Spirituality
Friday, 12th October, 2007
Spirituality
Exports need eager buyers, and in case of India’s spirituality, one hopes they will be in millions. They have to be. With global warming, war and terrorism, economic disparities and radical poverty in many parts of the world, we are at a turning point. This isn’t news, and yet everyone waits expectantly, in a kind of semi - paralysis. There are only three possible scenarios that will revolve around our current situation:
- It is already too late, and the human species is heading for decline and extinction.
- We will survive but only after a major crisis in which ecological disasters will take a huge toll in human suffering, with whole populations being wiped out.
- A critical mass of consciousness will emerge instead, and the tide of destruction will be reversed.
It is the third alternative that everyone is praying for, and yet a change in consciousness is the rarest of human events, particularly on a mass scale. In the past, when we looked at imminent catastrophe, whether on a micro scale (extinction of the natives on Easter Island) or a macro scale (devastation of Europe by Black Death), the human species failed.
The last remaining Easter Islanders waged a war over the few remaining trees and animals left to them; Europe engaged in a spate of witch-hunting and ligious persecution. Will we do any better? The key lies in only one factor: Self-awareness. Humans will have to rise to a higher vision of themselves. They will quickly have shed the trappings of nationalism, tribal hatred, and religious conflict. If such a rare-one might say unprecedented-change is to take place, India’s greatest legacy will play a key part. We have moved from economic imperialism to the information age.
Forward thinkers already look beyond nationalism toward a global community. The Upanishads provide a map for gaining wisdom when they declare, "Know that one thing by knowing which every-thing else is known." This is India’s spirituality in its true essence. It comes from a deep experiential knowledge the nature of consciousness as the one reality. India is poised to become a world leader if it follows its own wisdom tradition and embraces the world as its family.
