Laws of Development
Some are physical laws and others are psychological.
- Rich get richer.
- Physical inputs will not be psychological levers as the development by administration tries (laws of one plane cannot effectively act on another plane).
- Development is always (or at least most often) preceded by a favourable public opinion: The cycle of public opinion: Starts from the mass - changes the elite - the mass moves in en masse - the final sanction is accorded.
- Development by an institution not an integral part of the society has the least immediate effect on the environment (TMV, Palur Farms, Mothers Estates till 1970, T.S. Rajan Farms, etc.) but in the long run the knowledge they offer is unconsciously and beneficially absorbed by wide area (CBE Agricultural College, Kadur Fruit Station, IARI's Punjab Agri University impact on Punjab).
- Man, left to himself, is unresponsive to development opportunities, speaks in idealistic terms of being unambitious. If by some chance, he is given or happens to enjoy, however temporarily, some fruits of development; initially he takes it for granted. When it stops, he would not take efforts to acquire it but would demand he be given! This is a sort of awakening. After a long time this may lead to his trying to acquire the lost comfort.
Principle: Even if man has fully seen or enjoyed certain prosperity before he is mature enough to seek after it (psychologically), man cannot successfully strive for it.
A basic condition for successful development is social maturity to acquire it and not knowledge or even experience of the value of the resultant benefits.
(Examples: A college functioned in Cuddalore in the early decades of the century and a high school functioned in Tirupapuliyur. After a shortwhile they reverted to being a high school and a middle school. Till 1950 the high school was not revived and till late 60's the college was not founded).
- If there is a belief that development is a function of capital, it is necessary to prove the extent of that truth. At best it is a partial truth; also there is another partial truth that capital is formed out of development. Of the two, in true historic perspective, it is development that has preceded capital formation.
Further: development by itself can create capital BUT capital by itself cannot create development. Capital formation is a logical, necessary consequence of development and not its primary cause.
- Development easily takes shape in communities with energy and which have no earlier cultural endowments. (USA as against UK; Coimbatore, Salem as against Tanjore, Trichy, MDU) [i.e. mostly, present endowments are a bar to future ventures - such cross - section of population respond to development. Only that aspect of development becomes sufficiently accepted by the society. In other words, when the new aspect of development acquires a social momentum greater than the present possession, man is able to seek it].
- Stages in which (material) development moves towards a knot of population (like a village or town).
- News (knowledge as information) comes of another's development. Till that even touch another with whom man is in psychological relationship (like a relative, friend whom he can take as a rival) the news never interests him, never does he remember it.
- Sees for himself the same development in a nearby area or in the life of one whom he knows. Here too till it comes to him through a psychological channel; he does not consider it with interest. When it does come, his vital gets prepared for the same development.
- Development presents itself as a challenge when his psychological compeer has achieved it, preferably in his own place, in his own level, in his own medium, in his own context. Till then his energies are not released. Now the urge is felt. NOW he is fit for self-development. (All development is really self-development).
Challenge in:
- accomplishment
- turning it into money
- raising his status
Different societies respond to different challenges. Without the mental, vital preparation generally life does not present the challenge. If it does, man still accepts the challenge but he passes through self torture in the process of accomplishing it.
Equally true, when the opportunity for development teasingly presents itself in a field where he does not have the necessary skills. Here also, he accepts it and passes through a self-imposed torture. (Like a villager going to Engineering College or buying a watch he does not need).
- After the whole population has taken to one form (or aspect) of development about 30-40% will lag unable to take advantage of the situation. Positively it may be because one essential skill may be missing or negatively one cardinal weakness may be there while the general endowment to move ahead is there. For all village boys, or for most boys, lack of English knowledge is one such (physical skill). For many, it is lack of self-confidence or clarity (like Danasingh or Ramamurthy). Negatively it is prestige like Rangaswamy's son. Like Surendran's offensive behaviour, the offensive behaviour, the offensive manner of uncultured but talented people.
Principle: In a climate of active development, a sizable minority of the population will be unable to participate in the movement either for want of a cardinal physical skill or due to the presence of a cardinal psychological weakness.
- As in the case of felt need, any society will be able to develop only in the plane where its sociological skills are formed. For instance, the development activities that need the social sanction to contractual obligations cannot flourish in a society that does not have that skill yet.
Every successful development is necessarily preceded by the society acquiring the corresponding social character.
- Development of a society or a nation by another in the past history was mostly accompanied by exploitation. [A certain amount of exploitation of the weak by the strong is always seen as a rule in the effort of development].
This has a limit, the limit being the point where the social organizational resources of the weak reach the stage of self-development. Beyond this stage the earlier rule works in the reverse, i.e., no development is possible till exploitation is removed.
- Why should societies develop at all? Why should they not be static or stagnant? Where does the energy for development come from? When?
Society, as the individual, is a living organism, not a mere organization. It is in harmony with the physical (earth, mountains, lands, etc.), vital (water, air, animal, vegetable kingdom, etc.) environment.
At each level social collectivity observes and learns for a long time, lives its knowledge at a second stage and finally shelves its acquisitions to its physical possessions. At this stage it becomes curious again. The movement to its next stage begins. It is in three stages of mind, vital and physical.
- The laws of growth for the entire humanity, or a single nation or for a village society to grow into an urban community, in other words, the laws of the part or the whole are the same.
At its physical level it is intolerant, destructive, and impenetrable.
At its vital level it is jealous, competitive, imitative but always scandalous.
At the mental level it is curious, expansive, innovative, and tolerant. It is possible to find all the levels of behaviour in the same society and even inside the same family.
- Development and Values: All values at one level are values of a cloistered society. Development being expansive in its physical mechanism naturally tends to destroy or erode all values preserved in a static society. Destruction of values is unhealthy but development rarely comes without destroying values.
It is inevitable that most of the great values will be destroyed by the process of development and they should be recreated at a higher level. (Currency is the best example).
- Development climate and development of an individual by another
For one who works for development, it is best that he creates a system or scheme or a general opportunity which everyone can avail of. Development that issues out of such impersonal opportunities are less capable of counter reactions. The more impersonal a development opportunity, the better.
Efforts made by a single (or group of individuals) individual to uplift individuals or communities even when they are successful will not directly constitute a development effort for two reasons. When successful, this work belongs to the pre-development society and increases the social value of the pioneer. When either the work is unsuccessful (or when the work bounces on the pioneer), the psychological reaction of the unregenerate beneficiary creates a short circuit permanently preventing future development work.
Principle: Development is most desirable as impersonal opportunity. When it is personal, it is often counter productive.
Strategy through which this principle successfully works: Society does not generally take initiative, only the individual does. The individual cannot successfully take an initiative in affairs to which there is no social approval. This guardian knot is to be cut. By demonstration, the mind of the society (rather the resistance of the society is to be blunted) is to be educated. At this stage when the society will not crush to death the pioneering individual, an individual is to be chosen for initiating the desired act. This when it becomes socially desirable, society approves. All men follow suit.
When one wants to develop another [or the government wants to develop the people] he first emotionally identifies himself with the other and that is why he thinks of helping him. It is this sympathy that makes the help possible. In the natural set up - hierarchy - the advanced and backward persons belong to two different social levels. Psychologically it expresses itself as social superiority and inferiority which both recognize. Now if the advanced person tries to offer a help to the backward person an equilibrium comes into play at the psychological level. The poor man ‘feels' the rich is now his ‘equal'. As each material level of development is translated into its psychological version and prestige is higher than comfort, the moment the poor man ‘feels' the prestige of being emotionally equal to the rich, the psychological differential or gradient which makes the flow of help possible, disappears. The developmental offer remains unutilized. If pressed, perverse responses arise.
Solution: What is attempted is social development and not personal gratification for the doer. Therefore the psychological gradient (differential) must remain. The pioneer's emotional sympathy is the prime mover though it is the equalizer and neutralizer of development. Hence it must remain. This sympathy must be institutionalized through a scheme; the psychological differential must be retained by creating a psychological gap between where the recipient is and to where he can move. The catalytic action must be released by raising one of the poor to a higher level. The aspiring mass must feel that they are progressing by their own effort and should not be under a sense of obligation to an individual or an institution even if it is the government. If the population is cultured the other thing is possible and it will accept the help with gratitude to the giver. For these purposes SOCIETY does not seem to have acquired this culture anywhere in the world or at any time in the history.
- Symptoms in a developed society:
In an undeveloped society there will be stray individuals who are capable of self-development inspite of the general atmosphere of lack of development. A developed society is capable of self-development while those around are not capable of it.
Most individuals - perhaps all - are endowed with some unique faculties which when developed will make them outstanding. Often they may be unaware of it. In beneficial individual frame of mind, he endeavours to foster it; in a (cultured) developed family, other members help nourish that faculty in an individual; in a developed society, the society lends all its moral, psychological, social support to such an individual's general development.
That social, psychological climate in a society which helps brings out (all) the unique endowments of each (or most) individual(s) and offers social recognition, psychological encouragement, and moral support is the true symptom of its development.
A highly developed society institutionalizes these supports and the highest society outgrows the need of even this institutionalism and makes it a cultural recognition.
- Where Development is successful, to continue the process it is necessary that the results of development should be used to fortify life at the level in which development has taken place. Any effort to use the achievements of development to fortify, perpetuate, the present aspects of life will directly lead to the cancellation of further development. (Exceptions are rare; if any, will have its own explanation).
A villager who graduates naturally seeks the employment graduation offers and in pursuit of it he moves away from the backward life of the village and in fact village itself.
Introduction of tractor ploughing is to release the farmer from drudgery, primitivity and low productivity. This implies the ‘farmer' - man - is upgraded, developed. The ordinary expectation is the country plough will become cheaper and downgraded. That may be so if this effort is isolated. In an overall climate of national development the aim, the idea, the ideal should be that when tractor is introduced, the farmer who owns the country plough should also be upgraded and paid more. It looks ironical. In practice after the advent of tractor the man who drove the country plough now drives the tractor. Again the wages for the country plough has become Rs.12/- from Rs.2/-. If farmers introduce tractors and from out of the introduction they endeavour to lord over the farm worker more, it will not work.
The cry against inflation arises from the fact that MAN wants to develop and use the results of development to aggrandise his present life. It never works.
- In the process of development from primitivity to modern life, there are several stages well marked. Maybe they are half a dozen or a dozen. It is possible to define these stages in terms of production, law, culture, education, beliefs * and all the rest. Surely they are well defined and marked and perhaps the same all over the world. As a historical fact samples of all such stages are still extant in today's world.
Each such stage permits a certain range of development embracing the above said * terms of social life. So also each stage refuses to permit another range of development.
It is possible to define each stage of development and state the corresponding stages of development possible and stages precluded.
It is also possible to list out hundred of omens and symbols that indicate each aspect of possible development at every stage and those that indicate the impossible.
- Energies required for development varies according to situations:
- The least energy is enough to add one more item in the horizontal dimension of any previously established work. [E.g. extending the railway line or mileage of roads or starting another university, etc.].
- The next higher grade (or amount) of energy is required to start a field of work for which the whole society is ready. E.g. starting a university when the country is fully benefited by high school level of education or installing phones when commerce is developed.
- The next higher level will be required if an isolated linear development is tried in a place. E.g. a high school is followed by elementary school in a place while all the area around has no education and later if a college is attempted to be established there disregarding the fact that the whole are is still not used to education and this town cannot support this linear expansion in an isolated fashion.
- To start any activity like education or transport or trade with which the area is unfamiliar.
- To start any activity like education or co-op for which the area has no REAL use.
- To start any activity like education or marketing in a place which has the opposite line of life organized and therefore is either indifferent or opposed to the new activity. [e.g. to introduce education where the children start earning or farms do depend on the child members of a family or organize a Regulated Market where the cultivation expense is dependent upon the local trader who advances against the crop].
- The greatest energy is required if a development activity is to be started in a place which has once enjoyed such a facility but has ruined itself out of mismanagement and now is content with ways of that misfortune. [E.g. To start indigo business in areas where it once thrived and now the place is in ruins. HMP belongs to this category in a great measure].
- Status Symbol, Fashion, that which man imitates {the imitable) out of what he does not know, to belong to the Group (Group Consciousness), prestige, etc.
Each man lives at the level of his maximum social evolution, exercises his intellectual maximum, puts out his best social impulse. Man cannot do better. For any development effort from above - Govt., social apex - to be successful should be offered to MAN in the above life idiom. Otherwise the effort will evoke no response.
So, Fashion, etc. can be described as MAN's highest social comprehension institutionalized at the greater level of his enthusiastic emotional response.
- Opportunities and their utilization determined by behaviour:
In a society men exist in several levels. These levels can be identified by levels of character (behaviour, will, alertness, etc.). Each level of social life DEMANDS its own level of character. In any society the population has settled down in several levels according to their character ability.
When drastic social changes take place and the society develops, hundreds and thousands of opportunities open up at all levels. The entire society unleashes its energies and tries to achieve its latent ambitions. The latent ambitions are attained in the measure these were latent strength of character and no more. The entire society is in mobility, an upward mobility. Some retain the heights they reached; others do not.
When a man accepts a higher opportunity, he must quickly endeavour to acquire the higher level of character demanded by that opportunity. In the measure he endeavours and succeeds, he retains it.
MOTHER: When a man comes to MOTHER, SHE opens up Life to him at the highest level he can reach if he makes an endeavour possible for his personality. Mostly men are unaware of the need to take effort and many resist such an endeavour. (The general rule is man hastens to exploit the new opportunity to assert his present level of life which he should shuffle off). Life settles down at the level of compromise. Always it is twice higher than his present.
- Characteristics of mental, vital, physical planes, though they overlap in some areas, are in their essential incidence confined themselves to each plane.
E.G. Curiosity is a mental quality and the vital is not capable of it. Memory is a mental faculty and the vital functions on the basis out of sight, out of mind.
Jealousy is a vital faculty and the physical values possession and not so much the idea of jealousy.
Stupidity is a physical faculty and the mind is not capable of it.
- Development of the best and worst part of the community:
When the aim is to bring equality of the population special effort to uplift the weakest section will serve the aim (E.g. Harijan welfare). When the aim is to enrich the nation, special effort must be given to extend the full support to the most developed part of the population (exclusive help to the Brahmins in education). The Govt. at times of crisis calls the richest company and orders them to execute a certain work in return of fast blanket benefits.
- Growth and Development:
- Growth is horizontal (or vertical) increase of what is already there. Development is the creation of what is new mostly in the vertical plane and rarely in the horizontal.
- Growth is the unconscious change brought about by the evolutionary urge. Development is the consciously planned change to fortify and hasten evolution.
- In Growth the resultant power exceeds the capacity to contain. In Development the capacity to hold is always greater than the power it generates, as it is a conscious process.
- Growth is ascent. Development is general descent after the ascent in the individual.
- Man, as he is created self-conscious, is meant to progress by development. Growth is for the subconscious animal kingdom.Man resorts to Development but growth presses from below and overtakes him very often. Man is human when he seeks development and slides to animality when he lets growth overtake him.
- What is involved in Development?
- Capacity for mental observation.
- Mental capacity to organize the observation into a practically useful thought.
- Capacity to initiate a hitherto unknown act based on self-conscious thought.
- ‘Technology' at the level of functioning.
- Capacity to persist in repeating the innovation (at the individual or) at the group level,
so that the innovation will come to stay. [This means the knowledge of the mind must be RELEASED at the level of the physical].
E.g. -- Groundnut farmer creating the institution of borrowing from the trader offering a lower price in return of guaranteed supply of produce.
-- The division of labour of the woman keeping house and man seeking food.
-- All systems of lending; all systems of leasing, hiring.
-- Festivals, reward of honour, punishment with fine, marriage.
-- All institutions in the society that make use of division of labour.
-- Cattle control from the crops.
-- Evolution of family, protection of the aged, weak, invalid.
-- All social disciplines like funerals, collective protection, collective building of tank, etc.
- The processes and Laws of Development to be discovered are the processes and laws involved in the creation of (1) individual institution (habit), (2) primary physical institution for production, (3) secondary complex social institution, (4) Higher psychological institution like language and the processes and laws involved in integration. (1) of any of the above two institutions, (2) Extension of any of these institutions, (3) integration of the individual psychology of the institutions, (5) enrichment of an institution by a greater base or wider application or by rising to a greater height and (6) evolution of a fresh institution of a greater complexity based on these existing ones.
- Conditions that permit Development * A repetition of (5) above.
- Generation of excess mental energy that seeks expression;
- Matching outer physical necessity to the mental excess energy;
- Mental capacity to organize its observation into a thought-system that is viable;
- Vital endorsement of this thought-system, its enthusiasm for it and vital energy;
- The above mental-vital creation should soak into the physical consciousness of the creator and move his physical urge and restlessness to accomplish it.
Social:
- Society should have a use value for the end product at the level of its individual creation [Physical produce should be usable; vital story telling must be interesting; mental knowledge should be consented to].
- For each level of institution, the foundational support from its previous level must be forthcoming from the society [Physical support for vital institution and vital support for mental institution, etc.].
- The institution must generate the support in the physical plane (livelihood) for those involved in it by its functioning and frequency of use.
- Support, cooperation, permission, consent and understanding of the various aspects of the milieu that comprises the society at the corresponding levels of the institution should be there for any institution should come into existence, function and become part of the life fabric.
E.g. Drama ( ) - The theme should be understood for appreciation. The theme should be consented to for performance. The idea of acting, conversion of a play into playing (sometimes with woman, sometimes depicting gods, etc.) should be permitted by the social consciousness. The very act of putting on boards requires the cooperation of adjustment with other activities, cooperation of the actors, space for acting, etc. The physical support by financing the play and all the other support for each performance and repeat ones.
- The linear expression (equation, extension, development) of self-development (character) - social institution - social activity.
Self development Social Institution Social Development Capacity to abide by law, custom, usage Contractual arrangements (e.g. lease, sharing profits, mutual help in fields, etc., lending) Able farm worker becomes cultivating tenant.
Idle money and honest worker float a partnership.
Fills up gaps in revenue, labour, ability.
Increased production in field and factory.
-- do -- Gifts in marriages Ready financial help on the function day helping the institution of marriage to perpetuate. - A definition of development:
Development is that movement which takes place when the society either by virtue of evolutionary growth or by technological advancement rises in its psychological content above that of the mass of men and compels them to conform to that higher level for their survival.
- Psychological explanation of the development attitude:
Material development is based on psychological development. Psychological development, as any other, requires preservation of the existing endowments and their consolidation so that we can build on it further. Dissipation of the existing capacities rule out the possibility of development. That psychological attitude which generates the SELF RESTRAINT for the preservation of the present and building up of more on its basis and prevents dissipation is the psychological essence of material development.
Within limits, family, community, society, nation help prevent this deterioration. In that measure society is preservative. Society does so by denying the individual freedom for dissipation. If the individual is of less value, even though the environment prevents him from dissipation, he may inwardly dissipate and may not have enough capacity to grow outwardly using the preservative atmosphere. These are the people belonging to the category "non-persons". They may not grow but a conducive atmosphere prevents them from disintegration.
On the other hand he who has the self-restraint plans, organizes, endeavours to develop according to his endowments. Even he, without a conducive atmosphere for development cannot forge ahead. When the society is in a developing climate these individuals are helped to great prosperity. A developing climate also forces average persons to conform to higher standards of prosperity. That section which is unable to respond to this pressure drops out and dies.
Society itself can come to acquire the social self-restraint to preserve the present and build on it. Then it rises like a giant. Every individual is compelled vastly and the progress is social and individual. The society moves ahead by leaps and bounds.
- 26(a). Further Principles of (self) development:
- When the society has moved up one step (E.g. political freedom, technological invention, social reforms or fresh advantages, economic activity, etc., etc. as witnessed in Post Independent India) one who has the full appreciation and understanding of the changed conditions has the full appreciation and understanding of the changed conditions and the opportunities it holds if he is willing for the utmost hard work, he would witness in his own life what a man in static societies considered to be ‘lucky' would get.
- Stated otherwise: In eras of social opportunities intelligent, industrious men are rewarded in life what a ‘lucky' man in stagnant societies can get.
- For alert, intelligent, hardworking men changing (upward) social conditions hold luck in store.
- In the post independent Tamilnadu I can say there are several thousands of such incidents in Coimbatore, Sivakasi, Virudhunagar, Salem and Madras.
- If the man has an inner light and endeavours to express it in his vocation and keep his vocational life upto the norms of the inner light, his development will take him to the uppermost level of his vocation, uppermost in the geographical area of his emotional identification. For this to be true the social condition mentioned in the previous entry must prevail. This is not true in a decaying or stagnant society.
- When one raises his vocational life to the idealistic heights of his inner LIGHT, the work moves to the height of society his personality belongs to. (It is enough he reforms his life in terms of the requirements of his ideal in that field. It is not necessary the work should be transformed to idealistic levels). This much effort ensures material prosperity of that level. E.g. If one is in industry, instead of fighting competition, he must create competitors. He must be unselfish. Maintain quality, service, etc.
- If one who has materially so raised himself to the topmost levels of his vocation, wishes to go further his next step is to raise his personal life to the heights of his ideal, viz. truthfulness, creativity, expansiveness, self-giving, etc. Should he do so and integrate his vocation to this somewhat, the material prosperity will acquire fame and recognition and reward at that intensity.
- When the society has moved up one step (E.g. political freedom, technological invention, social reforms or fresh advantages, economic activity, etc., etc. as witnessed in Post Independent India) one who has the full appreciation and understanding of the changed conditions has the full appreciation and understanding of the changed conditions and the opportunities it holds if he is willing for the utmost hard work, he would witness in his own life what a man in static societies considered to be ‘lucky' would get.
- -- Comparison of going ahead and stopping the deterioration.
When the society moves forward, essentially it is the social energies that flow forward and the individuals - though the social energies are their contribution mainly - fit themselves to the movement. In this condition if an individual has to move one step ahead from where he is, all that he has to do is to tune himself to the main current and that is the extent of effort he has to take.
When a society is decaying the social energies are sagging. A downward movement, as powerful as the upward movement, is initiated. The momentum of this movement is in many ways equal to or similar to the movement upwards. To bring a person from one point of downward movement to one level higher (i.e. from -3 to -2) it is not enough the individual makes an effort to tune himself to the general movement, as the general movement and his aspiration are in opposite direction. First of all the downward movement must be arrested. To do that an energy equal to that needed to arrest the progressive forces in a positive climate is needed. This is phenomenal. Having done so, the direction of the movement is to be reversed. The energy required here is far greater in quantity and in quality must be creative. Suppose these two things are accomplished, a great thing is accomplished twice over. If there is NOW a progress of one point upwards, the gain is not comparable with one point higher in a positive movement. That little represents the RATE OF ACCELERATION of change.
GNP in India today is still an accurate indicator. Only that the academicians and politicians do not have an idea of what is going on. The very fact that GNP has not gone down inspite of doubling population is proof that India has doubled her productive effort. She has done so after giving up imports, British civil service, the trade advantages of common wealth and placing herself in a position to defend her borders which Britain took care of prior to 1937. Is not the effort phenomenal in magnitude? I would add the effort is phenomenal in quality. A young nation with no previous experience in administration to launch on development in a democratic set up to accomplish a work that neutralizes its double population is an effort unparalleled in the history of the world. And people ask how much she has moved forward. I say 100%.
What I say of the nation is equally true in the lives of individuals. If you can think of one recently offered freedom while his mind is still in the traditional framework, the first sensation is fear. This is followed by doubt. To gain his functioning poise in the newly won freedom he really takes many psychological generations. If that much happens, it is miracle. When he does gain the poise, he has no skills to employ, no ideas about the opportunities, no ideas of what he can expect. He exercises his freedom in a social vacuum. It turns out to be violent. Social unrest is the issue. For him to find his feet and to decide to act on any possible course is evolutionary accomplishment. The right feeling emerges only in the succeeding generation. In short, he undergoes in miniature what the nation has undergone in its plane.
- Character and Development (leveling off)
Every man a stop developing at the point where he brings up consciously the lower qualities in him which he was at pains to suppress during the period of progress.
Character expresses inner strength and also the ability to learn skills and accomplish things in outer life. Naturally what is accomplished will not continue or may be destroyed if opposite characteristics are emphasized.
- When opportunities - social, economic, academic opportunities - abound, why is it that no one takes initiative to avail of them for their own prosperity? Why is it that when repeatedly offered, people turn the opportunities down?
Ans.: A period when opportunities abound is the period preceding the one when natural energies rise to saturation in the society and break the limits seeking fresh creative effort. The latter period is a period of natural social growth; the former is one where if a determined effort is taken either by the individual or by the society substantial positive developmental result would issue. The two can be likened to the river in full flow when man with a determined effort can irrigate his lands on the banks through a lift and the river overflowing in floods submerging the lands on the banks. The quantitative difference between the two in terms of water volume may be 10 to 20 fold.
For the society to move from the Developmental period to period of growth, it may need far greater energies and may take 50 or 100 years depending upon the country, the field of development, the century it is in, etc.
Man in developmental period does not move by himself. If a single member is set up as a social rival to the entire community, the entire community takes a Himalayan effort, excited, challenged by the new social gradient created and does not rest content till the gradient is abolished. As the individual has the subconscious knowledge of the monumental effort called for, he subconsciously decides to desist from taking that initiative.
- Social, moral values in backward and developed communities
A backward society which lives by many moral virtues and social values when it develops, it loses all these values at the backward level and slowly begins to reacquire all of them at the developed level, always these values re-emerge at a higher level and a content.
E.G. at the backward stage obedience to parents and elders is due to fear. When the same value is acquired at the higher level the same obedience is out of respect for the elders and their attainments and out of affection which was not possible in the earlier stage owing to the presence of fear.
Values arise out of the perception of the thing or person valued.
- Evolutionary strength once gained is never lost. In cases where the loss of it is more than convincing, on examination, it will be seen that what is lost is the form and the content, instead of lessening in strength, has increased.
EGO: Ego, social status, mental intelligence, emotional attachment, vital skill, physically entrenched habit of a higher order, are all of one type with varying degrees of organization and intensity. Not one of them disintegrates by itself except for moving to higher forms. In cases where caste superiority, official power, social pre-eminence, wealthy affluence or traditional high rank was once attained but was lost later, psychologically man CLINGS to it by converting the presently non-existent original value into ironic humility, inferiority complex, perversity, etc. negatively. Very rarely do these individuals preserve their inner goodness. In such rare cases, the lost eminence, inherent value combination is preserved as cultural value, idealistic simple life, high mental pursuits, spiritual awakening, etc.
Evolutionary strength once attained is never lost. If the form is lost, the content is pursued at other socially possible planes of life. The truth is, what is created cannot be lost.
In the society its achievements at higher levels, if interrupted by social disintegration, are preserved as essence in the collective subconscious. If and when positive periods emerge these achievements are not merely brought back into life but are recreated at slightly higher level.
- A quotation from Life Divine on the growth of life and consciousness, Vol.19, P.1018, written down at the foot of the 9th leaf below the entry Unselfishness, i.e. page 99.
- An organization or an organism will move only at the level and point where its energies are in harmony for motion and not at any other level where it is ordered to move by higher authority or expected to move by its members out of different considerations.
E.g.
- If PKS is given a higher income to liquidate his debts he would spend it on fancy clothes and a scooter.
- Whenever Mother's consciousness touches an organization, it is not Her blessings they receive but either some violence shows or a breakdown issues because the organization is in harmony at a lower level.
- Development of a nation (or a community, family or even an individual) implies, among other things, the strong necessarily working for the weak. Even it extends to the point of supporting sheer laziness.
Positively this expresses as self-giving, service, generosity, etc. Neutrally this service expresses as compelling conditions to the strong man's growth. Negatively this support of the weak rears its head as irrational revolutionary demand of the poor, lazy population.
- Setting up of self-development goals: -- the necessary attitude -
When the society reaches the conscious awareness in the collective to set up social goals for the individual by whom each individual is enabled to exhaust his maximum energies and capacities, the society is said to be poised for full growth and development.
- A pre-requisite for development: When an individual is equipped with energy, skill and all the required aspects to enable development to issue, he will still find himself needing one pre-requisite. As development is the creation of a new form different from and often directed against the old form, he needs to have the strength of will to stand against and overcome the existing forms and their expressions. Without this pre-requisite condition being fulfilled, his own development will not fructify.
This is equally true of the society.
Any person, organization or an ideal that strives to create a radically new ideal - even an ideal opposite to the existing one - when they try to enlist support from the existing society must create a new attitude. This attitude should cherish the support forthcoming....?
- Knowledge of the process of development gives the power of creativity:
Awakening is at several stages, at the level of receiving benefits and fully using them - as in Education in 1980 - at the level of earning for such benefits and helping the community to create more and more of it - as in Kerala in the field of education, political rights, etc., now - at the level of adventure - as in England when they set out to explore the continents and finally at the level of creation as in early 20th century USA and late 19th century England. We can add one more at the level of imitation as in Japan.
India in 1947 was not awakened enough to know it had needs to curb population or produce more food. The effort of GOI in education failed. Later she moved on to a point of receiving a benefit when offered. This is limited to a few areas. Now she is awake in many fields in different measures. All this belong to the lower half of development.
Awareness to receive and use is the awakening of consumer who buys a useful product put out in the market, the parent who sends his children to a school established in the village, the wife who receives the money from husband for household expenses. Such people will not know what to do if the facility is not there. They cannot create a product, establish a school, and earn the money. Creativity needs the knowledge of the process and the capacity to implement it.
Materially man is the creator in the family and the woman is the consumer. Psychologically the woman is the creator in the family and man the consumer.
DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION GIVES THIS KNOWLEDGE OF CREATIVITY. For this knowledge to turn into power the individual has to have the already developed inner personality of ability.
-
- Once man chooses (or decides) to obey a certain authority, his ability to discriminate the wrong against the right within the realm of that authority is lost by him. [The ill fed cow which resists another calf drinking its milk lets her master milk herself. The cow does not resist the master inspite of the fact that he does not fully feed her].
- The process of development (for prosperity) is also the process of development of social and personal character. Particular characteristics are necessary to accomplish particular development. E.g. Organisation can be developed only if the psychological capacity to cooperate is available. The following is a tabulation showing the related physical and psychological endowments. (This excludes the characteristics at birth).
Physical condition available or physical development attained Necessary psychological accomplishment that follows i) Abundant physical resources like water, land in deltas Material security, psychological satisfaction, physical self-giving ii) Overwhelming physical health and energy Dynamism, physical helpfulness iii) Education Understanding iv) Full parental attention Psychological security, sharpening of mental faculties v) Absence of external physical threat Birth of imagination and consequently creativity in cultural fields vi) Presence of social, family tradition of any value Attitude of conservatism, deference to established custom, etc. vii) Rich social or family vitality in conditions of affluence Generosity viii) Absence of society as in the case of a single child Self-righteousness, oblivious selfishness, inability to think ix) Compelling social obligations and partial availability of resources (e.g. thrashing of harvested grain and scarcity of thrashing grounds) Mutuality leading to contractual obligations - Socially organized force, its cooperation and resistance:
Social conformity in the individual lends its support to ideas, customs, programmes that the society has long accepted and cherished. When the individual endorses it by his understanding, approval and daily practice, he becomes an integral part of that already well-organised force of society with respect to that custom. That is a force which carries the entire weight of society. The individual, with respect to that custom, cannot be changed without the society itself changing or the individual rising above the society in that aspect. Even attempts to educate a single individual can powerfully be disturbing not only to the individual but to the society as a whole.
This is the reason why when, occasionally if one individual (preferably one who is at the top levels of the society) is fully convinced of an unusual programme, the entire society follows readily. Negatively, the moment one tries to espouse, explain, educate any individual of a radically different idea or programme, we find cataclysmic disturbances in the outside society, apparently unconnected with our initiative. The relationship between that individual and the society at large is in the subtle physical plane which our rationality misses.
- Rights, human, social, legal, etc.
To have rights or to feel the need for rights or to claim rights is a measure of development of the individual and the society he lives in.
Rights are the psychological knowledge of what one has created earlier and therefore enjoys. What one has not created, he does not feel a right for. In the initial stages of development an elite creates often with the participation of the mass, offering the mass in return a greater privilege than they enjoyed till then. This fresh prosperity is more than a sufficient compensation for their unconscious participation of the new creation. For the masses to come to realise the real and full role they are playing, it takes time. To assert that realization, it takes further time. From the time they begin to assert and the time they get it is a period of human development, most desirable for the entire humanity. The selfish elite which was a parasite till then cries that ‘values' are lost.
Societies and civilizations can be graded if the individual, personal, collective, social, governmental, legal, administrative, religious, and all the other possible rights are given full consideration.
- Funds for Development: Leadership (especially political leadership) finds the money necessary for a development it has come to feel essential.
Administration prunes the development to the available funds.
A prosperity movement or a strong public opinion given even the administration qualities of leadership by compelling it to act as the public wants.
- Development can be described as man becoming mentally conscious of higher faculties (or faculties in the next higher plane) AND making his life conscious of lower faculties.
The first upward movement is obvious. The second movement is seen in the villager who has moved to the town making his unconscious habits in the field conscious by agriculture education. With every passing century or even decade man becomes more civilized in the field of health by replacing his ignorant health habits by an enlightened attitude towards health based on greater knowledge of physiology.
The ultimate aim of Development Education is to make the student aware of the complex social process in life outside and in himself inside which he is presently unconscious of.
- Development University:
Society's existence is (mostly) entirely vital, in the plane of LIFE. Society needs education only in this plane most. Life education that yields life knowledge so far is only by experience. Society has so far not attempted to convert this process of experience into a process of education. Conversion of experience into education is conversion of unorganized, unconscious change into a systematic conscious process.
When education was attempted by the society, it started with pure knowledge which in later times indirectly makes the individual a better member of the society. It still remains so. When technical education came in, it took care of comforts of life, the material physical life and made it enjoyable, free from drudgery.
Mind being curious, it is natural that pure knowledge is valued. Physical living being a reality, it too claims a certain precedence in every walk of life.
LIFE, if we explain it as one's own psychological existence inside and social existence outside, so far has not received this attention of education. One reason for that may be the pressures in other planes (mind and physical) have not developed here. In a slowly changing society, life knowledge was acquired in time without hurting his own life. In a rapidly changing society, man is unable to adjust and find his inner or even outer poise. Development Education can give this knowledge.
Suppose a Development University is established, what would it do?
In short, the D.U. will collect all the psychological truisms of the individual, collective and animal lives, even as the Technical University collects the physical properties of all materials. How would the society benefit by and respond to a D.U.?
- As new scientific discoveries are rendered into commercially viable products, the psychological knowledge made available by the D.U. would be converted by social pioneers into viable forms of better living, defying the existing social forms of accepted living.
- Life is based on eternal values of the spirit, viz., Truth, Light, Love, etc. and their psychic versions, viz., honey, loyalty, sincerity, affection, etc., etc.
In the past all these values were cherished and adopted as ideal ones, but all these values served to foster the society of those times which were authoritarian, less civilized. Mostly these high values were found in the social living as lifeless outer forms and appearances without inner content more out of fear and authority than out of genuine inner living. Development Education aims at helping the student discover the innate worth of these values and adopt them in his life for its inner content and inherent value.
- Inflation: Development in a nation should come by the social effort and when the social effort is not commensurate with the development the equivalent of the difference is paid by the currency value.
E.g. If the enormous strides of Indian Development and its monetary Plan factors of Rs.70,000 crores are considered, it is easy to see that this result should have flowed out of the EXTRA effort of the nation. In fact in the nation as a general rule there is a tendency for lessening the effort. The difference between the achievement and effort must be paid for by someone or something. It is inflation. [Inflation is the combined result of man's assertion, greater consumption, etc., etc. and the effort of govt. to give more than the population has worked for. The above explanation is only concerned about the last mentioned effort of Govt.].
- Law and order: The physical foundation of social development is peace and tranquility in the community without which or before achieving which the community does not contemplate development. Achievement of peace and stability progresses in stages, the village, the bigger kingdom, the nation, etc. That process in the world has reached a certain worldwide status after the II World War but is yet to be perfected.
This stability exists in several stages, viz., physical, vital, mental and spiritual. The primitive physically annihilates his rival or rival group, the civilized vitally annihilates his rival - runs him down, ostracises, boycotts, disapproves his religion, his ways, his ideas. The next higher stage which is yet to be developed is the mental. Here the rival's theory will be denounced at first. As a measure of progress in the mental plane later he comes to agree to co-exist, see the truth in the other man's point of view.
Spiritually rivalry does not exist. Spirituality sees the Oneness of all existence.
- Levels of Institution: Institutions can be classified under
- Physical, Vital, Mental heads; also any institution can exist at different levels depending upon the society, period in which it is found.
- E.g. Agriculture production is physical whereas a political party is a vital institution. A research institution is mental. Marriage in primitive societies is a physical institution. With greater civilization in the urbanized countries it is a vital institution. There is scarcely a chance for this institution to become mental.
- The higher the centre of life, the higher is the intensity of happiness. The higher the institutions of a society, the greater is the joy that society can offer its members.
- The movement that takes down the moral caliber, destroys the sentiments, values, etc., is a movement that will destroy the happiness possible from social life.
- Physical, Vital, Mental heads; also any institution can exist at different levels depending upon the society, period in which it is found.
- Endowments and opportunities: When the society moves into a climate of development by a process of growth or due to political freedom or breaking the hierarchy of society or class oppression, etc., etc., old endowments that were denied expression now find a field day. E.g.
Political democracy in England opened up the opportunity to the labourer to reach the cabinet.
Advent of English education and later freedom offered the brahmins administrative jobs and high academic positions. The hardworking Nadars are becoming millionaires when the commercial opportunities are available. The humble sections of the population who have never asserted find great opportunities of growth in business and politics where absence of assertion is a virtue.
- Repetition of earlier mistakes:
Forms of life and habits individual and social are ingrained in the very physical consciousness which insists with a totality and fatality on repetition. Even after a radical revolution like the November Revolution in Russia the new form of socialist government was in fact the repetition of Tzarist setup. So also in China. The old in an effort to repeat its basic constitution tries to absorb the new into the old mould. This is so because there is no known human force that can change the fixity of physical consciousness. Such a change will be transformation of which only the Supermind is capable.
Unless a radical revolution has taken place in the life of an individual compelling him to change to opposite behaviour, all the measures he initiates to reform himself are, however earnest he is, a MERE repetition of his old way of functioning now labeled as change, reform, progress, etc. When the external pressure is decisive he does change, but often tries to absorb the new into the essence of old. This is true of organizations and societies.
All moves without exception that an individual makes to reform himself are suspect.
[In the case of New Deal Roosevelt, who so dramatically and revolutionarily exercised his powers and succeeded beyond measure, after a while succumbed to the force of the tradition and resorted to the monetary policy. It was the II World War that came in and saved the situation. This illustrates that even though MAN successfully changes, the inertia of the physical consciousness tends to reassert. The principle illustrated by (50) is man at his best "corrects" himself in the old fashion, i.e. by camouflaging his original behaviour under the new one. This footnote is to show that even when one genuinely changes the milieu in his subconscious would assert in the opposite direction].
- Above average men:
If we consider a cross section of men who are successful in life either in business or politics or any other walk of life, each will have one prominent quality as their mainstay supported by all the other requisite qualities in minimum measure. This will be true of organizations and societies too. If such a person tries to develop one more quality in an outstanding measure, before he succeeds in it, he has to raise all the supporting qualities to the level of his mainstay. If he succeeds, he will rise from local to national level. Generally this is not a possible progress. One who is outstanding in several qualities passes for a phenomenon and even to start with he starts at a very high level and goes on moving ahead till he reaches the very top. (Nehru has charisma, Rajaji brains, Azad erudition, Annadurai oratory, Kamaraj common-sense, Tata organization, TVS systems, R. Hon. Sastri scholarship, Radhakrishnan amiable nature, etc.).
India is making an outstanding successful effort on the fronts of food, education, International leadership, science and technology, etc. That is why India's experiment in development is noteworthy.
- Each person desires to relate to another through his most developed quality or propensity.
The generous person, the offensive person, the mean ones, the great ones, etc., each, if left to his choice, would put forth instinctively his own quality to form the relationship. It may be ironical that the offensive hope to create a relationship with another through offence, but that is the only truth.
- The weak and the strong:
The process of the weak becoming strong is by the weakness filled in by strength. The weak fills in its personality by the knowledge of its own experience and later converts it into strength which means life rushes into the weak, breaks it to pieces a few hundred times at the end of which knowledge accumulates. This is natural evolution of the weak into strength. The central ruling principle here is the free will - free determinism - of the member, i.e., the weak.
In planned development or when the society determines to help raise the weak the social will becomes the central ruling principle. Here the social determinism acts. In this process too the principle above stated is true in essence but it appears to work as social upliftment of the weak. The society refuses to allow the individual to break into pieces preventing it each time by itself absorbing the losses arising out of individual incapacity. Society continues to do so till the individual acquires the right knowledge and turns it into usable experience. For the society to attempt this successfully the society should have attained the maturity needed to administer development. Prior to this stage, the individual will not be benefited by this social help. Society reaches this stage if (a) a sizable portion of the population - not necessarily the majority but that number of persons who can make the entire society feel that the social acceptance is complete - has developed or (b) if the KNOWLEDGE of the ENTIRE society has come to accept this development and a tiny portion has realized the development.
Society matures to the point of helping the weak to rise when its own determinism can beneficially replace the individual determinism. (?) (or) When social determinism can beneficially (effectively) replace the individual determinism society is mature for social development, is said to have reach the point of maturity for social development.
- Insistence on data:
The vital man insists on sensation which is frowned upon by the mental man. Knowledge is light which reveals as vision to the soul but the scholars and scientists insist on data which is of the physical plane.
- Education:
As leadership that exhibits heroism is collective action in the individual, a collective action in the mental plane too is necessary. The instrument for such a collective action in the mental plane is THOUGHT. The institution that prepares the society for this collective action is EDUCATION.
EDUCATION IS LEADERSHIP IN THOUGHT.
- Spiritual method in life: When one rises above desire, he masters over the things he desired. This is a method of detachment. Even in life only those who really rise above the need and desire succeed in creating. Upto a certain point DESIRE gives the drive, beyond this point unless the man gives up the crude desire and moves on to higher forms of desire he does not succeed in accumulating the object desired. E.g. money is made in great measure by one who desires the power of money. Power comes in great measure to one who seeks fame or service through power.
- Stupidity and initiative: Stupidity is dull but in a general atmosphere of energy it can be active or even dynamic. Individuals as well as societies sometimes come to this stage. At this stage, if opportunity presents they are unable to understand its true nature. As they are energized, they won't be indifferent. They begin to activate their own attitudes and handle the fresh opportunities.
Even when they find no response they would not stop. Till they fully spoil the opportunity or drive it out them would activate themselves in their own stupid fashion. Nor will they learn from the initial experience.
Active stupidity confronts opportunity with deadly destructiveness and repeats it ad infinitum.
- Authority: Ideal of one plane implemented by a lower plane settles down as authority.
- Insistence: Insistence is the end of development
Development is a movement that implies that there is much more to achieve, possess and enjoy. The various expressions of insistence are firmness, stubbornness, obstinacy, subjectivity, pride in what one has value of tradition, etc. Only when people see that they are backward, there is something in the outside world which is more desirable than their present way of life, that there is more to learn, learning is enjoyable, in short, when they are open to education of the mind or nerves there is a possibility of change, growth or development. The attitude that insists, insists on what one knows, what one already follows, what one has and enjoys and is sure that its value is great and is worth insisting upon. This is an attitude of closed mind and rules out any development.
The villager insists on preserving his one meal a day freedom that lets him be lazy.
The irresponsible parent insists on ways of indifferent cultivation that permits him to loiter.
The dull mind of the auditor insists on not using a calculator and century old accounting method.
The impatient youngster insists on implementing his new-found programme because he is lazy enough to read enough to compare results of other programmes.
The weak-willed person insists on a reaction as it settles the issue at that level and does not call for an effort to strengthen his will.
- Organised functioning - Conscious social awareness - Process of Development
Talents, skills, systems, individuals as well as organizations sporadically develop in the society initially. Society draws upon this reservoir for its purpose in the measure it is available. At a later stage society moves to the stage of training the skills, devising the systems, creating the talents through organized institutions with the clear view of supplying the needs of various sectors when they do arise. The measure of this conscious organization is a measure of development.
In all societies education is the very first to undergo this change from unconscious availability to conscious preparation.
Doctors, engineers, architects, teachers were in ancient India supplied by this unconscious category. Presently they are all trained. Poets, artists, journalists, scientists, politicians, administrators, writers, editors, actors, etc., are now in the unorganized sector in India and to a great extent in other countries too. Barring the fully creative areas like poetry, all professions can be supplied from an arsenal of training ground.
- Enjoyment and creation: Creation ends when enjoyment begins
Normally one works hard to develop, to create and at the end of the work begins to enjoy it often possessing it. In this context, both are successive stages. Note 59 on insistence carry a parallel. The process of development comes to an end when people want to enjoy. Those who want to continue the process of development must be willing to postpone the beginning of enjoyment. This phenomenon in some parallel is seen when you are explaining to someone. He listens upto a point and starts answering. At the point he starts answering, his capacity to listen has come to a stop. Patience comes to a stop when one expresses irritation or defense or begins to explain or argue. If a scholar has a tendency to begin writing, it means his thinking process or absorbing capacity has come to an end. This is almost like a physical law, applicable at innumerable points of life, the truism remains the same.
- Prestige, ego, superiority, self-respect, independence, individuality, etc.:
To be independent is manliness.
To submit totally one's independence to a higher will is the greatest height to which manliness can rise.
Any faculty rises in value with greater application of its essential value. Beyond a point where the value of that faculty is overwhelmed, its essential value will rise if it is submitted to the higher will of the overpowering faculty.
- To accept an ideal implies accepting totally that which espouses the ideal (of 38).
The client of a lawyer or the patient of the doctor can only accept the professional help but cannot be explained the significance of every move. This is a general truth. In practice it comes that one shuts his eyes to the defects of his camp and the members in it. Professionally the customer is incapable of understanding the intricacies of every little step in the process of law, medicine, mechanics, or any field for that matter.
While being a subordinate, the best way to progress is to accept the authority with adoration. His part is before choosing the authority. Once chosen, his contribution lies at his level and then he can help shape the form of the authority. Once it is decided, it is best for him to accept it in his emotions.
- Attitude: (page 10a) Attitude forms out the information the mind receives and the emotional perspective he has.
E.g. We speak of changing the attitude from salaried employment to self-employment. In salaried job the man seeks a security which is visible to his understanding. Surely he does not know or understand ALL the opportunities self-employment offers. This part he must be told. That makes for understanding. Understanding does not necessarily lead to action, but without understanding any possibility of action is ruled out. Once the understanding is there, if some of them use (let) that understanding widen their perspective of job, security, work, employment and career, there is a possibility of a portion of them being enthused by the prospects. This is what I call emotional perspective. If the understanding and emotional perspective are there then the old attitude begins to give way and a new attitude begins to take shape. This change in attitude can help him to act in the new direction.
- Physical and mental satisfaction:
Man who would be delighted to achieve a small goal of life, in his imagination does not feel satisfied with a very high goal when he knows he is to share that status with many others.
A writer when he is very proud of one of his ideas feels disenchanted the moment he comes to know that it is earlier expressed. The disenchantment continues even after he knows that on previous occasions the persons who expressed this idea are world personalities. But the same author feels a great exultation when his first book is published though it has not been taken notice of by the world. The very fact he could publish his writings gives such a great satisfaction in the physical plane to which his real personality centre belongs but when he is in his world of fancies he would not brook a rival however eminent he is.
- Every development area is capable of creating a financial capital of its own thereby raising the earning capacity of money and consequently man several fold.
Bombay pays a third of nation's income tax. It is more a financial capital of the nation than the commercial capital, though the commercial base has made the former possible. Every hardworking, resourceful man in Bombay becomes a greater success than his wildest dreams admit. The earning capacity of money, at all levels of life, is many times higher than in other cities or areas of the country. For everyone who looks for an opportunity many present themselves greater in content and higher in life situation. All this is made possible by the transport, communication, commercial, financial infrastructures presently available. Above all the ‘social infrastructure' by which I mean the migrants who shed their inhibiting social conventions, releases greater energy in the population than normal. In the absence of traditional social opinion which inhibits, man loses his higher self but finds his native energies released. The existing social environment compels him to be cooperative, smooth, energetic, adjusting. The rigours of the city life generate this compulsion. Though educational base is very poor, the given circumstances of being the ONLY part of India on the East, She has attracted the head offices of RBI, SBI and a host of other financial institutions. Saddled with an overpowering atmosphere of opportunities, she has shown to the world that at all levels of life man, if he chooses to exert, can earn more than 10 times his normal expectation. He can rise in social, financial level as high as he chooses to capitalize his circumstances.
The one drawback is the greater parts of the migrants are uneducated. Bombay itself prides more on its energy than on education. She has not used the opportunity to become the intellectual capital nor even the educational centre pre-eminent. Educationally she is backward. Had there been a higher level of education, the progress would have been greater.
Every area, viz., the state, district, block or a cotton area or an industrial area can become a self-contained commercial unit and create its own small scale financial capital. If by a planned process the organizational structure in these financial capitals is duplicated in viable commercial zones, this is possible. Such a capital is presently created by an unconscious social process. This process can be made conscious. Once such tiny capitals are created the creativity and productivity of men and money in these areas multiply 10 to 100 times within the overall limits of social creativity of productivity.
These tiny financial capitals will not redistribute the opportunities of the ONE capital of the nation. Each one of them will newly create. The limit to such new creation is the potentials for productivity of the area and the supporting organizations available.
A study of London, New York, etc., which belong to this category to examine whether in time sub-centres in the country are created and how long has it taken for different geographical areas in the country to attain the level of prosperity of these money centres will throw light on the issue.
- Greatest progress for a member of a group:
The member is as important to the group at his level as the leader at the top. If each member understands his level in the organization and emotionally fully endorses it to the point of being enthusiastic so that he feels fulfilled in playing his part, he makes the greatest individual progress possible for him and makes the greatest contribution to the group. Such a member is an asset to the organization and the organization is the field that offers him the greatest possible growth.
If the member does not understand his position vis a vis the organization, he is compelled to conform to the rules of the organization. If he does not enthusiastically endorse the situation, he is compelled to comply with his job requirements, prevented from speaking against the organization or running it down. The former is a vital participation whereas when compelled by authority it becomes physical conformity. Self-conscious, understanding participation first described enables progress for him in the vital plane. The latter is super-imposed, submission, obedience which ensures his physical welfare.
- Development Education should impart full social awareness of the presently enjoyed opportunities, opportunities missed in the past and the opportunities that await in the future.
Man is socially unaware in the sense he is not conscious of the unexpected benefits he has got from the society as well as the great many opportunities he has missed. A Brahmin and non-Brahmin family of comparable social position ends up after 3 decades at two different points in society those are as far apart as a senior executive and flower seller. The Brahmin, by virtue of his culture and education, is socially aware.
To give the entire society the social awareness, social initiative the Brahmin has, is the aim of development education.
If one scratches the Brahmin, it will be found that for his culture and education he too, in essence, is as self-oblivious as others. He has the dynamism which others don't have, not the dynamism he can have. In fact, to awaken the BRAHMIN to all the opportunities he is surrounded by is as difficult as in any other case.
One way of enriching the nation is to draw up a special programme that will foster and nourish the development of all sections that are already most developed such as IAS officers, developed areas like Punjab and Coimbatore, Brahmins, the artists, writers, rich entrepreneurs, top rankers in all walks of education, etc., etc.
- Stage of Development - Organisational functioning in the Society:
Society is stratified and a hierarchy of skills exists. I refer to the skill in functioning through the social, governmental organization. The capacity to utilize or function through the social, governmental organization is an index of development. That social organization through which the entire society can function with ease is a clear index of development.
Free education is extended upto PUC but not all are able to avail of it. When banking offers excellent benefits, those who are unable to rise to the level of that functioning seek the moneylender with whom they feel at home. Auditors today are not able to utilize the calculators. The Public at large are not related to the share market. Imagine the boom in the share market if the rural wealth comes into it. It will be similar to the boom in the bank deposits after the banks went to the rural side. Even Travel Agencies are not fit social organizations in places like Madras. It would be good to make the list exhaustive.
- Authority - moral sensitivity:
Provocation, jest, ridicule, injustice, slight, punishment and even cruelty are more tolerated when it comes from authority. Even heinous crimes are accepted from authority as inevitable and the victim does not always have the scruple not to approach that authority at a subsequent occasion for work or favour.
Man concedes social authority as all powerful and conceives a great admiration for it inspite of all that is negative even towards him. This is so because all the time man, even those worst victims of authority, aspires for it and in that measure sees it as part of himself.
- Successful existence and functioning of a social institution or a govt. organization:
Social institutions like renting a house or a govt. organization like Regulated Market come into existence when the society attains the maturity needed for that purpose. This is not enough for its continued smooth functioning. Participating members in such institutions and their activities should evince the BEHAVIOURAL sufficiency called for without which the institutions, though created by the society, come to a grinding halt sooner or later.
Rent of land or house implies certain obligations like unkeep, payment of taxes by the lessor and equally number of duties by the lessee apart from the payment of lease value. Suppose the lessor fails to pay the land tax, the lessee cannot fulfill his part of cultivation.
In contractual agreements as well as institutional functionings, apart from the major obligations, there are a number of behavioural requirements on the part of the participants some of which, if not fulfilled, can hold up the entire functioning.
- Development University (of 45) - The distance between two harmonies, viz., vital harmony and mental harmony.
The aim of Development Education is to give the student all the life knowledge which will enable him to live harmoniously and happily from a mental centre, even as the animal does from a vital centre.
At the animal level life exists by INSTINCT. The animal is at peace with itself and the life around and is grappling with the effort of life at its level for survival. It does not face the discord arising out of conflict between itself and the environment, nor is it disturbed by the unattained ambition.
Man rose from the vital level, discarded the security of instinct, chose to lose the several subtle senses essential for the instinct, developed thought, rarefied it by reason and as a result created this wonder of a civilization we are in. The distance he has traveled is aeonic, the achievement itself is a miracle. Having given up instinct, he also gave up harmony inner and outer. Mind thinks, reasons, plans, directs, illumines and guides the vital to achievement. But mind does not feel the essential element to create and preserve Harmony. This MIND has an upper end in the Mind itself and a lower end in the vital, the former is the Mental Vital and the latter is the Vital Mind. The Mental Vital is creative of ideas; the vital mind is creative of material results. The present civilization is the result of vital mind guided by the Mental thought and particularly the Mental Vital which creates the feeling necessary (in the mind) for the harmony of thought.
Man today is besieged by innumerable conflicts as his leader is the Mental thought which is cleft from the achiever, the vital mind and all the disharmonies arise from this gap. This gap can be filled in, a higher richer harmony created if Man can move from Mental thought that is dry to Mental vital that is inherently harmonious and is in live link with vital mind the accomplisher.
The distance between the harmony of animal kingdom created by the vital instinct and the accomplishment of civilization by Mental thought will be dwarfed by the distance that will be created by the Mental vital between its own future accomplishment and the present civilization.
The aim of Integral Yoga is Life Divine, i.e., to raise this centre of life to the Divine.
- The University
Education, in its beginning, was confined to very elementary levels. With the advent of great thinkers in every field, there grew around them a school leading to a school of thought in one branch of knowledge. The University in its real sense was born when all these great schools were collected under one roof and finally espoused education under one ideal or perspective. Then the university becomes a social instrument that can collect the best knowledge available in the society and transmit it to posterity. This is best done only when the various strands of knowledge discover the unseen ideal of which they are parts and realize the inherent synthesis underlying the apparently disparate lines of enquiry. The centralizing ideal, therefore, becomes paramount.
Once education is thus institutionalized, the institution it is discloses other capabilities. The first of them is the missing fields of academic adventure. The institution that is created to be the repository of socially acquired knowledge now evinces the capacity to discover purely on the mental field (without the society having generated it earlier) other areas of knowledge by which the society at large can benefit. Some of the modern sciences or at least some branches of them are of this description.
A University which thus has become the academic apex of a social base is further in a position to share its knowledge with other universities. By this process each such university adds to its social base the foundations of the other universities, thus making knowledge a common possession. With this process advancing, a new phenomenon is witnessed, the phenomenon of universities becoming the several individual academic peaks of the base that is civilization. As before this process also generates the reverse process of each new university coming to this purview acquiring the capability of serving the social base of the university from which it borrows knowledge.
Just at present, if we look at the universities of the world from this perspective, we find the entire civilization united by the process of exchange of knowledge by the universities and every university of the world having the capacity to serve the entire civilization.
- The expressions of knowledge at the physical level is skill
vital level is interest
mental level is understanding (at a lower mental level information)
- Low consciousness - Hostility
What harm can be inflicted on you by hostility of another can also be inflicted on you by a friendly person of low consciousness. The harm issues out of the disharmony created. Low consciousness as well as hostility can create the disharmony. (A person of high consciousness can create the same disharmony in a person of low consciousness even when his feelings are friendly. Disharmony issues out of an incompatible difference).
- Organisation of Society, social organization and individual development
The higher the complexity of the organization of society, the greater is its effectivity for the least skilled member.
An average person in USA can hope to become a graduate or even a Ph.D. because the support issuing from every point of social existence to the individual is far greater than in a country like India where for a similar achievement the above-average man alone is qualified.
When the society organizes itself and acquires a certain capacity - like education, lending, technology - it offers that capacity to every below-average member, thereby neutralizing his insufficiency. Till society comes to acquire the capacity to offer education, loans through banks, technology through research institution, the effort of the individual seeking them is against cut-throat competition. And an organized society eliminates such opposition.
At whatever level the society organizes itself, at that level the social organization is kamadhenu to the individual.
- Organisation of society - Responsibility to the Individual
In the measure society organizes itself; it owes to the individual a responsibility. By organizing itself society takes away some rights of the individual and controls his life in that measure. In return the society has to offer him either rights or comfort or protection, etc.
That society which has monopolised the labour market by its technical and organizational advancement, OWES to the labouring population a duty to offer permanent employment.
- Individual Ideal and Social Ideal
Normally the individual ideal is more conducive to maintain the content and the social ideal is acceptable at the level of maintaining the form.
When the social ideal maintains the content, it becomes a cultured society whereas while maintaining the form it remains a civilized society.
- Man moving to a developing society often carries with him habits of the previous society to his detriment.
(Buying second-hand objects like a brass pot -- -- is valued in a traditional society as behaviour of mature people who do not seek glamour. The Chettiars of Tirukoilur when they started a textile mill - where the loss in production is great if worn out parts are not immediately replaced - following their tradition bought all equipments second-hand. As a result they are unable to commission the plant).
- Planned Development presupposes not only knowledge and enthusiasm but an effective self-control that conserves what is accumulating in the initial stages and totally prevents dissipation of any kind, as the forces that create are without a mental element which alone can exercise any control. That mental element is supplied by the centre of the planned development.
E.g. When we grow fodder for cattle, the self same cattle will not hesitate to destroy the young plants little realizing that their own future fodder is destroyed.
Principle -- The vital growth is to be presided over by the mind in any planned process. When the process is natural this is not necessary as the mind in the vital guards against the fall. Also the growth is slow as it is only to the extent permitted by the mind in the vital.
- Individual efficiency and social behaviour (Ref. to 40)
The Individual's psychological endowment has a direct and full bearing on his social development as tabulated in (40).
In the individual equipment there are two parts, the first is one's own skill, knowledge, capacity, experience, etc., all of which that can be exercised all by oneself without reference to others, e.g. an artistic talent, memory, intelligence, capacity to write, etc. The second aspect of it those capacities that call for relating to one or more persons necessarily, viz., team work, running a family, the writer's temperament that elicits the publisher's cooperation, exercise of authority, etc. This part is more than the unidimensional skill which is self-contained. This is a social endowment that calls for the creation of a nucleus "organization" transcending the "unicellular individual". On any level man's capacity to step out of the individual shell into the social organization is a big step in one's own social evolution. The greater, the better. A society's readiness for development can be measured by the distance between the individual social organization and the requirement of the society to fully exploit its opportunities. The less the gap the more ready is the society.
- Culture and Development:
Man moves in his effort from survival, convenience, comfort, luxury, aesthetics and spirit. This upward movement is development and it passes through stages of civilization and culture.
Increasing mastery of material physical nature outside, animal vital nature inside and bringing each faculty and plane of activity under greater and greater control of the next higher faculty and plane (viz. the physical under vital control and vital under mental control, etc.) is the process of civilization.
When civilized habits take root in the collectivity and can be passed on to posterity subconsciously, civilization matured into culture.
It is evident that the growth of culture and growth of development are parallel. One helps the other at one stage and in other stages one hinders the others.
- People backward in some respect if they ever make a successful effort to overcome it, the success of that effort contains the seed of their rising very high perhaps to the top.
Explanation: By endeavouring to bridge a gap they take a greater effort than normal. This excess is a surplus that leads them to catch up with others. Once they equal others, this capacity to create an excess is always there. That can lead them continuously to higher levels.
Examples: European winter compels man to earn for 12 months in 8 months. When life advances and winter is overcome in many respects his capacity to produce 1½ times his need remains. Surely that raises him in life.
People in desert areas like Marwaris and Jews develop enormous capacity to produce much out of little, conserve every available resource especially water. This they do for survival. Later when they move into plains the same capacity constantly produces a surplus.
The Coimbatore farmer who exhibits extreme endurance to dig his well finds cultivation child's play. Hence his cultivation is excellent.
By extension of this principle, if ever the third world takes a successful effort to catch up with the West, they will sooner or later outstrip the West. Japan is an instance.
Chrysler's effort to avoid bankruptcy was heroic. In our note to Chrysler we mentioned that they are likely to rise to the top which they seem to have done in some good measure.
- Natural human choice between a psychological enjoyment and a material gain is the former. This is true even when the material gain outweighs his present material prosperity standard. That is why man readily follows the example of a successful compeer even in areas he has earlier refused the benefit (Ramapuram - bore well). Here, after the compeer has accomplished what man seeks is the higher social status of the compeer not so much the material gain for its own sake. This too is pursuit of psychological enjoyment.
--
Perverse people, lazy men, clumsy folk, short-tempered ones, etc. have a REAL enjoyment of their psychological consciousness. Offer them a material status, twice greater than theirs or even ten times on condition that they renounce their old behaviour and acquire nice behaviour commensurate with the new income, I am sure there will not be one in a thousand who OPTS for the proposal. When compelling conditions arise, or the changing circumstances gradually steal into their lives they may unwittingly give in. The one climate where they readily respond is when a Ramasamy is sighted. This is again pursuit of psychological gain.
- Corruption: When a code of life or law is fully endorsed by the public conscience and upholding it does not hinder powerfully the ordinary life of the average man, the society can effectively enforce it. Transgressing such a law is corruption. The wider meaning of the concept of corruption must be confined to this definition.
When the administration or society accepts a code of life not fully subscribed to by the society at large, the code will always get flouted, bypassed, watered down. Such a transgression should not be brought into the purview of corruption as the society has committed the initial mistake of upholding a code not fully endorsed by it.
- Loneliness: Physical and psychological
Psychological loneliness arises from more than one cause. The first of these causes which is of no concern here is the separation from a loved one. This is a personal problem of rare incidence and does not constitute a social problem. We consider here only those aspects of loneliness that are social problems.
Even in a country like India where 5 to 10 people live in a family some people are victims of this phenomenon. There are people who have the habit of living and behaving as they are constituted. They do not try in the least to take the effort to adjust to the society. For one to grow from being an individual into a member of the society, he needs to exercise a self-restraint over the traits disapproved of by the society and take an effort to acquire every trait that is necessary to become a fit member of the society. In a country like USA these people had compensation in a bigger family of 1920 for their behavioural short-comings. In a bigger family the very living together offers some compensation or consolation. Inspite of one's temperamental defects there is some exchange between family members which satisfy his need for company. Today families have shrunk from large size to 3 or 4. Practically it is children versus parents or when the children grow up and leave it is man against woman. In a situation like this one's temperamental inadequacy assumes greater proportions. Relations are strained and one is left with one's own temperament to live with. What appears as a new problem in the society is really the bringing up into sharp focus and to the surface the inadequacies of individuals when the social living alters its physical composition and context. What is called for is not a solution to a newly created problem but growth in the lower members of the society as the society has outgrown their psychological backwardness.
Physical loneliness is the residue of the animal instinct known as gregariousness. That was the habit of the herd. Surely it is worth outgrowing. The growth called for is from physical to vital. He who acquires skills - vital skills - and generates enthusiasm in seeking an accomplishment may overcome physical loneliness in that measure.
- In a developing climate, if an opportunity is presented to one and he does not avail of it, he not only misses it, but loses the best portion of what he has.
Explanation: The opportunity that comes to him - as the climate is one of progress, change, development - gradually comes to the entire plane to which he belongs. If he has not availed of it, the entire plane moves above and he finds himself lower than where he was.
One who refuses to avail of an opportunity is ‘weak' in that measure. This exposure of ‘weakness' is availed of by all the forces in the plane and they rush at him to exploit the new-found ‘weakness' in him. A plane is not only an equilibrium of real forces but it maintains an equilibrium of forces of understanding. (As long as people understand that one has strength, they act on that understanding. The moment they understand he has no strength; they begin to act on the new understanding - Pandit was pounced upon by the Trustees the moment he resigned MSS Presidentship - what is true of known forces in society, is equally true of unknown forces in the subtle world too. Life acts in the same way as social life).
E.g. Spiritual sky who refused our offer in 1977 was later bought out by their distributor Balarama. The Tamil Chettiar devotee who once promised Mother his wealth and later failed and lost all his money. Mother says those who have a chance to give their wealth to HER, if they do not avail of that opportunity, later lose all their wealth.
By the time Life offers an opportunity to one, he has expanded into a good size and elevated to a certain height deserving the opportunity, i.e. he has come to a new structure or come to a status where a new structure is possible. If he refuses to accept the new opportunity, he can no longer attempt to create the new structure befitting his new height. So, he has to shrink to the old level. This process of shrinking is retrograde and anyone who is on a retreat is vulnerable to attack from other forces. The retreat he chooses by refusing the opportunity creates a vacuum and a vulnerability.
- Form and Content: After the content is destroyed with a vengeance and the fruits of the destruction are lived upon, the human mind sees, feels (and lives too) the full value of the form and maintains it religiously. The Brahmin widow who has borne three children as concubine to a Padayachi says, she would not eat the food cooked by her paramour.
- Authority: Development takes place unhindered if all the ingredients required are present - in the measure the Authority - social, collective, national, international - has accepted development as its goal or in the measure the development forces have acquired the Authority.
Presently the authority is that of the old social order. This society cannot and will not usher in the authority for new development. At best it can intellectually subscribe to the new ideas. The best example is inflation. The phenomenon of inflation is very simple to understand but all the world finds it difficult to accept but says it is unable to understand. The pity is those who benefit by inflation also project their own part of old authority and oppose inflation.
In a political democracy, when you come to the market place the economic authority lies in the buyer and seller. It is not so in an authoritarian govt. That is why economic progress needs the authority of its own.
In India today the labourer is scarce, not because there is a shortage, but because he chooses not to work when he chooses so. At that level authority lies in him. In earlier times in a village, he will be compelled to go to work. He himself dare not absent. That social authority to compel a man to work, has now moved to him and he is free to determine his course.
This AUTHORITY is of several shades, individual, personal, local, social, national, modern, rural, urban, etc.
What India now needs for full fledged development is that this authority should emerge at the national-social level and be vested in national-governmental level. As it is, govt. which is committed to great programmes, is hedged in by the authority of language, region, caste, etc., etc. This is the reality.
India has the development energy, climate, potentiality and all the rest. What she lacks is the developmental authority, authority of knowledge in the public, authority of wide public social approval of developmental effort and finally authority of individual motivation.
Such an authority can be developed by a prosperity movement.
- World Unity: Nature when she moves ahead and finds it difficult to move as a whole, fashions one strand of strength. Ordinarily this one point of strength becomes insular instead of generating a multiplier effect. When the intention of nature is the progress of the whole, she disapproves of the selfish insularity and to destroy that constricting movement, she develops further points of strength at lower and opposite levels. The right thing for each point of strength is to spread its gains. The ultimate unity will be achieved when infinite points of strength are developed and particularly each point of strength has to depend upon the sanction of other points, lesser points, opposite points thus compelling a wider unity.
E.g. In a democracy the greatest leader is made dependent on the smallest man, the individual voter. As long as the leader has to convince the smallest man, it is the will of the smallest man that is fulfilled.
A rich zamindar is to bow before a small urban officer. A high official is unable to command a small professional whose services he seeks. When the woman is accorded a status in society, the all-powerful personality of the husband that is a writer, thinker, artist, etc., is at the disposal of the all-powerful personality of an idiot wife. Democracy, urban life, social freedom, etc., are great levelers. These are the mechanisms through which life insists on unity in social life.
- Institutions are to social development what technology, science is to economic development.
Production is the field for scientific technology to effectuate. Social existence (as a collectivity) is the field where institutions express themselves.
- Small and great men - Selfishness and selflessness
The greatest public service a small man can render is to fulfill to perfection all his self interests (or even selfish aims).
The best way to build up the personality (of himself) for a great man is to pursue all his selfless aims relentlessly.
As smallness and greatness are not found in exclusive abundance but are mixed in various proportions in any personality, it is best to treat each strand according to his nature and constitution.
- Stages of the Development Process that complete one cycle
- Creation and release of the subconscious social energy in the collectivity;
- The social collective subconscious getting saturated with this fresh energy.
- The pioneer becomes conscious of this energy in himself and expresses it through an individual skill in work.
- Imitation of a single pioneer by several pioneers.
- Individual skill spreading to all members of the society becoming a social skill.
- Institutionalising of that activity by the society (through that skill).
- Conscious transmission of skills by the family.
- Conscious transmission of skills to the entire collectivity through formal education (civilization).
- Subconscious biological transmission of the same skills to progeny (culture).
Notes on Development
- Work that is the foundation of civilization
Work is the physical foundation of social survival and existence. When the leadership of the society is actuated by a higher level of living and the mass remains uninformed or uninspired and if the elite acquire a social authority that is compelling, society moves to the lower forms of civilization. The king forces the entire population to slave for building a temple or a pyramid for decades. As the society moves further to the point when the elite is incapable of compelling the mass to drudge for its own high standards - i.e. when the society becomes more civilized - the masses not only refuse to work for the elite's cultural goals but refuse to put in the necessary quantum of work that will maintain their own social ambitions or pretensions. At this stage, the masses by their intransigence and assertion compel the elite to pay for their keeping up the non-existent social prestige. Mostly the masses succeed. This is a form of social vengeance but has no real social energy in it. Hence this will not last long. At the next stage, the masses, realizing the imperative need of their higher social ambitions also come to realize that hard work alone can make it possible. Thus the masses who were compelled to hard work for the unkeep of the culture of the elite, progress to the position of being inspired to do hard work for their own culture.
Society moves from compulsion to inspiration for the same goal of HARD WORK in a movement from civilization to culture. Hard work is the mainstay at all levels (motivation may change).
- Perfection - Sri Aurobindo's pebble
In matters of effort that produces like material production result is proportionate to effort. Every little bit of effort has its benefit - Swalpam Abyasya dharmasya. Wherever perfection is required for qualification, even a little pebble upsets the whole apple cart. As a principle of development this expresses as: within the same plane result is proportionate to effort. When you want to rise to the next plane, perfection is called for. Nothing short of perfection qualifies to move to the higher plane.
- Process of Development is parallel to process of health
Human evolution, social evolution, physical evolution of forms all have in essence the same laws of progress, the same principles of growth, the same rules of existence. The variation may be demanded by the individual circumstance but even that variation will come under a general law of variation.
A comprehensive study of health, its composition, growth, deterioration into disease and recovery and the phases it passes through is worthwhile knowledge for the student of Development.
Health as well as Development has two major planes of existence of subconscious involuntary existence, and conscious voluntary function, Both grow within the limits of birth and death and pass through stages of infancy, adolescence, adulthood, maturity and decay. Both have an individual expression and a collective existence.
- One more definition of Development
Development is a process that enables man to function from the higher centres of his being making it possible for the development of his consciousness. Any process that makes man more effective is a process of development.
E.g. Transport and communication widens his physical sphere of action.
Script enhances his power of functioning.
Every technological innovation, any skill at any level higher than the present one, any institution that abridges time or space or lessens energy is of this type.
When the man who functions successfully by his physical skills like an engineer or a doctor (surgeon) moves to his vital, mental centres and begins to be a planner, designer from an engineer; a consulting physician or a research oriented surgeon from being a mere surgeon or even a planner or administrator of surgery based health programmes, we say he develops.
Every external technology, social institution, govt. programme or inner equipment as greater knowledge of work, higher control of men in work, understanding more complex designs of work is an instrument of such a development in man.
As a result man moves to higher centres of functioning within himself, i.e., Man develops. And this is the process of Development.
- Conscious expression of the pioneer and subconscious response of the society to Process of Development.
When the subconscious of the Society is saturated with a knowledge or enthusiasm or skill, it expresses in a pioneer as a conscious endowment at some level (knowledge, enthusiasm, skill). According to the level of saturation in the subconscious the Society responds to the pioneer positively with admiration, understanding support, etc., or negatively with lack of admiration, ununderstanding or resistance.
When the knowledge in the subconscious matures into subconscious skill, the process shows as knowledge in the conscious.
- Institutions - (Inflation)
All institutions are creations of the existing society to serve its own purposes and ideals and to preserve itself. It is natural that all such institutions will serve its creators, i.e., its leaders more than the others. Perhaps that is social Justice. What aims they state are formal.
Currency is a pre-eminent social institution. When its value is eroded by inflation, even this process of erosion is so organized that the dominant section is better served.
During the early part of this century inflation was described by the communists as a mechanism of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
Presently inflation serves as a mechanism to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor as the poor are the ruling majority in the nations around the world.
- The Pioneer is not one who accomplishes with the help of his colleagues, friends and relatives. He is one who does so inspite of all of them, rather the bitterest opposition, treachery and resistance comes only from those who are closest.
- Use of force: Collectively if one section of people throw away the self restraint accepted by the society and acts to the detriment of another section or the collectivity. Force is used to contain that section. The same is true of an individual with respect to the society.
Psychologically, if one part of the being - generally a lower part - is unable to accept the guidance of a higher part and moves into action that is detrimental to the whole being, the individual brings a discipline to bear upon the erring part which is employment of Force.
In life, if one species activates itself to the detriment of the collective harmony or refuses to activate itself so as to maintain the harmony, nature strikes the erring group with earthquake, burst of volcano, cyclone, floods or epidemics. This way nature resorts to Force.
To smite the erring member when it disturbs the collective harmony Force is used through administration or organization or natural calamities.
- Right and Wrong: For the ordinary man who is selfish - which is universal - life progresses by the restraints he has learnt in his upbringing. There comes a point where he finds it is no longer possible for him to exercise self-restraint. Here he levels off in his progress. Another psychological process sets in whereby he comes to believe his ineffectivity is right, he does not allow others to touch his life at that point, he likes only those who approve of that behaviour. Soon he comes to expect the world to appreciate him for what he is. His sense of right and wrong is based on it. All those who appreciate him at that point are right, others wrong.
For men, vital comfort is right, discomfort is wrong.
- The measure of Truth in one, is the measure of his progress.
Energy of a person alone makes for his effectivity.
Energy is usable only in the measure man is skilled.
Skill is meaningful only to the extent one's temperament is positive.
(Positive) temperament is organized by one's character.
Character helps a man in social progress only to the extent it is in the direction of social goals and helps him grow only in the measure social aim is positive (truthful).
Personal ideal leads one helped by his character and personality.
Growth of personality (either in life or) in itself is limited by the Force of Inner Truth.
- One asset, total fulfillment:
If a man is given one skill, strength, possession, position, etc., he feels he has the fulfillment of life. A worker becoming a maistry, manure for a coconut tree, attention to a neglected person, road for a village, access to car to a PKS or MGR, knowledge of Hindi for a woman etc., are examples.
Most shining successes now will fit this description. Bore well for Ramapuram, Degree for Baskar, fair skin for a girl, voice for Latha Mangeskar, oratory for DMK, organization for western industries, high standards in US schools, coaching in Loyola are the examples.
In India today, to achieve dramatic results, it is enough we HELP each section of people to acquire ONE SUCH SKILL OR ONE SUCH STRENGTH.
- Values, Ideals and social status:
At each level of society men are rated by their integrity, honesty, goodness and other ethical ideals, purity of caste. But if one from a level moves one or more steps in the social hierarchy, all his shortcomings are overlooked and his new status approved.
Morals and ethics and values are real, but confined to one's own level of social status.
In SOCIETY the paramount ideal or goal is social status. At its altar all values are sacrificed, including caste.
- Closed society opening to development - Hidden skills coming to the surface.
When society is closed, hierarchy develops in several fields, viz., political, religious, and social. This hierarchy protects and supports the weak members at the higher level and prevents and suppresses the strong members at the lower levels. Hidden talents, rich skills, great intelligence at lower levels languish. At higher levels birth, degree, tradition, form foster stupidity, lack of equipment, etc.
As soon as the society opens to development all barriers created by hierarchies are the first casualties. With the props removed, dummies at the top topple down. With the barriers removed, native talents, hidden skills, innate intelligence from below rise unhindered.
All the colonies like USA are good examples. Punjab where communal riots destroyed the old society is an example in India.
For the man brought up in the tradition the central hope lies in his ability and willingness to voluntarily shake off the trappings of the hierarchical society.
- Skills and upward social mobility: Skills lose their edge and effectivity when man moves to higher levels of society.
Excellent skills at low levels are unable to retain their effectivity when man moves upwards. Either when the area of activity widens or man's social position rises, his energies are drawn upon to meet the higher requirement. Hence his skills are not supported by the same energy and lose their keenness.
- Scale of collective values: Man's existence, collective and individual, rises from material to spiritual through vital and emotional. Hence individual efficiency, organizational effectivity, collective social status, national cultural level can be measured against a scale rising from physical to spiritual values incorporating at each stage horizontal expressions.
For instance, an individual can be rated by his physical skills, energies, vital enthusiasm and vital social skills of human relationships; emotional stability and expansiveness; mental agility and width of ideas; and finally spiritual poise and values of Truth and Harmony.
For an organization or a community or a nation, it is perfectly possible to construct a scale of skills, capacity, talents, energy, on the physical, vital, mental levels in the vertical and horizontal planes integrating into each item various psychological expressions (e.g. punctuality, concern for life, regard for Truth, health care, etc.) so as to embrace all possible cultural expressions and variations.
- Attraction to human nature: When utmost freedom is available, man refuses to do the most minimum duties required for his own existence. Having acted thus, he refuses to be pleased by anything less than the maximum of good results.
Development climate sometimes offers him such areas of action that combine less than minimum exertion and more than maximum good returns.
- Increase in income: In a static society where fashions, life styles, social expectations, job requirements, life requirements are FIXED, an increase in income is felt as a comfort, as a relief since the increase leads to greater satisfaction at any level or goes to savings.
In a developing society fashions change, life styles alter drastically, social expectations change overnight, life requirements continue to multiply endlessly. In the general population frustrations develop on all sides. In the younger generation which is unaware of past conditions the gap between (expectations and) requirements and income create conditions of revolt. Any rise in income does not produce satisfaction but lessens conditions of frustration. Even phenomenal rise in incomes to 10 to 20 fold only keep up with changing times with a fringe of inadequacy.
Developing societies cannot feel the satisfactions which stagnant societies feel. Newer technologies, greater social freedoms, fresh legislations for greater opportunities, unbelievable institutional changes bringing unheard of institutional (social) support for masses, infinite changes in occupations, life style, attitudes and above all HARD WORK alone can meet the rigours of changing conditions.
- New Work as fresh creation:
- The founder's most important, rather than most difficult, work is to create instruments for the work. The two difficulties here are the best fitted instruments will be unaware of their capacities (e.g. Vivekananda) and the natural second level leadership will be opposed to the work or be beside the point.
- For efficient execution of a work, it is said, the right person must be chosen for the right work. BUT, in accomplishing a fresh creative work, it involves getting each component of it done through persons specially unfitted for and added to it particularly unwilling.
- Founding an International Educational Centre.
When Royal Society was founded, it was intended to rescue human mind from superstitions and lead it towards Science.
As humanity was materially poor, this high aim - perhaps the true aim of the founders - has really served in the physical-material plane. As a result, a great material prosperity issued. This is the direct result of applying science to improve material conditions of life.
NOW, material plenty is reaching proportions where it may no longer be a blessing but a curse. What humanity seeks is the PSYCHOLOGICAL well being. Welfare is no longer the final goal. If MAN is rescued from the superstition of data, experimentation, concrete material facts and is taught to observe, study the life conditions and discover and apply the findings to life conditions, which is equally True Science, human life on earth can usher itself into happiness and joy relieving itself from the fetters of material plenty and its negative consequences.
Material Science required observation of the infinitesimal. Science of Life requires the unifying vision to inquire into Infinite.
The central aim of our educational endeavour is to give the world this perspective.
- Why people appreciate the FORM and not the content:
Any value begins as content and with its extension to its most external aspects with culture - it acquires the outer form. Greater is the extension of content, greater is its appreciation and wider too. With each further stage of extension of content, its corresponding outer form becomes more easily recognizable and by a wider population.
Form, rather content, is in vogue because the form is an index of a greater content rather the content in its highest cultured version and it is most easily recognized.
- Science, Data, Physical Mind: (Refer page 12, Physical Mind)
Science truly belongs to ideative mind. Data belongs to physical mind. Physical mind finally takes over the functioning, the maintenance of what has been created by the ideative mind. Ideas are originated, the pragmatic mind reduces to useful activity, creates skills through which it could be worked. After a greater labour the physical mind learns the skill and comes to possess it perfectly and gains a control over it through the outer forms of skills, conventions, data, etc.
The modern thinker unfortunately looks to the physical mind to create. At best it is an anomaly. The political leaders create laws, the administration implements. To expect the administration to create laws is foolish. The physical mind is like the administration.
- Human Value and Inflation: Prices rise because human value increases (standard of living goes up). Man is NOT willing to raise his work value in proportion to the rise in his social value. Hence the clamour of inflation.
Inflation will not go. It can only be understood. CLAMOUR of inflation will go when man is willing to give to HIMSELF, i.e., his own work the increased value he sets to himself.
Explanation: Evolution of social man is on the scale of slave - human labour as commodity - civilized citizen - man aware of his right - labour right conceded by society - labour right felt by him - upward social mobility as a pressing motive among labour.
Rising man raises the cost of the product he makes. By his rise, he makes the entire society pay him more; and he too should, similarly pay more for others products and in point of fact, for his own product too. In other words, he should work better or harder to deserve his social rise. A part of his social rise is paid for by the society which is reflected as inflation. Another part he can only sustain by his own raising his skill, energy, capacity and industry. The first part, viz., inflation cannot be removed. The second part, if he is willing, he will stop clamouring against inflation. If he is not willing, he will drop off out of the ‘survival of the fittest' struggle and be eliminated from his present social class. He will slide one step down or be annihilated.
- Small man's view of greatness - Indices of development and primitivity.
Each man has to have a certain self-esteem, a self-image for him to exist successfully. Family tradition, wealth, status of village or community, scholarship, religious values of piety, devotion, etc., moral values of chastity, integrity, rectitude, etc., social values of status, power, money, tradition, etc., serve as ideals with which man identifies rightfully to seek this self-fulfillment. This is so for the average man and those above him.
Out of this tradition of social existence comes the essence of self-esteem which degenerates into Pride. Men below average do not have anything to bank upon to build their self-image. The social urge for self-esteem is so great that it works relentlessly even in the absence of something to build upon. The right thing for such a man is to patiently work to create one such value in the long run. Man seeks shortcut and one is available in the form of trappings. This is in the merest externals of seeking the dress, language, and ways of life of their social superiors. That satisfies most but not the strong ones in that camp. They seek to invent the values and draw inward satisfaction by becoming proud of one of those attributes they already have, regardless of the fact that that attribute is a label of shame. It does not stop here. Going further, he sees every other man not endowed with his own shameful weakness, his own newly formed value, as an inferior to him.
Gopalakrishnan's capacity to read every newspaper, the smuggler's wealth, the singer's or actor's fame, and the unscrupulous man's great success are points of illustration. Those who make a virtue of necessity like those who parade their poverty as austerity, though it is a version of this principle, is essentially different from this.
The small man in his social rather psychological resourcefulness comes to be proud of one source of his shame if it yields any one trapping of social respectability. This inner process reaches its acme when he looks down upon others for not being endowed with his own ‘superiority'.
- Limits of growth - Individual, Institution, Nation, Humanity
Growth is energy formulating itself into skills, skills into systems, systems into organization and finally organization developing a controlling centre, viz., Personality.
Whereas Individuals and Institutions have their own personality, in the Nation and Humanity the centre is called the Soul.
Limits of growth are set by the ability to develop this centre, rather the willingness.
- Stupidity: The righteous anger of an incapable man at the work and the boss comes not from his emotions, but from his stupid personality.
Stupidity responds with righteous dignity when its incapacity is touched by work.
- Greatness and Stupidity: All great men know that they are great, says Sri Aurobindo. No stupid man knows that he is stupid as such an awareness disqualifies him from being stupid.
- Response to development:
An excellent idea for development - for personal progress - from one below in social status gets ignored, often unheard. One from a person above in social status has a response different from the one expected. Instead of receiving the benefit by implementing the idea and working for it, he expects the benefit directly to come from the person giving the idea, i.e., exploitation.
When a compeer implements the idea and receives the benefit, ALL at his level respond with great energy, enthusiasm for the action and receive total benefit.
- Sublimation of the lower into the higher is possible only when the lower structure is flexible and that too carrying the seeds of the higher as Free Indian democracy was built on the British legacy.
In case where the lower structure is encrusted or reached its maximum possibility of growth or of the opposite nature, it has to be discarded for the new to come in.
E.g. the hut-stringed village is to be destroyed for a modern colony to be ushered in. The smuggler's organization is to be scrapped to give place to a modern company.