=1 "How will future man refer to this, our present age?"

How will future man refer to this, our present age?

Which contemporary development will retain or assume, in the course of time, sufficient significance to become the symbol of an era? Communism? The glory that was America? Or will this be known as The Age of the Atomic Bomb or more hopefully The Age of the United Nations?

But these are all surface movements and may not loom so large when viewed in historical perspective. Yet the proof of time may go beneath and discover the underlying cause of these outwardly significant happenings; it may reveal the deeper movements which shaped this age, so that future man will accord them their recognition that is their due.

We ourselves designate past eras by phenomena which in their day were generally considered to be of little consequence. We speak of the times of Christ and Buddha, of Voltaire, of the Renaissance, but who, while he lived, believed that the life of Jesus of Nazareth would have a greater bearing on the future of mankind than that of Emperor Titus, that the illumination of the Perfect One would prove to be more momentous than Darius’ invasion of the Punjab, or that Leonardo da Vinci would one day receive greater acclaim than Pope Alexander?

How can we, in our own lifetimes, be sure to recognise the true forces which are even now shaping the future, drawing up the ties of man’s destiny and creating the universal consciousness of a whole age? For our age will not be regarded as the age of the laser, of hydrogen fusion, or of the electron calculator, as we might at first be inclined to believe. Important though these scientific developments are, they are essentially only effects of a cause which lies deeper, hidden to the majority: a new dimension of consciousness which has manifested upon the earth almost unnoticed, a new level of awareness which open us to truths which the mind itself cannot, or can only with difficulty perceive. The veil of appearances, which we take for reality, is being torn aside so that we can experience new interrelationships between forms of existence and realise the subtle oneness in the multiplicity of things and events.

What is really going on behind the new art, the new technology and the disappearance of the old values all around us?

Nothing less than a spiritual revolution is taking place in the foundation of human consciousness which puts us daily face to face with new capacities, developments and unfoldings: transistor, United Nations, the liberation of India, Africa and Indonesia, space travel, generation gap, student power, black power, church renewal, LSD, new mathematics, new education, new psychology, cybernetics, ecology… All these crises and confrontations, inventions and breakthroughs have thier root in a new kind of thinking, a new kind of mind, a new way of seeing ourselves and the world around us.

If you want to understand how a mind of light is leading to overmind and then to supermind, read Sri Aurobindo who calls our age the age of truth consciousness.