Eliade relates two main types of persons. The archaic man and the modern. The archaic models his life on archetypes, similiar to Plato's "world of ideas," forsaking history in favor of such. He repeatedly and continually destroys all history and recreates himself in a new beginning. He does this by entering a timeless realm Eliade calls the illo tempore, a timeless and numinous death and rebirth, which he bases on cyclic events of some type.

The modern man negates all of this in favor of historicity. He measures all history and time, or the profane time, and bases his entire life on the meaning of such in present existence and all future decision making. However, without the archaic man's non-historical regenerative abilities to recreate himself in such timelessness, or in the sacred, in imitation of archetypes, the modern historical man faces extreme existential despair. But what saves the modern man from suicide and utter meaninglessness in relativism and nihilism; he joins to his historical self, either religious faith, cyclic theories, mysticism, science and philosophy.

Hegel suggests history (and all the evil in history) is never repeated and necessary for the evolution to higher ends. Only persons like Belinsky or Dostoeyski have resisted but weakly in that. Marx had made a science of history as the results of the class struggle, which ultimately fails and leaves us in our existential relativity.

So remedies are created to coincide with historical measurement, as in Nietzsche's Eternal Return,although cyclic in nature is not the Eternal Return of the Archaic man who regenerations a new beginning, but rather that of the Greek Heraclitus and Pythagorean thoughts, are the cyclic meanings needed to live a life of measured time and history apart from the archaic regenerative man of archetype models and rebirth into new beginnings. The same holds true for Oswald Spenglers biological conception of history and Heidegger's idea of historicity transcending all are what modern man must attach to his linear historical measurement.

While monotheism, the first to measure history and time encounters the timelessness of the illo tempore in the beginning of creation and in the "end" of the world or in Christianity in the second coming of the messiah. Unlike the archaic man who enters the new creation each and every time he recreates both himself and his world.

Eliade suggests that perhaps mankind will one day return to the archaic man of regeneration in repetition of rituals and meaning to cease measuring this time and enter in the timelessness, letting go of history and entering in the illo tempore.

(Archetype Non-Historical Regeneration Man)
The wind blows - but - gets continually reborn; or,
(Historical Man with Religious Faith)
Cling to your dusty mirror and hold God's hand.
(Historical Man without Religious Faith)
Or the mirror without dust would destroy the world.

And to sum it up, Archaic man had no history, repeated archetype models, destroying his past (all history) and recreating the beginning of time each year in a mystical, timeless moment in the illo tempore, all history erased. While modern man relies on history and profane time and gains either science, philosophy or religious faith to prevent him from dying in existential despair.

Now I'm reading this great book entitled, When Science Meets Religion, by Ian G. Barbour and reading of those with religious faith who conform the uncertainties of quantum physics with a God who controls such acausual events. Seeing this through Eliade's lens, I see this as an historical man's attempt to join religious faith to his history and science in order to prevent him from existential despair in the terror of history. For the archaic man none of this is needed, as he will erase all history, re-creating the beginning of time reborn in the timeless moment of illo tempore, not of some future time but of the present.

And while the modern man has history and faith, he also forms minority governments to control, organized and maintains his linear history. The majority are followers, freedom is seriously limited. The archaic man has complete freedom as each time cycle or year, to erase all history, to enter in the timeless moment of the archetype of illo tempore and re-create himself and his world.

I can't say enough for this book, this only a summary of a higher mountain to see humanity.

These pitiful relativistic stances should be immediately ignored by a serious person. Otherwise, the influences of Jung's theories are always apparent. As always, ideas aren't bad in themselves, but their interpretation makes them a vehicle of relativism.

According to Eliade, the archaic man lives in a world of archetypes and cyclical past, while for the "fallen" man of modern civilizations archetypes no longer exist and time is linear. This is obviously incorrect. His very idea that "we should respect other peoples cultures and not judge others as primitive" is an ALWAYS recurrent mindless ARCHETYPE of Post-Modern ages.

The basic Eliade's idea that majority of basic beliefs of human beings about the world do not correspond to the reality but are merely inherited from the religious tradition of our ethnical group is the greatest insight that revolutionized my personal philosophy. After all, how many of our believes are unconsciously shaped by Judeo-Christian dogma? - not only the idea of history as having the beginning and the end which is analyzed in this book, but other ideas as well, such as the idea of death. We think it is bad to die. Why we think so? Because of our belief in soul and its death or possibility of suffering in hell. Tribals share with us the survival instinct which is basic for all mammals but aside from that they are not distressed by the idea of death because they believe that they return back to Mother Earth. Prove them wrong! After all we all come from the matter of this planet in material sense and return to it again, having lived our lives. To believe in the eternal return is more logical than to believe in some entity called "soul" which is separated from the body "once and for all" after death.

This is just a single thought on my part.
After reading this book, those of you who are ready to accept its ideas will undoubtly have more thoughts about the validity of our common-sense beliefs about reality.

Even if scientific materialism is true this is no great reason for pessimism - we are who we think we are!