For us human beings this present age has been the age of identification with our bodies and minds. This has constituted an evolutionary plateau in our development as a species—one that has lasted a considerable length of time and brought great devastation and suffering to the human ranks. But no evolutionary plateau lasts forever. There comes a time when a new evolutionary outworking is conceived and born. Consider the baby chick. For a long time it tries in vain to break through its shell and claw its way out into the world. But eventually there comes a day when the shell weakens and gives way. It begins with just a tiny crack, but not long after that the entire shell breaks apart. The baby chick emerges and beholds the light of day for the first time. So it is with our evolutionary thrust, as we emerge from this long age of spiritual darkness—the age of body and mind identification. We have been clawing and scraping for a long time, and at last a crack in the shell of our evolutionary impasse has formed. It won’t be long now before we too behold the true light of day—that is, the divine spiritual truth in all its eternal glory—and come forth into an entirely new dispensation of human initiative. Our darkness is about to give way to the light of a New Age.
In the age to come we will still be biological creatures. We will still have a body and a mind. The difference will be our state of consciousness. Instead of the state of consciousness that identifies with body and mind such as we have been moving in throughout this age, our consciousness will elevate and expand to include a vibrant awareness of our spiritual essence. When this happens, our identity will naturally shift to where we view ourselves as dominantly spiritual beings—spiritual beings with a biological infrastructure. The basic makeup of our inner world will not change, only its emphasis and order. And in that day we will look back and wonder how we lived with things so backwards and out-of-whack for such a long time. We will acknowledge that our condition was not only out of alignment with the created order of our universe; it was also extremely harmful and detrimental to us.
It has been our wrongful identification with body and mind that has made us mortal creatures. For, all such biological functions are temporal and pass away. And once our identification with these functions became solidified, it then impacted our physical bodies, causing a cellular realignment that over time produced decay and death. So this wrongful identification has been far more detrimental to us than we tend to believe.
In the New Age when we come to identify with our spiritual core we will no longer be subject to decay and death. In the same way that identification with temporal realities led to mortality, our new identification with the enduring spiritual aspects of our being will lead to eternal life. Our biological functions will not only be brought into submission to the order they were originally created for; it is not farfetched to believe that they will be changed to where they no longer respond to temporal influences. In other words, our new spiritual identification will have the effect of once again altering our bodily cellular structure, only this time that alteration will abolish decay and death instead of enslaving us to them. Thus not only will our spirit reflect eternality; so will our bodies and minds.
Like many other biological species, we Homo sapiens are evolutionary creatures,
but unlike those other species, our innate evolutionary impulse has up until now expressed itself in our inner makeup rather than our outward physical form. Our created evolutionary thrust has been an inward psychic phenomenon, through which we grow and expand in our conscious spiritual awareness and knowledge. Whenever this expansion of consciousness has occurred in the life of an individual, it has brought a flood of new light to his or her entire inner world, thereby enabling them to become new creatures in that psychic realm. All of this has been going on throughout this age of body-mind identification. But in the age to come our evolutionary impulses will expand to include our biological apparatus as well, and it is this distinction that will make it a collective phenomenon at last.
The rapid transformation of human society that we are currently undergoing is indicative of an unparalleled evolutionary thrust taking place in the collective human arena. A truly profound infusion of spiritual light is dawning inside countless individuals right now. And when this evolutionary thrust is fully appropriated and established, the world of men will not only be changed; it will be unrecognizable. In fact, the entire concept of what it means to be human will be redefined.
For a long time the collective human evolutionary process has been in a holding pattern. And this age has been the temporal-historical context for this stalled collective stance. Up until now human life has been largely defined by consistent and predictable behavioral and belief systems, many of which came into being as an outgrowth of our mortality. Of course, there have also been individuals doing unique things and presenting unique viewpoints. But overall not much has changed on the human scene.
Now however, the great upheaval of our times points to a seed change in the
human arena. Like the baby chick’s hard shell, the evolutionary holding pattern we have been stuck in as a species is finally cracking and breaking apart. Thus a new evolutionary plateau is being revealed. This is a monumental transformational event in the history of our species. It is primarily an evolution of consciousness but will be so strong that it will impact every aspect of our being, including our bodies and minds.
This is what the spiritual masters and prophets of old saw coming. They saw not only a New Age but also a new creation—a new creation in which human beings will no longer be the same creatures we have been up till now. And when mankind is thusly transformed, the rest of creation will follow suit. For, the evolutionary holding pattern we have been stuck in throughout this age has greatly impacted all other created life on the planet. Our temporal body-mind consciousness has been the cause of disaster, decay and death planet-wide. And so all those aspects of creation that have been subject to frustration on our account will be liberated, and this will, in turn, bring about a beatific flowering in our planet’s natural atmosphere. The great masters and prophets not only saw this coming; they also predicted the intense period of upheaval and collective struggle that would precede this wondrous event—a period that we are now entering.
Resistance to this cataclysmic planet-wide evolutionary outworking has been building for a very long time in the human ranks. It is, in fact, as old as the age itself. That is why the masters often had to veil their message. Throughout this age there has been an irrational reactive resistance at work in human society, and this resistance has invariably resulted in the rude shameful treatment of our species’ most enlightened, altruistic representatives. Moreover, it is this same resistance that is the impetus behind this intense period of upheaval and collective struggle we are now entering.
Jesus referred to this period of intense resistance and struggle prophetically as “birth pangs.” Mincing no words, he said, “There will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now.” (Matthew 24:8,21). The imagery of birth pangs indicates that this evolutionary outworking, when its time has come, will be unstoppable, just as nothing can stop a baby from being born, once its time has come. But it also implies that the more resistance there is, the greater the struggle will be. And the greater the struggle is, the more suffering and fear there will be.
Why have we been so intent on resisting the dawning of a New Age of enlightenment for our species? This is a complex question with several applicable answers. For one thing, there is our instinctual fear of the unknown. This age of spiritual darkness may not have been expressive of our fullest potential as human beings, but it has been all we have known. Thus we have come to cling to it irrationally. But probably the foremost impetus behind our resistance has actually come from a very small, albeit influential, segment of human society. It has come from those who have profited inordinately from mankind’s collective consciousness of body-mind identification. While the vast majority of us have suffered greatly on account of this consciousness and the spiritual darkness it has spread, these status quo proponents have thrived. Not surprisingly then, they have become fiercely attached to the perpetuation of this present order of things. All this has been going on since the beginning of time, and that is why, as the age winds down, this status quo segment of society has become so insanely bent on stopping the emergence of the New Age. They have repeatedly shown that they are not only willing to kill their fellow human beings in order to preserve this present order; they have even displayed a wanton willingness to destroy the planet that sustains us all.
Throughout this age we have been in a holding pattern—one that has effectually held back our evolutionary instincts from naturally unfolding. Now though that holding pattern is at long last breaking up, we are being subjected to birth pangs of an unparalleled magnitude. The New Age is being born, and nothing can stop that now. But those bent on resistance are determined to make the transition one of unparalleled distress.
Perhaps this is a fitting climax to an age that has been largely defined by its spiritual darkness. Human wickedness carries its own karmic repercussions. But it is unfortunate that those of us who are alive in these times and who are prepared to welcome the coming New Age with open arms must be subject to such distress.
We human beings have a remarkable capacity, however, for resilience and survival. We are also gifted with the prophetic ability to respond to as yet unmanifested circumstances. So it is that many of us have already begun to respond to the great seed change that is soon to take place. It is for this reason that many of us have undertaken a serious spiritual practice in these times, almost as if it were an urgent imperative. It is as if something inside of us is not only eager to welcome and experience the new order to come; we want to be fully prepared to participate in it from the get-go.
And so despite the insane resistance mounting up to meet this transformational event we are filled with anticipation. We no longer feel any attachment to an old order that revels in body-mind identification and are ready at long last for our full evolutionary thrust to unfold. So be it!