Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00108)

Jan 6 2005

Dear CB:

Each one makes their own environment. As travelling consciousnesses we like
a turtle carry our past with us -- as character and talent (or their lack).

The ideas we were educated into and which are implicit in most data, are as
you say traps and we ought to be consciously aware and independent of them.
The problem is How to do that? 

I agree that dwelling on past memories can be fruitless. But then. We are
the captains of our own "ship" and can direct our minds as needed.

"It got difficult, because we slid into a synthetic reality... We
lost the use of the mind... and are content with that..."  

Very true. But we can get out of such a loop, if we realize we are the
masters of our power to choose. Sometimes we find, on detached
consideration, that we have become slaves of our desires, our emotions and
we need to escape so that our minds are restored to the leadership of
independence is badly needed.
I call that learning to think.


We need not accept any "gods" such as 1-7-12-365, unless those symbolical
numbers represent cycles that envelop us all in the webs of a common
(temporarily accepted) time frame. There are other divisions.

Look at the power of 360: divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60,
etc....Strange that our Earth orbits the Sun in just about 360.

Have a look at this: [Isis Unveiled I pp . 30 - 38]

-------------------------------------  

CYCLE OF CLIMATE CHANGE - CATACLYSMS

" In order to demonstrate that the notions which the ancients
entertained about dividing human history into cycles were not utterly devoid
of a philosophical basis, we will close this chapter by introducing to the
reader one of the oldest traditions of antiquity as to the evolution of our
planet. 

At the close of each "great year," called by Aristotle — according to
Censorinus — the greatest, and which consists of six sars * our planet is
subjected to a thorough physical revolution. The polar and equatorial
climates gradually exchange places; the former moving slowly toward the
Line, and the tropical zone, with its exuberant vegetation and swarming
animal life, replacing the forbidding wastes of the icy poles. This 

—————————————————————————

* Webster declares very erroneously that the Chaldeans called saros, the
cycle of eclipses, a period of about 6,586 years, "the time of revolution of
the moon's node." Berosus, himself a Chaldean astrologer, at the Temple of
Belus, at Babylon, gives the duration of the sar, or sarus, 3,600 years; a
neros 600; and a sossus 60. (See, Berosus from Abydenus, "Of the Chaldaean
Kings and the Deluge." See also Eusebius, and Cory's MS. Ex. Cod. reg. gall.
gr. No. 2360, fol. 154.) 
----------------------------------------------------------.

change of climate is necessarily attended by cataclysms, earthquakes, and
other cosmical throes.* 

AS THE BEDS OF THE OCEAN ARE DISPLACED, AT THE END OF EVERY DECIMILLENNIUM
AND ABOUT ONE NEROS, A SEMI-UNIVERSAL DELUGE LIKE THE LEGENDARY NOACHIAN
FLOOD IS BROUGHT ABOUT. 

This year was called the Heliacal by the Greeks; but no one outside the
sanctuary knew anything certain either as to its duration or particulars.
The winter of this year was called the Cataclysm or the Deluge, — the
Summer, the Ecpyrosis. 

The popular traditions taught that at these alternate seasons the world was
in turn burned and deluged. .... 

So uncertain were the commentators about the length of this year, that none
except Herodotus and Linus, who assigned to it, the former 10,800, and the
latter 13,984, came near the truth.† According to the claims of the
Babylonian priests, corroborated by Eupolemus, ‡ "the city of Babylon, owes
its foundation to those who were saved from the catastrophe of the deluge;
they were the giants and they built the tower which is noticed in history."
§ 

These giants who were great astrologers and had received moreover from their
fathers, "the sons of God," every instruction pertaining to secret matters,
instructed the priests in their turn, and left in the temples all the
records of the periodical cataclysm that they had witnessed themselves. This
is how the high priests came by the knowledge of the great years. When we
remember, moreover, that Plato in the Timζus cites the old Egyptian priest
rebuking Solon for his ignorance of the fact that there were several such
deluges as the great one of Ogyges, we can easily ascertain that this
belief in the Heliakos was a doctrine held by the initiated priests the
world over. 

The Neroses, the Vrihaspati, or the periods called yugas or kalpas, are
life-problems to solve. The Satya-yug and Buddhistic cycles of chronology
would make a mathematician stand aghast at the array of ciphers. The
Maha-kalpa embraces an untold number of periods far 

—————————————————————————————

* Before scientists reject such a theory — traditional as it is — it would
be in order for them to demonstrate why, at the end of the tertiary period,
the Northern Hemisphere had undergone such a reduction of temperature as to
utterly change the torrid zone to a Siberian climate? Let us bear in mind
that the heliocentric system came to us from upper India; and that the germs
of all great astronomical truths were brought thence by Pythagoras. So long
as we lack a mathematically correct demonstration, one hypothesis is as good
as another. 
-----------------------------------------------------

back in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a kalpa or grand
period of 4,320,000,000 years, which they divide into four lesser yugas,
running as follows: 

1st. —Satya yug . . . . 1,728,000 years.
2d. — Tretya yug. . . . 1,296,000 "
3d. — Dvapara yug. . . . 864,000 "
4th. —Kali yug . . . . 432,000 "

Total. . . . . . . 4,320,000 

which make one divine age or Maha-yug; seventy-one Maha-yugs make
306,720,000 years, to which is added a sandhi (or the time when day and
night border on each other, morning and evening twilight), equal to a
Satya-yug, 1,728,000, make a manwantara of 308,448,000 years; * fourteen
manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years; to which must be added a sandhi to
begin the kalpa, 1,728,000 years, making the kalpa or grand period of
4,320,000,000 of years. 

As we are now only in the Kali-yug of the twenty-eighth age of the seventh
manwantara of 308,448,000 years, we have yet sufficient time before us to
wait before we reach even half of the time allotted to the world. 

These ciphers are not fanciful, but founded upon actual astronomical
calculations, as has been demonstrated by S. Davis. † Many a scientist,
Higgins among others, notwithstanding their researches, has been utterly
perplexed as to which of these was the secret cycle. Bunsen has demonstrated
that the Egyptian priests, who made the cyclic notations, kept them always
in the profoundest mystery. ‡ Perhaps their difficulty arose from the fact
that the calculations of the ancients applied equally to the spiritual
progress of humanity as to the physical. It will not be difficult to
understand the close correspondence drawn by the ancients between the cycles
of nature and of mankind, if we keep in mind their belief in the constant
and all-potent influences of the planets upon the fortunes of humanity.
Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian system, of 432,000, is
the true key of the secret cycle. But his failure in trying to decipher it
was made apparent; for as it pertained to the mystery of the creation, this
cycle was the most inviolable of all. It was repeated in symbolic figures
only in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the original of which, if now extant,
is certainly not to be found in libraries, as it formed one of the most
ancient Books of Hermes,* the number of which is at present undetermined. 

Calculating by the secret period of the Great Neros and the Hindu
Kalpas, some kabalists, mathematicians and archeologists who knew naught of
the secret computations made the above number of 21,000 years to be 24,000
years, for the length of the great year, as it was to the renewal only of
our globe that they thought the last period of 6,000 years applied. 

Higgins gives as a reason for it, that it was anciently thought that the
equinoxes preceded only after the rate of 2,000, not 2,160, years in a sign;
for thus it would allow for the length of the great year four times 6,000 or
24,000 years. "Hence," he says, "might arise their immensely-lengthened
cycles; because, it would be the same with this great year as with the
common year, till it travelled round an immensely-lengthened circle, when it
would come to the old point again." He therefore accounts for the 24,000 in
the following manner: "If the angle which the plane of the ecliptic makes
with the plane of the equator had decreased gradually and regularly, as it
was till very lately supposed to do, the two planes would have coincided in
about ten ages, 6,000 years; 

—————————————————————————————

* The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians mentioned by Clement of
Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of
Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon,
attributes 1200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. 

But the testimony of Iamblichus as a neo-Platonist and theurgist is of
course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by Bunsen in the
highest consideration as a "purely historical personage" . . . with whom
"none of the later native historians can be compared . . . ." suddenly
becomes a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with
the scientific prejudices against magic and the occult knowledge claimed by
the ancient priests. However, none of the archeologists doubt for a moment
the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the
greatest regard for their authenticity and great truthfulness, corroborated
as it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable
proofs of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there
was a line of sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the
Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years.


Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus
were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish law-giver. "Styli and
inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the
world," says Bunsen. 

If the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before
Alexander, to which Diogenes Laertius carries back the records of the
priests, he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of
astronomical observations, and remarks that "if they were actual
observations, they must have extended over 10,000 years" (p. 14). "We learn,
however," he adds, "from one of their own old chronological works . . . that
the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period, treated
of myriads of years." 
in ten ages, 6,000 years more, the sun would have been situated relatively
to the Southern Hemisphere as he is now to the Northern; in ten ages, 6,000
years more, the two planes would coincide again; and, in ten ages, 6,000
years more, he would be situated as he is now, after a lapse of about
twenty-four or twenty-five thousand years in all. When the sun arrived at
the equator, the ten ages or six thousand years would end, and the world
would be destroyed by fire; when he arrived at the southern point, it would
be destroyed by water. And thus, it would be destroyed at the end of every
6,000 years, or ten neroses." * 

This method of calculating by the neroses, without allowing any
consideration for the secrecy in which the ancient philosophers, who were
exclusively of the sacerdotal order, held their knowledge, gave rise to the
greatest errors. It led the Jews, as well as some of the Christian
Platonists, to maintain that the world would be destroyed at the end of six
thousand years. Gale shows how firmly this belief was rooted in the Jews. It
has also led modern scientists to discredit entirely the hypothesis of the
ancients. It has given rise to the formation of different religious sects,
which, like the Adventists of our century, are always living in the
expectation of the approaching destruction of the world. 

As our planet revolves once every year around the sun and at the same
time turns once in every twenty-four hours upon its own axis, thus
traversing minor circles within a larger one, so is the work of the smaller
cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced, within the Great Saros. 

The revolution of the physical world, according to the ancient doctrine,
is attended by a like revolution in the world of intellect — the spiritual
evolution of the world proceeding in cycles, like the physical one. 

Thus we see in history a regular alternation of ebb and flow in the tide
of human progress. The great kingdoms and empires of the world, after
reaching the culmination of their greatness, descend again, in accordance
with the same law by which they ascended; till, having reached the lowest
point, humanity reasserts itself and mounts up once more, the height of its
attainment being, by this law of ascending progression by cycles, somewhat
higher than the point from which it had before descended. 

The division of the history of mankind into Golden, Silver, Copper and
Iron Ages, is not a fiction. We see the same thing in the literature of
peoples. An age of great inspiration and unconscious productiveness is
invariably followed by an age of criticism and consciousness. The one
affords material for the analyzing and critical intellect of the other. 

Thus, all those great characters who tower like giants in the
history of mankind, like Buddha-Siddartha, and Jesus, in the realm of
spiritual, and 
Alexander the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great, in the realm of physical
conquests, were but reflexed images of human types which had existed ten
thousand years before, in the preceding decimillennium, reproduced by the
mysterious powers controlling the destinies of our world. There is no
prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose
prototype we cannot find in the half-fictitious and half-real traditions of
bygone religions and mythologies. 

As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads, in the
boundless immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the smooth waters of a
lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself in
the periods we can embrace in an historical retrospect. 

"As above, so it is below. That which has been, will return again. As in
heaven, so on earth." 

The world is always ungrateful to its great men. Florence has built a
statue to Galileo, but hardly even mentions Pythagoras. The former had a
ready guide in the treatises of Copernicus, who had been obliged to contend
against the universally established Ptolemaic system. But neither Galileo
nor modern astronomy discovered the emplacement of the planetary bodies.
Thousands of ages before, it was taught by the sages of Middle Asia, and
brought thence by Pythagoras, not as a speculation, but as a demonstrated
science. "The numerals of Pythagoras," says Porphyry, "were hieroglyphical
symbols, by means whereof he explained all ideas concerning the nature of
all things." * 

Verily, then, to antiquity alone have we to look for the origin of all
things. How well Hargrave Jennings expresses himself when speaking of
Pyramids, and how true are his words when he asks: 

"Is it at all reasonable to conclude, at a period when knowledge was at the
highest, and when the human powers were, in comparison with ours at the
present time, prodigious, that all these indomitable, scarcely believable
physical effects — that such achievements as those of the Egyptians — were
devoted to a mistake? that the myriads of the Nile were fools laboring in
the dark, and that all the magic of their great men was forgery, and that
we, in despising that which we call their superstition and wasted power, are
alone the wise? No! there is much more in these old religions than probably
— in the audacity of modern denial, in the confidence of these
superficial-science times, and in the derision of these days without faith —
is in the least degree supposed. We do not understand the old time. . . .
Thus we see how classic practice and heathen teaching may be made to
reconcile — how even the Gentile and the Hebrew, the mythological and the
Christian doctrine harmonize in the general faith founded on Magic. That
Magic is indeed possible is the moral of this book." ...

So far finite reason agrees with science, and says: "There is no God."
But, on the other hand, our Ego, that which lives and thinks and feels
independently of us in our mortal casket, does more than believe. It knows
that there exists a God in nature, for the sole and invincible Artificer of
all lives in us as we live in Him. No dogmatic faith or exact science is
able to uproot that intuitional feeling inherent in man, when he has once
fully realized it in himself. 

Human nature is like universal nature in its abhorrence of a vacuum. 

It feels an intuitional yearning for a Supreme Power. Without a God, the
cosmos would seem to it but like a soulless corpse. Being forbidden to
search for Him where alone His traces would be found, man filled the aching
void with the personal God whom his spiritual teachers built up for him from
the crumbling ruins of heathen myths and hoary philosophies of old. 

How otherwise explain the mushroom growth of new sects, some of them absurd
beyond degree? Mankind have one innate, irrepressible craving, that must be
satisfied in any religion that would supplant the dogmatic, undemonstrated
and undemonstrable theology of our Christian ages. This is the yearning
after the proofs of immortality. 

As Sir Thomas Browne has expressed it: . . . . "it is the heaviest stone
that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the end of his
nature, or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seems
progressive, and otherwise made in vain." ...

How could then such a belief have stood for countless ages, were it not that
among all nations, whether civilized or savage, man has been allowed the
demonstrative proof? Is not the very existence of such a belief an evidence
that thinking philosopher and unreasoning savage have both been compelled to
acknowledge the testimony of their senses? That if, in isolated instances,
spectral illusion may have resulted from physical causes, on the other hand,
in thousands of instances, apparitions of persons have held converse with
several individuals at once, who saw and heard them collectively, and could
not all have been diseased in mind? 

The greatest thinkers of Greece and Rome regarded such matters as
demonstrated facts. They distinguished the apparitions by the names of
manes, anima and umbra: the manes descending after the decease of the
individual into the Underworld; the anima, or pure spirit, ascending to
heaven; and the restless umbra (earth-bound spirit), hovering about its
tomb, because the attraction of matter and love of its earthly body
prevailed in it and prevented its ascension to higher regions. ...

But all such definitions must be subjected to the careful analysis of
philosophy. Too many of our thinkers do not consider that the numerous
changes in language, the allegorical phraseology and evident secretiveness
of old Mystic writers, who were generally under an obligation never to
divulge the solemn secrets of the sanctuary, might have sadly misled
translators and commentators. 

The phrases of the mediaeval alchemist they read literally; and even the
veiled symbology of Plato is commonly misunderstood by the modern scholar.
One day they may learn to know better, and so become aware that the method
of extreme necessarianism was practiced in ancient as well as in modern
philosophy; that from the first ages of man, the fundamental truths of all
that we are permitted to know on earth was in the safe keeping of the adepts
of the sanctuary; that the difference in creeds and religious practice was
only external; and that those guardians of the primitive divine revelation,
who had solved every problem that is within the grasp of human intellect,
were bound together by a universal freemasonry of science and philosophy,
which formed one unbroken chain around the globe. It is for philology and
psychology to find the end of the thread. That done, it will then be
ascertained that, by relaxing one single loop of the old religious systems,
the chain of mystery may be disentangled. "

----------------------------------

One idea holds my attention and that is the remarkable sensitivity of Nature
(or read our World and Universe) that provides a living space [like the
DNA/RNA links, and others] for so many diverse entities (from sub-atomic
energy fields, to the ultimate thinkable limits of our Galaxy) All details
are taken care of and integrated. There is an INTELLIGENCE resident in every
part of Nature and it serves every small or great "being" -- giving it life,
continuity and avenues for individual progress.

As to an "institution" -- we are already in one. Keep asking and
participating in the flow of thought, but also be tolerant of others, slow
or fast, accurate or obtuse -- we are all the pupils of one grand School --
our Mother Nature.

Take a view: Laws in Nature are assists to living, and not restrictive of
free thinking. Or we could not exchange our divergent and convergent views,
looking for an intermediate basis that resolves individual experience and
imagination.

Best wishes,

Dallas

=========================================
 
-----Original Message-----
From: C B
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 10:56 PM
To: 
Subject: Ancient Cataclysms... 

> "How is it a vast co-operative, and how it is not a cooperative...
> Is it something I and it would benefit by my joining...

> 
> Let me offer for consideration the following:
> 
> 
> We all look at Nature, at our Universe (either through telescopes or
> microscopes) and wonder how it originated and how it got to be so
difficult
> to be fully understood.

I thank you for a keen response... They use only lenses to see beyond
their
limited capabilities... I found another way to see what is... I am slowly
documenting and modeling the formula as yet another school of thought...
We have a better than electron microscope already in each of us, and as far
as our telescope, it be a million times better than the Hubble toy...It got
difficult, because we slid into a synthetic reality... We lost the use of
the mind... and are content with that...
 
===============

First off, we must forget antiquity, to learn how to present and accept
newness... if only while we are seeking and presenting... That being the
only viable solution...


But if we are told that LAWS of Nature are uniform here and there,
Evolution discounts law... especially the anti-litter laws, when the leaves
fall...  


[ DTB	DOES IT ? HOW DID WE GET HERE? WHERE ARE WE GOING?]
 
The only uniformity is how we hold to our synthetic interpretations of our
partially sensed microcosm...

Religion is a parasite upon the bloods of Art and Science... In essence Art
and Science are Religion's enemy, because they are the only items capable of
neutralizing Religion... is why, in antiquity, Religion gave Science and
Art a home, to keep it's enemies close, and submissive...  

[DTB	ORGANIZED RELIGIONS ARE SET UP TO CONTROL PEOPLE WHO DON'T THINK --
THEY PROVIDE POWER AND MONEY. TO DO THIS THEY CREATE AND SUSTAIN
UNCERTAINTIES -- AND FEARS]

[And yet certain phenomena that were considered disruptive and
> "out-of-line," were being either neglected or suppressed. I ask: Why ?]

> Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, logic and
psychology, the history, not only of events of government, invasions,
religious fanaticism, as we have all been taught -- are expressed in brief
compressed manner -- 


> Perhaps we ought to look for regularities and repetitions while not
> loosing sight of the conflicting diversities and curious incidents of
> apparent dissent. The only way I could devise for myself was making
> extensive notes as I read and studied and thought.
> 
> In THEOSOPHY I discovered a well balanced review of the chief religions of
the world. They showed a sequence. Also, it is apparent that there has
> always been duality in every religion: (1) the superficial religion of
rites
> and rituals for the average masses, and (2) the deeper gnosis of the
> priesthood.
DTB