by Palden Jenkins
About an influential myth in the psyche of the West
An extract from an early draft of the book Healing the Hurts of Nations
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Apocalypse!
by Palden Jenkins |
"The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is a great force leading to change"
Revelations
A century seems a long time, yet someone born in recent decades is likely to see these profound changes, whatever they turn out to be, take place in their own lifetime. By the end of their life (say 2040-70), many necessary changes will need to have been successfully enacted – or, alternatively, things will have gone very bad. In fact, on a deep-down level, a person born today probably chose to be born in this time specifically to be involved with such changes, to be part of an enormous encounter-session with reality and the future.
Let's work on an assumption that humanity responds to its challenges, and despite the lateness of response, that we make it through whatever crisis we must face. To successfully navigate the 21st century, we will have needed to transform our world civilisation and the nature of life considerably, thoroughly and deeply. Using a modicum of commonsense and imagination, the kind of safe and surviving civilisation we might see in one hundred years is likely to have the following general characteristics:
* A world society of relatively happy and safe people, positively overcoming difficulties and in a position to realise their full potential as human beings;
Without such qualities, survival is unlikely, as far as things look today. What these points signify is an utter shift in our reality, our collective psychology and sense of purpose. This might sound high-minded and idealistic, yet redemptive changes to life on Earth cannot be made unless such changes are fundamental and root-to-branch. Changing symptoms and appearances does not constitute a solution. What it all boils down to is a change of core consciousness – not just of values, but of the very awareness by which we form our values, awakening a fuller potential within us. Not a stone is likely to remain unturned.
It might well be that, forward in the future, there still are hardships, periodic disasters or errors made – we are not talking about a perfect world. This is unlikely, an expression of the utopianism which has been necessary to bolster good folks' hearts amidst dreadful times. We're talking of a world where energy no longer gets stuck, where people are heard, where helplessness and victimhood have disappeared, where solutions are possible, where human nature shines and where nature's soul becomes re-enchanted with wonder. This is where the real work of humanity at last unequivocally starts. In other words, we'll be very much in process. What conservatism is present would be of the stabilising, not the resisting kind, and what radicalism is present is of the inspiring rather than the rebelling kind. Achieving all this presupposes an enormous turn-around in humanity's direction and purpose. How might this be brought about?
We humans tend to act affirmatively when our arms are twisted behind our backs, when we no longer have any alternative. Despite our species name homo sapiens, 'Human the Wise', we tend to avoid exercising our propensity for sagacity. Wisdom: that acquired capacity to see the patterns in things, to live maturely by a greater understanding, to engage a sound moral sense and to utilise the full benefits of accumulated experience. Surely, by now, we have well enough historic experience behind us? Yet, we wait until we're forced to act, even when we know action is overdue and danger beckons.
One of the difficulties with voluntary affirmative action is figuring out where to start. All things are so interdependent. Changing one thing changes the effect it has on other things. Changing one thing brings a risk of changes snowballing, going out of control, over the edge. Profound changes have been delayed for a very long time, building up pressure, leaving multiple layers of issues unresolved – it's a case of layers of the onion. Added to this, we are hesitant to address the root-causes of world problems: it looks quicker, simpler and cheaper to do a cosmetic fix, plastering over symptoms, delivering quick, visible and marketable solutions without demanding sacrifices of the tetchy public and the corporate world. We moan about symptoms and symbols without looking seriously at the institutions, basic rules, norms and ways by which such symptoms are created.
Yet, to get a grip on world change, we need to have the courage to zero in on core issues. Courage tends to arise when crisis breaks out, in response to need and imperative – immense feats are carried out amidst crossfire, earthquakes and high-risk, free-fall situations. Britain experienced greater national unity of effort and purpose in its war effort in WW2 than at any other time in the 20th century – though the nation is beset by a tragic psychological relationship between national feeling and war, in which war becomes necessary as a means of rousing and uniting the nation. War is a state of emergency with which we have adequate experience. Yet, when we contemplate world change, we're looking at a state of real emergency – hopefully, without the guns.
When things are comfortable, courage seems out of place – dulled routine is what's required. When things are dire and threatening, we pull out all the stops and act with great energy. The difficulty lies in moving out of our comfort-zones into the risky and fluid area of dramatic change. 'Rather the devil we know than the devil we don't know' – a very dangerous belief which vainly justifies acceptance of the collective crimes we nowadays participate in. Institutions, belief-systems and social mores to which we are accustomed seem unable to catalyse sufficient change – even when these are progressive or reforming, they can get stuck in complication and resistance. There must therefore be some intervening switch, some circuit-breaking catalyst which forces core issues to the surface, activating mass positive action. This switch, this tide-turning, is what is often called apocalypse.
What, realistically, is apocalypse? Leaving aside biblical imagery of horsemen, archangels and thunderously-blaring trumpets (more Mithraic and Zoroastrian in origin than Judaeo-Christian[1]), the true meaning of the ancient Greek term apokalupsis is revelation. Revelation implies the unmasking or uncovering of things previously unseen – or perhaps unaccepted. It's a process of uncurtaining – yet what lies behind the veils has probably always been there.
Our current civilisation thrives and perpetuates itself not on forethought and wider longterm considerations, neither on truly realistic, mundanely-practical foundations – even though economists, politicians, scientists and other pundits currently hold the high moral ground in defining what 'reality' is. Rather, our civilisation is founded on an intricate system of interwoven half-truths, rationalisations, persuasions and illusions. Put bluntly, this house is built on lies. Lies we all have bought into, to the extent that we find difficulty stepping outside them. We have grown so used to untruths that we no longer notice them – our frame of reference is skewed.
What we are told and what we have come to accept is not what the final reality actually lands up being. This is a common factor throughout life, even if it takes until we lie on our death-bed to realise it. Therefore, revelation implies a breakthrough of reality as it is. The pressure of reality would be such that our beliefs could no longer hold up. It implies a collapse of false ideas and illusions – however this comes about. Russians had a case of localised apocalypse in the late 1980s – the Soviet system proved systemically unworkable and could no longer continue. Soviet bloc regimes collapsed and abdicated when people expressed their accumulated thorough disenchantment with the system. Was this a practice-run for the world? It didn't actually, in the end, take too much effort for the Soviet edifice to be pushed over. Yet, look back to 1980, and no one, even the best-informed, would have guessed it would happen. That's a clue: revelation comes about when it is least expected, in the most unforeseen ways.
How does such a revelation come about? After all, prophets have long spoken and the writing has long been on the wall. Only marginal minorities have tended to hear the message, while majorities disregard it. Yet this phenomenon of revelation gathers strength through the agency of personal experience, as individuals interpret their own individual and local life-predicaments in ways which begin to run counter to the prevailing social ideology. Revelation is experiential, often circumstantially-prompted, not a specialised mystical vision received by the few out in the desert. Patients turn away from doctors to healers, consumers turn away from shopping malls to make qualitative lifestyle changes, away from 'due political process' to various forms of quiet dissidence or divergence from the norm.
However, institutions by nature resist change, since they have a will-to-live which outstretches their actual relevance and contribution to society. So there is an ongoing institutional containment, a hijacking and trivialisation of all serious manifestations of awakening by the media, marketing men and, if necessary, security forces – even by religious leaders. This might not be intended by more than a few, but it still has the effect of suppressing revelation or its effects. As a result, movements for change are slow to coalesce into viable and coherent majorities which might make a visible difference.
Movements for change do however act effectively as seed-beds for new ideas and initiatives, or as single-issue protest movements. It takes a long time for an idea or movement to progress from a peripheral or underground to a mainstream influence. The summated personal transformations of individuals take time to add up to an overall tide of far-reaching social change. How do such personal and sub-cultural turn-abouts convert into a majority social turn-around movement – a movement which bravely addresses the fundamental causes of civilisation's discontents? How do ripples become a wave?
Gridlock
We are already seeing an acceleration and intensification of events: every person worldwide knows that time is not the same as it was but thirty years ago. Happenings, issues and problems quicken and deepen rhythmically in every area of life, accumulating at a rate faster than our capacity grows to resolve them. This is largely because we seek to resolve current pressing issues in old, comfortable ways, hoping that a brief twiddle of the knobs and a press statement will crack it. However, the events of the 1990s represent developments of a different tenor and nature to those before, and customary solutions are proving unhelpful, even damaging. The more the same old excuses and explanations are trotted out, the more they devalue those speaking them.
The 1993-4 American/UN interventions in Somalia and Haiti, or the aid effort in and around Rwanda[2] are examples of emergency band-aid applied to stop acute social haemorrhaging. Genuine empathy toward the victims of these crises was pitifully overshadowed by gestures played to the home market, to prevent buildup of guilt and humanitarian outrage. The press got there before the relief agencies – where are our priorities? A fundamental social healing did not occur in those nations, and a bevy of new problems was created – such as dependency on foreign aid. We avoid fundamental rethinks about aid, trade and society, the re-drawing of maps or the re-casting of inter-ethnic agreements – or the creation of drastic new methods of problem-solving. We sidestep the question: it's easier to perpetuate the Big Lie than to face reality full-on. Thus, further pending issues are amassed for some future day.
Gridlock is a systems-clogging through sheer overstrain. Each clogging element clogs other elements in chain-reaction, blocking all parts of the system such that no part can viably initiate gridlock-release. No one and nothing can get out, neither can anything get in, and everything feeds into everything else: the consequences of earlier actions or inactions have grown to such a level that all energy- and information-flows coagulate. Gridlock is a result of failing to foresee or to deal with problems at the time they first arise.
Business and government are patently unwilling to invest in and focus on issues which imply fundamental re-examination and change – three-to-five years and the current term of office is their perspective. While writing these words in October 1994, I heard the British prime minister on radio stating that, given current levels of economic growth, the economic living standard of the nation would double in 25 years. Never is there any questioning over the desirability of such growth.
As a result of national and global unwillingness to plan for more-than-cosmetic longterm change, transnational institutions do not have the authority or funds to act resolutely. Such transnational bodies, largely controlled by dominant nations and dominant interests, lack the means to act effectively.[3] There has been no willingness to hand more power and funding to the UN, to upgrade its effectiveness or its direct accountability to the people of the world – even though there is a movement within and around the UN to do so. Some even pass off the UN as a mere tool of an insidious New World Order, as if to justify and strengthen the continued existence of the self-serving nation state – as if nations guaranteed the sovereignty of people.
Having worked so hard at tying the public into short-termist rat-racing, governments, business and the media are hardly likely suddenly to reverse this trend – their very existence and structure rest on it. To assuage public pressures, symbolic and isolated measures are taken, though as time goes on they take on an increasingly cosmetic character. Top-level summits are staged, yet the negotiators who hammer out the details land up phrasing honourable declarations which remain under-enacted. The quest for further and faster continues unabated – there isn't enough time to deal with anything but short-term, immediate issues. Official decision-making bodies are not elected or constituted with a brief to make the fundamental shifts needed – they are created to conform to the specifications they were set, and no such body wishes to go out of business. Jobs could be lost – in our country!
The natural outcome of this creeping sclerosis is growing structural strain of all systems, increasing degradation, disinterest and disaffection in world society, sinking vitality and suppression of fundamental innovation. This all adds up to an increasing tendency to delay action. This is what felled the Roman empire, and we're happily repeating it. Meanwhile, with our egos unconsciously threatened and increasingly embattled, the world's population grows more and more self-serving and myopic, building emotional fortresses, instinctively consuming and rat-racing in ever-decreasing circles, just in case this becomes impossible in the future. "Buy now, while this special offer is still on!". Are we now living in an unannounced worldwide clearance sale? Get it while you can! Get what? The world thus becomes overridingly directionless.
Even Rome was burned down, raided by barbarians, abandoned by its emperor and citizens and finally denuded of its greatness: the impossible happened.[4] At some point comes a swarm of crises too pressing, too variegated and too many, and the most critical of them threatens to halt all activity. A sudden pensiveness develops – a dreadful silence. The powerful become impotent, sheepish, covering themselves. Their supporters melt ignominiously into the crowd. Favoured henchmen plead innocence. People in positions of influence suddenly lack solutions: they have the sticky fingers of complicity, and genuine truth-speakers amongst them have already been weeded out, or they resigned in disgust. Everything gets dreadfully stuck.
Dragons and monsters
Media and authorities – the agencies of the collective conscious – find they have no simple answers. No longer do they get away with standardly-offered excuses – 'troublemakers', 'foreign influences', 'terrorists', 'market forces', 'unforeseen circumstances' or 'national security'. It is at this moment that people discover they all share approximately the same feeling: a knowing, a sudden blast of unavoidable truth dawns simultaneously in the minds of many, turning their stomachs over.
Such a situation arose when the news of the Chernobyl meltdown emerged in late April 1986: for 4-5 long days after the news broke, the world's collective unconscious rumbled severely, faced with an entirely new, threatening situation. The question arose: "Is this IT? – is this THE END?". All manner of emotions, dread and fear swept through the public psyche like a lightning virus. Deluges of radioactivity, hell-holes bored into the Earth's mantle, full-scale ecological disasters and other end-time scenarios ricocheted around. The world was held in suspense.
After some long days, the news eventually came through that the disaster had been brought under control. There were billions of sighs of relief. This allowed the public to pack away its dread, bury its sense of doom, and resume normal, humdrum activity. There was also a small twinge of unconscious sadness, at the loss of an electrifying opportunity – something different was happening. Yet: business as usual! Within months, the event and its implications subsided, overwhelmed by other pressing issues. The relative media status of nuclear meltdowns in distinction to fashion shows were duly blurred.
However, what happens if humanity comes to the "Is this IT?" realisation, and the IT, doesn't go away? What happens if there is nowhere to go for escape? What happens if, amidst that thunderous pregnant silence, the human race as a whole genuinely realises that the Game is Up, and that This, beyond all measure of doubt, indeed is the Big IT everyone unconsciously anticipated?
Suddenly the collective mind starts racing, grasping at possible solutions. Surely someone can solve it? People feel vulnerable and unprotected. For once, we start praying. Normal means of evasion pale in effectiveness, clattering rudely on stony ground. Quickly this grasping, sudden despair exhausts itself: blocked exits are found in every direction. Gridlock, both psychological and in reality, takes hold of humanity.
Even the roads out of town get blocked. Everything stops as the news dawns. Resignation. It's not even worth panicking, though some do. Like snowfall, life becomes blanketed with a new reality. Even people unaware of what is happening, hidden away in the mountains or in confined circumstances, become aware that something major is afoot – they feel it. It's like that pregnantly-poised pea-soup intensity which builds up immediately before a storm. Suddenly, there is no point to anything. Or, more correctly: suddenly the already-known mounting pointlessness of life is consciously appreciated. This is a revelation of things as they are. No way out. Utter stoppage. A lethal mixture of red-alerts, total checkmates and utter doldrums.
We have had practice runs of this kind of experience on various scales before. It happens to individuals during moments of truth – bankruptcy, illness or prison sentences. It happens to any army and nation when it realises it is losing a war – Hitler and most Nazis only accepted their impending defeat when the Russians were two kilometres from the centre of Berlin in 1945. It happens when the markets plummet into free-fall and traders and investors are wiped out in minutes. It happens when the water runs out or the electricity goes off. It happens when death comes to fetch us. It happened in the Soviet Union in 1986-9, when it was realised that fundamental changes were unavoidable and urgent. Soon after such realisations dawn, it quickly becomes apparent that circumstances, systems and public bodies have become obsolete and obstructive. Even the rock-solid immutable Communist Party of the Soviet Union found itself irrelevant and unwanted, a vacuous heap of organisational impotence – in office, yet not in power.
In the Russia of 1990, there was however a difference to the scenario we are painting here. When the Soviet system collapsed, there was another system eager to replace it: Western capitalists congratulated themselves for 'winning the Cold War', seeking to stake out joint ventures, oil and minerals. Few acknowledged the national courage of the USSR in 'playing the ultimate card' (Schevardnadze's words): the Russians had unilaterally and intentionally renounced world-power status and nuclear overkill. They had changed the game. Western experts flew into Russia, jump-starting a dollar-financed profiteering binge by businessfolk, apparatchiks, criminals and prostitutes. The end-product was a substitute system: Yeltsin for Gorbachev, mafia for nomenklatura,[5] dollars for roubles and BMWs for Zils.
However, in the global scenario we're talking about, there are no easy substitutes – apocalypse is by nature worldwide, all-embracing, the end of the end-game. Nothing steps in to redeem the day. At least, nothing that is known of up until that point.
The trip-switch
Such a floundering situation can be sparked by small yet strategically-crucial or symbolic events. The crisis we're talking about here is multi-level, material, psychological and spiritual – it is a total show-stopper. Time actually seems to stretch or stand still. We have already had plenty of rumbles of such a phenomenon, saved by the fact that not too many ignited at once. Such a local and overnight event as the Kobe earthquake, Japan, in 1995,[6] had secondary and indirect repercussions everywhere, lasting at least five years. Such a crisis is manageable if unaccompanied by other crises of similar or greater magnitude. However, if several crucial crises arose around the same time, then serious consequences can compound, bearing heavily on sensitive arenas such as money-markets, military alliances, diplomacy and the mood on the city-streets, as its effects reverberate. The world can move rapidly into a potentially disastrous situation. The world's immune system and resistance to shock becomes vulnerable.
Into such a tenderised situation comes the public mood. If, in this circumstance, certain suddenly-controversial issues evoke exceptional public response, and if authorities respond inappropriately, and then, to cap it all, a world-threatening event arises, we have potential lift-off. Such trains of events are not as implausible as we would like to believe – they tend to happen just when we think they won't.
Specific glitches might at first spark things off, precipitating further chain-reactions. The world suddenly finds itself in an utterly new situation, vulnerable to the slightest shudder, for which few are prepared. It could be an initially-innocuous local problem which sparks things, such as a riot in Irian Jaya or the discovery that cornflakes induce arthritis. However, knock-on effects can multiply further knock-on effects which can then put the world into an uncontrollable spin, affecting things which appear to have no relation to the original bushfire spark.
There is choice though. When one has a heart attack or is told one has cancer, one is faced with a choice to meet reality head-on with ruthless honesty, or to enact emergency avoidance measures in order to deny the impact of the crisis and what it is demanding. If one chooses honesty, there is an immediate feeling of empowerment to act, to break old habits and engage in radical therapies. This involves perceiving and accepting the situation as it is and acting on it, no holds barred. Things go on from there.
The alternative is to deny the challenge, to go catatonic, go wild or go into terminal decline – each leading to eventual regret. This sort of predicament has a tremendously enabling effect on us if we are willing to say yes to what it presents. However, this is rare. Often, we go into shock or are caught unprepared. Grasping at simple proffered solutions or bleating for help from others is a frequent first response. However, answers and assistance are in practice available only when we render ourselves fully open and eligible to receiving them – and this demands change, not avoidance or resistance. If we are unhelpable, we cannot be helped.
Apocalyptic situations would rapidly become known to the world public, not only by satellite TV (or its sudden absence), but also by a mass psychic-instinctive intimation, an overriding atmosphere which becomes almost palpable – as was the case with Chernobyl or at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collective unconscious, not sectioned-up in the way that egos perceive selfhoods to be, resonates beyond and between individuals. Such mass intimations occur more commonly than we acknowledge – the collective unconscious operates at all times, unbeknownst to most, but when its dynamics and imagery shout loud and shake our foundations, we notice.
When it bubbles up to the surface, it creates an all-pervasive atmosphere affecting everybody far and wide – on the night of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 there was a crackly excitement in the air, palpable even in the isolated forests of Canada. Paradoxically, far from the madding crowd, such atmospheres are more tangible. On this occasion, the world psyche twanged Bly with the resonance of "freedom and democracy!" – and everybody was deeply moved. Such atmospheres are activated in subtle spheres and undercurrents of shared thoughts – helped by rapid media coverage, phone, fax or Internet communication.
These psychically-charged atmospheres do not require major events to catalyse them. Profoundly symbolic and suggestive events can be deeply stirring, even to people thoroughly unaffected. They can catalyse immense changes of perspective. The death of but one person can mean the end of an era. In the mid-80s, the sight of young Ethiopian and Sudanese children with thin limbs and distended stomachs stirred unprecedented feelings. The simultaneous bushfires in Australia and floods in Europe in January 1994 symbolised a global trial by fire and water, a forced purgation evoking considerable shock.
Symbolism-rich situations can bring an enormous turn-around in public consciousness. There had been hundreds of nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s-80s, yet the 1995 proposition by newly-elected French president Chirac to test a few nuclear devices at Muraroa Atoll in the Pacific sparked public uproars far beyond any rational explanation. These raised anti-colonialist sentiments in Polynesia, moral outrage in Australasia, confidence-based pressures on the Franc and diplomatic stresses in the European Union. Meanwhile, China detonated a bomb test of its own, which hardly anyone noticed.
Chirac had turned a key and opened a flood-gate in the world unconscious – and it decanted out in multi-coloured textures and hues. Exaggerated public response indicated that the public had reached a threshold of acceptance of nuclear testing – historically, the brakes were being unconsciously applied. However, this also represented an entirely unconscious response to an undiscovered secret withheld from the public: France was utilising nuclear tests as a means of disposing of quantities of low-level nuclear waste from its large civil nuclear programme, by deep-level underground nuclear incineration, far from home.
Amazing grace
Crises turn the screws to a critical degree, coercing adequate response – our very existence is threatened, or feels to be threatened. In such situations, normal ego-awareness and normality itself are short-circuited, and a clearer kind of insight takes over. The outcome depends on people's responses to razor-sharp perceptual clarity: some welcome it and thrive in it, others struggle to avoid and deny it. If we choose panic, chaos results. If we choose to look bravely at our situation, breakthrough is possible. This is what the people of South Africa chose in March-April 1994, when an ugly and ruinous civil war threatened – they chose civility, by some public miracle nobody has rationally explained, though the symbolic rectitude of Nelson Mandela played a large part. Mandela held a magic key which made him, in effect, one of the most powerful people of his time.
Something deep inside us wells up and intervenes. Even if chaos and panic have begun their confusingly destructive work, a new level of brilliance and capability can enter the fray. It comes from a still place. It has qualities of utter newness to it. There's a change of gears. Bottom-line verities are met full-on, with a new simplicity and straightforwardness. Fundamental decisions are made: there is no going back. These can affect all spheres of life, from Holy Communion to billion-dollar bank accounts to tubes of toothpaste. The crucial element here is awareness itself, that which perceives thoughts, feelings and beliefs without actively participating in them. With a shift of awareness, every single thing takes on a different light. Awareness is central to any root-level change.
Complexity is rendered into to its basic components: issues become dreadfully simple. An utterly new world-view and set of priorities quickly emerges, as if it had always been there. In a sense it had – the quiet seers, servers and visionaries dotted throughout society had cherished and nurtured it. This might either be a flash of inspiration and new seeing, or an abyss-staring state where all has been taken away and nothing has replaced it. Revelation can take the form of absolutely nothing – a void within which all knowns have collapsed, and nothing takes its place. This can be debilitating or it can be a blessing. In states of emergency where there is nothing left that is safe, such states have saved many lives.
It's funny how most people pray only when in dire trouble – it's an age-old human habit of propitiating gods when human power seems exhausted or overwhelmed. In the modern secular world God is dead. Yet a mountain of modern evidence shows otherwise: in near-death experiences non-religious people report profound experiences of the divine, the world of Spirit. Feelings of oneness, bliss, humility and reintegration are frequently reported, leading to profound healings or life-changes. These arise once a person has given up or lost their hold on their normal living functions – it demands a letting-go of total proportions, giving an immediate pay-off of peace. This has interesting implications, since apocalypse is akin to a near-death experience on a mass level. This doesn't have to be a time of suffering – it could be a time of dawning relief.
This is where the spiritual aspect of our modern-day crisis is rooted. Inner transformation is publicly denied as a subjective, irrational and unbusinesslike form of behaviour, yet the centrality of psycho-spiritual transformation in our modern day cannot be overlooked. The godlessness of modern techno-culture doesn't mean divinity is dead – though it does mean that profound shake-ups are necessary if godfulness is to arise. The crux of any mass apocalypse-experience is spiritual in nature. The hold of 'proper civilised behaviour' not only ends with the apocalyptic experience, but also actually has caused it.
Apocalypse is the logical conclusion of the inexorable progress of modern Western consciousness – a consciousness which has substituted worldly economic growth for inner growth. Thus cancer has become a major epidemic – growth of cancer cells arises from blocked spiritual growth. It is a result of humanity's departure from the ways of natural order and human sensitivity. Millennial mythology is not as mad as it looks, since our global system is rooted in a dynamic with an inbuilt capacity for fatal collision with reality.
Thy Will be done
Another basic idea, which prevailed in Europe until the Renaissance, is of a Divine Order with laws of operation and with steering intelligences who enact it. Even though medieval cosmology placed us at the ignominious bottom of the universal pile, we at least felt we had a place in the scheme of things. We moderns omit to understand how the talent and genius within the human heart strives perpetually to correct itself and to evolve – no matter how long or how much it takes. This is soul or conscience, an overlighting guardian angel. If self-correction fails to arise, then life-experience is taken to its logical end and excess followed by breakdown occurs. When breakdown occurs, we are defenceless – in this moment we allow the corrective influence of spirit to act on us directly. We suddenly start perceiving angels – or wrathful deities, depending on our disposition.
In other words, apocalypse can be seen as a trick, a roundabout way by which spirituality, historically denied and incrementally lost, reasserts itself as a steering force in the lives of humans. The power of the human mind is thus overcome by the gridlocking of its own creations and projections, superseded by a greater power to which humans usually respond only in crisis, at the last moment. This spirituality does not come from outside to descend upon us like manna: it is an integral part of our psyche, a quintessential core of our sapient constitution. Homofemina sapiens rises to its name.
Apocalypse can thus be seen to be an subversive plot executed by our own unconscious psyches, collectively coordinated to create a world situation which is so utterly compromising that its transformative effects are unavoidable. It's a carefully-crafted historical manoeuvre by humankind's group psyche to reclaim its prodigal children. That's one way of describing it. In the terminology of apocalypse, our reawakening is a re-entry into the dimensions of angels and archangels, of immense universal forces, however they are seen or enshrined.
Apocalypse is a revelation not only of the raw facts of our worldly situation – it is also a metaphysical removal of the curtains between realities. These realities, previously sundered, suddenly intermesh. Those who have previously disengaged from 'normal' behaviour and beliefs are already practised in dealing with this. Those who have heavily subscribed to mainstream beliefs will find themselves in unfamiliar territory. Nevertheless, a metaphysical reality is very likely to present itself: a change of consciousness has an uncanny way of changing reality – though which comes first is a chicken-and-egg question.
Devas, angels and archangels (or whatever name and form you give them) are intelligences committed to unfolding the universal order. They oversee the role that microcosmic parts play in the macrocosmic whole. Such beings are dedicated to the evolution of the universe and of the souls within it – which are splinterings of that consciousness we rudely name 'the Creator'. When we splinter-souls align our consciousnesses to one unitive source, we become the Creator, at one with the Oneness. The Divine, pervading all things, seeks to come to know itself through exploring all of the panegyrations of its creation, the universe. This universe it thought up in order to see itself mirrored, in order to give a framework with which to define and understand itself, formless and infinite though it is. This Ultimate Existence-Consciousness-Bliss subdivided itself into individualised consciousnesses, delegating them various briefs and setting them to work in creating a universe.
Metaphysically, we each are such individualisations of consciousness, with our own brief. A key brief for angels is the education of souls – our education is their fulfilment. Souls are microcosms of the Originating Creative Principle, who multifariously learn about the nature of existence and consciousness through encountering the intricacies of experience. In cases where souls refuse to learn and refuse to hear corrective promptings (such as we), we are left to explore the consequences of our choices, such that we may learn. We learn by experiencing the consequences of our choices and acts. The learning experience leads back to an understanding of each individual soul's participation in the larger scheme of things. Eventually!
What is the point of education except to prepare students for a greater role, for an adult task to be carried out? While the redemption and healing of our world and of humanity is the next major item on our evolutionary agenda, this is but a correction of a path gone wrong and a breakthrough back onto the path we need to follow. However, it is still not the end-point of our evolution – it's the beginning of a new story. However, something will have been gained: we might now be in a mess, but after we have redeemed it, we will have become enriched by the experience. Enriched in a way the Creator had never thought of before – because we, minuscule droplets of the ocean of vastness, ourselves thought of it.
On our planet, our education process has taken some strange turns, and the learning process is slow. We have taken ourselves to the edge, to the point where we threaten the very means by which we live and learn. For some strange reason, we have elected to annihilate our planet and our continued physical existence – or, at least, to try! It's a very acute, razor-sharp situation we're in! It's a battle for the hearts and minds of humanity.
One of the interesting factors here is that of individualised free-will. With individualised free-will, each and every person has the opportunity to do whatever they feel best with their lives – and to face whatever consequences arise from it. Thus we have a capacity to dream up and construct creations which the macro-creation process, the Universe, has not itself thought up – our cultures, civilisations and multifarious productions. God didn't think up Mickey Mouse, microchips, microwave ovens or Minuteman missiles – except inasmuch as we are parts of God. The Divine, in modern terms, is a decentralising, downsizing, delegating networker, who seeks empowered, intelligent co-creators – contract-workers filtering energy from bottom-up.
The point behind the universal educational process is thus to create wise mini-creators, incarnate intelligences whose understanding has stretched beyond their noses into a wider field, capable of operating as proactive constructors of something larger. However, the rub is that, with individualised free-will, we are asked to intelligently obey a bundle of basic laws, by our own choice. It is hoped we will exercise our free-will to the extent that we choose to live and work as one human family – even in our diversity. It is hoped that we choose to align ourselves to the innate intelligence and implicate order of the Universe. The global lessons of today are forcing us in this direction.
Seen from this metaphysical viewpoint, our current world situation, with its strange mixture of exciting breakthroughs and dreadful depravity and destruction, is in a potentially pre-divine state. Apocalypse is an outbreak of corrective participatory spirituality. For some, this might well be disastrous – fear of love and of freedom are the two greatest fears humans possess. For all of us, apocalypse is both a potential breakthrough and an enormous failure, inasmuch as it is a logical outcome of flawed collective choices made earlier in our history. The choice we made was to overlook wisdom and sense and to 'go for the kill'. Deep in our souls, we have long sought to meet the Great Reckoning – this is one reason why a full 10% of the world's total population over time is alive today. This is why a large proportion of young children of today have bright eyes and surprisingly clear intelligence. Such a reckoning offers a golden opportunity for humankind to redeem itself, even if at the last minute. It's cards-on-the-table time.
While it might be logical for such beings as angels to intervene in our affairs to guide us through our times of tribulation, intervention would be detrimental. The very experience of apocalypse is itself enormously educational for humanity. To redeem our deep historical errors and to make our successes worthwhile, we have to be served notice. We need threatening like we've never been threatened before. Divine intervention would thus make sense only in two circumstances: if humanity acknowledged its problems and their causes and resolved to act immediately and fundamentally, requesting assistance, or if humanity were on the absolute edge of overwhelming disaster or extinction. All this might sound far-fetched, but stay with it!
If we faced serious devastation or extinction, we would be denying ourselves a possibility of making sense of our history. We would fail to graduate from our education because we wrecked the college. For angels, from a universal viewpoint, both rescue and devastation of humanity would constitute a grand failure – either way, experiential learning would have been scuppered. Rescue would imply a massive failure of the education process, and devastation would constitute an enormous refugee problem – billions of angry, disillusioned, destructive souls with nowhere to incarnate. However, if we took the choice to awaken to our situation and to act correctively, free-will would not be overridden, the world would, theoretically, be redeemed, and the rest of the universe would be relieved. The nub of the issue would be that the human race had been in charge of the process. We exercised our free-will to an ultimate degree.
On doing so, a new spiritual empowerment would probably dawn: we would realise the extent of our true human power, traditionally curtailed. We would thus no longer need to ask for assistance in the same way as before. We would, at heart, begin to realign to the very laws of nature and the spirit, which would end our consciousness-separation. This would signify an enormous breakthrough: we would have made the ultimate choice of free-will – to surrender intelligently to the larger scheme of things, to begin intentionally to participate in it. The angels would already be here by dint of our having greeted what they are involved in. Not only this, but we, as souls, would have come from such a hard place, such an intensive, crisis-ridden crash-course, that we would constitute a body of billions of 'enlightened' souls. Like reformed alcoholics, junkies or criminals, we would be the Ber for it – in retrospect! This would be of immense universal evolutionary potential: we would each and all qualify for further challenges.
Metaphysically, it is important that higher powers allow us to experience the full consequences of our cumulative historical acts, so that we may learn. This can be taken only as far as the point of dire threat and no further, since overwhelming disaster would be detrimental. The soul-refugee problem would be overwhelming – spare Earth-like planets probably aren't available, and anyway, we would possibly wreck them. Yet the threat on Earth needs to be dire enough to twist our arms and catalyse action. If we look on 'angels' as soul-educationalists, then they have to cut a fine line between enlightening and damaging threats to our continued existence.
A central part of this intense apocalyptic learning process is redemption, correction of what went wrong. Only after the redemption of our historical ills will humanity be clear of the binding effects such historical ills have. So apocalyptic learning and redemptive correction are an integral part of our breakthrough process.
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- Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, London Observer, July 1965.
Presumably, in one century from now, around 2100, we will be experiencing some form of extinction, or we'll be severely damaged and diminished in number and condition, or we'll be populating a very different and perhaps happier world, brought about as the outcome of an enormous breakthrough.
* An ecologically-friendly civilisation which not only avoids harming nature and its balances, but also constructively enhances nature, according to its own rules and needs;
* A world ecosystem and atmosphere well on the way to achieving a new dynamic balance, under wise management by its dominant species, humanity;
* A world society where different social and ethnic groups, regions and nations may appreciate their variations and sense their basic unity and commonality, peacefully coexisting and reinforcing each other's identity, life-ways and cultural wealth;
* A world economy which is equitable, humanly and environmentally sustainable, operating in line with true human necessity and environmental sense, supplying goods and services without damaging resources or people;
* A balanced population and demographic structure and a mutually-supportive community-sense, locally and globally;
* Restoration of meaning and wonder to birth, life and death, matters of the spirit and daily life;
* An emotional clearing- and healing-process of all core historic hurts within humanity, and psycho-spiritual change of an individual, collective and cultural kind;
* A reconstruction of civilisation (cities, buildings, technologies) and a management of nature which reflects and enhances joy, creativity and human soul;
* Communication and contact with other life-forms in the universe and in other dimensions of reality;
* Spiritual and psychological learning, growth and expression as a general norm;
* A basic unity of purpose which interweaves and contextualises all of these points, acting as a prime motivator in human life.
Such a wave is likely to come about through a kind of circumstantial gridlock. This gridlock involves an overloading of the global system and world psyche by the sheer compromising force and intensity of events. Gridlock is a situation where so many and such profound events pile up so overwhelmingly that normal responses become impossible. So much needs fixing that established channels and means are shorted-out. From the president of the USA to the motor workshop down the road and the sewage farm across town, everything locks everything else into immovability – or chaos. Things stop functioning, or they start going everywhichway.
At such a point, the network of egos which makes up society finds itself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Fear and panic lurk menacingly. The collective unconscious, a wild untamable force, bubbles up to the surface, overwhelming normal everyday, routine activity – people get the horrors, doubting and looking for something to grasp onto. At times when the conscious mind of a nation is short-circuited – times of shock – a gap opens, through which the unconscious pours.
Apocalypse is by nature global. All existent systems seize up or deflate, or public support evaporates – whichever comes first. At the core of this is a fundamental change in the way people see things – it could literally happen on one day, even though there would be a buildup and aftermath. Apocalypse is not simply an inconvenient seizing-up of trade and services: it is a spasm of reality itself, a coincident, irreversible interlocking of outer events and inner experiences. It is a cognitive and metaphysical crisis of enormous dimensions, a plunge into the utter unknown.
Resolving issues by facing up to crisis tends to be more efficient than gradual reform, in the long run. Reform is subject to conservatism, forgetfulness, corruption, complacency and downright manipulation. A crisis turns keys to deep doors of perception and to sources of action, if thunderous enough to throw the public into a quiver. Crises threaten.
Let's look at things from a metaphysical perspective. Our rationalistic world-view has purged certain spiritual ideas from our repertoire – nevertheless, they become relevant here. One such idea is of the omnipotent might of Universal Spirit, God. Somehow, we have put our own rights and needs above those of the Creator, then to forget that there is a power far greater than us. Spiritually, this means that, when stripped naked, we have lost our coordinates. Our attachments are to entirely transitory things. A rather witty saying goes: If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans.
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