In the material realm, there are new possibilities for swift change, great abundance, remarkable and rapid acquisition of wealth. Though poverty is still widespread, huge fortunes are made (and lost) overnight. The struggle for prosperity, once tied to long years, even generations, of toil and production, has begun to shift venues. Where once it was tied to land, and then to manufacturing, wealth today can be generated almost instantaneously from ideas alone.
In the realm of science and technology we take for granted today things that could not be imagined even a few short years ago. Photographs of Mars are transmitted into our living rooms. Computers only a few molecules in size make possible a precision which stretches the limits of the imagination. New technologies become obsolete almost before they are off the assembly line. Genetic researchers discuss the possibility of slowing down or even stopping the aging process and of reversing all illnesses.
This explosion of change in the realms of science, medicine, information and business is being driven by an entirely new sense of what’s possible. We have begun to feel that there is no frontier that cannot someday be conquered, and we act accordingly. We are racing toward the infinite.
At the same time, a subtle yet profound transformation is taking place in human consciousness. Our thinking has begun to undergo a shift, one that we take for granted, but which in fact represents a deep change in our perspective and expectations. Even while our society is in crisis, in some ways more than ever before, we nurture an inner and unquestioned conviction that things just shouldn’t have to be this way.
For millennia, the world has endured war, poverty, oppression, cruelty, ignorance and suffering. These things were predictable, constant and inevitable. To all previous generations, this painful reality was accepted without question.
This is no longer the case. In our generation, for the first time in history, ordinary people have begun to dream about, talk about and work toward such utopian ideals as universal abundance and world peace.
Though you may not have noticed it consciously or been able to explain it to yourself, you are probably already aware on some level that something is happening. Most of us sense that the world is in the midst of a kind of transformational process, spiritual in nature, and that this process, like time in general, is moving faster and faster each day.
This feeling is not limited to those religiously inclined. Go to any bookstore and you’ll see an amazing number of books on spirituality. Check out the most popular shows on television, cover stories of magazines, movies and commercials to hear about angels, heaven, afterlife, destiny. This thirst for spirituality and meaning is far more widespread than ever before. More significant, it’s no longer confined to weekend services at a house of worship, but is permeating the most mundane and personal details of our daily lives.
More and more, we are becoming comfortable with the idea that the physical world is governed by spiritual principles. We are beginning to believe that if we can understand and integrate these principles, we can break through the limiting boundaries of life as we’ve known it until now.
On the human level as well as the technological, we are moving toward a whole new set of beliefs, toward that language of Geula, and it is only by taking a big step back that we can see what an enormous shift these beliefs represent. Despite all evidence of the past, we are convinced that all problems have solutions, that differences can and should be resolved without conflict, that cooperation buys us more than competition. That life is not random and chaotic but rather filled with an underlying meaning and purpose and that human beings are, in their essence, good.
These ideas have crept into our minds and our culture through a process that’s transparent to us. Our parents didn’t think this way. Neither did our grandparents or great-grandparents. In fact, they would not have been able to begin to imagine the world of today.
