Altered consciousness vs. increased consciousness

This is from a blog that hates me. It has nothing to do with me. I'm just lifting it because it's a theme I tend to gravitate towards and write about now and again:

This is a brief follow-up to my earlier post. It’s one thing to spontaneously experience an altered state of consciousness, quite another to practice various techniques designed to actively trigger or cultivate an altered state of consciousness. I think the latter is foolhardy. It exposes you to malevolent spiritual forces that are more powerful that you. Once you open that door, you may not be able to close it.

Even in the case of a spontaneously altered state of consciousness, that still needs to be scrutinized (e.g. 1 Jn 4:1-3).

There is truth in this statement, but it also presents a very common limited view of 'altered consciousness.'

A Christian can *increase* consciousness without necessarily altering their consciousness. You can alter your consciousness by smoking pot or getting drunk or doing some more hardcore drug. This usually lets the spirits in *because there is no control* on the part of the person taking in the consciousness altering substances. There may not even be much of a developed essential core in the individual to fall back on once their surface personality is wiped off the map.

For instance, some people take a recreational drug or get drunk and they're pretty much still the same person, just some motor skill deterioration and what not. Others take a drug or get drunk and they metamorphose into an explosively angry human pit bull or a totally inappropriate quasi-rapist...or worse. The former has an essential core built up, to some degree. The latter is hollow, so to speak, and thus at the mercy of channeling the spirits unimpeded.

But this isn't serious spiritual development or the way to any kind of spiritual development.

In serious spiritual development you really don't want to *alter* your consciousness. You actually want to *increase* your consciousness, or, to put it more plainly, you want to be more awake.

A person has to be ready for it though. A person who is not ready for it could just end up building up features of their fallen nature. Or, prior to that - with little discernment - they could just connect with a teaching/teacher/group that is offering devil-inspired nonsense or worse.

Here's where it can get tricky. When you test your limits for being awake you provoke all the features of your inner fallen nature. You also attract the ire of the world and the attention of the devil. Fun!

Those are the three fronts of the battle that make up spiritual warfare.

This is not necessarily letting demonic forces into you (though admittedly it can seem that way, for anybody who has experienced it). It's just simply becoming known as a soldier of Christ on the spiritual battlefield. Regeneration itself effects this. You're no longer a tame slave in the devil's kingdom going along with the flow. You're now noticed and a threat. The key is having a basic degree of understanding of what is going on and having a basic degree of control that you are able to operate from.

I.e. you need knowledge and you need being. That is to say, we are ignorant and we are weak. We generally don't even know what the features of our fallen nature are. Talk about being an easy victim, when you don't even know what you are in bondage to. But even once we get knowledge of them we find that we are very weak in our ability to go against them.

Individuals - Christians - don't even usually get to this point unless they are able to basically survive it. Having discernment for what is true. Seeing what is on-the-mark and what is off-the-mark. Having a basic level of internal development which is similar to regeneration by the word and the Spirit but is more a basic level of internal awakeness.

In my experience - and others I know - you are naked at first on the battlefield. You are pretty much at the mercy of the forces you are up against. Though obviously you have some protection or you'd be jumping out a window or something. This is where God and the Bible come in. I instinctively avoided such things until I was regenerated by the word and the Spirit. Though I was always working and developing towards it. But the real thing, where you provoke limits in a serious way, I avoided. Until I had the Spirit of Christ in me. Even then I didn't know how naked I was on the battlefield. Eventually you have to don the armor of God. With experience you learn you can't proceed on your own and that you need the armor of God including prayer.

At that point though it's easy to back off, feeling you're already 'there.' Moving forward into that battle needs a degree of valuation for the activity and the goal that is a whole battle on its own. Easier to become a fat monk pouring over the same books - old ground - until death sneaks up on you...

In this post I have not mentioned any teachings or 'schools' or material or influences or anything like that because really a person has to find that on their own. It requires development and a degree of separation from the world. You have to get knocked down pretty good by life too. You have to see your own nothingness. You have to have help, really, from God to even get out of the unconscious patterns of life. This touches on higher aspects of time as well that I won't go into (I have before on this blog though!)...

Suffice to say *increased consciousness* (or will, or conscience for that matter) is not the same as what is commonly known as *altered consciousness.*

"You must learn of the sacraments!" they shouted to Christian from the sidelines of the Way that is straight and narrow

Of course one(CT or whoever) would think Winzer is FV if they are a baptist, because we who adopt infant baptism are seen as a type of Romanist no matter what our views on Regeneration/Justification are just because of our belief that baptism can further bless or further curse, baptism DOES SOMETHING in our view, which baptists totally disagree with and hate! CT should take a break from FV and get back to studying the sacraments...OOPS! I mean.."THE ORDINaNCES" :P

The Holy Spirit Himself is my teacher regarding what is symbolized by baptism and the so-called Lord's Supper. The Holy Spirit doesn't say it is about crackers and grape juice. Any more than you are supposed to actually eat Jesus' flesh. Jesus kind of disabused the apostles of that notion as Scripture tells us. Neither did the more bright Reformers like Zwingli and Calvin think it was about crackers and grape juice. The problem with the Reformers on this subject is they feared man more than God and taught what they knew to be shallow nonsense so as not to upset man in such a politically tense time.

Of course there's also more going on regarding 'sacraments.' For them to be so entrenched in Christian experience it has to be due to there being different levels of Christian experience (a subject establishment Christians suppress with the same vehemence they suppress any talk of spiritual warfare or the subject of regeneration by the word and the Spirit itself). The unregenerate, or the regenerate-though-shallow, who by constitution gravitate towards ritual, need their ritual sacraments. It's kind of funny that there are only two for them and one of them is a once and done experience. Actually one can make the case that they cling to the lone remaining 'sacrament' as a way to wash their hands of any necessity to make any effort at all in accumulating the Spirit and being in union with Christ (and of course their justification is it is not *our* effort, yet once regenerated you have *ability* to make efforts, pilgrim). Really, when seen in this light, the Christians who champion ritual sacraments are the most willfully delinquent Christians among us.

So what has the Holy Spirit taught me regarding the 'sacraments' (and did He talk to me audibly and in the King's English? ha ha, yes, it's always fun mocking the work of the Holy Spirit, isn't it, churchians?). Oh, that parenthetical aside is the 'mean' side of me. I'm trying to not be so brutal on this blog.

Well, it's a hard subject to approach, simply because it comes under the category of 'talking out of school.' And why are we not suppose to 'talk out of school'? For the same reason Scripture tells us not to cast pearls before swine.

So it's a hard subject to approach. I'm really left to approaching the subject by citing the rare instances where mainstream Reformed Theology touches on the subject. For instance, in Grudem's Systematic Theology he touches on the subject of baptism being an ongoing process and being about accumulating the Spirit. He does it mostly in a foot note, but it is there. It's kind of silly for me to have to cite Grudem, but there it is. As for the so-called Lord's Supper, that is a subject - regarding the deeper understanding of it - that Reformed Theology really avoids altogether. It wasn't a good start when the apostles themselves thought Jesus was talking about cannibalism. That is the revealed word of God kind of signaling to us that the deeper teaching is rare and not for everybody. Available to anybody, but not for everybody. Probably not mandatory for salvation either, but there is degree of reward in Heaven. (The word 'probably' doesn't even need to be in that last sentence.)

So, swine, if you ever begin to lose your desire to be swine, and you begin to value things of higher value than barely edible garbage and slop, just know that the higher teaching exists and is available to anyone with the will to seek it.

In 'be awake' and 'love your enemy' is a world of sophisticated mystical doctrine. Mystical in regards to the mystical union with Christ.

To find the practical teaching you need to begin to fear God more than you fear man. When you fear God alone you don't fear man. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

(And see this post:

http://electofgod.blogspot.com/2011/08/summit-vs-foundation.html

to make sure you don't go getting too crazy... Though you may have to get crazy for a league or two to get at what you need... Ironically to get to where you fear God alone you will seem like a rebel to all that people hold dear, though you will just be a rebel to the world and to the Devil and to your own inner fallen nature.)

The Praise of the Holy Scriptures

"It is not only an armor, but also a whole armory of weapons, both offensive and defensive; whereby we may save ourselves and put the enemy to flight. It is not an herb, but a tree, or rather a whole paradise of trees of life, which bring forth fruit every month, and the fruit thereof is for meat, and the leaves for medicine. It is not a pot of Manna, or a cruse of oil, which were for memory only, or for a meal's meat or two, but as it were a shower of heavenly bread sufficient for a whole host, be it never so great; and as it were a whole cellar full of oil vessels; whereby all our necessities may be provided for, and our debts discharged. In a word, it is a Panary of wholesome food, against fenowed traditions; a Physician's shop (Saint Basil calleth it) of preservatives against poisoned heresies; a Pandect of profitable laws, against rebellious spirits; a treasury of most costly jewels, against beggarly rudiments; finally a fountain of most pure water springing up unto everlasting life. And what marvel? The original thereof being from heaven, not from earth; the author being God, not man; the inditer, the holy spirit, not the wit of the Apostles or Prophets; the Penmen such as were sanctified from the womb, and endued with a principal portion of God's spirit; the matter -- verity, piety, purity, uprightness; the form -- God's word, God's testimony, God's oracles, the word of truth, the word of salvation, etc.; the effects -- light of understanding, stableness of persuasion, repentance from dead works, newness of life, holiness, peace, joy in the holy Ghost; lastly, the end and reward of the study thereof -- fellowship with the Saints, participation of the heavenly nature, fruition of an inheritance immortal, undefiled, and that never shall fade away: Happy is the man that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that meditateth in it day and night."

[From the translators of the Authorized - King James - Version to the readers. Found this excerpt here: http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/preface-to-the-king-james-version-quote-1.html ]

A great pageant of religion

Ha, ha... Sitting here listening to Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams it came to me that all of history, particularly in mind the totalitarian movements of the last hundred years, is a great pageant of religion, only the religion of the Kingdom of Satan and its unconscious though also willful followers. A great pageant of idol worship and human sacrifice. All of it.

And what I mean is it is *actually* religion. All the effort and striving put into it, to effect such outcomes, such tyranny, such suffering. Religious activity. As if human beings can do nothing else. Just as we are either in the Kingdom of Satan or in the Kingdom of God, no in between, no neutral position, just so we can do nothing else but worship in either Kingdom.

Don't read this and say "obvious." It's not obvious. It's actual *religious* activity. Not political, not war, not revolution, not ideological strife, but underneath it all...religion. Human beings can engage in nothing else. The goals are the same, create as much human suffering and death as possible to feed the Kingdom of Satan. They'll sport different ideologies, different justifications, different historical resentments, etc., but the goals are the same underneath. See the church of Communism, the church of Nazism, the church of Italian Fascism, the church of Mao, the church of the Khmer Rouge. These were big productions. They aren't easy to get started. The usual is a more low level of scattered activity here and there. A low boil of hedonism, say. Or what have you.

Summit vs. Foundation

The problem is the moment a seminary level Christian thinks of the possibility of jumping out of the surface level intellectual doctrinal nursery (and I am posing a seminary level Christian that is on-the-mark with biblical doctrine) they think - and their peers think - that they, by default, have to jump into a downgrade on doctrine or new age this or that. They're thinking in the wrong direction.

They are thinking like they are on a summit and any other direction is down. No, they're on a foundation, and the direction to go is up, as in building on the foundation.

One of the fathers of the Dutch Second Reformation, Willem Teellinck, is said to have become a mystic in later life. Something tells me, his having attained the level of being able to be on-the-mark with pure biblical doctrine, that he didn't abandon that foundation but built upon it. Yes, I'm sure he freaked out his contemporaries, to use a modern term, but it's not difficult to freak out Christians with a shallow level of understanding of what is to be built upon the foundation of pure biblical doctrine (pure biblical doctrine being five solas, doctrines of grace, classical Covenant - Federal - Theology).

Of course 'mystic' is a word with as many meanings as the tangled foliage of an Amazonian forest; though, as Reformed Christians, we can keep it simple and cite the unio mystica, i.e. the mystical union with Christ.

The shallow, who think they are standing on that summit, rather than on a foundation, will cite the 'means of grace'. What is the means of grace? The word of God. OK, so far. What else? The two sacraments. Oh, so, the faith is about ritual. That would follow, if you are a shallow Christian who thinks you are standing upon a summit of understanding of the faith with no where to go but in a downgrade fashion downward, then empty ritual until the return of the King would be the order of the day. Empty ritual justified as being not-empty, usually appealing to the presence, somehow, someway, of the word of God as being part of the ritual.

No, the faith isn't about ritual. For instance, Jesus said watch and be awake. This is infinitely more meaningful in regards to building on the foundation of regeneration and justification and faith and knowing the Truth than ritual.

Jesus said love your enemies. The shallow on the summit can only see this in moralizing terms, if they choose to recognize the command at all.

Yet to a mystic, a true mystic who has understanding of the word of God and is standing upon that aforementioned foundation, can see everything in just these two commands: be awake, and love your enemies.

In esoteric Christian teaching these two commands are called 'conscious shocks' (because they aren't mechanical shocks), because they are things you have to *do.* And with regeneration comes ability to do.

The shallow on their perceived summit, performing their ritual, are already mocking such a notion. Their shallow minds have a vast store of downgrade phenomena to free associate with such notions. (The mocking is a sign of the spirit of disobedience, by the way. It's not good.) Teellinck no doubt was mocked. I have no idea what Teellinck got into, but let's assume, again, that he didn't start worshiping crystals, and let's assume he began to focus on the teachings of Jesus that the seminarians are blind to (and let's assume he did it while standing on the foundation of regeneration and justification and faith and an understanding of pure biblical doctrine).

But who really cares about shallow, mocking Christians.

A mystic, pursuing union with Christ to ever greater degree, fears God alone; and when you fear God alone you don't fear man. Man the mocker. Mockers of the end times.

Bottom line on so-called sacraments

Bottom line, people who have been regenerated by the word and the Spirit don't have any reason to care about ritual water baptism or the so-called Lord's Supper. Why would we? We've been baptized by the Holy Spirit Himself, and we have union with Christ Himself. Visual parables, or whatever, are for those who need them, but the bar is raised a bit higher than ritual in real Christianity, and any who have had ritual performed on them need to at some point engage the actual word of God, which - the churchians need to admit - is something most self-identified Christians never do in a serious way; including academic Christians and church leaders who engage endless Christian books yet never the actual word of God in a serious way.

Will Kinney exposes the devil's spirit in James White

James White was stung - by his own admission - by some men who approached him at some talk he had given and told him he didn't give the impression of brokenness. I.e. he didn't give the impression of being a regenerated Christian.

White is an example that you can be on-the-mark all you want regarding doctrine but if you've yet to have your vanity, and pride, and self-will broken and you've yet to humble yourself to the word of God you can be a walking computer regarding doctrine all you want, but you aren't saved.

A love for the word of God which has the authority of God in it (the Received Text), not the authority of man (scholars or any other men constructing texts from myriad corrupt manuscripts) is a foundational mark of regeneration. (Also, it should be noted, having a love for other believers is a foundational mark of regeneration, and White gives himself away here as well. He hates Christians who hold to the Received Text. He compares them to Muslims often. He mocks them. He mocks them for the sole reason that they hold to the Received Text.)

White has an abiding hatred for the Received Text. He claims he doesn't hate it, but his words and his emotions give him away. He even stated in one of his internet shows that when he was in England he visited the library or museum that keeps editions of his favorite corrupt manuscripts - satanicus and vaticanus - and then he said he noticed not far away in another glass case was an original edition of the 1611 Authorized Version and that the fact that it was in the same room with his precious corrupt manuscripts made him "sick."

This is a devilish soul.

See and hear Will Kinney expose White's spirit of disobedience.

White even turns red in this video. It reminds me of the pictures of Vladimir Lenin days and hours before his death where he began to take on the physical appearance of a demon already in the fires of hell.

And count the times White engages in mocking Kinney's intellect, as if White, or any of his seminary educated peers, with his one course in See it and Say it in Biblical Greek, makes him anything close to the translators of the AV1611.

You wonder why the visible Christian church is so shallow these days? Look at this wet church leader and educator screaming into his microphone defending his wet vanity and worldly pride, all in the service of demanding that the word of God needs him more than he needs it.

Postscript: There is another aspect to White and his position among other so-called church leaders and educators. None of his peers ever remark on Whites immaturity. Set the manuscripts issue aside. White has the maturity of a junior high school kid. On his internet show his producer, on air, told him a woman was on the line who wanted to talk with him because she was very depressed. White proceeded to giggle at the woman for about fifteen minutes, mocking her based on her supposed craziness and ignorance in not going to her pastor with such an issue. Giggling like a little boy at this woman and her request.

White has recently picked up on using the word 'shallow' (which he got from my use of it on this blog) in describing his doctrinal opponents. This is always the danger in using language in a creative or unique way in a church Christian environment. They inevitably pick up on your language and rather than being influenced by the language to see themselves a bit they use the language in their own self-serving manner remaining dead asleep to themselves. That White's peers seem to think there is nothing wrong with him exposes them as well. May all such shallow, mocking church 'leaders' and 'educators' get their just reward, and may it be a great surprise to them when it happens.

Reformed theologians against body, soul, and spirit

This is true for the person who wrote it, and this isn't a statement that says truth is relative, I simply mean that for this person what he has written here is true for him.

It's certainly not true by the tribunal of Scripture or by the experience of obviously many regenerated Christians.

One thing we can't do as Christians, though, is deny other Christians' experience. Doing that is similar to the non-believer telling a Christian that he isn't a Christian, or that he doesn't even understand Christianity (said in a way to deny the Christian's professed faith). It borders on a serious boundary crossing act to say such a thing, and maybe is a wicked transgressing act for which the person who does it will get slammed pretty good by the Almighty in time. I.e. it's a degree or form of denying the work of the Holy Spirit.

One point about dichotomy vs. trichotomy: we don't mold doctrine based on concerns it could be taken wrongly. This is merely justification for a Christian to deny doctrine that stings him.

Another point: when we physically die we leave our bodies as a complete microcosmos, i.e. as body, soul, and spirit. More or less consolidated, more or less developed. Theologians seem to want to leave out 'body' in what leaves the flesh body.

1Co 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

So in death we are still a contained body, soul, and spirit. Our spirit will be connected with the Holy Spirit of the Kingdom of God or with the spirit of disobedience of the Kingdom of Satan.

More on true false idols (yes, 'false idols' is redundant, but many don't know idols are all false)

To really see the depth of true false idols as opposed to temptations (money, sex, power) see if expiation of the inherent sense of guilt in fallen human beings is occurring. Environmentalism is a good example in our day. It includes the deification of 'Gaia' or Mother Earth. "We must sacrifice for the Earth. We are nothing. If you don't sacrifice for the Earth we will have to kill you." Cultish. Sacrifices are demanded from all and given willingly from active adherents.


Multiculturalism is another. It is the old worship of the noble savage by another name. With the twist of self-flagellation. "That North African Muslim immigrant just raped my daughter, but it's OK, I deserve it. We all deserve it." If the noble savage burns down their very neighborhood the worshipers of that idol accept it. Their idol can't mock them enough. It feeds their expiation of guilt.


Leftist politics is another, where the state (socialism, communism, fascism) becomes God (is idolized, fetishized, worshiped); and sacrifices - including human sacrifice, sometimes to the degree of genocide - are made to it. The state can't torment them enough. Can't kill them enough. Can't tyrannize over them enough. It expiates their inherent sense of guilt.


All the above expiates fallen human beings' inherent sense of guilt. They can't bring themselves to recognize their Creator, or the Mediator Jesus Christ, but they still feel a strong need for expiation of their inherent guilt. So they turn to the creation rather than the Creator. And humans and human institutions.


There is a category of false idol that seems more shallow which is the cult of personality that happens in the entertainment/celebrity fascination area. You see it in politics too, of course. Rock stars are the generic term. Both words metaphorical - even biblical - words for Jesus Christ. But nobody makes sacrifices to Lady Gaga (I don't think) like they do to multiculturalism.