Human Survival in the Balance

by Michael Grosso:

Albert Einstein wrote: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything

except our ways of thinking. Thus we are drifting toward a catastrophe

beyond comparison. We shall require a substantially new manner of

thinking, if mankind is to survive.”

A substantially new manner of thinking—we should underscore Einstein’s

words. They suggest that any approach that relies on old formulas

for solving the world predicament probably need to be scrapped. A substantially

new manner of thinking? Einstein has remarked on the importance of

imagination in solving the great problems by stepping outside

the box of our usual assumptions.

In Edward Thompson’s Letter to America, we read: “Nothing less

than a world-wide spiritual revulsion against the Satanic Kingdom

would give us any chance of bringing the military riders down.” The

“new manner” needs to be conceived in terms of a spiritual revolution.

Einstein and Thompson seem to me right and being right here points

to the greatness of the challenge. It’s no small thing to outgrow one’s

worldview and launch a revolution of consciousness. Something

very jarring needs to happen.

In a short play by Luigi Pirandello, The Man With A Flower In His

Mouth, a man emerges from a doctor’s office with a fatal diagnosis. Possessed

by this knowledge of impending death, the world lights up for

him, the smallest things swell with significance; he lingers over every

detail; the doomed man’s awareness changes radically, and he undergoes

a brilliant conversion of consciousness.

The question is whether ours is a world with a flower in its mouth.

Like the man in Pirandello’s play, will we wake up in time and see all life

in a new enlightened way?

(From The Final Choice: Death or Enlightenment?  Available on Amazon or from the publisher, White Crow Books)