The Confluence Age
Question: How do the insights of the world’s leading scientists, including Albert Einstein, conceptually echo Baba’s reference to the end of the Confluence Age, and when do they predict it may occur?
Answer: Time, as we understand it in the physical world, is a human construct. Terms such as second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century, and millennium are all linear units used to measure this time. In contrast, the “Confluence Age” refers to a dimension of time that is not linear, and therefore its duration lies beyond the limits of human comprehension.
Recently, I read about a particular kind of Clock located at the Keller Centre at the University of Chicago which is maintained by an organisation led by a team of leading scientists and physicists known as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The way this clock is set and managed reminded me of Baba’s references to the phrase “end of the Confluence Age”.
In 1945, in the aftermath of the destruction caused by the first atomic bombs, Albert Einstein, along with atomic bomb’s inventor J. Robert Oppenheimer and many other scientists and engineers involved in the Manhattan Project, decided to establish the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an organisation dedicated to warning and educating the public about the potentially catastrophic consequences of their invention.
In 1947, Martyl Langsdorf, an artist married to Alexander Langsdorf Jr., a Manhattan Project engineer, created the Doomsday Clock graphic for the first cover of the Bulletin’s magazine. The Clock later gained worldwide recognition as a symbol of the threat of an impending nuclear apocalypse. It was initially set at seven minutes to midnight, with “midnight” representing the doomsday. For decades, the Clock is regularly managed and adjusted by a group of leading scientists based on their assessment of global existential threat levels. In each instance, the Clock’s hands move based upon whether the events push humanity closer to or further away from the Doomsday or a significantly major catastrophic event.
I encourage readers to watch the Bulletin’s official 4-minute introductory YouTube video on the Doomsday Clock, available at the link below, or by clicking on here.
Over its 80-year history, the Bulletin has monitored existential threats to humanity and communicated its insights to the public through its magazine, website, events, and the Doomsday Clock, which visualises humanity’s metaphorical proximity to global catastrophe based on the perceived threat levels arising from climate change, nuclear and biological weapons, technological risks such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and broader geopolitical developments.
Although this may not precisely reflect Baba’s intended meaning of the phrase “the Confluence Age”, it is important to remember what the time of this Clock is truly intended to show, particularly in the context of Baba’s assertion about the approaching end of the Confluence Age. On a positive note however, according to this physical Clock we can still turn back the time.
On a personal level, I feel that the phrase ‘ending of the Confluence Age’ may not be limited to the physical world alone. It could have a deeper, subtler meaning, relating to when a new soul enters Gyaan and the experiences, and the inner upheavals, that precede the transformations occurring in the subsequent stages.
The Official YouTube Link of the Clock:
Link to the Bulletin’s website:
Link to the Official Website of the Clock: