Nearly every culture I know prophesies that in the late 1990s we entered a period of remarkable transition. At monasteries in the Himalayas, ceremonial sites in Indonesia, and indigenous reservations in North America, from the depths of the Amazon to the peaks of the Andes and into the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, I have heard that ours is a special moment in human history, and that each of us was born at this time because we have a mission to accomplish.
The titles and words of the prophecies differ slightly. They tell variously of a New Age, the Third Millennium, the Age of Aquarius, the Beginning of the Fifth Sun, or the end of old calendars and the commencement of new ones. Despite the varying terminologies, however, they have a great deal in common, and “The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle” is typical. It states that back in the mists of history, human societies divided and took two different paths: that of the condor (representing the heart, intuitive mystical) and that of the eagle (representing the brain, rational and material). In the 1490s, the prophecy said, the two paths would converge and the eagle would drive the condor to the verge of extinction. Then, five hundred years later, in the 1990s, a new epoch would begin, one in which the condor and eagle will have the opportunity to reunite and fly together in the same sky, along the same path. If the condor and eagle accept this opportunity, they will create a most remarkable offspring, unlike any ever seen before.
“The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle” can be taken at many levels – the standard interpretation is that it foretells the sharing of indigenous knowledge with the technologies of science, the balancing of yin and yang, and the bridging of northern and southern cultures. However, most powerful is the message it offers about consciousness; it says that we have entered a time when we can benefit from the many diverse ways of seeing ourselves and the world, and that we can use these as a springboard to higher levels of awareness. As human beings, we can truly wake up and evolve into a more conscious species.
from Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.
We live in what we would call the age of reason and by what many would call the triumph of science. The demons, the mystical, all have been pushed aside where it belongs. Humanity is no longer misdirected by such immature pursuits. We live in the most successful civilization ever created. Or do we?
By many measures we do not. We have higher suicide and depression. People rate themselves as less happy. We have more chronic disease. Are these inevitable consequences of success? Or are they consequences of a system that has gone off kilter.
One of the things that always strikes me is how our system provides ever higher standards of living as it continues to erode quality of life. Almost everything about our society is designed towards isolation, to the point where it becomes a little ridiculous for the average person to fight against it.
But money cannot buy community. It cannot buy more friends. It cannot put real, fresh produce on your plate when your grocer has decided only to carry produce based on size and transportability. It also cannot buy you more free time. And it cannot make your neighborhood more civically engaged. The costs of our system are certainly high, and the rationales flimsy when held up to scrutiny.
The thing is, there is nothing inherently wrong with “The Eagle”. I liken the prophecy to the teachings on compassion and wisdom in Buddhism. Compassion without wisdom is aimless and ineffectual. Wisdom without compassion is cold, sterile, and also ineffectual.
No one person wants to be island. And no one person (or at least very few) admit to being against communities. And yet we all seem to promote policies which are leading to the destruction of languages and culture on a global scale. And we do so without even taking a step back to analyze our premises.
But real change is going to require a sort of shift most people are not accustomed to. In reality, most people are not even accustomed to the critical thinking and analytic skills that truly underlie “The Eagle”. But understanding “The Condor” is about being in touch with something much deeper. It’s about understanding life at an intuitive level. It is from which art and beauty manifest.
There is a place for the mind and mind knowledge. It is in the practical realm of day-to-day living. However, when it takes over all aspects of your life, including your relationships with other human beings and with nature, it becomes a monstrous parasite that, unchecked, may well end up killing all life on the planet and finally itself by killing its host.
from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
Because we live in such a mind-dominated culture, most modern art, architecture, music, and literature are devoid of beauty, of inner essence, with very few exceptions. The reason is that the people who create those things cannot – even for a moment – free themselves from their mind. So they are never in touch with that place within where true creativity and beauty arise. The mind left to itself creates monstrosities, and not only in art galleries. Look at our urban landscapes and industrial wastelands. No civilization has ever produced so much ugliness.
also from The Power of Now.
Resistance to the Now as a collective dysfunction is intrinsically concerned to loss of awareness of Being and forms the basis of our dehumanized industrial civilization. Freud, by the way, also recognized the existence of this undercurrent of unease and wrote about it in his book Civilization and it Discontents, but he did not recognize the true root of the unease and failed to realize that freedom from it is possible. This collective dysfunction has created a very unhappy and extraordinarily violent civilization that has become a threat not only to itself but to all life on this planet.
once again from The Power of Now.
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