The"Individual human being"Is a dwarfed, misshapen wretch blind to the immensity of his true spiritual nature
“Prophecy is often based on resonances: the spirit of a bygone era
never really disappears, it just remains inchoate, settling down
into the subtextual quantum level of indeterminate, nonlocal,
atemporal potentiality, until the cavity of Space/Time once again
conforms to the frequency of its vibration. We have already seen how
the prophets whose visions touched upon the Millennial destiny of
the Holy See — Daniel, Malachy, Dante — each lived in a era which
resonates apocalyptically with our own: the dissolute decadence of
ancient Babylon, the violent factionalism of the 12th Century
Papacy, and the civil chaos of 13th Century Florence. And so, we
should not be surprised to find that the prophet whose visions were
perhaps best"Attuned"to the fate of the Church in the late 20th
Century was a man who lived through the Spanish Inquisition and was
a contemporary of the Jesuits' founder Ignatius Loyola — Dr. Michel
de Nostredame.
The Prophecies of Nostradamus
Along with the one thousand Quatrains, Nostradamus' Centuries also
contain two sections of prose — the Preface, which is addressed to
his son Caesar, and the Epistle to King Henry II of France. Not
coincidentally, both of these segments focus significantly on the
historical period of the 18th Century Enlightenment and the great
French Revolution. In his Preface, Nostradamus explains to his son
that he had originally intended to keep his prophecies a total
secret out of well-founded fear of persecution by the Church and its
Inquisition, whose leaders would likely find the foreshadowed
changes"so little in accord with what they would like to hear.”He
goes on to say that he was only moved to set down his visions,
albeit in very cryptic verses, because he felt compelled to reveal
what he foresaw as the"Collective Advent.”
What did Dr. Michel mean by the"Collective Advent"? Some
interpreters have seen this phrase as referring to the political
supremacy of the"vulgar"classes and thus have sought to apply it
to the French and/or the Russian revolutions. This thesis gets some
support from a subsequent passage of the Preface, which clearly
identifies the period of the Enlightenment as the beginning of a
great transitional phase ultimately leading to a new Golden Age.
And, in one of only a dozen references to precise dates in the
Centuries, the Epistle predicts a fierce persecution of the Church
in the year 1792"Which they will believe will mark a renewal of
time.”As it turns out, this is among the handful of Nostradamus'
Prophecies the fulfillment of which is absolutely irrefutable, since
the year 1792 was the beginning of the intensely anti-clerical Reign
of Terror, and was the very year designated as Year One of the
French revolutionary calendar.
Without doubt, the period of the French Revolution represents one of
the three great crises in the history of the sovereign Papacy — with
the other two being the Protestant Reformation and our own era. In
1773, Pope Clement XIV, bending to the pressure of Spain and France,
demobilized the shock troops of the Inquisition with his decree
suppressing the Jesuit order. Soon after issuing his edict, Clement
would be poisoned and would die precisely as had been predicted by
an Italian soothsayer named Bernardino Baruzzi. So much had the
Church's iron grip weakened by this time that the end of the Papacy
was being openly prophesied, and these predictions seemed to be
confirmed when, in 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte stripped Pope Pius VII
of his temporal sovereignty and had him taken prisoner. For this
reason, many of Nostradamus' commentators have equated Napoleon with
the"second Antichrist"Who would, according to the Epistle,
"persecute the Church and its true Vicar.”And, indeed, in view of
the three historical crises of the Papacy — the Reformation, the
French Revolution, and the end of the current Millennium — it is
quite logical to assign one of the Prophet's three Antichrist's to
each era.
Like most of Nostradamus' images, however, the"Collective Advent"
has a dialectical meaning, i.e. simultaneously invoking opposing
qualities. In one sense, the phrase does relate to the various
political movements — of which French Jacobinism was the prototype —
which have sought to forcibly unify humanity within the structure of
the modern Nation-State. Viewed from this perspective, the final
collapse of this"Vulgar"Advent was unequivocally foreshadowed in
the Epistle, where it marks a key watershed in the unfolding of
apocalyptic events at the end of this, the Seventh Millennium:
.”.. thereafter extreme changes, reversals in realms and mighty
earthquakes, along with a teeming new Babylon, miserable daughter
enlarged by the abomination of the first Holocaust, which will last
for only 73 years and 7 months" ( 25)
It is nothing less than astounding that the foregoing passage not
only gives an apt description of the Soviet Union — the"new
Babylon", quintessential historical incarnation of the"Vulgar
Advent", whose empire was expanded by the Second World War and Nazi
Holocaust — but it goes on to predict, with virtual pinpoint
accuracy, the actual time span from the founding of the Bolshevik
State in 1917 to the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991!
Nonetheless, one cannot truly understand the prophecies of
Nostradamus by taking account of only the darker side of his
dialectical imagery. It is just this type of one-dimensional
interpretation which over the years has unjustly cloaked the
prophet's message in the somber mantle of"gloom and doom", when the
fact of the matter is that he actually foretold not the"End of the
World", but a tumultuous transition to a new"Golden Age.”
Understandably, many of the institutions of the world as we know it
will be radically transformed or totally swept away in this tidal
wave of change, and the dislocations brought on by the precipitous
collapse of these institutions will surely be a cause of temporary
suffering for many. But the end-result envisioned by Nostradamus is
entirely consistent with the visions of Daniel and Revelation: i.e.,
the"Apocalypse"Is destined to accomplish the"cleansing"of
consciousness which will uncover the spiritual universe in the
fullness of its infinite splendor.
Taken in its supernal rather than historical vein, then, the
"Collective Advent"Is exactly what the words imply — the Advent of
the God-Man in the form of a transfigured human race, its ageless
dream of transcendent unity finally fulfilled in the attainment of
Collective Mind, Body and Spirit. Looking back at Nostradamus'
references to the 18th Century as the onset of this Great
Transition, moreover, we should recall that this same period
produced not only the Enlightenment, with its deification of Reason,
but also the visionary poetry of William Blake, who saw"Jesus"As
the metaphysical Body of a spiritually-integrated Divine Humanity.
The"Collective Advent", therefore, is the New Jerusalem, the
Millennial city of Blake's poetry, an ecstatic realm which has
always been within and all around us, but has remained inaccessible
to a false consciousness which arbitrarily partitions the mental and
physical worlds and atomizes the organic Oneness of mankind.
What, then, are we to make of a"spiritual"doctrine which teaches
the"sanctity of the individual human being"? In truth, the
"Individual human being"Is a dwarfed, misshapen wretch, who was
torn from the Body of the God-Man when humanity fell from Grace —
blind to the immensity of his true spiritual nature, an impotent
thing at the mercy of the lifeless mechanical universe which his
dissociated consciousness has conjured up! Even a superficial
understanding of the prophets would suffice to warn that the
fragmented"Individual"Identity which keeps Man in exile from his
Higher Self will be the very dross to be consumed in the"refiner's
fire"of the coming transformation.”
Apokalypso: The Fall Of The Papacy
"What is this that I am, I do not know.”Man is a riddle to himself; he is a mystery he cannot decipher. Man is an"I am," he is a spark of being, he is real, but he does not know who he is because the very faculty he is endowed with, the very power he has, his mind, is what reveals to him that he is and conceals from him who he is. It is by his mind that Man wanders about; it is by his mind that Man recognizes his human condition and that he is free because he knows that he is; but that very mind is for him a burden, almost a prison in which he is secluded. He cannot fly beyond, because it is his own mind that makes the space available and sets the limits to his own incursion into reality; the mind is the organ he has in order to discover reality and even to be real. This is the first distich. Man is because he thinks, and he is because he thinks to be. No pretension is possible here. Thinking and being are not identical, but they are so intrinsically correlated that in Man there is not the one without the other. Man cannot escape the"space"of his own consciousness or transcend the"time"of his own being.”
Professor R. Panikkar, The Vedic Experience
"If you strive to find the Self by using your mind, you will strive and strive in vain, because the mind cannot give you the Truth; a lie cannot give you truth. A lie can only entangle you in a web of deceit. But if you sensitize yourself, awaken your true, fine, beautiful qualities that all of you have, then you become a channel, a chalice in which your effulgent being will begin to shine. You will first think that a light is shining within you. You will seek to find that light. You will seek to hold it as you cherish and hold a beautiful gem. You will later find that the light that you found within you is in every pore, every cell of your body. You will later find that that light permeates every atom of the universe. You will later find that you are that light and what it permeates is the unreal illusion created by the mind.”
Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, September 1997
"collective unconscious: term introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung to represent a form of the unconscious (that part of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain. It is distinct from the personal unconscious, which arises from the experience of the individual. According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains archetypes, or universal primordial images and ideas.”
Britannica Online, 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
"I am born at this Time where I have to do this job of telling you that you must get your transformation. This is a very difficult job from all others. At the time of the Devi when She came, She had to kill the raksasas (demons). The raksasas were separate and human beings were separate. So She could protect the human beings.
But today the raksasas have entered into the heads of human beings. It's a very difficult job to tell them that the raksasas have now gone into your head... . The freedom given to human beings at the time of Adam and Eve has deteriorated into this kind of humanity today.
And, when it comes to such a stage, then only a person becomes aware of himself that there is something wrong. What am I going to give my children? What am I doing? Where am I? And when such a question comes to mind that is the time where Mahalakshmi starts showing Her Light to you, that you have to seek the Truth. And when that seeking of Truth comes in, as William Blake has said, that men of God will seek the Truth and they will really become men of God. A special category of seekers will be born at this Time, and they will make others men of God.
So Sahaja Yoga is being built slowly in an evolutionary process through many sages, scientists and seers — and through many incarnations. And it's all within ourselves. The whole world is within ourselves. All these great things are also within us.
The human being is not an ignoble being. He is the epitome of all evolution. He is not a person to be degraded. Only thing is his ignorance. In ignorance a rope seems a snake. Unless there is light you cannot see the rope. So I would not call anybody guilty, whatsoever. Whatever a person has done, he can get his transformation because his Spirit is still there — shining! It's just clouded with many things. And if somebody can by any chance move those clouds the sun, that is the Spirit, will shine forth ...
So the happening is of the breakthrough of human awareness into a New Dimension, about which Jung has written, that is, Collective Consciousness which has to be actualization and becoming, and not just talking. They become real brothers and sisters in the sense they become part and parcel of the Whole ... that human beings will know that they are in the Kingdom of God.”
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Shri Mataji's Birthday Puja, Bombay, India — March 24, 1990
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