The Steel Magnolia

There are two types of articles that are catching my attention lately: 1) those that rail against the lack outrage among Americans at what their government is doing 2) those that declare that NOW the Downing Street Memo is going to wake everybody up and there’ll be a revolution, or at least an impeachment. Neither cheers me up at all even though what I am reading should be evidence that at least SOMEbody is awake and paying attention.

There’s an old saying: You can’t fight City Hall.

That goes doubly true for Bush and the Neocons. I don’t think that the Downing Street Memos are going to change a thing because what Americans - and those who observe America and do nothing - are really suffering from is something much deeper and more frightening. Paul Levy writes:

The fundamental psychic process that underlies what is playing out in our world today has certain striking similarities to what played out in Germany in the 1930s. Speaking back then, Jung could just as well be talking about the modern world when he says, “The struggle between light and darkness has broken out everywhere. The rift runs through the whole globe, and the fire that set Germany ablaze is smouldering and glowing wherever we look. The conflagration that broke out in Germany was the outcome of psychic conditions that are universal.” [Emphasis added]

The eternal mythic struggle between light and darkness, whose source is the psyche and whose arena is the world stage, not only underlies what happened in Germany, but is at the bottom of what is being collectively acted out in the world today. What played out with the rise of fascism in Germany was the manifestation of an unrecognized deeper psychic process that, fractal-like, has been endlessly recreating itself in a destructive way all throughout history. If we fail to recognize this underlying, universal, psychic process–be it in Germany in the 1930s, or current day–the result is a destructive collective psychosis.

To quote Jung, “The phenomenon we have witnessed in Germany was nothing less than the first outbreak of epidemic insanity, an irruption of the unconscious into what seemed to be a tolerably well-ordered world. A whole nation, as well as countless millions belonging to other nations, were swept into the blood-drenched madness of a war of extermination. No one knew what was happening to him, least of all the Germans, who allowed themselves to be driven to the slaughterhouse by their leading psychopaths like hypnotized sheep.” [Emphasis added] Like Germany, we are in the midst of a collective psychosis. Volcano-like, the Unconscious has erupted into our world, and, unrecognized, is wreaking havoc as it gets unwittingly acted out through us. We don’t want to unthinkingly follow our commander-in-chief and mimic the Germans, who, to quote Jung, “…..follow a mediumistic Fuhrer [which means leader] over the housetops with a sleep-walker’s assurance, only to land in the street with a broken back.”

People like Bush and the Neocons are just representatives of what America has become. No, not ALL Americans, and maybe not even most of them, personally, but certainly a lot of them. Levy writes:

We could say that George W. Bush, because he has literally become taken over by the Unconscious, is a living embodiment or incarnation of the Unconscious in human form. In other words, Bush is a living, breathing symbol, in full-bodied form, of the state of being unconscious. To recognize that George W. Bush is a symbol reflecting back to us our own unconsciousness is to begin to get insight into and integrate this unconscious part of ourselves.

We can agonize over this all day long - and some days I do just that - but in the end, I don’t think that Jung’s answer was the whole story. I think there is more and it is best described in the Hindu theory of World Ages. I think we are in the final stages of Kali Yuga. Rene Guenon wrote about this, and as you read his words, you will see that he is describing exactly what is happening today:

According to the Hindu tradition of cosmology, we are now nearing the end of the Kali Yuga (the Age of Iron) which is the final and most negative of four evolutionary Yugic cycles.

Each Yuga is like the season of a super-cosmic year, even greater than the cosmic year of the precession of the equinoxes. When the Earth came into its current phase of manifestation and the first Yuga began (’Satya’ Yuga, meaning ‘Purity’) humanity was barely removed from its original state of God-like innocence. This was the original Golden Age.

As time progressed the planet underwent the influence of a negative descending spiral, and the quality of life in each successive Yuga became further and further removed from the knowledge of truth and natural Law (in other words, ‘Reality’).

In the second, Treta Yuga (Silver Age) spiritual awareness decreased by one fourth and by the time of Dvapara Yuga (Copper Age) negativity had a 50% holding.

In the Kali Yuga the vibration has become pretty murky and humanity is labouring against heavy odds. Righteousness (right-use-ness) has diminished to scant one fourth of its original strength.

Throughout our current history we have created and been assailed by all the evils of Pandora’s box. No wonder the human race is having such a difficult time. But the turning point has now arrived, and the dawn once more sheds its light on a confused and ignorant planet.

The Vishnu Purana, one of the oldest sacred texts of India says about the Kali Yuga, “The leaders who rule over the Earth will be violent and seize the goods of their subjects… Those with possessions will abandon agriculture and commerce and will live as servants, that is, following various possessions. The leaders, with the excuses of fiscal need, will rob and despoil their subjects and take away private property. Moral values and the rule of the law will lessen from day to day until the world will be completely perverted and agnosticism will gain the day among men.”

There are many other references to this division of time. For instance, in the Bible, Nebuchandnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2:31-45) was of a bright and terrible image with a head of finest gold, chest of silver, hips of brass and legs of iron. The feet and toes were of iron mixed with clay. This image was destroyed by stone, unmade by human hands, which crushed the feet to dust and the pieces blew away in the wind. Although Daniel the prophet interpreted the various metals as the world empires which succeeded Babylon, the dream also has a more cosmic meaning. It represents the great yugas. The iron legs are the Iron Age or Kali Yuga which deteriorates at the end of its cycle into the present unstable civilisation symbolised by the feet of iron and clay. The prophet interpreted the stone as the true kingdom of God which would replace the other civilisations as the real and lasting Kingdom.

This end only appears to be the “end of the world,” without any reservation or specification of any kind, to those who see nothing beyond the limits of this particular cycle; a very excusable error of perspective it is true, but one that has nonetheless some regrettable consequences in the excessive and unjustified terrors to which it gives rise in people who are not sufficiently detached from terrestrial existence; and naturally they are the very people who form this erroneous conception most easily, just because of the narrowness of their point of view.

…the end now under consideration is undeniably of considerably greater importance than many other, for it is the end of a whole Manvantara, and so of the temporal existence of what may rightly be called a humanity, but this, it must be said once more, in no way implies that it is the end of the terrestrial world itself, because, through the “reinstatement” that takes place at the final instant, this end will itself immediately become the beginning of another Manvantara…if one does not stop short of the most profound order of reality, it can be said in all truth the “end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.

Seems that the truth is that humanity, as we know it, simply has run out of gas.