Interesting article about Goebekli Tepe...If you look at Egypt—which is particularly interesting since there’s so much of it left to experience—Egypt is a single-issue civilization. All of it— anyway, all that remains of it—is consecrated to the immortality of the soul. Rather different from our current culture.
Right. You look at where our own creative energy goes, probably 60 percent of it, if not more, goes into weapons of mass destruction or military something, one way or another. Probably another 30 or 35 percent goes into frivolity, into Hollywood and Disneyland. And maybe 8 or 10 percent actually goes into real science, medicine, things that are genuinely useful. But almost none of it is directed toward the development of the soul, the development of any spiritual discipline. From my point of view, without that, there is no civilization; it’s just progress, which I describe as “shiny barbarism.”
What do the ancient civilizations say is the purpose of life, and human life in particular?
Really, it’s probably best expressed in a contemporary context by Gurdjieff: his pupil J. G. Bennett called it The Theory of Reciprocal Maintenance. In the simplest terms: If we human beings don’t do our job (call it striving for immortality) the whole planet, and probably the solar system and all the rest, is affected one way or another. We have a job to do, and that job involves us acquiring a level of consciousness we’re not born with. If we look around us in the chaos of today, it is self-evident that the vast majority of us are unaware that such a possibility even exists. Unfortunately, that unawareness is particularly prevalent in many who call themselves “religious.”
http://www.chronogram.com/issue/2010/7/ ... e-Ancients