Sailendra Pattnayak
25th May 2020. A Black man of 46 years old named George Floyd died on the footpaths of Minneapolis city of USA as a White police officer kept him pinned down to the ground with his right knee pressed on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. The entire scene was video recorded by an onlooker’s cell phone and was widely circulated on the internet.
The same evening there had been out pouring of protesters at least in four cities, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Miami and Atlanta. From the very next day there had been massive protests in almost all the cities and towns of America. It was totally unexpected for the authority. Probably a Black man being killed by a White police officer was not that unusual a thing. But somehow the minds and hearts of the people had been ignited and nothing could deter the Americans hitting the streets demanding justice.
Until fifty eventful days have passed, the citizens of America were not prepared to leave the streets, in spite of the pandemic of Covid-19. There had been incidents of violence, loot and vandalism. Also video footage had been showing that secret elements of placing bricks, bottles, etc. on the strategic points through which demonstrations were to pass. Between the mass and the mob, the dividing line has been always very thin and fragile.
The steadfastness of the demonstrators even after fifty days in most of the cities including the capital city of Washington remains unflagging and the sheer number of protesters pressing in to entering the White House has been such that the President of USA was compelled to take shelter in the White House bunkers twice.
Howsoever, no clear cut leadership has been visible anywhere. So far all the organizing had been happening through mass participation in social media channels of cell phones. Clearly this is something completely novel in human history. And this very fact might be a bright example of a new age we already have been living in.
Astrology
The characteristic of our age is that “…. the human intellect can comprehend the fine matters or electricity and their attributes which are the creating principles of the external world. And the mental virtue is in the second stage of development…”, says Sri Yukteswar Giri. “The fine matters or electricity and their attributes!”, probably, clearly indicates at the present achievements in communication technology, and our lives so intricately controlled by the internet, cell phones and other such gadgets.
First, a word on Sri Yukteswar Giri – he was the Guru of Paramahamsa Sri Yogananda, the famous author of that enchanting and uplifting all time bestseller ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ and the propagator of ‘Kriya Yoga’ in America and Europe from 1920 until his Mahasmadhi in 1952 at Los Angeles.
Sri Yukteswara Giri, the great yogi with a deep insight into astronomy and astrology, in the introduction to his book ‘Kaivalya Darshanam’ (translated as ‘The Holy Science’) written in 1894, wrote – “The astronomers and astrologers who calculate the almanacs have been guided by wrong annotations of certain Sanskrit scholars of the Kali Yuga, and now maintain that the length of Kali Yuga is 432,000 years, of which 4994 have (in A.D.1894) passed away, leaving 427,006 years still remaining. A dark prospect! But fortunately one not true.’’
Sri Yukteswarji then explains when and how the wrong annotations began and got established in the minds of the people. To discuss all that here although not possible but it is important to be informed that the four Yugas move one after the other in ascending order, and then again in descending order. As according to that, the Kali Yuga is at the end of the descending order which in continuum is repeated in the beginning of the ascending order. But fortunately, Kali Yuga happens to be the shortest of all the four Yugas, i.e. only 1200 years. With mathematical calculations Sri Yukteswarji establishes that Kali Yuga of the ascending side has ended in A.D.1699 and the ascending Dwapara Yuga has began exactly in the year 1700 A.D. and the length of the Dwapara is 2400 years.
Psychology: The Contemporary Conceptions of Living
H.G.Wells, the famous writer of scientific works and the father of the genre of science fiction towards the end of his life completed ‘Experiments in Autobiography’ (published in 1934). In it Wells talks of certain developments in human mind and the changed conceptions of life.
“Conceptions of living, divorced more and more from immediacy, distinguished the modern civilized man from all former life. In art, in pure science, in literature, for instance, many people find a sustaining series of interests and incentives which has come at last to have greater value for them than any primary needs and satisfactions… And the desire to live within these sustaining systems of effort becoming increasingly conscious and defined.
“Mankind is realizing more and more surely that to escape from individual immediacies into the less personal activities now increasing in human society is not like games or intoxication, a suspension or abandonment of the primary life where the primary life though subordinated but remains intact.” Whereas the involvements of the contemporary man in arts, literature, pure science or even ethical politics with the intentions of leading a ‘super-normal life’ essentially “is an imposition upon the primary life, a participation in the greater life of the race as a whole… It is not a repudiation of the old but a vast extension of it, in a racial synthesis into which individual aims will ultimately be absorbed.”
Historical: Zeitgeist or the Spirit of the Times
“Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact they are the grand children of slaves. There is no dishonor in being slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners. But let us not think of honor or dishonor in connection with the past. Let us realize that the future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving…” This message of Gandhiji to Black Americans was published in the magazine ‘Crisis’ in July 1929. Since then scores of Black Americans had made pilgrimages to Gandhiji’s Ashrams. To such a group in 1935 Gandhiji had told, “Perhaps it will be through the Negro that the unadulterated message of non-violence will be delivered to the world.” This prophetic wish of Gandhiji had to take twenty five years to come to happening.
1st December 1955. Montgomery city of southern America – Rosa Parks, a Black American woman catches a city bus to return home. On the way she was asked to move to the rear section of the bus marked for the Blacks as White passengers board. She refused and was being arrested. In protest a one-day bus boycott was declared by the Blacks. Earlier all such attempts were failures, so no one was really serious. But this time, on 4th December 1955, the one-day boycott stretched out itself to 382 days. And the 382 days, not only transformed the heart and face of the Blacks but also the White man and thus the history of U.S.A with the creation of a legendary leadership in Martin Luther King Jr., affectionately called ‘King’.
King, a Baptist Church Priest, although had come to Montgomery only a few months back but for his ‘get-tough’ policy was marked out. He was arrested and jailed with false charges of rush driving. Four days after his release, on 30th January 1956 while King was addressing a mass meeting a bomb was thrown into the front room of his house. Fortunately, his wife and their nine weeks child had moved to the back room only a couple of minutes before.
When King arrived the house was ringed by the angry Black crowd with guns, knives, sticks, bricks. Only a word from King would have sufficed to inflame the crowd. But King raised his hands in the manner of saying ‘Amen’ and said, “Don’t get panicky… Don’t do anything panicky at all. Don’t get your weapons. Who lives by sword, will perish by the sword.” As the crowd fell silent King became aware of a greater strength. “We are not advocating violence… I did not start the boycott. I was asked by you to serve as your spokesman. I want it to be known the length and breadth of the land that if I am stopped, this movement will not stop…” Cries of ‘Amen’ and ‘God bless you, son’ floated up from the crowd.
That was the moment which changed the course of the protest and made King a living symbol. Non-violence dawned in the heart of countless Blacks. King was not yet 28 years old. At the end of 382 days, with the Segregation Rule abolished, when Rosa Parks was asked what really inspired her courage that day in the bus, her answer was simple and prosaic, “I was just tired from shopping. My feet hurt.” Explaining the same King had said that Rosa Parks really had been “tracked down by the zeitgeist – the spirit of the time.” King, although had read a bit of Gandhi in his university days, but he was a serious student of German philosophy and Hegel’s conception of ‘zeitgeist’ or ‘spirit of time’ had been dear to him.
Towards the end of the 382 days a White women of Montgomery in a letter to the editor of a city newspaper wrote of the similarities between the Montgomery struggle and Gandhi’s non-violent freedom struggle in India. This made King to return to Gandhi and study him seriously. What followed has been history. Exactly nine years from the beginning of the Montgomery Movement, on 10 December 1964, in his Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech what King had said, sums up the past-present-future of the Afro-American struggle for emancipation. “… I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.
“Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle…
“After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression…” The man who was so greatly successful in leading the non-violent struggle of his people for their right to live with dignity, on the night of 4th April 1968, was assassinated by a distant gunman who raced away and escaped.
Call of the Zeitgeist Again!
The American citizens today irrespective of color and creed and age in the streets asking for equality and truth seems to be responding to the call of the spirit of history, and brings to mind lines from another German philosopher: “Better to perish than to fear and hate: far better to perish than to be feared and hated.”
(The author is a Poet, Spiritualist and Development Professional. Views are Personal)
