Author: Beloo Mehra
Date published: February 6, 2025
As a Collaborating Center of SAIEN (Sri Aurobindo Integral Education Network), BhāratShakti regularly contributes to the SAIEN Blog. Are we ready for a Real Change? is our third blog published on SAIEN platform.
Are we ready for a real change?
Change is the only constant, it is often said. But nothing in the world is as simple as a cliché. We must dig a bit deeper if we want to get closer to the truth.
What kind of change are we talking about? Is it only an outer change? Or only an inner change? Or both? Who or what makes the change possible? Does it happen on its own? Or does someone or something compel or force or push for a change? Is change a natural phenomenon? Or is there another master-plan working behind the surface phenomenon of Nature? What is the outcome of change? Is it always for the better? Can change also be for worse? What distinguishes a good change from the one that is not? Who decides what is a good change and what is not? Who decides what is good, period.
So many questions. How do we begin to search for answers. But sometimes you don’t need to have the answers. Or at least not right away. You just need to keep asking the questions. So that you don’t believe anything just because it is told to you by an authority, by your textbook, by your teacher, or by a social media influencer.
Change may be a constant. But perhaps so is Beauty. So is Joy, and so is Delight.
This may not make any sense the moment we start looking around and see all the horrible stuff happening. In our lives, individually and collectively. In our homes, in our communities, in our worlds. Where is any Beauty in all the gross, all the terrible, heart-breaking, horrendous human behaviour that we witness all around us? Where is joy, delight in any of that?
And that’s when we begin to want a change. We begin to lose our innate joy, our innate delight in the world, in life, in existence. We begin to question Beauty. We begin to question whether any of this madness makes any sense. We begin to feel restless. We begin to wonder if we can do anything to change something. We begin to ask what changes we need in the system out there so that some of this madness can be stopped. We begin to get angry, angrier when we don’t see any changes happening. We get more restless. And so, it goes on….
But where does it all take us? Do things ever change? Does the system become better? Does the horrible stuff stop? Or does one kind of terrible replace the other?