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CHAPTER NINE

 

CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONSEQUENCE:

 VITAL EMBLEM OF THE CREATOR

 

The very Earth is Full of the Glory of the Lord

as the Waters Cover the Sea:

What is Coming is the Realisation of this Fact!

(Habakkuk 2:14)

 

THE SPIRIT OF MAN

in the Realm of Consequence

Causes elicit consequences. That is the nature of this world's system of operation. Characteristics are indited, consequences may be indicted. Things follow. Order and organisation is instituted; results are constituted. It is well to be awake in this world, not only in practical things, but in thinking about them (cf. Causes).

Consciousness is not uncaused. It is a consequence. But of what ?

It is a display unit based on the fact that life is designed as now so clearly attested in its physical interstices, unitary results, mutually adapted but highly disparate realms, command language in DNA and the conceptuality implicit in command, while its one language is a correlate of disciplined mind and its capacity to order AND have what it to BE ordered to hand, in mutually integral operation in this setting,  makes mere nonsense of its denial. Ordered, organised, mutually efficient, conceptually recognisable, legally directed, linguistically oriented materials are not those which come from nothing, or any variety of it, from a realm of disorder or a schema that has no scheme. This anti-scientific hypothesis, which seeks the MOST unlike and non-correlative areas for the cause and source of highly specific and particularised results, is not mere mockery. It is oblivion of method, scientific method (cf. Scientific Method, Satanic Method and the Model of Salvation).

We have seen these things in detail in Design an Destiny... for example, and in a broader verificatory mode in LIGHT DWELLS WITH THE LORD'S CHRIST, Who Answers Riddles and Where He is, Darkness Departs.

Our current interest is more specialised. It is in the field of consciousness, that one of a whole division of bugbears of the naturalistic, magic hypothesis, one where we ponder results without due and alignable cause!

Consciousness, then, is a mirror of design, an elegant exhibit of the mental origin (to name but one facet of the whole basis of life) which has a mental resultant. It enables perception as a UNIT, beyond and over the myriads of cells, organised into a meaningful consequence. It is the vivid correlative of the DNA, which mirrors mind in its linguistic and command conceptions which are its milieu. Just as this has the modus operandi clearly spelled out for the merely physical, so consciousness has the vitality of the thinker who made it all, mirrored direct. The kind of origin is here simply brought to light, just as the kind of origin of a painting is brought to light when in the lustre of the colours, the dappling or diffusion of light, the reflection of a thousand minor things bring to the mind which has understanding, comprehension of what the artist has in MIND. From mind to mind it leaps, by material media.

It is always so. You simply have to watch ANY medium, such as a smile (materially visible), with the understanding given you, to discern what it MEANS. It is useless to talk of many relevant muscles as if this WERE it; they are a means, an operative sub-unit. We smile. We know the implications. We have to discern them when another does so, by correlation with what is in the totality of life, the disposition of mind, the cast of thought behind it.

Of what kind is this smile ? Is it cynical, wry, ironic, happy, abandoned, demure or dismissive ... and so on ? You do not immerse yourself in irrelevant nonsense once you are aware of the dimensions available. Instead, you use whatever is material inputs are available, as a mere index, then consider the context, the configuration of heart and so on. It is all a matter of relevance,  closely co-ordinated thought to the intimacies and elements of the case: it is not a question of absurd and blind reductionism.

In the case of man's consciousness, since he is made in the image of God, there is no limit, in principle that is, to the extent to which he may be able to consider the options and the implications of divine work and action. That is to say, not that man is as wise as God, for there is a vast distance there, but simply this: that man is given a capacity to move in the relevant realm of thought, of mind, of life, in his endeavours to understand his way, himself, the cosmos and the world,  space and race, grace and disgrace.

This operational magnificence, this questing capacity, this ability to seek and to find, while it often has rebuttals when presumption pronounces, is the direct correlative of God's creation. You are efficient in this realm precisely BECAUSE it is from this that, in spirit, you come;  for this you are made: in this you have your being.

Consciousness is the enablement of integral inherence in it: that is, by this you are able to look around, find yourself comfortably placed, even enjoy the order and the composure of things, and above all, find in their source, the sufficient cause of your being, your needs, your obligations, your conscience, and the sharply defined words which come not only in DNA for operational action at the physical level, but for that at the spiritual level,  applied to the mind, for your co-operation or otherwise with that great Spirit. These words attest themselves only in the Bible (cf. SMR Ch. 1 for example, and in the last two references above),  definitively indicating the Creator who is filled with might and wisdom, source of logic, ground of causation as made operative in our particular universe.

Consciousness, then,  is the screen of mind, the point d'appui of the type of being that you are, the receiver of broadcast both of the body, the mind and the spirit, your own, that of othersx and of God Himself. Again, it is the locus and focus of operations by which you plan to engage in action. You find your priorities, your penetration of a situation, your overview, your perspective, and you apply it.

Such is the munificence of liberty with which our race is endowed, that we are able to do many things in this mode of consciousness. We may elect to deceive others by subtle or brazen lies, to undeceive them by conscientious and industrious labour, to deliver them  from deceit, to bring blessing or even cursing on them,  to be kind and considerate or rank and rash,  filled with ambition as many political and military conquerors yield their minds to become, or meek yet buoyant for the Lord.

That liberty by no means allows us to act as gods, though without any doubt whatsoever, it is precisely this which has brought on man the majority of his woes. He attempts it, but cannot carry it through. Much of the woe in modern politics is just this, that man cannot be a god, acts often in his delusive illusions as if he were, and history finds him out.

Eve started it; Adam followed it, and rank actions and vile deeds, contrary to our design, grossly neglectful of our God - He IS the same whatever is done with Him, as it was with Christ who was resurrected after doing His divine duty as self-defined in the Trinity, out of love for His creation, man - have belaboured history as if it were a very prodigy of folly. It is not all or always so: but like plagues, fevers, diseases, these distresses and follies of soul, fractures of the very coherence of spirit, have come and even been desired by many, whose preference is power above glory, or command above reality.

That this ends in hell is obvious, unless there be repentance. Someone does not love God ? so heaven is hell for that person. Another will not face reality ? so confused conflict and impacts are natural for that person. His heart being in rebellion,  there arise smashes of objectives, while wily,  wilting additions or dominating subtractions which are a foretaste of ending, like Autumn leaves, come in their season, to be strewn over the way of spiritual abandon.

Weeds have replaced wisdom and works substituted for wonder and worship, merely mismatch land and plan, so that the patch is overgrown, and in the end, with much aborted, a disgrace. Liberty allows all this; but never requires it. Rationality can be confused amid all this, but never permits it (cf. SMR Ch. 3). Rather it leads to God who leads to His chosen way, not dictated, but directive, dynamic and shrouded in glory, like the sun in multiplied colours amid clouds, as it shines.

Consciousness is wedded to these things; and where diseases OF SPIRIT abound, it may be welded to them, either in actual insanity, or reams of profanity, evil thought, and so slander, or inability to see things straight, the mind festering with fairy tales uttered from solemn faces and other farces. These come to occupy what had been a living soul, now a spectre of imminent death, however fat the wallet or conceited the heart.

In Glory, Vainglory and Goodness, this topic of consciousness and correlatives was broached, and it is well here to have it before us. There are some variations for impact from the original. We here add for it, a heading.

 

THE COLLEAGUES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

 Consciousness is a matter of vast concern to the unruly. HOW does it arise as something different from directed mail, from directed ingredients, directing all things ? WHY does it work as it does, in acute correlation with that of which man is conscious, such as stars, and cars, communication and concept, physical and chemical law, aesthetic conceptualisation and artistry ? If it has to be, why is it such an indubitable component in conceptual parallel to many things, all with their own systems, significance and significations, and what leads it from what is, to what ought to be!

Seeking to find from materialism - that naive insistence on the material component as if it were all, when in fact in consciousness it is necessary to have validity for thought before you can have any theory about anything at all with warrant, what it is all about - is like seeking to find from a nib, the purpose of a pen. You really need to consider the whole pen. Then you look for this: by what it is being used.

If it cannot be seen, heard, quantified, it is not real ? But is that theory quantifiable ? This is mere antilogy, the antics of angry fluff, the hubris around bluff, making man sneeze unwarranted words.

You move from consciousness as a conveyor, the thing at work, to what it works. What does it work ? It is an enablement for thought, personality projection, communication, symbolisation, reading of symbols, resistance to force, or to breach of law, deliberate false assessment to further illicit motives, deceit, greed, connivance with corruption (that is, what removes the functionality of man by trickery, deception or force, on the basis of desire).

WHY is it such an enablement ? and what is its relationship to the component called conscience ? and what does it so work ?

It is because consciousness is not only a link, as an overseeing part of a multiplicity of systems, all attuned and co-ordinated with the brilliance of a military compaigner, a scientific genius, a mathematical star and an industrial giant (except far more so, the sophistication surpassing man's ability even after thousands of years to get going with his gifts). It is an also interpretive part, formulable in command, functional in creativity, fathoming in address. It can embark on the assessive, whether physically or morally.

Thus we need to pass beyond mere consciousness, an aspect of the human capacity, to the powers which it enshrines, the personalities which it enables and the laws and rules which it admits. We come then to spirit, the name not for a mere graphic, verbal or conceptual awareness, but for the willing, purposing, conceiving, imagining, imaging, surveying, sympathising, hating, loving, corrupt or virtuous producer, according to taste, waste and basting. The products require a producer; the functionalities require what functions and the multi-purpose deployments require what deploys. It is neither a vacuum nor a nullity. It is what has what it takes.

If we are going to consider one part, we must in all order, conceive all of which the element is that part. Consciousness in this broader setting of integral functionality of the type noted above, is merely the screen, the awareness of the powers, of their use, of their usability, including the power to propose, to purpose and to fight. The self-awareness of spirit is a necessary correlative of its capacity to be personal, to be functional as a unit of thought, thrust, plan and assessment.

It is part of what spirit is, and without spirit it would be a mere phantasm, a figment, a thing hanging in the air, with neither physical nor logical roots. That is precisely why secular 'science', that is, the sort of thought which assumes the irrationality of materialism as a preliminary to thought, fails to 'solve' what consciousness is, and talks all around and about it with the daring non-composure of a child walking on the keys of a grand piano.

 

We hear so much about the 'god of gaps' that there is a strong tendency to forget the gaping gap between what is and what is not. What is ordered and systematic and conceptualisable and subject to command by symbols, but only within its own scope, and constructed in logical terms, some implicit, some written, is not a matter of gaps. It is a matter of a chasm between this and the empty naturalistic chatter which assumes everything, from substance to law, from order to logic, from force to fashioning: and provides nothing.

ALL that is required is missing; all that is needed for what is, is not present in the secular world view. The gaps between types of things, always vast in units of information input required, and the conforming ability of each kind that lives, towards various pressures, alike are simple empirical facts. The gaps between each realm of order and of operation and the basis, origin and power to make them, and nothing, the other option, are rather like a choice between a chasm as the source of a mountain peak, and earth with power and propulsion upward in its system.

We have then not a god of gaps, but a gap in place of God, a logical gap, of which all the smaller gaps are mere applications. It is rather like finding a house and four garages, one with a boat, one with another car, one with a space vehicle and one with a robot, and then entering the climate controlled house, and asking how the underlying matter really managed to move from the floor to the walls, from these to the ceiling, from there to the roof, from there to the air, from there back to the basement, from there to the vehicles in the garages, and before there, to the garages, and finding the one questioned becoming slightly impatient with those who do not SEE that OF COURSE it was all like that. Like Topsy, it just was: why worry about how or why! Such science...

The very IDEA of creation is naturally ludicrous, since this is the ONLY way anything of this systematically original and integrated, overall purpose-oriented, law-girt kind ever comes to be, to exist in all empirical reality and systematic thought that does not forsake causality. It is naturally ludicrous for common SENSE is a forbidden word, logic being uprooted while surreptitiously used; and so creation is anathema. Such is the disease of the spirit, the intolerance of the mind, the disposition of the psychic dynamics.  Creation ? oh no! not that, they chant. Their reasonings are treason to rationality. Creation ?

Since you can't use it, it being verboten, excluded, apartheid to the faithless soul, the realm of the forbidden (cf. SMR pp. 150ff.),  then it cannot have happened, even if the sheer majesty of truth cannot be answered, and is not, without it. Indeed, the maverick substitute for thought inherent in naturalism which demands that all has made itself, or needed no making, though their delimitations are clear enough,  resembles an atomic crater.

Yes, there is a gap, the creation on the one hand and the correlative and vast arenas of integrated and multi-functioning powers and wisdom needed to put it there.

There is another: the design*1. Creation, the propulsion into existence, it is one thing. Then, creation more generally involves design, to some extent, and sometimes magnificently. Of course you can doodle on a pad while you talk on the telephone, and that can be fun and in a way, creation. I remember a medical specialist doing that, perhaps frustrated. However this is not the scope of what we actually have. It is rather more than doodling that enables us to converse right now: it involves, logic, symbolic communication, systematic thought, personalities with consciousness, spirits with survey properties, patience, interchange of underlying thought modes without static or at least without tune out, ethical and moral principles duly applied; and this is merely the beginning. Yes, it is more than doodling.

Such a complex, purpose-driven, system-enabled, personally related totality does not create itself, the only other alternative, since matter does not have these qualities, and wanting it to evolve, is not the same as finding it is able to do so! Nor does nothing secure matter in the first place. On this, let us look at an excerpt, below, slightly adjusted for this purpose, considering the obfuscatory art-work of the diligent anti-creationist in the drugs and stimuli of reason-forsaking misalliance with chaotic thought and disenfranchised life.

With such things in mind, we turn now to a series of excerpts from other works on this site, which consecutively explore arenas, worlds, dimensions and perspectives found in such a diversity in such integrality as is ours, before making a final assessment.

 

THE SERIES OF CONSECUTIVE EXCERPTS

THE GENERATION OF THE DISPOSSESSED (Barbs ... Appendix 1)

The Gap in place of God is the emptiness for the fulness, the imagination for the reality, the despair for the triumph, the woe for the wonder. The generation of ashes finds itself fancy for a time; and then the disrepair of the heartless sets in, or the disruption of the dispersed, or the shadows of the illusions, the once gleaming aluminium foil of the pretences and pretensions, the false ideals, the imagined hopes fall twisted, making crazy patterns, some gleaming for the time in the dirt, some "successfully professional", some already visible relics.

And where are those patterns? In the dust. Man disdains his dust and imagines his life is self-productive in the generation of the dispossessed; but the dust is the material and God is the Creator both of dust and of destiny, of soul, and mind, and spirit and emotion, of feeling and of the whole architecture which is the basis of the product called man. Ignoring reality is the stuff of dreams and the site of irrationality.

What is it like? It is like a pen that thinks, but disdains to write, for it conceives there is no author, and it was produced in a fit of abstraction by what is not there. So it is used to dig the fields, and it leaks and it breaks and the maker of pens is disdained, or despised but in any case not considered. Ink-blots are then the least of the troubles, for the 'advanced' case where paper is still considered 'relevant'. The philosophy of the relevant replaces the spirit of service; but relevant to what?

"Just keeping fit, Uncle!" says the young man in Punch, as he goes off to tennis in the days of mere gadding about. "Fit for what!" returns his senior. Fit to be considered, in that case, recklessly irresponsible as his glamour world of self-entertainment misuses the joy of sport by substituting the life of self-satisfying balms, which turn sour. Survival of what? of ashes, of twisted metal, of dirty houses, of broken staircases to the loft, to the skies, so that the light is not seen in the sunken basements, carved out, hewn from below for the purpose?

 

THE FOLLY OF THE MOCKERY

The architecture of the house is ignored.

The schema of the life*2 is disregarded.

it is ignored like dust, returns to dust; but not only to dust.
 
 

THE VISIONARY VICES

The mental wreckage is a destructive act; the visionary vices are a warping distortion, the wild sprees are a frustrated dysfunction, the blindness to fact is a toxic violation of the power to imagine, the assurance of godlike powers is the denial of God, and the denial of God, even when a false god who has no power, no creation and no judgment is imagined, is the assertion of delusion.

Deluged with delusion, what do you expect? Will not even mentally active professional people of discipline in the mental world, show their barrenness in the moral and the spiritual, because they do not understand that it is there.

Immersing themselves in 'Nature', which is somehow made into something real, even a propounder with invisible powers at its disposal, a virtual person, they become infatuated with fiction. This in effect, they seem to see, often speak of as if seeing, rather than observing a series of products inter-related by plan in the multitudes of inter-meshing worlds, with which they live. Ostensibly, they look to the visible, as if a pen worshipped paper when its maker would use it, and the two went off on a spree of finding out what "life is like," ignorant of the purpose and the procedure alike, in writing. It is then like absconding with equipment, with madness for vision and recklessness for reason.

How each part of the face of this 'nature' is pock-marked. Reason arises, mind arises, imagination arises,  freedom, of thought arises, will arises, perception of thought arises, capacity to understand arises, while nothing generates matter or else it needed nothing, just sat there amid its varied imposed laws, a magical phenomenon. Thus, one way and another, Nature becomes its own source and basis. The explanation of any and all is nothing. It is all a matter of nothing. The most profound case ever known of begging the question lies here; it lacks basis and interface, rationality and empirical attestation, can never be done, never shown, the laboratory is ignorant of it, it knows no source for information*3E, and dances to the tune of the dunce's cap, for its bases and interfaces, from first to finish.

Like the emperor's invisible  clothes, there is nothing there. It is naked.

The feelings that go with the exultant trip are those of ruin, when the fling is past, and of ashes, when the fire is burnt. Some fires burn more slowly, and the bitterness of facing death without reason becomes a lust for life that will pay thousands for drugs to extend it just a little. Some rejoice like Solomon in their works (though in Ecclesiastes he saw through its vanity to the truth); but the worker is ignored, and his destiny is like that of any thief. To the productive worker in Song of Solomon, comes this word: "Your own vineyard you have neglected!"

To use the words given: "I have not taken care of my own vineyard" (Song of Solomon 1:6). What if it is not remedied? When judgment is delayed, it is not dismissed.

The dispossessed are repossessed, if not by demons, as we see more and more frequently, in higher and higher profile, then by lurid dynamics, broken systems out of control surging and charging, like an aircraft on one engine, inadequate and only partial; or a power aircraft acting as a glider which looks to the drafts which cannot lift, because it is constructed for power; and because the engines are not there - but only things that happen with a roar, so that no oil or service is provided as the pilotless craft crazes through the skies of life into the oblivion of dramas ending in death.

Perhaps it crashes into other craft before it hits the ground.
 
 

THE STARK HULKS OF MISEDUCATED MISSIONARIES

Stark hulks without life, they are often taught by miseducated missionaries to believe in their sacred selves, their internal fulfilment, their hold on life; so that? so that they may look to their survival as relics, spiritual outcasts, demented meddlers with mind without the knowledge of its place in the hierarchy of the soul, and the place of the soul in the agile vigours of the spirit, and the placement of the spirit in the hands of God who made it: for the realities of fellowship with the One who having given it meaning, means nothing else! (Cf. Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:13).

The escalations of matter, mind, imagination, feeling, personality, spirit with their multitudinous equipment in ever more intricate divisions, as of a firm, directions and instincts, programs and programs suffering intervention, opportunities of understanding and results of ignoring it: these like a vast skyscraper sit in each yard, in each life (cf. SMR 332G-H).

No manager, but abuse, no standing orders but the self, no purpose but to be there, no care but desired receptions from the clouds that pass, no service but what is lusted, no significance but what is assumed, nothing: this becomes the parlance of the place.  It is the generation of nothings because of dispossession; of dispossession because of blindness; of blindness because of sin, and of sin taught, actively instructed, belaboured on the tormented brows, the lost minds and the steely hearts.

WHY, WHY, WHY do these and those horrors happen even with the very young! they ask. Why do so many children murder, why is there no sensitivity of heart, cluster of morals, awareness of significance! Why is the mind dead ?  they ask as they deliver the mind-destroying drugs of their cultural dis-ideals? Why is there no heart ? they query, as they give the cultural substitutes for good, the heart-arrest drugs, since there is no heart is there? only when it is needed!

But does such vain asking after ruin, does this remove the misinstruction, the blindness which led to the collisions with the lampposts on the side-walk, because not only are the eyes shut tightly, but the arrogance of flesh is promoted, promulgated, survival is sainthood and sainthood is getting there, whatever your thing is, whether in work or play or pleasure: getting it.

YOU are the mentor, the mind, the player, the worker, and NOTHING shall interfere with you; because you come from nothing, it is a matter of nothing. SO what is not there is the imaginary source of what is, and what is there is the object of blindness and yet they wonder: WHY! There is no answer from the dismal nothing, the great myth, the self-contradictory illusion; it is time to turn at length to the Producer who leaves 'nothing' of life's blessing to the dead who turn from Him, who however, will not find that nothing which is their desert. (Cf. Proverbs 8:34-36, Isaiah 66:24, John 3:30-36). What is to be found in such a case has nothing to do with nothing but much to do with the reality, and in reality, with mercy dismissed in the spiritual spree, there is judgment.
 
 

THE REPOSSESSION PHENOMENON

Repossession by demons, by malfunctioning systems, abused mentally, physically and certainly spiritually, by social imaginations of community, and pretences of unity, pieces of manufactured specification which surge on without life or meaning, vision upon vision, the visions of death for the blind: such is the call, such is the tenor, to this due result of desecration is the destiny.

Are not the demons of World War I enough, that World War II has to happen; and is not World War III, the Cold War enough without making more specifications for what we will do with the world, as if we had invented it, or ourselves! Will Brussels teach man, will the United Nations become God, will power teach truth, will force make faith, will desolation produce reconstruction, will a US reconstruction-assist Europe manufacture for its pains, a new world, whirled about in the cyclotrons of human hope, resting on the radioactive powers of flesh in a one-world where the environment is desperately stressed!

Why? Because we cannot make it, because we are not God; and His creations die off, and His world is misused, and it cannot be created anew, so it grows old: so the human capital must be conserved, so ever more desperate methods must be devised to make the veteran vehicle, this world, seem capable (cf. Isaiah 51:6).
 
 

IT IS NEVER ENOUGH

It is never enough. There is only one way out of the derelict pretences of a drugged nation, and that is to return to its founder. Even "Advance Australia Fair" once had a verse in which "Christ" at the helm of the nation, was paramount.

More conscious, then, of the lack of conscientiousness which forsakes conscience and is conned into confusion, let us consider the depth and height of the background, which mere process simply represents. Consciousness is a function of a reality which can inject grief into it, or joy, and which has many grounds for either. It is not a mirage, but a picture, a depiction of a multiple-storied works which relates to many others. Mirages do not produce: except perhaps delirium.

*3E

 Above is added. For this, see: Jesus Christ, Defaced, Unfazed: Barrister of Bliss Ch. 4.

 

END OF EXPANDED EXCERPT

 

LIGHTS AND PERFECTIONS THAT ATTEST THEMSELVES  IN CONSCIOUSNESS

What a light therefore is to be found in consciousness: for it tells both weal and woe, enables a directorship in the cockpit of life, astounds the soul, instructs the mind, brings a whole series of vales of discovery, gives methods and means for discovery, enables appreciation and  depreciation, verbalisation and indication. Further, it is a command post and an attack site, to give and to get, a spiritually enabled display screen allied to keys for action at multiple levels, and even these in schematised correlation, dependent on desire and capacity!

What perfection is enabled by the simple fact of this most wonderful quality, consciousness at the human level! By this, not what someone is saying about his dust-bin on Face Book, but what God is saying about man, about his mind, his heart, his spirit, his destiny is to be found. Here is instruction from a book, not this time DNA, but the direct gift of the Maker of it all.

It is well to heed it. It is not for nothing, nor for nothing is it made so testable that it is unlike all science and religion in BOTH being verifiable in multitudes of correlative tests, and applicable to life as it proceeds, without ever varying in its declarations, both concerning the past and the future, and its insistence that every last part of it will be fulfilled (as in Isaiah 41, 43, 48, Matthew 5:17-20).

The perfection is multiple. Thus here we can FIND what is there (you do not need a golden plate or special glasses - it is clearly pronounced) - Isaiah 45:19:

"I have not spoken in secret in a dark place of the earth;
I did not say to the seed of Jacob, 'Seek Me in vain';
I the Lord speak righteousness; I declare thing that are right."

In that very location, God is at pains to make clear things imminent and to come (Isaiah 40-46), vast in chronological distance and nearer, just a few hundred years to come, the principles beyond all, the history to come, many steps ahead and that a little nearer. In this, He is giving view and review. He even foretells the name of the King of Medes and Persians (Cyrus) who will liberate Israel AFTER it has been carried away by Babylon (cf. Isaiah 13-14), and the latter has been vanquished. It is like an opera program, and we who read are the audience, as have generations before us been,  step by step as all is fulfilled before the eyes which test, which see, which transmit concurrence. It indeed has happened.

Prophets were killed for what was said in God's name and did not happen (Deuteronomy 13).  Despite its failings, Israel was well aware of the grounds of authenticity: truth and majesty, mixed with fact and fulfilment in coherence of words from the first. It happened. Israel was conscious of it. Despite it, it killed Christ. The current Gentile is not other; for although Christ the Lord is no more available for physical assault, His people are; and His word can be excluded where its tests leave it in majestic superiority to all. Man is conscious of it.

God is conscious of it.

Man may revolt, or he may repent, and find the truth, and the testimony confirmed within as without.

Consciousness is an occasion of discourse and in the case of man, one of unlimited significance for himself and his race. It was a site for the Lord's  own divine transmission of word and thought to man (cf. Amos 4:13). It is, for man, an outcome of what God has created: of spirit in harness with mind, set in a format of flesh (like a jewel in a jewel case - it sets it off well, but is not at all of the same character). Here is the site for a meeting of minds, or for an explosion of intemperance, as common among mankind.

Linked to conscience (as displayed in Glory, Vainglory and Goodness Ch. 2), it is also an avenue to God. Yet to traverse that avenue, you need permission. The road is free, but its entrance is specific. It is like some roadways where, though their whole construction is already complete and paid for, yet you must conform to the entry by a GATEWAY. The nature of the admission depends on the nature of the maker of the roadway, the author, the authority back of it.

The wonder of perfection would be, if possible, enhanced in this road, in this, that it is not only FREE for entry, but provided on its route, with realities as required (cf. II Corinthians 4, Matthew 6). To be sure, some of this can be painful, for truth disciplines; but that is far better than being merely playful or derogatory. It works. Certainly, the gate to it is very narrow (Matthew 7:15ff.). There is no room whatsoever for any encumbrances, additives. You come in alone and without additives, drugs or reliance on money of any kind. What may be appointed you, this you receive for the way. What may disappoint you, this you bear. It is stringent and free. It costs nothing but sincerity of purpose, realisation of heart and direction of entry. There is no reverse once you are on it. Once you are engendered anew, begotten all over again, regenerated, a close companion of saving faith and repentance, then there is no new DNA-correlative at the spiritual level.

What you are, then this you are; and on this route, what you receive on entry, you receive. It is a KIND of thing. It is a WAY for life; and it is one thing just as you are, and not another. You are made more like Christ, but this is development on basic lines already laid down.

Conscious of these things, you enter or do not.

It is like birth. You are born, or else stay to rot as post-mature. Much of this world rots, and that is why it often stinks, why deeds of desperados, encumbered with the rule of many nations, are so fatuous as to invite incredulity, so unrealistic as to lead one to consider whether it be a dream! It refuses the spiritual restoration necessary for a fallen race, and insists on imagining that the disease is not there, that its results do not/will not happen, and that all can be controlled, as it takes over more and more of the heart, mind, soul and spirit of man.

Essential to this is the control of finance and of expression. Europe's current woes seem set to lead to vast new controls in the former level, while paper money's more and more imminent seeming demise for important transactions, brings nearer efforts for complete financial control, as foretold in Revelation 13. As to the latter,  even the internet's opening to many authorities who would commit acts of piracy on it, and exclude what is not wicked, but merely informative, and that from God, is set to make of it a thing to be overseen by the sightless and invaded by godless harassments of governments. This invasive thrust, even now, speaks at high volume, and ears should not be entirely closed to the closure motion which may also be more and more imminent. China shows it already; other totalitarian governments have shown it in the past, each in its mode and time. Means for an international development in this dereliction of liberty come fast to hand.

Efforts more and more militant, at the control of consciousness, that grand screen, are coming; and in some nations, results are impressively showing intemperance already. Google's fight was not about nothing. Thought police in Orwell are not so strange now; for here is a domain of thought and here is a place for police. On what ground is the morality behind it to be made ? Why! it is what reasonable people think, for some! Reasonable ?*1  culturally demanding, this becomes mere preference where logic is defaced and truth is defiled, yes lies stricken in the street. Such is the regress as our own generation comes more and more to resemble some of the last phases of Israel brought to mind. Yet it does not rest there. This is followed by its rescue, as foretold in Isaiah 59:20, and noted by Paul in Romans 11.

Here, the REDEEMER comes into the midst of the devastation of truth, equity and peace, and be assured, we will be conscious not only of the impudence and impiety of the transgressors who seek control in our schools*2 and thought-expression, but of the Lord's answer, and that not far away to those who would govern Israel, indeed the entire world. This sudden transition you see in Isaiah 59:9-21, especially the later verses, which show us the return of the Lord, for that display of power and rule, depicted in Isaiah 11 and Psalm 72. You find it in Isaiah 66, in Micah 7, in Revelation 19, foreshadowed in Matthew 24:29ff..

The utmost perfection for consciousness comes when the Creator enables one to become conscious not only of evidence and of His presence by His Spirit, given to all Christians (Romans 8:9), but of His destiny for saved sinners (cf. Micah 7:19ff., John 3, Titus 3), where His name has swallowed up shame, since He elected to be stricken with it for us who receive His gift of divine righteousness, so that we might live, and indeed, live for ever.

Strictly, consciousness is not a place for competition of follies and striving ravings, but for the peaceable mandate of God to man, to know Him and to follow Him in this glorious but now doubly stricken creation. It is then that it is a blessing and a place of refinement, where the influences of God enter like the rising tide, and cover the beach with wonder, His!

 

 

NOTES

 

*1 See Classification Bill *2, Freedom, The Nation, the Internet and the Next Generation Ch. 4 .

 

*2

See Ch. 8 above, and Freedom, The Nation, the Internet and the Next Generation which specialises in this sphere.