Are we in the spiritual dark ages?

[de_paradise]

Not just a few esoterics having attained spiritual heights, which is our nature, but the entire society being enlightened. This is what we had as humans, and lost some thousands or ten thousands of years ago, because the universe moves in cycles--we are now in a low of the cycle, Amun. This according to an unbroken oral tradition found in Egypt, but also coinciding apparently with some North American indigenous tribes beliefs.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtsS3G68MJQ (you can skip most of the first one, the lecture starts at end)

 

Without getting too New Agey, I am interested to know how many people could subscribe to that theory, that we are living in a period of devolution. What seems to be proof is, number one, the pyramids had to have been built by someone, two, many of our esoteric practises come from (reputedly) long ago, pre-Ancient Egypt; the oral tradition mentioned in the lecture,

 

50,000 years ago, what were societies like, who existed? Thats the question resonating in my mind.

[Vajrahridaya]

Not just a few esoterics having attained spiritual heights, which is our nature, but the entire society being enlightened. This is what we had as humans, and lost some thousands or ten thousands of years ago, because the universe moves in cycles--we are now in a low of the cycle, Amun. This according to an unbroken oral tradition found in Egypt, but also coinciding apparently with some North American indigenous tribes beliefs.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtsS3G68MJQ (you can skip most of the first one, the lecture starts at end)

 

Without getting too New Agey, I am interested to know how many people could subscribe to that theory, that we are living in a period of devolution. What seems to be proof is, number one, the pyramids had to have been built by someone, two, many of our esoteric practises come from (reputedly) long ago, pre-Ancient Egypt; the oral tradition mentioned in the lecture,

 

50,000 years ago, what were societies like, who existed? Thats the question resonating in my mind.

 

 

In Vedic tradition and Buddhist tradition it's called "Kali Yuga" and Kali in this sense is not the goddess Kali, but the demon Kali. Where most people are influenced by material gains, the leaders of the world are more about personal power than the people. At the same time, it's the time when if one were truly spiritually inclined, one could attain realization very fast, because of how fast karmas happen and can be burnt through for someone who has realization of the path to realization.

[minkus]

At the same time, it's the time when if one were truly spiritually inclined, one could attain realization very fast, because of how fast karmas happen

 

Ow yes, creating balance gets rewarded. Its like karma happy hour

[sheng zhen]

I would agree we are still in the dark ages simply because the majority of humanity(christian, muslim, jew) still consider what is written in the bible as the truth.

[Vajrahridaya]

Ow yes, creating balance gets rewarded. Its like karma happy hour

 

It's also a time if one were liberated, one could really have their cake and eat it too, because of all the ignorance has created air planes, movies, all sorts of games and sports, computers, etc. Not that these are all healthy for human longevity, but if one is liberated, one can sure experience this play in lots of more possobilities without really falling for the trick, than during a time without gas driven thingies....

 

I would agree we are still in the dark ages simply because the majority of humanity(christian, muslim, jew) still consider what is written in the bible as the truth.

 

And manifesting these falsities through the power of conjoined mind's of agreed perspective.

Edited August 13, 2009 by Vajrahridaya

[sheng zhen]

And manifesting these falsities through the power of conjoined mind's of agreed perspective.

and if that dosent work, bombs...

[Vajrahridaya]

and if that dosent work, bombs...

 

I'm in front of the computer, hiding from guns...

kinda...

[Sunya]

Not just a few esoterics having attained spiritual heights, which is our nature, but the entire society being enlightened. This is what we had as humans, and lost some thousands or ten thousands of years ago, because the universe moves in cycles--we are now in a low of the cycle, Amun. This according to an unbroken oral tradition found in Egypt, but also coinciding apparently with some North American indigenous tribes beliefs.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtsS3G68MJQ (you can skip most of the first one, the lecture starts at end)

 

Without getting too New Agey, I am interested to know how many people could subscribe to that theory, that we are living in a period of devolution. What seems to be proof is, number one, the pyramids had to have been built by someone, two, many of our esoteric practises come from (reputedly) long ago, pre-Ancient Egypt; the oral tradition mentioned in the lecture,

 

50,000 years ago, what were societies like, who existed? Thats the question resonating in my mind.

 

 

ignorance has existed even before the 'age of enlightenment' of the New Agers. in fact, there is no beginning. the cosmos = beginningless. and you have been in ignorance for a very long time :/ we all have. not just humans, but you've been a goat too, and a firefly. everything in fact. so don't worry about what humans were 50,000 years ago. they were still ignorant. If you were one of the mindstreams that lived in an enlightened society then you didn't do a very good job in achieving liberation because you're still here

 

a lot of new agers focus on the past and think that humans were enlightened and then shit got ugly. well, who cares even if thats so? what does that really change? you're still here, and you're still ignorant. i think this comes from identifying too much with the human race. maybe it can be good to imagine the possibility (damn near definite probability) that there are infinite worlds out there with civilizations, and if you like the idea of reincarnation (who doesn't?) then chances are, you were a member of many many different societies

 

society really doesn't exist as an evolving entity. there is no Self in society, there is no Self in humanity. its the individuals in the society that matter, and its their evolution that matters. the evolution of humanity only happens because of the individual evolution of the mindstreams who happen to incarnate on Earth during this time because of their karma. There is a possibility that the mindstreams that were incarnated on Earth 50,000 years ago are all elsewhere right now, and humanity is made up of completely different beings. so you see, there is no such thing as 'humanity'. for that to be so there would have to be continual reincarnation of the same mindstreams on Earth. but how can that be if the population has gone up so dramatically? and if you take into account the INSANE size of the Universe, and the high probability of many civilizations existing, then the probability of humanity continually having the same mindstreams is very low.

Edited August 13, 2009 by mikaelz

[sheng zhen]

society really doesn't exist as an evolving entity. there is no Self in society, there is no Self in humanity.

hmm... I find its rather obvious that any kind of group consciousness (be it 2, 3, 10 or 10000 humans, cells, atoms, planets, flowers, business companies, whatever) has a sense of self that evolves.

Edited August 13, 2009 by sheng zhen

[~jK~]

hmm... I find its rather obvious that any kind of group consciousness (be it 2, 3, 10 or 10000 humans, cells, atoms, planets, flowers, business companies, whatever) has a sense of self that evolves.

I agree - all living things evolve.

As well - it seems that the non-living things - devolve.

Oddly though - it seems that humanity tends to do a cyclic philosophical evolution/devolution in opposing relation to the economy.

1929 was an era for economic downturn but creative upturn for the arts.

My grandfather saw it as being distracted by too much mass entertainment. - mainly TV, movies and the distractions that money could buy . .

[Vajrahridaya]

hmm... I find its rather obvious that any kind of group consciousness (be it 2, 3, 10 or 10000 humans, cells, atoms, planets, flowers, business companies, whatever) has a sense of self that evolves.

 

it's pieces evolve from other entities though continueously. NY society continueously has new people coming into it and out of it evolving and effecting the entire city in different ways on and on.

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

50,000 years ago, what were societies like, who existed? Thats the question resonating in my mind.

 

Just to make it perfectly clear, 50,000 years ago there were homo sapiens, but they were just hunter-gathering tribes. There was no civilization, no domesticated animals, no crops, no pots, no permanent huts, just nomads with spears and bone earrings. Absolutely all of our scientific evidence agrees with this.

 

Now granted, Plato heard from some crazy old fisherman about an ancient city that he called Atlantis, and the New Age community has latched on to that idea, pushed it back to a ridiculous point in time and added an even older civilization prior to them (the Lemurians), so take what will from it.

 

Even a reasonable theory of Atlantis would not place the city more than about 10,000 years back or so.

[Enishi]

Societies and businesses can indeed have a kind of thought-form group egregore which develops in the astral. It's not the same as a self-conscious soul/mindstream though, its more like an AI computer program.

[Aetherous]

It seems to me that...yes we are in the dark ages when you "see" a person's spirit (if you can), and it appears very dim. And you witness people's actions out in public, and they're withdrawn, scared and cold hearted. Or they're overly outgoing and loud, avoiding the things within themselves. And people chase after nothing their whole lives, never truly realizing how much they're missing out on, and how erratic they've become. When people subconsciously love their sadness/anger/stress/worry, etc...and aren't willing to give those powerful feelings up, because it's who they are. All of this is pretty dark. And that's not even mentioning the evil things people do to eachother.

 

Was it ever any different? Perhaps only when we were little kids. It seems to me that theories about the past and the future aren't very realistic. I don't care if some brilliant sage said it...it sounds delusional to me.

 

It's true darkness to not even realize that it's dark...and the more we realize how dark it is, the more light we shine.

[hyok]

50,000 years ago, what were societies like, who existed? Thats the question resonating in my mind.

 

That's pretty much what it comes down to.

 

I was watching Mel Gibson's Apocalypto for the third time, and I think his depiction of Mayans in the Capital City are not so far off from what it was probably like. A spiritual society doesn't make it so that souls are more pure as they arrive. Karmic bonds will include the shallow, the less-intelligent, the more-evil as well as the good, deep and smart.

 

If people are pretty much the same, then I imagine a lot of spiritual pride in a more Spiritual Age, a lot of people wearing things to show off their spirituality. The elders at the top are probably always shaking their heads a little at the ridiculousness of it, but knowing that this is the way of paths.

 

If anything, the social organization of civilization would have been more progressively spiritual, and more advanced adepts were probably present, but was human nature all that different?

 

Probably not, but i imagine it was a lot better than the largely demoralized civilization we are in right now.

[Vajrahridaya]

Just to make it perfectly clear, 50,000 years ago there were homo sapiens, but they were just hunter-gathering tribes. There was no civilization, no domesticated animals, no crops, no pots, no permanent huts, just nomads with spears and bone earrings. Absolutely all of our scientific evidence agrees with this.

 

Now granted, Plato heard from some crazy old fisherman about an ancient city that he called Atlantis, and the New Age community has latched on to that idea, pushed it back to a ridiculous point in time and added an even older civilization prior to them (the Lemurians), so take what will from it.

 

Even a reasonable theory of Atlantis would not place the city more than about 10,000 years back or so.

 

Well there have been amazing Anthropological finds in the red sea or dead sea and in the ocean in between India and Shree Lanka. Like cut out stone and what not, possible civilisations. Things that prove various things that appear in scriptures true, like the road between India and Shree Lanaka that existed some 5,000 years b.c. when Rama was supposedly alive and more. I don't think it's delusional at all that there were different cycles and different based civilisations. Just because we are like this now since the time of the Agricultural age pretty much, doesn't mean we were always like this. I mean look at some of the Tribes like the Bushmen and the Aborigine desert tribes. They are quite amazing and have a language that dis-includes selfishness, hate, revenge and things that we think are naturally a part of human society, but are actually just false conditions and these tribes have been the same for 30,000 years because they didn't need to change. We can change our nature through thought, focus and intention.

[DalTheJigsaw123]

I think we are. However, I think we have been for thousands of years. I believe that it's been a consistent thing. It never really stops.

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

Well there have been amazing Anthropological finds in the red sea or dead sea and in the ocean in between India and Shree Lanka. Like cut out stone and what not, possible civilisations. Things that prove various things that appear in scriptures true, like the road between India and Shree Lanaka that existed some 5,000 years b.c. when Rama was supposedly alive and more. I don't think it's delusional at all that there were different cycles and different based civilisations. Just because we are like this now since the time of the Agricultural age pretty much, doesn't mean we were always like this. I mean look at some of the Tribes like the Bushmen and the Aborigine desert tribes. They are quite amazing and have a language that dis-includes selfishness, hate, revenge and things that we think are naturally a part of human society, but are actually just false conditions and these tribes have been the same for 30,000 years because they didn't need to change. We can change our nature through thought, focus and intention.

 

This is a good point, but I was just saying that civilization did not exist 50,000 years ago. Even the most ridiculed, fringe archeologist would not claim that there were any real permanent structures from earlier than 18,000 BC, and that is pushing the envelope really hard.

 

There may have been plenty of very enlightened nomadic tribes from the paleolithic age, but you could not say that they had any stone temples, crops, or sophisticated (metal) tools. The spinning wheel and pottery were not even invented until the neolithic age sometime after 11,000 BC.

 

So the question that seems to arise is whether or not you can have fairly large groups of enlightened people and civilization (modern or not) at the same time.

 

And for the record, if the kalpas are real I assume that they are referring to other worlds than ours, be it on another planet or in another dimension/realm of existence. I think that there is plenty of backing for this opinion in the Mahabharata of Hinduism, but even more in Buddhist texts such as the Lotus Sutra. You do not have to hold so rigidly to the idea of a kalpa as being an age on this particular earth.

 

And there are many respected people who even go so far as to interpret the kalpa as an age in oneself (psyche), making the Kali Yuga into a type of dark night of the soul before cycling into enlightenment.

[Erdrickgr]

Not just a few esoterics having attained spiritual heights, which is our nature, but the entire society being enlightened. This is what we had as humans, and lost some thousands or ten thousands of years ago, because the universe moves in cycles--we are now in a low of the cycle, Amun.

 

Well, I don't think there has ever been a time when entire socieites were enlightened, so I guess that is going to throw my whole answer off! I believe that we are at neither a high or low point in our spiritual development (or in the cycle, if you believe things are cyclical). On the one hand, there is a lot of apathy about things spiritual these days, especially in some areas of the western world. On the other hand, we've never before had so many tools or so much information at our disposal for pursuing enlightenment. I think man will continue developing technologically, and I only hope that spirituality will not be a casualty of that development.

Edited August 14, 2009 by Erdrickgr