CHAPTER SEVEN
At the Gates of the New Age - 9

Indeed a great law of retribution (karma) seems to be at work according to which the nation who conquers another by physical violence and wholesale death is in turn psychically conquered — or at least deeply influenced — by spiritual leaders of the conquered people. Just as the conquered Hebrews spread through Rome the Christian doctrine of Jesus and Paul, and defeated Rome psychically, so England conquered India, but the Anglo-Saxon world has become deeply influenced psychically by Hindu yogis and by Gandhi's movement of passive resistance. America defeated Japan, but Japanese architecture and the Zen doctrines are influencing today hundreds of thousands of Americans. While fighting the Barbarians, Rome opened herself to an inflow of Germanic mercenaries and to the new spirit of Nordic people; likewise, after having tried to contain Communism in Korea and Viet Nam, we already see a Korean "avatar" visiting us and perhaps establishing magnetic centers throughout the United States, and I foresee the probability of some Vietnamese movement spreading in the future to our land. An authoritarian Japanese movement, the Soka Gakkai, is already making many converts among Americans, and it is not impossible that this will be an important force to reckon with.
      All this suggests that the present power of big business and militarism in the U. S. and in all the Western world, and also the Communist Party dictatorship (backed by the Army) are phenomena which represent the end of the Piscean Age. Whether they will be bequeathed to the new Aquarian Age next century remains to be seen. It need not be so; at least not in anything like their present form. It presumably will not be so if, as one may very well expect or envision, some radically transforming event occurs around 1990 on a planetary scale. A change in the earth's polar axis could even alter the length of the precessional cycle. A contact with super-intelligent beings from some other planet or solar system would also no doubt profoundly and radically affect man's mentality and presumably the entire pattern of human society — which would then almost inevitably become integrated in opposition to, or in contrast to the newcomers from outer space. And, obviously, there could be a devastating nuclear World-War killing perhaps nearly half of mankind and making entire continents inhabitable for at least half a century — perhaps until around 2062 AD , the date I have given for the concrete, physical beginning of the Aquarian Age.
      I certainly do not believe in the coming total destruction of the human race and the suppression of all possibilities of life within the earth's biosphere. I feel nevertheless that drastic developments are likely to occur around 1990 and after; and these might resemble, in a sense, the famed battle of Kurukshetra, which is described in the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. To this vast epic belongs the well-known Bhagavat Gita in which the incarnate Deity, Krishna, speaks to his disciple, Arjuna. In this battle of Kurukshetra which, tradition says, saw a confrontation between two equally matched armies, the rule of the Warrior Caste of ancient India was broken up. This opened the door to the domination of the Brahmin Caste and to the great Hindu "Age of Philosophy." It also marked the opening of the very vast cycle of Kali Yuga; and, as we already saw, it is said to have occurred in 3102 BC in the month of February. The Avatar, Krishna, was a great statesman, at least one aspect of whose work was the very destruction of the Warrior Caste.
      For many years, I have felt that this was what was in store for mankind just now — indeed since 1918. But of course we need not expect another Kurukshetra, or a Biblical Armageddon, or an apocalyptic and fiery Wagnerian consummation to our present Piscean Age. The fire may burn, but it also purifies. That the last 72-year sub-period from 1990 to 2062 will be a period of thorough and radical rebuilding seems a most likely possibility. Then the today so emotionally longed-for Aquarian Age should begin.