If we see the 21st century with a new outlook, we will be rewarded with a break from the past, says Rajyogi Brahmakumar Nikunj ji

It’s been a couple of weeks since we entered a new year with fresh plans and renewed hopes. We have been reading and watching the intelligentsia sharing their views and visions of what the society in this year would be like. Generally, these talks revolve around the new inventions of science or about social and economic issues.

However important these inventions and issues may be, there is hardly any forum or platform where anyone ever offers ideas, ideology or visions which have such social, political, economic, administrative, cultural and health-related dimensions that represent almost a complete departure from what we know of what has been in the past 20 centuries. They only stretch their human imagination, linked as it is to what we see today and their visions or predictions are, more or less, a knitting-together of the latest researches and findings, projected by their fertile imagination into the future. What they say is not altogether novel nor do they give any scenes of a wonderland that will become a reality.

Similarly, newspapers, magazines and electronic media also give almost the same stuff with only little additions or changes in perceptions, observations or conclusions and they call some of these changes a ‘breakthrough’. Perhaps, these are a breakthrough but what will be their overall effect, reflected in the emerging society is hardly discussed with any clarity, certainty and coherence. They just give bits and pieces of information which are disjointed and no one tells how these will fit in the jigsaw puzzle of the new society. They give only grains of information; no one gives an integrated and holistic view of what society in the coming years will be like. No effort has ever been made to synthesise the findings of all branches of knowledge to give mankind the multi-disciplinary sum-up or resume of the whole thing. Perhaps, no human being could do this because no one is well-versed in all the branches nor has anyone the requisite time and acumen. Moreover, the total information provided by all kinds of research, done in all fields of knowledge, is so scant and sketchy that one cannot make out anything concrete about the 21st century, with any certainty. Also, there are many gaps and missing links in the information, so much so that the knowledge of these in future may overturn and invalidate the current beliefs.

If we read the history of Philosophy, Physics, Astronomy, Geology, Biology or Psychology, to give a few examples, we will find that many theories in all the disciplines have been changing and some of them have been changing very frequently and overnight. So, we cannot say that what we have learnt is accurate and final and will stay unchanged at least in our lifetime. What then can, we, human beings say about the 21st century when we do not know whether a nuclear world war will start or an environmental catastrophe will result in grave devastation of our flora, fauna and humankind or the population explosion and the expanding cities will cause havoc during our lifetime? Again, the so-called new information or discoveries have not yet even been delinked from the old and the obsolete and contradictory theories co-exist as there is no clinching proof of either or the paucity of time and effort to sift the grain from the chaff. For example, there is no universal agreement as to whether the mind or soul is an entity separate from the body or the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain. The information we have is so inadequate that nothing can be said with certainty that is acceptable to all.

Further, the major and minor events that occurred from the 20th century till today are recorded in history but no human being knows their effects and after-effects thoroughly nor has anyone ever combined and coherently collated these to give a cogent view of what will happen as a cumulative result of these. No one can calculate these. We do not even know for sure whether we are sitting on an active volcano or that, soon, the gates of paradise would be flung open unto us to enter. More importantly, we do not know whether all these events have been part of a well-knit plan that has a meaning and a goal for all of us without a single exception. And, what is most important is that most of us haven’t ever thought that there is a plan of retrieval that is being implemented and there is an incognito intervention of Supreme Almighty to impart new holistic knowledge, give a new paradigm and teach new ways of making spiritual efforts to usher a new era that is almost totally different from what we see today. So, let us look at the 21st century from that perspective. No one can neglect or postpone seeing the birth of this golden era in this light. Can we?