Human Devolution by Michael Cremo

Stardust · 17-08-2009, 10:55 PM

Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory, by Michael Cremo.

In shortest way present the idea that human beings did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the realm of pure consciousness, spirit. Cremo tries to tide in new way science and religion into a cohesive paradigm of reality.

What you will find in a book? Answers on some Qn

What is man?
by Cremo its ordinary matter + mind + consciousness. And main conclusion is: man is degraded from pure consciousness, to mind, to material body.

What is human body?
Human body is a vehicle for a conscious self, and the proper use of the vehicle is to bring the conscious self back to its original position in a realm of pure consciousness, where spiritual human forms have always existed beyond time. That is our original home.
When we depart from there, the conscious self is covered by a material form, a body. That covering process is what Cremo calls exactly devolution. But the process can be reversed, and the conscious self can be freed of its coverings and restored to its original pure state. That process he calls re-evolution. Every genuine wisdom tradition in the world has some means for accomplishing that, some method of prayer or meditation or yoga

“We” human existed billions – not thousand years ago.
That is most solid part of the book. Cremo talks about actually incredible amounts of neglected evidences. So here I will just call out 3 of them:

- The oldest artifacts go back about 2 billion years. These are round metallic objects that have been over the past couple of decades by miners in South Africa. The objects come from a mine near a place called Ottosdalin, in the West Transvaal region. The objects are one or two inches in diameter. The ones we had analyzed by metallurgists turned out to be made of an iron ore called hematite. The most interesting feature of the objects is the parallel grooves that go around the center of each one. Some have four grooves, some three, some two, some only one. The metallurgists who examined them said they were not produced naturally. Therefore, the objects must have been manufactured by someone with humanlike intelligence. Yet they are found solidly embedded in mineral deposits over 2 billion years old.

- The Laetoli footprints were found in layers of solidified volcanic ash, dated by the potassium-argon method as being about 3.7 million years old. BUT - Ttere are footprints and even shoe prints that go much further back in time than that. For example, the shoe print found by William Meister near Antelope Springs, Utah, goes back about 500 million years (hard to imagine). The Laetoli footprints are still quite interesting asthe footprints are exactly like those of modern human beings. This is unusual, because according to most scientists today, human beings capable of making these footprints did not come into existence until about 100,000 years ago.

- full modern skeletons - Italian geologist Giuseppe Ragazzoni discovered
anatomically modern human skeletal remains in Pliocene formations at a place called Castenedolo in northern Italy. The Pliocene goes from about 2 million years ago to 5 million years ago. Cremo calls also other such discoveries from other parts of the world.

How we can be sure there is more than current living and current consciousness?
The book leads through evidences of spiritual realities and scientific experiments and facts which carefully document supernatural phenomena, including various forms of spiritism, miracles such as those at Lourdes,
reincarnation claims, UFO phenomena and intelligent design arguments. So you can find in here as well “reported” and categorized to some level proofs of us being much more than we think. Again – interesting reading

Why he takes Vedic as a base for explanation?
Somehow indeed there is many paralels. At least in the one that Cremo picked up for comparison. Sanskrit writings of India takes human presence that goes back about 2 billion years on earth. Current textbooks on archeology, does not carry that evidence. But Cremo found that over the past 150 years archeologists have discovered huge amounts of evidence, in the form of human skeletal remains, human footprints, and human artifacts tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of years old, going all the way back to about 2 billion years. Of coursa again a matter of trust in scientinc periodic he recalls in his book..

How we can explain other humanoids skeleton found?
The base for explanation is again Vedic. It speaks of 400,000 humanlike species scattered throughout the universe. According to Cremo various hominids, such as the australopithecs, could be placed among those 400,000 species. Why they appeared? - idea is they were designed as vehicles for conscious selves. “Today, we see that auto manufacturers design and build many different kinds of vehicles of different types and sizes and prices for people of different tastes, needs, and purchasing power. So the "intelligent designer" does the same thing: designs and builds various kinds of bodies for conscious selves with different desires and karmas”

How does the age of the earth and the existence of life on it correspond to the Hindu cosmological calendar?
The Hindu, or Vedic, concept of time is cyclical. There are cycles within cycles within cycles. The basic unit of this cyclical time is called the day of Brahma. It lasts about 4.3 billion years. It's followed by a night of Brahma, which also lasts about 4.3 billion years. The days follow the nights endlessly in succession. During the days, life is manifested in the universe, and during the nights it's dormant. The current day of Brahma, the one we are in now, began about 2 billion years ago. So by this account, we should expect to see signs of life, including human life, going back about 2 billion years on earth.
Cremo quotes simply that the oldest undisputed fossil evidence for life on earth recognized by paleontologists is also about 2 billion years old. We're talking about the oldest undisputed fossils of single celled life forms.

The age of earth vs. Vedic
Modern geologists give the earth an age of about 6 billion years. Vedic conception of the universe gives the conscious self a temporary domain of experience, apart from the eternal domain of the realm of pure consciousness, or spirit. Under this conception, Cremo takes the earth, our particular domain of experience, as “being somewhat like a rewritable CD or DVD disk. It's erased at the end of each day of Brahma”.

All the geological and paleontological evidence that was written on the disc. Then comes a night of Brahma, during which the disk is reprogrammed. Geological information is written on the disk. The night of Brahma lasts 4.3 billion years. Then comes the next day of Brahma. And then biological evidence starts to get written on the disk. And we are now 2 billion years into the day of Brahma.

So when we look at the evidence, Cremos shows we find geological evidence that the earth has existed for about 6 billion years, and biological evidence, in the form of fossils, showing that life has existed for about 2 billion years.

Also, the day of Brahma is divided into 14 subcycles called manvantara periods, each lasting about 300 million years. Between each one there is a devastation, after which the earth has to be repopulated. We are now in the seventh manvantara cycle, and that means there have been six devastations over the past 2 billion years. Modern paleontology also tells us that the history of life on earth has been interrupted by six major extinction events, spaced at intervals of hundreds of millions of years, the last being the one that wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

What happens during the "night of Brahma" when the earth is "unmanifest"?
The various living entities are put into a state of dormancy or suspended animation, something like dreamless sleep.

One of claims of Hindu is that world is creted and destroye countless times. By Cremo energy can never be destroyed, so just moves into a different dimension and becomes "unmanifested”
In Vedic cosmology we have pradhana, which is the unmanifest, undifferentiated material energy. During the creation cycles, this unmanifest material energy becomes differentiated into elements, starting with the more subtle elements and proceeding to the grosser elements. Then the differentiated elements are manifested into the forms of planets and bodies, which serve as domains and vehicles, respectively, for conscious selves.
In the current day of Brahma, humankind goes back 2 billion years. In each day of Brahma, in each life of Brahma, not only in this universe, but in countless other universes, the human form has been manifest for vast periods of time.
.
So to summarize - What I liked is that the book definitely exposes the weaknesses in Darwinism and relates the tradition doctrine. And its doing in compelling and attractive way being solid grounded on scientifically recalled evidences or existing already learnings (both when it comes to archeology, reports of spiritual events, Vedic texts)/

It has big potential in impacting on the dominant materialist and religious paradigms , enabling finally for more perspective....as long it would be introduced to larger scale :].

Maybe we shall start lobbying for placing some books / ideas at school level, otherwise it will take another “ages” to stimulate human thinking to new level?... If so i would put this book defintelly on the lobbied list.

“Every man bears within himself partial beings
that are unaware of each other’s existence: we
are born many, we die only one – or none –
and to recount is to remember oneself.”
HECTOR BIANCIOTTI

Observer · 22-08-2009, 02:00 AM

Very interesting!

17-08-2009, 10:55 PM	#1
Stardust Member Skeptic Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: best middle part of the Europe where people speaks my native language :) Posts: 78 Time Online: 2 h 32 m Thanks: 3 Thx 8 Times in 8 Posts	Human Devolution by Michael Cremo Human Devolution: A Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory, by Michael Cremo. In shortest way present the idea that human beings did not evolve up from matter; instead we devolved, or came down, from the realm of pure consciousness, spirit. Cremo tries to tide in new way science and religion into a cohesive paradigm of reality. What you will find in a book? Answers on some Qn What is man? by Cremo its ordinary matter + mind + consciousness. And main conclusion is: man is degraded from pure consciousness, to mind, to material body. What is human body? Human body is a vehicle for a conscious self, and the proper use of the vehicle is to bring the conscious self back to its original position in a realm of pure consciousness, where spiritual human forms have always existed beyond time. That is our original home. When we depart from there, the conscious self is covered by a material form, a body. That covering process is what Cremo calls exactly devolution. But the process can be reversed, and the conscious self can be freed of its coverings and restored to its original pure state. That process he calls re-evolution. Every genuine wisdom tradition in the world has some means for accomplishing that, some method of prayer or meditation or yoga “We” human existed billions – not thousand years ago. That is most solid part of the book. Cremo talks about actually incredible amounts of neglected evidences. So here I will just call out 3 of them: - The oldest artifacts go back about 2 billion years. These are round metallic objects that have been over the past couple of decades by miners in South Africa. The objects come from a mine near a place called Ottosdalin, in the West Transvaal region. The objects are one or two inches in diameter. The ones we had analyzed by metallurgists turned out to be made of an iron ore called hematite. The most interesting feature of the objects is the parallel grooves that go around the center of each one. Some have four grooves, some three, some two, some only one. The metallurgists who examined them said they were not produced naturally. Therefore, the objects must have been manufactured by someone with humanlike intelligence. Yet they are found solidly embedded in mineral deposits over 2 billion years old. - The Laetoli footprints were found in layers of solidified volcanic ash, dated by the potassium-argon method as being about 3.7 million years old. BUT - Ttere are footprints and even shoe prints that go much further back in time than that. For example, the shoe print found by William Meister near Antelope Springs, Utah, goes back about 500 million years (hard to imagine). The Laetoli footprints are still quite interesting asthe footprints are exactly like those of modern human beings. This is unusual, because according to most scientists today, human beings capable of making these footprints did not come into existence until about 100,000 years ago. - full modern skeletons - Italian geologist Giuseppe Ragazzoni discovered anatomically modern human skeletal remains in Pliocene formations at a place called Castenedolo in northern Italy. The Pliocene goes from about 2 million years ago to 5 million years ago. Cremo calls also other such discoveries from other parts of the world. How we can be sure there is more than current living and current consciousness? The book leads through evidences of spiritual realities and scientific experiments and facts which carefully document supernatural phenomena, including various forms of spiritism, miracles such as those at Lourdes, reincarnation claims, UFO phenomena and intelligent design arguments. So you can find in here as well “reported” and categorized to some level proofs of us being much more than we think. Again – interesting reading Why he takes Vedic as a base for explanation? Somehow indeed there is many paralels. At least in the one that Cremo picked up for comparison. Sanskrit writings of India takes human presence that goes back about 2 billion years on earth. Current textbooks on archeology, does not carry that evidence. But Cremo found that over the past 150 years archeologists have discovered huge amounts of evidence, in the form of human skeletal remains, human footprints, and human artifacts tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of years old, going all the way back to about 2 billion years. Of coursa again a matter of trust in scientinc periodic he recalls in his book.. How we can explain other humanoids skeleton found? The base for explanation is again Vedic. It speaks of 400,000 humanlike species scattered throughout the universe. According to Cremo various hominids, such as the australopithecs, could be placed among those 400,000 species. Why they appeared? - idea is they were designed as vehicles for conscious selves. “Today, we see that auto manufacturers design and build many different kinds of vehicles of different types and sizes and prices for people of different tastes, needs, and purchasing power. So the "intelligent designer" does the same thing: designs and builds various kinds of bodies for conscious selves with different desires and karmas” How does the age of the earth and the existence of life on it correspond to the Hindu cosmological calendar? The Hindu, or Vedic, concept of time is cyclical. There are cycles within cycles within cycles. The basic unit of this cyclical time is called the day of Brahma. It lasts about 4.3 billion years. It's followed by a night of Brahma, which also lasts about 4.3 billion years. The days follow the nights endlessly in succession. During the days, life is manifested in the universe, and during the nights it's dormant. The current day of Brahma, the one we are in now, began about 2 billion years ago. So by this account, we should expect to see signs of life, including human life, going back about 2 billion years on earth. Cremo quotes simply that the oldest undisputed fossil evidence for life on earth recognized by paleontologists is also about 2 billion years old. We're talking about the oldest undisputed fossils of single celled life forms. The age of earth vs. Vedic Modern geologists give the earth an age of about 6 billion years. Vedic conception of the universe gives the conscious self a temporary domain of experience, apart from the eternal domain of the realm of pure consciousness, or spirit. Under this conception, Cremo takes the earth, our particular domain of experience, as “being somewhat like a rewritable CD or DVD disk. It's erased at the end of each day of Brahma”. All the geological and paleontological evidence that was written on the disc. Then comes a night of Brahma, during which the disk is reprogrammed. Geological information is written on the disk. The night of Brahma lasts 4.3 billion years. Then comes the next day of Brahma. And then biological evidence starts to get written on the disk. And we are now 2 billion years into the day of Brahma. So when we look at the evidence, Cremos shows we find geological evidence that the earth has existed for about 6 billion years, and biological evidence, in the form of fossils, showing that life has existed for about 2 billion years. Also, the day of Brahma is divided into 14 subcycles called manvantara periods, each lasting about 300 million years. Between each one there is a devastation, after which the earth has to be repopulated. We are now in the seventh manvantara cycle, and that means there have been six devastations over the past 2 billion years. Modern paleontology also tells us that the history of life on earth has been interrupted by six major extinction events, spaced at intervals of hundreds of millions of years, the last being the one that wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. What happens during the "night of Brahma" when the earth is "unmanifest"? The various living entities are put into a state of dormancy or suspended animation, something like dreamless sleep. One of claims of Hindu is that world is creted and destroye countless times. By Cremo energy can never be destroyed, so just moves into a different dimension and becomes "unmanifested” In Vedic cosmology we have pradhana, which is the unmanifest, undifferentiated material energy. During the creation cycles, this unmanifest material energy becomes differentiated into elements, starting with the more subtle elements and proceeding to the grosser elements. Then the differentiated elements are manifested into the forms of planets and bodies, which serve as domains and vehicles, respectively, for conscious selves. In the current day of Brahma, humankind goes back 2 billion years. In each day of Brahma, in each life of Brahma, not only in this universe, but in countless other universes, the human form has been manifest for vast periods of time. . So to summarize - What I liked is that the book definitely exposes the weaknesses in Darwinism and relates the tradition doctrine. And its doing in compelling and attractive way being solid grounded on scientifically recalled evidences or existing already learnings (both when it comes to archeology, reports of spiritual events, Vedic texts)/ It has big potential in impacting on the dominant materialist and religious paradigms , enabling finally for more perspective....as long it would be introduced to larger scale :]. Maybe we shall start lobbying for placing some books / ideas at school level, otherwise it will take another “ages” to stimulate human thinking to new level?... If so i would put this book defintelly on the lobbied list. “Every man bears within himself partial beings that are unaware of each other’s existence: we are born many, we die only one – or none – and to recount is to remember oneself.” HECTOR BIANCIOTTI __________________ "Imagine there is no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too..."

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22-08-2009, 02:00 AM	#2
Observer Member Human Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 43 Time Online: N/A Thanks: 9 Thx 2 Times in 2 Posts	Very interesting!