The Eschaton
Once an enlightened individual has come to equate his formerly separate self
with the eternal universe, he may then come to the subsequent realization that
mankind as a whole will also come to such an equation as a final consummation. This
epiphany that mankind shall ultimately realize himself to be his own progenitor is the
worlds most perennial, yet esoteric, eschatology. On a microcosmic level, man as an
individual comes to realize his eternal nature upon dying and he does this so as to will
himself again. Macrocosmically, the universe*, via mankind, comes to its own
consummation at the end of biological evolution, so as to start itself anew as well.
This intuitive extrapolation stems directly from the understanding that man must die to
self in order to realize his true nature; the original sin of being incarnated in matter
must be transcended by both the temporal microcosmic individual and the eternal
macrocosmic persona in order to reach consummation. This understanding forms the
entire ground upon which all modern apocalyptic thought is based. The oneness of
the universe imparts to the enlightened mind that all shall return to it, often without
warning, and the concrescent nature of the universe not only implies this, but makes it
necessary by means of its evolutionary dynamics.
*Let me note that I realize the possibility that our Eschaton could also be just a localized
concrescence on a microcosmic scale of the greater Cosmic Eschaton(the big
bang/crunch) that is eternally recurring in resonance with ours.
The death of the material body, as seen from this point of view, is a microcosmic
concrescence for human beings, as it is without a doubt a consummation of an
individual’s life and the event itself is transformative for the directly affected. It is a
temporally dense event which, by nature of its emotional gravity, affects the very
matrix of causality in which it is embedded. Macrocosmically, the end of mankind,
will be both a consummation and an event that transforms temporality itself.
Essentially, at the end of an individuals life, Eternity is realized and due reflection is
allowed before the will to forget is reached. The very same will be for the end of
mankind; Eternity will be realized in the aftermath of the death of vegetable existence
and consciousness, having thus transcended matter, will have realized itself to be
eternal, which represents the end goal of self reflection; the end of the universe; the
Big Bang. We start all over again in complete ignorance of our former existence in
order to experience it all anew.
The implications are vast, as the end of the universe can be seen to have already
happened; in fact, it is always happening, as our Eschaton merely represents the
ultimate fate of the universe on a microcosmic level. To borrow from one of Terence
Mckenna’s revelations on time travel, our history may be seen as the realization of
Eternity, which essentially means the realization of the timelessness of the universe.
Our Eschaton, by the nature of relativity, occupies the same temporal position as the
greater Cosmic Eschaton, so by mere logic alone, we may deduce that our Eschaton
will subsequently lead us to the end point of all existence, not just biological, but
universal. We are all essentially a vastly interconnected whole that is held together by
a veil of illusion which keeps us from figuring ourselves out until the precisely
determined moment that history has foreseen as the Eschaton.
The oneness of the universe, the fact that there is really only one vastly
interconnected whole, leads to the realization that time is cyclic. Most ancient
cultures believed that time is in fact cyclic, repeating itself an infinite, yet
unrecognizable, amount of times. The icon of the serpent eating its own tail is used to
symbolize this concept. Time, being a circle, is repeated infinitely as there has only
been one event to have ever happened. The implications of such revelations for death
are quite clear; we are eternal beings, who live the same life over and over again.
Death is merely a transition. Enlightenment and our subsequent religions are the
primary mechanism for conveying this very difficult concept of Eternity and death.
The universe is in the process of coming to its consummative realization and mankind,
as the collective persona of God, is at the forefront of this process, intuiting its
completion as his spiritual destiny. With the relatively recent acquisition of language
and subsequently, self reflecting consciousness, Man represents the final end of this
evolutionary process by means of his conscious awareness of the universe.
Man, in his own microcosmic process to achieve understanding, had to do so while
struggling to shed his former animal consciousness; resulting in the great tragedy that
we call human history. In this historical epoch, Man plowed the depths of animal-like
unconsciousness, while subsequently glimpsing his final end; which ultimately, over
thousands of years, became canonized in hopes of explaining such unconsciousness
and promoting its antithesis; enlightenment. All of our great religions have stemmed
from this common idea which deals with the problem of unconsciousness by
assuming its necessity by the law of reciprocity. Our shedding of our former simple
animal consciousness is offset by our ever growing acquisition of understanding
which results ultimately in morality. This understanding is the realization of eternity
and it is the means by which the universe will consummate itself. This is the intuition
of our great religions; a final time in which the truth is revealed and death is finally
known for what it truly is.
"All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in so doing he
finds that God in his "oppositeness" has taken possession of him, incarnated himself in
him. He becomes a vessel filled with divine conflict. We rightly associate the idea of
suffering with a state in which the opposites violently collide with one another, and we
hesitate to describe such a painful experience as being "redeemed." Yet it cannot be denied
that the great symbol of the Christian faith, the Cross, upon which hangs the suffering
figure of the Redeemer, has been emphatically held up before the eyes of Christians for
nearly two thousand years. This picture is completed by two thieves, one of whom goes
down to hell, the other to paradise. One could hardly imagine a better representation of
the "oppositeness" of the central Christian symbol. Why this inevitable product of
Christian psychology should signify redemption is difficult to see, except that the
conscious recognition of the opposites, painful though it may be at the moment, does
bring with it a definite feeling of deliverance. It is on the one hand a deliverance from the
distressing state of dull and helpless unconsciousness, and on the other hand a growing
awareness of God's oppositeness, in which man can participate if he does not shrink
from being wounded by the dividing sword which is Christ. Only through the most
extreme and most menacing conflict does the Christian experience deliverance into
divinity, always provided that he does not break, but accepts the burden of being marked
out by God. In this way alone can the image of God realize itself in him, and God become
man...
...Because the image of God pervades the whole human sphere and makes mankind its
involuntary exponent, it is just possible that the four-hundred-year-old schism in the
Church and the present division of the political world into two hostile camps are both
expressions of the unrecognized polarity of the dominant archetype."
"It was only quite late that we realize (or rather, are beginning to realize) that God is
Reality itself and therefore - the last but not least - man. This realization is a millenial
process." Carl Jung, 'Answer to Job'
"Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a
perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are
never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma, or
immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language,
man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively, and hopefully in
the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts to tell him what to do; must
rely on personal cleverness, rather than on inspiration from the divine Nature of Things;
finds himself in a condition of chronic civil war between passion and prudence and, on a
higher level of awareness and ethical sensibility, between egotism and dawning
spirituality. But this "wearisome condition of humanity" is the indispensable prerequisite of
enlightenment and deliverance. Man must live in time in order to be able to advance into
eternity, no longer on the animal, but on the spiritual level; he must be conscious of
himself as a separate ego in order to be able consciously to transcend separate self-hood;
he must do battle with the lower self in order that he may become identified with that high
Self within him, which is akin to the divine Not-Self; and finally he must make use of his
cleverness in order to pass beyond cleverness to the intellectual vision of Truth, the
immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Reason and its works "are not and
cannot be a proximate means of union with God." The proximate means is "intellect," in
the scholastic sense of the word, or spirit. In the last analysis the use and purpose of
reason is to create the internal and external conditions favourable to its own
transfiguration by and into spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond
itself." Aldous Huxley
"All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one consciousness
experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and
we are the imaginations of ourselves." Bill Hicks
"Creation achieves the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it has reached its final
term which is everlastingness - the Apotheosis of the World." Alfred North Whitehead,
'Process and Reality'