Some things that were perfectly acceptable even 20 or 30 years ago are reprehensible today in many places around the world (e.g., incest and sexual abuse, use of corporal punishment in child-rearing, discrimination based on race, sex, or religious convictions, and torture or blatant pollution of the environment. Our progress is uneven, but thanks to mass media technologies such radio, television, and Internet, people worldwide have an opportunity to compare their way of life with those of others. Once higher standards are established and implemented in one region or country, people elsewhere can see their benefits and use them as a new standard for which to strive. When California introduces more stringent emission standards for cars, soon other states follow suit, forcing manufacturers worldwide to change their standards as well. Freedoms won by women in the West create a desire for similar freedoms in other parts of the world, gradually improving women’s fate in even the most traditional societies where they have been marginalized for millennia.
There is hope for humanity, yet the future is not set in stone. Our survival as a species depends entirely on what each of us chooses to do—in truth, we are creators of our own reality. Our intentions are of the utmost importance—every word and every deed makes a difference, pushing us closer either to salvation or to extinction. The choice is ours: heaven or hell? Most ancient and modern prophets predict a period of turbulence and suffering preceding the Golden Age of humanity. They tell us that the period of trials can be shortened or even prevented completely if each of us decides to change and follow the teachings of brotherly love in daily life. Unfortunately, it appears that personal suffering is unavoidable on the path to awakening, but those who see the light and start the work of inner transformation earlier are likely to experience more tolerable doses of suffering spread over time.
I certainly hope that our collective and individual torment will be minimized by the work of those who are walking the spiritual path already. I do not claim to know the future, but in my mind the best case scenario is that we all awaken before our civilization falls apart. When that happens, a new world will be born from the ashes of the old, based on a new paradigm of love, wisdom, cooperation, and respect for all life. Our current planetary civilization is based on greed, lies, corruption, suppression, and fear, and as such is destined for destruction. An excellent book entitled Behold a Pale Horse exposes some of the shocking secrets of our governments. William Cooper, who wrote this book, paid with his life for his courage. We cannot continue as we are and hope to survive. More and more information is emerging showing that this civilization is sick to the core and that we have to start all over again, creating a brand new paradigm for humanity.
We have already entered the time of change, and many powerful events in the recent past have shaken the consciousness of the all of humanity. Do you remember the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 11, 2001? What about the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the deadliest natural disasters in history, which killed more than 225,000 people in 11 countries and inundated coastal communities with 100-foot tall waves?
Please ponder also hurricane Katrina, one of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, which wreaked havoc on New Orleans and neighboring coastal regions in 2005, and the dismal failure of the American government to help those affected by this disaster. What about the catastrophic hurricane in Myanmar and earthquake in China in 2008? These events made us stop short in our tracks and ponder our mortality. Many people were kinder to others for a short time, and victims and their families experienced an outpouring of support and compassion from every corner of the world. Was it enough to produce a permanent change in the way we think and operate? Seemingly not. The same events were perceived by others as an opportunity to loot, kill, or abuse others.
Derrick Jensen argues in his recent book Endgame that our civilization is based on exploitation, violence, and destruction of the natural environment is not sustainable and that we should dismantle it as soon as possible. If we don’t do it ourselves, this insane civilization is bound to collapse when natural resources such as fossil fuels are exhausted or destroy the whole planet, making it uninhabitable. Incidentally, there are many indicators that global peak oil production (the so-called “Hubbert peak”) may have already been reached. All the “easy” oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Reports indicate that in the last two decades of the twentieth century the oil industry doubled its efforts to identify new oil fields, but more or less gave them up after year 2000 since almost no new large, profitable fields have been discovered. With a growing demand for oil from countries like China and India, the global oil crisis is going to come much sooner than expected. Some predict a global depression that may occur within years rather than decades, perhaps even initiating a chain reaction of the various feedback mechanisms in the global market that might lead to a collapse of the global industrial civilization. This is not surprising, considering that our economy is totally dependent on cheap oil. We use it everywhere—from agriculture, housing, the power industry, and pharmaceuticals to transportation. Can we find alternative, clean energy sources before our civilization collapses? GAO report on peak oil issued in March 2007 is not very optimistic. Let’s hope that human ingenuity saves us as it did many times in the past.
With our natural environment deteriorating more and more rapidly, global warming is spiraling out of control, polar ice caps are melting in front of our eyes, and weather extremes are getting more pronounced worldwide. Some predict that ocean levels may rise very quickly once average global temperatures reach a certain level and polar caps melt—perhaps even as much as 30–50 feet a year for a total of 300–500 feet, as suggested by Hank Wesselman in his book Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future. Positive changes on both local and global levels leading to more tolerance, freedom, and openness are challenged by religious fundamentalism, terrorism, isolationism, wars, and persecution. We are witnessing the first resource wars (i.e., two Gulf Wars fought to secure oil supplies, as well as political maneuvering of global powers such as China and Russia to secure sources of oil for the near future). Water shortages may become a reason for future wars as well. Even Jesus predicted that the new world is not going to be born without birthing pains: “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24: 21–22).
In 2008 it became obvious to everyone that the world’s financial markets are also teetering on the verge of collapse—decades of blatant greed, incompetence, and corruption are coming to fruition. How much longer can this giant stand on its’ clay legs? American government has been quietly and surreptitiously concentrating power in the hands of the executive branch. The constitutional freedoms of Americans have been gradually eroded under the pretext of fighting terrorism. The international image of the United States has changed from that of the champion of freedom to global oppressor and bully. Due to the reckless and selfish policies of the Bush administration, the United States today has very few friends and allies in the world, but many enemies.
Many people feel that this “evil world full of suffering” should come to a swift end. End-of-the-world prophecies have been appearing regularly in the last two millennia. In spite of Jesus’ warnings that nobody but God knows the day and the hour of reckoning, many specific dates have been proposed—and all of them have come and gone without a bang. Remember the Y2K predictions? Obviously the end did not come in the year 2000 or 2012.
Several books published in recent years—such as the Abraham series by Esther and Jerry Hicks, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and the Handbook for the New Paradigm series—stress the importance of imagining and then striving for the best possible future of humanity. They describe the universal laws ruling our universe: the law of attraction, the law of deliberate creation, the law of allowing, and the law of harmony. T
hese laws imply that the above period of turmoil and suffering can be shortened or even avoided entirely if a significant number of humans manage to awaken. We can create the best possible future for our whole species when we unite in striving for that goal.
Biblical prophets predicted the future Golden Age of Humanity, promising our return to the Paradise. Jesus spoke extensively of the Kingdom of Heaven—it is in fact the central theme of his message. Phrases such as “Kingdom of Heaven,” “Kingdom of God,” and simply “Kingdom” occur in the New Testament more than 100 times. When every single human being awakens, our planet will become the Paradise it was meant to be. Yet, a lot of work lies ahead of each of us to achieve that goal.
Christopher Bache in Dark Night, Early Dawn describes his spiritual visions dealing with The Great Awakening: “I saw humanity climbing out of a valley and just ahead, on the other side of the mountain peak and beyond our present sight, was a brilliant, sun-drenched world that was about to break over us. The time frame was enormous. After millions of years of struggle and ascent, we are poised on the brink of a sunrise that would forever change the conditions of life on this planet. All current structures would quickly become irrelevant. All truths would quickly be rendered passé. Truly a new epoch was dawning. The lives of everyone living on the edge of this pivotal time in history had been helping to bring about this global shift. I could not see the specifics of what the future held. What I experienced was overwhelming light and bliss, and though these may sound disappointingly vague, they in fact revealed more to me than any details possibly could. I knew the brilliant light to be the radiance of enlightenment and the bliss was the joy of liberation. The human species was poised on the brink of a profound and inclusive spiritual awakening. There is a social awakening coming, a time when we will have dropped our attempt to live in the atomized cells of our historical past and will have appropriated the truth of our inclusive nature. Everything we are currently undergoing both privately and collectively is paving the way for this future. The net result of these many experiences was to focus me on the question, “How can the entire species be awakened? What would it take for the whole of humanity to make the quantum jump in awareness?” Though I had seen that this awakening was our immediate historical task, I had not seen how it would be accomplished.”
Dr. Brian Weiss, who uses hypnosis as an aid in the psychotherapy of his patients, has been taking them into the past to explore their previous lives. More recently he has begun to take patients into the future. He is careful to acknowledge that the future is a “flexible” destination—a multitude of possible and probable futures may lie ahead of us. He describes experiments in which he has hypnotized audiences participating in his workshops (often hundreds of people at the time) and asked them to go into the future: 100, 200, 500, and more years from now. Afterwards, he asked them to write down what they saw, and compiled the results. In his recent book Same Soul, Many Bodies, Dr. Weiss describes what he has learned so far. According to him, a thousand years or more into the future we will inhabit the idyllic, fertile, peaceful land. Some of the areas of the world, such as the Middle East and North Africa, will be off limits (perhaps because of radiation damage or an epidemic), but the rest of the world will be beautiful. Fewer people will inhabit Earth, and they are described as content, happy, and even blissful (my speculation is that there will be so few people left on Earth because the rest of us will spread all over the universe). The ones living on Earth will be able to access all knowledge and will be virtually omnipotent; they will be able to come in and out of their bodies at will, there will be no disease, and even death will not be what it seems today. In short, heaven on Earth, the way our life was always meant to be.
A recently released movie called The Last Mimzy depicts such a beautiful future, where people live on a planet that is healthy and free of pollution, where we can communicate telepathically, fly in the air, and travel in time. Yet we are capable of doing all of these things even today. Do you find this hard to believe? Jesus told us explicitly that all of this is possible: “I tell you the truth. The person that believes in me will do the same things I have done. Yes! He will do even greater things than I have done” (John 14: 12). Can you fathom being able to do everything that Jesus did and more? Imagine being a baker who bakes only one perfect loaf of bread each day and then multiplies it according to the needs of his customers, just like Jesus did? Envision being able to shape-shift like Jesus—you could look like anyone else, appear any age you like or even change your gender on a whim. Check stories about Jesus appearing to his disciples as a different person after resurrection, and as a child in the Gospel of Judas. Walking on water will be as easy as teleportation, telekinesis, or creating things out of thin air.
Neale Donald Walsch in his recent book Communion with God tells us that all of the wondrous abilities of future humans can be realized today by individuals who are determined enough to do the work necessary to awaken. Awakening means freedom. Freedom from anything that may bind you: suffering, boredom, imprisonment in time, in your body, or on your planet. As we awaken, we will discover not only our latent psychic and creative abilities, but also our true place in God’s creation. Mystics describe a benign, peaceful, infinite universe teeming with intelligent life, beauty, and creativity. That’s what Jesus had in mind when he said, “There are many rooms in my Father’s house; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14: 2–3). Native American shamans and Hindu gurus such as Swami Prabhupada, who wrote a book entitled Easy Journey to Other Planets, claim to have an ability to visit other worlds throughout the cosmos. They teach that it is possible for you and me to take a tour of the universe today without waiting for human technology to catch up with our dreams.
Steven Greer in Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge draws a magnificent picture of our future after the Great Awakening: “This will be the time of genuine enlightenment and the establishment of God consciousness in greater and greater numbers of people. Even as we live on earth in bodies, we will have the fullness of the realization of divinity within us. The major theme for the next several hundred thousand years will be the establishment of a divine civilization—a civilization that is on earth in a state of spiritual enlightenment. Whereas in this day there may be a few people at any given time in a society that are enlightened, by the end of this cycle every man, woman, and child on earth—and every child that comes into this world—will be in that state. All the wondrous worlds, all the fine celestial realms will be opened up to the knowledge of people, even as they dwell on the earth. And the earth will become one of the great jewels in the crown of the entire cosmos. The early stages of peace on earth will be paralleled by early, open contact with extraterrestrial civilizations. It will be commonly known that we are not alone and that we have never been alone. The true history of humanity, including the cycles and millennia where there had been advanced civilizations on Earth that have vanished, will become openly known.
“The masses of humanity will realize that these extraterrestrial people and humans share a common oneness in spirit, in pure Mind, and that the sciences emanating from the knowledge of consciousness will begin to be shared openly with humans. We will begin to go into space and explore other worlds with other extraterrestrial civilizations. The earth will develop as an extraordinary and beautiful culture and will become a cosmic culture. While the first thousand years of this new era have the hallmark of peace and a highly abundant world civilization, the later millennia to follow will have as their hallmark a growing cosmic culture. Eventually, we will evolve adequately to share the benefit of our wisdom with other worlds. And just as we are being visited today by civilizations that have established peaceful worlds, we will be emissaries and guardians of civilizations that are also crossing into maturity.”
What will our role be in the universe (besides mentoring younge
r civilizations!) once our species joins the galactic community and begins traveling between the stars? According to John Mack (psychiatrist from Harvard and author of Passport to Cosmos and Abduction), some aliens have a keen interest in our ability to feel emotions. Perhaps our emotions can be used in service of other sentient beings that are not as empathic and emotional as humans, to help them to make optimal decisions that lead to an increase in universal happiness? Our unique art, movies, and music will likely become hot commodities on galactic markets. One can imagine that the alien tourist industry will boom as well when we become a peaceful species and the Earth quarantine is lifted.
An old Jewish tale claims that God loves stories and that He has a great sense of humor. I suspect that He loves movies and games as well. In a certain sense our life is just a very realistic game that God plays for fun and to learn about Himself. God loves happy endings, and since He is the one playing the game, it has to have a happy ending. That’s why all of us will eventually awaken. When that happens, we will live in a world of abundance, in which everyone is as loving and caring as Jesus—a world in which we all will happily serve one another. It will be a world without fear, suffering, sickness, and death. A world of an eternal peace and joy, full of adventure, magic, and wonder, where anything is possible. This wonderful future will come, sooner or later—and each of us is capable to speed up its coming. We don’t have to worry about changing the whole world. Let’s start with changing ourselves first.
Secrets of God Page 19