When Bob Dylan sang his heart out — The times, they are a changing — people must have taken it as a poetic expression of a rebellious young man. But it seems this realistic expression was a voice of the changing times. Times indeed are changing; they are not as they used to be. The essential qualities that have changed are those that were fundamental to human life. Take the ability to trust, which was so prevalent in the olden days, has become a rare commodity these days. The pure and innocent, childlike heart that can trust anything, anyone easily is not found anymore. It is the ambience of the contemporary human being. The way people used to trust each other, made friends, is not possible any longer.
Osho holds the training of science and technology responsible for this. He says: “The modern man suffers from great anxiety; it has never been so — a man has never suffered so much from anxiety. Why is there so much anxiety? Amidst so much scientific, technological growth, amidst so much affluence, why does man suffer, One thing has disappeared from his heart: trust is no more there, only doubt — doubt and doubt. You are surrounded by doubts, a thousand and one doubts. They are like ghosts torturing you. Your life has become a nightmare.”
It is not only Osho who is warning you, the latest Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust is in crisis around the world. The general population’s trust in all four key institutions — business, government, NGOs and the media — has declined broadly. With the fall of trust, the majority of respondents now lack full belief that the overall system is working for them. In this climate, people’s societal and economic concerns, including globalisation, the pace of innovation and eroding social values, turn into fears, spurring the rise of populist actions now playing out in several Western-style democracies.
How can the trust be rebuilt and restore people’s faith in the system, addressing their fears? Well, basically trust is not related to others, trust is a state of relaxing with one’s nature. One who is at ease, at peace and at home with oneself lives in trust. It doesn’t depend on others’ behaviour. There may be cheats and traitors around, but the trust is the intrinsic nature, it cannot be snatched by petty incidents of cheating. To restore this open nature, a massive movement of meditation has to be started. Meditation that will shift the focus from the head to the heart, from thinking to feeling. Scientific studies have trained people to doubt everything they come across, which was necessary for scientific studies but it has gone to the extreme. Now it can be balanced by teaching love and poetry, respecting inner and outer nature. You can be surrounded by the ethos of trust. In this atmosphere the spring is bound to come. You start blossoming, for the first time you start releasing your fragrance. Life becomes a celebration.
