Hero Image

Naw-ruz ushers in a spiritual spring

New Year is the most widely celebrated festival in countries and communities across the world, at different times according to different calendars. This traditional celebration has become an occasion for renewal of friendships, exchanging greetings and gifts, of making futuristic plans, of starting a new phase in life with fresh zeal and hope.

It is a universal festival and a medium of spreading goodwill.

Nature celebrates New Year too. The spring Equinox — March 21 — is the harbinger of a new season of sunshine and warmth, ringing down the curtain on cold, sultry winters. Warm sunshine and fresh spring air breathes new life into nature. Trees are garbed with delicate green foliage, dormant plants spring forth and blossom into colourful and fragrant flowers. Hibernating creatures emerge from their burrows to forage for food and birds chirp gleefully welcoming the sun. As nature ushers in a new season of sunshine and warmth, so do Baha’is and Zoroastrians, by celebrating the spring equinox as their Naw-Ruz, also spelt as Nowruz.

As the solar cycle in nature, so also the ‘soular’ cycle in the spiritual realm. As spring renews life in nature, so does a divine springtime rejuvenate mankind. As natural seasons follow in planned succession, so do spiritual seasons. Whenever man is lost in the mire of materialism, a spiritual Sun rises in the garb of a new Manifestation of God to generate a new spirit in man and guide him back to the path of spirituality.

History records that during our darkest hours, a Krishn, a Buddha, a Zoroaster, Moses, Christ, or Muhammad, appeared to lead us out of our gloom and depravity, and instil in us noble and sublime attributes. As long as we have followed the fresh guidance of successive Manifestations, we have progressed. Our lives have been fruitful. These periods in history have been the summer seasons of unprecedented advancement, enrichment, and the establishment of glorious civilisations. And when we have veered from righteousness, we have brought on the spiritual autumn, followed by the cold lifelessness of winter.

These spiritual seasons conform to our yugas. God’s Manifestation ushers in the Satyug of flowering faith, followed by declining fervour through Dwapar, Treta and Kali yugas. Having suffered the woes of Kalyug, the travails of purgation and cleansing, mankind prayerfully awaits the dawn of Satyug. God has not forsaken His creation. The winter season of materialism will assuredly be dispelled by the rising of the promised spiritual Sun of a divine spring. The differently named avatar of all holy scriptures – Kalki, Amitabha, Shahbahram, Messiah, Christ-returned, Qaim – is destined to appear at the pre-ordained time and place.

The Baha’i community believes the promised Manifestation has appeared and all scriptural prophecies are fulfilled. Born in Persia, Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, declared his mission in 1863, suffered forty years of persecution, exile and imprisonment at the hands of hostile governments and fanatical clergy. But, the teachings of this Prisoner spread through mid-eastern countries, reached India, the cradle of two divine Revelations, and subsequently throughout the world. Today the world is gradually veering towards Baha’u’llah’s teachings on human rights, gender equality, disarmament, universal peace, and a world government. His followers, from every background of race, religion and nationality, speaking over eight hundred languages, inhabit the far-flung corners of the planet, claim they are not converts to the Baha’i Faith having abandoned ancestral beliefs. They state they have investigated and recognised in Baha’u’llah, the fulfilment of prophecies of their respective scriptures. Has a New Age dawned in the ‘soular’ system? The affirmative answer lies in the holy scriptures.

Today is International Nowruz Day

READ ON APP