NOTE FROM JEFF: The ancient prophecies of "doom and gloom" seem to be coming true as I write this now...but why and how is this happening? Surely the Earth has always had volcanic eruptions and earth-quakes, naturally, of her own accord; surely, the sun has its own cycles and variations which affect life here; surely, cosmic energies and celestial bodies have always influenced and interacted with the Earth; surely, we may indeed be in a 'window of alignment' of cosmic geometries and/or passing through a cloud of energetic emanations that only happens every few tens of thousands of years. SURELY all this is true. But HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY distinguish what is 'really' happening from what 'seems' to be happening, given our collective obsession with unreality and the "artificial world of our own creation" that Rachel Carson warned of? Moreover, why does it appear to be that much of the current dooms-day destruction is actually being waged by humans and against humans, using extremely advanced technologies on a par with where Atlantis was at just before she went down (as the story goes). Speaking of stories, what greater story could be told than that of the "Heberu", the ancient nomadic tribe expelled from Egypt from trying to take over there...you know it well, the whole story of THE BIBLE..."God", Jesus, the old and new testaments...the greatest work of fiction ever foisted on humanity and held to be 'true' by so many. Look around...it was all a set-up and we've swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Silly us...it's US who've been creating all the problems. And it's US who are responsible. Surely creative forces infinitely more powerful than us exist; we didn't create the universe or the beauty of the Earth. Part of why we are here is to understand the spiritual responsibility of our creativity and our existence here. To me, it makes a lot more sense to be thinking about doing "inner work" and what the science of chakras is really about, instead of consuming more fictitious bullshit, blaming somebody else for what is happening, and waiting to be "saved" by Jesus or extra-terrestrials...or Robama! Question: is there anything we 'know' or experience that ISN'T in the 'province of the mind.? How do we 'get outside' of our own minds in order to know "reality"?
"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true." Dr. John C. Lilly
THE BIBLE
(Chapter 12 from Beyond Prophecies and Predictions, Moira Timms, 1994)
“…the seven seals are allegorical to each of the seven chakras (energy centers, like valves between the etheric and physical bodies, which are related to the endrocrine system) of the human body. With the opening of each seal comes “revelation” and the opportunity to be purified and transformed by the particular energies released. The more successful we are in handling and transmuting within ourselves (i.e., within each chakra) the intense surge of purifying energy released by the opening of each seal, the less necessary it is for these releases to manifest in the external world as chaos and catastrophe.”
“For no prophecy of scriptures ever originated in the mind of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (II Peter 1:21)
The Bible contains many prophecies and references to “the fullness of time”, “the harvest”, the “latter” or “last days”, the “purification of the nations” and the battle of Armageddon. God spoke clearly in these times (and sometimes not so clearly) through his prophets of the Old Testament, through the disciples who recorded the life and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, and through John’s vision of the Revelation. The various biblical prophecies present warnings to the reader of the signs to watch before the finale, so that all who receive the message might prepare themselves, and be awakened to their spiritual identity and divine heritage. Again, we stress that it is not the end of the world that is predicted, but the end of the Piscean age and present world system. Preparation is needed to achieve sufficient faith, strength, understanding, and purity to make the transition to that promised land of a highly evolved and truly righteous society of the Aquarian, Golden or New Age. It will usher in the final stage of the Yuga, the 26,000 equinoctial cycle, and culminate in the evolution of humanity to a spiritual/fourth dimensional state of consciousness. The Bible records that it has always been God’s way to provide ample time and forewarning before catastrophes or judgments. A renewal of religious interest and spiritual awakening are important signs of the predicted times, and this is happening today.
In the ancient world of the Hebrew prophets, villages and centers of trade and commerce were scattered over an arid landscape of relentless sunlight and hazy barren hills. The prophets who emerged to stir the pulse of conscience were a remarkable breed of men. Wandering between communities and royal cities, they would often appear out of the wilderness areas to warn or admonish, help or advise. They were probably a thorn in the flesh of the populace, feared yet revered, as they spoke out against kings, corruption, and unGodliness. Through His prophets, God spoke directly in those days to people who would hear, and dealt just retribution to those who would not; or so it seemed. It was a simple affair, uncomplicated by the intricacies of technology and media.
A criticism aimed at Biblical prophecies is that describe events of the prophets’ own times. But this would not necessarily disqualify a prophecy from being true for our time, too. You can get a lot of mileage out of the major biblical prophecies because they deal with archetypal myths and images. While the perennial wisdom enables us to transcend the conditions of the world, it is the perennial ignorance that brings down the negative aspects of history that repeat in such predictable patterns. That is to say, failure to live according to natural law and divine will has consequences – returning karma. Biblical prophecy lets people know that God keeps His promises and covenants, and helps them understand more clearly God’s will and the moral standards by which He judges, in order that people may harmonize their lives with them and thereby avoid suffering.
In the visions of the various Hebrew prophets, we see again and again events quite similar, if not identical, to those recorded in the annals of many ancient peoples, several of which are discussed in the chapter on Pole Shift. The prophets quoted below lives just prior to the great cosmic upheavals that appear to have accompanied the “brief anomaly” of magnetic pole reversal around 860 B.C. If events that happened then are about to recur, the prophecy is still good. For example, the Book of Joel, form which the following quotes are excerpted, opens with Joel instructing the people to repeat to as many future generations as possible the prophecy he is about to give on the coming “day of the Lord”:
Joel, c. 820 B.C., “The Earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble; the sun and moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.” (2:10)
“And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord to come.” (2:30-32)
Amos, c. 800 B.C., “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to do down at noon, and I will darken the Earth in the clear day.” (8:9)
Isaiah, c. 775 B.C., “For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine…Therefore I will shake the heavens and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.” (13:10 and 13:13)
Habbakuk, c. 628 B.C., “He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow.” (3:6)
Many centuries later the Gospels were written. They are accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus as written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These men also recorded in a firsthand and informal way very interesting information about the people and customs of two thousand years ago. The culture was still predominantly Greek, with Roman politics and Jewish religion. The political, social and moral attitudes of that time were quite corrupt, not so very different from our own, and the disciples who wrote the gospels originally were just plain folk from all walks of life. Matthew was a former tax collector, and Mark a scholar from a wealthy family. Luke had been a physician, and John (who also later wrote the Revelation) was a fisherman.
One day, on the Mount of Olives in the Judean hills, the disciples asked Jesus privately when the end would be, and what would be the signs of His coming again. Jesus spoke of wars and rumors of wars, of famines, of pestilence, and earthquakes, and said that they would be but the beginning of troubles. He warned of religions persecution; false prophets and imposters claiming to be Christ himself, and performing such heavy miracles that even the wisest might be deceived. He said that unless God intervened, humanity would be wiped out entirely, but that for the sake of the “elect” the time of trouble would be shortened.
In his discussion, Jesus also confirmed the visions of the Hebrew prophets. “Men’s hearts [will be] failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming upon the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” [emphasis added] (Luke 21: 26-27). In this passage, the original Greek word for “heavens” is “ouranos” – the root for uranium. One could read instead, “The powers of uranium shall be shaken. And then shall they see…” Uranium is shaken to produce atomic power. It is a matter of record and certainly a curious coincidence that the first nuclear experiments, detonated in New Mexico desert at Jornado del Muerto (journey of the dead) was called “Project Trinity.” When he beheld, on that fateful day, the awesome release of power wrought by their research, project director Robert Oppenheimer recalled the impact it had upon him. A passage from Sanskrit scripture echoed in his mind – Shiva, the destructive aspect of the Hindu trilogy, saying “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds…” The result of that dynamic fusion, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, was code named “Baby Jesus.” This interpretation correlates with data from the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid – for the date exactly in the center, March 3-4, 1945, indicates the date of the first atomic bomb experiments. Also, the Hopi prophecies say the same thing. In a letter of appeal over the Black Mesa issue, the Hopi elders wrote to President Nixon, “The Great Spirit said that if a gourd of ashes is dropped upon the Earth, many men will die and that the end of this way of life is near at hand.” Matthew, Mark and Luke each report Jesus as saying right after this, “Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away until all be fulfilled.” And it looks very possible.
“Watch therefore, and pray always, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” (Luke 21:36) This was his last advice to his disciples on the subject, for He was speaking also of the events concerning the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, which came about in 70 A.D., and which would have been witnessed by disciples still living at that time.
“And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” (Mark 13:37)
St. John the Divine was the youngest and most beloved disciple of Jesus. He had sat at Christ’s side during the last supper, and it was to him that Jesus entrusted the care of His mother, Mary, during the crucifixion. We know that Jesus was aware that John had been chosen to receive the prophetic vision of the close of the age, because John records at the end of his own gospel that “The saying spread abroad among the bretheren that this disciple (John) was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’” (John 21:23) After Christ’s ascension, the Roman authorities put a finger on John. His preaching activities concerning the new Christian doctrine posed a threat to the establishment religion and the government arranged for him to be forcibly exiled for apostasy. John was banished to the island of Patmos in the Mediterranean, and it was during his later life that he had the vision recorded in the last book of the Bible as “The Revelation.”
The Book of Revelation is an obvious account of some very real future shock, detailing signs of Christ’s second coming and the events that presage the final judgment of humanity. Although interpretation has always been difficult and unsatisfactory, the veils of mystery are gradually lifting, as world events today shed light on much of the allegory. Many volumes would be necessary to explore fully all the aspects of John’s amazing preview, but there are a few highly relevant trends forming today that relate to it.
The Revelation involves a series of happenings that occur in the spiritual world of the heavens. In the first part of the account, John sees a scroll with seven seals, each of which represents an aspect of retribution that must come to pass before the “harvest is gathered”, i.e., the last judgment when the “sheep will be separated from the goats.” The seals are opened one at a time, and the first four release that famous quartet, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, bringing pestilence, war, famine, and death upon the Earth. It is important to understand that the seven seals are allegorical to each of the seven chakras (energy centers, like valves between the etheric and physical bodies, which are related to the endrocrine system) of the human body. With the opening of each seal comes “revelation” and the opportunity to be purified and transformed by the particular energies released. The more successful we are in handling and transmuting within ourselves (i.e., within each chakra) the intense surge of purifying energy released by the opening of each seal, the less necessary it is for these releases to manifest in the external world as chaos and catastrophe.
"CREATIVE RENAVIGATION:
The Karma and Dharma of Being Here Now"
"Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going farther and farther into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world… We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective…Here and there awareness is growing that man, far from being the overlord of all creation, is himself part of nature, subject to the same cosmic forces that control all other life. Man's future welfare and probably even his survival depend upon his learning to live in harmony, rather than in combat, with these forces...the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race.”
Rachel Carson, speech in acceptance of the National Book Award, 1963
"We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all."
Adlai Stevenson, address to United Nations, 1964
“We are blinded by the delusions that rise from our hollow and rotting social order. It is vain pomposity to believe that humanity can advance while the Earth and its native peoples, plants and animals are enslaved, desecrated and destroyed.”
Robert Lawlor, Voices of the First Day, 1992
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” Mark Twain
CREATIVE RENAVIGATION:
The Karma and Dharma of Being Here Now
We live in a vast cosmic context beyond our comprehension as well as our control; paradoxically, after at least a million years in our present form, we as a species find ourselves overwhelmed by an array of problems arising exclusively from our own actions, including the destruction of the human genome and an accelerated “mass-extinction” phenomenon known as industrial civilization, which could prove to be the “final solution” for life on Earth.
No greater problems confront humanity today than those of true self-understanding, individually and collectively; herein are the solutions to the essentially psychological and spiritual issues which threaten the continuity of the human adventure, those of purposive self-destruction, chronic denial, and the deep-seated inability actually to use the best knowledge we already have. These problems are not biological in origin but are the result of “software” anomalies in the human psyche.
If we each had done a lot more inner work, we may never have participated in the development and maintenance of a parasitic world system founded on greed, exploitation and genocide; we may never have funded the evolution of the global military-industrial juggernaut whose primary target is now us; we would have known better than to become mindless addicts and consumers of products, technologies and world-views designed to create disease and death. We would never have allowed the construction of nuclear reactors or technetronic weapons systems, fallen prey to the ministries of mass-media and mind control, or come to worship in the Church of the Fed. We would never have committed planetary ecocide, or submitted to being murdered. We would never have allowed our individual and collective dharma to sink so low.
Our collective dharma, our adherence to that which we know is right and true, has declined so drastically that values, beliefs and practices are now accepted as “normal” which even 20 years ago would have been decried as acute violations of honesty and decency. Without reservation, we routinely ingest images of institutionalised fraud, deception and mass-murder, hosted by a veritable “tumour circus” of celebritized acticians; moreover, we uncritically assimilate these images as both “real” and “acceptable.”
Through the summation of our collective inertia, we have allowed a full-spectrum nightmare scenario to unfold before our very eyes wide shut. The technological facility to destroy life as we know her on this planet has been unleashed in many forms, the most lethal of which is ionising radiation from all things nuclear.
The nuclear scenario is the most salient example of the seemingly insoluble human dilemma. For over 60 years this situation has compounded exponentially in terms of biological lethality and psychological unreality. The wake of Fukushima has at one level generated a renewed wave of nuclear awareness, forcing an appraisal of just how insane it all really is. Consider the following:
“Based on the ration of spent rods to reactor fuel inside U.S. nuclear facilities, there are close to 200,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste at the 453 civilian nuclear-energy plants worldwide. Yet not a single permanent storage site has ever been opened anywhere.” Yoichi Shimatsu, journalist
“Dr. Helen Caldicott…relates that a typical one mega-watt reactor produces approximately 500 pounds of plutonium per year…At this same rate, 227 lethal doses of plutonium are produced for every watt of electricity generated. The electricity consumed by a typical light bulb results in the creation of thousands of lethal doses of plutonium alone, not to mention over 1000 other highly dangerous substances…the 400+ civilian reactors alone world-wide would produce around 92,000 kgs of plutonium per year. This equals 92 trillion lethal doses of plutonium being created per year. This is on-going and doesn’t even begin to include what already exists. The number of lethal doses of plutonium that currently exists might be on the order of 10 to the 15th power. And this is JUST plutonium; over a thousand other extremely dangerous radio-nuclides come into being during fission reactions, many with extended half-lives. We currently possess enough plutonium to kill every person on Earth tens of thousands of times.” Jeff Phillips, information activist
“Dr Paolo Scampa, a widely know EU Physicist…[relates that thus far the Fukushima disaster has released] three thousand billion (3,000,000,000,000) lethal doses of radiation [which] means there are 429 Lethal Doses chasing each and every one of us on the planet, to put it in a nutshell.” Bob Nichols, journalist
The average person’s mind tends to shut down when forced to confront facts like these, yet the unimaginably and incomprehensibly dire nuclear scenario is affecting almost every living thing on the planet, with the possible exception of benthic thermophile cyanobacteria. This quasi-supernatural, “science-fiction” situation, growing worse day by day, is not “cosmic” nor is it an “accident” but an “anthropogenic catastrophe” with planetary consequences, which has come about exclusively through continued and directed human action.
In addition to a massive elevation of global radiation levels, Fukushima has generated a new wave of nuclear awareness; this ray of light, however, is immensely over-shadowed by revelations that the earthquake which caused the damage was not in fact “naturally occurring” but an act of “tectonic warfare”, and that the “leaders of the free world” are in fact clearly committed to agendas of premeditated depopulation and oligarchical megalomania.
Lies, distortion, spin, marginalisation, distraction and actual media and information black-outs have all been fully deployed to prevent the public as a whole from knowing what is really going on with Fukushima and the global radiation scenario; most people seem to be ok with this, however, as even though a relatively accurate…and shocking to the nuclear novice…perspective is available with a little work, they find the whole global radiation thing to be somewhat inconvenient to business as usual. Since it’s invisible anyway, most people are more or less oblivious, although not quite as blissfully as they would like.
When we step back and look at what’s happening, we can discern a clear historical pattern, of which Fukushima is only the most recent and most extreme example: human beings using their most advanced methods and technologies to inflict death and disease on other human beings. These methods and technologies are rationalized and/or disguised as “nature” or “liberation”; the “spectacle consumers” as a whole swallow it all just like another episode of The Simpsons, while “the people” who are being “liberated” endure or succumb to plagues of escalating technological innovation.
The practice of genocide is one of the unique characteristics that sets homo sapiens, “man, the wise” apart from all other life forms on Mother Earth. No other species of life engages in systematic killing of its own kind, nor has any other species attempted to demonstrate its purported “superior intelligence” by becoming a threat to the health and/or existence of other species of life.
Why is this happening? The way I see it is that Mother Earth, in her compassionate wisdom and love for all her children…not just us…and having given us ample opportunity as a species…has endured our dementia long enough and is now allowing us to destroy ourselves. Why make someone else do the job?
Indigenous people have warned us for many a mega-moon that “what we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves.” We were warned time and time again that “if we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.” Not only have we NOT heeded these warnings in the least, as a whole we have forged ahead at full throttle laying waste to the planet as fast as possible. We individually may not drill the well, but we purchase the petrol and burn it in our vehicles. Mulitiply our daily damage times billions of upwardly-mobile people and a significant slice of ecocide and its karmic consequences comes into focus. Our growing demand feeds exploitation and supports the extraction cartels, who influence us to want even more. The driving force of modern “civilization” has been mass-genocide followed by mass-exploitation, an “unconscious jihad” against the Earth. This in a nutshell is the karmic foundation upon which the entire past 5000 years rests. We as humans are all responsible; no one forced us to do these things.
These long-standing warnings from indigenous people are not superstitious beliefs but cosmic wisdom incomprehensible to “civilized” humanity, yet grounded in ancient knowledge and awareness of energies and inter-relationships inherent in the fabric of life. We have the ability not only to access this cosmic wisdom but to implement it in our daily lives; that we have not done so is a testament to the human paradox.
Look again at the global nuclear scenario. Through our obsession with extracting “precious things”…gems, metals, minerals, coal and petroleum, for example…we have accumulated a monstrous karmic burden from the genocide of indigenous peoples, the rape of their land, as well as incalculable environmental and toxicological consequences.
The mining of uranium from sacred indigenous land for use in the atomic bomb took the karmic consequences to another level entirely. Uranium and other naturally radioactive elements are literally “star stuff”, truly sacred substances whose residual energies are supernova condensates; their presence in the Earth is inseparable from and perhaps essential to the evolution of life as we know her. Human extraction, mobilization, and concentration of these materials has created a “self-destruct” mechanism which is now in full swing.
Even a cursory rational analysis of the current nuclear scenario reveals that because of the astronomical amounts of extraordinarily radioactive substances that have been and are being created daily, existing as fuel, weapons and waste, in storage or dispersed throughout the biosphere, it could be simply a matter of time until life as we know her has been all but extinguished. Contrary to popular delusion, these substances can IN NO WAY be isolated from the environment; and, contrary to popular delusion, at least 20 generations of people must be studied in order fully to understand the genetic implications of ionising radiation. We of today are only the third or fourth; that another 16 generations of human life is even remotely possible is highly questionable. Well documented, moreover, are the increased frequencies of cancer, infertility, and cognitive impairment occurring in people exposed to artificial ionising radiation at any level, i.e., every person alive today.
We as human beings have done this. Not “they”, “we.” I hold this principle of “species responsibility” to be equally as real as the concept of karma, which is an ancient Hindu word meaning essentially “what comes around, goes around.”
At the leading edge of thought, through a synergy of synthesis, where scientific knowledge, intelligent speculation, cosmic insight, shamanic vision and creative imagination fuse, we may discover understanding not only of the reality of karma, but also how and why humans have arrived at the current situation, as well as how we may in fact be able to transform the collective “actual death experience” we seem to be creating into a highly educational collective “near death experience.”
In a more in-depth article I will explore possible explanations or “mechanisms” not only for how karma might work, but also how the Hindu concept of yugas, or “galactic seasons”, might operate. According to Hindu cosmology, we are now somewhere in what they call the Kali yuga, the shortest but darkest of the “seasons” of a vast cosmic cycle: the time of war, degeneration, oppression, killing, machines, disease…the “iron age.” This idea makes a lot of sense when you look around at the world of human creation and the way it’s all been going; yet the presence of cosmic influences does not preclude the responsibility that comes with free will.
The scary part is that, IF we are in fact in the Kali yuga, unless we are at the very end, transitioning back into a “season” of higher vibration, then things are only going to continue to get worse. We need only look to Fukushima and the thousands of other reactors, weapons, wastes and contaminated sites around the world whose legacy of disease, depopulation and mutation may give way to extinction to visualize how much worse it can get. We can glimpse the future of humanity, of our descendents, in the images of deformed babies from Iraq and Chernobyl.
On the other hand, as impossible as it may seem, we may be able to reverse our descent into oblivion by elevating our dharma through conscious renavigation of our decision-making at every level: a genuine expression of the “wisdom” we claim to possess. This could result not only in “stopping” our destructive activities but more importantly in transforming our personal world-views, our internal psychology, our “operating environment” in ways that benefit life. Dharma essentially means doing what you know deep-down is right, listening to the “still small voice” of conscience. None of this will bring back species we have caused to go extinct or the indigenous people who have been murdered, nor will it put the ionising radiation back in the ground, but it could prevent the total annihilation of life that seems to be our goal.
This is the challenge of living in the Kali yuga: to maintain our dharma at all costs. It’s logical to assume that dharma must be maintained in ALL yugas, but that during the Kali yuga it’s MOST important as well as extremely difficult to do so.
Just as it might be easier to feel cold in winter than in summer, it might be easier to make selfish or destructive decisions in the Kali yuga as opposed to in the Sat yuga (the golden age); but the point is that it is possible to stay warm in winter, just as it is possible to make unselfish and life-nurturing decisions in the depths of Kali. The hordes of consumers, the herds of sheeple will far out-number the “people of one heart”, but only a handful are required to carry the seed of the next creation.
The biggest issue here is the level of awareness we each have of what is going on within and around us: it’s totally insane for people to think that they can magically “ascend” into “another dimension”, either through their own efforts and/or with the assistance of “higher beings”, while they are functioning as soldiers in World War 3 through the ecological and health consequences of their daily lives.
Technologies of psychic influence are pervasive; few people recognize television as the advanced weapons system, the “electronic dictator” it was designed to be. Reclaiming the autonomy of our own thought processes is the first step towards effective renavigation.
The next step is to examine fundamental beliefs, assumptions and values affecting how we live and relate with each other and Mother Earth. For example, we could ask ourselves, “IS the Earth just a ball of rock consisting of resources we need more and more of, or could she really be our mother in a real sense, a planetary being possessing a vast intelligence who gave birth to life, who has feelings of love and pain, and who is aware of us now? If so, how do we get in closer touch with her, heal our relationship with her?”
As the human beings of today the most powerful and intelligent changes we can make are to expand our “horizons of identity” to include as “ourselves” not only our entire human family, but our larger “family of life”, including Mother Earth herself, a family the Lakota refer to as “mitakuye oyasin”; to recognize and accept the unity of responsibility for how in truth “we”…not an indeterminate “they”…are harming the Earth and ourselves; and, most importantly, to renavigate our habitual patterns of living and thinking towards simpler and saner modes, and to implement ways of being and relating with each other and the world of nature which reflect a genuine love of life.
Pragmatically, most people in western “civilized” countries could elevate their dharma dramatically, and at the same time lessen their ecological “foot-print” and increase their health, by making a few changes in day-to-day routines that are typically accepted as “normal” but in global summation constitute a major share of the human impact on the Earth and therefore on our collective karma.
The basic idea is voluntary simplification: reducing or eliminating the use or consumption of products or technologies whose health risks, environmental dangers and/or fraudulent foundations are well known. Consider for example a few things that many people take for granted on a daily basis: driving a car, eating meat, watching tv, talking on mobile phones, building new houses, and using banks.
If people as a whole simply reduced their participation in these activities, not only would our accumulation of negative karma be massively reduced and our dharma levels be elevated, but the Earth and our fellow life-forms would breathe a sigh of relief from the lessening of our attack on them. Any intelligent person, were they to take a few moments to think about it, can explain in detail why all of these things are extraordinarily bad in general, for people and for the Earth. Allow me:
We need transportation, but not only is most driving unnecessary and wasteful, civilian petrol consumption is astronomical as are vehicular casualties, human and non-human. Professor Pete Singer estimates that over 60 billion animals are slaughtered annually for meat, most of them having endured tortuous and truncated existences. All animals have babies and love them. Television, the “atomic bomb of the mind” is not only the most advanced weapons system in use, it is also the most cleverly disguised. Mobile phones are literally microwave ovens held next to the brain; a global epidemic of brain and eye cancer is under way now. How many people actually need a new house, especially one that’s the size of a medieval castle, and that might be inhabited a few weeks out of the year? Think of the resources consumed, think of the billions of people who have no house; indigenous people never “owned” land. Finally, modern banking is the biggest lie we ever believed in, bigger than Jesus and Satan put together; that capitalism is a de facto religion is beyond refute. Gold is extremely valuable, but only when it’s in the ground where it belongs.
Voluntary simplification means that you need less money and resources, but that you can still have everything you need; it also involves the taboo practice of conservation, which no one can capitalize on but is the only truly intelligent and ecological solution to “growing energy demands.” We don’t need more energy…we need to use what we have more efficiently. And why do we need “to grow?” What’s wrong with growing smaller?
Beyond this level, we have the ability to create ways of living which do not require any of these harmful practices or technologies; how necessary or desirable are all the things we think we need more energy for? So we can drive faster and farther on tanks of water? We have the ability to live more cooperatively, in greater harmony and partnership with each other and the Earth. We have the ability to stop doing harmful things. The problem, the dilemma is why we are choosing NOT to stop doing harmful things even though we know better.
I believe that at this point in time, we are living in an ever-tightening feed-back loop not only of “consumption-demand-exploitation” but at another level, of our participation in violating the Earth, her life-forms and indigenous peoples. Our participation in what quite literally is a “war” on the Earth is directly driving the escalating “war on ourselves” manifesting most recently as weaponized “natural disasters” and “industrial accidents”, traditional “wars of aggression”, economic fraudulence, the “wall of doo-doo” mass-media syndrome, and the global depopulation agenda in general.
The loop is so tightly configured that for every farm animal that is tortured, every mile that is driven unnecessarily, every tree that is chopped down to make card-board, every kilogram of uranium that is mined…for each of these events, these flagrant ecological violations, several thousand litres of petrol are thrown onto the metaphorical fires in which humanity is being consumed…and several million allotments of plutonium.
If miraculously a significant number of people voluntarily simplified in the ways I suggested, not even by eliminating those activities but cutting back on them, it’s possible that the likelihood of another diabolical “false flag geo-terrorism” event, premeditated and executed as a deliberate attack on humanity and the Earth, may be greatly reduced. In other words, if we show that we care enough about nature and the Earth to make tangible changes in our lives which reflect this concern, then the entire holomorphic spiritual intelligence network of the Earth, of which we are only a small part, will know; if we lessen our destruction of nature, we also lessen the self-destruction of humanity against humanity.
Once again, in a more in-depth article I will go into the morphogenetic and whole systems concepts that I think explain how all this works. For now, we need to focus on what we can do, what changes we can implement at the level of the individual that can generate positive spiritual energy. The intent of making changes that show love of life is important, but intent without action is meaningless. Individual people cannot shut down a reactor or unplug a H.A.A.R.P. facility, BUT a million people each cutting back drastically or eliminating driving cars, eating meat, watching tv, using mobile phones, new construction, and supporting banks would generate a tsunami of positive spiritual energy that may help Mother Earth to reconsider extending our “existence permit” in her web of life.
Six and a half billion of us exist at this time, each of us possessing what is truly the “ultimate technology.” To open oneself to the full reality that we ARE in fact doing our utmost to kill ourselves and our planet, whether it’s through direct action or chronic inaction, is excruciating. With this many extremely powerful spiritual and creative human beings alive at one time, shouldn’t we be manifesting a collective reality that’s a little more desirable, instead of this worst-case scenario that seems to be a function of the “path of least resistance” having been taken for several millennia. After a 5000-year downhill journey we have arrived at the alluvial fan where the river of life meets the wide open sea; instead of a boat to eternity we find ourselves stuck in the mud and the ocean is a radioactive waste dump.
No matter what is happening to or around us…don’t point the finger at “them”, whether it’s Tepco, GE, Obama, Osama, Evelyn Rothschild, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Zionists, the Pentagon, Monsanto, Rio Tinto, the Queen, the Pope, the “illuminati”, or the Federal Reserve. Own the responsibility of being here now as a human being and realize that it’s truly “us” who are manifesting all of this. These people and organizations are just giving us what we want. We even pay them to do it!
Make a difference that makes a difference not through words, good intentions, or donations to Greenpeace; make real tangible changes in your own day to day life which reflect a spiritual intelligence committed to a genuine love of life, of Mother Earth, of “mitakuye oyasin”, of yourself. Treat the Earth like you would like to be treated, with gentleness and kindness. Ask not what your planet can do for you, but what you can do for your planet..or stop doing.
Our “inner homework” is long over-due; a critical examination of the “software anomalies” in our psychological “operating environment” is essential to successful renavigation of the human process. If we make some major transformations in how we think, for example, if we start identifying with consciousness instead of matter, then many “problems” no longer exist. If we are consciousness, we are eternal and therefore cannot experience “death.” And if we identify with the consciousness that we are, we are then able to perceive and honour the consciousness not only in all other people, but in all life-forms, in Mother Earth and beyond. I cannot think of a more empowering realization.
We have a lot to be thankful for. The crisis of extinction through our own actions could be an opportunity for spiritual transformation. We as a whole are choosing, allowing, participating in what is happening now. We are getting what we want; but is this what we really want? If we’ve found ways to stay warm in winter, surely we can find ways to stay sane in the Kali yuga!
Ultimately, we are each artists in a very real sense. Becoming conscious of the power of our creativity might be the lesson that all this is about; instead of creating bad karma, insanity and destruction, we may choose to elevate our dharma by creating awareness, beauty and harmony.
JEFF PHILLIPS
NEW ZEALAND
4 JUNE 2011
“The main difficulty during the Kali Yuga is to maintain dharma, to maintain the order of the world and the integrity of our own actions, which are intimately connected in Indian thought, because we are in part responsible for the smooth running of the universe. If each of us observes his own personal dharma, if each of us accomplishes what he came into existence for the purpose of accomplishing, the universe will proceed along its course, and one day the world will be reborn. It's all a question, therefore, of knowing how – despite this prospect of inevitable destruction – to continue to strive for dharma… There's only one thing left for us to do in these dramatic times: maintain our dharmas in circumstances which will make it harder and harder for us to do so… Which is why we must at all costs maintain our dharma, in order to help Vishnu not to forget. To help the god to dream. If all values, all beauty are destroyed at the end of the cycle, the world is in danger of never reappearing. If something of the equilibrium between the forces of destruction and the forces of conservation is preserved in the memory of the great 'maintainer' that we are, Vishnu and us together, then all hope is not lost. A new cycle will begin again...”
“THE TIME OF KALI”
from interview with Jean-Claude Carriere, “Answering the Sphinx”, in Conversations about the End of Time (with Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, and Jean Delumeau), 1998
You mention Sanskrit, so perhaps we might think about the Hindu concept of time. According to them, we've come to the end of a cycle, haven't we?
Hindus believe we are now living in what they call the Kali Yuga, the age of destruction. It's an irremediable process. Shiva has, once more, prevailed...Which is no surprise: Shiva always prevails. At the end of the last of the yugas, which form a cycle, everything disappears. The world we know will disappear, but not for the first time. There is no use trying to resist this destruction, because the forces sweeping us away are infinitely more powerful than us. The main difficulty during the Kali Yuga is to maintain dharma, to maintain the order of the world and the integrity of our own actions, which are intimately connected in Indian thought, because we are in part responsible for the smooth running of the universe. If each of us observes his own personal dharma, if each of us accomplishes what he came into existence for the purpose of accomplishing, the universe will proceed along its course, and one day the world will be reborn. It's all a question, therefore, of knowing how – despite this prospect of inevitable destruction – to continue to strive for dharma.
When did we enter the time of Kali?
About 3200 B.C., on the death of Krishna, the eighth avatar of the god Vishnu. But how long will the time of Kali last? I've never managed to find out, though I must have asked at least fifty people.
The French comic Fernand Raynaud would have said: “For some time...”
If the time of Kali began around 3200 B.C., it's already lasted more than 5,000 years. How much longer? Some talk of fifty years, others of 3 million. It is very difficult to know how long a yuga lasts. Probably because, for Indians, that's not exactly the point.
It's the very idea of measuring time which is foreign to them.
Yes, because you can't measure a circular phenomenon.
What's going to happen at the end of the Kali Yuga?
We shall see – are already seeing – an increasingly radical and increasingly evident decline in the whole idea of civilization. One can find very precise accounts of the Kali Yuga in the sacred texts of India, in the Mahabharata, for example. We shall experience a period in which all social ties disappear. The laws will be called into question, opposed, and finally dispensed with. The texts speak of the 'laws of Manu', named after the Indian equivalent of Solon. These laws have provided the structure of Indian society for a very long time. When they cease to be in force, civil wars will follow, within states, within cities, within families, rifts of every kind. Wild animals will invade the cities. The texts are very precise on the matter. I remember Jean-Luc Godard saying fifteen years ago that the fact that the blackbirds had deserted the countryside to come and live in the towns and cities seemed to him one of the most important events of the last years of the century; within a short period of time the least tame of animals had become almost domesticated...One reads, too, in the Mahabharata: 'Crime walks abroad. Carnivorous animals lie sleeping in the streets...The vultures are gathering. Birds with iron beaks have been seen, crying: “It's ripe! It's ripe!” And so on. Predictions of the end of the world share a number of common signs pretty well everywhere.
Aren't these just metaphors?
Absolutely not. It is presented quite clearly as fact. The texts speak also of the human race degenerating: of people becoming shorter, of muscles weakening, of the hair of fifteen-year-olds turning white...
If we look around us, the opposite seems to be true. The new generation is taller, healthier than any previous generation.
The Indians argue that ones does indeed see many people living to the age of eighty or ninety. But they belong to a generation born before the Second World War, when more than half the population still lived in the country and ate natural foods, produce that grew from the earth without the aid of pesticides and chemicals, and when they breathed clean air.
Will the post-war generation face problems that we don't yet know about?
It's quite possible. More often than not, what happens in the future is unexpected. But if everything is going from bad to worse, according to the traditional Indian view, one thing is nevertheless getting better and better: the quality of wine is improving, throughout the world. An exception to the rule which is not without its charm! There is absolutely no doubt that wine today – in the Herault, for example, where I live – is better than it was thirty or forty years ago. And that's encouraging. But will wine survive the Kali Yuga?
Perhaps it's your taste buds which have deteriorated?
Absolutely not. Everybody agrees on the fact, the wind-growers especially. Consumption of plonk has fallen considerably, people are discovering quality wines all over the place. Individual wines, with their own personality, that refuse to be like the rest. The wine-growers have devoted considerable efforts to the choice of grape varieties. And to mention something I do know quite a lot about, Corbieres wines are in the process of becoming very fine wines, on a par with the wines of Bordeaux. And even Bordeaux wine is getting better. So there's one good reason not to despair completely. There's some serious resistance going on...
But according to your sacred texts, none the less, the human race is under threat.
I remember talking to an Indian in 1985, in Avignon, on the banks of the Rhine. We'd both been giving talks on the Mahabharata. It was rather an amusing situation. France had just offered to send a group of scientists to India to help combat the pollution of the Ganges, and there we were, sitting on the banks of the Rhone, when we saw several shoals of dead fish floating past. Then, thinking of this country that was proposing to come to the rescue of the Indians while neglecting to protect the species to be found in its own territory, the Indian calmy and simply said to me: “Watch out!” Throughout history, average life expectancy has varied. Historians contend that people in the West lived longer in Ancient Greece and Rome than they did in the fifteenth century. Great epidemics of the sort that decimated populations in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were unknown throughout Antiquity. Since the introduction of chemicals on a grand scale into our agriculture from the 1960's on – into our air, our water, our soil - no one has been able to predict the long-term effects on the human species as a whole. It's equally possible, of course, that it will have no effect. I'm not trying to act the prophet of doom. I'm simply trying to caution against any unduly complacent assertions about the 'progress' made by our civilization.
And how does the Kali Yuga end?
The abandonment of the rule of the law, followed by civil wars and the degeneration of the species, lead to wretched deprivation, everywhere. And there are disasters on a global scale, great rains, red vapours, yellow vapours, deadly clouds, which will all turn the earth into one enormous swamp.
Richard Fleicher's film Green Sun [Soylent Green] seemed to be predicting a miserable end of that sort.
Yes, it was a moving account. The age of Kali is terrifying. And there is no remedy. It's pointless to resist. There's only one thing left for us to do in these dramatic times: maintain our dharmas in circumstances which will make it harder and harder for us to do so.
But why maintain this dharma if the cause is definitively lost?
Precisely because time is cyclical, and a certain number of values, of the elements that constitute the order of the world, cannot disappear for ever. When all that's left on our planet is a sort of grey mud, as the texts describe it, then at that moment Vishnu will admit defeat: Shiva will have triumphed, the world will have been destroyed. There are two great divinities in India, Vishnu and Shiva, and one creative principle, Brahma, of whom it is said that he is the third divinity. In reality, Brahma intervenes very little. There are only one or two temples in India that are dedicated to him. Vishnu and Shiva, on the other hand, are constant rivals: one preserves the world and the other seeks to destroy it. The Mahabharata is a great Vishnuist poem in honour of Krishna, who is an avatar of Vishnu. In difficult times Vishnu comes down to fight Shiva and to delay the end by a few years. Indian statuary often depicts Shiva with four hands. The top two are at the same height; in the right hand, the god holds a small drum to signify that the world was created to the sound and rhythm of a drum. In the other he holds a flame, which reminds us that everything that has been created shall be destroyed. The gesture that Shiva makes with his third arm is also the gesture that the Buddha makes, the famous abhaya, meaning “Be not afraid.” Fear is an illusion, it does not exist. Since everything that has been created must be destroyed, why be alarmed, why worry? The fourth hand is a finger pointing towards the god's feet. Shiva is standing on one leg and crushing a demon with his whole weight. He seems to be telling us: “Be not afraid, for look! By the power of my thought, I have lifted one foot off the ground.” This is one of the most emblematic and meaningful figures in the whole Hindu pantheon, which has no shortage of them. Shiva has prevailed, but all hope is not lost. He demonstrates the fact himself. From his raised foot our eye travels back to the original drum: one day everything will begin again. We all have our own little Kali Yuga in us, our own sense of apocalyptic doom. There's even something strangely inviting about this sense that the end is nigh. If so many periods in history have experienced it, that's probably because the feeling is part of us, deep down, and surfaces on this or that occasion as evidence of our fear, of our sense of guilt. In India, too, they are familiar with this human sense of being haunted by an ending. They simply respond to it in their own way.
“VISHNU'S SLEEP”
And what does Vishnu do during this time?
Vishnu sleeps. He sleeps for a very long time upon a limitless ocean. There are thousands of depictions of Vishnu sleeping. While asleep he must dream so as not to forget the beauties of the world that has disappeared. Which is why we must at all costs maintain our dharma, in order to help Vishnu not to forget. To help the god to dream. If all values, all beauty are destroyed at the end of the cycle, the world is in danger of never reappearing. If something of the equilibrium between the forces of destruction and the forces of conservation is preserved in the memory of the great 'maintainer' that we are, Vishnu and us together, then all hope is not lost. A new cycle will begin again...
So dream has a function as memory.
As non-oblivion, as the struggle against oblivion. Dream remains awake within the sleeping mind. Who decides when the world will be created? No one says. There is no text, I think, which talks about it. Indian thought is reluctant to give shape or words to what is not yet shape, to what belongs to the realm of the shapeless. Tat tvam asi, they say of the ultimate reality: 'You are that.'
That's the essential message of the Bhagavad Gita.
The Bhagavad Gita is a very dense text which cannot be reduced to an 'essential message.' We must stop thinking that we can summarize in a few sentences the great thoughts, the great texts, that come from outside our own tradition. In a sense, the Bhagavad Gita subsumes everything that went before and develops it in certain aspects. It's a complex text. People have even found Buddhist influences in it. I shall certainly not simplify it for you. I wouldn't be able to.
As far as the dharma of the Hindus is concerned (the word has a different sense in Buddhism), no one knows hot it came to exist in the first place. It's simply a fact. That's how things are. There have been many people – Jorge Luis Borges, for example – who have been surprised at this obligation without explanation.
As I said, it's almost impossible to assimilate Indian thought (or Chinese or Mayan thought) to our Western concepts. We are far from having a monopoly on ways of thinking. There's a certain intellectual racism to be found more or less everywhere in the West, and we should constantly be on our guard against it.
So it is with time. Indian time cannot be reduced to our own. It defies all human arithmetic. Taken to its limit, this way of thinking means that a civilization could disappear in a few seconds and then reappear. In a few seconds, in a few thousand million years; what's the difference in the eyes of an extinct cosmos? Brahma the creator acts in an instant. Shiva takes longer, being more tortuous about his destruction. But it all comes to the same. An age is an age. Often if all depends on us, on our feel for things, on our way of seeing, our attitude.
For a thinker like Rene Guenon, manifestations belong to different orders, some of which take place in time and other of which take place in other dimensions. Yes, perhaps in those parallel universes that the scientists tell us about these days. But let me finish talking about...what am I saying! One's never finished with him, with Vishnu, our official protector.
After a certain 'time', all at once and for reasons we don't understand, Brahma, the creative principle, suddenly emerges from the belly of Vishnu, seated on a lotus leaf, and recreates the world he was dreaming about. The job done, Brahma returns to sleep inside the stomach of the god, ready for the next occasion. Creation dwells in sleep.
