The individual human being is a dwarfed, misshapen wretch blind to the immensity of his true spiritual nature

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" 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 Encyclopædia 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