2.5 An Eonic Model
Last modified 05/26/2008
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We have already seen evidence that the phenomenon of the Axial Age
requires a larger framework for its correct understanding, that of the eonic
effect. And this larger pattern itself demands a new way of looking at the
question of history. The data of the Axial Age, and the larger pattern in which
it is embedded, suddenly reveals signs of a particularly ingenious and elegant
system at work, which we can describe with what we call the eonic model. This model is basically about
an 'eonic sequence' of transitions, and the Axial Age takes its place in this
series. This model requires us to consider the scale on which this phenomenon is
occurring and to recalibrate our ideas of history and evolution so that they
work together as related concepts. Basically, what we suspect, is that our
'eonic sequence', in its fullest scope, comprises the whole period of the
Neolithic to the present, and thus begins to generate an alternate
interpretation to our conventional idea of evolution. We must in some fashion
connect the idea of history to that of evolution. In fact, that is not a hard
thing to do and our data suggests the way to do this with its clear suggestion
of two levels at work, macro and micro. Basically what we are seeing is an
evolutionary macro aspect in tandem with an historical micro aspect. We see the
effect of the larger system in the Axial Age and the realization of that in the
outcomes to that age, keeping in mind therefore that the two are not the
same.
Thus history and evolution are in some sense braided together in our 'eonic model' and we are confronted with an elegant picture of a dynamic at once driving world history in the large without contradicting the realization of history of the dynamic in the chronicles of the various civilizations in the mainline of the eonic sequence. We have a clue to a better way to take the Old Testament, whose enigma is compounded by the discovery of its place in the Axial interval, thence the eonic sequence. The document that is bequeathed to us is the historical realization of the larger process of the eonic sequence. Thus we must penetrate the veil that it creates in its escalating mythological wrapper to reach the deeper core meaning of the text as a testament to the larger evolutionary process seen in the eonic effect. Armed with this insight many of the paradoxes and much of the conflict with between so-called secular and religious interpretations fall away to leave us with a renewed perspective on its significance. |
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