Carter Phipps: THE HOUR OF MY COMING

Journal Entry - July 30, 2004
I have often asked myself what it would have been like to live in the time of Jesus, to be a monk in the time of the Buddha, or to live in Greece in the company of Socrates. No longer. After the earth-shattering events of today, people in the future may very well be asking what it was like to live on this planet in the year 2004.

The day started like any other. I was at the office early, working on some reports for the week. But there was a heavy feeling in the air. The news was bad. Pakistan seemed to be teetering on the edge of chaos and the Middle East on the brink of war. The recent attacks in L.A. were still on everyone's mind, and the talk in the office was of little else.

Around six, I left work. It was a warm evening, and as is my habit, I decided to walk the twenty blocks home. I usually pass through Times Square on my way, and tonight it didn't take but a glance down the street to see that something strange was happening on Broadway. Even from several hundred yards away, the scene was bizarre. Traffic was stopped, taxis were parked in the middle of the street, and everyone was standing still, as if someone had hit the pause button during a crowd scene. As I approached, the gathering, maybe several thousand strong, seemed unusually quiet. New Yorkers are never this quiet, I remember thinking—not on their own, not in public, and certainly not in Times Square on a summer evening. There was a strange intensity in the air, and everyone was looking up at something I couldn't see—probably one of those new giant television screens hanging above the street. Had something happened? For a moment, frightening images burst into my mind—another chemical attack on an American city, exploding nuclear weapons in South Asia. I rushed around the corner and as I did, a voice pierced the quiet night—a voice that seemed to be speaking directly to me.

Startled, I looked to see who was addressing me, but even as I did, it began to dawn on me that the voice was not coming from outside, but from inside my own head! "What the hell?" I exclaimed, and I must have said it louder than I thought because a couple of people a few feet away turned and caught my eye. Saying nothing, they just put out their hands and pointed upward, at the television screen, the focus of everyone's rapt attention. The scene on the screen looked simple enough, a news conference from London. A dark-haired man, dressed in a flowing white robe, was gazing beatifically into the camera. And as far as I could tell, he was not saying a word. Then it hit me. The words I was hearing in my mind were coming from the man on the screen. "Oh my God!" another exclamation slipped out of my mouth. But I felt no fear, only a growing sense of amazement.

"Yes! Yes! I understand," a woman next to me cried out, falling to her knees in response to some unseen inner dialogue. I recognized that my experience was being shared by what must have been almost ten thousand people at that point, stopped in the street, all hearing the inner words of the figure on the screen. In perfect English, he addressed us, a clear and compelling voice that spoke of the spiritual crisis now facing humanity. He explained that the time has come to change the course of human destiny. Forever. A wave of peace and bliss welled up within me as he boldly declared, "I am the One, the one who so many religions have waited for: the Jewish Messiah, the Christian Christ, the Kalki Avatar, the Maitreya Buddha, the prophesied Mahdi of Islam. I have come for all of your sake, to bring hope and salvation. I have come to establish a true and lasting brother- and sisterhood among all of the races and peoples of the world. Together we are going to build a new civilization based on the principle of love."

Something cracked inside. I began sobbing uncontrollably. The hard inner shell born of years of frustration and despair seemed to dissolve, melting away in the warm summer evening. I knew, without any doubt, that the man speaking these words inside my own soul was the holiest of men. Awestruck, I stood there for what seemed like an eternity.

Then the voice became quiet and the scene on the television changed. CNN started showing images from around the world—hundreds of thousands of joyous people celebrating, singing, and dancing in the streets; crowds praying in mosques, churches, and temples. Everywhere, it seemed, people had heard His message. The entire world, from the tip of Africa to the coast of California to the edge of Siberia, had heard this new Christ, this divine messenger, and everywhere you could feel the ecstatic release. As for myself, standing there with thousands of stunned New Yorkers on a summer night in one of the great bastions of our modern material civilization, I knew that humankind was finally unified as one—one world civilization, changed forever. He has come—and from now until eternity, nothing will ever be the same.

The scenario described above might sound implausible, even ridiculous, to the modern ear, and who would argue otherwise? The Second Coming? The Messiah? Isn't that strictly the arena of late-night televangelists and New Agers who have spent too much time in the California sun? After all, now that we have passed the millennium with our computers still functioning, our oceans still within their relative boundaries, our nuclear weapons still in their silos, all rogue asteroids still keeping a safe distance, and the prophesied Four Horsemen still absent from yonder sky, you might think that those voices telling us that the end of the world is near, that a new age is dawning, that an apocalypse is brewing, or, in this case, that a messiah is coming would be muted. But you would be decidedly wrong. In fact, as we enter a new millennium, the sheer number of individuals insisting, warning, hoping, and even praying that the trajectory of human destiny is about to undergo some serious alterations is unprecedented. And before you dismiss these cultural Jeremiahs and go back to the morning paper, it might be good to take a closer look . . . at the morning paper. Iraq, Israel, SARS, genetics, India/Pakistan, 9/11, nanotechnology, nuclear missiles, North Korea, global warming, cloning, famine, AIDS. The list of radical breakthroughs, dangerous flash points, and volatile issues on the human horizon is long, and getting longer. Indeed, it seems safe to say—and many of the individuals interviewed in this issue would concur—that we are living in a unique time in our species' development, a time of transition, a time of convergence, a time of culmination. But just how unique is it? After all, transition is one thing, but apocalypse? A new age? The Second Coming? Who would go that far? Well, millions and millions of Americans for a start. Indeed, if you ask the average American where human history is ultimately headed, forty percent are going to tell you that we are destined, sooner or later, for Armageddon, the final Biblical battle between good and evil, often seen as a prelude to the Second Coming of Christ. If you don't believe that statistic, keep in mind that the Left Behind series, which novelize the events foretold in Biblical prophecy with a cheerfully apocalyptic perspective, have sold over fifty-five million copies to date. And it's good to remember that this isn't just an American phenomenon. For that matter, it's not even a Christian phenomenon. Almost every major religion has some version of events that signal the coming of a great messianic figure who will rescue the world from darkness and usher in a new age of light and peace. Hindus speak of the next great avatar, the Kalki Avatar; Muslims foretell the coming of the Imam Mahdi; Christians, the Second Coming of Christ; Jews, the coming of the Messiah; and Buddhists, the future Buddha, Maitreya. Each does have its own particular emphasis, its own version of the events that will herald the coming world teacher, but the similarities among them are nevertheless quite striking, especially given that these traditions weren't exactly developed in a time of global internet collaboration. And that's not to mention the similar notions in Zoroastrianism, countless references in New Age literature, centuries of esoteric and occult traditions prophesying a world teacher—the list goes on and on. And let's be clear—these myths, these prophecies, are much more than superficial stories sprinkled on top of religious theology, a little sugar and spice to go with the main course. They are fundamental components of their respective traditions.

So what really is going on here? Is there a messianic figure waiting in the wings of the new millennium? Should we give any credence at all to this often dismissed yet near universal theme in the great religious traditions? Is this how God plans to handle the challenge of the twenty-first century? With a personal messenger who can set right the troubled ship of our global state? A divine proxy battling for the salvation of the world? If so, then when and where might this messianic savior arrive on our planet? And the most intriguing question of all may be: What if he or she were already here? For this issue of What Is Enlightenment? we were curious to look a little deeper into the messianic myths of humanity and discover what, if anything, they might have to do with spirituality in the twenty-first century. Given the volatile nature of this moment in history, it seems important—indeed, absolutely essential—to stand back and take a look at our spiritual legacy, just in case, in our collective rush toward the future, we might be missing the fact that God has already stacked the deck.

THE END TIMES

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand."

W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Eschatology. Yes, the spell checker on my computer is still working and this is actually a word—albeit a rather obscure one for the ninety-nine percent of us whose path through higher education did not include a few years at the seminary. But as unsexy as it sounds, for many, a good chat about eschatology will get the heart beating and the neurons firing and maybe even the endorphins pumping like few things this side of the local Nautilus.

Eschatology, to put it simply, is a theological term that means "the doctrine of last things," the study of the end times. And if that definition doesn't clarify the matter, let me throw out a few words that may help: Armageddon, plagues, 666 the Mark of the Beast, the Rapture, the Antichrist, the New Jerusalem, the Seventh Seal, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Judgment Day, and, of course, the Second Coming. Now that I have your attention, let me explain a little further. You see, when we talk about the Messiah, or the Second Coming, we are in essence talking about the end times, the end of history, when a religious savior is prophesied to return and sort out the rather embarrassing mess we have made of this planet that we have the good fortune to live on. And even though eschatology is a word used primarily in association with the Abrahamic religions—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—our Eastern brothers and sisters have their own doctrines that describe the end, if not of the entire world, then at least of this age in history.

"When our whole existence is threatened, as it is today, the eschatological veins in the various religions come to the fore," observes Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. And though some may accuse him of stating the obvious, the point is well taken. Like a slow-building multi-car pileup on a busy highway, we are witnessing the unprecedented convergence of eschatological trajectories that, for the most part, were set in motion thousands of years ago, and no one this side of paradise quite knows what will be left when the smoke clears. Will Jesus be standing there with his "terrible swift sword"? Or Islam's prophesied Mahdi declaring to the infidels of the West that there is "no god but God"? Or maybe a New Age messiah spreading the Aquarian gospel to a troubled world? Or perhaps some as yet unseen power, awakened by humanity's desperate need, will descend into Bethlehem and give birth to a golden age. Whatever the case, don't fool yourself into thinking that eschatology is merely a backward theological doctrine of a bygone era. In fact, today it seems to be all the rage. Everything from New Age preoccupations with prophesied "Earth changes" to digerati intuitions of a coming technological omega point called the "Singularity," to Hollywood's recent obsession with end-of-the-world scenarios could be seen as part of what we might call an "eschatologically driven" culture that has grown up in the time in which we live. And wherever you have this kind of culture, there are several other elements that you are likely to find near at hand. First and foremost is a messiah, a prophesied religious savior. And of course, any messiah worth his or her weight in human history needs a raison d'�tre, and that reason, more often than not, is to usher in a new messianic age, to bring about a promised new world, to help build Shambhala, to create a new heaven on a rejuvenated earth.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF MILLENNIUM

"And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."

Revelation 20:4

If you were to walk into a major university these days and start talking about a new golden age, writing papers on how to build Shambhala, or waxing poetic to your students about creating heaven on earth, one of two things would happen: either you'd promptly be fired, or (if you have tenure) you might just be sent down the hall to the Millennial Studies Department. Indeed, in the world of academia where they actually study subjects like eschatology and messiahs, there is a name for the belief in the coming golden age—millennialism. And it's similar to eschatology . . . only different. "Eschatology is a term that means the doctrine of last things," explains Dr. Richard Landes, director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, "and I use it to refer to the belief that when the day of judgment comes, a resolution will take place beyond the physical plane. In other words, the physical plane is going to be destroyed, vanish, or be transcended at that point. The bad go to hell, and the good go to heaven. Millennialism, on the other hand, is about the transformation of the world. It's a kind of outrageous hope that it is actually possible for embodied human beings to live in a just society together."

For Landes and a number of other scholars, millennialism is a label that can be applied to just about every truly progressive movement—religious, social, political, etcetera—whose vision and work in some way entail the creation of a just society on this earth. But when it comes to millennialism, the essential question is: How do we get to the promised kingdom? Good deeds? An apocalypse? A proletariat revolution? A messiah? "There are two patterns of millennialism," Dr. Catherine Wessinger of Loyola University explains, "catastrophic and progressive. Catastrophic millennialism is the belief that the transition to collective salvation will occur catastrophically. This is apocalypticism. The other type is called progressive millennialism, which is the belief that things are getting better all the time and that human effort, motivated by and working in conjunction with a higher power, can help to create the millennial kingdom." And that, she says, is where the whole notion of a messiah comes in: "The Messiah is someone who is believed to be empowered by a superhuman agent to create the millennial kingdom." That kingdom may take many forms. It may be painted with bright Hindu colors, with sober Buddhist hues, or even with New Age pastels. It may require every last ounce of effort and toil that we can muster, or it may come unexpectedly "like a thief in the night." It may be one beautiful historical age in an endless series of universal cycles, or it may be the greatest collective retirement party of all time. But one way or the other, the message of antiquity is unequivocal: collective salvation is possible through the grace, love, and wisdom of the coming World Teacher who will lead the way to a glorious future. That's the good news. The bad news is, of course, that accompanying many of the visions of this glorious future is a not-so-glorious apocalypse. All of which begs the obvious question: Are we getting close? Are we approaching midnight? And, how do we know if we are?

APOCALYPSE NOW?

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
no more water, the fire next time."

African-American Spiritual

The evangelist John has spoken of . . . two resurrections in the book which is called the Apocalypse [Revelation], but in such a way that some Christians do not understand . . . and so construe the passage into ridiculous fancies." These words began St. Augustine's rebuke of the narrow, literal interpretations of the Book of Revelation which, in 410 AD, were finding plenty of traction among the residents of Rome. The Book of Revelation, for those who have neglected their Bible scholarship, was written by John of Patmos (not to be confused, most scholars agree, with the apostle John). John was the man, we might say, who put eschatology on the map. His visions foretell a powerful version of the end times, and in the early fifth century, they resonated with many Romans, who had just watched their city fall to the invading Visigoths—a defeat that had deeply shaken the confidence of the newly converted Roman Empire. Surely these must now be the end times, the population cried; the messianic kingdom of our Lord must be near at hand. In response, St. Augustine set forth a rebuke so powerful that his own more conservative and allegorical interpretation of the Book of Revelation became official Catholic Church policy regarding the Apocalypse from that moment forward. But Augustine did not altogether reject apocalyptic prophecy or the Second Coming, and both notions continued to exert tremendous influence on the spiritual development of the Western world. Various strains have long run rampant in both Christianity and Islam, influencing such important figures as Martin Luther, Christopher Columbus, and Oliver Cromwell. Augustine's rebuke is, however, the reason that apocalyptic visions figure more prominently in the Protestant mindset than the Catholic one, and why much of today's preoccupation with the end times and the Second Coming finds a more receptive home in Protestant hearts.

So it is perhaps no surprise that the United States, with its heavily Protestant population, would provide particularly fertile ground for all kinds of messianic fervor, and for what Dr. Wessinger calls "catastrophic millennialism"—the belief that the transition to a millennial kingdom will occur through a kind of apocalyptic event. Indeed, from Reagan's Interior Secretary James Watts's famous statement that conservation wasn't necessary because he didn't know how many generations we had "until the Lord returns" to Hal Lindsey's near-legendary seventies bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth, Americans have continued to show an unexpected appetite for end times theology. The Late Great Planet Earth's original print run was for a few thousand copies. Thirty-five million later, Lindsey is still going strong. And that figure would be even more impressive if it weren't for that new kid on the block, the Left Behind series, which, at this point, is practically an industry in itself. Somebody, it seems, really believes not only that Christ is coming but that He is coming soon.

It is not only traditional religions that are driving this phenomenon. Even in the ever-optimistic love-and-light doctrines of the New Age, reading between the lines can be a little frightening. "I believe that a time of tribulation occurs whenever there's a great shift in consciousness," says Gordon-Michael Scallion, one of the most respected psychics/futurists on the circuit these days. In what has to be one of the strangest pairings of philosophical opposites since James Carville and Mary Matalin, some New Age voices are beginning to sound more and more like Christian fundamentalists with their talk of Earth changes and planetary shifts. Indeed, Scallion, who made his reputation accurately predicting several earthquakes, sounds almost like a fundamentalist preacher when he says, "We can look throughout the world and see that there have been specific predictions of certain signs that would indicate that the world is either going to be destroyed or going to be reborn. And these predictions have told us that various messengers and masters would come and help prepare the way. At the same time, there will be the 'anti-' of those people and there will be great battles. And when these battles are through, there will be a new earth born and, as a result, enlightenment for the planet. So these conditions are being met now. They're being fulfilled." As outlandish as it may seem, it is a statement that merely fleshes out the core doctrine of almost every religion in the world—the one difference being the specificity of Scallion's timing. But what makes him, and so many others, convinced that the moment is now? Is there really anything objective about this time in history that would lead us to the conclusion that a messiah, any messiah, is actually on his or her way?

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

"You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we're the generation that is going to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of those prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we're going through."

President Reagan in 1983,
Speaking to an Israeli Lobbyist

I think it's purely subjective," Dr. Wessinger told me last January. "There is no objective way to draw that conclusion, to my knowledge. Because when you look at it from a historical perspective, people at any given point in time will be looking at current events around them and saying, 'This is the time.'" Dr. Landes put it more colorfully: "I don't know of any case of an apocalyptic prophet who did not look around and say, 'Can't you see? The world is going to hell in a handbasket.'"

Still, it would also seem that a genuinely objective reading of the nature of our current historical moment could easily support that very conclusion. "That is the scary thing," Dr. Wessinger acknowledged. "We're living in a time right now when there is a lot of conflict in the world. You've got climatic issues, environmental issues, nuclear issues. And there are a lot of hot spots where things could get out of control. It could turn out very bad. So therefore, naturally, it's going to feed into all of those traditional prophecies, and the interpretations of those prophecies." This would seem especially true given that perhaps the only element of most of these prophecies that doesn't seem open for question is the fact that the appearance of the Messiah corresponds with a difficult, if not disastrous, time in human history.

For example, Hindu scripture tells us that the Kalki Avatar will come at a time when "the rulers of the earth will have degenerated into plunderers" and when "the practices taught by the Vedas and the institutes of law shall nearly have ceased." Buddhist scriptures are even more graphic, describing, as Buddhist scholar José Cabez�n explains, a time of great strife when "human beings basically continue to deteriorate both mentally and physically. There's constant fighting, constant feuding. Humans become physically shorter, and they have shorter lifespans. When it gets really bad, the figures that I've heard are that they live only about ten years, and they're about ten inches tall. These things could be metaphors, but in any case, that's the time when Maitreya comes." Islam, heavily influenced by Christian end times theology, shows little mercy in its description of the conditions surrounding the Mahdi's coming. We are told that "the false Messiah (the Antichrist) will remain for a while, destroying mankind completely, and the earth will witness the greatest fitnah (tribulation) in its history." Judaism, which has already lived through one apocalypse in the last century, is the only one of the major religions that doesn't seem to insist that things must get worse before they get better.

"Prophecy has often been discredited in the past by misguided people who said that the end of the world was near or that the Messiah was coming," declares Hal Lindsey in the video version of his book, The Late Great Planet Earth. But Lindsey has his own reason for believing that now really is the moment of messianic destiny. "The key to the whole prophetic pattern," he assures us, "... has always been the rebirth of the State of Israel." Modern interpreters like Lindsey offer statements like this one to place the end of history firmly in our lifetime, but definitive statements in relationship to any Biblical or, for that matter, Talmudic, Kabbalistic, Koranic, Vedic, or Pali prophecy tend to be inherently problematic, to say the least. Indeed, the traditions offer very few clear benchmarks by which to measure the veracity and timing of their predictions, a situation that has left an interpretive vacuum waiting to be filled by generations and generations of messianic Chicken Littles. Or so history has proved them to be so far.

So is there anything more concrete outside of the context of traditional religious scripture? Well, if you don't mind your prophecies being delivered in more unconventional packages, then there is a veritable mountain of evidence that begins to tumble out of the pages of history. Not necessarily evidence that would get past a good lawyer—but then again, those ancient prophets of the scriptural canon didn't exactly have to subject themselves to the mainstream press. Prophets are sort of like presidents: the farther back in history, the more respect we tend to give them. There are the usual suspects like Nostradamus, whose obscure quatrains are almost impossible to decipher but which seem to suggest, at the very least, some kind of tribulation at some future moment in history. And then there is Edgar Cayce, the famous early-twentieth-century psychic, who correctly predicted both World Wars and made such cheery pronouncements as, "The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye." The Mayans had a prophetic calendar that points, we are told, to the date 2012 as the end, or the beginning, of an entirely new cycle in the pages of history. Add the Hopis, the Aborigines, the Eskimos, many of the occult traditions, and a few hundred other miscellaneous soothsayers and would-be prophets to a mix that already includes just about every major religious tradition and it's enough to make you at least wonder if something (or someone) big isn't headed our way in the near future.

But we live in a rational age, and most prophecy, no matter how compelling, isn't going to convince the skeptical Sergeant Fridays (or Agent Scullys) of anything. Indeed, if all we have are highly subjective interpretations, based on highly uncertain timing suggested by prophetic statements that we may or may not yet believe, then the notion of the coming Messiah starts to look like it's resting on pretty thin ice. And so it may be. However, there is more to the story, and it has to do with something far more objective than any particular interpretation of any particular prophecy. It has to do with the unique characteristics of this moment in history.

As a species, we are just waking up to the fact that we have become a global power capable of giving and taking away life on a planetary scale. Whether or not we are in the end times, we are definitely playing an endgame with human history. Everything we do has global implications, and these days God's wrath is pretty low on the list of apocalyptic concerns. Indeed, we're quite capable of taking out the biosphere, destroying civilizations, and releasing plagues, all by ourselves. Don't like the Book of Revelation? Fine. Just read some recent issues of Science magazine. Or Wired. Or Michael Crichton's latest novel. The end of the world is a notion that has escaped the confines of theology and now thrives in sociology, economics, science, and politics. And that should give everyone more than a moment of pause—not only for the gravity of our collective situation but also for the fact that never, before a very recent point in history, has it been possible to so easily fulfill the prophetic statements of our apocalyptic heritage. As Dr. Landes puts it, "Just at the moment where I don't know of any serious scholar who would actually profess publicly that he believed in a God who intervenes in history, we now don't need to believe in a God who intervenes in history to believe in an apocalypse. Up until recently, you had to have God for an apocalypse to occur. But we now have objective scientific reasons to believe in it."

While it might not be enough to make one a true believer, the recognition of this time period as a profound global transition point unlike any other in recorded history starts to have eerie resemblances—the first such similarities that have existed in history—to the exact conditions that we are told over and over again will call forth a messiah into this crisis-riddled world and change human destiny forever.

SEARCHING FOR SALVATION

"Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through,
He unleashed His power at an unknown hour that no one knew.
How long can I listen to the lies of prejudice?
How long can I stay drunk on fear out in the wilderness?
Can I cast it aside, all this loyalty and this pride?
Will I ever learn that there'll be no peace, that the war won't cease
Until He returns?"

Bob Dylan, "When He Returns"

Only a God can save us," declared the German philosopher Heidegger as he approached the end of his life and looked out on the looming realities of the twentieth century. He was perhaps speaking for a great many who look out at the overwhelming nature of our modern society and find themselves reaching beyond human agency for the answers to the urgent questions of our time. For better or worse, we live in a culture well primed for a messiah—a culture that Dr. Landes describes as a "supersaturated solution."* "In order for an apocalyptic movement to take," he explains, "it really has to be carried by a prophet who has sufficient charisma to act as sort of a seed crystal in a supersaturated solution. Seed crystals won't work if the tension isn't big enough. But if the tension is big enough, amazing things will happen." Those "amazing things" may be even more amazing in today's world, as messianic movements find themselves poised to have an unprecedented global impact. For all would-be messiahs out there, that is good news indeed, but for the rest of us the picture is a little more murky. Indeed, Heidegger himself was temporarily seduced by the Nazi regime, and his and others' missteps serve as fair warning that when it comes to picking messiahs, human beings don't always do such a great job of evaluation. And in this brave new world, everyone is potentially affected by both our successes and our failures. There simply is no longer any geographical isolation behind which we can hide from the eschatological visions and millennial dreams of our brother and sister religions, not to mention our own. When an evangelical minister suggests to Pat Robertson that maybe he should not run for president because success in making the world a better place might delay the Second Coming of Christ, you don't have to be a fundamentalist or even a Christian to feel the dangerous proximity of the apocalyptic fires of Western history. And when certain groups in radical Islamic circles declare that the only way to bring about the true Islamic society ruled by the Mahdi is to act as violent agents of a cataclysmic transition, none of us can afford to ignore the implications. Like it or not, we truly are a global village, and if a few neighbors down the street decide the Apocalypse is near and the prophesied one is set to arrive, there is no way to pack up your house and move on.

Still, the omnipresent reality of globalization cuts both ways. "Christ and the Buddha worked in a time where they had a very limited influence because of the geographical constraints upon them. Today, any true teacher who comes forth has the media at his or her fingertips and can reach the entire planet rather than just a small area in Palestine or a small area in India," says Kathy Newburn, an editor at Lucis Trust, publisher of the works of the late esoteric spiritual teacher Alice Bailey. "The power for planetary transformation is so much greater this time, and that's why I think there's an opportunity here for a teacher, or teachers, to come and transform the consciousness of the planet as a whole through the internet and mass media. There's a possibility that through the influence wielded by a group of men and women who are truly enlightened, the whole structure of our planet can shift to a much higher level." In messianic millennialism, as in all other fields, globalization is a twenty-first-century reality, and it is a reality that could be our greatest ally or our most dangerous foe. In the end, perhaps, it simply depends on exactly what kind of messiah figure we are talking about. And that brings up a crucial question: What kind are applying for the job?

*A supersaturated solution is a solution that contains more dissolved solute than can ordinarily be accommodated at that temperature. Therefore, if you drop a seed crystal into it, the entire solution will crystallize out almost instantaneously. All the chemicals in the solution will quickly find their places in relationship to the seed crystal.

A WORLD FULL OF GODS

"Whenever the world declineth in virtue and righteousness;
and vice and injustice mount the throne, then cometh I,
the Lord and revisit my world in visible form, and mingleth
as a man with men, and by my influence and teachings do I destroy
the evil and injustice and reestablish virtue and righteousness.
Many times have I thus appeared, and many times hereafter
shall I come again."

Bhagavad Gita

The witness of history is that always the appearance of man's necessity has been met with a divine Revelation," wrote Alice Bailey, author of The Reappearance of the Christ, in the middle of last century. Considering that "man's necessity" has perhaps never been so acute as it is today, it may be time to start watching the skies, or the internet, or maybe even Times Square for the signs of a new revelation. And once you start looking for a messiah, you will find that there is no shortage of eager aspirants. Just type "avatar" or "second coming" into Google and see what you get. "Christ is back. He's black. He's gay. And he shall overcome" are the words running across the top of one website. Welcome to the democratic internet age, where everyone has a platform and no one is excluded from the messianic sweepstakes—a fact that becomes somewhat overwhelming after spending just a few minutes online. But even in the midst of the confusing free-for-all of this messianic clamor, a few teachers have put forward more serious, or at least more influential, bids in this high-stakes spiritual drama in which, tradition tells us, there can be only one—only one Messiah, one Maitreya Buddha, one Imam Mahdi, one Kalki Avatar, only one true Son of God . . . or maybe not. Certainly if we're talking about Hindu avatars, apparently there can be many.

Avatar is a Sanskrit word that means the "descent of Divinity into flesh" and originally referred specifically to the incarnations of Vishnu, with the Kalki Avatar being number ten, prophesied to appear at the end of our current age, the Kali Yuga. Why, then, an astute observer might ask, do avatars seem to be proliferating everywhere in today's spiritual world? Indian spiritual teachers Sai Baba and Mother Meera both call themselves avatars. The late Meher Baba adopted the designation in the early twentieth century; Swami Yogananda was referred to as an avatar; the mythical yogi Babaji as a "maha avatar"; the early-twentieth-century Indian sage Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual partner The Mother were declared to be avatars by their students—and the list continues to grow. There is even a quick and easy weekend enlightenment program called "The Avatar Course." All of which adds up to not so much a descent but a veritable cascade of divinity into flesh. Vishnu, it would seem, has some explaining to do.

At the same time, in a postmodern world that tends to lean heavily toward a diminishment of spirit and a cynicism about the unabashed, one can't help but be slightly in awe of the willingness of so many to unequivocally proclaim themselves to be the prophesied religious savior of humanity. "The Promised God-Man Is Here," announces the most recent book of American spiritual teacher Adi Da. But even that outrageous statement has some serious competition from a former traffic cop all the way over on the other side of the world. "I am Jesus Christ. That which was promised must come to pass," says Vissarion Christ, the Russian founder of one of the two major spiritual movements today being led by individuals claiming to be the return of the Son of God. "It was promised in Israel two thousand years ago that I would return, that I would come back to finish what was started." Looking as if he just walked straight out of a da Vinci painting, this modern messiah has attracted a large following that includes a number of Russian artists and intellectuals, and the first international seekers are beginning to find their way to his remote rural home as well. Indeed, with a presence on the web, even the teachings and ministry of this "Jesus of Siberia," as one reporter dubbed him, can reach around the globe—testimony to the unique dynamics of this moment in history, as a new crop of now globalized messianic dreams greets the twenty-first century.

Despite Vissarion's success, when it comes to sheer numbers, his efforts pale before the alleged influence of a nameless, faceless second coming of Jesus purportedly living in China. "For as the lightning cometh out of the east . . . so shall also the coming of the Son of man be," writes Matthew in the New Testament. And someone in China has apparently taken this particular prophecy quite seriously indeed. A major underground movement has arisen in Mongolia named Eastern Lightning that is declaring, quite actively (and militantly, some claim), the arrival of Christ in this world. And here is the twist: this time Christ is a woman, and a very circumspect woman at that, as no one in the West has so far seen, interviewed, or taken a picture of her. This Christ figure, her disciples say, believes in an imminent apocalypse and has written her own addition to the gospels, which she calls the "Third Testament." The exact number of converts is not known but estimates are in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, a number that may be sufficiently large to draw some special attention from the authorities (a dangerous thing to do in communist China, as anyone associated with the Falun Gong sect will tell you). And don't be surprised if Eastern Lightning tries to make some Western waves in the years to come. East may still be east and West may still be west, but in our brave new messianic world the internet is quite big enough for would-be Christs on both sides of the Suez—black, gay, Siberian, female, or Chinese.

The Once and Future Messiah

"The King Messiah will in some future time come, restore the kingdom of David to its former power, build the Temple, bring together the scattered of Israel, and all the ancient laws will again be in force. Sacrifices will be offered, and years of release and Jubilees will be kept as prescribed in the Torah. Whoever does not believe in him, or does not hope for his coming, shows a lack of faith not only in the prophets, but also in the Torah. For the Torah testifies concerning him in the words: 'And the Lord your G-d will again bring back your captivity, and show mercy unto you, and again gather you from all the nations. If your outcasts be at the ends of the heavens, from there will the Lord gather you, and the Lord will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed.' (Deuteronomy 30:3-5)"

Maimonides, Mishneh Torah

If one has messianic aspirations but doesn't quite have the inclination to stand up before the world and unequivocally declare oneself to be the religious savior of humanity now manifest on this earth, one needn't despair. There are other ways to end up on top of the messianic heap. Indeed, a look around at our eclectic spiritual world tells us that one of the most common and direct ways is simply to have others recognize you, to be what we might call an accidental messiah, the helpless pawn of a messianic drama that installs you in the unsought for position of avatar, Christ, Mahdi, or whoever the particular tradition might be waiting for.

For example, Sri Kalki Bhagavan, founder of the Golden Age Foundation, is a popular and well-established Hindu spiritual teacher who now goes by the name of the Kalki Avatar and is one of the best-known Kalki claimants around. So how did he come to adopt this rather bold and conspicuous title? Was there a point when he recognized the truth of his own incarnation, a moment of awakening that revealed to him his true identity? "It was neither a revelation nor an experience, nor was it a spiritual awakening," Sri Kalki Bhagavan explains. "It was always so from the beginning. I knew I had come here to give enlightenment to humanity." But lest we assume that this knowledge, along with his adoption of a messianic title, constitutes a personal claim to be the mythological Kalki Avatar, he sets the record straight. "I have never proclaimed to be the Kalki Avatar," Sri Kalki Bhagavan says. "It so happened that lots of people began to have visions and revelations that I am the Kalki Avatar come to set man free. On the basis of those experiences, people started to call me Kalki."

Of course, it should be said that the recognition of one's own spiritual realization by students is a crucial indication of any spiritual attainment—although hardly a definitive or objective standard. And obviously, to even be considered a serious candidate for a position as extraordinary and profoundly influential as a prophesied religious savior, one would have to already possess an unthinkable spiritual depth and purity, or at the very least, a rare charismatic power that few could even begin to approach. But in a world filled with all kinds of mahdis and messiahs, it never hurts to have a few supporters to push you over the messianic hump.

Another fascinating case study of this dynamic and, in fact, a number of dynamics surrounding messianic claims, is the saga of the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Brooklyn, NY. Few would disagree that Rabbi Schneerson, founder of the Lubavitch movement in America, was a divinely inspired leader, a spiritual genius, and by all accounts a true tzaddik—a deeply wise and holy man. But the Jewish Messiah himself? Could it be true that the prophesied one, long awaited by so many, has already lived and died . . . in Brooklyn? Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a close student of Schneerson who worked with him for over fourteen years, is careful in his response: "You see, this is not up to my opinion here. This isn't a popularity contest. What we humans can do is look at the criteria. Does a certain individual fit those criteria that tell us God is choosing that person?" For all messianic hopefuls, the criteria are laid out in various Jewish scriptures. Perhaps the three most significant of these, as established by the Jewish prophets, are that he will come from the House of David, rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and gather all of the exiles back to Israel.

Rabbi Schneerson never announced himself to be the Messiah nor did he seek the title in any active way. Yet for the last several years of his life, a culture grew up around him convinced that this great rabbi was indeed the prophesied one—a culture of belief and speculation that he never unequivocally dispelled. His death in 1994 would seem to have put the issue to rest once and for all, given that at least two of the major prophecies concerning the Messiah remained rather conspicuously unfulfilled. But when it comes to charismatic spiritual leaders, death often seems to enlarge rather than diminish their mythological standing in the eyes of followers, and Schneerson's death has provided little deterrence to those who see in his deeds the works of the prophesied king from the House of David and the promise of the messianic kingdom he will bring. They point to the fact that resurrection is hardly an unheard-of concept in the Jewish tradition, and there are those who believe that Schneerson may still be planning a return engagement to this world. There are even rumors that a camera sits watching over his grave, ready to record the expected event. "He's not with us anymore," says Rabbi Jacobson. "But in Judaism, there is a belief in resurrection." Jacobson is a little more circumspect about the rabbi's status: "That doesn't mean it's easy to believe. Trust me, I don't find it easy to believe that the dead will rise, but I do believe in spiritual energy, that saints can change the world. At minimum, he definitely set in motion a chain reaction that is a major contributor to the new age. Rabbi Schneerson is secondary to the fact that the world is ready."

This passionate expectation of an imminent golden age is characteristic of millennial movements such as the one Schneerson inspired. And if this expectation is unfulfilled, explains Dr. Landes, then you have to come to terms with disappointment. "You can't start out with an announcement of the imminence of the kingdom without getting disappointed. And there is no more exquisite or painful description of disappointment than in the response of the apostles to the crucifixion. That is sort of the prototype model. The most important way that that disappointment is handled is the Second Coming." This is especially true of Islam and Christianity, Landes feels, but not as common to the Jewish tradition, a tradition that has over the centuries seen many would-be messiahs come and go—acknowledged mistakes in the messianic drama. That is what makes the talk of Schneerson's resurrection so unusual, he says. "In some of Schneerson's disciples who are talking about him sitting next to God in heaven and that he's coming back, you are beginning to have a group of people who sound more and more like Christians."

Ironically enough, it was this disappointment—the fact that the messianic age has not yet arrived—that Rabbi Schneerson himself was addressing in one of the last public talks given a few months before he fell sick and eventually died. "How is it that the Moshiach [Messiah] has still not come?" the rabbi asked his audience. "Why is our world still a place in which evil and suffering prevail? Why is it acceptable that redemption should not come tonight, nor tomorrow, nor the day after? You must do all that you can to bring our righteous redeemer, immediately! . . . It is up to each and every one of you to bring the ultimate redemption with your actions. It is in your hands to bring about the harmonious, perfect world of Moshiach."

A WORLDCENTRIC MESSIAH

I will tell you, Sariputta;
Listen to my speech.
In this auspicious aeon
Three leaders there have been:
Kakusandha, Konagamana,
and the leader Kassapa too.
I am now the perfect Buddha;
and there will be Maitreya too
before this same auspicious aeon
runs to the end of its years.

The Buddha, Anagata-Vamsa

Amidst the strong passions, revelations, and inspirations of world teachers and coming saviors, Buddhism has registered a little lower on the overall messianic Richter scale. Perhaps it is because the tradition seems to clearly put the arrival date of the future Buddha, Maitreya, far in the future. Or perhaps it is because the ecstatic revelatory passion that might lead individuals to declare their own messianic potential tends to be discouraged in this more sober-minded religion. Whatever the case, one has to search hard to find in Buddhism the same intensity of expectation that has caused so many around the world to see their own religious impulses through messianic and apocalyptic eyes. However, when it comes to the name "Maitreya," it's a different story altogether. Indeed, somewhere along the line, the name Maitreya slipped away from the Buddhist fold, hopped a train to the West, and went off cavorting with all kinds of rogue messianic movements, most notably Theosophy and the New Age.

"I've been using Maitreya as the name for the World Teacher," says Wayne Peterson, a former diplomat with the U.S. State Department. "It's a name, of course, that has been known to Buddhists simply because they always knew that in the future, one would come who would be called Maitreya Buddha." Peterson is one of the most vocal supporters of what we might call the Maitreya conspiracy—the idea, originally put forward by author Benjamin Creme, that the coming World Teacher, the fulfillment of every religious tradition's highest hope for humanity's future, is now working behind the scenes from a base in London. Slowly seeding the world consciousness with his ideas and quietly contacting important political, economic, and religious leaders, he is methodically preparing us all for an eventual public coming-out party the likes of which this world has never seen. "I certainly believe that Maitreya is the Kalki Avatar, now that we're at the end of the Kali Yuga period," Peterson explains. "Many people also call Maitreya the Christ, but it would be best for people to see Maitreya as really a universal figure or a world teacher who is not here for any specific religion or spiritual movement but who will show all humanity another way to live."

This world teacher, this Maitreya, as Benjamin Creme and Wayne Peterson understand him, may have the unique distinction of being the first truly global messiah in history. Or perhaps, we should more accurately say, the descendant of the first global messiah in history. The first, arguably, was born in the late nineteenth century in the esoteric doctrines and astral planes of the Theosophical Society. In those days, the renowned social activist Annie Besant was president of this fledgling but quite popular religious movement founded by Russian prophetess Madame Blavatsky, and she felt strongly that the world was poised for the coming of a new kind of savior—a world teacher who would ignite a global religious revival, a universal messiah who would bring a universal teaching for humanity. Besant, along with her colleague Charles Leadbeater, began a search for a "vehicle" who could bring this new and improved cross-cultural, interfaith messianic figure they named Maitreya into the world. Their search culminated on the west coast of India in 1909, when Leadbeater noticed a young boy playing on the beach who, as he would later put it to friends, had an extraordinary aura around him that contained no selfishness. The boy was J. Krishnamurti and the rest is modern history. Krishnamurti, under the initial guidance of Besant and Leadbeater, grew to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers of the twentieth century—but not in the way that his mentors had foreseen. Indeed, at the age of thirty, Krishnamurti rejected, once and for all, the messianic mission appointed to him, leaving the door open for others to pick up the pieces of the dream of Maitreya and carry it forward. Benjamin Creme, inspired by the esoteric doctrines of Theosophy, did just that, suddenly proclaiming in 1982 that the new Christ had reappeared in the world and was living not in the high Himalayas or in the Old City of Jerusalem but rather incognito amidst the Asian community of London.

THE HIERARCHY OF MASTERS

"And round about the throne were four and twenty seats:
and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders
sitting, clothed in white raiment;
and they had on their heads crowns of gold."

Revelation 4:4

Maitreya is his personal name. As mine is Benjamin, his is Maitreya." When you speak to Benjamin Creme, you have to get used to talking about the coming World Teacher, the prophesied Messiah, as if you were speaking about John Q. Public who lives down the street. It is one of the many likable qualities of Mr. Creme, a longtime student of the work and philosophy of Alice Bailey. If Bailey and Besant were theosophical prophets heralding the coming of Maitreya into this world, then Creme sees himself as a sort of John the Baptist, enthusiastically announcing the imminent appearance of the World Teacher, wherever and whenever he is able to.

"Maitreya is the head and leader of the group of advanced men we call the spiritual hierarchy of our planet, or the esoteric group of masters of wisdom who oversee affairs on earth. For thousands of years," Creme explains, "these masters have lived, for the most part, in the mountain and desert areas of the world—in the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies, the Cascades, the Urals, the Gobi Desert." In 1945, at the end of the war, Maitreya announced his intention to return to the world, and this time not alone but with a group of these masters.

The flesh-and-blood masters originally spoken of in Theosophical circles have, in the hands of modern interpreters, sort of morphed into what are often called ascended masters, with a great number of psychics, channelers, and all sorts of unusual folk claiming to be mediums for their messages to the world. If all of this sounds as if we took a left turn into some New Age alternate reality a few paragraphs back, it's good to remember that traditional religions are also filled with just these sorts of myths—the Communion of Saints, the Great White Brotherhood, the Hierarchy of Angels—and that Bailey, Besant, and Blavatsky were speaking about these masters long before channels, walk-ins, crystals, and Shirley MacLaine were even a thought in the Aquarian mind.

Despite these strange trappings and his unconventional entourage, if you're looking for a world teacher with global reach and a comprehensive vision, few can compare to Creme's as yet unseen world savior. No ivory tower ascetic saint is this messiah, we are told. Deeply concerned about the state of the world, politically and economically astute, extraordinarily well-versed in esoteric philosophy, and of course, spiritually without peer—this is a messiah envisioned with an eye toward modernity. His global outlook also underscores a crucial point—the sheer potential for his message to be heard in today's interconnected world. This is not lost on the publicity-savvy Creme, who has envisioned quite a scenario for Maitreya's coming-out party. He calls it the "day of declaration." "The day of declaration will be unlike any that the world has ever seen," Creme explains, "because he will come by demand and appear on the television networks of the world. And we will all know when to tune in, in the different countries, and we will all see his face simultaneously on the television. And this time, he will announce that he is Maitreya. But he won't actually speak. He will come into telepathic rapport with the whole of humanity simultaneously. Each of us will hear his words in our own language, whatever that happens to be. And this is a repetition on a world scale of the true happenings of Pentecost, two thousand years ago, and also a pre-vision of the future ability of humanity to speak telepathically at will over any distance."

If Maitreya sees telepathy as part of our twenty-first-century future, then what about spirituality? What would the alleged incarnation of the Messiah, the Buddha, the Christ, the Kalki, and the Mahdi have to say about spirituality in the twenty-first century? Speaking to me last winter, Creme paused for a moment and posed the question to Maitreya . . . telepathically. "What today is possible for the gurus, the yogis, those who sit in contemplation up in the mountains, abstracted from life—this awareness that they are seeking will become possible for everybody." Creme's voice sounded roughly the same, apparently just passing along Maitreya's thoughts on the matter. "Everyone will grow more and more into the expression of the faculties of divinity. And this will lead to a complete transformation of our lives. Life will deepen. War will become a thing of the past. And the key to it all is the simple understanding that we are brothers and sisters of one humanity. This means that the resources of the world, the food, the energy, the science, must be redistributed more equitably. And when we begin to do that, we create the right circumstances for the demonstration of the divinity in each and every one of us."

A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

"When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted. . . . It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. . . . After he died, the oracle prophesied his return, and that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people. That is why there are those of us who have spent our entire lives searching the Matrix, looking for him. . . . I believe that search is over."

Morpheus Speaking to Neo in the Film The Matrix

Just as the messianic myths of humanity are helping to shape the emerging contours of twenty-first-century culture, so is our modern interconnected society influencing in turn this most traditional element of our religious heritage. Perhaps at no point was this clearer to me than when I came across an article on the Eastern Lightning sect in Mongolia titled, "Jesus Is Back and She's Chinese." Now that headline is revelatory in more ways than one. Indeed, at what other point in history would it have been possible to have a headline quite the same? We live in a world where two of the most vocal and popular claimants for the mantle of the Second Coming of Christ live not in the Bible Belt of the American South or in any ancient stronghold of Christianity but rather in southern Siberia and in an unknown province of China. Today, we have American gurus from Long Island naming themselves after the Kalki Avatar of Hinduism, Englishmen proclaiming the arrival of Lord Maitreya in North London, and French-American New Age teachers from California making statements such as this one: "I have chosen to reveal Myself to the world. Let it be heralded among all creation and throughout the annals of time that I have come. As the one Jews have long awaited as the Messiah; Christians, as the Second Coming; Buddhists, as the Maitreya—all these am I and by all other names of all other prophecies, henceforth known as Bhagavan Sri Pranananda, clothed in humble, earthly disguise as Louix Dor Dempriey." Whatever the veracity of Mr. Dempriey's claim, one thing is clear: the messianic age has gone global, and today's messiah is no longer constrained by the boundaries of tradition and culture.

So what's the next big thing on the messianic horizon? Christian monk and mystic Brother Wayne Teasdale offered a clue in an interview last January. A passionate activist who is deeply concerned about the potential of human activity to create an ecological apocalypse, Teasdale caught me off guard when he suggested that messianic salvation might ultimately come by the way of . . . extraterrestrial intervention. Yes, believe it or not, the UFO hypothesis has seeped into current discourse regarding all sorts of end times scenarios, some of which place our alleged ET visitors in the role of messianic saviors. After all, didn't the Bible say that the Son of God would "descend from the clouds" when he returned? Benjamin Creme actually started out in this field, spending many years of his life, as he puts it, "working with the UFOs" before he began his involvement with Maitreya. Most of these scenarios tend toward contact of a benevolent sort but there are also those who see something a little more nefarious in the possibilities. I remember an episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation where an alien shows up on a planet and uses advanced technology to pretend to be a mythological figure from the planet's religious culture. Easily convincing the population that she is the "second coming" or their planet's equivalent, this alien is on the verge of controlling the entire population through her charade when Picard, Data, and the rest of the Star Trek posse come to the rescue and stop this extraterrestrial pretender to the messianic mantle. Should we be on the lookout for something similar? For example, what if our Times Square messiah was actually coming to you live not from London but straight from the dark side of the moon, with plans for planetary domination? How would you know the difference? Let's play the scenario out a little further. How hard would it really be for some clever extraterrestrial, with highly advanced technology, to convince Pat Robertson and his millions of fellow believers that he or she or it was just off the bus from heaven ready to rule in the new age?

As fascinating as it can be to speculate about such scenarios, there are some for whom these questions take on a more urgent tone. For example, Stephen Greer, whose National Press Club event on the subject of UFOs made network news a couple of years ago, takes a darker but no less bizarre view of what we might call "extraterrestrial eschatology." He fears that there are those in our military "who share a certain bizarre eschatological bent: a dark view of the future, featuring an extraterrestrial Armageddon—or at least the threat of it." Such a theme, he maintains, "supports retrograde and fanatical religious causes, as well as deeply covert military-industrial plans to expand the arms race into space."

While most of this theorizing starts on the fringe and quickly goes much further out into the vast netherworlds of endless internet conspiracy, it is noteworthy that some respected individuals are actually considering these kinds of hypotheses. And for those of you who do think that all of this sounds quite mad, I would only ask if you've read the Book of Revelation lately. Indeed, from a certain point of view these propositions are hardly more speculative, wild, and unsupported than the idea that the Son of God, who was crucified and resurrected, will come again in human form, fight the antichrist beast that will rise from the ocean, walk upon the earth, and save us all from a divinely induced apocalypse. In the end, perhaps it all comes down to the same question the Hebrews were no doubt asking themselves thousands of years ago as the first predictions filtered through their local culture, the first wild speculations that their future might bring the coming of a great messiah, and a disastrous apocalypse. How do we tell, they must have asked themselves, who is the prophet and who is just plain crazy? Now it's thousands of years into the future, and we're still asking ourselves the same question. Yeats quote on p.130 from the poem "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats, appearing in The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Funneran, Ed., (Scribner, 2nd Revision ed., September 19, 1996), p.140; Reagan quote p.134 excerpted from Paul Boyer's When Time Shall Be No More: Prophesy Belief in Modern American Culture (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1992), p.142; Hal Lindsey quote on p. 135 from the film (on videotape) The Late Great Planet Earth (Western Front Ltd, Palos Verdes, CA, 1976); Edgar Cayce quote on p.136, from Reading #3976-15, given on January 19, 1934 (www.geocities.com/Athens/5692/earth.htm, 2003); Bob Dylan quote on p. 137 from "When He Returns," by Bob Dylan, from the album Slow Train Coming (Columbia Records, 1979); Alice Bailey quote on p.13 from Alice Bailey's The Externalization of the Hierarchy, Section III: Forces Behind the Evolutionary Process, May 1941 (beaksund.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk-/ externalization/exte1121.html, 2003); Maimonides quote on p.140 from Mishneh Torah; Schneerson quote p.142 from Simon Jacobson, Toward a Meaningful Life: The Wisdom of the Sages (William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), p. 295; Buddha quote on p.142 from Anagata-Vamsa, (www.bci.org/prophecy-fulfilled/founders.htm, 2003); Krishnamurti letter quote p. 143 from Pupul Jayakar, Krishnamurti: A Biography (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1986), p. 37; Jimmy Carter quote p.145 from Jimmy Carter, "Just War - or a Just War?" New York Times Op-Ed, March 9, 2003; Matrix quote on p.146 from the film, Matrix (Warner Bros., 1999); Greer quote p.147 from www.disclosureproject.org/disclosureserves.html, 2003; "Jesus Christ" quote on page 148 from Steve Baxter as Jesus Christ in the film, The Second Coming (Red Production Company, 1999).