Forgotten Ages Research

Forgotten Cycles of Time—Exploring the Memories of Former Worlds

Report Topics:

• Global ancient accounts of the cycles of past civilizations and multiple world ages
• Recorded memories of events extending back millions of years
• The stories of former ages among the Greeks, Hopis, Maori and Hindus
• Correlations between the Yugas and the Precessional Ages of the Zodiac
• The esoteric-occult traditions of forgotten civilizations and repeating cycles of karmic patterns
• Report Update—Three Measurements of Extreme Ages—How Far Back Does Intelligent Consciousness Go?

Full Report:

When we look back at old legends and the written accounts of antiquity, we discover that the prevailing view among ancient writers was that human history is not linear, but cyclic.

Such bygone chroniclers as Plato, Ovid, Hesiod, Manetho, Berosus, Sanchuniathon, the authors of the Vedas, the Eddas, the Pentatuch, the Mesoamerican Codexes, the Chinese Annals, and so many others—all recorded that civilizations have risen and fallen again and again in great wheels of time. Most of their wisdom has been lost to us, either through decay over the ages, or through natural and sometimes human destruction. The repeated hope of rebirth, rejuvenation and revival of the world has been a prominent theme in all systems of ancient chronology, or what mythologist Mircea Eliade called polygenesis—the formation of something new out of something that once existed, a cyclical regeneration of time.

Here are just a few of the traditions of forgotten cycles of prehistory from around the world:

*The Seneca Indians remember Six Ages
*The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, in their work the Bahman Yast, one of their sacred Avesta books, count the former existence of seven world eras
*The enigmatic Etruscans were said to be well-versed in the science of the stars, and from their observations recorded in their lost books the passages of seven ages having already elapsed
*The Toltecs spoke of many periods when the Earth suffered cataclysmic destruction
*The Hawaiian Kahuna still chant the myths of forgotten ages of lightnings, storms and great tidal waves
*The early Icelanders recall a total of nine worlds of various beings on Earth
*The Chinese called the perished ages the Kis, and numbered ten Kis from the beginning of the world—their great encyclopedia, the Sing-li-at-tsiuen-chou, discussed at length the various types of cataclysms which periodically strike the planet and humanity
*The Norse remember many former Ages and their deaths and rebirths in great Cycles of Time
*The Sibylline Oracles of Rome knew of seven previous ages and prophesied two more to come
*The Ayyavazhi of southern India believe in Eight Yukams, and that we are today in the Dharma Yukam or Last Age

The Alexandrine Greeks knew of a long period called by them the Supreme Year at the end of which the sun, moon and all the planets return to their original positions. Each Supreme Year has a Katak or Great Winter marked by a Deluge, and an Ekpyrosis or Great Summer ending in a general Conflagration of the world.

According to ancient Hebrew traditions, the Earth was not created once but six times before, in order to satisfy the Divine Plan. Each was separated from the other by chaos and watery destruction just like the Noachian Flood. The first Earth was called Eretz, the second Adamah, the third Arka, the fourth Harabah, the fifth Yabbasha, the sixth Tevel and the present Earth Heled.

Among certain Islamic sects is the belief that thousands of worlds or ages have come and gone, of which our present world is but one expression. Each world begins with an Adam and Eve, who become the Imam or Great Teachers for its duration, and are the last survivors who bring their wisdom into the next succeeding world. Adam carries the external laws and their extrapolations, while Eve is the mother of all esoteric and hidden teachings. At the end of each world, the integration of the two takes place, and for those ready to receive it and be awakened, the power of Time itself is defeated, and they transcend into another sphere of cycles, beyond the Earth.

Among Tibetan Buddhists is the sacred book of Visuddhi Magga, which contains a lengthy chapter on World Cycles. It describes three major global catastrophes occurring on a periodic basis—one of fire, another of water, and the third of wind. Other destructions were said to also include ice, the oceans drying up, and the world filled with smoke that blocks out all sunlight.

Plato, who traveled to the land of the Nile and was Initiated in its Temples as a Master, once wrote, “Egypt has recorded and kept eternally the wisdom of the old times. All came from time immemorial when gods governed the earth in the dawn of civilization.”

Confirming Plato’s statement are numerous ancient Egyptian papyri which spoke of the Zep Tepi, the First Time, when the Neteru or deities of the Nile valley reigned on Earth and the true foundations of Egyptian civilization were laid between twenty and twelve millennia ago.

The Building Texts of Edfu record this was an era “before anger came into being, before noise came into being, before strife came into being, before tumult came into being.” But the legends also say that the “gods of old” had returned in their designated cycles of rulership many times in the distant past—and are prophesied to return yet again.

The ancient Egyptians also possessed historical and astronomical records going back 120 Precessions of the Equinoxes, cover over 3 million years.

The Babylonians and Assyrians had calendars preserving events going back 2 million years. Their memories were inherited from the older Sumerians, whose cuneiform literature recounted the story of the Flood of Utnapishtim and the existence of Antediluvian kings who reigned for many ages long before recorded history.

The Hindu Kalpa or Day of Brahma goes back 4.32 billion years, and sacred books of India preserve the memory of intelligent life on Earth going back 2 billion years. On a larger, more panoramic scale of time count, the Grand Duration of Brahma’s Existence, which was considered also to be the Existence of the Universe itself, was figured to be just over 31 trillion years.

The Classical chroniclers Hesiod and Ovid both symbolized the succession of Ages as Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron, with the understood inherent prophecy that after this sequence’s final culmination, another Age of Gold would be returned.

Greek legend preserved a remarkable mythic history which reveals a vast panoramic series of cosmic, terrestrial and human revolutions stretching far back into the forgotten past. A distillation of these revolutions include:

*Chaos
*Birth of Love
*Love creates Light
*Heaven and Earth (Ouranos and Gaea) become gods
*Heaven and Earth give birth to monsters
*Imprisonment of monsters within the earth
*Birth of the Titans
*The Titan Cronos wounds Earth, and the Giants spring forth
*Reign of Cronos in a Golden Age
*Birth of the Gods
*War of Cronos and Titans against Zeus and the Titan Prometheus
*Defeat of Cronos, banishment of the Titans to Tartarus
*Birth of the fiery comet Typhon, defeated by Zeus
*War of Zeus against the Giants, and the world is cleansed of monsters
*Prometheus gives fire to the first humans, and rulership over animals
*Creation of Pandora by Zeus, leading to the release of plagues from Pandora’s Box
*Banishment of Prometheus by Zeus, and humans lose heavenly contacts
*Ages of the golden race of humans, who live like gods but die out
*Age of the silver race of humans, who destroy themselves by accident
*Age of the brass race of humans, who destroy themselves in war
*Age of the iron race of humans, destroyed when Atlantis sinks
*Beginning of the present stone race of humans *Scorching of the earth by Phaeton, and the Sun momentarily falling out of orbit
*The exploits of Perseus, Theseus, Hercules and Jason
*The Trojan War
*The exploits of Odysseus and Anaeas
*The First Olympiad
*Golden Age of known ancient Greek history

According to Plato when his ancestor Solon presented this outline of mythic history to the priests of the Temple of Neith at Sais in Egypt about 590 B.C.E., the Egyptians only laughed at him. They told him that all the Greeks were but “children” compared to themselves, that the Hellenic myths were nothing in light of Egyptian records of history, which stretched back through far more cycles of time.

The Maya and Aztec peoples of ancient Mesoamerica possess in their Codices the memories of four former worlds plus the present world, altogether called the Five Sun Ages. In each passing Age it was said that a different Sun ruled the sky or had a different appearance, indicating that the atmosphere of the Earth has changed over the course of time.

The Ages which have come and gone were called the Water Sun, Earthquake Sun, Hurricane Sun and Fire Sun—each denoting what type of major cataclysm ended the Age. The present Sun is designated with the Maya glyph for Movement, and has been interpretated to mean that our Age will close with a significant shift of the Earth on its axis. This will bring about the Dawn of the Sixth Sun which as yet has no name, prophesied to be the time when Humanity shall become as Gods.

The Hopi Elders of the American Southwest remember Four Worlds, collectively called the Hisi Tacu. The First World was created by Taiowa and called Tokpola or Endless Space. In it He created Sotuknang the Manifestor and his Helper, Spider Woman, who in turn formed the First Twins of Humanity. But these First Ancestors and their offspring forgot their spiritual origins and were destroyed with volcanic eruption and fire.

A remnant people escaped by living with the Ant People below ground in caves and eventually emerged into the Second World, called Tokpa or Dark Midnight. But soon their descendants also forgot to sing to the Creator from the tops of the hills, and they were overwhelmed when the Earth teetered off balance and everything turned to ice.

A second remnant people escaped underground, and eventually they emerged into the Third World, called Kuskurza or the Lost Ancient Ones. Their children and children’s children built large cities, lived in many countries and created a great civilization. But then they also invented flying craft called Potuvotas which were used to destroy each others’ cities, leaving their World in the ruins of warfare.

The Third World was soon after destroyed by rains and tidal waves as high as mountains, yet a remnant people were again saved, this time by being enclosed in giant hollow reeds and floating on the Flood waters.

Traveling from their sunken land, these people gradually migrated from island to island before reaching their present ancestral lands, which became the Fourth World called Tuwaqachi, the World Complete. These are the Indegenous Peoples who became the various Hopi Clans of the modern age.

The Maori Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand have a rich heritage of what they call Korero Tupana or legends which say that before the Creation of the Present World there were Former Worlds, each with their own Ope or inhabitants possessing their own Matauranga and Ingoa—Wisdom and Identity.

In the Timatanga or Beginning of the Whakapapa Papa-tu-a-nuku or Earth Mother’s History, there were Takawa o Mua or successive Past Ages variously called the Night, Chaos, the Sound, the Development, the Great Forest, the Growth, the Vine, the First Root, the Taproot, and the Root of Our Origin.

The legends extend so far back that they even speak of a pre-existent Earth Mother, Mumuhango, with whom a pre-existent Earth Soul Spirit called Pa-Rikoriko mated to create the very first life and first intelligent forms upon the planet, long before the life we today recognize came into being. They were the holders of the true primordial Taniko or Code Patterns of Creation.

In each Takawa-Age the different inhabitants had their own growth Initiations to fulfill, often symbolized by the Maori expressions of the time of day or night, the lunar and solar seasons of the year, extended into lengthy periods of several millennia each.

The fuller spiritual expansion of a civilization could be seen in the evolution of such favorite Maori cultural heroes as Maui, about whom many a Waiata or Song Cycle was sung. In many cases, like Maui, the Ope or former inhabitants passed away on the physical level yet graduated spiritually through the Te-Tatau-o-te-Ao, the Doorway into the Light World, into the next octave of learning.

However, there were times too when other former inhabitants fell short of their spiritual goals, and perished either as the result of Pakanga—warfare—or in a cataclysmic period of Hurihanga-a-Mataho, when the Earth Mother literally rolled over, sinking great continents.

The destroyed civilization would have to begin all over again, facing its lessons previously avoided once more, building and growing together along a better pathway.

One subject of special interest concerned what is termed the Whate-Paralua or Hidden Repositories of their accomplishments and experiences. These the Maori prophesy will one day become Whate-Ohura or Places Uncovered—Halls of Records unearthed for the benefit of our own humanity as it enters a Takawa-Hua—an Age of Renewal.

Hindu tradition from ancient India has a long memory of former ages and forgotten prehistoric cycles of the past. The Kala-Chakra or Wheel of Time is divided into Maha Yugas or Great Cycles, also called Chatur Yugas or the Fourfold Cycles. Each begins with the Satya or Krita Yuga, known as the Age of Truth, the Age of Light, the Golden Age, the Period of the Superconscious State of Mind. According to traditional Hindu time-count, the Satya Yuga lasts for 1,728,000 years during which humanity possesses great spiritual and psychic powers, and is in constant touch with the entities of the higher worlds. The Age is characterized by righteousness, meditation, sublime deeds, self-realization and goodness.

Next follows the Treta Yuga lasting 1,296,000 years, designated as the Period of the Intuitive State of Mind. Its focus for humanity is on religious ceremonies and rites of sacrifice, good speech, good conduct, zealousness, reverence, sincerity, respect, knowledge, invention and intuitiveness. But then also begins an increase in physical and emotional sufferings, unhappiness and misery.

Succeeding this comes the advent of Dwapara Yuga, covering 864,000 years and dominated by the Intellectual State of Mind. Its positive points include penance, charity, hospitality, humility, valiance, courage, learning, teaching, worship, the beginnings of science and technology. But on the downside also comes sickness, disease, plague, addictions, suffering from uncontrolled desires, lying, cheating and the beginnings of warfare.

Finally arrives the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, stretching for 432,000 years, a Period of the Instinctive State of Mind. It is synonymous with excessive emphasis on sensual materialism, sexual obsessions, falsehood, hypocrisy, ridicule, superstition, lust, dishonesty, wickedness, ignorance, social domineering and absolute rulership.

Hindu records indicate that the present Kali Yuga began in 3102 B.C.E., and when it finally ends amid the destruction of everything, then will come a return to Divine Truth and Light, and another dawning of a Satya Yuga will start the Wheel of Time all over again.

More modern Hindu teachings, such as those of nineteenth century Sri Yukteswar, have reinterpreted the time lengths of the Yugas and their sequence, because it is now believed that the whole process of the collective spiritual evolution of humanity has been speeded up.

Sri Yukteswar calculated that the last Kali Yuga began circa A.D. 500 and lasted 1,200 years until about A.D. 1700, when we entered an upward cycle of Dwapara Yuga. This will last for 2,400 years ending in A.D. 4100, at which point a Treta Yuga will commence, reaching 3,600 years until A.D. 7700. Then will come a new Satya Yuga for a period of 4,800 years, until circa A.D. 12,500.

These new calculations coincide more closely with what is recognized in the West as the Precession of the Equinoxes, the astronomical phenomenon by which the Sun appears to move slowly backward through the Zodiacal signs at each Spring Equinoctial sunrise. The full period of a Precession is 25,290 years or very close to twice a Maha Yuga time count.

This reconciliation between the two Grand Cycles adds credence to the astrological interpretation of the Precession, which sees the Sun’s gradual journey through the Zodiac as designating Twelve Great Ages in the past and future history of humanity. It takes the solar body approximately 2,150 years to pass through each Zodiacal sign, and the claim is made that during each two millennia period the characteristics of that sign have had a general influence upon the course of global events.

During the distant Paleolithic period, when the Sun had sojourned in Virgo the Virgin between approximately 13,500 and 11,300 B.C.E., the Stone Age artists of Europe, Asia and Africa produced a multitude of Venus figurines and Earth Mother cavern images.

There then followed the slow transition of the Sun through Leo the Lion, from circa 11,300 to 9100 B.C.E. In Egypt the Sphinx was carved, originally with the head of a woman and the body of a lion, symbolizing the cusp between Virgo and Leo. The images of the lion also figure prominently at the entranceway to many of the cavern-temples of Magdalenian Europe.

The solar orb’s passage through Cancer the Crab, a water sign, from about 9100 to 6900 B.C.E., saw the catastrophic end of the Ice Age, the sudden rise of ocean levels world-wide and the drowning of all coastal areas in massive floods, as well as severe climate changes marked by torrential rains and violent storms.

Between circa 6900 and 4700 B.C.E. the Sun moved backward through Gemini the Twins, which characterizes the sharing of ideas, communications and writing. This was precisely the period when we find in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas the appearance of the first forms of alphabetic script, symbol signs, pictographs and petroglyphs, as well as the earliest spoken grammatical languages. There is also historical evidence during this era of the transition from the older matriarchal societies into the eventual rise of Neolithic male predominance, which during this interim resulted in a period of male-female joint rulership—the “twins” of Gemini.

From approximately 4700 to 2500 B.C.E. was the solar Age of Taurus the Bull, an earth sign, typified by organization and material creativity. True to form it was during this period we see the emergence of the first cities, large-scale construction, agriculture, animal husbandry—and the image of the bull or cow as the religious sign of strength and fertility.

The succeeding solar Age of Aries the Ram, from about 2500 to 300 B.C.E., saw the manifestation of the fiery Aries attributes of warfare, violence and conquest, with the rise and fall of the Empires of Egypt, China, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia and Greece, ending with the advent of Rome.

With the dawning circa 300 B.C.E. of the solar Age of Pisces, the sign of Two Fish swimming in opposite directions and thus epitomizing spiritual turbulence, the world entered a two millennia dominance by the major religions—Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, as well as the Sun religions of Celtic Europe, the Polynesians, Mexicans, Incas, Native Americas and West Africans. In early Christianity, the followers of Jesus took the fish as their secret symbol, in order to recognize each other as “fishers of men.“ As late as the end of the nineteenth century, when the Piscean era was coming to a close, such new religious movements as Mormonism, Spiritualism and Bahaism came into existence.

Today we stand on the threshold of the transition between the solar Ages of Pisces and Aquarius the Waterpourer. True to the Aquarian character, we are just starting to move away from collective religion and into individual enlightenment and personal freedom. This period will last through to A.D. 4100—which will also coincide with the dawning of the next Hindu Treta Yuga.

Paralleling these grand cycles of spiritual and astronomical time periods, Hindu literature is also filled with references to various types of creation and destruction which take place repeatedly in sequential order within these grand cycles. Each act of New Creation contains several vital elements necessary to both inaugurate and sustain the process from one Age to another. These include:

*Ekarnava or the immense Cosmic Ocean out of which new creation is organized
*Bhutadi or the primary vibratory principle of the Universe
*Tamas or the force of Expansion
*Rajas or Tension
*Tanmatra or Form
*Purusha or the Indestructible Spirit
*Pradhara or Being beyond Substance which incarnates into matter
*Vyakta or what is Manifest
*Avyakta or that which remains Unmanifest
*Kala or that which came from beyond Time, also the Measuring Stone of the Yugas, related to Kali the Goddess Beyond Time Who Completes All Time
*Buddhi or the Instilling of Consciousness *Lila or the Game of Birth and Death within each Cycle
*Vishnunabhi or the Grand Center of Space which, as our Sun moves toward and away from it, creates Ages of Light and Ages of Darkness

In balance with these elements are principles and forms by which the Ages may come to an end:

*Naimittika or the induced (man-made) end of the world
*Piakrita or the natural end of the world
*Naimittika Pralaya or when the Creator must destroy humanity because of unplanned increases in population
*Vadava or an explosion in the ocean (volcanic or from a meteor strike?), also marked by a seven-year period of drought and fire followed by storms and floods
*Sarvantaka or an energy-charged cloud of many colors that approaches the Earth (a giant solar flare or cosmic ray burst?)
*Pushkara or a cloud of death (pyroclastic cloud from the eruption of a super-volcano?)
*Mahar or the sudden disruption among interplanetary dimensions of space
*Parardha or the End of Time
*Pralaya or the Grand Rest that follows the destruction and allows the Earth to be restored to a Paradise
*Janalaka or the Parallel World into which surviving people escape destruction, then return to Earth to help regenerate a new existence

In more recent times, cyclic concepts of the ages have been revived by several prominent metaphysical writers in their attempts to define humankind’s past, present and future spiritual and karmic development. Among the most notable of these within the last two centuries have been Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, James Churchward, Alice Bailey and Edgar Cayce.

While each of these occult-esoteric sources has added their own particular variations, there is nonetheless a remarkable agreement among them as to the general succession of lost World Ages and the forgotten civilizations which inhabited them.

Paralleling the ancient chroniclers, the spiritual channelers and psychics likewise point back to the existence of several forgotten yet sophisticated cultures long before our recorded antiquity came into being. The names given to some of these include Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, Hyperborea and Polaria.

Most significantly, the advanced technologies metaphysicians describe as having been developed during these World Ages also appear to be reflected in the out-of-place artifacts and anomalous prehistoric ruins now surfacing in various places around the world.

The overall occult-esoteric viewpoint, which is upheld by many ancient philosophical and religious constructs as well, is that our present humanity came to this planet many ages ago as a single Soul Influx.

Upon our arrival, we broke up into billions of tiny soul-beings, and took up residence in the most evolved animal form which existed at the time, the simian apes. During the First World Age, through repeated lifetime experiences, we helped to speed up the development of these creatures, so that they would become more efficient vehicles for our soul habitations.

From this perspective, the flora and fauna forms of life on the Earth have undergone a slow but steady process of evolution through the eons, just as modern research has discovered. But the development of Homo sapiens as physical beings has clearly been a divergence from the normal evolutionary pattern.

Our advent was the result of a deliberate infusion of higher intelligence and soul-spirit into the natural world that took place within the relatively recent past. It is this which has had such a profound effect on our sudden appearance and rapid growth as a species, which scientific evolution alone cannot adequately explain.

After our initial soul infusion, in the World Ages which followed, humankind experimented both spiritually and intellectually through the creation of a series of global civilizations. However, because of our repeated karmic entanglements with both physical existence and with each other, many of these prehistoric experiments ended in failure. Each succeeding World Age was totally destroyed, giving birth to the next Age beyond, which offered new challenges and learning potentials of a different nature.

Our Present World Age, according to metaphysicians, is the Fifth of its kind, and the reason we are today seeing so many global problems emerging is that a multitude of old souls from previous World Ages has returned in order to resolve their karmic issues from the distant past. This, from a spiritual perspective, is a necessary process if our Soul Influx is to eventually coalesce back together and we are to finally Graduate into a greater spiritual dimension.

According to the occult-esoteric view of history, like a developing embryo which recapitulates all the previous stages of evolutionary life, so each of the World Ages within our planetary sojourn has recapitulated within its individual cycles of civilization the stages of collective karmic development of the previous World Ages.

Even within the single cycle of each passing civilization, there is a specific repeating Wheel of Karmic Incarnation which corresponds to the sequence of the World Ages. Each turn of the Wheel allows both individual and collective Incomplete Karmic Patterns to be fulfilled.

By detecting how the Wheel of Incarnation has turned before, and what the Karmic Patterns have been in past known civilizations, we can gain an appreciation of what the larger spiritual developmental issues once were among the World Ages long forgotten.

Report Update—Three Measurements of Extreme Ages—How Far Back Does Intelligent Consciousness Go?

The ancient Chinese calendar is composed of a series of grand time repetitions that are based on what was called the Stem-and-Branch Cycle of Sixty Rounds. It is a calculation of the lengthy periods between when the lunar synodic month is exactly in phase with the solar tropical year, which occurs very rarely. Such a period was designated as the Supreme Pole Superior Epoch.

In circa 26 B.C.E., the Santong Li—The Three Sequences Calendar—determined that the Superior Epoch was 23,639,040 years long. However, the later Dayan Li—The Great Expansion Calendar—dated at 700 A.D. and utilizing more accurate measurements, found the Epoch to be closer to 96,961,740 years in length.

However, such a tremendous period was considered only the base-line for further calculational purposes. Another higher Cycle of Sixty Rounds brings us to an origin point of approximately 5.8 billion years ago, considered to be when our Sun first formed as a star.

Another Round stretches us back to an incredible 348.8 billion years, which is long before our Universe came into being. Chinese philosophical writings once spoke of the pre-existence of the Tao—the constant working out of an Innately Intelligent Order and Destiny—among former worlds and dimensions which are long gone.

Have there been, in fact, other Universes previous to ours, which also encapsulated Intelligent Consciousness?

Yet another Round touches on 20.9 trillion years ago, and another beyond that brings us to 1.2 quadrillion years. As we shall see in studying both the Hindu and Mayan extreme Cycles of Ages, they too calculated the Primal Awakening of Consciousness measured in quadrillions of years.

For the ancient Hindus, their traditional Vedic temporal count also consisted of ever larger multiples of basic hourly, daily, monthly, yearly, centennial, millennial and even larger lengths of time. All of these were but mere reflections within the ongoing macrocosmic activities of the life of Brahma, the Supreme Deity who personified both the Singularity and Continuity of Intelligent Consciousness throughout all space and time.

The Kalpa, or Daytime of Brahma, was calculated to be 4.32 billion years, which is equivalent to the time the Earth has been in existence, according to modern physicists. Two Kalpas made up a full Day and Night for Brahma, or 8.6 billion years, a Brahmanic Great Year of 360 Full Days is 3.11 trillion years, and a Full Lifetime Incarnation of Brahma of 100 Great Years adds up to 311 trillion years.

Just as there will be Seven Incarnations of Vishnu on Earth, so the Hindus prophesy there will likewise be Seven Grand Incarnations of Brahma throughout all dimensions of space, making for a total of nearly 2.2 quadrillion years. Though we are now supposedly in the Seventh and Last Brahmanic Incarnation, the present Brahma is considered a relatively young Deity, so we still have a few trillion more years to go. When Brahma’s multi-lifespan is over, who will replace him and what happens then is far beyond what our infinitesimally miniscule human minds can hope to wrap itself around.

A Swedish researcher, Carl Johan Calleman, has discovered that in the greater geometric expansions of the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar system, there are cycles within cycles recorded that define the evolutionary origin points for human life, animal life, the appearance of first life, the initial formation of the Earth, our Solar System, Galaxy, and even the beginnings of the Universe itself.

At the Mayan city of Coba is a stone covered with calendar glyphs designated as Stela One, that preserves the fuller progression of these grand cycles. Calleman designates them as each being an expansion of the traditional Mesoamerican Thirteen Heavens Cycles in Nine Underworlds of Creation. The last named cycle on the Coba Stela is 13 hablatuns, which is equivalent to 16.4 billion years—very close to the estimated 15 billion years that today’s astrophysicts calculate is the known age for the present Universe.

However, there is a second way of interpreting these, using instead the tzolkin or cycle progression based on a 20-count, which refigures the now 20 hablatuns as being 25.2 billion years. What does such a vast time measurement encompass? Are we possibly looking at a temporal duration that includes the age of a previously existing Universe?

As if this was not mind-boggling enough, the Coba Stela contains four more unnamed progressions beyond the hablatuns, which, in terms of the base-13 count, takes us roughly 468.4 trillion years into the past, and according to the base-20 count, to just a little over 4 quadrillion years ago.

Usually, the invention of units of measurement pre-supposes that there is an inherent need for its use, that a measurment of any sort presumes that something specific has yet to be measured. What was it that has had a duration so far that is older than the Universe, older than many Universes, even older than all existing primordial matter and energy, perhaps even older than the fabric of space-time itself? Were the Mayas reaching back to the beginnings of Intelligent Consciousness itself, its First Awakening into Primal Awareness?

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]