Recently, I have been corresponding with a European anthropologist (I still can't believe the internet) concerning hitchhiking, what might seem an insignificant thing. And it is, from a casual perspective, but it can tell us a lot. The rush to the roads in the late 60's and early 70's was due to many things, including a large youth population and a new interstate road system, and that tells us something about demographics and modernity, but there was much more. Some on the road were runaways, some were road hobos, but many, if not most, were like myself: idealistic students looking for some place, some way to a better world that would be found by fate, or the Will of God working through the chance of a hooked thumb. It was both a naive and sacred movement, caused by hope in the wake of the disintegration of the the old American way that had been pieced together out of immigration, depression, war, and cold war. It was, as the anthropologists say, a liminal time for many young people, an aperture in the normal collective conscious that allowed for new thinking. Much of the new thinking tended towards utopia. A very little of it fell on fertile ground, but most died with maturity, with a return to a different, but just as mundane, consciousness.
We, the dreamers, had thought of it then as the end of the old and the beginning of a new age, named by some astrologists the Aquarian Age. It may still be at work, more slowly now, but because of its slowness, it is hard to say. However, after reading some new chapters in Gary Lachman's The Secret Teachers, we can say definitively that such millennial periods in modern history are nothing new. According to the author, the late 1700's and early 1800's was such an era, populated, he said, with such an array of mystical thinking that it put the 1960's to shame. Swedenborg, Mesmer, Rousseau, Blake and Coleridge were just a few of the more notable stars that arrayed the esoteric sky at that time, which had grand practical implications. The French Revolution was not, as common history tells us, simply a precursor to Marx and a socialist society. It was instructed instead by a belief that the cosmic balance between the micro world of man and matter and the cosmic "all" had been upset. Man was, in the thinking of that time, a possible god, a microcosm with infinite potential that had been buried by dogma and laziness. Throw off the shackles of the ruling elite, and Man would rise to celestial heights, creating a new paradise on earth.
This was made possible by a combination of the belief in the efficacy of Man that was reborn in the Renaissance, a revival of ancient esoteric beliefs (Pythagorian, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism) and rapidly changing times due to technological development. It was at this time that Blake and Coleridge rebelled against the "atomization" of knowledge that was permitting the Industrial Revolution, something that also made possible their very heretical (according to Medieval standards) ideas to grow and thrive. In the wake of mechanization, they were able to appreciate the holistic view; and in the wake of the retreat of the power of the church, they were able to read and write about things formerly forbidden.
Such it was, then - to every action was a reaction, and that time period had, perhaps, the greatest impetus towards change of any other in the post-medieval era. It was then that Newton made of the universe a mechanical clock; and it was then that science began in earnest to change technology and the way people had lived for centuries.
And so, it seems, that our era holds nothing new - but of course, it does. The stage is still set as it was in the early 1800's: science has further atomized our thinking, and the technology it has wrought is further changing our lives, and quickly. But the villains and heroes have changed their masks. Socially, mechanical capitalism (the new aristocracy) is being pursued by mechanical democratic socialists (materialists), who are are being pursued, unwittingly, by those of a holistic bent (spiritualists), who are in search of the same micro-macro union of those of centuries before. The front, however, is no longer set in the cities of the poor, but in the eco-systems of the world. We see the disconnect between the micro and macro worlds not so much in the misery of the working class, but in the tottering eco-systems of the world. It does not matter if this vision is scientifically correct or not: rather, it is a spiritual movement with its roots in the ground of European revolutions, and further, in the esoteric beliefs of the ancients. Much has changed, then, but the inner battle between the sacred and profane worlds continues.
In the late 18th century, many of the illuminati believed that a new era was in the making - and it was, that of the modern mechanically (now digitally) based world - but their belief was that a New Age, a much better one, in harmony with the cosmos, was in the offing. It did not happen. In the 1960's and 70's, many of us believed the same - and still do - simply recall the broo-ha-ha over the Mayan calendar a few years ago. In the past, this spiritual unbalance was bringing the world to the point of social collapse, just as today we believe that our 'atomistic' thinking is bringing us to environmental catastrophe. Both were and are true, to a point. But the former did not lead to a union of the micro and macro worlds, just as, to date, our current dangers have not. History tells us that, apparently, nothing will; that our dangerous and disparate mentality is as stubborn and as illusive as gravity. Yet everything of this world ends. Something has to give. Is it just "when", or will the world struggle on as it is, with wars and rises and falls, punctuated only by individual breakthroughs? Will there ever truly, as Marx once said of his utopia, be an end to history? FK
We, the dreamers, had thought of it then as the end of the old and the beginning of a new age, named by some astrologists the Aquarian Age. It may still be at work, more slowly now, but because of its slowness, it is hard to say. However, after reading some new chapters in Gary Lachman's The Secret Teachers, we can say definitively that such millennial periods in modern history are nothing new. According to the author, the late 1700's and early 1800's was such an era, populated, he said, with such an array of mystical thinking that it put the 1960's to shame. Swedenborg, Mesmer, Rousseau, Blake and Coleridge were just a few of the more notable stars that arrayed the esoteric sky at that time, which had grand practical implications. The French Revolution was not, as common history tells us, simply a precursor to Marx and a socialist society. It was instructed instead by a belief that the cosmic balance between the micro world of man and matter and the cosmic "all" had been upset. Man was, in the thinking of that time, a possible god, a microcosm with infinite potential that had been buried by dogma and laziness. Throw off the shackles of the ruling elite, and Man would rise to celestial heights, creating a new paradise on earth.
This was made possible by a combination of the belief in the efficacy of Man that was reborn in the Renaissance, a revival of ancient esoteric beliefs (Pythagorian, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism) and rapidly changing times due to technological development. It was at this time that Blake and Coleridge rebelled against the "atomization" of knowledge that was permitting the Industrial Revolution, something that also made possible their very heretical (according to Medieval standards) ideas to grow and thrive. In the wake of mechanization, they were able to appreciate the holistic view; and in the wake of the retreat of the power of the church, they were able to read and write about things formerly forbidden.
Such it was, then - to every action was a reaction, and that time period had, perhaps, the greatest impetus towards change of any other in the post-medieval era. It was then that Newton made of the universe a mechanical clock; and it was then that science began in earnest to change technology and the way people had lived for centuries.
And so, it seems, that our era holds nothing new - but of course, it does. The stage is still set as it was in the early 1800's: science has further atomized our thinking, and the technology it has wrought is further changing our lives, and quickly. But the villains and heroes have changed their masks. Socially, mechanical capitalism (the new aristocracy) is being pursued by mechanical democratic socialists (materialists), who are are being pursued, unwittingly, by those of a holistic bent (spiritualists), who are in search of the same micro-macro union of those of centuries before. The front, however, is no longer set in the cities of the poor, but in the eco-systems of the world. We see the disconnect between the micro and macro worlds not so much in the misery of the working class, but in the tottering eco-systems of the world. It does not matter if this vision is scientifically correct or not: rather, it is a spiritual movement with its roots in the ground of European revolutions, and further, in the esoteric beliefs of the ancients. Much has changed, then, but the inner battle between the sacred and profane worlds continues.
In the late 18th century, many of the illuminati believed that a new era was in the making - and it was, that of the modern mechanically (now digitally) based world - but their belief was that a New Age, a much better one, in harmony with the cosmos, was in the offing. It did not happen. In the 1960's and 70's, many of us believed the same - and still do - simply recall the broo-ha-ha over the Mayan calendar a few years ago. In the past, this spiritual unbalance was bringing the world to the point of social collapse, just as today we believe that our 'atomistic' thinking is bringing us to environmental catastrophe. Both were and are true, to a point. But the former did not lead to a union of the micro and macro worlds, just as, to date, our current dangers have not. History tells us that, apparently, nothing will; that our dangerous and disparate mentality is as stubborn and as illusive as gravity. Yet everything of this world ends. Something has to give. Is it just "when", or will the world struggle on as it is, with wars and rises and falls, punctuated only by individual breakthroughs? Will there ever truly, as Marx once said of his utopia, be an end to history? FK
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