What Is Truth?

Dear Reader,

We have, clearly, mismanaged the resources of the earth, water and the sky. With all the universities and halls of knowledge that we enjoy in the West, just where have we gone wrong in our identification of Truth and how to apply it?

Western education still appears to be telling us that everything we now know comes from the study and experimentation of the last four hundred years or so, based on rational thought. My previous two posts will have surely put a seed of doubt into the reader's mind, as, based on the sources of considerable evidence available, what I have written is correct, and that western knowledge is very much based on previous knowledge of great antiquity; that the source of that knowledge lies in India. 

Even then, much of what India knew was unknown to the West until very recent times. And, very importantly, India knew (and knows) one more important aspect that the West has yet to address: how to live in balance with nature.

Despite receiving such poorly constructed education in the West, which is really enough to act as a restraint to becoming the best of what they can be, Ph.D or not, most people seem to 'go with the flow'. Their consciousness is suppressed, the pay packet for many becomes the be-all of everything because they can't see what other purpose there is in life other than striving. 

Apart from striving to preserve oneself and one's family, there is in fact little point in it. Even academic study is often worthless unless it is related to universal knowledge, the meaning of life itself, not GNP or study for study's sake.

And whatever political party they vote for, it is expected to look after just their material welfare with little regard for true education nor stimulation of the nation to a truly worthwhile national identity, but instead emphasises GNP. In the UK, our values are based on a loose idea of what Christianity is supposed to be, and though some aspects of Christianity are laudable, there is much that is not. The actual teachings of Jesus have been subjugated to something largely equatable to emotion, not reason.

How is it that we have got to this misunderstanding of the source of knowledge and its proper study? To put it bluntly, it appears to have been largely as a result of the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire as far as the West is concerned. That Empire - in various ways - seems to have succeeded in obfuscating the subtleties of knowledge and justice, and as we are indoctrinated with that mode of thinking that has developed over two millennia, anything else seems to be regarded as being something of a myth.

A few great Western thinkers knew differently. A few hundred years ago, men such as John Dee and Sir Francis Bacon in Britain, and Leonardo da Vinci In Italy knew more than they openly revealed to others.  These men gained considerable insight into ancient knowledge by one means or another, and they realised that what they learned was Eternal Truth. 

Vitruvian Man (drawn by Leonardo da Vinci), related to the idea of squaring the circle, merged with the Tree of Life and the Flower of Life, all of which are embodied in Sacred Geometry that was known to the ancients.

By the 19th c., thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (a Unitarian Church minister as well as a noted philosopher), Mark Twain and other eminent persons had discovered the Vedas of India and were greatly impressed.

In more recent years Professor Keith Critchlow and John Michell were eminent conveyors of the subject of sacred geometry.

Examples of Sacred Geometry in nature ...

... and in many crop circles.

So, what is a 'myth'? Does it only come from man's imagination? In fact, perhaps we should examine more the idea of a once-perfect form of life that pervaded the Earth in some ancient time beyond the range of archaeological history. Because religious scriptures have not been taken seriously as indicators of scientific truth, we have now adopted a sceptical approach to their study, but although scepticism can be a good thing, we forget that our range of study hitherto has been primarily concentrated with a Western perception of what it has chosen for itself.  

It is not that long ago that the British Empire existed and we tended to have a view of ourselves as a superior race. These days, however, consumerism has mostly become the basis of living for many in the world (due to mainly Western influence), gradually eroding inherent and ancient values of worth, some tangled up in 'myth'. Therefore, it is not too surprising that the West has developed a form of myopia these last two thousand years, thinking that its knowledge is greater than that of the Eastern peoples as well as the indigenous people of the Americas and other places.

Although it is clearly correct that the Old Testament of the Bible cannot be taken literally, and that the New Testament is a mere portion of many scriptures, study of the ancient Indian Vedas has (as has already been indicated) revealed that India knew things that we have only recently come to know in the West, or are just finding out.

It has been known for aeons that myths and tribal traditions have carried through indicators of ancient life, and here is a text that describes  the matter (unfortunately I cannot find the source for this text):

A global myth declares that the world has not always been as it is experienced now. In a former time, man lived in a kind of paradise, close to the gods. It was the Golden Age. Throughout an eternal spring, the earth produced abundantly, free from the seasonal cycles of decay and rebirth. And under this remarkable cosmic order, man experienced neither war nor sickness, neither hunger nor any requirement of human labour.

This recurring and unexplained myth was carried into modern times by primitive races the world over. In Mexico native legends spoke of an ancestral generation whose every need was met, without cost. There was no sickness or hunger no poverty or sadness, and the gods dwelt among men. But this harmonious age didn't last, eventually succumbing to an overwhelming catastrophe. According to the Cheyenne of North America, the original race roamed naked, innocent and free, enjoying the natural abundance of eternal spring. What followed, however, was an age of flood, war, and famine. The Caribs of Surinam have a poignant memory of this fortunate epoch. "In a time long past, so long past that even the grandmothers of our grandmothers were not yet born," they say, "the world was quite other than what it is today: the trees were forever in fruit; the animals lived in perfect harmony, and the little agouti played fearlessly with the beard of the jaguar " 

The South American Indians of Gran Chaco and Amazonia recall this as the Happy Place, where work was unknown because the fields produced an abundance of their own accord. The Hopi Indians proclaim that in the earliest time they were a marvellously contented race, at peace with their brothers. They knew nothing of sickness or conflict, and all things were provided by Mother Earth without any requirement of labour. But these are just the American Indian versions of the story.

The aborigines of Australia insist that their first ancestors enjoyed a Golden Age, a Paradise of abundant game and without conflict of any kind. Northern Europeans once celebrated this earliest age as the "Peace of Frodi," a mythical Danish king. Throughout this peaceful epoch, no man injured another and a magical mill ground out peace and plenty for the entire land. Memories of a Golden Age pervade the myths of Africa. 

The distinguished folklorist Herman Baumann reported that "Everything that happened in the primal age was different from today. People understood the language of animals and lived at peace with them; they knew no labour and had food in plenitude." 

Sacred texts of ancient India recall this as the Krita [Sathya] Yuga or "Perfect Age," without disease, labour, suffering or war [Note: The Krita Yuga is the first of four evolutionary cycles which culminate in the Kali Yuga, the yuga in which we are now living and the densest, and most prone to evil. This Kali Age precedes the cyclical return to a Krita Yuga when perfection will again rule].

The Iranians called it the age of the brilliant Yima, an age with "neither cold nor heat," an eternal spring. According to ancient Chinese lore, the purest pleasure and tranquillity once reigned throughout the world. Mythical histories called it "the Age of Perfect Virtue" and declared that "the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness. . . all things grew without labour, and a universal fertility prevailed." In their myths, rites and hymns the ancient Sumerians contrasted their own time to the earliest remembered age--what they called "the days of old," or "that day," when the gods "gave man abundance, the day when vegetation flourished." This was when the supreme god An "engendered the year of abundance." To this primaeval age, every Sumerian priest looked back as the reference for the preferred order of things that was lost through later conflict and deluge. 

In the city of Eridu at the mouth of the Euphrates, the priests recalled a Golden Age prior to familiar history. The predecessors of their race, it was claimed, had formerly reposed in the paradise of Dilmun, called the "Pure Place" of man's genesis. This lost paradise of Dilmun, about which scholars have debated for decades, is strangely reminiscent of the paradise of Eden. "That place was pure, that place was clean. In Dilmun...the lion mangled not. The wolf ravaged not the lambs," the Sumerian texts read. The inhabitants of this paradise lived in a state of near perfection, in communion with the gods, drinking the waters of life and enjoying unbounded prosperity. 

Ancient Egypt, an acknowledged cradle of civilization, preserved a remarkably similar memory. Not just in their religious and mythical texts, but in every sacred activity, the Egyptians incessantly looked backwards, to events of the Zep Tepi. The phrase means the "First Time," a time of perfection "before rage or clamour or strife or uproar had come about," as the texts themselves put it. This was the paradise of Ra, and the memories of that time echoed through centuries of Egyptian thought. "The land was in abundance," the texts say. "There was no year of hunger. . .Walls did not fall; thorns did not pierce in the time of the Primeval Gods." Or from another text: "there was no unrighteousness in the land, no crocodile seized, no snake bit in the time of the First Gods." Cosmic harmony, abundance, paradise on earth. To this paradisal, according to the great nineteenth-century scholar Francois Lenormant, the Egyptians "continually looked back with regret and envy." The golden age of Ra was, for the Egyptians, the great "example" setting a standard for all later ages.

A certain Englishman of the 19th-20th centuries, an accomplished metallurgist who used his wealth to travel and discover Truth, wrote books providing considerable data that indicates a time and place that considerably preceded the ancient Indian culture and even preceded, by some time, the fabled 'Atlantis', though it is suggested that both co-existed for a lengthy period. 

That Englishman,  James Churchward, was shown ancient records written in stone and thus rediscovered the legend of Mu (or Lemuria), a vast island in the middle of what we now call the Pacific Ocean, that appears to have been destroyed by phenomenal earthquakes and a deluge perhaps some 20,000 years ago, or even more recent. Churchward asserted that many of the peoples of the world today descend from the inhabitants of Mu/Lemuria, but that one of their most enduring settlements in terms of culture was in India.

That there is a great similarity in pictographic writings as far apart as Easter Island and Tibet (see this link) should indicate a common source of culture, as well as the existence of pyramids worldwide. And that is just scratching the surface for proof of a worldwide civilisation or common source of knowledge.

Importantly, however, Churchward wrote of India:

INDIA, the land of mystery and mysterious sciences, the cradle of the philosophy of the old Greek sages, Bharata (the ancient name of the Deccan), glorious, magnificent Bharata carried on and maintained the civilization and learning of the Motherland [Mu] for nearly eight thousand years after the great volcanic forces had torn her body asunder and the ocean waters had swallowed up the fragments.

It was India was who stood foremost for thousands of years, holding together and carrying on the earth's first great civilization after the destruction of the Motherland. Other nations held the civilization for a time but all except India soon began to fall back and many disappeared.

It was India that stood foremost in form of spirituality, philosophy, astronomy, sciences, music, art and medicine from the time of the destruction of the Motherland down to about 500 B.C. No other nation could stand as her rival or compete with her in all branches of knowledge. The world generally knows nothing of this. Historians have utterly failed to show and to credit India with a civilization of ancient date, yet the Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians and Upper Egyptians were her offspring.

It is not necessary to quote ancient writings or bring forward traditions. We have only to examine the western shores of India to prove the extreme age of her civilization; for here, lying on the bed of the Indian Ocean a few miles from the present shore line, are to be seen beneath the waters remains of great imposing structures. History does not relate this submergence, yet here it is, an incontrovertible fact that in bygone times India enjoyed a high civilization. The physical proofs are there. How does this compare with the nonsensical histories of India, that say India's civilization only dates back 4000 or 5000 years?

Churchward wrote of things about India 100 years ago that are now being substantiated by foremost Indian researchers, and whose findings I summarised in my previous two posts. Not only about India itself, but how other civilisations, including that of Egypt, were influenced by India. So too the Greeks. Even the mysterious British Druids are believed, in turn, to have emanated from Greece and their Indian-based knowledge. The Romans, again, are noted for their power complex and determination to wipe out the Druids

Let us not forget also that the remarkable and geometrically amazing Buddhist temples of Asia, from Thailand to Indonesia, represent an offshoot of Indian philosophy.

The extraordinary alignment of major temples in India

In the 20th c. Hitler replaced God in Germany and Stalin replaced God in the Soviet Union with their cult of personality. Naturally, Hitler and Stalin, being without religious understanding, did not direct the thoughts of their respective peoples inward; that is, toward the goal of having every individual first and foremost gaze into his own soul and analyse it. On the contrary, obsessed by their self-importance and ideas of nationalism, they attempted to direct the psychic energy of their peoples centrifugally, toward destruction, domination and war. In contrast, however, the seemingly innocuous spiritual practices of daily self-analysis and intensive study of the soul by every individual carry enormous power that is universally beneficial. The effectiveness of spirituality is demonstrable, not least by prayer.

In peacetime, the reality has been that the market economy exists and effectively forces people to work, but when people use any means possible to achieve material well-being and forget the concepts of honour, conscience, and morality, then society loses much more than it gains. Though people may not be conscious of the fact, a society that has lost spirituality (of honour, conscience, and morality) will inevitably perish. Because of the way the resources of the earth and sky have been misused, that has been society's direction for some time. 

Now, but belatedly, is the time to rectify the direction. It is time for materiality (in science and technology, as well as in daily life) and spirituality to come together, to fuse together, to become in line with the natural process of the cosmos. The cosmos is desireless except to fulfil its natural function and man must learn humility and how to be desireless in the same way, to be self-controlled in all his deliberations and actions, and be cooperative in attitude. Otherwise, we will continue to not be in harmony with creation and will continue to suffer as a result.

More than you need will always be greed.

- Professor Keith Critchlow

It is not to be understood that man should become a mere automaton to God's written laws (actually, are there any that He wrote?). However, with remembrance and gratefulness to our Creator in mind, we should seek the power of intuition and self-analysis that exists within ourselves. It is these faculties, combined with the balancing of the feminine and masculine, with which we should be occupied and be ready to develop that advantage, both personally and universally, with the intention of achieving justice and peace in the world. 

Thus, a Brotherhood of Man will become attainable, and man will walk the upright path for which he was intended. Muslim Sufis call that man insan-i-kamil: the perfect man, the one who lives in harmony within himself and with the cosmos, as One.

Thank you for reading this.