MAKING THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN A REALITY

 
The incident of birth is common to all life on earth. Unlike each living creature which is born insignificantly, lives an involuntary life and dies an uncertain death, physical birth of human beings denotes an important — and if they are extra-circumspect about it — perhaps a final stage of their evolutionary progress. From here onward they are no longer automatons but masters of their destiny, which they can shape and mold according to their will.

This means that human beings, having passed through all the travails of lower evolutionary processes, should insist upon the reward thereof, which is spiritual birth in this very life, and not rest content with a promise in the hereafter. No sooner does one recoil on oneself and become eager to find the answers to the introspective questions, "whence and whither," than one may surely be said to have had "spiritual birth."

Once gained, this poise of mind automatically and unknowingly brings about a readjustment of material surroundings, and the man finds himself in harmony and at peace with the world. Conservatism, intolerance, pride, and selfishness will fall away. Everything will put on a new meaning and assume a purpose. Sinner and saint will appear to be waves differing in size and magnitude on the surface of the same ocean, a natural outcome of forces in the universe, governed by time, space and causation. The saint has not the pride of place, nor the sinner the stigma of eternal degradation. Nobody is utterly lost and nobody need despair.

My panacea to the worried world is the effort on its part to get the answer to the questions of "whence and whither." The knowledge that all have the same beginnings and the same end, with life on earth a happy interlude, will go a long way toward making the brotherhood of man a reality on earth, and this in turn will strike at the root of narrow exploitation.