EWS #162 National and Other Characteristics + Q&A

May 20, 2023

Sraddhalu (0:00:41):
Namaste and a warm welcome to Evenings with Sraddhalu. We will begin with a continuation of the overall theme that we have been dwelling upon, which was not about gender, not about masculine and feminine, but what was about the different kinds of nature in the context of education. And as part of that discussion, we went into this aspect of the distinctions between the masculine, feminine, or rather male and female biology, psychology shifts, arising from the biology, and then we did a deep dive into that whole theme with all its associated aspects.

But now we step back to the larger line of discussion which was recognising different types of human nature, so that we can better fine-tune the interaction that we have with the student to assist the learning process and equally for ourselves to recognise what are perhaps inherent strong starting points or inherent weaknesses and then make for corrections to these. Remember just as with biology of the male and female, Nature only provides a starting point. To identify with the biological limitation or strengths would be a mistake by limiting yourself to it. Rather take the strengths as your starting point, use them to widen, deepen, heighten, intensify, make complete, including whatever limitations may or may not be present.

Because after all, what we come with is a combination of three things:

There is of course the heredity which influences the biology greatly, but there is also psychological component to the heredity.

Then there is the environmental influence which again can influence both biology and psychology.

And then the third which is the soul qualities, the soul experience, the soul maturity, the soul personality which is infused into these.

And Sri Aurobindo says that where these three may conflict, the soul's power to override the other two is the greatest. After all, our psychology and our biology are finally top-down expressions of the Self, and therefore if the soul chooses, it can override. There may be a process, there may be a struggle, there may be a time requirement, but that is our deepest, greatest, most complete truth. Even as an evolutionary soul, we begin with some limited capacities, but it can override everything else, it can grow unendingly.

So this was the backdrop against which we looked at various kinds:

We looked at the soul powers, four soul powers, the three modes of nature, the different kinds of temperament, qualities of consciousness, powers of consciousness on different parts of our being.

And then we looked at the distinctions between the genders as regards the slant or the emphasis in these characteristics between the two typically again as starting points, and again nature shows you that she is absolutely free and creates all kinds of blending ranges.

So to view biology in terms of male-female as opposites or as extremes would be an error, it would be true only on a very physical level; psychologically, no, they just represent bundles of qualities, bundles of qualities with large overlaps but with a slant this way or that way in the way those qualities are expressed and then sometimes qualities which don't overlap which are more distinctive, which again the soul can override. All this we saw before. We looked also at specific characteristics such as visual learners, auditory learners, kinaesthetic learners or those who live more in the abstract mind, emotional mind, sense mind. I touched upon in passing aspects of race, culture, civilisational imprints, influence of media, and so on.

(0:05:17):

Today I intend to explain a little bit on this civilisational types and again, as we have to look in context of everything we have seen, these represent only starting points. There is no hard and fast rule that just because you are born in a certain culture, civilisation, or you have a nationality that you are in that box, because as is Nature's intention, through every national characteristic or imprint, Nature wants to open out to the full framework of possibilities.

So there was a period, let's say about 2000 years ago, Sri Aurobindo points to, where he says Nature was working with pure types. And he draws upon various known, let's say, cultures, particularly among the Greek, he names certain things. I am unfortunately not very good with those, but just to point out the general idea that, he says, those, let’s say, groups represented the last of the pure types. And from then on, as if Nature has begun to mix the pure types to create more diversity, more plasticity, more fluidity in the possibilities for the future development.

Now you have to understand Nature's strategy in doing this. And Mother explains this in a different context, she says, what Nature does initially is to push to the extreme specialisations. Sri Aurobindo also explains this in The Synthesis of Yoga, the very first page: Nature makes these extremes of specialisations literally as if they are, you can't say ‘polar opposites’ but multipole opposites, pushes them to the maximum of their opposites or extreme and then begins to mix them to create a huge canvas of rich mix, blends, complexities. And this is what she has been doing also with civilisations, cultures, and more recently with what we would call ‘national types’.

So what do we mean even by that, a culture of a people? What does it mean? How do we even define? What are we looking for when we say, this is the culture? So Sri Aurobindo explains this in one of his writings, I think, it is in the uh, Foundations of Indian Culture, he says: “The culture of a people may be roughly described as the expression of a consciousness of life which formulates itself in three aspects. There is a side of thought, of ideal, of upward will and the soul’s aspiration;” Next: “there is a side of creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence and imagination;” Third: “and there is a side of practical and outward formulation.”

Now I will re-read, because this is so important! When you assess a civilisation, a culture of, on a collective scale, or of yourself as an individual, or a sub-group of society to which you belong or which you are observing, these are the three things we should be looking at. And he lists them in sequence of priority: “There is a side of thought, of ideal”: he is not speaking of intelligence here but the direction of the thought, the direction of the ideal, the level to which the thought and ideal have risen – “of upward will”, so the whole thing is about this peak of our being. What is it going towards? The “upward will”, do we have a strong “upward will”? Or is it that “upward will” deficient, or even turned down? “and the soul’s aspiration”

Now in the sequence, it is: “of thought”, “ideal”, “upward will”, “soul’s aspiration”.  Of these, the highest is the soul aspiration, but it’s not always the most forward, in front, in a culture. But you do see first this aspect of “thought”, the turning of thought, which is the turn of the thought. And ask yourself this question: What is your primary turn of thought? Or, assess your friends, your family members, or anybody you wish to develop a partnership with in work, in relationships: What is the tendency, direction, of thought?

Then, of ideals: because the ideals as if are setting up the distant point, things you will never achieve perhaps, but towards which your whole being eventually, not just your thought, turns towards. Do you even have ideals? Do they even have ideals? Or the ideals forgotten? Or, are the ideals so low that you are actually plunging downward?

And then “of upward will”: Is there any intensity, an intention even to grow, to rise, to develop to exceed your limitations?

And then “the soul’s aspiration”, which is the most difficult to see, because most deep, to the extent that you awaken to your soul’s consciousness, or its influence is strongly felt, you can begin to sense this in others.

So: “thought”, “ideal”, “upward will”, “soul’s aspiration” going to the more and more rarefied and yet the most important. All this is the first uh, aspect that you look at.

(0:10:40):

The second aspect which is intermediate to these, interestingly, is where he puts the “intelligence”. So: “there is a side of creative self-expression and appreciative aesthesis, intelligence and imagination”. So, observe these:

How, is there even a strong or creative “self-expression”? There are cultures which have zero “creative self-expression”, they are just happy to be, chill, nothing to do, and at best the creativity is for practical day-to-day minor improvements. You will see this often in island cultures where everything is laid back and relaxed and just enjoyment of the sense-life. But you see equally other cultures where the power of creativity of self-expression is so developed, generally assessed by the peaks of their painters, musicians, artists, sculptors, poets, writers, uh, playwrights, etc.

“appreciative aesthesis”, and you will see this among people: To what extent can you appreciate something beautiful?

You might have one exceptional artist, but if the people do not appreciate, the artist is often considered to be ahead of his or her time or he is completely forgotten or because their work is destroyed. So this, “appreciative aesthesis”.

And then the “intelligence”.

And then the “imagination”.

So, you could have a great intelligence, but the intelligence may be turned downward to very low objectives, it does not mean any great culture. So, while intelligence is important, because it allows us to be able to amplify the upward effort, in itself it may lead to even greater downward collapse which is what we see today in large parts of the world, where the, there is almost a civilisational collapse.

And then the “imagination”! Why is imagination so important here? Because with your imagination you create the future. If your power of imagination is not developed, you do not have a worthwhile future that you can even conceive of, and then what do you work towards? Or, if you work towards something, you are wandering or seeking in the blind.

The power of imagination is precisely the power that allows you to see, to create even, in the mental world, it becomes a reality when you conceive of it, and then you as if articulate or manifest, realise it, in the material domain. So the imagination and the nature of its content, direction, etc., all this would be the second aspect.

And the third, which is, well, the most exterior, is the “side of practical and outward formulation”, how does this culture express itself practically, organise itself, formulate its values and its forms of life, and so on. Now if you look, take this as our criteria, and now we begin to assess the distinctions of various cultures, civilisations, national, let's say, types, then you will see naturally, there are certain tendencies which tend to be strong.

If you look at from the context of general education or from the purpose of the Integral Yoga, which is just taking the general integral education to its higher spiritual potential, we see starting points, we see strengths, we see weaknesses, we see work that Nature has done in us, through us, of which we are the beneficiaries. We can also then recognise that if Nature has created these vehicles, just as we were discussing earlier regarding the genders, the soul may choose to incarnate in a particular space of culture, civilisation or nationality, or type for purpose of developing those qualities, isn't it?, for refining, amplifying, developing and then choose another which would have a completely different priority and then come to another where he would be able to unify across lives.

(0:15:01):

And for this purpose it would be reasonable for Nature to try to actually protect some of these specialisations, up to a point, until she says ‘No, now the blending, the merging, is more important’ and then she will as if open out rapidly, push the boundaries and the limits to as if connect from this specialised viewpoint to the rest of the world and nourish from the other specialisations even as she shares this specialisation with others. This means of course there is a sudden opening to the whole world. A good example would be Japan. Japan chose to keep itself isolated, chose to keep itself in a very closed space, even foreigners coming were pushed away, even threatened. And yet Japan had a very strong urge to learn and know from others. So they sent out emissaries to China, to India, to learn, absorb, but not to mix with foreigners, to create their own distinctive characteristics. Who decides this? It's not the people. It's Nature.

The instinct of Nature in a collective which chooses ‘Ha, here I am going to push this’, and suddenly people feel ‘Haa, this is so important, so interesting, I’ll have to do this’, and that's how she builds the type. And having built it sufficiently perfected it, pushed it to its extreme sometimes, then she opens out as if pouring out this into the rest of the world, and when the time is ready, opens this to receive from the rest of the world.

And you see Japan having this, especially after the Second World War, suddenly Japan is, has to mix with the whole world and share its unique characteristics. And yet, you will see within Japan, a very strong resistance to learning other languages. You see similarly in Europe, strong resistance to learning other languages in France, in Germany. In India, in certain states, you will find similar tendencies. And it's as if there's so much pride and self-respect of your own achievement as a civilisation or as a culture that to accept something else which is inferior, ‘How can you even do that?’.

And you see this, it's a kind of a national ego, and yet it's used by Nature to protect certain things and not lose them too soon. So all this is to set a context for wider exploration of these types. Now I don't consider myself to be sufficiently competent to make a deep dive, but I will leave things at a more indicative level and especially draw upon Sri Aurobindo's words so that the responsibility is much more his.

The tendency of course when we make these observations even when we read Sri Aurobindo's comments is to either view it as a stereotype or try to reduce an entire culture or nation to that. Understand he is describing certain preeminent characteristics which if you took the whole culture would hit or would represent about 80% of it and then you will have 20% which is much fluider, open, and bridging with other characteristics from other cultures. So even it's interesting to see in physical spaces Nature does this.

You look at France, and this was explained to us by a Frenchman who was a professor in our School, he said “On the extreme of France, the north, is the British sense of humour, which is the stiff upper lip, the wisp of a smile to suggest that you found it humorous; on the other extreme is Italy where the humour goes ha-hha-hha-hha-hha [loud enthusiastic laughter]”. This is how he showed us. He made this gesture. And he described, he described various others. I did not have at that time the full appreciation of all these countries, but he described various others and showed how France being in the centre physically, geographically, took all these influences and became as if the melting pot for the most rich blending of these qualities, experiences and styles of art, values, and so on.

You will see the same thing even, let’s say, within France, you look at patches, within Italy you look at patches, often these are aligned to whether the region is mountainous, or a plain, near the ocean, warm, cold, all of these make a huge difference to the cultural content and values. Generally we find spaces which are more warm or don't have extremes of cold where survival becomes difficult, you will have efflorescence of culture and civilisation because you can afford it. Where you have to bunker down for six months in snow, there's not much you can do, and there's not much possibility of exchange or growth, isn't it? So these things do make a difference.

Again, being on a mountain, being on the plains, it does make a difference. And then there are qualities which come from within the earth itself which make a difference.

(0:20:18):

And all this is just to set a background of how complex this whole thing can be and then to recognise and as if by an intuitive perception go straight to the core of it, that is Sri Aurobindo's gift. And when he tells you this  you say, ‘Ha-yes, of course that's true!’. But remember always, it is still a starting point and Nature uses that starting point to flower out.

So now we read with this background, we read from the evening talks as recorded by Anil Baran Roy. Remember, these are words from memory, so they may not be absolutely accurate and we have to be careful to get the main idea and not to catch the words too much. So this is a discussion taking place in 1926 July and Anil Baran notes this. One of the persons who is sitting with Sri Aurobindo, X, “described how … Japanese crew had saved many shipwrecked Englishmen at the risk of their own lives.

Sri Aurobindo: That is quite like the Japanese. They would rather perish than neglect their duty.” Interesting!

 

“… What has made the Japanese so dutiful?”

“Sri Aurobindo: It is their ancient culture – the splendid organization and the discipline of the Samurai which has reached the whole people. That discipline consists in great self-restraint and sacrifice at the call of duty.”

If you look at any Japanese movie, including the most modern ones, and of course, especially the more artistic, cultural types, but even the most modern ones, you will find these two things just stand out: “great self-restraint”, “sacrifice at the call of duty”. These things are rarely questioned. It’s as if, there is no other way to be! And you see that describes the type and the values of the culture.

Just as an aside, I was in Japan at one point when there was a huge cyclone and there was a lot of destruction and there was an Indian Navy ship which had just docked and the Indian sailors helped in disaster relief, and so on, they brought food packets and various things. I was sitting with a group, I think it was in Kyoto, this had happened, I think, in Tokyo or some other part. And when this news came that morning, there was the Japanese who were in front of me, they said, ‘We appreciate very much the help from the Indian people’, and they did a deep bow. And I said, [laughing] ‘I am nowhere in the picture, I pass it on to them’.

But that sense of duty, the sense of the collective identity was not so strong with me, I don't see it so strong in India, but among the Japanese it's clear: the Indian people, the Japanese people, and the fact that something took place among some of them, it reflects in all of us and our responsibility and our gratitude, and the values of the culture just come in. Fascinating. So I continue to read from Sri Aurobindo: That “discipline consists in great self-restraint and sacrifice at the call of duty. A Japanese lives for the sake of the Mikado or the country; there cannot be a traitor in Japan; …” Interesting. “Mikado” is, I think, the king, the emperor, who is literally seen as god incarnate.

It goes back to the origin of the emperor itself in the Japanese tradition that the Japanese people consider themselves to be descendants of a deity who came and there is a cave still today known where she settled and the emperor is the direct descendant of or representative of that deity, and so on. So literally the emperor is God. And even though you have replaced post-Second World War by a parliament, the parliament is just nominal, when the emperor goes somewhere, the entire people will stand with respect. He is driving by in a car, there is no official role, and yet the people have the highest respect.

So, it's interesting, Sri Aurobindo writes this in 1926, it's still true today after all these changes. “A Japanese lives for the sake of the Mikado or the country; there cannot be a traitor in Japan; then they show extraordinary powers of endurance; there is no shouting and screaming anywhere; if they are angry, they may kill their enemy but will not give vent to their anger in any other way. Whatever you have to do, do it without speaking or bragging about it. During the last big fire, forty thousand people met death but surrounded by flames they showed no impatience – they sang hymns and calmly met death, all those forty thousand! If anybody dies no one will weep. In face of duty they either accomplish it or commit suicide.” Harakiri, as you know. It's interesting.

(0:25:39):

In just a few sentences, characteristics which are summarised so accurately, so precisely. Well, for most of us through cinema you can validate this, but having been to Japan, being in spaces, interacted with the people, it’s, it's a perfect description. And there's something very interesting about them. When you're interacting with a group, let's say, and it's an interaction, formal, even if it's informal, it's a formality of being informal, so there's a formality always. And when it's over, they're all there, very respectful. When it's over, suddenly there's a relief and suddenly they'll start smiling, laughing and be very friendly, never losing the respect, but there's this as if, rigidity held, what he describes here, not showing any exaggeration of any kind, and then as if, let go, and it's fine. So I spoke with a group of Japanese, they were ladies who had been to India, and I said, ‘Oh you must have been shocked by the chaos’. They said, ‘No, it was such a relief to not be in a structured and rule-bound society’. Fascinating!

And you see the same, a similar tendency as far as rule structure is concerned with the Swiss without the rest of those things though. And in the Swiss, let's say, immigration system, without a doubt they will give visas to any Japanese applicant because they know the Japanese will live by the same standards of duty, responsibility, order, public cleanliness, and so on. And they meet on that level, but after that the rest is very different. Okay. So I continue.

Sri Aurobindo: “In all this they are conscious of the support of their ancestors. All this discipline is due to organization in the mental, the vital and the physical plane. But their rigid discipline has made them rigid – they have no plasticity; a Japanese never does well if taken away from his own proper environment. Also, the soul cannot develop spiritually under such rigid conditions.”

So after having seen the strengths, you see how the very strength becomes a limitation in a different context when you go beyond certain boundaries. It's interesting though when he says, speaks about “they are conscious of the support of their ancestors”. And this is a point Sri Aurobindo makes elsewhere, that unless you recognise the sacrifices of your ancestors, you cannot value what you have inherited. And a civilisation that does not value the sacrifices of the ancestors and therefore the inheritance and the effort that has gone into what you have received, will squander it all away. And therefore it is so extremely important to know about the past and especially the achievements, the efforts, the sacrifices, the high peaks, at least attempted, whether succeeded or not is not important, the attempt itself sets a type and a direction, and to be able to value and appreciate how that, all that has helped you to give you the turn of nature and the support and even the growth and development, sensitivity, and so on.

And as we say in Ayurveda, the influences go down seven generations. You receive, going back seven generations, the best of the efforts of all those, and what you do today will contribute down seven generations. So biologically, we can say, ‘Yes, there might be a transmission through the epigenetics and the genetics’, and we see this in rats. You can stress a group of rats, you remove the stress, they copulate, they give birth. The first generation gives birth again, the second generation shows epigenetic symptoms of the stress their grandparents had. Fascinating. And so, yes, it's true. Seven generations is not an exaggeration. The number is perhaps not so critical, but we take it as indicative.

But I'm saying, psychologically, culturally, when you recognise that you have something, and you can value it. But the rigid discipline makes them rigid, and taken out of the proper environment, you have difficulty managing. This is one of the reasons why you will see when the Japanese businessmen travel all over the world, they have translators, but the way they live is a replica of the Japanese space. They will go to hotels which have the facilities which they require, which they are used to, the food that they have, and so on. When they mix in a space outside what was common to what they are used to, there is difficulty in adaptation.

(0:30:23):

And the hierarchical sense goes through even when they move out, when they have little island communities in other countries, the hierarchical sense does not go away. In fact the language is so hierarchical that you have two or three or four levels of seniority in the way you speak a word. And so inherent to the language, having the sense of hierarchy makes that it becomes embedded in the culture, you can't lose that easily.

So, “Also”, he says: “Also, the soul cannot develop spiritually under such … conditions. Thus the Japanese have never been spiritual.” Quite a statement, but understand the context! “Whatever spiritualism appears there is chiefly intellectual.” Interesting. “But, apart from spiritualism, this rigid discipline of the race has been of great help to them in all other spheres of life.” Now this word ‘spiritualism’, ‘spirituality’, I don’t know, it may be the transcriber’s language, the one who remembered, Anilbaran Roy, I don’t know! But we have to catch the idea.

“The Russians were absolutely no match for them in the last war.” This is the First World War. “They were prepared to give any number of lives to win their cause. With their splendid organization and spirit of sacrifice and devotion to the country, they carried everything before them.” Then he says: “The want of plasticity in their nature accounts for the fact that the Japanese can think of only one thing at a time and cannot coordinate their attention on several things together. Thus they have not been a success in aircraft.” Fascinating, as an observation.

And you have to wonder, how does Sri Aurobindo have this kind of deep insight into so many cultures, and he never went to Japan, physically at least. But he makes this observation that as his Yoga advanced, there was this poise when he was living in the universal consciousness, he said, he saw more things and experienced more things of the human life and the world and obviously other worlds than he could ever with the physical body and the physical senses. So let me get some idea of where this insight, this kind of insight can come from. But you see how precise his observations, the ability to coordinate attention on several things together.

And all this comes from the lack of plasticity which comes from the rigid discipline, and the result is that they will not, they have not been successful in aircraft. Interesting. And then if you start looking at how the value system has this chain of cause and effect, then you begin to understand why the culture, why those higher values, impact so much everything else. It may seem as if ‘Ho, you have wonderful thought, wonderful ideas’, and as we saw earlier the “side of thought”, “ideal”, “upward will”, “soul’s aspiration”. ‘Oh, that's abstract!’ – No, you see the chain here, how it comes all the way down to the particular technologies at which you are, you would be good or not or the kinds of business at which you would be good or not. Interesting. Okay.

So the disciple next comments:

“Disciple: The Kshatriyas of India had a similar discipline as the Samurais of Japan.

“Sri Aurobindo: The Indian discipline was more psychic and more plastic; the Japanese is confined to the moral and mental sphere and is extremely rigid. If the Indians had such discipline, no one would have been able to touch India.”

Remember, this is at a time when India is struggling to throw off the yolk of the foreign rule, but not just that, it’s going, been going back a 1000 years that there have been invasions, the missing character of discipline. And I am highlighting this also because Mother makes observation for India particularly, she says that India lost, say going back to 1000 years because of the ascetic phase and which she needs to recover two things, she says: one, the collective discipline; and second, reigning the grip on matter. You see, the ascetic phase became extremely individualistic and the collective discipline faded, was lost.

(0:35:06):

And the fact that the ascetic phase turns away from life and says, ‘That is greater, this is the illusion’, means then you stop giving it importance, ‘What’s the dirt? What’s the ugliness? That’s illusion, it’ll pass, it doesn’t matter’. And so, bit by bit your grip on being able to seize upon life materially and change, make things happen, you lose that.

I remember, recently I had a, I had to clean some, there was some thing in the tank, I had to clean the tank, so I asked somebody who is nearby neighbour, he grew up, he is of, he is an Indian who grew up in, born in Pondicherry but grew up in France or under French culture. So I just called him for help, we did the thing, and I had to empty the tank, clean it, throw out everything, came out, I was exhausted in the hot sun, and there was a little bit of the mud in the water which had been, which was on the terrace. He picked up the broom and pushed it and cleared it. Not totally because you couldn't. And I wouldn't have done it thinking ‘Ha, it will rain in a few days, it will get washed out’.

And my first comment to him was ‘You are much more French than you are Indian’, why? – This discipline, grip on matter where I was struggling to grip, it's easy to let go, I would rather let go, he takes charge, does it, completes it, and the way he does is not resisting but with joy, with compulsion, with clarity of habit in the body. That character was very distinct, and he understood what I was saying. So these, these two things need to be recovered.

This is generally about India, but now we are looking at this specific thing about the discipline. And the observation that the Samurai and the Kshatriya had a difference: “The Indian discipline was … psychic and more plastic; the Japanese” more “moral and mental”, and therefore “extremely rigid”.

So, the disciple says, “The Japanese have kept up their ancient discipline, but how did the Indians lose theirs?

“Sri Aurobindo: They allowed foreign people to enter into their land and also they were very individualistic.”

Now remember, these are conversations, it does not have to be comprehensive, but these are indicative. Elsewhere he has written about the decline of India because of the ascetic withdrawal, and so on.

“Disciple: Japan is not a vast country like India – it is an isolated island and so it was possible for the Japanese to discipline and organize themselves in that manner.

“Sri Aurobindo: That is not the case – there are many other islands in isolated position without the discipline of Japan; it is something peculiar in their race. They are not Mongolians – they are a race apart.

“Disciple: England can compare with Japan.

“Sri Aurobindo: Certainly not. The manufacturers of arms in England sell them to those who used them against England. Of course, the English are more disciplined than the Indians; and they have the political instinct. The French have less and the German greater discipline than the English, but in political instinct Germany is inferior to England.”

Interesting observations, and we get a sense of these tendencies, let’s say, of the national types. But this observation is fascinating: When he says, England can be compared to Japan, “Sri Aurobindo: Certainly not.” Just one example he gives which differentiates: “The manufacturers of arms in England sell them to those who use them against England”. That would never happen in Japan. Interesting. You would never sell to an enemy who would use it against your own people. In England, it’s possible, in India, today at least it’s possible. Again in India, there is the Kshatriya-groups, they would not do this, they would never do this, but India is already too large and too mixed, so there will be enough people who will do it, and that has been the bane.

“Disciple: Is there anything in the nature of the Indians which makes it impossible for them to have the Japanese discipline?

“Sri Aurobindo: The Indians are capable of a good deal of discipline. But they are too plastic – they have tried to assimilate everything that comes from outside. Then, Japan is perhaps the only country where the Government is really for the people. There is a parliament in name, but still the word of the Mikado”, the emperor, “is a law to the Japanese. But the Mikado stands for the country and the people. This popular nature of the government is maintained as the people will at once throw away anybody who will go against the people.” So again in describing this you have to contrast this with at least current India.

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“Disciple: Has Buddhism done anything to build up the unique discipline of the Japanese people?

“Sri Aurobindo: Buddhistic discipline might have contributed something – but their main characteristics were derived from their own ancient religion, Shintoism.”

Now I will share here my own experience in this, because travelling in Japan I had occasion, especially in Kyoto which was the one city which was never bombed, and therefore, it still preserves all the most ancient temples, both Shinto as well as Buddhist. My experience there, and it’s limited to my experience, I went to all these temples, I had a glimpse of the Buddhism and the forms that Buddhism has taken in various, let’s say, modern groups in Japan, as well as the influence of the Shinto and the blend of these two.

What was obvious to me was, the life of the people was still ruled by the Shinto-values, and Buddhism became as if the larger intellectual unifying factor around the central idea that all this, what would have been otherwise too diverse, organising around this, and so it was as if Buddhism sitting on top of Shintoism like a dome over a temple but representing a peak in terms of intellectual values, ideas. But the values by which people lived were still in the Shinto and the temple of the Shinto, and the connection that it gave linking to Nature was fully the Shinto-values.

And what was interesting is, within the Japanese consciousness there was no conflict between the two, because they, so to say, spanned different domains and they were complementary to each other. Without the Buddhism, the intellectual content would have been perhaps weaker, I don't know, that was my sense at least. And the Buddhism gave it this unifying principle in the thought.

“Disciple: As a people the Japanese are very aesthetic.

“Sri Aurobindo: Yes.

“Disciple: What has made them so aesthetic?

“Sri Aurobindo: That is in the race. What made the Greeks or the Italians so aesthetic?”

So, interestingly Sri Aurobindo does not give any answer other than saying, it is “in the race”, and then he gives two other examples, Greeks and Italians have this aesthesis.

Well, what made them that? So of course he could have elaborated. But the way we could look at it this way, generally speaking, that nature picked, nature chose to pick these locations to push forward certain qualities. Yes, there is a rationale to it also, some of it may have to do with the environment to push forward a certain quality, let's say, nature chooses looking at the totality of the earth and all the patches of culture, civilisation, human life, if you look at it from a One-consciousness turning to multiplicity, so One-consciousness experiences the whole earth.

And now this whole earth-consciousness wants to develop:

somewhere chivalry, heroism, courage;

somewhere else beauty, aesthetics;

somewhere else discipline, structure, order;

and immediately in the totality of the earth-consciousness or human-consciousness on earth, ‘Ha, this feels right for this’, ‘That feels right for that’, ‘That feels right’, that's how it works. So obviously a space which has great physical beauty would be a space where the push towards the aesthetic sense or art would naturally take place.

There is an interesting observation I was given that many of the painters in Europe would go to Italy to a particular area, I think it was in Siena, where the light was special. And they found because of that light, it was easier to capture some certain aspects of Nature, and so on. So it's as if the physical environment becomes the basis or the support around which the deeper psycho-spiritual even characteristics can naturally bloom. So what made the choice? We could look at it this way.

“Disciple: I mean, whether there is any connection between the discipline of the Japanese race and their aesthetic sense?”

And strangely in the text we find: “Sri Aurobindo:”, the, Anilbaran has not noted the answer, so it just says, “(No answer recorded here)”.

Another, “Disciple: The Indian people have lost all aesthetic sense.” .

“Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is mainly due to the influence of the English with their utilitarian outlook and their puritanism.” Interesting!

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So here comes a colonial influence and these are civilisational values of that coloniser, “utilitarian outlook” and “puritanism”, and it now begins to affect those who are colonised with those values, and then it, it can destroy certain things, exaggerated certain things, provoke reactive responses, all those things.

“Disciple: The Brahmos of Bengal have saved music in Bengal.

“Sri Aurobindo: Nonsense; they made it as ugly as possible. Music and art have survived through other agencies.”

Very brief responses but very insightful! You see the Brahmo, I believe that’s the Brahmo Samaj, was started by one Raja, King Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and he was an Anglophile somewhat, but he wanted to reform Hindu society taking values from the English influence. And so the result was a kind of a mishmash, a blend, which was not really of a very high order. He was an artist, so you see his art being more of a replica of European art, but also in the values which he propagated, there was the rejection of many core values and principles which were part of the Indian civilisation, and including he even brought in this concept of a kind of a secularism and abandonment of idols or idol worship going to some kind of pure idealism. And you can see how it is a reflection of certain values which come from the British.

So, “Nonsense; they made it as ugly as possible”. So the music which came from that influence was of course again a replica of the, attempted replica and a bad imitation, therefore. So what are these “Music and art have survived through other agencies”? I believe he is referring to the Bhakti movement which was carrying the deeper spiritual content of these.

“Disciple: The Tagore family has done much.

“Sri Aurobindo: But the Tagores are not Brahmos, they are half-Hindus; the Keshabites are the real Brahmos.”

Straightaway he is speaking of certain communities and almost saying that the family values of the Tagores come from that community values. You see here, we have a race, now the modern term used is ‘caste’. ‘Caste’ is not an Indian word, it is a Portuguese word wrongly applied to the Indian context. In India what we had were ‘communities’. In each community often it had to do with the work, so there was a weaver community and a potter community, a metallurgy community, so they are called ‘weaver caste’, ‘potter caste’, but that's not caste in the original sense, so there's a mishmash again of vocabulary here.

But if we speak of communities, then each community is a repository for certain values, certain ideals, even certain spiritual content or intellectual content or artistic values which have been built within the communities. Now if you go to Japan, even there all the small island like that you will have many communities, though the distinctions between them, I don't know whether they would be very strong, but in India which is much larger, much more diverse. Each community can be literally like a country elsewhere in a different part of the world so distinctive can they be in their values, in their culture.

And therefore, through the, let's say, centuries past, they did not encourage mixing in marriage across communities. They will say, today they will translate as ‘castes’. No, it was not caste. It was communities and the values of the communities. Because when you create that kind of mixture, you have a collision of values, and it's not enough that you love each other. If you cannot be supple enough, that collision eventually creates a lot of disharmony. But as you find after Nature has decided to participate and she started mixing everything, suddenly people across communities not only find themselves drawn, attracted, but also willing to blend and make the effort, and what comes through the children across these inter-community uh, mixtures, inter-racial mixtures, inter-civilisational mixtures, across the world sometimes, is a certain potential for sudden diversity, extraordinary flexibility or plasticity, but often accompanied by great stress of different values or colliding values.

And it’s interesting to see how that flexibility is there inherent. Now what you do with it is still yours, but you have at least an interesting starting point which is more rich potentially. I am digressing a little bit, but you will see, it is related to what we are reading, so just adding to, content to it.

And then disciple’s comment: “The rigid organization of the Japanese is bound to disintegrate in the course of time”.

“Sri Aurobindo: Why?

“Disciple: Because this is a hindrance to their spiritual development.

“Sri Aurobindo: They may not seek spiritual development.”

Very interesting!

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“Disciple: But their souls must seek.

“Sri Aurobindo: Their souls also may not seek that development in Japan; for that purpose they may migrate to some other country as the soul of X has taken birth in India (laughter).”

They are referring to somebody, I think, part of their group. It’s a very interesting idea!

So when a soul incarnates, it will pick the environment most suited for the kind of experience it wants. And as in this case from what Sri Aurobindo describes, the develop, the spiritual development is not principle within Japan, it may go for the aesthetic sense, for an intellectual content, and so on, for the discipline aspects, and whatever else, but then when it says, ‘Oh now I want to integrate with the spiritual content’, it may take birth elsewhere. And that's why if you look at the earth in this way, you can almost say, they are training schools of specialisation in each culture, in each civilisation, in each nationality, in each subgroup within all these, in each lineages, in each communities, and so on.

Inevitably they will develop specialisations. If you take, if you build two schools, just next to each other, with exactly the same origin of their teachers, at first you will say: Are they a replica of each other? And they are sitting right next to each other. Go down one generation, and each will have grown into a different direction and often away from each other.

Why? Because it's just the very fact that you're in proximity with another and there's a repetition and overlap, that part which is overlapping begins to turn away, and it pushes everything else, and gradually the whole thing tilts away, and you find very different directions of specialisation. And if at the moment there is a slight difference, this one says, ‘Oh, they specialise in that, but we are strong in this’, and automatically you begin to exaggerate your strength; these people say, ‘You see, those people, they are too abstract, we are more practical’, and automatically you begin to exaggerate in this because now it becomes a matter of pride.

Inevitably, you will have specialisations and typically in extremely opposite directions. Interesting. So it is the case with all the elite schools, universities all over India, all over the world. I've had occasion because I've had some friends who went into some of these universities in Stanford, MIT, and others, so hearing from them I can say, ‘Ah-yes’, so one of them will say, ‘Oh those, they are much more engineering based’, ‘These people are much more abstract thought based’, and so on. Fascinating to see this. But it is inevitable.

And if you look at it from a deeper perspective, in Nature, in the earth-consciousness, the moment there is a repetition of two things, ‘Ha, we don't want that’, and immediately in the earth-consciousness the slant begins which reflects through the people and their cultures. So, that’s it. And then the last sentence of this passage, Sri Aurobindo says: “The Western influence has to a certain extent affected the ancient discipline of the Japanese.” That’s it. Now we can say, today at least, it is much more than a certain extent and it is all over over the world, because the entire educational system is as if largely a replica of what comes from Europe and especially at least in India from the English framework. So all this was to, as a first entry into this aspect which is the distinct characteristics of these cultures.

I am going to read another passage which is from the Mother where she speaks of this, but it's slightly different, and again it will link with something we had read last time about women, and so I'm going to read a large part of it because it covers these two things and, well, maybe some observations as we go along. So this is in the Mother's Agenda, they were talking about something, then Satprem makes a comment, and Mother answers: “Yes, that's right. But Sri Aurobindo said it to me. I asked him several times how it was that people (who consciously, outwardly, would rather have pleasant things and favorable events) are constantly attracting and attracting unpleasant things, even terrible catastrophes.”

And then she gives an example: “I know some women (men too, but they are fewer), women who spend their time imagining the worst: they have children – they imagine that each of them will meet with the worst catastrophes; someone goes away by car – oh, the car will have an accident; they take the train – oh, the train will derail; and so forth. Well, that's why. That's what Sri Aurobindo explained so well: all those parts of the being are terribly tamasic and it is the violence of the shock that awakens something in them; and that is why they attract those things as though instinctively….”

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Now this, we, she takes the example with women, I can confirm this through various contacts that I have had with people and some of the things I have heard from people, the tendency is there, and especially it happens when a woman is at home, husband has gone, children have gone, perhaps in-laws are there, or she is all alone, and then suddenly the mind is empty, there is nothing to look forward to, it's all home chores. And then emotional mind, remember we discussed this tendency of the emotions to seize, the emotional mind starts a whirl. And the character of emotional whirl is, it does not care about logic. It's all about feelings. And then what provokes feelings sucks the emotions more into it, and it becomes a vicious cycle, ‘Oh my God, what if that happens?’. And then the drama of the emotion starts, and then there's the wallowing in the drama, and those give rise to more thoughts which feed the same.

What do you do? You have to cut that or rise above it. And so we have discussed this before two or three sessions ago, I will not repeat that. But the only way is to break out of it, to step out. But notice what happens: The excitation of the emotions as it feeds, supports, nourishes an insensitivity, a kind of a dullness, which needs that extreme to feel something, and that's what Mother is pointing to.  And then she now takes another example, now this goes more to a civilisational character, she says: “The Chinese, for example, have an extremely tamasic vital and an insensate physical: its sensation is totally blunted – they are the ones who invented the most frightful forms of torture.” So, even today, we speak of Chinese torture as a special kind.

“It is because they need something extreme in order to feel, otherwise they don't feel. There was a Chinese who had a sort of anthrax”, it’s a boil, “I think, in the middle of the back (generally an extremely sensitive spot, it seems), and because of his heart they couldn't put him to sleep to operate on him, so they were a bit worried. They operated without anesthesia – he was awake, he didn't move, didn't shout, didn't say anything, they were filled with admiration for his courage; then they asked him what he had felt: "Oh, yes, I felt some scraping in my back"! That's how it is. That's what creates the necessity of catastrophes – of unexpected catastrophes: the thing that gives you a shock to wake you up.”

So I skip the rest of it. But this point is important. In the parts of our consciousness where there is more of inertia or insensitivity, we seek exaggerated stimulation to be able to feel something. Now if you generalise this from an individual, because all of us have our own little patches, if you generalise it to groups, to communities, even to cultures or civilisations, then you will get patterns like this. And you will wonder, in certain ways the civilisation is extremely refined, extremely richly developed in power of thought. And we see this as a good example in China. But on the other side, when they go into the domain of torture, you see what is happening currently with certain groups who are, well, the target of the government, we hear this in the news, and the kinds of torture which are applied to them, and you would say, ‘But that's not acceptable’. But If you do not feel much, then you need a much greater intensity, and you may not realise, the other person does not have the same insensitivity or maybe they do, whatever it is.

I had an interesting interaction with a professor, he was an English teacher in Hong Kong, and he shared this example. He said, they were studying some play of Shakespeare, and there was a passage, I think it was perhaps in Othello or something, there was a passage where it was extremely moving. You are, normally you feel so bad for the person, you feel contradicted within you, you have emotions going for and against, and it's an intense moment, of course skilfully done by Shakespeare, and in the class as he is teaching this play for the English language, he pauses and says, ‘Don't you feel anything about it?’.

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And the group who were his students, they said, ‘No, he got what he deserved’. You see at this point, the group which is, at least the group that is with part of his students is in the rational mind with no empathic content there, ‘He got what he wanted, that's it’. ‘What if it had happened to you?’ Well, if that empathic character also is accompanied by a kind of a dullness in the emotions, maybe you wouldn't feel it, and that's perhaps why you are unable to feel the empathy. Otherwise, if in a human being you do feel but you do not have the empathy, then that makes you a bit of a sociopath or at least you are going in that direction, and we say ‘There is a problem’. But if you don't feel, then you don't empathise, then you say, ‘Well, that's just one part of your consciousness that was not developed’.

And perhaps it happens in a culture or in a group or a sub-group in humanity where that is left undeveloped in order to develop something else or because of certain physical environmental circumstances or historical reasons those things have become dulled or been held dulled because of some kinds of trauma, or so on, there could be many reasons, but we have to understand this at an individual level as well as at collective level.

So I go to the next passage. There are couple of things I want to read now which relate specifically to the Indian mind and then sometimes in comparison with the European. And again the intention here is simply to show how there are certain distinctive characteristics, and Sri Aurobindo's observations sometimes just point to this so precisely. So this is I think from the, from a letter, he is writing to somebody, and this is I think during the freedom struggle, there is no exact date, but Sri Aurobindo is writing to somebody: “But if the English mind would take the first step and try to see things from the Indian’s standpoint—see their mind and act accordingly, all difficulties might be resolved. The Indian mind has not the Irish memory for past wrongs and discords, it forgives and forgets easily.”

Interesting, the comparison with the Irish culture of which Sri Aurobindo had extraordinary things to say. He said, if the original Gaelic language had survived, and you know it was exterminated by the British rule and the colonisation, they exterminated the language itself, he said, if the Gaelic language had survived, it would stand today as one of the most refined and rich in, and nuanced. So, “The Indian mind has not the Irish memory for past wrongs and discords, it forgives and forgets easily. Only it must be made to feel that the approach on the other side is frank and whole hearted. If it once felt that, every difficulty would be solved.” So here you know how to manipulate the Indian mind. If you have a conflict, you just come and give the impression that there is a frank and wholehearted attempt to understand, and there is a forgiveness.

So you see how this was misused also by the British. So they would come, and they would say ‘Yes’, and somebody would apologise “This is”..we have stories like this also. And the king says, ‘All right, I forgive’. And then the, this is during one of the Islamic invasions: A Rajput king forgives the king and lets him go, and that fellow comes back later stronger and kills this king. So there is no honour. Here if you live by an honour and you interact with someone who does not share that honour, you cannot apply those values. Okay. That's again a passing comment.

We go to something else now. This is where he is describing certain characteristics of the Indian mind. He says: “A remarkable feature of the Indian mind was a close attention to the things of life, a disposition to observe minutely its salient facts, to systematise and to found in each department of it”, of life, “a science, Shastra, well-founded scheme and rule. That is at least a good beginning of the scientific tendency and not the sign of a culture capable only of unsubstantial metaphysics.” So he described Indian science and its developments. He shows this characteristic. And naturally any culture which has this tendency to go deep into specifics of facts and organise and systematise, build a whole science around it, create a rule and optimisation, uh, ‘Shastra’ is the term we use, and we have Shastras for everything.

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Not all have survived, but they exist everywhere, in everything, even in the domain of romance, of psychology, of philosophy, of arts, of theatre, in each of these you will find textbooks going back several thousand years. And in most cases, the depth and richness and even the breadth of these Shastras is so great as to be comparable to any modern text. Only being in the Sanskrit language, they are inaccessible to the modern Indian mind who is taught not to study Sanskrit, isn't it?

And we will come to that also as an interesting observation later, shortly.  And then he says:

“It is perfectly true that Indian science came abruptly to a halt somewhere about the thirteenth century and a period of darkness and inactivity prevented it from proceeding forward and sharing at once in the vast modern development of scientific knowledge.” But he explains the reasons for that, and we skip that portion. But here again characteristics of a civilisation can be of very specific kinds like this.

But then what defines the civilisation? Remember, there were those three things we had to look at the culture and we have to look at the highest particularly for the real understanding, and here Sri Aurobindo’s comment, this is in the book Foundations of Indian Culture now renamed as Renaissance in India, he writes: “Spirituality is indeed the master-key of the Indian mind; the sense of the infinite is native to it. India saw from the beginning, —and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight,—that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities. She was alive to the greatness of material laws and forces; she had a keen sight for the importance of the physical sciences; she knew how to organise the arts of ordinary life. But she saw that the physical does not get its full sense until it stands in right relation to the supra-physical; she saw that the complexity of the universe could not be explained in the present terms of man or seen by his superficial sight, and that there were other powers behind, other powers within man himself of which he is normally unaware, that he is conscious only of a small part of himself, and the invisible always surrounds the visible, the suprasensible the sensible, even as infinity always surrounds the finite.”

Now in very brief strokes, he is describing something which is so deep, so rooted, so intrinsic to the entire culture that you do not even notice it. A normal Indian growing up in any influence, reasonable influence of the civilisational values will not even notice this. He assumes everybody else thinks, feels and lives by these values. Not so. And it’s only when you experience something totally different, you say, ‘But there is something big missing here’. What is missing? And you can't pinpoint it until you read this text and say, ‘Ah-yes, this is what is missing here’. Interesting. It is like fish being in water, you forget, you don't know that water is something distinctive, special, and you think, everywhere, everything is water. And when you're out of it, you don't know, you're missing something, you're about to die, but you don't know what it is until you see the difference or someone points out, ‘Ah, this’.

Now what is interesting is, few more lines I want to read because it sets the direction which should be our general attitude in the Yoga, and in life generally. Now remember all of us, and it does not matter where you are in the world today in any body, in any form, in any uhm, language, culture, skin, nationality, it does not matter, we have all had switched places across lives. And if you have any interest in the spiritual life, in yoga, well, you've been in India at least once, if not many times. So, I am not looking at what you are today. You took birth today wherever you did for certain things. Even those who have grown in India are uprooted from these values. So, it applies to all of us. We need to consciously reawaken to these values which are intrinsic to us and which are our soul values. And that's why I am going to read this a little bit more:

“… even as infinity … surrounds the finite”, so the sense of this ‘We are part of this whole’.

“She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is,—truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.” You see, in the, if you take the common mind in Europe and say, ‘Ho, this is the case’, they’ll say, ‘Haa, what were you talking about? It doesn't make sense!’. It's only those who are touched or drawn to something higher who will say, ‘Yes of course, this is what I was looking for but I don't find anywhere in our education or in the culture these things or if they were there, there they were partial, they were hidden, and they are lost’.

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Then: “She saw the myriad gods beyond man, God beyond the gods, and beyond God his own ineffable eternity; she saw that there were ranges of life beyond our life, ranges of mind beyond our present mind and above these she saw the splendours of the spirit. Then with that calm audacity of her intuition which knew no fear or littleness and shrank from no act whether of spiritual or intellectual, ethical or vital courage, she declared that there was none of these things which man could not attain if he trained his will and knowledge;”

So, you see these, ‘Wow’! But then the important thing is: there is nothing that you cannot attain, if you train your will and your knowledge, to that. And this should be our aspiration.

“He could conquer these ranges of mind, become the spirit, become a god, become one with God,”, capital-‘G’, “become the ineffable Brahman. And with the logical practicality and sense of science and organised method which distinguished her mentality, she set forth immediately to find out the way.” Now, I don't read the rest…Just finish this paragraph:

“Hence from long ages of this insight and practice there was ingrained in her her spirituality, her powerful psychic tendency, her great yearning to grapple with the infinite and possess it, her ineradicable religious sense, her idealism, her Yoga, the constant turn of her art and her philosophy.”

Then he goes on to say, this is not the whole, there is the vital and then there is the physical, and all that he describes. Now remember, in this whole description he is speaking of India as if it's somebody, and this is the interesting part. Actually it's a description of this spirit, the being Mother India of whom we are children as if part of her consciousness, and so when she wakes up, you wake up, or to the extent that you choose to make yourself awake, she has an instrument through which she can act.

But also there is as if this collective consciousness, soul of a nation, which literally shapes the thoughts, the values, the inspirations of its people. And this is something unique that Sri Aurobindo conveys. I do not think that there is any such idea anywhere else that there is actually a soul, a spiritual being, that represents the soul of each nation on earth. Who decides whether it is a nation or not? We can say, perhaps it evolved from below or perhaps an evolution from below allowed this spirit-, this soul-consciousness to join with a receptacle, a receptive vehicle, and so, it is often these things which define the nationalities.

Otherwise, otherwise you cannot explain why Ireland refuses to unite with England although they are so close and with all the brainwash that has been done with the language and all that, still something in the spirit says, ‘No’ and turns away. And then if you look deeper, you say, ‘Ha, there's a characteristic of the Irish people which is very different from the characteristic of the English people’. And you go deeper and then you find there's a soul quality, and a soul quality and the different qualities as if, and then you find behind that perhaps the being of the nation or the soul of the nation.

And then what is interesting is you may have a lineage of an Irish descent going back three or four generations which migrated to the United States or to some other country and still it retains something of those qualities. It has not lost it. It has blended or acquired certain other characteristics, overcome certain limitations or maybe made itself a little more plastic, and yet, ‘Ah-yes, you can see this is distinctive and this is typically something of that Irish quality’. So when you actually begin to see, and look at the United States in general because initially it was almost valued as a melting pot because people came from all cultures, nations, still these distinctive characteristics remain and down a few generations where you've almost forgotten who your ancestors were, you still have this.

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And it's fascinating to see how nature has created this blending in order to build something more rich, more supple, more complex. In India, an equivalent takes place in a different way. Literally each state of India is as if an entire country, and we can't say nation, but entire country in language, dress code, values, type of mindset, food habits, etc., and each having grown together and now held in one soul. So there is something quite extraordinary there, in a single soul, that multiplicity and diversity. And which is quite fascinating. And if this can happen, then that unified, that soul of Mother India can actually, with that skill of diversity, embrace the whole world.

Which is why you find Sri Aurobindo actually giving this as a message that it is this Mother India who will bring all her children together and unify humanity. So there are deep spiritual truths when you go to these levels, and we have to, we get a glimpse of it, that's all we can do. So here's another text I'm going to read from which is… said about the Veda, ‘Ho, we don't read Sanskrit anymore because the British closed down all the Sanskrit schools and pushed English as the link language’.

So here is an article of Sri Aurobindo which is titled The Secret of the Isha, Isha Upanishad. And it starts like this: “It is now several thousands of years since men ceased to study Veda and Upanishad for the sake of Veda or Upanishad.” “several thousands of years”! Maybe 3000 years.

“Ever since the human mind in India, more & more intellectualised, always increasingly addicted to the secondary process of knowledge by logic & intellectual ratiocination, increasingly drawn away from the true & primary processes of knowledge by experience and direct perception, began to dislocate & dismember the manysided harmony of ancient Vedic truth & parcel it out into schools of thought & systems of metaphysics, its preoccupation has been rather with the later opinions of Sutras & Bhashyas”, that is, commentaries, “than … the early truth of Scripture. Veda & Vedanta ceased to be guides to knowledge & became merely mines & quarries from which convenient texts might be extracted, regardless of context, to serve as weapons in the polemic disputes of metaphysicians.”

Very interesting description! And it summarises the last, well, let’s say, 3000 years! So each school quoted from the Veda to prove they were right and the other was wrong. But what did the Veda teach that was so special that you find it still the authority to quote to defeat somebody else? That had stopped. For many reasons. We don't have to go into that, but the primary reason he points to is this intellectualising and turning to the secondary means of knowledge and leaving behind the primary means of knowledge which is “knowledge by experience and direct perception”. And secondary means are “knowledge by logic & intellectual ratiocination”.

Now having read that, uh, he describes certain characteristics, and it is actually a very interesting passage. He describes how there have been a decline, how the knowledge itself subsequently declined, and the devotion declined, the spiritual and psychological experience gradually got lost, little pieces kept in the bhakti tradition, and so on. And then he says: “I have said that the increasing intellectualisation of the Indian mind has been responsible for this great national loss. Our forefathers who discovered or received Vedic truth, did not arrive at it either by intellectual speculation or by logical reasoning. They attained it by actual & tangible experience in the spirit,—by spiritual & psychological observation, …” And he goes on. I don’t read the rest, he describes the cycles and why there is this decline, and so on.

But here is again a characteristic which is a civilisational characteristic, and all the 3000 years have passed where nobody has, in the collective mass, nobody has bothered to tap into that, and yet an imprint of the work done so many thousand years ago is there in that collective space. I would say, some of it is in the genes, but, maybe, it's there in the space, and therefore even when somebody who comes from a very different tradition comes into the Indian space, they come under this influence, and suddenly you find your mind starts working differently.

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You move out of that space, and suddenly you find your mind starts working different. You come here, and suddenly deeper realities are more real. You go out and you say, ‘Ha, where did that go?’, and you're bound more to the superficial appearances. And this is what happens in any concentrated spiritual space. Similar experiences people may have when they come to the Ashram or you go to a sacred space, a sacred spot, where the spiritual force or presence is strong, your state of mind, state of consciousness, values, ideals, everything changes, you move out and it tends to fade.

But I point to this because at some point this turn will have to take place again and all over the world eventually. Not specifically in the form of the Veda or the Upanishads but to the intuitive perception of things and beginning to rely upon it more and more because we are entering the subjective and spiritual ages. And at that point you will suddenly find the Veda or the methods used for training of the mind and the intuition of that period or the texts which nourish the intuitive opening and assist its opening, all these would stand out.

But you don't need it. You can start with Sri Aurobindo who has written in English but with the same turn of consciousness. And the intuitivisation of your mind will begin if you read with that intention. So I will now end with one last passage and this is more as an example to demonstrate to you the deep and rich insight that Sri Aurobindo had into all the different cultures of the world at various ages going back thousands of years, and you have to really wonder at this mastery that he had. Remember, when he was in, a student in Cambridge, he was already studying ancient Greek and Latin and writing poetry in ancient Greek. That's the mastery of the language he had, as a teenager! And obviously he has read the Greek authors, isn't it? And if he is writing poetry in ancient Greek, he has already read ancient Greek sufficiently that he has the grip on the language and the culture and the people.

And then of course he is tapping into his own past, well, experiences, incarnations or, and later in the universal consciousness identifying with all these into the past and the present. And so his comments, fascinating! So, he is comparing, this is part of the, again, Foundations of Indian culture, he says: “An ancient Greek, full of disinterested intellectual curiosity and a flexible aesthetic appreciation, was in spite of his feeling of a racial and cultural superiority to the barbarian much nearer to the Indian mind than a typical modern European.” He is actually comparing the European criticism of India, and so on, but the ancient Greek was closer, and he is describing the characteristics and also the limitations.

“Not only could a Pythagoras or a philosopher of the Neo-platonist school, an Alexander or a Menander understand with a more ready sympathy the root ideas of Asiatic culture, but an average man of ability, a Megasthenes for instance, could be trusted to see and understand, though not inwardly and perfectly, yet in a sufficient measure.” So there he is describing the Greek civilisation and its values, both common man as well as the elite.

“The mediaeval European, for all his militant Christianity and his prejudice against the infidel and paynim, yet resembled his opponent in many characteristic ways of seeing and feeling to an extent … no longer possible to an average European mind, unless it has been imbued with the new ideas which are once more lessening the gulf between the continents.” So you see the sweep of history and the deep understanding of the mind of various cultures through those ages and being able to compare them just like that across time periods, across ages, eons even. And then he says: “It was the rationalising of the occidental mind, the rationalising even of its religious ideas and sentiments, which made the gulf so wide as to appear unbridgeable.”

(1:25:08):

And so we skip, similarly, and here is another observation he makes where he compares the Chinese civilisation and the Indian civilisation both having these common characteristics which are common to the east and distinct from the west, particularly in Europe in that case.

Yes, so I come to that now. So, in Europe, he says, philosophy was pursued purely intellectually, but very much apart from life. It never touched the common man or the common life. “It is remarkable that while in India and China philosophy has seized hold on life, has had an enormous practical effect on the civilisation and got into the very bones of current thought and action, it has never at all succeeded in achieving this importance in Europe. In the days of the Stoics and Epicureans it got a grip, but only among the highly cultured; at the present too, we have some renewed tendency of the kind. Nietzsche has had his influence, certain French thinkers also in France, the philosophies of James and Bergson have attracted some amount of public interest; but it is a mere nothing compared with the effective power of Asiatic philosophy.”

And so what is specific to Europe? “The average European draws his guiding views not from the philosophic, but from the positive and practical reason. He does not absolutely disdain philosophy like Mr. Archer, but he considers it, if not a “man-made illusion”, yet a rather nebulous, remote and ineffective kind of occupation. He honours the philosophers, but he puts their works on the highest shelf of the library of civilisation, not to be taken down or consulted except by a few minds of an exceptional turn. He admires, but he distrusts them. The Plato’s idea of philosophers as the right rulers and best directors of society seems to him the most fantastic and unpractical of notions; the philosopher, precisely because he moves among ideas, must be without any hold on real life. The Indian mind holds on the contrary that the Rishi, the thinker, the seer of spiritual truth is the best guide not only of the religious and moral, but of the practical life. The seer, the Rishi is the natural director of society; to the Rishis he attributes the ideals and guiding intuitions of his civilisation. Even today he is very ready to give the name to anyone who can give a spiritual truth which helps his life or a formative idea and inspiration which influences religion, ethics, society, or even politics.”

And so you will call them ‘Rishis’ straight away. Rishi Bankim Chandra! You see, because he influenced. And so here is a distinctive characteristic. And here is also something common between China and India. Where in the Chinese philosophy, the Taoist philosophy actually has formed even modern China, extremely practical, extremely applied, and they go back to their roots in the Taoist philosophy. But it stops with the intellect, it does not go to the spiritual behind. Interesting.

So I think these were some examples I wanted to share which may perhaps help us to appreciate what I was trying to convey about civilisational types; or the mindset of a civilisation or a culture or a nation and how it influences; and then its implications because that's the starting point, the vessel, as well as the social environment in which you grow, that's your starting point, from there how can you broaden out, well, to embrace the infinite; but also when you are helping others to recognise what is the strength, the characteristic, the weakness, the limitations; and then what needs to be corrected; how to approach a subject; how to tap into some strength to overcome some limitation; and so on.

So, ideally just as, this is completing the discussion, just as we would change the content of the textbook, even its starting point, its approach, the examples we take, depending on whether we live in the city or in the farms, in the villages, because the life is so different, values and examples are so different, so too we would want to adjust these to fit different cultural values, civilisational values, national ideals and sometimes the historical circumstances of the peoples.

(1:30:06):

And so ideally we have a framework of education, and this is, I am describing now the integral education, a framework which is described at a level so essential, so fundamental as to be universal and at the same time adaptable to these most extreme circumstances of any period of time, at any age, and any circumstances, and any type of mind also. But in order to be able to adapt fully, you must have this deeper understanding of the psychology of a people.

And then if you look at it in this way, the integral education offers you the most comprehensive framework, so universal as to be applicable in any planet, anywhere in the universe, and we may go so far as to say, every planet might have its own distinctive type of consciousness and evolutionary ideals or values, isn't it? That also is possible if it can be so of nations or even of continents, why not of planets? But the integral education foundations, the principles, would be universally applicable everywhere and extremely flexible to be adapted to all the circumstances, anybody.

So, coming back to a very practical position, you as a parent, as a teacher, as a student, as a learning adult, how do you start?

Observe the student. If you are the student, well, observe yourself, but otherwise observe those around you. The first task of the teacher is to observe as deeply, as minutely. And the more deeply you can perceive, the more it will be easy for you to assist. If you can all the way down from, remember the text we read from Sri Aurobindo:

the “thought”, “ideal”, “upward will”, soul aspiration,―the upper layer;

“creative self-expression”, “appreciative aesthesis”, “intelligence and imagination”,―the middle layer;

and the “practical and outward formulation”.

Now this would apply to a culture, it would apply to an individual, it will apply to a group, subgroup, and so on. Observe all these things. You get a sense, a map, where a person is, and what are the prime motivators, prime drivers, prime limitations, the things, the anchors which hold back, which limit, which bind, the parts which are narrow, the parts which are wide. And then, the interesting thing is, if you are more intuitive, you feel it and then it's obvious ‘Ah, this is how it should go’, this is the way forward. And it's easily done. If you are not so intuitive, well, you start with the strengths and apply them to expanding, widening, starting with the less difficult weaknesses and then eventually to the more difficult.

Always start with the easy, always start with the natural, always start where there is a natural flow and then broaden out. So I think, with this I will close the whole theme, overall theme of education. We still have many questions which have been waiting, including questions from our last four sessions on the masculine and feminine which I had hoped to cover today, but we will take them up next time. And then there are a few questions today also from, from the chat box, and we will take this up also next time. I think, this is it.

One day, all of us, without exception, will begin to reawaken to the sense of continuity across lives which has brought us to where we are. That comes with the soul consciousness automatically. And we have to consciously choose to not identify with this very narrow, superficial, this life-personality, this is just one mask, one instrument, one vehicle through which you are growing now for the best possible in the current circumstance.

But you have with you all those experiences and rich experiences across the earth and sometimes from other planets which you carry with you and which are there latent, which are as if the basis for your inner, truer psychic personality. And don't make the mistake to identify too much with the specifics of this personality, culture, nation, civilisation, community, race, etc., use these as a starting point. Yes, be, be grateful for what it has to offer and the efforts of all the ancestors which have gone to give this, but also know that you have been part of many other ancestries which have gifted you so much, but all those ancestries are finally led by the Divine Mother, working through the Earth Mother, and through the Mother India, and through our souls.

(1:35:04):

And so the best identity one can hold, one should cling to, from the spiritual point of view is that we are all equally children of the Divine Mother. And some of you have been through those schools, some of you have been through these schools, and then we have exchanged schools at various times, and we are all, well, equally children, and still children, and perhaps will always be children, growing always, nourished by her.

So turn to her. Turn to her with full trust, give yourself wholly, entirely, exclusively to her and to the sense of the infinite of her Presence. Don't stop with the narrow conception of her. She is infinite Divine Consciousness, power of consciousness, infinite love, infinite wisdom, infinite strength, beauty, all these, open yourself to her, and let her flow, let her fill, let her shape you.

All these years, all these lives have brought us to this point where we are ready to be able to enter in this relation and allow this now accelerated growth by this self, joyous self-giving to the Divine Mother. So be grateful for the past, do not identify too much with it. Rather, take the best of what is there within and surge forward to what is waiting for you. And so much is waiting that we will be able to achieve ideally in this one life more than 10,000 lives before, without much difficulty, because we rely not on our strength but on her strength.

So, we can hold this as our aspiration and concentrate together in a collective aspiration because we are one family as her children.

Namaste!