A New Age has dawned upon the horizons of humanity and few will deny it. Yes we can debate whether it is the newest of the new or simply a repetition of the old ‘new ages’ that have repeatedly dawned upon man, only to end in yet another twilight and the ambiguous Night. We may also argue whether it is something ‘positive’, a turn of humanity for better or it is something that is evil, a loss of degradation of values for the worse. Of course, each age of humanity brings its own set of values and is conditioned by it. These values, the ways of living peculiar to an Age become a sort of comfort zone for the society conditioned by it. The more strongly we are conditioned as in a certain rigid and narrow doctrine, religions and ideological groups, the more there is the tendency to regard change as evil. Similarly, the more a society is governed by purely external frames of behavior and less by the spirit behind it, the more it resists change. When the focus is on the spirit, then we can understand that the same spirit can clothe itself in different forms and yet remain alive and a vibrant dynamic influence on humanity. But when the focus is only on the form, the externalities, the conformism of common behavior rather than conformism of ideas and still deeper of the divine essence in humanity that clothes itself in different ideas, then the change is shunned, denied, opposed or forcibly suppressed and violently crushed.
But the change imposes itself for the change is again not just a change of external way of living, – which is incidental, but a change of poise of the spirit that governs humanity. It finds its way as a river its path towards the sea. And if we have to look somewhere for the change then it has to be found in this spirit of humanity rather than in outer behavior and patterns of life. The change in outer patterns is an after-effect, the result and not the cause, the rearrangement of things on the shore or the land after a giant tidal wave or massive winds have flown past. The winds break many old structures, the giant wave takes back into the sea many shells lying on the shore and give back some new ones. So too after the tornado has passed away, a clearing of the debris follows and then, new colonies of plants and people, new arrangements of relationships emerge. Until the whole process is over, there is confusion, the blinding of our vision, the breakage and the wreckage, rather than buildings and institutions of a new hope. But meanwhile there is often a rainbow phase that colours our vision, makes us momentarily forget the fury and fills our eyes with hope and renewed charm. But the rainbow is only a sign of the gods, the change upon earth comes afterwards through much labour and effort. We seem to be passing through such a rainbow phase now. Like the honeymoon of the newly wed it is full of happiness and charm and dreams of the new creation yet to arrive. Nevertheless for the new relationship to endure and succeed a phase of evolutionary struggle must follow, a phase where past atavism, subconscious habits, the pull of the old will assert itself until the new equation between heaven and earth has been discovered and humanity settled in the new poise. Such is the phase of evolutionary struggle that we are now going through and will go through for quite some time until the New has definitively conquered, transformed and integrated the old.
Yet, it is precisely here that a word of caution is needed.
None can deny that something has changed and fundamentally changed in the earth and humanity since 1960. A seeking for new things, for a new adventure, for new experiments has begun. The old, stable theories, paradigms, systems, constructs, institutions are being broken and set aside or are undergoing an enlargement and change so as to accommodate and prepare for a new kind of thought and a new way of life. But it is precisely here that a word of caution is needed. All that is off-beat and in-fashion is not necessarily ‘new’ even though it may indirectly help in ushering the New Age. Very often it is like a distraction that helps to dislodge the mind from being glued to past formation. But the passage can be perilous too for the mind loosing the safe anchor of the old may suddenly sink into a bog and mire worse than the immediate darkness of the past. Renouncing the human way it may gravitate towards animality instead of swimming upwards towards divinity. The prison bars of Reason removed and the light of intuition not yet dawned, it may rush blindly towards the precipice driven by infra-rational forces that may imitate the supra-rational.
Nor is the New Age served on a platter, ready to eat as some fast food. It is not a rainbow dream sold to us for a shilling. There are many such dreams which are flooding the market in times of transition that we live in. These dreams come as various products as well as various ready-to-satisfy inner experiences. Momentarily, some of them, may serve as a bridge between the Earth and the Beyond. But soon enough they fade away under the debris and smoke of the old world whose destruction is still under way. When this happens there is a disillusionment, a disbelief in the New Age itself. There is then a tendency to fall back on the ‘old, tried and tested’ ways.
The real cause of the confusion is that we are in transition. The old ways do not work well any more since their time is over. And the new is yet to be discovered. Meanwhile our mind and heart rush at every glimmer and mistake it for the New Light. What we forget is that even when the Light has dawned we still have to emerge out of our prison-homes, remove the thick draperies of Ignorance, cleanse our eyes of the debris that is flying around and then dare to step out into the vast to discover the true and the Beautiful.
The New Consciousness is not ready-to-eat dish. It is a new ingredient, a new element that has been added just as fire was one day discovered and added to man’s life. This discovery did not automatically lead to an application of the presence of Fire in many ways that have changed our life. The first humans probably simply felt ‘awe and fear’. The Fire was there, born amidst man, but its meaning and power and full possibilities were yet unborn, waiting for our effort.
So too, now, the New Consciousness, the Supramental Force is there upon earth and activated in humanity. Now we have to slowly learn to receive it rightly. Perhaps some may get burnt in the process as the discoverers of fire might have been. But slowly as man grows in this new experience he will be led and guided over a period of time wherein he will learn to change his individual and collective life, to reorganize his dealings with himself and the world, to readjust the balance and equation with inner and outer nature. This is what’s being worked out slowly but steadily and assuredly in the Divine laboratory called Earth and within the ‘Divine reactors’ called man. The Divine experiment is meanwhile going on and extending itself so that more and more bodies and souls open to this ‘New element’ and integrate it with their life.
Till then the labour and the effort, the struggle between the old and the new will be there. It is only when the price is fully paid and our ego-bound individuality drops off and desire driven nightmare cease, to be that we shall truly see, live and be the Dream Divine.
Alok Pandey
About Savitri | B1C2-10 Condition of the World (p.18)