22 Jul 2006 @ 15:45, by Shreepal Singh
We intend to end the present series of articles on the history of new civilization, though for the time being and till the opportune time comes, with a few observations. What is the relevance of history with a civilization that is yet to take birth? It is this: The new civilization cannot be founded on something that is totally new in its essence. The realty - the essence of truth - has to be discovered again and again by the marching mankind. It is a discovery of something that has always been there, though we think we had not grasped its essence and meaning in our previous discoveries as we think we have grasped today with our larest discovery. But the truth is that it was discovered in the past also, albeit with a different content and meaning. We have to discover this essence once again with a content that is acceptable to us and with a meaning that is understood by us, that is, the essence of realty couched in the modern scientific language and seemingly new in substance.
This realty was discovered in the past also by many known leaders of mankind and by many more who are not known. We do not have the appetite for now to refer to them here. We want to skip to the subject that is more important in utility and relevant in guiding us onto the correct path that lays ahead for mankind. What do we understand by new civilization? How different would it be from our "current" old civilization? What would be the basic features of new civilization?
Evolutionary agenda of Mankind
Nature is on its ceaseless task of evolving an instrument better than Mind. We have pointed out elsewhere that Mind follows a thought-processing method wherein there is separation of a part from the whole and then integration of this ‘now understood’ part into the whole. It is a trial and error method. All hypotheses – that are based on reason and logic of Mind – follow this blind method of trial and error. This method is flawed on account of its inherent weakness. Therefore, all truths discovered by this method – that is, by Mind – never expound a truth fully and completely. All scientific discoveries and their underlying scientific laws – like the laws of gravity, law of conservation of energy, et al – regularly undergo periodic modification.
But what we human beings know, animals do not. And, what animals know, plants do not. Each life-species has evolved over a long period of time her instrument of knowledge, which is still under the process of evolutionary refinement. Man is no exception to this process. Man and his Mind are undergoing change. It is axiomatic to say that it has always been so since the debut of Homo-sapiens on our Earth. But, significantly, this change is rapid today. Science is playing a decisive role in this process of evolutionary change. Science does affect not only the human being’s day-today life by offering levers to him in his struggle against Nature but his Mind also. His Mind grows more complex. With the advance of science, man becomes more capable to understand nature, and that includes his own life, and more aware of the limitation and insufficiency of the instrument (of Mind) that he is equipped with. This awareness is reflected in his growing sense of hollowness somewhere within and inability of science, despite its dazzling achievements, to account for many open questions.
Man and his science have reached a place where all branches of knowledge are converging onto a single point and a single query is staring them for answer: what is the nature of universal existence?
A new instrument that is better than Mind in efficacy and higher in evolutionary stage is in the offing. With the new instrument in place, Mind would not be discarded but would be relegated to a subordinate position in one’s life. This instrument would know the truth by a method where human consciousness would identify itself with the object rather than the method wherein consciousness disintegrates and re-integrates thoughts of objects into a harmonious whole. It would be a method of heart, which would replace and dominate the method of Mind – reason and logic. Though the new method still would be a mere shadow of the eternal Presence but there would be less distortion of this light in the process of downward percolation in its case than in the case of Mind.
New civilization ought to be dedicated to this evolutionary phenomenon and must be founded on its requirements. New civilization is not the civilization of human beings who are equipped with this new instrument of truth-perception but it is a civilization of those people who are ready and preparing to welcome the new advent. New civilization is the transitional civilization: a meeting place of two civilizations.
New civilization and the efforts to make its debut as early as possible is a serious subject and the same do not merit to be played lightly at our hands. New civilization cannot be made to happen and establish itself in a short period of time. It is bound to take not decades but centuries, if not more. Also, its happening is not dependent on human efforts. Individuals’ efforts, if made, may shorten the gestation period and help in a smooth birth that may become long awaited.
Nature is full of paradoxes. Yet it is the inability of our Mind that makes things look paradoxical. One such paradox of Nature is that it is cyclic in its operation and yet the things are not repeated again in exactly the same manner. It looks like a spiral evolution where things and events appear again and again, which are basically the same but in new forms to meet the new situations. History is no exception to this cyclic process.
We find in history seeds of human culture that sprout again and again in new forms but with the same qualitative contents to meet new situations brought into existence by the passage of time. We foresee that these seeds are once again ready to sprout in the fertile soil of our times. Our times are fully ripe for the germination of the old seeds. Our times are fret with problems that are unparalleled and unheard of in human history. These problems are so grave in their consequences and so encompassing in their scale that they put the mankind’s existence in peril. These are ideally fertile times for germination of the old seeds – that had saved mankind many a times in the past – once again in new forms. Mankind embattled with these problems is once again ready to listen – as in the past – to the teachings that have been taught in ages past in different contexts and different forms.
A new civilization that offers this old seeds in new form to bail out mankind is the need of the hour.
There are three signs of new civilization. Firstly, it would be based on the new understanding by human beings of the prime realty that has always existed there. Secondly, this understanding of the prime realty would be uniform for human beings and would not be divisive in nature as it had been in the past. The evolution of Mind would not only remove the geographic distance among different sections of mankind but it would also remove the difference of perceptions of the prime realty among these sections. And, thirdly, this prime realty, though still mystic to Mind, would be supported by its reason. New Civilization has not yet dawned on our Earth, where people have already gone global. Whenever it makes its debut, it would be compulsive in its utility and global in its reach. But this utility would not be its chief strength. Its strength would rather lie in the realization by our race that it has re-discovered the realty in a manner – so called scientific manner – that is the only one acceptable to reason and that this realty though always existed there but remained mystic to Mind. This realization would profoundly change mankind’s priorities and its institutions of collective living would accordingly undergo a revolutionary change. All these institutions – economics, culture and politics – could then no longer be allowed by the enlightened collective societal life to further the egoistic agenda of individual or collective living.
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