Contents | Outer Book | Next
The original meaning of "avatar" is "embodiment of a god." It gradually also came to mean "great spiritual teacher." Thales defines it to mean "scientific instrument of the spirit." Alan Watts, in a marvelous little article on Jesus VS the Jesus Freaks which originally appeared in the LA Free Press, implicitly defines "avatar" as a self-realized person, one who has experienced the divinity within, the 'that-art-thou.' All these meanings of "avatar" are compatible.
Alan Watts: "Christianity has universality, or catholicity, only in recognizing that Jesus is one particular instance...also...realized in the Buddha, in Lao-Tzu,...Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, and, perhaps Aurobindo and Inayat Khan."
It is the failure to recognize this catholicity that makes Jesus Freaks and fundamentalist Christians so obnoxious.
For Thales, the most important modern avatars are Edgar Cayce, Rudolf Steiner, and Sri Yukteswar, because all three lend themselves to the scientific approach to religion. All three flourished in the early years of this transitional century. Cayce was American, Steiner German, Sri Yukteswar Indic. Cayce was a good, simple, uneducated man, who achieved his phenomenal results under hypnotic trance. Steiner was a scientifically trained and highly civilized European, who happened to have HSP as a child and progressively developed it by psychic exercise. Sri Yukteswar worked in the ancient Indic tradition of the Yogi, but was also a Westernized and scientifically educated man. Sri Yukteswar was known to the famous Orientalist Evans-Wentz, but is chiefly known to the public through the Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda, his chief disciple, who was sent to America by Sri Yukteswar as a kind of missionary. Steiner wrote several books and several were written about him, which have been translated and published in London, which seems to be one of the more active centers of anthroposophy.
Cayce is known today because there is a file of 14,246 readings on file in Virginia Beach, at the A.R.E. headquarters. These comprise 49,135 pages of psychic material, recorded verbatim between 1901 and 1945. The fact that they are so well-recorded and preserved is one thing which makes Cayce's avatarship scientific. Another is the fact that the sons of Cayce made of follow-up by mail of the readings. Ninety-five percent of those responding though they had been helped by the readings, one percent made worse, and four percent unchanged. This is the more remarkable in that 8,976 readings were unorthodox medical diagnosis and prescription, in cases deemed incurable by traditional medicine. Thus, we must rate well over half the readings as highly testable in a conventional sensor way.
Thales draws a strict analogy between avatars and the great scientific instruments. Why do we believe in the images of galaxies that appear in the 200 inch telescope? We cannot see galaxies with the naked eye. Yet we firmly believe all sorts of things only revealed by the largest telescopes and base fundamental scientific theories on these beliefs. Avatars also tell us about things no revealed as yet by the five senses, such as the existence of planetary sojourns on other planets between lives here, and about Pliocene and Pleistocene civilizations, and provide facts about Christ's avatarship which definitely upset the traditional interpretation encapsulated in the bible. How can we believe such things? For the same reason we believe the 200 inch:
Internal Consistency: 'No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.' Yet people have written histories of Atlantis and of Earth Changes from consistent remarks in thousands of readings over 40 years in the Cayce material.
External Consistency: Steiner, Yuktesar, and Cayce independently agree. Indeed, all the proven avatars say the same things.
Validation and Calibration: The 95% success in the followup accomplishes this for Cayce. The fact that he was never submitted to some white-coat specialist's meaningless repetition of weak correlation studies with symbolically impotent targets in a 'laboratory' is something for which we can be thankful. If anything could have destroyed his talent, it might have been that.
Consistency with Science: This grows all the time as conventional theory and observation catch up. Eventually we will be able to cross-check almost the death-blow to the bibliolatry of the Jesus Freaks and fundamentalists. Nevertheless, it is the remaining conflict between scientific theory and the teachings of the avatars which at present prevents their being fully accepted as the core of world-wide scientific religion.
Ian Stevenson removed one roadblock to acceptance by finding solid scientific proof of reincarnation. Thales removed another by finding a scientific explanation of astrology. Perhaps the biggest remaining stumbling block is Atlantis, and the associated esoteric view of the Great Pyramid. Is there any solid evidence for such things? How can conventional theory be so far wrong?
Once in awhile an isolated civilized artifact will turn up in Pliocene (20 million to 2 million B/P.) or Pleistocene (2 million to 10,000 B.P.) deposits. These are usually found in mines, in deep well cores or while digging wells. Let me quote from Early Man in the New World, by Macgowan and Hester, p. 178.
As far back as 1869 a geologist named C.J. King found a pestle---considered in the Old World a product of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age of polished artifacts---so firmly cemented into the gold-bearing gravels under Table Mountain near Tuttleton, California, that he forced it out of its place with the considerable difficulty. The gravels and the lava which lay just above it are of the PLIOCENE!
Macgowan and Hester say that other ground and polished implements have been found in mine shafts, but they do not give details. The fate of such artifacts tells us much about the question of scientific evidence of Atlantis. There is evidence; it is as rigorous and sound as any accepted piece of evidence; yet it is passed over in silence. Possibly they could believe a fully excavated Pliocene or Pleistocene village, but such a thing could not be discovered by accident. The King pestle, the Napa, Idaho human figure, and the valley of Mexico corn pollen cores were all discovered at depths of 300 feet or more. Vast geological changes have taken place in 10 million years, and there would be absolutely no surface remnant of such a society. The point is that we are not totally lacking in evidence for the super-ancient civilizations described by Cayce and other avatars; it is just that scientists have so far found this evidence too incredible to believe and have passed over it in silence, with no follow-up. They are only human.
The disagreement between Cayce and conventional science is not merely over data, but over theory. Scientists are much more guided by theory than ordinary folk, and this leads both to the great successes and the great pratfalls of conventional science. How can continents suddenly rise or sink? How are cataclysms possible? How is the existence of Atlantis or Lemuria possible, considering the requirements of plate tectonic theory? Let me dispose of the last problem first. It is probable that Atlantis and Lemuria were not thick continental plates, but were temporarily upraises seafloor. So the question becomes, how could the earth change shape slightly?
There is plenty of conventional evidence that the earth does periodically change its shape slightly. For about 500 years we have known it is not perfectly spherical, but is slightly oblate. With the era of satellites, it has been discovered that it is slightly pear-shaped and no conventional explanation has been found for this. There is also plenty of conventional evidence for cataclysms...associated with reversals of the poles, exactly as Cayce said. Lava preserves the magnetic orientation present when the rock was hot, and from this scientists know that there have been periodic reversals of the magnetic field, at irregular intervals of a million years or more. Great extinctions of species are often associated with these magnetic reversals. The last such magnetic reversal, and the last such extinction of species occurred on the boundary between the Pleistocene and the Holocene, about 10,000 years ago(sic). The exact cause of this extinction is unknown to conventional science, but there is an interesting clue in the permafrost of Arctic regions. Let me quote Macgowan and Hester, p. 203.
The most puzzling of all the fossils of extinct animals are those in the deep Alaska muck beds. Their numbers are appalling. They lie frozen in tangled masses, interspersed with uprooted trees. They seem to have been torn apart and dismembered and then consolidated under catastrophic conditions. Eden and Plainview spear points and perhaps one Clovis have been found in these chill beds. Skin, ligament, hair, flesh, can still be seen.
In Siberia, sled dogs have eaten such frozen mammoths without ill effects. Stomachs still contain the frozen remains of the animals' last meals....tropical vegetation.
If magnetic poles are always aligned with the axis of rotation (as they should be by existing theory), a magnetic reversal means a toppling of the poles. If this happens abruptly, or if any of the steps in the change wee abrupt enough, the conservation of momentum would ensure catastrophic conditions, such as tidal waves that cover the continents (the great deluge?) and vast hurricane winds and sudden drops of temperature of hundreds of degrees. This could account for the fossil beds in Alaska, and for the frequent correlations of magnetic reversals with extinctions. But how are such pole-shifts and shape changes possible?
The answer lies in cosmic quantum mechanics. Classical vibration theory is usually a guide to the possible quantum states of a system, and a sphere has several possible classical modes of vibration, including a pear-shaped mode and a slightly square-cornered mode. Suppose there are cosmic quantum states corresponding to these shapes, with the transition caused by absorption or emission of just the right sort of graviton? This change of shape would cause abrupt risings and sinkings and tiltings which could very well plunge the continents under water and raise the sea-floor above or vice-versa. The pole shift could also be a quantum transition, or a whole series of them, from one stable quantum spin-state to another. Again, it would be the quantum absorption or emission of a graviton which would provide the energy.
Still, is there any evidence for Atlantis, specifically? Indeed there is, but of a type which might appeal more to the humanist than to the scientist.
Scattered all over the globe are evidences of a high technology which we cannot now duplicate, and of knowledge which we do not now understand. What we have are numerous clues, which can be put into a single coherent pattern if we assume they are remnants of a once mighty civilization, that of Atlantis, as described by Cayce.
The Atlantean technology included psychonic tools which we do not now have. On page 21 of Earth Changes is described the power house of the Atlantean civilization. It was a device for converting solar energy into psychonic energy or dragon current, which was used to rejuvenate the body, to kill dangerous wild animals, and to propel various craft through space, through the atmosphere, under water, and through solid objects. It may have been this same energy which was used to make stones soft, or to make stone and iron float in the air. It was by such techniques that the Great Pyramid was built. The powerhouse sounds something like a laser, and made use of "the elements that are found and that are not found in the Earth's atmosphere." It was made of glass and had a large faceted capstone. Unlike modern physical and electronic technology, not everyone could use dragon power. You had to undergo purification and become an initiate (figs 10, 11). Cayce describes this purification (440-5):
Q-3. What would be the nature of this purification? A-3. Purifying from within, much in the way and manner as has been given or illustrated to the entity in how that the mental self must be purified, much in the same way and manner as the inner self has been purified through its sojourns in the planetary influences between the appearances in the earth. For, as given, the body, the body consciousness, is a well-balanced body, mind and soul, for development as an initiate to again use these forces, these influences, for constructive rather than destructive forces.
Body-consciousness refers to the psychonic body, with its chakras and nadi. The reference to planetary sojourns is fascinating. Apparently the mental self (without the psychonic body) is purified in the planetary sojourn, and if the psychonic body could be similarly purified, the dragon power could once again be used. Incidentally, we may not want to, since tuning the power system too high (accidentally) was one of the causes of the cataclysm. This is another reason for thinking the power was dragon current, and was tied into the earth's psychonic body, which gives form and maintains solidity in the earth.
The final cataclysm about 10,000 years ago not only destroyed many species, it wiped out civilization. The few human survivors on earth apparently had to start again on the most primitive level of existence.
Yet, some scattered remnants of knowledge survived, perhaps only among a class of initiates who kept it secret. The initiates must have known that the destruction of civilization and the return to rugged conditions was necessary for further evolution. So they kept their knowledge to themselves and each passed his knowledge only to one other person.
For whatever reason, some of the ancient knowledge survived right up through the Renaissance here and there. One evidence of this is the knowledge of geomancy found all over the earth, among Indians in North and South America (who left the serpent and other animal earthworks in Ohio and Nazca, Peru), among the Australian aborigines, in the megalith builders of Europe and the Pacific, and the geomancers of China and of the Gothic civilization. Everywhere, this knowledge is associated with the symbol of the dragon, and every culture (except our own) knows of the dragon current, which reverses with the seasons, and wells up in special holy spots (power spots). There is also the legend among all the megalith builders, from Cornwall to the Easter Isles, that the giant stones moved by magic.
It is easy to be skeptical about this or that part of the story. But there is more. Only recently, it has been discovered that both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid are astronomical models and computers and that both are based on the same magic square (a square of numbers that add up the same in all directions). Both the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge incorporate facts of geography and astronomy and mathematics that have only been known recently, such as accurate knowledge of pi, of the size of the earth's circumference, knowledge of the longer cycles of astronomy, the angle the earth makes to the ecliptic, and the rate of precession of the equinox. Yet, in the fourth dynasty, the historical Egyptians were using 3 for pi. The first four dynasties of Egypt are not well known from historical documents, and the attribution of the Great Pyramid is mainly based on the discovery of King Khufu's cartouche carved within it. Might it not be that his dynasty was simply the first historical Egyptian society to learn how to break into the thing? Khufu simply laid claim to it, the sort of thing countless later pharoahs unsuccessfully attempted. Khufu was successful because no historical records have survived to deny his claim.
The things that make Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid puzzles are the kind of things only known and appreciated by mathematicians and physicists. Sir Isaac Newton was one early scientist to be fascinated by the dimensions and mathematical peculiarities of the Great Pyramid, described in the books of John Michell and Peter Tompkins.
Incidentally, it would be perfectly possible, though expensive, to mount archaeological expeditions to test at least some of Cayce's ideas about Atlantis or the Great Pyramid.
Another matter is the Piri Reis map, and other similar early maps which show things not then discovered, such as Queen Maude Land in the Antarctic, ice-free, which it has not been for 20,000 years. The Piri Reis map also showed both sides of South America in 1513, the same year Balboa was first glimpsing the Pacific. Indeed, Piri Ibn Haji Memmed (an admiral of the Turkish navy, i.e., a Reis) claimed to have gotten the western part of the map, including the Pacific, from a captured former member of Columbus' crew. Did Columbus actually know where he was going after all?
There were other old maps which show things not 'known' until recently. There is the Nicolo de Camerio map of 1502, the Orontius Fineaus map of 1531 and Mercator's map of 1538 and the Turk Hadji Ahmed's World map of 1559. In the 18th century Phillippe Buache made a map indicating the total outline of the sea level coasts of both Antarctica's, showing the gulf that slices through the continent, despite the fact that all these details are now covered with a mile and a half of ice, and were only rediscovered by twentieth century scientists. See Charles Hapgood's Maps of the Ancient Sea-Kings. The map makers themselves preserved a legend much like Plato's about Atlantis; that the knowledge was preserved by priests in ancient Egypt and written down or passed on before the disappearance of that culture. The claimed their knowledge came down from Atlantis or from refugees from Atlantis.
Some fools believe Atlantis stories refer to the sinking of the Minoan outpost of Thera. That is like believing the stories of Julius Caesar really refer to George Washington. In short, there is absolutely nothing similar about the two, and the attribution in no way explains the story. For instance, how cold the scholars of Tibet know about the explosion of Thera? yet the stories of Atlantis and Lemuria collected there by James Chuchward are the same as those collected by Solon in Egypt.
It is, of course, difficult to believe the professors are wrong while a simple photographer in a trance could be right. Yet the tide of scholarly opinion is slowly swinging in that direction. Once we fully open our eyes to the possibility that the avatars are right, and the 'modern' or World-Machine world-view is wrong, it is easy to find confirming evidence (or to refute the Atlantis legend once and for all by mounting the appropriate archaeological expedition).
Contents | Outer Book | Next