The Mirror: A Brief History of Civilization, Nature of Reality and Purpose of Existence

By James Chapel

Ever wondered: What am I, really? ... What am I becoming? ... or, Why on Earth am I even here? Am I still capable of original thought, or am I starting to just react to endless 411 inputted from the data sphere? Am I really nothing more than a dust mote, aimlessly adrift on a limitless cosmic sea, or am I a totally unique creation with limitless conscious potential? What if we are all about ready to find out, to be tested, on the next evolutionary shift in human consciousness? What if there is an ultimate test we will all be required to take and what if that test is to determine one's eternal life or eternal death? Read James Chapel's, The Mirror and discover where your destiny lies when you must decide which side of the fence to jump to...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781640829626

Book preview

Acknowledgement

However, become doers of the word

and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves

with false reasoning. For if anyone is a hearer

of the word and not a doer, this one is like a man

looking at his own face in the mirror. For he looks

at himself and goes away and immediately forgets

what sort of person he is.

James 1:22–24 New World Translation

Introduction

Why—the word the Prisoner fed into the Village computer, which caused it to whirl, sputter, smoke, and finally shut down, having been asked a question it could not answer. Why—the word most often asked by children of their parents, ever curious to know why something is supposed to be so. This word, this eternal question mark, is the symbol that has characterized my walk through life and—I sometimes fancy—will be the only symbol to appear on my tombstone.

The following treatise was originally intended to be a brief afterword to a last manuscript. As it turns out—with life being a constantly evolving learning lesson—the more questions I asked, the more answers I found, resulting in an afterword running longer than intended and so seemed to call for a separate title.

When my wife passed away, I was left adrift, never realizing until then how much I depended on her—her love, her wisdom, her steadfast support. I became an empty shell, chained to this earth, reaching out to the one who was ever beyond reach. When I went to sleep at night, I didn’t know if I would wake the following morning—rather hoping I would not. But finding myself to still be in the land of the living, I did ask myself if there was any real reason or purpose for me to continue to exist.

Once concluding Death intended to stay its hand, I decided maybe I should try to find the reason why I was being permitted to live a little longer. So I boxed up all the pleasant memories, and painful reminders, and hit the road to an uncertain future. On that road, the Fates led me straight to the Siege Perilous.

The concept of the Siege Perilous comes from Arthurian legend. It is the place where only the bravest, most stalwart errant knight ventures to prove his mettle to the court and to himself, and where the Holy Grail of truth is purported to be found. It’s the Green Chapel where the Green Knight awaits you to see if you have the courage to accept his challenge. He tests you with questions. If you answer truthfully, he next asks a more difficult question. If you answer untruthfully, deceptively, or evasively, the Green Knight will, forthwith, separate your head from your shoulders. Such is reality. It pulls no punches, and when push comes to shove, it plays for keeps.

By no means was an errant knight, but considered myself nothing more than a wraith on the wind. I was all but dead inside, hiding a diminished spirit behind a facade of life. But when faced with the door, on its lintel the words, Enter at Your Peril, I knew what the Siege was: the desolate place of the mind, inhabited by the demonic and angelic realm where I would be faced with the stark truth of my being. Afraid, yes—not for my life, since I was more than half dead already, but afraid for my soul, which, perhaps, I didn’t deserve to retain, having failed to give due respect to the one I valued beyond all else.

If I turned and fled from the chapel, I knew what the future would hold. Each time I looked in the mirror, I’d see a coward looking back. And cowardice is its own punishment. So with nothing to lose that I didn’t deserve to keep, I decided, Ah, what the hell, and stepped inside.

Guided only by my conscience, I spent a dozen years trapped and wandering the many twisting mazes and corridors in this netherworld of the mind. Having emerged on the other side, I discovered what I believe to be the purpose for not only my continuing existence but the ultimate purpose for mankind’s existence and the reason we are all here at this time in the planet’s evolution.

As is the dual nature of reality, the conclusions I was forced to draw are both frightening as well as hopeful at the same time. Consequently, I fully expect to be pilloried by the public, the press, and most assuredly, by the pulpit for what I have herein writ. Be that as it may—if but a single individual derives some benefit from my experiences, then I will have happily fulfilled my duty to conscience.

My truth and yours are to be found in the mirror.

The Author

December 2016

Search for the Universal Truths

What is a universal truth? I define a universal truth as an axiom that can be applied and will explain, without exception, any given concept.

Impossible! say you. The inexplicable, that which is beyond a person’s capacity to understand, that cannot be scientifically proven, cannot under every circumstance be accepted as a universal truth.

I beg to differ. Granted, from here on, what I purport to be true is what I have come to believe … based on what makes sense (what would be considered acceptable in a court of law), does it work in application (productive or counterproductive), or is it something that simply is unto itself.

Proving a universal truth is a challenge since no two individuals perceive reality in exactly the same way. There are as many different perceptions as there are people on the planet. So I encourage the reader to have a difference of opinion from my own, but in having such differences, the reader will find themselves having to support that difference in light of does it make sense, does it work, or is it accepted to be a fact.

Finding such a truth is like being handed a thousand-piece puzzle—not in the box it came in, but in a ziplock bag, with the hope none of the pieces are missing. (I’ve always enjoyed solving puzzles—a couple of my favorite mentors being Lara and Sherlock. I soak up media like a sponge and have always been a voracious reader but have never been able to shake that childlike tendency to demand a self-satisfied explanation for why something is supposed to be so. I’ve always had that unfortunate trait of not accepting a questionable concept as being a given unless I can prove it).

As it has always been, but especially in today’s information age, determining the truth of any given subject can be a challenge since (to interpolate the lyrics from an old Who tune, You only know what we tell you … You only see what we show you) one must correlate all available data, separate the wheat from the chaff, to hope to discover the underlying meaning of the bigger picture.

In the quest to uncover these truths, I have read, researched, and had to consider the various merits of prominent theologians, philosophers, and spiritualists in their endeavors to express their unique views as to the deeper meaning and purpose of humanity’s existence.

To name a few, I’ve tried to get through the works of Kant, Spinoza, and Emerson and got a sense of what they were trying to convey but were unable to do so except, perhaps, to a mere handful of like classically educated peers. I got the sense that these gentlemen felt the need to showcase their relative degree of acumen for egotistical reasons to impress themselves—especially in Waldo’s case, trying to appear profound by using deliberate obfuscation. So I have to ask, what use is trying to expound a universal truth if no one can understand it? It’s a load bollocks and absolute waste of one’s valuable time!Writers like Maslow, Reich, and Jung (who, if I’m not mistaken, originated the term synchronicity as being meaningful coincidence) came far closer to explaining universal truths simply because they had the self-restraint to not feel the need to display their acumen when trying to convey to humanity certain truths. (I cannot include Freud, the so-called father of modern psychology, in the above group, believing him to have been a deeply disturbed individual—since I can say with certitude that, In all cases, a banana is still a banana, Anna.) The only mystic/philosopher/teacher I have found to adequately explain the universal truths is Hermes Trismegistus—also known as the Egyptian god, Thoth of ancient lore. The maxims he expounded, I use on a daily basis to help me negotiate my path through life (and how they managed to survive after thousands of years must be something of a miracle). I have a complete list of those maxims, but the ones I will be using in this treatise are as follows:

All exists in the One (everything is a part of everything else).

Gender (male/female, right/left brain hemispheres composing humans).

Frequency (everything vibrates at its own specific rate).

As above, so below (everything has been planned out in advance).

Cause and Effect (every effect has a root cause).

(In other words, everything happens not by chance but for a specific reason. When trying to explain the seemingly inexplicable, one asks who or what benefits the most from the effect. In criminology, it’s called motive. By applying the principle of Occam’s Razor, the simplest answer usually being the correct one, you arrive at the most likely originator of the cause).

* * *

Case in point—some time ago, someone posed the question: Were it not for 9-11, would the Patriot Act ever have passed? Having that question put to me, I began to sympathize with the Village computer, programmed as we all are to not believe that which we have been trained to think of as being something inconceivable. I think it reasonable to assume the Patriot Act never would have passed but not for the tragedy—much less unread and passed virtually unanimously in a moment of emotional fervor. Therefore, would it then be reasonable to assume that emotional excess is counterproductive to reason? Once heard a US congressman state, The American public is being played like a violin. In the above instance, the US Congress can also be included in that statement.

* * *

Alas, and I presume, Hermes’s other writings as to the Mysteries were lost in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria—the repository of all the ancient teachings—all the ageless wisdom reduced to ash by, what I glean from history, a fervently rabid mob of early Christian sectarians, mad monotheists, bent on destroying any knowledge that might controvert their myopic belief in their god.

Zealotry—Origins

A zealot can be defined as one who possesses an unyielding mind-set—especially a religious one—that they are absolutely right in their belief and that no difference of opinion will be tolerated. If one were to even have the temerity to try to open an avenue of reasoned discourse with a true fanatic, some form of violence would most likely result. This is the reason zealots scare the bejeesus out of me. The first impulse to having their fervent belief system questioned is not to think but to react.

Since time immemorial, humankind has been afflicted with one form or another of zealotry, even up to the present day—whether it be radical Islamic jihad or fundamentalist Christianity. Both faiths hold the firm belief that in order to pave the way for the return of their Messiah, a last, great worldwide battle must be waged and won. Since this is their ultimate goal—total eradication of the unbeliever (those of a different viewpoint)—would it be reasonable to assume that in a so-called civilized world, zealotry is a form of insanity?

So where did zealotry come from? And why does it still exist? Slings and arrows, spears and swords, or a dagger thrust in a back alley is one thing; the proliferation of weapons of mass (global) destruction is something else.

Since religious zealotry is the root cause of all forms zealotry, I will henceforth confine my prognostications to Western and Middle Eastern religious belief systems and how they affect the ongoing thought process (concerning the Eastern religions—with their original tenets, myths, and legends; all the world’s major religions are basically alike in their histories and in the message they wish to convey: that of finding the path to a higher state of being).

Bible skeptics are confident in dismissing the content of the Old Testament as being nothing more than a fable, based on its contention God created the heavens, earth, and all the creatures on the planet in six days; whereas the geologic record indicates the planet is far older. That sort of stultified conclusion is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At the very least, we can credit the Bible editors with engaging in poetic license as well as with the understanding that time perspective is relative—whether viewed from man’s linear time perspective or God’s universal reference.

In the spirit of reconciliation between Bible skeptics and Bible thumpers—it, for all intent and purpose, would be reasonable to state that the world was created a mere six thousand years ago since our record of civilization only goes back that far? To dispute the point further is counterproductive, a waste of time, and a further example of pointless zealotry.

The fossil record seems to indicate that what we know as homo erectus/sapiens have continually inhabited the planet for anywhere from fifty thousand to two hundred thousand years. Due to the many variegated extinction events that periodically strike the earth, all record of past civilizations are virtually nonexistent. The last such catastrophic event was the Great Flood, which flushed away all knowledge of our antecedents, leaving us with only legends. But that memory, I believe, is embedded in the fabric of our DNA, imprinted on our souls as it were. The legend of the flood is told in all of the world’s major religions. So where in this present cycle does our current history begin?

Sumeria. In this present cycle of civilization, humankind’s recorded history only goes back about six thousand years. Sumer seemed to come into full flower virtually overnight. From nomadic hunter-gatherers, humans were suddenly domesticated—becoming farmers, builders of great cities, organized soldiery, and devout worshipers of deities.

Zecharia Sitchin is the preeminent historian and translator of the Sumerian tablets—a permanent and meticulously detailed record of present humanity’s origins. His book series, the Earth Chronicles, is a precise and definitive history of where earth’s present population came from and explains what constitutes us to this day.

These records state that our present human species was created by an interplanetary race known as the Annunaki—space travelers who came to this planet to mine its resources, primarily gold. These extraterrestrial miners soon discovered that the back-breaking work was not at all to their liking. Technologically advanced, and with the wherewithal to do so, they elected to try an experiment: to see if they could engineer a worker race from the indigenous protohumans found scratching about the surface for their survival. First attempts were a hybrid mix of animal/human, but the monstrous results proved intractable. Strong, yes, but far too savage to be instructed and so had to be destroyed. Then one came up with the bright idea of splicing human DNA with that of the Annunaki themselves. Success! A being was created just intelligent enough to understand instruction and able to do the work required.

(It’s been stated that, the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp. But is such a scenario that farfetched, when this is the current state of our civilization? After all, our scientific community is now able to genetically engineer virtually anything imaginable. And are we not still mining the planet’s resources for our overlords?) So early humans got a major upgrade. We were given and taught how to use tools to build the temples of our new gods and hovels for ourselves to shelter us from the elements. We were given