The answer, therefore, to the biblical admonition is a definite, profound NO. Forget it. What do you know? Not for Christians nor, from what I gather, for most other people of whatever persuasion. Yes, including the avowed atheists. Of course, they are under no obligation to learn anything from the evangelists. They can make up their own rules on how to get fat.
Evidently we do not feel that life is more than food, and our body more than raiment. A bag of bones? We, the incredible preponderance of us, most definitely regard ourselves as our body, which might, perhaps, be endowed with a ‘soul’. Judging by our behavior, it is most emphatically an ‘animal soul’.
This assertion, in turn, makes us most definitely animals. Now, at last, we know what we THINK we are.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being an animal. Some of my best friends are animals. If, by your behavior and belief you indicate that you are one, then allow me to assure you that I love animals. Really. I love animals, including some human ones. Unfortunately, the man credited with the philosophy expressed by the New Testament, calls all who regard themselves as such: “dead”. Remember? “Let the dead bury the dead”. So why do we think that we are alive? Well, because life is a manifestation of change, and we (as do all other animals) do change. So we are half-right, anyway.
Physical reality, including our physical bodies, can be compared to ashes left after the fire used up their usefulness. Our real universe, our real bodies are bundles of energy, held together by the act of our will. As Evelyn, M. Monahan (The Miracle of Metaphysical Healing) once said, “our will is the most powerful force in the universe.” Or, I strongly suspect, in any reality.
Or, we can detach ourselves from our bodies and regard ourselves from without. As though in a mirror. We might learn that we are in a constant process of recreating ourselves in an endless procession of images. It is not easy. But, if we are to believe Krishnamurti: “The image that (my) thought has created is ‘me’. The ‘me’ is the image. There is no difference between ‘me’ and the image.”
I am that I am.
Life is only the memory of a dream.
It comes from no visible rain.
It falls into no recognizable sea.
Sai Baba
There is one other item to consider. We have been described (by a scientist whose name I can’t remember) as mobile robots, designed for the sole purpose of providing food for our genes, to keep them immortal. This includes our ability to reproduce in ever increasing numbers. But there is one other item that particular gentleman hasn’t considered.
Deep within us, in the dark dungeons of our stomachs and other internal organs, there is a plethora of life the biologists don’t seem to like to consider.
There are about 50 trillion (some sources report as few as 10 trillion) cells in a human body. It sound like a lot but it pales in relation to the number of bacteria who/which makes their home in/on us.
Let us start with the proposition that there are ten times as many bacteria in the human body as there are cells. That comes to at least 100 trillion, or 1014. That’s 100 followed by 12 zeros. Take your pick.
Now, rather then imagining that we are mobile robots designed for the sole purpose of sustaining the immortality of our genes, how about redefining the function which the robots have, not instead of, but in addition to their primary function. What if the real purpose of human body is to keep the bacteria alive? Life is life. Bacteria are people too, aren’t they?
The bacteria send us out to pasture, they keep us alive, they multiply like crazy (I wonder where they got that idea), and finally they continue their enjoyable existence on our children and our children’s children. Sometimes, in the process of their own reproduction they destroy the internal mechanism of the ‘human’ cells, but, well, we can’t all have everything, can we?
There is another tidbit for J. Craig Venter (A Life Decoded). A great number of the bacteria occupying the best real estate in our body are anaerobic. They don’t need him to crate earth-like conditions on other planets to survive. They can do very nicely without oxygen, thank you.
On the other hand, if bacteria find it profitable, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were already working on converting some planets in the universe to sustain the biological life of the best milking cows they ever found. There. We all have a noble purpose. Or, perhaps we are more than feed-bags? I leave that to the atheists to cogitate. I am told that the human brain is not immune to bacterial invasion.
Chapter 11
The God Diffusion
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
Aldous Leonard Huxley, British author (1894—1963)
In the West, we like to rely on scriptural statements taken verbatim from the Bible. There are, however some 6 billion people who do not share our views. The non-Christians have their own problems to solve.
In her book on esoteric Buddhism, The Secret Doctrine, which Einstein is said to have kept on his bedside table, Helena Petrovna Blavasky shares with us dogmas, or theories, of quite a different kind. They are derived from the life of Brahma, the god of creation. A kalpa is a single day in the life of Brahma. Two kalpas are a day and a night. Each kalpa is composed of 1,000 Maha Yugas. And this period is amazingly close to the life of planet earth.
The scientists tell us that the oldest rocks which have been found on Earth date back to about 3.9 billion year ago. However, those rocks include some minerals, which are as old as 4.2 billion years.
Now… guess what.
A kalpa is therefore equal to 4.32 billion human years.
Coincidence?
But don’t worry. If they are both right, the esoteric Buddhists and the scientists, then we still have about 120 million years left, before Brahma wakes up and a new order of things begin.
But let us stick to Maha Yuga and its characteristics.
First, esoteric Buddhism does not take physical evolution into account. In fact they define our existence as continuous devolution, lasting some 4,320,000 years, and which period is called Maha Yuga (or the Great Year). Each such Yuga is divided into four Ages, whose lengths follow the ratio of 4:3:2:1. As the gods of the East appear kinder to us than the gods of the Near East, the longest of these Ages is the Golden Age, the shortest is the present, or the Iron Age, known also as Kali Yuga. Of one thing we can be sure: we’re on the way out.
In her book, the late H. P. Blavatsky took it upon herself to decipher ancient writings hidden in the upper reaches of Tibet. Her findings are discussed in my book Visualization—Creating Your Own Universe. I quote some (gently edited) parts:
“The myths embrace the Atlanteans, the Lemurians, and reach further back as though in a blink of an eye. Time is nothing to Theosophy, as indeed it seems like nothing to all who have read it. In the midst of all this, HPB (as Ms. Blavatsky was known to her colleagues) stresses the reality of the present. No mean achievement.
The Theosophical cosmogony also revolves in cycles. Yet they (the cycles) do not strike me as truly repetitive. From the mists of prehistory, reaching back countless millions of years, the humanity evolves in a series of Root-Races. They are seven in number and now we have reached the middle of the fifth Root-Race, which became established su generis approximately a million years ago. Each Root-Race is in turn divided into seven Sub-Races, which, in turn, are composed of seven Family-Races. This last subdivision has a life-span of some 30,000 earth-years, and is made up of innumerable tribes and nations lasting some 4,000 to 5,000 years each.”
“Each Root-Race goes through repetitive cycles of Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages. The subgroups echo this rotation, rather as in the Hindu mythology, but the subdivisions allow for a greater awareness of present conditions. In Theosophy, after the Age of Kali, steeped in materiality, we know that a new Satya Yuga (the new Golden Age) is just around the corner. The corner might spell a few thousand years of waiting, but presents a more rewarding prospect than global dissolution,
with which the Jews, the Christians, the Moslems, and the scientists are so enamored. And if we are prepared to settle for latter rewards, then, with a dose of optimism, we can devise a sub-sub-cycle, which will place us in a mini-age of Silver or Gold sub-age often enough to combat an ongoing bout with manic depression.
A broader view is more pessimistic. We have only just completed the first 5,000 years of the Iron Age cycle of Kali Yuga, which began with the death of Krishna. In terms of mega-cycles, we have a long wait for the new Golden Age. I am grateful that my own thoughts have evolved along the lines that we all create our subjective realities, no matter how illusory, and my own reality seldom strays far from the golden hues.
A word about our past.
In Theosophy, we had not been created by God in Eden, or any other specific location, but rather we result from the cooperation between Nature and Higher Beings. Nature took us as far as she could along the upward path, and then gods granted us the mind, which facilitated continued struggle. As for the distant future, we have two more Root-Races to go, before we join our Hindu friends and cease to be. Rather like in a Big Crunch, which, as mentioned, our astrophysicists are determined to impose on us. As for the timing, don’t hold your breath, the present Iron Age, the Kali Yuga, still has some 417,000 years to go. Give or take a few thousand. That’s the bad news or the good news, depending whether you enjoy your life in Kali Yuga. The other good or bad news is that each Family-Race more or less disappears every 30,000 years, a mere blink of the cosmic eye. Strangely enough the tectonic plate movements, the periodic shifting of the earth’s magnetic poles, and the unexpected bombardment from our asteroid belt could easily accelerate this schedule. So—maybe we shouldn’t take any deep breaths, after all.”
The Hindu vision is truly cosmogonic.
“To clarify, its ancient brush paints a more disturbing picture. While the Jains (people who follow Jainism) offer a cycle in which there is also an upward trend toward self-betterment, the Hindus deny us this relief. They start, as do the Jains, at the very top, in the glorious Golden Age, Satya Yuga (more accurately—the Age of Truth). This age of bliss and beauty is by far the longest of the four ages of the Maha Yuga, and lasts 1,728,000 years. I would suggest it is equivalent to the period humanity had spent in Eden. It is followed by the Silver Age during which we are still blessed with considerable virtue and beauty for the next 1,296,000 years. Then things begin to deteriorate more rapidly. We lose a lot of our spiritual values and seem to straddle the ethical fence. This Bronze Age lasts for 864,000 years. Mercifully, the last Age, in which humanity sinks to the lowest level and is steeped in materiality and egotism, is shortened to 432,000 years only. It is appropriately called the Iron Age, the least noble of the four metals. As stated above, another name for this period is Kali Yuga—variously translated as “age of vice” or “age of the male demon Kali”, a little strange since Kali is (also?) a Great Hindu Goddess.”
The ancients, you’ll note, had not been concerned with our bodies, or with our civilizations, but with the development, or otherwise, of our Atma. If you are a scientist living in India, you face completely different problems than scientists swimming the ocean of Christianity. I wonder if the Hindu scientists also worry so much about god, and or other divinities, as the western scholars seem to. If so, my condolences.
It is vital that we understand the essence of this teaching. There are many ways to interpret devolution. The ancients were thinking in terms of spiritual entities, or beings, gradually sinking into materiality. In this process we were intended to learn and develop individuality. Perhaps nature or other universal forces are grooming us to take over various worlds, in which scientists will spend their lives trying to prove that we don’t exist.
No matter, as long as they are having fun.
Regardless of the imminent and apparently unavoidable devolution, it is my contentions that some individuals, few and far between, would swim against the current (the chosen few) and would indeed rise up to unprecedented heights, while the vast majority would succumb to their inevitable nadir, only to begin again in another megacycle. This, according to the eastern philosophies, or as Blavatsky prefers to call ‘theosophies’, takes place over many millennia, or as already mentioned, some 4,320,000 years. Although on mega-scale the only concern is the descent of man from spiritual to material consciousness, the cycles within cycles, contrary to the laws of natural selection, also speak of degradation of physical faculties of survival.
On a minute scale, a simple example of the latter comes to mind. Imagine dropping a primitive man in the middle of a Brazilian jungle, with but a pocketknife in hand. The man would have a good chance of survival for an extended period, probably a number of years. Then, 100 miles away, drop a Wall Street executive similarly armed. I wouldn’t give him a week. That’s what I mean by physical devolution.
There are other illustrations.
Perhaps because I am convinced that the ancient sages of the East were right in their prognostications of reverse evolution, of foreseeing that even as material goods and comforts grow they pull us away from our true nature, from our higher consciousness, I have been called an iconoclast. Yet I only expose the folly of that which holds us back from developing our true potential. And make no mistake about it. We are drifting away.
It is hard to define the direction humanity has chosen to espouse. Here’s but one example.
A great deal has been said about the complexity of characters in the book “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. A story about (inter alia) a misogynistic avenger. The fact remains that the story raises our taste for depravity, our penchant for our lowest instincts, and our propensity towards sadism, to an altogether new low level. And that book, and many like it, sates our emotional needs, infiltrates our character by osmosis. To the day of writing these words, the book has sold 65,000,000 copies. Did those 65 million people know what they were buying? Or have we already developed a sense of sniffing out the lowest level that will gratify our needs in advance.
While there are a number of ‘oldies’ bestsellers, which will never be caught, among them the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Qur’an—which are the most-printed books ever—they also share the dubious privilege of being the most maligned and most ridiculed books by most atheists, who never took the trouble to even attempt to understand them.
Fundamentalists hate competition.
In addition to the ‘literature’, the meaning of which has changes substantially since a good dose of sadism, mayhem and murder became its mandatory ingredients, (sorry Mr. Shakespeare, at least you did it with such poetic charm), there is also Hollywood—the USA single biggest exporter—the Americans’ cultural gift to the world. More often than not, the prerequisite of a successful film (movie) is an avalanche of corpses splattered in great many likely and unlikely places. Unless you see dozens of policemen with guns drawn, held threateningly in both hands, you haven’t enjoyed yourself. Or so, apparently, the public thinks. Or else, this is the opinion the Hollywood morons, sorry, I meant solons, have of their public.
Are they right?
Hardly. I just heard that Meryl Streep has been acclaimed as the greatest actress of all time. Yet, lo and behold, I do not recall (with forgivable exception of Sophie’s Choice) any corpses adorning any of her films. In spite of that, all her films are financial successes. Could it be that she can really act?
She is one of the chosen few.
We, en mass, are definitely devolving. Fast.
Few people realize that there is a parallel philosophy suspended between the Hindu and the Hebrew traditions, hidden in the Bible. The golden age can be compared to the period the human consciousness had spent in Eden. Then, there followed a period of inordinate longevities, exemplified by a number of people. For those interested, I discussed the matter briefly in my book Visualization—Creating Your Own Universe.
If we are to take the Biblical information scientifically (or literally as a good fundamentalist would), then we can
broadly divide the long living ancients into two groups— those living before and after the flood. The average life span before the flood (some ten generations) has been calculated at 857 years. After the flood, the average life span of also some ten generations (from Shem to Abraham) has shrunk to a mere 317 years. A considerable difference. It should be noted that in biblical symbolism (see my Dictionary) moving water normally represents great changes in consciousness.
Examples of the first, or the pre-flood group, which corresponds (symbolically) to the Silver Age in Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, would include Methuselah, boasting 969 years, Jared 962, Noah 950, Seth 912, Kenan (Cainan) 910, Enos, 905, Mahalalel 895, and Lamech 777. Some include Adam and Eve in this group, although we have no knowledge how long they stayed in Eden before they were given ‘skins’, which represents (to me) the onset of the Silver Age.
Examples of the second group, living after the great flood, with considerably shorter life-spans, and again, representing symbolically the Bronze Age, would include Shem 600, Eber 464, Terah 205, Abraham 175, and Moses, who is said to have lived 120. And all this without the benefits of Medicare.
DELUSIONS — Pragmatic Realism Page 8