The Hopi, Sioux and other tribal traditions hold that at this point in history, we are about to transition from the current pattern of civilization to a radically-different way of living. This change is so profound that it is called the passage from the Fourth (current) World to the Fifth World! By "world", the native traditions refer to a slow gradual rise of the human population to a period of widely-shared cultural and technological high civilization.
The implications of these indigenous teachings are staggering. For this means that we humans have gone through three previous Worlds, in which our ancestors rose to a peak of civilized living, only to crash back to a primitive level.
From halfway around the Earth comes additional corroborative information. Mac Ruka, a Maori spiritual teacher, has toured America at the behest of his Maori people to share their ancient history. Ruka tells of a civilization, Mu, from which the Maori came.
This civilization once reached ascendancy in the Melanesian Pacific, before it destroyed itself and its island empire sank beneath the ocean. Fragmentary memory of this empire still resides in the mythic history of the West as a place called Lemuria.
And what of that other high civilization, Atlantis, which the Greek philosopher Plato stated he learned about from Egyptian historians? Were Atlantis and Lemuria the Second and Third Worlds which the Native American oral histories refer to?
If our present "Fourth-World" high civilization is about to fall and be swept away, we would do well to learn from the history held by these native teachers. For, as philosopher George Santayana has said, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Let us examine in more detail what those master keepers of oral tradition, the Hopi, reveal about our previous Worlds.
The First World was called Tokpela ("Endless Space"). The First People understood that although they had human parents, their real parents were the universal entities which had created them through their parents: Father Sun and Mother Earth. Each learned that they had two aspects: as a member of an earthly family and clan, and as a citizen of the great universe.
Gradually the First People forgot to respect their creator. They began to use the vibratory centers of their body [chakras] only for earthly purposes. They began to perceive differences and separation between people and animals, and between different ethnic, linguistic and religious groups. The animals began to draw away from people. The First People began to divide up and draw away from each other. They became warlike and fought. The First World's fatal flaw, then, was forgetting the unifying Oneness of all creation.
But there were a few in every group who held to the original spiritual enlightened path. These were directed by Spirit to migrate to a special underground location. Then, the First World was destroyed by fire: volcanoes erupting and fire raining down from the sky, until there was nothing left but the few faithful people inside the Earth.
The Fourth World is this present world we live in. The survivors spread across the broad lands, and gradually began building up the high civilizations which surround us today. Since this Fourth World is the one we have grown up in, we are aware of the behaviors of those in it. It can accurately be said that, after an initial time of fidelity to the path of wise consciousness, many have fallen into a low level of consciousness.
In fact, it can honestly be stated that many people of this Fourth World have fallen into the fatal flaws of the three previous Worlds: forgetting the Oneness of all creation, sinking into greed and materialism, and engaging in promiscuity and aerial mass warfare. But we have added an additional serious element: mass destruction of Earth and its ecological systems. Thus, the Fourth World's fatal flaws are: all of the previous Worlds' ones, plus ecocide, the killing of one's own environment.
And now this Fourth World is coming to an end. Some of the signs indicating this are: extinctions of plant and animal species; poisoning of lands by toxic materials; pollution of the seas; and thinning of the upper atmosphere, "ozone holes", letting in excessive ultraviolet energy, which in turn is killing plant life, causing cancer in humans, and die-offs of phytoplankton, the source of 90%of the oxygen necessary for life. Global warming is destabilizing climates, and upsetting the ecosystems that plants, animals and humans live in.
As the Fourth World careens towards its end, a major new factor is entering the equation: a widespread series of contacts by various extraterrestrial cultures with human individuals. What are these extraterrestrials communicating when they make contact? They express grave concern for how we are killing our planet and therefore ourselves. Their concern extends to the warfare we are almost continually engaged in, and the other forms of violence going on: including people allowing whole populations to die of starvation or disease, while affluent countries stand by. The ETs want us to take responsibility and turn these situations around, before it is too late.
But the extraterrestrials also have come to make us aware that we are not alone; and that our rightful place is to be participants in the larger, cosmic family of intelligent peoples spread across the universe. But first we must eliminate our fatal flaws and reorder our lifestyle. We must live with consciousness of our oneness with all creatures, and with the Creative Source. We must lay aside our greed and materialism, and learn to live more simply and without undue attachments.We need to start treating Earth and its ecosystems like our Mother, with respect and cherishing.
As at the end of the previous Worlds, there will be a faithful remnant of this Fourth World who will survive, while the others perish. The Hopi Prophecies say what will happen soon. World War III will be started in the East. Much of the United States will be destroyed, land and people, by nuclear weapon radioactivity.
What will the Fifth World to which we are headed be like? The Prophecy gives a brief glimpse of what is in store. Those who take no part in the making of world division by ideology are ready to resume life in another World, be they of the Black, White, Red or Yellow race. They are all one, brothers [and sisters]. As for this Fourth World, material matters will be destroyed by spiritual beings, who shall remain to create one world and one nation under one power, that of the Creator.
We are entering the time of Great Purification, as Earth prepares to transition to the Fifth World. This is a period of Earth Changes: major earthquakes, tidal waves, many volcanoes erupting, land subsidence, emergence of new land, climatic changes, disease pandemics, and widespread starvation. Catastrophes of human origin are also in the offing, including: warfare involving weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, rioting and looting, collapse of monetary systems, and forced migrations.
As with the previous Worlds, there will be those who want to cling to the old ways of the Fourth World and resist the need to change. We see them all around us now. And just as surely there will be those who seek to live in harmony with the rest of creation. Sensitive co-existence with other life is not ecological romanticism or fuzzy metaphysics. It is recognition of the true extent of family.
During this transition more than ever before, each of us is being called to serve the Great Spirit, that Center of Consciousness from which everything derives its being. Each of us has an important role during this Great Purification. We need to help find ways for nations, races and tribes to put aside differences, and join together for the good of everyone. We need to help plant and animal species survive. We have to bring to an end the pollution of Earth, and return to our proper role as caretakers of Earth's ecosystems.
We need to lay aside the "success" lifestyle of greed and materialism, and learn to adopt a lifestyle of "just enough" and "good enough". We need to move away from the twin follies of promiscuity and puritanism, and learn to reverence sex as the delightful yet sacred activity of appropriately joining opposites to create a higher truth. And we need to lay aside the weapons of war, and operate with that compassion, understanding and economic justice which make for peace.
Native American tradition honors the existence of Thunder Beings. These Thunder Beings are understood by Native Americans to be messengers from the powers on high, the Star People (extraterrestrial visitors). The Thunder Beings are a force for both dissolution and re-creation. In the Plains Indian tradition, a person who has a visit by a Thunder Being, in person, in vision or in dream, becomes a heyoka, a "contrary".
This heyoka then customarily soon starts behaving in a way opposite to the conventions of the dominant culture. The heyoka does so, precisely in order to wake up society to see that there are other and fresher ways of doing things. Thus, the heyokais the human counterpart of the Thunder Beings, who repeatedly dissolve the existing order and fashion a new arrangement from the pieces.
As we transition from the Fourth into the Fifth World, it occurs to me that not all heyokasare Plains Indians. Some have yellow skin, others black, others white. These heyokas of every color are experiencers, and have been changed by their experience of extraterrestrial contact by messengers from the sky (Thunder Beings). As modern-day heyokas, experiencers are charged to live as active witnesses against the ignorance and corruption of the Fourth World, and to live as witnesses of the Fifth World which is emerging. In doing so, modern heyokas honor the Thunder Beings, the extraterrestrials, who have come as cosmic midwives to help us birth the Fifth World.
And there are others, too, who have not had a personal extraterrestrial encounter, but who are actively helping humanity move towards cosmic citizenship, and helping usher in the Fifth World society. These are heyokas as well.
Fifth World society is shaped by the feminine paths of cooperation, nonaggression, inclusiveness, noncompetitiveness, service rather than dominance, use of psychic and spiritual gifts as well as technology, and living in conscious harmony with nature's ways.
Word of formal declaration of the birth of the Fifth World was beginning to spread out to the wider society. This process will take time. But it is important to realize that the Fifth World has already begun. Just as the Period of Purification which will end the Fourth World has already begun. During this painful but exciting period of transition, each of us must stand up and choose: status quo, or helping usher in the Fifth World.
And here is a miracle. A higher-vibrating person (or heyoka, if you will) is like a tuning fork, tending to create a higher matching (sympathetic) vibration rate in others around who are functioning at a lower (Fourth World) vibratory/consciousness level. Just like a soprano's high note can cause a crystal glass to vibrate, heyokas can cause Fourth Worlders around them to tend to increase their vibratory rate. But Fourth Worlders have choices.
They can go along with the higher vibratory/consciousness rate, and transition into the Fifth World.
Or they can resist and, like the glass, "shatter", as their outlook is increasingly dissonant with the emerging Fifth World. If they remove themselves from all contact with Fifth World people, they may buy some little time, but in the end they will still have to choose.
