Geologists are admitting that theories of how continents form
may have to be revised, in view of the recent discovery on the
seabed, about 4000 kilometres south-west of Australia, of a continent
that rose above the Indian Ocean at least three times over 80
million years, only to disappear beneath the waves again each
time.
New Scientist reports that geologists aboard the drilling
ship which is working on the international Ocean Drilling Program
have found that two submerged features, the Kerguelen Plateau
and Broken Ridge, now about 2000 metres below the surface, were
once joined. Together, they formed a continental shelf of two
million square kilometres.
Based on plant remains and fossilized marine plankton found at
drill sites, the researchers have identified three periods during
which the crust rose above sea level. The first was about 110
million years ago, when the southern end of the plateau rose
above the surface. Part of the crust broke the surface again
about 85 million years ago, and again 35 million years ago, each
time farther to the north and involving a smaller amount of land.
Says Mike Coffin, one of the leaders of the drill team, “It
is unknown for an event of this magnitude to be repeated three
times. It means we don’t quite understand mantle plumes.”
“Elevation and subsidence of continents is always in progress,”
says The Secret Doctrine (II, 787 fn.), and this happens
under cyclic law. The supercontinent which once existed and which
scientists know of as Gondwana, was part of the ancient continent
of Lemuria which, it is said, “not only embraced a vast
area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape
of a horseshoe past Madagascar, round ‘South Africa’
(then a mere fragment in the process of formation), through the
Atlantic up to Norway” (S.D., II, 333). Present-day Australia
is a relic of this gigantic Lemurian continent.
Archaic Science asserts that there is a series of periodical
cataclysms from the beginning to the end of every Round, and
the Earth’s continents have several times been submerged,
only to reappear in changed form and bear their new groups of
mankind and civilization. Says The Secret Doctrine:
It is absolutely false, and but an additional
demonstration of the great conceit of our age,
to assert (as men of science do) that all the
great geological changes and terrible convulsions
have been produced by ordinary and known
physical forces. For these forces were but
the tools and final means for the accomplishment
of certain purposes, acting periodically, and
apparently mechanically, through an inward impulse
mixed up with, but beyond their material nature.
There is a purpose in every important act of
Nature, whose acts are all cyclic and periodical.
But spiritual Forces having been usually confused
with the purely physical, the former are denied
by, and therefore have to remain unknown to
Science, because left unexamined. (I, 640)
Among ancient myths and legends none is more universal
than that of a catastrophic flood in prehistoric
times. Christians and Jews know it as Noah’s
flood. A DPA report from Hamburg (reproduced in
The Times of India, June 22) says that “the
Bible’s big flood lies halfway between legend
and science”:
Authors have produced some 80,000 publications in 72 languages
over the years, some of them full of religious zeal, some full
of cool scientific detail, all trying to interpret the significance
of the flood. The problem has been declared solved a hundred
times already, but not even the simple question of whether the
apocalyptic flood was a local or a truly global event has been
answered….
Modern research techniques indicate that salty Mediterranean
waters must have poured through what was then the narrow Bosphorus
river valley, rushing down the valley at some 80 kilometres an
hour with 200 times the force of today’s Niagara falls.
The Black Sea, which had been a fertile oasis in the middle of
a parched wasteland, became a sea of death, overspilling its
shores, driving people ahead of it into the flood….
Could it be that the Black Sea flood disaster left such a lasting
impression on its survivors that it passed on into the Babylonian
epic of Gilgamesh and from there into Jewish tradition and ultimately
into the Christian Bible?
American geophysicists Walter Pitman and William Ryan, in
their book, Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries
About the Events That Changed History, elaborate on this
theory. But not everyone agrees that the flood the authors write
about has to do with that recorded in the Bible and the Epic
of Gilgamesh. For, though the Deluge is undeniably a universal
tradition, there have been numerous deluges. The Secret Doctrine
states:
There were several Deluges mixed up
in the memories and traditions of the sub-races
of the Fifth Race. The first great “Flood”
was astronomical and cosmical, while several
others were terrestrial. (II, 353)
Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half dozen
Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges-the earliest
of all being dated by them 850,000, and the
last about 100,000 years ago. But which was
our Deluge? Assuredly the former, the
one which to this date remains recorded in the
traditions of all the peoples, from the remotest
antiquity; the one that finally swept away the
last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with
Ruta and Daitya and ending with the (comparatively)
small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown
by the agreement of certain details in all the
legends. It was the last of its gigantic character.
The little deluge, the traces of which Baron
Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places
at about 10,000 years B.C., had nothing to do
with either the semi-universal Deluge,
or Noah’s flood-the latter being a purely
mythical rendering of old traditions-nor even
with the submersion of the last Atlantean island;
at least, only a moral connection. (II,141)
Minuscule filamentous structures found in sandstone
deep beneath the seabed off Western Australia are
said to be the smallest organisms ever discovered.
Geologists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane
have named the filaments “nanobes.” They
are between 20 to 150 nanometres in diameter, and
prove that cellular life can squeeze into tighter
spaces than was thought possible.
As remarked editorially in New Scientist (March
27):
Just how strange can life be? The “nanobes”…
found in rock more than three kilometres beneath the Earth’s
surface, are smaller than any creature ever seen before, and
appear to have come back to life after millions of years lying
dormant….
Life is turning up in more bizarre environments. Bacteria are
now known to live at least 3.5 kilometres beneath the Earth’s
crust and others happily survive temperatures as high as 113°
C or low as - 15° C. Some bacterial spores have survived
20 million years in amber.
So evidence of a tiny new life form must at least be taken seriously.
If nanobes really exist, it will certainly cheer up NASA’s
exobiologists. This month, they again reported evidence of fossilized
bacterial life in a Martian meteorite.
If life is everywhere, as Occult Science
avers, it must exist in what might seem to be
the most inhospitable places and the most forbidding
circumstances. The metaphysical implications of
the ubiquitous nature of life are even more important
than the physical.
The University of Cape Town archaeologist Christopher
Henshilwood and his colleagues have found evidence
that humans living on the southern coast of South
Africa 80,000 to 95,000 years ago behaved in ways
that experts term modern-more than 40,000 years
earlier than at any known site in Europe. (National
Geographic, January 1999)
Anatomically modern humans had already left their
mark in South Africa, in 117,000-year-old footprints
found on the west coast. But the people of the now
excavated Blombos Cave made a variety of standardized
bone tools as well as sophisticated pressure-flaked
points from stone brought from more than 25 miles
away. They drilled ochre, an earthy pigment possibly
used for decoration. The cave also held the world’s
earliest evidence so far found of catching large
fish.
“Modern” humans are certainly far older
than today’s “experts” have any conception
of.
The Great Sphinx at Giza continues to fascinate
people and to appeal to their sense of the mysterious.
“It is the brooding enigma of a remote and
lofty antiquity,” writes Rachel Hajar in The
World and I (February 1999). Geologists say
it could date back 11,000 to 15,000 years, but orthodox
Egyptologists reject the notion.
The hybridizing of man and lion [says Hajar] suggests the dominance of
human intellect over raw animal power. The head
of a king or deity was placed upon the tense
body of a lion ready to spring. The result was
a creature at once invincible and wise. The
royal human head on a lion’s body symbolized
power controlled by the intelligence of the
pharaoh….
The Great Sphinx has inspired a tradition of
wondrous legends and stories. Egyptians believed
the figure guarded the “Splendid Place
of the Beginning of all Time” and revered
it as the focus of “a great magical power
extending over the whole region.”….
Identified with the sun god and the deified
pharaoh, the Sphinx fulfilled a protective function.
It guarded the spirit’s great leap through
sacred thresholds, of passage through death
to an existence beyond our visible world.
The Secret Doctrine offers this hint:
An impenetrable veil of secrecy was thrown over
the occult and religious mysteries taught, after
the submersion of the last remnant of the Atlantean
race, some 12,000 years ago, lest they should
be shared by the unworthy, and so desecrated….It
is this secrecy which led the Fifth Race to
the establishment, or rather the re-establishment
of the religious mysteries, in which ancient
truths might be taught to the coming generations
under the veil of allegory and symbolism. Behold
the imperishable witness to the evolution of
the human races from the divine, and especially
from the androgynous Race-the Egyptian Sphinx,
that riddle of the Ages! (II. 124)
It is through self-transformation that world transformation
can take place. It is because of mental pollution
that there is atmospheric pollution. The atmosphere
is created through people’s attitude, and therefore
it is essential for that attitude to be transformed.
This was the theme of B. K. Asha’s talk at
the National Consultation on Religion and Conservation
organized by WWF-India and some like-minded organizations
on the eve of Earth Day. (Purity, May 1999).
Referring to the stewardship of the Earth, the speaker
said:
What are the most precious resources on the earth and how
can we preserve them?
The most precious resources are the spiritual qualities and virtues
of the human being. While we need to be concerned about the environment
and the Earth’s resources on a physical level, it is essential
that we learn about the resources of the spirit. The resources
of the soul are the qualities that we like to have; they are
love, peace, happiness, purity and strength. If these qualities
erode then human beings begin to look for fulfilment outside
of themselves and in the process the environment is destroyed.
The personal and the planetary are interconnected. What we do
to ourselves, we do to the Earth. In order to protect the Earth
from the damage that we are causing her, we need to stop harming
ourselves. We need to pay attention to and restore the soul’s
resources. What are the conditions of the inner spirit? Has my
peace and happiness eroded? Have I preserved my inner nature?
Meditation will help you to see which areas need improvement
and will help you restore the original the original resources
of the Earth.
As stewards or trustees of the Earth, we must understand that
the Earth does not belong to us. We are the caretakers, the instruments
who have to sensibly use the natural resources. We must learn
to use them without selfishness and greed….
Our thoughts influence the way we act. Meditation
is a tool to help us plant the seed of our powerful
thoughts in our Consciousness.
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