We have stepped into a New Age. The past century challenges the old views and ways of life and to a large extent has either destroyed it or else is replacing it with a completer and more inclusive view. Each and every field of life and sphere of human endeavour is witnessing this change, this shift of paradigms towards a more comprehensive understanding. But even as this is happening and the debris of past imperfect forms is being cleared, it is important to be cautious of two things. First, in our hurry and eagerness to create we should not end up creating yet something imperfect and give it the name of newness. There is an attempt in certain quarters, for instance, to pitch their tents upon the grounds thus cleared and sell their products each as the new one. Such a ‘newness’ is at best a passing phase, an experimentation of sorts, before the true things can come up. The second danger is that the old thing may be passed off as the new with some minor adjustments or merely a change of label.
It is here that we need to exercise caution. For newness is often (mis)understood as something that is in fashion. It is also understood as something that dazzles us suddenly and caters to man’s grotesque need for an impossible miracle, impossible because it seeks for a miracle without fulfilling the conditions. But such miracles do not last and cannot be replicated for the larger good. A true and lasting miracle could take roots only when the conditions under which we live and labour are changed.
But what are these conditions but the very state of consciousness that we live in. If we regard the universe as a projection of the One Infinite Consciousness then each finite is only an embodiment of a certain movement or poise of this One consciousness. It is this binds us and creates the conditions we live in. Just as we are bound by the state of sleep and dream respectively and become subject to the conditions that exist in these states, so too our waking state itself is a partial and limited consciousness and subjects us to all that we create ad experience in this world. To recreate or create afresh and anew we must first change the consciousness in which we live or rather with which we are presently identified. We need to deepen, widen, heighten ourselves till the boundaries and limits of our individual consciousness begin to overflow on each side into the Infinite. It is this that will create the truly New in us, a new being who will see, understand, live and act from a new and vaster poise. It is raising the human in us to a larger pitch and scale, as it were, rather than multiplying more methods and techniques in the name of newness.
How can we do that? Therein lies the real challenge of the new cycle of evolution that calls upon us. Not to merely repeat the old formulas under new names, not even to merely tinker and polish the surfaces of life but to discover a new possibility and way of being that has never been so far! Time presses towards this change, our souls are called to this great adventure, the winds blow in its favour, the ground and soil of human nature is ready. All that is needed is the leap of faith and the courage to endure the process of change. The change is not outside but within us and it is happening. Only we must look and work in the right direction, and press and persevere till the moment comes when the limited circle of consciousness in which we had locked ourselves open at some vantage point and we begin to breath infinity and work out the dreams of eternity in and around us. This is the new possibility, the possibility of creating a New world that awaits us at this hour. Or shall we say that the New world and the New possibility have already arrived. All that they need is a steady will to enter into it, or better still allow it to enter into us.
We need to make the definitive choice, – whether to belong to the old world built with blocks of ego and division, watered by ignorance and desire whose best bloom is a precariously held temporary gain, a happiness mixed with suffering, a pain that can be ameliorated but not cured, a palliative at best. Or else to be born anew into the True and the Vast with its bloom or intuitive knowledge and spontaneous power of action, and behind it all that delight which is the batch and mark of the New Consciousness, the Delight that sets our souls free and rebuilds for us a life free of the stress of suffering and sorrow.
Alok Pandey
