Plato’s Vision for the Philosophic Empire (5 of 6)

Part 5: The Kali Yuga and the Age of Materialism

Jan 13, 2023

In Part 1 of this 6-part series on Plato, we discussed at length the history of empire and debt. In particular, we noted that the early agrarian states of Eurasia tended to fall into extractive and corruptive empires when they began to adopt the financial policy of usury (i.e. lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest).

Through the compounding of debt, the population of these early states became economically enslaved to an aristocratic caste of merchant bankers. This ultimately lead to the downfall of society, as the integration of the social castes began to break down as a result of one caste (the aristocracy) turning predatory in relation to its counterparts (the state, the priesthood, and the populace).

Political revolts usually resulted, spurred on by populist demands for debt cancellation. As history shows, it was only by restructuring and/or cancelling the debt that social collapse could be averted. However, if the aristocratic caste became politically powerful enough, they were able to forestall this canceling of the debt (called a “debt jubilee” or “clean slate” policy). Instead, the aristocrats and financiers promoted a policy of war, conquest, extraction, and enslavement. Once this latter course of action was pursued, the foundations of oligarchy was born as a result, with the initial cohort of oligarchs being comprised of a blend of land-owning aristocrats, private financiers, and military leaders in charge of war and conquest.

This pattern happened all over the ancient world simultaneously. The common theme is that debt becomes leveraged by a “new money” class of merchants-bankers. They use this tool to both expand their power and wealth and to take over political control of the state, which they re-orient into an imperial model of war, slavery, and resource extraction.

Economic historian Michael Hudson points out that there is an impersonal inevitability to the way that debt corrupts civilization. He writes that “the problem lay not in the personal character of bondholders and bankers, but in the impersonal mathematics of compound interest, which leads savings to build up in ways that (indebt society and confiscate) its economic assets.”

The underlying problem is that “money is saved and reinvested with the expectation that it can grow without end, … with receipts of debt service plowed back into new loans and investments. There is little analysis of how their customers are to pay these debts, much less how the economy can carry this (continually increasing) debt overhead.”

Hudson continues: “From the vantage point of bankers and other lenders, all that seem to matter are the computer printouts of the debts owed to them, the yield on each obligation, and the dates on which payments are scheduled to fall due.”

Historian and anthropologist David Graeber elaborates, noting that “the crucial factor ... is money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic - and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene.”

When the impersonal, debt-accumulating nature of this compound interest system, which begins with merchant banking, is brought over to the agricultural sector, this is when problems arise. This is because compound interest grows exponentially, a growth rate that economic productivity (particularly in the agricultural sector) can never match.

Consequently, over time, the economic enslavement of the population is inevitable, as debts will inevitably accumulate faster than the real economic wealth of society can be increased in order to repay them.

This pattern of events happens all across Eurasia with such frequency that there seems to be a karmic inevitability to it. It’s as if a pattern of circumstances was destined to constellate together in order to catalyze a transformation within civilization itself.

There is an impersonal and inevitable aspect to the long-term, large-scale historical motions of human history. For example, as we tracked in Part 1 of this series, when the merchant bankers of early states began to apply their interest-bearing loan model to the agricultural sector, a series of circumstances is set up that inevitably leads to the political and economic takeover of society by the aristocratic caste.

Notably, this sequence of events sets the stage for a transformation in the organizational model of the state: as the aristocratic class consolidates their power, society experiences a shift from a monarchial to oligarchical model of governance.

Given that this shift happens in civilization zones all across Eurasia - and given also that, after this period, the era of monarchial government begins to fade out completely from the pages of history - what is suggested is that there is an evolutionary inevitability to the way these historical motions played out.

In other words, human government is destined to move into more and more pluralistic modes of expression, and this dynamic with debt and empire served as a means to catalyze this necessary transition.

From a psychological standpoint, the fact that this motion happened all across Eurasia during a relatively short timeframe suggests the presence of a hidden coordinating agent within the collective psyche of mankind.

Given the coordination of events occurring across time and place, there seems to be a underlying Intelligence guiding mankind away from an older pattern - a paternalistic order of governance - driving it instead toward the emergence of a new pattern - a state where more and more of the populace is directly involved in the processes of self-government.

The move from monarchy to oligarchy is only a small step in this direction. But in order reach democracy, which is the ultimate end-state of this process, the intermediary condition of oligarchy has to initially be reached as a first step.

As the historical records shows us, tremendous amounts of mass suffering accompanied this transition. But none of this suffering was necessary or inevitable. Rather, the human tragedies that accompanied this transition occurred as reflections of the immaturity, greed, and materiality of the people involved in actualizing this transition. If humanity had been stronger, wiser, and more thoughtful during this period, things may have played out differently; but we were not, and so we had to experience this period of transition as pain and suffering, with the idea that we will learn and grow through the experience.

In sum, Nature appears to be driving human evolution in the direction of more and more pluralistic forms of governance. But, insofar as we fail to become conscious participants in this process, the Divine Intelligence behind Nature is forced to drag us kicking and screaming toward achieving the pre-destined patterns and end-states it has planned for us. We suffer so that we may learn and be stimulated to grow “soul powers” within ourselves, ones that will allow us to better meet and adapt to future changes that Nature has in store for us.

31. A Collective Fall into Materialism

As we covered in Part 1 of this chapter, the emergence of the first debt-driven empires began to appear in Eurasia around 3000 BC.

Thousands of years ago, Aristotle, observing this dynamic of the spread of usury, pointed out that this situation was unnatural and against the ways of nature. Michael Hudson summarizes Aristotle’s view, writing that “the taking of interest is contrary to nature, because money by nature cannot produce anything and is intended only to serve the purpose of exchange.”

In Arisostle’s thinking, “money’s appropriate function was to be a means to facilitate trade, not to intrude into property relations.” With the rise of private banking, however, this “appropriate function” becomes coopted: here, money is used by the aristocratic class as a political tool to indebt and enslave society. Rather than be used as a public utility that works to service society as a whole, credit becomes re-oriented, privatized, and made to service the need of a small elite at the expense of the collective as a whole.

In this unnatural state, the central purpose of money is no longer to serve society but to grow itself indefinitely. Inevitably, the collective well-being of civilization is sacrificed to feed the “wealth addiction” of the money-lenders.

For this reason, to Aristotle and his fellow Greek philosophers, “money was associated with sterility - it grew inorganically and destroyed organic relationships. It was antibiotic. Its existence was antithetical to the normal social reproductive process.” (Hudson)

When privatized lending is combined with compound interest, an unnatural cycle begins where the population as a whole no longer gets to enjoy the fruits of its labor, as the economic surplus it generates must be paid back to private bankers to service its debt. In time, society as a whole begins to starve and wither so that a small elite within it can accumulate and horde its wealth for itself. Ultimately, civilization atrophies and dies in order to service the debt owed to these oligarchs.

Here we find money taking on the opposite role that it should: rather than facilitate economic productivity, it strangles it. And “rather than creating families, creditors broke them up by seizing their members as pledges, as well as foreclosing on their subsistence lands.”

This dynamic of mass indebtedness makes perpetual war an attractive solution to the inevitable economic and political crises that result from the aristocracy’s usurious economic policies As Manly Hall explains, “wars are an aspect of frenzied finance. War becomes an economic safety valve: it uses up surplus, creates markets, elicits patriotism, and employs or kills off the unemployed.”

Given the fact that debt-based empires of this sort emerged simultaneously across Eurasia, an underlying pattern becomes apparent:

Mankind as a whole was shifting gradually but inevitably into a state of materiality, secularity, and caste fragmentation, with the rise of debt-based empires serving as great collective symbols of this transition. Here we find the collective psyche gradually re-orienting itself away from its traditional pattern rooted in religion and social cohesion and toward an increasingly unstable focus on material accumulation and social domination.

The rise and fall of the River Valley civilizations beginning around 3000 BC are examples of this motion: each fell into collapse because of a widespread preoccupation with material existence over spiritual concerns. As an inevitable consequence, the state begins to be influenced by secular considerations over religious ones, with its policies coming to be inspired by the short-term thinking of economic and political motivations rather than the long-term values of spirituality and philosophy.

After having driven the early River Valley civilizations into extinction, this trend toward secularism and materiality re-emerged again and was developed further within the Axial Age empires of 600 BC - 400 AD. Here, we find the sins of the previous cycle amplified to a whole new level.

As we explored in Part 1 of this series, the Axial Age empires were characterized by the oligarchy’s control of the “military-coinage-slavery complex”. This war-making cartel was entirely dedicated to the accumulation and control of material existence; as such, they perfectly embody this idea of mankind’s collective fall into a materialistic mode of living.

The materialistic and wealth-addicted nature of these empires resulted in the formation of privatized war-making industries, including weapons manufacturing, mercenary armies, and slave trading. The slaves caught up in this system become literally trapped in a material mode of existence: they are kept alive only that their labor may contribute to the continued dominion of the oligarchs over man’s material existence.

David Graeber notes that, during the Axial Age, an intellectual elite of military and government strategists arose to influence the thinking of their patrons in the oligarchy. Their writings perfectly articulate the sociopathic, materialistic, and dehumanizing psychology that came to dominate the thinking of the ruling elite of this age.

Graeber writes that “during the Axial Age, a new way of thinking about human motivation emerged as a radical simplification of motives.” This new way of thinking “made it possible to begin speaking of concepts like ‘profit’ and ‘advantage’. It was this, in turn, that allowed human life to seem like it could be reduced to a matter of means-to-ends calculation.”

For example, in China, “the predominant school of political thought under the Warring States was that of the Legalists, who insisted that in matters of statecraft, a ruler’s interests were the only consideration, even if rulers would be unwise to admit this. Still, the people could be easily manipulated, since they had the same motivations: the people’s pursuit of profit, wrote Lord Shang, is utterly predictable, ‘just like the tendency of water to flow downhill.’"

Greaber continues: “Wherever the military-coinage-slavery complex began to take hold, we find political theorists propounding similar ideas. ... (To give another example,) like the Legalists of China, (Indian strategist) Kautilya insisted that ‘war and peace are considered solely from the point of view of profit’ - of amassing wealth to create a more effective army, of using the army to dominate markets and control resources to amass more wealth, and so on.”

As we can see, in the descent of empire through the millennia of human history, a consistent theme of man’s concern of material wealth and power being prioritized over spiritual advancement and social well-being continually resurfaces.

In the previous article in this series (Part 4), we discussed how these themes surrounding materiality and wealth addiction interface with the archetype of the Atlantean fall.

In the sections below, we will revisit these archetypal themes of Atlantis, exploring now how they resurface as part of a 5,000+ year sub-cycle taking place with our current age. In the language of the ancient Hindus, this sub-cycle was termed “the Kali Yuga”.

32. The Kali Yuga and the Deconstruction of Civilization

The date that economic historians give for marking the onset of these large-scale changes within the psychology and sociology of human civilization - ones emphasizing materialism, secularity, empire, and oligarchy - is an interesting one (~3000 BC), as it coincides with the onset of an important subcycle within the World Soul, one that the ancient Hindus called the “Kali Yuga”.

As historians Michael Hudson, David Graeber, and others have noted, the rise of secular, materialistically oriented-empires across the landscape of Europe begins around 3000 BC. It is very interesting to note that this date is also indicated in ancient Hindu records as the point at which an important sub-cycle within our current World Age commences: the Kali Yuga.

The idea here is that the human soul develops according a cyclical pattern with four main stages. These four stages of the soul imitate the fundamental pattern that we see in nature in terms of the four seasons of the year. In ancient Hindu philosophy, these four seasons are called “Yugas”, with the “Kali Yuga” representing the winter season of this larger cycle.

As in nature, this winter season of human life is characterized by a relative dearth of light and a relative abundance of darkness. Symbolically, this indicates that during the Kali Yuga man’s spiritual inclinations are at their nadir, while its tendency toward materiality and egoism is simultaneously increased.

Putting this idea of “seasons” into a larger framework, Manly Hall explains that life’s grand motion through four seasons or quarters of development is one that takes place as part of a larger unfolding cycle. This great cycle begins in spirit, moves down into matter during the course of an “involutionary” arc of descent, before reaching a nadir point and gradually re-ascending back up toward spirit during a subsequent “evolutionary” arc.

In philosophy, time is perceived in terms of cycles, with each time cycle broken into two dominant motions, one involutionary and the other evolutionary. In the involutionary motion, consciousness moves from a unified state to a diversified one, with its orientation shifting from a spiritual focus to a material one. This motion culminates in a point of peak materiality, after which an evolutionary phase begins, where consciousness gradually returns out from the confines of materiality and ascends back toward its natural condition of Spirit and Unity.

From this perspective, the Kali Yuga or “winter season” of this cycle represents the culmination of the human soul’s involutionary motion into matter. During the Kali Yuga, the nadir point of the greater four-season time cycle is reached. This period represents peak materiality and secularism. After consciousness confronts the experiences associated with this nadir, a turning point is reached, after which a corresponding arc of evolutionary ascension then commences.

During the Kali Yuga, when the guiding light of the Holy Spirit becomes obscured, mankind collectively falls victim to its own materialistic attachments, desires, and tendencies.

The Kali Yuga, as the Winter season of this greater time cycle, is characterized by the human soul falling into a secular and materialistic mindset. This is not something that happens to one particular group but rather to the collective species as a whole.

Manly Hall summarizes the main themes associated with this “dark age”: “during the Kali age, environments destroy themselves and destruction avenges itself. That which is false falls prey to its own falseness. Thieves steal from each other, until crime destroying itself gives birth to a new virtue. Peoples vanish, races are overturned, and those who think they are proud collapse.”

Here, a death-rebirth process is intimated, with various evils manifesting in such a way that they burn themselves out and destroy themselves. Once this negative karma is exhausted, a process rebirth is ready to commence.

Overall, in the Kali Yuga, we find man lapsing into a state of ignorance and egoism. On a collective scale, this shift results in a new order of materialistic and secular empires rising - the type that we see emerging across Eurasia in the periods following 3000 BC, when Hindu tradition states that the Kali Yuga is said to have initially begun.

One of the key attributes of the empires that arose after the onset of the Kali Yuga is that a plague of “wealth addiction” sets in within their economic and political elite. This is inherently a materialistic tendency, one that indicates a lack of commitment to an idealistic vision of life.

Based on an insatiable appetite for greed - an appetite that, unlike food, can never be fully satiated or fulfilled - the elite driving the economies of Axial Age empires became self-centered and greedy. As a consequence of their obsession with material accumulation, the collective welfare of society suffered tremendously.

Thus, one of the major destabilizing psychological tendencies that began to widely manifest after 3000 BC and the onset of the Kali Yuga is that of “wealth addiction”. This addiction comes to dominate the aristocratic class, leading them to lust and conspire after the collective wealth of society, which they sought to privately control and claim for themselves.

Greek philosophers were well-aware of the issue and discussed it at length in their teachings. In a recent article on the topic, Michael Hudson explains that the Greek philosophers of the time “saw monetary wealth as being insatiable, becoming addictive and compulsive.”

Hudson cites authors from this period such as Aristotle, who references the legend of King Midas of Phrygia. Praying to Dionysus that everything he touched would turn to gold, Midas found that he could not eat without turning his food to gold. “What a ridiculous kind of wealth is that which, even in abundance, will not save you from dying with hunger,” observed Aristotle.

Overall, the philosophers of Greece concluded that usury, a practice which spread rapidly after 3000 BC and the onset of the Kali Yuga, was inherently evil because it awakened within man an insatiable appetite for greed and material accumulation. “As a Roman proverb expressed it: ‘Money is like sea water: The more you drink, the thirstier you get.’”

Hudson, quoting Jean‑Pierre Vernant, summarizes the nature of the wealth addiction that gripped the human soul during this period: “Ultimately, wealth has no objective but itself. … It becomes its own end, a universal, insatiable, boundless craving that nothing will ever be able to assuage. At the root of wealth one therefore discovers a corrupted disposition, a perverse will, an (extreme greed) – the desire to have more than others, more than one’s share, to have everything.’”

The economic paradigm that the aristocratic castes create as they fall prey to wealth addiction becomes “an economics of autism, a narcissistic social-personality defect that low-surplus communities could not afford and indeed took pains to prevent from developing” (Hudson).

Left unchecked, wealth addiction brings out the evils of greed, materialism, selfishness, and egotism. Indeed, this is what brought about the downfall of both the River Valley and Axial Age civilization that we covered in Part 1 of this series. As Hudson notes, “the most characteristic excess” of these empires “was addictive money-wealth. A Greek proverb warned that excess (koros) was so addictive that that it lead to pleonexia, the compulsion to obtain more and more wealth. This compulsion led to hubris, an obsessive and arrogant trampling on the rights of others, taking what rightfully belongs to them, (striving) to get the most he can for himself and from everyone.’”

Here we find the prophecies of the ancient Hindus regrading the Kali Yuga becoming fully realized.

In the Kali Yuga - an age of materialism - the unredeemed character traits and tendencies in human nature come out and plague our psyches. This happens as a consequence of man departing from the Laws of God.

As we noted previously, the empires that emerge after the 3000 BC marker are ones that become increasingly secular in orientation. By removing itself from ethical and moral foundations of religion, mankind makes itself vulnerable to possession by the most base and materialistic aspects of its own nature.

The ancient Indian philosophers foretold that these negative psychological tendencies would manifest during the 5,000 or so years that the Kali Yuga was predicted to last. As they predicted, during this age “man shall depart from the law”, with the needs of the individual placed over that of the collective. Overall, the coming of the Kali Yuga is said to mark “the end of a divine era”, with an ancient order of civilization and mode of human life coming to a gradual collapse as a result.

33. Reincarnation and the Specter of Atlantis

In the teachings of esoteric philosophy, the human soul proceeds across seven cycles of development, with the Atlantean root race existing as the fourth cycle of this pattern.

A reincarnation concept is implied: the human soul is collectively one entity that moves across seven stages of development.

The first three stages of this process are involved with the “involution” of the soul from a spiritual state to a material one. The final three stages are involved with the “evolution” of the soul back out of a material state in order that it may return to its natural spiritual condition.

The fourth cycle in this process represents the turning point between these two motions, where the involutionary arc culminates and the evolutionary motion first commences. This is the place of Atlantis: it serves as the midpoint of this great cyclical pattern - the point where human consciousness is extended furthest into matter.

In seasonal terms, Atlantis represents the “winter” season of this overarching cycle - the point where darkness is at its peak and light at its nadir. Like Atlantis, the Hindu time cycle known as the Kali Yuga also represents the “winter” season of a cycle.

In the evolution of human life, many overlapping cycles are occurring - the Atlantean Cycle and the Kali Yuga being two of many. As Manly Hall comments, “we are truly living in a world of wheels within wheels.”

In both cases, the Kali Yuga and the Atlantean age, the collective psyche of man experiences a descent into a materialistic phase of self-expression.

Relating the two together, it appears that the themes of the Atlantean age become re-expressed in our current cycle during this period known as the Kali Yuga: a ~5,000 year sub-cycle. Here, humanity falls back into old patterns and tendencies, ones that it has not yet overcome. Why? “Because we are constantly repeating experience until that experience is no longer necessary.”

While interpretations differ on the start and duration of the Kali Yuga among scholars, Manly Hall offers the view that this important sub-cycle began around 3000 BC and lasts for approximately 5,000 years.

It is notable that right as the Kali Yuga begins, around 3000 BC, familiar Atlantean themes associated with empire and a collective fall into a materialism begin to surface across the face of the globe.

In particular, 3000 BC is noted as the key date associated with the rise of usury, debt bondage, and the destabilization of the old social order. These themes played out within the River Valley civilizations that we covered in Part 1 of this chapter. As we tracked in that article, the civilizations of this era all ended up collapsing as a consequence of their Atlantean-style descent into materiality, secularization, and imperial conquest.

In the next wave of empires that emerge centuries later - the Axial Age civilizations that rose and fell between 600 BC and 400 AD - these familiar themes reappear, albeit in new and more complex forms of expression. David Graeber, summarizing the materialistic nature of these Axial Age empires, reveals a definite thematic linkage between their fates, the archetypal themes of the Kali Yuga, and the archetypal themes of Atlantis.

He writes that “everywhere we see the military-coinage-slavery complex emerge (a dynamic characteristic of the Axial Age empires), we also see the birth of materialist philosophies. They are materialist, in fact, in both senses of the term: a) in that they envision a world made up of material forces, rather than divine powers, and b) in that they imagine the ultimate end of human existence to be the accumulation of material wealth, with ideals like morality and justice being reframed as tools designed to satisfy the masses.”

“In such a world, vows to gods and heroic considerations of honor and glory … were at best weaknesses to be manipulated. In the numerous manuals on statecraft produced at the time, everything was cast as a matter of recognizing interest and advantage, calculating how to balance that which will profit the rulers against what will profit the people, determining when the ruler’s interests are the same as the people’s and when they contradict, etc. … Goddesses and gods, magic and oracles, ancestral cults, even caste systems: all either disappear or are sidelined, no longer treated as ends in themselves but as yet mere tools to be used for the pursuit of material gain.”

Returning to the concept of reincarnation, a pattern linking Atlantis and the return of Atlantean themes during the Kali Yuga is suggested.

The fallen Atlanteans perished without having corrected the tendencies within their own natures that lead them to disobey the laws of the gods. This disobedience is what lead the gods to “punish” the Atlanteans, bringing about their ultimate demise.

Having fallen without overcoming the negative karma they had created for themselves, the souls of the Atlanteans must continuously reincarnate until this karma is confronted and overcome.

It seems that the onset of the Kali Yuga - a “winter” subcycle within the World Soul - creates the conditions necessary for various themes associated with Atlantis’s downfall to repeat themselves. The relative lack of spiritual light that takes place during this Kali age provides an environment conducive for the souls of the fallen Atlanteans to reincarnate through so that they may once again experience and be confronted by the type of behaviors that lead to their downfall in the previous age.

We were all once Atlanteans. Therefore, the unredeemed karma from Atlantis is simultaneously the unredeemed karma in ourselves.

The need to liberate ourselves from this past karma is one of the primary reasons that we exist here on Earth: Earth is a “schoolhouse of the Mysteries” where souls come to shed ignorance and materiality by facing and overcoming their own shortcomings.

As Many Hall explains, “when man sets in motion the wheel of karma, he must abide by the consequences until by merit, he achieves his own redemption.”

The implications of this line of thinking can be humbling: we suffer not because we are victims of a cruel, indifferent universe but rather because we bring forward negative karma from past lives which we ourselves have created. This negative karma continually confront us and causes our suffering. And it will continue to do so until finally we gain the strength to face it and overcome it.

As Manly Hall explains, “all our vices originate within ourselves, so there is no real need to accuse anyone of the mismanagement of world affairs. No divine despot whispers in our ears, and no deity on some remote throne is bent upon punishing us for our mistakes.”

The doctrine of reincarnation and karma turns the search for the cause of human suffering back upon ourselves. Hall elaborates, noting that belief in these laws necessarily brings an end to all superstitions and beliefs about “accidents of fate and fortune. By accepting these laws, we can never consider ourselves to be unjustly injured or punished in this world or the life beyond.”

In one of his last articles (“Twilight of the Unbelievers”), Hall points to the rise and fall of empires throughout history as an example of how this process works:

“Although great waves of people are involved in events, no one is punished for any misfortune except his own. An army of ambitious, avaricious people wage war. Those who survive the battle pass out of physical life in due time. Later they return to pay for the ulterior motives which dominated their previous actions. Tens of thousands may suffer together now because tens of thousands committed wrong actions together long ago. In spite of appearances to the contrary, no one is imposed upon, over influenced, misjudged, or falsely punished.”

Hall then points to today and our current world troubles as further examples of this pattern:

“Those entities that come to birth in the twenty-first century will appear at the proper time for themselves and have an assortment of diversified actions and consequences. No one is to blame, no thought pattern dominating a generation can punish a person who did not deserve appropriate retribution.”

“Confusion reembodies, families come back, rulers return, and little children arrive in our home. They are not new helpless creatures, for each one is growing up to face his own karma and to prove that by paying his debts he will not again make the same mistake.”

In this view, we reincarnate so that we may confront and overcome the shortcoming of the past. In other words, the laws of reincarnation and karma are part of nature’s mechanisms to evolve the human soul - if the negative tendencies from our past did not come back to confront us as suffering, then we would not be as impelled to better ourselves and to overcome the shortcomings within ourselves that lead us to create this negative karma in the first place.

As Hall again explains, each incarnation is a God-given opportunity to learn and grow: “We may not be able to detect the procedures, but nations are reborn together, institutions call back their old members, and the great schools have venerable footprints in their corridors. Teachers come back to teach, wiser than they were before. Parents are given new privileges to contribute to the well-being of their children. Leaders of states have accumulated new information that will prevent them from repeating the mistakes of the past.”

Overall, instead of finding a great cosmic evil directing human destiny from “on high”, we are left to confront the fact that evil exists within ourselves as a consequence of our own misdirected actions. The great battle of good verse evil is therefore a process that continually takes place within the human soul itself. To achieve victory, we must turn inward and find its causes within ourselves. Only in this way can we overcome them and bring the negative tendencies of Atlantis finally to rest.

34. Free-Will and the Philosophy of Karma

We are here not only to overcome the sins of the past but also to evolve toward godhood - an evolutionary end-state that we attain by releasing soul powers and potentials that we inherently contain within ourselves. The great cycle of Earth existence gives us the opportunity to do this.

The purpose of life on Earth is to learn and grow through experience. As Manly Hall explains, “experience will justify and perfect all things in the end,” as it is through experience that finally we gain philosophic insight.

Hall elaborates: “If Plato or Buddha saw further into the mysteries of life than the rest, it was because they lived life more completely than the rest. Buddha told his disciples what he had experienced in his previous lives. In one life he was a murderer; in another life a tyrant; in another life hr had born false witness; and all the hundreds of incarnations that preceded his adeptship were incarnations filled with the experiences of misfortune, temptations, and sorry. But of the tremendous experiencing which this entity passed through came final emancipation through the realization of the inevitability of the Law.”

This was the great discovery of Buddha, Plato, and the adepts of all ages: that Law is supreme. Hall explains further: “The philosophic concept of Law may be defined as a pattern of inflexible rules operating everywhere and forever. … When the philosopher refers to the Divine Law, he means the workings of the Divine Will, against which there can be no recourse under any condition.”

This supreme realization of the inherent divinity of Law is something that the vast majority of human souls on Earth are still evolving incrementally toward. Until then, we are free to express our capacity of free will, which allows us to “choose to keep faith with the universal plan” or to “temporarily ignore this plan and try to follow one’d own imperfect instinct instead. (We) have the choice, but, having chosen, (we) must abide by the consequences.”

These consequences represent the karma we create for ourselves as a consequence of disobeying the Law. As Hall explains, “karma is not a law enforced by a cosmic equivalent of the sheriff’s office. All consequences are inherent in their causes, and once a pattern has been set in motion or activated by an impulse of the human will, it must fulfill itself.”

The only remedy for this is to learn the Law and obey the Law: “Law cannot punish the law keeper, for he is one with the current of life, and there is no inconsistency between his own nature and the Plan. Man cannot suffer unless he acts contrary to the code set up by Nature for the administration of mortal affairs.”

When we zoom out and consider the role of mankind in relation to the World Soul, it is our task to evolve from “not-knowing” Law to “knowing” Law. The primary way we come to “know” Law is through life experience.

Inevitably, in the course of learning to “know” Law, we will make many mistakes, thus creating negative karma for ourselves. When this karma reacts back upon us, we are intended to learn from it and course-correct our behavior. In this way, we evolve ourselves gradually toward an increased capacity to “know”.

This process of learning to “know” is something that each human soul is destined to work out for itself. This need requires each soul to learn from experience. To learn from experience, the soul must, like the adolescent child, eventually move out of the safety of its parents’ house and strike out on its own, carving out its own path in life.

Consequently, the evolutionary motion of civilization through time is toward the gradual creation of social environments where individuals are enabled to both express their own free-will and to learn from the consequences of those decisions.

This motion informs us as to why an older age of paternalistic governance unraveled everywhere on Earth, to be replaced by new models of civilization where mankind assumes the onus of governing and leading itself. The experience of self-governance provides a “platform of experience” for evolving human souls to express their free-will and to learn from the errors they inevitably make in the process.

The fall of Atlantis represented the end of a great prehistoric age of paternalistic governance - particularly for the colonized tribes on the periphery of the Atlantean empire, who, after the collapse, were left to fend for themselves without the custodianship of the “wise ones” who were the progenitors of their civilizations.

Likewise, on a more immediate historical scale, the onset of the Kali Yuga also represents the end of an age of paternalistic governance, with the era of “divine right of kings” gradually ending and oligarchies taking their place. Eventually, during this age, the old order of pagan civilization comes to an end and is replaced by a new set of institutions and a new paradigm of world order: one that the collective body of mankind is now responsible for building and maintaining for itself.

Overall, as time moves from the past to the present, we see the onus of self-government and self-responsibility being put more and more on flawed but growing individuals. This becomes increasingly the case as we move toward the era of nation-states and democratic self-governance.

As time proceeds, the energetic motions of Nature will continue to emphasize these trends - and we must continually respond and rise to the occasion, learning from the mistakes of the past and building “soul powers” that we can take forward to the future as we quest to build and maintain a “New Atlantis” - a global civilization that we will build based on the foundations of the old, but this time one the people govern and maintain democratically for themselves.

This long-term, collective motion from paternalism to self-governance is one that requires the participation of responsible and dedicated individuals to work. These individuals can’t allow themselves to be possessed by their own shadow tendencies; they must grow to become philosophers, capable of participating in the government of society because first they have grown capable of governing themselves.

The capacity to self-govern requires the person first to learn to express their own individuality: to see themselves as a person with free-will capable of discerning right from wrong. It also requires the development of intelligence so that the person will be capable of discerning the good from the bad. As we will see, these are soul powers being worked out in our age, with the pressures of the Kali Yuga serving to stimulate and cultivate them within the collective body of mankind.

35. Pressure Makes Diamonds

With the fall of mankind into a material state of orientation, its psyche shifts from an internal to an external focus of awareness. Here, man’s consciousness becomes localized in the body, where it experiences life from the standpoint of the individual ego existing in relation to an external world of material objects and entities, which it perceives as the “not-self.”

The nature of the shift that humanity experiences after the fall of Atlantis - and particularly during the Kali Yuga subcycle — is one in which the human soul moves to develop its innate capacity for individual self-identity. In psychological terms, the ego-principle within the psyche is being stimulated and developed.

This function had been latent in the “hive mind” psychology of the Atlanteans. The fall of Atlantean civilization thus opened the door for a new mode of psychology to be experienced, one in which man’s psyche re-orients from an inner to an outer focus, with the pineal glad moving into a state of latency and the sense perceptions becoming more heavily emphasized and developed.

Focused outwardly, man’s cognition becomes locked in his bodily perspective. This is a perspective that orients consciousness away from an awareness of its connection with the collective and toward an experience of itself as an isolated individual entity.

In the old order, one whose origins trace back to Atlantis, individual identity was submerged almost entirely into a caste system. Consequently, the psyche’s sense of individual selfhood and self-identity was held in a latent state, as it was not given an outlet for expression.

This sense of dependency was further emphasized in the old monarchial pattern of government, in which the authoritative parent ruled over a population of child-like dependencies, who were totally subservient to his will.

During the Kali Yuga, as states and empires rose and fell, people were thrown out of this old social order and reborn into a new one - one characterized by oligarchy, materiality, and secularism. Consequently, in this new environment, the psyche was forced to re-orient itself in order that it may survive in this new, continuously changing, and inherently unstable social and material series of circumstances.

Theosophist and philosopher Annie Besant summarizes the shifts taking place within the human psyche during this age, particularly those involving the development of the soul’s capacity to express self-will and self-identity. She writes:

“In the working out of Law in this universe where men are evolving, wills also evolve which are separate, personal, and individual. All the confusion in the world of man is due to this evolution of the separated wills that do not recognize their root in God, but try to follow their own diverse ways and want to move after their own separated fashion; so that in the world of man, as nowhere else in nature, you have discord instead of harmony, clashing instead of peace, struggle and war instead of tranquility.”

Besant notes that there is a pattern, plan, and purpose behind this period of strife and struggle that we are experiencing.

She emphasizes that, in the reaction of self-will against Divine Will, the soul is being stimulated to grow and evolve. She writes: “In man, there awakens the germ of the will. This separated will, which brings about discord, will yet end in something greater and richer. … For when human evolution is over, millions of separated souls will join in one mighty chord of harmonious union.”

Manly Hall agrees with her viewpoint, writing: “even materialism will in the end play its part in the perfection of human ideals. By exploring every possible aspect of the world as thought and experience, we are gradually but inevitably approaching the realization of unity. … Through diversity we are becoming aware of unity. Through the many we are discovering the One. And when that discovery is complete we shall be aware of the dignity of the One because we have examined thoroughly all of its parts and members.”

Besant elaborates further on one of the key “soul powers” being developed during this period: that of the rational intellect.

She writes that mankind, in its current state of evolution, is developing the aspect or ‘Soul Power’ of Intelligence: “We are in the very crisis of intellectual evolution. … Characteristic of that stage of evolution is division and separation and the place of the individual apart from and somewhat in conflict with other individuals. … The next stage in the evolution of life is the seeking for union amid the individualized units.”

Further unpacking the psychological themes being developed in our current age, she writes: “the mental world is a world of phenomenon. … Its characteristic is diversity, each being standing by himself and regarding other things as separate. You cannot think of unity unless you have seen variety; you cannot recognize likeness until you have seen unlikeness. The characteristic of intellectual evolution is the discrimination of differences followed by the recognition of likeness. … Analysis proceeds synthesis. Differences are seen before an underlying Unity is developed.”

She further notes that the unending series of social conflicts which characterize this age are ”characteristic of the intellect”. Evolution’s goal is “to make the ‘I’ (or ego) a strong center, a separate center. … There must be a clearly defined center of consciousness (in each individual) … (and) that center grows by struggle.”

In his analysis of Axial Age empires, one’s that rose and fell as expressions of the greater themes of the Kali Yuga, David Graeber offers an example of how the political and economic circumstances of the time emphasized the development of this “soul power” of the rational intellect that Besant is referring to.

Graeber notes that the materialistic and capitalistic tendencies of these empires coincide with the emergence of “a certain habit of rational calculation, of measuring inputs and outputs, means and ends, all of which must inevitably have found some echoes in the new spirit of rational inquiry that begins to appear in all the same times and places.”

He continues: “Even the word ‘rational’ is telling: it derives, of course, from ‘ratio’ - how many of X go into Y - a sort of mathematical calculation previously used mainly by architects and engineers, but which, with the rise of markets, everyone who didn’t want to get cheated at the marketplace had to learn how to do.”

Furthermore, Graeber points out that “the Axial Age was the first time in (recorded) human history when familiarity with the written word was no longer limited to priests, administrators, and merchants, but had become necessary to full participation in civic life.”

Overall, in the playing out of events, we find the “end of a divine era”, when kings ruled by divine right and high priests ruled over the people as “shepherds to the flock”, and the coming of a “new world order” where the lower body of mankind gradually builds the capacities or “soul powers” it needs in order to eventually take over the responsibility for maintaining its own social order.

These themes are emphasized with the Fall of Atlantis on a large scale and the Kali Yuga on a more immediate one. In both cases, the soul’s motion toward an individual and materialistic state of orientation is emphasized. At the same time, the gradual implementation of increasingly pluralistic models of government emerge, where more and more of the collective begins to participate in the governance of society.

Here we find the involutionary process of nature, which binds mankind to its material body, being accompanied by the onset of evolutionary processes, which promise to one day bring man to its ultimate liberation from this condition.

The evolutionary destiny of the soul is to re-ascend out of the body and its material condition, so that it may once again embrace its true state as a spiritual entity. By developing its capacities for self-will, rational intellect, and other related soul powers, the soul gradually attains this release for itself.

36. Evolution: From Individual to Universal

As discussed earlier, the fall of Atlantis represents the culmination of an involutionary process, where the consciousness of universal Spirit gradually moves into creation and becomes enmeshed in the bodies of individual life forms. In the course of this process, this universal Spirit ceases to be aware of itself as a unity and instead perceives itself as a diversity comprised of many different and separated individual parts.

For each human soul, this involutionary process represents the consciousness of the spiritual Self or “Higher Self” going to sleep in the material form of the individual body. Here, in the body, its consciousness remains asleep until gradually the experiences of life begin to re-awaken it and re-activate its various powers and potentials, which had gone latent in the process of its physical incarnation.

The disciplines of philosophy are designed to quicken and enhance this process of spiritual reawakening: by following its disciplines, the soul learns to consciously work with and quicken nature’s evolutionary processes, ones that are intended to bring consciousness back out from its enclosure in matter, liberating it in incremental stages so that it can return to its proper spiritual condition of universal awareness.

In his book "Lecture on Ancient Philosophy”, Manly Hall describes the evolutionary re-ascension of the human soul from body to Spirit as a process that proceeds across seven stages. These stages occur as a series of compounding realizations that take place within the human soul.

The process begins with the involution of the human soul from a spiritual to a material condition, with its consciousness moving into the body and becoming trapped in it. Here, it goes to sleep: it is no longer aware of its identity with the universal Spirit and instead comes to identity with the ego-consciousness of the body.

Locked in the body, the soul’s first and most primal instinct is to survive and persevere. With the activation of this instinct for self-preservation, the soul recognizes the necessity of its own existence.

As Manly Hall informs us, this state of consciousness signifies the soul’s most limited and primal state of self-realization. At this level, man is “ignorant to the degree of the savage. Life is ruled by fear and hatred: fear of the unknown and hatred for that which possesses superior knowledge. … Finer emotions, sentiments, and understanding are totally lacking; in their place is a certain primitive cunning which warns of danger and instructs in the rudiments of physical survival.”

He continues, “Little to no effort is made by this type to communicate its attitudes or feelings to others.” Hence, the soul at this level lives completely on an isolated, individual plane of mind: it “does not establish any definite communal life, but lives by itself and for itself alone.”

At the second stage of this process, the soul begins its evolutionary ascent back toward Spirit. This stage begins with the soul recognizing the “insufficiency" of living at the level of absolute individuality. With this step forward, “the circle of realization expands and the self takes the first step to escape from the tomb of the ‘not-self’. The Annihilation of the sense of diversity has begun.”

For the human soul, growth is associated with the renunciation of the various illusions and false acceptances that bind it to matter and an identification with body over spirit. This renunciation represents the soul’s growth toward an attitude of “increasing inclusiveness, where the individual accepts into himself a limited number of external objects” or persons.

Hall elaborates, noting that individuals at this stage “still view the world as hostile, but their love of self has expanded to incorporate a limited number of others as parts of himself.” These include “blood relations and those upon whom particular affection are lavished: the mother, father, husband, wife, and child. These are accepted as parts of the self.”

At the third stage, the soul moves beyond the immediate family and begins to accept those outside of blood relations into its experience of Self. Here, friendship becomes available, while participation in a greater tribal pattern of social existence is opened as a possibility.

Manly Hall describes a friend as “one to whom we are related by consciousness and not blood.” Until this third level of evolutionary expansion, friendship is impossible because “egotism is so dominant a motive that man's love for itself precludes all other affections.”

As one’s capacity for friendship is unlocked, so is one’s capacity to live and exist within a tribal pattern of existence, where one lives and dies to defend not only one’s blood relations but also other members of one’s tribe.

Manly Hall writes that, at this level, “a certain clannishness is manifested, for though the great world without is still excluded, nevertheless the sense of inclusiveness has been increased to take in those having a similar origin or living in close proximity.” He also remarks that, at this level “the tribe is simply an enlarged family” with the “chief or head symbolizing the father.”

Hall also notes that this state of self-realization is at the root of nationalism. Here, as with the tribe or clan, one’s ego-awareness expands to incorporate a larger community that one sees themselves as inextricably linked with and bound to.

But even while, at this stage, the soul has taken large communities of others into its own sense of self, an element of ego-centricity remains. This is because the psyche’s polarization between “self” and “other” still prevails. Tribal, and later national, politics exemplifies this level of realization, with one group defining its collective identity in relation to other nations and peoples who the former sees as the “not-self”. Thus, even at this level, ego-centrism still remains as a dominant psychological factor, an illusion which still remains for the soul to overcome in higher evolutionary stages.

At the fourth level, the soul’s expansion of self-identification “passes from national to racial concerns.” Here, the intellect of man develops to a degree where it can posit an idea of racial identity and then latch its sense of self-identity to it.

Hall explains that this level of self-awareness is attained with the realization that “the inhabitants of Earth are not merely isolated individuals or even families and tribes, but rather can be classified under a few racial headings.”

While at this stage the consciousness within the human soul continues to accept the illusion of diversity and the not-self, it still nevertheless represents an expansion in consciousness over the previous stage. As Hall explains, the individual at this stage “continues to annihilate diversity, for in his analysis of peoples he no longer conceives of a billion and a half separate units but rather of a score of major segments, each composed of a vast number of lesser parts.”

As the history of the 20th century has shown us, there are obvious downsides when consciousness remains locked on this level and unable to attain to the higher stages above. Hall explains that, at this stage of race identification, “the mind establishes comparisons between the relative superiority of races.” It naturally follows that, at this stage, “the un-illumined man should, upon some pretext or other, elevate the particular race of which is a part to the position of superiority.”

Hall points out that the root cause of this tendency lies in the “racial notion of a ‘chosen’ peoples’ who possess their own racial gods, attitudes, and prejudices.” Hall then qualifies what he means by race, noting that the term applies not just to one’s ethnic identity but also to other types of abstract, international categories of self-identity, such as religion, gender identity, westernism, cosmopolitanism, etc.

Writing in the late 1920s, Hall informs us that “practically all of civilized humanity is now in the throes of racial upheaval,” meaning that mankind en masse is collectively working through this fourth stage of self-realization, with the fifth stage awaiting us after we successfully complete it.

At the fifth level of the soul’s evolutionary expansion, it begins to transcend earthly concerns and instead turns its attention toward identification with divine (and hence immaterial) concepts and ideals.

Hall explains that, at this stage, the soul “has now reached that point where it begins to recognize the magnitude of the plan behind manifesting life. The concerns of nations and the politics of men then recede into insignificance, for, from this comparatively exalted level of realization, humanity is viewed as a single unit.”

Hall notes that, at this level, one begins to identify not only with humanity as a whole but also with the other kingdoms of life on earth and in heaven. He writes, “at this stage, man comes to the realization that human life is not the only rational manifestation of Deity. Consciousness and intelligence are recognized in the lower kingdoms, and brotherhood extends to all corners of the earth, including all races and species without distinction. The vastness of the whole … begins to become apparent.”

Hall also notes that this level of psychology becomes transformative for the leadership class of humanity. Here, “power becomes thoughtful of weakness and might considerate of that which is less than itself. From the code of the survival of the fittest comes the realization that it is possible to make fit the unfit so that all may survive.”

While this state of realization represents the soul’s move to identify with Spirit over matter, its enlightenment is not complete, for the reason that, at this point, its orientation remains focused on itself as an individual. It remains for the final two stages of evolution for the soul’s sense of individuality to finally be overcome.

At the sixth level of self-realization, the soul “transcends individual concerns and becomes a citizen of the Universe. Here, his kinship with the sun, the moon, and the stars is established.” At this point, “the consciousness that was formerly individual discovers individuality to be a limiting and binding illusion.”

Manly Hall explains that the universalization of one’s consciousness is the end-goal that evolution has been pulling us toward all along. He writes that, “philosophically considered, growth from the standpoint of human evolution is a process proceeding from heterogeneity to homogeneity. In time, therefore, the isolated consciousness of the individual fragments is reunited to become the complete consciousness of the Whole.

At this sixth level of realization, the truth of the One God is perceived and identified with as the supreme truth. Reaching this point, the soul “stands at the threshold of reality”. This means that the Unity of God is the only true reality, with the whole world of diversity being suspended from this unity as an elaborate illusory projection.

Upon attainment of this stage of self-realization, one’s preoccupations with the world of diversity correspondingly lessen and fade away.

At the seventh and final level of self-realization, the Self renounces identification with diversity, matter, and individuality and dissolves itself into the substance of Unity. This is Nirvana, “the day that has a dawn but no sunset.”

Here, “diversity has been completely absorbed. The iridescent bubble of being now floats upon the great Ocean from whose primordial spray it was fashioned. For one breathless, unmeasurable second of time, the bubble hangs suspended, an opalescent sphere. Against its confining walls, the imprisoned sage hurls the blazing thunderbolt of his will. The bubble bursts and instantly disappears except for a fine mist that settles back in the endless sea.”

“With one supreme effort of realization, the soul has renounced death and become deathless; he has willingly surrendered and become lifeless. … United with that which eternally endures, the perfected soul is freed forever from the illusion of change, of difference, of time, and of distance.”

37. Is the End of the Kali Yuga Forthcoming?

In discussing the Kali Yuga, we should note that scholars differ on both the duration and starting point of this important sub-cycle. Manly P. Hall, the source I trust most on these matters, does not give an exact date for the Kali Yuga’s duration, but he does provide an approximate time frame: 5,000 or so years. He also provides an approximate starting date for this sub-cycle: 3100 BC.

Using simple math, we discover that, if the Kali Yuga beings around 3000 BC and lasts approximately 5,000 years, then it should come to a end at some point in the early-to-mid 21st century - the period in human history we are currently living through today!

Hall notes that the end of this age “will be heralded by a number of things, in the midst of which Kali will devour creation and a newer and purer world will take the place of that which has gone before.” What he’s implying here is that this age culminates in a phoenix-like process of creative destruction, where the instabilities of the evolving world order that has emerged during the course of the age will be “devoured” by the goddess Kali, leaving “a newer and purer world” to take the place of the old social order and the various “shadow complexes” that have so thoroughly dominated it.

Elaborating on the circumstances associated with the end of this age, Hall, writing in the 1940s, cites scholar Oswald Spengler and his book The Decline of the West, which makes several notable observations about this time cycle:

First, Spengler "shows that this cycle in the history of the world has always produced dictatorship, conquests, and the reawakening of the thirst for world power.” In our case, “he says that the 20th and 21st centuries will bring us (western civilization) back to the level of the Caesars at the time of the conquests which resulted in the collapse of the Roman Empire.”

Hall elaborates: “Rome became a great industrial-economic empire almost immediately after the beginning of the rule of the Caesars, and this rule reduced the Roman empire from one of great power to absolute corruption and destruction. The same thing happened in Greece, Egypt, India, and China.”

As with Rome, we have passed as a culture into a materialistic phase of civilization. Rome began as an empire under the leadership of men possessing both physical and philosophical aptitudes. But then, after an initial great period of culture, it became an industrial empire. Consequently, it began to colonize and make war.

One is reminded here of the American empire, with former president Kennedy attempting to reform the military-industrial complex, which had come to dominate the national security state during the Cold War period.

Like Julius Caesar, he was assassinated for it by the oligarchs behind this system. And, also like Rome, the military-industrial complex, backed by American banks and corporations, became empowered by this assassination and formed themselves into a global colonizing force as a consequence.

Using an aggressive campaign of “dollar diplomacy”, which was backed by the full weight of the American military behind it, they ensnared the nations of the world in dollar denominated debt, which they levered to extract the wealth and resources of the world and direct it into their own pockets.

Economic historian Michael Hudson elaborates on the political economy of Rome during the era of the Caesars, emphasizing that, by the 2nd century BC, it had already become an aggressive empire ruled by a powerful military industrial complex, with a consortium of oligarchical families backing and profiting off its war campaigns.

Hudson writes: “Look where Antiquity ended up by the 2nd century BC. Rome physically devastated Athens, Sparta, Corinth and the rest of Greece. By the Mithridatic Wars (88-63 BC) their temples were looted and their cities driven into unpayably high debt to Roman tax collectors and Italian moneylenders. Subsequent Western civilization developed not from the democracy in Athens but from oligarchies supported by Rome. Democratic states were physically destroyed.”

Hudson then, like Hall and Spengler, ties ancient Rome to the United States of today: “The tendency is for political power to reflect wealth. Rome’s constitution weighted voting power in proportion to one’s landholdings, minimizing the voting power of the non-wealthy. Today’s private funding of political campaigns in the United States is more indirect in shifting political power to the Donor Class, away from the Voting Class. The effect is to turn governments toward servicing a financial and property-owning class instead of prosperity for the economy at large. We thus are in a position much like that of Rome, where the kings were overthrown by an oligarchy claiming to “free” their society from any power able to control the wealthy.”

The rise of an oligarchical ruling class empowered through the “overgrowth of debt is also destabilizing today’s U.S. and other financialized economies. Banking and financial interests have broken free of tax liability since 1980, and are enriching themselves not by helping the overall economy grow and raising living standards, but just the opposite: by getting the bulk of society into debt to themselves. This financial class is also indebting governments and taking payment in the form of privatizing the public domain.”

Thus, we see that America - and the entire western capitalistic world order - is recreating the pattern of the Roman empire. Like our predecessor, we have become an extractive imperial force upon the world. And also like Rome, we face collapse, with the institutional paradigm of the western world threatening to come down alongside us as we experience our fall.

Today we are on the cusp of the formal establishment of world government, with a whole suite of new technologies and economic possibilities at our doorstep. Clearly, a “Great Reset” is underway - the question is, what model of government will arise to replace the current design of nation states, transnational corporations, and NGOs, with the US serving as the imperial hegemon protecting the whole apparatus?

The era of the United States ruling the world as a nation state are coming to an end - its empire, like Rome, is destined to collapse. But unlike Rome, we don’t seem poised to enter back into a feudal state, but rather to be reborn into a new, global pattern of government.

This is a transformation of such magnitude that it befits the coming of such an auspicious event as the end of the Kali Yuga. Remember: the theme of the Kali Yuga is the deconstruction and rebirth of the human soul on both an individual and collective level, with vital soul powers being stimulated into development through the process of making it through an age in which repeated patterns of empire plague humanity in cyclical fashion.

The United States is the last empire in this line: one destined to replay the sins of the past but also to, in one last gasp, sacrifice itself in order that a new, global world order will be born from its symbolic ashes. This doesn’t mean the United States has to literally burn; rather, it must, willingly or unwillingly, secede its global hegemony so that an explicitly global system of world governance may be implemented, one rooted in the willing participation of a commonwealth of democratic nations, with no one single nation dominating the others in imperial fashion, as has been the tendency these last 5,000 years.

Whether we like it or not, Kali will devour her creation at the pre-appointed time. Will we be wise enough to participate constructively in this devouring and in the rebirth that will consequently result? Will we understand that this has all been one great initiation for the collective body of mankind - one that, as souls, it is our privilege to go through and learn from?

In the final article of this series, we will consider the need for philosophy to be enthroned as the dominant institution in the new World Nation that this to come.

It is my opinion that the circumstances of the Kali Yuga have been stimulating the human soul (individually and collectively) toward the development of capacities and powers that will allow it to successfully manage and govern this new global world order that is now imminent.

In Plato’s thinking, this new world order will come forth and blossom as a Philosophic Empire, one where its leadership class will no longer be comprised of materialistic oligarchs but rather by philosophically-trained teachers and leaders. Check back for that article to explore more on what this means and how to bring it about.

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