This section covers the widespread evidence that we are approaching a cusp of infinite change, termed by some the Singularity, in 2012. Discusses accelerating change, the Mayan calendar, the Vedic yuga system, the cycles of the chakras within the yugas, transitions between yugas and chakras, pralayas, the worldwide effects of the battle of Kuruksetra, and much more.

 

 

Transcription

Babaji: ...and I've made several CDs of spiritual music, and that engages my talent, and my ability, and something I enjoy in a spiritual process. So we can all do that; no matter what our thing is, we can find a way to link it with a spiritual purpose. Then it becomes karma-yoga; whereas normally it would produce karma that would bind us to the material world, when we use it in a spiritual process it becomes liberating. The very same thing; it's just like in homeopathy, you take the same thing that would cause a medical condition and use it in a medicinal way, and it clears that condition up.

So that's what we're talking about; we're talking about using the very material things that can act as a cause of bondage; they become a cause of freedom when they're applied in the proper way. So it's really not about the thing; like some people are like, totally against drugs, or totally against whatever, on some religious principle. But actually, those things, if they're engaged in the right way, with the proper set and setting, can also act as helpers. Like the ceremonies in the Andes in South America, the ayahuasca and stuff like that; they're always done in a sacred setting. They're never done like in a party mode. The thing that makes those things dangerous is when they're separated from the context of sacredness. But that's what makes anything dangerous; as soon as we separate it from its origin, as soon as we separate it from the spiritual context, then it becomes a cause of material consciousness.

Response: I think that's what took me the longest with this, is that I was trying to understand it logically, trying to put into words what I was doing and what I was feeling, but I don't believe it should be; it should be something you feel, and not necessarily have to understand.

Babaji: Well, we can understand it, but the logic is different. It's not material logic; it's spiritual logic. So when we understand how spirit works, then it's quite logical; it's just transcendentally logical. We were talking last night about Aristotelian logic; that's the logic we use in most material thoughts. Aristotelian logic means [that] something's either true or false; it's either right or wrong; it's either good or bad; it's either lawful or unlawful. It's either spiritual or material. But in transcendental logic, something can be both of those at the same time; or it can be something in between. Or it can be another value that doesn't have anything to do with those polarities.

Spiritual thought requires a more advanced form of logic that's technically called non-Aristotelian logic. When we learn non-Aristotelian logic--which is required for things like Quantum Mechanics, so you can't say it's not scientific; it's very scientific, but it just doesn't observe the limitations of what we know about material objects. For example, we know that two material objects can't penetrate one another. But that's not true in non-Aristotelian logic. In non-Aristotelian logic, for example, the soul and the body can be present in one place at the same time, and there's no contradiction. Even though they're different things, they interpenetrate one another, because they have different nature.

So like that, we need to understand the soul with a new kind of logic. Well, it's not actually new; it's very, very old, but in our culture it's been suppressed, and [so] we don't know [it]. But it's all very logical; it just takes awhile to understand how the logic of spirit works. Then we can think about it, we can reason about it and arrive at reliable results; whereas if we try to think about spirit with material logic, we'll always get it wrong. That's what material religion does; it tries to apply material logic to spiritual subjects, and as a result it comes up with crazy answers, nonsensical.

So now I would like to talk about 2012. Oh, I forgot to look for those graphics. Well, I'm just going to draw them on the board; what the heck, it's more fun to draw anyway.

So like we talked about before, time means change. Everything that's in time is changing; like every minute our bodies are getting older. Things come into existence, and they live for a certain length of time, and then they disappear. Everything [material] is going through changes. In fact, if something changes, we can say it's definitely material. Things that go through transformations, you know, like the seasons, or like these bushes; they grow up, they make so many leaves, then the leaves fall off and they go into the ground, and over the wintertime they decompose, and in the spring, they're like, soil. These are transformations; it's the same matter, the same atoms, the same substance, yet it's going through transformations of form. That's typical of material things.

But what about those transformations? Well, some of the things we see is that they occur in cycles, and these cycles repeat over and over and over again. Another thing that we see is that there's a pattern to the changes; they occur in a certain order. There's a structure to them; and if we know that structure, we can determine what changes are going to happen next. That's what science is supposed to be about; the kind of science we have now is based on observation. We take a look at the patterns, we observe them, we analyze them, and then we try to predict what's going to happen next; that's called a theory. And if we get our theory right, it really does predict what's going to happen next; and then we say "OK, we accept that theory; that's scientific." But if the theory doesn't predict accurately, then it means we got something wrong, and we have to try again.

So basically, when we look at time... Before we looked at time in terms of dimensions; now I'd like to look at time in terms of patterns. The basic pattern is... remember? Does anybody remember what the basic pattern of time is?

Response: It moves one way?

Babaji: Yeah, it moves one way, but what are the seven stages it goes through?

Response: Birth...

Babaji: What comes before birth?

Response: Gestation, or conception.

Babaji: Conception, gestation, birth; then what?

Response: Adolescence?

Babaji: Well, what happens between birth and adolescence? Growth! Then what?

Response: Deterioration?

Babaji: No, there's another stage: work or reproduction; the production of byproducts. Then?

Response: Deterioration.

Babaji: Deterioration and finally death. So these seven stages are visible in every material thing, every material body and every material object. That's one kind of pattern. Another kind of pattern is there in cycles, like the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall--always going around in a pattern like that. And then there are patterns within the patterns, and so on.

So these cycles produce typical patterns, and one of those patterns is called a logarithmic curve. The logarithmic curve looks like this [draws it on whiteboard]. This would be the zero point [indicates the origin]; and this would be infinity [indicates the top of the abscissa].

A logarithmic curve is actually the sum of many other curves. Mathematically speaking, it's a bunch of quantum leaps. The first quantum leaps are at a low energy level, so they're very small. But as the quantum leaps increase in energy, they become higher; each leap is higher and higher, and the final leap just goes right off the scale. So each of these [quantum leaps] is a combination of other curves that are going on beneath it, and they're coming faster and faster and adding up into more and more change. And this is the kind of pattern that we have today.

I think I am going to get some of these slides up, because this is really hard to explain just by drawing.

Randy: Do you want a DLP projector?

Babaji: Oh, that's right, we didn't get the projector out, did we? That's a good idea. [break while setting up the projector]

[Here are some] charts that I have that show the [logarithmically] increasing rate of change in the world today. And basically, this one gives the history of mass use of inventions. I'm not exactly sure how they have figured... Oh I know what it is; this [vertical scale] is the fraction of [the population of] human beings, I think in the United States, that are using a particular invention at its inception. When electricity was first introduced, and telephones were first introduced, there were basically very few people using them in the beginning. Now, of course, everybody's using them; but when they were first introduced, [few people were adopting the technology].

Oh, I know what he's saying here; this is the diameter of the technology in use that that particular time. So the telephone and electricity involved the use of really big components. Then radio, television, the PC, the mobile phone and finally the Internet, they use progressively smaller and smaller and smaller components. Now to get on the Internet, it just takes one tiny little chip, a modem chip, and you're online. But when these technologies were first introduced, they were pretty clunky, they were very gross, they used big pieces of stuff. And not only that, the number of people who adopted them in the beginning was very small. I remember when we got our first TV, in 1954 or something like that, and we were the only house on the block that had a TV for a long time; then gradually other people got one. And when the first PC came out, only geeks had a PC; now everybody has a PC or a laptop, or something. And then mobile phones; oh my God, you don't exist if you don't have a mobile phone now! Right? Or a page on [the website] MySpace[.com].

So as these new inventions have come out, people adopted them faster and faster. It took a long time for everybody to get telephone or for everybody to get electricity; but once the Internet came out, within a decade everybody had Internet; or at least they had the possibility of getting on the Internet. Now let's go to the next slide.

This is about data transmission network speed. Now you notice, this scale [the y-axis] is not linear; this scale is 10¹ which is ten; 10² which is 100; ten thousand, a million, and so on. It goes by powers of ten; so the distance from one line to the next is ten times the distance to the previous one. So when we talk about, like Morse code back in 1840, they were getting like ten characters a second. [imitates Morse code] That was the fastest network they had then. But a digital T1 line, which came out in the 1950s, gives a million characters a second; or it did then, now it's even faster. Fiber optic, which came out about 1990, gives 10⁸, or a hundred million characters a second. And now we're dealing with other technologies, this is on the year 2000, and this line just keeps going up and up and up, faster and faster; and each advance gives more [increase in] information throughput than the one before. So what happens is, time is going along here linearly on the bottom scale [x-axis], and on the speed scale [y-axis], every time it advances, it's advancing faster and faster.

But still this line curves up; it's not a straight line, it keeps curving up. It's an exponential curve. Even on an exponential scale, you're getting an exponential curve; this is called a double-exponential curve. A double-exponential curve has a feature that it goes along very slow for a long time; before Morse code there was letters. People wrote letters, and then they gave them to the postman, and the postman walked the letter to the place where it was delivered. And then they had Pony Express; and this was considered a big improvement. And then trains, and finally, planes and so on. So this curve went along at a very low speed for a long time; and then suddenly it reached this point where technology got involved, and the rate of change began to take off, until we have now a double-exponential curve.

And that's the thing about a double-exponential curve, which is also called a hyperbola. It's an open-ended curve; for example comets, certain comets have this particular kind of curve as an orbit: the ones that come from outside the solar system. When they come by the sun, they pass by the sun only once; they never return. That's called a hyperbolic curve, or a double-exponential curve.

So basically what's happening here is that not only is the rate of change increasing, but the rate of change of the rate of change is [also] increasing. And not only that, the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change is increasing. That's a double-exponential curve. So the rate of change of the rate of change of the rate of change increasing means [that] things are changing really fast; and they're going to change faster and faster at an accelerated rate.

This is what we call a tipping point. Because we're living through it, it appears to have a curve. But when people look back on this [time] in the future, it'll appear to just hit a certain point, and then go straight up. Because we're living through this revolution of technology, there's [apparently] a slight curve to the line; otherwise, it would simply be a discontinuity. It's like one century ago there was practically no data transmission; and now all of a sudden, we have like unlimited bandwidth. In historical terms, a hundred years is not a long time. So to go from letter-writing and then to Morse code, to whatever terabyte networks we're going to have next year, is just like an instantaneous transition; it's like a digital quantum leap in historical terms.

So the amount of change that we're experiencing now is basically more than all the amount of change since history began. Let me give that to you explained another way: the rate of data transmission from the beginning of human civilization until the middle of the 1800s was basically constant; and then in the last 150 years, it has increased 100 million times. That's 10¹⁴? Make that 100 billion times; 100 billion times increase in just 150 years. That's basically like going from zero to infinity; it's digital. It's not analog; it just jumps! So this kind of change, or this rate of change, a factor of 100 billion in a very, very short time is more change than has happened in the previous 10,000 or 100,000 years.

That rate of change is very dislocating to our whole society. And I've got more graphs; actually I've got a whole folder full of them that show these kind of changes. Let me give you another example. There's a pretty-looking one: [the] decrease in size of mechanical devices.

In 1985, we're talking about diameter in millimeters; approximately one millimeter in diameter is the smallest machine part in 1985. But already by about 2000, they're down to one ten-thousandths of a millimeter, and decreasing fast. Pretty soon we're going to have nanomachines; we already have micromachines, like that device you're working on.

Randy: Well there's one in here; there's a micrometer device in this DLP projector. There are a million mirrors wiggling.

Babaji: A million mirrors wiggling to show us this picture? That's really cool. So that's a micromachine; and soon we'll have nanomachines that have features a thousand or ten thousand times smaller than that. So the rate of change in the size of the machines that we're able to create is also increasing, because you see, this is also a logarithmic scale; it goes from .1 to .01 to .001 [millimeter] and so on--powers of ten. And yet, the curve is curved; that means it is another double-exponential curve.

And you can look at almost any industry, any human endeavor, any area of pure research, and especially in the technology area, and you will see the same thing. Like I said, I have a whole folder full of these charts that show similar double-exponential curves in various areas. So what's going on? Let's look at another [graph.]

What is the anatomy of this level of change? What's happening is that there are a whole bunch of little changes making these big changes. This curve shows the adoption [cycle] of a particular technology. 'A' means, we've got a new capability that we didn't have before; and then that's rolled out into applications, and at 'B', we are able to integrate that new application or that new capability with existing applications. At that point, the rate of change begins to take off. 'C', at the top of the curve, means we've reached the ultimate potential or the limit of development of that technology; and at 'D', it means the use of the technology is declining, usually because we've found something new and better to replace it.

So what happens when you are looking at a particular technology--let's take data storage for example. The first wave might be, for example, filing cabinets. Then somebody came up with perforated paper in binders, and that enabled us to increase the density of our data storage. And then somebody came up with the phonograph, and then all of sudden we can store a lot of data on a little phonograph record. And then somebody else comes up with optical discs, and then somebody else comes up with a hard drive. Remember the first hard drives? They were the size of a refrigerator, and they held a whopping 10 Megabytes. Now 10 Megabytes will fit on a microscopic chip; you can't even hardly see it, it's about the size of a grain of dust.

So each successive technology drives the curve faster and faster; because of the integration factor, it integrates with the previous technologies and increases their efficiency. So every new generation of technological change drives the rate of change itself faster and faster; this cycle takes place in a shorter and shorter time span, and becomes more and more efficient because it builds on the existing infrastructure of other devices that are also going through the same technological change.

Like this projector technology he was talking about; it couldn't exist without so many other technologies like large-scale chip integration, nanofabrication, and so many other things, [ultraviolet] lithography and so on, that didn't exist ten years ago. So because those things are improving rapidly, then these other things based on it can improve rapidly, and it leverages the amount of change, increasing it faster and faster. So now this is happening all over the world in so many different areas that the rate of change in general in society is speeding up.

Now let me show you the TimeWave; and this is going to look real familiar, because guess what: it's a double-exponential curve.

The bottom scale here is time: all time; and this vertical scale is change. So basically this is telling the same story [as the other charts], even though it's got a little noise and stuff in it. But still, it's basically a double-exponential curve. This [y-axis] is an exponential scale; each line here is ten times the amount of change of the previous value. And this time axis here [the x-axis] is linear. So along the time axis we see that there are periods where there is relatively little change, or the rate of change remains constant, for a long time. Then we gradually come along until we reach a certain area here [indicating where the curve begins to rise], then things start to get really volatile; the rate of change itself is changing quite rapidly, and then finally the rate of change just takes off and goes right through the roof.

So where are we on this graph? Right here. [indicates a point just before the final rise to infinity] This is the year 2008. If we were to zoom in on this area right here, guess what we would see? Approximately the same picture. This little area, this little glitch right here, if we expand it out, it's like the same curve starting from about right here. Why? Because time is fractal. A fractal means, when you zoom into it, it looks exactly the same or similar [to the whole design]. The design, the curve, the whole thing looks pretty much just like what you would see at the large scale. Is everybody cool with that concept? I have a bunch of pictures I could show you to explain it, but if you're already...

Randy: Baba, could you expand a little bit on TimeWave Zero? Maybe some people don't know what that is.

Babaji: Ah, like how did we get this?

Randy: Yes; what's the data that you used to extrapolate that dimension?

Babaji: OK, this was developed by Terence McKenna, a research partner of mine who did a lot of research into the Vedic soma. And basically what he did was, it was based on the Mayan calendar, and it's also based on the I Ching. He took the I Ching and analyzed it as a calendar. [He wanted to see] what would happen. You know the I Ching is about change, right? And it's a series of 64 hexagrams, and each of these hexagrams has a certain significance, a certain meaning. And then it changes into the next one; so you can very easily calculate the degree of change that occurs between one hexagram and the next. So he did that, using a particular classical sequence of hexagrams called the King Wen Sequence.

So the King Wen system or the King Wen series of hexagrams involves all these changes, and he statistically analyzed the degree of change, or the amount of change between one hexagram and the next. And this is the curve he came up with; it's called the TimeWave. And like I said, it's fractal; you can zoom in on any particular detailed part of this curve, and it'll have approximately the same shape as the entire curve. [This detail view shows the last seven years before the Singularity.]

Question: Is this the theory of novelty?

Babaji: Yes, the theory of novelty.

Question: OK, and does this have anything to do with the Fibonacci Spiral?

Babaji: Well, there's some mathematical relationship between them [they are both fractal curves], but they're not exactly the same. But really, what you have here is another one of those double-exponential curves.

Randy: Is there a book about this, or something we can refer to , or...

Babaji: There's quite a few websites, and there are a couple of sites where you can download the software that generates this; that allows you to zoom in on it and examine specific areas, specific dates. And it's so amazing, the correlation between the places on this curve and specific dates, such as the French Revolution, the World Wars, or you know, different historical occurrences.

Randy: What should we look for, TimeWave Zero?

Babaji: TimeWave Zero, Terence McKenna, yeah.

Randy: Baba, one question. Can you apply this software to your personal astrology? Can you plug in data sets, personally, and analyze peaks, and...

Babaji: I suppose you could; it would take a lot of work, a lot of customizing. It's much easier to use the planetary periods which, in Vedic Astrology, serve the same purpose. We can go over that tomorrow; keep that in mind, OK? We'll look into it tomorrow when we go over Vedic Astrology.

So, everybody is clear on what the TimeWave is now? So the degree of change... Change is novelty; something new, something [that] never happened before, something we never saw before. That's the nature of change. So when change hits, it's always destabilizing. That's the nature, that's the meaning of change, right? It's nothing remaining the same. So when we have change it always makes us grow, because we have to deal with a situation or quality that we've never had to deal with before. That's the nature of change.

So when we have change, we're always surprised; novelty means a surprise: "Here's a novelty gift for you." Or something like that. And we also get the chance to look at the world in a new way, and to experience things in a new way that we never did before. So change is good, in the sense that it helps us grow. But too much change is like too much of a good thing; we don't have time to integrate it, we don't have the headspace to make sense of it, to deal with it, to understand how it fits in with everything else.

Change can overwhelm us; and this is what happens, this is what people try to do, for example, in strategy, when they make a military strategy or a competitive strategy for their business. They try to drive change so fast that the other guys can't keep up; or to drive it in novel direction that no one is prepared to deal with. This is strategy; this is how you win in certain competitive areas in life.

So what's going to happen when change goes so fast that it overcomes the ability of our systems to integrate? [long pause] Well the answer is, we don't know what's going to happen.

Question: What's your best guess?

Babaji: That is my best guess. [laughter] By definition, we can't know what's going to happen because it's going to be new; it never happened before. Novelty means it's unique, it's new, it never happened [before]. So whatever is going to happen, it's going to come out of left field; it's gong to be completely unexpected: unimaginable. Because the degree of change we're talking about... And if you look at those graphs [in my collection], I mean, sunspot cycles, weather changes, changes in the economy and the stock market, in government; I mean, look at all the rebellions in the world today. What's going on? It seems like every state wants to chop itself up into little pieces based on, along ethnic lines, and stuff like that.

There's all kinds of things going on [to show that change is accelerating] in every area of life; it just happens to be easier to trace out in the technology area because we have a lot of reliable data in that area. But the same thing [accelerating change] is happening all over the place. So, why?

Well, the Vedas say that time is cyclical; and time, in the Vedic system, is divided up into yugas. So actually, let's go back to the whiteboard... [break while closing the computer and projector, and setting up the whiteboard]

So the measure of time in the Vedic system is called a yuga. A yuga equals 432,000 years. So there are four yugas: Kali, Dvapara, Treta and Satya. Kali-yuga--kali means one, one yuga, so it's 432,000 years. Dvapara means two, so it's 864,000 years. Treta means three; these are powers of two, so it's 1,728,000 years. And Satya is also known as Krita; krita means four, so 2⁴ is 8, so it's 3,456,000 years. That's the Vedic time cycle; and the sum total of this [cycle] is like 6,480,000 years. So one [complete] yuga cycle is about 6,480,000 years. And actually they come in the reverse order: Satya is first; Satya then Treta, then Dvapara, then Kali. That's the order of the cycles of Vedic history.

So when we look at time, we're looking at a cyclical pattern that occurs over and over and over again. For example in Satya-yuga, everyone is very pure, very spiritual, very moral, very loving. Everything goes according to the principles of religion, and so on. In Treta-yuga, vice is introduced, sin is introduced; and it begins to affect up to 25% of the population. In Dvapara-yuga sin increases, and it affects ultimately up to 50% of the population. And in Kali-yuga, sin or unrighteousness [starts at 75% and] eventually affects 100% of the population.

So we're in Kali-yuga right now; we've passed through approximately 5,140 years of Kali-yuga, and this [period] is called the Kali-chakra of Kali-yuga. Within each yuga there are chakras, and here chakra just means a cycle; actually chakra means wheel. So within Kali-yuga you have the Kali-chakra, then the Satya-chakra, then the Dvapara-chakra, and then the Treta-chakra. Each chakra is 5,140 years; in other words, we're right at the end of the Kali-chakra right now. And then the Satya-chakra is like 2³, or 8 times that; that's about 41,120 years. Treta-chakra is about 20,560 years; Dvapara-chakra is about 10,280 years. So then the cycles of chakras repeat during the [entire] yuga, and always in the same order. So in the beginning of Satya-yuga, for example, it starts out with the Satya-chakra, which is a very long time, and then Treta, Dvapara and Kali [chakras]. But Kali[-yuga] begins with the Kali-chakra; and so since Kali-yuga only began 5,000 years ago, it began with the Kali-chakra and now we're right at the end of that. [math errors in the previous paragraph have been corrected]

So in between each yuga and the next, and also in between each chakra and the next, there's a period called sandhya; sandhya means the border or the transition. And in every sandhya there is a pralaya; pralaya means devastation. And what it really is, what a devastation means is a period of increased change. What is a devastation? It means that things are changing so fast that it actually wipes everything out.

So in the past, scriptures talk about a great flood. We know there was a great flood; it was recorded in the Bible, it's also recorded in the Vedas, different stories are there. Then at certain times we know there's been flames scorching the earth; maybe a comet came by, or maybe some other astrological body came by and there was excessive heat. And then there's been other times when there was too much wind, and sometimes, you know, all different natural disasters have occurred on this planet, that kind of wiped everything out, and people had to start all over again. That's called pralaya; and that happens at particular times, it doesn't happen arbitrarily, it doesn't by accident, it's not a coincidence. It's part of the natural historical cycle that's given, not only in the Vedic calendar, but also in the Mayan calendar, the Aztec calendar, the Native Americans' [prophecies], and the Zoroastrians and so many other civilizations.

So these cycles are saying that time, in other words, is a fractal; the same pattern repeats at different scales. Here we see one example where the pattern of the yugas, the four yugas and their relative lengths, also repeats within each yuga, in the chakras. It's a little bit complicated, but the principle [of the yugas and the chakras] is basically the same.

Randy: "Wheels within wheels."

Babaji: Mmmm-hmmm; "spinnin' in the air, way up in the middle of the air." Good ol' Ezekiel, you know?

Right now we are in the sandhya, we're in the transitionary time between the Kali-chakra and the Satya-chakra of the Kali-yuga. What does that mean? It means the last 5,000 years have been a time of terrible degradation; so many civilizations were destroyed, so many animals are becoming extinct, so much knowledge has been lost, so many ancient languages [have died], so much ancient knowledge [has disappeared]--all within the last 5,000 years. Things were going along in a certain [stable] way for a long time before that; and then all of a sudden, when things changed to Kali-yuga, everything changed.

For example, the Vedic civilization was spread all over the world 5,000 years ago. 5,000 years ago, the Vedic civilization had outposts in South America, North America, all throughout the Pacific Ocean, much of Asia and so on, was under its control. And then 5,000 years ago, something terrible happened; it's called the Battle of Kuruksetra. The Battle of Kuruksetra is narrated in a historical document called Mahabharata. And because of this... In fact Bhagavad-gita, the famous Bhagavad-gita is spoken right at the beginning of this Battle of Kuruksetra.

Basically what happened in the Battle of Kuruksetra [was that practically] all the kings and warriors of the whole world were killed. In those days, they didn't have wars like we have them today, where they bomb the population and the cities, and [other non-military targets]. All the fighting was done only between the warriors themselves; they had a rule [of war], they had principles [of chivalrous conduct], they were much more advanced, much more cultured than we are today. So they didn't hurt the citizens; but the Battle of Kuruksetra was so devastating that except for just a handful, all the kings of that time, from all over the world, were wiped out.

Just imagine if we had a war today, and all of a sudden the whole government of every country in the wold just disappeared, was wiped out, off the face of the earth, overnight. There would be chaos; without [experienced] people to manage things, without [qualified] people to run things, there would be social chaos. There would be a power vacuum; whenever a power vacuum exists, then all these people compete to fill it. Well, there was a huge power vacuum after the Battle of Kuruksetra.

More than that, at that time their whole civilization was dependent on a certain technology. When we look at the functions that it had, it was some kind of nanotechnology based on living things, rather than on dead machines. They could actually breed living things that had a certain kind of intelligence, and that would listen to instructions and do stuff. For example, they had arrows, they had weapons that would seek out a particular individual. You would tell it "I want you to go kill so-and-so," and then send it off, and it would go find out that person and hit him. But then there were counter-weapons that would do other different things to stop it, and so on. So they had a whole technology that we don't have. It was some kind of nanotechnology; but it wasn't mechanical, it was living. So it was really cool, but we're not there yet.

But anyway, when Krsna left this planet 5,000 years ago at the end of Dvapara-yuga, that whole technology stopped working overnight. Overnight; it would be just like if we woke up one morning and all of a sudden there was no electricity. They couldn't even fix the technology, because whatever it was that made that technology work suddenly was gone. So it would be not only as if we woke up and there was no electricity, but [as if] there could be no electricity; let's say the conductivity of copper changed, or something like that, and all of a sudden we weren't able to send electricity over wires anymore, and just none of it worked. Our whole civilization would just collapse.

I mean, it was bad enough to have a big power vacuum, like losing our whole government; but then on top of that, to have your major technology suddenly fail? I mean completely, irrevocably fail. The whole civilization fell apart in the matter of a generation or two. The whole worldwide government, the whole society that they had built up over thousands of years [of Dvapara-yuga] just basically disintegrated, and suddenly all these countries that had been part of one [global] political entity were now independent, autonomous.

So you can imagine what happened: basically, they all started going their own ways. Whereas before you had one [worldwide Vedic] system--like today we have one world economic system, pretty much everyone who is educated speaks English, everywhere you go in the world, you have a passport and you can get in, and like that--it's a system. So [after the Battle of Kuruksetra and Krsna's departure] all their systems just failed, and basically, all the countries just went their own way, and they started using their own language, they started developing their own religious traditions and functions, they started competing with one another economically, militarily and so on, whereas before [as part of the Vedic Empire] they wouldn't have done [any of] that.

So basically in the last 5,000 years, we've had the Tower of Babel; we've had complete and utter chaos on the surface of this planet, and it's no wonder that it's been a very destructive period. And now that [chaos] is peaking; we're about to see some kind of level of change that we have never seen before in all of history, in all of recorded human history. So what's going to happen? Well, nobody really knows; nobody knows. It's probably going to be pretty chaotic. But then again, it's hard to say.

What I think is going to happen... I think that the level of change is going to become so severe, so radical, so drastic that our language is going to break down. We literally will not be able to describe what is happening. Things are going to change so fast, so radically, overnight, that it's going to be like, er, ah, um [gibberish]. "What the heck is this?" We won't be able to communicate, even with ourselves! Because our language will break down. The structure of our semantic network will fail, because it will be confronted with something that is so new, so startling, so radically different that we literally won't have any words to describe it. And nobody could imagine what that would be; because if we could imagine it, we could deal with it. It would be an extension of our semantic system. But what's going to happen is going to be so radical that it's going to transcend language altogether.

So that's my idea of what's going to happen, and all of this together is called the Singularity. The reason it's called the Singularity is because a singularity is a phenomenon where some parameter of that phenomenon goes to infinity, like a black hole. In a black hole, there's basically infinite gravity; there's so much mass compressed into such a small space, that its gravitational field is so intense that not even light can get out.

This is called a singularity because it's an infinity, it's a logical anomaly. But there's a certain point at which this phenomenon takes place, which is called the event horizon. And for example, the event horizon of a black hole is where its gravity become so intense that not even light can escape; no energy can come out of it. So at that point, that's where the singularity actually occurs. So we're talking about something that is a singularity of change; it's where the rate of change becomes so intense that not even our imagination can go there. It's too much; it's just beyond us. So what is that? Well, we don't know; and we won't know until we get there.

So that's the definition of the Singularity, and people have said that it's going to happen in 2012. I don't know if it's going to happen exactly in 2012. The 2012 date comes from the scholars who tried to decode the Mayan calendar; and it's quite possible that they could be off by a few years. So it doesn't necessarily have to be exactly in 2012, it could happen a little earlier or a little later. But certainly we are headed towards a singularity of change; there's no doubt about that. Even the scientists, as skeptical as they are, they see it coming. Even the governments see it coming, and that's why you see such an increase in surveillance and security; they're ramping up, they're getting ready for something. They don't know what's going to happen either; but they know it's gong to be wild.

But of course, all of these preventive measures will fail; there's really nothing we can do, because whatever is going to happen is completely unimaginable. How do you prepare for the unimaginable? Dig a big hole and jump into it? I don't know; nobody really knows.

So, are there any questions at this point?

Randy: Baba, has this phenomena occurred countless times in countless universes over countless eons?

Babaji: Absolutely; his question, for those of you on the Web, is: "Has this happened before?" And yes, this happened many, many, many times. That's why we don't have reliable histories going back more than, let's say, about 5,000 years. The last time this happened was at the end of the Dvapara-yuga, when the Battle of Kuruksetra occurred. And so most of the world just went into complete chaos, and they lost their sense of history. Only the Vedic tradition really has reliable history that's over 5,000 years old, and that's because they took extraordinary measures to preserve it. Others weren't ready for this; they didn't see it coming. They had no idea, and so they weren't prepared.

Question: Do you think many people will die?

Babaji: I don't know; that's the whole point: we don't know what's going to happen. And if we think we do, we're just fooling ourselves. It's going to be an adventure.

Question: And probably negative rather than positive?

Babaji: [shrugs] Who knows? I think the aftermath, once things settle down, is going to be pretty good; because according to the Mayans we go from the World of Chaos to the World of Peace. And according to the Vedic calendar, we go from the Kali-chakra [of the Kali-yuga] to the Satya-chakra; and Satya is always a time of peace and spirituality, and wonderful things.

But it's the transition that's the problem; the transition is going to be rough, because in Kali-yuga we have so many social, economic, political [and] religious structures that are based on the principle of exploitation. And we're going to get to a point where that's just going to short-circuit itself, and the whole thing is going to come crashing down like a house of cards. It's simply not going to work anymore; people are going to get tired of the exploitation and finally say "OK, I'm done; this is over. It's like, I'm past this; let's move on." And at that point, there's going to be like...

It might be something like the war that's going on between the record companies and their customers. People want downloaded songs, and the record companies want to sell CDs. So they're at war with each other. The record company says "You're going to buy these CDs, goddamn it, and you're going to like it! Otherwise we're going to sue you." And consumers are saying "Aw, forget that, man. You know? [laughs] If I can download something on the Web in two minutes, why should I spend $15 on a CD?" And they're right! I think we're going to see these kind of conflicts come up in many, many areas of society; people are fed up with exploitive government, exploitive religion, what to speak of exploitive business. They're simply not going to take it anymore, and I think we're going to see a lot of people dropping out of the system.

I mean, there's a prediction in the Vedas that at this time a lot of people will go to the government land and just live in the forest. And I see that coming; I mean, have you ever been to a Rainbow Gathering? They get bigger every year. People just go to an area in a National Forest, and they camp out, and they, you know, it's like a big party; it's great.

Comment: This is just a guesstimate on my side, but thinking of whether it's going to be negative or positive is just more an internal projection of what it is, kinda like, if you build your entire foundation, or your entire life on a foundation that's a little too material, and depending upon the material world, then it's really just a way of, kinda like the destruction of it, is more or less just like a wake-up call, saying you know like, bringing yourself down to a natural foundation rather than what we've built upon the material world.

Babaji: Yeah, that's exactly right. Ben is saying, for those of you on the Web, that the foundation or the categories that people have built up to describe their existence are basically going to fail; it's going to be a huge wake-up call, that we have come back down to earth and find a new way of looking at things. That's the whole point, exactly; that's what I mean, that our semantic systems are going to fail. Those are the categories that we use to describe our experience to ourselves: our ontology, in a word.

Our ontology is inadequate for the experience that we have, even now, because it doesn't take into account the phenomenon of consciousness, which is what we talked about, basically, in the last session. We were trying to give a theory of consciousness that really works, that really describes the symptoms and the actions of consciousness. So what we're doing now is [that] we're trying to define what's gong to happen when all those categories, when all those stories that we use to describe our experience to ourselves, suddenly fail, and none of them are adequate. That's coming closer and closer, the faster the change accelerates.

Response: And just pretty much the chaos that would be from people trying to hold on to what used to be their...

Babaji: Well, it's only chaos because we try to hold on to it. You know, like what happens when you trip, for example, is that the rate of change increases beyond your ability to hold on to anything. And the more you try [to hold on], the worse it gets, until finally you surrender, let go and go with the flow, an then everything is alright. So this [2012] is going to be like the Whole World Trip-out--really hard. [laughs] Maybe somebody invents a nanotechnology that just like permeates everything, and everything starts waving, or moving or something. Who knows? It's going to be something really crazy, whatever it is. Virtual reality that...

Student: Lunch is ready.

Babaji: Lunch is ready! Well, I guess we shouldn't ignore that! [laughter] What time is it? Almost two o'clock; great. [reading from the computer chat] Florian says he sees a UFO that looks like a bird.

Randy: I saw a UFO that looked like Florian. [laughter]

Babaji: Randy says he saw a UFO that looks like Florian! [laughs] Have I seen UFOs? Well, what do you mean by a UFO? I've seen Krsna, and He's pretty unidentifiable if you didn't know. [reading from the computer chat] Teleporting birds, oh great.

Well whatever they are, it's something that we don't understand. [reading from the computer chat] Yeah, X-files. So it's like, when people come in contact with something that they don't understand, and don't have the language or the categories to describe to themselves, then they go into denial, and they make something up.

So we all have stories about little green men in flying saucers, so when we come in touch with something that we don't understand, we tend to project our story on the reality; because we go into denial on what really happened--we can't deal with it, we don't want to deal with it. Instead, we project, like movie projector, our own vision or our own interpretation on whatever it is we're experiencing. That's what happens whenever we come in contact with something radically new.

[reading from the computer chat] OK well, whatever they are... Now we're getting into a whole riff on UFOs. Imagine if reality itself changed in a completely unexpected way. People would start to impose or project their own expectations on that new reality because they don't have categories to describe it to themselves, and they would go into denial on what that reality actually is, and start imagining what they think it is. So in other words, if there was a significant change in the reality itself, the whole population could basically go into mass psychosis. I think this is what's going to happen [in 2012].

So yeah, it's going to be pretty gnarly; it's probably not going to be pretty. But that's what people do when they're confronted with something that they can't understand; whether it's a UFO or some kind of a dimensional shift, or teleporting birds, or demigods, or whatever it is, they don't have the categories to explain it to themselves, so they're going to like block out what's actually happening, and just project their own vision on the scene, just like we were talking about the people at the trial.

The prosecutor is projecting his angle of "Yeah, the guy did it, he's guilty, you know, we've got the evidence," and then the defendant is saying "No, I didn't do it, I'm innocent, blah blah blah, and I have this reason and that reason why it's not so." They're both talking about the same incident, the same exact event, but they're talking about it in completely different terms because they have different projections, different ontologies, different desires. We're gong to see the same thing happen when people are confronted with infinite change. And the only example of infinite change that we have, or even close to it, is like I said, when somebody trips on a psychedelic drug. And the changes come so fast that if they resist them and they try to project their own story onto those changes, that they start to suffer very much; but if they can let go, and understand that it's all OK, and that it's not going to really hurt them, then they can have a nice experience.

So yeah, it's going to require God to guide us through this. And that's going to be the whole point of the next section, where I talk about how to deal with this infinite change.

So now lunch is ready, right on time; it's just two o'clock, so uh... [reading from the computer chat] Florian, what are you smoking? [laughter] I think they're looking out the window and seeing UFOs or something. [reading from the computer chat] Outside his window. That's cool, huh? He's in Hamm, Germany. Hey, put it on the video, Florian! We want to see it! He has a webcam. Get your webcam going! He says, "I tried to capture it." What happened? It flew away. OK, if it comes back, video the darn thing. OK? It got away.

Randy: Can we see Florian?

Babaji: Yeah, we could. Hey Florian, turn on your webcam!

[end of tape]

 

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