(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Dec 2011, Sasolburg, Johannesburg, South Africa)
When industrialisation began, the world changed for the first time – drastically in big ways! When we started to get big factories and so on, that was the beginning and an end of an era in the world all over. Gradually we saw a society that became based on industry. Instead of taking food from the land, we are bringing it in vehicles to central markets, where everyone is buying. Slowly we rely more and more on all these artificial arrangements…that’s of course is modernity…and now we are living like that…. and it has gone so far that it is practically impossible for many people in the world to go back to living more naturally!
Sometimes it has been said that:
‘Nature’s arrangement was God’s arrangement. Technology – that’s mans’ arrangement.’
Or sometimes it is said:
‘The village is God’s arrangement. The city – that was mans’ arrangement.’
Well there is some truth in thoughts like that – it is true! It is not impossible to have spirituality in a modern lifestyle…. it is very possible, if we recognise the same thing. Like even if you are involved in a big chemical plant, then where do the chemicals come from? Okay then we are back to a perennial question:
‘What is the origin of this universe?’
The western culture offers ‘the big bang’ as the solution, which is basically suggesting, that the whole matter was very dense and not together….then it exploded………but obviously the fundamental question remains:
‘Where did that matter come from? What was the origin of that dense matter?’
That doesn’t really speak of the origin of the universe, since it speaks of the interim stage of there was a matter. All right but:
‘Where did that come from?’
That was our question. So far modern science has never given a satisfactory answer to the origin of the universe. Therefore, we prefer to keep it on a divine origin!