Genesis-like tales and Big-Bang-like theories have their foundation in a collective subconscious memory, but since that encrypted recollection is not easily deciphered, it has thus far found conscious expression only in the form of fantastic, overblown mythical tales and theories. We all share in the collective subconscious memory of the many beginnings of time that we have repeatedly experienced as individuals, but that memory has been largely misinterpreted by the scientists and story tellers that have written about them. In consequence, the fascinating tales that those stories tell us are mostly figments of the story tellers’ imagination.

My answer to question No. 2 would again be valid only from the perspective of a monistic cosmogony. Apocalyptic and Armageddon-like tales and stories are best explained following the line of thinking developed in answering question No. 1. This time, however, we have some specific references that may prove illuminating as illustrations for the main two diverging points.

Before going forward, let’s get a refresher on what question No. 2 was all about: 2) How can the human race have any collective intuition of the end of days if, a) The Apocalypse is an event that by definition has never happened before and, b) It is an event that nobody can possibly have witnessed because it hasn’t happened yet?

It is befitting to start the answer by recalling that in the western world the most significant apocalyptic story ever told is, of course, the Apocalypse. But as we know, other similar mythological stories had surfaced in the different parts of the globe way before the Apocalypse ever did. Saint John may have come up with the best seller among those stories, but he couldn’t claim the copyright on that idea. If he could, I wouldn’t be writing these words, for that would mean that such tales are the sole preserve of the Christian religion, which would also mean this whole issue wouldn’t pertain to humanity as a whole.

But that is not the case. Genypse-like stories belong to the human race, as they all spring from some sort of shared subconscious memory of those events. We now know as well that, from a monistic perspective, those events never took place and will never take place at the level of the Universe. We also know that they are taking place as we read in every corner of the world where there are a good number of people. There are people being born everywhere and there are people dying everywhere too. The Genesis and the Apocalypse are happening simultaneously at this very moment in time, but not at the level of the Universe. The Genypse is happening at the personal level of those who are, as we read, being born or dying.

In this line of thinking, St. John’s apocalyptic visions were only the visions of his own death which, exalted by his religious fervor, he extrapolated to the level of the Universe. Because of his evident constant devotion to Jesus (2), St. John probably had attained a certain purity of mind which one day spontaneously brought him to a level of transcendental consciousness similar, but of a lower order, to the level achieved by some successful practitioners of Jnana Yoga. That level of consciousness was probably very similar to other after-death experiences St. John had previously lived in the course of the many reincarnations he had gone through in his long evolutionary journey.

Those after-death stages that St. John relived are quite similar to the ones explained in the Tibetan Book of the Dead or Bardo Thodol. As explained in that book, anyone as deeply devoted to a prophet or deity as St. John was clearly devoted to Jesus, can, because of their devotion, avoid or overcome any and all of those horrific visions that may appear to us at certain stages in the after-death process. St. John was unable to avoid those visions, but he was able to overcome them because of his profound love for Jesus, who in the duration of his epiphany appeared a few times as his savior and, in St. John’s exalted grandiose extrapolation, as the savior of humanity.

St. John’s visions of apocalyptic horsemen and speaking animals had much to do with the attachments he had had and the actions he had performed during his previous lives. The suddenness and intensity of such unexpected state of transcendental consciousness excited his imagination to the point of eventually ascribing dialogues and overimposing Universalist religious meaning on everything he saw. Overall, the final destruction of “creation” in his vision was nothing but an extrapolation to the Universal level of the many times he had experienced death, which represents the end of the world at the personal level for each and every one of us every time we die.

His depiction of the final judgment was also an extrapolation of the balance of deeds that each of us has to submit at the end of each life, except that such balance is not submitted to a court-like group of judges sitting on thrones up in heaven or anything of that sort. That balance is assessed in our ability or inability to bypass or overcome the obstacles that any horrifying visions may put on our way towards liberation. As a merger of Jnana Yoga and the Bardo Thodol would explain, the stronger the attachments we experienced in our lives were, and the more selfish and crooked the deeds we performed were, the more difficult to bypass or overcome those terrifying visions it will be.

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(2) Please note that, in these writings, any reference to St. John's devotion to Jesus is presented exclusively from the perspective of Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga of devotion.