Getting Back to Paradise, part 2: Reading the Transition Signals

Apocalypse of light
“The peasant doesn’t cross himself until he hears the thunder.”
In bringing this series to a conclusion with this and my next two blog posts, I will share excerpts from the closing chapters of Richard Heinberg’s MEMORIES and VISIONS of PARADISE. But before I do, I would like to share some uplifting words my friend and favorite poet Don Hynes sent to me a few days ago, as they resonate with the theme of my current considerations.
THE PROGRESSION
After the fall, which was a planetary solar progression as much as human, moving through a cloud where our current reality became possible, the Atlantean manipulations were fatal death-like steps for humanity and the planet. The trauma of those nightmares is in the genetic memory of the human race and the trajectory of that epoch was downward, from the downfall of the Lemurian priesthood through Atlantean science-abused wars to the caveman, cannibalism and the following centuries of darkness and struggle.
We Pass Through Nightmares
Don’s words are a clarion call to sanity and for an about-face retreat from our mad drive toward extinction — touchstone words to keep on hand as the transitional pressure gets more and more compressed, as it will. The birthing of a new world is in process and the contractions are beginning to be closer and more intense. It’s time to breathe deeply and exhale expectantly as we labor in love for the truth of life on our home among the stars.
READING THE SIGNALS
Richard Heinberg has been very active in the environmental movement since the 1980’s. He has written several books on climate and clean energy issues, including The Party is Over: Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Societies — AFTERBURN: Society Beyond Fossil Fuel — Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy — and his latest work The End of Growth, in which he examines how the expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.
In the following excerpt, Richard takes a hard and sobering look at the shadows cast by coming events, the symptoms of mankind’s abuse of the earth’s generosity. Keep in mind that this was written some forty years ago. Since then climate and energy issues have gained greater attention as the environment continues to deteriorate further and time runs out on the implementation of viable solutions. His and other authors’ warnings having gone unheeded, Richard’s optimism about our future has diminished considerably.
(For a rather sobering update on where we have come over the last several decades, you may wish to view — at a later time — Michael Moore’s recently-released film PLANET OF THE HUMANS, an hour-and-forty-minute documentary on the present state of our world and our ill-placed hope in biomass, wind turbans and solar panels; well worth watching.)
And now, without further ado, here’s an excerpt from chapter 12, “To Get Back to the Garden.“
Warnings from the Collective Unconscious
When we diverge from the way we were designed to function, Nature sends warning signals. For example, when we eat foods we are unable to digest, our stomachs rebel; when we use our limbs in ways in which they were not designed to be used, our muscles and bones protest. When we do such things habitually over time, we are likely to receive not only external signals in the form of pain, accidents, or disease, but we may also receive internal signals. Such signals may take the form of nightmares and premonitions through which the body’s own unconscious wisdom attempts to alert us and to influence our behavior.
If this is true for us individually, perhaps it is also true for human kind collectively — that is, if humanity is ignoring an innate paradisal design (by envisioning and working toward a world characterized by artificiality, separateness, and the suppression of Nature), then we should expect to be receiving both external and internal warnings. On the collective level, such external warning signs might take the form of war, environmental degradation, famine, or plague; internal warning signs might appear as widely occurring visions of apocalyptic events.
As Norman Cohn showed in The Pursuit of the Millennium, apocalyptic visions have tended to appear in profusion during historical periods of political and religious oppression, social upheaval, war, and pestilence. The Hebrew prophets lived in an age of defeat and captivity; Jesus lived at the height of the decadent and oppressive Roman Empire; and medieval millenarian movements seemed always to flourish in places and times of unusual hardship. We see the same association of apocalyptic vision with societal stress among tribal peoples: in North America, Africa, and the Pacific islands, new spiritual movements that have arisen during the last century in response to the onslaught of civilization have invariably been prophetic and millenarian in character.
There are many reasons for thinking that contemporary Western civilization is approaching a period of maximum divergence from the paradisal ideal. Instead of simplicity, innocence, and the ability to work in harmony with natural processes, industrial civilization values sophistication, abstraction, the concentration of wealth, and the complete subjugation of Nature. These values have not appeared suddenly or recently; rather, they can be traced back to the beginnings of civilization itself. But we do seem to be witnessing the culmination of their influence. And as we actualize the ultimate implications of long-term trends leading toward the centralization of social power, the technological domination of Nature, and the fragmentation of human consciousness, we find ourselves on what appears to be a collision course with a deeper reality.
We see external warning signals appearing everywhere around us. We hear, for example, of the death of thousands of lakes and forests from the effects of acid rain. As the thinning of the ozone layer creates an epidemic of skin cancer, we simultaneously discover that a greenhouse effect — created by the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels — is altering global weather patterns. We hear of the disappearance of tens of thousands of species as the result of the clear-cutting of rain forests, and of the loss of millions of tons of irreplaceable topsoil due to modern mechanized agricultural practices. These and other warning signals portend catastrophes of truly apocalyptic dimensions, catastrophes that can be averted only if immediate steps are taken to change our fundamental relationship with the natural environment.
At the same time, we are seeing an unprecedented eruption of what could be interpreted as internal, psychic warning signals. The past two decades have seen burgeoning numbers of people turn to millenarian fundamentalism for a sense of meaning and purpose. Christian fundamentalists look toward the imminent end of the world, the destruction of unbelievers, and the restoration of an earthly Paradise characterized by all the qualities of the original Eden — peace, happiness, and, above all, the opportunity to dwell in the immediate presence of the Lord.
But while fundamentalist millenarianism draws upon apocalyptic scriptural visions from eras past, we are also surrounded by fresh and original prophetic utterances. The classic apocalyptic scenario — a final battle between the forces of good and evil, followed by the advent of a restored condition of peace and beatitude — appears, for example, in numerous science-fiction plots and in the psychic predictions of Edgar Cayce and the “channelers” of the 1980s. Moreover, near-death experiences are making their own contribution to what amounts to a contemporary explosion of apocalyptic prophecy.
While conducting his NDE studies, Kenneth Ring began to hear reports of prophetic visions (PVs) of humanity’s future, and he decided to collect and compare them. Ring found that PVs seem to occur most frequently during core NDEs, and that there is an “impressive similarity” among the visions. In Heading toward Omega, Ring summarizes the common elements of the classic PV:
There is, first of all, a sense of having total knowledge, but specifically one is aware of seeing the entirety of the earth’s evolution and history, from the beginning to the end of time. The future scenario, however, is usually of short duration, seldom extending much beyond the beginning of the twenty-first century. The individuals report that in this decade there will be an increasing incidence of earthquakes, volcanic activity, and generally massive geophysical changes. There will be resultant disturbances in weather patterns and food supplies. The world economic system will collapse, and the possibility of nuclear war or accident is very great (respondents are not agreed on whether a nuclear catastrophe will occur). All of these events are transitional rather than ultimate, however, and they will be followed by a new era in human history marked by human brotherhood, universal love, and world peace. Though many will die, the earth will live.
Ring then quotes several PV reports. The following is from a woman whose near-death experience occurred in 1967:
The vision of the future I received during my near-death experience was one of tremendous upheaval in the world as a result of our general ignorance of the “true” reality. I was informed that mankind was breaking the laws of the universe and as a result of this would suffer. This suffering was not due to the vengeance of an indignant God but rather like the pain one might suffer as a result of arrogantly defying the law of gravity. It was to be an inevitable educational cleansing of the earth that would creep up on its inhabitants, who would try to hide blindly in the institutions of law, science, and religion. Mankind, I was told, was being consumed by the cancers of arrogance, materialism, racism, chauvinism, and separatist thinking. I saw sense turning to nonsense, and calamity, in the end, turning to providence.
At the end of this general period of transition, mankind was to be “born anew,” with a new sense of its place in the universe. The birth process, however, as in all the kingdoms, was exquisitely painful. Mankind would emerge humbled yet educated, peaceful, and, at last, unified.
Ring attempted to find a rational explanation for the remarkably consistent patterns of imagery in the PVs he had collected. Could these experiences be projections of unconscious fears? Or, perhaps, do individuals who perceive themselves as dying somehow generalize the experience as being “the death of the world”? Ring found both of these explanations unconvincing: Why not a greater variety of global-future scenarios? The PVs are just too consistent to be personal projections. Could they, then, be eruptions of unconscious Jungian archetypes?
Ring found this explanation more plausible, but he was still uncomfortable with the specificity and paranormal character of PVs. After examining all of the explanations he could devise, Ring found himself left with the interpretation the NDErs themselves insist upon: that PV’s are in fact exactly what they seem to be: inspired prophecies of future events.
If this is the case, why is humanity propelling itself toward a cataclysmic day of reckoning? Ring invokes a sobering metaphor: he suggests that humanity is approaching — and subconsciously preparing for — a collective near-death experience. As we noted earlier, NDErs almost invariably undergo a sudden and radical restructuring of values. A typical comment is this: “My interest in material wealth and greed for possessions was replaced by a thirst for spiritual understanding and a passionate desire to see world conditions improve.”
Throughout history, moral reformers have sought to inspire humanity to change its collective values and to regain its sense of the sacred. Despite occasional and temporary successes, such exhortations have generally been ignored. We seem convinced that greed and aggression are constants, restrainable only by the force of law. But Ring’s hypothesis implies that human nature, when it comes face to face with annihilation, may dissolve to reveal a deeper and more profound nature, one that has been hidden for millennia behind the veil of the human ego.
The Russians have a saying: “The peasant doesn’t cross himself until he hears the thunder.” That is, people tend to make basic changes in attitude and behavior only when their backs are to the wall. This observation seems as true for society as a whole as it is for individuals. Often, only a crisis will awaken us to the results of a destructive habit. In the case of late-twentieth-century humanity, the habitual behavior (and the potential awakening) is at a critical level and underlies all of our social, economic, scientific, and political realities. This crisis amounts to far more than just a serious inconvenience, or even a catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression or the two world wars. Religious prophets and scientific futurists alike envision what amounts to the end of our entire way of life, and, conceivably — in the event of an all-out nuclear conflict or the irreversible destruction of the environment — the death of the human race itself.
We recall the prophecies of the tribal peoples concerning a Great Purification, which will cleanse the world of human depravity but will also reunite Heaven and Earth, ushering in a new age of spirituality and light. Is this what we are all unconsciously laboring to bring about?
Yes — and with a large “critical mass” of humanity, that labor is conscious and deliberate, done with joy and a sense of mission and purpose; truly a labor of love. Apocalypse means revelation. Every death is an apocalypse of light — only the light is revealed in the invisible realms. What is needed is an apocalypse of light in the visible realms — as above so below — on earth as it is in heaven. I see this occurring as this pandemic brings out the best of the human spirit. May it continue long after the crisis is over.
I leave you with this tidbit of common-sense wisdom: “Like the proverbial bar of soap when squeezed, looking downward we go down; looking upward we go up.” So, remember to look up when the squeeze is on. Until my next post,
Be love. Be loved
Anthony
I think you will find solace in this video clip. “Death is not an end-point. It’s a transformation moment.”
Thank you, Rumi, for your rumination. The world is indeed too full to talk about, so I will simply write about it. In this series, I’ve been considering the history of archetypes and its parallel evolution with that of human consciousness. The source of my research is Richard Tarnas’ epic book COSMOS AND PSYCHE, which I am finding incredibly fascinating and enlightening a read and study.
It is not by happenstance that this material has come into my hands just prior to the time of the current planetary alignment, which will end on February 20th, two days before this post will be published. My consciousness is attuned to the energetic messages being transmitted to Earth at this pivotal and chaotic time when the most powerful person in man’s world is about to be chosen by the citizens of the United States of America—who are divided amongst themselves with fear and hatred governing hearts and minds. There is an encoded message for us in the music streaming from these aligned spheres, and one message I am hearing is
As those who follow my blog know, I encompass many aspects and areas of life on planet Earth. Lately I’ve been exploring the heavens and cosmic influence of the planets upon human consciousness and behavior, having recently read Richard Tarnas’s epic book COSMOS AND PSYCHE — Intimations of a New World View, in which he examines the impact of planetary alignments and their archetypal influence on human consciousness and historical events. In this post, I will share my thoughts on how this influence works on the basis of acoustic cymatics, the shaping of matter by sound vibrations. Let me first define and demonstrate what cymatics is.
The term “sound wave” tends to create in the mind’s eye an image of a wave of sound, rather like a water ripple, moving vibrations of air molecules toward your ear in a wave-like motion when, in reality, sound does not propagate as a wave but moves out from its source spherically with one small part of the sphere’s leading edge reaching your ear. According to acoustic physics researcher, John Stuart Reid, all sounds that humans hear propagate in this way. He calls these spheres “sound bubbles” and they carry the sound by contracting and expanding according to its pitch (if it is a musical sound) or its frequency. The violin bubble image (above) demonstrates this principle graphically, illustrating a musical note emerging from a violin. (More about John Stuart Reid’s work can be found at his website, 
I enjoy reading books whose authors agree with my way of thinking and resonate with my depth of knowing. Don’t we all? COSMOS AND PSYCHE, authored by Richard Tarnas, is such a book whose author I’ve come to know and regard as a soul brother and kindred spirit. Although he uses large words and long sentences at times, his spirit flows through the lines and between the pages with unfettered authenticity. He is a joy to read, and I am happy to share that joy here,
My spiritual mentor once stated that the entire solar system, which he rather called a “Solar Entity,” is the embodiment of Man, is Man, with the planets’ orbits serving as “wheels within wheels” turning the thinking Mind of Man, the planets themselves being the manifest form of Mind orbiting a radiant star, the source of his own being and of all life on earth. When I first heard this scenario back in the 1970’s, I thought it sounded wonderful, even plausible, although I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, nor how it all worked. 
Anthropologist, shaman, historian and investigator, Carlos Barrios, of Spanish descent, was brought up alongside the indigenous Maya Mam tribe in Huehuetenango in the highlands of Guatemala. In exploring the many different Mayan calendars and the stories they contain, he unveiled a number of inaccuracies in the interpretations anthropologists who visit the temple sites have made. For example they imagined the implications that the world would end rather than go through a transformation, the more accurate interpretation by the Mayan elders, who alone know how to read the calendars. 
We are just seven years into the Mayan Long-Count Calendar that began anew on the night of the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012, when our solar system moved into the neutral zone of the galactic equator and aligned with the core of the Milky Way Galaxy where our planet is having a rebirth and vibrational upgrade. The powerful wave of high-frequency energy coming from the galactic center is impacting all life forms on Earth and all the planets in our solar system where severe climate changes are causing radical shifts in weather patterns. We are being called to attune to the Tone of the “Seventh Angel’s Trumpet,” the Tone of Love.
