Review of modern values by the author of Enigma of the Second Coming

We live in an age wherein experts, or specialists, are admired above all others. In the field of various sciences, such a nuclear physics, computer sciences, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, robotics or diverse fields of medicine, the specialist is honoured above all others. In medicine, one specializing in oncology doesn’t know the meaning of ontology, nor would he or she be able to cure a common cold. Even salesmen take on a mantle of an expert by confining their wares to a specialized area. In radio or TV interviews, the specialists are introduced as the Alpha and the Omega of a particular domain, at par with the demigods of the modern day Olympus of Knowledge. As if that wasn’t enough, we have artists who paint only nudes, or only landscapes, or abstracts; we have writers who specialize in murder stories, or thrillers, or mellifluous romances designed to sate libidinous cravings of lonely ladies. Yet…

Yet the philosophers of yesteryear were also mathematicians. Leonardo da Vinci was not a specialist. He was an ‘expert’ in a dozen fields. Other sculptors painted, designed buildings. Musicians played a variety of instruments, composed, conducted operas, concerts. Shakespeare wrote tragedies, dramas, comedies and sonnets. Each a very different challenge. Einstein was first and foremost a man searching for truth. He wanted to know the thoughts of God. As a philosopher he displayed unprecedented imagination. "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious," he’d said. Even today there are scientists, Leon Lederman or Richard Feynman, who sound like poets, or philosophers, in love with the universe. "Beyond the God Particle (the Higgs boson), is revealed a world of splendid, blinding beauty," said Dr. Lederman. "I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb," Dr. Feynman seemed to reply. Echoes of Socrates? Neither of the Nobel Prize recipients sounds like a specialist in nuclear physics or a foremost ‘expert’ in the mysteries of Quantum Theory. So what brought about this mania for the limited, the myopic, the restricted? A specialist or expert is little more than a man, or woman, who sacrifices the Whole for the sake of an insignificant part. Espousing a part, any part, as the most important, imposes limitations on your mind, on your imagination, on your vision of the universe.

Your perception of infinity?

It wasn’t always like this. Neither Krishna, nor Buddha, nor Jesus, nor many other Avatars ever ‘specialized’ in anything at all. Just the reverse. They did their best to remove all limitations from our consciousness. "I and my Father are one," claimed Jesus. "All men are Buddhas," Siddhartha Gautama is reputed to have asserted, "even if not as yet awakened." "I am the Self, seated in the hearts of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all beings," Krishna assures in the Bhagavad-Gita. Not very restrictive or confined by specialization.

It is indeed time for the Second Coming. It is time for the return of freedom to man’s hearts, to his mind, his aspirations. Let us not specialize lest we miss the blinding beauty Leon Lederman spoke about. If in the First Coming Jesus taught inseparability of himself from God. From the Whole. What is holding us back? You and me? After all, "Ye are Gods," King David insisted in one of his odes we know as Psalms.

I’ll leave you with another quote of the renowned physicist Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." I really believe we should think about it. If we don’t, we are apt to face a different kind of Second Coming. Such as described in my book, The Enigma of the Second Coming. You wouldn’t like that. Read for yourself. You will find my book by clicking the URL below: