The New Age - Part 3

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 2 with:

 

(p.281) " Many people today anticipate a great advance in humanity and I think

that is perfectly right, as we shall see. In many respects we can look forward

to a great advance but I think we also have to look back. We have to recognise

that the summit was achieved in those centuries before Christ, and that with the

coming of Christ the final fulfilment of this experience of ultimate Reality was

reached. In other respects great developments took place and they can also take

place again in the future. So there we have the perennial philosophy, with the

physical base, the psychological development and the spiritual order

transcending all and integrating all. We need to remember that it is the

spiritual that integrates the whole reality. "

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith)

Chapter 13, p.281.

 

Here now is part 3.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

The New Age - Part 3

 

(p.281) We go on now to ask, what will the pattern of the new age be like? What

can we discern in the light of our present understanding of the universe and of

the knowledge which we have of Eastern mysticism and spiritual experience? How

in our time can we look forward in the light of our present knowledge of what

science has done both for good and for evil, and what are we to make of the

past, its art and philosophy, its religion and its mythical experience?

 

The first thing is that human society will be based on a new relationship to the

world of nature, arising from an organic understanding of nature in place of a

mechanistic view of the universe. This is a major change which is taking place.

We have to learn to see ourselves as part of the physical organism of the

universe. (p.282) We need to develop the sense of the cosmic whole and of a way

of relating to the world around us as a living being which sustains and

nourishes us and for which we have responsibility. This will give rise to a new

understanding of our environment and will put an end to this age of the

exploitation of nature. At the present moment the whole movement of economics

and politics is characterised and marred by the exploitation of nature at every

level. The material resources of the universe are being grossly exploited in

order to create more material prosperity for relatively few human beings, no

matter at what cost that is done. That trend would be reversed by the new

understanding that we are all parts of this universe, of this natural world,

that we are integral elements in it and that we have to respect it. This would

involve a new attitude to the earth and to the natural resources of the earth,

to the sea and all the creatures in it, to the animal world as a whole, to the

question of vivisection and the treatment of animals in general, and to our

attitude to outer space, whether we try to exploit it for human gain or whether

we look on it in another way.

 

Secondly, the sense of communion with an encompassing reality will replace the

attempt to dominate the world. The different understanding of ecology and a

greater sensitivity to its realities would revolutionise our understanding of

nature and of the world in which we live. This would lead to a new kind of

technology based on the new understanding of science, and an appropriate or

intermediate technology as Schumacher conceived it, answering the needs of the

vast majority of people in Asia, Africa and South America who live in rural

communities. The present system of technology has been built up on the basis of

mechanistic science and it savagely and indiscriminately exploits the world of

nature. This has produced the terrible situation in which we find ourselves with

its material conveniences for a minority but with its disastrous consequences of

global injustice and destruction. (p.283) We are looking for a new technology

which Schumacher speaks of as appropriate or intermediate technology which

builds up from the villages. It would build upon the economy of the village

instead of destroying it. There would be respect for the basic crafts of

spinning, weaving, pottery, carpentry, metal work and of course all forms of

gardening and agriculture. This is very important. All these crafts were evolved

in the millennia before Christ, from roughly the fourth millennium onwards, and

they represent a summit of human achievement in this sphere. When we look back

on the past and see the weaving, the clothing, pottery, woodwork and metalwork

of the past ages, we put them in museums as something to marvel at because of

their beauty. And that was the ordinary work of the people of those times. To

discard those abilities in favour of the progress of the mechanistic system is

to degrade civilisation and human life.

 

Respect for the basic crafts enables human persons to live in harmony with

nature and with the world around them. Their art and their work express this

harmony and therefore it is beautiful. Beauty is always due to this harmony with

nature. When we have that harmony the products of our hands are beautiful, and

when we do not have that harmony the products may be useful and very helpful in

other ways but they lose their beauty.

 

Thirdly, these new values would give rise to a new type of human community. This

would be a decentralised society drawing people from large cities to smaller

towns and villages where a much more total and integrated human life would be

possible. I do not see any future for the huge cities of the present world,

London, New York, Tokyo, Bombay and Calcutta. In such cities all over the world

in every continent the population may be over ten million. Cities of millions of

people do not provide a human mode of existence and depend on a whole economic

system which will eventually collapse, for such societies cannot sustain their

economies. (p.284) So we have to look back beyond these industrialised cities to

find some kind of norm of human existence. Here I would like to quote from Lewis

Mumford, where in his book 'The Myth of the Machine' he describes the neolithic

village. This is a village the like of which lasted for thousands of years, all

over the world, and still exists to some extent to the present day. This is how

he describes it. " Where the seasons are marked by holiday festivals and

ceremonies; where the stages of life are punctuated by family and community

rituals; where eating and drinking and sexual play constitute the central core

of life, where work, even hard work, is rarely divorced from rhythm, song, human

companionship and aesthetic delight; where vital activity is considered as great

a reward of labour as the product; where neither power nor profit has precedence

over life; where the family, the neighbour and the friend are all parts of a

visible, tangible, face-to-face community. There the neolithic culture in its

essential elements is still in existence. " That is to my mind a model of

wholesome human existence. All these elements were present in the villages of

India until recently and are still basically there although they are being

undermined daily. That Indian village life and culture which existed for

millennia is being systematically destroyed, year by year.

 

A New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith) Chapter 13, p.281-284

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0