Page 8 - NAMAH-Jan-2017

Moving Forward

Though to our surface experience we all appear as separate and distinct entities, deep
within us a secret oneness dwells. Not only our immediate environment affects us but
also the distant stars. We feel a secret kinship with not only those who think and feel
alike but also with the unthinking animal and the dumb stone. We share a common bond
with all creation.

This is at once our strength as well as our difficulty. This is our challenge as well as our
unique opportunity. This is a unique challenge in this age since we have, on the one hand
such extreme isolation possible due to technology that absorbs us, on the other hand, and
paradoxically due to the same technology, we remain connected to the world, breaking
free from our immediate social and cultural environment.

We need to find the right balance. By finding the right balance between the individual
and the group we evolve. But when we tilt towards an excess of either an absolute
individual freedom or become merely a unit in collective or social life, we fail to
respond rightly to the evolutionary impulse. The real challenge however is not merely
in a uniform inclusivity but in an inclusivity that preserves and does not obliterate the
individual freedom, not only of man but of other species as well. Nature has already and
successfully accomplished this in the species that has gone before us. Now it is our turn
to meet the challenge and, survive through evolution or else perish the way some other
species have gone before.

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