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                                        History Becomes Mythology 

For still unknown reasons, the ancients encrypted history in poetic allegories that we now call myths.  We can use the insights of modern science and our own intuition -- our inherited knowledge -- to decode these invaluable collections of prehistoric knowledge.  Our objective will be to develop a plausible and consistent history of all existence: -- of Time, the physical cosmos, and Life.  

On the surface, the well-known myths are dramatized and exaggerated accounts of purported historical events and so we cannot believe they are 'true' history.  Even after we decode the myths, we still don't believe them because some contain explanations that are strange and unfamiliar to us.  These myths refer to a technology that was ahead of ours and since we have not learned such advanced knowledge in school it is our own ignorance that prevents us from believing them.  Thanks to the flattery inherent in the statement 'man was created in the image of God', it is unthinkable that more advanced life than ours has ever existed on this planet. 

The following is an attempt to construct a technically plausible history of the world using the mythic poetry and sacred knowledge of ancient people.  It is a hypothesis based on advanced science and should be compared to our own theories of how the universe and life began and developed.  The source materials -- the myths -- are readily available, and others are invited to improve their interpretation to arrive at a more accurate, more consistent explanation. 

Note that to maintain credibility it is absolutely essential not to invent new laws of physics (i.e. not to use the explanations of magic or spiritualism) in this process.  And due to the cryptic, fragmentary and sometimes contradictory archaeological evidence contained in the myths, the interpretations must be tentative.  We will have to live with this uncertainty until our own science has caught up to that of the previous high civilization.

                                               The Ultimate History

Somewhere, sometime in the ageless, endless cosmos, history began. At that moment the world already consisted of God, Chronos (Time), and of Principles related to matter. These three have always existed, and were associated with the Imperishable Precepts and the Strong Fate who was called Inescapable and Necessity. The ancients said that the creation of the cosmos was unknowable and incomprehensible, presumably because unknown cosmic principles -- different laws of physics -- applied during the process.

1. From our own experience, we know that there has to be a cause for every effect. We naturally assume that such a causal connection has always been a requirement of the cosmic order. And, since the world exists, we are certain that it must have been caused. This First Cause is, by definition, the uncreated Creator God.

That is dead-end reasoning, however, because we can never hope to understand the concept 'uncreated cause'. It is more useful to assume that the ancients defined God -- the supreme intelligence and all-powerful ruler of the world -- to be the creator and enforcer of the cosmic order. The Imperishable Precepts doubtlessly are the principles and laws of Nature (i.e. of physics) that pervade and govern all physical processes in the universe. There is an irresistible Force that ensures that the Natural Laws are always obeyed (Necessity), even in the furthest reaches of the cosmos (Inescapable), and so God exists in everything -- including in each one of us!

It is interesting that subatomic-scale particles of matter exhibit random behavior that (apparently) disobeys the macroscopic laws of physics and thus defies the principle of Necessity. The weaker Fate may therefore represent the random occurrences that are characterized by quantum mechanics and which may also cause the unpredictable behavior of living beings and the increase in entropy of the universe. This Fate may have given rise to the concept of Satan.

2. Chronos (the Persian Zurvan Akarana) is the endless Time in which each universe is only a temporary emanation or manifestation of local time and three-dimensional space. The individual universes are enormous 'bubbles' of time/space continuum that expand from a source at very high speed and collapse again into this source at the end of their allotted time span. These material universes exist in the macro Time and (probably) two-dimensional Space that the ancients called the 'spiritual universe' and that we will call the cosmos.

Significantly, the spiritual universe was associated with duality (good/evil, male/female) and contained things that have two dimensions: -- Time, the souls of life-forms (i.e. information), ideas, shapes, images, etc. Since it contained the 'Principles related to matter' rather than matter itself, this universe likely had only two dimensions. That leads to the idea that at the next level up there is a universe which has a single dimension and thus exhibits the sublime perfection that we attribute to the Cosmic Intelligence or Absolute God.

The fact that the ancients knew that time and space are so intimately related that you cannot have one without the other is truly amazing. Endless Time may refer to a closed loop, as opposed to meaning extending to infinity, and as such is beyond human understanding. Moreover, Time/Space is so fundamental to the existence of the cosmos that the Zoroastrians considered Zurvan to be the ultimate Principle, as well as the creator of our material universe.

3. Some scientists believe that time/space can be converted into matter/energy, and the Greek philosopher-scientists said the matter in our universe derives from a primordial 'fluid' (the water of Thales) that arrived from the outside. This fluid is most likely what was meant by 'Principles in the form of matter', and it was converted by a 'vortex' -- perhaps a now-extinct black hole from the macro universe -- into the four 'elements': solid, liquid and gaseous matter, and energy (energy is a state of matter). Matter and energy are kept in equilibrium with the fluid or substance of the primordial 'sea' at the periphery of the universe by some still unknown principle in order to maintain cosmic stability.

Our universe is a lot more than a bubble of space that contains the stars and floats in Nothing. The ancients held that the innumerable galaxies are surrounded by a spherical layer of ether (the 'sea'), perhaps an ocean of black energy. Black matter may be a condensation of the ether as is it is displaced by the expanding universe. Alternatively, the boundary layer of our universe could be a hollow sphere of black energy from the Big Bang and this may be condensing into matter as the universe expands. According to the Orphics, the universe consists of constellations (galaxies?) surrounded by a layer of earth (black matter?) and a layer of sea (black energy?), followed by the Outer Heaven and ether (the macro-universe).

The Hindus said that initially there was the 'Absolute', or 'The One', who multiplied by emanating the cosmos containing the coiled serpent Ananta (endless Time), the Lord (the Divine Intelligence or 'spirit') and his wife (duality). The Lord then created the waters (the primeval fluid or Principles in the form of matter) in which he deposited the seed that developed into the Universal Egg. The Egg hatched to reveal the re-born Lord (re-created life and the intelligence embodied in the natural laws of our universe), the lower and upper eggshells (the space/time and limits of our universe) and the Purusha, probably the vortex. The latter was sacrificed (extinguished) to produce the sun, stars, the earth, etc. (i.e. matter and energy).

Thomas Tobber