1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Let's Welcome, Help Hasten,

the Sunrise of Enlightenment

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, Professor in Applied Cosmic Anthropology

Asian Social Institute

This talk was delivered before the Lambat-Liwanag's 1st Conference on Empowering Paradigms held at the Main Library Bldg., University of Sto. Tomas, Manila, in October 2001.

Harmony and understanding,

Sympathy and trust abounding.

No more falsehoods or derisions—

Golden living dreams of vision,

Mystic crystal revelation,

And the mind’s true liberation…

I FIRST came across these words almost 40 years ago in the happy refrain of the song, Age of Aquarius, which described the period then of the mid-60s as a dawning, the dawning of a new age for Humankind. Now, almost four decades later, are we well into that age? 

I stand before you once again, this time to represent Dr. Mina Ramirez, President of the Asian Social Institute where I have been teaching since last year, because she could not come to be with us here physically. ASI was founded a few years before the song Age of Aquarius became popular, and I am proud to say that through all the decades since that time, ASI has been resonating with this dawning, even contributing to the hastening of this dawning.  The role assigned to ASI this afternoon is thus appropriate:  to challenge us all to do the same in the coming years and decades. 

It may be difficult for the youth of today to even imagine life at the time that song was popular— no computers, no Internet, no cellphones or texting, no faxes, and no cable TV. (And may we add— no need for bottled water, no flash floods, no red tide, no ozone hole, no…)  Things have really changed. And all that change did not happen in just a few years.  It’s part of the movement of history that is as slow as the creeping of the glaciers but also as powerful as glaciers that have redesigned entire mountain ranges. This is the very gradual dawning of the glorious sunshine for us to let in so it could chase away darkness and shorten all shadows in our lives.

There definitely has been this dawning of a new fully-human level of consciousness that loves all life, prefers celebration to competition, chooses appreciation before intellectualization, consciously breathes in the divine spirit, earnestly stands for honesty, mutual respect and equality, democracy, pluralism, gender harmony, intergenerational responsibility, deep ecology, and the synergy that is dynamically based on healthy diversities among species, among races, and among cultural or belief-based groupings. Such synergy now confronts, for example, the “millennium monster” that is globalized greed, a.k.a. "Globalization." People all over have seen through the exploitative designs of the World Trade Organization (WTO), created by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was once quite prophetically described as “The Ten Commandments of the Golden Calf.”

All over the world, people coming from various races are getting spiritually magnetized by kindred frames of mind and action that empower and not shackle, frames of mind that unite people instead of turning them against one another, paradigms that would tear down walls and build bridges. 

People have started, in the words of a poem-prayer, Earth Synergy in the New Millennium to  “stand in reverence before the rest of the bio-diverse citizens and elements of our living planet Gaia, to take full responsibility for past and present environmental destruction, and to lovingly commit a conscious synergy of efforts to rescue and heal, conserve and exalt out Mother Earth.”  The poem (now translated into at least 16 or so languages) calls this “a giant leap for Humankind,” not towards the moon or anywhere else in the outer space, but “right back to the bosom of our home planet.”  This would be a strong metaphor for every human to start “going home” to oneself, and rediscovering one’s real individual and our collective identity.

 The development of consciousness of the human race has come a long way from the command regimentation that stressed faith and righteous behavior (Old Testament) while downplaying comprehension and free will. We have had more than two thousand years of enhanced free will and the admonition to love one another (message of Christ), where the beginnings of comprehension (physics and other natural sciences) completely sidelined spiritual faith as by then misrepresented by dogmas of divisive religions. Through this period, the use of free will was often leading to disastrous consequences of intolerance and bigotry, oppression and exploitation, greed and tyranny.

And we are now gradually moving into a new period where human consciousness would really blossom in unconditional love and unconditional peace. We will fully be enjoying free will but matured enough, after centuries of experiential education, to freely choose love and synergy over alienation, separation and antagonism. Faith will still be there but no longer blind. Individual human dignity will be there but no longer as separative ego. Comprehension will be there, well beyond present-day conventional physics, but intellectualization will be underpinned by love, honest humility and spiritual discernment. Righteousness will be there in each of us but based on maturity and no longer externally commanded.

The conscious synergy of Humankind and of all Creation will emerge, a real and embracive unity, no longer an artificial or exclusive one. That will be the real age of the full Pentecost, where a fast-increasing number of people, not just a dozen apostles, will now feel the tongues of fire lighting up their souls from within, souls that would reach out to embrace one another and draw in more and more people into their informal families.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will live as one!  But you cannot say that to me in all earnestness. That would be more appropriately addressed to  Lennon of those days, not to me or to ASI or to groups like the SanibLakas Foundation or Lambat-Liwanag Network of today. We all have reason to declare having joined Lennon in his dream, and that more people are joining us, more and more people like us are joining up with all the rest.  And we can all say, or rather sing with more feeling than we or our parents ever sang in the 60s—the Age of Aquarius has already dawned. The bright sunrise of enlightenment for real peace and love has come!

The empowering paradigms are seeds of light. They resonate with the innermost whispers of our spirit. They are seeds of light that we can gather to plant deep within our hearts and minds, in all our talk, in all our walk of all our talk, and plant in the heart-minds of many others.  Are we all ready to pledge upon our honor to help gather, spread and cast far and wide these seeds of light?  Are we all ready to make extra efforts to contribute to the hastening of this glorious sunrise in the history of Humankind?

Are we ready to make the commitment on that Panata in your kits that I had earlier asked you to read immediately?  Are you?  I’m almost sure I already know your answer, and so, slightly ahead of hearing your response to this challenge, let me just say this…

Congratulations!