CHAPTER SIX

End of an Era:

A New Cycle in Gestation

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents … what does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.

Max Planck

It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.

Joseph Campbell

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

It seems that we have arrived here, at Chapter Six, with the title End of an Era, a much more positive offering than the previous two chapters which spoke of the dark night and being caught in Plato’s Cave. So, having come this far, why now the sudden shift? The shift in focus and emphasis is to show that what was described in the preceding chapters was in fact the last-ditch attempts (a dying gasp) to retain control over a rising consciousness within humanity; and which will eventually fail. Why? Because, as this chapter will discuss, humanity is very likely now passing through a grand historical and cosmic cycle whereby we are now ascending once again away from times of ‘darker’ gross materialism towards what has been referred to in our mythology as the Golden Age – a period of finer energies and heightened consciousness. Let’s begin this journey by going back once again to the words of Plato …

Plato wrote that humanity could only know the ‘real’ world in the form of memories; by what he termed anamnesis, meaning the recovery of buried memories, both individual and collective. Plato insisted that all thought was recollection, and that humankind generally existed within a state of collective amnesia, having only fragments of recollection as reference points for reality. That is, humanity had lost (or fallen) from an earlier state of heightened being and now had only traces of this memory in their collective psyche as a reminder. In this paradigm it is further suggested that humanity passes through constant cycles that descend from higher ages to progressively lower ages, and then ascend back to higher ages, as recorded by the Hindu Yugas. This means that collective images and myths reappear in our minds, in our histories, as grand archetypes that dwell as close to us as our own systems of thought, as signifiers of memory to assist humanity not in the creation of imaginative worlds but rather in re-creating our recollections of such realms/states of bygone times. In other words, remembrances of what we believe is our mythic lost Golden Age – a ‘Paradise’ – and the nature of grand cycles of the ages.

It has been suggested that humanity resonates closely with the concept of Paradise because our ancestors once dwelt in such a state and time, and thus we carry within our collective consciousness vestiges of remembrance; a deep sense that we once belonged to something ‘higher’, and to which we may one day return. Within our interior selves lies the hope of returning to something once ‘lost’ – a Paradise lost. This notion has been expressed in allegorical form in many tales, such as in the parable of the pearl of great price, and this one, ‘The Precious Jewel’, adapted from Eastern sources:

In a remote realm of perfection, there was a just monarch who had a wife and a wonderful son and daughter. They all lived together in happiness.

One day the father called his children before him and said: ‘The time has come, as it does for all. You are to go down, an infinite distance, to another land. You shall seek and find and bring back a precious Jewel.’

The travellers were conducted in disguise to a strange land, whose inhabitants almost all lived a dark existence. Such was the effect of this place that the two lost touch with each other, wandering as if asleep. From time to time they saw phantoms, similitudes of their country and of the Jewel, but such was their condition that these things only increased the depth of their reveries, which they now began to take as reality.

When news of his children’s plight reached the king, he sent word by a trusted servant, a wise man: ‘Remember your mission, awaken from your dream, and remain together.’

With this message they roused themselves, and with the help of their rescuing guide they dared the monstrous perils which surrounded the Jewel, and by its magic aid returned to their realm of light, there to remain in increased happiness for evermore.¹

This allegory/parable, amongst others similar, reveals that a latent message lies hidden deep within our interior self, and acts as an umbilical of remembrance keeping us in touch with a forgotten ancient history. Mythological research, such as that undertaken by Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, has shown that one story in particular threads its way through nearly all traditions and myths – the story of a lost idyllic golden age and the hero’s journey to restore the world to its former glory and high state: a tale of loss and the need for heroic restoration. It is also a journey to reconnect ourselves with a sense of the sacred, to cosmological systems that embed humanity within a sense of the universal, a dimension of meaning, where the human psyche merges into the significant whole.

Many myths recovered from the past, and from indigenous tribes, reveal a worldview of our ancients that accepted all things as part of a living and conscious cosmos, connected with an energy that spread through all, giving life and animation. As mythological researcher Richard Heinberg wrote:

I feel compelled toward the view that our cultural memories of a Golden Age of harmony are the residue of a once-universal understanding of the spiritual dimension of human consciousness, and are at the same time memories of how contact with that dimension has been almost completely severed.²

The contact may appear almost severed, yet traces of it have remained in records scattered through various domains. Ancient writings, not only myths, talk of this once Golden Age. The Roman poet Ovid wrote of a time when:

the birds in safety winged their way through the air and the hare fearlessly wandered through the fields … There were no snares, and none feared treachery, but all was full of peace.³

Likewise, the Annals by 1st-century Roman historian Tacitus describe a time when:

most ancient human beings lived with no evil desires, without guilt or crime, and therefore without penalties or compulsions. Nor was there any need of rewards, since by the prompting of their own nature they followed righteous ways. Since nothing contrary to morals was desired, nothing was forbidden through fear.⁴

And as I shall discuss shortly, the Yuga ages of Hindu philosophy outline very clearly the nature and time scale of this rise and fall of Golden Ages–Dark Ages.

This once bygone state that the stories and myths refer to as the Golden Age – or Paradise – can also be regarded as a metaphor for an evolved state of consciousness as well as a highly evolved state of civilization. Humankind’s state is that of having fallen into the grip of gross matter, and of having left behind a finer awareness of subtle energies. We have, as all great religious traditions commonly state, entered into a realm of separation from a ‘divine’ source. The anthropologist Mircea Eliade, in his The Sacred and the Profane, writes that every historical culture has regarded the human condition as being under a temporary spell of unnatural limitation and separateness. Further, that our world now contains symbols and signs that serve to jolt human consciousness into some degree of reawakened awareness and remembrance, much as in the tale of the ‘Precious Jewel’ told above. Eliade reminds us that in so-called ‘primitive’ societies the act of understanding the symbol can help to succeed in ‘living the universal’. Similarly, mythologist Joseph Campbell describes how the aim of ancient spiritual practices, tribal myths and shamanic teachings is to assist in recovering a lost mode of awareness.

It is easy to conclude that the myth of Paradise (or of a Golden Age) represents an innate and universal longing, deep within us, for a state of tranquillity but from which we are separated. Metaphorically it could merely indicate a state of inner being that is naturally balanced and harmonious. Perhaps there have been historical ages in which human beings shared a state of oneness or union with all life and their environment, and that this peak of civilization was indeed lost. Cultural historian Riane Eisler, for example, has uncovered much evidence of past cultures/civilizations that were not male dominant, violent and hierarchic, and where peace and prosperity reigned for long periods.⁵ Such matriarchal cultures could indeed have represented a metaphorical Golden Age.

The Hopi legend of the ‘First People’ talks of a time in the ancient past when people ‘felt as one and understood one another without talking’, as if suggesting a form of collective telepathy. This legend describes a time when humans on the planet manifested a form of suprasensory perception, and where dialogue often occurred between various entities. Anthropologist Roger Wescott writes that:

Moreover, most mythic traditions concur in asserting that, in the Golden Age, human beings associated easily and often with beings that were discarnate or only intermittently incarnate, ranging from awesome cosmic deities to playful local spirits.⁶

Eliade, likewise, noted in his research that ancient myths spoke of a friendship between animals and humans, with knowledge even of their language. Eliade speculates that the shamanic imagery and/or visions of human transformation into an animal may be a metaphorical account of re-establishing a connection that was lost ‘at the dawn of time’. According to Eliade, the shaman goes into a transcendental state in order to ‘abolish the present human condition’, which is now regarded as a resultant state from the ‘Fall’, and to re-enter into the condition of ‘primordial man’ as was the natural state during the Golden Age.⁷ Mythologist Richard Heinberg considers whether:

… Paradise may be seen as serving a specific function, as a design for living embedded in the circuitry of human consciousness. All biological organisms, including human beings, contain elements of design … Perhaps we also contain within us a neurological or psychic program for the optimal design of social and spiritual relations between ourselves, the Cosmos, and Nature – a design of telepathic oneness and interspecies communion that represents the goal toward which our individual and collective experience would naturally tend to unfold.⁸

Heinberg is suggesting here that memories of Paradise/the Golden Age may not only refer to a physical reality or time but also serve as a trigger function to catalyse human neurological and psychic functioning into continued evolutionary growth. The memory, then, is not only as a remembrance of things past (as Proust would say) but also a ‘design’ wired into us as perhaps a social and spiritual guide during ‘dark ages’, between peaks and towards the next ascending Golden Age. This, whilst speculative, does present an attractive and appealing hypothesis that, whilst it cannot be proven, can at least be considered. However, at the present time humanity still exists in a state of separation – the so-called ‘Fall’.

Various religious, spiritual and indigenous traditions all refer to this rupture, or ‘Fall’ – from a higher state of awareness, behaviour and morals, descending into greed, egoism, fear and selfishness. It is a state where the focus is almost all upon gross materialism, rational science and ‘dirty’ energies (coal, wood, oil, etc.). It is also sometimes indicated that this lower state of humanity is the cause of Earth cataclysms – geological, climatic, etc. – that not only wipe out huge numbers of people but also create a psychological trauma within the collective human psyche. Gnostic, Hindu and Buddhist traditions talk of humanity forgetting its true purpose; of how distraction of, and attraction to, the physical world produces a continued state of separation. Teutonic Norse myths state that a renewal of the world would only come after great destruction in which a period of chaos and disorder would arise that would see humans commit many degrading and tragic acts. As discussed in Chapter Three, there are numerous accounts in ancient and sacred texts that depict the theme of cyclic destruction and renewal; from biblical accounts, Hindu scriptures and Tibetan narratives. Similarly, there are various indigenous accounts, such as from the Mayan and Hopi histories, that align their myths to the 26,000-year precession of the equinox (the time it takes for the tilt of the Earth to make a complete passage to its original astronomical position in the zodiac). Yet they are not alone.

It has been found that there are many ancient myths that contain references to celestial cycles and their impact upon human civilization. According to the book Hamlet’s Mill, a work of comparative mythology, there are over 200 myths/folk stories from over 30 ancient cultures that refer to the ‘Great Year’ – the precession of the equinoxes.⁹ Marking the passage of the ‘Great Year’ was important to many past cultures, as if this timing – or rather calendar – was marking a significant cycle. Laurie Pratt, a researcher into the Hindu Yuga cycles, notes that:

We must grant, therefore, that man can have no more accurate universal measuring-stick for the passage of time than that afforded by the position of the fixed stars in relation to the yearly equinoctial place of the Sun.¹⁰

The grand cycles of the Yugas may indeed have something to teach us about the rise and fall of epochs, civilizations and the consciousness of humanity. After all, as T S Eliot so eloquently reminded us:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

from Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’

The Rise and Fall of Ages

Ancient myth and folklore from around the world speak of the Great Year and refer to a long-ago Golden Age as part of a grand cosmic cycle of growth and decay. Archaeological records are forever being updated to reveal new evidence of the decline and collapse of civilizations throughout the ancient world. This trend in decline peaked recently in the early Middle Ages, a time of contraction where long-distance travel and trade almost ceased overnight. This near-anarchic period of tribalism, warlords and serfs is commonly referred to as the Dark Ages, circa AD500. Then, almost a thousand years later – as if on cue – the wheel begins to turn again and a new impetus emerges, an energetic surge in knowledge, scientific discovery and artistic expression that was the Renaissance period. Is there a pattern here, some kind of cyclic trend? Many ancient myths and teachings think there is; and one of the most explicit teachings on this cyclic trend is in the Hindu Yugas.

In Hindu philosophy the Yugas refer to a grand epoch that is divided into four ages: the Satya Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age), Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) and Kali Yuga (Iron Age). Hindu cosmology tells us that the universe is created and destroyed each full day of Brahma (lasting up to eight billion years). In this time the cycles of creation and destruction repeat, like passing seasons, shifting from periods of greater growth (springtime) to times of decline and hibernation (winter). Like the seasons on Earth, both Nature and the consciousness of humanity goes through changes. It is thus said that the grand Yuga cycles affect the phases of life on the planet (growth–decline) and the subsequent capacities of the human psyche. A complete Yuga cycle passes from a high period of growth (Golden Age) to a period of decline (Dark Age) and back again. This grand cycle of time is said to be correlated, or caused, by the solar system’s motion through interstellar space – specifically its motion around another binary star.

Now the subject of our solar system being a binary star system is a controversial one, and has been debated for decades by astronomers. At the same time the cause of the Earth’s precession has not been fully agreed upon by modern astronomers, some claiming it is due to a slow change in direction of the Earth’s axis caused by the gravitational forces of the Sun and Moon (as put forward by Newton), whilst others believe that it is caused by the motion of the Sun in space along its own orbit.¹¹ However, many ancient teachings have made reference to the fact that our own sun does have a binary star, of greater magnitude, around which it has an orbit, bringing the solar system with it. This idea of a grand central star around which our solar system revolves has been considered by many ancients to be Alcyone, the brightest star of the Pleiades. To the Babylonians it was Temennu (‘The Foundation Stone’); the Arabs had two names for it – Kimah (the ‘Immortal Seal’) and Al Wasat (‘The Central One’); and it was Amba (‘The Mother’) of the Hindus. Its present name of Alcyone was derived from a Greek word signifying ‘peace’. There is a mention in the Bible of the Pleiades constellation that contains Alcyone where the Lord asked Job: ‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? … Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?’ (Job 38:4–31).

According to Hunbatz Men, a Mayan daykeeper and elder, the ancient Mayans constructed their calendars to reflect this orbital revolution around Alcyone:

Of the many calendars of the ancient Maya, behind them all was the calendar of the great cycle of 26,000 years – the time it takes for our Sun to complete a single revolution around Alcyone, the central star of the Pleiades, with all our galaxy’s orbiting planets accompanying it.¹²

Hunbatz Men reveals that the ancient Mayans regarded the Pleiades system as being the home and origin of human consciousness, and that the cycles of the ebb and flow of consciousness were built into their social, cultural and religious systems, through correspondence with the movement of the Pleiades star system.

Another indicator to this orbital movement comes from German writer/astronomer Paul Otto Hesse who published in his Der Jüngste Tag (The Last Day) how our planetary system forms part of the system of suns that belong to the Pleiades system, and that our sun occupies the seventh orbit which revolves in a 24,000-year orbit. Further, that this orbit is divided into 2 periods of 12,000 years each, of which 10,000 years are of ‘darkness’ and 2,000 years are of ‘light’. Hesse claims that humanity has now entered the beginnings of the 2,000-year period of ‘light’.

However, another controversial subject still in contention regards the exact dating/timing of the Yuga cycles themselves. According to the Laws of Manu, one of the earliest known texts describing the Yugas, the length is:

Satya Yuga – 4,800 years

Treta Yuga – 3,600 years

Dwapara Yuga – 2,400 years

Kali Yuga – 1,200 years

This makes for a total of 12,000 years to complete one arc of the cycle (declining from the Golden Age to the Iron Age). In order to complete one full cycle (back from the Iron Age to the Golden Age) another 12,000 years is required, making a grand total of 24,000 years. However, this is still not the 26,000 years of the precession of the equinoxes noted today. Yet the ancient astronomers, we learn, had calculated the rate of the Earth’s precession slightly differently, to 50" yearly. Modern science now puts the present rate of precession at 50.1" yearly (or 1°0" in 72 years) making it not 24,000, but 25,920 years for the vernal equinox to make one whole circle of the zodiac. Hence, one great cycle of the Yugas can now be clearly correlated as equal to the Great Year precession.

There is still some debate as to the correct duration of the Yugas as more recent, and popular, interpretations measure the years in terms of the demigods (1 year of the demigods is equal to 360 human years), making the Yugas much longer. For example, the 4,800 years of the Satya Yuga would now be 4,800 x 360 which equals 1,728,000 years. Since the highly respected 19th/20th-century Indian yogi Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri (teacher of Paramahansa Yogananda) agrees with the shorter duration, as written in his The Holy Science, correlating with the earliest known texts of the Laws of Manu, I am inclined to agree with the traditionalists on this dating. So in which Yuga are we currently? The obvious one might be the Kali Yuga – the Iron Age – to which many commentators readily, or hastily, concur. However, this may not be the case. Again, it is a matter of number-crunching to find the exact dating.

In The Holy Science, Sri Yukteswar wrote that during the latter years of the Dwapara era (about 700BC):

Maharaja Yudhisthira, noticing the appearance of the dark Kali Yuga, made over his throne to his grandson [and] … together with all of his wise men … retired to the Himalaya Mountains … Thus there was none in the court … who could understand the principle of correctly accounting the ages of the several Yugas.¹³

This was because, Sri Yukteswar tells us, nobody wanted to announce the bad news of the beginning of the ascending Kali Yuga, so they kept adding years to the Dwapara date. Therefore, when the last year of the 2,400-year period of Dwapara Yuga passed away, and the first year of the 1,200-year Kali Yuga Dark Age had arrived, the latter was numbered as the year 2401 instead of year 1 of Kali Yuga. In AD498, when the 1,200-year period of Kali Yuga of the descending arc had been completed, and the first year of Kali Yuga of the ascending arc began, the latter was designated, in the Hindu almanacs, as the year 3601 instead of year 1 of Kali Yuga of the ascending arc.¹⁴

With this new understanding of the dating of the Yuga ages, the present full cycle has been calculated as:

Satya Yuga – Golden Age of humanity – starts 11,502BC

Treta Yuga – Silver Age – 6702BC to 3102BC

Dwapara Yuga – Bronze Age – 3102BC to 702BC

Kali Yuga of the descending arc – Iron Age – 702BC to AD498

(the peak of the early Middle Ages – the Dark Ages, after the fall of Rome)

Kali Yuga of the ascending arc – AD498 to AD1698

Dwapara Yuga – ascending Bronze Age – AD1698 to AD4098

Treta Yuga – ascending Silver Age – AD4098 to AD7698

Satya Yuga – the next Golden Age – will commence in AD7698

In terms of attributes the Yugas generally highlight the rise and fall of great civilizations, as well as the ebb and flow in the morality, ethics and the quality of consciousness in humankind. During the descending arc, not only do civilizations become more materially based but there is also a loss of truth, wisdom, sincerity and integrity; as if saintliness turns into decadence. It is said that in the Golden Age of Satya Yuga, humanity comprehends the source of universal divinity and how the universe is sustained; has complete wisdom, oneness, purity, intelligence, and works with the finest energies of the cosmos. In Treta Yuga, the Silver Age, humanity has lost its peak of oneness yet still works with an extensive knowledge and power over universal energies (such as magnetism) and cosmic forces, and constructs harmonious and peaceful cities and civilizations. In Dwapara Yuga, the Bronze Age, humanity retains a comprehension of some of the finer forces and more subtle energies of the cosmos, and various forces of attraction and repulsion, and understands that all matter, all atomic form, is nothing other than the manifestation of energy and vibratory forces. Finally, in Kali Yuga, the Iron Age, humankind’s knowledge and power is restricted to the world of gross matter, and focused primarily upon material concerns.

According to Yukteswar, each ascending age enhances humanity’s mental faculties and clarity of understanding, which includes knowledge of the finer forces at work within the cosmos. This begins with a rudimentary understanding of electrical forces. Yukteswar writes that:

About AD1600, William Gilbert discovered magnetic forces and observed the presence of electricity in all material substances. In 1609 Kepler discovered important laws of astronomy, and Galileo produced a telescope. In 1621 Drebbel of Holland invented the microscope. About 1670 Newton discovered the law of gravitation. In 1700 Thomas Savery made use of a steam engine in raising water. Twenty years later Stephen Gray discovered the action of electricity on the human body.¹⁵

In the second decade of the 21st century we are now several centuries into the ascending arc of Dwapara Yuga (which began in 1698) so should therefore be discovering that energy underlies matter, and working with even finer sub-material forces. Indeed, the advent of quantum mechanics in the early part of the 20th century has led to a revolution in how we understand universal forces – right on cue. However, are the Yugas really a serious way of understanding human history? After all, we are not taught about them during our history lessons in school.

Despite this absence of conventional data on the cyclic nature of history there are clues, allegories, signs and revelations in various diverse sacred scriptures. These include the Bible; the Vedas of the Hindus; the Books of Thoth/Hermes of the Egyptians; the Zend-Avesta of Zoroaster; the Kabbalistic Zohar of the Hebrews; the Woluspa of the ancient Scandinavians; the Popol Vuh of the ancient Mexicans; the Tanjur of the Tibetans; and the mystical Hymns of Orpheus. In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon it is written:

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:9–11

Also, famously, Plato reveals in his Timaeus that the Egyptians held oral records of past bygone civilizations:

Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said … you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you … there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water … and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.

N.B. The infamous texts from Plato’s Timaeus and Critias contain references to the lost civilization of Atlantis.

* * *

Archaeological research may reject the cyclic theory of civilizations, yet, as a relatively young science, it has in effect only scraped the surface of human history with the majority of available knowledge left untouched and still, literally speaking, under the ground. It is likely that many unknown ancient civilizations also lie inaccessible under the oceans of the world, sunk and hidden through millennia of geophysical upheaval and cataclysms. Examples include the recent discovery of a civilization 5,000 years older than the Indus Valley culture, found in the Gulf of Khambhat (formerly known as the Gulf of Cambay) in the Arabian Sea off the west coast of the India. Also, there are the underwater structures including a pyramid, wide terraces, ramps and steps that have been found in Japanese waters off the island of Yonaguni near Okinawa. There have been similar recent discoveries that have filled books of what is now termed ‘alternative history’ and which is largely shunned and ridiculed by mainstream traditional scholars.

It may just be that our mainstream ‘academic’ knowledge is lacking in its absence of the cyclical law that could represent a framework for the rise and fall of civilizations. Instead, our mainstream theories prefer to believe that a primitive humanity emerged from a Palaeolithic Age and entered a Neolithic or New Stone Age of rudimentary agriculture and into the first faint beginnings of human culture about 15000BC. In other words, the history of civilization is linear, a straight path from hunter-gatherers to the industrialists of today, rather than the alternative that:

… follows a circular (rather, a spiral) course, with upward and downward half-circles which blend into each other as naturally and inevitably as day follows night, and season succeeds season. Scholars grant that a cycle of growth and decadence is evident in the history of all past empires and cultures, but they have not yet perceived that the trend of civilization as a whole follows a similar cycle.¹⁶

In this theory the descending arc of the cycle will witness the gradual loss of immense knowledge and heritage of the previous great epochs through descending millennia, scattered and strewn into fragments, considered anomalies, until the known historical achievements of humankind are nothing other than the material structures built with ‘sticks and stones’ during the final descending Iron Age. It could well be that past records and traces of once-great civilizations have vanished so completely that modern scholars will never admit the possibility of their ever existing.

Even the remnants of past civilizations that we do know something about cannot be considered primitive just because they ‘came before’. This is especially so when even today architects say they cannot replicate the exact precision of the building of the Egyptian pyramids – even with the most modern technology. Let us consider also the remnants found at different places around the world: the grandiose Hindu ruins of Ellora in the Dekkan; the Mexican Chichen-Itza in Yucatan; and the grand ruins of Copan in Honduras, amongst many others. The cyclic theory of ascent– descent begins to make more sense when we consider that the lowest point of the cycle was said to have been reached in AD498, at exactly the same time that much of the world was plunged into the near-barbarism that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire and the break-up of western lands into tribal regions. This theory of cycles in human civilization accounts for the lack of continuity in the progress of humankind, and provides a pattern for why it appears that socio-cultural evolution seems to abound in start-stop leaps rather than in a clear developmental linear fashion. Let us now take a brief look at this historical pattern.

Into the Ascending Arc of History

Humanity entered what has been designated the darkest, densest and most unenlightened period of history in the year 702BC – the beginning of the Kali Yuga (Iron Age) of the descending arc. This period roughly corresponds with the founding of ancient Rome (the precursor to the Roman Republic, and later the Roman Empire) and the start of a more or less fair chronological historical record. It is a record of the rise and fall of mighty empires, of the destruction of human knowledge, and of the dominance of wars, invasions and strife. Whilst I do not claim here to give an accurate historical overview (a whole volume would be required), a brief outline of just a few events may serve to give a general flavour of the epoch.

We can begin by noting how the Kali Yuga saw the collapse of the great Assyrian Empire (in its Neo-Assyrian phase) with the fall of Nineveh before the conquering Medes, Babylonians and Persians in 612BC. Assyria was then ruled by the Chaldean civilization of ancient Babylon, until that too was ruled by the Achaemenid Empire (also known as the Persian Empire) with its power centred in Mesopotamia. The great Persian Empire was then invaded by Alexander the Great and subsequently collapsed. Around the same time we also saw the final decline of the once great Egyptian dynasties, as the Late Period of Egypt began with the 26th Dynasty (672BC to 525BC) and ended with the 30th Dynasty (380BC to 343BC) and its final dwindling until Egypt finally fell under Greek rule when Alexander the Great conquered the country in 332BC. The great days of Greece, however, were over by the 2nd century bc and in 30BC, after the death of Cleopatra VII, the Roman Empire finally declared that Egypt was to be a Roman province and ruled by a selected prefect of Rome.

By this time the Roman Empire had already asserted its geographical dominance with the capture of Carthage in 146BC, an important and famous Mediterranean city and seaport; Carthage was to become the Roman Empire’s third most important city. In the same year the Romans also destroyed and captured the Greek city of Corinth, another strategic ancient city-state. The era of the Roman Empire finally ended in AD476 when a revolt, led by the Germanic general Odoacer forced the abdication of the last of the Western Roman Emperors. Europe in the 5^th century saw itself break up into various tribal warring factions, as Attila the Hun and his army of Eurasian nomads laid waste to much of Europe and created the Hunnic Empire. Fighting ensued over Europe between the Huns, the Goths (Visigoths and Ostrogoths) and the Vandals. Around the same time India was invaded by the Indo-Scythians who founded the Kushan dynasty over all northern India. The Hephthalites, known as the ‘White Huns’ later came to rule parts of India through the 5th and 6th centuries ad, inflicting much atrocity and cruelties upon the people.

This period of invasion upon invasion and the rise and fall of subsequent empires gave the descending Kali Yuga Iron Age a flavour of violence, greed and material dominance. It is perhaps little wonder, then, that the Christ figure of Jesus of Nazareth appeared during this period as a timely reminder of the inner kingdom that lay within – the lost jewel. However, this is not the place for a discussion on Christianity. Suffice to say that humanity suffered much in order to reach the ascending arc of the Kali Yuga, the period from AD498 to 1698. The scene now begins to shift to Western Europe and to the Americas.

The ascending arc of the Great Year broke with the past and started a new journey for humanity; an upward spiral of civilization and human evolution that is said will culminate in the year 12498. However, this first period of the Iron Age saw a fragmented and divided populace. By the 10th century the population of Europe comprised a scattering of European and Asiatic nomadic blood and tribal allegiances: Huns, Goths, Vandals, Alans, Franks, Teutons, Lombards, Czechs, Burgundians, Magyars, Bulgars, Slavs, Norsemen, Ephthalites, Indo-Scythians, Finns, Arabs, Turks, Avars, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Picts and Scots. These tribes had almost all been migratory peoples, at once invading and settling, century by century, in Europe, Africa and Asia. These races intermarried with the peoples whose lands they conquered, and over the course of centuries evolved into our present-day races. These seemingly chaotic tribal states and regions slowly began to give way to a new class of governance, as tribal kings declared themselves ‘divine rulers’, and their populations became their subjects. These early European centuries gave rise to the Age of Feudalism – a socio-political system of rigid class structure that served a purpose within times of great chaos, insecurity and uncertainty.

Out of this new socio-political system of rule emerged the Crusades at the end of the 11th century, continuing until the final years of the 13th century. Whilst these series of religious wars may seem to be a dark period in history for many people, it succeeded in opening a channel to Europe through which much new knowledge and influence from the Muslim world could penetrate and impact the stagnating West. The degree to which the Arabs disseminated great learning and sciences to the West has now been well documented. For example, the oldest university in the world, Al-Azhar, was established in Cairo in AD970, and influenced the later European universities in the 11th and 12th centuries (Bologna, Paris, Oxford, etc.). Arabic knowledge included mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, pharmacy and the use of anaesthetics. The introduction of the so-called Arabic numerals, brought from India, greatly stimulated European learning. It is also said that the concept of hospitals came from the Bimaristans (places of the sick) first established by the Seljuk Turkish ruler of Damascus and the Mamluks of Cairo, and brought to the West through the Crusades. The first critical historical study – the Muqaddimah – was made in the 14th century by Ibn Khaldun. The first book to be printed in England – The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers – was a translation from an Arabic work.¹⁷ Further, Arabic translations of Aristotle and other Greeks were introduced into Western thinking in the 15th century through Spain.

The great revival of learning in Europe can be said to have begun in the 15th century with the introduction of the printing press and paper manufacture (paper was first brought to Europe from China by the Arabs). Europe was once again introduced to the old classical culture, the thought of ancient Greece and Rome, of Babylon and Egypt. European classical literature of the likes of Dante and Chaucer – and later Shakespeare and Goethe – is now seen to have been influenced by Arabic sources. The Renaissance was a flowering of European thought and culture (as was discussed in Chapter One) and occurred at the crux of the ascending arc of the next Yuga – the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age).

The Dwapara Yuga or the Bronze Age of the ascending arc began, according to our time references, in 1698. In the past four centuries of Dwapara Yuga the world has, by and large, made greater strides forwards in knowledge and discovery than in all the 24 centuries (comprising two Kali Yugas) that preceded the modern period. Knowledge in the world is now expanding exponentially and discoveries and inventions have transformed the world. As humankind has left the Iron Age, we are seeing a gradual move away from the structural materials of iron and steel towards the use of lighter, and finer, materials. We have literally triumphed over the Iron Age of the previous Kali Yuga cycles. The Industrial Revolution was the peak of these material infrastructures that opened up the expansion in transportation and urban growth. The Dwapara Age that began in 1698 is marked by an understanding of what Sri Yukteswar termed ‘fine matter forces’; i.e. advances in the understanding and use of forces that are more subtle and less physical, such as electrical and atomic forces. As humanity progresses along this ascending cycle we are set to increase our understanding of the forces and energies of the universe that will perhaps lead to new discoveries in the use of magnetic forces and bio/nano technologies. Indeed, we are already well into the age of electricity and its finer (more etheric?) qualities: the Internet, cyberspace, avatars, teleconferencing and near-instantaneous global communications. This is indicative of our need to rise above the heavier energetic elements of coal and oil (finite fossil fuels) towards more subtle energies that may comprise magnetic, quantum, or even the infamous ‘free energy’ sources.

According to Mayan Elder Carlos Barrios, the world of the Fifth Sun (our present ascending age) is associated with energy, and with the development of a new awareness and relationship with energies. It could be that humanity is thus entering a period of discovering new aspects of energy and how to harness the energies and forces associated with not only our developing technologies but also our increased knowledge of quantum, magnetic and electrical universal forces. In other words, the mind of humanity and its capacity for understanding are also attuned to the grand cycles of time.

The Cyclic Mind of Humanity

Today we have much more knowledge about how human brainwave frequencies operate and their relationship to external influences and impacts. For example, in the early 1950s German physicist Dr W O Schumann calculated that global electromagnetic resonances were present in the cavity formed by the Earth surface and the ionosphere. Schumann set the lowest-frequency (with highest-intensity) mode at approximately 7.83Hz, which is in the alpha brainwave range, and found that the Earth’s surface, the ionosphere and the atmosphere form what could be seen as a complete planetary electrical circuit. This planetary circuitry acts as a ‘waveguide’ that handles the continuous flow of EM waves, and is now known as the Schumann Resonance (SR). In fact, it was this atmospheric circuitry of global EM resonances that Nikola Tesla speculated, in 1905, could be utilized for the creation of worldwide wireless energy transmission.

These SR frequencies are important since all living biological systems are known to function within electromagnetic field interactions. In fact, EM fields are what connect living structures to resonant energy patterns (or morphic fields¹⁸). The SR cavity formed between the ionosphere and the Earth produces oscillations capable of resonating and ‘phase-locking’ with brainwaves, since the human brain is also an EM receiver and transmitter. EEG measurements have found that the brain has the following four frequency bands:

delta (up to 4Hz)

theta (4–7Hz)

alpha (8–12Hz)

beta (12–30Hz)

The Earth’s SR waves have been observed by experiment to oscillate at several frequencies that are very close to the brain’s frequency bands; and even closer when a person is in deep meditation.¹⁹ In particular states, a resonance is possible between the energy field of the human being and the planet. In such a state of resonance it is speculated that a mutual ‘information-sharing’ energy field is created. This is hardly surprising since the human body (both physically and ‘energetically’) evolved over eons of geological time as part of Earth’s own evolution. The human species is thus a product of the Earth’s environment, and must have built up an energetic relationship to surrounding atmospheric EM oscillations. As Earth is surrounded by an ionosphere (a layer of electrically charged particles), natural fluctuations in frequency thus impact upon the energy field within and around the human body. It is reasonable to assert, therefore, that the frequencies of the Earth’s naturally occurring EM waves have shaped the development of human brainwave signals.

If the frequencies of human brainwaves evolved in response to Earth’s own wavelengths then it is very likely that variations in the Earth’s oscillations will result in reactive changes in the human body and mind. Such changes could be categorized as behavioural and mental changes. For example, it could be that incidences linked to the classic states of ‘lunacy’ (often accredited to the Moon’s influence) could arise from a variation in atmospheric EM frequencies in conjunction with Moon/planetary forces. In fact, there was one study that analysed the correlation between the incidence of ionospheric disturbance and the rate of admission to the Heathcote Hospital (Perth, Western Australia) over a three-year period. Results indicated that when an ionospheric disturbance occurred then the admission rate changed. The report’s authors give the probability factor of the association being random in the order of 2000:1 against.²⁰

The fact that energies which circulate in the Earth impact and influence the human mind and body should not be regarded as mystical or esoteric. At all times our physical bodies act in a similar fashion to lightning rods grounding (or ‘earthing’) energy. The well-documented human biofield thus binds us closely to the ionospheric and EM fields of planet Earth. As in a physical energetic circuit, the human body is closely interwoven with the Earth’s fluctuating energy fields, which to some degree helps to regulate our body’s internal clocks and circadian rhythms. We also need to remember that Earth is likewise affected by solar and stellar activity. According to physicist and Nobel Laureate Professor Hannes Alfvén:

The conditions in the ionosphere and the magnetosphere of the earth are influenced by the electromagnetic state in interplanetary space, which in turn is affected by the Sun. There are a number of solar electromagnetic phenomena … sunspots, prominences, solar flares, etc. Other stars’ electromagnetic phenomena are of importance, most conspicuously in the magnetic variable stars.²¹

Recent speculations on the Earth’s precession of the equinox have, as stated earlier, pointed towards our solar system having a binary star.

Again referring to Sri Yukteswar in his book The Holy Science, when ‘the sun in its revolution round its dual comes to the place nearest to this grand center … the mental virtue, becomes so much developed that man can easily comprehend all, even the mysteries of Spirit’.²² What this suggests is that there may be some form of great stellar force (perhaps an electromagnetic pulse or field) that affects the Earth as it draws closer to its binary star as part of the cyclic Great Year (precession of the equinox). Whilst this hypothesis is still speculative it does illustrate how the spiral/cycles coincide with the rise and fall of civilizations and the life of humanity on Earth.²³ And our sciences, too, are indicating that the human mind is under the influence of fluctuating EM energies that have both solar and interstellar origins, as was noted by Professor Hannes Alfven above.

Similarly, the electromagnetic field theory of consciousness, proposed by Susan Pockett and Johnjoe McFadden, says that the electromagnetic field generated by the brain (as measurable by electrocorticography) is the actual medium for the experience of human consciousness (more on this in later chapters). The Cemi (conscious electromagnetic information) Field Theory suggests, in essence, that consciousness is related to the EM fields that the body produces, especially those produced by the brain. This new and startling science of consciousness links up with other research (such as that by physician Frances Nixon) to demonstrate that not only do humans have a personal EM field but also that it appears to be connected to the EM field of the Earth. (See also the research of Dr Robert O Becker in his book The Body Electric.) This also clearly ties in with the information we are receiving about the energy interactions with the Earth’s Schumann Resonance.

To recap, there is now increasing evidence that stellar sources in the cosmos generate huge magnetic and EM waves/pulses affecting the ionic and magnetic atmosphere of the Earth; further, that these forces can have a marked effect upon the biological and mental functioning of humanity. It is thus reasonable to speculate that the cyclic passing of the Great Year (as defined by the Yuga epochs) may in fact be a blueprint for describing the rise and fall of energies that are involved in the evolution of human civilizations and conscious being. After all, the cycles of celestial orbits are remarkably reliable and constant over human historical time.

As Walter Cruttenden, a researcher on the binary star theory, remarks:

Think of the power of drops of water to cut through stone; then think of the very long duration of the huge magnetic and electromagnetic pulses generated by distant stellar sources, wave after wave permeating our world. There is a possibility that they could prove at least as powerful over the long term than any experiment we can generate in a laboratory in the short term.²⁴

As the stellar winds blow, so to speak, human awareness increases in its knowledge of ‘finer forces’. As our civilization moves further into this ascending Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age) we may find a greater emphasis and acceptance of ever subtler forces and fields, such as the human bio-field and consciousness.

In the following chapters I will examine what I consider to be developments in the rising tide of human consciousness; to conclude with a look at our new and coming generations. To begin with, the next chapter takes a look at the emerging interplay of humanity’s individual and collective empathic mind.