Culture of Enlightenment

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This book has two purposes. The first one is to offer suggestions to ward off dangers and meet the challenges that are threatening the existence of mankind: be it global warming, terrorism, destruction of non-renewable resources of the earth, star wars, the crashing levels of our ethical values or the ignorance of the treasure of spirituality lying hidden inside us. Basically, these horrors are attributable to the crisis of split between human heart and mind and the cause of ignorance of the subtle life dimension which exists beyond the mind. Therefore, the scheme of this book has been designed to probe and explain these hidden areas. Man's material quest and exaggerated security concerns compounded by greed are assuming proportions where even a single act of inadvertence and mechanical error can cause a near annihilation.

The second purpose of the book is to spell out concrete steps which must be taken to boost and reinforce creative and inspiring ideas to usher in the era of the culture of enlightenment which alone can ensure, on long-term basis, the continuity of the globalized society which has become a necessity to provide security, peace, prosperity and the prospect of enlightenment to all. Ideas and institutions calling for the establishment of the new culture of enlightenment are already at work but there is pressing need to strengthen and widen these ideas and institutions, because the dynamics of a lasting public order and the prospect of enlightenment involve new dialectics based on global vision and sense of sacrifice on the part of its pioneers. Therefore, the problem confronting us needs a two-fold remedy: i) adopting immediate measures to contain the damage and ii) a plan containing measures to yield lasting solutions. To block the flaring up of these destructive forces, more concrete and better organized initiatives, as indicated in the text, are required from already active individuals, groups, private sectors and government circles. Most of them are aware of these dire threat perceptions and seized with their responsibilities to deal with them, but their responses must be redoubled. There is need to initiate a debate across the globe involving parliaments, media, universities, intelligentsia, moral and spiritual organizations to mobilize resources to contain these threats. Only persistent pressure on governments and concerned organizations will motivate them to adopt concrete measures like legal actions and economic sanctions against the forces oppressing world peace and harmony. Undoubtedly, in this respect the role of political leaders and press can be very effective. In fact, committed individuals, cultural activists, industrial and business captains are already fermenting to move forward in a big way to make the advent of New Age, characterized by the culture of enlightenment, a lasting reality. Sages proclaim and trends indicate that the advent of enlightenment is programmed in the process of evolution and its happening seems irreversible. But human effort can accelerate and protect it from the devils of destruction.

The second purpose of the book as already mentioned is the necessity to prepare a field which will breed pragmatic forces to generate enthusiasm to transform the basis for progressive development of a culture, which will synchronise scientific advances, and moral and spiritual education to unleash revolutionary élan to unchain this new adventure. This aspect therefore needs deeper consideration.

In this 21 century we have entered the New Age. The age is characterized by human endeavour to fuse and harmonize the forces of science and spirituality to build a culture of enlightenment. The keynote of this new culture is to move beyond the mind.

This theme is explained at length in different chapters of this book. Integral to this culture is the thesis that human race has evolved from one source and we share the common genome. "If we compare our genes with any other human being's on an average they will be about 99.9 per cent the same, and that is what makes us a species" (something nearly about everything, p. 481, by Bill Bryson). Scriptures had said long time back, what now bio-sciences have proved that our physical, psychological and spiritual needs are identical. Undeniably we humans are one race and constitute one vast family. Therefore, we have to build a culture to reinforce our blood bond and create institutions and conditions to ensure its continuity to be reflected by us in mutual service and unavoidable interdependence. Unfortunately our behaviour is contrary to the truth of our common heritage and the source of mutual brotherhood, even though proclaimed by religion and now proved by science.

The secret of our survival and enlightenment lies only in accepting and living with this truth. But the truth of prevailing life is so different that even two brothers rarely share the love bond of the same blood running in their veins. It is love which has become the missing link and in the breach has stepped in the spectre of lack of trust, fear and hatred. As earlier said, the split between human heart and mind is widening the breach. Man is increasingly becoming all mind and is bypassing his heart component. Modern education has excluded moral and spiritual concerns and in promoting commercial mindset, is adding to the intensity of this gravity. No wonder ethnic bloodshed and the epidemic of violence are emerging as an agonizing consequence.

In the wake of these conditions it is spirituality and not science which can correct this major disorder in our social and cultural evolution. This important but sensitive matter needs careful planning with a good deal of tactful handling. In this effort we will have to obviate the factors that poisoned and vitiated the cause of human brotherhood and fraternity in the past. Therefore, before embarking on projections to mould and shape the future course of evolution, it will be expedient and even useful to cast a fleeting look at the course that evolution followed through the dark and long past to reach the present stage.

Carl Sagan in the introduction to his famous book Cosmos writes, "Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon the method. They imagined a small, quaint, tidy universe in which the dominant forces were Gods like - Anu, Ea and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not a central role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of the toothache with second-rate beer was tied to the deepest cosmological mysteries. Today we have discovered a powerful and elegant way to understand the universe; a method called science. It has revealed to us a universe so ancient and vast that human affairs seem at first sight to be of little consequence." Stephen Hawking, in his small but famous book A Brief History of Time, expressing similar views resonating with optimism, hopes that scientists may stumble on a unified theory of science which will not only explain evolution but also answer many other important questions.