As we stand on the threshold between the second and third millennia, we feel that this is a very special time to be alive. All of us living at this time are the harbingers of a new age, a new vision, a new reality. We were born to span two millennia, to bring the best of the old traditions and ways into the new age, to ensure that universal and timeless values are never lost to humanity, to keep the window of spiritual life open and accessible to those who seek it, and to keep the light of yoga burning in man's hearts.
Paramahamsa Satyananda has said that the next millennium will see a merging of bhakti and science, an opening of the heart. Now the heart is imprisoned by a wall of muscular tension, defending our ego and its intellectual drives and ambitions. We have only just begun to realize the importance of the heart and that, in our ignorance, we have handed over our self-control to the head, while ignoring and limiting the influence and love of the heart.
The heart is our core energy. When this energy connects with our head, it makes us aware of how we feel and allows us to express our feeling in words. This energy connects with our arms and hands and allows us to act as we feel. This energy connects with our gut and enables us to digest what we feel. This energy connects with our reproductive region and allows us to recreate ourselves in love.
Our pranas are very much influenced by the way we feel. When the heart is shut, the pranas are also locked in, and so they become unbalanced and deficient. This results in depression, emptiness and hopelessness, as well as an infinite host of incurable psychosomatic and metabolic disorders. In order to emerge from this disease syndrome, science will have to investigate the opening of the heart – bhakti yoga.
What are the effects on the different systems of the body when the heart opens? What are the effects on the mind, on the brain waves, on the learning power and on the level of efficiency? How does an open heart affect our family life, professional life and community life? What is the potential power of the fully opened heart? These are the questions which science will answer in the new millennium.
So, the new millennium will usher in a new unfoldment, an opening of the heart which will enable us to develop into complete human beings. In the past millennium we have developed head power, intellect represented by science and technology. The heart submitted to the head and mankind became intellectual giants. The levels of education and specialization seemed to have no limits. However, in the coming millennium, the head will submit to the heart and we will become true human beings, able to function in life with a balanced expression of head, heart and hands.
Wisdom does not arise from an overdeveloped intellect, but from a joining of head and heart. Now, when people ask for qualifications they want to know your mental and intellectual training, your income, your status. Nobody asks about your heart, about your emotional stability, to what extent you have integrated your head and heart. They want to know what you think, rather than how you feel about certain issues.