Potpourri- Wisdom For The New Millennium

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Wisdom For The New Millennium

The general understanding of evolution presents human development as linear. The thinking goes that man evolved from an uncivilized, barbaric being in the beginning and over a long period of time gradually became more civilized, cultured, and better off. This is a short-sighted conclusion. If you go back to early human civilizations, you will find there were very intelligent people living then. Nature has not deprived any generation, at any time, of civilization, culture, and refinement. Of course, sometimes life was more cultured and civilized than at other times. Long ago, time was seen as a wheel or circle rather than linear. A circle means you always come back to the same point. From the Dark Age you come back to the Golden Age. Then, as time goes by, the knowledge of one civilization gets lost, and in some future time it is again revived. What we call “New Age” today is nothing new; it is all very ancient. The shift from the Old Age to today’s New Age is a shift from prestige to self-esteem. Look back in the past century or even the past few decades; the values were different. People were more into showing off, or were very much concerned about what other people thought about them. As the New Age begins, we see values shifting. In the Old Age, people believed in seeing God somewhere up in the clouds. In the New Age, the idea that God is within you, that you are the Divine, is becoming more prominent. New Age people talk in terms of angels and consciousness, with more emphasis on values, on love, on meditation. If someone spoke on love a few decades ago, people would have thought it was something phony, or unscientific. The previous age was more head-oriented; the New Age is more heart-oriented, but people are still searching for something of substance. Much of the so-called new age knowledge has no backbone to it; it is a little airy-fairy, so to speak. In the previous age, there was more emphasis on such things as pesticides and antibiotics. Now the emphasis in the New Age is going back to natural and organic farming. Being more with nature and using natural herbal medicines is again an ancient wisdom. A few decades ago, yoga was thought to be something very odd and not very dignified. Sitting and squatting on the floor was not very mainstream. Today yoga has become very fashionable. Everywhere you go you see people doing yoga to keep their health, and scientists have documented the benefits. What was once thought to be primitive has become meaningful and what was once thought to be a very advanced and civilized technology has proven to be destructive. That is why I say time is not linear, it is a wheel, it is a circle, and it comes back around. People view ancient times as barbaric, but today look at the toys children use. Do they look more refined? Civilized? Look at movies and television, do they show signs of refinement? We are coming back into a “New Age” because time has come to its darkest point. You cannot go any further down! This age has come to the end of barbarism; it cannot go any further down. At the bottom of a wheel the only direction you can go is up. That is why people are becoming more aware of value systems. Parents are concerned about their children and their values and on how to enhance the human values in everyone. This is exactly what the ancient rishis, sages and saints did thousands and thousands of years ago. You can find these records in ayurveda in yoga and many other literatures which contain the same principles, in a more profound and methodical way, of what is now being called “New Age” thinking. In India a few decades ago, singing was thought to be not a very nice thing to do in public, especially for women. Dignified women would not come and sing in public. Singing was not thought to be very graceful. The first film producer in India had such a hard time getting a few singers to come and sing, and actors and actresses to participate in the movies. Only the temple dancers would sing or dance. Today the times have changed. Today music has taken over. The value systems change and the changing of value systems are due to the change of time. We are, I think, in a very fortunate time, because we are coming up from barbarism to an era with more trust, more love, more compassion, more service, and more caring for each other. Not only caring for each other, we have started to care for the planet, which was never heard about until recent times. The environment has become the talk of this decade. Before the last few decades no one cared about the environment or even heard this word that is so popular with the common public today. Someone said recently, “There is no place on earth where there is no environmental problem.” Fortunately this New Age has brought us more hope and more promise. Today we recognize that there is something beyond the material, the matter, that there is something that is higher than our day-to-day routine life. In previous decades, business was the main talk, love was secondary. Today love has taken a more prominent place. We can talk about love without feeling shy or shameful about it. Emotions can be expressed today, but they were not allowed to be expressed a century ago. This is especially true for men. In the past, a man could not express his emotions because that was considered wrong. Today expressing emotion is acknowledged and even encouraged. Love and business have opposite arithmetic. They are opposite in nature, so they cannot meet. Business is giving less and taking more. A banana worth two cents is sold for ten cents. Business is giving that which is less valuable and taking something more. Otherwise business cannot work! You cannot buy something for ten cents and sell it for five cents! Love is taking minimum and giving maximum. Love is giving more, but taking very little. Both business and love need an exchange, a communication, a happening. When the sense of belongingness grows in us, love finds its true expression. Not just as a formality, but the presence of it in our very life. Love is seeing God in the person next to us, and meditation is seeing God within us; they go hand in hand. The best position is to combine the ancient and the new and adapt them to modern-day life and current situations. For example, when people started inventing airplanes, it took them several decades to really come to the right design. Before a plane could take off they had many obstacles they had to undergo because there was no map or blueprint available from the past. There was no clue because no one had done anything like it in the past. If they had there was no record of it. What the knowledge from ancient ages offers us today is a map on which we can do our own research. The path of inner awakening is an individual research, everyone has to walk the path, and the ancient knowledge can give us guidance. The knowledge will be like lampposts, showing the way from time to time. In the New Age community I have heard many people talk about predicting earthquakes and earth changes and the visions they get about this angel, or that angel and a lot of things like that. One thing these people don’t understand is the process of yogamaya. That is one word explained in detail in the ancient texts. Yogamaya is a sort of mental game that the mind plays, an illusion that comes in the mind bringing it some visions. Unfortunately, people believe these visions are one hundred percent right. People go on and on, going to psychics to ask them questions and other such things. Sometimes these visions might be true, but they don’t have a way to verify the visions or test the accuracy. The ancient wisdom tells us these visions could be just a mental hallucination. Recognizing the value of the ancient knowledge helps separate you from hallucination to authentic reality. Making use of the ancient knowledge can also save society the research of many hundreds of years. If the herbologists of today had to do all their own research to find out which herb is suitable for what disease, without using the available ancient knowledge, it would take them forever, because there are millions of herbs! When there is guidance, when there is an ancient book available on herbology, they can refer to it, and then they can experiment on what has been said there, and this saves them a lot of time and effort. Many have heard about people in the world who get a vision that the world is going to end on some such date, or something like that and they tell everyone to come to the church and give up everything, and they will be taken in a chariot to heaven. The visions of such people are a mixture of their own fears, anxieties and desires. Right vision can only happen when one is thoroughly hollow and empty, what Buddha called total emptiness of the mind. To check on one’s yogamaya you need someone who can tell you if your vision is right or wrong, if there is a little difference here, and you are making a little mistake there. Those having such experiences could also take more time to examine themselves more carefully, and meditate more and go deep inside, then they may see a clearer distinction between the illusions of the inner visions and the reality. This knowledge of discrimination is what the modern New Age needs to make use of from the wisdom of past ages. *** This article is extracted from the Wisdom for the New Millennium with permission from the Art of Living Foundation.
(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)

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