[God (on the Circles)][30th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:354][19891130:1358][God (on the Circles)][30th November 1989]

19891124.1358

*

*<920106>[date referring to ‘o’ (probably)]

[(i.c.) = (inner circle)

(c) = (C)

(o.c.) = (outer circle)

(o) = (the O)]

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{Extract: Cycles of Conflict}[24th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:354][19891124:1508]{Extract: Cycles of Conflict}[24th November 1989]

19891124.1508

[A copy of a review from the Times Literary Supplement 19891110(-16), p1234 [sic], by Alice Kelikian, of ‘Democracy and Disorder: Protest and Politics in Italy, 1965-1975’ by Sidney Tarrow, is inserted here in the ms but cannot be reproduced in the ts or blog for copyright reasons. It includes the following sentence: ‘[The book] begins with the premiss that social conflict possesses a cyclical quality, with upswings and downswings that must be observed in their entirety.’]

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{The Imitation of Christ [continued (5)]}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:353][19891120:0930h]{The Imitation of Christ [continued (5)]}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

[continued]

    It is worth recalling the spiritual vocabulary:

God the Spirit – the ultimate and original centre of God.

The Spirit of God – the ultimate and original centre of each Individual – distinguished from God the Spirit only in the perception of the separated Individual, not in its own perception.

spirits [sic] – ‘Free spirits of the Kingdom’,* that is, the Spirit(s) [sic] of God ensouled but not embodied, each being generally a cluster of Qualities motivated by a Will – the Will (to a lesser or greater degree of Separation) of God (This last suggestion is rather more speculative).

    The designation ‘spirits’ is traditional and helpful: it might be more pedantically precise to describe them as ‘Souls’ and ourselves as ‘Bodies’, but this would not emphasise the inner nature of the questions we are dealing ** with.

*(per? [2] [confirmed – subject to revision])

**([s] fecit – [s] joggit) [marginal note presumably relating to a deletion here of the first attempt to write ‘with’]

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{The Imitation of Christ [continued (4)]}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:352-353][19891120:0930g]{The Imitation of Christ [continued (4)]}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

[continued]

It is, of course, part of the essence of the Spiritual Kingdom that spirits (that is, disembodied ‘Souls’ or clusters of qualities)* may fuse in a way which embodied Souls of the Physical Universe cannot easily comprehend. Therefore, such a spirit (small ‘s’) may fuse with many different embodied Souls to a greater or lesser extent; and yet each embodied Soul, because of limitations on awareness brought about by the Separation, {wi}ll generally be aware only of the spirit’s [sic] engagement with him.**

*[See next entry]

**[cf the film ‘Her’ (2013)]

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{The Imitation of Christ [continued (3)]}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:352][19891120:0930f]{The Imitation of Christ [continued (3)]}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

[continued]

The idea that the Christ Archetype was ‘in’ Jesus{,}* can only be understood in a completely different** sense again: not in the way that the {the} Spirit of God ‘inhabits’ the Soul [which] ‘inhabits’ the body{;] nor in the way that God the Spirit expresses its Purpose in God the Creator whose most unified spiritual embodiment in Separation is the Christ.

The relationship of Christ Archetype to Jesus bar-Joseph is not one of inhabitation or inspiration but of fusion: they were identical, which is why Jesus came to be be aware of God the Creator – and ultimately to disclose God the Spirit – and to perceive the Spiritual Kingdom, as nearly as he did.

*[See last previous entry but one, [Redbook6:350-354][19891120:0930d]{The Imitation of Christ}[20th November 1989]]

**[See last previous entry]

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{The Imitation of Christ [continued]}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:351-352][19891120:0930e]{The Imitation of Christ [continued]}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

[continued]

This* is slightly different from the idea of the Trinity (I am in danger of repeating old heresies, with their multiplying personalities, eg 3+1).

God the Spirit is the Spirit ‘in’ or of or behind (ie creating) everything created, to its degree:** the Purpose of the Spirit for Creation, linking the two as the manifestation of that purpose [sic].

As the Christ is the purest and nearest (and dearest) created thing or creature (in any Realm),*** so the Christ Soul is the Soul nearest and purest in (separated) Unity to God, the Creator ‘Soul’: so that my earlier**** statement |# that Christ was the ‘Body’ of God must be understood in a spiritual sense, as indeed must the idea that the Creator is the ‘Soul’ of God.

God is Spirit, and everything said about God must be understood in the spiritual sense.

*[See last previous entry]

**cf Fusion Child, I: [[Redbook1:265A,297A-I;2:1A-1G][19730501:0000][The Wind, the Edge of the Sea, and Fusion Child][To 1st May 1973]] end & II: [not in ts] start. [‘...All you perceive is real, and all implied, To its degree; the rest can keep itself....’]

***Anglican doctrine notwithstanding.

****ref? [?See last previous entry, final sentence]

#(Interruption: [s] has done a poo....)

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{The Imitation of Christ}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:350-353][19891120:0930d]{The Imitation of Christ}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

[continued]

*One of the distinctions of God the (Father-)Creator, and Christ, so far as I am concerned – and one which makes it impossible to conflate them as ‘persons’ – is that while I do wish to become like Christ (although I doubt whether I can succeed), I do not wish to become like God.

My aim, unachievable in the World, is Union with God. Unity [sic] with God, so far as can be achieved while separated within the Spiritual Kingdom, is Christ’s degree; and so far as can be achieved in the World, the Physical Universe, was Jesus’ degree.

That is not, of course, to deny the reality of Jesus Christ as the living embodiment of the Christ archetype in Jesus ‘while Jesus walked’; and it was this fusion of the spiritual archetype and the physical man which is seen in Jesus’ acute awareness of God the Creator as his Father.

*ref [last previous entry but one, [Redbook6:349][19891120:0930b]{Thee-in-One?}[20th November 1989],] 349

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{Not Tonight}[20th November 1989]*

 [Redbook6:350][19891120:0930c]{Not Tonight}[20th November 1989]*

19891120.0930

[continued]

‘Jewish married couples were supposed to “be fruitful and multiply” on Friday night[,] if the purity laws permitted.’

– Rabbi Lionel Blue, ‘Bolts from the Blue’, p[age] 40.

And Friday, the day of Freya (‘Lady’), who became the Scandinavian goddess of love, marriage and fertility, and was probably a sybil,** is of course also the French Vendredi, dies Veneris, or Venus’ day; and on the outer circle of the week comes somewhere like this (depending slightly on what C is):

***

– so Friday night is late G~, early R~. on an inner circle, of course, it would be late m~, early s~.****

*[...a Monday!]

**(Everyman’s Dictionary of non-classical mythology[:] ‘Freya’)

***{cf IV: [[Redbook4:265-266][19871227:1000b]{The Working Week}[27th December 1987] ] 265 (?)}

****[The point presumably being that the Quality of r~ (inner R~) is Love and of s~, Harmony]

- - - -

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{Thee-in-One?}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:349][19891120:0930b]{Thee-in-One?}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

[continued]

And yet* within a few pages – p[age] 38** – Swanson writes of the Trinity: ‘No one while praying experiences three persons.’ I don’t think I have ever experienced three persons at once (Concurrent Trinity?) but I have certainly experienced ‘persons’ at different times (Consecutive Trinity?), and I have a strong impression that he excludes both these experiences: ‘The union of mind and will between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is so complete that we experience them as one’ (p[age] 38).**

My impression is that the experience of each of the three corresponds to a different requirement of the Human Individual.***

*[See last previous entry]

**[of Kenneth Swanson’s ‘Uncommon Prayer’ – see last previous entry]

***[& see next entry but one]

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{[+C†I~]}[20th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:348-349][19891120:0930]{[+C†I~]}[20th November 1989]

19891120.0930

I had intended to tell [Canon][XQ] of my uncertainties – which, after the Eucharist (an unusually excellent service, as several including he himself commented, but my first service for a month, I did: only to be immediately and totally won back again by his robust good sense and Christian awareness.* This left me with a renewed sense of inner peace: something I had not been aware of for some weeks.

He also left me with another book, Kenneth Swanson’s ‘Uncommon Prayer’. On p[age] 18, he** describes the end of his last drug trip (on LSD): ‘Suddenly, without any indication, I found myself face-to-face with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He didn’t have to tell me who he was, and I didn’t have to ask. He said three things to me: “I am real. The Bible is true. You will never use drugs again.” I was immediately dropped out of the trip into normal consciousness.’ Reading this – in the bath – c2345 yesterday evening, I was suddenly aware of the strong presence of the archetype +C, +C†I~, and was (and am) convinced that – however much the +C of my fiction*** may or may not be distorted by my own subjective perception, the archetypal +C†I~ of inner experience is the Christ. I have always hoped that this was so, but felt it wrong to assume it to be: there are differences of emphasis between +C and the slightly Victorian image of the Church’s Jesus with which I grew up. Now I have the certainty of intimate (and continuing) experience.

*{The same sort of thing happened again at the Church children’s party just before Christmas (on 891215Fri)}

**[Swanson]

***and in my mind?

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{Self-justification by faith [continued]}[14th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:346-347][19891114:1020b]{Self-justification by faith [continued]}[14th November 1989]

19891114.1020

[continued]

Part of the explanation why relationships with close family need so much more careful handling than do other relationships may be found in my analysis of why she* has this effect on me (and on [W], who for the first time described her (to me) as a wicked woman: they used to get on quite well).

This particular mother is automatically armed against criticism or self-criticism, presumably because of that unconscious self-doubt which leads her continually to justify, and prompt identical justification from others for, her own actions. In practice, if she is criticised or held unacceptably accountable, she will first of all defend herself, with increasing vehemence, with sophistry, half-truths and (in the end) outright lies; and if the emphasis of the argument overwhelms her – either (unlikely event) on its merits, or by becoming tactical, for like my father she stands firm against courtesy but gives in to bullies – she will break down in tears and agree with everything: only to recover, when she is alone again, and resume exactly her former position. (I suspect that she then goes and misrepresents the argument to other people in order to justify herself; but as I have never seen both ends of this process in** the same issue, I can’t be certain!)

The frustration produced by this condition of hers, in me at any rate, is insupportable.***

*[The writer’s mother – see last previous entry]

**{= on?}

***I’ve also had painful indigestion (dyspepsia)**** since about the time she stayed with us; and that is now going, or seems to be, too.

****[The writer’s incorrectly used term for acid reflux]

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{Self-justification by faith}[14th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:346-347][19891114:1020]{Self-justification by faith}[14th November 1989] 

19891114.1020

Since my mother left* I have unfortunately been thinking again about that dark past, and my parents’ part in constructing it: both in relation to the flat, and in the upbringing of me and their other children.  Although there is little bitterness or resentment left, there is anger.  Much of this profitless resurgence arises, so far as I can see, out of specific things she said when she was here: new and specific information she gave to [W] and me, about family matters in the past and the present.  

While she was here [W] and I quarrelled four times: we rarely quarrel, in normal times; but my mood has been strange since then.  

It also occurred to me yesterday(?) that my present hard antipathy towards the institutional church – which shows signs of melting away, in thoughts (in sermon form) on the reality of Angels – probably dates, in this form, from around the time of my mother’s visit.  

*[[Redbook6:327][19891018:1842b][Maternal footnote][18th October 1989]]

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{Ecclesiastical Horrors}[9th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:345][19891109:1420]{Ecclesiastical Horrors}[9th November 1989] 

19891109.1420

Last night, after staying up late to watch Rabbi Lionel Blue talking to Bishop Kennedy (delayed by old football films), I went to bed at around half past midnight saying ‘This decision is too big for me – I leave it in your hands’ (subsequent to saying, as usual, ‘Tell me what to do and I’ll do it[’]) – with some idea that * the Church could be enabled to make the right decision, as agent.  

I then lay awake or half-awake for ages suffering a fit of the horrors at the prospect of being ordained into the Church: that particular kind of almost tangible horror which only occurs (to me) on the edge of sleep, where the issues become less a matter of intellectual argument than of imaginative weight.  

*(I having said Yes) 

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{Welsh by numbers}[9th November 1989]

[Redbook6:345][19891107:1455]{Welsh by numbers}[9th November 1989]

19891107.1455

[Have] r[ead] Bowen 7 Rhys Jones, (Teach Yourself) Welsh (London) – at long last! I had already read Ch[apter]s 1-10+, at least once, probably twice (or more?). I should no[w] re-read at least Ch[apter]s 11-30 at least once; but as I am spending about 7 hours per week* on Welsh lessons + homework, I think I shall let it pass!

*{Now more like 10 hours per week + 3+ hours travel &c}

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{‘Albion?’}[5th November 1989]

 [Redbook6:344][19891105:1145]{‘Albion?’}[5th November 1989]

10891105.1145

The resurrection of (inner-arising) interest in fiction-writing* – co-incident with its complement, a decreasing attraction towards the ordained, institutionalised Church – brings this pattern for fitting another book into the pattern already revised:**

***

Then again, there is a case for inserting L at g~, and R at m~, (say) between I & II, or (less happily) in the series II – L – III – IV – R – V. (Is [2] then L?!) I am inclined to think that neither iof these is necessary: that L and R, being my speculative addition to the pack as 2 Jokers – represented by the 2 publishers’ cards, ie instead of attributing the Joker(s) to the Tarot Fool – should remain ‘hidden’, moving or omnipresent ‘cards’ – wild cards, able to appear anywhere on the Circle to varying effect, according to one’s degree.

The influence of a~ is also felt according (this is an over-simplification) to one’s degree; the same is true of C, but (being numberless) it is felt at the beginning, at the turning-points in the middle(s), and at the end (inwards from XXI, representing the whole of the 4^th Circle).

So what is the difference? I have an idea that g~ and m~ are less predictable than a~ and C. This would fit the ‘maths’ of creation, by which the diagonals would be less predictable still; but then, they have been fixed in this framework.**** Haven’t they?#

*ref [[Redbook6:224][19890830:1424g]{Renaming ‘[2]’}[30th August 1989],] 224

**Phew! What a sentence. I feel incredibly tired.

***[ms diagram omitted for planning reasons]

****!

#{cf [[Redbook6:357][19891208.0935]{‘L’ – The Booklet’}[8th December 1989],] 357}

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{Government Circles Revised [continued]}[31st October 1989]

[Redbook6:343][19891031:0008b]{Government Circles Revised [continued]}[31st October 1989]

10891031.0008

[continued]

This* compensates for the recognition of Dominions of approximately Continental status – and Principalities are then the Regions (such as Wales).**

Eg {(Dominions)}

[Text extracted from ms diagram reproduced above:]

			A~
			Eurasia
			|
			|C
	North America				China
			?Sinai
Latin America			☼			South Asia (India)
	(C&S) Africa				Australasia	(incl SE Asia & Pacific)
			a~
			|
			Antarctica
			C

*[See last previous entry]

**[Paragraph repeated from last previous entry]

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{Government Circles Revised}[31st October 1989]

 [Redbook6:343][19891031:0008]{Government Circles Revised}[31st October 1989]

10891031.0008

*

Note** abolition of the concept of ‘clusters’ within the Ward – amalgamation of (extended) family and friends-with-neighbours.

This compensates for the recognition of Dominions of approximately Continental status – and Principalities are then the Regions (such as Wales).

[Text extracted from ms diagram reproduced above:]

			Individuals Angels	(Universe) Seraphim
			|
	Family & Friends Archangels		C		(Galaxies) Cherubim
		r~		s~
			Creation
Wards Virtues	–	g~	☼	m~	–	World{(s)} Thrones
			Ophanim
		j~		u~
	Districts Powers		a~		Provinces Dominions
			|
			Regions Principalities

*{cf [[Redbook6:311-312][19891013:0941f]{Crucifixion and Love [continued (6)]}[13th October 1989],] 312}

**{(ie above on [[Redbook6:342][19891030:1728]{Booklet Circle (2)}[29th October 1989],] p342) [(last previous entry)}

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