(Published in The Speaking Tree, The Times of India – June 3, 2013)
Before Galileo Galilei and Nicholas Copernicus, we lived in a geocentric solar system. This was the truth that was the accepted one. This was excepted by the church, the governments, the scientists, the philosophers and the common people of the day. There was just one little problem – it was not true.
Today, largely due to the bravery of the two Renaissance scientists mentioned above, we know that we actually live in a heliocentric solar system. The sun, and not the earth, is the center of the solar system and all the planets move around the sun and not the earth as was believed before.
The 21st century world has no problem believing that the earth goes round the sun because we have known this since the time of our birth. But remember that just a few centuries ago, the entire world’s paradigm of belief was turned over like a ship tossed over by a rogue wave at sea. This shift in perspective no doubt had a large impact on the future course of scientific discoveries, technological inventions and other human events. From a geocentric world we suddenly became a heliocentric world.
We are today on the edge of a new frontier of shifting paradigms of thought. Our global perspective is about to shift once more. For now it is not a question of whether the sun moves around the earth or vice versa, it is a question of our very existence as beings and our own spiritual destiny.
We have been so used to considering ourselves as a human body with a soul that most of us have forgotten our own truth. We have forgotten our own destiny. We have forgotten who our true being is.
One of the great minds of the 20th century was the French Jesuit named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who perhaps managed to encapsulate this new paradigm of spiritual thought and our own true identity in the best possible way when he said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” That is the new paradigm shift in self realization that we need to think about and allow the great significance of to sink in. The moment you realize this truth that you are a luminous being of love, light and wisdom and not a sack of flesh and bones human body, that moment is the beginning of true wisdom and true wonder.
True wisdom because when you start identifying with yourself as being a spiritual being who is an image of God, you begin to realize that you are a spark of the Divine Flame and are a Divine Child of God and brethren to all the Masters who have incarnated on this world to try and make us realize this truth.
True wonder because it makes us realize that we are all voyagers here on an eternal voyage of wonder and self discovery. Our bodies are only vessels through which our souls can explore this material earth plane and through it we learn and experience important lessons that help our spiritual selves to grow and ultimately move to higher planes of consciousness.
Coming back to our solar system analogy. We are not like the rocky ball of the earth which does not shine any of its own light but reflects the sunlight. We are like the sun, which shines brightly and observes its planets as they revolve around it. We shine like the glorious sun!
But remember this, there are always higher planes to go to, for even the glorious sun is but a spark that moves around the center of the Galaxy, which itself is but one amongst billions of others in The Universe, which could be but one amongst the billions of Universes in the Multiverse.
And so on the journey continues!