The Fourth Awakening Chronicles III

By: Rod Pennington, Jeffery A> Martin

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Penelope Drayton Spence has been hired by two of the world’s richest men to track down and interview enlightened people who may have arrived at the Fourth Awakening. The problem, as fast she can locate a potential candidate, they have a nasty habit of mysteriously vanishing. These “Chronicles” are written in the "Serial Novel" format Charles Dickens famously used for the “Pickwick Papers” and many of his later books. It is also the format magazines such as “The Saturday Evening Post” made popular not that long ago. THIS SERIES OF NOVELLAS WILL BE COMPLETED IN 2014. “Chronicles III” is the third in a series of SHORT NOVELLAS based on the characters and concepts explored in “The Fourth Awakening" and “The Gathering Darkness.” The goal of each Chronicle is to present an Enlightened “Archetype,” and explore its characteristics. While each Chronicle is a stand-alone episode that can be read independently, it is a part of a much larger and continuing story which is easier to understand and follow if it is read in sequential order. In this episode, we learn the true identity of “Jacobin” and meet the formidable Agnes Finch Turnbull. Dr. Turnbull walked away from a tenured position at Harvard and started a controversial publishing empire focusing on books about enlightenment and personal development. She is also one of the most severe critics of the Hermes Project and wrote a scathing review of Penelope’s book, The Fourth Awakening, for the “New York Times.” WHAT IS AN AWAKENING? An awakening occurs when something so profoundly changes the world that all of the old rules no longer apply. A powerful new order arrives, completely unexpected and without warning, and things are never the same again. The First Awakening occurred approximately 200,000 years ago when Homo sapiens emerged in East Africa, but it took another 150,000 years for things to begin to get interesting. The Second Awakening saw the emergence of spoken language, early shamans, and great myths being told around the campfire. For the first time, early humans became self-aware and while still considering themselves a part of nature, they understood they were now different. The Third Awakening began around 3,000 years ago. It saw the rise of all modern religions, as well as science. Between 800 BC and 400 BC, there was a religious explosion. The key events in the Old Testament occurred, from which emerged Judeo/Christian beliefs. At the same time Taoism was being followed by Confucianism in China. The same was happening with Shintoism in Japan, and Hinduism and Buddhism in India, and later Islam. For the past 500 or so years, the political power of religion has waned while the power of science has flourished. With videos of Space Shuttles exploding on cable news, both sides politicizing environmental science to serve their personal agenda and “safe” nuclear power plants melting down, science is now in retreat. When the big ideas from the previous Awakening start to collapse, a new Awakening is on the horizon.