The following amusing incident was related by a civil engineer X of my acquaintance. Once, while on vacation in the Appalachians, he was studying the opposite slope through binoculars. To his surprise he noticed a geologist of the party slowly rolling a large glacial boulder downhill. After lowering the rock well over a hundred feet, he left the spot.
At camp that evening, the engineer asked his companion what in the world he was doing and received this astonishing reply:
"Oh! I was getting the rock down where it belonged. You see I found on checking on its position, that I had placed it too low in my report. Someone might discover the mistake, unless I changed its position."
There is still a lot of "rock rolling" going on, for with the swift movement of the present cycle, two developments are coming to the fore. First, there is a far greater measure of truth unfolding for those who can accept it. Second, there is a sharp reaction on the part of those who cannot adjust themselves to the ideology of the present era, and consequently fall back upon the religious and scientific dogma of their childhood.
Strange as it may seem, the average person is apt to resent anything which requires the readjusting of his ideas or exposes the pettiness of long established opinion. In all ages, the revelation of truth too often stirs resentment in the human heart, steeped as it is in the thoughts and dogmas of other men.
A good man who does not worship as you do, a saint outside the church, proof of a round world at a time it is popularly believed to be flat, or the stunning revelation of the Grand Canyon — things such as these bring a conflict in the mind which, baffled, turns outward to deny or destroy the evidence if it can; and like the shadow of a ghost this refusal of truth clouds the mind of future generations long after the original argument is forgotten.
Let us go back to the middle of the seventeenth century. At this time three men, Colonel Wilford of England, Archbishop Seep of Munich, and Archbishop Ussher of Ireland were attempting to establish the age of the world and the date of Creation. While examining some old manuscripts they are said to have discovered the figures 4321 at the beginning of a number of them. Not knowing the significance of these figures in the racial Yugas of India and Babylonia they first attempted to interpret them in terms of solar years but did not succeed in making them fit the Biblical records. They next decided that the figures referred to lunar years and thought, by changing them to solar years, that they could obtain the exact time from the first day of creation to the birth of Christ.
Archbishop Ussher then adjusted the patriarchal and prophetic fragments to fit this chronology and in 1664 a.d. published his controversial "Annales Veritas et Novi Testamenti," giving his proposed chronology for both the Old and New Testaments; and setting the day of creation as: October 25, 4004 B.C. at 9:00 o'clock in the morning.
It is not known by whose authority these dates were placed on the margins of the Authorized Version of the Bible. The entire system proposed by Archbishop Ussher was long ago proven false, but the greater number of Bibles printed today still carry these misleading marginal notes. These notes which were never part of the Bible itself have, even when least suspected, obscured the vision of both religion and science.
Actually the figures 4 3 21, are the respective time periods of the four racial Yugas. Of these, Krita-Yuga, the first and longest, contains four parts; the Treta-Yuga three parts; the Dwapara-Yuga two parts, and lastly the Kali-Yuga one part. The whole cycle amounts to 4,320,000 solar years, which is the average period of a Root Race of which there are seven in each Round, ours being the fifth.
These four Yugas were known to the Greeks and Romans as the Age of Gold, the Age of Silver, the Age of Bronze and the Age of Iron.
All racial cycles divide in these same proportions, for 4 3 2 1 is one of the key numbers of nature and was known to the Chaldean and Babylonian seers as well as to those of India.
According to this ancient tradition the solar system has already existed in its present imbodiment 155,520,000,000, of our years; and the earth itself in this fourth Round or cycle of activity is said to be 320,000,000 years from the beginning of sedimentation. It would be strange if the learned Hebrew students of the Qabbalah were not familiar with this chronology and did not understand the Chaldean and Biblical creation myths in their esoteric sense. After all the Pentateuch was their own book.
Many centuries have passed since the darkness of the Middle Ages. A scientific era has succeeded the religious and has in its turn become philosophical. The dogma of the past, in its literalness has been forgotten; but its spirit, its ghost, still lingers as a strange reluctance on the part of many to accept the age of the earth, the immensity of the starry universe or the antiquity of man.
Perhaps worst of all is that fatal psychosis of the race which would deny those of another color equal rights in the brotherhood of man. These our inheritance from the past, united with greed and unthinking waste of natural resources, are bringing the West to the brink of an abyss.
Many have wondered at the strange reaction the Grand Canyon produces upon tourists, especially those whose thoughts are clouded with dogma of a limiting nature. For others the first view of the Canyon is a soul-shaking experience, a revelation of reality. With some the Canyon can scarcely be said to exist for to them it is a narrow and shallow ditch; these often declare, their speech bristling with Biblical texts, that it is a delusion created to mislead men, a work of the devil. Yes, there are a goodly sprinkling of the latter.
Many of the remarks heard at the Canyon would scarcely be considered serious were it not for the near tragic cases of tourists wandering down the trail unattended. And their obvious inability to comprehend what lies before their eyes! How, for instance, are you going to answer the question of a well-dressed woman who asked, "Please tell me, does the Grand Canyon fill with snow in winter?"
It might be a good idea, if one were to check occasionally with nature and stand alone for a moment of self analysis — in silence, before the sea or the starry sky.