Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Signs of the Advent of a New Consciousness in the World Today

Transcript

Signs of the Advent of a New Consciousness in the World Today · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:02
  Namaste people find it difficult to understand how to recognize
• 0:13
  the advent of a new level of consciousness as initial science
• 0:19
  begin to appear. There are in fact numerous signs
• 0:27
  if we look at the history of humanity and we look at where
• 0:32
  things are in the modern day world.
• 0:35
  For instance, we see the coming together of people through
• 0:42
  advanced communication where there is now a worldwide
• 0:47
  network. You could say the Internet and
• 0:51
  other communication methods that allow people all over the world
• 0:56
  from different backgrounds, cultures, social settings,
• 1:02
  religions, whatever, to interact with each other.
• 1:07
  And that is something that is bringing humanity to the point
• 1:12
  of starting to recognize our inherent oneness.
• 1:18
  Another point is that in the past everything has been done
• 1:23
  more or less secretly, and levels of falsehood and self
• 1:33
  dealing were kept strictly under covers, much of it protected by
• 1:39
  what we might call the old Boy network.
• 1:43
  And nowadays we see increasingly that these falsehoods and these
• 1:49
  self dealing operations are being exposed and brought to
• 1:54
  light and that is absolutely something new in our world.
• 2:03
  We see that people are much more aware of the environment and our
• 2:10
  relationship to the environment and that is also something new.
• 2:17
  Fifty, 60-70 years ago, even people had much less awareness
• 2:22
  about the interrelated necessity of maintaining an environment
• 2:32
  and keeping it in balance. And today this is becoming a
• 2:36
  major concern. And in fact, even major
• 2:40
  corporations are taking notice and major insurance companies
• 2:47
  are looking at the risks, for instance, of climate change,
• 2:52
  which wasn't happening 60 or 70 years ago.
• 2:56
  So they are definitely waking up to the reality of the impact of
• 3:07
  humanity on the world and the need to move towards a more
• 3:13
  balanced approach. There's also a new level of
• 3:18
  concern about the needs and suffering of people all over the
• 3:21
  world. We see humanitarian movements,
• 3:25
  we see concerns with first aid, Doctors Without Borders sending
• 3:32
  food aid and medical aid to people everywhere.
• 3:35
  There's a earthquake or a tornado or a famine, and
• 3:42
  suddenly people all over the world are mobilizing to try and
• 3:46
  help people that they have no direct connection with.
• 3:53
  And that also is a sign of a new global understanding, awareness
• 4:00
  and consciousness developing. We see an increased pressure to
• 4:06
  move away from things that create harm or create a toxic
• 4:11
  environment. We have more clean energy
• 4:15
  production. We have an increased focus on
• 4:18
  removing heavy metals from our food supply and watching and
• 4:26
  removing toxic materials and disapproving toxic materials
• 4:32
  that have been used in the past. This represents another level of
• 4:38
  understanding that people did not have 70 or 80 years ago.
• 4:45
  So we see that many things are moving.
• 4:49
  In addition to that, we see a worldwide movement of people
• 4:54
  working within themselves for greater awareness, greater
• 5:00
  consciousness, greater focus on how to live in harmony within
• 5:06
  themselves. We see a worldwide growth of
• 5:11
  interest in yoga, Tai chi, meditation, Ayurveda,
• 5:17
  traditional healing methods, vision, quest, et cetera.
• 5:22
  All of these things represent a relatively new worldwide
• 5:28
  movement, as opposed to a relationship of an individual
• 5:35
  randomly here or there. We see attempts to bring forward
• 5:41
  a venue and methodology to work out differences between
• 5:47
  countries, experiments like the League of Nations originally and
• 5:53
  then the United Nations. And it must be noted that the
• 5:58
  success or failure of any particular initiative does not
• 6:03
  reflect upon the very fact that such initiatives are taking
• 6:08
  place and that have gathered people all over the world and
• 6:13
  countries all over the world to participate in them.
• 6:16
  However flawed these initial attempts may be, we see the
• 6:23
  development of new forms of intentional communities.
• 6:26
  And here we've got places like Findhorn or places like Oroville
• 6:32
  in South India. And at Oroville, for instance,
• 6:36
  they have people from dozens of countries speaking dozens of
• 6:42
  languages, different religious backgrounds, different cultural
• 6:47
  backgrounds, different educational backgrounds, living
• 6:51
  together and trying to do things that improve and work out both
• 6:57
  the relationship between people and their governance.
• 7:02
  And setting up programs and projects to try to tackle and
• 7:08
  initially work towards a solution of the major crises
• 7:14
  that we face in humanity. The crisis of water, the crisis
• 7:18
  of the collapse of the ocean fisheries, the crisis of
• 7:24
  pollution, of crisis of waste and energy imbalances, all of
• 7:32
  these things need to be understood and dealt with.
• 7:37
  And at Oroville we see a community focused on and
• 7:42
  actively working on finding solutions that functionally
• 7:49
  begin to address these major human issues and problems.
• 7:56
  We see actually another example and that is that we see a
• 8:01
  development of a worldwide interest community so that
• 8:09
  people of similar interests, wherever they are in the world,
• 8:13
  whatever their background, can find people of common interest
• 8:19
  and join with them and work through that common interest.
• 8:22
  This is something that is unique in modern day.
• 8:27
  In the past, everything was fragmented and isolated.
• 8:31
  Now we see people joining together across boundaries to
• 8:36
  find where their commonality may support one another.
• 8:42
  We see increasing focus on the rights of minorities and we've
• 8:47
  seen over the last couple 100 years many countries abolish
• 8:53
  slavery, for instance, which has been a scourge of humanity for
• 8:58
  literally thousands of years. We see an increasing focus on
• 9:06
  bringing about equality for women in the world.
• 9:09
  And while there are still major resistance areas to this, there
• 9:15
  are also major steps forward in creating a space where women can
• 9:21
  exercise free and equal rights in the political, economic and
• 9:27
  social spheres. Again, these things are not
• 9:32
  perfect, they're not complete, but they represent new steps
• 9:38
  that could not be seen even 100 years ago.
• 9:44
  So we see that each of these things are new initiatives, and
• 9:50
  they all speak to a common underlying thread that there is
• 9:54
  a new awareness, a new consciousness, if you will, that
• 9:59
  is slowly permeating humanity and making itself felt.
• 10:06
  We see an increased movement for better treatment of children.
• 10:11
  Child labor has been outlawed in many countries, and in European
• 10:18
  countries there was child labor up to the late 1800s.
• 10:23
  Well, now that's changing. There are laws, there are
• 10:27
  protective measures. And while it may still occur,
• 10:30
  when it's discovered the penalties can be enforced and
• 10:36
  severe so that companies can take some concern about whether
• 10:43
  they undertake to have child labor in their organization.
• 10:51
  There's an increased understanding of the oneness of
• 10:55
  all life and all existence on the planet.
• 11:00
  The photograph taken from outer space of the planet really
• 11:07
  illustrated that oneness, and many people have been impacted
• 11:11
  by that. Their mindset has been changed
• 11:15
  and they're beginning to understand that we live together
• 11:18
  in a fragile environment and that if we don't work together
• 11:24
  to solve the problems of toxicity and pollution and
• 11:29
  improper use of resources and climate change, etcetera, those
• 11:36
  who don't live together and work together are going to die
• 11:38
  together. And people are understanding
• 11:42
  that. We see more of a global
• 11:46
  awareness as opposed to purely a local awareness.
• 11:50
  You go back 100 or 150 years and everything was centered about
• 11:55
  the local needs of each community.
• 11:57
  And now we're beginning to see that everything impacts
• 12:01
  everything else. And we're looking at a global
• 12:04
  awareness developing. And finally, we see an increased
• 12:11
  acceptance of alternative states of awareness, out of body
• 12:16
  experiences, near death experiences, spiritual
• 12:20
  experiences of various sorts, which in former times were
• 12:24
  basically very much kept hidden because people were afraid to
• 12:29
  speak about experiences that they had, things they could not
• 12:35
  relate to other people without being ridiculed.
• 12:41
  If we look back, we can see that science, medicine, give us a new
• 12:48
  deeper understanding of how things work.
• 12:52
  And we see a breaking down of the walls between various
• 12:57
  disciplines as people start to open their minds to a broader
• 13:04
  unified view of our reality. It must be noted that there is
• 13:13
  at the same time an extreme aggressive resistance to the
• 13:22
  type of changes that are coming about here.
• 13:26
  There is a retrogressive movement that is actually a sign
• 13:32
  of the power of the new consciousness that is working
• 13:37
  because, as they say, a cornered beast is more dangerous.
• 13:44
  It reacts because it's very existence is threatened.
• 13:49
  And the fact that we see this kind of aggressive, very strong
• 13:56
  reaction from conservative retrogressions, retrogressive
• 14:00
  forces that do not want to change and do not want to adopt
• 14:05
  the new reality, implies that they feel and understand and
• 14:11
  experienced that new reality coming and moving and changing
• 14:16
  things at a very fast pace. And so the very resistance and
• 14:21
  its nature and its strength represents for us another sign
• 14:27
  that a new consciousness is at work in the world.
• 14:32
  And that is a sign of hope and a sign of consolation for us when
• 14:41
  we think that everything we do, all of the changes we make, all
• 14:46
  of the focus we put into things may not be having a impact.
• 14:52
  In reality, they are not only having an impact, they are
• 14:57
  having a tremendous impact. And change, while it seems slow
• 15:02
  to our limited human individual life experience, in fact is
• 15:09
  extremely fast in relation to the way the societies undergo
• 15:14
  change. And what we see in today's world
• 15:18
  is an unprecedented, very fast, radical transformation of the
• 15:26
  way we relate to ourselves, to our communities, to our
• 15:31
  societies, and to our lives and to the planet.
• 15:36
  And that is the sign of a new consciousness home.