A Human Story and a journey through time.

Please relax and activate your imagination. Now, consider the possibility that some 20,000 years ago or even further back during the last ice age, an advanced human civilisation existed. This was a global society and one of the capital cities may well have been Mount Olympus and their behaviour perhaps mirrored the Greek gods.

Given that the Greek gods have achieved legend status as has the ancient civilisation based on the lost citystate of Atlantis, there may well be some truth to these legends while all around the world there are traces of monolithic architecture that survive indicating global travel and the use of technologies that we are as yet unable to replicate.

It could be argued that stories about the Greek gods and their behaviour directly influenced Greek, Roman and European social constructs. These are largely two-dimensional with humanity focused on personal pleasure, a hierarchical social order and a dominating attitude towards life.

But about 12.5 thousand years ago, there was a major upset for all life on earth with the arrival of the Younger Dryas event. There is a massive amount of evidence to suggest that the ice covered northern hemisphere was bombarded either by a meteor shower or a fragmented comet that brought about the extinction of the remaining mega fauna.

This event adversely affected all life on Planet earth over a period of 1000 years and the once thriving global civilisation was completely decimated. The city of Atlantis was wiped from existence, and it is from this time that we have legends of great floods and other disasters yet there were survivors.

On every continent there are stories of great teachers, mythological or godlike heroes arriving and teaching those who survived how to recreate civilisation and social order. There was Quetzlcoatl in South America, Kutoyis in North America, Lord Shiva in India and every culture had its heroes from which they modelled their behaviour.

A key focus during and immediately after the younger Dryas was on mapping the heavens and recording the devastating event. According to researchers like Graham Hancock, ancient sites like Gobekli Tepe and the snake mound in North America directly relate to that devastating cosmological event.

In the world before the advent of the younger Dryas, life had been about the acquisition of power and control but afterwards, the focus of life shifted towards understanding the cosmos and how to be more prepared should another such disaster recur.

It is during this aftermath as people began rediscovering themselves that Shiva the first Yogi who lived perhaps in the vicinity of North India appeared. Some say he lived in Kashmir but there is no absolute certainty, and his contribution was to reveal and share the technology of being human better know today as the science of yoga.

Now to clarify who Shiva was, Shiva sometimes spelt as Shiv or Siv is the personification of a cosmological principle more clearly defined as ‘the potentiality from which the universe and all life emerged’. Shiva as I am discussing here was a man who actually lived about the end of the younger Dryas period, and he is otherwise known as the Adiyogi or the first Yogi.

Shiva the Adiyogi taught the way of yoga, that the internal world of consciousness was as important as the phenomenal environment that we reside in and for people to be genuinely happy without need of external gratification, they had to find a balance between the physical world and that of one’s individual consciousness.

It is well known that a calm and somewhat pragmatic internal disposition means that one is less disturbed by external phenomenon. A simple example is to be unconcerned about how other people describe you be the description good or bad. Shiva taught that through the practice of yoga an internal sense of equanimity can be achieved and that the thrust of physical or worldly life should be towards improving human well-being in an overall sense without seeking personal gratification.

The idea of yoga along with social responsibility spread west to the Mediterranean to be embraced by the Arabs and Egyptians. These ideas and practices spread over most of Eurasia and resulted in a contentedness of the overall population who developed a needs-based economy. That sense of communal harmony may have lasted 1000 years or more and was shattered by individuals represented in the Garden of Eden story who were adverse to taking responsibility for their own happiness and peace of mind, they were more interested in the acquisition of pleasure, wealth and power.

The Tree of Desire !

A Gem from the Mahabharata Shanti Parva, Moksha Dharma.
Vyasa says:-
“There is a colourful tree of desire in the heart.
It is generated from the store of confusion.
Anger and insolence constitute its gigantic trunk.
Ignorance is its root and delusion sprinkles it with water.
Jealousy makes up the leaves.
Earlier acts provide the fertilizer.
Lack of judgement and lack of thought are the branches.
Sorrow makes up the terrible smaller branches.
The thirst that seduces are the creepers that surround it from all sides.
Those who are extremely greedy, desiring the fruit, worship that giant tree.”

Consequently political forces emerged creating individual countries with trade and competition. The lands once known as greater India began to diminish and new countries were defined. Yet India remained a centre of learning with a successful education program. It was in fact so successful that as the world entered the first century BC, scientists and thinkers from all over the world were not considered to be worth their salt unless they had studied in India.

While most countries existed as kingdoms and administratively, India did as well, life for the majority of people was more communal. As the Hindu people were well educated with groups devoted to the various sciences including the workings of consciousness, they were well able to adapt and deal with environmental changes and natural disasters.

The Hindus (that is the people who resided across greater India who followed the philosophy described as the eternal way which is now called Hinduism) also dealt effectively with invaders. By the time that Islam arrived, the infamous Alexander the great had been defeated and Buddhism had separated itself to experiment with a different approach to understanding the nature of existence.

The Buddhists did not know how to protect themselves so Islam swept through the Buddhist regions, across Persia, Afghanistan and North India then down into Indonesia and neighbouring nations whereas those who were established in Sanatana Dharma successfully defended themselves from the marauding Islamists.

In summary

Sanatana Dharma which is more commonly known as Hinduism advocates the various practices of yoga as a means of acquiring self-knowledge and becoming established in an internal sense of peace and harmony while remaining acutely aware of the surrounding physical environment while seeking to improve the welfare not only of all humanity but of all life on earth.

सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिन: सर्वे संतु निरामया:।
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यंतु मा कश्चिद् दु:ख भाग्भवेत्।।

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