Can you hear the birdsong?

Part 3 of 4: Myths and Archetypes.

Celestial Cosmology

Santillana and Dechend noticed a common theme of a mill that ran through the earliest renditions of the Hamlet myth with a millstone that no human strength could move. It has the ability to deliver peace and happiness or grind you to salt. This millstone is also mirrored in Norway as the ‘axle-block,’in the Faroe Islands as the ‘nave in the millstone’ and Poqanghoya and Palongawhoya on the poles of the naval of the earth from the Hopi emergence myth.

Santilla and Dechend believed that all these tales have a common message, in that they express the laws of the universe in the language of time. Its central argument is that the precession of the equinoxes—the 25,000-year cycle that changes the positions of the (otherwise) fixed stars due to a slight wobble in the Earth’s axis—was discovered by the early Bronze Age Mesopotamians. To give a simple explanation: “in astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's rotational axis. In particular, it refers to the gradual shift in the orientation of Earth's axis of rotation, which, like a wobbling top, traces out a pair of cones joined at their apices in a cycle of approximately 26,000 years (called a Great or Platonic Year in astrology). The term ‘precession’ typically refers only to this largest secular motion. (Crystalinks, 2017)

The pole traces its way backwards through the constellations and due to the nature of the fixed stars we end up with a different North or Pole Star. At present we have moved from the age of Pisces the fish, into Aquarius the water bearer, often depicted as a women pouring water out of an urn.

The precession of the equinoxes also corresponds to the Hindu theory of the Kali Yugas, where The Kali Yuga (Iron Age) was preceded by three others Yugas: Satya or Krita Yuga (Golden Age), Treta Yuga (Silver Age) and the Dwapara Yuga (Bronze Age). The Hindu sages illustrate the four stages journey in which man lives in an illusion in which he hides his divine nature from himself (and is ground to salt) and during the Golden Age he leaves behind the illusionary world of reflected light, depicted in Plato’s cave. 

Carl Jung was a proponent of precession and the system of zodiacal world ages. In 1958 he wrote ‘It bids me to fulfil my duty and prepare those few who will hear me for coming events which are in accord with the end of an era. As we know from ancient Egyptian history, there are symptoms of psychic changes that always appear at the end of one zodiacal age and at the beginning of another. They are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the archetypes or "Gods" as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started within the historical tradition and left traces behind within it, first in the transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius. ... I am, to be quite frank, concerned for all those that are unprepared by the events in question and disconcerted by their incomprehensible nature. ... I undertake this thankless task in the expectation that my chisel will make no impression on the hard stone it meets.’’

If the majority of myths are a metaphor for the beginning of a new era, what could this new era have in store for us? What separates us from the instinctive behaviour of animals is our ability to access our unconscious; the fact that we are intelligent enough to conceive of and act on a general idea about reality, whether it is the symbolism of a dream, a myth or a religious concept. 

The Swiss neuroscientist, Matthew Alper, striving for a scientific basis for this ability to access our unconscious, speculated that it this ability maybe due to the development of neurological connections that have developed in our species and stated “after generations of natural selection, a group of humans emerged who perceived infinity and eternity as an inextricable part of self -consciousness and self –identity. (Beauregard and O’Leary:48).  Behaviour geneticist Dean Hamer author of ‘The God Gene,’ although referring to spirituality, states “it is has a biological mechanism akin to birdsong, albeit a far more complex and nuanced one.”( Beauregard, M and O’Leary, D 2007:48). The important question here is, is our natural ability to access this ‘birdsong’ little more than ‘an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our D.N.A’, as Time Magazine wrote in response to Hamer’s work? 

Buddhist Studies Professor, Robert Thurman stated that Hamer’s ideas gain more credence to a popular Buddhist concept that we inherit a spirituality gene from our previous incarnations (and I believe this can observed in your astrological makeup with contacts to transpersonal planets), there is no evidence to support Thurman’s theory and Hammer later stated that humans inherit a predisposition for a level of awareness of abstract thoughts, including spirituality, but it may possibly be an outcome of the level of human intelligence, rather than a link to a specific gene. It may not be possible, as yet to prove that we can inherit the capacity, but it does seem that different personality types do tend to have an attraction to spirituality or an intuitive ability to ‘hear the birdsong’. 

The neuroscientist, Mario Beaureguard and Denyse O’Leary authors of ‘The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientists case for the existence of the soul,’ would sympathise with Hammer’s inability to offer a biological explanation for religious or spiritual experiences. From their research they came to the conclusion that the important action may not be so much the brain process per se but how the physical process connects to the outside world and stated that ‘The brain is not the mind, it is a an organ suitable for connecting a mind to the rest of the universe.’

Another neuroscientist, Karl Pibram, who found that if you cut out different parts of a rat’s brain, regardless of the portion removed, you could not eradicate their memories of a maze. Pibram believed that memories, and hence consciousness, were not localised to a certain part of the brain but spread across the brain. He postulated that memories were created by a crisscrossing pattern that occurs when two or more waves (much like the ripple effect after a stone is dropped on a pond), cross each other, causing inference, a complex pattern of peaks a troughs.

Karl Pibram’s discovery inspired Michael Talbot to write his book ‘The Holographic Universe’, where he explains that when you split a single laser light into two separate beams, the first beam is bounced off the object to be photographed and the second beam is left to collide with the reflected, it makes an inference pattern which can create an image on a piece of film. It is not until the second laser source (or bright light source) collides with the reflected first that the inference pattern, and a 3 dimensional figure is created, which you can walk around the image and view it from different angles.

Pibram believed that this wave-like phenomena takes place as the brains nerve cells or neurons create an electrical communication pattern. When this electrical pattern reaches the tree like branches within your brain it radiates outwards, like the ripple on a pond, creating an endless kaleidoscope of images from the inference patterns. Michael Talbot collaborated previously with Lynne McTaggart author of ‘The Field’, this book collected a number of research findings that suggest there is a quantum connection between the earth and all living things. Is it possible that all living things are connected and when Philo stated that “The creator of the world did not fashion these things directly from himself, but copied them from archetypes outside himself,” (Tarnas, 1996:110) that this connection, whether it is between a planet and a human or a human and an animal may just be a question of a shared frequency, and as Nikola Tesla once stated, “If you want to find the secrets of the universe think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration” (Tesla Universe, 2005) . Will this new era provide us with the insight to stop us looking for the answers outside of ourselves, if our perception is part of our own frequency and our own making?

If we all play a part in creating reality and our vibration plays a part in the reality we experience, it is also equally plausible that our reality is a continual evolving experience. The American scientist David Bohm found in his work on plasmas that, ‘ plasma is a gas that contains a high density of electrons and positive ions (atoms that have a positive charge) and when the electrons were in plasma they didn’t behave as if they were separate, but as a part of an interconnected whole. e.g. the plasma like an amoebic creature regenerated itself and pushed all its impurities into a cell wall, like an organism encasing a foreign substance. Giving the impression that the electron sea was alive.’ 

Bohm believes that consciousness is present in various degrees of enfoldment and unfoldment and not just in living things, but in all matter, which is perhaps why plasma possesses the traits of all living things. He believed that ‘life and intelligence are present not only in matter but in energy, space and time and the fabric of the entire universe.’ All interwoven in a holographic universe.

Continued in ‘Can you hear your calling?’