[Consciousness] [1REED] History of the End of the World

[Henry Reed]

How Do You Think the World Ends?Shifting one’s perception, from seeing
the glass as half empty to seeing it as half full, creates a minor
miracle. It changes an impoverished world into one of opportunity. Does
that count also as an actual change in the real world? Some say yes,
some say no. Could this difference in understanding be fueling today’s
culture wars?In his book, A history of the end of the world: How the
most controversial book in the Bible changed the course of western
civilization (HarperSanFrancisco), Jonathan Kirsch presents the history
of the book of Revelation, from the time of conception through it’s
impact upon current events. Revelation’s basic theme is that history is
something God planned in advance. There are good guys and there are bad
guys, both with support from divine sources. The end is preceded by a
major battle between Good and Evil. Good finally triumphs and Earth is
restored to its rightful condition of peace and harmony. We all know
that story.Revelation has some thematic elements so common to human
nature that it seems to justify, if not invite, certain human
predilections. Apocalyptic (the Greek equivalent of the Roman term for
“what will be revealed”) books, authored through divine intervention,
was common at the time Revelation came into being. One Jewish source
mentions over seventy other “future histories,” or divinely channeled
accounts of the end of the world, which were held in sacred regard.
Apocalypses were found among the Dead Sea scrolls. End of the world
prophecies existed in most other cultures, each having an equivalent
thematic form.Kirsch places the first apocalypses around the time of
Zoraster in Persia. He suggests that the Hebrew versions began after
Alexander the Great invaded Judea, when Jewish culture was under threat
of the foreign, and much more liberal, culture of Greece. The Hebrew
apocalypses thus emerged to combat the cultural invasion by casting
anything Greek as part of the “evil empire,” while divisions among the
Jewish people began to reflect this difference in values. Thus the
apocalypses became a tool in what we now call the “culture wars.”
Kirsch describes a pattern, manifesting from Biblical times on up to
our modern era, where those who perceive they are suffering because of
the behaviors of other groups of people, who have heinous values, and
look forward to the day when Good will triumph over the Evil ones to
create a New Age of Peace. Thus Revelation seems to be a timeless
archetype of political struggle powered by religious fervor.From the
earliest time, however, the theme that the “end of the world is at
hand” proved to be an unfulfilled claim. To bolster the power of the
apocalypses, therefore, it became useful to view these texts as
symbolic, leading to various interpretations of their meanings.
Augustine (354-430, A.D.), for example, an influential theologian of
the early Christian church, argued that Revelation shouldn’t be taken
literally, but as an allegory of the “moral conflicts within each
person.” Kirsch traces the history of Revelation as it continues into
the New World, firing the imagination of the Pilgrims. It played a role
in Joseph Smith’s founding of the Mormans. It plays a role today in the
thinking of the current United States administration. It continues to
fit the way people experience their struggles.One interpretation,
however, that Kirsch never mentions, is the one that two influential
symbolists independently envisioned. Edgar Cayce, operating from a deep
intuition, and Carl Jung, a psychiatrist who studied comparative
religion and mythology, both saw Revelation as a blueprint for a
radical shift in consciousness. In this interpretation, Revelation is a
process of enlightenment that changes the person’s perception of
reality, especially that of the human-God relationship. Cayce
identified the experience as coming to know oneself as an individual
yet one with God. Carl Jung interpreted the Christ symbol as a portent
of a transformation of consciousness similar to Cayce’s description.
After such an experience, the person lives in a totally different
world. If Revelation is symbolic of an inner process, can it tell us
anything about the future of the world? Suppose many people were to
experience enlightenment. Would the world “out there” become different
because so many people are experiencing reality in a new and different
way? Edgar Cayce speaks of the return of Christ as an inner event that
more and more people will come to experience. Jung predicted an
increase in this transformation as reflecting the coming “Aquarian
Age.” Both men saw consequences for world history arising from the
collective effect of the transformation of individual lives. However,
whether ridding the world of evil requires an external extermination or
an internal transformation seems to be a question that plagues us
today. A reconciliation of these two viewpoints is probably in order.

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Posted By Henry Reed to 1REED at 5/30/2007 12:04:00 PM
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