Keynotes of the New Era

Where are we going – Visions of the coming civilisation.

It’s easy to look back at the past, already created, and find fault with it; nostalgically idolise it; or select bits to rationalise our current actions. But we are creative beings! We really don’t need to scrabble amongst the refuse of the past in search of shiny scraps on which to hang our unfulfilled fantasies and desires. Instead we can proactively create the world we may long for by seeing its potential in current happenings. The signs are there – if we have the eyes to see and the will to bring these barely perceived intimations into the foreground of the emerging future.

The way we see things can transform them – even a violent war, when deeply examined, may reveal the soul of a people rising up and demanding freedom to express in the world. Freedom and Peace are being demanded on every side, in every nation and in every individual life. They might be called the keynotes of the New Era. Yet the mounting pressure for Freedom may seem to be inimical to Peace because of the turmoil created by its impact on the state of the world we’ve inherited from the past. And yet these two qualities are deeply connected as they carry us towards the new civilisation.

Seeing deeply behind the surface events we might understand freedom as part of a higher sense of responsibility as the Tibetan Master defines to one of His disciples:

Your major need (and this you know) is freedom, is liberation. I do not mean freedom from incarnation or liberation from the pressures of life, but the freedom which the sannyasin knows as he roams free in the three worlds—unsupervised or unintruded upon by aught but his own soul. It is the freedom which gives mental help, emotional response and physical time as and when the disciple chooses. These are not evoked by habit or by the demand of others, but are the free contribution of the soul to a current need. Your response is not always to need, is it, my brother? Ponder on this.” [Discipleship in the New Age, Vol II, page 758]