Seraphim Rose - Tumblr Posts

“We have to be aware that what is being pounded in upon us is all of one piece; it has a certain rhythm, a certain message to give us, this message of self-worship, of relaxing, of letting go, of enjoying yourself, of giving up any thought of the other world... It is actually an education in atheism. We have to fight back by knowing just what the world is trying to do to us...”

– Fr. Seraphim Rose

I'm curious (asking in good faith!): why aliens would be demons? Also, do you think this would also be true for unicellular creatures from another planet?

Aliens are demons. The aliens I am referring to with this statement are specifically extraterrestrial intelligent lifeforms, not including simple organisms like unicellular life forms possible on Mars or one of Jupiter’s moons.

I will try to answer this with my perspective as an Orthodox Christian.

A lot of the evidence we have for extraterrestrial contact come from UFO sightings and anecdotal accounts of alien kidnappings and experimentation. I agree with the Orthodox saints that have said these “proofs” are demonic manifestations that are called evidence of extraterrestrial life because modern society has rejected the Christian framework and theology regarding the spiritual realm. In short, secularists and materialists reject the idea that aliens are demons because they’d have to agree with the idea that there is a spiritual realm that can interact with the material realm.

The devil doesn’t want people to know he exists, because it’s easier for him to fight us when we’re unaware of his existence. You don’t protect yourself from an enemy unless you realize he exists.

If we look at the oldest stories of early church fathers’ battles against demonic attacks, we actually find their accounts of demonic manifestations to be very similar to modern accounts of alien encounters and UFO sightings. UFO sightings often speak of objects that “materialize” and “dematerialize,” always with the aim of awing and confounding people. UFO phenomena also report the strange mingling of physical and psychic characteristics in them. Some people speak of alien abductions, “time loss,” and “memory gaps” but even in the Gospels we read how Christ Himself allowed the devil to abduct Him and tempt Him after His forty days of fasting in the wilderness.

There is a book by St. Seraphim Rose that has a whole section focused on this topic called Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend reading it. A dear friend posted the PDF file of the book in the book club server as well.

"Atheism, true ‘existential’ atheism, burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God whose ways are so inexplicable even to the most believing of men, and it has more than once been known to end in a blinding vision of Him Whom the real atheist truly seeks. It is Christ who works in these souls. The Antichrist is not to be found in the great deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips. Nietzsche, in calling himself antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ…"

~Fr. Seraphim Rose

"For years in my studies I was satisfied with being 'above all traditions' but somehow faithful to them... When I visited an Orthodox church, it was only in order to view another ‘tradition! However, when I entered an Orthodox church for the first time (a Russian church in San Francisco) something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said that this was 'home, that all my search was over. I didn't really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me, and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning its language and customs.... With my exposure to Orthodoxy and to Orthodox people, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal - even a Person - sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ."

☦︎ Saint Seraphim Rose, who is commemorated on the 2nd of September; the date of his departure from this world in 1982.

Hieromonk Seraphim Rose

“When conversion does take place the process of revelation occurs in a very simple way: a person is in need, he suffers, and then somehow the other world opens up. The more you are in suffering and difficulties and are desperate for God, the more He is going to come to your aid, reveal Who He is, and show you the way to get out.”

-Fr. Seraphim Rose-

Once one accepts reason as the standard of truth, you have to follow it all the way. And that is why, as we are examining these religious thinkers, we see that one generation holds on to more of the past and thinks that is rational. The next generation subjects that to criticism and holds on to less, but thinks there's still something left. The next generation destroys all that, and thinks there's very little left. And that generation resembles [overturns?] the next one.

As long as you believe that reason is capable of giving you truth, you have no argument against it. And that's why there was no one; even the ones who were defending Christianity were arguing on the same rationalistic terms. It's the same thing that Dr. [Alexander] Kalimiros talks about: that between Orthodoxy and the West there is this gulf because in the West they are all talking in the same language, the Protestants, Catholics, sectarians, atheists; it's all the same language. They're all used to taking reason as the standard, even when they do not take it all the way, because they're scared to go too far, most people; still, they have this rationalistic atmosphere in common.

And in that atmosphere you cannot escape.

You have to admit that reason is capable of truth; and, therefore, when your enemy has a very good argument, you have to grant that that's true. If it's true, he explains away your faith. But in Orthodoxy, reason has an entirely different function which we'll talk about later.

And so we'll see also in one of the next lectures that the history of our world in the last 200 years is a continuation of a kind of dialectical process whereby reason overthrows everything in the past and finally destroys itself. That is, reason must destroy itself once it is given the license to be the standard of truth. That's why this Enlightenment Age seems now so naive.

Another reason which acted for the overthrowing of this world-view is that the loss of the whole spiritual tradition and spiritual experience which we can see by the very fact that reason is made the standard -- which means they lost the spiritual tradition -- this loss made men actually hopeless, helpless before the negative criticism of reason, which you see in Voltaire, being very pathetic in his defense of some small part of the old tradition.

And also made them unaware of non-rational influences which actually act upon the rationalists themselves. Later on people will become more aware of this, and that's when reason actually destroys itself, in our own time. And also they did not see when demonic powers intervened because they don't believe anymore in demons. There's no -- these people weren't even arguing for the existence of demons anymore.

Orthodox Survival Guide Seraphim Rose

(Via Gebre Menfes Kidus)