If you are doing research to know how well the world has received new inventions, new ideas, or anything new which is most widely used today, the list you get will be miles long. Some of the comments of the greatest minds will surprise you at the human ingenuity for folly. One can safely declare that anything NEW has so far been greeted unanimously with disapproval, dissent, resentment, and solid resistance. Humanity arrives at an equilibrium from time to time which is security of existence. Anything new disturbs that equilibrium. It is seen as an attempt at insecurity. Hence the reaction. No reaction can contain any trace of reason. Man reacts, as he has no reason. This is so because the highest instrument of man is Mind. It can see only one side. Even the Rishis saw only one side of Sachchidananda.
Around 1800 A.D. Malthus, an economist, saw that the population was multiplying fast. Each man gave birth to about ten children, and each child in time gave birth to as many. The population that was expanding as 1 - 10 - 100 - 1000 - 10,000...was too vast for the production of food grains to cope with. He never knew what to do about it. But he thought fit to voice his concern about the future of humanity. He did so in the British Parliament. Ever since that warning, the world has echoed it faithfully and gratefully. Mind cannot see both sides. It can see only one side. Hence this error of great minds. Even then, there was a lone voice of a far-seeing philosopher. His vision was penetrating. He explained that the Industrial Revolution had opened up new vistas in all sides. In his view, the new factors that would come into existence in the future would accommodate any problem like the bulging population. It is after 2000 AD or around it that experts here and there began to have a small glimpse of this prophecy and declare that maybe population is an asset.
Poets are always known to be visionaries. The superstitious world has always disapproved of their visionary dreams. To historians, what we call the MODERN period was born between 1815 and 1830. The most illustrious poets of England were dismayed at its birth and expressed their despair. To take the other man's point of view or to take a wider view is to be awake in the Spirit, as the Spirit sees all, not only the one side before it. That philosopher who disagreed with Malthus was awake in his Spirit. When the first railway track was to be inaugurated, the British Prime Minister was reluctant to officiate there and declared, "I am sure nothing good will come out of it." Let the cream of India be awake in the Spirit and SEE our future, not by the Mind, but by the Spirit. Everyone born on Indian soil belongs to that CREAM.