the religious worldview can accommodate the reality of free will, consciousness, goodness, beauty and truth. Only the religious worldview can rescue humanity from the modern atheist nightmares of totalitarianism, anarchy, rampant capitalism and techno-slavery.

It really is time we outgrew atheism.

 

The Wheel of Samsara is a thumbnail sketch of the human ego. By “ego” I don’t just mean the distinctive manifestations of selfish behaviour that invariably elicit moral censure in others, I mean the basic structure of the human personality – any personality. Think about your name. What’s in a name? Your name somehow contains the whole bundle of ego states which make you who you are. You are a bundle of muggles, muppets, divas, addicts, victims and demons, just like everybody else, though differently configured. Amazingly enough, you can actually dimly sense your own unique configuration, just by saying your name.

On an individual level, the Wheel of Samsara is the “Ego System”. On a collective level, it is what Rastafarians call the “Babylon System”. The tricksy bit is that, all claims to the contrary, most religious people as much part of the Babylon System as everyone else. They have just re-arranged the furniture a little. If they are only nominally religious and live reasonably good, moral lives, they will be predominantly Type 1 or Type 2 muggles (“Home Muggles” or “Work Muggles”). If they are excessively religious, they will most emphatically be Type 4 muppets (“Fundamentalist Muppets”).

Rational, scientific minded secularists who think that they see through all the illusions lesser mortals labour under (the self-designated “Brights”, or “Enlightenment Bunnies” as I like to call them) are just as wrapped up in samsara as those they patronize with such abandon. Their “Chief Feature” is Type 1 muppetry (“Scientific Materialism”). Again, if they are nominal materialists, they will most likely live on the muggle side of the street. They will probably call themselves humanists, and may even live as good and morally virtuous lives as religious muggles.

All so-called “exoteric” religions exist within the Babylon System. If they are genuine, well-intentioned and orthodox, they will promote the cultivation of positive, pro-social feelings and behaviours and will help people be good muggles. They will defend people from too deep or frequent a descent into the addict, victim and demon realms and will divert energy away from the muppet and diva realms.

Exoteric religion is for muggles. Which is a good thing. The more muggles in society, the better. Muggles don’t want trouble. They just want to get on with their lives, and generally get along fairly peaceably and harmoniously. They are good neighbours and good friends. They are not to be sneezed at.

However, problems arise when muggles start to get itchy feet. For some restless souls, Muggle Land is just not enough. They want adventure and excitement, or at least something more meaningful than the daily round. Oscar Wilde clearly felt this when he said, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all”.

But where can a bored, disaffected muggle dandy go? He could take a trip round the Wheel and enjoy a spot of hedonism and depravity à la Dorian Gray, or perhaps a taste  worldly success or, failing that, some good old fashioned protests and rioting. Alternatively, he could step off the Wheel altogether.

Stepping out of the “Ego System” is basically ego suicide. The person you thought you were, embodied in your name, disappears. Your old self dies. This is what “esoteric” religion means. You die to your self and are reborn as something else, hence the perennial esoteric motif of death and resurrection (which is why the essence of Christianity is esoteric, despite most practicing Christians being firmly exoteric).

Esoteric religion is also known as “mysticism”. A mystic is someone who enters the mystery beyond the egoic world of the Babylon System. In mystical consciousness there is no personality to speak of. What is there then? There is what Buddhists call “Buddha Nature”, the essential enlightened consciousness within each of us. No matter what twisted configuration of ego states we may play out on a rainy day in Babylon, behind it all is our intrinsic Buddha Nature.

In Christian Mysticism it’s called “Christ Consciousness”. As St. Paul succinctly put it, “Not I, but Christ lives in me”. In Vedantic Mysticism it’s called “Krishna Consciousness”. It doesn’t really matter what you call it. The important point is that it is not you. Not your usual you anyway. It is your “True Self”, your “Higher Self”, the Atman, Buddha Nature.

If you are ruled by your left brain hemisphere, you are automatically in the Ego System, and by extension, the Babylon System. If you are religious, your religion will be exoteric. It will have nothing to do with deeper spiritual realities. You will be you, identifiable (at least to yourself) by your name.

If you are ruled by the right brain hemisphere on the other hand, you are not that which your name points at. You are a Buddha, an “Awakened One”. You have escaped samsara and crossed to the other shore. If you identify with a religion, you will understand it esoterically, as a signpost to a completely different way of being. You will be a Mystic, and also, in time, a Shaman, a Warrior, a Monk, a Philosopher, a King, a Poet and a Priest.

And what’s more, you won’t be bored any more.

 

“Materialism” can mean one of two things. If you are “materialistic”, you love shopping. If you are a “scientific materialist”, you believe that everything that exists is material. Biology is a sub-set of physics. Psychology is a sub-set of biology. Everything can be ultimately explained in terms of complex arrangements of matter and material processes.

Muggles are materialistic. They judge themselves and others according to their material possessions and material-acquiring-capacity (money). They don’t think much beyond the stuff around them. They spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on stuff. They feel lost without it.

Muppets are materialists. They think that scientific descriptions of regularities in Nature qualify as solid and robust metaphysics. They fail to understand that physics is not metaphysics. They would probably retort that science has no need for metaphysics. But then again, neither does snooker. Human beings do, however.

I am constantly taken aback by the arrogance and philosophical ignorance of scientific materialists. In one sweep they dismiss religion and philosophy as outmoded and unnecessary. Science is the only reliable truth. And science says that only matter matters.

Science doesn’t say anything of the sort of course. Science has absolutely nothing to say about anything beyond it’s self-delimited field of inquiry. Philip Goff makes this point with great perspicuity and lucidity in his book Galileo’s Error. Galileo explicitly defined the limits of science: scientists observe the external behaviour of natural phenomena but are silent about the intrinsic nature of things. Science does not ask what something is, only what it does. The soul, consciousness and experience are intentionally left out of the equation.

Due to its astounding success, however, especially in the development of ever more impressive technologies, we seem to have forgotten the limits of science. It appears as though science is capable of explaining everything, of offering a grand TOE (theory of everything), and taking the place of metaphysics and religion. But it only provides knowledge of the exterior of things. When it comes to essence or meaning, the “why” and the “what” rather than just the “how”, it can’t help us.

Scientific materialists need philosophy if they are to escape their materialistic strait jackets. They need to read Philip’s book. They need to read Mind and Cosmos: Why the Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel. They need to read The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake. They need to read Science and Religion by Alister McGrath. They need to read Miracles by C.S.Lewis. But they probably won’t.

The “Materialist Fallacy” is the first philosophical error affecting muppets. The second is the “Relativist Fallacy”. The third is the “Egalitarian Fallacy”. The fourth is the “Rationalist Fallacy”. In a discussion in the pub last night my antagonist committed all four fallacies in the space of half an hour. This is not uncommon in Muppet World, since the four fallacies naturally reinforce each other.

The Relativist Fallacy is the belief that all interpretations are equally valid because they are ultimately subjective and so have no external reference point or standard beyond themselves. The Egalitarian Fallacy is the belief that it is in fact the case or if not presently the case that it is desirable that all human beings are or should be equal. As with the Relativist Fallacy, just a little reflection reveals how contradictory and ridiculous this belief is.

The Rationalist Fallacy is the belief that reason and logic are sufficient for making sense of the world, as long as the words used to describe it are taken in their most literal sense. The rationalist has no time for metaphor. Which makes sacred scriptures like the Bible completely nonsensical and impenetrable. So whether you choose to “believe” it or not, a literal, rationalistic reading of scripture makes you a Rationalist Muppet, whether you are a tub-thumping religious fundamentalist or a tub-thumping anti-religious fundamentalist.

Perhaps it is no accident that the people I argue with on our Wednesday night discussion meetups are predominantly computer scientists and computer programmers. The Muppet Fallacies are a perfect match for left brain hemisphere dominance.

I studied poetry at university. I experimented with psychedelics. I went to illegal raves. I stayed at a Zen monastery. I read spiritual classics. I listened to sacred music. I went to church. I went for walks. Art, literature, music, religion, nature, the body, spiritual experience: these are the province of the right hemisphere. Science, binary logic and computer code are the darlings of the left. How to bridge the gap?

How can God even begin to make sense in Muppet World?

 

What do you wish for? Let me hazard a guess. You wish to be happy and for all beings to be happy. You wish to have peace in your soul and peace on Earth. Am I right? If not, I wouldn’t bother reading on.

So you wish to be happy. Not just fleeting happiness, but lasting happiness. Not just a temporary satisfaction of present desire but a permanent state of satisfaction. So what is that? Obviously not euphoria, ecstasy or bliss. That would be exhausting. Even if you lived in a perfectly orchestrated pleasure palace with perfectly timed breaks between pleasures, you wouldn’t necessarily be happy.

Maybe “happiness” is the wrong word then. It’s not so much about the highs of extreme positive emotion. It’s about feeling good at a more terrestrial level, feeling comfortable in your own skin, feeling that everything is alright with the world, feeling that just being alive is enough.

It might be easier to define happiness negatively rather than positively. If you are happy, you are free of negative emotions. You are free of greed, anger and fear. If you are happy, you are free of confusion. You see the world aright.

So lasting happiness depends on the state of your soul, or the content of your character.  As the saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are”. You cannot run away from yourself. If your character is sound and strong, you will be satisfied wherever you are. If not, even the most splendid palace will be cause for complaint.

The telos of human life, the aim, goal or meaning of life, is not really “happiness”, it’s “character”. Happiness is a by-product. The claim of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics (and almost all religious and philosophical schools throughout human history) is that the wiser you are, and the more virtuous and mature, the happier you are, in sickness or health, prosperity or adversity. Care of the soul is primary. Everything else is secondary.

“Character” is not “identity”. Identity is a poor substitute. You could say it is a displacement of character, an impostor, a simulacrum, a devious sleight of hand of the ego. The “Wheel of Samsara” describes six archetypal identities which are in fact the principal obstacles to the true development of character. They are the main obstacles to spiritual development.

You subconsciously or consciously identify yourself as a diva, for example. You are possessed by a “Diva Spirit” and express “Diva Nature”. You have Fame, Fortune, Power and Influence. You feel entitled to your superiority complex. But you don’t necessarily have a good character and you are not necessarily happy. You are possessed by Pride and Vanity.

If you identify as a muggle, you are either a Safe Muggle (Types 1 and 2) or an Ambitious Muggle (Types 3 and 4). You are either content to stay within the confines of family or societal expectations or else you aspire to divahood and work or hussle your way up the muggle pole. You need character in order to succeed of course, but your “Muggle Nature” will still be in defined by Ignorance and Spiritual Indolence. You will see nothing beyond worldly success.

If you identify as a muppet, you identify with a particular narrative and worldview. Type 1 and you are a scientific materialist atheist and vociferously believe that everything that exists can be reduced to material processes and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a superstitious fool. But if you’re an atheist simply because you haven’t really thought about, you’re a muggle not a muppet. It’s only the evangelical, militant atheists who qualify as muppets, because their atheism is really just another form of fundamentalist religion.

Type 2 and you are a postmodernist who believes that everything ultimately reduces to relativistic mush (either “Theory” or “New Age” mush). Type 3 and you are a political revolutionary activist and believe that the world is so corrupt that it needs to be razed to the ground. Type 4 and you are a religious fundamentalist who agrees, but who hopes that God will do the razing for you. Whichever brand you are called to identify with, you are basically “ideologically possessed”. Your Muppet Nature is chiefly characterised by the twin vices of delusion and dogmatism.

If you identify as a victim, you may find your sense of identity in collective solidarity with an oppressed group. If you have an ambiguous or fluid sexuality, you may find your sense of identity (and implicit victim status) in the LGBTQI+ “community”. If you are an ethnic minority and feel that this defines you negatively, you may find it in the BAME “community”. (I use scare quotes because I don’t think they are real communities). If you are a woman and feel that you are continually oppressed by the patriarchy, you will find confirmation and solidarity by identifying yourself as a feminist. These are Type 1, 2 and 3 victims.

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not dismissing or denigrating the value and importance of civil rights movements, whether women’s rights, gay rights or black rights. I am just pointing out how an over-emphasis on these issues to the point of basing your identity on them, can lead to psychological problems in the form of a deep sense of victimhood. Of course you can perfectly well be gay, black or a woman (or all three!) without being a victim. “Intersectionality” argues that you are “three times a victim” if you are a black lesbian, but that is a subjective, not an objective claim. There is a world of difference between believing you are a victim (which is a psychological condition) and actually being one (which is an existential fact).

You can fight against social injustice without necessarily adopting a victim mentality or subscribing to a victim narrative. It may be that there are simply some wrongs that need to be put right. This takes courage and character, not “identity”. The victim narrative is a vicious circle. The more you identify as a victim, the more powerless and oppressed you feel, which confirms your victim status, and prevents you from taking steps to strengthen your character.

The fourth victim type is the environmentalist who identifies with possibly the biggest victim of them all, Mother Earth. We are exploiting the Earth. We are abusing the Earth. We are destroying the Earth. We are raping our Mother. We are a cancer on the planet.

Again, care for the environment is obviously not a bad thing. In fact, it is absolutely essential. There are real challenges we need to face in order to keep the balance. We need to deal with the problems of species extinction, pollution and waste and climate change. We need to keep deforestation and over-fishing in check. All this is beyond doubt and beyond dispute.

But the victim narrative is not helpful. It is both psychologically damaging (many people are now suffering from “eco-anxiety”) and even potentially environmentally damaging, since it prevents people from seeing and addressing environmental problems realistically. Reacting (and over-reacting) to problems on the basis of emotional panic can have grave unintended consequences.

In sum, all four victim types are ruled by the debilitating and distorting vices of Fear and Dejection, which are again serious impediments to spiritual progress.

If you are an addict, you are either a substance addict or a behavioural addict. Types 1 and 2 are substance addicts: food and shopping in the case of Type 1’s and drugs and alcohol for Type 2’s. Types 3 and 4 are behavioural addicts: love and sex in the case of  Type 3’s and  entertainment and information for Type 4’s. If you are a demon, you are probably a tramp (Type 1), a criminal (Type 2), an abuser (Type 3) or a killer (Type 4).

I don’t mean to judge or pigeon hole. I am just pointing out how forming an identity around any of these types can divert our attention and energy away from the true telos of human life, which is the development of character.

The Wheel of Samsara describes the endless inter-play of stories and identities we attach to. The Orthodox Cross points to the development of true character. It begins with the Mystic, which is all about forgetting and unknowing. You forget your identity, your life script and your fixed belief systems and narratives and open up a space for your essential, unalloyed humanity to shine through.

The Mystic Shaman represents a shift from the left brain hemisphere to the right hemisphere. It represents the awakening of the mind and body in unmediated, global awareness, free from the identitarian bondage of the left hemisphere. From this place of freedom (firmly rooted in the right hemisphere) the Mystic Shaman can then employ the necessary functions and qualities of the left hemisphere to strengthen and develop an all-round, healthy, balanced character.

The Warrior Monk archetype facilitates the development of virtue and the Philosopher King the development of wisdom. Both virtue and wisdom are only possible through the harmonious collaboration of the left and right brain hemispheres, but with the right as the “master” and the left as the “emissary”.

Character is not about being this or that, left-wing, right-wing, gay, straight, white, brown or black. Forget your identity. If you really want to be happy and for others to be happy, you need to be virtuous, wise and not a little holy. It’s a life’s work, but it has the advantage of making life worth living.

 

“What are the roots that clutch? What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?” (wonders T.S. Eliot) They are the roots and branches of Ego, of the Default Mode Network, of Left Hemisphere Dominance, of the Babylon System, of the Matrix, of Satan, of the Anti-Christ.

They are Pride and Vanity. Anger and Hate. Fear and Dejection. Lust and Greed. Delusion and Fanaticism. Ignorance and Indolence.

Pride and Vanity make us divas. Anger and Hate make us demons. Fear and Dejection make us victims. Lust and Greed make us addicts. Delusion and Fanaticism make us muppets. Ignorance and Indolence make us muggles.

There is no escape from the forest of Samsara without cutting the roots and branches of vice. But where is the axe? Not in the forest but beyond it. There is no cutting the roots and branches without escape from Samsara.

What is beyond Samsara? What is beyond the dark forest of the fallen world?

Beyond Samsara is God. God is the only way out.

Escape from Samsara is escape from Ego. So forget your Ego and remember God.

God is Three-in-One: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Father is the transcendent Parashiva. He is Emptiness, Energy, Matter, Life, Mind, Earth and Universe: Amun Ra Atum Ka Ba Gaia Jah.

The Son is the incarnate Shiva. He is Mystic, Shaman, Warrior, Monk, Philosopher, King.

The Holy Spirit is immanent Shakti. She is Peace, Love, Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Consciousness and Bliss.

Let this triune God be your axe to cut down the tree of Samsara at the very root. Then reject Satan and all his works, and the tangled forest of vice will never again grow back to stifle your spirit.

 

The Wheel of Samsara is the eternal round of transmigration through six realms: the muggle (human) realm, the diva (heaven) realm, the muppet (titan) realm, the addict (hungry ghost) realm, the victim (animal) realm and the demon (hell) realm. We experience the muggle and muppet realms as “Earth”, the addict and victim realms as somewhere between “Earth” and “Hell” (call it “Purgatory”), the demon realm as “Hell” and the diva realm as “Heaven”:

We experience the diva realm as “Heaven” but it is a fool’s paradise, a pseudo heaven. It doesn’t last and is characterised purely by pleasure, fame, fortune, power and influence, purely “worldly” goods. It leads to ego inflation, which inevitably sets the diva up for a fall, the greatest fall epitomised by the fall of Lucifer, who fell straight from Heaven to Hell.

Up to a certain point, the mugglish aspiration to reach the worldly heaven of the diva realm does in fact exercise the virtues and so does overlap with genuine spiritual development. This is because to get anywhere in the world, it is necessary to bring the lower impulses of the addict, victim and demon under strict control. You’ll never make it to the top if you’re constantly swayed and derailed by Greed, Fear and Hatred. You will also need to keep your muppet in check so that it doesn’t sabotage you on ideological grounds.

Psychotherapy is good for liberating you from the self-defeating demands of the addict, demon, victim and muppet. Life Coaching is good for helping you up the muggle ladder. But even if you do make it to the top, the diva realm will never fully satisfy you. You may even fall down to a lower level out of sheer boredom.

There is no ultimate satisfaction on the Wheel of Samsara. There is no salvation. There is no deliverance. There is only the eternal return of the same. As the Buddha taught, the only escape involves stepping off the Wheel altogether. He called this realm beyond the six realms “Nirvana”, which roughly translates as “cessation”. Nirvana is reality as it is experienced beyond the round of Samsara, reality as it is experienced once you have stopped being a muggle, muppet, addict, victim, demon or diva.

“Cessation” or “stopping” requires “kenosis” or “self-emptying”, “mu-shin” or “no-mind”. It requires stopping the incessant chatter of your “monkey mind” and stopping the incessant itch of your “ants” (anxious negative thoughts). It requires falling still and letting go. It basically requires meditation, “Dhyana Yoga” (“Ch’an” or “Zen”).

The bridge from the Wheel of Samsara to Nirvana can therefore only be crossed by the Mystic. Through meditation, the Mystic transcends the limits of the Samsaric world and enters a new world, a new dispensation, a new covenant, a new existence. Then, from the Mystic realm of Dhyana Yoga, she passes to the Shamanic world of Kundalini Yoga, the Warrior realm of Karma Yoga, the Monk realm of Bhakti Yoga, the Philosopher realm of Jnana Yoga and the Kingly realm of Raja Yoga.

These six Yogas constitute the Orthodox Cross:

Practice of the Yogas, separately and together, makes you stronger. It strengthens your body, heart, mind and soul. In truth, physical health, emotional health, mental health and spiritual health all require work (yoga) and the development of moral fibre and strength of character. This is the essential point, the key to unlock the prison of Samsara. It’s not just about being meek and mild, kind and considerate. It’s not about being weak. Nietzsche understood this, but few understood him.

The stronger you are, the easier it is to resist the lure of the Wheel of Samsara. It is spiritual weakness that makes us fall into the self-defeating patterns of the victim (“Be afraid. Be very afraid!”) and of the addict (“Go on. Just one more!”) and of the demon (“F*** you. I f***ing hate you!”) It is spiritual weakness that makes us fall for the complacency of the muggle, the self righteousness of the muppet and the arrogance of the diva (“I’m normal! I’m right! I’m the best!”)

It takes spiritual effort and persistence. For escape from Samsara is not a once and for all event. You will find yourself back on the Wheel over and over again. So just keep escaping. Keep escaping until there is no more Samsara and no more Nirvana, but only Satchitananda (“Being-Consciousness-Bliss”) in all worlds and in all directions. Don’t give up! There is nothing to compare in Earth or Heaven.

 

 

Everything is a teaching.

Lost souls remind you to find your way.

Great souls remind you who you are.

The whispering serpent reminds you not to listen to snakes.

The smiling sun reminds you to smile.

 

The cosmic battle for your soul is here on Earth.

Heaven and Hell beckon continuously.

It’s true.

And yet…

But it’s still true.

 

No one has the last word.

There is no last word.

Learn true learning.

There is no end of learning.

But beware of false prophets.

 

Rest in great natural peace.

Everything is reconciled.

Remember.

Believe in God.

Have faith in faith.

 

Be strong in faith.

Be strong in love.

Be natural. Be strong.

Remember the teachings.

Don’t worry about the teachers.

 

Teach love and peace.

Be good.

Be beautiful.

Be truthful.

Be soulful.

 

Tell her you’re sorry.

Tell her you love her.

But not necessarily in words.

Be happy.

Have fun.

 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is not a question we necessarily outgrow. Whether or not we are conscious of it, there is always something we are aiming at in our lives. But what exactly? Maybe it depends which part of us you’re asking. How would our inner muppets, muggles or divas answer, for example?

In Sola Ratio, Sola Scriptura I identified four types of muppet. Type 1 is the rationalist, scientific materialist, militant atheist type; Type 2 is the skeptical, relativist, postmodern hippy/hipster type; Type 3 is the radical, idealistic, extremist, political revolutionary type; Type 4 is the dogmatic, reactionary, literalist, religious fundamentalist type. I suggested that Types 1 and 2 are the unfortunate products of “sola ratio” and Types 3 and 4 are the lamentable products of “sola scriptura”, both “solas” being characterised by excessive left hemisphere dominance.

Well it might also be useful to identify four types of muggle and four types of diva, if only for the sake of comprehensiveness. A Type 1 muggle would be someone who’s aim in life is simply to do what is expected of them by their parents and family. As a consequence they tend to be rather conventional and unadventurous. This is the most traditional and probably the most common type of muggle.

Type 2 muggles are less attached to their family, but are very concerned about the approval of their peers and of the culture the find themselves in. They tend to be very image and fashion conscious. They will look the part, and may go to great lengths in order to fit in with the prevailing winds, perhaps getting tattoed, pierced or having a touch of plastic surgery in the process. They are usually very active on social media and are invariably rabid consumers of popular culture. They are basically highly conformist, even when the image they project is nonconformist.

Type 3 muggles seek approval not so much from their family or peers but through monetary success. Their main purpose in life is to become as rich as possible. This is partly for the sense of security that financial stability affords, but primarily for the status it confers. A large bank balance, a successful business, a nice house and car and an assortment of other impressive material possessions are the heart’s desire for Type 3 muggles.

Type 4 muggles just want to be adored. They put all their effort into activities that lead to general approbation, popularity and perhaps even celebrity status. Whereas Type 3 muggles are naturally attracted to the world of work, especially business and the financial sector, Type 4 muggles gravitate to more visible arenas such as the arts, especially acting and the music industry. They may be creative and talented, but their art is inevitably compromised by an obsession with image and fame.

So what about the divas? Divas are “top dogs”. They are the ones who have made it. There are two muggle top dogs and two muppet top dogs. Since the first two types of muggle are unambitious, they don’t even attempt to climb up the slippery pole to Muggle Heaven. Neither do the first two types of muppet bother trying to get up the muppet pole. They are content to feel superior in their own eyes.

Type 1 divas are basically the rich and the super rich. Type 2 divas are A-list celebrities. These are the two muggle top dogs, the “rich and famous”. Type 3 divas are powerful politicians and leaders and Type 4 divas are influential cultural, spiritual and religious leaders. These are the two muppet top dogs types, the movers and shakers wielding “power and influence”.

Deep down, what do you really want out of life? Do you want to be rich and famous, powerful and influential? If so, this is the Wheel for you. You might even get to be a diva in this lifetime. Chances are you will take a few spins round the addict, victim and demon realms as well, but you may judge that a small price to pay. If you play your cards right, you’ll probably spend most of your time as a muggle or a muppet, and may even be remembered as a diva after you die.

Alternatively, you could settle for ordinary muggleness and muppetry and spend your days quietly and unobtrusively as Type 1 or Type 2 muggles or muppets with the odd unremarkable foray into the lower realms of addiction, victimhood and demonology. Of course you might get lucky, have greatness thrust upon you and end up a diva anyway, without all the sticky sweat and tears. So, what shall it be? Fame, fortune, power, influence or mediocrity? Or is there something else to aim for?

Well there’s always the Cross. Does this model have a specific aim? If we break it down into the three lines (one vertical and two horizontal), we can discern three aims, one for the Mystic Shaman, one for the Warrior Monk and one for the Philosopher King. Together, these constitute the threefold goal for those committed to spiritual rather than worldly ends.

To be holy, virtuous and wise: that’s the ultimate threefold aim of the Orthodox Cross.

The Mystic Shaman is oriented to the cultivation of holiness through the purification of mind and body. Holiness is here closely related to both wholeness and healing. The essential qualities of holiness are Peace and Love.

The Warrior Monk is oriented to the cultivation of the virtues, and the virtues are rooted in Goodness and Beauty.

The Philosopher King is oriented to the cultivation of wisdom, and the key to wisdom is dedication to Truth, Consciousness and Bliss.

So there is the fundamental choice at the heart of life. Don’t choose, and you will just turn endlessly on the Wheel, like a child’s paper windmill in the breeze. Do, and the choice is between two different worlds and two different lives: one dedicated to fame, fortune, power and influence and the other dedicated to holiness, virtue and wisdom.

 

“Sola ratio” means that only reason can give us a reliable and accurate understanding of reality. This was the sincere belief of the Enlightenment philosophes, the champions of the “Age of Reason”. The exclusive nature of “sola ratio” (only reason) leads inevitable to a left hemisphere dominant vision, which ends up distorting or even ignoring reality through excessive attention to rational models, theories and systems.

“Sola scriptura” is the attempt to base reality on the revealed scripture. Maybe our reasoning faculties are faulty, but the sacredly validated truths of scripture are inerrant. They are the Word of God, so they can’t be wrong. We must defer our fallible human intellects to the unfathomable mind of the Most High. We must not question the sacred texts, but must uncritically see the world through the lenses they provide for us.

When there is only reason, everything is fair game for rational analysis and deconstruction. Everything is dissolved in the universal solvent of objective scientific observation and analysis into its smallest component parts. Everywhere mechanisms are laid bare. Whether or not the cosmic watchmaker is blind, our job is to take the watch apart to see what makes it tick. In rationally constructing diagrams, maps and models of parts of the “watch” we imagine that reality really is just an infinitely complex machine, without realising that our diagrams, maps and models are the creation of our own minds and may in fact have precious little to do with reality at all.

Followers of “sola ratio” are left brain people. In extremis they display autistic symptoms and behaviours. These are the rationalist, scientific materialist, militant atheist, logical positivist, nerd muppets. They are “Type 1 Muppets”. But there are other followers of sola ratio who took a different path. They do not worship reason in the same way Type 1 Muppets do, but take reason to its logical conclusion so that it ends up undermining everything it touches, including itself. These are the postmodern, skeptical, relativistic, nihilist deconstructionists, and their symptoms are more schizophrenic. These are the “Type 2 Muppets”. In both cases, the worlds of art, religion, nature and the body are de-mythologised and de-sacralised.

Followers of sola scriptura are also left brain people, but instead of rejecting all filters on the world and relying solely on pure reason, the scientific method and radical skepticism, they cling tenaciously to one ideology through which they can interpret reality. Their ultimate commitment and loyalty is to seeing the world through the lens of their chosen “scripture”, whether it be a traditional religious scripture or a secular system of thought. They refuse to consider alternative views or try out other “lenses” or multiple “maps of meaning” because that would amount to disloyalty and treason.

“Type 3 Muppets” are ideologically possessed political extremists. “Type 4 Muppets” are ideologically possessed religious fundamentalists. Both types are capable of extraordinary levels of violence in the name of their chosen scripture, whether it’s Das Kapital or The Book of Revelation. They make excellent revolutionaries and terrorists, but terrible lovers.

 

The four key books that launched the aggressive attack on religion known as the “New Atheism” are The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett; God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens and The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason  by Sam Harris. Collectively, these four writers have been affectionately dubbed “The Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse” because they appeared to herald the final and inevitable demise of religious belief. This was the Final Battle and they had won. (Sympathisers wisely omitted Alistair Grayling’s The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism from the list because it is so toe-curlingly bad).

Since the publication of these hugely popular international bestsellers, however, there has been a growing interest in hearing the other side of the argument. How would religious believers respond to these full-frontal assaults? Are the heroic atheists right to be so confident in their supposedly unassailable position as defenders of the right and the true?

The debate rages on, but the celebrity atheists now find themselves on the back foot. The response has been measured, considerate and thoughtful but intellectually devastating. It is very difficult to see how the horsemen could recover their moral and intellectual integrity without willfully burying their heads in the sand or blocking their ears (which doesn’t do much for their integrity either).

Ironically, the meteoric success of the New Atheists may have re-awakened an interest in religion, and the books written in response to theirs, although far less of a publishing phenomenon, still have much greater sales than religious books generally have. The high quality of the writing and argumentation is also in stark contrast to the vituperative and condescending rhetoric of the New Atheists.

Contrary to the popular conception of the inevitable collapse of religion as a feasible option in the modern world, the following books, in my view, put the nail in the coffin of atheism as a tenable belief system. It is true that, as Dawkins quipped, Darwin made atheism intellectually respectable, but for those who take the arguments seriously, I predict that, as a consequence of these and other books on religion and atheism, it will be increasingly difficult to be an intellectually respectable atheist in the twenty-first century.

In no particular order, they are:

The Case for God: What Religion Really Means by Karen Armstrong; The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led me to Faith by Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s younger brother); Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart; The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath; The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Inquiry by Rupert Sheldrake; There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind by Antony Flew; The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski; Why There Almost Certainly is a God by Keith Ward; God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John Lennox; The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning by Jonathan Sacks and Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel.

And four books on atheism by two former atheists and two avowed atheists:

God’s Funeral by A.N. Wilson; The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World by Alister McGrath; Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton and Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray.

John Gray is an atheist, but he has no time for the militant atheism of the New Atheists, as he makes clear at the start of the first chapter of his book:

“The new atheists have directed their campaign against a narrow segment of religion while failing to understand event that small part. Seeing religion as a system of beliefs, they have attacked it as if it were no more than an obsolete scientific theory. Hence the ‘God Debate’ – a tedious re-run of a Victorian squabble between science and religion. But the idea that religion consists of a bunch of discredited theories is itself a discredited theory – a relic of the nineteenth-century philosophy of Positivism.”

We need to move on from such left hemisphere dominated narrow mindedness. We need to move on from Positivism and Materialism, both fatally flawed, philosophically defunct ideologies. In my opinion, we need to move on from Atheism tout court.

Atheism, particularly the militant strain of it exemplified by the New Atheists, is inevitably a left brain view of reality. Only the right hemisphere can make room for the transcendent mystery we call “God”. Take away religion and you take away our main route to the right hemisphere, and ultimately to the very foundations of civilisation itself, which depend on holistic, embodied, right hemisphere consciousness. We in the West are presently running on the fumes of Christian civilisation and the cracks are starting to show.

The left hemisphere world of atheistic disbelief is populated by divas, demons, victims, addicts, muppets and muggles. The right hemisphere world of faith is populated by Mystics, Shamans, Warriors, Monks and Nuns, Philosophers and Kings and Queens, or at least by people with a sincere aspiration to embody these ideal types.

Next time you’re out on the town of a Friday or Saturday night, have a good look around you – which world would you say you’re in?