We move forward carrying with us the anguish of the past and a hope for the future.
We carry the anguish of a civilisation where man has been reduced to a molecule; his greatness and nobility shaped by an aberrant nerve impulse; his high feelings of love and generosity traced to a chemical reaction in the brain; his most perfect moments of awakening and enlightenment seemingly determined by a reluctant gene releasing an abundance of hormones into the blood.
This is the bitter-sweet wonder we have discovered. This is the gospel of life, a chance association of genes knitted together by threads of randomness. This is the paradox and the miracle of unconscious clay (matter) that constitutes conscious man.
And yet a greater miracle and wonder awaits us, as a hope for the future. So far we have asked, ‘What is man?’ Now we need to ask, ‘Who is man?’ It is only when we have solved these two riddles together that we shall escape the destroying sphinx that guards our journey to greater lands. It is only when we have answered the eternal ‘Who’ rather than the temporary ‘How’ that we shall know ‘Why is man?’ Where is the end of the journey that started with the Big Bang? Where does man go and what distant horizons of knowledge await his discovery that began with plasma in a sea of life? These questions may answer the mystery called life!
We shall then know that man is the Infinite denying his infinity; that man is the Eternal wearing a temporary human mask; the Omnipotent limiting itself in minutes and hours.
This is the paradox of man. And this is the key to his future, awaiting discovery and opening the doors of freedom and immortality so far denied to him.
Here lies the crowning glory of his efforts: the justification of his long suffering labour.
